DEX!

Is out tomorrow! !  Which is awesome, because the tension is killing me!

Seriously-- I had so much fun writing Dex!  Maybe it was because Sidecar made me flashback to my youth (and therefore feel old) and Mourning Heaven was just so emotionally raw, but Dex?  Dex made me remember being young again, and fucking up and realizing that I had a little bit of time to get it right.  Dex and Kane are all about reclaiming their innocence and realizing that it was never really lost in the first place because innocence is more than sex, it's the way you see the world and trust the people around you, and they'd never really lost that.  And maybe it's that infectious enthusiasm of being young that makes me so nervous about this one.  I want people to like my guys!  The adult Amy, the one who's put out a few books, is perfectly sanguine with the fact that people aren't always going to get her guys.  (Seriously--someone wrote a review on Winter Courtship of Fur-Bearing Critters criticizing my use of the word "sheep fur", because no one she knew thought that was funny.  I actually refrained from responding to that review in order to point that all of my friends thought that was fucking hysterical and odds were, I'd like those people better anyway.  Frankly, I'm considering that restraint a hallmark of maturity on my part.  I turned forty-five today, so, well, Happy Birthday to ME!)  But, well, the less mature Amy-- she gets nervous, and she wants everyone to like all her guys (even though the adult Amy keeps saying that's not possible!) so, well, I'm gonna be all nerves.  Because these guys are important to me.  They're young, and they fuck up, but by the end of the book, they've got the rest of their lives to sort it out, and even then, they've got a plan for the afterlife that they're both amenable with, and they're gonna run with that.

I love this book very much a lot, and I hope that you do too;-)

And in other news?

*  Well, there's the birthday thing today--my stepbrother called, and we both remembered that we used to be young, and, well, that made me feel old.

* I almost created a major disasticle with my hotel reservations at GRL, and, even worse, with someone else's, and the fact that I managed to scale that back to just a kerfluffle is making me feel like maturity may have it's bennies.

*  Mate played three softball games yesterday after coaching soccer, and then slept a lot today after counting his boo boos, because Mate turns forty-five tomorrow, and, well, boo-boos rack up when you pass forty-four.

*  Big T scared the holy crap out of me last night when he forgot to call me and tell me he was going to be late.  It's the first time he's done something like this, and part of me is proud that he's finally getting around to worrying us stupid, and part of me says if he ever does that again, I'm braining him with an alarm clock.

*  I'm not quite caught up with all of the stuff on my desk, and I don't understand why it's so HARD to write when I'm texting Chicken just as much as I used to talk to her when she was here.

*  Squish is enjoying the holy hell out of moving into her big sister's room.  She's been putting all her clothes away in the drawers and sitting there and playing.  The incidences of screaming coming from their shared room have diminished considerably, and that's good.

*  Zoomboy is missing his people so badly he hasn't slept in a week, and that's bad.

*  And today, I remembered two stories that need to be shared, and I shall leave you with those:

A.  So, before I took Chicken to San Diego, I stocked her up on supplies.  Toilet paper, shampoo, feminine protection-- you get the idea.  Well, Chicken and the Target guy ended up flirting, after having bonded over Pokemon of all things, and it was cute to watch them.  And then, in the middle of the cuteness, the guy started handing me $5 gift certificates that came as rebates because, well, I bought a lot of feminine protection.

"Wow!  This is cool!"  I said, taking the third one from him.

The guy nodded and said, "Yeah--it's because you bought a lot of--"  And then it occurred to him.  He was flirting with a pretty girl while he was ringing up her maxi pads, and now he was pointing out that he'd handled the maxi-pads to her mother.  The kid turned red, looked down at the bag in front of him and said, "This.  You bought a lot of this!"  And then we both politely ignored what "this" was and they continued their flirting.  But the squashed-possum look in his eyes was priceless, and I shall treasure it always.

B.  And two things happened on the way to San Diego that deserved note.

The first one was that we were trying to decide if we'd gone too far down 5 south (almost impossible, we know that now) and we were feeling sort of lost, when our only responsibility was to drive a straight line.  We were in the middle of cursing my damned GPS and squinting into the darkness wondering if that cursed freeway ever fucking ended, when her phone rang.  It was her room assignment guy making sure she would be at the orientation the next day.  She hung up, and I got frustrated with her.

"Why didn't you ask for directions!"  I wailed.

"Because he doesn't know where we are either!" she snapped back, and then we realized what we'd just said and giggled for ten miles until we saw the next road sign.

And the second one happened about an hour after that, as we were approaching San Diego.  She'd fallen asleep, and had been that way for about ten minutes, when I saw a sign and needed her to wake up to navigate.

"Chicken!"  I said, "Wake up."

And then, as she flailed about on the passenger seat, she OPENED HER DOOR!

As soon as it was open, her panic subsided and she clenched it shut, staring around the darkened car with big eyes.

My eyes were also big as I scanned our surroundings for the next place to get off and shut it.

"Interesting choice," I said, staying calm.  "I'd love to know why you did that!"

"I have no idea.  I woke up and spazzed out.  I do that."

"Awesome.  Just like your father.  Good to know.  Be sure to tell your roommates so you don't scare the shit out of them either."

"Will do.  Can we get off at this exit?"

"Yeah, yeah, hold your door shut a little while longer."

And then we fixed the problem--but I did not have long enough to give her hell about that, cause now that we're all alive and everything, it was funny!

And that's it.  Dex is out tomorrow, did I mention it?  It is.  And I'm excited.  And I hope you are too!