Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Excuse me...Could you bathe?

QUOTE OF THE DAY: When your life flashes before your eyes, make sure you've got plenty to watch.

I sat myself down last night and worked on the Novel, and eeked out 1100 words. Not spectacular, but at least it’s something. Of course after that I watched a movie: A Knight’s Tale and went to bed around 1am.
Every time I watch that movie, I remember how clever it is. And fun! The first time I watched it I was put off by the modern music interwoven with an ancient setting, but now I just think it’s…cool.
Such a primitive time—the age of Jousting and Knights and Edward the Black Prince (played quite yummily by James Purefoy).
One thing I have always marveled over, is the fact that these people had no indoor plumbing, and if they took a bath more than three times a year, it was considered "above" the standards of cleanliness. I mean, these people didn’t have toothbrushes, and they literally wore their clothes until they rotted off of their bodies.
I don’t like to set romance novels in such primitive settings, because my heroine would probably have greasy hair, MASSIVE B.O. and my personal favorite...nasty teeth. In the biography of Elizabeth I that I just finished, Elizabeth in her later years was reported to have black teeth, and several of them missing, which made her hard to understand when she spoke. Apparently she kept sucking on sweets to make her breath “sweeter” when in actuality she was destroying her teeth even more.
YUCK.
But then reality dawned on me. People back then would have been used to nasty B.O. smells, and it would have been accepted as the norm, rather than the exception.
Thank Heaven for Technology! (Maybe that’s why the majority of my novels have been set in Victorian Times—they were so fastidious about being clean.)

The sun has been coming up around 4:30 in the morning now, and my kids (bless them) pop right out of their beds. Thankfully, they know not to wake Mommy up if she’s still asleep--in that way I've trained them well. I woke up to the whining of the dog at 5:30—and Things Two and Three (my boys) were already in the basement watching Sponge Bob. If it weren’t for the darn dog, I could’ve slept in until 7am. (When Hubby is home we’re up at 6.) *Yawn*

I think I’ll try for another 1000 words tonight. I’ve been working on my hubby’s Father’s Day present, (I’m putting together a scrapbook with pics and things from his younger years) and that takes up a lot of time. I think I bit off a bit more than I could chew with this project. I’ll be glad when it’s done. I hope he likes it.

Well, off to wake up Thing One! It’s Trash Day, so I get to suffer through all the bickering/hitting/name calling/whining that ensues when I have the three kids emptying all the garbage cans in the house. But at least they’re getting faster at it. So the time I have to suffer through bickering/hitting/name calling/whining is at least getting shorter!

1 comment:

Michelle Miles said...

Congrats on your words!

And I made you watch it, didn't it? LOL I love LOVE LOVE that movie. In fact, it's the inspiration for my newest WIP. I love medieval times, but my heros and heroines are always squeeky clean. HAR HAR