Monday's Muse 2015-02-02

I went through today's Amazon recommendations, and two of the stories are about plucky heroines that inherit a hotel/inn, and then try to not fall in love with the guy that thinks that he should have inherited, or the guy that broke her heart when she was sixteen and visiting Nana or whoever owned the inn beforehand.

Awesome! That sounds like an easy enough story to write, and since it's a guaranteed publishing in, done!

Intentions for 2015

Jennifer Crusie is right. New Year's Resolutions just put pressure on you to actually have will power, energy, and the ability to complete tasks.

Who actually has that?

Intentions are so much better.

I intend to write more. 

Check. It only took ten days to complete this post. Actually, at the time of writing this very sentence, I cannot guarantee that I will actually complete this post.

I intend to have more sex with my husband.

Or with myself. Or with my BOB. Either way. Orgasms every day, please.

I intend to keep my house tidier.

Ha!

I have a 2 and 4 year old boy! I hope you didn't fall for that one!

I intend to enjoy every moment with my children and my husband.

Even when they're being whiny, throwing temper tantrums, and running their syrup-covered hands down the hall walls on the way to the bathroom.

My husband is in no way included in the sentence directly above this one.

I will lose some weight. And/or get into better shape.

I'd be happy with five pounds for the year, at this point, because let's face it: I gained weight in 2014.

I intend to paint the inside of my house this year.

Which leads me to:

I intend to get my house organized and de-cluttered.

Please see the third intention, above.

I intend to go camping with my family more.

And, not the kind of camping where you drag a house behind your truck, park it next to a million other trailers beside a major highway. The kind of camping where there's one other family camping on the other side of the lake, and you may hear a logging truck go by once in awhile. Oh, and you're sleeping in a tent, and if you're lucky, the floor to the outhouse won't be completely rotten, just a little rotten.

I intend to not let my mom's micro-management bother me.

Starting now.

Or maybe tomorrow.

I intend to laugh more, especially with my children and my husband.

This seems more reasonable than the fourth intention, above.

I intend to not let my whiny little bitch out. 

I'd like to add ever on to the end of that, but I may have to give her one PMS day per month. But only one. Because, a week or two is probably driving everyone around me a little bit crazy. I know it's driving me crazy. And then I just feel guilty, so I cry more, etc. etc. Bitch.

Okay, she gets one day per month for the first six months (starting in February. Ahem.), then that's it. The skank is getting cut out of the family.

I think that these are all doable. And, I should be able to stay sane during the process.

BMBR: The Bottom Line by Sandy James

This is a cute romance in the "Ladies who Lunch" series about a breast cancer survivor and the carpenter that she hires to work on her house.

It was a decent story with the usual back and forth of miscommunication, misconceptions and trust issues.  There's also a lot of descriptive, normal sex.

That being said, I felt compelled to finish the story, but I didn't feel compelled to jump my husband after reading it, but I'm going take into consideration that he fell asleep watching hockey, and that my uterus is gearing up for a wonderful Christmas present. Yay.

Bottom line: these books are 3-4 bucks as an e-book, and that would be my maximum. It was worth it, but I'm not dying to get the others in the series. Probably would if I needed something easy to read and sweet.

BMBR: Touch and Go by Lisa Gardner

Started buying her books a few years ago. Have thought about moving her to Kindle but bought this one at Costco when I saw it. My dad likes mysteries so easier to share this way.

Almost done. So fucking close. I brought it to work do that I could sneak a page in here and there. Left it in the car. Fuck.

I think that I know who did it, and it's killing me not knowing for sure.

Bottom line: One of her best. Definitely good enough to buy ebook if that's cheaper, but good enough for the real book version, too!

Muse Monday

My muse hath spoken again.

She gives such great advice, doesn't she? I love that she's on the same page as I am about the "dream resolution".

I don't know how else I would've ended my story about about how the world is dying and it's climate is producing an environment that is conducive to the growth of slime molds and wicked awesome bacteria that can devour an entire cow in about 10 minutes in such a way as to not, like, totally freak out my readers!

Whew!

The Kazoo Catastrophe

Wow, I kinda dropped off the face of the Earth there for a bit, didn't I? Well I think I'm back. I want to be back. I'd love to be back every day, but that might make things a little crazy. Well, that might make me a little crazy. As it is, I finished the dishes and I thought, Self, you can reconcile your bank account like a good little girl, or you can write a blog post. I'm over a month behind in my bank rec. That's not going to be any different tomorrow, now is it? Kind of like sticky floors. They can wait.

Ah, the patience of chores waiting to be done.

On to the Kazoo Catastrophe.

I picked the kids up from daycare on Friday, and I thought that since it was K2's Birthday Party this weekend, K1 might like to stop at the toy store and pick something out for his brother (and yay, K2 gets to wander around!). 

I laid down the law of a quick visit to a toy store, and K1 (who's 4) agreed with them. K2 of course agreed, but he's just 2, so you always take that with a bit of skepticism. 

Now, this isn't just any toy store. It's not the big-box giant that sells what everyone else sells. It's not the mega-aisles at Wal-Mart. It's a tiny storefront that's jam-packed with real toys like Thomas the Train sets (the wooden ones) and Play Mobil and Melissa & Doug and creative toys (and I'm sorry, I don't have girls so I didn't look in that spot too clearly--probably special dolls and oh! Horses. They had lots of horses) and perhaps best of all, real sets of Lego. Not the sets that must be built a certain way and can only be made in to one thing, but actual boxes of random pieces! Like when I was a kid. Which feels like fifty years ago, but I swear it's not.

So, of course my kids gravitate towards the Thomas table that's set up in the back, and they're playing and not really looking at other toys, and so I drag K1 off to find a bath toy for K2, which he does and it's so cool that I want to have a bath just so that I can play with it (seriously, it's that cool). 

So then I try to round up the kids towards the front. I tell K1 that he has five minutes to pick something out to spend his allowance on, and of course he's too busy playing with the cool baby toys, so I decide that I'll pick, and I spy some Kazoos. Inexpensive, and they sound like fun.

I pay for the gift and the Kazoos, I (literally) drag the kids out to the car after prying toys that we haven't paid for out of their hands, ask K1 politely to get in to the car please, pick up K2 and realize that he's shit his diaper, ask K1 a little more firmly to please get in the car and for the love of all that makes Mommy happy please stop crying I said we had to go. I get K2 in to the back of the car, give K1 a lot of heck for not getting in to the car in a parking lot, hello, get him in the car, change K2's diaper without any wet cloths, yay, in the dark, double yay. Get him in his car seat, get K1 buckled in, and finally oh my goodness, Mommy where is our KAZOO?!

I pull out the kazoos, show the kids how they work (you have to hum to get noise, not just blow air through them), and get in the car. 

Hell. I'm in fucking Hell. But it's kind of a funny Hell, if you have a sense of humour.

I start driving. 

K1: I didn't WANT a Kazoo!

K2: Phhh. Phhhh. Mommy! Phhhh.

Me: Well, next time I say pick a toy, please pick a toy.

K1: But I don't want a Kazoo.. Whaaaawahaaawaaaa. Taaaake it baaaack.

K2: WhaaaaAAAAAaaaaazzzzz. KZzzzzzz. Phhh. Mommy!

Me: We can't take it back. You had your mouth on it.

K1: We can [hic] wash [hic] it!

Me: No. If you really don't want it, give it to me and you can get something else next time.

K2: Phhhh Zzzzzzz Phhhhh.

K1: NOOO! 

Me: Put it in my hand please.

K1: Noozzzzzz (crying in to the Kazoo).

Me: Hey, that sounds pretty good. 

The next twenty minutes are spent listening to K1 cry with and without the kazoo (with is much nicer on the ears) because he hates the kazoo but he doesn't want to give it back and he keeps trying to make music with it, and listening to K2 cry because he can't quite make it work, and every time K1 cries, K2 has to, and I'm pretty sure that by the time we hit the driveway they were both crying on purpose through the kazoo. Wackos. 

Moral of the story: Don't take your kids to a toy store for fifteen minutes on a Friday night when they're tired and hungry and you don't have the proper means to clean up poop, remove the poopy diaper from your car as soon as you get home or you'll hate your forgetfulness come the next morning, and if they tend to be whiny and cry-y on a drive home, get them a kazoo. Crying sounds much better.

BMBR: Never Buried by Edie Clare

This delightfully well written mystery was one that I picked up when I was trolling for free e-books, and it was good enough that I bought the second in the series, Never Sorry, for $3.