Update on Garden Project

On May 19, 2015May 19, 2015 By HeidiIn Blog, Gardening2 Comments

After a weekend in San Diego and another filled with rain, my hubby was finally able to do some more work on the walkway. It’s looking really good.

We ran out of bricks about the same time as hubby ran out of steam. As soon as we get some more this part of the project will be done. The next will be moving the dirt we dug up from this and a small hill in our yard that we did not want and spread it around the areas that need to be receded.

The project I did last year is doing pretty good. The small roses still haven’t come back from the shock of being moved. Hopefully in another year they will be looking better. I hope so because I really liked those roses, and one I bought when my 23 year old son was born. So a bit of sentimental value there.

I do think the clematis is liking it’s new home.

I bought this weilgia a few years back and I really like the shape of it. The problem is it is getting too big for the spot it’s in so I may have to do some pruning. 😦

Well, back to what I came out here to do and that is edit my new book while the dog enjoys laying in the sun.

Have a wonderful day! 🙂

New Pathway

On April 28, 2015 By HeidiIn Gardening1 Comment

This is the first post for my gardening section. I have a few projects that I have done already but I haven’t had the time to start this section of my website. So here is the first post.

When we bought the house, there was a hot tub in the backyard. We, well I because I was a stay at home mom at the time, used the hot tub quite often. However, it was old and starting to break down. Not to mention it was under a Cedar Tree. WHY it was put under a Cedar tree was beyond me. Not only can you not keep cedar out of the tub, but relaxing with your head back as the jets work the knots out of your shoulders only to open your eyes up to see a huge spider making it’s way towards you from above is not…well…relaxing in any sense of the word. The tree was damaged in a wind storm and it had to go. Soon after I decided so did the hot tub. So one day I took a saws-all and cut it up into manageable pieces and headed to the dump.

Now we had a huge cement pad in our backyard. What to do with it. Obvious answer? Tile it!

So this was done a few years back, and it looks good, but now what? We have to go across the grass to get to it and sometimes that’s messy. So we talked about put a pathway from the deck to the patio. This year we finally decided to do it. So here is what took place Sunday.

As you can see the grass wasn’t in the greatest shape. (That is another project that hubby has taken over this year. Fixing the grass. This was after thatching the moss out. Yuck!) So now that the sod is gone and everything is level we need to put the sand in along with a new product we thought we try instead of gravel.

It’s called EZ Base and it is suppose to take the place of gravel. Also weighs nothing. Says it’s suppose to work under driveways so I’ll let you know how well it works. I know our backs already love it! lol

But this….

not so much. 😛 We still need a few more of the larger stones (Home Depot didn’t have enough) but these should do for now. I have a feeling it will be like putting down new flooring in a room. Suddenly the furniture doesn’t look as good as it used to so it needs to replace. Where the reworking of yard ends we will see.

Until next time…..

Distractions and Writing

On April 11, 2015April 11, 2015 By HeidiIn Blog2 Comments

When I was in junior high and that fateful paragraph was written on the board of my Homeroom class, my love of writing began. Saved my ass a few times, too. You see, I was too busy writing, so the projects I was suppose to be doing sort of got…lost. (Actually they just didn’t get done so I made a deal with my teacher and turned in my latest chapter instead.) I remember even having time to write when I worked at the front desk of the local pool. As I sit here, some years later, I still have that passion to write but for some reason I cannot stay focused. Some could blame it on old age or the fact that real life is a lot more complicated and filled than it was in my school years. And when I got married and had kids all that free time went by the wayside because…well…babies are a bit time consuming.

But I digress. Back to the distractions. Even when I started writing again when the kids went to school I was still able to focus. Yes I had television, books, housework, the flower gardens, the family when they were home, yet I still was able to focus. Now I could be all alone and I can’t get down on paper what it is I want to tell. The difference? Internet, for one. The internet and the social media that has all these distracting evil addictive games. Games where you move objects to make three or more of a kind and they disappear. Games where you grow crops and sell them, pop bubbles, hit the spin button and see what prize you will win at the end. I have managed to cull some of those games and I never put money into those games for more ‘lives’. I have five then five it will be. I do my best to ignore them. Play those five lives then close it down. Music helps to focus me, as always. But unless I go somewhere where I don’t have internet access, or inspiration hits so hard I can no longer ignore it, I have a hard time staying focused.

Another is me, myself and I. The book I am writing now was written a long time ago, in those school day. Since then I have rewritten it a few times, each time the journey a little different than the last. This time around I finally realized what it was missing. Why it never felt right. So I started again, trying to keep to the original storyline as best as I could. Unfortunately, I am to the point that the story has changed and grown so much that a lot of what was written before will not work, yet I still try to keep as much of it as I can. And that trips me up, puts that writer’s wall firmly into place, not allowing the scenes in my head pass through my fingers and onto the paper until I get out of my way and just write.

So on that note, I’m going to plug into my music and try to ignore the call of the games, forget what I have written down in previous rewrites and try to finish the book I am currently working on. Not as in done ready to publish, but done as in this part of the story is finish and I can now begin the many edits. Oh, and find a title. Little like trying to find the perfect purse. I mission doomed before it’s started. You girls know what I am talking about! 😉

Have a great weekend. 🙂

Heidi

Drums Beating in the Night

On April 10, 2015 By HeidiIn Poetry1 Comment

Drums beating in the night
Thrumming through the walls
Beating in time with my heart
Strengthening duty’s call.
Drums beating in the night
Heralding enemy untold
Striking dread into the soldiers
Telling of death that waits to unfold.
Drums beating in the night
Pounding in time with steel and might.
Drums beating in the night
When sudden silence speaks
In the dawn we will fight.
To go into history
Brave and valiant soldiers be
To save loved ones
To assure they are free
From those who’s beliefs and might
Give them convictions blight
That only their ways are virtuous and precise.
That those who stray
From path straight and true
Need to be punished
For thoughts deemed impure.
Drums beating in the dawn
Earth shattering, strong.
The battle begins
In a war no one will win.
Drums beating in the dawn
When will the madness end?
When will we put down our swords
And put peace into living words?

Unable to put into words what you see? Try this trick.

On April 9, 2015 By HeidiIn Blog, Creative Writing3 Comments

If you are having a hard time putting down the visual you see your mind, close your eyes, immerse yourself in the scene and then type. Don’t worry about mistakes. Don’t worry about wording. Just write what you see in as much detail as you can. When done, open your eyes, fix the spelling errors (there will probably be a lot!) then edit. It is amazing how easy it is to put down in words what you see in your mind when there are no distractions from what is around you.

Stray Thoughts

On April 7, 2015April 7, 2015 By HeidiIn Poetry2 Comments

Stray thoughts invade
all focus lost
scattered to the winds.
Fog descends
moonlight wans
misty trails like skeletal limbs.
Whispered voices
reaching towards me
beckoning me in,
“Step into the darkness
where secrets lie
and the forbidden is
no longer a sin.
Come play with us
till dawn light wins.
Come play within
your darkest dreams.”

~ © Heidi Barnes

Why, When, Who, What….

On March 21, 2015 By HeidiIn Poetry2 Comments

I ask you why
You say goodbye
I ask you when
You say it’s a sin
I ask you who
You say it’s all hullabaloo
I ask you what
You say tut tut
I ask you where
You say love is in the air
When I only stare
You whisper if there was only time to spare

~ Heidi Barnes

Silent Pleas

On March 14, 2015 By HeidiIn Poetry1 Comment

Are you strong
when you solder on
through agony so deep
it should bring you to your knees?
To keep smiling
even though inside you are dying,
so those who surround you
have sanity in chaos to cling on to.
What they don’t realize
is when you are alone and hidden
that grief kept under wraps
breaks out and your knees collapse.
Greif and agony
washing over, through, surrounding
your soul screaming,
your heart breaking
chaos reigning.
Stay strong
stay silent
break wrong
no longer valiant.
I feel your pain
hear your silent pleas,
help me bear this grief
before I lose all belief.

When Do You Say…Enough.

On March 11, 2015March 11, 2015 By HeidiIn Creative Writing, Poetry1 Comment

When is it too much? When do you finally say enough? Some people’s threshold is very high, reaching for the heavens and above. “They have the patience of a saint,” people would say. Others are so low not even Lucifer in his realm can find it, settling in the deep core of the earth to simmer and burn. All it takes is a look or maybe one certain person walking into the room and their patience is gone, flying out the window as if the very demons of hell were nipping at its tail.

There are situations where walking away can be the most difficult act you will ever play. The one that not only will affect your life, but those around you that you thought you loved and those you still do. How do you change your life without destroying theirs? Yet if you don’t change, won’t your life be destroyed? How do you betray those who depend on you in order to keep what little sanity you have left by leaving them in the frozen wasteland that has become life? Or the scalding desert that has become your hell? What is that final act that forces you to say “I have had enough” and you walk away, never to look back.

How many people can you save by saying “No more” to the demon who possesses the power to harm those around them? How many will you sacrifice to end the misery? Strengths come in many levels, many ways. The strength to keep going, to fight that which yearns to destroy everything you hold dear. The strength to say “Enough” and walk away to live, to breathe, another day.

Some say those who refuse to step out of the darkness that has become their lives, that stay and just endure are cowards. Are they? Just because they see no way out. That the demon that holds their life in its hands has every exit sealed shut with vicious words and violence promised to those they love, or to them if they dare to seek the light. Maybe they have been beaten so far down that there is no strength left to fight for what most of us take for granted. Freedom to think and choose for ourselves. Freedom to say, “Enough.”

Rabbit Hole: How deep does it go?

On March 10, 2015 By HeidiIn Blog2 Comments

One of my favorite authors, Laurel K Hamilton, has recently been talking about what she refers to as “Rabbit Holes”. This is when the story you are writing starts down a path that does not necessarily go along with the plot yet we, as writers, either don’t recognize it or decide to see where the tunnel leads. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t and we can find out way out and sometimes it leads us down into darkness only to leave us stranded and wondering how the hell we got here in the first place. Then comes the ponderous job of going back and trying to figure out where we fell in. I think this may be what has happened to me as I sit writing the second book to Destiny. The problem is I’m not sure.

It is true that the original story has changed quite a bit in the years that I have been writing and tweaking it. I realized that there was something that was missing. A piece that would explain some of my characters behaviors. I’ve said this before so I won’t delve to deep into this part, but I thought maybe it needed a supernatural aspect to it. Sure enough things became clearer. New characters were introduced, sub-plots, and as events began to fall together where this story may be going.

As I started writing the second book (I still don’t know what to call it), I realized that I may not be able to keep some of the original storyline that kept the storyline going. That would bring in key characters that would play major roles later on in the story. How to fix that. Then the first rabbit hole appeared as one of the major characters in Destiny that I thought would be around for awhile went and got himself killed. I’ve tried to see another way for this to happen, like maybe when I planned for this character to die much later in the series, but no, the act has been committed and apparently it is going to stay right where I didn’t not plan it to happen. A second tunnel appeared as one of my characters started not acting like himself. In fact he is so out of character it is starting to worry me. This is the one tunnel that I am not sure if I can backtrack and re-route. It fits, yet it doesn’t. The action is appropriated to the scenario, and the scenario needs to stay, yet that character needs to get his head out of his….well you get the idea.

The book is far from done, yet I am afraid I may have to scrap it and start over again. Something I don’t want to do. So more thinking, more writing and we will see if there is an end to this to this tunnel and I will see the light of day, or if I will dig myself into an even deeper hole and drown in the darkness.

Have a wonderful day. 🙂