I was all ready to type up my blog tonight. I’d seated myself on my spot on the sofa, turned on my laptop, and got comfortable.

It was brilliant. Possibly, it was the best, funniest, most inspired blog post I’ve ever written.

And then the Internet went down.

Down.

As in no Internet. Oh. My. God. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I wanted to call the cable company who holds all of my communication capabilities in their ineffective hands. I didn’t know the phone number. You know how people get phone numbers these days? THEY LOOK ON THE INTERNET.

I fidgeted on the couch. I tried to watch TV. I focused on reruns of The Big Bang Theory (the funniest show on television, bar none) but no dice.  I asked My Honey to go see if he could get on line with his desktop computer. He went and did that AFTER he made considerable fun of me.

I don’t know what I thought was going to happen. The Internet was down. No one can get on line. It’s down for everyone, not just my laptop. Why, when the Internet goes down, you feel like it’s localized on just your computer?

I felt certain I was going insane. I turned my computer off and on again. Still no Internet.

The phone book! I remember that there were still phone books in the kitchen. I got the phone number for the cable company and called on my cell phone. A very annoying man’s voice came on to tell me that there were receiving so many calls that they couldn’t take MY call. He cheerfully suggested that I try again later. I roundly cursed the idiot on the recording and tried the Internet again.

ARRRRGGGGG! Nope. I called again. Same recording. And again and again and again and again. I paced. I cursed and threatened to cry. My Honey informed me I was being dramatic and then he laughed at me. I cursed at him and accused him of not loving me.

Clearly I had rounded the corner of Distressed and loped merrily into the sad little neighborhood of Lunacy. I memorized the zip code. I figured I’d be there a while. I called the cable company again. That jackass was still answering the phone. Have you ever noticed that you can’t furiously hang up on anyone on a cell phone? Pressing that end button – or in the case of my piece of shit SPRINT phone – sliding the “end” thingy on the touch screen is wholly unsatisfying. Ava pointed this out to me weeks ago, but I hadn’t the opportunity to experience it until tonight. I sincerely missed the “good old days” when you could slam the receiver down in a fury and everyone would know about it.

I tried the internet again. I wept a little. I pulled up my current manuscript. I hoped that if I focused on my hero and heroine and Regency England – a time, I’d like to note, that did not have internet – that I could keep my mind off the fact that I was completely cut off from every other person on the planet. Unless, I wanted to call them on my STUPID SPRINT phone that doesn’t work.

I was saved by Sons of Anarchy. The show finally ended at 12:30 and I was more than half asleep. I tried the Internet one more time before I toddled off to bed.

IT CAME ON!!!!!!!!!!! I’m wide awake now and showing everyone on the Internet who cares to pop on over here and read about my psychosis that I’m completely insane. Yes, it’s true. I’m not right. And now that the Internet is back on I can go on to WebMD and diagnose myself with all kinds of brain malfunctions. All is right with the world again.

Read the next paragraph in a sing song voice.

I’m going on vacation in three days. To the Caribbean. HA!

This week I plan to regale you with stories of my trying to prepare Sassy and The Bandit for vacation. It’s not going smoothly. Honestly, did you expect it to? I certainly didn’t. I did not suffer delusions about this.

My house isn’t small but it’s loaded with stuff and there isn’t a single bit of unused space. We do not have a spare bedroom so we don’t really have a staging area, per se. I have been collecting various things for the trip and stacking them in the little area around my desk in the office. It’s almost like I’ve been erecting a little fort in there.

As I’ve been collecting clothes, specifically dresses and little suits,  I’ve been hanging them from the book shelves. Finally this week I hauled out the suitcases so I could start migrating clothes in that direction. Ava is flabbergasted that that is as far as I’ve gotten. If this was her trip, the bags would have been packed for a week. She also irons every single item of clothing before it goes into the suitcases – so obviously she’s nuts. I’m not nuts. I understand the limitations as presented by my children.

I was 100% certain that the minute I started putting clothes in the suitcases, they would be in there rifling around. THEY FIND IT COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO LEAVE THINGS ALONE. Ava says that is because they are not sufficiently afraid of me. I’m certain that is true, even while everyone else in the world does hold me in a certain amount of fear. I can’t understand it. She says it’s because I’m not crazy enough, that they know that underneath the bluster and threats, there is a perfectly reasonable person in there. Well, if they’re not careful they’ll suck all the reasonableness out of me.

Of course, the chaos I predicted came to pass.  Sassy’s completely packed suitcase was open this morning and being rooted through. The bigger problem so far has been the negotiation with The Bandit on what he can take with him and what he can’t. Having never been to the Caribbean, and being six, of course he has no real understanding of what clothes he needs. It’s getting chillier here so I guess it makes complete sense that every time I open his suitcase to put more stuff in there, I find down coats, wool ski caps, mittens, and such right in there along side his swimsuit and water shoes.

Yesterday, I removed among other things : several handfuls of Army men, about ten thousand matchbox cars, the Monopoly board game (even after I told him NO BOARD GAMES) and – this is my favorite – his Captain America suit.

Apparently, one never knows when being Captain America will be useful while on a cruise ship in Grand Cayman.

To be continued…..

This is a conversation My Honey and I overheard from the backseat today. I swear to Zeus with my right hand raised. I testify because I know you think I make this stuff up. I don’t. I’d never make anything up this good.

“I call my butt Bob,” The Bandit told his sister. My Honey and I tuned in at this point so we don’t know how the conversation wound it’s way to the naming of body parts. I don’t know about you all, but we found “Bob” to be rather uninspired.

Sassy laughed. “That’s weird, dude.”

“Guess what I call my wiener,” he said. Eyebrows were raised in the front seat and My Honey and I glanced over at each other. I didn’t know what to say. Shouldn’t a mother discourage this kind of talk? I’m sure a good mother would, but I wanted to know the answer.

“I call him Larry.”

Now everyone in the car is laughing. Larry? Really? I didn’t know six year old boys named their “wiener”. Having a son has enlightened me in innumerable ways.  Even in only six years I have learned more about boys and men than I ever would have expected in such a short time.

At least I can’t say they’re boring. I’m often amazed with the wit of the things they say. Now as my children are growing up and getting their own personalities, I love their jokes and zingers.

My friend, Kurt, texted me tonight a good one from his boy. His son is called TJ and the kids on his new hockey team asked him what the initials stood for. He told them Tinfoil Johnson. HA! That’s pretty damn funny.

I have no idea what he calls his wiener and I’d just as soon keep it that way.

If you wondered what I was doing when I was screwing around and not posting here or writing on my manuscript….

I wrote two reviews:

and

I haven’t posted a picture of the Idiot Dog that doesn’t have him sitting on the kitchen table. I just want you all to know, Dear Internets, that the dog abuses other pieces of furniture as well.

 I don’t want you all to think we’re mean to this dog. This dog leads the life of Riley.

Not that he isn’t totally annoying all the time.

Sweet Clementine

Even as I write this, Roscoe is running around behind the couch, stepping on the curtains. We can tell because you can see the little white tip of his tail waving above the cushions.

I keep telling My Honey that what he desperately needs is a friend to wrestle with. I keep assuring him the dog would be less pesky to the humans if there was another canine with whom he could pal around

We happened to stop into a pet store at the mall this weekend. I named all the dogs. There was a Dogue de Bordeaux (remember Hooch from Turner and Hooch? Yes, that dog!) whom I named Clementine, a Great Dane called Frank, and a bulldog I called Festus.

Holy cow. I really need a puppy.

Oh. My. God. I hate other people. I just want to put that out there before I tell you this tale.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, how much I hate the fake solicitousness you get these days at grocery stores and, in this particular instance, Target. The episode this evening had an extra component that I can’t wait to share with you.

I’d had a long, hard day at the salt mines. It was especially bad today because Ava was off (she’s off all week **whine**) and Kelli was unavailable for lunch. This Sister was lonely and pathetic. I needed to go to Target after work because I’m tired of fighting with the keyboard on my lap top. As you may recall it is missing the keys for the O and K. K isn’t bad, but the frequency in which I need to use the O is excruciating. I decided I needed a cheap keyboard I can plug into the USB port. That would solve all my woe’s, I am certain.

Target has one for ten dollars. Perfect. I walked in and made a bee line for the electronics department in the back of the store. I could get there blindfolded. I know the floor plan that well. I could probably get to the aisle with the keyboards blindfolded. That’s embarrassing to admit, but there it is. I was reading email on my phone and thus not paying attention to the people around me. In  fact, I’m pretty sure my aura read “Do Not Bother Me”. Regardless, I was asked by four separate employees if they could help me find anything. I was unable to politely ignore them by number four.

I got to the keyboard aisle and don’t you know they were out of the ten dollar keyboards. I grabbed the twenty dollar keyboard, huffed loudly, and headed for the checkout lanes at the front of the store.

“Can I help you find anything?”

Oh, what the hell. “Yes, actually.” I asked the twelve year old boy working in electronics if he could check the backroom for any of the ten dollar keyboards.

He zapped the label with his magic gun and informed me, “No. We’re all out of the wired keyboards.” Then he looked at the twenty dollar wireless keyboard I was holding and he asked me with a great deal of disdain. “Why would you want that other keyboard anyway?” Then he actually snorted.

I thought of all the ways I could kill him with the wireless keyboard box I held in my clenching fists. One good whack to the chin ….

I told you it had been a very long day, I hate other people, and he asked for it. “Look,” I glanced at his name tag, “Jeremy, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

His eyes were huge and round. He didn’t say another word. How could he? I’m certain he wasn’t used to people sassing back. After all, he worked in the electronics department. Clearly he knows everything. It may be true that I know nothing, but I recognize a boy with a smarth mouth when I see one. I’ve had quite a bit of experience in that area.

I’m telling you, I’m going to get a little hut on a beach somewhere and become a hermit. It doesn’t have to be a fancy hut. It only needs a lot of shade and broadband Internet.

And a complete lack of twelve year old electronics salesmen.

I told you just the other day that I don’t have a shoe problem. You knew I was lying, right? Totally, lying. Granted, my book thing is a more pronounced problem, but I definitely love me some good shoes. In fact, I’ve mentioned exciting shoe incidents more than once on this blog.

Well, I needed a pair of red shoes. I personally find it astounding that I didn’t own a pair of red heels. Every woman should own some red heels. So Sassy and I went shoe shopping. I’ve taught her everything she knows about shoe shopping – not everything I know, of course. I still need her to need me. We went to the DSW hoping that I’d find a pair on clearance. There is nothing that sends me closer to Nirvana than finding a great pair of shoes on a super duper clearance. UNLESS it’s finding a first edition of a favorite book in the back of a book store, on the top shelf, behind two other books, in excellent condition WITH A SIGNATURE ON THE FACING PAGE.

So Sassy and I walked into the store and right in the very front were a really cute pair of red, satin pumps.

“Those, Mom. They’re perfect.” Sassy needlessly pointed them out to me.

“Yeah, those are really cute,” I agreed and hustled right past them.

Sassy held back, confused that I passed them by. “Try them on,” she insisted.

“Nope.”

“Why?”

We rounded the corner and headed for the size 7 clearance section. “Because if I try them on, they’ll fit and I don’t want to spend that much on shoes today.”

She looked at me like I was crazy, but it’s totally true. This always happens. It’s like science. The physics of shoes.

I tried on several pair of perfectly adorable red clearance shoes. There was one I liked quite a bit. Sassy kept bringing me shoes from the general population, most of which caused me to squinch up my nose. They were wrong color, too tall, too slutty, too something.

I modeled my cute clearance shoes in the mirror. They were adorable.

Then she brought those damn shoes we saw at the front of the store. “Please try them on,” she said. “They’re the cutest ones here.”

“Nooooo,” I whined. Boy, they were the cutest shoes. “I don’t want to try them on.”

“Yeeeees,” she said and shoved them at me. I’m telling you, they shimmered. They actually shimmered.

"ooooooooh," she said with reverence

“How much do they cost again?” I asked. She told me. I fainted.

“Try them on,” she repeated. I’m pretty sure I heard a very faint voice whispering my name from inside the box.

I caved in and tried them on. A person can’t fight the supernatural. Especially not a weak person such as myself.  The perfectly fine clearance shoes lay forgotten on the floor – “dropped like third period French.”

The damn things fit like Cinderella’s shoes, like they had been cobbled by elves just for my feet while I slept. 

Look at these beauties. You see why I didn’t even want to try them on.

Sigh. Now I never want to take them off.

Pretty, pretty shoes.

I have a security badge I wear for work. We all wear them on lanyards around our necks with retractable cords so we can pull the badge to the scanner thus releasing the magnetic door locks. We have them on the two exterior doors and then on the two doors that lead into the inner offices from the public side. If you want to go pee you need your badge. If you have an appointment with a customer you need your badge.

It’s really best if you don’t lose your badge.

I keep losing mine. Really, it’s through no fault of my own. There is a plastic mechanism with our company logo nestled inside a metal hoop and mine keeps coming apart there. I always know it’s in the inner sanctum when I lose it because I couldn’t have opened the doors to get inside if I didn’t. I generally find it under my desk, but as you can imagine this gets quite pesky.

I ran home during lunch today to let the Idiot Dog outside. It had been frigidly cold and raining this morning and I didn’t have the heart to throw his fuzzy butt outside. While I was there, I decided to Super Glue the parts of my lanyard together in a proactive solution.

It was really more like an episode of I Love Lucy than a quick trip to my house.

First, I super glued my right thumb to the back of the plastic piece. While I was trying to pry my thumb loose, I glued my right index finger to the front. I got both of them separated with my left hand only to get that thumb stuck as well. Cursing mightily, I pried all my fingers loose, let go of the lanyard and promptly adhered it to my shirt.

“Oh for …. *#^$@%&” I unstuck my shirt without cutting a hole in it. Of course you know the cap to the glue was stuck to the counter top.

If there is any question about the ownership of my lanyard, I’ll be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is mine. My fingerprints are stuck all over the thing. That may come into play sooner than you think because, as I write this a scant half hour later, the plastic part has come loose again and is floating around the office somewhere.

Super Glue indeed.

“I wanna go to Africa,” The Bandit told us over dinner. He was very excited about it. “All I need is a blow torch and a jar of mayonnaise.”

Do you remember that noise cartoon characters make when they shake their heads in confusion? It’s sort of a wobbly noise. That’s the sound my head made when he said this.

“Blow torches come in very handy,” My Honey agreed.

“I thought all MacGyver ever needed was a paperclip and a stick of gum.” Honestly, I didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation,

Is this something guys understand? Is there a class they give boys in the first grade in which girls are excused that outlines little known uses for welding equipment? Like when they give the girls the class where they teach the names of all the colors – persimmon, chartreuse, thistle. Or when they take the girls aside and discuss the importance of asking all the pertinent questions when confronted with news like “So and So are getting a divorce.” Men are more than happy to divulge that they heard during band practice that people you know are breaking up but not why, or who’s at fault, or any actual detail whatsoever.

What could my little boy need with a blow torch? What in Zeus’ name does that have to do with mayonnaise? Are these items everyone should consider when heading off to Africa? Does the blow torch come in a convenient travel size because, if it’s not already, I suspect the Transportation Security Administration will be putting that right on the prohibited items list. I mean if I can’t take my cuticle nippers with me, I’m certain they’re not allowing my six year old on a plane with mayonnaise.

HA! You thought I was going to say blow torch didn’t you. Well that’s just silly.

I swear, I almost never have any idea what that boy of mine is talking about and I fear it’s only going to get worse.

I was home with a sick kid today. It all started around 1am the night before when Sassy came into the office and heaved up her dinner and her socks. That went on for hours. At one point, when I’m certain I saw her feet come up, she turned to me and said, “Am I gonna be alright?”

Poor little pumpkin. I let her stay home from school, of course, and I was exhausted from being up all night with her, too. We never got out of our pajamas – not even when I took The Bandit to school. We watched HBO all day. And I was pleased when she kept down toast and mac & cheese. Then I made her take a nap after lunch even though she insisted she didn’t need one. Well I did, so I folded us into my big bed and we slept for another five hours.

There was one thing that happened that almost caused me to have a heart attack. I received an email out of the blue from one of the NYC editors who is reading my manuscript. She has a very distinctive name which I recognized immediately. She has my email because I met her at the Tucson Festival of Books earlier this year. We correspond several times so I am obviously still in her contact list.

I took a deep breath and clicked on the email. I was absolutely certain that the only reason she was emailing me was because she read my manuscript and loved it. What else could she possibly want?

Her email made no sense. It was theater notes about a play she’s in. I didn’t read very far because it was clearly not for me. It turns out her email when haywire and her message went out to her entire contact list.

Honestly, I don’t know if my heart could take another close call like that. It was torturous.