Zoomboy and the Sign

Honestly, I've only ever seen a monologue from the play Zooman and the Sign by Charles Fuller, but the minute I started calling Thing 3 "Zoomboy", that title has been going through my head.

If you've been around awhile, you remember when we called Zoomboy, "The Cave Troll" instead.  See, when he was first born, Mate and I knew we were hopelessly outnumbered as it was.  And then Zoomboy started showing his rather peculiar type of manic intelligence, and suddenly this kid seemed like overkill.  Abruptly, we were Boromir and Aragorn in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and there was this tremendous force of nature about ready to squash us flat.

"They have a cave troll," Boromir said to Aragorn.

Aragorn's smile was correspondingly arch.  Overkill.  Madness.  They were going to die anyway, and the enemy has a cave troll?

Well, Boromir and Aragorn had to kill their cave troll.

We simply enacted a ten year campaign to make him one of us.

And he is!  He is the geekiest, brainiest Little Lane-ette we have ever turned out.  He loves Star Wars, Monkeys (primates!), Diary of a Wimpy Kid, reading almost anything, and Legos.  He never makes eye contact while he's absorbing information, doesn't say a lot when you ask his opinion, and is devastated if you don't get his jokes.  He refuses to declare whom he's crushing on (and I think he teases me about being gay because he knows he's my last best hope) and he's finally caught on that soccer is social hour, even if he's only partially sure what to do with the ball.  He does his homework every night, never turns it in, and, I'm sure, makes his teacher bug nuts crazy because he aces all his tests.

Every morning as he's getting out of the minivan, he gives me a hug and says, "I love you."  Then he turns to the dog and pats it.  "You, not so much."

It's his ritual, and I treasure it.

In spite of the fact that I drop him off on time, he is perpetually late for class.  His first grade teacher told me that she'd say he had an attention deficit, but that would imply he had any attention at all.  She also said she adored him, and wanted more of him.  I think she was kidding about that.

His second grade teacher said exactly what the first grade teacher said, but added (in an embarrassed whisper) that he seemed to play with himself a lot.  It seems this is a thing that ADHD kids do-- they get bored, and, well, it's portable, it's easy to play with, and it can be a hell of a lot of fun.

We got him on his meds, and his third grade teacher repeated what the first two teachers said, but Thank God, he'd stopped playing with himself.

His fourth grade teacher said he was awesome, and he got lots of great certificates.

His fifth grade teacher can't believe he's not turning in his homework.  I can't believe she thinks he would.

And the entire time, his entire academic career, not one teacher has doubted that he's going to do great things.

When he was born, he spent an extra five days in the hospital after we left, because his blood sugar dropped and he almost died. It feels as though I have spent his entire life feeling my feet on a rocking boat, making sure I never take his persnickety, particular, ADHD presence for granted.  He's not your usual boy, our Zoomboy.  He's not average, or easy, or laid back.  He's intense and wall-bouncy and brilliant.

And kind, and funny,



And mine.  

Happy Birthday, Zoomboy.  It's been ten rollicking, unpredictable, amazing years.  You're still overkill.  We still love you.  We can't wait to see who you become.  

And this pic is for my knitters out there (Roxie, Donna Lee, Knittech, and Samurai) I thought I'd show you that I haven't forgotten you, and that I still keep the faith and knit, and that I treasure every comment you make, even if I don't show up on your pages as much as I'd like to.  This is a pair of worsted weight baby socks, that go with a matching hat-- that I'm going to have to finish up tonight, as well as another pair to go with a contrasting hat, to go to a mom from ZB's soccer team who is having twins.  












And this sort of stoked my fire-- that's the RT Book Reviews magazine that features the article about the Riptide Christmas Bundle.  So, yes.  I'm in there!  And there it is on the shelf of Barnes & Noble. And yes.  I bought a copy.  Seriously-- wouldn't you?  

And then I crashed the cart...

The day at the zoo was really awesome.  We learned about Aye-Ayes (so sad!) and saw the lemurs groom and watched a hippo-po-tom-atus completely lose his shit.  I shall give you pictures and captions, a-cause I have a fourth edit (there will be between five and six this November, if anyone wonders why my pace on NANOWRIMO is a wee bit sluggish) and a blog tour to write, in addition to more Jeremy Bunny who is, btw, breaking my frickin' heart.  

But anyway… I thought first I'd tell you what a wonderful daughter I have.  

Chicken is awesome.  She and I get along very well pop-culturally, and she sends me things like THIS.   In particular, she sends me stuff like THIS while I am IN THE GROCERY STORE.  

And while I was gawping at THIS (and geawd, it just does not GET any less pretty, does it?) a nice man drove his little cart by, saying, "Are you looking at your grocery list on your phone?"

"Nnunoooo…"  I stuttered.  "My daughter just sent me a picture of a very pretty boy, and I'm recovering."

The man rolled his eyes and snorted.  "Girls," he said.  "That's girls."

Well, yeah.  But I'm sure if someone sent a Playboy Bunny to flash across his windscreen, he'd crash his cart too.

  For the kids, the trip down to the zoo
 was as much fun as the Zoo itself.  

We called the black and white Lemurs "Steve lemurs for
obvious reasons.

Look at that!  Isn't it fascinating!  Trust me-- whatever it was,
it was all fascinating.

Mate said, "Look-- he's trying to hide!"  I thought that was
hysterical.

Multicolored mandrill butt.
Let the commentary commence.

Zoomboy was self-acknowledged
"King of the world!"

The thing about this series of pictures

is that they were taken sequentially.

This hippo was not only PISSED THE FUCK OFF, 

He was moving at "outtamywaybitch!" speed.

We're not sure if he wanted his food, or if he'd fucking had it

with all the frickin' people, or even if this was celebratory--

Maybe he was just in a good mood.

But somehow, we don't thinks so.  If you ever see a hippo
charging in the wild?  GET THE HELL OUTTA IT'S WAY!

There is no way to take a bad picture of kids on the beach
at sunset.  It's all beautiful, ephemeral, and joyous.

Of course the funny part was, just before these pictures were taken, I said, "Okay kids, don't get too wet or too dirty, and we can go have a sit down dinner!"  Yeah.  We ate Taco Bell while they huddled naked and half naked in the backseat of the minivan, covered in sweaters.

I don't think they minded, do you?

And this was Zoomboy's souvenir.
We think he chose well.

And this is what I missed out on-- Bent Con, which, from all accounts, was a blast.  (*waves wildly to Little Vampires people*)  Sorry I missed it guys--but I think I was where I was supposed to be :-)

A VERY busy weekend

 So I had an offer to go to Bent-Con this weekend, which I sadly declined.  Even though the offer was over two months ago, I knew-- knew with instinct that the weekend was going to be insanely busy, so when I asked Mate, I let him know, honestly, that I understood if he needed me home.  Yeah, sure, playing with all my buddies in a comic book venue would have been awesome.  In fact, the Little Vampire people were there, and Elizabeth got a picture of them waving at me that broke my heart--but…

Well, let's just say my instincts were right on.

To begin with?  On Friday (while I was getting "Why aren't you here you silly bint!" texts ;-) I was one of the drivers at the Nimbus Dam Fish Hatchery.  In fact, I had to recruit Mate, because they still needed one more driver after I volunteered.

Anyway, it was fascinating-- but it was also kind of depressing.

I mean, at the beginning of the tour they gave a little tour, and there was a "Wheel of Survival" for the Chinook Salmon.  Folks, it didn't look good.  It was like, maybe 1/20th of the original batch of fish made it through the life cycle, from egg to fry to stream swimmer, to estuary of adolescence to adult sea resident and then back up into the river womb, where, after all of that surviving, the fish get to have their one jizz and die.

You heard me.  One jizz, and they die.

Except, you know, Folsom Lake took all but 7 miles of river in which to jizz and die, so the hatchery took over, to, you know, both expedite the process and improve it for volume.

So these fish make it all the way up the river, men put them in sorting stations, figure out who's pregnant or who''s ready to pop his wad, and then-- get this-- KILL THE FISH, FORCE THE JIZZ/EGGS OUT OF THEIR BODIES, and MIX IT ALL IN A BIG BUCKET.

I mean, I'm sure there are fish there getting sorted, flapping their tails going, "Yeah, motherfucker, I'm GONNA break your fucking nose!  Cut off my head before I jizz, will ya!  Assholes, take that!"

Or the fish who goes to the head chopper with tail fin extended.  "Eat shit and die, motherfuckers, you'll never take my ji--"

Because seriously.  That is just… I mean, really.

So sad.

Anyway-- we went and saw eggs, fish, dam and pretty lady Fish and Game Department ranger, who gave such a dynamite talk she had me pondering things like "adolescence is the estuary of humanity-- neither fish nor fry, neither fresh nor salt water, just stuck, being battered by the currents of all forces, seeing if the strong survive" and, you know, that poetic gem about fish jizz which I'm sure has you all diving for the brain bleach as you read.

We also fed the young fry, and yeah.  I am that adolescent.  "Lookie that, we're at a fish fry!"  Okay, even the fifth graders thought it was lame.

It was a good day-- and ZoomBoy was enthusiastic about how we had performed our service as visible parenting units--go mom!

And then there was today.

Squish had her game first, and then we drove to see her brother play.

My directions were to go down a road called "Walerga" and turn left on "PFE."  Now, PFE stands for Pacific Fruit Exchange, and it's a throwback to the days when the railroad went out there.  It is, essentially, acres upon acres of farmland, behind which hides cute little developed suburbs.

And somewhere is a big building that passes as a middle school.  And it dead ends in the world's teeniest continuation high school.

And I wasn't sure which one of these bizarre places in the middle of nowhere Mate and ZB's team was playing.  I finally picked the second one I stopped at, and hauled our shit across a parking lot and a tennis court to sit in the sun and watch our kid play.  Mate looked at me in askance as I trudged up-- I was a bit late.

"PFE Road?" I snarled.  "It was spelled wrong."

Yup.  Some one forgot the fucking "B".

Anyway-- so there was that, and on the way home, Mate took the kids (since he had to take one of his players home) and I headed to Mr. Pickles, the superior sandwich place.  Of course, on the way back I missed my turn and ended up in the land of Butt-Hurt Lost.  I followed my nose, though, and soon found myself in familiar territory again and… oh wait-- was that a Mr. Pickles I hadn't seen before?  It was a Mr. Pickles I hadn't seen before.  And it was charming.  And they employees rocked.  That place shall be my Mr. Pickles forever.  So, see, even wandering around in Butt-Hurt Lost can have positive consequences, right?

And after that, Squishy had a birthday party-- and the little girl's mom had told her mom that I was a knitter.  And lo and behold, she needed help.  So Squish ran around this backyard that could fit three of my houses in it and got her face painted (the turtle was a nice touch) and I spent a pleasant forty-five minutes teaching a very charming woman how to knit a pumpkin.  Seriously-- of all the places I'd expected my day to end?  That was not one.

And when we got home?  I'd forgotten, but Mate has Zoomboy at a King's Game.

And tomorrow?

Well, tomorrow is a reaction to the fact that next weekend-- Zoomboy's birthday weekend-- is going to be all soccer games and King's Games and end of the season pizza banquets, so this weekend?

We're going to the San Francisco Zoo with ZB's friend Sam, whom we haven't seen much of in the past few months.  (Sam switched schools, and his mom and I have both been minivans passing in the night. We miss the hell out of each other, though-- we have a craft date after Thanksgiving!)

I"m sort of excited.  I mean really excited. Especially since Zoomboy doesn't know about Sam-- he's going to be so surprised!  Anyway, after that the climax of my weekend is going to be bringing my car in on Monday for a much needed overhaul (we had the oil changed and it got a tune-up but it's still making noise.  I think it's something external and not too serious, but I want the noise to go away).  

So, yeah.  Phew.  You know?

It sounds like a blast, and I'm sorry I missed it, but with all that going on this weekend, I really think it's a good thing I didn't go to Bent-Con!

Strategic Sheep Purposes

So I've been thinking about my tribes.

It's taken me a while-- when I was in school, I was one of the few students who was married and working full time.  Mate and I were our own tribe, and, very honestly, including the kids, we've maintained our tiny tribalism, and that has been my touchstone.  

Beyond that, when I was teaching, every time I thought I'd found my tribe, they'd either move or have somehow had a life-changing experience that made us drift apart.

Sometimes, me and my tribe just experienced philosophical differences.  I favored paganism, and they were more inclined towards misogynistic douchefuckery.  

And sometimes, in spite of being related by blood, vocation, or time, I was simply the odd man out of the tribe.  The yarn, the movies, the stories, the approach to life-- it all sort of rendered me the laughing stock of the tribe.  The fuckup, and the member most likely to crack the wrong joke at the wrong time, or to have to explain where the humor came from, which then merely rendered it lame.

So today, a friend of mine was watching Teen Wolf, and it was the episode.  You guys know.  The One With the Pool.  

My friend liked this episode, for obvious hottie reasons.  She was going to watch it again. 

"For strategic sheep purposes?" I asked, and she laughed.  

And then I tried to remember where I'd actually heard that line before.  

And it occurred to me.  It didn't matter where I'd heard that line before.  It didn't matter where she'd heard that line before.  

She could have been thinking about any number of things--fiber, knitting, comedy. She could have thought it was a dirty joke and laughed.  She crochets--she could have been planning her next project.  She could have been laughing about the origin of the term "dyed in the wool".  The point is, it didn't matter.  The point is that she got it, and for any of the reasons I thought it was funny, she thought it was funny.  

It may take completely different things to piss us off, but humor?  That is a thing we share. 

And that right there is maybe the hallmark of the found tribe.  

I thank Geoff, god of biscuits, whenever one of you out there laughs with me, and I know I've found mine :-)


(Oh yes-- don't forget to check out my new Amy's Lane article on going to conventions and conferences. Bibles full of truth my brethren, bibles full of truth!)

Halloween Stories and The Car is Blue

Long, long years ago (nearing on 30 years, actually)  I had this little Datsun-- yes, it was a Datsun, it was made before they were called Nissans--and I said it was blue.

The entire family said I was crazy, and the car was white.

I said, "No-- look at it, in the shadows-- it's very very light blue."

"Well, all we see is a little white car. You know you need glasses anyway. You must be colorblind."

Well, a few years ago, that color test started making the rounds-- one of those ones where you put the colors in order?  Apparently if you had a score of 20 or less, you had a really sensitive color sense. I got somewhere in the low teens.

ZB has no problem seeing the blue
 car.

And so I say again, the car was blue.

And I resist the temptation to shake my ass and blow raspberries at my entire family and friend set from that period, because they told me I was crazy, I was color blind, I was too stupid to know blue from white.

But I am going to remember that moment, as my life gets stranger and stranger and more and more divergent from the life I thought I'd lead as a teenager.  My vision was true.  Just because the whole world did not see what I saw did not mean my vision was not true. It's been pretty much the story of my life.

***

So, with that thoughtful moment aside, Halloween was pretty much wackiness all around.

Speaking of Death

To begin with, I made a quick trip to the market for little things, like cat food and toilet paper, and I passed a looming, deformed figure in black about three times.  The costume was great-- one of those ones where the skeleton head balances on the black shrouded real head, and there are arm extensions to make Death look more elongated and more macabre. 

The first time I waved-- and he waved solemnly back. 

 The second time I waved and laughed, feeling uncomfortable.  And he waved silently and solemnly back.

The third time I said, "It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it."

And he said, "It's not even a job.  This is my day off-- I just felt like dressing up."

And I almost shit my shorts. 

"So you like being Death?"

"Oh yeah-- I love Halloween.  Dressing up's a blast."

"Well good--because you're doing a bang up job of it, I almost died of fright."

*  

It has occurred to Mate and I that we have not bred the most aggressive of children.  This was made clear to us when we approached a house with an "honor bowl".  Our kids approached trepidatiously, and were looking at the choice, planning to make a judicious choice when…

They were overrun by half the neighborhood, who swarmed like locusts and ran away, leaving our kids staring at an empty bowl and rubbing the cleat marks off their backs.

"They didn't even let us get one!" Squish complained.

"That's okay," I told her, trying to make her feel better.  "We have at least six extra pounds of chocolate at home."

Which was about how much I shipped to Chicken in San Diego.  Happy Halloween, Chicken-- make sure you give most of it away, it's bad for you.

*

Darth Zoomboy would have
done the same.

And I went full on Mama Bear on some poor student the other day.  Yes, yes, I usually take a savage anti-bitch stance on the minimum wage worker in a shitty job, but this person (who works the mail room of my daughter's apartment complex) basically refused to look for Chicken's actual name when looking for her packages.  So, my baby, tired from midterms and very homesick, had three packages, one from me, one from my mom, and one from herself, all dedicated to making her feel better, and these idiots couldn't look beyond the apartment number and look at her name. 

And they made my baby cry.

And suddenly I didn't give a shit about how much money they made in their jobs, I wanted them to do their jobs better.

So I yelled and they found her stuff.

"Geez, Mom-- you yelled at the sweetest guy in the front office."

"Tell him to be less sweet and more competent.  It's not like you have a name you find in every classroom twice."

Yup.  Sometimes Queen-Bitch is the way to go.  (Give me a couple of weeks and I will feel guilty about this.  Right now I'm riding the empowerment… let it go.  It never lasts long enough.)

***

And Squish knew exactly what she wanted to be for  Christmas.  She wanted to be a Ninja Bunny.  We went with it-- you heard the story.  The Playboy Bunny ears and tail, the ninja costume, the sword.  And then we told Chicken what she was for Halloween. 

 And Chicken said, "That little shit.  She got that from me."

"You told her to dress up as a ninja bunny?"

"No!  But when I was there for my birthday I showed her THIS."  And she sent me the black and white picture to the left.  

And I was even more impressed.  Because that was a joint effort between my girls and me and their father.  Best Halloween costume ever.  (And the fun part about it?  Nobody ever questioned it.  "Oh, you must be a ninja-bunny!"  "Yes.  Yes I am!")

**

And that's it-- Halloween Stories and the Car is Blue.  Oh-- and one more thing.

I think I've decided on my newest Cafe Press item.  It's going to be a T-shirt that reads, "Put the E-Reader down and walk away."  A number of book-a-holics have assured me that this will sell.

So What Am I Doing Next Year?

Okay-- so I wanted to post something adorable for Halloween, and what can I say?  There is NOTHING more adorable than the guys from Little Vampires.   And then I WENT THERE for the link to the site, and saw the post that Rebecca put up for Halloween.  GO!  GO NOW!  YOU WILL BE HOPELESSLY CUTED OUT!   Because even though Rebecca gave me permission to post one of her comics on my blog, I loved the picture SO MUCH that I want people to FLOCK THERE, wander around the store, read the web comics from beginning to end-- fall in love.  (I gave James and Rebecca mention in the book Shiny! which will be out in March sometime-- they're some of my favorite con-people EVER.  Go visit their site and find out why.)

Anyway, so I saw the above webcomic, and then this picture in my phone, and I had to wonder... who zapped THAT guy?

Seriously-- this whole "planning ahead next year" is blowing my mind.  I mean, I've always sort of had a knack for it.  I always felt like I was pulling a semester out of the seat of my pants, but the fact was, i always had a long term assessment in mind, and we were always working toward it.  But to sit down with Mary and say, "Okay, if I agree to do this one thing, where is it going to fit in?" and have her play with my writing queue so that I can write a story NEXT YEAR-- well that's sort of boggling.

I know that the industry has changed since my first go at it-- I submitted If I Must at the end of August and found out September 1st that I would be published on December 1st.  I submitted Keeping Promise Rock in mid-October, and it was out on January 19th.  Dreamspinner can't afford to do that anymore, and, honestly, they shouldn't try.  There's a lot to be said for an extended production time-- better quality product for another, and a chance to promote and get the word out as well.  But it's more than that-- it's that old Hollywood thing.  Mate and I used to see an actor from one venue in another venue or a commercial, or hear that they were on Broadway, and we'd say, "Hooray!  They're working!"  And since I've begun to make my own living with my art, I've come to really appreciate that idea.  Once your financial needs are met, the thing with writing (or acting or painting or singing, I suspect) is that working is really all you ever wanted to do in the first place.  The opportunity to work at this thing that you love-- that's huge.  So, well, yeah.  It's blowing my mind.

In a year I'll be working collaboratively on the current Riptide project, Bluewater Bay.  It feels sort of delicious, and I'll be excited to do it, but, folks, that's an outline for what I'll be doing in a year.  

From someone who can't tell you what she's having for dinner tonight.  Just the knowing that I'll be working in a year is pretty fucking delicious.

And speaking of delicious-- see that cover in RT Book Reviews?  Yup.  Riptide Gives Back- the charity bundle that includes Christmas Kitsch gets cover mention on RT.  I'm sort of doing the pee-pee dance about this.  I hope we raise a whole lot of money for homeless LGBT charities.  Rusty and Oliver are good spokesboys for how much kids really just need a hand up-- and love.


And speaking of love-- this sign here that Zoomboy is holding is an act of love.  That thing lived in our house for a year before Mate got it all together, but there it is, lighting up ARCO Arena.  Mate was so proud-- and honestly, I'm pretty proud too.  That there's my family, y'all, and if they have a love affair with the underdog, well, so do I.  We're well matched.  Go Kings!

And, uhm, *snicker*  This was making the rounds on the ethernet, and I thought it would give the Halloween Psycho Killer motif a nice little update.  Because, you know, there's never a swamp when you need one.

And the Rainbow Barf Gnome-- this is Chicken's universal signal for "Mom, you're grossing me out with all this talk of love and the way you have unconditional faith in me.  Stop it.  Say something snarky immediately."  Alas, I am poor at taking hints, so I get this a lot in my texting.

And that's it-- I know what I'll be doing next year, and I can definitely tell you what I'm doing tonight.

I'm going Trick-or-Treating with Darth Vader, a Ninja Bunny, and a Chiwhowhat in my shirt!