Quote for the Day: "She made me go out and buy three more books!" a reader, commenting after being wowed by "Vincalis the Agitator" by Holly Lisle

Make shelf room, hon. You'll be buying more than three.

Medical Fact for the Day:Paragraphia is a condition in which a patient misplaces words or the letters in words while spelling, or uses the wrong words while writing as a result of a lesion to the area of the brain which governs speech. This condition sometimes resembles but is not the same as dyslexia(difficulty in reading or learning to read, also known as word blindness) and is regularly displayed by patients with related brain disorders, such as epilepsy.   ¶ 12:59 PM

  Eff Day: Before I swing back into normal routine and start quoting/medical quoting and stuff for the day, I'm giving myself 24 hours to do anything I want. I started last night by getting out my brand new copy of Vincalis and not moving from the sofa while I read the first couple of chapters. I have to take the kids to school now and then I have the whole house to myself for six hours. And that new shipment of uranium I just smuggled in . . .   ¶ 7:29 AM

  Dinner with Children: For those of you who don't have progeny, this is how it goes: We ask for a non-smoking table (sub-request a booth) and sit down. There is an immediate territorial battle over crayons for the kid's menu (we never get an even number) and pens borrowed from my purse (I have about a thousand in there) which I officiate between giving our server the drink order. Kathy makes me guess what she wants to drink. I ask for menu choices up to three times, then I pick what they eat, so I usually get an answering grunt on the second or third time. I pick out whatever I think will be enough for me and Kathy for my own dinner, because she eats hers and half of mine. Kathy and I color the picture in her menu, while Mike and I play tick-tac-toe or boxing match on his. Good thing I'm ambidextrous.


We talk about school while we wait for the order to arrive, and Mike drinks all of his soda before the food gets to the table. I issue the standard two-soda maximum warning. When our orders are delivered, Mike asks for yellow mustard please not that brown stuff and Kathy announces she likes what I have alot. I hand out napkins, which are otherwise ignored, and make the usual manner reminders. Food disappears from my plate as the little thief next to me starts filching her share. We make food swaps, like my garlic bread for ten of your french fries. Mike finishes eating in three minutes, Kathy takes a leisurely twenty minutes to do the same. Somewhere in the middle of that are at least two trips to the bathroom by both children -- one to see if anything has changed, the other to actually use the facilities. I accompany Kathy but Mike is on his own. I still wait outside the men's room until he comes out, because every adult male in a restaurant looks suspicious to me.


By the time I'm finished my escort duties, the waitress comes around for dessert orders, and Kathy immediately loses interest in non-dessert food. She's usually cleaned my plate and hers by then, so I don't mind. Her hands are also freezing from being in the air conditoning, and she likes to press them to my face to see me jump. I have a cup of coffee while the kids eat small sundaes (Mike always complains his are too small. Mike would eat a Mt. Everest-sized sundae every time if I let him.) Kathy, always a lover of the exotic, will drink the half-n-half from the little plastic cups for my coffee if I let her. We go for the final wash and rinse trip to the bathroom, then I tidy up the table and let the kids figure out the tip, and remind them to add two or three bucks if the waitress is cool (like she was tonight.)

Not a gourmet's idea of heaven, but then they eat escargot and send their children to boarding schools. I skip the snails and enjoy my kids.
  ¶ 7:58 PM

 

Revisions on Jian-Shan's book are DONE.

Crawling off to huddle on the couch, read Vincalis and revive my brain . . .next book is due May 1st.   ¶ 4:42 PM

  Something Fun: I may be writing a serious quilt book. Yeah, in my copious spare time, right? But this is a cool idea. We're just beginning to explore the possibilities. The title? "The Quilt Detective", naturally. :)  ¶ 9:54 AM

  Pro Writer Rule #9999: Before you tell your editor you think an example of cover art is completely repulsive, find out how he/she feels about it.  ¶ 9:52 AM

  The Universe Goes With Just About Everything, Darling: Astronomers at Johns Hopkins University had concluded that, based on a sophisticated number of calculations, that the universe is pale turquoise, or just a shade greener. The media loved it. Then someone checked the math, and discovered that the universe is not turquoise, but beige.

After years of steering their clients away from beige, the #1 dread neutral, nothing, no life oh my god you can't use that in the livingroom color, interior designers all over the world are taking the news very badly. "Great. Just great," said Giancoliani Fretrazini, a noted Italian furniture artiste. "What do I say now? Do not use neutrals, never mind that the rest of the universe is beige?"

  ¶ 7:19 AM

  Okay, so they do have more fun . . . Being temporarily blonde has become an interesting sociological experiment, of sorts. Ordinary males I routinely encounter during my daily travels -- who never blinked at the brunette me or the redhead me -- are suddenly smiling and chatting and (cough) flirting with me. This is very weird. I haven't changed, my whatever's-clean wardrobe choices are the same, I haven't trowelled on any makeup, and yet I am attracting tons of opposite gender attention. Does being blonde increase the level of phemerone production in women? I don't want to believe men are that trite. I seem to be still invisible to most women, although one cashier I'm friendly with said, "Wow, you look just like your kids now."

My blonde children have already voted on the color, too: Mike thinks I should go back to being a brunette, Kathy wants me to be a redhead, and Jay told me "Have fun, Mom. Do whatever you want."   ¶ 9:12 AM

  It's That "M" Day, Isn't it?: Sweet Jesus, not again. Dr. Kevorkian, where are you when I need you?  ¶ 7:20 AM

  9.9 on the Richter Scale: As I go through the extended process of stripping all this artificial color out of my hair, I have turned various shades you would probably not believe unless you saw it yourself and am now almost white haired. Almost. I also confirmed my life-long suspicion that no, I should never, ever go blonde. The big problem is that under all these years of artificial dye are still some vague red highlights that are activated by the bleaching. About noon today, I had 3 inches of white roots, and pretty pastel orange streaks everywhere else. Happily, I found industrial-strength bleach, and some drabber, and went to work. I don't look like Heloise, or my mother (an unnatural blonde most of her life) but it's interesting. The contrast makes my eyes look laser-beam blue, which is nice. Just not sure if I like it. I look in the mirror and think, "Who are you?"

One note -- sorry about the appearing/disappearing graphics. The site I uploaded my pics on just keeps shutting down and locking them. I can't figure it out, so I'm giving up.   ¶ 11:25 PM