Lyda Morehouse's Blog, page 85

Ding-Ding Park

I can't find my USB plug for my camera right now, despite emptying both computer bags, the cord bag, and even digging through random, unlikely places. Nuts. I'd wanted to post a few pictures of what Mason and I got up to yesterday.

Mason got a bit bored at the Women of Wyrdsmiths Wednesday gathering, so Eleanor offered to go home a bit early. After dropping her off (and remarking at the large number of hawks along 94,) Mason and I decided to try to hit "ding-ding" park. "Ding-ding" is so named because there's is a train track that crosses very near the park entrance, and when Mason was a toddler he was rather obsessed with trains. He'd get excited whenever the crossing guard arms would drop and the bells would ring. We'd go stand as close as we dared and count cars. All the time the crossing bell would ring: "ding! ding!"

It may be officially called Aldine Park, I'm not sure. It's about eight or nine blocks from us, as you cross the highway on the pedestrian bridge. Mason wanted to pack a picnic, even though I warned him that the entire park might be sludgy snow. He also wanted to bring along a notebook to record all the animals we might see on the way, because as we left Eleanor's place, we saw what was probably a Cooper's hawk carrying a dead... mouse? vole?... in its beak or talons. This is what we recorded:

Feb. 16, 2011

Saw hawk carrying dead mouse/vole on the highway

2 hawks sitting together on one lamp post

Many birds in bushes, trees, vines, and on rooftops.

A cardinal.

Crows.

A dog.

A horde of teenagers swearing up a blue streak.

Because, when we got to the park and played a little bit, a group of teenagers got off the bus and took over the park like a small invasion force. We decided not to stay for fear Mason might learn new combinations of various oaths. (Alas, my little reader knows most of the swear words in American English and British English, but he really doesn't need to hear them out loud.)

I did take a couple of pictures at the park because, before the teenagers came, it was kind of comical to watch Mason struggle through the snow, which is hard packed in some spots, but soft and deep in others. In fact, on his way in to the playground section of the park, he got one foot so deeply into a mushy hole that he got his boot stuck so badly he ended up pulling out the liner with his foot and had to dig to release the boot from its icy near-grave. I would have helped him, but I was laughing too hard. (Actually, I eventually did help. He didn't quite have the leverage figured or the arm strength.)

Hopefully Shawn will know where the cord is and I can post the picture tomorrow.

Motivation, Where Art Thou?

I'm in desperate need of motivation. The thing that usually kicks my butt, a looming deadline, isn't working the way it should. Normally, at this point in the novel, I look at the calendar and realize I only have a month and a half to finish the book and I start running around like the proverbial headless chicken and then I buckle down and get serious.

I'm not chicken-running or getting terribly serious.

This is not good.

Add to that that Mason is on Intersession break and it's been warm and welcoming outside. We keep trying to build a fort. My folks bought Mason these nifty little snow block makers. Imagine sand pails, except with snow. At any rate, this time last year we'd made a fort large enough that Mason could look out a window at eye-level. This year, we build and build, but when we come out the next day, it's puddles and melted brick shapes. I'm not used to that in February. It's supposed to be almost 50 today. That's above, folks. In Minnesota. In February.

Unnatural.

I almost wonder if my lack of motivation has to do with the fact that, in a money-saving effort, I've been making coffee at home. I'm not sure I make my coffee as strong as the folks at the Coffee Grounds do. I'm here at the coffee shop today, so I'm hoping that their coffee will perk my brain back up to freak-out stage.

I need that.

Mason and I have earned another private lesson at kuk sool wan. I'm going to ask Nikki Jo Kyo Nim to help me with my kicks. I realized the other day at the adult class that my body/brain has forgotten the side kick and I have never quite gotten my brain/body around the roundhouse or the tornado kick. Though I'm torn because I LOVE working on form.

In other news, the dojo may be moving. Apparently, they've been having a lot of trouble with their landlord and, of course, the light rail will be coming down University starting this Spring that will mess things up for them even more. They're hoping to move within a mile or so of their current location, but whatever happens we'll keep coming. We may not be able to walk in the winter, but we'll still attend. As I told Nikki JKN last night, we'd keep coming even if (God forbid!) they moved to the suburbs.

Okay, well, I need to go. Mason is anxious and we need to go pick up Eleanor for our women of Wyrdsmiths Wednesday.

Your Tuesday Mouse Fix

The train never comes to the station. It's not really like I expected it to, I mean the world has ended, after all. Sixteen days ago, the Aswan dams collapsed and the rushing black water crushed much of Egypt. Taking with it everything I've ever known.


I haven't managed any of those things yet, but I do find a toilet that hasn't been flushed. I use it before making my way back outside.

Since the moment I left the shelter of the school, I've felt precariously exposed any time I set foot in the open. This time is no different. It's not so much that I feel eyes follow me, but that I'm hyper-aware of their absence and the unnerving emptiness all around me. My padded footfalls on the concrete sound ridiculously loud. Even my breath seems too harsh.

Silence has always freaked me out. I was born in the heart of Cairo, a sleepless, immensely crowded city, that –unless very recently – was one of the noisiest places on earth. I don't like silence when it stretches between people, and I didn't like it now, as it whispers in the dust along the abandoned Ring Road.

Where are the cars? Bicycles? Donkey carts? Airplanes roaring overhead?

They're all gone.

And everything smells so foul. Even this far out in the suburbs, something rotten hangs in the air, like the stench of a refrigerator left open.

It's not long until I find the clog of cars. Despite our petrol fields being accidentally bombed by our allies during the Medusa war, Egypt has been slow to accept electric powered traffic tunnels. "Habit trails" just don't work in the expansive desert the way they do in Europe and Asia.

From my vantage point of the bridge, it's a strange sight. Rounded, multicolored forms covered in a thin film of dust stretch along the highway, reminding me of a dry river bed of stones. The similarity to the serenity of a Zen garden erodes in a flash when I notice pale forms flitting furtively through the highway's valley.

A strange impulse drops me to the ground. I don't want to be spotted, though I couldn't tell you why. Carefully, I edge up to the chain link fence to peer down. A person could almost mistake them for human, and I whisper a prayer to Allah that somehow I did not.

One of them wears a gallibaya to cover his or her head, but there the similarity to a peasant fellah stops. Silver strands of hair reflect oddly in the bright sun.

Allah protect me.

Gorgons.

From my clipping service...

From my clipping service, aka naomikritzer , I give you "Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword", a graphic novel based on a web comic of the same name about an Orthodox Jewish girl who has high fantasy-esque adventures. And, in a similar vein, "Bad Hebrew Tattoos". Ever wonder if that tattoo artist really wrote "Peace" in Chinese on your upper chest or something more like "stupid white girl"? Well, here are some real-life examples of people chosing (or mangling) Hebrew permanently on their skin.

Science Fiction is SO cool

I've been watching everything that's been happening in Egypt for many reasons, not the least of which is that I have a friend there and, since basing RESURRECTION CODE in Cairo, I've come to know and love Cairenes and Egypt. But, while I heard about Google's attempt to work around the internet shut down, I missed this awesome article. naomikritzer found this in Newsweek, in which the Egyptians invent mouse.net... kind of.

This weekend was good/bad. We had a really, REALLY crappy Saturday, which required an actual re-boot. We were all so snarly and grumpy after swim class that we decided to literally go back to bed and call a "do over." It worked... eventually. Saturday was one of those days, actually that I wish the universe could refund so we could get that time and energy back and use it more constructively.

Ah well.

Sunday, however, was fairly awesome. We had a birthday party at 11:00 am for a younger friend of Mason's. It was dance themed, and we had a blast boogying underneath their disco glitter ball. Plus, once again I found my tribesfolk and I got to talk nerd/geek among my own kind. Always awesome. I was only a little disappointed that Mason pooped out early and we ended up leaving before anyone else. But, I've learned from experience that if he starts askng when we can go, it's time to just pack up.

It was so nice outside yesterday that we built a snow fort in the back yard. I wanted to take a picture of my handiwork, but it melted and collapsed almost as soon as we got inside. Still, we had a lot of fun staging a brief snowball war. My jeans and gloves were soaked (but warm) by the time we came in.

It really feels like spring today too. Unfortunately, this means that the garbage is starting to resurface. When Mason and I go out today (he's on another intersession vacation), I'm going to bring a bag and pick up some of the grosser stuff. Garbage is a huge pet-peeve of mine. I hate seeing is so much that I'm willing to put on gloves and pick it up myself.

I'm hoping to get writing done today while Mason plays video games, but we have to take advantage of the winter too. Last night I stayed up to 11 pm (super late for me) finishing some revisions from Wyrdsmiths, though as a bonus I added 666 new words (seriously. And stranger? This is the second time I made that particular word count.) Today... forward! Though at some point I need to write a couple more of the promotional vingnettes for the prequel, as I have only one more saved up for tomorrow. Gah!

Anyway, I hope you're having a great Monday (and Valentines day.)

Text is an Awful Medium, Even for a Writer

Looking back at my previous post, I think I sound much more cranky about the kuk sool wan adult class than I really was. I mean, yeah, I'm sore. It was hard, but I actually had a lot of fun. I laughed through the whole thing, even when I had no idea how to count in Korean. And I was really, really grateful that Kate and Mary were there because that meant I knew people and had a ready partner for the various things you have to partner-up for.

Today has been, as we say in Minnesota, "interesting" so far. I'm out of my usual vitamins so I asked Shawn if I could borrow one of hers. She gets the traditional sort of daily vitamins for women that you can buy anywhere. I popped one in my mouth and went on with the morning stuff... except I forgot one very important thing. I'm allergic to oyster shells. This may seem like a non-sequitor, but one of the ways I learned that I was allergic to oyster shells and not oysters themselves was when I took a Calicum pill at Shawn's dad's place many years ago. Major manufacturers use oyster shells for calicum in most vitamins. I horked then, and, no suprise, I threw up this morning.

As I was regergitating breakfast, I remembered why it was that I go to the trouble to buy organic, bio-available vitamins that cost a million dollars at Whole Foods.

Egad.

Then, Shawn decided she would go into work late -- partly to be nice to be, but also because of the dangerous wind chill and the fact that she had to walk to a meeting at Centennial Hall near the Capitol building from MHS. I offered a ride to the meeting, and we thought we might hang around the house since Mason didn't need to be to school until almost 9:00 am and her meeting started an hour later. I thought, "Great! This is a chance for me to try out my new coffee maker, which I had to buy because I accidentally threw the glass pot on the floor (luckily empty) and shattered it on Saturday." Guess what? It's broken. Like, no lights come on to indicate it's even getting power, broken. Luckily, I saved the receipt so I can go back and exchange it for another one.

Right. So, after all this, especially the barfing, I should be really cranky. But, weirdly, I'm not. The sun is so bright that when we dropped Mason off at school we could see a "sun dog" around the sun. (For those of you who live in moderate/temperate zones, this is a rainbow caused by ice particles in the air that goes all around the sun like a giant halo.) It was cool.

It's my busy day too. I managed to miss recycling, but again, that's okay because we don't have that much this week. I have fish tanks to clean, but I've already done the dishes and got dinner cooking in the crock pot. Tonight: whiskey and maple glazed chicken drummies. Yum! Mason and I are going to try to hit the kid's class at kuk sool wan at 6:00 pm, and then I'm going to hurry home and head off to Wyrdsmiths tonight. So a dinner that's ready to put on the table as soon as we get home is a bonus. While I was at Whole Foods picking up my vitamins, I also bought fixings for a salad to go with the drummies. Now I just have to figure out another side -- I'm thinking maybe potatoes that I pre-boil so I can just fry them up as we're setting the table and making the salad.

Oh, and I can't forget to go volunteer today at Mason's school. He's off again soon. Another intersession. But this one is only for a couple of weeks. I really need to get more ahead of my word count, though, since it's often really difficult to get stuff done during the day when he's home. And it's getting to be crunch time.

Ah well. I should try to eat something for lunch. I'm pretty sure my stomach is all settled, but wish me luck

Grown-ups is Crazy/I need help

First of all, I actually went to the adult class at kuk sool wan last night. Mason had the sniffles (we kept him out of school) and I figured he would only make one class this week. As we pay a pretty steep price per month, I thought I should at least do my two times. Plus, everyone harrassed me at the cooking class and I completely bought their LIES that it wasn't so hard.

It was pretty much as awful as I expected. AND there was a quiz, which I failed as I can not count to 30 in Korean. Seriously! A quiz! Okay, really they were just doing some excercise, but everyone else, even the other yellow stripes, knew how to count to 30 in Korean. I was the only idiot who had to do it in English. Grown-ups is crazy. Foregin language AND sweating. Because they work out for a half hour before doing the already rigorous martial arts stuff. AND the class lasts longer than the kid's class. AND they play _NO_ GAMES.

Have fun! I'll be back with the ten year olds playing Space Invaders, suckers!

However, I can see why people go back. There's a much greater sense of comraderie among the growed ups. (Perhaps, it's a kind of Stockholm syndrome where everyone bands together against the evil overlord...) If I was twenty years younger (that would only make me 23, kids!) and single, I'd totally go to the adult class.

In other news, I need to announce that I talked to Don Byly last night and we've arranged not one, but TWO signings at Uncle's for the upcoming months. If you're local, they are:

Saturday, March 26, 2011 from 1 - 2 pm at Uncle Hugo's, I'll be signing RESURRECTION CODE.

Saturday, MAY 7, 2011 from 1 - 2 pm, I'll be back at Uncle's as Tate, singing ALMOST FINAL CURTAIN

You can find Uncle's at 2864 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis MN 55407. If you would like directions or any other information about the signing or the store, you can call (612) 824-6347. Also, if you are out of town or otherwise unable to attend and would like to still get a PERSONALIZED, signed copy, Uncles will fill mail orders. For information contact Don Byly at UncleHugo@aol.com

If you know people who might be interested local or otherwise, please, PLEASE feel free to boost the signal.

My signal totally needs a boost, btw. Because as I was creating an event on FB for the RESURRECTION CODE signing last night, I got a comment from a reader who seemed genuinely surprised to hear that the book was coming out. I feel like I've mentioned RC a zillion times on Facebook, and even had Tate post about it on Twitter. It's ALL OVER my website. I blog about it here, of course, but also on Tate's blog *and* the Wyrdsmith's blog. I can't think of what else to do other than beg all of you to pimp me anywhere you can. I would even hand out a prize to the biggest pimp... like original fiction with you/your favorite character in the AngeLINK universe, or anything else, like, a free copy of RC or whatever. Slash! Just tell me what would motivate you, and I'd do it. I mean, seriously, I'm concerned that there are people who like my work who I'm not reaching. I don't expect y'all to go out and find me new fans, but I, *at least*, need to get the word out to people who ALREADY like my stuff.

Anyway, I need to go to Walgreens to pick up Children's Tylenol and a number of other things we sneezed ourselves out of last night. Then it's off to the coffee shop to hang out with the women of Wyrdsmiths.

Your Tuesday Fic Fix!

It's been sixteen days since the Nile smashed through the Aswan Dam and plunged North Africa into darkness. Nobody is coming for us any more, despite what Ian says. Ian's a prissy little git, anyway, scared of the idea that his mummy might have been swallowed by the dark water. I'm hoping he pulls the shortest straw and has to go into downtown Cairo tonight all alone.


Me, I've got the worse lineage. Not brown enough to hang with the local Egyptians, and not pale enough to blend with the English set. No, in fact, I'm pretty sure they'll rig the straws so I'll get the short shaft. Nobody left at Maadi British International School likes me much. Except maybe Tom, he's the only one of them that never called me a towel-head or jumped on me in the shower, nearly drowning me, telling me my skin was still "dirty."

"My mum is probably flying in right now," Ian says. Ian's pointy chin presses into his clasped arms. The sun brightens his hair until it's almost as white as his skin. We gathered in the cafeteria because of the windows. There are rows of them, looking out at the carefully manicured courtyard. It's hard to believe we're in the desert, except that scrubby date palms ruin the otherwise perfect lines of the English garden.

Except we all know the planes stopped coming days ago. I'm the only one to say something, though. "In your dreams."

"You know, Chris, you could be a little nicer." It's Mike. He's our American, big and broad, and always wearing fancy white running shoes. In front of him sits the tea candle he always carries. The cafeteria is light enough that he doesn't need it, but it's his insurance policy against the blackness. It's also the symbol of his power. For a guy afraid of the dark, he's got a lot of charisma. He's become our kind of de facto leader. Mike's is also the oldest. In a couple of months, he'll be fifteen. Fifteen is the age of majority, and, that's when his nexus will activate. He'll be on the LINK. I've got far too much time of silence. "Just because you know your mom is dead, doesn't mean it's true for all of us."

I'd be hurt, but my mom's been dead for years. She got herself accidentally shot while covering a story on Israel and Palestine for Al-Ahram Weekly. My dad... well, the only thing I ever knew about him was that he was white and non-Muslim, which is how I got saddled with the given name Christian. My mother's idea of a joke, I guess. Good one, mom—we'll all be laughing when I go on hajj and become Mohammed Christian El-Aref.

But, even though I knew she was gone, at first—just like everybody else--I still expected someone to come for me. My great-aunt Fatima has been paying to keep me in Hell, er, I mean Maadi British International School. And, even if Fatima couldn't come, my mother's family is pretty extensive. I thought one of the El-Arefs would come and pick me up eventually. I guess they forgot. Or they really are all dead.
It's just us ten now. Even the headmaster left a week ago. He'd agreed to soldier on, wait with us stragglers, but his wife came and took him away in the dead of the night. They're probably half way out of the country by now.

"The airport could be underwater," says Tom in his usual compromising way. His dad is a diplomat, and it shows. "Maybe they're waiting for the water to recede a little."

I shake my head. "Recede? Don't you remember our geography class? The Aswan dam was one of the biggest man-made structures in the world. The Aswan lake held something like one hundred and sixty-six tons of water, and that was before the rain overfilled it. Downtown is a swamp."

"See that's just it, isn't it?" Mike says, leaning in closer. "We don't know. That's why someone's got to go scout things out. Report back."

Ian sucks in a sniffling breath. "What about the deadboys?"

We've heard rumors about how, after the darkness hit, what was left of downtown Cairo was overrun with riots, pillaging, raping. The newest, biggest gang—the deadboys--had this weird, quasi-religious thing about the resurrected Osiris. The deadboys, someone said, had been sacrificing castrated penises to the black water to try to appease the Nile. We all shiver at that thought.

"Well," Mike says, "whoever goes will just have to be back before dark."

Mike shoots me a look, so I bite my tongue. I really want remind everybody that getting to downtown and back before dark is impossible. Maybe, when the trains still ran, but on foot? No way.

It's time for the straws. Mike reaches in the front pocket of his white shirt and pulls out some grubby toothpicks. He turns his back to us, and starts arranging them. When Tom tries to peek, Mike gives him a hard kick in his shin. Everybody cringes.

This whole place is becoming very Lord of the Flies. Of course, it always was. I mean, this is a British boarding school for Allah's sake. But, I'm not sure I can take added stress of being stuck here waiting for someone else to come back with news that the world is over and it's just us and a whole lot of water. Pretty soon we're all going to be wrestling over Mike's tea-candle the way those creeps in the book killed each other over that conch. I know which character I am, too: the fat kid who lost his glasses. First to die.

"I'll go."

They all stare at me like I said I wanted to do something rude to their mothers. So, I stand up, to show them I'm serious. "I'll need water. As much as I can carry. And food. And what am I looking for exactly?"

"A sign," Ian says.

"Somebody in charge," says Mike.

"Help," says Tom.

I have doubts I'll find any of that, but I just kept talking because that was the only way to keep my nerve. "Okay, then. I should probably get going."

Even Mike looks kind of surprised, with his bullyish square jaw hanging open, like he might protest because I'm starting to look a bit like the heroic leader he's supposed to be. To hold off any argument, I hit them with the clincher: "Anybody else here speak Arabic? Right. Then, I'm the one to go."

#

Turns out the headmaster locked the gates, so I have to crawl under dip in the chain link fence out by the rugby field. It's a good thing I volunteered. Mike would never fit through the hole, not loaded down with an army pack full of thermoses of water. I'm only five foot six and skinny to boot. As it is, I have to work to pull the pack through after wriggling myself out first.

I take a moment to catch my breath and brush the dirt off my school uniform. The air already smells foul, like someone forgot to flush the toilet. Under my breath, I mutter a quote from one of my favorite old flats, "I have a very bad feeling about this."

Even though the sidewalk is empty, I check behind my shoulder every other step. The sensation of being exposed haunts me. I wish there were cover to hide behind or a wall to keep at my back. I have to satisfy myself with the shade of the sparse fig trees. The manicured grass of the boulevard slowly browns without the constant tending of the gardener and his irrigation system.

I get to the train station in ten minutes, never loosing that creeping sensation of being too visible. The clock tells me it should be rush hour, but I'm the only one staring at the printed schedule as if trying to divine my future in the departure times. Jumping the turnstile makes me feel a twinge of guilt, but there's not a soul to see or comment.

More bizarre is the strange blinking light where the LINK trigger should be. I'm mesmerized because I've never seen one broken before. The one time I took the train into Cairo to celebrate Ramadan with my aunt and her family the trigger looked like a glittering blue patch on the wall and all the connected passengers nodded their payments or blinked through schedules as they passed by. Now it seemed to be flashing out "doom" in some kind of twisted Morse code.

Looking down the dusty length of rail, I wonder what in Allah's name I'm supposed to do next.

Trailer... Hmmm

So I guess that I missed seeing the trailer for CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER because I had a dinner date with my nephew who was boycotting the big game. (First of all, *I* am extremely pleased that the Packers won. I'm a Wisconsin native and it's just kind of cool to see a team owned by the people of Greenbay do so well.) Jon and I watched the Cap trailer on his iPhone, but I thought maybe I missed something because the screen was so small, but, uh... not really.

Here's the link
I don't know. It's not that Cap doesn't look cool, because he does. But I was really hoping for an iconic shot, you know, a sheild toss or something... like they gave us with IRONMAN (the classic shot of him landing and then the repulsor ray image. Honestly, it's little bits like that which make me go: "cooooooooooool!")

I should write to the folks over at the Marvel movie studios and explain something quite simple to them. Comic book fans (or, at least THIS comic book fan,) is actually not as nitpicky as you think or worry. I'm used to reboots. I'll follow almost any storyline for a couple of hours. What I want from a superhero movie is a chance to see my hero do that cool stuff s/he does in the still frames LIVE. Like, seeing Nightcrawler's "bamf" in action totally made up (for me, at least,) for the fact that Kurt apparently did not recognize his own MOTHER, the only other blue skinned person in town.... But, you know, seriously, I even enjoyed seeing Gambit do his card trick, even though I wasn't at ALL sold on the guy they had playing him in WOLVERINE.

So I'd like to see:



or that moment right before he yells "Avengers Assemble" when he raises the sheild, like this:



That's kind of all I need.

At any rate, we had a fine weekend, despite missing the Superbowl ads. Saturday Mason had swimming class and then we went directly to the Sprawl where we met up with some friends who had unlimited wristbands to the amusment park formerly known as Camp Snoopy (now Nikolodean). Alas, I forgot to pack my computer, so I ended up having to make an emergency purchase at Barnes & Noble of a notbook and some paper, since Mason had two teenage girls to chaperone him. I got to sit with the other adult and chat at the Caribou Coffee which is nestled just inside the amusement park next to the LEGOs store. I was awfully distracted from writing, though, anyway. The Mall is the GREATEST people watching place, probably just shy of the State Fair. I discovered, for instance, that Goths still exist. I was really grateful to see that, since I just sort of assumed they did when I wrote Garnet and Ana.

I was also distracted all weekend by the most bizarrely overwhelming desire to write STAR WARS fan fic. I'm going to have to get that out of my system at some point, but it seriously has to stop descending on me whenever I realize I have a deadline swiftly approaching.

sigh-yi-yi.

Snowpocalypse... Minnesota-style

We didn't get all the snow the rest of the country has had to deal with. In fact, as Eleanor and I were saying the other day, there's a werid part of us, as Minnesotans, that's a little disappointed when we don't get major storms. On the flip side, it's been gorgeously sunny here, so I'm REALLY not complaining.

In fact, right now, I feel very much like a snow princess. Mason has a half day off school and we just played outside. I love winter days like this. It's just cold enough to put a blush on your cheek, but warm enough that you sweat under your layers. There's something about this kind of day that, when I play outside in it, that makes me feel... healthy. Or, maybe just young again, because the hot/cold of outside winter play is VERY MUCH a feeling I remember as a child in Wisconsin.

And, there's just nothing quite like the quality and intensity of light that we get this time of year. It's BRIGHT. You can almost feel the vitamin D in each ray hitting the very little part of your skin that's actually exposed.

In other news, I may also feel kind of young again because I managed to really strain myself at kuk sool wan last night. As instructed, I attempted a one-handed cartwheel, and, considering my cartwheels (shaky at best) it should be not surprise that I fell on my butt. Twice. I actually left a bit grumpy and had to cheer myself by watching "Shaun the Sheep" claymation shorts (via NetFlix) with Mason and Shawn last night. (OMG the little chicks were CUTE.) I almost never leave kuk grumpy, but I think I was also starting to get the headache that dogged me much of today. (Hooray for [legal] drugs and sunshine.)

It's going to be a busy weekend for us. We're actually invited to a Super Bowl party, and, on Saturday, we have swim class as well as a spontaneous invitation for Mason to go hang out with friends at the Mall's amusement park. Personally, I loathe the Sprawl, but Mason LOVES going on rollercoasters and so when friends who can accompany him offer, it's difficult to say no, since it spares me from having to white-knuckle those rides.

I should be writing, but it's been one of those Fridays when fun things call stronger than writing. I guess I'll have to make it up by writing later tonight. I actually am looking forward to it because I'm really delving into a character that's been on the periphery of Ana's life in the previous Vampire Princess of St. Paul books. He's not based on any particular real person in my past, but he's from a different social class than most of Ana's friends and I'm trying to write honestly about class differences and how they affect relationships. It's nothing truly political or earth-shattering, but I'm not sure it's something a lot of teen romance books deal with (although I may be completely wrong there, not having read that many.) Anyway, it's keeping me interested, which is good since I have write it. :-)

See you on Monday!