Knitting

We had short people invasion problems last night, and I got no sleep. Seriously--4:00 a.m. and the short people are invading the bed, and all of the wiggling, giggling, and hair pulling that that implies...and around 4:45, everybody gets to sleep, and fifteen minutes later, the Cave Troll squeals in his sleep and unloads a half a gallon of used liquid. Mate leaps out of bed and starts the midnight (or a quarter til five) sheet/pj change, and Cave Troll stands up, looks miserable (as mom is changing him into whatever the crap we had on hand) and says, "I'm sorry I peed on you, dad."

Oi. I would have been the walking dead today, but I had an assignment that involved music (compare/contrast Springsteen's 'My Hometown' to Bowling for Soup's--if I don't lose my job, it could be the best lesson I've taught all year. The chorus to the BfS version pretty much hammers the idea of 'I'm just glad we got the fuck out of our hometown!') and so I was there, mostly, jumping up and down and walking them through the differences in poetic terminology. It was great. I'l spend the rest of the year being perfectly mediocre, but for a minute there, I was almost a real teacher again.

And then I sat and tried to get some writing done and fell asleep. For forty-five minutes...it took me the whole drive home to get rid of that thready-heartbeat, caught-breath feeling that happens when you wake up too soon from a nap you didn't mean to take.

So, I'm giving BMoonII a rest and spending the rest of the night knitting, and hoping the short people can hold their own with the bedtime bogeymen tonight. It's a hope, anyway. (The fishlight still has a little bit of magic in it--at least they go down in their own room!)

But BMoon II beckons, and Part I will be out in five or so weeks, and I think, when I get that baby in my hands, I may actually weep for joy. You never know.

Oh yes--I didn't give props to Donna Lee yesterday, but I snarfed her quiz, threw it up on my blog really quick, and took all the credit--sorry, darling--I didn't mean to do that, and belated thanks to you. It was just that (and you all can back me up, here) it was such a rockin' quiz that there was really no question that I was going to take it. And pass it on to my buddy who loves Jane Austin so much that she actually reads fanfic--a think I swore I would never do, but I'm starting to think twice about it. (I've got students threatening fanfic for my books...I'm tempted to tell them to do it so I can see what they want my characters to do...)

Anyway, my knitting is calling...that first pair of mitts turned out WAY too big, so I'm working on a different pattern/different yarn thing, just to get the bad taste out of my mouth that a dip in the Nile from the great ship Gauge Disaster can leave. I like this pair--of course, it's Debbie Bliss Cashmerino...I would have to actually roll it in a ball and eat it to make it look as bad as that last pair I knit.

And this is the younger, dipshit Dashwood sister Marianne, signing off...

*sigh* I thought I'd be Lizzie, at least...

Take the Quiz here!

In no particular order:

1. I'm done with the galley's proofing. I managed to correct 39 instances of the word 'snow-cat' that was hyphenated when it shouldn't have been, un-capitalize 'gift' unless it was at the beginning of a sentence, and thoroughly convince myself that I suck as a writer and should never be allowed to put thought on paper unless it's a grocery list.

For those of you who are alarmed by this sentiment, those of you who have been around awhile may be thinking that this is sounding very familiar. It should. By the end of BOUND I was certain that I was the world's most boring human. When people talk about how hard writing is, this is one of the reasons why. The other reason is when other people tell you that you suck and are the world's most boring human. Some validation is not good!

2. We took the kids (pictured above--they really are wonderful little craptoasters, aren't they?) to a snow park today. They had a lot of fun--except for Ladybug, who wandered around in her snow coat (to quote 'Christmas Story', 'looking like a tick ready to be popped') and didn't get to do much of anything except take off her hat and mittens, and then have us put them on again. The Cave Troll got to go sledding and tubing, and she was left with mom. By the way? None of us own snow-boots--this snow park thing was sort of a wild hair. I fell down four times. I'm a big woman to be falling down that much. There's a reason the snow park isn't tops on my list of 'to do's'. There's also a reason we have no pictures of the snow park. No one was foolish enough to give me a camera.

3. Speaking of being a 'big woman', we're gonna need Brunhilda and her cattle-prod, because although I did document much of my eating, I also managed to gain a pound. (And no, I didn't document eating 5,000 calories a day--swear to Oueant, god of honor, that I was being good.) The nice lady said 'some people take two weeks to really take off'. That was nice of her. I decided to reward her by explaining that I'd been up 'til 2:00 a.m. proofing my galleys for five days straight. I'm sure there was food on this table when I sat down some of those nights that was not there when I got up, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. And oddly enough, it did not seem to 'document itself'--which, considering my earlier conscientiousness, sort of pisses me off. You'd think the food, at least, would cooperate!

4. We've updated the website. Huzzah! You can see a picture of the front cover, before they make the changes I asked for, since I thought the title and author elements were out of proportion. No matter--what you can REALLY see is Gala's wonderful artwork. Artwork that I just remembered I forgot to thank him for in the acknowledgments, although that's not something he would know to look for, and having his signature on the front cover is going to be a big enough thrill for him. Damn. Remember that good feeling I had about having my proof form in? Good feeling gone...

5. I have to start school tomorrow. *shh* Don't speak. I'll be in denial until the alarm goes off.

6. I have discovered a new band--the Dropkick Murphys! Has anyone heard of them? (For some reason, Julie and Bells, they make me think of you...funny, since I've not even heard your voices!) They are a Celtic Rock Band--no, not Enya, or Celtic Woman. These guys are Irish in the truest 'bar band' sense--they are hyperfrenetic, drunk, and mean. (I don't know if they're really drunk or not--but I saw them performing on the Letterman show and they worked off more calories in five minutes than my whole family does in a day.) And they KICK. ASS. And, corrupter of the young that I am, I turned my kids on to them immediately. Now I'm going to have to go listen to the lyrics carefully--they can deal with swearing, violence, and sex, but there might be other objectionable stuff there that I'll have to debrief. Damn. It's my parental duty to listen to kick-ass music. I'll just have to bear it. Soooo sad.

7. I've finished one of my post Christmas presents--a pair of handwarmers for a student. They're too big...but I'm hoping a little help from the drier might fix that!

8. *sob* I'll see you all on my lunch break tomorrow. *sob* At wwwooooooooorrrkkkkkk!!!!!! (wail wail wail and carry on...)

Peace out!


325

What I told the Harlot...

I cruised the Harlot's post on 34 wee tiny leaves last night as I was proofing galleys, and wrote a response that's at least two blocks past Goofy with a right on Weird:

My manuscript sucks
My manuscript bites
It's not what I want
To be reading tonight
But I have to proof it
And change where I goofed it
And my brain and my eyes
Are working their loosest
So I'm taking a break
How much more can I take?
Til I see the Harlot make socks
That would make my brain ache.
Now my work doesn't grieve me
You all can believe me
If she can knit thirty-four
Tiny ol' leaves, gee--
I can finish my proofing
My awful typed goofing
And as a reward
I can knit up a new thing!

Go Harlot and her leaves!


And now, after three hours of sleep (Ladybug was on a 'let's make the parents wacko with exhaustion' kick) that's not looking any less strange.

BTW? I start a new semester on Monday--I'm not thinking about it because I don't want to sob through my last two days of break! I've got nearly 200 pages to go, and a nap to take, so I'm gonna git crackin'!

Galley Proofing

Okay--this is a polite way of saying "AUGH! I'm too busy reading my own book to write a proper blog!" The good news is, Mate is going to throw the cover picture up on the web site. (Rocks. Rocks out loud.) And I'm going to read my own book and wonder why anybody else would want to. (Seriously--this is the stage I out and out hate the most. I'm pleased with how few typos et al there are, but I'm just OVER this part of the story and want to be working on Part II! The good news is that the whole 'now what did I name that character?' dilemma is solved because I read the part where I named her in the first place. *whew*!)

And I've got to ask--what do you thing is an outrageous upload time? Because when I reach five minutes, I pretty much call the whole thing off, and I'm wondering if that isn't my problem. Anyway, here are turkeys on the roof of the house two doors down. No, I don't know why it wasn't my roof. Those other people are just lucky. But it was pretty freaking amazing. And I even got a picture.

Not It...

First of all, I have done very little today. I had plans...visit my aunt-in-law's sick mother, do some laundry, write another ten pages, but I woke up with the mother of all headaches, its gotten vaguely better since I woke up but mostly, all I've wanted to do has been check the amazon forums (Amy Lane is as close to being a hot topic as she ever gets right now, and I'm not going to discourage that in the least) and knit. Lots and lots of knitting.

I finished the first fingerless mitt with that Kathmandu-cash/silk/merino and I'm not as pleased with the pattern and yarn mix as I thought I would be. C'est la vie...the second one has been cast on, and away I go. I'm working on a pair in this Arucan sock yarn as well... I'm using Barbara Walker's stitch dictionary and making a cloverleaf rib, and hoping for the best...the sock yarn takes my breath away in terms of colors, but I"m pretty sure that before I'm three inches in, I'll wish I'd obeyed my first instinct and knit up that purplish mystery fiber that Roxie spun for me...it was calling my name too, but the Arucan was calling louder. (Maybe it felt as though the homespun were getting all the attention, I don't know.)

Anyway, in the meantime, the short people were thrashing the house like veteran rock stars, and although I've cleaned up just a little from that, I'm hoping to get some more done tomorrow. (Tomorrow we're sending the short people to day care for the first time in the whole vacation. Mate's staying home and we're gonna...play cards. Yeah, that's it. We're gonna go on a date and play cards. And isn't it sad that I'm planning to clean the house when all the cards are played...)

But really, nothing besides that to report...oh--wait. There's the fish light. We got one of those lights that looks like a round tank of fish, where on layer of fish is spinning one direction and the background is spinning the other direction and basically? The Cave Troll will go into the darkened room to watch the spinning fish. And take a nap or go to bed without falling asleep in our bed. For us card-playing adults, this is a big furry deal, let me tell you! And since the Cave Troll is there, Ladybug will stay there too (at least until two a.m. when the whole thing goes to hell and our King Size becomes the family cot again...)

And that leads me to my post title--I've got here, for your viewing pleasure, the top 10 (or so...me and counting...) reasons for a married couple to play rock-scissors-paper, or, as my husband does, cry "Not It" triumphantly at the top of his lungs... here they are, in the order in which I remember them...

10-- Your fifteen year old son wants a proofreader for his handwritten essay. His handwriting is just like mom's.
9--The crapweasels have violated the sacrosanct bounds of the holy defecation receptacle.
8--A suspicious sound, suspicious smell, or otherwise suspicious look to a vintage diaper.
7--No socks for the youngest can be found outside of the infamous pile of 'sock soup' on the floor of the car below her car seat, which is heavily seasoned with McDonald's crumbs and misplaced chocolate milk.
6--A blown circuit breaker in the backyard when no one has gone 'landmine' hunting in over two weeks.
5__A stinky dog when no one has gone 'landmine hunting' in over two weeks.
4--A mystery stench in the kitchen and/or bathroom.
3--Ginormous hairy spiders who have set up webs across key entrance points in the garage.
2--A sound like the wheels of the Juggernaut dancing in tune to an AC/DC cassette being played in the same player that harbored the missing pb&j on wheat coming from your bedroom where the children are supposed to be asleep.
1--Your angsty, weepy, 500 words per minute teenaged daughter comes home after a baaaaaaaaaaddddd dddaaaayyyyyy.

Dear Cat Food Company...

So the picture is the 'Cindy Lou Palm Trees' picture from a few months back, and other than that... I feel some more letters to imaginary people coming on...

Dear Weight Watchers,

I don't mean to criticize, but you people need to stop being so nice to me. I was gone for over four months for crying out loud--you redecorated!!! And when I get on the scale to find that I have gained back most of the 90 lbs I lost six years ago, did I get scolded? Laughed at? Slapped about with an empty MacDonald's bag? No, no. You people just commiserated with my wobbly chins and told me gently that next week, after a week of dieting, things would look better. Gracious goodness, people--do you not realize that if you don't send a six-foot bruiser named Helga after me with a billy-club and a cattle-prod to separate me from my chocolate, this weight-loss thing is never going to work?

Thank you, and I look forward to seeing a mean-assed uber-bitch with handcuffs and an attitude at our next meeting. Unless of course I lose weight. In that case, your regular sweetheart with the nice smile will do just fine.

Sincerely

Amy Lane



Dear Science Diet people,

I realize that you spend a whole lot of your life force formulating the best vitamin complexes to extend the lives of the sorry hairballs camping out on my kitchen table. While you're at it, could you try making that super-spiffy ultra vitamin complexed ball of kibble more appealing to the hairballs than it is to the goddamned dog? She's gulping it down by the quart and we could park a glass of water on her stupendously sized ass. Besides, its making her break wind like a fart-scented hurricane.

Thank you for your time,
Amy Lane


Dear Loose-Id people,

Please make it harder to download your smutty books onto my computer. If an idiot like me is doing it, how many more people are squandering their precious time and life force reading word-candy when we should be writing classic literature? Or at least sweeping the damned floor.

Thanks for helping me out,
Amy Lane


Dear Genetic Scientists,

Please work faster on the ability to remove the genes containing a parent's least-likable traits from our children. My older kids would rather read than clean the house and my younger kids think that 'no' is a noun, verb, and an adjective. We need to fix this and fix it now, and really, I think you're my only hope.

Thank you so much,
Amy Lane


Dear amazon.com,

Sell my books faster. Faster. NO, DAMMIT, I WANT TO BE A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR RIGHT NOW!!!

*whew* Thank you so much, and I'll let you know when I celebrate my big fat royalty check (HAH!).

Sincerely,
Amy Lane


To the makers of Kathmandu merino/cashmere/silk yarn--

You've got three different fibers in there people, would it freakin' kill you to put some damned nylon in the mix? This yarn is sumptuous, squishy, and gorgeous and it has less stretch in it than my unimaginative principal's skinny, black and white mind. A little help here?

Thank you,
Amy Lane

To the ghosts of Mel Blanc, Friz Freling, Chuck Jones, et al:

I just wanted to let you know that your work lives on. My four year old can watch the Looney Toons Gold collection for hours at a time--and because we frequently get lost in our little lives in this littler house, he often does. Thanks to you, my son can do the 'Rabbit Season/Duck Season' bit until we're ready to jump in a lake with poor Elmer Fudd, and he thinks that life really is a cartoon and attempts to jump off the furniture accordingly. As long as no one gives him a loaded weapon until he knows better, I think you all will help keep my little Cave Troll grounded in all things comedy. Seriously, gentlemen, your work lives on. Thank you.

Amy Lane

324

Ta Da!

I didn't used to be such a pussy about the weather. Some of you may remember the post about the swimming lamas...yeah--that was me. Braving the elements, forging stoically through Mother Nature's mayhem undeterred by little things like downed trees, swimming picnic tables and the possibility of ending up on the evening news as the world's stupidest person killed in the dumbest quest for a double-cheeseburger, ever recorded.

But not so much anymore. Maybe I'm older. Maybe I'm wiser. Maybe I've trained my imagination in the vivid details of death, and as I looked outside today at the leaning trees, the waving powerlines, and the glossy ripples of turbid water splooshing across the street, all I could hear in the back of my head was the voice of the EMT's..."Gees...too bad she didn't put on any makeup before she wrapped her car around that bus...she was having the world's worst break-out EVER! And just imagine how much she'd weigh if she'd died AFTER she ate lunch..."

Or maybe I just don't like getting cold.


Either way, you may very well ask yourself what it was that made me brave the elements today. What was it that caused me to plow the crapmobile through the knee-deep puddles and the erratic debris on this soggy January 4th? What was it that caused me to go head to head with a trash can as it sailed through an intersection and made a stately left onto Greenback? What was it that sent me out in rain so thick and wet that I was sopping after a three minute go with a downed window?

What was it indeed.

I'm proud to announce to my readers that my Christmas cards have, at last, been sent.

They're a bit soggy in the middle.

Update

Hmmm...

*I did not become a size 12 overnight--in case anyone thought that was a possibility. For the record, I was, once, when my hipbones stuck through my jeans and I got to know my food coming and going. If I was a size 8 at this stage in my life, I'd be able to use my boobs for knee-pads, and nobody wants to see that....

* Ladybug and I have come to an agreement. She gets out of her crib, sits down next to the toybox in her cluttered room, and sleeps there all night, so that she has her pick of stuffed animals the next morning when she cries for me to come get her. Do I understand this logic? Not on your life. But, hey, whatever lets us all get to sleep before 1:00 a.m.

* Ladybug is now the proud bearer of two tiny earrings in that pretty light purple color that most Aries I know would rather sport than the regular diamond that is their birth stone. I don't know why this is, but it is so (and if any Aries out there disagree, by all means let me know, because I would feel far less guilty about my totally groovy star-sapphire that I get to call my birthstone as a Libra. If you are insanely jealous--although I don't know why you would be--it may help you all to know that I look like crap in blue!) My Latina students will be so proud of me--they were telling me that I had waited too long as it is. And if anyone is wondering how I could possibly mutilate my sweet little girl like that, I've got to tell you all that the tantrum she threw when Chicken took Cave Troll to the other end of the mall was bigger, worse, and uglier than the little whine she gave when the second ear was pierced.

* Floyd (aka Tabitha) is starting to read BOUND for his third review. I'm expecting to get red-penned within an inch of my life, but, well, hey... type as thou shalt o, or something like that.

* I'm waiting (WAITING) not so patiently for my galleys for BITTERMOON. Honestly, I'd be getting a lot more reading done if I could make myself stop checking my e-mail for my damned galleys! (Although I'm almost done, Roxie, and I love it so much--for the uninitiated, Roxie's eye for color detail in her fiction is exquisite... I can practically feel the colors and see the textures of her stitch patterns of her well-woven descriptions, and her character, Sanna is so much fun! Okay...done gushing now...I'll save the rest of the gush for the ending, and my review on amazon;-)

* Chicken did me proud as an observer of human nature the other day. The guy who takes out carts at Target is one of the nastiest people I've ever met to hold down a job. He's been working there for five years and says NOTHING. AT ALL to the customers, although I've heard him frequently cursing out the human race as a whole when there's no one close enough to be offended enough to complain. I was telling Chicken to beware of him--basically, just stay out of his way, because he looks mean enough to mow down the unwary with his carts--when she suddenly did a passable Meg Ryan imitation from 'French Kiss'. "My ass is twitching. You people make my ass twitch!" I was laughing so hard I actually smiled at the nasty man. He mentally cursed me and my offspring to hell, but since we're practically pagans and probably going there anyway, I figured I should let him have his fun.

* My back was doing great until I took the Cave Troll for a walk tonight. He gooooooeeesssssss soooooooooooo sllllllllooooooowwwww... it hurt just to go that slow sometimes, but that's not why my back hurts. My back hurts because at least six times he turned around and launched himself at me when I wasn't ready, and little dude weighs 45-50 lbs. plus momentum. OUCH!

* And, after using up two skeins of Lorna's Worsted, Camouflage to make Big T a pair of socks and my Uncle (as it turns out) a hat, T wanted a hat like the one I gave away. And I had to buy one more skein. And I asked, cheekily, because I'm so damned done with this color, "So, T--what should I do with almost this entire skein of yarn I have left." The answer--and promptly, I might add-- "Fingerless Mittens!" Well, shit...feet, head, hands...and he's promised to wear them to school. Cool.

* So, I spent my evening watching 'snakes on a plane'--you know, the movie w/Samuel L. Jackson and, well, lots of fake snakes. On a plane. And all I can say after watching it is that the knitters would be the only ones who would live. Why? Because we have big pointy sticks and we know how to use them.

* And if you'll excuse me, I need to venture into the land of the Farting Dog (aka, the living room) and rescue my husband, who has been hinting to the two older children for ice cream for the last ten minutes. My husband as a whole tends to be a subtle, sly & dry sort of person. I can't convince him that this is lost on teenagers, and the poor man may die of ice cream deprivation if he depends on them to serve him with quart and spoon.

A What?

Ladybug has figured out how to climb out of the crib. For the uninitiated into BedTime Wars, this is a BAD THING. She is in her little crib right now, screaming "Out there...get out there..." Except her face is red and her voice is hoarse from shrieking and it's not nearly as cute as it sounds. (And looking back over this, it don't sound that cute.) Anyway, the Cave Troll was too much a lover of order and control to ever dream of climbing out of his crib. He could, all right--he's got the best physical skills of the four, but as for WANTING him too...as it is, he won't sleep in his own bed--he would rather sleep between Mate and I because it feels more like the crib.

Sometimes, I wish we could plug one child into another and download the program that would make our lives easier. Alas. Not to be.

Anyway--we stayed up, watched SNL and then watched the ball drop, jumped up and down and hugged the kids, and then...went to bed. Roxie said everything I was thinking about arbitrary days to denote a new year, and all I can add is "Go darlin'" My life is really good, I resolve to lose weight and check my e-mail less, and basically, what it really means is that people took their lights down and my walk is a little less picturesque.

Oh--and I've figured something out about myself...green is my favorite color. Sort of. Now see--it's hard to put a finger on--I don't kid around about being a color-slut. There are days when I just want them all, and I'm pretty sure they all want me. So I'm going to go on a stash dive and count how many skeins of purple sock yarn I have versus how many skeins of green I have. I'm having a feeling that, (much like my heroine, Cory, and her two lovers, Bracken and Green) it's going to be a toss up--on one day purple may be the thing I need, and on the next day, green feeds my jones to perfection. Wouldn't it be funny, though, if the purple outweighed the green? Then, wouldn't it be true that purple would be my new Green? (Okay, the book people are going to think that's hilarious. So, basically, I wrote a knitting joke for five people who both knit and read my books. I think my next New Year's resolution should be not to do shit like that anymore because it's so totally dumbass there is no excuse for it, that's what I think!)

And speaking of dumbass jokes...

When we were at my friend's wedding, I walked into the bathroom, which was not connected to the rest of the reception hall, and prayed I could peel my ass off of the freaking cold toilet seat when my mission had been accomplished. (I had visions of being stuck there, like that kid in 'A Christmas Story', except with less dignity.) When I came back to Mate I said, "My God! Even a witch would need tit-warmers in there!"

He said, "A what?"

*sigh* Maybe my real New Year's resolution should be to forget that I ever thought I had a sense of humor, that's what it should be! That, and to finish Roxie's wonderful book. I've been reading slowly--mostly because it's my vacation and I feel like it. And the book is worth the savor, so that helps! Tomorrow, I resolve to be humorless, matter-of-fact, and no nonsense. I also resolve to be a size 12 overnight.

See ya in skinny pants!