Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Apropos of nothing

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  • I hardly ever write by hand these days, and yet I still pore over catalogues from the Fountain Pen Hospital as though I were going to get something from them any time soon.
  • I have discovered, much to my shock, that for NaNo I’ve been doing 700-1000 words per hour. Given my typing ability, I would expect I could do five to six times that. However, having to think of what I’m going to write slows me down a lot. Also: getting snacks from the kitchen. Big time sink there.
  • If you mix together orange and cinnamon essential oils in your diffuser, it makes your office smell like Christmas. And that, friends, is a happy smell.
  • I wonder where the best place to buy Torani syrups is. The supermarket I go to has a small selection, and I really want vanilla, to make homemade cream sodas. I have found the motherlode of Torani! BevMo formerly (Beverages & More) has a)the gigantic bottles of Torani in b)every possible flavor for c)less than Lunardi’s and other supermarkets charges for the small bottle.

    Today I also discovered that Williams-Sonoma has an extremely good-looking seltzer water bottle that would make my need to buy endless plastic bottles of carbonated water obsolete. I’m putting that on my Xmas list.

  • I’m going to outline. I am. I am going to do a thorough, tested, bounce-the-quarter-off-the-hospital-corners outline. Because seriously. I can type a hundred words a minute when I get going, if I know where I’m going. And if I work on the outline for last year’s book to tighten it up, I think it will be ready to go. This year’s book? Maybe, maybe not. But I am having fun with it, even if half the scenes are more the characters being clever than being, you know, on point.
  • Great writing soundtrack: Pirates of the Caribbean Also perfect: The Killing Fields, Mishima If anyone has any suggestions for other great soundtracks to pick up, let me know.
  • Great new exercise music album: Confessions from a Dance Floor I know, I know, but… what can I say? I like Madonna. And every song is 150bpm; good for dancing, good for elliptical machines. However, the lyrics to “I Love New York” are so stupid I cannot believe someone did not take her aside and say, “Um, fix this.”
  • And if anyone has any other 150bpm music they’d like to recommend, let me know. My iPod Shuffle makes going to the gym possible.
  • The iTunes Music Store: E. Vil.
  • Why am I spending precious writing time looking up books on afternoon tea? Seriously?
  • The average caloric intake of those little Fun Size candies we give out on Halloween? About 100 calories each. One little bite worth of candy, 100 calories. That’s freaking amazing. It’s a wonder that I wasn’t 500 pounds as a 9-year-old, because believe you me, I ate all the candy in my Halloween bag every year.
  • We’ve been portioning out the candy from the kids’ Halloween bags at one piece per day, two if we’re having “Dessert Night.” And they still have full bags. Good God they got a lot of candy trick-or-treating. I think at the New Year we’re just going to have to draw the line and pitch the bags. “You’ll get some more next year. Who’s up for Cold Stone?”
  • There’s 8 pounds between dress sizes? Really? I don’t mean to sound sarcastic — I just have no idea how the fashion industry determines these things. The European system, measuring in non-changing centimeters, seems a lot more reasonable to me. No fudging for them!
  • According to this month’s Vanity Fair, Kate Moss is 5’7″ and weighs 100 pounds. That’s not thin, that’s criminal. How on Earth did she get her body to support a baby?
  • Shopping with the kids in the mall? I’m sure people all over the mall were calling Child Protective Services on me.

    • Comments

    1. What makes a person de-lurk after reading you for probably 7 years? Halloween candy. This year, based on a suggestion I read online, the Halloween Witch visited our house. The kids picked out a small pile of their favorite candy, then left the rest of the bucket outside their doors. The Halloween Witch traded the candy for a new toy and a new book and a new toothbrush.

      Of course, then we had to get rid of the candy before “the Halloween Witch” weighed 900 pounds, but that’s a simpler problem. I’m not sure if it’ll work when they’re older, but this year it was a huge hit.

    2. My kids are a litle older than yours, but starting a few years ago I let them have 3 pieces when they got home, 3 for after dinner, for a week. The last day they got to eat as much as they wanted, then we dumped the rest. I don’t know if I would have tried it when my kids were your age, but it’s a solution that worked for us.