Amy Sumida's Blog, page 8

Human is as human does

I've been getting into this new series called Almost Human. It comes on Mondays nights and I'm actually waiting for it to start as I write this post. The reason for my fascination isn't merely that it's a great story, it's that one of the characters in it reminds me of one of the characters in my books.
The series is set in the future where cops are assigned robot partners except the hero of the story gets assigned an older version of the robots that was created to feel emotions, to be almost human.
This character reminds me so much of Torrent, my little Pinnochio who was created by a god with parts of himself and Internet energy. One of the issues I address with him often is that of what's real. What makes us real people? Is it blood and flesh or is it our emotions and the way respond to those around us?
I know this is a fictional argument but it resonates with me and I think it works on many levels, racism and animal abuse are two that come immediately to mind. Ironically, it seems to be a human trait to think of others different than ourselves as not human. Does the color of our skin change our ability to love or be loved. Does a body covered in fur or feathers make it okay for others to hurt us or treat us as property? I could keep going but I'm sure you've got the idea. So I leave you with the words of the great bard and also of Torrent: If you prick us, do we not bleed?

Update for The Godhunter Series

Just a quick note to let all of my readers know that yes, I am working on the next two books in The Godhunter Series. Vervain's adventures are continuing, much to her chagrin and my delight. I hope to get them out within the next three to four months but I will keep you all updated and publish as soon as possible. The working title for the next books in the series split are Cross My Heart & And Hope To Die. Cross My Heart will be book 10, following Vervain through the God/Human Realms and And Hope To Die will be book 11, following her through the Faerie Realm. Thank you all for your wonderful reviews and support. You keep me inspired and most importantly, keep me writing.

Thunderstorms and Thundercats

I can definitely tell it's December in Hawaii, we've barely had a dry day in over a week. My house actually gave up the fight for a random five minutes the other night when it decided to spring a leak at the juncture where one of my rooms adjoins another. It gushed and gushed and then just stopped. This is why I have ferns growing out of my roof... yes, my roof. My house is so old that sometimes I think the roots of those ferns are the only thing holding my roof on.
So for those of you who actually read this blog, you'll know all about my little cat colony I have living under my fern ridden house. For those who don't or don't remember, I had a pregnant female move in recently and had to go through the arduous task of getting her and her five children fixed so they wouldn't start multiplying like trebbles(tribbles? I don't know). Anyway, they've stuck around and are finally getting friendly and allowing me to pet them...while they eat. So I decided to try naming one.
The one I chose to name was of course the rattiest of the bunch(I have a thing for misfits). He's a black cat with yellow eyes who cries when he sees his mother. He also caught a cold recently with all the bad weather and has had a rather bad run of it.
So I looked at this cat and thought, he's a beautiful yet creepy guy with Mommy issues. I'll name him Dexter. and in the way of all male cats, he seems to know that he's been named and assumes this means that he's also been claimed and therefore entitled to special treatment.
Even when all the other kitties are gone, Dexter is sure to be found lurking somewhere around my house. Maybe it's just because I pulled that feather off his nose(it was firmly attached with kitty snot-I told you he had a cold- and took a bit of pulling to get loose). Anyway, I found him crying on my porch the other day in the midst of the worst rainstorm. The food dishes had been soaked and scattered by the wind and Dexter was sitting there waiting for me, soaked as well. If you've never seen a wet crying kitten, you have no idea what pathetic is.
So I felt really bad for him and fed him some special wet food in the garage. I know, as if he weren't wet enough already but trust me, it was a treat he won't forget because the next day he was right at my door when I came out in the morning, crying at me and trying to look as pitiful as possible. That cat's playing me like a fiddle. Under that pathetic ragged kitten exterior lies a Thundercat who knows a sucker when he sees one. Oh well, I used to love that show.
Thundercats, Ho!

The Series Split is Here!

I am thrilled to announce that the first two books in my Godhunter series slit are finally published and on sale on Amazon.com. This is a momentous occasion for Vervain and me and I've been so excited to finish the books and get them out there.
With her father's ring, the Ring of Remembrance, Vervain is able to travel through time. There are limitations involved but she finds that she can use it to return to the same time that she's left a realm. So when she leaves the God Realm to visit Faerie, she can return to the God Realm at almost the exact moment she left it. This allows her to be in both realms continuously.
A friend of mine(Krystal) who reads/edits all of my books for me, suggested that because of this, I should split the series and do one full book in the God Realm and one in Faerie. I loved the idea and decided to take it one step forward. Vervain travels from the God Realm to Faerie several times in the books and the reader has the option of either traveling with her(jumping from one book to the other) and experiencing things as Vervain does, or they can read the books separately.
So they're finally finished and they even have split covers that I painted myself. They form a complete picture when you lay them side by side. I'm so excited to release them and I hope all of you enjoy them as much as I've enjoyed creating them.
They are Harvest of the Gods and A Fey Harvest.Harvest of the GodsA Fey Harvest

In Sickness and in Hell

I'm blessed to have two living grandmothers and they are as different as night and day. I've nicknamed them Spike for my paternal grandmother and Fluffy for my maternal. Yet as different as they are, they have both recently tortured me in similar ways.
I started feeling under the weather last Tuesday. By the next day I was really feeling bad but I'd promised Fluffy that I'd take her to the bank. So I didn't tell her I was ill, figuring it would be a quick jaunt, down the street and back. I actually live in a little apartment beside Fluffy's house so this wasn't a big deal for me.
However, once in the car she starts to list off more errands she'd like to do. "Oh, I need to go to Walgreens," she says. And then it's PetCo for cat food, then Safeway for groceries. By the time she's got all her groceries in the wagon at Safeway, I'm about ready to keel over and she hasn't noticed my distress at all. This from the same woman who moans and sighs all day and gets upset if you don't ask after her health...because you know, she may be dying. Finally, she looks at me and asks if I'm okay.
"No," I say. "I'm not, I'm feeling sick, are you about done?"
Well that got us out of there finally and I went home and sank happily into my bed, all set to rest while she looked after my cats, Sebastian and Dominic, for me. No more than ten minutes after I snuggled down with a heating pad, she comes knocking on my door. I climb down out of bed(my bed is lifted quite high) and open the door to find a very discombobulated Fluffy.
"Sebastian pushed his way out of the screen door," she says. "Then he went around the fence."
I throw on my clothes with a heavy grown and pad out to our neighbor's house, where Fluffy said Sebastian made his escape to. After getting permission to scour their property, I plod down their extreme hill and into their back yard where I find Sebastian contentedly eating grass under their car. He comes out immediately, having no idea that he's done wrong, and I pick him up and carry him back up the hill.
Having failed at cat sitting, I no longer trust Fluffy to watch my babies so I take both boys back into my house and close the door on the world. The next day I discover the amazing magic of Emergen C and start feeling much better but I find that I now have insomnia and am unable to fall asleep until 7am, a situation that would have been fine if the next day didn't happen to be my niece's birthday party which started at noon.
Grandma Spike was kind enough to wake me up with a phone call at 11am and come and pick me up for the party. On the way there she regaled me with stories of people I don't know and frankly, at that moment, didn't care about, including one about her friend Edith who she'd been helping move to the mainland. Edith has a cat named Charlie who Spike felt strongly about introducing me to. Evidently I'm the cat expert in the family and all cats must be introduced to me for inspection.
I tried to tell her about my recent success on Amazon, how well my book was selling and that I'd actually peaked at an author ranking of 18,ooo(to give you an idea of how great this is, I started out in the 500,000 zone). She nodded and then started in about Edith's furniture. Furniture! Fine, whatever. I was too tired to be upset.
We go to the party, which is a pool party no less, and sit the required amount of time eating pizza and watching children spit all over the cake while trying to blow the candles out. Then we finally head home and we are about to take the exit to take us back to my house when she suddenly veers off into another direction declaring that we must go to Edith's house so I can meet her cat!
"Grandma," I say in a tired voice(I've already told her I've only had four hours of sleep and have been sick so she doesn't have the excuse that Fluffy did of not knowing)"I don't want to meet the cat."
"It'll just take a moment," she insists and as she's driving, I can hardly do anything else about it.
We get to this ghetto apartment building and pull up the one lane that goes practically vertical, so we can enter the parking structure, only to find that someone else has parked in Edith's spot.
"Oh well," I declare, "let's just go home."
"No, I'll just park on the street," she says and point out a spot across the four lane street from us.
I have to add at this point that Spike is the worst sort of elderly driver. She's the woman who causes accidents and then just drives on unknowingly. Every time I enter her car I wonder if I'll live to see a new day. Half the time she's driving, she's focused on me instead of the road, gesturing wildly with her hand as her other hand(holding the wheel) follows along and swerves us about willy nilly, forcing other people to careen out of our way. Now this woman has decided to cross four lanes of traffic to parallel park in a small space just so I can meet a cat.
We barely make it across and pull up to the spot, where she comes to a stop without putting on her turning signal to give the driver behind us any idea of what the hell we are doing. She looks at the spot and declares that she can't fit, then takes off, almost ramming the poor guy who has now gone around us. Once again she swerves across the street and pulls up in front of the building, parking not only in front of a fire hydrant but an inch away from a crosswalk.
"Grandma, you can't park here," I declare.
"I won't be long," she says and marches up to the building, using the dangerous single lane car entrance instead of the stairs because her hip hurts. I sigh and follow her up to this lady's smelly apartment to meet a sweet but dirty feline who looks at me with eyes clearly pleading for help.
I scratch his face and shake my head. Sorry, Charlie, you're stuck with the old broad. Then, while I'm distracted by the cat, Spike invites Edith along to ride with us back to my house. I follow unwillingly back to the car, thinking I'll get into the back seat and go to sleep. But no, Spike comes up and whispers to me to put Edith in the back, she doesn't want her riding up front with her. What the hell? Why invite the woman along if you don't want to talk to her.
Then we start heading back and Edith starts shooting questions at me from the back seat... starting with what do I think of her cat. WTF is up with this damn cat? I tried to answer her but it turns out that Edith is hard of hearing so she just keeps asking me the same question until Spike tells me I have to yell at her. So now I'm exhausted, on the verge of a relapse, shouting at an old woman in the back of a car as we speed down the highway, swerving into other lanes each time Spike gestures too effusively.
Miracle of miracles, I make it home in one piece but now Spike wants to bring her friend out to meet Fluffy and show her my cats! No, I was done. I told them my cats are shy around strangers and left them to their old lady hugs as I went for another glass of Emergen C and then headed to bed.
There's nothing like the Hell that family can put you through.

Catastrophe Averted

Finally I can breathe a sigh of relief. It's been months since this whole cat ordeal began with the simple feeding of a stray cat, which led to her having babies and bringing them around to eat. Oh, the terrible and evil cuteness of kittens. I wanted to round them up and take them to the Humane Society so they could be adopted but their mother had other plans for them. She hid them and taught them to be wary around us and now they're too feral to adopt, though they are starting to warm up to me. So instead of adopting them out, we decided to catch them all and have them neutered. Easier said than done, and if you've read my past blogs you know how much hoops I had to jump through with the Humane Society to get these cats fixed.
We caught all but the mother, some of the kittens being stupid enough to get caught numerous times, and I despaired that we'd never catch her and she'd go and get herself knocked up again, thus starting the cycle all over. I had nightmares of being smothered in an ever growing tide of kittens like the episode of Star Trek with the tribbles(is that even spelled right? I'm not a trekkie).
Anyway, last Saturday was our last chance of catching mama cat as our rental of the cat trap is up tomorrow and the only appointment they had left was Sunday. I had previously stayed up till 6am trying to catch mama cat to no avail so I was not hopeful in my endeavor but I'm happy to report that finally, at 2am, I was successful and caught that willy kitty. She has been fixed and the cycle has been stopped. Though she gave me an angry glare when I released her, she had no problem coming back five minutes later to eat the food I put out for her. I am so relieved, I can sleep once more. Now I get to name the kittens, we have four boys and a girl...I was thinking Dexter.

Frustrating Felines

So awhile back we started feeding a stray cat that was coming around the house. He knew a good deal when he saw one and brought his girlfriend for a cheap dinner. Then in typical male fashion, he knocked her up and took off, leaving us to take care of his mess.
The mama cat gave birth to five adorable kittens but when I found her birthing nest, she took off with them and hid them until they were old enough to bring around to eat solid food. By this time they had turned feral and are too wary of humans to take in to the Human Society to be adopted. So now we are feeding six cats.
Luckily, the Humane Society has a wonderful catch and release program for feral cats in which you can bring a cat in to be neutered and microchipped and they will give you back the cat to release back into the wild. My cousin and I decided that we would get them all fixed before we had our own cat colony living under the house. So we went down to the Humane Society to get a trap which you can borrow from them for a deposit of $100.
I thought this was a bit steep, especially since you are expected to pay for every neuter and microchip in the amount of $25. But it needed to be done and the deposit was refundable when you returned the cage.
So we go down there and meet two of the most annoyingly stupid girls I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. First, after telling them the purpose for our visit, one of them immediately starts drawing up paperwork, even while I'm still asking questions.
Evidently the Humane Society doesn't want people to use their program because they seem to make it very hard for you to do the right thing. I told the girl we had a mama and five kittens but she said not only could we only bring in one cat per cage, we could only get one cage per household. I signed up separately from my cousin so we were able to get two cages at least, bringing our total trips to the Humane Society down to eight, one to pick up the cages, six to drop off and then pick up the cats, and one to return the cages.
When asked if I could give my receipt to my cousin so she could return my cage, I was told an emphatic no. Then, when I told her we weren't sure if the mama cat was pregnant again and would they be able to tell? And if so, they wouldn't fix her, right? The girl ignored my question completely and instead asked for my phone number. I repeated it, stating that she could just hold her horses on the paperwork until all of my questions were answered. Finally the other, less stupid girl, answered me, saying that no they would not operate on a pregnant cat but let's just say I wasn't convinced.
After all of this, the first stupid girl announces that there are no appointments until Thursday(it's Monday and the cage rental is only for a week). My cousin tells her that she spoke with someone on the phone who had assured her that there were appointments available for the very next day.
"No," says stupid girl, "that can't be right."
"Call Susan," says the less stupid girl.
So she gets on the phone and finds out that there are appointments available for both Tuesday and Thursday.
"But it's Tuesday, so you'll have to wait till Thursday, like I said," she says snarkilly.
"Actually, it's Monday," my cousin says.
The girl just looks at us blankly until the less stupid girl says, "Yeah, it's Monday."
"Okay, fine, I'll put you down for an appointment for Tuesday."
"So, tomorrow," my cousin says.
"Tuesday," says stupid girl.
"Which is tomorrow," my cousin persists.
"Yeah whatever," stupid girl says. "So you want one appointment?"
"We're getting two cages," I growled. "You just did our paperwork. How many appointments do you think we'll need?"
Another blank look.
"They need two appointments?" Less stupid girl says to her.
I'm told by my cousin that when she took the kittens in the very next day, which was a Tuesday by the way, the same stupid girl was working and her first question was:
"Do you have an appointment?"
"I have two," my cousin said.
Then the girl asks her what the cat's names were. They're feral, my cousin says, they don't have names. On top of all this, my cousin gets off work at 4pm but they won't let you pick up the animals until 6pm because they might be groggy. So basically, they feel that it's better for the cats to be groggy in an unknown terrifying place rather than at home where we could at least put them outside near their family.
I have never been so disappointed and angered by the Hawaiian Humane Society before.
To top it all off, we got all the kittens done but mama cat is just to willy to be caught. She looks at the cage and turns away, while those kittens get caught multiple times. Sigh, one little one was caught three times in one night, she wasn't even scared anymore, just sat in the cage and ate the food there. I guess she figured the worst had already been done.

This Old House

So right on the tail of my run in with a termite ridden bookshelf, I've had another piece of my home fall to pieces. This time it was my door.
The apartment I live in was an add on built by my Grandfather before I was born. It has two levels to it but they are only accessible from outside so I have two front doors. The downstairs door has been slowly falling apart until a panel finally just fell right off it, leaving a big hole in my door. Actually, at this point my door is more hole than door but I digress.
It was recommended to me that I go to a shop that sells recovered pieces of buildings. A very eco-friendly and economic way to replace my door. So I and a friend went down to this place called ReUse It.
It was fabulous, having everything from hasps to telephone poles and the people who worked there were friendly and very helpful despite the sensation of being roasted alive inside the large metal warehouse.
I felt very prepared with my measurements of my door and my handy dandy tape measure in my purse and we found a wide assortment of doors for sale. I found one with the perfect measurements I needed and hefted it onto an empty cart. However, while I was there I thought I'd look for a door for my Grandmother who's been wanting to replace one of her doors as well. I found just what she was looking for but it was an inch too long.
Then an employee comes by so we ask him if they would cut off that pesky inch for us there. Oh no, they didn't have the tools for that in their massive warehouse workshop and yet he was surprised that I didn't have a circular saw just sitting around my tiny cluttered home.
"You just make a straight cut," he said as if it was the easiest thing in the world. "And then you shellac the hell out of it."
"I'd really rather not," I said, looking at the length of solid oak door. "I think I can hang a door but cutting into it is a different matter."
Then he tells me not to underestimate the difficulty of hanging a door and that you actually must be trained to do this.... and yet he thinks I can handle a circular saw no problem. What proceeded afterward was a ridiculous performance I wish I could re-enact for you. Alas, I'm limited to words so I shall try my best to describe it.
"Have you measured the door you have there?" He asks, pointing to the door I've already chosen.
"No," I point to the tag taped to the door with the measurements on it. "The measurements are right here."
"Oh, but those could be off," he shook his head as if he didn't work there and wasn't directly responsible for said measurements. "You should do your own measuring."
"Ok," I whip out my tape measure but now he feels left out.
"Oh, no, I'll get it," he says and measures the door which is indeed much wider than its tag had stated. "Oh that won't do."
He got the measurements I needed and went searching for a better door.
"Now what's the swing on the door?" He asked as he looked through the assortment of doors lined up.
"Swing?" I blinked at him.
"From which side does it pull out?" He stops and comes to stand in front of me.
"Oh," I say. "If you were standing outside the house, this is the way it would open," I mimed pulling a door open from right to left.
"Like this?" He asks and does the opposite.
"No," I say, "from right to left."
"Say I'm the door," he holds himself straight. "Which way would you move me to open me?"
I grab his left arm and swing him out toward his right. He turns around and does the opposite maneuver.
"Like this?" He asks.
"No," I put his back as he was, "like this," I pull him open again.
"Like this?" Again he does the wrong movement.
My friend is meanwhile standing off to the side watching our little comedy routine with great appreciation.
"Why are you not getting this?" I asked and replaced him. "Like this, its the opposite of what you were doing."
"Oh, like this?" He again does the same motion.
"No," now my friend has had enough and she's got involved. "This way."
Still he doesn't understand.
"There are only two ways to open it," I shook my head. "It's the way you're not doing."
"Which side are the brackets on?" He finally asks.
"If you're on the outside of the house," I say with relief. "They're on the left."
"Oh, ok," he wandered off to the doors again. "Here's a couple."
I just looked at my friend and shook my head.
Good news is we did end up finding a door, it was an old inner door because they don't make outer doors at the width that my Grandfather had made ours, but it was an old door and therefore a very solid one. I'll have to put a padlock on it since it doesn't have a handle that can be replaced easily and the only lock on it can't be opened with a key but I was happy to find a door and they very nicely carried it out to my car for me, all for fifty bucks.
I'll get back to you on whether I'm able to hang it.

The Price of Paradise

All of you who live in Hawaii know that although we are blessed to live in such a wonderful place, the cost of paradise is high. Real estate is crazy, groceries alone are expensive enough to make you starve, and the price of gas has gone through the roof. Along with all of this, we have the pests of paradise. Without the harsh winter cold to kill off or at least hibernate the bugs, we have gigantic cockroaches, mosquitoes, and termites. It's the latter on the list that I've had a recent run in with.
I live in an old house and we've been battling those wood-munching menaces for years. Lately though I've been hearing them at night, crunch, crunch, crunch. I thought they were in the wall next to my bed but I haven't found any sections of macerated wood. Then, last night, I hear them again. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Ugh! I run and get the bottle of termite spray and sit with my ear pressed against the wall, trying to determine where exactly the damn things are.
My cat Dominic thought this was the best game ever and came over to help me by pressing his face into mine while I sat there listening for the tell-tale munch of the tiny monsters. Finally, I realized that the sound wasn't coming from the wall at all but instead from my bookshelf on the wall. I pressed my finger into the underside of the shelf and lo and behold, it gave way, an avalanche of termite droppings falling out.
Agh! I screamed again. I pulled all of my books and chatzkis off the shelf and redistributed them around my house so I could remove the entire contaminated piece and throw it out. It's better than having the wall infected but now, I ask you, where do I put my collection of Nightmare Before Christmas figures and my collection of Tokidoki Unicornos? Sigh, paradise lost.

Alienating Aliens

So I was at a party the other night. There were a lot of military men there and one was a husband of a friend of mine. He starts telling us how he was asked(at work) what one object he would send to an advanced alien civilization to represent the human race. He says a sword because humans are the best at killing each other. I was shocked but even more shocking was the round of support he got from the other military men there.
I don't know if this is a male thing or a military thing but I thought it was horrible thing to say. Yes, humans kill each other and yes, we've gotten so good at it that we're afraid to use our best weapons for fear of destroying the whole world. Also, I admit that there was a moment, while watching the movie 2012, that when LA fell into the sea, I internally applauded a bit. But I found two things wrong with advertising this to an alien species. Number one, it's probably not the best idea to tell an advanced race that all humans are good for is killing. Unless you want aliens to come to our planet and wipe us out for the greater good. Number two, although humans can be some of the most evil creatures ever made, we can also be some of the most generous, kind, enlightened beings who are prone to great acts of kindness and sacrifice. However, when I mentioned this I was summarily shot down. I recalled the plane brought down by the passengers on 9/11 and you know what I was told? That it was actually brought down by the government. Evidently, the mass amount of phone calls people made to their loved ones telling them goodbye, that they loved them, and that that they were taking down the plane to save lives was all just a huge conspiracy to make the people into heroes. This was from my friend, not her military husband by the way. How cynical have we become that it's easier to believe the government shot down a plane full of innocent people and then covered it up, rather than believe that people can be heroic?
If you know me, you'll know I can be very cynical and I choose not to watch the news because it makes me more so, but still I believe that Love will always outweigh Hate and that people are born with an innate sense of what is right and wrong, and they generally want to do the right thing. I don't believe for one second that we're born killers or that the human race's best accomplishment is the act of warfare. Yes, our history is full of war and we have many men in it who are esteemed for their leadership abilities during battle but the history books focus on things like that, just like the news. Maybe we should start writing new history books, chronicles of the good things humans do. I know that personally, I could contribute a great many stories of acts of kindness, self-sacrifice, and love that I've witnessed(no government conspiracies there). Like when Sacred Falls(a waterfall valley on Oahu) caved in and several men went running back into the still falling rubble to try to save people who were stuck in the rocks. Some of those guys didn't make it back out.
We are capable of great love, not just great hate, and I think people would be much happier if they remembered that. They challenged me the other night to come up with a list of non-war related people who are historic figures and before i could even answer, I was cut off with a "And don't tell me Ghandi and Mother Teresa cause that's all there is." Since I wasn't given a chance to give my list then, I'd like to offer it to my readers now, in the hope that you may focus on this in the future instead of the violent heroes others tend to promote. So here it is, and just to get them out of the way, I'll start with the two previously mentioned:
Mahatma Ghandi
Mother Teresa
John Lennon
Dalai Lama
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nelson Mandela
Siddhartha Gautama
Confucius
Jesus Christ(This one was actually mentioned by my friend's husband who said "Jesus Christ, look at all our heroes, they're all violent men" I thought that was particularly funny and I pointed out that he just mentioned a great man who was not violent in that very sentence)
The list could go on and on, I'm sure I could find a lot just by googling Nobel Peace Prize winners but I think I've made my point. There are a great many respected people who are not known for acts of war. Let's stop promoting hate and in the words of the great John Lennon let's "Give peace a chance". Because I really don't want to be killed by aliens.