C.L. Bevill's Blog, page 29

Candy Zombies, Beware! Or More Zaniness From Cressy's POV

Once there were...candy zombies.  These weren't normal zombies.  Yes, they would eat brains, but only brains with cereal and milk.  (Milk is good for the bones, and zombies have big issues with bones.  They fall off.  They stuff 'em back on.  All that nonsense.)  No, these were worse than the usual, typical fare zombie.  They had the capacity to induce terror in even the bravest of souls and make the knees knock of super heroes everywhere.  They were...
They were the most evil, the vilest, the nastiest, meanest zombies ever.  They looked at you meanly.  They spit on the ground.  (I'm told this is a truly icky thing.)  They said bad words.  (Like...shh....crap....and...barf.  Apparently those are the worst words Cressy can think of at the moment.)  They looked at you in a bad way.  (They made the Charles Manson Zombies look like Mary Poppins Zombies and that's saying a lot.)

So one night when the moon was full and the candy store was empty, the candy zombie came out.
Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  There's an editorial change.  It turns out that the candy zombie doesn't have blood coming off him.  He has candy dripping off him.  Silly me.  What was I thinking?
And I was specifically reinforced that candy zombies do eat brains but only with milk and cereal.  There was no mention of what type of cereal was involved, but I suspect it was Captain Crunch or possibly Cheerios with 1% milk.  (No Wheaties or Fat-Free Milk because those are gross-buckets.)

Anyway, to get this story back on track, the candy zombie had a special key.  He looked everywhere for it.
Finally, he found it in his shoe.  Apparently candy zombies are very security conscious.
So the candy zombie took the special key and opened the door to the candy store.  Then HE ATE EVERYTHING IN THE FREAKING STORE.  Oh, my gosh.  ("Oh, my gosh," is a direct quote from Cressy, the erstwhile director.  She was truly shocked at the direction that her own story was taking.  That nasty, awful, dreadful candy zombie ate ALL THE CANDY IN THE CANDY STORE.  Horrors abounding!) Yes, the candy zombie consumed every last bit of candy in the store.  He shuffled happily off into the sunrise, wondering if he could find some early morning brains with milk and cereal.  (Definitely not a bran cereal because that tastes like grass that someone threw into the bowl and farted on it.  Possibly it had nuclear fall out too.)
But when the candy store owner came back he was really upset.  He cried.  Then he ran away from the candy store and became a politician.  And he never ate candy again.  (For a seven year old this is truly a fate worse than death.)

The end.

The Brussels Sprouts Incident of 1972 OR How My Mother Found Out Via the Vacuum Cleaner Method

It was 1972.  I'm guessing at the year but it was definitely thereabouts.  My mother believed in 'Thou shall eat of the vegetables,' and 'Thou shall cleaneth of the plate.'  My mother also mentioned starving children in China.  Repeatedly.  (I think it was China.)  (HIM has mentioned that his mother, my MIL of whom I'm not supposed to blog about except in a glowing positive manner, also used the same phrase and HIM outdid me by responding thusly to her, "Then give it them."  I'm sorry I didn't think of that.  Really I am, but it was probably for the best because I don't think my mother or father would have appreciated the humor in it.)  This was also the year that my father scared the crap out of me by letting us watch a really bad 'B' movie on TV.  (See 'I have Pinpointed How I Became Warped Or It Was All My Father's Fault' from April.)  Truly it was a year of vivid personal memories.

My mother served us...da da dahhhhhh...Brussels sprouts.

I'm not sure who originally decided that Brussels sprouts was a good thing to eat.  I recollect that Ma used to serve it with butter on top because I suspect she knew that no one but a person who had just wandered out of the Gobi Desert after 30 days of being lost would ever voluntarily eat unadorned Brussels sprouts.  (Hey, melted butter almost makes anything taste better but I'm thinking that melted cheese in a deep, gooey, I-can-drown-in-it-layer would have been the way to go.)

So now I felt compelled, as I often do when I'm blogging, to look up Brussels sprouts in my BIG dictionary.  (This is the dictionary I can use as a lethal weapon if I was so disposed.)  Here we go for posterity and because I think it's funny:

Brussels Sprout n., often cap B 1: any of the edible small green heads resembling diminutive cabbages and borne in the lower axils of the stem of a plant (Brassica oleracea gemmifera) closely related to the cabbage and cauliflower 2: the plant that bears brussels sprouts - usu. used in pl.

Isn't blue a nice color to describe Brussels sprout?  Wait, I guess it should be green:

Brussels Sprout n., often cap B 1: any of the edible small green heads resembling diminutive cabbages and borne in the lower axils of the stem of a plant (Brassica oleracea gemmifera) closely related to the cabbage and cauliflower 2: the plant that bears brussels sprouts - usu. used in pl.

There.  All official like.  Who decided that cabbage and cauliflower were good, much less a closely related plant to them?  What was wrong with those people?  (I bet they never had a hot fudge sundae with nuts sprinkled on top.)  Now we'll discuss the problems I had as a child with the consumption with said Brussels sprouts.

First of all, it didn't look right.  In abject demonstration I will show you a photograph:

The alleged Brussels sprouts - I think they look like little aliensOMFG, I've gone off on yet another tangent. 
If you stare at it you can see the little aliens waiting for their moment.  Clear as day.See, definitely little alien cabbage monsters waiting to suck our blood and kidnap our women.  Or something like that.  Anyway, anyone can see that Brussels sprouts are not the most appetizing looking.  Furthermore, here's the plant they came from:
I mean, if I was wandering around in the wilderness, starving for something, I don't think I would look at this plant and say, "Oh great balls of fire, look appetizing morsels to stick in my mouth and alleviate my raging pangs of hunger."  (I think it looks like a plant with a case of testicularitus.  Come on, guess what that means.)

And hey, if you put them in a bowl, they don't look any better.  Really, do they?
Of course, you could put a lot of cheese on it.  Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of cheese, just about any variety.
A little boiling would take care of those little alien creeps too.  Plus they probably taste like chicken.  (Okay that was baaaaaad, but I'm not taking it out.)

Second and more importantly, it didn't taste good.  It tasted like old tires that had been boiled into obscurity.  (Don't ask how I know this obscure fact; it isn't a pretty story.)  Besides which the Brussels sprouts talked to me.  Seriously, they told me the bottom line.


So you can see as a child I had objections.  But like a poorly paid, cheap suited defense attorney my objections were promptly overruled.  My mother said, "You shall eat of the vegetables.  You shall clean your plate.  You shall not get up from the table until the above two things are accomplished."  And hell yes, I wanted up from the table.  There were things to do.  Lots more interesting things than eating bleeping-blarping-bloinking Brussels sprouts.

Another tangent has occurred.  This time from Cressy, the non-Brussels sprouts eating child of my loins.  (I have never told her there are starving children in China who would love to eat her food.  But I might have intimated it.)  Anyway, she came in, saw the alien Brussels sprouts, felt like she had to draw the following:
I love the blue spots on Fat Woman, er, Alien Mommy's face.  Could be a strange, virulent space disease.  (Man, are we obsessed with aliens and such.)  (And can I interject that if we gave all the invading aliens our Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cabbage, they wouldn't want to invade us anymore.  I mean, isn't that a good point?  Somebody call Barrack and let him in the know.)

Back to the Brussels Sprouts and the point of this blog.  It was 1972-ish.  Ma had served Brussels Sprouts.  There were probably other things on the plate, but apparently they weren't so objectionable that I vividly remember them.

The Alleged Incident of 1972...ish.Well, I don't recall the exact thinking that led to the crapshoot that followed my mother's dictate.  Honestly, I wanted to get away from the dining room table and I DID NOT want to eat the Brussels sprouts.  I think I lingered enough that everyone was either up or distracted.  Cleverly I thought of a plan to contrive my way out of this situation.  (I think I had been watching Jonny Quest and The Wild, Wild West too much.)  I reached out with my fork, got a sprout, and put it into my mouth.  I probably gagged, but subterfuge was necessary.  I sneakily reached for my...paper napkin.  While my mother/father/sister were not looking I spit the sprout out into the napkin.  Then I put it into my lap.

Again I don't remember the formation minutia of my escapade.  There was a convenient lip/shelf under the table.  How I happened to know that it was there or what I intended to use it for, I do not know.  (More realistically, I do not remember what little sneaky thoughts had formed in my eight year old brain.)  But I put the little half chewed Brussels sprout wrapped up in its napkin coffin there.  Whoo-hoo.
What a master manipulator.  How had I learned this from such an early age?  From my parents?  No.  From my sister?  No.  From kids at school?  Maybe.  From Saturday morning cartoons.  Definitely.

I cleared my plate and innocently alerted my mother.  I called, "Oh, Mother dear, I have cleaned the plate and politely request that I be allowed to frolic and rampage about my sister and the general neighborhood at large.  I will pluck hapless crawdaddies from the stream across the street and gleefully chase the neighbor's child with them."  (I didn't really say that but it was categorically understood by myself at the time.)  Ma nodded at me and I was allowed to leave the table without chastisement.

Undoubtedly, just out of parental viewing range there was a victory dance.
And life went on.  Apparently for some time.

Until my mother was vacuuming around and under the dining room table.

One would understand that as an 8 year master manipulator I had made a critical error in judgement.  I didn't go back at a secure time to remove the evidence.  I'm not sure what I thought would happen to the Brussels sprouts in their little decomposing napkin cocoons.  Maybe I thought aliens would come and take them away.  But they didn't.  Ma knocked the table with the vacuum cleaner and down came a slew of small tissue enclosed desicated Brussels sprouts.
I wish I could have seen the expression of comprehension on my mother's face when she figured it out.  (Probably better that I hadn't.)  I don't remember what happened after that.  It might have involved being spanked or being forced to eat a fresh batch of Brussels sprouts.  But I do know that it was a long, long time before I got left alone at the dining room table again.

Spending Time at Chuck E. Bleeping Cheese Hell OR How I Was Blackmailed by my 7 Year Old Daughter

Cressy, my 7 year old daughter, my only beloved child, is kind of like a special little monkey.  Once I tried to describe her to my Sis, who lives all the way across the country, and I said, "She's on her own little wavelength."  And she is, but then, so am I, so I guess she got it honestly.  What can I say?  My DNA has passed onto her.  So when I mistakenly ask her what she wants to do when it's just she and I, I can always count on those cutesy-mootsy genes coming back to haunt me.  (Or in actuality to kick me in my metaphorical balls.)

Consequently, I was coerced by Cressy to go to the restaurant that all parents secretly fear and dread.  Yes, I'll say it.  I know people are cringing somewhere.  But here it is:

Chuck E. Cheese
Whoops.  Just lost a few people.  I can still hear them screaming in denial.  For those of you without children, this is a restaurant, and I use the term 'restaurant' loosely.  It serves kid type food.  It has kid type entertainment in the form of games, toys, and a giant robotic dancing rodent named Chuck E. Cheese.  I'm assuming that Chuck E. is a mouse, although I think he looks like a giant rat in jams.   I don't know who the kid is, but the other thing is Chuck E.  I can only surmise that two vice presidents got together with a bottle of cheap tequila and brainstormed for ideas of a mascot.  ("I know, a giant talking thing."  "No, how about a sheep?"  "No, I mean, like a rat, no, a mouse."  "How about a rouse?  Or a mat?"  "You don't have children do you?"  "I could have children...somewhere.")
Cressy likes the games and the other kids at Chuck E. Cheese.  However, when the poor little bastard in the Chuck E. Cheese suit comes out to socialize, she's usually like, "WTF, Mommy?  Is that a rat or a mouse?"  (Once Chuck E. Cheese accidentally knocked her over at a friend's birthday party and she has never forgotten it.  Twenty years from now she'll still be holding a grudge.  That guy better have eyes in the back of his head, let me tell you.)
Here she is attempting to catch her breath after days of stressful playing at Chuck E. Cheese.  It's my belief that she and her friend, shown here, are holding each other up. "You ready for more, Cressy?"
"No, I need to rest or maybe find a bathroom, Alyssa."So the great part about Chuck E. Cheese is that parents can go in, get their hands stamped with ultraviolet ink so no perverts can take their kids out, buy pizza, hand their wallets to their kids, and sit quietly until their kids return with the empty wallets.  Fun, huh?
Okay, so we went.  It was a Friday and it wasn't jampacked.  I ordered pizza for Cressy and salad for me.  (I was being a good fat woman.)  I handed Cressy a cup full of tokens.  She disappeared into the mass of whirling, spinning, undulating, and color screaming machines to gleefully burn out the neurons and dendrites in her little brain.
I had brought my Kindle, thinking I would get to read.  Hah.  Instead remnants of a psychological/sociological education started slithering around in my head as I watched all the other parents attempting to maintain their collective sanites.  There were lots of mommies at Chuck E. Cheese and well, I couldn't help myself.  I started categorizing them.  I even came up with seven types.  SEVEN.  Who knew?
The first is the Hoverer.  This mommy likes to stay by her child's side no matter what.  I suspect that this mommy wouldn't even let their own grandma pick them up as an infant.  This mommy is on the prowl for anything unsafe to their precious little angel and will ruthlessly safeguard their being.  Pay particular attention to the protective bubble that has been formed around the child.  (This child will grow up to be a serial killer or maybe a politician.) Then there was my personal favorite, the Screamer.  This mommy has several kids in the restaurant, some of which are actually hers.  She WILL NOT get up to go straighten anything out.  Now don't get me wrong, the Screamer Mommy is not ignoring her children/wards/things to be watched.  On the contrary, she is paying close attention to them, but she doesn't really want to get up and do anything.  So she bellows.  (She has special mommy voice powers that enable her to be heard over Chuck E. Cheese's robotic dancing mouse/rat music, other kids' screaming, and the sound of 20,000 games being played at the same time.)  Everyone knows that the Screamer Mommy is present.  (My God, they can hear her all the way down the street.) Next up is the Socialite.  Here is a mommy who cannot go anywhere without a posse of gal pals.  She has friends in multiples of twos and will not stop speaking/gossiping/interacting with them in order to do anything so silly as to be a parent.  You see, Chuck E. Cheese has become socializing time and woe be to the parent who interrupts her precious socializing time.  She might nail you with her Manelo Blahniks.  Seriously. There is the Smart Phone Addict Mommy.  This mommy has a smart phone.  It is surgically attached to her hand and she has special implements to help her use it effectively.  She has this phone in front of her the entire time, even while she is eating, drinking, telling her kids not to kick Chuck E. Cheese in the testicular area and even if someone else comes up to speak with her.  This phone is the Smart Phone Addict Mommy's best friend.  She even sleeps with this phone.  God help her if it runs out of juice. The Smart Phone Addict Mommy is closely related to the Talker Mommy.  There is an important difference.  The Smart Phone Addict Mommy is playing with the phone, Tetras, Angry Birds, Facebook, etc.  The Talker Mommy is yakking on her phone for the entire time she is at Chuck E. Cheese.  It is my observation that this type of mommy is speaking to every one she has ever known.  Relatives, friends, the guy at the Quik-E-Mart, her pastor, her 2nd grade school teacher.  You name it, she's talking to them while on the phone. Okay, now we have an editorial comment.  My daughter, Cressy, has wandered in to ask what I was doing, and when I explained, she said, "There's another mommy, Mommy."  She looked at me with large, solemn blue eyes.  "The Space Mommy," she intones.  "You know with the suit in outer space and everything."  I know.  I know.  It has nothing to do with the point of this blog, but Cressy's so cute when she suggests something to draw that I have to oblige. Space Mommy, which has nothing to do with this blog whatsoever.Okay, then onto characterization number 6.  The Director.  This mommy could be confused with the Hoverer, but they're actually quite distinct.  While the Hoverer mommy seeks to protect her child from, pretty much, everything in existence, the Director wants to live vicariously through her child.  Nothing that the child does is the correct way.  This mommy wants the child to do everything mommy's way, no matter if mommy is nitpicking or not.  The child can only play the games mommy's way.  The child can only dress mommy's way.  Don't you dare take off your scrunchy because mommy put it there.  The Director Mommy can also be easily mistaken for the Screamer Mommy because of her yelling capacity but don't make that subtle error.  The Director Mommy is large and in charge, kind of like Fat Woman.  Not only does she want to be in control of her children, but she wants them to be mini-robotic versions of herself so that she can feel like a better person.  Also the Director Mommy can be likened to the Godfather.  She'll make you an offer you can't refuse and if you refuse you'll wake up in your bed with the head of one of your plush animals cut off. Finally, there's the Hermit.  The Hermit Mommy sits alone, avoids eye contact, and ignores pretty much everything unless her child is shrieking bloody murder, has a bone sticking out of their leg and/or arm, or has arterial spray which is coating the ceiling in a bad way.  The Hermit Mommy should not be confused with the Smart Phone Addict Mommy.  Hermit Mommy is not playing with her phone constantly.  Nor should she be confused with the Talker Mommy.  Although Hermit Mommy may talk on her phone it is limited in nature and only because her mind is fried from child/mommy interactions and/or Chuck E. Cheese exposure.  And me?  I am Fat Woman Mommy, ignorer of all social conventions.  So there.

How HIM Shouldn't Be Allowed Out of His Hole First Thing in the Morning On Sundays OR How Fat Woman Shouldn't Be Allowed Out of Her Hole First Thing on Sunday Mornings

It was a Sunday morning.  We'd crawled out of bed at approximately 7:30 am and that was only because our daughter Cressy had 'slept in.'  Hah.  We're lucky she's not getting up at 4:30 am anymore.  (She did, you know, and believe me, getting up with a three year old who likes to get up at 4:30 am is not fun.)

After I had made breakfast for Cressy, washed the dishes, cleaned up the kitchen and gotten the dirty clothes sorted for washing, HIM had made himself coffee, taken a shower, read a little on his Kindle, and gotten around to asking if I were going grocery shopping.  If I was could I please not forget the beer, wine, diet-coke, and Cheezits.

Here was my expression at that request.  But first a little background information.  We had gone out the night before.  Cressy had a pizza party.  We went to Red Lobster where HIM plied me with one Long Island Iced Tea.  (It was enough judging by the amount of alcohol in one of those suckers.)  There were copious amounts of teenagers dressed in formal length dresses and a few of them in suits.  (It was Prom, in case anyone doesn't get it and some of the girls were clearly confused about whether they were going to Prom or out to the Las Vegas strip.)  (HIM wouldn't let me take a photo for the blog because he didn't think the teenagers would like it.  I was tipsy enough from the single Long Island Iced Tea not to care overly whether they liked it or not, but I bowed to his sober knowledge.)  We had stayed up late.  Cressy had stayed up late.  Then contrarily she had gotten up at her regular time.  I didn't have a caffeine injection automatically shot into my arm.  I was somewhat groggy.  I was in a mood.  Consequently, I should have been locked in a nearby convenient closet for the duration of the day.  But I wasn't.
Fat Woman On the EdgeDespite all of the warnings, HIM looked at me like a puppy dog expecting to be rewarded.  HIM, you must understand, was happy that he had remembered to put actual items on the grocery list.  Excuse me, The Grocery List.  No, I guess it would be THE GROCERY LIST.  (Words actually spoken by Fat Woman to HIM, usually in a snarky fashion: "Can't buy it if it's not on the list."  "Can't read your mind."  "I would have bought it if it had been on the @#$%^!! list."  Wow, I sound incredibly bitchy.)

No, at this particular moment, he wasn't adorable.So was I thinking, 'Goodness Gracious Googly Woogly, I should be grateful that HIM remembered to remind me that he would like me to NOT FORGET to purchase beer, wine, Cheezits, and Diet Coke on my next shopping extravaganza.'?  No, I was not thinking that.  Also I was not thinking that all those snarky statements had finally borne fruit.  "See, I remembered to add it to the list BEFORE the list was compiled and you went shopping," HIM might say in a cheerful and pert manner denoting his utter adorability.  (Hey, I think I made up another word.)  HIM might even run outside, pound his chest in a manly fashion and yell it to the neighbors, "I HAVE REMEMBERED BEFORE SHE GOES SHOPPING!  I AM COMPLETE!  HALLELUJAH!"
Okay, does HIM deserve a medal?
But here's the thing.  (There's always a thing.)  HIM hadn't remembered to take two steps to my left and especially hadn't remembered to reach out to the little notepad that is my combined list/things-to-do-JOURNAL-of-DOOM (It rules my life.  HIM will probably bury it with me.) which was a maximum of three feet away from where he was blithely reminding me to not to forget his stuff for his benefit.  HIM didn't unclip the pen that is on the spiral part of the notepad and he didn't find the last list in the pad, and HIM most certainly DID NOT write the four fucking items down for himself.  NO. Nopity.  Nope.  Nopus mopus.

HIM asked me not to forget the beer, wine, Cheezits, and Diet Coke.  (You can probably appreciate at this point of the story that I might have been right to be locked in a hole and be fed through a slot until I came to my senses.  Alas we don't have an oubliette and our closets are pretty much full of other crap.)

So instead of ripping HIM's throat out with my bare teeth, I calmly picked up the notepad myself and wrote this, while HIM watched in a state of dawning horror, and made sure I multiple-underlined each and every most important item for HIM.  (It's possible HIM was frozen in terror because there was a set of very sharp knives not five feet away from the place I was standing):
I did not want to underestimate the importance of how HIM wanted me to remember the bleep-bleep-bleeping BEER, the bleep-bleep-bleeeeeeeeeeeep WINE, the bleep-bleepity-bleep DIET COKE & the bleeping bleep bleepious Cheezits.  (No, you don't need to point out that I misspelled Cheezits on the list.  I would understand the list and get the right item no matter how it was spelled.)  And btw, the itsy bitsy, teenie-weenie items on the list were for insignificant little ol' me and insignificant little ol' Cressy.  Tea bags, Cheetos, toothpaste, and pink lemonade.

Oops.  Streaking off on an almost unrelated tangent.  Looking over the above leads me to think that the list sounds like it's the list of a family, shall we say, who is unconcerned with health and appearances.  Let me go back and amend my list.  Yeah, yeah, this is the real list:
Right, so not only did I diss HIM, but I took care of the 'good' things that I needed to do.

And oh what the hell, I might as well make myself look really good:
Anyway, when I was done with my melodramatic effect on the list HIM laughed and went in the living room to drink some more coffee, probably because we've been married so damn long and HIM knew I wasn't in a homicidal mood.  Lucky bastard.

And I thought, "This is a blog," because that's the way my warped mind thinks.

The Bug Who Wanted to Kill Me OR It Was the Bug That Got Away ("It Was THIS BIG!")

One evening there was an insect on the ceiling in my bedroom.  I don't know what it was.  I didn't stop to ask if it had its correct species name.  ("Why, yes, Fat Woman, I am Ceilinicinous Badeous Bugicuss, commonly known as the Ceiling Crawling Insect and now I wish to consume your dessicated flesh, mortal mammal enemy.")  Instead my words were something like, "CRAP!  There's a BIG ASS BUG ON MY CEILING!"  Four lettered words might have been involved.

Not actual size except in my imaginationThere was an unidentifiable bug on my ceiling above my bed just as I was going to go to sleep.  I didn't think this was a tenable situation.  In fact, the bug didn't know it but I was about to Def-Con-1 it.  You see, in my mind, an unidentifiable bug on my ceiling above my bed just as I was about to go to sleep could lead to only one situation.  I will illustrate for I cannot NOT illustrate.

If the bug had actually dropped from the ceiling onto me or near me or in my immediate vicinity this might have happened.  Also screaming, shrieking and imprecations would have commenced.  There would have been ritualized beating of the bug with the largest thing I could find in the area.  Weapons could have included the night table lamp, HIM, or the novel 'Breaking Dawn.'  Whateveh.

As it was I looked at the bug on the ceiling and I did the next best thing.  I called HIM.  What I said was, "Sweetie, there's a bug on the ceiling."  HIM was in the living room reading a book and drinking a glass of wine.  HIM knew what I wanted but he wasn't going for it.  "So?" HIM called back.  "Would you...take care of it?" I called back.

You see, I knew I could appeal to HIM"s vanity.  Allow me to illustrate again.
So, of course, HIM came swaggering into the bedroom to kill the fabled insect beast before it drug me off to its lair to slowly consume my living flesh at its leisure or whatever evil plan it was planning.

At this point the story should end.  It should.  It really should.  HIM came back to the bedroom, killed the threatening buggie, and returned triumphantly to the living room, having proved his manhood in a incontrovertible manner.  HIM would flex his biceps and leer at me saying, "The big bad bug is all taken care of, so give me some sugar, baby."  End of the literary tale of a bug's woe.

But I'm still writing because my life never goes just like that.  Not my life anyway.

HIM had to take a minute to decide which was best to kill the beast.  Item number One - a Harlequin Presents book of approximately 180 pages.  Light enough to swing adequately and best of all it had already been read by me.  Item number two - a Kindle.  Nice heft but electronic in nature.  Does not respond well to being pummeled against insects, ceilings, or other implacable items.  Item number three - a Sci Fi book by David Drake.  A 500 page novel, it would certainly squash any insect within its path.  But it's one of HIM's favored authors and what fan really wants to get bug intestines on one of his favored authors?  What does HIM pick?

The Harlequin book.

HIM climbs up on a trunk and discovers that the flat surface of the book won't squish the bug on the ceiling because the ceiling is a popcorn ceiling, a design remnant from the 80s that lingers in this 80s house.  Perplexed HIM attempts to use the end of the book in a battle ending maneuver.  No can do.  The insect starts crawling away.  I am watching from the security of the door where it cannot leap.

So here's the spot where things get a little...weird.  ("When do they NOT get weird in your house, Fat Woman?")  HIM takes the book and, instead of smashing the insect into the obscurity of a distant memory, kind of flips it off the ceiling with the end of the book.

Directly at me.  I could see the trajectory in my head like a smart machine calculating it.  (I'm thinking like the Predator did with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  "Madam, I've met the governator, and you ma'am, are no Arnold Schwarzenegger.")
Anyway, there was more screeching involved.  The neighbors thought about calling the police.  People up the street thought there was an air siren and took cover.  The guys from Andrew AFB did a flyby to see WTF?  The President was interrupted in the middle of a joke about a dog walking into a bar with a blonde under his shoulder to be briefed.  It was very ugly.

And amidst all of the chicanery the stupid bleeping bug got away.  It's out there, you know, watching me, waiting for it's moment.

A New Bubba Book - Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas

Hey, guess what.  The second Bubba book is here and available on http://www.bn.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, and http://www.smashwords.com/.  Coupons to come on my website, http://www.clbevill.com/, for free copies so keep an eye out.
Here's the scoop:

Bubba Snoddy's got some problems.  His family has descended for the Christmas holidays and not in a good way.  His cousin wants to own the Snoddy Mansion, decrepit, falling down columns, termites, wood rot and all and isn't above using manipulative behavior to achieve his ends.  Miz Demetrice is up to nefarious and illegal activities while trying to entertain relatives.  His cousin's ten year old son is the personification of a demon and has hobbies of looking at medical photographs, making stun guns from scratch, and causing havoc wherever he roams.  The woman of Bubba's dreams, Deputy Willodean Gray, is still evading his romantic pursuits.  Patients from the local mental institute are wandering over the town, ostensibly assisting with the Christmas Festival thanks to a program established by the mayor to cut costs.  And Bubba has just found the dead body of a man dressed as Santa in the Christmas scene at City Hall.  Oh, Pegramville, Texas is just the best place to be at Christmas if a fella has a bullet proof vest and a linebacker's helmet.  All the folks think Bubba might have done did it…again, even though it was proven that he didn't done did it the first time, and Bubba has to move quickly in order to catch a murderer.   

It'll make you happier than a tick on a fat old hound black and tan or as happy as a pig in slop or my personal favorite, as happy as a two-peckered billy goat. And for my fans without a kindle or nook or ereader.  You can download the reader to your computer or an ap for them to your smart phone ifin you've a mind.  Happy reading!

Oh, Those Wacky Publishers! OR What The Heck Were They Thinking?

Long story short.  I published a book with St. Martins/Thomas Dunne in 2002.  It was called Bayou Moon.  It's a mystery set in Louisiana.  (Did the Bayou part give it away?)  It sold okay.  About 4000 copies give or take.  Then it dwindled into the place where authors go who don't sell a million copies on the first hit.  (HIM and I still giggle about when I first sold the thing and HIM's boss seriously asked if HIM was going to quit his job because I was going to be an AUTHOR.  Haha.  She had no idea how much authors really make.)

Here it is:
Bayou Moon by me, a mystery
2002 by Thomas DunneAnyhoo, there it is.  It's not my best work.  But it's okay.  Southern Gothic mystery.  An artist returns to her Louisiana roots to find out what happened to her mother, who's been missing twenty or so years.  Lots of dripping Spanish moss and y'alls.  It was originally another name but my editor, who shall remain nameless for the sakes of all, said, and I'm quoting because it was funny, "It needs to have a name with 'bayou' in it because bayous are sexy."  Never mind the fact that I had to go back and change a couple of the swamps mentioned in the book into bayous.  Never mind that I got people from Louisiana saying I never lived in the south and I cornfused everything.  (Yes, I meant CORNfused.)  (It's FICTION, y'all.  It's made up.  And I did live down south for a long time and I'm married to a man who's from there.)  So Bayou Moon it became.

The editor at Thomas Dunne passed on my second effort and I tried like hell to do my stuff.  (I found another literary agent.  The literary agent dumped me.  I kept writing books and trying to find another 'good' agent.  It didn't work out.  It's beginning to sound like a very lame soap opera.)  Then ePublishing came around and wow, I went ahead and put out just about everything I have.  (Damn the torpedoes!  Full speed ahead!)  Some of the stuff is genre.  Some of the stuff was meant to be published under a pseudonym.  Some readers don't like that I genre hopped.  Some readers love it.  I won't apologize.  I love to write and I tend to have a little romantic thing going on it each of my books.  (The one that a lot of people seem to dislike is The Life and Death of Bayou Billy, probably because it's pretty raunchy, but it's also funny as hell.  An infamous outlaw dies and two neighboring towns fight to get the right to bury his body in their town.  Corpse-napping and other hilarity ensues.)  But I'm digressing.  Once I got all the books out there, I made most of them free just to give people a taste.  Unfortunately I couldn't do this on Amazon but I did it on many of the other epubs, notably Barnes & Noble.  And some of them are doing very well.

For example, Bubba and the Dead Woman is a favorite.  Bubba is a good old boy involved in a genuine murder mystery and everyone thinks he done did it.  (Incidentally this is FREE at B & N and http://www.smashwords.com/, so if can download it, YOU REALLY SHOULD.)  It's so popular I wrote a second one that will be published in the next couple of days.

Here's the second one, Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas for the Bubba-ites.  Good old country boy Bubba gets involved in another set of murders, except it's all funky and to do with Christmas.  I'm just finishing with the editing so next month it should be out there.  Yea, Bubba.
So as soon as things start getting popular what does St. Martins do?  Well, for years and years Bayou Moon has been available on Kindle at Amazon for $10.99.  The price alone made me wince.  (And in case it's not clear, I am NOT the one who set that price.)  However, as soon as Bubba and the Dead Woman does a booming business on B&N, guess what happened?  St. Martins puts Bayou Moon out on Nook and some of the other epubs.  And surprise they lowered the price to $6.99, which Amazon matched.  And because some of these readers really like some of my other work, they're buying Bayou Moon.
All of which should be a happy thing for me.  Except I'm not fond of publishers who want the authors to do all the work and then only reap 7.5% of the proceeds and in this case, St. Martins ain't paying me dick.  My literary agent went out of business in the middle of the last decade and St. Martins won't send me any of the quarterlies.  (I'm going to have to find a lawyer who will write them the dreaded LETTER and threaten them with some kind of legalities that frankly make me irritated at best and have a rash in the nether regions at worst.)  I don't expect the royalties to be much but they should be paying it to me.  Hell, I've even bought a couple copies of Bayou Moon on Kindle just because I got a Kindle and people I know have Kindles.  (Incidentally, I'm probably going to buy a Nook, too, because I like both of them.  Yea, ePublishing!  Power to the paperless!)
Am I saying don't buy Bayou Moon?  No, that would be like shooting myself in the foot.  But all of the melodrama aside, there's more.  I was recently googling my book names because a) I'm vain, and b) I want to see if people are repeating things about my books.  So I found a little thing about Bayou Moon that I hadn't seen before.  (The technical phrase for this is to, 'add insult to injury.')
Here's the link: http://readingthepast.com/gallery/reusable-covers.htm  It's got stuff about recycled cover art.  Some of it is similar stuff.  Some of it is exactly the same.
Case in point: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurierpublished by Virago, 2003 The Chatham School Affair
by Thomas H. CookPublished by Indigo, 2000
Bayou Moon
by me
Published by Thomas Dunne, 2002
Hmm.  This seems to be suspiciously
familiar, doesn't it?Anyone can see the first one is a little different.  But the latter two are the same damn picture.  And I remember the editor yammering about how hard the illustrator worked on the stupid iron gates.  Hah.  (He worked hard at copying the jpeg of the iron gate.)  I wonder who was fooling whom?  Thpppt.  I never realized how much the publishers are recycling.  I've seen romance stuff that has been uber recycled but here's the other stuff.  And it's a bunch of stuff.

It's a lesson to authors.  It wasn't like I had a choice in the cover.  A word to the wise to would be writers out there, marketing is the publisher's forte.  They don't want the author having their input in the cover or the artwork.  (Of course, if the author wants to plunk down thousands of dollars in separate publicity, then by all means, go for it.  They love it when authors spend their own money on making the publishers more money.)  When the editor first sent me a jpeg of the cover I really liked it.  I thought it was cool.  There's this whole descriptive thing about the gates in the novel and I was thrilled to death that their graphic artist had picked up on it.
What a goober.  I'm glad I do my own publishing now.  I hope my fans will forgive my less than sterling editing on the books in exchange for free or very low priced books.  I hope they understand that I work hard on the books and try to be entertaining because it's what I truly enjoy.  I hope they like the work.
So who did my covers for Bubba?
Me.  Nothing complicated.  A program called Gimp.  (Free software rules!)
May free enterprise never die.

COMMENT, damn you, COMMENT!

Okay.  It's cool.  I can live without comments.  (HIM, the man to whom I'm married, comments sometimes, but HIM doesn't really count.  HIM knows what I mean.)  However, one anonymous person out there felt the need to comment this, 'Fair words break no bones,' on the blog about 'Pain in the Ass Man OR How my Husband Invented a NEW IMPROVED Super Hero.'  (I know.  I know.  Is it fair to ask for comments if when I get them I then proceed to make them into a blog?  And possibly make fun of them, too.  Probably not.  But hey, it's my blog.  Haha.)
I'm going to center this comment and make it bold and make it a larger font and put it in color so everyone can see it, and absorb it, and let it soak in:

 'Fair words break no bones.'
I'm not sure.  Was that criticism?  Does this person think I'm insulting HIM, the man to whom I'm married?  I can assure you, Anonymous, that HIM reads 99% of my blogs before they are posted and HIM has not complained once.  HIM has never once said, "OH, Jesus Christ, Caren, don't write that!" or "For the love of gawd, that's TOO MUCH DAMN INFORMATION!" or even "WTFWYT, woman?"   As a matter of fact, I'm going to ask HIM to come in and type something just for Anonymous.  (I'd like to reassure Anonymous that HIM is psychologically and socially okay with my rantings and wry humor so Anonymous has a good day.  I'm having a sudden image of Anonymous skipping happily through the forest with a picnic basket holding hands with a cute blonde stripper.  Dude, I've got to get more sleep.)
Here is HIM's comment on the comment: 

"My wonderful, magnanimous spouse is the best woman in the world.  Her beauty exemplifies the word, 'beautiful.'  Her sarcastic wit thrills my ears.  Never shall she offend me by her satirical and mordant badinage.  I worship even her little toes.  As a matter of fact, I love her little toes to death.  When she dies her toes will be soaked in gilt and mummified."  (Okay, this isn't HIM's real words, but it's what he meant.)

I wish.  Okay, HIM just read the above and here's what he really says.  No, HIM isn't speaking, despite my entreaties to versify the matter.  HIM is staring at me in a way that indicates that HIM thinks I am amusing and that he is not going to comment.  So I'll ask HIM, "Did your feelings get hurt?"  "No," HIM said.  (Now HIM thinks I'm being silly and well, HIM may be right.)  So I ask, "Are you embarrassed by my blogging?"  "No," HIM said.  "Do you still love me?" I asked.  "Of course I do.  Where's the beer?" HIM said.

There.  See?  His bones aren't broken and actually HIM thinks most of my witty repartee is hilarious.  Good thing we're married.  (Keep in mind that HIM's birthday is coming up and HIM might be buttering me up for a better present.)
So when I put out the blog about Alternative Barbies and some of the illustrations got, shall we say, somewhat offensive, I thought, 'There.  People are going to comment about that.  For sure.'  So what did I get?  Nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Which leads me to put in this one just to shake things up.

Then of course I had to do this:

Oh, hell yes.  Fat Woman is on another roll.  Here's my nod to my daughter, Cressy:


I thought about doing something really offensive like painting a picture using my whoa-mammas as the paint brushes but then there was a moment of 'how do I get the paint off me when I'm done?' and that was the end of that.  Surely that would get comments.  (Isn't there an artist who paints with their ass?  Talk about paint removal issues.)  (Think about the names of the artistic works.  'Blue Ivory Blush Upon Crushed Umlatters.'  'Sprinkled Tatas Melting into Red Sienna.'  'Sweater Puppies Meet the Crimson Valley of Alizarin.'  I'm feeling inspired.)
So zooming off on a tangent, I actually looked on the Internet (Google and Bing ROCK!) and found several artists of a mammary gland nature.  Surprisingly enough some of them were very interesting.

Here's one who uses her 38DDs as a paint brush and sells her stuff on eBay: Kira Ayn Varszegi - Tata Artist
Not sure how she walks without falling
forward.Anyway, am I digressing?  Probably.  I really wouldn't want to scrub the paint out of every nook and cranny.  But here's one of her works and I'm having an issue trying to figure out how she does the details with her boobies.  (Her nipples must be like stiletto heels, I'm thinking.  Or is that just my dirty brain?  Let me ask HIM.)
 Anyway, I kind of like her work.  (Maybe she keeps a lot of ice on hand while she paints.)  (Think about it for a while, I'll still be here.)
How did I get from Barbies that should have been to painting with titties?  I'm not entirely certain.  Ah, yes, shock value.  Here's my final volley into the comment issue.  (My Sis said I shouldn't do it, but I felt compelled.  I mean, really, I had to do it.  It's awful, terrifying and wholly inappropriate but I was obliged.)
Be WARNED!
Not for those with sensitive stomachs or those lacking in resolute mettle.  This could be very frightening to the uninitiated.  Bet you didn't know Fat Woman was invited.  Did ya?