Ah, another topic that can offer differing perspectives between men and women. We, of course, understand exactly why we take certain actions before the cleaning lady or cleaning team arrives. “If they’re coming to clean, then why are you cleaning first?”, can be a common question from spouse/significant other, however. To begin with, it all depends on whether it’s the first time a cleaning lady/team has come. After all, if it is, you want to show what your standards are and the best way to do so is to have the place essentially like you want it. Besides, having a cleaning lady/team is because you need someone to take away the burden of the heavy cleaning or the annoying stuff, not because you want someone to think that you’re a total slob.

In follow-up cleaning though, most cleaning ladies/teams have a set pattern and have a certain number of houses lined up per day. Therefore (and every woman knows this) if they have two hours allocated for your house and they have to spend half an hour de-cluttering to get to the important stuff – they’ll skip something else that they think you won’t notice in order to keep on schedule.

Next in the process is deciding how often you need someone – once a week, once every two weeks, once a month. If you require someone in to clean more than once a week – you might want to look at the patterns in your household, but that’s not the point of the post. When I was working fulltime, plus coming home in the afternoon to either run the kid to karate class or take an afternoon walk, and working on my writing, it was definitely once a week. As my schedule modified, I backed off to once every two weeks and for a long period, I gave up on cleaning ladies/teams and just decided to do it myself. Which brings me to the last part. There are times when you honestly can’t find the right person/team and it is less irritating to do it yourself. Again, most men don’t understand that all clenaing ladies/teams are not the same and what should be a help can instead become a source of aggravation.  How about it out there – who has stories to tell? (And yes, I know - shudder – those cleaning ladies/teams can definitely have stories to tell)

Edgar Allen Poe once said, “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” When writers map out stories that will involve death, two main questions are, who is to get killed and why? I just finished a book by an author that my husband really enjoys and I had read one of his books to see what I thought. I enjoyed that one okay, so I thought, I’ll try a second one. I liked most of it, but sure as the world, a really nice character was killed off that I felt was completely unnecessary. Actually, I wasn’t too happy with another one he killed off, but I understood the selection. But both of them? That was a bit over the top for me. Anyway, that brings me to the point of how I decide which characters to kill and why.

In one of my mysteries, there have to be a certain number of people that die – can’t have much of a mystery without that. Then the issue becomes, is the individual to be tragic in nature, someone who is “getting what they deserve”, or created for the express purpose of being killed off in the first place? How much I want the reader to connect to the character, or how that character’s death affects the protagonist is also important. In some cases, it’s easy, and at other times, it can be a struggle as to which way to go.

In one of my non-mystery novels, I had a character that I intended to have die, but the problem became that I realized I needed to increase the tragic aspect. I hated to do that but, quite frankly, I’d made the character more likeable than I orginally planned to and so by definition, the death would be more tragic. On the other hand, it was the only logical way to move the plot in the direction that I wanted to. And that is how it happens sometimes.

Duck going to join his other pals waddling in the neighborhood.

Actually, if I go by what some neighbors think, this should be in the Food and Drink Category. In the area where we live, there are a number of what anyone other than a realtor would call a “pond” – they understandably refer to them as “lakes”.  I erroneously believed they were a developer’s addition in order to claim waterfront property lots, however, I later found out that no, they serve a purpose from a flood control perspective. It was one of those “win-win” sort of things. Or, maybe I shoud say, “win-win-win” since they are also a reason that we have this wonderful water bird population. I’ll set aside the periodic alligator visitor for the moment. Now, I come around to the ducks. I happen to like ducks, as I believe most people do. The problem, though is the ducks have apparently figured out that these bodies of water are pretty well protected and therefore, they have no fear of predators (okay, maybe when the alligator visits, but that doesn’t happen often). Anyway, some of the neighborhoods have more problems than others where the ducks literally wander into open garages and definitely impede traffic as they very slowly cross the streets.

We have recently started seeing more ducks in our neighborhood, although at this time, they are confining themselves to merely waddling about the streets and into the yards. I don’t consider them to be a nuisance yet, but then again, I haven’t found duck poop on my driveway and sidewalk. So, we shall see how this all plays out over the next few months.