I have a book!!!

So I wrote a book.

No, no, no. I should rephrase that. I have a published book.

Yeah, that seems to be a bit more grand.

Because I've written several books actually. Okay, I've completed three. Okay, two of those still need some editing. And I've about four other books in various stages of completion. (Note: That brilliant buzz of a new idea that I often get at 2:00 after a marathon viewing of Red Dwarf or Downton Abbey does NOT count as a work-in-progress... as much as I'd like it to.)

So out of all those half-completed-kinda-edited-perhaps-they-might-at-one-time-see-the-light-of-the-day stories... I have published A Book.

My first book.

And so I am feeling duly proud and nervous all at the same time.

But, look! Here's the cover:

Isn't it spiffy? 

Oh, and it has a blurb!

"When seventeen-year-old Olivia Davies receives a phone call from her estranged father, she’s in for a huge shock. Her father is getting married - again - and he wants her to be at the wedding. So over summer break, Olivia packs her bags and makes the trip back to England to meet her future stepmother. But instead of the middle-aged woman she expected, Olivia finds herself introduced to Emmy Balfour, a stunning blonde young enough to be her sister. And if that wasn’t enough, she also finds herself dealing with the disapproval of Emmy’s older brother, Ian, a man for whom “polite” and “respect” seem to be four-letter words. 

With only three weeks until the wedding, Olivia struggles to stay afloat while navigating the treacherous waters of wedding planners, aristocracy, and bridesmaid’s dresses - not to mention the bridesmaids in the dresses. But just when she thinks everything is finally settling down, a few well-timed lies threaten to destroy her father’s chance at happiness. As a last resort, Olivia must work with Ian in an attempt to set things right, a partnership that forces her to decide if keeping him at a distance or disregarding her first impressions of him will cause her to step up and make a few changes in her own life."

But, wait! It's also available on Amazon! In paperback! For your Kindle! You can even borrow it for free (if you have Amazon Prime) directly from your Kindle! It's amazing! (I mean, who cares about the hoverboards that Back to the Future promised us when you can totally order and/or download a book from the privacy of your... area that is most private to you.)

And... that's enough self-promotion. Tomorrow, it'll be back to gardening or little dolls or something that I feel much more comfortable posting about. 

Screech Owls

My husband and I went out yard-saling, which we do when there’s nothing better to occupy our Saturday mornings, or if we’ve gone and overdosed on too much Antiques Roadshow and been fooled into thinking that at any moment, we’ll stumble across a Lalique vase, or some Native American artifact rescued from the Gettysburg battlefield by Honus Wagner and the fifth Beatle.

Our first stop was in a woman’s garage, where there were two tables. One was covered with the usual yard sale nonsense, and the other was covered entirely with shoes. Large shoes. Large, sensible shoes. I had never seen so many large shoes in one location. If my husband had ever harbored a secret desire to be a cross-dresser, now was his time to step up and claim his prize.

While we were still gawking at the dozens of pairs of shoes, a raspy voice piped up from the rear of the garage.

Woman: What size shoes do you wear?

Me: Er... Seven and a half, maybe an eight.

Woman: Oh. Do you know anyone who wears a fourteen?

Me: Ooh, not off the top of my head. Sorry.

Woman: Do you see those blue ones? I had those specially dyed to match a dress. I won’t take less than twenty dollars, since I had to pay to have them dyed.

Me: I... okay.

Woman: You know, you could stuff some tissue in the ends and they would fit you just fine.

Me: Um, I don’t think so.

She continued to talk for a while, moving away from her attempts at peddling Janet Reno’s shoe collection until she started going on about her joints and how the doctors had ordered her to quit smoking, but then she’d gotten too jittery, so she’d started smoking again, and-

Woman: Are you sure you don’t want those red ones?

Me: No, I... I... I’m just going to... walk over here now.

We continued down the street, stopping here and there, buying some hot dogs and homemade fudge as if we were running a marathon and someone was passing out little paper cups of water for us to splash on our faces and renew our strength.

The next house we visited turned out to be the proverbial holy grail of yard sales. I think they may have had the actual holy grail tucked away somewhere, behind some mismatched salt and pepper shakers and a stack of Gordon Lightfoot albums. There were antique binoculars from Paris, century-old cameras, a collection of pocket watches, a tray of what appeared to be old medical instruments and tools. I stood there salivating while trying not to remind myself that I only had five dollars in my wallet.

I grabbed the binoculars and one of the watches, and when a young woman appeared at the door, she told me that everything had belonged to her great-grandmother, who apparently was awesome and had traveled across Europe and there may have been ballooning involved but we unfortunately had to leave before she presented us with one of the bullets that her great-grandmother may have used in an attempt to kill Rasputin because we were out of cash and you really can’t haggle with someone when your end of the bargain involves NOTHING.

Clutching my nifty binoculars and my watch (which the woman said didn’t work, but I didn’t care) we began our trek back to our own house, when my husband suddenly darted from the sidewalk, racing toward a collection of tables covered with... owls.

I trudged up behind him, to find him deep in conversation with an elderly, white-haired woman.

Husband: You have a lot of owl stuff here.

Elderly White-Haired Woman: I JUST LOVE MY OWLS.

Husband: And this painting... My parents had this painting in their house.

Elderly White-Haired Woman: I’VE BEEN COLLECTING OWLS ALL MY LIFE.

Husband: Really?

Elderly White-Haired Woman: NOW MY SISTER, SHE HAS EVEN MORE OWLS THAN I DO.

Husband: That’s fantastic. So... how much for this painting?

Elderly White-Haired Woman: THAT ONE? TWENTY-FIVE CENTS.

Husband: Is that all?

My husband fished around in his pockets and managed to produce a quarter. After completing the transaction and sending the woman back to her owl-induced bliss, he ran back to me, all smug smiles and happiness at the beautiful picture he’d acquired for mere spare change.

Hmm.

I had to Google it once we arrived back at the house. The trouble was, part of the title and the artist's name had been cut off at some point, so the only thing I had to go on was "Richard" and "Screech". Funny enough,  when I typed in those two words, Google asked me if I was looking for Richard Hinger Screech Owl Painting. 

Yes. Yes, I was.

Apparently, Richard Hinger was (Is? I don't know. My Google prowess didn't take me that far) a man who liked to paint owls. 

Also, I think that the baby owl wants to kill me.

Seriously. He wants nothing more than to peck out my eyes and wear my chin for a hat.

My husband declared that he wanted to hang the picture in the upstairs bathroom. I went along with this, not thinking anything of it. Until I went to use the bathroom for the first time after the picture was placed on the wall, and I found myself staring at this from the toilet.

(My bathroom looks like it stepped out of a Comfort Inn. Yes, this is a thing that I am aware of.)

Now, every time I step out of the shower, every time I glance over my shoulder while swiping on mascara, this is what stares back at me.

If you find me dead tomorrow, claw marks on my face and my corpse littered with feathers, you know who is responsible.

The Day Mattel Tried To Quash My Child's Dreams

My daughter was given a present today. It was a little, plastic Cinderella doll and a toy horse with shiny, sparkly hair. The box was all pink and covered in pictures of birds and swirly bits, the kind of thing to make a toddler's eyes widen in an immediate rush of joy and anticipation.

And dancing mice. Dancing mice wearing little hats.

My daughter passed the box over to me so that I could open it for her. I could see the gleam in her eye, the eagerness to play with her new toys, to send her little Cinderella galloping across the brilliant meadows of her imagination, jewel-toned butterflies dancing on the breeze kicked up by the horses shining hooves, Cinderella's plastic hands grasping the horse's reins as the two of them rush towards a fence, ready to leap as one and-

...

...Um

... What was that?

But... the brilliant meadows... the-the butterflies...

...

Okay. Okay... maybe... maybe it was a size issue. Maybe Cinderella was too big, and... Okay, I could explain this to my daughter, and she'd understand. Just like when I had to explain to her why she could not ride on her 13-month-old sister's back. I would just put doll and horse side by side and she'd learn a lesson in size difference and...

Right. So size didn't seem to be an issue. Well, then maybe everything would be okay, and my daughter could still have her meadows and hedgerows and-

ARGH. 

By that point, I'd had it. How dare Mattel, beloved company of my youth, purveyor of toys and dreams and gumdrop-scented rainbows tell my child that her little Cinderella doll cannot ride - nay, even dare to sit on a horse? What would be next? Telling her that Santa Claus isn't real? That the Tooth Fairy is retired? That the Easter Bunny isn't going to bring her any candy because he's too busy setting up a meth-lab and single-handedly destroying the imaginations of boys and girls all across the world?

Well, here's what I have to say to that:

Your move, Mattel. Your move.

Conversations With My Husband

Me (while in the car with my husband, who was driving well below the 55 mph speed limit): Honey, I think you can go a little faster now.
Tim: It's a speed limit, not a minimum speed.
Me: Well, how come when we're on any road that's 45 mph or below, you're always driving way too fast?
Tim: ... Don't hate my freedom.

The Little Bonsai Forest That Could

My husband likes to garden. Digging in the dirt. Planting seeds. Propagating. Culturing. Um... Hoeing. And he does well with it. I've learned from past plant-killing experience that whenever someone decides to gift me with some sort of organism belonging to the vegetable kingdom, I immediately turn it over to my husband. Because I'd like to see it flourish. And I know that I'm not the one to accomplish that.*

A few years ago, when we were first dating (well, when we were first dating for the second time around) he decided on a whim (My assumption is that it was a whim, since I'm not always aware of all the goings on inside his head. This could have been a long-planned event, for all I know.) that he wanted to grow some bonsai trees. Now, my knowledge of bonsai trees was pretty limited to what I'd managed to glean from repeated viewings of The Karate Kid, so I just thought, "Little trees? Cool. I can vacuum around those." Little did I know that his plans would soon begin to... grow. (Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

First, he began to search. This wasn't going to be your traditional bonsai, a centuries-old gnarled little conifer that could've been transferred from some rock approaching the summit of Mt. Fuji. No, he wanted it to be more locally oriented. So, he went with Maple trees.

He brought home a few small saplings, their roots still tucked into moist clumps of soil. (My husband brings home odd plants and things like other boys will pick up stray dogs.) There were about a half dozen of them in all, chosen because their trunks were oddly shaped or just because he liked them. But he needed a planter. Something from a local garden center simply wouldn't do. He had to keep it home-based. So he took our fireplace pit from the patio, dumped out the previous year's ashes, and tucked his plants into its depths.

Every year, when the time was right (I honestly don't know when the time is right. He has books about this stuff, telling him what soil to use and when to water and fertilize, or when he should massage their trunks while singing "Time In A Bottle" under the dim light of a gibbous moon.) he would trim the branches and clip the buds and... do plant-y things. And he landscaped. He added rocks, and a stream bed, and a path, and moss. It became a complete world, only two feet tall and never expanding beyond the confines of the fire pit.

And now, four years and some odd months later... It is this:

I can even fit the broom under there!

Of course, it's when you're playing with the zoom function that it starts to become a lot of fun.

Smurfette, Strawberry Shortcake, and a limber German boy recreate the Blair Witch Project.

This one is my favorite. A little bit of blurring, a Karmann Ghia, and you could almost believe that a Sleestak is ready to jump out from behind one of those rocks.

*I can kill any plant. It doesn't matter if I follow the directions. It doesn't matter if I talk to it, or love it, or give it ample amounts of sun and water. Even Chia Pets and various types of cacti will find their demise beneath my thumb of death.