But now the word is out that drinking is actually good for your creativity.

In a study (called “Uncorking the Muse”) published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition it’s revealed that drinking a moderate amount of vodka can make you more creative.

“Moderate” in this case is just below the legal limit in the U.S. Participants were “cut off” once their blood alcohol level reached 0.075 percent.

How was creativity tested in the study?

Via a word association test.

The drinkers were given a vodka cranberry. The sober men were not. Both groups sat through a cartoon movie, waiting for the alcohol to work its way into the bloodstream of the potential creatives. After the movie, both groups were administered the test.

According to the article, “the men were presented with three words (“peach, arm, and tar,” for example) and then asked to come up with a fourth word that formed a phrase with each example (“pit”).”

The results?
On average, sober men took 15.4 seconds to come up with the correct response. The men who drank vodka, on the other hand, only needed 11.5 seconds.

You’re all invited for martinis at my house tonight! Bring your laptop.

Read the full story on line at The Week.

This means that the Husband of Awesome™ and a platoon of his cohorts are in the nether realms of the basement gaming, drinking scotch, and probably acting like neanderthals.

(They probably wouldn’t like me saying that.)

But that’s not hard to believe if you’d hear the laughter rolling up the stairs like thunder every so often. (One wonders what they jabber about. The game should be taking all their attention, right?)

They approached me last week and asked if it were all right to play tonight. I was dumbfounded.

I mean, I knew I wasn’t celebrating tonight. (We’re gearing up for a raucous party Friday night.) But what are the odds that the Husband of Awesome™ and every single one of his gaming buddies is free as well?

I smell a conspiracy.

I told them that I wasn’t the woman they needed to clear this with…after all, every one of them has a wife or fiancée. They should be asking their own women!

But darned if every one of them didn’t show up tonight.

So, I’m writing blog posts…and cleaning off the desk. Looking forward to Friday when I can spend a lot more time in the company of the Husband of Awesome™. What are you all up to tonight?

However, I found it very difficult to get through.

The premise of the book is based on a wonderful 30-year-old memory: Faced with the insurmountable problem of writing a book report on birds, Lamott’s 10-year-old brother is in tears and wondering how he’s going to get it all done. Their father puts an arm around his shoulder and says, “Bird by bird, Buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

Fabulous advice.

But I realized after reading the introduction the book was not for me. It’s written in a literary style, a bit verbose for my tastes, and the takeaways aren’t what I need in my writing life right now. In my mind, Lamott spends a lot of time rambling about she thinks about things, rather than adding any concrete “how to” to the information. And there are a few chapters where she talks about something that happened to her, and you’re sort of left to wonder what she wanted you to get from the aside.

In the first chapter, “Getting Started,” Lamott talks about writing the truth and writing what’s real. She advocates starting with writing down everything you remember from school and kindergarten and holidays and such, along with your feelings and what you knew at the time. If you keep hacking at it, you’ll find the truth, or what’s real to write about. And that’s where you should start writing.

As a writer of speculative fiction, this isn’t what I needed (or wanted) to hear. I make things up. And while my stories might contain a kernel of something that happened to me (or someone else I know) it’s not going to resemble anything in the way of this exercise. The feelings, the emotions, yes – else how could you identify with my characters? – but the rest doesn’t make sense for me.

(From a genealogical perspective, on the other hand, I find this chapter fascinating. And, I might have to give it a whirl when I find the time.)

Other chapters in the book offer sound advice for beginners:

• Start small. (Especially if you are easily overwhelmed by large projects.)
   
• It’s okay to write terrible first drafts.
   
• Stop being a perfectionist. Perfectionism is “the voice of the oppressor,” according to Lamott.
   
• Plot grows out of character.
   
• Care passionately about what you write.
   
• Trust what your inner voice – your intuition — is telling you about your writing.
   

Then there’s a chapter called, “School lunches,” where Lamottt talks about a writing exercise she uses in her classes. Everyone writes down what they remember about school lunches and then they compare. She says when they discuss the differences of lunches throughout the states, it’s where they “see in bolder relief what we have in common.”

She gives some examples of what she wrote, which seem over dramatic. I think they’re supposed to be funny, but aren’t to me. It’s like she’s trying too hard.

One section of the book is called, “Help Along the Way,” where I suspect Lamott meant to suggest some useful tools for writers. But she spends an entire chapter discussing index cards, where the advice amounts to “Always carry something to write on.”

In another chapter, “Calling Around,” Lamott advises, “There are an enormous number of people out there with invaluable information to share with you, and all you have to do is pick up the phone.” Again, good, but we don’t need entire chapters to get the point across.

Two chapters, “Writing Groups” and “Someone to Read Your Drafts” are all about finding critique partners and getting feedback on your work. These are the two best chapters in the book. They contain good information, especially for beginning writers, and I agree with most of what she says.

(Unlike Lamott, I don’t advocate getting feedback from relatives, because in most instances they’re too afraid to hurt your feelings to tell you what you need to hear.)

The chapter on writers block is encouraging, but not instructional. There are no suggestions for how to overcome it (although an earlier chapter on writing letters could be useful. Lamott does not tie the two together.)

If you want to learn more about the author Anne Lamott, read this book. There are long passages about what she thinks about the writing process and how she handles it. She’s admittedly neurotic about it, and makes the assumption that most writers are as well. I disagree.

If you’re looking for concrete examples on how to write, new tools for your toolbox, or tricks of the trade, I’d look elsewhere.

(I didn’t know this until I sat down to write this post.)

Seems kind of silly to me. (But fun, too. For some reason it makes me wish it were raining today.)

I suspect that “National Umbrella Day” must be the product of a greeting card company, because I can find no congressional evidence of a “national” day being declared for it.

Do you have a favorite bumbershoot? I have this wonderful golf-sized umbrella that I got free from drinking lots of Lipton Tea. It’s red-and-white-striped with the Lipton logo. It’s my go-to umbrella when it’s raining…and people laugh and laugh because it’s so huge. But it keeps me dry, so I’m keeping it.

Here’s Your Prompt:

• Write a poem using the imagery of an umbrella. It can be any kind of umbrella: rain umbrella, beach umbrella, an umbrella in a mixed drink, one of those silly hat umbrellas, etc.
   
• If you journal, write a letter to your children (or nieces and nephews) about the time you needed an umbrella and didn’t have one.
   
• Consider the things that “umbrella” is a metaphor for: a shield for protection, something to hide behind, as a cover from risk, or a folded umbrella representing untapped potential, etc. Write about the time you or a character in one of your stories could have used an umbrella — metaphorically.
   

A picture from the road:

How the day ended:

It was unexpected, but not surprising. Still a bit of a shock to hear on the phone.

Human nature being what it is (and this being my family, I guess), the first order of business was a tussle over which family plot my uncle will be buried in.

(What – your family doesn’t have any death real estate?)

Grudges can be held, apparently, into the grave…and for decades beyond.

And we learned there’s going to be an autopsy. Required, apparently, by the state.

Since there’s time between death and burial preparation, the phone lines have lit up among the older generation in the family. People who have not spoken to each other in years, finally have a topic to bring them together.

Funny how that happens.

After you get over the initial impact, that kind of “out of the blue” call gets you to thinking about, well, death.

Here’s Your Prompt:

Caution! Some of these prompts may cause you to come to terms with death.

• Plan your own funeral.

  (If this seems morbid to you — consider that you’re doing your family a favor by letting them know what it is you want to happen upon your death. It saves them the time of speculating (perhaps agonizing) during the initial grieving process. With luck, it will ensure that they lay you out in your favorite outfit, instead of something pulled off the rack at the funeral home.)

• If you can’t plan your own funeral, plan one for someone else. Be creative: plan a funeral for your Great-Uncle Harry who always slipped you a fiver when he saw you, and never forgot your birthday. Do it up right. Conversely, create a special ‘funeral in hell’ for that neighbor of yours with the dogs that never stopped barking, the wild parties every day of the week, and the police raids which happened on a regular basis.
   
• Your grandmother dies and leaves you $75,000 in her will. How do you feel when you hear this? What will you do with the money?
   
• Write a story — starting with the reading of a will — where the most unlikely person in the room inherits all the cash and assets. This is the black sheep of the family — the runaway, the drunk, the drug user. Everyone hates him (or her). Speculate why this person inherited everything. Was there a relationship with the deceased that no one else knew about? What happens with the family dynamics now that this person inherits?
   
• Your spouse or partner dies suddenly. Write their eulogy.
   
• Write your own eulogy. How do you think people will remember you?
   
• You’ve just learned you have terminal cancer. Write what happens for the next week of your life.
   
• Write the funeral scene of the villain in your current work in progress. Or, write the funeral scene of your favorite evil character from a book, movie or television series.
   
• And now for some obligatory quotes about death:
   
  • I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid. ~ Thomas Stearns Eliot
     
  • Let death be ever daily before your eyes, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything. ~ Epictetus
     
  • Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him — that is the best account of it that has yet been given. ~ Edward Morgan Forster
     
  • Our scripture tells us that childhood, old age and death are incidents only, to this perishable body of ours and that man’s spirit is eternal and immortal. that being so, why should we fear death? And where there is no fear of death there can be no sorrow over it, either. ~ Mahatma Gandhi.
     

Decades before the software program Photoshop was a gleam in anyone’s eye, photographer W.H. Martin was creating photo montages. Judging from the few postcards I’ve seen, his themes were mostly agricultural, with some based on “old wives tales.”

All the ones I’ve seen tell a tall tale.

According to Wikipedia:

“A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some such stories are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories (‘the fish that got away’) such as, “that fish was so big, why I tell ya’, it nearly sank the boat when I pulled it in!”

Other tall tales are completely fictional tales set in a familiar setting, such as the European countryside, the American Old West, the Canadian Northwest, or the beginning of the Industrial Age.

See Wikipedia for more information about tall tales.

Here’s Your Prompt:

• Write a tall tale about what happened to you today.
   
• If today is too hum-drum , write a tall tale about another day in your life.
   
• Re-write a tall tale you already know with yourself as the main character, and using modern day events.
   
• Like Martin, create a visual pictorial of a tall tale: draw it, use photography software to create it, or tear pictures from a magazine to make a collage.
   
• Write an exaggerated poem about something that happened to you yesterday.
   

I dropped by the library after work tonight to check out a movie, and of course I couldn’t help but peruse the book-sale rack.

I’ve done this a couple of times in the last few months and have been relieved to find those shelves chock-full of stuff that didn’t interest me. (Which was good.)

But the librarians must have spent their time this week winnowing out the sci-fi and fantasy sections of the library and dropped it all on the shelf before I came in.

I can’t even tell you how many books I picked up (though I will say it had to be close to 40, because I spent over 10 bucks and the paperbacks are only a quarter a piece. I did score a few hard backs.

Sadly, this comes on the heels of a book-buying binge over the weekend.

In 2011, I “officially” purged 227 books from the house. This means they were boxed up and carried away from the premises. This doesn’t count all the books I gave away to relatives and friends.

There are literally hundreds more sitting in bags and boxes in a little room off my kitchen because they’ve (so far) been too much trouble to haul away.

(It’s funny how I find it no problem to bring, say… 40, books into the house one day, but I can’t be bothered to take that many out the next time I leave.)

I think a large part of the problem is the lack of venues for divesting myself of books. The local thrift stores will take them, but not in the quantity I have to give away. The library doesn’t want back the books they sold me – though they’ll take the ones I’ve recently bought. I don’t mind giving them away, but I’d rather not have it be at my expense. (See how complicated it’s getting?)

And I am completely against tossing them in the trash.

I’ve been known to take a box of books on vacation, and then leave them for the next renters…but you can only rid yourself of so many that way.

How do you get rid of your excess tomes?

Apparently jimmies (sprinkles, for those of you who are unfamiliar) must be a local (or regional) term. Is this actually the case? Please let me know in the comments.

What spurred the discussion was my creation of these little ladybug cake confections.

I received one of those “cake pops” pans for Christmas this year. Totally unexpected. I bake a lot of cookies — mostly Italian style biscotti using my Grandmother’s recipe — but I don’t bake cakes.

It’s not that I don’t like cake. It’s just that a cake, even a small one, usually rots on the counter after a few days in this small household. It’s just a waste.

But cake pops on the other hand…are a neat way to economize…

…unless you decorate them, I’ve found. I could have bought a HUGE bakery-made sheet cake — fully themed – for what I paid for candy melts and icing pens, junior mints and confetti and jimmies.

But it was a lot of fun…if not as delicious as I thought they should have been.

Frankly, a slice of cake would have been fine.

But these do look so cute on the counter.

Now… no derisive comments about my decorating skills, okay? I’m a novice.