September 25th

Tiff brought to my attention that for those of you that skim these *ahem* I mean, read them quickly, you might have missed that my second book is out.  So this time I'm putting it at the beginning. 

Hey, y'all, my second book is out. :)

******

Charlotte and Elliot love each other.  Except, you know, when they're awake.  Or breathing.  No, really, it's not that bad.  They love each other dearly.  But they fight almost any time they occupy the same space for more than about 27 seconds.  A catastrophic escalation of hostilities is pretty much guaranteed to occur each and every day.  Neither one of them sees the virtue in a measured or proportional response.  I'm just grateful they don't have nuclear access codes.  If they did, we'd be screwed.

That being said, I knew it was going to be hard on Charlotte when Elliot went to preschool.  I mean, sure, she could actually play with one of the eighteen million train sets in the house without her brother freaking out for two whole hours, but she was going to miss him.

I just wasn't prepared for just how traumatic this event was going to be.

Almost every day, when Elliot goes to preschool, I am blessed with two hours of a tear streaked Charlotte asking for him.

"I want my brudder!"
"Your brother is in school, sweetie."
"Less go get him."
"We can't go get him, he needs to finish.  Would you like to go to the library?"
"No.  I want my Ellyiot."
"Well, we'll go get him in a little bit."
"Less go now."
"We can't go now.  Would you like a snack?"
"NO! I WANT MY ELLYIOT!"

This will pass, right?

****

I'm doing some research for book 3, currently looking into naturally occurring antiseptics, and colloidal silver came up on the list (of course.)  In fact, the quote attached to it is as follows:

"...a powerful antibiotic and many organisms can only live for a few minutes in the presence of silver."

All of a sudden I had this blinding thought chain:  Silver really does kill things.  Werewolves!  Guess myth makers knew more than they thought they did.  Wait, silver is ubiquitous now.  MAYBE WEREWOLVES WERE REAL AND WE KILLED THEM ALL WITH THE PERVASIVE PRESENCE OF SILVER!

Like peanut allergies. 

Come with me on this.  You know you want to.

:D

****

Hah!  I have been rereading my old life in the slow lane emails.  Boy howdy, I didn't know anything, did I?  Of course not.  I still don't know anything, but now I've stopped even pretending.  Also, I read something in which I said I was never going to dress a girl in ruffles, or in pink.

Do you know how many of Charlotte's clothes have ruffles on them?  I couldn't give you a precisely accurate percentage, but I'm gonna go with "a fair amount."  Also, pink?  Like half her clothes are pink!  What was I thinking?  I dunno.  I'm an idiot.

****

Here is a sound piece of advice for all parents out there:

Whatever you do, don't watch hospital dramas.

You know what?  Those things are full of sick kids.  And no matter how many times your spouse turns to you and says "Our babies will be fine,"  (thanks, babe)  the truth is that if you are unlucky enough to have a sick kid you just have to cross your fingers and HOPE.

Here's another great piece of advice:  Do not dwell on things during your mid day slump.  It will get you no where good.

****

The kids and I are in slow recovery from excessive screen time.  What happened?  Well, it's been a tough summer for me.  Summers in general tend to be crazy, with all the vacationing and traveling and what not.  It ought to be relaxing and fun, but most years, while I find it fun, I don't find it terribly relaxing.  This particular year there were moments of fun, but it turns out that the changes in my life have made me a little... I dunno.  Not depressed, but certainly moody.  Maybe brooding?  I don't think I have words.  Whatever the case, I have not been my typical self, cycling through happy and snarky as my hormones moved me.  Rather I've just been a bit down, and not dealing with things.  Dishes have been low on my priority, as has laundry, sweeping, cleaning the toilet, and in general being a responsible little domestic.  And I haven't been good about keeping the kids away from the TV/computer.  All I wanted to do was sit around and read, or watch TV, and I wasn't feeling hypocritical enough to impose limits on them that I wasn't willing to maintain for myself.

This has changed, however.  Not my mood, my mood is still skirting the dark parts of town, trying not to get mugged by any of my inner demons.  But in the great tradition of my protestant heritage I have decided that maybe sucking it up and getting on with life is the best way to encourage my mood to creep out of the slums, and back into the brightly lit main thoroughfares of my psyche, where the carnival rides are playing their relentlessly cheerful tunes.

And so, as one of many steps I'm taking to get it together, I have cracked down on the screen time.  Charlotte gets to watch TV while Elliot is in pre-school, and Elliot gets to do TV or computer after Charlotte goes to bed at night until his bed time.  That's it.  And holy bejeezum crow, have they been cranky about it.  I totally understand, and am not really upset with either of them, but I long for the day when the limited TV time is normal to them, instead of a fresh injury.  Yesterday Elliot told me he didn't want to go to pre-school, he wanted to stay home and watch TV with Charlotte.

Eye-roll.

I have to say, though, when they're NOT whining about the TV, they seem to be in a much better mood.  So I guess there's hope for the future.

****

This time of year always makes me think of the National Balloon Rally.  For those of you who never lived in Statesville, the National Balloon Rally is held every year at an old airforce base outside Statesville.  North Carolina weather being what it is, sometimes the balloon rally is cold and rainy, and sometimes it's sunny and warm, and sometimes it's bright and chilly.  You never know.  But, unless the weather's really hideous, every sunrise and every sunset for three days hundreds of hot air balloons launch off the air strip out at the base.  In between launches you can wander around the fair, where there are game booths, food booths, and craft booths, not to mention my favorite, the fund raising booths, which were inevitably humiliating (pay $10 to have your friend put in jail.  Pay $10 for three chances to dunk them in a vat of water.  Whatever.)

The Balloon Rally was a staple of my childhood, we ALWAYS went.  And the Wednesday before it began, our elementary school got out of class early, and one of the balloon teams came and launched their balloon from our sports field.  This was both awesome, and more awesome, because hot air balloons are fantastic and I also got to miss almost an hour of school.

The last years we were in Statesville, we actually ran booths at the fair.  We had a food booth, where we sold spring rolls we'd spent the last month making in our kitchen, and we had a craft booth, where we sold tie-dye, as well as condom fashion accessories.

(Yeah, you heard me right.  Someone donated a giant batch of bad condoms to the shelters.  Because what poor people really need are unplanned pregnancies, I guess.  Anyway, we had a ton of condoms we couldn't give out, for obvious reasons.  So my mom made jewelry out of them.  People loved it.)

I'm not sure if my family liked running booths and the fair.  I loved it.  For one thing, I only ever worked very short shifts in the booth.  Most of the time I was free to run around the fair.  I found all the best booths (like the ones where they were giving away free chocolate bars.  The people working the booth were working in hour long shifts, so Tiff and I went back every hour and got more chocolate.) and orchestrated a few coups (like when my friends and I pooled our money to have this guy who made fun of us locked up in the jail cell for half an hour.)  I even saw my band director dunked twice.  It was a good time.

And fall always reminds me. 

Hope everyone is having a lovely yearly transition to the cold times, and enjoying whatever rituals are yours, this time of year.