C.L. Bevill's Blog, page 24

The Cold of Doom OR Other Random Stuff That May or May Not Be Funny

This last week I got a cold.  Nasty, yucky cold.  Lots of sinus pressure.  I thought my head might explode.  And over the counter medications don't really work for colds.  Neither do prescription ones, but the doctors give you the kind where you pretty much sleep through the cold and wake up when it's all over.  I didn't, however, go to the doctor.  (I don't enjoy doctor's visits.  I have blogged on this matter before.  I probably will repeat myself.) (Oh, the hell with it.  I hate doctors.  They get stuck on the weight issue for every single frigging thing I ever go to them about.  I'm not going there for a stupid cold unless something awful happens that involves arterial spray and/or a bone sticking out of the fleshy parts of my body.)
Seriously, this is a picture of a cold virus.  I hate it.  It sucks.
Kind of like doctors and politicians.  Burn!I dragged myself to Wally World for supplies.  There I haunted the cold medication section.  I got daytime caps for sinus/colds.  I got nighttime caps for sinus/colds.  (I didn't buy the sinus/cold tabs for early morning.  I have to draw the line someplace.)  I got saline solution mixes for my neti pot.  (Neti pot is something you put water and saline solution and flush out your sinus's.  It's loads of fun especially when it accidentally drains down your throat and you gag but it does seem to shorten the lifespan of the demonic cold.)

I went out of the cold section and got cans of chicken noodle soup.  (Come on, didn't your mom force chicken soup on you when you had a cold as a kid?  Or maybe tomato soup with goldfish in it?  (Bonus points for sinking goldfish.)  You remember you swore you wouldn't do that as a parent, but you do it anyway.)

Then I rounded up with the cold remedy trifecta with a visit to the Kleenex department.  (Who knew that they have ten different types of Kleenex's?  With lotion.  Without lotion.  With cotton puffiness.  Without cotton puffiness.  Gold plated?  Bamboo recycled hankies?  Seriously?)

I like this cold virus better because it looks all red and evil.  Also it's floating
in the air and ready to kick unsuspecting people's immune systems.
It's a bad boy virus and not afraid to let you know.Then I visited the DVD section for support.  Also because I'm going to go on a tangent that's indirectly related to Walmart.  Last week, Cressy, our daughter who is 7 and realizing that she has more power than she previously thought, was being instructed to go to bed on a weeknight.  She came to me and said, "Mommy, you're lucky you get to stay up."  I said, "Well, you need a good night's sleep for school tomorrow."  (Standard Mommy line, feel free to use it.  I think I stole it from someone.)  "But you get to stay up," she whined.  I folded like a cheap suit at a laundromat.  I said, "You can stay up on Friday night as long as you want."  She didn't seem particularly mollified, so I threw in a bonus, "And you can watch a scary movie."  (It's October and WTH?  I was already weak with insidious cold germs so I was overwhelmed by her big blue eyes blinking pleadingly at me.)  She smiled and said, "Goody."
I really wanted to get The Creature From the Black
Lagoon for Cressy to watch but I couldn't
find it at Walmart.  I don't remember
the creature actually carrying the hot babe in the
white swimsuit in the movie.  Come on, what's
he really going to do with her?  Wait for her to
drop her eggs in a rocky crevice
and then fertilize them?
(Something icky just popped into
my head.)Discussing with Woody what scary movie she would watch was interesting.  Having already blogged about my elementary aged experiences with scary movies shown to me by my parents, I knew that it had to be fairly mundane.  (I.e., no blood, guts, decapitations, chainsaws, intestines tied into knots by crafty serial killers.)  I decided to check out Wally World for their Halloween selection and see if I could come up with a contender.  (I told you I was getting to the connection.)  Since I was sick and needed cold remedies in urgent amounts I combined the trip.
Well, you had to know that I was going to add alternative dialogue that
should have been in the movie but got deleted because of
narrow-minded censors.At the DVD section at Walmart, they had such stellar 'R' rated examples of Scream, Hellraiser, and Spongebob: Halloween (which isn't really 'R' rated, but it ought to be).  And they had...Frankenstein.  I'm talking about the Boris Karloff one.  We had a winner!

Going through the line at the front was fun.  The clerk looked at my cold stuff and the DVD and backed away from me.  She also reached for her GermX.  Maybe I had the plague.  Fortunately for her I didn't sneeze in her direction, but I was tempted to fake it.  (Colds make me cranky.)
Hey, he was just a slimy fish guy with a need for a little
friendly companionship in his big, black lagoon.  It could
happen.At home, I told Cressy I had a scary movie.  I said, "It's Frankenstein."  She was all like, "Who's that?"  I said, "He's a scientist who makes a monster out of dead human body parts."  She was like, "Gross.  Can I have popcorn with it?"

On Friday night I was sitting there all stuffed up with a dry mouth from the cold medicine, wondering if I had to rewrite everything I've written that week.  (Writing while on cold medicine doesn't necessarily produce anything worth reading or even selling.  It's probably interesting but I don't think the Bubba fans want to hear about cold-medication-inspired delusions of Bubba flying through the air in an antique, iridescent Chevy truck.  Just saying.)  Cressy invited the kid from next door to participate in their Friday night scare fest.
And now I'm just getting weird.The movie started.  The kids gave it a college try but I guess since the blood and guts wasn't flying everywhere, they gave up about thirty minutes later.  They crawled up and down the hallway playing cats and dogs because monsters constructed from stolen, deceased corpses wasn't as fascinating as I thought.

I should have gotten The Green Slime.
You can't say that wasn't cool and all sixties-y.  See I have Pinpointed How I Became Warped or It Was All My Father's Fault.  Then read It Was Really Mom's Fault Or How I Stand Corrected (Or How I Sit In Front of the Computer Corrected).

Anyway, the kid announced ten minutes past her usual bedtime that she was tired and was ready to go to bed.  Ten minutes.  Wow.  The next day she explained to me that Frankenstein was lame because it was in black and white.  Obviously a color movie would have not been lame.  WTFWIT?

But the cold's getting better.

Back to Something Funny OR Let's Go SHOPPING at Ikea OR Can I Make This Title Longer or Sillier?

Warning:  I will bounce randomly from subject to subject, probably because I'm mildly bored with anything serious.  Brains will probably be impacted.  Protection may be required to read this blog.  People without a sense of humor should just stop reading here.

Recently we went shopping at Ikea and Pain in the Ass Man returned for a guest spot in the trip.  (Pain in the Ass Man RISES AGAIN!)  Pain in the Ass Man is HIM, the man to whom I'm married.  Well, Pain in the Ass is HIM's alter ego.  He has super powers, such as how to annoy me in three words or less.  Occasionally he can annoy me simply by looking at me.
I like the twinkle on his teeth.
Pain in the Ass Man may be a pain in the ass but
he knows about dental hygiene.We went to Ikea to waste time, browse through Swedish imports, drool over Swedish meatballs in their cafeteria, and buy me a new office chair.  (Note to Fat Woman's writing fans and especially Bubba fans, Fat Woman's back hurts in the old chair.  If my back hurts I cannot write funny Bubba dialogue and witty pseudo literature to entertain you.  The chair was ten years old and tired of me, too.  Now it's been relegated to the garage where it will sub for outdoor chairs.  We also had an interesting race with it on the slight slope of the driveway.  Bet you didn't know that that law of physics was applicable to old office chairs and sloping driveways.  Didn't I just tell you I was going to meander?)
This doesn't have anything to do with Pain in the Ass Man but
everything to do with stopping off at Ikea's cafeteria for a cheap and yummilicious
lunch after heavy duty shopping with your significant pain in the ass partner.So back to Pain in the Ass Man and Ikea.  If you haven't shopped at Ikea, it's like this.  You find a chair.  (Or whatever you're shopping for in the way of furniture.)  You like the chair.  You decide to buy the chair.  The tag on the chair tells where to get the box that contains the chair you will buy and then take home and assemble at your leisure.  Ikea is also insidious by having a 'path' that it leads you through all aspects of the store on two floors on 100,000 square feet of consumer heaven before delivering you to the warehouse where you pick up your furniture.  Then you go to the registers and, let me just add snidely, that that is where they have another mini-restaurant that specializes in cinnamon buns.  (I think they've got a machine that sprays cinnamon bun smell all over this area so you will automatically drool over the cash register and/or clerk before rushing over to buy one of the spicy confections.)  Ikea knows how to market.

Again back to the return of Pain in the Ass Man.  As you enter the warehouse you need to get a flat cart if you're going to get a bigger piece of furniture.  You'll need it to load and then carry your booty off to the registers where you can trade your first born child or use your MasterCard, whichever.

I said to Pain in the Ass Man, "Let's get a flat cart."  (My reasoning was thusly: desk chair DOES NOT come pre-assembled, but in a large box that will have to be transported, somehow, to the front area for purchasing and then out to your car for loading.  I did not want to have to somehow obtain a team of huskies and ride that sucker to the front, so the flat cart was ideal.)

However, Pain in the Ass Man had already gotten a regular shopping cart and deposited our only child in it because she said, "I'm tired, Daddy."  (100,000 feet of shopping extravaganza wears out a seven-year-old fast.  And let us not forget that Ikea has established little yellow play areas about every 200 feet for children to further entice their parents into the whole trapped-in-the-super-store experience.  Possibly I should say that Cressy will never let us forget each and every single one of these playtime mini-areas.  God forbid we should skip one because she wasn't paying attention, because she will make us go back.  She has a little mental map of all of these areas permanently etched in her brain.  Ikea = smart, devious cookies.) 
This is our daughter in a exhausted, hungry, demonic moment.
"You talking to me?  I don't think you're talking to me.  You're
talking to some other tired seven-year-old in a shopping
cart, aren't ya?  Yeah, say hello to my little friend."HIM said defiantly, "No, it will fit in this cart."  He might have puffed out his chest and put his hands akimbo at that point but I'm not really saying that.

I looked at the cart.  It already had a 50 pound child in it and a couple of items from the cooking ware section of the store.  "But, the chair won't fit."

Pain in the Ass Man said, "It will."  He had a mulish expression on his face that said I wasn't going to win but he didn't anticipate that I was looking forward to the chair box not fitting in the cart so I could say, "I told you so."  (I can plan ahead.)

So I shrugged and trudged over to the aisle where the chair was located in its handy-dandy box, ready to do damage to the unsuspecting consumer who doesn't bend his/her knees when lifting.  (Ikea should have a chiropractor on site; they missed that op.)  We looked at the box.  Then we looked at the cart where Cressy was sitting with her hands locked onto the plush beagle she'd managed to finagle out of the children's section of Ikea.  We looked at the box again.  Then at our child.  Our child looked at us both as if we were insane before we could even dare to suggest that she get out of the open part of the shopping cart so we could put the box into it instead.  "Surely, you jest," her little blue eyes glittered at us.  "One of you puts one hand on me and you're going to lose it.  Or I'll cry.  Whatever is worse."

Consequently, Pain in the Ass Man attempted to stuff the over-sized box on the bottom shelf of the shopping cart.  The box wasn't narrow enough to go all the way back.  But that didn't stop Pain in the Ass Man from shoving at it anyway.  After all, his new motto had become, 'If I push it hard enough it will go in there.  We didn't really need those other parts that were compacted and fell off.'
It occurs to me that this can be misconstrued.The box did not fit.  I finally said, "There's a support beam on the side of the cart that's blocking the box from going further."  (I don't think I was that polite but it's my blog, so it's going to be my version.  If HIM wants to have input, let HIM start his own blog.)

Pain in the Ass Man grunted at me.

Instead of going back to get a flat cart, we tottered with the child in the inside part of the cart and the box leaning out of the bottom part.  (Leaning waaaaaay out.)  If I had let go of the cart the entire thing would have tipped over to the front and the HazMat Team would have to be called.  Or maybe the SWAT Team.  Maybe a divorce lawyer.  (I get confused.)

Well, you don't have to imagine what happened because I will draw a picture.  I leaned to the back and pushed the cart to the front because somehow Pain in the Ass Man had managed to evade that detail.  (It's possible he was trying to get far enough away from me so that he wouldn't be able to hear, 'I told you so.'  I believe HIM might be underestimating my need to communicate the message to HIM, because I would have yelled it across the store if necessary.)
Does anyone notice who's NOT in this picture?  Hmm.Leaning further and further back I narrowly avoided a few other carts and gingerly directed it to the cash registers.  (Another note here.  Apparently Swedish shopping carts are not like supermarket shopping carts.  These bastards are like four-wheel drives.  If you go to turn one way, all the wheels turn that way and the whole thing floats to one side.  God help you if you're going fast because there's a lot of glassware and glass products on the bottom level of Ikea.  Just saying, I think Ikea did it on purpose.)

We did the self-check out line, which is always fun because the hand scanner is usually broken.  This means you have to lean down and read the number on the bar code and then laboriously go to the machine and enter it with fat little fingertips.  (Chances of making mistakes are high in this scenario.)  Then after making several mistakes and starting over, it finally rang up.

By the time we were ready to leave I was a little steamed.  HIM wanted to plow ahead and damn every other shopper in our vicinity.  HIM especially wanted me to get ahead of a shopping cart with a little old lady who was doing a shuffle-shuffle-step guaranteed to irk his sensibilities.  Since I was driving the cart, and still leaning backwards to balance the blankity-blank thing, I declined to throw myself, and the cart with our child still in it, in front of the old lady.  It may be just me, but I'm not speed-four-wheeling through Ikea with an unbalanced shopping cart just because we can't possibly allow a little old lady who can't see above the handle bars in front of us.  ("Jesus, sweetie, she's in front of us.")

Then I received the death glare from Pain in the Ass Man.  (This is the part where one of HIM's special powers kicks in.)

I began to grumble. (One of Fat Woman's special super powers is the ability to bitch at a sub-tonal level.) (This ticks off Pain in the Ass Man because he can't hear what I'm saying but HIM knows I'm complaining about HIM.)  There was a massive injection of deja vu at that point because it dawned on me that the last time we went to Ikea, the exact same thing happened at the very same part of the store.  (Not the chair buying or the lack of a flat cart, but the fact that I didn't cut off someone with a wandering cart, singing, 'Oh, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.')  (He drives like this but I recently just started closing my eyes while he's behind the wheel.)

The event of the battle of supremacy was escalated when HIM allowed twenty other people, with carts, onto the elevator with us, in an elevator meant for maybe three people with carts.  I fought back by allowing the other 19 people, with carts, to get off before us.

When I pointed out how similar this was to the last visit at Ikea, HIM and I had a good laugh.  (Which is why we're still married after almost three decades.)

Anyway, next time the lesson is to get a flat cart, and let HIM drive it.

The Liebster Award OR How I Was Nominated For a Cool Blog Award by a Fan! OR How I Can Just Go On and On In this Title!

What does this have to do with the Liebster Award?
Why, nothing, but isn't my daughter adorable?
This is her dance recital costume.  They tapped
to Chatnooga Choo Choo.  It was appallingly sweet.The Liebster Award - Thanks to Jerrilyn Atherton, who is wickedly cool down in Texas and has a funny blog.  (Peanut Butter Fudge recipe this week and it rocks.)  Thanks, Jerrilyn.  (She's a blast on Facebook and always entertaining.)

What does it mean?  Liebster in German is beloved or favorite.  This award is a kind of spread the blog love award by shooting it over to other blogs that bear mentioning.  The blogs nominated must have under 200 followers and must have a linkback to the blogger who nominated you.  It's kind of like a chain letter award for bloggers.
Again, nothing to do with the award, but
it is about the love.  Who couldn't love
a little pookie face with red demon eyes?Rules to follow:

1.  Linkback to the blogger who gave you the big nod.  See Jerrilyn Atherton above and don't forget about that Peanut Butter Fudge because it's SINFUL!

2.  Post your own five picks of bloggers who rock your world.

3.  Post the award on your sites, website, Facebook, blog, etc.

4.  Celebrate!  I've got the Vanille Rum out.  I'm thinking maybe Jell-O Shooters or maybe just a hearty whoo-hoo!

So here's my picks and this was hard:

1.  R. Mac Wheeler - The guy is interested in writing.  He reads tons AND he's about to indie publish a fantasy series.  Yeah, Mac.

2.  Teri Ann Stanley at Temporary Sanity.  Teri Ann is a writer/mommy and this touches me on a good level.  She always has interesting perspectives on things.

3.  Dawn Alexander at Chasing Someday.  Dawn is a yet to be published author and school teacher in her daytime persona.  She's fun and I look forward to reading her novels one of these days.

4.  Dixie Dreams at My Crazy Journey.  This is a fun lady who lives in Alaska and talks about all kinds of neat stuff.

5. IMGirl - She's fun, she's crazy and she's funky.  Yes, she's an artist and her website is all that.
Help me!  I can't stop adding photos of
my child in tap costume.  (At least I'm
not addicted to that show, 'Dance Mom.'  Some
of those women are craz-ee.)All deserving bloggers.  Check 'em out.

Lessons Learned From Being Married 28 Years OR What? It Can't Be That Long! OR Oh Eff, Do I Have to Buy Another Anniversary Gift?

Recently I read a story about a woman who has recently celebrated her 18th year of marriage with her husband.  So, happily, she shared her 'success' hints with the rest of us.  This, of course, spurred me into coming up with what I've learned in 28 years of marriage.  (Hang on, this ride is about to start.  Keep your hands inside the interior and remember, I do it because I think it's funny.  Also I've never actually tortured HIM, the man to whom I've been married for almost 28 years.  You can ask HIM.)  (HIM just responded to the latter statement: "You did torture me.  There was the time you went through a vegetarian stage and made cheese onion soup that was completely disgusting.  That was torture."  My response: "Nobody made you eat it.")

Lesson #1: Never get married after knowing each other precisely five weeks after meeting each other scrubbing hallways while enlisted in the US Army and you're only 19 and 20 years old respectively.  (It doesn't happen much, but when it does, don't do it.)  (Hey, it worked for us, but I should have bought a lottery ticket that day, too.  Oh, wait.  They didn't have the lotto in Texas then.  Damn.)
As a writer I often say that you can't make up the stuff that
happens in real life.  You can't.Lesson #2: Don't argue about small stuff. No one really should care if the toothpaste tube is squeezed in the middle. Here's what we did. We got a toothpaste dispenser that wasn't squeezable. That worked until we decided we should each have our own toothpaste tubes and the other one could just go to hell.  Amazingly this technique worked well with many things in our marriage.  Go figure.

Lesson #3: Talk about money and kids and stuff before saying, "I do."  We sort of lucked out in that we agreed on some stuff but HIM initially had the idea that I would spend all of my income on rent, groceries, and cars, whilst HIM would spend his on beer.  Hahaha.  No.  That was our first argument in a grocery store.  Great fun.  ("I don't like Hamburger Helper!"  "Well, I do and you're a total jerkface."  "I still don't like it."  "Great.  You cook."  "I'm going back to the barracks."  "Great, jerkface.")  (Good times.)

Lesson #4: Always warn your significant other about your relatives especially since your significant other hasn't met your relatives before the wedding.  (I had to endure many snide remarks about being pregnant as a reason for our hasty marriage.  (Pregnant was the nice way to say it when in actuality 'knocked up' was the least objectionable way that it was phrased.)  I certainly proved them wrong since we didn't have a child until 20 YEARS later.  There.  Showed them.)  Although you're married to the person, his or her family comes pre-attached in cement.  Really.

Lesson #4 rephrased: Meet your in-laws before it's too late.  Dumbass.

Lesson #5: Don't fart in bed and then pull the covers over your spouse's head.  I'm not saying this happened.  I'm saying don't do it.
Oh, you've done it.  Don't lie.Lesson #6: Your spouse is not going to look like Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie after twenty or so years.  Brangelina has surgeons, trainers, dietitians, people who slap their hands, publicists and someone with a voodoo doll.  If you saw them in person you would understand that Hollywood glamour is really Hollywood glamour.  Don't be fooled.  Life is real.

Lesson #7: Oh, go ahead and fart in bed and then pull the covers over your spouse's head.  It might be funny.

Lesson #8: Don't have your first child at 40.  (We didn't have a choice and I wouldn't change it for anything, but OMG, I'm pretty sure it would have been different at 30.)  But if you can don't have your first one at 18 either.  Sure when you're 38, it's all good, but what do you do in the meantime?  30's just right.  You get to have fun, then have children and have some different kind of fun, and then work your way into grandparenthood.  (Where am I going with this?  I don't know.  I lost my train of thought.)

Lesson #9: Eat broccoli and popcorn and then go fart in bed.  After 28 years of marriage, it's definitely funny.  Gross, but funny.

Lesson #10: Tell that person you appreciate them.  (I know, it's mushy.)

Hey, you, HIM, the man to whom I've been married for 28 years, you're still a hunka-hunka-burning love.
I love my autosketch program.

OMFG! Something's About to Happen!

This is supposed to be like, a neon arrow that blinks, but
I couldn't figure out how to make it blink so I made
wavy lines instead because I couldn't think of anything
else.  Oh, well.  Just look anyway.You!  You in front of the computer and the one with the smart phone.  Look up there!  Yes, up there!  Above the title and the date.  At that number.  Yes, that NUMBER!

It's almost at 10,000.  OMFG!  Quick, keep hitting this post so I can hit 10,000!  Also, click on one of the advertiser's spots because that's how I get paid.  You wouldn't want a starving fat woman would you?  That would be really ugly.

Oh, crud.  I'm about to ramble again.  I'll stop before it's too late.  But quick!  Hit the post again!

The Invasion of the Fungi Snatchers OR Please, Let All This Moisture From Here Go Straight to Texas

It has rained so much in Virginia that we're at a premium on rainfall.  We're like six inches ahead.  It's been so wet around here that the shrooms are attacking.  I'M NOT JOKING!  They're growing so fast they're going to elect a congress and establish a constitution.  And they might be biased about warm-blooded life forms.

The whole side of my yard has a 1000 mushrooms growing in it.  Weird mushrooms.  But don't take my word for it.  I HAVE PICTURES!  Also captions.  Humorously hilarious captions where I'm compelled to make witty observations!  Yea, writing!  Hooray, imagination!  (I may be out of control.)
This is bigger than it looks because I haven't
mowed my yard lately.  Really, it's like four
inches tall.  I swear.
It reminds me of the giant mushrooms
in Journey to the Center of the Earth.
(The James Mason version.)  I tried to
steal the idea for a book but I made them
into giant walking trees instead, which
it turns out that I stole from a movie that
I watched when I was a kid but I had forgotten until
my sister reminded me about it.
These captions seem to be getting longer
and longer, don't they?Then there's the little orange one.  BRIGHT fricking orange.  It's probably poisonous.  I saw a squirrel eating one so I'll find out soon.  (You could use this mushroom as a location device.  You can see it from two miles away.)
I know it looks like a little pancake or something that
I threw into the grass but it's a shroom!Also there's this kind that looks like the lacy bottom of a flamenco dancer's dress.  (It's a writer thing.  I have to make up hoity-toity descriptions of stuff to make myself feel more self-important.  The shroom can't be just wavy.  It has to be fancy.)
I know.  It's out of focus.  Try holding a Droid still
for those important shroom shots and see how well
you do.  Also, it looks like a dog came and barfed in our yard
but again it's a fungi of some kind.  I'm going with
some kind of shroom variation because it
sprouts out of the ground looking like a shroom
and then explodes like the above.  Gross.Then there was giganto shrooms.  These buggers were hanging out by the bus stop, innocently minding their own business.  I managed to get a shot of them before the kids decided to do a complicated dance step on top of them.  Apparently shrooms have no rights to life and are instantly marked for death because of their vegetative ethnicity. (HIM just commented thusly, "Someone someone from the ACLU sat up and shuddered in horror.")  (It's so cold.  SAVE THE SHROOM!  We need to alert Obama or maybe Michelle.)
Seriously, these were like six inches high before
the elementary terror squad got done with them.
(The kids were singing a strange version of the Hokey
Pokey Song when they did it.  "You put your
left foot in, you put your left foot out.  You
stomp on the mushroom with all of your might!
It's the HOKEY-STOMPY!")
(Hey, it wasn't just my kid.)And here's another odd and compelling fungi shot.  This was a picture from our trip to the mountains while Hurricane Irene was ruining our beach vacation.  So these are like, Hurricane Fungi.  I don't think these are actually shrooms, but I'm running with a theme here.
These are orange fungusy growths that are
devouring the tree or maybe they're
just really good friends.  (Hey, if they've
got an open relationship, it's all good.) (The tree
didn't seem unhappy.)Finally, there were these hunormous shrooms by the walking path.  These were orange and humongous.  I saw them while I was driving by.  I mean, really, I saw them when I was driving by.  I dragged HIM and our daughter out to take a picture of them.  HIM was all like, "Mushrooms.  We have to go take pictures of frigging mushrooms.  Why?  Why?  Why?  Why do I have to go?  What did I do to deserve this?  Is there beer by the mushrooms?"  But the important question was, "How big could a stupid mushroom be?"  Allow me to post the first photograph.
Big ass orange mushrooms on the side of the walking
path.  They were big and orange.  I saw them
zipping down the adjacent street at 35 mph.  (It was
actually the car that was doing 35 mph.  I can only
do about 2 mph tops and that's while
on a steep hill whilst going downhill and being
chased by a man with a bloody machete.
A strong back wind helps.)
I know this doesn't look that impressive, but
wait til you see the next shot.And HIM was all like, "Dang.  Those ARE big mushrooms."  I tried to get Cressy to put her hand in for comparison but she was all, "NOOOOO!  Yuck.  I'll get poison ivy!"  So HIM did it.  (I was halfway hoping that I could goose HIM, but he was onto me.)
That's what I'm talking about.  These suckers
are about to sprout legs and take over
the capitol.  What, do we suddenly live in
a rain forest?And here we go on a tangent.
This is my idea of a ginormous shroom ready to get biz-ahh!
I stole this line from a move.  I'm a bad, bad author.Then my mind pretty much goes wandering.  What would a shroom be pissed off about on earth?
Hey, I've seen some of these types at the fancy food store.And I think I've lost the point of the blog, but who cares? If you were a giant shroom with sudden cognition, wouldn't you be
pissed off that Campbell's was making TONS of cream of
mushroom soup and people were using it for
tuna fish casseroles?  Yes, I think you would be.  If you
were a giant shroom with sudden cognition, that is.So I believe I might have blogged enough.  It's wet here and the shrooms are going nuts.  If all communication stops from this area of the country it's because they just grew all over us and smothered us to death.  Or something like that.

Life is Like Forrest Gump Being Played by Donald Trump OR I Got Nothing But a Weird Title

I looked at my Big List of Blogs-to-Write and I was not inspired.  So then I thought of a weird title.  Recently I saw Forrest Gump again and I was trying to imagine another actor playing the character besies Tom Hanks.  According to www.imdb.com, the Internet Movie Data Base, which is a place where some people spend entirely too much damn time watching movies and television, Bill Murray, John Travolta, and Chevy Chase all turned down the title role.  On a related note I heard once that Nick Nolte turned down the role of Han Solo.  I just can't picture it.  Furthermore, Tom Selleck was supposed to play Indiana Jones.  I guess Harrison Ford was the lucky one in those two.
Yes, this is my sister's cat, Mellow, who
should probably NOT play
Forrest Gump.  But I seem to
have neglected taunting the cat
for awhile so I obliged.So who would be truly weird playing in a Forrest Gump remake?  A) Justin Bieber (Musical version) B) Will Ferrell C) Johnny Depp (But only if Tim Burton directed.) or D) Sandra Bullock (It's a revisionist version.)

And that led me to this question?  (It's coming.)  Of course this is wishful thinking and the movie rights haven't been sold.  (Seriously, Coen Brothers CALL ME!)  (And not only am I getting WAY ahead of myself and my sales, but it's somewhat arrogant, too.  However, I'm going with WTH?)  But who should play Bubba in the movie version?

I'm going to ask the question in big, bold letters so that people think I'm serious.

Who should play Bubba in a movie version?
I have to admit I'm a little buh-buh-buh.  (That's where I thumb my lower lip in a repetitive manner and look utterly confused.  Sometimes I'll even make strange noises that indicate that my brain has left the building.)  In my mind I've always pictured Bubba as being like Clint Walker.  He played in a television series called Cheyenne and in The Dirty Dozen, and about a million other things.  Here he is, in all his bubba-like, hulking glory:
Clint Walker from Cheyenne.
Come on, can't you picture it?
Who doesn't want to be rescued by
this cowboy?  (Perhaps we should
start a stampede.  Perhaps I should
stop typing words.)  And yes,
he's SIX FEET, SIX INCHES tall.
(Note to self: Buy HIM a cowboy hat and
maybe a whip.  Yee haw!  Did I leer?)I've had people email me about what do I think Bubba looks like.  One man even wanted to know if I looked like Willodean.  (I don't.)  On a related note I've got two nice guys in Houston working on the audio version of Bubba and it's a blast to listen to their take on all the voices in the book.  (Yea, Matt and Kevin!)  (Hmm.  I wonder if I can attach an audio file to this.)

Anyway, who plays Bubba in the movie?  Come on, comment, you know you want to.

And yes, I know this is a little lame post for me today, but my brain is locked in on Bubba.  I'm writing, I'm working, and I'm fixated on the plot of Bubba and the Missing Woman.  I'm having dreams about Bubba and Miz Demetrice riding sparkly unicorns across a twinkling rainbow while they throw M&M's from a golden leprechaun's pot.  (Or was that a Skittles commercial?)

Let me know.  Who's Bubba?  Because I got nothing.

Next post: All about weird things growing in my yard and I don't mean jalapenos.

More Randomness OR How I Was at a Loss For What to Write OR Those Funky Jalapenos, What Will They Do Next?

Well, I'll just say that random thoughts will be ensuing in this blog.  I will jump from topic to topic in a fashion that will leave most readers annoyed or breathless or possibly both.

Okay, jalapenos have been on my mind.  Yesterday was chicken and sausage gumbo day.  I chopped of the vegetables.  I made a roux.  I boiled up a whole chicken and saved the broth for the gumbo.  I even used peppers from our own garden.  (The pumpkin leaves finally cleared enough for the pepper plants to grow and apparently we have a buttload of jalapenos.  Lots n lots n lots of jalapenos.)  And dang, that gumbo was good.

But what in the name of Jiminy Cricket am I going to do with all those other jalapenos?  (I will remind anyone who has previously read my blog that it was NOT my idea to grow three different packets of varied pepper seeds in a minuscule garden.)  Salsa comes to mind.  There's also a recipe I saw for little jalapeno dippers.  (It's got cream cheese in the middle of a sliced jalapeno and is wrapped in bacon.  Sounds like one of my arteries just instantaneously clogged up.)
I wasn't going to add captions but it seems like I should
explain that I didn't feel like drawing anything.  Hence,
a talking jalapeno.  It's my universe.
So here it is:

Jalapeno Stuffed Peppers
Ingredients
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1 (1 ounce) package dry ranch salad dressing mix 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder 20 large jalapeno peppers, halved and seeded 1 pound sliced bacon, cut in halfDirections Preheat an oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Stir together the cream cheese, Cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, ranch dressing mix, and garlic powder in a mixing bowl until evenly blended. Spoon some of the cheese mixture into each jalapeno half, wrap with half a bacon strip, and secure with a toothpick. Arrange the wrapped jalapeno halves onto a broiler pan. Bake in the preheated oven until the bacon is no longer pink and beginning to brown, about 20 minutes.
The recipe is from Mrs. Houston on www.allrecipes.com.  Thank you so much for telling me what to do with my peppers.  I was beginning to have delusions of pepper grandeur and visions of pepper inadequacies but I got better.  (Thank you, Monty Python.)
Once I bought Jamaican Hot Peppers to make a salsa and it
was the hottest salsa that I ever did.  It made HIM cry.  So
naturally HIM took a batch of it to work with chips so
HIM could share the love.  It made other men cry, too.
I'm so proud.  I'll never buy those kind of peppers again.
But hey I want to try one of the Ghost Peppers.For some reason I couldn't pick a peck of pickled peppers.  (Hahaha.  I had to work that in.  It also reminds me that my name isn't Peter.  But there is a Peter Principle.  My husband thought I was making that up when I told him years ago because at the time he worked for a complete dick who was actually named Peter.)  (The Peter Principle states that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence", meaning that employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position at which they cannot work competently.  This is from Peter Principle in Wikipedia.)  (I didn't have to make it up.  And OMG, you know this person don't you?  You worked for him/her/it until you couldn't stand it anymore and found another job.  Am I right?  You bet I'm right.)  (This is kind of how the presidency works except the electoral college does the honors.)  (I told you I was going to wander aimlessly.  Don't say you weren't warned.)
In perpetuity means I can mess with Mellow, my sister's cat,
the weird butted pumpkin I grew, and HIM forever.  I really
like that phrase, 'in perpetuity.'And here's the reason I was thinking about jalapenos in the first place.  (It turns out that this blog has a point to it, after all.)  Last week, HIM, the man to whom I'm married, was traveling last week and made the mistake of consuming some massively cheese-drenched, jalapeno-topped, towering nachos of doom.  Apparently his stomach didn't think much of it and especially not of the jalapenos in particular.

How did he know that?  Well, I'll leave that to your imagination.

Anyhoo, one of the many airports at DFW was the proud recipient of his stomach's preeminent and grand moment of massive discontent.  Upon returning home, HIM shared with me some inspired tidbits of knowledge gleaned from using airport bathrooms.  (I'm supremely surprised at the thought that this subject was given and I'm compelled to share.)

Let's see.  How to proceed.  Well, the first thing is to mention that most of the toilets at DFW are motion sensitive controlled.  That's the auto-flushers for those of you who aren't following me.  Once you move, the toilet has a little sensor that either detects that you moved and assumes you're done and flushes or it's light sensitive and senses that it's not dark anymore and flushes.  One or the other.  I'm not so interested that I even feel like googling it.  You get the picture.  You don't have to pull the handle because the toilet will do it for you.

Allow me to describe the dilemma here.  It's happened to me.  And it's scared, well, the crap out of Cressy before.  (And if ever you have the crap scared out of you, then this is the correct place to be.)  If you move before you're done, sometimes the sensor will take that as initiative to let it rip.  It will flush before you're done and you're not expecting it so it's somewhat disconcerting.  (Not really a dilemma yet, but I'm getting to that.)

If an individual were to say, fill up the toilet and then move before ready, and the toilet were to back up because it had been filled a little too damned much, then the individual might look down and see that the contents of the bowl was coming at him like a little poopy tidal wave.  (Vivid imagery, huh?)Since the individual has got their pants down around their ankles, they can't just leap up and run away from the impending nastiness.  No, they're trapped in the compartment.  (Try to envision a person doing the droopy drawers shuffle whilst attempting to get away.  That's a wretched mental image, isn't it?)

And it gets worse.  You see, the poor individual is stuck between a whoopsiedoodle waterfall and the door, which opens to the inside.  (The poor bastard would have to move backward with the pants around his ankles in order to get the stall's door open and escape.  Thus, they are truly hosed because there really isn't a way to get out without getting into...something or other.)
Only the coolest jalapenos say, 'Dude.'Consequently, HIM has mastered the hide-the-sensor method.  Using a bit of toilet paper one covers the sensor and prevents it from auto-flushing until an individual is well and truly prepared to amscray before calamity befalls them.  (I.e., this means that their pants are up, their belts are buckled, their bags are not on the floor and fully exposed, and they have the hand on the stall's door handle all before removing the toilet paper shield to allow the device to function.)  (Did I mention that I was impressed with the amount of thought that went into this particular subject?  Why, yes, yes I did.)

All of this because of jalapenos and possibly the Peter Principle.
I'm referencing a horror movie from the 80s here, as I have
done before.  But I thought it was apt since the
jalapenos certainly tore something of HIM's apart.
Yes, I am slightly demented.  I went from jalapenos in my garden to how to confuse auto-flushers at DFW International Airport in one blog!  WTFWIT?  I do not know.  However, I'll bet you don't ever look at those automatic flushing toilets the same again.

More on Writing OR OMG, NOT Again! OR Wait, I'm Not Ranting About My Writing This Time!

So I'm deeply, industriously, religiously involved in writing the third Bubba, Bubba and the Missing Woman.  (Yes, I know what my own title says and I'm not really writing about my writing.  Haha.  That's a funny sentence.)  However, I can't write all day long without a blood vessel in my eye exploding.  (I know, that's shameful, isn't it?  I should just chain myself to my laptop and produce a Bubba book just like that.  Cue fingers snapping.)  Anyhoo, I still like to read other things while I'm actively in the pursuit of the next Bubba story.

Just for human interest it turns out I can't read the same genre as what I'm writing while I'm writing it or weird things happen.  (Weird...things...)  As I'm writing mystery I CANNOT read mysteries.  I especially can't read humorous mystery or any other book that's humorous.  (For some reason I start writing in someone else's voice; it's very bizarre.  Did you ever hear someone speaking in an accent and find yourself wanting to imitate it?  It's kind of like that.  Obscure writer fact: Writers are strange.  Just go with it.)

Consequently, I'm reading a lot of Urban Fantasy right now.  I've got a few Emma Bull's on my Kindle and I'm liking Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews, and Faith Hunter.

Recently I read two books by Diane Sylvan.  The first one was called Queen of Shadows.

Here's the link to Queen of Shadows on Amazon.  Here's what Publisher's Weekly said about it:  

Starred Review. Sylvan's powerful debut is packed with startling action, sensual romance, and delightfully nerdy vampires. An empathic gift is slowly killing Austin musician Miranda Grey, who uses her talents to influence her audience. After four men gang-rape her, Miranda uses her untrained powers to kill them with visions of their previous victims. Exhausted and traumatized, she's taken in by David Solomon, the steely but quirky leader of the South's vampires, whose no-kill laws have created unrest among his subjects. As David teaches Miranda to control her abilities and the two grow closer, a vampire civil war looms. Sylvan's compelling take on vampirism, her endearing characters, and a complex, unabashedly feminist plot will have readers hungry for a sequel. (Sept.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

I liked this one.  It had a few issues with it that I wasn't happy about but I won't spoil it for anyone who's interested.  (Since the description above mentions the gang-rape, I'll say I didn't care for that overly, but it was an integral part of the plot and was handled appropriately.)  It had some nice little twists in it about Sylvan's vampire world and I especially enjoyed the Austin, Texas setting.  (Austin is a great place for vampires.  I think New Orleans must be sick to death of vampires.  Hey, bad pun.)  Hey, how can you go wrong with vampires in Texas?  I don't think you can.

Therefore I downloaded the second one.  Here's the link to it, Shadowflame.
Don't you love these new UF's?  They get the cool girl in leather usually carrying a big sword.  I mean, nothing says kew-ell like a hot, hip babe in leather swinging a big sharp-edged weapon about to go postal on something big and beastly.  I'm putting that on the next Bubba book.  Bubba and the Hot UF Woman.  Yeah.  Well, not really, but it's fun thinking about it.

Back to the book.  Here's the product description (There's a reason why it's so short and I'll get to that.):

It's been three months since musician Miranda Grey became a vampire and married David Solomon. But when a powerful force from David's past appears, Miranda begins to realize how little she really knows about her husband.

Now for the warning:
 
SPOILERS HO!Big, fat, freaking, world-shattering SPOILERS upcoming!Don't read any further unless you ain't gonna read the book.
I've got to make a comment here.  Oh, I have to.  I'm compelled.  Here it is and it's a pretty big comment.  I have NEVER seen an author 'eff' themselves up the 'aaa' as quickly as Diane Sylvan seems to have done.  (Authors have done it.  Stephen King's done it many times, but he's got a humongous bank account so he can do it without compunction.  Who's gonna stop Steve?  Actors do it all the time.  Look at Charlie Sheen.  He's like the poster boy for 'effing' oneself up the 'aaa.'  He's like the founding member of the 'Eff Yourself up the Aaa' Club.  Politicians seem to make it a time-honored tradition.  This is the same as the WTFWIT category.  Oh, you'll figure it out.)
Back to Diane Sylvan.  I thought some of my readers were ticked with me, but I've got nothing compared to what this lady is going through.
Here's the spoiler.  The protagonist in book, the hero figure, turns out to be bisexual AND still in love with his former lover.  In fact, three months after marrying the heroine from the first book, he meets up with his old flame and they have a little interlude.  (Oh, the hell with it.  They had sex.  In the same building as their soul-mates and it turns out that the soul-mates could 'feel' everything!  So it wasn't like it was a big secret.)
OMFG.  When I got to that part of the book I was all like, "Oh, no, you didn't do that, you shithead."  I was speaking to the character, of course.  Then I was thinking about the author.
I don't normally leave reviews and I had to think about this book for awhile.  I like the author's writing alot.  The world she created in Queen of Shadows was cool.  The characters are cooler.  But the character that was the hero in both books suddenly became this whole different person in the second book.  Bisexuality aside, he cheats, is a totally different character than in book #1, and I'm a big HEA kind of girl.

That being said, it doesn't mean that Diane Sylvan is a bad writer.  She isn't.  The mores of the characters are just that, theirs, not the author's, and I can understand that the author was going for a little shock value.  But reviewers don't always see that.  Her second book got a lot of 1-star reviews just on the fact that the hero cheated and was an asshat.  Consequently, the author took exception to some of the reviews and began blogging and tweeting about it.  (Who would do that?  Hmm?  Me?  Nawww.)

Again, nothing wrong with letting off a little steam, but this lady apparently got PO'd with former fans.  She was so angry she said, "Now I want to have him f*** every guy in sight and become a cross dresser just to piss 'em off."  (Honestly, I think that's funny and it strikes me as a joke.  I guess some folks didn't get the humor.)  She also got pretty down on some of the reviewers.  (I know.  I do too.  There are basically two types of 'bad' reviews.  One type states their reasons for not liking a book.  Reasons are endless but it's not a personal attack on the author.  I might not like it, but they've stated their case in a mostly logical fashion.  Then there's the other type.  This one says things about the author and/or the book that are untrue and vicious to boot.  The latter is the kind I detest and occasionally rant about.  See I'm Sorry This Individual Never Had a Female Dog OR Denial Ain't Just a River in Egypt OR I Rant Therefore I Am)  (Don't say I didn't warn ya!)

However, here comes the however, Sylvan had to know she was going to tick people off.  She's writing a genre book.  It's got a formula.  If you eff with the formula, you tick people off.  (Not the same with me.  I'm not messing with Bubba and the Dead Woman's shtick.  Nope.  But I'm not going to write other books in other genres exactly the same as Bubba.  And yes, I'm going to continue to argue about that one until the cows come prancing back from the prom in six-inch-high, purple stilettos.  No offense to anyone wearing six-inch-high, purple stilettos.)

I believe that Diane Sylvan pretty much did something that is supposed to be physiologically impossible.  I read a little on her blog and she had to take her email address off because she was getting so much hate-mail.

(Apparently, The Life and Death of Bayou Billy hasn't inspired any of that yet, but it's still early in the day.)  (People did email me about the cliff-hanger ending on Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas, but that's a little more socially acceptable.  I'm hardly the first writer to do that.  Sheesh.)

Sylvan's got a third Shadow World book coming out in March, 2012.  Should be interesting to see what she does with that one.  Yes, I will buy it.  I do like the lady's writing.  But there's an important lesson for writers here.  I like my characters and although I don't want to see them hurt, if there isn't conflict there isn't a story.  Be careful, however.  There's conflict and then there's conflict.

And with that I can categorically confirm that Bubba is not a bisexual who will have an affair with a former lover three months after marrying Willodean Gray.  However, everything is still open.

Happy reading, ya'll!

A Scary Story As Told by CRESSY! Or How I Steal Material From My Daughter OR Halloween is Coming!

Recently, my seven year old daughter, Cressy, came to me and said, "Do you want to hear a scary story, Mommy?"  Of course, I had to say, "Yes.  I love scary stories.  I love Cressy's scary stories."
Parental Disclaimer:  Cressy totally did not watch the movie, Scream.I'm not certain what motivated this particular story.  She had her guitar out and it was obvious that she was going to have musical accompaniment for the tale of terror.

So here it goes, as told by my daughter and illustrated by me.  Smart-assed comments interjected at will because, well, I can't not do it.  (Really, I can't.)

Cressy's Scary Story (almost verbatim):
Once there was a desert.  In the desert there were horses, rattlesnakes, and cactus's.  The horses whinnied.  The rattlesnakes rattled.  And the cactus's...hmm...the cactus's...um...the cactus's cactused.  Yeah, that's it.  (And yes, this is the true way that this was told to me.  The cactus's did, indeed, go cactusedity.)
Cressy's desert.  I wasn't sure how a cactus cactused
so I ad libbed.  I think it works.And there were coyotes.  (Here's where the musical accompaniment came in.  I'm truly sorry I can't have audio here, so I'll do my best writing to encourage your imagination.)  *Strum!*  (*Strum!* is the sound of Cressy strumming in a malevolent movie-music sounding manner.  Come on, you can totally hear this in your mind.  For further clarification, it's the moment in time where the music starts playing in the movie where the nubile young cheerleader is about to get decapitated by the man in a Bill Clinton mask wielding a massive Maori sword.  It could be worse, you know, it could be a guy in a Hilary Clinton mask wielding a cigar.  And oh, I can't help it: *strum.*)  So anyway, there were...coyotes.  (Big, suspense building pause here.)  *Strum!*
Really not sure if I captured the essence of the penultimate twang
of this moment.  Whateveh.These were bad coyotes.  They howled.  (There was a demonstration.)  They howled a lot.  And they liked to hunt...people.  (Wait for it.)  *Strum!*
Yes, the lips do, in fact, extend that far out.But these were really bad coyotes.  (As opposed to just bad coyotes.)  They hunted people so they could...eat them.  (Here's the good moment.)  *Strum!*

(There was another pause here so the listener can truly absorb the horror and intensity of the terrifying tale of animals gone wrongity-wrong-wrong.)  And these coyotes would eat a lot of people.  *Strum!*

(It's my belief that I was supposed to gasp at that moment, so I did.  And Cressy obviously approved of my abject fear of man-eating coyotes because she nodded and then...)  *Strum!*

So in the middle of the night when it was really quiet, the coyotes would go hunting.  (Here it comes again.)  *Strum!*

And they would get you, Mommy.  (Uh-oh, this story seems to be taking a turn for the worse.)  *Strum!*

And they would eat you, Mommy.  (I'm not sure what brought about this need for my gruesomely bloody ending, but it could have something to do with the fact that I didn't let her stay up to 8 PM the other night or possibly that I won't let her have the Screaming Eagle tattoo on her derriere.  One or the other.)  *Strum!*

Then they eat your arms!  *Strum!*

Then they eat your legs!  *Strum!*

And you're still alive, Mommy!  *Strum!*  (Wow, have I really ticked off my 7 year old daughter or what?)

They eat your...tummy!  *Strum!*

And you're still alive, Mommy!  *Strum!*  (Remarkably and I'm still listening to the story.)

Then, Mommy...*Strum!*, *Strum!*, *Strum!*...they eat your head!

*Strum!* *Strum!* *Strum!* *Strum!* *Strum!* *Strum!*

The end.
(I think we're gearing up for Halloween.  Just a thought.)