People ask me all the time what I’m reading, hence the advent of the little box at the top that tells you what I’m carting around in my purse and toting from room to room.  Unfortunately, I’ve been so ridiculously busy that my reading is very slow going right now.  In fact, every moment I’m reading there is a nasty old schoolmarm figure in my head berating me because I’m not writing.

The book I just finished reading was a fabulous one by a friend who exemplifies everything that is the exact opposite of the stigma of a self-published author.  She has done a truly excellent job of editing her work and it’s very professionally done, not to mention a good read. 

I thought I’d show you the bookshelves that house my rotating To Be Read pile.  Keep in mind this is the pile of books I haven’t read.  There are many, many more books scattered about this house I assure you.

One of the Sisters does not see the draw of Johnny Depp.  Quite frankly, the other Sister and I can’t understand how she shares our DNA.  Clearly, she must have been brought by fairies, or discovered in a melon patch, or as my fabulously imaginative Grandmother would say, perhaps she was knitted out of yarn. 

Whatever the case, Kelli simply doesn’t care or notice when something by the yummy and magnificently talented Mr Depp comes out.   Now Ava and I on the other hand are alerted by curious tingling and other-worldly whispering in our ears.

I happened to see this on one of the blogs I regularly visit – The Goddess Blogs written by some of my very favorite authors.

Ooooooh, I just can’t wait.

All Christmas Eve day I repeatedly told The Bandit to go pick up his room.  I was repeatedly ignored.

“Go clean up your room.”

Nothing.

Repeat.

Finally I told him, “If I was Santa, I wouldn’t bring you anymore toys because obviously you don’t have enough room for the old toys.”

I swear to God the little creep looked at me and said, “Well if YOU were Santa, I’d be good every day.”

What do you say to that?  I stood there like a guppy, my mouth opening and closing, opening and closing.  I so desperately wanted to form the words.  Of course, if I did, the parenting police would show up at my door and my Mommy card would me summarily revoked.

I finally had to walk away or risk irreparable damage.

Last night we went to walk the Winterhaven Festival of Lights.  It’s a local thing where an entire neighborhood decorates their houses for the holidays.  There are contests and awards and literally thousands of people come out every year for two weeks around Christmas.   There are light and music displays and a gazillion horse and mule drawn wagons and a few lovely carriages drawn by gorgeous prancing horses.  It’s usually brisk, cool weather if not really cold and we get to feel a little like Christmas dressed in mittens and hats.

We took The Idiot Dog with us because it always seems like a good idea at the time.  We’ve always taken the dogs.  This

The Idiot Dog

year I was amused that so many people approached me to exclaim at Roscoe’s size. 

“Oh my God, your dog is huge!” they’d exclaim as they stroked his long, silky ears and I’d look at them in bewilderment.  Roscoe is a young coonhound/bloodhound mix at not quite three years old, and by that I mean he is tallish but he is still youthfully trim.  His legs look less stilty than they did last year, but he has by no means filled out yet.  He looks a lot like a teenager.  So I peer down at this admittedly tallish dog, he comes up to about the top of my thigh/hip area but then I’m not a tall woman at 5’4″, and I think, “Hmmmmm.”

Now here is why I become bewildered by people’s astonishment.  I’ve always been a fan of big dog.  BIG DOGS.  When

Shirley

 My Honey and I started dating I had three dogs: a Sheppard husky mix named Shirley, a great dane/rottweiler/St. Bernard mix named Hugh, and a pure bred Newfoundland named Sophie.  They registered in a combined weight of 390 pounds. 

Silly Hugh

Obviously I had no fear of living alone.  A person would have to be a complete idiot to burst into my house uninvited.  I also had a completely insane gargoyle of a cat but that’s another story altogether.

There were several years we took Sophie or Hugh or both to the Winterhaven festival of lights and, understandably when seeing 180 pounds of black Newfoundland in the dark, I heard more than once, “Holy crap, she has a bear on a leash!” 

Admittedly my perspective of big dogs is slightly skewed, but I just don’t see Roscoe as a big dog.

Sweet Sophie - no one could melt on a tile floor like Sophie

Here’s another thing.  Just to add to the inventory of nonsense about this dog – he’s terrified of horses.  And trolleys.  When the carriages or hay rides would come by he would literally hide behind my or My Honey’s legs, turn his face away from the street, and tremble pitifully in fear.  At one point, he ran and hid in a hedge until the horses passed by.

It would be sad if, at the same time, I didn’t think it was so funny.

Really, I’m not a nice person.

Alright, so here’s the deal.  I’ve told you that I’m surprise challenged.  I can’t take it.  Really.  I’m 41 years old and my husband still can’t bring my presents into the house until Christmas Eve due to the very real fear that I’ll get up in the dark of the night and unwrap them to find out what they are, re-wrap them and then do an outstanding job of being “surprised” on Christmas morning.

I try.  I really do, but their call is too strong.  I can hear it when I’m sleeping, burrowing into my dreams and begging to be discovered. 

Additionally, my hard and fast rule is: anything that comes in the mail is free game and will be opened in the yard on the way in from the mail box.  I honestly don’t understand people who can wait.  I don’t think we’re even from the same species.

How is this for a cruel twist of fate.  Now, I have a five year old who absolutely can’t keep a secret.

Mom was over last weekend to do the ritual cookie baking.  We did it at my house because we knew Sassy and The Bandit would want to help however, at my house, once they got bored, there’d be stuff for them to wander off and do.  At some point, the seven year old asked Grandma to tell her some of the presents she bought.  Of course, Bandit wasn’t about to be left out and said he wanted to know, too. 

I warned my Mom, “Don’t tell him anything.  He can’t keep a secret.”

“I know,” she replied. 

Umhummm.

So the three of them trooped off to the hall so Grandma could whisper without my dog-like hearing picking anything up.  I am certain Grandma had barely let the last syllable leave her lips before the boy was back in the kitchen.

“Grandma got you some special pe…..”  He got that much out before I slapped my hand over his mouth.

How fair is this?  I’m dying to know and yet it’s not very sporting to allow him to tell me like that.

Sassy is thrilled because I’ve given her carte blanche to lie to him.  I’ve explained that it only applies to Christmas, but somehow I don’t think that stipulation has fully registered in her brain.  I’ve got no choice though, because otherwise he’d blab everything he new.

It’s a cruel, cruel world.

I put my shoulder out again.  Sometimes I think my spine and ribs are assembled from legos and someone has snuck in there and discombobulated them all.  I have a perfectly lovely doctor – my primary care physician is also an osteopath, so she puts be back together several times a year.

This time, I don’t know if some of the legos are missing or what, but I’m just not going back together as smoothly as I always hope.

Anyway, the point is – I’m way too sore to sit at a computer tonight.  I’m going to take a hot, hot bath with a glass of wine and maybe even a muscle relaxant.  I’m going to finish the book I’ve been reading for a week – the great one by Sabrina Jeffries from up in the right hand corner.

I’ll have a good story for you tomorrow.  If not, I’ll make something up.  Deal?

The last couple of years Christmas in the Bright household has come to mean tears and hysteria over loose teeth and pending visits from the Tooth Fairy.  If you’ll remember last year, The Idiot dog knocked out one of Sassy’s front teeth the week of Christmas and then The Bandit knocked out the other on Christmas Eve.   That was also the same evening my brand new Blackberry went for a swim in bloody bathwater. 

Everyone recovered.  Sassy grew in new teeth – although they are crooked and widely spaced so I’m hoping when she’s twelve, Santa Claus brings braces.  She’s also lost several more over the year.  For the last several days, she’s had a very loose bottom tooth.  She has moaned and whined and groaned and cried and starved herself because “I can’t eaaaaaaat with my toooooooooth!” 

I’m sorry to say, I’m not a very good commisserator.  “Just pull it out!”

This drool is nothing. Really.

“NOOOOOOO!” Then, as God as my witness, a string of drool will come from her mouth to rival one from my old Newfoundland, Sophie. 

I’ve told her repeatedly the more hysterical she makes herself, the more it’s going to hurt but she can’t listen to my sage advice because she’s hyperventilating.  I pity her husband some day in the delivery room with her. 

About 100 times a day she drags me into the bathroom  to hold her hand while she fusses about and pretends that she’s gonna pull it out, but in the end, she chickens out.  Every.  Single.  Time.  For days and days.

This morning her tooth was so tender she couldn’t eat yogurt because there were blueberries in there. 

“Honey, there is nothing softer on the planet than yogurt.  I don’t know what to tell you.  I guess you’ll just starve to death.”  I know I’m not going to win any Mommy of the year awards, but a person can only put up with so much self-created drama.

Right now, as Kurt is reading this, he’s falling over laughing because, once upon a time, I was the Queen of Self-Created Drama.  Now, however, I’m the Mom and FOR GOD’S SAKE JUST PULL IT OUT ALREADY!

Finally at dinner tonight I could take it no more.  The crocodile tears and dragons’ breath eminating  from my child due to several days of poorly brushed teeth pushed me over the edge. 

We went to the bathroom: her to pull out her tooth, me to be a cheerleader.

“Ready?  On three.  One…..two….”

“No! I can’t. I can’t,” she sobs.

“Yes you can.” I squeeze her hand for moral support.  “Just grab a hold of it and give it a little twist.”

“OoooooKaaaaay,” she stutters, drool hanging from her quivering bottom lip.

“Alright, one….two…..”

“NO!  It’s goooooooona huuuuuuuurt,” she tells me.

” You have to breathe, Sassy,” I say.  “And it’s only going to hurt for a minute.”

“A MINUTE!?” she asks, complete and total panic written across her face. 

“A second,” I backpedal quickly, “Only a second.  Baby, it’s holding on by a thread, a tiny little piece of skin.”

Now she’s standing on the toilet so she can peer at it in the mirror over the sink.  “But it’s gonna bleed,” she tells me.

“Not much.”  OH COME ON.  “Do you want me to do it?”

Now she glares at me like I’m a monster.  “NO!”

“Alright then, grab hold of it and pull on three.  One…..two….”

This goes on for about fifteen minutes.  The whole while my dinner is getting cold.  Finally a tiny bit of porcelain smaller than a Chicklet is plucked from her mouth.  There is no blood.  No pain.  The drama has ended and the Tooth Fairy has come and gone.

I can’t wait to do this with The Bandit.

In the spirit of romance:

I have doen what I pleased, so that every bit of exual impulse in me has expressed itself,” H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells

 wrote in his autobiography.  A staunch advocate of “free love,” Wells cheated on both wives, claiming at one point that he had the “right” to do so with impunity.  (It’s unclear whether he believed this “right” belonged to his wives as well.)  Such brazen horndogging didn’t seem to scare off too many paramours.  Wells remained a veritable babe magnet well into his seventies.  One lover attributed his erotic prowess to the fact that his body gave off an irresistible honey-like aroma.

H(erbert) G(eorge) Wells is big, again, right now with the popularity of steam punk.  His stuff, after Jules Verne, is probably the most stylized science fiction out there. 

Of course, there’s not a lot of romance in his stuff, but I found it very intriguing that he was described as smelling like honey.  Interesting.  I looked him up on Google images and I don’t see it, but then Google doesn’t have a smell option so I’m not getting hit by the full force of his charisma.  I’m just going to have to take them on their word.

I Twitter – Amylynnbright is my name.  You probably would have never guessed that, right?  One would think I’d be pretty good at it with all the random things that run through my head, and all the silly thoughts, but I sort of get stage fright.  In the beginning, I was afraid to tweet just any old thing, but seriously, if you follow Twitter at all you know that being profound isn’t a requirement. 

I am making a concerted effort to be more consistent.  I follow quite a few people: Publishing industry folk, some of the bloggers I really enjoy – especially The Bloggess and Dooce, but there is only one I person in which I follow every single tweet.  I have MY AGENT’s tweets come to my phone.

Today she had the following Tweet: Just got “the call” that is going to make someone very happy…a Merry Christmas indeed! She needs to answer her phone tho!

I’m telling you – I stared at my phone all day and it didn’t ring once.  DRAT!

Still waiting.