Like Ava says, why have kids if you can’t mess with ’em.

The theme song from Indiana Jones alerted me to the phone call while I was at work.  I was surprised to see the caller ID show one of The Bandit’s friend’s Mom.  I was even more surprised when she told me why she was calling.  In fact, I think she might be insane.  Or horribly naive.  Or totally delusional.

She invited The Bandit to spend the night with her son.  I blinked several times and said nothing, but then came to my senses and readily agreed.  And then she told me the rest of it.  She was going to sell the boys to gypsies.  Oh, I wish, and she may by the time this story ends.  She’s also inviting two other boys to spend the night.  That’s four five-year-old boys.  Together.  For like fifteen hours.

Does it terrify you more when I tell you this merry band of boys is the entire membership of the famed Four Toddlers of the Apocalypse?

I offered to bring Vodka with the boy’s sleeping bag.  She’s under the impression that everything will be fine.  I don’t think she’s thought this thing through.  I, on the other hand, have.  Along with his sleeping bag and clean jammies, I giving her his medical insurance card and fifty bucks for a copay.  I plan to leave the state.

So I’m telling all of this to Kelli and I keep hearing crackling and other assorted muffled noises over the phone. 

“I just ate a sleeve of Girl Scout cookies,” she finally confessed.

“Oh, yeah.  I still need to get some of those,” I told her.  She’s the co-leader of her charming six year-old’s Daisy troop.  I don’t remember Daisies but apparently they come before Brownies which supersede the actual Girl Scouts.  Since Kelli’s semi-in charge, she runs around with a trunk load of cookies like some sort of suburban drug dealer.  Unfortunately, she’s broken the cardinal rule of drug dealing: she started using her own stash. Don’t I sound urban?  I’ve watched Scarface and Miami Vice.  I’ve got the lingo down.

One of the Mommies at her daughter’s school mentioned she needed cookies.  “Do you have any more?” she innocently asked Kelli.

“Maybe.”  Kelli was cagey.  “What kind do you want?”

“What kind do you have?” the Mommy innocently asked.

“What kind do you want?” Kelli asked again, giving nothing away.

“Thin Mints?” the Mommy suggested, tossing out everyone’s favorite.

“Nope.”  Kelli was quick to answer.  Her words clipped and unfriendly.  “I don’t have any of those.”

“Really.  How about Samoas?”  the woman mentioned another popular cookie.

“Na-huh.”  Kelli shook her head.  “None of those.  And no Tag-a-longs either.  Peanut butter has been real popular.”

The woman looked perplexed.  “I thought you were a cookie mom.”

“I am.  There’s Shortbread.”  Kelli was willing to part with the Shortbread ones.

Another Mom arrived on the scene who claimed to have multiple varieties in her Lexus minivan.  She was also uber-thin.  Certainly Kelli hated her on the spot.  But most importantly, her stash was safe.

So you know how I’ve been writing angsty emails about children’s birthday parties?  I’ve mentioned several places by name, one of them more than once.  Well, I’d not given  it any more thought since the last birthday ended in a non-event.

Today I signed on to write you an absolutely hysterical blog that involves The Bandit, The Four Toddlers of The Apocalypse, a sleep over, girl scout cookies and my obsessive compulsive issues with M&Ms.  I’ll write it up tomorrow.  You can keep that little preview to sustain you until then. 

Instead, when I logged in I saw that I had a comment that needed to be moderated.  I fully expected to find either a comment written solely in Russian, or a penis enhancement drug pitch, or some other obnoxious bit of spam.  None of those is what was awaiting me. 

There was a comment from Peter Piper Pizza.  Gulp. 

Hi Amylynn,

We came across your blog and wanted to chime in.

It is important to us that all Peter Piper Pizza customers leave our restaurants feeling like they had a positive experience. We also pride ourselves on being a family-friendly establishment and are honored that so many families choose to have their children’s birthday celebrations with us. Any suggestions you have for improvements are welcome, and we invite you to give the store manager a call to share your feedback.

Thank you for your business Amylynn, and we hope that we will see you again in the future.

So why do I feel guilty?  Every word I said was true.  All right, perhaps there were some enhancements and poetic license. I am a writer after all. That’s what I do, but the spirit of my posts were true. Ask any parent.

So now I’m at a crossroads. Do I bother to reply and think they really give a damn what I have to say?  What would I tell them anyway?  That I’m a budding curmudgeon?  That I’m a hypocrite because both of my children have had parties at Peter Piper, but that I completely cringe every time I get an invitation? 

And here’s another thing.  Why can’t Sprint ask me for my opinion?  Or my bank?  Or the cable company?  Especially Sprint.  I’ve been fairly vocal on these pages about my loathing of Sprint but I get bupkiss in return.

I’m going to have to mull this over.  And I’ll try not to let the power go to my head – but don’t be surprised if I grow a Snidley Whiplash mustache over night.

“There cannot be a crisis next week.  My schedule is already full.”   Henry Kissinger, American diplomat and political scientist.

I totally feel like this.  I don’t currently have a crisis to deal with like so many Mr. Kissinger managed, but I am definitely all full up. 

Another good quote:

“I’m not exactly a tiny woman.  When Sophia Loren is naked, this is a lot of nakedness.”   Sophia Loren, mondo movie celebrity.

Yeah.  Look at this picture.  She was huge.  If I starve myself until June, maybe I’d be this huge.

One of the things a writer will tell you is their favorite thing about writing fiction is that you have total control over your people’s lives.  You own them and they have to do what you say.

Many writing teachers will tell you, if you get stuck, just have something horrible happen to one of your characters and everything will take care of itself. 

That’s why I love this quote:

I can do to him whatever I like.  I’m allowed to torture him as much as I want.  He’s mine.

J.K. Rowling, on her beloved Harry Potter.

Here are a couple of things from this weekend.

I had my first speaking engagement.  I’m considering it an audition for the two I have at the Tucson Festival of Books in March.  I think it went alright.  Mostly.  I tried REALLY hard to speak slowly.  I have a tendency to get manic when I’m nervous.  I don’t know how anyone can tell my regular manic from my nervous manic besides maybe Kelli and my mom, but there is a lot more parched mouth in a manic moment. 

Kelli is my new assistant.  Really.  She’s serious about this and I’m her biggest fan.  More about that later.  The point of my mentioning it was due to the fact that if anyone liked what I had to say at the library that day, it was because Kelli wrote my speech which included reading from one of my favorite novels – even going to far as to mark the pages with “breathe here.”

Kudos to her.

I almost forgot this part, someone asked for my autograph.  Isn’t that hysterical?  I giggled the entire time I wrote down my name.

Finally an employee asked us if we needed help.  We told him who’s party we were attending and he grinned sheepishly and told us the best news I have heard in weeks, “Yeah, about that. It seems there was a mix up and the party was yesterday. The wrong date was printed on the invitation.”

I swear I would have kissed that pimply-faced kid square on the mouth if I hadn’t been afraid his braces would cut my lip.

“Can we still stay and play games?” my kids asked.

“No!” I answered forcefully and shoved them towards the door.  “Get in the car.” 

Honestly, I was certain Alan Funt was going to pop out behind a booth and yell, “You’re on Candid Camera!”  I wasn’t taking any chances so I made them sprint to the parking lot.

***

In the car, Sassy and I were talking about friends.  I really wish I could help her wade through the shark infested waters of girl relationships but, alas, I can’t.  I can merely only offer advice.  I attempted to do just that when I tried to help her see she shouldn’t invest all her hopes into one girl she knows.  This particular girl is very immature (and that’s saying something for seven year olds) and really has no idea how she hurts Sassy’s feelings. 

I don’t know what I was thinking when this came out of my mouth, “I wouldn’t put all your eggs in her basket.”

There was silence from the back seat.  I glanced at her in the rear view mirror and her eyebrows showed she was perplexed.

“But Mom, I like my eggs scrambled.”

***

Our little berg is recovering from the vicious cold snap that blasted through here last week.  All the prickly pear cactus in my neighborhood is dying from the freeze.  Huge pads are wilting and falling off and whole sections of the plants are laying on the ground.  The neighbor who shares our back fence on the South side has a huge prickly pear that has grown to about twelve feet high.  It’s very heavy and My Honey is constantly battling with it as it droops over the wall and bends the fence.  A big clump fell over into our yard this weekend and broke our back flow valve. 

In the course of trying to repair the plumbing and get rid of the cactus, the Idiot Dog tried to eat a giant, thorn filled pad and then lick the blow torch.

Ava is always telling me the dog is really very smart.  I beg to differ and I keep amassing proof.

This Saturday, February 5th, I’ll be speaking with three other of my romance buddies at an Amore & More workshop put on by the Pima County Public Library. 

Finding Your Niche in Today’s Romance Market

Romance novels accounted for 40% of all fiction sold in the U.S. in 2009.  Authors Amylynn Bright, Lisa Cottrell-Bently, Lorelie Long and Frankie Robertson host a workshop that will help you find your niche in the billion dollar market.

We will be at the Mission Library from 1-3.  Stop on by and say Hi. 

I’ll be the one talking really fast and hyperventilating.

Yesterday I posted a picture of the fountain at work with some icicles hanging on the tiers.  The girls at work and I all thought it was so pretty.  We ooohed and aaahed and went out into the bitter, freezing cold to take pictures with our phones.

Last night was even colder.  Really cold.  Our little city woke up to a world of hurt this morning.  Southwest Gas can’t get gas to half the damn state so those poor people don’t have heat.  Water mains broke all over town.  In fact, my kids school is closed today and tomorrow because three of the four main water lines broke and the fire sprinklers exploded.  They have three plumbing crews working on it.  I can’t even begin to imagine the bill three plumbing companies are going to charge. 

As I drove to work, there were gysers all over town.  I can just see the plumbers nestled all snug in their beds, dreams of hefty invoices dancing in their heads.

But honestly, this town is a mess.  The whole state really.  I know that it’s much worse in other parts of the country, but my little berg was not made for this nonsense.  Our underground pipes are very close to the surface.  Our infrastructure isn’t staffed for this kind of weather.  They are even considering calling for a State of Emergency.

I called Kurt this morning because I heard a rumor it was 45 in Anchorage.  It was 19 when I went to work, and I’m just saying, I don’t want to live in a place colder than Alaska.  Kurt informed me it was 25 in Anchorage but that Kenai was 45 since it’s further inland.  He urged me to go on living because soon enough it would be hot and I could complain about that.

So, today our fountain at work looked like this.

Looks like a wedding cake, right?  Like a Disneyland winter wedding cake.

Later, the maintenance guy came out and spent three hours beating the icicles off with a shovel.

Holy Cow is it cold. 

This morning I went to let the Idiot Dog out and my first clue to the temperature should have been that I could barely get the back door open.  It was frozen shut.  Seriously! My back yard faces west so it doesn’t get the sun until noonish.  I finally wrenched it open and Roscoe blithely trotted out the door and WHOOOOSH all four legs went a different direction and he took a header on the brick path.  He looked like Bambi on the ice pond. 

He got up and sniffed the path and looked at me, bemused.  He also found the crunchy grass an unlikely oddity.  I pried his dog dish off the patio and ran back inside to fill it.  I came back and he was standing in the grass at the exact same spot I left him, staring at the door with a look of mild concern on his fuzzy face.

I deposited his food and slammed the door.  It’ll warm up.  He has hair.  This is what I told myself.

The kids and I went back to scrambling for school.  It was only a few minutes before he started up.

“Ah-ooooooooooooooooooooiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnne,” he managed to combine a howl into a mournful whine.  It was a potent combination of misery and woe that could not be denied.

I shut the doors to the kid’s rooms so he couldn’t steal their toys and tucked the kitchen garbage into the pantry.  When I opened the back door he burst through in a flurry of ears and spindly legs and frost bite.

We all went off to school and work and I just prayed I’d have a couch left when I got home.

At lunch I ran home to let him out.  I figured it was warm enough for him to go out by now.  Not warm enough for me, mind you, but he’s covered with hair.  He roused himself lazily when I came through the door.  He was warm and sleepy and looked quite happy.

“Come on. Let’s go outside!” I sang with great enthusiasm.  I am often guilty of anthropomorphism, but I swear to you, that dog shook his head at me and gave me a look that said, “Yeah, I’m not going out there, lady.”

“Come on!” My voice raised another thrilling octave and I clapped my hands together.  His eyebrows told me, “nuh-uh.”  He wouldn’t even go out to pee even though I promised him I’d let him back in.  He simply turned around and went back to sleep.

I let him stay in because the only evidence I found of mischief was a half a loaf of bread shoved in the couch cushions.  And it really was VERY cold outside.

Here is the proof of the cold.  These are pictures of the fountain in the courtyard at my office.  These pictures were taken at 3:45 in the afternoon.  These are serious icicles, people, even in the middle of the day.