Summer Reading

This summer, I bought two books.  One of them I bought from Amazon and had delivered to my house.  The other one I bought for a $1.25 at the dollar store.  Guess which one I liked better?

The book I bought from Amazon was Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella (as in Sophie Can-sell-a lot of books!  Ha!  Well, I thought it was funny).  Anyway, I have normally been a fan of hers but I couldn’t finish reading this one.  It seemed like it was all about whether or not you should have sex before you get married.  Not to be intensely snotty, but I thought she wrote books for adults and haven’t adults already figured out their answer to this question?  So, I was intensely bored and … I didn’t have an ounce of sympathy for any of the characters.  Not a big deal.  Now I have to go through the trouble of pawning it before the Wee Book Inn stops accepting hardbacks.

The other book I bought at the dollar store.  I picked it up and was immediately inspired.  It was by a lady named Christina Spence (the happy slob (she’s from Calgary – woo!)) who wrote a book on housekeeping called No Hassle Housecleaning.  I’ve been reading a little from that book every day and my house has been looking better and better for it.  I mean, I have used all sorts of methods to get my house clean and keep it clean, but she’s so optimistic and cheery and her advice has really been working for me.

I think I should just forget about reading fiction.  I know that’s hideously hypocritical coming from a novelist who writes fiction, but I get so much more out of non-fiction.  L.M. Montgomery often references people in her books who think fiction is a waste of time and they are characters you are meant to like - like the hero (Barney Snaith … I love Barney Snaith!), which shows I’m not barking mad.  And there’s also Morton Harket (A-ha) who, when asked what he listened to on the radio answered that he didn’t listen to the radio, because ‘he needed that space for other thoughts.’  I could go on. 

The thing is I do really well with do-it-yourself books.  I’ve had numerous success stories, but I don’t have that kind of positive repercussion when I read a novel.  A lot of times when I read a novel, I know where the writer is coming from.  I know how they did their research and where they got the information they’re using.  Often times, I make my guesses and then read the acknowledgement section afterwards to have my suspicions verified.  I find authors very transparent these days.  And sometimes I’m really sad about it.  I used to read all the time and I found it very exciting. 

On the upswing, I hate cleaning my house less, so that’s good news.

Quarter Life Crisis

So, I took a break last week.  I didn’t update Whenever You Want.  I sat around and moped.  Actually, I wish I could say I sat around and moped.  I didn’t.  I got so busy that I forgot all about Thursday updates and then when I sat down to do it on Friday my hubby asked what I was doing.  “Thursday updates!” I said cheerfully.  “It’s Friday,” he said.  All the blood ran out of my face.  “Well, what’s the point now?  Wah!”  It went something like that.  Yeah, I was so busy, I missed a day.  Anyhoo, here’s today’s update.

So, I keep hearing people talk about their ‘quarter life crisis.’  Luckily, it’s not anything I hear out of any of my acquaintance’s mouths.  A mid-life crisis seems to be when you’re around 47 and you realize that you’re half way done your life and either a) you haven’t done anything; or b) you don’t want to admit that you’ll die so you start acting like an idiot teenager so you can feel like you’ve turned the clock back. 

I’ve decided that a quarter life crisis has more to do with your looks then your lifespan.  You’re 25 and you realize you only have ten more years of being cute and then you’ll start to get crows’ feet and laugh lines.  And you won’t be able to play a teenager on the Disney Channel anymore. 

Personally, I think these people are strangely misguided.  They think they stop being cute at 35ish (maybe 45 with surgery).  I disagree.  I think people stop being cute after their baby teeth start to fall out.  So, the window of chibi cuteness is from about age one to six.  But then you have the humiliation of being in a diaper.  So, let’s say you get potty trained on your third birthday (a little optimistic there).  That makes four years, maybe three, of being cute. 

So, to celebrate hideous adulthood, I would like to provide a list of adult pleasures that have absolutely nothing to do with looks.

1.      Having a drivers’ license.  Even if the cop shouts, “Agh!  What is that thing?” when you roll down your window, he can’t give you a ticket for being funny looking.

2.      Being employed.  You may not have a lot of money, but at least you get to decide what’s done with it.  You get to pick your own cheap apartment.  Do you want the one with the dishwasher that has the chalk outline and blood stain on the living room rug or the one with bars on the windows the size of postage stamps and no blood stain?

3.      Remote control control.  Yes, you get to decide what to watch.  No one is making you watch that documentary on fleas.  You decided that for yourself.

4.      No more gym class.  I know, too easy.

I could go on.  But I’d rather go outside and weed.  You don’t have to be cute to weed. 

The King of the Babies

So, I met the King of the Babies.  I’ll bet you’re wondering who he is.  Well, let me tell you about him. 

First of all, everything he says is inaudible.  It’s like when a doctor is writing a prescription and their handwriting is illegible.  The pharmacist inevitably has to call the doctor’s office for confirmation, but the line is busy and it’s never free, so they guesstimate.  It’s like that.  You can’t understand anything he says, so you guess.  If you get it wrong, his face will curl up and he’ll cry.  And for non-tyrannical reasons, you’ll be sorry you made him cry.

Next, the King of the Babies finds everything amusing.  You can tell him that he’s about to get a shot in the leg for various diseases.  You can even list them and tell him the symptoms of each, but he’ll just smile at you and blink cutely.  You can even go further than that and tell him about the car crash you just passed and the reason why they are cleaning off the street, but no matter what horrible thing you tell him you cannot disturb his tranquility.  He’s like the Buddha.

 

The King of Babies is also waited on hand and foot.  He has someone to bathe him, dress him, feed him, and play with his feet (when he’s too tired to reach them).  This may make him sound like a demanding master, but that’s far from the reality.  He doesn’t need a helicopter to fly him out to a hotel resort to have a good time.  As stated before, he is quite content to play with his own hands or feet, without bothering anyone.  He doesn’t even need movie tickets.

It goes without saying that the King of Babies is very popular among his subjects.  Who are his subjects?  Why, anyone he meets.  He’s soft and warm and draws a crowd.  They don’t kiss his ring (that would be a choking hazard), but they kiss the top of his fuzzy warm head.  And people never say a word against him because he is completely bald. 

Like most people, the King of Babies likes to travel; but, unlike most people he doesn’t care if he gets anywhere.  He is totally comfortable going in circles around a single room, where there isn’t much to see.  He also likes riding in a car even though his car seat is rear facing allowing him only to see the back of the captain seat his seat is strapped to.  He isn’t even allowed a view of the passing scenery, as his seat points him toward the sky rather than the road.

In short, the King of Babies is very short.  And everything about him calls for everyone and anyone to come and love him.  I fell for him too.

Right Random

After my random blog last week, I realized I had a lot of other random observations that I didn’t have enough room for.  So, here’s week of randomness number two.  Let’s see how long y’all will put up with this.

So, besides the joy of having everyone look directly at your butt as you walk away, I have yet another reason why all of us should have writing on the seat of our pants at all times.  I have one pair.  They are pajama pants with the name of a place I visited.  No, they don’t say ‘juicy’ on them or ‘if you can read this, you don’t need glasses.’  But every time I wear them, I unavoidably have my rear end touched a few times – by a toddler who is trying with his limited understanding of the alphabet to figure out what it says.  He’s tracing the letters.  ‘Mommy!  It’s an H.’  He’s so proud.

As another reason to celebrate, my neighbors are yet again reminding me that I need to mow my lawn.  They do this only by mowing theirs.  When I look down the block, I realize that I am the only one who has not mowed their lawn in the last 20 minutes, so I’m way behind the times.  This happens in the winter too.  I get up all bristly before 7:30 a.m. to shovel my sidewalk after last evening’s snowfall only to find that my neighbor on either side (both seniors – one has a wheelchair ramp) have beaten me to the punch.  Grrr!  Did one get up and do it 3:00 a.m. and the other at 4:00 a.m.?  Am I always going to feel like the slob on the block?  They even run ads on the radio in Edmonton reminding people to shovel their neighbor’s walk for them if they’re seniors.  How can I when they get theirs done first?  They’re gloating from their front windows.

Actually, I really like my neighbors.  One of them has this tree in their front yard that is seriously the ugliest tree I have ever seen.  It’s looks like Cinderella who was once dressed up for the ball, but changed back into her rags and then got mud splashed on her a couple dozen times on the walk home.  That may seem like a strange comparison, but if you saw how it droops, you’d understand.  The other day I was out pruning my nesting spruce, thinking about a) how ugly that tree was, b) how hot it was, and, c) how nice the shade was.  I looked up and it was that ugly tree shading me.  I love it when I figure out I’m wrong before someone has to embarrass me by telling me.

 

If I do another random thought post next week and it is quite probable, I’m going to tell y’all about the space lake.

Summer Solstice Scurry

I think in my greed for summer weather, I tend to forget that it comes with a price.  The price is a break from the routine.  Of course that means that I didn’t get my blog posted last week.  I just decided to let it slide.  I can’t be Super Woman all the time. 

Today’s blog will be about a few random things. 

First off, can you believe William Shatner’s reaction to them not naming one of the moons of Pluto Vulcan?  What, pray tell, does Vulcan have to do with the Lord of the Underworld?   Nothing.  So, they didn’t name either of the moons Vulcan.  And why would they have needed to?  There’s already a town in Alberta named Vulcan?  Isn’t that way better than a moon so far away that no one can ever go there?  You can go to Vulcan, Alberta, anytime you want.  I think they even have a Star Trek visitor’s center there.  There isn’t a Star Trek visitor’s center on the second or third moons of Pluto.  If I keep talking about this, I’m going to show off how much of a geek I am, so I’d better move on.

Not that the next topic isn’t going to make me seem geeky.  It’s because I have always lived in a part of the world that is completely landlocked.  I am massively interested in giant squids, and colossal squids, and whatever kind of squid is around.  Anytime I open my mouth I’m barking out some weird fact on squids.  I need to stop.  But who will host a squid intervention?  And as a side note, doesn’t it just tear your heart out to watch baby turtles get eaten as they try to race from the nest where they hatched to the shore?  I don’t feel sorry for squids.  I watch those get dissected and don’t flip out, but baby turtles!  Ack!  I’m tearing up.  Gotta move on.

I didn’t know it was possible, but I’m falling in love with another kind of flower than roses – dahlias.  I went and bought a beautiful one yesterday with mauve petals and planted it in a goblet-style planter outside my front door.  I’m starting to understand the beauty of annuals.  You drop a tenth of the cash, they bloom for the summer, die, and then in the spring, you can pick new plants and have a completely different look each year.  Except, I don’t like petunias.  It seems like everyone around here plants them, but they plant them really far apart, so that you can see this cavernous expanse of dirt in between each one.  And they look so fragile, like your flowerbed is covered in fist-sized bubbles.  One gust of wind and boom – the petals are creased with brown cracks.  Roses aren’t like that – they’re sturdy.

Welp, that’s the end of my randomness.  Go read my book Whenever You Want on fictionpress.com (my penname is Sapphirefly) while it’s still free.