Book Reviews, My Books, and Whatever….

     I’ve started a new book.  This one is a lighthearted look at the life of reporter Andrew Carnes.  Hope you enjoy it.

     I’m still sidetracked by real life, but it’s starting to settle down to a normal lunacy.  I can’t wait to get back to my little story!  I had plenty of time to read while sitting in the hospital waiting room, and it was really tough not to laugh out loud while reading the remaining Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich.  I had to keep covering my face with the book while suppressing the laughter.  I got some mighty strange looks from the other folks waiting there.

     Well, I do have to take care of business so I’d better get to work on it.  That will allow me to return here with another installment a bit sooner!

Later, y’all!

I haven’t had a chance to write the next installment on the novella, but I’ll get back to it soon.  I’ve simply had too much going on, and not enough time to do it all.  Things are getting better now, so hopefully in a few days I’ll get my head screwed on straight and sit down to write.

OMG!  If ever there was an alternative rock group with old souls, it has to be Muse!  I’d never really paid attention to them until the Twilight soundtrack came out, but now I’m probably their biggest fan.  I’ve downloaded every song of theirs that I can find.  Thankfully, my MP3 player lets me choose how I listen to music, so I select by artist and play Muse. 

Their song Blackout has to be the most beautiful alt rock song ever made!   It’s sensuous, soothing, and edgy with a depth of soul like no other.  It continues to roil through my brain long after the music has ended. 

I got the advance ticket notice that they would be in Houston in October with U2.  As much as I love Muse I won’t pay the kind of ticket price that U2 commands; Bono’s ego isn’t that wonderful to me.  So instead, I’ll sit here and enjoy their music in the peacefulness of my own surroundings……at least until they venture out on their own.  (sigh)

In the head, that is.  I’m enjoying a personal smirk right now.  Some people actually get my sense of humor, and what’s more, they share it, too.   Now how funny is that?  Just when I thought I was unique in this world, I find out someone else has swiped my funny bone and is using it for their personal benefit.   There’s something to be said about humor sharers….I guess “sharers” is a word.  If it’s not, it should be, and officially is as of this writing. 

When you share a sense of humor with someone, you have a tie that binds regardless of differences in color, shape, education, or social status.  That little nudge, nudge, wink, wink can go a long way towards smoothing out life’s rough patches, and creating a bond where none previously existed.  I would even venture to say that a good international truce would be greatly enhanced if only the writers of said truce shared the same kind of humor or even a good laugh together.

There’s nothing worse than being forever tied to someone who has no sense of humor or refuses to see the humor in a situation.  Because there comes a time in every life when the only thing that will pull you through is a good laugh.  Believe me, if I hadn’t been able to laugh at my life, I’d probably have blown my head off by now. 

Once upon a time, when I was young and reckless, I sat and contemplated how I would like my epitath to read.  I finally came up with “She made people smile.”  Now, I know in the greater scheme of things, “she made people smile” is a rather lame  legacy; however, if I’ve managed to make even a quarter of the people I’ve encountered smile, then I’ve accomplished more than I’ve ever thought possible.  Indeed, I’ve accomplished more than many politicians could ever hope for in the struggle for world peace.  I can’t think of many things more depressing than going through life without smiling. 

I also made it my mission to purposely make people smile.  Call it a stealth mission.  I have been known to go through the drive-thru at many fast food franchises and compliment the person working at the window.  I’ve also stopped strangers on the sidewalk and complimented them for something totally unexpected.  I will never forget the look on a young lady’s face when I pulled up to the window at Jack-in-The Box in Cleveland and, as she handed me my order, I told her how exquisite her skin looked.  She went from looking tired and rushed to absolutely radiating.  And, funny thing is, it was the truth.  She was African American and her skin was a wonderful caramel color, flawless, and smooth.  It was gorgeous.  I just figured she needed to hear it.  Hopefully her day improved after that.

There was also the young African American girl, about sixteen, who I stopped on the sidewalk in front of JC Penney to tell her how pretty her dress was and how beautiful she looked in it.  She went on to tell me where she got the dress and was blushing like crazy by the time we parted ways, but her ego was miles above that sidewalk.  I made her smile.  Probably more so than if I’d told her a joke, but even a compliment can beget a sense of humor. 

To exercise my stealth humor, I usually try to pick someone who seems to be having a ho-hum or dismal day.  If I can find something about which to compliment them, or a funny tidbit to pass along, it improves not only their day, but mine as well.  Humor is a commodity best kept in ample supply.  It doesn’t go bad or ruin, and it can be passed down from generation to generation without causing greediness or jealousy.  In fact, it enhances life in much the same way that a good dose of salt enhances French fries.  How’s that for a strange simile?   There goes that weird sense of humor again.

My DH told me tonight that something was different about me…..or us.   That got me to thinking about what the difference might be, so here I am, sitting at the keyboard at 1:00 a.m., thinking. 

I do believe I’ve figured it out, though.   For the first time in God knows how many years, I’m truly happy from the inside out to the outside in.   I started to notice this change when I started doing things that I enjoy……like reading copious quantities of words, working out, listening to the kind of music I like, and just doing things I like to do without worrying if it’s going to piss off or inconvenience anyone.

All my life I’ve listened to music that those around me liked, because I didn’t want to impose my music on them.  Same thing with most everything else in my life.  I’ve done so many things just to avoid confrontation or because it was expected of me.  I’ve volunteered for causes I had no interest in because my DH or my kids enjoyed them.  I’ve associated with many people with whom I had nothing in common simply because they were part and parcel of something my DH or my kids enjoyed.   I’ve wasted a lot of time and energy on personal projects and lifestyles of others that I resented, but I kept my mouth shut.

Instead of staying quiet and putting myself second, or third, or even last, I should have spoken up years ago.  But years ago, I don’t know if the marriage would have held up if I hadn’t subjugated my own interests.  Relationships are funny that way.  However, there comes a time in everyone’s life when they finally have to let their own personality out, and boy, has mine popped to the surface.  I feel years younger, healthier, more relaxed, and just flat out happy.  I still make sure the bed gets made, the meals get cooked, and the laundry gets washed, but I do it on my own schedule now. 

I grew up in an era where the wife waited on the husband hand and foot, the husband was the master of his castle, and whatever hairbrained idea he came up with was simply the smartest thing in the world.   Unless you’ve lived that way, you have no idea how stressful it can be……..especially when your own soul is screaming to be released from the dismal trap that it’s in, and it slowly wilts and smothers until it’s only a shadow of its former self.  That’s the way I was raised.

I really can’t put my finger on the exact time the transformation began, but perhaps it was when the DH worked away from home for three months, and for the first time in my life, I had no one to cater to except myself.  I decided to reread a series of novels just to be able to enjoy the continuity of them.  It was sheer bliss.  I could read all night long if I wanted.  After that first series came the Twilight series.  Scarfed them down in four days.  After that I found myself trolling the aisles at Borders for new authors, new series, new ideas.   In the span of about six weeks I read somewhere in the vicinity of ten thousand pages.  I was ecstatic.  My brain felt lighter.  It was better than any artificial high anyone else could have come up with.

This has been going on for four and a half months now, and I’ve no idea how many books I’ve read in that time, although I should stop and take a count of them.   I reread one entire series of eight books in March after I had read them in January simply because I’d had pneumonia at the time and had missed some of the details.   I think if I died tomorrow I would die a happy person just because my brain no longer atrophies from neglect.  It’s getting the thing it craves most above even food and water……..stimulating words, beautiful words, harsh words, thoughtful, insightful, exotic words printed on paper that I can touch and feel and horde for years to come.   I can revel in the thoughts and ideas of other minds, and try them on mentally just to see how they feel. 

There was one amazing lady in my life who was responsible for my love affair with words……Mrs. Stanford.  I never knew her first name, but she was the most amazing teacher in the world.  She shared her love of learning, and it’s because of her that I have an unquenchable thirst for reading and learning.  I doubt she’s still alive, but that woman was a godsend to me.  Next time you enjoy a good book……thank a teacher.  I do.

The pollen is everywhere!  Thank God for antihistimines…..I’d be miserable without them.  But in all fairness, the flowers are beautiful, the trees are leafing out, the grass has already been mowed a couple of times, and everywhere I look there are new babies.  There are new calves, new kids, new chicks, and new skunks.  Especially new skunks!

There are at least two families of skunks living in different areas of our barn.  Most of the time it’s not a problem, but they love the cat food I give the barn cats.  They dig huge holes in the dirt around the food bowls looking for food that’s been dropped.  They’ve managed to break off the edges of the concrete we poured several years ago, and they refuse to replace it.  They simply leave their mess for me to clean up……as if I needed something else to do.

I have to admit, though, it’s pretty cute when I happen to spy two of the babies inside the food bowl eating the cat food.   What’s not so funny is when they come out in the daytime and walk right past me either going to or from their hideout.  Such an event is fairly commonplace around here, to the extent that I’ve gotten several pictures of the critters eating.  Our barn is a converted horse stable with pens down each side and a center runway that’s open.  One day I happened to be working in the barn, and I heard a crunching noise.  I swear, it sounded like the cats had lost all their manners and were smacking their lips as they ate.  Finally my curiousity got the best of me; I had to see what cat dared to break character and be so rude.

I stood in the center of the runway, behind a gate, so I could see the front of the barn, and there were two “teenage” skunks eating out of the big food bowl.  I say “teenage” because they were too big to crawl inside the food bowl any longer, but not big enough to turn it over.  They were having a wonderful time chowing down and enjoying the nice sunny day.   I believe they must have sneaked out of the house without mom knowing, or else mom forgot to tell them that skunks are supposed to roam around at night.  It was 10:00 a.m., and mom didn’t have a clue where her kids were. 

Fortunately, I had my camera in the barn for other reasons.  I crept quietly to the office, got the camera, remembered to remove the lens cap, and was able to take quite a few pictures of them.  They ignored the camera flash, and continued to eat.  I returned the camera to the office and went back to work.  Several minutes later, I noticed one of them leaving via the outside of the barn.  The remaining skunk must have been the male, because he had the nerve to walk straight down the runway, directly to where I was working.  Only a guy would think nothing of disrupting a woman at work!

Since he was so obviously not going to stop, I did.  I held perfectly still so he wouldn’t be surprised when he got close to me.  Actually, I was hoping he wouldn’t notice me at all.  To hell with not being surprised, I wanted to be ignored!  The entire time, my brain was kicked into overdrive with the thoughts: Please, don’t stop here; Please, don’t get scared; Please, don’t spray me!  This banner ran like a long-winded commercial, over and over inside my head.  I watched as the little skunk slunk under the gate right into the area where I was standing.  “Oh, God, no!”, flashed through my head!  The skunk hadn’t spotted me yet; obviously they have poor eyesight.  However, the minute he got in front of the office, he must have caught my scent, because he stopped dead in his tracks six feet away from my hiding place!  

He stood there, stock still, sampling the air and peering as hard as his myopic eyes could peer.  His little teenage tail was twitching.  My heart was pounding.  I do believe I was more scared than he was; at least, I had more to lose than he did!  His little nose continued to wiggle and sniff, and I continued with my impersonation of a statue.  After what seemed to be hours, but was really only a few minutes, he decided that the foreign smell was benign and he continued on with his journey.  He ambled past the feed room, under a gate, along a wall, and slipped into a hole mom had made for access under the feed room.  My muscles turned into jelly and my lungs gasped for air.  I was unaware that I’d been holding my breath, but my lungs had been paying attention, and now they were working overtime to get that nice clean oxygen into my system.

That wasn’t the last encounter with skunks, large and small, in the barn, but I finally wised up.  The morning cat feeding is now given at a location apart from the barn, the evening feeding remains in the barn, but I’ve cut back on the amount of food in the bowls.   Occasionally our little yard dog, Foxey, must sneak up on one or two of them while they’re eating at night, because some mornings there’s a distinctive skunk odor permeating the barn…..and it originates at the food bowls.  

Foxey doesn’t much care for them, but the cats don’t mind them at all.  I’ve caught those turncoats actually playing games with the young skunks when they thought I wasn’t looking.  Their favorite is “whack the skunk on the head,” and it only takes two players.  The cat will situate herself on top of the garden wagon and wait for a skunk to come along.   Because the wagon has an expanded metal floor, the cat can see in every direction.   She’ll wait for the skunk to finish eating and amble over to the wagon to check her out.  When the skunk gets close enough, the cat leans over the edge and takes a swipe at the skunk’s head.  That signals the start of the game.  Thereafter, they exchange paw swipes with each other until one of them gets tired of getting hit on the head or gets pissed and decides to gas the place.  However, the cats hate being gassed so they try not to hit the skunks hard enough to piss them off.  The game can go on for quite a while.  Since the skunks know they’re getting grounded anyway, they’ll go ahead and waste as much time as they can before going home.  The cats sometimes get bored and quit, because the skunks have a lot of energy, and the cats are just plain lazy. 

Living on a farm can have its plusses, but it can also contain a few minuses.  Sometimes those minuses can really mess a person up if they’re not careful.  I’ve collected a lot of recipes for removing skunk smell; hopefully I’ll never have to use them!  Kinda like being armed, but hoping you never have to shoot.

……..for the second book of the Dark-Hunter series to arrive.  I  forged ahead to the third one, Night Embrace.  Sherrilyn Kenyon has a way with words, and the men in her books sizzle with so much sex appeal, I keep waiting for the books to spontaneously combust.  Night Embrace was just as entrancing as Fantasy Lover, and just as hard to put down.  Unless Night Pleasures arrives in the mail today, I plan on proceeding with Dance With The Devil.   

I bought three Janet Evanovich books yesterday; one, The Grand Finale, is a short romance novel from her writings prior to Stephanie Plum.   I may read it prior to anything else just for a mental palate cleansing.  I adore her sense of humor. 

I haven’t made any progress on my own books this week……my mind has been occupied with more important matters which made it impossible to be creative, i.e., I brood, therefore, I read. 

I made my weekly trek to a client’s office yesterday while listening to the diverse music of the Twilight soundtrack.  I have become the newest fan of Muse, Mutemath, Blue Foundation, and The Black Ghosts!  Supermassive Black Hole is one song I can disappear into…….I like everything about it.  I’m also a huge fan of the song, Eyes On Fire!  Many of the soundtrack songs are just too awesome for words.  Paramore has been on my faves list for a while, and they didn’t disappoint with their songs.   In all fairness though, I always return to Nickelback’s music.  Those guys are just too creative for words! 

Words of wisdom for today:

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

That’s all, folks.

Just finished my workout…..time for the shower. Exercise is good for me mentally and physically, and I’ve managed to do it all my life. However, I have fallen off the wagon and gotten lazy from time to time. It’s always difficult to re-establish that routine once I drop it, but my will to succeed is stronger than my lazy streak. I hate going to the gym, so all my exercise is done here at home using free weights and sometimes a Bowflex. Not often on the Bowflex, though. I workout to Nickelback on the iPod. I have 3 of their CDs on it, and I just skip past the softer songs and go with the hard hitters. Keeps me focused that way.

I also plug the iPod into the aux jack in my Mustang when I’m on the road in Houston or surrounding area. Nickelback tends to make my foot heavy, though, and I’m really hoping I don’t get a ticket. It’s just impossible to listen to them without driving faster and faster. I also have Paramore, Santana, David Cook, Alanis Morissette, Muse, Coldplay, Duffy, Evanesence, Finger Eleven, Fuel, Good Charlotte, Seether, Twilight Soundtrack, and a few other scattered artists. Pretty good mix, huh. I seem to be an oddity around here. It seems most people listen to country music. Not that I have anything against it, but if I wanted to be depressed I could manage that all by myself. I do like a few of the songs out now, and if I’m somewhere and country’s playing I’ll listen, but that’s not my preference.

I did find a song I’d been looking for without luck. Way back in the dark ages, Kenny Rogers sang rock, as in psychedelic rock. I found Kenny Rogers and The First Edition’s “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” and downloaded it. Probably the best song he ever put out. Weird, huh?

Gotta run. Calling on a client today. …(accounting).

After years of taking care of my family, I’ve finally made time for myself. I’ve been catching up on my reading, and decided to write some books of my own. Don’t know if they’ll be worth a flip, but I plan to give it all I’ve got. If they’re really worth reading, it will be the ultimate high for me.

I’m working on two books, but concentrating mainly on one right now. This particular one has been wrapped in the folds of my subconscious for years, and I decided to trot in out in the open. I have about six or seven chapters in rough draft, and continue to edit to smooth and polish it. At this rate I may never finish, because I’ll edit it into oblivion.

Throughout my life many people have offered me words of wisdom. I’ll try to pass them on as I remember them.
Words of wisdom for today:

Never date anyone you wouldn’t want to marry.

It took years before I understood that one, but I finally got it.