Customizing Blogger

Hey ho!

I'm trying to make an affiliated blog for my sewing and things, but I'd like to customize the sidebar with badges and links to various quilt sites and forums that aren't official blogger 'widgets'. Does anyone know how to do that? I keep trying and it's not working, either my html code gets rejected, the link/pic doesn't show up, or it's in a weird place. I know diddly about coding, so if anyone has instructions oh how/where to insert code so that it goes in a sidebar, that'd be AWESOME!!

Movies. And Books.

I used to be a voracious reader, consuming pretty much anything but westerns at the rate of roughly a book a day. That pace slowed considerably after our daughter was born, and I finished college, and went to work full time, and, well, life happened. But I still read lots and lots, a couple of books a week or so anyway.

Until I 'became a writer' in more than the casual sense and began to understand how good prose works, and grammar and layering and theme and all that stuff. Selling (and going through the process of being professionally edited) pretty much ruined me for reading, at least for reading like a wild thing. It became WORK and there was that rotten need to red-pen everything, just like I had to do every day with my own prose. I had a great deal of trouble separating my writing brain from my reading brain because, for me, the two are incredibly linked.

Fear and Confidence

Two of the huge, crushing issues I struggle with every dang day.

Including today.

Why does this have to be so freaking HARD?!?

House for sale

There's a house in another little town that's, well, CHEAP. How cheap? $6,000 cheap. Yes, Six. Thousand. Dollars. No mortgage kinda cheap. Dirt freaking cheap. Laura - who spends most evenings watching House Hunters and Property Virgins and My First Place - is just about to quiver out of her skin.

Bill has tons of experience in remodeling fixer-upper houses, especially crap-tastic ones - our previous house, where we happily lived for 12 years, was just about a tearer-downer when we bought it. If the roof's not caving in, the plumbing and foundation are decent... she might just be buying a house. Maybe. I'll know more after she discusses the deal with her dad and after (if) they go look at it with Amy, our Realtor.

Mutter mutter

Blogger has decided to make my typeface freak out, adding extra carriage returns and changing fonts and things, and I don't know why. So I cut the two posts in question, not that either one was very interesting.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Nothing's certain but snow and taxes

I did our taxes last week and helped Laura do hers today, so that's done for another year. The state seems to think we need to pay them more money, the bastuds!

Iowa currently has an average state-wide seasonal snowfall of 40 inches. I think we're a bit higher here in the north, around 50-55 inches. We have about 30 on the ground right now, give or take, and that's including a lot that's been packed down by time - snow settles - and occasional ice/sleet/drizzle. More snow's forecasted for later this week! I am VERY concerned about flooding this spring. Not for us so much, since we're on high ground and all, the worst we'll likely see is a little random basement seepage. But south of us, especially in the lower Des Moines area and other points along the Des Moines river (and further south yet into Missouri, Arkansas, etc) it might get REALLY bad. I wonder why no one's talking about spring run-off and flooding yet. This winter might make '93 and '07 look like kiddie parties.

Isms

I have a fairly minor character in the book - the MC's neighbor - who is a crankly old hag. She's also, to be blunt, racist and downright hateful.

How right, or wrong, is it to write her dialog accordingly? Are there any words off limits? Any sentiments? I like to explore what makes people how they are, and I love dichotomy. How can the lady one one side be so nice and helpful while the other so nasty? What makes them the same, and what makes them different, and how does all that play into my character's own struggles with her own identity as her life is completely shattered?

But I worry that my tendency to explore the dark side of humanity will once again go too far. Can an easy-going white gal from the midwest write about race and prejudice?

What to do, what to do?