My grandfather has been real sick lately and Tuesday, the decision to put him in hospice care was finally made. My thoughts and emotions have been tumbling around inside of me like stones in a rock tumbler. While I have been quiet on the outside, inside the noise is deafening. I keep plucking memories from the tangle and holding them up to the light and letting the emotions wash over me.

Memories like—

• Wearing grandpa’s soft white undershirts for pajamas when I stayed the night at my grandparents’ house; the faint smell of bleach combined with the embrace of soft cotton always brings a smile
• Grandpa warming my small, icy hands between his large, calloused ones
• The way his eyes smiled bright whenever he unlocked the door to let us in
• The gift of the first two books that were ever completely and totally mine and were kept on a special shelf at his house in his ‘library’ room
• Grandpa bringing out brightly colored bottles of ‘bubbles’ on hot summer days
• Grandpa teaching me over and over again how to take care of my books. He reminded me repeatedly to not leave my books open or dog-eared to save my spot; instead a bookmark was mandatory
• And while I don’t remember the event itself, I’ve heard the story of how he taught me my first word, “bird”.

All these memories and more combined with more ephemeral feelings are clouding up my mind. So if I am a little quiet for a while, forgive me. I’ll be back to my usual overly-chatty self before you know it.

        

Really? I, the lowly bookseller in one store connected to a much larger mall,  is not going to know the answer to that. Aside from that the mall is closed every Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas with special hours on every other major holiday. These folks should have known to call at the very least before journeying in for a day of shopping. And for gosh sakes, don’t blame the shop-girl trying to sell a book or two during the middle of her Easter holiday.

But by far the best parts of my day were in the morning and the afternoon. I woke up at 6:30 am (missing my alarm for 3 am) to put the baskets together, imagining I heard the pitter patter of child feet with every crinkle of plastic. One of my children still believes in the bunny and I didn’t want to spoil that with my sleepiness.

Baskets ready, I spent a couple hours on my laptop before the first child (teen. Does that still count as a child?) made her appearance. Over the next hour, the other three kids gathered around. Then an hour doing Mad Libs and laughing with my children passed before I had to tear myself away to head for work.

After work, egg hunt time.

Finished the day out with dinner, some time researching family genealogy, and of course a new episode of Game of Thrones.

What a wonderful day. How was your Easter.

        

The black furry housecoat my husband wears is the exact shade of the kitty’s coat and I wasn’t reassured until I saw that it was man-shaped. I know, I know, I didn’t even think were-cat. What is wrong with me?

“Whatcha doin?”

“The icemaker is making a noise and it is driving me crazy. I am trying to get it to stop.” Did I mention my husband sleeps out in the living room on the recliner a lot? No, not because I kick him out of bed but because of his insane heartburn.

I reached into the freezer and fiddled with the thing and gave up after a mere 10 seconds. “I’ve got nuthin’.” And I turned around and went back to bed, hoping against hope that I could get another hour in before my alarm went off.

I did not get that hour and now I sit here in the living room (Hubby moved downstairs) listening to the icemaker make it’s noises (and they are normal noises, always were) and thinking about other sleepy-time adventures.

I have a history of sleepwalking. When my parents divorced when I was very young, I am told I spent the next year sleepwalking every night. I would toddle from room to room making sure everyone was where they were suppose to be. My mother told me this story and I have found that she exaggerated a lot of things but this one I believe because I still occasionally somnambulate. A few years ago, a friend was in our game room AKA back room playing some Magic: The Gathering with my husband after I had gone to bed.  His wife, who I had never met before, came to the front door with a crying two-year-old on her hip and knocked. Or so I am told. I got up from bed, let her in, and led her to the back room, and went back to bed with absolutely no memory of this. The next day at a birthday party, I met this lady for, what I thought, was the first time and was laughingly told differently.

That is just one very memorable instance of sleepwalking in recent years. Luckily, I don’t seem to leave the house while I am sleeping and I don’t do it very often anymore. A much milder form of it that I do much more often is talk in my sleep.

Talk in your sleep? you ask. No doubt thinking that that is normal. I do mumble and scream and yell in my dream state on occasion but I also hold entire conversations with folks in my sleep. I uphold my end of the conversation so well that folks have no clue that I am sleeping. Suddenly wishing I had cultivated this skill for use in the classroom. My children now have a firm rule that they can’t wake me up to ask permission to do something unless they are 100% sure that I am actually awake; longer conversations, getting me out of bed, the panicked breathless state that indicates I was awoken suddenly. My husband still insists on telling me the important things while I am asleep. “Work called and I have to go out of town.” My first clue that he is gone is when I can’t find his car in the garage the next morning.

Sigh.

And then there is the sleepy-time adventure my sisters still like to tease me about. I was 17 or 18, still living at home, when I heard my mother yelling in the middle of the night. I stumbled out of bed (weirdly enough, I wasn’t sleepwalking this time though I could have been for all the action I took) and found my mother and step-father in their robes yelling at a homeless (?) drunk (?) in our living room. It seems that this guy had gotten confused and wandered into our house—the front door was locked but the back was not—and liked the look of our couch.

So here I am with a stranger in our living room, in the middle of the night. Parents yelling. Stranger slurring his words loudly in response. And what do I do? I go back to bed.

Yep. No stranger danger for me in the middle of the night. I am too tired for concern and let my parents handle it. We could all have been murdered where we stood/lay but I wasn’t going to miss a minute of sleep. I am that dedicated to my rest. <nods sagely>

How ‘bout you? What sleepy-time hi-jinx do you get up to? And furthermore, can you remember them after you wake up?

        

Grown up, I’ve tried to revisit my childhood and have myself a butter and sugar sandwich. They are flat-out gross now. I could blame it on the bread. We eat wheat bread loaded with ‘stix & twigs’ as my friend likes to say. I could blame it on the real butter we use. The sugar is the only part that is the same but even that doesn’t taste like I remember it.

I blame it on the chef.

My mother made those sandwiches with the special love only a mother can put in food made for her child. Making them for myself will never be like those sandwiches from my childhood.

Bread and butter sandwiches are near the top of my list of things I’ve left behind with age. If I could time travel, I would go back to when I was five and living in the Dayton house and have another, homemade by mom.

And take the time to savor it before coming back.

        

She then told me that if I was going to maintain my “skipped-a-grade” status I couldn’t get any grades below a ‘C’. I had to stay above average or she would hold me back. Sounds like incentive to work hard on keeping my grades up. Right?

Wrong.

Getting B’s and A’s was easy. Oh so easy for me. I didn’t have to work at it. I could get by with minimal homework. Only two classes had me asking for help and actually *gasp* studying, chemistry and pre-calculus. Blech. I didn’t care about my grades as long as they weren’t C’s.

Even in college, these non-habits held me in good stead. As long as I attended classes, I could get good grades without cracking a book.

I am not telling you all this to brag but to bring up a point. I have awful, terrible, no-good work habits and now when I am trying to write stories and share them with others, I find I am trying to get by with the minimum needed for that pat on the back from my friends and family. People seem to enjoy my tales and it feels like they have given me a grade that is good enough to keep me going with little or no work from me.

Sigh.

These habits are hard to change twenty-five-ish years after I should have began forming them. I feel like those cartoons with the ginormous rock that they need to push up the mountain and they keep slipping back down. I want to push that rock up but it is so much easier to stay here at the bottom, back against the rock, butt on the ground.

So I say unto you: If you ever plan on working for yourself like writers do, do your homework now. Those habits will help you later. I promise.

Note: My mother told me about 12 years ago that my 5th grade teacher recommended I skip another grade and she declined. She thought it would put me too far behind socially. I sometimes wonder if I would have had to work harder in school if I had and so have those habits I so desperately wish I had now. Parallel universe time to find out.

        

• Annie and Auggie need to begin a romantic subplot on Covert Affairs. Their chemistry is my favorite part of the show so far.

• Writing outlines is hard. I usually am a seat-of-my-pants-type writer. A challenge/assignment for my writing group has us writing an outline for a novel due next Thursday and my brain keeps resisting it. I will do it!

• Abbie on NCIS is cool.

• Having my oldest child out of the country for the Fringe Festival makes me feel old. The first faint feelings of empty next syndrome are stirring in my heart.

• Cast in Chaos by Michelle Sagara is a great book. My one complaint with it had to do with the part just before the ending. Something about the way it was written made me feel almost like things went into slow motion. Can’t wait to hear more of Kaylin’s adventures.

• As Lie The Dead by Kelly Meding kept up the pace of the first book. Coming back from the dead never was so cool.

• Step Up 3D was a good movie but gratuitous 3D effects are annoying.

• Visiting amusement parks on a Saturday in August is not as fun as it may sound.

• And finally, keep your eye on the blankie. If you don’t, your son will make you go to extraordinary means to get it back.

        

I don’t have much to report unless you are interested in hearing about all the mommy duties and extra hours I worked this week. However there are a couple neat things to report.

Work

I work at the nook desk one to three times a week and this week was no exception. Monday the news came down that the price on “nook original” was being dropped and a new “nook lite’ was coming in and it’s price was even better. So lots to learn about at work and now nook is even more tempting. I find it incredibly easy to spend money and my job is one big temptation and they keep sweetening the pot.

Proud of my Brother

My baby brother graduated from Perry Technical Institute on Thursday and I am so proud. He has always struggled with school and to see him walk up in his cap and gown; receive his certificate; and walk with a smile on his face  was a great moment. My baby sister graduated last month and now the youngest of us (and there are 8 in the family) has made it through some form of higher education. It is a very cool moment for the family.

Hopefully next week will be a bit more interesting to share. At the very least I’ll be wishing you a Happy 4th. Have a good week.

        

Reading

Eat, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss: I’ve been reading this book during my breaks at work for the last few weeks and I finished it up today. I’ve been told several times “you should read it” and I finally did. It is a hilarious look at those pesky punctuation rules, trends, and history. I found myself laughing out loud, literally, many times. As an American, I also found it very interesting to look at writing from a British perspective. To sum up, you should read this book.

Writing

Writing group met this week and, while it wasn’t my turn to submit, I learned some things from the critiqued pieces. Both of them were too heavy on backstory, in my opinion; my stories have been lacking on the world-building, or at least on communicating the world building. I detest info-dump-type sharing of the setting and history of the story. I suppose in response to that I have been leaning too far the other direction and not sharing enough of the details of the setting with my readers. Seeing the other end of the spectrum was helpful. Maybe my writing will improve.

        

Reading

Daemon’s Mark by Caitlin Kittredge. The fifth in the Nocturne City series and another heroine shapeshifter. Luna Wilder is the main character in these books and she heads up the Supernatural Crimes Section of the police department. In this book, (despite the mistake on the cover blurb) Luna gets caught up in an investigation into a Russian sex slave ring. Young supernatural women are going missing and Luna is compelled to help them. An ex makes an appearance and her new boyfriend asks a question complicating Luna’s already full plate. This book is one I could not put down, and why would I even try? It is that good.

Revenant by Phaedra Weldon. Mental note: Ask Zoe Martinique how she keeps track of all her mental notes. Zoe Martinique started off this series as a plain old investigator who just happened to have the little talent of being able to go Out of Body (OOB) and spy on people incorporeally. Handy trick that. By this time, as a result of a connection with a certain Vin Diesal look-alike from the Abysmal plane, she is now Wraith. Wraith with a capital W, complete with scary black wings and killer bunny slippers on her feet. Irreverent and funny, Zoe’s friends are being threatened by a series of attacks on Revenants AKA vampires (but not the kind you’ve been reading about) and is off to save them. By the way, you can blame Zoe for my Sunday post being posted on Monday morning.

TV

Lie to Me. Cal is back in business, rooting out the liars and having fun doing it. In the season opener, Cal is after a serial killer. Everyone else doesn’t see it, but Cal pushes forward and proves himself right, again. Doctor Johnny Fever saw a UFO and his career was saved. Ok, so maybe it was the actor, Howard Hesseman, playing a professor who saw the UFO and as everyone thought he was crazy his career was in jeopardy. This show is one of my favorites. The team dynamic, the irreverent Cal, and the “who-done-it” aspects of this show hit all the right notes with me and I am happy it is back for the summer.

Good Guys. I’m on the fence about this new series. On one hand it is a cop and partner show. Two partners who are completely different are out there solving crimes. On the other hand it is a tongue-in-cheek spoof of a cop show, poking fun at the genre with a lot of strange, but funny, flashbacks.  ”I finally figured out how to use the computer machine.”–Dan Stark as he wedges the laptop into the car to hold down the accelerator.

Stargate SG-U. Wow. Season finale and it won’t be coming back until October. I think there were tears in my eyes when I knew how long it would be before I FOUND OUT WHAT HAPPENS TO EVERYONE! The season finale has the potential for new faces (and another faction) to be added to the Destiny. It also has the potential for several favorites to be leaving. I am loving this show and I am going to be counting the days until the next season starts.

Writing

You might think with all this reading and watching of the TV, I didn’t have time to write. You would be wrong. While my word count might not be that impressive, I did make progress on my current story. I am also seeing the path I want to start down with the next scene or two which is always nice. The path is fog shrouded and murky, and I think I hear some creepy music playing, but there is some excitement down there I can’t wait to explore.

Movies

Karate Kid. I told you that I wanted to see this movie and so I took the family with me to celebrate the kids’ last day of school. I really enjoyed it. There was enough of a balance between the familiar and new, that everyone could have fun with this movie. Jaden Smith has a lot of his dad in him (or at least a lot of what his dad shows on the screen) and Jackie Chan is, as always, awesome. Fun, fresh, and most importantly, this movie teaches kids to do their chores and respect their elders. You should see it.

How was your week? Any summer plans you are jumping into already?

        

Reading

I read Ilona Andrews‘ Magic Bleeds, fourth in the Kate Daniels series. I enjoyed this book, as I did all the others, greatly. The pacing, the voice of the character and author, the setting; all these things suck me in and keep me reading until the last page. And then looking for more pages and being disappointed when I couldn’t find any.

Writing

I turned in the first 10 pages of my rough draft for group and it was critiqued last week. I was hesitant to turn in something unfinished and so rough but I am determined to finish a novel length project this year and so I didn’t want to write a short story just for group. My critique raised a bunch of questions and pointed out some holes in the story so far that are helping generate new ideas. I will have to remember how that helped and try showing some pages to a close friend or two when I get stuck in this story.

Movies

My daughter begged for some time with me, asking to go see Letters to Juliet. Y’all know I wanted to see that movie and to spend time with my oldest daughter just sweetened the deal. Together we went and laughed and cried and enjoyed the story. The movie is fun and watching the relationships between Sophie and Claire, and Sophie and Charlie, develop was very entertaining. The one sour note for me was that I couldn’t believe Sophie had ever been in love with Victor, her fiance.

That was my week. How was yours?