Update on Dad

Well, it's not electrolytes, that's not what the doctors said. it's something electrical in the part of his brain that regulates blood pressure.

Which made me think of Greg of the Wiggles who was diagnosed with Orthostatic Intolerance. Hmmm....

They're going to do tests on my dad and have him lie down and then the bed will flip him upright and then they can monitor what it's like when he stands up.

Will my children

EVER and I mean EVER learn to start a sentence without saying, "Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?"
And then when I say "Yes?" they say, "Mommy?" and I say "WHAT?" and they say "Mommy? uh...."

On the good side of lame books

I just read an early work by Susan Andersen, who writes romance novels and romantic suspense. It was from the late 80's and even though the edition I read was updated in the early 00's it was still a stinker. I won't even tell you the title because really? Not worth it.

Could you PLEASE mention the heroine's dead sister another twenty times in the first ten pages? I don't think we've heard enough vague hints about how she's dead. Because you know, it makes the heroine sad and uptight. And wait, what? her sister died?

Anyway, this is not to mock the novel (well, maybe a little), but to point out that Susan Andersen has improved ENORMOUSLY since then. She's still not writing Capital-L-Literature or even the very best romance novels out there, but she has written a lot of them and they are good for a nice escape with you know, plot and character and foreshadowing that foreshadows instead of beating you over the head until you pass out.

And what the h??? is this with a Scottish guy as a cop from Seattle who has come to Reno to help with the investigation. And Anderson writes his lovely brogue into it and he calls everyone 'lass' and I was about to shoot him. And no mention of how he became a cop in the US after growing up in a Scottish orphanage. No mention of how he became a cop at all, really.

So anyway, I am extending the novel that I have been working on and trying to get rid of some deadwood in the middle (that I love a lot, but which doesn't drive the action or even the characters. It's nice stuff, just void of plot) and suddenly I have a new character in my head who's been sort of fidgeting around and who thinks that she'd like to make friends with my other characters, but you know, after they're married, so could she have her own story, please? And she's already married to her hero, but they don't know each other well, even after five years, and are both lonely.

So I've written 3470 words on the computer and another couple hundred on paper today.

On a different book.

But really, I AM going to finish the book I was working on before.

Jennifer Crusie, who is one of my favorite authors ever, had a first book (that was published second, I think?) called Sizzle that was.... well, average. She heartily discourages anyone from ever reading it and hopes that no one ever wants to reprint it. I managed to find a copy and it's.... average. Not even average maybe. The germs of greatness are in there, but whoooo.

And Jane Austen? Have you read Lady Susan? Pffffff.

And my whole point here was that even if it stinks big time, even if the second one stinks like dying fish in the local river on a hot afternoon with the water table low due to drought, it will be an early novel and I can get better. So stinky early novels aren't that bad, really :)

Person of the Day

In DS2's K/1 class, they have a different student as person of the day each school day. That student brings the snack for everyone, brings things for sharing (they aren't supposed to bring toys), and is in charge of the calendar and other such things at circle time.

DS2 was quite clear that his teacher told him that when he's person of the day, he is person of the day ALL DAY which means he gets to pick what's for dinner (sure, grilled cheese works for me). He was hinting that he needed a cake, too. Ah, hmmm... no.

Embarrassment of riches

I went to the library today and checked out 11 books that I had requested that had come in. About 5 or 6 are at the top of my must-read now list, which means that the book I started yesterday just went way down in importance, because I just am not getting into it.

I think I'm going to start with Lisa McMann's FADE. Though the next Sebastian St. Cyr (name of the character, not the author) novel is up there, vying for position. Or maybe the Arcane Society one by Jayne Ann Krentz that's been out for a while and I've been waiting for.

Now, if the Brockmann one had come in, it would win, but no sign of that one yet.

And then, I still have a dozen or more out from the library that I haven't read yet. They're all going ahead of finishing the one I started yesterday, I think...

ooooooh my head

My friend brought her two boys and two pizzas over and we're taking care of the boys and eating the pizza while she and her husband get some stuff unpacked and shifted around and moved and so on.

And lordy, but boys who are 6, 7, 8, and 9 years old are loud and goofy and uncontrolled. My head almost exploded just from eating dinner with them. A certain one of them is just loud for the sake of loudness because he gets really really wound up. The biggest problem is that he shouts over the top of anything anyone else tries to say, especially my DS1.

The baby was all wound up and ready to take a nap before they got here and well, there's no way she's going to sleep until they're gone. I'm hoping she'll just go down for the night and not for a nap that ends at 8 pm and then she's up until 11 or midnight. She ate a lot of pear at supper, so half her problem was that she was hungry.

So now they're starting in on saying butt and stupid. SIGH.

Sort of embarrassing.

(Especially because I have a hard time spelling embarrassing)

I read 34 books in February.

Many were lightweight, I have no problem admitting that. Some of them were a lot more serious and harder to read, I have to add in my own defense.

So that's, um, a lot of books.