I wish my camera worked.

The sky right now is perfect grey – classic winter sky right before it spits sleet or snow at you.

Last night I stayed up and read Stephanie Meyer’s Midnight Sun partial draft. After writing about going to see the midnight release of the New Moon movie and now this, I’m sure some of you are rolling your eyes at me.

And you know? That’s OK.

I’ve never said that I thought the books were award winning – the movies definitely aren’t – but sometimes it’s good to suspend reality and just escape in a book that plays on cheap emotions and high school memories.

If you’ve read the first Twilight book then you should read what there is of Midnight Sun. When I first heard the premise of the book – Edward’s perspective of Twilight – I decided that I wouldn’t read it since I didn’t need to rehash a book I had already read. And, like happens a lot, I was wrong.

I like Midnight Sun better than I liked Twilight. Edward is a much more likable narrator than Bella ever was. Midnight Sun also interests me from an author perspective since it is all character development  – fleshing out the Edward character. I bet that was an interesting mental exercise.

Actually, the whole reason I started writing this was to bitch about Ollie.

He went to bed around 7:30 and I didn’t hear anything from him all night. He was so quiet that I considered peeking in his room to make sure that he was still breathing but if you’ve ever had a child who didn’t sleep, you know that you’re walking a fine line with the whole peeking thing.

On the one hand, obviously you don’t want your kid to be dead but on the other hand, you don’t want to wake the kid up if they’re still alive. SO, more times than not, you convince yourself that there is nothing wrong and that you’ve just finally gotten lucky in the sleep department.

That’s what I do anyway.

I don’t really remember when exactly I got done with Midnight Sun but it was really early this morning.

And, wouldn’t you know it, literally the minute I turned off my bedside lamp, Ollie started fussing in his room. He went from 7:30 until 1 or 2 with not a freakin’ sound and I put my head on my pillow to go to sleep and he’s up.

What the hell?

I have a sneaking suspicion that if I had been in bed and trying to sleep the whole time that Ollie would have woken up like twelve times.

I’m not off to shower and then I’m going to Barnes and Noble and leaving the kids with Tucker.

That grey sky is making today the perfect writing day and I can’t concentrate with two small humans pulling on my toes and kicking me in the shins.

Image|donut2D

About a month ago, my friend Alana [HI, Alana! ] decided that I was going to see New Moon with her. On opening night.

Alana really isn’t one of those people you argue with and so I went online, bought my ticket and spent the next month stressing about how Tucker would handle the fact that Ollie was going to wake up around 10:30, my boobs wouldn’t be here and then Tucker would have to deal with that emergency.

Yesterday a new “emergency” developed when Alana called me to say that every single screen at the movie theater was showing New Moon, that they had sold completely out and that everyone was lining up and then at 10:30pm, the theater workers would open the doors and it would be a free for all.

Needless to say [though I will], I was pissed by this development since I had bought my ticket through Fandango and was worried that the theater wasn’t going to honor the ticket…especially since the guy Alana talked with said that we should “get there early” since I had used Fandango.

I made dinner – roast chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy and corn – and it was pretty fantastic.

The lemon is an inside Twitter joke of sorts.

After dinner, I set off to Alana’s and we followed two other chicks to the theater. When we got there, the LINES [as in holy crap! there are multiple freakin' lines!] were already pretty long and we got there at like 8:45pm – you do the math because I’m damn tired but we were there early.

It was cold. Really, really cold.

So, we waited and waited and waited. And we listened to this very militant theater worker who took her job a tad bit too seriously holler about not running and/or pushing as she stomped up and down the line.

Finally we got in and managed to get seats all together.

About three times, teenage theater worker boys came in and told everyone how no cameras or cellphones were aloud once the movie had begun and if you were caught then you’d be kicked out and you wouldn’t get your money back and they would beat you up and take your lunch money too.

OK. The beating up part and lunch money part was a blatant lie. But that’s what it felt like.

The previews started and there was a faint electronic buzzing noise and while the music for a preview would be fine, the voices of the actors sounded like the actors were under about three feet of water – you could hear they were saying something…you just couldn’t make out what exactly that something was.

At one point early on [and I can't remember if it was after the movie had started or still during the previews] a theater worker came in and said that they were fixing the sound. This is an important little nugget of information since this shows that at least one employee knew that particular screen was having sound issues.

Sound fixed, movie proceeds.

Movie doesn’t suck as bad as the first one. I could have done without the real live laugh track from everyone in the theater because, really? The movie wasn’t that funny.

Also, the CGI bugged me – the wolves didn’t look as rockstar as they should have, the wave looked fake and the plane looked fake.

AND there was this damned Burger King bag sitting on the trash can outside of the movie theater in the movie and it was such blatant product placement that I mentioned it during the movie [Sorry, Alana!] and when I thought about writing about New Moon, that stupid bag was the first thing I thought of.

I’m sure I am the only person who had such an issue with the Burger King bag.

Now, I don’t want to hear anyone bitching about me ruining the movie for them from here on out because if you’ve read the book then you know what happens so stick a smiley faced lemon in it.

Around the time when everyone has breakfast at Emily’s house, the sound started to screw-up again. And for the next 45 minutes [I wish I was joking] the actors sounded like they were back under that three feet of water.

Ten minutes into it, people started losing their shit.

Women as old as my mom flounced off to demand that the theater workers fix the sound.

Nothing happened.

As the period of messed up sound continued, more and more people got up and started searching for an employee who could fix the sound.

People kept coming back and saying they couldn’t find anyone and that the entire place was deserted.

One of the guys in the audience even went so far as to find the projection room and beat on the door.

Time wore on and people really started getting crazy. There were several different people who loudly suggested calling 911 – cause that would fix everything! [Idiots]

Then came a couple of suggestions of pulling the fire alarm. Like the 911 call suggestions, I’m not quite sure what people expected to achieve with that. Did they really think if they pulled the fire alarm that the firemen would run back the movie, fix the sound and then tell everyone to have a great night? [Double idiots]

Finally, FINALLY, someone managed to WAKE THE PROJECTIONIST UP [!!!] and he ran the film back to where Bella jumps off the cliff…about ten minutes in front of where he should have run the film back to.

And here’s the kicker, even though the theater essentially made the movie 45 minutes longer, totally screwed up the continuity and enjoyment of the film and potentially put their patrons in danger by having NO employees present, no one is owed a refund since the theater showed the film in its entirety.

There were little kids in our theater – they looked seven or eight.

Can you imagine the panic if someone had pulled the fire alarm and there were no employees to direct the flow of bodies? What would have happened to those kids?

Movie ended. Everyone was pissed cause we didn’t get a refund and no one came to address the angry masses. When we left, we saw no one except for the people who had been in our theater.

Since this thing is already a novel, I might as well tell the rest of it.

After I left Alana’s, I still had an hour drive and it was about 3:45 am. I got a text from Tucker asking if I was on my way. Ollie had been up since midnight and I can only assume that Ollie and Tucker weren’t laughing and bonding or anything cool like that. Also, Tucker had to be up for work in a couple of hours so it wasn’t especially cool for him that Ollie was keeping Tucker up.

AND, from my perspective that sucked since my grand plan had been for me to come home after being up longer than I had been in a long time, sleep for a few hours and then when Tucker got home at noon [since he works a half day on Fridays] I’d take a nap. But, since he got a very small amount of sleep, I don’t see that happening…even though I got home at 4:50 this morning and had been up since 6 the previous morning. Cara woke me up at 6 this morning so I’m running on coffee at this point.

To just really ice that shit cake, the fog was so thick this morning that I had to drive 45mph at some points and had to call 911 on a driver who almost took me out on the Decatur bridge and who kept swerving. That was fun.

So yeah…New Moon.

Was it worth all of the bullshit that I went through last night?

Nope.

I mean, Lautner was nice jailbait eye candy, Pattinson and Stewert did the “I love you so much” thing well and I bet it would have been a good flick if I could have watched it all the way through – and been able to hear the actors’ voices the whole time.

Will I be emailing this link to the movie theater?

You bet your sparkly vampires.

Images|Mine and Evens Hill

If you were following me yesterday on Twitter then you got to read me live tweeting my Nikon camera repair.

Correction.

You got to read about me shocking myself numerous times while I ripped into my Nikon.

We’ve had this camera since 2005 and it’s served us well but a couple of weeks ago, it just stopped working. Actually, it thought it was working. It would “take a picture” – flash and everything – but the pictures were all black and it was pretty obvious that something was up with the aperture.

Cara and Ollie had been carrying it around for the past few weeks and Cara had finally worn the batteries down to the point where the camera would turn itself off the second she turned it on. Since I wasn’t about to waste batteries on a camera that doesn’t work, I decided that I was going to fix the damn thing.

Of course, I wasn’t concerned by the fact that I had never fixed a camera.

And, since I was sitting at the dining room table with my laptop in front of me, I figured I’d take pictures of the camera fixing progress and share the whole thing.

Before anything happened. All the necessary tools have been gathered.

I realized the other screwdrivers were too damn big.

Yay! I got the back off.

You know that whole “famous last words” thing? Yeah…right after I got the back off I tweeted this: This is going to be a freakin’ cinch…

I’m such an idiot.

No. Really. Because a few minutes after that fateful tweet, I tweeted this: I just got the SHIT shocked out of me.

When I was typing that, my pinkie was doing this weird spasm thing. It wasn’t nearly as cool as it sounds.

If you’ll look at the picture below and note the black cylinder right below that lens. That’s a capacitor and it stores energy and it’s a bitch.

This is around the time that the bastard shocked me.

Of course I got nothing but support and sympathy from my Twitter followers:

It was around this time that I became a big chicken. Even though I was assured that I had discharged the capacitor THROUGH MY HAND, I still didn’t want anything to do with that freakin’ camera.

Hence these tweets:

• The camera is sitting here mocking me. I have to put it back together but I don’t wanna touch it.
• I wonder if I just put it in a sack and shake it around if it would magically put itself back together…and work
• I’m thinking about stomping it.

Chuck had words of encouragement:

To which I replied:

• Yeah! Discharged into my fucking hand!
• You’re just saying that so I’ll touch it again. You can’t fool me.

Ollie had to take a look. Luckily, he didn't touch.

I finally bit the proverbial bullet and tweeted this:

• OK. So since the capacitor discharged THROUGH MY HAND, it should be hunky dory to put this back together. RIght?

And then this to Chuck:

• If I get shocked again, I’m coming after you.

And this:

• I’m scared.
• I didn’t realize I had a freakin’ electric fence hanging out in my camera. :0
• OK. I’m going to do this now. WIsh me luck.
• Yeah…I still haven’t done it.
• Fuck me. This is going to suck.

And more words of encouragement:

I follow such assholes. I mean supportive people.

And there was a ray of sunshine and angels sang and stuff because:

• Just accidentally touched the capacitor [because I'm a fucking genius] and it didn’t bite me again.
• Guess it really did fully discharge through my hand. Awesome.

And then, demons ran in and clubbed the angels.

Injury from the SECOND shock. *sigh*

I tweeted this as I was reassembling the cattle prod camera: My pinkie has finally quit twitching. That’s good. Makes typing easier.

"Repaired" Nikon - complete with "spare" parts. *snort*

And the comment I left for the above picture: Note the bulge in the camera casing, the “spare” parts and the fact that I don’t give a fuck.

And you know what?

After all of that work and pain, the thing won’t even come on now. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that there were spare parts.

Image|Tomás Fano

Yesterday I hopped on Twitter and saw the hashtag “#prayersforAnissa” and had no freakin’ clue what was going on. After asking a couple of people, I found out that Anissa had a stroke yesterday afternoon and was/is in ICU.

I met Anissa in person this past July when I went to BlogHer. I already “knew” her through Twitter and her website but meeting her at BlogHer was the icing on the cake.

Since all the extra cash we have is used before we even get it, I can’t donate to help Anissa and her family. BUT, what I can do is the get her story out there.

I’ve direct messaged some of the people I regularly talk to on Twitter with more reach than me and asked them to mention Anissa. Thanks to: Montaignejns, PeasandBananas, Joegerstandt, SookieBonTemps, and David_N_Wilson. If I missed anyone, I’m sorry. I also think it’s freakin’ awesome all of the people who have retweeted for someone they’ve never talked to – sometimes people amaze you with how cool they can be.

Part of getting the word out is sending you to a place where you can help make a difference.

Heather at The Spohrs Are Multiplying has set up a page with updates on Anissa’s condition as well as where you can send packages/letters and a sign-up form to help out Anissa and her family.

You can also find updates at Aiming Low – though they’ve been having server issues.

Anne at The Meglomaniac Mommy has a “Pray for Anissa” button you can grab and put on your site or use as a Twitter avatar.

If you’re like me and don’t have any spare cash to donate then spread the word.

P.S.

If I’ve missed a site, let me know and I’ll add it.

Image|iloveyougalleries

When I was little, I went to church with my grandma and grandpa whenever I was at their house on Sundays. Since my mom worked several jobs when I was little, I was at my grandparents’ house a lot.

One thing that I can vividly remember about that church is the smell of the place. An odd mix of Veg-All, old books and Bengay.

Now that I’m older, that mix of smells makes perfect since considering the mean church population’s age is somewhere around 70 and they have always served dinner to the poor kids from the church’s neighborhood.

The only time the smell of that church changes is at Christmas time when the  parishioners erect a real, live [well...used to be live] evergreen and then string it with the old bulbs that are as big as a baby’s fist. Then the church smells like Veg-All, old books, Bengay, Christmas trees and apples.

The apples come in since a bag of apples, oranges and nuts are what the little kids get as Christmas gifts.

When I was one of those kids, I would get my bag of mixed fruit and nuts and wonder what the hell I was supposed to do with it. Not because I didn’t like fruit – because I did, though the nuts I could do without.

What a six year old wants for Christmas is toys. Loud toys that require lots of batteries and lots of patience on the part of the six year old’s parents. What a six year old doesn’t want for Christmas is a bag of fruit and nuts. Trust me on this one.

What six year old me couldn’t understand was that back in my grandparents’ day, an apple, an orange, some nuts and maybe a nickel were prized possessions. If you grew up during the Great Depression, fruit and nuts were a luxury that you probably didn’t see too often. But, of course, little six year old me wasn’t grateful for the gift.

When I was in junior high, my school district had the brilliant idea to teach good citizenship by having a word of the week. Words like responsibility, compassion, charity and gratitude all had their week in the sun and their definitions and examples were read to us over the intercom every morning during homeroom.

While the idea was nice – and I’m sure it made the school administration awfully proud of themselves – the lessons they were trying to teach were abstract and schools usually aren’t known for their success at teaching abstract concepts. Those two minutes were spent passing notes or doodling swirls on our notebooks. Nothing sunk in. No lessons were learned.

Gratitude is something that you learn as you get older through experience. Gratitude is something that you learn once you’ve lost something or someone very dear to you. You appreciate what or who they were and you learn from your mistake of not appreciating the gift while you had it.

Charity can’t be taught – it’s a compulsion. You either feel compelled to help out those less fortunate than you or you don’t. Forcing charitable actions fail even if something good comes from those actions because charity is a two-way street. The person being charitable has to have a charitable heart and the person receiving the charity has to be humble enough to accept the help.

And compassion and responsibility? Those are two things that some people never learn.

This all hit me today as I reached into a bag of apples from a cabinet under my counter and was hit by the sickly sweet smell of overripe apples.

I sliced the bright red thing in two, then into four and finally into eight perfect wedges and removed the core from each. I patiently inspected each wedge for any brown spots and then after each had passed my inspection, I placed them on a Hello Kitty plate right next to a heaping spoonful of peanut butter.

“Cara! Your apple’s ready!” I called out into the living room.

Cara tore into the kitchen screeching about some loud, battery operated toy she had just seen on TV and she took the plate full of apples with a small “Thank you” and then carefully carried the plate back into the living room. Ollie, being a typical little brother, knocked the plate from Cara’s hands which of course led to a bout of tears and screaming. An apple wedge or two were thrown at Oliver’s head and I’m pretty sure the dog got some peanut butter before it was all said and done.

Life went on as it tends to do and the apples were picked up, dusted off and eaten.

I want my kids to truly understand those concepts that my junior high teachers tried to teach us and I wish that there was some way that Caroline and Oliver could learn those lessons without having to experience pain and loss.

But I know that my job is to present both of them with the best apples I can and then let them do with them what they will.

Image|beta karel

Ollie’s 14 months old now.

He’s been walking for months, nods his head “yes” and “no”, beats up on his sister and does long division. OK. So the beats his sister up part isn’t true…

Anyway, one thing Oliver doesn’t do is sleep through the night. He’s normally in bed by 7 or 7:30 and then will sleep until about midnight. He wakes up, demands boob and then goes back to sleep – in our bed. Sometimes I can wake myself up enough to chunk his butt back into his bed after that midnight snack but he’ll wake up at 4am.

At 4am, I’m not too keen on dragging my butt into Ollie’s room or dealing with him when he’s screaming at the top of his well developed lungs.

So, we take the easy route which is Tucker going into Oliver’s room when Ollie wakes up and then Tucker tossing Ollie next to me in bed.

This didn’t used to bother me. I wanted to sleep and I got sleep if Oliver was in the bed with us. But, I’m a stomach sleeper. And I don’t care how saggy flexible my boobs are, they will not allow me to breastfeed Ollie while I’m on my stomach.

I’ve always said that you should do things until they don’t work for you and yours any longer. And the kinda-sorta cosleeping thing was working. But not so much anymore.

This site started out with me writing about Cara’s epic sleep issues and now I’m writing about Ollie’s issues.

What the hell?

Image|Mine! All mine!

Am I the only person who still hasn’t gotten the whole daylight savings time thing down?

It just seems unnatural for it to be bright as noon when it’s only 6am. Of course, once it’s light outside, my children [who were apparently birds in a former life] are awake and loud and demanding breakfast and cartoons.

So, we’ve all been up since 6 this morning and I’m steadily working my way through a pot of coffee.

I’m rewatching the first episode of Season 3 of Mad Men and am I the only one who feels like there was a missing episode between the finale of Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3? Betty’s all big and pregnant and there are new people in the office who are just there and weren’t really introduced. Odd.

And on a completely unrelated subject, @tomguarriello tweeted a link to this year’s Breeder’s Cup and it was fucking amazing. Really amazing. I’ve always been into horses and there’s just something about a filly winning over studs and geldings and winning easily. Hell, for the first half of the race the filly was practically loping in the back and didn’t seem the least bit concerned. Awesome video. You’ll have to follow the link to ESPN’s Breeder’s Cup page since they’ve disabled embedding of the video. Just go watch it.

So, yeah. Today’s going to be filled with coffee and cleaning since Tucker gets back from Drill tonight. Considering how he picked up the living room before he left, I can’t very well let him come home to a screwed up house.

And thanks to you guys who emailed your support and left comments. You guys rock my socks.

Image|Jack Kendall

Any blogging “expert” will tell you that the key to blogging “success” is to write and write often.

Based on my performance recently, I suppose I’m on the fast track to blogging failure.

It’s just that right now, I feel like I have this basket [mine's one of those old timey wicker affairs that I used to get at Easter. Yours can be whatever you want.] and I can only fill it up with so much stuff.

There’s the kids [and they're space hogs] and cooking and occasionally cleaning and then there’s the two sites that I write for for money and then there’s this site. Add to that the two stories that I’ve started and still need to expand and now you have an awful lot of shit in one tiny, rather delicate basket.

I’m not super strong so some of that stuff’s gotta come out so my arm doesn’t fall off. Cause I need my arm. And I’ve officially taken this device past the point of usefulness.

The point, which I know you already get since you’re a smart bunch, is that when everything is in “my basket” I get overwhelmed and can’t see my way out of the mess I’ve made.

This past month, I got way behind on my work obligations and for the first time ever, I didn’t meet my minimums. That’s bad and it sucked and I had to email my boss and confess to her that I really am a bit crazy and basically that I’m sorry I suck.

I expected to get canned.

I’m pretty sure Tucker expected me to get canned. But, I had done [and not done] all that I could do and I just had to wait on my boss’s response. Luckily for me, she’s a pretty damn understanding person and she didn’t fire my ass. So, now we get down to the reason this site hasn’t been updated in a coon’s age.

This site got “taken out of the basket”.

I just couldn’t do it all – I wanted to and I tried to but based on last month’s performance, I really can’t do it all.

So. Where does that leave me and this site?

I’m not shutting it down because there’s really no need for that. I’m not taking a “blogging break”. I’m just not going to stress myself out about if I’ve written anything here. I have an actual job that I have to worry about and this place is supposed to be somewhere I come to write what’s going on in my head that has to get out. And sometimes, there isn’t anything.

Sometimes, my brain is absolute mush by the end of the day and all I want to do is watch Mad Men online and forget about writing.

Today, I don’t have mush brain and I kind of want to write about the Ft. Hood shootings since Tucker’s in the military and the shootings hit close to home – especially since he’s working on an Army base right now. I also realize that I haven’t posted any pictures of Cara’s rockin’ birthday party or the cake that I made that took me three fucking hours to make.

But, today, I think this is all I’m going to write.

It’s a cold, bright day. Tucker’s at Drill and my goal is to get my work done early and take the kids to the park.

I don’t do enough of that and since the kids do take up the majority of my “basket”, they need to be my number one concern.

Image|Okinawa Soba

Mirrors are scary things.

If you drank a bit too much the night before, you definitely don’t want to see the scary ass reflection that will be staring back at you the next day.

Then, there’s that whole Bloody Mary thing and do I even need to describe that game to anyone? Who didn’t play that in grade school? Well, actually, I never played it since I knew what I would find in the mirror.

You see, mirrors for me aren’t what they are for most people. Most people use mirrors to check their hair and makeup or to see if they have panty lines. For me, mirrors show me dead people who need help and once they know I’ve seen them, they won’t leave me alone.

I was around six when I first realized that I had this interesting and damn annoying “ability”.

It was late at night and I had gotten up to use the bathroom.

Instead of turning on the bathroom light like I normally did, I just trudged on toward the toilet and something must have caught my eye since I can remember turning to look into the dark mirror. My Aunt Martha was looking at me and she was all kinds of pissed.

I screeched a little girl squeal and jumped away from the mirror and that seemed to piss Aunt Martha off even more. She kept pointing at her wrist and hollering something but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. The next thing I remember is me sitting in a puddle on the bathroom floor and the sun coming in the window that lived in the shower. I guess I never made it to the toilet that night.

I found out a couple of days later that Aunt Martha – who lived a couple of states away with her four cats – had died recently. I say recently since Moe, Curly, Larry and Shemp – the cats – had done an impressive job on Aunt Martha. I guess they were hungry?

At the viewing, Aunt Martha’s daughter Cleo kept going on and on about Aunt Martha’s stupid watch and telling anyone who would listen that the cleaning lady who cleaned  Aunt Martha’s house must have taken the watch. But Aunt Martha’s watch was an old Timex and it didn’t keep good time so why the cleaning lady would want to take it I couldn’t tell you. Even six year old me knew the only person who wanted that piece of crap was Aunt Martha.

And like a proverbial ton of bricks, I remembered seeing Aunt Martha in my bathroom mirror and her pointing her wrist and how pissed she had been and I knew she had been pissed because she was missing her watch.

What the heck was I supposed to do about my dead Aunt’s piece of crap watch?

So, I forgot about the watch. I went to school. I went to my Brownies meetings. Basically, I did all of the stuff that normal little girls did.

Then one night at dinner, I drank a bit too much tea and of course needed to go to the bathroom that night.

I took precautions this time.

I snaked my arm into the bathroom and ran my hand up and down the wall until I found the light switch. I kept my eyes squeezed shut to make sure that I couldn’t see even a corner of that mirror and once I heard the reassuring pop of the switch hitting home, I did my business and went back to bed.

But wouldn’t you know it? I glanced at my bedroom mirror right before crawling back under my covers and dammit if Aunt Martha wasn’t scowling at me from that mirror.

When that happens to me now, when I have a rude spirit, I refuse to even look at them. I treat them like rude kids or rude dogs – ignore their asses until they change their crappy attitude. But back then, I was so screwed up about seeing old Aunt Martha – who I had just seen laid out in her fake gold casket two days before – in my bedroom mirror that I burst into tears and begged her to tell me what she wanted.

Aunt Martha tapped at her wrist like an impatient person who’s trying to get you to hurry up. She tapped and I cried.

Tap, tap, tap.

Then she looked at me with her jaw set and if I could have seen her feet [did she even have feet?] then she was stomping them like a two year old.

I told her that I didn’t know what she wanted from me. Why couldn’t I hear her? Was I dreaming?

Eventually, Aunt Martha must have gotten pretty tired of our game a charades since the old hag flipped me off and kind of faded.

Seriously? What kind of old dead aunt flips off their six year old niece? That’s just rude.

I pulled my comforter over my head and cried myself to sleep.

The next day my mom took me with her when she went to clear out Aunt Martha’s house. Luckily, the four cats had been evicted. Cloe was in the family way and far too delicate to deal with all of her mother’s stuff, so my mom volunteered her services – and mine.

We boxed up breakables until my fingers were black from newsprint.

We boxed up linens. We threw out about a millennium’s worth of old magazines. Playboy? Really, Aunt Martha?

We went through each bedroom and cleaned out the closets.

All in all, we had a very productive day and were proud of ourselves.

I flopped down on the threadbare, cat hair covered couch with about all the force my little six year old body could muster and jumped right back up when something sharp stuck me in the butt.

I screamed and my mom dropped one of Aunt Martha’s priced candy dishes that Mom had been putting in the last box to be taped up. Of course the candy dish shattered into about a million pieces and Mom cursed a blue streak but my butt still hurt!

I glared at the couch fully expecting to see a spider or a dagger or a knitting needle – even though Aunt Martha didn’t knit so that was a weird thought – but guess what I saw?

You got it. That stupid fake silver Timex. And the damn thing was still working – though it was about five minutes off.

That night before I went to bed, I turned off all of my lights and stood in front of my bedroom mirror.

I can remember shaking a little bit since being in front of that mirror in the dark was just about the last place in the world I wanted to be.

“Aunt Martha?” I whispered it.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t want her to show up. I’m pretty sure I was just calling her so I could think, “Well, at least I tried”. But Aunt Martha showed up. Actually, she kind of appeared…materialize? Oh whatever. There was this smoky stuff like fog and then she was staring right back at me.

Aunt Martha had her hands on her hips and she was in just about the same mood that she had been in the last time I had seen her.

She started in with her mime hollering and I was more than just a bit happy that I couldn’t hear the old bitty since her screaming tirades were legendary in my family.

How I mustered up the courage to stare her down, I just don’t know but I let her get it all out of her system. When she finally shut up her whole silent bitch fest, I dangled her Timex in front of the mirror and smiled a sly smile.

Aunt Martha lunged toward me like she was going to come through the mirror and I jumped back so fast that I dropped the Timex. I picked it back up and I’ll be damned if I hadn’t cracked the stupid glass on that stupid watch and the stupid thing was still ticking away.

Aunt Martha gave me a stern look and then cracked a smile. She gave me a thumbs up – I never realized Aunt Martha had such expressive hands – and she just faded away.

I still have that stupid watch with its stupid cracked crystal that still keeps its stupid time. But, I haven’t seen Aunt Martha in twenty years and if I have to keep this stupid watch for the rest of my life so that I never have to see that crazy cat lady in my mirror again, well, I’m alright with that.

Now, if only I could get all of these other people in my mirror would leave me alone…

Image|zinov

*Note*

This is a work of fiction. It is MY work of fiction and my concept. Please don’t steal it. Not only would it hurt my feelings but stealing makes you a bad person. And, while I don’t see dead people in mirror, I still refuse to look in mirrors when the room is dark.

I started on this book just about the second that I got it in from One2One Network but other obligations and life in general has managed to get in the way of me writing my review until now.

My opinion of it initially was probably tainted by the fact that I had just come off a marathon re-read of the Twilight Series [Don't. Judge. Me.]

But once I got into the book, I started to like it. The back story was necessary but it dragged a bit for me and when I got through that, I was good to go.

Goudge’s characters are far from perfect.

One is a junkie who got her kid taken away from her because she was too screwed up to be a mother.

One is a book store owner in a loveless relationship to a guy who is a first class jerk.

One is a former “dancer” who serves as a mother figure.

One is a famous author with a mysterious past.

One is a young guy with a love for all things sweet and for one of the other characters.

I liked that the character weren’t perfect. No one in the book was above reproach and they all act a bit irrationally at times which pretty much holds true to how people act in real life and if I’m reading general fiction, I want the characters to be real. If I want perfect characters, I’ll read nursery rhymes and “happily every after” stories.

I won’t tell you the ending because that’s never nice but toward the end, things are wrapped up rather quickly and I felt a tiny bit letdown since there were some character relationships I would have liked to see fleshed out a bit. But, all in all, this was a good read.

Was this a book that changed my life?

No.

Was this a book that I would recommend for a plane ride or a weekend read?

You bet.