They're home!!!

Can you see them in the picture?  Clean and chilling in the rubble?  *happy sigh*  It's where they belong.

My children are home from their camping trip, and I'm glad!  I was about to raise the flag of surrender on all of that childless fun--I shit you not!

Anyway, I'm so glad to have them home-- although I'll be even happier to have them CLEAN-- and right now they're munching McDonalds (because my parents don't believe in fast food and my kids needed to visit our place of worship tuite suite!) and coming down from animation withdrawals in the living room.  We can't stop hugging each other when we pass, and Big T talked my ear off because he read Fahrenheit 451 during the camping trip and wanted some discussion on it that Grandma and Grandpa were just not up to.

Anyway,  I am now up three movies (Red 2, Pacific Rim, and, yes, finally, Wolverine, for those counting!) and down one edit of Ethan, and all I have from living without the structure of children for three days is a bunch of random observations and moments of dialog, both in person and textual, so here we go.

*  As Mate was leaving this morning, he said, "I fart in your general direction!" And then he did.

And then we both almost asphyxiated.  He walked out of the door saying "I love you! Run away run away!" over his shoulder.  I laughed for a very long time.

*  In the car, after I picked the kids up, Zoomboy said, "So, did you feed Greg?"

I said, "Uh..."

"Greg?  How's Greg?"

"Uh..."

"MY FISH?"

"Well, uhm, you know Beta fish, hon.  They can live for a week without food."

Big T looked at me sadly.  "No they don't.  I killed one off that way by accident."

Me-- in panic:  "Well it's only been four days... right?  RIGHT?"

As it turns out, Greg was okay, but dude, I was having visions of taking a dead fish to the vets and coming home with a live one...

*  Squishy had her hair in two tight Renaissance braids when I got her.  Apparently those lasted for three days.  Yes.  I practically TOSSED that child into the shower, why do you ask?

*  Apparently, my parents broke their dog.  They said they played with the dog so hard for three days straight that when he woke up this morning, he staggered around like he was sleepwalking, and then fell down sideways with his eyes rolled back in his head-- like people do when they're too tired to open their eyes, right?  I watched him when I picked the kids up.  He flopped down in the middle of the walkway and fell asleep within seconds.  Now Max is a fairly young dog-- only about five years old.  That takes an awful lot of playing, to break a dog like that.  Damn.

*  On the way home, Big T told me that I'd forgotten towels.

Me: Crap.

T: Grandpa has several things to say about it.

Me:  Awesome.  Thanks for telling me.

T:  Your 'thanks' has a sarcastic ring.

Me:  No, no, the 'thanks' is sincere.  The 'awesome' was sarcastic.

T:  Ah...

*  Apparently while I was gone to RWA, Jonny and my father had a run in.  The dog ran outside, saw my dad waiting for Mate, and spazzed the fuck out.  He jerked the leash out of Mate's hand, and by the time Mate cleared the house to see where the little fucker had gone, he was doing the two-pawed desperation run and was rounding the corner of the block.

As a result, my dad has upped his campaign to  prove to me that small dogs need to be treated like big dogs to be considered real people.  When I went to pick up the kids, I took Jonny with me.  My dad grabbed his leach and tried to make him recognize that both my dad, and Max his giant golden lab, were not going to eat him.

Jonny peed on Max's nose.  Then he peed on my dad.

The kids and I laughed our asses off.  I told my dad that if we'd wanted a big dog, we would have gotten a labrador retriever.

*  Mate and I decided that the Bruckheimer foundation is aware of when he's got a weekend off to watch movies, because it invariably follows that they play everything fromThe Rock to Con-Air in an effort to pander to Mate's guiltiest movie pleasures.  *sniff*  Notice how nobody panders to my need for comfort disaster flicks like Twister and The Day after Tomorrow, right?  BASTAGES!  *shakes widdo fist*

*  Okay-- I can't show you these because they're preliminary sketches, but DUDES.  Harmony Ink (the YA subsidiary of DSP) has accepted my Bitter Moon books to re-release in a total of four volumes instead of two.  They get new covers, and even the preliminary sketches are amazing.  I don't want to show you guys because A. I'm not authorized and B. I don't trust people with my rough drafts, I don't think an artist should have his just thrown out willy nilly, but dudes.  I'm so excited.  The covers are gorgeous, and this series will get a new chance at life.  Now, if you look it up, vendors are still allowed to sell copies they have in stock, but it's been taken off of Kindle and off of the iUniverse website.  I still have author copies of the old version as well, which I'm thinking of donating to our local LGBT outreach center in Sacramento, but it will be out this fall, one volume every two months, and I am jazzed.  One of the bennies of this sort of release is that YA librarians will be able to look the book up on lists and it will be submitted to their review publications and I would love it if it showed up in school libraries.  That, I think, would be a real milestone for me.  I know that if Talker were released at this point in time, it would be under the New Adult category of YA, and so, possibly, would Locker Room and (definitely) Litha's Constant Whim and Truth in the Dark.  Given what I've dealt with because people assume two male leads make porn instead of literature, I'm going to call this idea a win.

Anyway--

So that's news-- I've said it before, my virtual life may be chock-full-o-goodness, but my actual life is the stuff that naps are made of.  I do have to admit, though-- I'm finally catching up my sleep after RWA.  And I'm still waiting trepidatiously for footage of me and two llama puppets to emerge from the cybersphere.  If it doesn't, I'll be very relieved.