The dark small hours of the morning...

*Yawn*

One of the sad things about my hours in the summer is that I'm still up during the dark, small hours of the morning, doing writing business (as I call it) and often writing as well. Of course, one of the not-so-sad things, is that I often go back to sleep around six-thirty in the morning!

Thank you, everybody, for your good wishes about grandpa. I've seen this a lot on Donna Lee's blog--sometimes it just seems like the Time Bitch is running us down at a dreadful rate, and I think grandpa's death was one of those moments. But then (as was OFTEN stated at grandpa's memorial) Grandpa lived a long--and fairly blessed life. (Four plane crashes? Two brain tumors? And he passed away at ninety? I mean, yeah. SOMEONE thought he was a hell of a guy!)

I had a chance to guest blog in the last couple of days, and I had so much fun chatting with Mikhail that I decided to invite some other characters to come chat. They were mean to me. Seriously-- seriously mean. Remind me not to have Cory from Vulnerable come chat--she'll fry me as I sit.

And thanks to Chris, who sent me this video, which is proof that the nice and funny woman in it has either been reading my mail or just totally gets the whole bad review thing--this made my kids laugh until they fell down. They were like "omg omg omg...MOM! That's YOU!" Especially because I'd just gone off on a long rant about Nicolas Sparks that morning. (Apparently he ran track with my aunt's boyfriend's son--he came up in conversation.)



Of course, Chris got this video from this website and if you scroll down you'll see a lovely review for Keeping Promise Rock there. I love blog reviews (as opposed to, say, amazon.com reviews) because they are usually much nicer to me than the amazon.com people--and even if they DON'T like the book, they maintain some objectivity and some professionalism, and that's always nice. (That one woman who felt compelled to share her verbal gang-rape disguised as a review on four different websites being the notable and painful exception.)

And we're having company over for fourth of July, and street fireworks (which I only get because the kids like. Seriously--I'm not really a fan and neither is Mate.) This is important only in that I'm going to be NEAR the computer but unable to ACCESS the computer for nearly two days.

Let the withdrawal symptoms begin!

Happy fourth, all... Not my favorite holiday, no--but any excuse to get together with friends and family is a good one:-)

Oh yes-- and I'll leave you with this story, because it made Big T and I crack up for at least five minutes.

We went to the movies yesterday-- Big T was not here the weekend we saw Toystory 3, and felt that this was a wrong in the universe that must needs be made right. I took the kids to the movies, and Chicken and her friend went and saw Eclipse while we were watching T3. (BTW? You know a movie is good when your four year old is trying to warn you that the big pink bear on the screen is BAD and Woody and Buzz shouldn't listen to him!) Anyway, Chicken has LONG ago outgrown the Twilight thing--and if you want proof, check out her blog. (I especially like the first two frames of this one. I'm so proud!) Anyway, she feels that the characters are flat, Bella's a ditz, Jacob needs a spine and Edward needs a personality transplant and she's through. (She thinks my books are much better--but she also thinks they're too intense emotionally to read. "You're so MEAN to all your characters! Even a happy ending isn't happy!")

But the person she was going to the movies with LOVED the books AND the movies. I was not aware.

So we all get into the car, and I say, "So, Chicken, how was the movie?"

"It was AWESOME mom. It was pretty, and well choreographed, and it was really excellent."

"Don't you mean well directed?"

"Nope. I mean choreographed."

Well, that should have set off little alarm bells in my head because she knows the difference between these two terms and 'choreographed' suggests something artificial in the action on the screen.

But still, she waxed poetic about the movie for a couple of minutes, the conversation moved to other things, and we took her friend home and dropped her off.

As soon as the door slid closed behind Chicken's friend, Chicken burst out with, "Oh my GOD! Mom that was the lamest movie in the history of LAME!" And followed with a five minute impassioned rant on the follies of filmmaking especially to substandard material while her brother and I gazed at her in shock and tried not to wet our pants laughing.

"What?" She said when we were laughing too hard to respond to her.

"I'm sorry, sweetie," I told her. "I'm just trying to put my mental pants back on after that one-hundred-and-eighty degree mindf*** you just pulled!" (I actually don't 'say' the word, either, when I'm talking to them--just open my mouth and fill in the blanks. I'm not sure if this is good parenting or a hypocritical way to whitewash bad parenting, but it's a technique I'm fond of and I'm sticking with it.)

She laughed then, and then continued her rant, and her brother filed the expression away for later but when we got home, I showed her Franklin's take on the movie (mmmm... Malabrigo...) and she heartily approved! (And thanks Chris for the link to that one too!)