The 10 Minutes o' Fun Game

Hey Blog, did you ever have a stray hour or so of free time, and wish you could convert it to as much fun as possible?  Well, this is what happened to me, and while pondering what to do with said 60 minutes, I had a sudden epiphany.

I invented the 10 Minutes o' Fun Game!

No--don't say a word, Blog...I can see on your non-corporeal face how eager you are to learn how to play! Hopefully our readers are too.  Here's how it works:  Think of a small thing to do, something you know you will enjoy, but won't take more than ten minutes. Do said thing, and after you're done, think of another ten minutes of fun and do that!  Allowing for one or two of these ten minute things to take a little longer, you still should be able to do five--count 'em, five--fun things in your free hour!

I will demonstrate by sharing with you what I did with my hour:

10 Minutes o' Fun Thing #1:  Estate Tour

"Touring the estate" is what my parents used to call looking around the yard at the gardens. Magic House is a condo so it has a small yard, but I still like to go outside on a summer night and just look at the plants and trees. I admired my new rock arrangement on the patio (rocks from our vacay trip around Lake Michigan), looked at the front porch and thought about sitting out there on the folding lounge sometime (new idea), and watered the east flower bed. Got to savor the outdoors in that smidge of truly quality time!

10 Minutes o' Fun Thing #2:  Living Room Check

If you never just pause to look at your own stuff, before long you won't even see it anymore. I very frequently just walk around my house and look at the wall art and knick-knacks. This time I combined the experience with letting Selke sit on my lap and be cuddled. Bonus. In the process I noticed a book pile that looked uncool, and this led to...

10 Minutes o' Fun Thing #3:  Scrapbook Repair and Perusal

In said book pile was the scrapbook I made of the aforementioned Lake Michigan Circle Tour trip that we took in June. The cover kinda came off recently. So I was inspired just then to fix the cover, and then just flip through the book again, and then put it away upstairs, making the book pile look better. You may be noticing a theme, Blog: during the course of your fun, you sometimes complete odd little tasks you've been putting off. This adds a sense of accomplishment to the game!

The Cloud Chair in its usual spot

10 Minutes o' Fun Thing #4:  Foot Treatment

While I was upstairs, I remembered it had been a coon's age since I PedEgg-ed my feet. (That's using a PedEgg to get your feet all smooth.) I followed it up with a nice foot massage with shea butter. Now we're talking fun, mes amis!

10 Minutes o' Fun Thing #5:  New Perspective Lounging

We have two Cloud Chairs (normal people call them papasan chairs) at Magic House, one in the living room. I had the sudden brainstorm that it would be fun to move the Cloud Chair in front of the sliding doors that lead to our patio, to catch the breeze and the evening view. With Selke looking on perplexedly, I dragged the chair over, and settled in in the dark room with my backlit Nook Tablet and a good book. What a grand idea this was!  The chair barely fits there, but temporarily...why not? I'll be doing it again soon, I'm sure.

New spot for the Cloud Chair

I read a bit longer than 10 minutes, but all in all, these things took me about an hour and a quarter. And they were varied, so I felt like I'd experienced way more fun than 75 minutes' worth! I still had time to watch an episode of My Little Pony in bed before lights out!

I'm pretty sure the 10 Minutes o' Fun Game hasn't heard the last of me. Or me of it. Give it a try soon, Blog, and you too, readers! Let me know if you enjoy yourself in a disproportionate-to-time-spent way like I did!

I wanna see my characters SO BAD!

Aggie, by me

So, Blog, here's the deal: When you're a fiction author, and privileged with the power to create characters, sometimes you become pretty fond of them. Now imagine knowing and liking a bunch of friends that you will never see with your own eyes, not even in photos. I'm sure lots of writers deal with this okay, but me? Well, it makes me bonkers, and not in the good way.

Case in point is the title character in my latest novel, Aggie's Nine Heroes. She's a bright, earnest, philanthropic young girl, as determined as she is cute. I wish I could see her. Not just Aggie, but her team of nine friends and family, everyone of them unique and special.

Complicating this is the fact that all my life I've wanted to be a cartoonist/ illustrator. Cartoon depictions of the A9H gang would be perfect, Blog, because Aggie, her grandpa Bernie, and her best guy friend Brandon are all comic book fans. I could almost see how they should all look...just enough to make me nuts, and far short of being able to capture on paper.

W-I-P cover, by me

Which did not stop me from trying. I did the above cartoon of Aggie, festooned in her beloved hot pink hula hoop. Not bad for someone who sucks at illustration--but of course nothing like I wish I could do.

Early on in writing the book, I developed a work-in-progress cover which I cobbled together in Photoshop in a most complicated fashion. It did give me a sort of feel for Aggie, her teen-in-the-90s casualness, her air of independence and self-reliance. Another feeble stab...

Aggie, by Katie

For a long time now, my cover designs have been done by my daughter, Katie Nelson, who clearly got her illustration genes from her father and is a professional graphic artist. Katie flattered me by basing her cover on my W-I-P one, and she did a fine job turning Aggie into a silhouette/cartoon hybrid.

Her execution of the silhouettes of the team of nine was also boffo. I don't know how she does this stuff.

The Nine Heroes, by Katie

So, that made for an awesome book cover, but I couldn't get over my crazy craving to somehow see my ten fictional buddies turned into cartoons. Thus it festered inside me for months, until one fateful day....

Via Facebook, I was introduced to an illustration of a bunch of TV characters hanging out together at a cocktail party. I took one look at the depictions of personal faves like Sheldon, Mr. Spock, Walter from Breaking Bad, House, and the rest...and I went completely bonkers, in the good way. When I checked out the blog of the artist, one Anna Rettberg, I went bonkers in the good way all over again.

This was my illustrator.

Aggie, by Anna

Seeing as Anna's TV illustration was in the process of going viral, I wasted no time emailing her at once. In spite of being on the verge of college graduation and suddenly in the limelight, she was happy to agree to a commission! It was really happening! My SQUEE must have thundered across the entire Midwest, Blog. I sent her Katie's art and my notes on the ten characters, and prepared to wait for the line art for my review.

It was only a few days later when the astonishingly speedy Anna emailed me a 4 MB file, which, when opened by my trembling hand on the mouse, revealed the line art of Aggie and her crew. My cat Cody was sitting in front of the monitor, and who knows what he thought when his mistress began to sob and laugh simultaneously.

They were perfect!

How can I possibly explain the experience of seeing on the screen these ten characters who before lived only shadily in my mind's eye...and yet now were so perfectly, spot-on recognizable? This was, without doubt, a Top Ten Moment in my life, Blog. Bonkers in the BEST way!

For now I will share here just the image of Aggie Borkowski, with her hula hoop. Sometime in the next couple of weeks I'll be clicking on another file in another email from Anna, and seeing the ten in full color.

Plan now on me not getting anything else done on that day, Blog. And plan now on seeing it yourselves, readers, as soon as it comes into my possession!

How to have a Birthday Week

So, Blog, one of my Facebook friends asked, "You get to have a birthday week?" To which I replied, "Actually, everyone does, they just don't all know it."

I myself didn't always realize this. I can't precisely recall when I first started observing the Birthday Week tradition, but I'm pretty sure how it came to be. And you'll be pleased to know that it springs not purely from self-indulgent, narcissistic motives. Although certainly it does in part. But actually, I have always been pretty flexible about the specific day my birthday is officially observed, because my family members are busy and have other commitments and I really like to make the party convenient for everyone.

So, for example, this year it worked out for everyone to be available on Sunday the 14th. Aka Day Two of my Birthday Week (Day One being the day I gave our cats their Turbo Track). So, here's Principle #1 of Having a Birthday Week: one of the days is the day you have your family party. I had a super one this year: My fabulous chef daughters with their fabulous sous chef boyfriends prepared a Mexican feast featuring a fajita bar with grilled beef and chicken, and chips and guacamole. My dad and little Ava (age 5) were on hand so we had a 79-year age span in the attendees. Mother Nature gave us perhaps the loveliest weather of the whole summer, and the patio was splendiferously prepared by Davie. My cat Cody provided entertainment (his birthday gift to me).

Now, it's always nice, if you have a significant other, to also have a private, romantic birthday-related event. In other words, Principle #2 of Having a Birthday Week is that one of the days is the day you celebrate with spouse or mate. This year I'm doing this with Davie on Day Four, and we're getting duck BLT's at Honeypie. We have heard they are uber-scrumptious. Bet we'll follow up with some cozy cuddle time at Magic House, watching "Mad Men" or "Food Network Star" on DVR with amusing commentary by us.

Principle #3 of Having a Birthday Week is that you also observe your actual birthday. Mine this year falls on Day Five (aka August 18th, the day it always is). I'll be taking off work and am going to spend the day with my dad and be treated to lunch at the place we call the Pink Palace. There's nothing like spending quality time on your birthday with someone who was there when you were born, especially when enhanced by a Greek-owned restaurant that makes great omelettes and hash browns.

Now, so far we've covered three days of your birthday week, assuming you do all the above on different days. That leaves you a lot of days left over! What do you do with those? Principle #4 states, see if there's a reason to open a present on its own day. In this case, I asked for the Turbo Track for my cats, and opened it on Day One so that we could let the cats get the hang of it by Day Two, aka Family Birthday Party. See how this works? You may be able to find a reason like this too, for example, one gift is an item of clothing you want to wear on your birthday itself.

Principle #5 is that you can look at some fun thing you were planning to do anyway during your birthday week and declare it part of the celebration. Here's my example from this year: I have been trying since May to work out a day off to go to the Milwaukee Zoo. Every time we have planned to do this, it has ended up cold and rainy or super hot, or our plumbing has unexpectedly exploded. But the forecast for Milwaukee for Day Six of my Birthday Week is sunny, warm, and not horribly humid, plus it's Zoo a la Carte week! Anything that involves tigers and sampling local food is a celebration in my book!

Now Blog, with those days in your birthday week that just don't seem to have anything special going on, you may have to take a good look at your activities that day and just find something that seems cool enough to call celebratory. Aka Principle #6. On Day Three of my Birthday Week, I installed the makeup mirror I got from Davie on Day Two. Anytime I wield power tools and the project turns out well, I consider that a party. It's also a party to use my makeup mirror, which is the exact same kind I fell in love with when we stayed at the Vdara Hotel in Vegas in January (pictured here in this still from a video I took there).

There is one final Principle, #7. And that is that your birthday week is a time to indulge in something you really, really like to do. Maybe it's a trip to your favorite out-of-town shopping mall, or getting a mani-pedi, or going to the horse track, or getting yourself a bottle of your fave expensive wine. That kind of treat qualifies an entire day. Or combine several. As for me, I'm doing the latter, because on Day Seven of My Birthday Week I will be kicking off our annual mother-daughters camping trip, with my favorite girls in the world, at my favorite place in the world, Point Beach State Forest.

And that, Blog, is how you have a birthday week. Birthday Week is really a state of mind and doesn't have to cost you or your loved ones any more than having a mere puny birthday. And yet it packs 600% more birthday punch! So I hope our readers will plan now to enjoy their right to an entire Birthday Week the next time that happy occasion rolls around.