Hedgie · Notes

I shrugged. "It kinda sucks, but since one ideally wants this person to be pestering publishers about your work, do you really want them to have to wade through a thousand extra emails a week?"

She started to say something, but her voice cut off after the first syllable.

I looked down at my phone, not at all shocked to see that it was reporting zero coverage.

It's been doing that for around a quarter to half the time since Saturday, when I fumbled it while attempting to salt a steak while talking to my friend Alison.

Jimmy's pretty sure that I knocked a connection partially loose. It's not that the signal to my house has changed, at least not if one assumes his phone would have also been affected by that. In theory, we could open the phone, find the connection, and solder it. But the odds of that killing the device completely are high.

When I got the phone to talk to the tower again, I called my mother back. She says that I go through more phones than anyone else she knows.

Well, at least I stand out for something. =)

Current Mood:

aggravated

I've been working on cutting spare wordage from Shadow Mountain this week... Also, discovered that Openoffice is 100% useless for counting words in anything containing dialog because it counts opening quotation marks as words. Which means that the word count I've been wincing over, cringing when I see it on my query letter, and having nightmares about (no shit, honest to goodness nightmares about the accursed word count) isn't as ungodly high as I thought it was.

Of course, I don't actually know what it is... I've changed my query to use the estimated count now, which I would think is higher than my actual due to an above-average number of paragraph breaks but which is at least in the realm of acceptability.

And the beat goes on... click, click, click... click, click...

Ex-NFL QB McNair found shot to death in condo

::jaw drops::

Well, shit...

=(

Current Mood:

sad

The concept in this case is Hollywood Voice. Not a phrase I knew before today, but it's something I noticed a book I read recently doing and it irked me. (No, not the book I was expressing displeasure with the other day, a book that I enjoyed other than having this problem and another problem with brevity. As in, there was too much brevity. A lot of books have this problem, particularly in YA, and I find it quite sad. But that's not today's topic...)

Anyway... Hollywood Voice pretty much means dialog you see in many movies but not in real life. Generally, people babbling about backstory even though the other folks in the conversation know already.

"One excellent request to make of first readers when you hand them your manuscript is to ask them to flag any statement that any character makes that could logically be preceded by variations upon the popular phrases, “as you know,” “as I told you,” “don’t you remember that,” and/or “how many times do I have to tell you that…”"

The book I was mentioning a second ago actually had, "I know..." followed by something that the character would mention only because the invisible people watching the scene didn't know. He could have said something in response to what he knew that would have filled us in while still being something somebody would say, but instead he just reminded the MC of her already obvious negative feelings for third character, which he told her were based on events from several years ago. And I instantly said, "And you mention several years ago, why?" Just leaving it at, "I know you don't like her," wouldn't have bugged me nearly as much, although I would think a normal guy would have just sighed or given her a look and not said anything.

This example isn't as blatant as the ones cited in Author!Author!'s July 2nd post on the matter, but it saw print and yanked me out of the introduction of a story that I was trying to like. Had I been trying it dislike the book, that would likely have tipped the scales, coming as it did amongst a host of minor gripes.

Of course, I feel compelled to point out that it's unfair to say that people never, ever look at someone else and go, "You know I hate peppers!" or, "Don't you remember, Bob's coming to visit next week?" or, "How many times do I have to tell you that our cat is nearsighted?" In fact, you wouldn't go very long in my household without hearing someone remind a family member of something we should already know. This is because all three of us are very forgetful and preoccupied people. But we're not forgetful enough that Jimmy has to tell me things like, "You're very fond of Sommer and have been since going to middle school together in South Carolina during the late eighties."

Likewise, there really are people out there who approach strangers and dump years worth of backstory on them without prompting. (Again, hang out with my family for a while and you'll see this.) But most people don't and while some folks enjoy random backstories being dumped on them, many will get away if at all possible. Or at least stop paying attention, which isn't something one wants a reader doing.

I'm still sad about it. I can't stop thinking about it. And it's keeping me from really moving on, so I'm going to write about it...

To say that I hated the book would be an misstatement. Nor do I hate that it was printed. I don't feel angry that the author was paid for it, or even resentment that she was paid whereas I haven't been yet...

But it was so bad a fit for me that I find myself scared of reading anything else.

This happens sometimes. A book that's just so disappointing that my next book has to be something I've read before and remember well, lest I be scarred again while still wounded. I usually get over it faster though.

I need to learn to pay attention when amazon tells me that a book has won certain awards... I tend to like books that get tagged For Reluctant Young Readers. And I'm sure there are books that I've liked that have won other awards. But, for the most part, the majority of things that could be sitting on the counter at a school library with a little sign saying that these books won awards and are thus better than all the other books one could check out might as well be labeled, "Books that Andy will find pretentious and/or dull." I didn't like them in school and I don't like them now.

This particular book, like many thrust upon young people in English classes, featured a first person MC who was a teenager, but whose narrative voice was that of someone with an MFA in Lit, no connection to kids, and no real recollection of what it was like to be young. It's what I think of as, "Condescending Adult Voice." It's acceptable as real if one assumes that the story is being told many decades after the fact by someone who left these events behind to pursue an MFA somewhere far away and remembers the events, but not so much the thoughts or emotions that went with them. Oh, the storyteller may remember things like, "I loved Debbie Gibson," or, "I thought the bagger at the Piggly Wiggly was really cute," or, "It drove me crazy having to wait all summer for the resolution of that cliff-hanger episode," but he doesn't remember what those things felt like anymore. And maybe it's a consequence of this that he doesn't really seem to respect those thoughts and emotions, seeming to dismiss the entire narrative as childish.

I was on second page of this book when I sighed, said to myself, "If this books hasn't won a library award and wasn't written by a woman with an MFA, I'll give up books," and flipped to the back jacket flap. Sure enough... Check and check. And check again, if I get a point for guessing the author's gender as well.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with people obtaining MFAs. But unless they can write like they don't have one, I'm probably not going to enjoy reading their works.

If I ever lose a bet and find myself writing something I declare to be a coming-of-age story... Remind me not to let my narrator say things like, "I grew up a lot over that summer." Don't let me get away with talking about how much more simple everything in my MC's life was back then. Argue with me if one of the parents died tragically when the MC was in preschool. And confiscate my computer if I ever even _think_ of having my MC be all confused when she starts bleeding because oh, dear, it's her period. Unless, of course, I have specifically stated that I'm writing a parody, in which case I should include these things. Like this author did. Except that she forgot the part about making it a parody...

Current Mood:	depressed
Current Music:	Wilco

This, of course, caused me a little bit of worry in regards to Shadow Mountain.

My characters are not shallow stereotypes.

In fact, I made myself nervous when I started writing the story by having a Moral as one of my goals. And that moral was that nobody's a stereotype. And that dismissing someone's worth because they're popular and like sports is at least as stupid as dismissing someone's worth for being socially awkward and in the band... Or for wearing black and listening to death metal...

However... Drew starts the story thinking of the people around her as one-dimensional cut-outs.

Drew's sister's a cheerleader. In her introduction, we see short skirts and clingy sweaters. We soon become familiar with a preoccupation with makeup and bleach-blond sidekicks. There's more to Bobbi than this. We see glimpses of that. But in many ways she's trying to be a stereotype and Drew is more than willing to write her off as one.

The same article went on to discuss the importance of showing why a disliked character is disliked.

Hmmm... Yeah, second thing that my first chapter disregards. Finn comes onto the page with, "What are you staring at, jock boy?" It's clear that he irritates the hell out of Drew, but the only things she gives us to dislike about him is that he plays football without sucking at it, is liked by other people, and has taken at least one trip to Colorado.

Not exactly offenses that would make most people agree that he's awful.

But, that's deliberate.

The reader is supposed to like Finn. The reader's supposed to think Drew's being unfair and want to smack her up the side of the head. In fact, it isn't very long before the dead Drew is feeling that way herself. She starts in the very first chapter. The living her is griping that Finn needs to stop looking at her while the dead her recognizes that he's just thrown off by the ghost.

I think that what's going on with the two versions of Drew reacting differently to Finn makes it obvious that the stereotypes and the, "just take it as a given that this guy's annoying" attitudes were meant to be there and weren't meant to sell the reader.

I can only hope it's obvious to other people...

There are also subtle aspects that may help my case if whoever is skimming my submission notices them. Early in the second chapter, for example, we hear the running back say something. The running back. Not 'one of Finn's friends.' Not 'one of the other ballplayers.' Not 'some guy I don't know' or 'a kid from the class behind mine' or even 'Brent Miller.' Why is that relevant? Because it demonstrates that for all Drew's sitting around dissing her town, her school, and, yes, jocks, she still knows who the school's primary running back is. Which means that she's paying at least a little bit of attention. Which means that maybe she's not the bitchy unique rebel stereotype she's trying to act like...

The facts that she does pay attention to the people around her and that she secretly views them as people come out later. If the first chapters didn't show her trying to deny those things, lashing out with acerbic wit of the outcast teenager as she attempts to marginalize the people that she feels marginalize her, then we wouldn't be able to see her start to grow out of that.

So... I won't be rewriting anything to try to remove the opening stereotypes. But they can be yet another thing to be selfconscious about...

Current Mood:	pensive
Current Music:	Social D

( Spoilers and Gushing Compliments )

Okay, that was a partial truth... Everything currently in my Opera RSS feed is either related to writing or publishing. Which are largely the same thing from a distant viewpoint. Or, at least, they both huddle under the umbrella of Stuff Relating to Andy's Job. But some of them are focused on publishing companies, some on agents, some on books, some on writing craft...

There's only so long I can sit with the laptop open staring at them...

Why, yes, reading blogs on a Kindle would help. But, no, I'm not going to. Because I consider paying for blogs to be Wrong. And because I'm growing progressively more anti-Kindle... No, not really the right word. Because I'm not hating the Kindle for existing or Amazon for making it. I don't think that people who have them are idiots. If I become published in a way that gives me any say over the matter, my books will one day be available on the Kindle. But they'll also be available without DRM if I get my way. In a format that can be read on more devices. So... I don't feel a need to remove the Kindle from the planet, but I don't want one. And if someone gives me one, I'd likely sell it to fund a different reader... Maybe a Cool-er...

Hmmm... I'm certain this was going somewhere. Positive. But the ADHD seems to have kicked in. ::sigh::

Yeah, that's been pretty severe lately. Particularly in the middle of the night, when I'm supposed be sleeping but am jerking about feeling trapped and wondering if it would make me sleepy or wake me up even more to jump out of bed and run around the block a few dozen times...

There may be depression too. It's hard to say. I could just be hyper-focusing on being miserable.

I think it's mostly just Summer. We're past the solstice, thank Fates, but the evil Day Star is still around almost the entire time I'm supposed to be awake. It's hot. (No, not as hot as it is other places I've been forced to live, but Too Hot for Me nevertheless.) The air is filled with things that make me feel sick. I hardly leave the house and when I do, it's mostly to do things I don't enjoy. Like buy groceries. Because there's not really anything else to do in this stupid town. Jimmy asked during a recent breakdown if the problem was me not having a car, but it isn't. There's honestly nowhere I want to go. Not within several hours of here, anyway. Not this time of year.

Add that into not having written any roughs lately, trying to get Shadow Mountain all perfect and handed to someone who can do Something with it, and still not having bothered to unpack everything, and it's no damned wonder I'm going insane...

Current Mood:	weird
Current Music:	Social D

It strikes me that trying to learn from them is rather like trying to learn skiing from watching other skiers. Watching people ski well can help tremendously. But, likewise, watching people ski poorly can hurt. Because either way, you see what other people are doing and try to copy it. Even if you were watching them and thinking, "Idiot. That's no way to turn!" your subconscious may still be emulating what you saw.

Miss Snark's comments are, of course, helpful. But I'm not sure if I'm really helping myself looking at other people's mistakes...

Current Mood:

anxious

She's on an antibiotic and the doctor wants to see her again in a week.

The urine analysis did show more kidney concerns than before, so she's going to be eating Science Hill k/d from now on. They said that she seemed to like it and hopefully she'll eat it for me too.

They also said she hadn't had a bowel movement today. Which could be related to her treating me with one on the drive home. At least it looked normal...

Current Mood:

tired

The detailed bloodwork showed her kidney levels a little off where they should be, so the vet's running some urine to see if that should be concerning us.

But Sheba's stopped vomiting and the diarrhea is gone. She'll hopefully be coming home this afternoon.

She's being given antibiotics and will be staying overnight. The doctor says that they're keeping her hydrated, but that she's not interested in food yet. And I'll be called again in the morning...

Sheba tends to get sniffly in the spring when I do, but it usually corrects itself. A few years ago, it didn't and she wound up on antibiotics. I feel so incredibly bad for letting it get bad enough to be messing with her digestive system... And hoping that's what I did, because there could still be something horrible in the tests that they hadn't gotten to yet. =/

Current Mood:

guilty

"Meow," she said pitifully.

"I'll call you when the bloodwork's done," the vet promised me again, her soft voice soothing. It occurred to me that she was speaking to me as though I were the spooked little animal, but me as a scared kitten was close enough to the truth that I couldn't be offended.

I took the knot of worry in my stomach, got in the car, and drove home...

Our new vet is hydrating her now, then she's going to take some blood and run tests. I don't know when that will be done. They do their bloodwork in-house, but I don't know how dehydrated Sheba is so I don't know how long it will be before her veins are ready to give. I'd say there's a pretty good chance the poor thing is spending the night at the clinic though...

Current Mood:

worried

Sometime in the past, I forget when exactly, she decided that she wanted to attract a large number of new YA writers, so she posted saying that she was looking to expand her list and invited us to post comments with brief pitches. At the time, Werestory was the work I had closest to presentable and she liked the pitch enough to ask for a partial. She said in her blog how many people she asked for partials from. I forget the numbers, but I didn't think I had a very good hook and my bio has absolutely nothing relevant to writing, so making the cut was something that surprised me in a good way.

But she did something else that surprised me. In a bad way. She asked for a synopsis.

"A synopsis?" I squeaked at my email client.

Somehow, in all the revising my novel and all the agonizing over a query letter for it, I had managed to completely neglect to even think about writing a synopsis.

I got me to Google.

But this was one of the few occasions when Google didn't save my rear.

The reason I'd managed to block needing a synopsis was that the darned things are mentioned only in passing on most of the awesome sites that were helping me with everything else. Authors are constantly posting tips on writing and revising. Both authors and agents blog about how to query, even put up entire sites dedicated to the process. But even the most holy Miss Snark didn't help much because while she had examples of synopsizes, along with some of her trademark witticisms in response to them, she didn't have any from anything I'd read. I couldn't figure out how to get from those to a synopsis of my work and while I was wringing my hands over it, the very nice agent who was willing to look twice at me was waiting!

To top it off, waiting agent had asked for a 'short' synopsis. Short is a relative term. Compared to my 75k novel, an entire shortstory would be short. (It even has 'short' in its name!) I figured she probably didn't want that, but I was still still uncertain. I think what I finally turned in was around three pages. And they probably didn't make sense because while I cut out a lot of the stuff that was jotted into my outline, I still couldn't get past, "she did this, then this, then her friend did this, so they all had to do that..." To summarize, it was wretched. And I knew it. But I had this idea that I needed to just send it.

In a do-over universe, I wouldn't send it. I'd take extra time to get it done decently. Yeah, I'm sure that agents like their writers to respond with reasonable speed, but I suspect they like them to not act like b00bs even more. Of course, if I didn't enter the do-over universe with any more knowledge of what agents are looking for, I'm not sure time would have helped. Not unless it was a _lot_ of time. Like until now...

Friday, Nephele posted this after reading a blog entry from another agent, Querying Too Soon. Both of them make me feel somewhat justified for annoying the heck out of my beloved by obsessing over details before approaching anyone with Shadow Mountain. And, more importantly, I finally know what 'short' meant! (Yeah, I might should use my do-over to go back and ask her that before attempting to construct an outline in sentence form, huh?)

I also now know what 'synopsis' means. I thought I knew that before, but I was wrong. To me, the word has always meant, "Summary of things that happen." So, being asked to do this in one page... For the last fortnight plus, I've been driving myself crazy trying to make an outline of events from Shadow Mountain that was both short and understandable, yet somehow managed to sound like it had been written by me. But apparently at least part of my overwhelming angst was due to taking a completely wrong approach to the base concept.

After about a week, I threw my hands up in the air at my most recent attempt and started trying to convey the major issues without trying them to a plot outline. I think it's closer to what I actually need than anything I've come up with before. It's still far from perfect, but I think if I take what I learned from it and roll that with what Nephele was saying Friday, I'll be a lot closer to on the right track than I've ever been before. I'm still sighing, "Back to the drawing board..." But at least I feel I have a clue what I'm supposed to be doodling on it now.


***


Note: No, I don't think that Nephele passed on representing Werestory solely because the dreadful synopsis. Although I'm sure it didn't help. I'm also sure it didn't help that the first time I sent her the manuscript, I'd jacked up the formatting. I don't think the main issue was me being a twit. I don't even think it was the novel being written in first person present. She said that she liked the story, but she didn't love it. And after she wrote that, I realized... Me too. I like the story. I'm really fond of the people in it. But I don't have the connection to it that I have with Shadow Mountain.

But the difference between, "I'm not ashamed to have written this," and, "OMG, even I think this is good!" is something to ramble about at another time...

Current Mood:	contemplative
Current Music:	Dropkick Murphys

I'm part troll. I can't prove this, but my brain stops working when the temps go over seventy.

My AC is set to 72. I feel really guilty about it. It would be much more responsible to set it higher. But around 73, I start feeling like I'm overheating. And I'm not really comfortable now. I can't wear less without Eric complaining and I don't really think it would help much anyway.

Saturday was nice though. I was in snow.

Last time I was up at Snoqualmie (which I never got around to writing about), I was able to skin up the resort slopes at Summit West and ski down the nice, familiar, blues there. But the last two weeks have been nothing but that evil star battering radiation on the mountain and the base at West was almost entirely melted out. We could have climbed past it because there was still happiness higher up, but we went over to Alpental instead. It's shadier there, which means that the snow lasts longer and that we'd be in less sun.

Two hours of constant skinning past the parkinglot, we hit Source Lake. It was further from the road than I'd ever made it before and absolutely stunning.

Jimmy had told me that I'd know I'd hit the lake when I saw a big stretch of flat with no trees on it. He was wrong about that, the sun had done damage up there as well and the lake is already looking very much like a body of water. But it was gorgeous...

We had lunch up there, next to the partially melted lake in a little valley from which we could see more waterfalls than I felt able to count.

Jimmy dug me a shelf under a tree and let me sit on his backpack.

It was very, very good...


***


I broke down some on the way back. The slopes weren't too hard for me. I've done steeper and nastier. But the snow was weird and I didn't get a warm-up because there's no easy up there. It was the last stretch of real down before the mostly-along back to the car before I felt at all comfortable. So, when we made it back down, Jimmy took me over to the Alpental resort and we went up under one of their lifts so that I could get a run of real skiing in. I enjoyed it immensely. It is a tragedy that I have to put so much time and effort into going up before I get to go down...

We saw a few people while we were out. There were two guys who skied down past us. And some people who didn't appear to have any skis at all... Or even snowboards. They appeared to be... walking. If find this confusing. Why put all that work into going up if you don't get to ski? People are strange...

=)

"Thanks, kiddo." I smiled wryly at the child. If he were just a little older, his behavior would be obnoxious, but seven is still young enough for it to be sweet.

"It looks really good!"

Looking at the yard, I wouldn't go that far. But it did look a lot better than it had before I started attacking it.

I grunted over a rough patch. The yard was filled with them. There were two types of grass, one of them was short and brittle and very easy to cut. The other was long and springy and a complete bitch. It was the latter that was happy with the funky leak in the irrigation system, the leak that hadn't been found yet let alone repaired but which had soaked parts of the front yard and turned bits of the back into a swamp.

I lost count of how long I spent outside. Long enough to get dizzy a few times. Not long enough to completely finish the back, although I did get out the sheers and start lopping at the grass that had gotten far too tall to expect a mower to deal with it. And I trimmed some in the weed flower beds so that they look... Not good, but not as ignored.

*

My allergies are still pissed at me...

Pondering why it is that these business would want to be cash-only (how much cash does that put on premises on a holiday weekend? And security is two teenagers and a dinky camera? If I ever decide to embrace the joys of armed robbery, I'm heading to the movies... Not sure the armed part is even needed... Which would limit both the investment needed and the consequences should it go wrong...), I paid my entrance to the new Star Trek film with dirt softened paper and followed my son into the theater lobby.

The night before, I'd asked a local if it was worth driving to Yakima to see the movie there rather than here and his answer had seemed to come down to, "It depends on which room it's showing in." His review of the downstairs screens wasn't overly enthusiastic and glancing through doors showed me why. It wasn't just that the seating was from years before grading became standard. The main problem was that the bottom of the screens were about eight or nine feet off the ground. While this would limit the damage of tall people in front of a viewer, it also meant that in a room as small as these, everyone would be craning to look up.

Upstairs was better. The room was still rather small. And there was a light source that I couldn't pinpoint that never got removed. But the seating was stadium and the screen was in a standard location. I nearly wasted my entire soda attempting to put it in a cup holder that wasn't there, but our seats were otherwise pleasant enough.

Eric and I both liked the movie considerably, although I never decided if I was glad or regretful that I had read the prequel. There would have been more suspense if I hadn't, but I'm not sure it would have made quite as much sense to my mind. Eric didn't complain about being confused, however. His only complaint was to insist that the Internet must have lied about how long the movie was. "That was only an hour!" he protested at the end credits. Which is a pretty strong endorsement from a seven year-old.

The road was wide for something in the middle of the woods and mostly drenched in sun. Much as I hated the radiation, it was probably a good thing for our trip because the spots where shadows were managing to survive featured snow. We went over a few patches like that fine, but the road was climbing so it stood to reason that the patches would be getting deeper.

We turned a corner onto a stretch of flat. At the end of it, the trees had managed to create another long patch of snow. But this patch was different from the others. This patch had a truck sitting in the middle of it.

We parked behind the two pickups who had already stopped to offer attempts at towing and, when that failed, to watch as the stranded truck's occupants used borrowed shovels to dig their vehicle out. Jimmy trotted up to hand our shovel to a third guy from the snow trapped fishing expedition out of Seattle. An expedition that had gone up without a single shovel of their own, as though expecting maintained pavement and parking lots.

The truck sitting in the snow was a four-wheel drive Silverado. In the commercials, it's shown doing things a lot tougher than getting through the patch this one was stuck in. But I betcha the trucks in the commercials aren't equipped with city street tires. And the fine print at the bottom of the screen likely translates to, "Not to be driven as shown if you are the type of moron who is surprised to find snow in mountains that are snowcapped year round."

Eric and I hung out by our car, throwing snowballs and rocks into puddles for an hour while the silly city people got themselves unstuck.

So... questions to those who have seen the new Star Trek movie:

1.) Eric thinks the previews look good, but is there hope that he will he be able to sit through all two hours? (Comparing to past ST films... He'll watch the evens all the way through, but like everyone else he tunes out on the odds... =)


and


2.) Where do I want to see it if I go?
Options...

a.) five minute drive to Liberty Theater in Ellensburg. Reason that isn't a given: when Google told me it was playing there I said, "Whoa. They show things there?" It was built just before WWI, renovated in the eighties, and... Well, it looks like a great place to see a classic film or maybe something artsy. It really doesn't give the impression of being acceptable for modern sci-fi. I mean, I'd assumed it had been turned into an art gallery or something... But I haven't been there and no one seems to be discussing it online except for people who keep going on about the outside. (Angst! Anyone who cares knows what the outside looks like! The thing's in the middle of downtown!)

b.) fifty minute drive across the desert to Yuck-ima. Two theaters there have it, both recently built with stadium seating. (reason this is on the list and Wenatchee isn't is that the earliest showing in Wenatchee is at four, which would mean I'd have to drive home with the sun doing nasty things to me, whereas it would at least be up out of my eyes coming back from Yakima.)

or

c.) two hour drive across the mountains and into the city to try to find it in IMAX. Haven't researched this as it doesn't seem likely to be worth it for someone who hates driving and cities.

Poll #1403036 Opinions on Star Trek movie viewing.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

1. Is it at all possible that Eric will be able to sit through it?

Where should we go?

"Ahh!" the screaming continued, moving around outside of my room and shifting from urgent to dramatic. "Ahh!"

My son ran up to the door of my room, then stopped abruptly as though suddenly remembering that he's not supposed to wake me up in the morning. He turned sharply, but still went, "Ahh!"

"Eric?" I called after him.

"Ahh!" He turned and came back. "Get it off me!"

Blearily, I sat up and squinted as he came into the room. "Get what off you?"

"Ahh! There's a spider on my shirt! Ahh!"

Inwardly, I groaned. Saying that I am sick of the kid going on about spiders and bugs being out to get him is like saying that Arabia has sand. "Let me see, sweetie."

"Ahh!" Even without the running around before, the spinning that he executed trying to find the passenger on his shirt would have dislodged any spider who hadn't thought to bring harness gear on his attempted ascent of my son.

Dutifully, I checked the child's shirt. And his pants. And his hair. And his skin. And the replica of Lightening McQueen clutched in his hand.

Then, I went into the game room and checked all around the TV, the blanket Eric had been snuggled under, the throw pillows, the box of blocks, and everything else in the room Eric pointed at while hovering several yards away and preparing to sprint off should I find so much as a leg.

Even though I went as far as verifying that the arachnid hadn't fallen into the aquarium and wasn't trying to eat the danios, I never saw a hint of him. My theory is that he crawled into a dark corner and quietly had a heart attack.

Current Mood:

tired