Of Calendars and Keys

So, I've been lucky enough to be home this last month, and the subject of 'word count' came up. How many words can you write in a certain space of time.

Well, I was appalled, because novel wise, I'd only written around 55K--and usually, even with the EDJ and soccer/dance/karate oh-my, my word count is higher than that.

But, I've got these handy day-calendars now (okay-- I tried this a couple of years ago, and they worked, but when things got REALLY hectic, with the four kids, I settled for writing stuff on the back of my hand because the day calendar was just too darned much trouble) and I started looking back at my month to figure how it could have gotten away from me.

First of all, remember that the more kids around, the less chance I actually have to write, and we'll start from there:

One week of Christmas vacation
One four-day weekend
Three dentist appointments
Two doctor's appointments
Two kid-shrink appointments
Four ADHD classes
Back to school night
Guitar Recital
Teacher's conference
Two sick kids (on different days)
Final edits on Talker 2
Two edits on Yearning
Two book releases w/guest blogs
One manuscript submission (and acceptance)
Gathering Squish's Kindergarden submission
One failed meeting to register her (not my fault)

And...

Losing my keys.

Now, Losing My Keys (and, yes, it deserves to be capitalized) didn't happen until Friday afternoon, but it managed to completely fuck up Mate's weekend. Mine, yes, but my devastation was emotional--his was actual.

I lost my keys on Friday--literally, got home on Thursday night with them and spent all of FRiday looking for them--and after two days of Mate telling me that he HAD TO WORK on Friday and even on Saturday, my complete idiocy resulted in:

* Three hours Friday, spent bringing kids home, and taking Big T to a radio station. (That last was sort of cool-- T submitted his favorite songs to the radio station, they picked his playlist and he had to come in and record his intro. Like I said, cool-- but *I* was the one who was supposed to take him!) He went back to work after all of that and stayed until almost nine, and I felt like crap.

* All of yesterday (when, remember, he was going to work) during which he spent the day getting the car towed to the dealership and getting the keys replaced.

*My neck deep weepy guilt, because there was no WAY he wasn't mad at me, and he had every right to be, and he was trying not to be because I felt like crap.

*sigh* And then he reminded me that the reason we had to get the car towed was because I had already lost the first set of keys in August. So that's two sets in a year.

I've been flaky like this my whole life, right? It's just that some times it seems like more of a burden than others.

Of course, the bright spot is, as it always was, Mate--

"I have no idea where they are! Damn, I may as well read the damned cards to find them!"

"You do that!"

"Okay, fine."

"What do the cards say?"

"The cards say that the kids made me lose them."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah-- five of staves. Staves are responsibility, the kids are playing with them in the picture--I say it means the kids made me lose them!" (Yes--I did just pull that out of my ass-- but I swear that was the picture!)

"Was it really the kids, or was it the five people playing in your head that made you lose them?"

*crickets* "Uhm, probably option B."

"I thought so."

So there was that--how a life of leisure can really be so full and so weird that 'leisure' is a dirty word.

And, I must confess, I just acted very badly, not an hour ago.

Big T's alarm went off--it's REALLY LOUD and he was sleeping right through it. (I mean, it IS Sunday morning!) Anyway, it woke me up in the next room, and so when I stumbled over to his room to turn it off, I was, well, peeved. So I stood at his doorway and surveyed the single-serving sized version of the apocalypse that is his room and decided to just get his attention. I called his name (loud enough to wake Mate in the next room) a couple of times, and no dice. Wasn't moving. So I took my life in both hands and tried to take the four steps that would let me turn off the damned alarm.

I stumbled twice, almost broke my neck, turned off the alarm, and smacked my sleeping giant of a son on the shoulder.

"WHHHHAAAAA!!!"

"Could you turn off your own alarm! Jesus Christ, T--you can hear that thing in the next block!"

"Wha?"

"Go back to sleep. Just turn the damned thing off next time!"

And he has now gone back to sleep--but I think I owe him big when he wakes up. Like I told Mate, I was just going to turn it off for him until I realized my life was at stake walking across the damned room!

Anyway-- that's tricks. I think today I might get to catch up on some of your blogs... I sure have missed you in my life of leisure!

WE HAS COVER ART!

Jack and Teague (& Katy's) first story officially HAS COVER ART!

Okay--I hadn't expected to be quite so excited about this but I AM. Remember, I started these stories about three years ago, and they took me, one installment at a time, about two years to finish. Suddenly, they have a cover, and they're going to be OUT THERE for review and look and...

zomg zomg zomg. Guys--for those of you who follow my m/m and are a little leery about reading something m/m/f, Teague is... well, he takes the idea of tortured hero to the extreme. YOU WILL LOVE HIM. Trust me. Just.... just trust me. And Teague's wolf is so handsome... I love it...

*swoon*

Me happy. (Tonight is also ADHD class, which doesn't sound exciting, but Mate and I have been going out afterwards, so it's officially date night! HUZZAH! Good day!)

*beam* Off to write some more LP:-)

The Fool

I admit-- I'm a rank novice at this whole enterprise, and that's one of the most enchanting things about it.

Our tarot cards have arrived, and I am utterly beguiled.

This image is taken from my deck, Fenestra, and the art boggles me-- just the fact that what you read into the card is influenced by the deck you've chosen which is influenced by the way the art spoke to you before you purchased the cards, that complicated dance of meaning, choice, and future is intangibly beautiful, and the art of laying the pictures down and telling stories of a life that are drawn out from the pictures?

It's everything I've loved about literature.

I particularly love this card.

The fool represents the wanderer, the person with that blithe optimism to just start a new enterprise with only a smattering of possessions and a faithful companion in his cache. He has courage, is unencumbered by prejudices, bitterness, or preconception, and can not only think on his feet, but thrives there. Of course, he's not without his flaws--he tends to dodge responsibility--or at least be conveniently absent when it lands. He has no real home, so he is eternally searching for security, and he may be a little afraid that something secure will be the death of his optimism and cheerful rambling around the psychic landscape, and that's a problem. A person should have a home.

In the picture, he's about to tread into dangerous territory without a thought in his pretty little head--but there's also the suggestion that his very purity of heart is going to get him through. Maybe he's a lucky bastard who's unaware of his blessings--could be true. But he is also wise, and joyful, with the heart of a child and the prudence to know when to share that joy with the people around him. The sun at his back and the wind in his face are simple pleasures and he loves these small things and indulges in them as often as possible. Perhaps he's not as foolish as we first assumed--perhaps he just needs drive, decisiveness, emotional ties and a certain material stability to render him a fool no longer, but a friend.

It's a pretty story, anyway, isn't it? I like it... I think I'll look at some of the other cards to see what they have to say.

Of course, there is going to be scads and scads of things that I am unaware of (and that some of you reading this post are probably DYING to tell me--I've noticed that there are many layers of meaning to a card that I'm just flat out going to miss)--but that's okay. There used to be (still is) scads and scads about knitting that I was unaware of, but I practiced, made mistakes, practiced, and obtained a certain fluency with the medium, and I will continue to do so, I hope until my shriveled fingers stop twitching because my wool and my needles are a part of me as much as breathing is. I don't know if this particular infatuation is going to dig as deep a trench in my soul and take root--but there's always hope.

I am, after all, the fool.

Potpourri

* Good news on the picture front--I've talked Mate into a small camera, for me, because I'm tired of doing this shit on the blog. *woot* I'd love real pictures of the kids growing up again. (Yes, I know, this means I'm carrying around a phone, an iPod and a camera. That's not the point. The point is, I KNOW HOW TO USE EACH DEVICE WITHOUT HELP! Uhm-hm. You're feeling me now, aren't you?)

* Went to Big T's LAST Back-to-School night tonight. (He's on a 4x4 block, so each semester is actually four year-long classes.)
Big T, in accordance with his goals for high school, wanted to achieve a 4.0 (check) and he wanted to take an honors class. He's now in Honors Chemistry, and I'm a little trepidatious. (Don't care if that's a real word or not. Me likey.) His teacher is a nice guy, but, if I may borrow a phrase from about a thousand years ago, sort of a poindexter in his delivery--he doesn't hammer his main points with the mighty weapon of Thor, if you know what I mean, and he was VERY surprised to hear that T had an open IEP (and grateful for the heads up, bless him. Like I said, nice guy, but T usually needs a little drama with the presentation to be able to discern what's important from what's not). But that doesn't mean T can't do it--I have some faith. Of course it helped that the teacher before that was Big T's weight training teacher. Big T had this guy last year and dropped sixty pounds in a semester, and is now the program's success story. (*big wide grin* That's my boy, oh yeah, that's my boy.) So, hearing the weight training teacher congratulating me on what an awesome kid I had? Well, you know. It sort of gives me reason to think he really CAN do anything he puts his mind to.

* Also tried to enroll Squishy in Kindergarten. *sigh* *fume* After double checking on the website and making a phone call, I got there to discover that they'd pushed the open enrollment date back to February. I've got a date on February the second, and I'll go in there with my remarkable packet to prove that she's human, and some paperwork that I'm having Mate fill out because no one can read my handwriting. *sigh* She's going to be in full day Kindergarten. I sort of hate that part, because I LIKE the idea of a half-day Kindergarten, but I LIKE Zoomboy's school, and I want her to be in the same place. Chicken and Big T were in two different schools for all but two years of their schooling--and there's good reasons for that, but it's been a COLOSSAL pain in the ass. Next year marks the first time we'll actually have three kids in two places instead of four kids in four. (Big T will have his license by then and be enrolled in Junior College and have a job. I think. The level of responsibility this entails, vs. what he has now secretly makes my head explode. I know he can do it, because *I* did it, and I'm pretty sure I was nowhere near as together as he is--but I also had four years of balancing drama, band, and whatever was going on in my pointy little head at the time, and I don't know if he's done all that. We'll figure it out. We always do.)

* Talker's Redemption is doing pretty well (cross fingers!) so far. People seem to like it--I'm getting a LOT of reports about how painful it is, so I think I've done my job. It's selling pretty well on two fronts, too--but for some reason it took forEVER to hit All Romance e-Books, and apparently that's the BFD of e-book sales right off the bat. *shrugs* Hey--people like it. I'm happy.

* Oh yeah-- true to form and my inability to actually stick to a timeline, I took a better look at the paperwork for "I Love You, Asshole!" (the Marcus & Phillip novella) and it's going to be out in MAY instead of March, like I originally thought. Oh well, nothing going on in March, but two books in April--I'll just have to deal, yeah?

* Yeah--I've been having some fun with internet Tarot... I'm kind of digging it, actually. It's all about symbols and interpretation and using basic facts to extrapolate a larger truth--sort of an English Major's wet dream, actually (although I'm sure there are male English Majors out there who are just big-eyed and horrified at the thought that anything so off the key could possibly be in their millieu. Screw 'em. I'm sticking to the idea that interpreting Tarot is the same thing as that big ol' volume of symbols that used be used in order to write and interpret Japanese Haiku in competition. It's a legit form of interp, and it's a hell of a lot of fun!)

* I'm working on a shawl now in Lion Brand Homespun. God, I used to love this yarn. now I can't finish it fast enough. It's making me CRAZY, but I think the recipient will love it. It's a mitered triangle in garter stitch, starting with a WHOLE LOT of stitches and then decreasing once on either end and twice in the middle for every other row. The sheer deliciousness of this pattern comes from the fact that there are fewer stitches every other row. Doesn't sound like much, but it's sort of like writing a book. You push, and it's ponderous, and it hurts your shoulders, then it picks up a little faster and a little faster and a little faster and then... you're rolling that boulder down hill in the final stretch! LURVE that feeling!

* Speaking of... I'm in the peak of the hill part for Living Promises... and that puppy is about to go downhill into the speed part really soon! WHHEEEEEE!!!!

Oh yeah-- and THIS is what happens when you're up at two in the morning, trying to hit your target of 4K in a day:



Well... at least Christopher Walken didn't mention a watch...
And that's all I got... not bad considering the fact that at first I thought I had nothing at all!

Sharing the happy, sharing the sad...

But mostly happy, really...

* Tonight, we're going out to dinner. Big T suggested it--he asked, actually. We used to go out all the time, before Things 3 & 4, and since Mate and I were SO impressed with our brain trust (because SERIOUSLY, it's not like either of us slackers got a 4.0) he said, "So, can we go out to Red Robin?"

Hell to the YES we can do that! Goddess bless them both--I'm so proud I can't even use real words.

* I sent everybody to Jessewave's site yesterday to see the wonderful write up for Wishing on a Blue Star. What I DIDN'T know when I sent them there was that this review for Talker's Redemption would be there. And I was happy. Very very very happy.

* Mate, darling Mate, updated the website. My Christmas short set on Green's Hill is there, as is my story from Wishing on a Blue Star, and my upcoming projects as well. Enjoy!

* Squish and I had the following conversation today about petting slugs:

"No, baby--you can't pet them. The oils from your hands will make them shrivel, and you'll be touching mucus. Ick."

"It's not Ick! They're adorable creatures!"

"That's creechy, sweetheart. They're creechy. Not creatures. Creatures have fur."

"They are too creatures! I want them to be my pets!"

"The cats will eat them!" (blargh!)

"Oh. Well. Then we'd better let them stay outside."

*whew*

* I found this and remembered this poem, and for reasons some of you know, it felt incredibly personal.




* I thought of John Keats, and then this one did too.



* And then I decided I had to pull my head the hell out of it, and I went to the two things that always make me happy--Supernatural and kick-ass music, and then I felt a whole lot better.



May you enjoy the happy and deal with the sad. It's very very probable that it'll be all right.

Short Photos of Fiber Content

Okay-- tomorrow, I'm going to be on TWO different blogs. I'm going to be on Marie's blog tomorrow, talking about The Crazy Tree, and I'm going to be on Wave's talking about
Wishing on a Blue Star.

I'm also up for awards in a couple of categories over at Love Romance Cafe (voting instructions are here if you're interested) and basically? I'm well covered on the internet in the writing department tomorrow.

And that's why I led with my kid showing off scarves. The first one is in her two favorite colors--pink furry and pink shiny, and the second one is for Littlewitch, who asked for something in vampire blood with maybe some black, and now she will maybe stop pasting "Write bitch!" on my Facebook, because, you know, knitting is good on her end too!

And Squish made me pose for the one of us together. She's the best part.

Oh yes-- and BOTH my teenagers brought home 4.0's this semester... dude! I don't even know what to do for them! I want to throw them a parade! WOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!

So come visit me in those other spots on Friday--I might even be coherent, and maybe charming!

Redemption

Goddess, I love these stories.

For one thing, they were dragon ridden--I started writing and couldn't stop. I love it when that happens, even though I've had to learn to temper that ride with real things, like housework and feeding the family and going to the bathroom.

For another, they represent everything I've come to believe about love. Chemistry may be a bolt from the blue, friendships may spring up in an instant, but love, real love, comes from existing side by side, seeing the best and the worst and maintaining that slow, strong burn that can sustain both parties of one of you is brought low. Tate and Brian are friends first, helpmates second, and lovers a strong, spectacular third. The first two things feed the third one, and it wouldn't be such a precious emotion if it wasn't for all of the work that goes into it on the other fronts. Dating is fun--don't get me wrong. But in a way, dating is "Disneyland love". Dating is always the best of things, putting on your best clothes, leaving behind the unpleasant realities in order to make a good impression.

What happens in Talker and Talker's Redemption is sort of the exact opposite. It's loving each other through the worst of things. It's finding the best of yourself for your lover when you couldn't find it for yourself. It's courage where you didn't think you'd find any, and humor when you have very little to laugh at and optimism when the only thing you have to wake up to is your lover, and that's more than enough.

Talker's Redemption is available from Dreamspinner Press tonight, and through the other avenues, like Amazon.com and ARe tomorrow or the day after. (It always takes a day or two for the story to hit the other sites.)

I am, of course, anxious as to how it will be received.

Everyone's chief complaint about Talker was that it was too short--they wanted to see more. When asked why I wrote it as a novella instead of a novel, my answer was simply that it hurt too much. Talker's life, Brian's life--they are painful, and while I found that their stories very much worth telling, it just HURT to live in that place with them, so I stuck to the flashback format, even though I knew it drove people crazy, mostly because it gave the whole piece a sort of hallucinatory, prose-poem feel that added depth when I was emotionally incapable of giving it length.

This one was worse. I literally relived Tate's worst moments in his head with him, when he was frightened and vulnerable and in SO much pain. I used the same format, and it made the emotional peak of the story just that much more painful, and it left me as open and as bleeding as it left Tate. The ending is quick, and sad, but it, hopefully, leaves the reader with that hope, the same hope they had at the end of the first one: as long as these two people can continue to wake up to each other, that's all they need.

It's funny--I'll peruse goodreads.com and try to find a rhyme or a reason to why people will like one writer or one story as opposed to another. I've long since realized that so very much of this is subjective, shaped by a reader's past experiences, perceptions, and beliefs about mankind in general, and so very much of this is out of my control. But I've noticed that of the things I CAN control, people tend to be more passionate about my angst than about my comedy. This isn't true for everyone, but if you put two antagonists in a ring, one of them fighting for Talker and the other one fighting for Bella's Brother or Danny Fit, I'm thinking that even though Balla and Danny are higher rated, it would be the person fighting for Talker who would win.

It's why I had to write a sequel. I'm passionate about these two kids too. But it's also why I kept it short. You can't sustain the sort of energy it takes to win that fight and continue to do things like eat and sleep and raise kids and function--at least sanely. You come home from a walk or a trip to the grocery store in tears and sobs enough times from running that plotline in your head, and your husband starts making crazy talk-- things like taking the computer away or not writing for a while or maybe, picking another genre, like haikus about the cats.

So Talker's Redemption (I also call it Talker 2) is short. But I hope it's also powerful. And I hope that everyone who has rooted for these two kids from the beginning loves it too.

And, of course, there is the inevitable: Holy Goddess, Merciful God, let it not suck!

On being nocturnal...

Zoomboy is sick--that horrible high fever, crushing head-ache, lay there like a dead fish sort of sick that apparently only bird-boned, intense little boys get, because he's the only child I've had who gets sick like this. Anyway, when Zoomboy is sick, he demands cuddles, and he's been sick enough to be laying down in our bed watching television.

The cuddles turn into a nap.

The nap makes me wide awake at eleven o'clock at night, and, well, since there are kids in our bed, and nothing else exciting is going to be happening there, I stay up late.

And last night, I lay down for cuddles at eleven o'clock, figuring that, well, what the hell, I'll just sleep like a normal person.

I woke up at three a.m., with a driving need to edit "I Love You, Asshole" (The Marcus/Phillip story) so I can send in the revised vision for editing, instead of the old version. (I think my beta readers will enjoy the changes I made!) I edited until six, and then went back to bed--until seven-thirty, when Squish woke me up going, "Mom! Mom! Mom!" I wobbled out of bed (my feet are giving me hell) and went staggering down the hallway to look around the living room in bleary-eyed confusion.

"Mom! I'm in the bathroom!"

So I staggered back down the hall."

"What's wrong?"

"I'm in the bathroom."

"Yes. You're going pee. You're doing a great job."

"Thank you."

And apparently, that's all she wanted.

So there I was, up. And Zoomboy got up too, and he sat on my lap. I think... that's all I remember until about 10:30 a.m. So anyway, that's why I'm feeling like that guy in the picture. Chicken tried to tell me that my bedtime was 1 a.m. tonight--and I might take her up on that.

And in fiber news?

Went to the LYS, and saw that Babetta's was YARN BOMBED! It was AWESOME-- and we have a picture on Chicken's cell phone... I swear we'll download them shortly, so you can see. Seriously-- it was adorable. She has a very young tree outside her shop, and it was covered in acrylic glory--apparently it only took the White Ford Suburban an hour and a half to sew all those little ruffles on that tree. I was so tickled--and so was Babetta! I WILL get you that picture, because, I'm sayin'... damn.

Anyway, while we were there, Squish spotted her two favorite fiber drugs--pink furry and pink sparkly. Babetta has a bunch of drop-stitch scarves as samples, and Squish has wanted a scarf for so long. Every time I've taken her there, she's fondled the drop stitch specialty yarn scarves and talked about when mom would make her one... so this time, as she found her favorite drugs and fondled them hopefully, I committed... I'm about halfway done now, and it's furry and soft and blindingly pink. Don't worry... although the camera situation is still iffy, I'll have Squish pose in front of the computer--it's so very her:-)

And that's about all... next week is going to be wrapped up in getting Squish ready to sign up for Kindergarten. Can you beLIEVE the amount of paperwork we have to provide to the world just to prove we're human? I mean... she needs proof that we've taken her to the dentist? Really? Anyway--so up to my elbows in doc appointments and dentist appointments and the usual--writing.

Of course, only the best stuff happens at night:-)

zomg zomg zomg

TELL me you see what I'm talking about!

Okay-- for the record--I LOVED the cover to Making Promises... I just couldn't figure out why it looked a little bit familiar. That's okay though--Hercules and Iolus hit my slash button before I knew I had one. It's like kismet or something, right?

Points of Interest

(Forgive the pirated Michael Parkes Print-- I'm a sucker for that faintly sinister blind jester... SO sexual...)

Anyway, some things you may want to know.

* The endless technicolor yawn has ceased, and Squish is feeling much better. The dog, however, is traumatized.

* Big T spent all night typing a paper. At one in the morning, he accidentally flushed the paper down his computer, and was cruelly informed of this fact when he awoke to print it up. The resulting brouhaha put such a weirdo crimp in my morning that I can not even begin to tell you how much I don't know what time it is.

* Chicken is in finals too. Last night, she stayed up until eleven o'clock to watch a movie, and seemed put out when I looked at the clock in horror (my own internal clock is too fucked up right now to even explain) and said, "Tall people! Why is nobody sleeping!" Big T, of course, had an excuse, but she got all persnickety. I was like, HOW CAN I WRITE WITH ALL THIS NOISE!

Of course that wasn't exactly fair, since I was up watching the movie too. *sigh* Being the grown up sucks.

* Zoomboy. Ah, Zoomboy. The voyage of self discovery that is Zoomboy's journey through ADHD diagnosis has been a whole lot of fun--for me mostly. Zoomboy missed it all. I brought him to his appointment today and he was like, "Why are we here? What a nice man--can I play with your Duplos now? Excellent."

The doctor, however, was pretty funny. He told me the following things:

--Kids with ADD often have poor social skills. When you can't control your impulses, you're annoying.

--Everyone has an executive function office in their head, right between the eyes. This office is like a traffic cop in your head, prioritizing stuff and making sure you know what's more important. When you have ADD, your traffic cop is on a permanent donut break. (It figures I hate authority--even my BRAIN CHEMISTRY hates authority--it pretty much fired its executive officer when I was five and has been running the show in complete anarchy ever since.)

--People with ADD tend to forget things because it takes a minute for something in the short term storage to go to long term storage. In the meantime, the traffic cop is on donut break, and the other parts of the brain are going "Oooh! Shiny!" and that thing you were trying to remember goes bye bye. (I told him that I'd had not one but TWO break ups in college, where the guy was breaking up with me while I was doing something else, and when we were done with the conversation, I didn't realize we'd broken up. AWKWARD!)

-- People with ADD often become teachers.

--When that happens, they become the teachers that kids love but administrators hate.

--They're also the teachers that never grade their work, they just give really exciting lectures.

--If they don't become teachers, they do really well when they're self-employed.

--ADD kids can have sort of difficult childhoods and adolescences.

--But if they survive until adulthood to find something they like and are good at, they do GREAT!

*blink* Uhm, yeah. Wow. Who knew--my entire life, I've been suffering from a disability. I just thought I was like that dog in Up--"Squirrel!" Of course, now I can go "Squirrel!" and then smile brightly and say "ADD!" like a big goofy parrot in mismatched knitwear. Same me--more material.

However, Zoomboy has a chance at a normal life (as opposed to his mother) with a little understanding, some medication, and a lot more time with his father.

*happy sigh* Silver linings abound!

Your regular blog post will be interrupted today...

by the following special report...

My four year old threw up on the dog this morning. That sounds really spectacular, but I've got to tell you, she had a lot of practice before she made the award winning shot. If anyone needs me? I'm going to be doing laundry or serving as a barcalounger, or (more importantly) trying to figure out how to see Big T's guitar recital tonight, since Chicken has plans, and we were going to take the short people, and Squish obviously feels like shit!

Your regular blog-blathering will resume tomorrow, where I'll probably talk about wisdom teeth or something equally inspiring, like the logic of getting barf out of a stinky dog bed.

That is all...

Edited to Add:

And now she managed the million dollar bonus barfing: took out herself AND mom in one fell swoop. I'm SO grateful the only thing in her stomach at the time was seven-up. You have no idea.

Sunday Afternoon Convos

My seventeen year old son, Big T: "Awkward."

Me: "What?"

T: "There was a Facebook poll asking for my favorite female character."

Me: "So?"

T: "I misread it. I thought it said favorite character, period!"

Me: *snicker* "Who'd ya put?"

T: "Data and McCoy."

Me: "zomg... I don't know if even *I* could slash that!"

T: "Oh God, Mommmmm!"

Me: "Mmm... Karl Urban... Mmmm..."



And obviously, I"m having a Moody Blues moment...



Which is okay, really, because I'm going to meet a friend to see Season of the Witch (SEE, Saren-- I told you I'd see it!)

Anyway, it's all quiet here, really. Just vague, funny things happening, like Squish coming in with the squat and lovely dragon totem that was a gift from Mary Calmes. I had it next to my computer, and she just took off with it.

"What are you doing?"

"i just wanted to touch it mama. I'll leave it over here so I can touch it."

"Okay. Why do you want to touch it?"

"It's all smooth..."

I'm thinking that kid can feel power when she sees it!

(Said kid is sitting on my lap right now. She just gave a big twitch, let off a left-cheek-sneak, and went back to doodling on my calendar. Uhm.... yeah. *shakes head* I think going to the movies without a little person is probably a good idea--we're VERY comfortable with each other.)

Oh yeah-- and the top image? A rejected photo for the cover of Rampant. I'm going to finish one more chapter of Living Promises before I start editing the Marcus and Phillip story for real. W
anted to get in the mood!

All Free--but not all me!

Okay--I've mentioned this before, but I didn't realize then that the e-book for Wishing on a Blue Star would be TOTALLY free! Again, if you just want to read my story, it's right there on my website, but if you want a free e-book, with lots of great writers, and a really strong message about strength and joy, well, yanno... free?

And this was a surprise--this is an impromptu Christmas anthology calledStuff My Stocking. Now see, this was sort of a Christmas game on goodreads.com, in the m/m romance forum. The Moderatrix had people find pictures, and they put them out on the forum, with an invitation to the authors on the forum (you'll see there are a number of us) to choose a picture and write a short bit of fiction to it. I wrote in the Green's Hill world, and you'll se an uncomfortably pregnant Cory there, but mostly, it's all written to a picture of a handcuffed elf. Well, I had to set that little guy free, and then Green had to heal his wounds, and... well, we all know how Green heals.

Oh yeah--and don't forget the VERY short Deacon/Crick interlude added the free stories on Goodreads.com on my author page.

Anyway, yesterday's blogpost is NOT translating to goodreads.com-- I don't know why that is, but this sort of thing sort of ticks me off. For one thing, I can't figure out how to reboot that whole idea. For another, I saved that picture of Spongebob special!

And I will leave you with this--Chicken came home upset because she had to pick a song for the character George Wilson from the Great Gatsby. I gave her three choices--the River or Atlantic City, both by Bruce Springsteen, or this song:



She chose Mumford & Sons--but we need to find a clean version on iTunes, because she doesn't think the teacher's going to buy that she didn't know 'fook' was Aussie for 'fuck'. Either way, she makes me proud--and we both REALLY love that band now!

Help! I'm Running Low on Clipart!

LOL-- seriously! I love me a good picture on the top of the blog... I've been having fun doing that for the last few months, but, well... I've only got so many pictures of the kids (and I do need more, I admit) and the knitting, while being accomplished, doesn't really get the ol' juices flowin' like some nice, professional, erm, FREE clipart, yannowhatImean? Anyway, if anyone's got some good pages of clipart that you don't need a computer degree to save to your hard drive, I'm all thumbs. Erm... Ears. Yanno... whatever... Hey-- I still have lots of files of sleeping animals to put up, right? And the creepy little sleeping hamster doesn't look dead AT ALL, I swear!

I've got another ADD class for Zoomboy tonight-- hey, let's see if I can pay attention long enough to actually start applying this to Zoomboy instead of my own manky-arsed self. Still, it is sort of amusing to look at all the symptoms and think "A-ha! I'm not weird, I'm learning disabled!" And, let's face it, saying, "Do you mind if I knit? It helps me control my ADD," sounds a LOT more grown up than "Do you mind if I knit? I'm pretty sure this is going to be as boring as hell and I don't want to doze off." Anyway, I've got my knitting packed and good to go, and I'm thinking I might get a goodly bit of a scarf done this go-round. Let's hear it for health improvement classes--now, if only we got units for them!!!

And, I think I've figured out the secret to keeping mama happy--it involves enough sleep and time in my own head. Seriously--if I don't get time in my own head, to read, to write, to create to just BE, I turn into a really grumpy bitch. Just do. Being alone--go figure, it CAN be a mood enhancer! Yesterday I met a friend for coffee, and to go shopping at a yarn store (I told her next time we meet, we should meet at my regular yarn store because Babetta SERVES coffee in the store) and even though I forgot Squish's coloring books (BAD MOMMY--Squish would have had SUCH a better time if I'd remembered!) it was lovely to talk to an adult. The only problem was, I also talked to Zoomboy's best friends' mom (one of THE loveliest people on the planet--I am firmly convinced. I don't care what faith you walk, some people are destined to be angels, and this woman is one of them. Pure goodness. I adore her,) and that was great, but I came home and my crazy friend Wendy called, and then the kids all seemed to think I'd want to talk to them (go figure) and, well...

By eight o'clock, I didn't want to talk to another living soul, and I made sure the feeling was mutual. Funny, how you think you're a social person and then you realize that it's all a sham. I love being social--but it needs to be followed by intense periods of being curled up in my own shell. I know that now. I'll be careful whom I inflict my nasty ol' self onto in the future.

Anyway, writing continues apace. I finished another Gambling Men short mostly because my editors like them, and not really to publish. Although we all see the stories being published in the future in some way or another-a collection, a novella, something--what they really boil down to is being fun to write and getting me in the headspace for something a little more difficult and a little more serious.

"I Love You Asshole"--the Marcus and Phillip novella-- is finished, and has been accepted (YAY!) and will probably be out around March, but it has a LOT of tightening needed before I send it to Jennifer (for whom it was written) and let it be edited for publishing. I'm going to give it a couple of days before I start the editing... I'm on a roll on Living Promises, and don't want to break that again so soon. It took me a while to get my head back into that one, since I let it sit for two months to work on other projects, and I want that puppy to start rolling like a moss-covered rock!

And to that end-- Littlewitch DEMANDED more Deacon, and we've already sort of determined that sometimes, I'm just her fast-typing bitch, so I wrote thiswhich does contain a plot spoiler, but which is also a quiet, Deacon/Crick moment. No sex, but some sadness, so beware.

And, well, that's 'bout all! The post-Christmas quiet (sort of) continues, and it's already been a productive new year!

The genes of Sherlock Holmes

Okay-- yeah. Since the last blogpost led with a current photo of her, I thought I'd try for an old one on this post, so we could all go "Awwww..." at how much she's grown. Mind blowing, isn't it? Dickens said it best... "The years performed their terrible dance..." Fortunately Squish has a number of dances to go before she's grown, but she really is amazingly big right now, isn't she?

Mate and I went to a 'class' last night on ADD/ADHD. One of the things that the guy said was that ADD was genetic, and that usually when he was treating children with ADD/ADHD, he would look out at an audience and see PARENTS with ADD/ADHD. I pulled out my knitting, started doing character profiles of the people I saw around the room, checked to see if Mate was paying attention, flirted with the new baby the row in front of me, wondered what the woman behind me was knitting when she changed projects and then I wondered what she was crocheting instead, and wondered who on earth this guy could be talking about.

Later, I semi-facetiously asked Mate if he figured out who he thought gave Zoomboy the ADD gene, and he said, (also semi-facetiously) "Yeah. Your father."

And I said, "What about my mom's side of the family? They're all brilliant and they all hated school!"

Well, basically, you know which side of the family can remember what they're doing when they go from one room in the house to the other, don't you?

Yeah. His. Poor guy--I'm sure he must have imagined, at some point in our lives together, that he'd signed on for 'normal'.

Anyway, the little seminar was interesting--I thought it highly amusing when the nice p-sychiatrist pointed out that the deal with ADD/ADHD is that neurology hinders the 'Executive functions' of the brain. I'm like, "Great--even my brain chemistry hates authority. That's refreshing to know!" He said that about 1/3 of all kids with an attention deficit would be simply ADD-- attention deficit, no hyperactivity. Mate thought this could be Zoomboy, but I don't now--Zoomboy doesn't run until he drops, but he IS sort of a little twitch. I'm sure we'll see, right?

Most folks with this disorder have both, but a small percentage are just hyperactive. "This," said the nice shrink, "is the REALLY dangerous kid. This kid is really bright, has horrible impulse control, and he pays attention to EVERYTHING!"

Mate turned to me and said, "Oh God--that kid would be Sherlock Holmes!" I thought that was an absolutely perfect observation-- Conan-Doyle would be proud, seriously! (I mean, Mr. Holmes DID try to self-medicate, right?)

About the only thing I DIDN'T agree with was the idea that back in the cave man days, the ADD/ADHD people would have been the hunters, while everyone else would have been the gatherers. "You've seen our kid on the soccer field!" I complained to Mate. "If that ball was some sort of animal he was supposed to hunt, he would have been dinner!"

"Well, yeah," Mate pointed out, trying to be reasonable, "but that's because he was never squatting in the dirt, watching daddy hunt!"

Well, yeah. But Daddy would have been a gatherer, and mommy would have been put to death as some sort of witch, so, basically, even though ADD/ADHD kids are 5-7% of the population our little Zoomboy would still have been the precious little anomaly that he is.

No matter how you slice it, though, the one thing we walked away from the evening with was, "Well, thank God for medication!" That and, for me anyway, "Thank God for knitting!" which apparently works just as well, right? I suppose we'll find out--if there's one thing we've learned from eighteen years bringing T to adulthood (or close-- the 'grown-up fairy' did not jus wave her wand and Shazzaam! Big T into productive adulthood, declaring our jobs completely over, and our lives without him complete. For one thing, he's gonna be living here until he's thirty!) it's that this sort of thing doesn't really end. You just teach your kid how to cope productively with it until it's his problem--and solution--and not yours.

So, enough of that.

Mate showed me this next thing last night. I wish I could get all righteous and give a dedication for this one--you know, send it out to everyone who has ever cut me off in traffic or sabotaged my life or kicked me in my shins or something--but I can't. This is not sent out as a curse, if anyone out there is reading that into it, but as a blessing, because it is by far one of the frickin' funniest things I've seen. Ever. I mean that.

Goddess love William Shatner--man, if we could all laugh at ourselves like this, the world would be a MUCH happier place:



And on that note, I'll leave you all to send that out to your friends--I hope you thought it was as funny as I did!

Feels Like Sunday Morning

Ulg. Boy, am I a grumpy bitch.

I woke up this morning to write, got some work done and thought, "Hey--I never go back to bed and sleep in. I'm gonna do that--it's everybody's last morning before vacation ends, I'm gonna enjoy sleeping in."

Oh yeah. That'll work. Mate? Yeah. Mate can sleep in. Me? I'm asleep, Mate's in the front room, and guess who comes to ask me for cereal? And milk. And to find the remote. So I get up and pour everybody cereal and stumble in to the computer, just wanting to be left alone and...

Well... they're cute. It's probably why they lived.

Anyway--I have FINISHED the Marcus and Phillip thing, and while I'm not sure if it will mean ANYTHING to anyone who is NOT a fan of the LG, I have it out to someone who's never read the LG, and we'll se if we can bang it into shape with some rubber mallets or something. Of course, the one thing I need to do now is go back in time and find the e-mail of the person who requested Marcus and Phillip in the first place, so I can print out her copy and send it to her! (Not as easy as it sounds. I'm on all these yahoo chat groups, and I delete around 100 emails a day.)

Anyway, if you're out there, hon, buzz me. I gotsa present for you!

And other than that? It's going to be a tough sell, convincing everybody that yes, there really IS school and work tomorrow. We have grand plans for watching True Blood today, and I'm down with that--I've got some post Christmas knitting to do!

Seriously--when my life is a little less hectic, that's when I knit more, and I've got this scarf working for Littlewitch that is... mmmmm.... she requested blood red, I used a double strand of merino for a garter cable and some thick black muppet to trim the ends... it's looking REALLY lush, although my hands are winter-dry and I have to keep asking Mate and the kids to fondle the wool to tell me if it's soft or not.

When I'm done with that, I'm crocheting a shawl from my favorite pattern which worked out pretty well, and then I'm making some fingerless mitts. Yeah, I know--this whole spiel would be better with pictures. I'm going to start taking more of them--I swear. The camera we have is not working well, and my phone camera... well, I've taken better pictures with a shoe box and a pinhole. But I hate not having a daily record of the kids, or of what I make, because I produced some items for the Chaney bag-o-knitwear that I was pretty proud of, and it would have been nice to have pictures.

(Oh... I forgot...A Christmas story pending: On Christmas day, I was telling my aunt about how some of my worst moments this last year have come because I'm not great with authority. I interrupted myself to say, "Hey--here's my bag of knitwear for the year!"

"Jesus, Amy! No wonder you have problems with authority--you don't even understand when we tell you NO GROWN UP PRESENTS!"

"These are backlog birthday presents," I sniffed. "They don't fall under the purview of the Christmas present clause."

"I still say this explains a lot about your life," Teresa said (with humor.)

"Yeah, well, why follow a rule when common sense tells you to go another way?"

All she did was shake her head. I'm starting to think I'm sorta kinda doomed.)

Anyway. Pictures coming. I suck with authority. I'm still knitting. The new year has begun.