oblivious

I had to make a trip to the supermarket today and took my 4 year-old with me. He always likes to ride in those huge kid-friendly carts when we go there. You know the carts I’m talking about? They have a slightly smaller than normal shopping cart attached to the rear of a plastic car or truck that is big enough for 2 kids to sit in. They have little seat belts and annoying horns and fake steering wheels. Thank God, they’re fake. These contraptions are so large and difficult to maneuver as it is that the only way to make it worse would be to let pre-school aged kids steer them. If normal grocery carts are regular cars, these things are stretch limos. So, we grab our purple stretch limo and do our shopping.

When we are ready to check out, I get in line behind a Deceptively Normal Looking Young Woman. She stands directly in front of the cashier with her cart behind her. I have to be behind my cart in order to reach the stuff I’m buying because the kid car thing is too huge to reach over. So it lines up like this: her, her cart, my cart and then me. I can’t reach the belt to unload my stuff, so I just wait for the woman to realize that she needs to move her cart, which is already unloaded. She doesn’t. The cashier scans the Deceptively Normal Looking Young Woman’s groceries, the D.N.L.Y.W. MOVES TO THE END OF THE CASHIER STAND TO BAG UP HER STUFF and leaves her cart right in my way.

I feel my annoyance begin to burn inside of me.

I wait until she moves back in front of her cart and then bump it. Just a little.

“Oh, sorry!” I say. “Couldn’t see the end, there. Sorry. Couldn’t see.”

“That’s O.K.” she replies, still not moving her cart or sensing any possible reason why she should. I thought that maybe she was afraid of me hitting her heels with my cart and that was why she kept her cart in between us, sort of as protection, but then she moved back to the end of the stand to bag some more, leaving her cart right in the way.

Now, my annoyance is a full burn. The grocery belt is empty and I still can’t reach to put my stuff up there. I don’t like grocery shopping in the first place and I really hate checking out. I want to leave! My kid isn’t going to be good forever. At some point, he will see the entire rack of chocolate and chewing gum that is easily within his reach. I NEED TO MOVE. What is this woman thinking? Anything at all? That’s it. I mutter under my breath. I place both hands on the handle of my cart, make sure Bud (4 year-old) is sitting safely, look casually to my left and BUMP. I hit her again. Harder this time.

“Oh, sorry again!” I say. “I’m really sorry. Trying to reach … um … can’t see … sorry … really sorry … he he … whoops.”

“That’s O.K.” she said, still not moving her cart or sensing any possible reason why she should.

Unbelievable. How could she be so oblivious? Why wasn’t she run over by a car in the parking lot when she was walking in here? How did she find the door to the store? How on earth does she have any money to buy things with? This person, this D.N.L.Y.W. is either so self-centered that she doesn’t notice anything around her that doesn’t affect her directly, or she is so unaware of her surroundings that she shouldn’t be allowed out or she did it on purpose and she’s just a jerk. No matter what, I don’t need the hassle. Next time, I’m getting in front of her and pulling my cart through backwards, so she’ll have to deal with Bud. Face to face. And he’ll be armed with chocolate.

Arrested spy zero book black

I’m sitting here fighting the very strong urge to spend the rest of the night watching Arrested Development on dvd instead of writing blogs and whatnot. Arrested Development was SUCH a great show. Laugh out loud funny stuff in every episode, even the early ones before the writers just went crazy and started throwing in every wacky idea they could think of. There were only three seasons and the dvd sets aren’t expensive (unlike those dastardly HBO show dvd sets) so if you don’t have them … why? What’s wrong with you? Don’t like humor? Don’t like being entertained? I really don’t understand you sometimes.

Speaking of great tv, BBC America has started showing reruns of MI-5 (Spooks in the U.K.) and if you haven’t ever seen that show, give it a try. It is SO good. Not funny, mind you, but just really great spy drama where anything can happen to any character. No one is safe. It’s fantastic stuff.

Oh, I must be in such a good mood tonight, even though I’m out of Coke Zero. How could I let that happen? Diet Pepsi is not even in the same league as the Zero (I say as I take a sip, confirming).

I just finished reading I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak. Really good. Maybe one of the best books I’ve read this year. It was a Printz Honor book in 2006. If you are sensitive to such things, please note that there is a certain amount of questionable language in the book. It didn’t bother me, but then again, I’m not sensitive.

I spent the day on Sunday at the Philadelphia Eagles Carnival with my two boys. We had a great time. Got to meet Sav Rocca, who was a big name in Australian Football and now is trying to win a spot on the Eagles as a punter. Met quite a few other guys as well, played a bunch of games, won some prizes and toured the Eagles locker room. All in all a great day out. It’s one of our end-of-summer traditions. We’ve gone to the carnival the last seven years or so. It has changed quite a bit since those first few years, however. There are just too many people attending now for it to be as casual and friendly as it was before. They sold out 10,000 tickets to this year’s event. Oh well, price of success, I guess. Both boys won a little stick of what we thought was Chapstick and when we got in the car to leave I told the younger (Bud) he could put some on. Problem was, the little stick wasn’t Chapstick at all but was a stick of the black stuff that athletes put under their eyes. Eye Black, they call it, but on Bud it was Lip Black. Picture a little Goth 4 year-old. I’m just glad I didn’t let him put it on while we were still inside.

blank page

It’s been so long since I’ve posted an update that this morning I just clicked on the “New Post” button without anything in mind to write about. Let’s see where this takes us, shall we? Good. Buckle up.

I love my local library and I’m really looking forward to the opening of a brand-new branch which will be about the same distance from my house but in the opposite direction of the one I’ve been going to. I’ll still go to the old one, but I’m hoping that the new branch will have a better selection of YA and Middle-grade stuff for me to read. They have these inter-library loans, so I can get anything I want by going to the same branch that I’ve been going to (I like the people, and they know me) and asking for them to grab what I want from the other locations. Evil plot, I know.

I’ve purchased a few books that are not available in my whole library system (mostly new releases) and now I’m torn between keeping them for my personal library and donating them and making them available to the whole county. I’m leaning toward donation, as I think it will help those authors expand their audience and I like the idea of being part of that, but you know that will result in me buying those books all over again so I have personal copies also. Maybe that would be a good use of my first royalty payment. See how I just assume there will be a first royalty payment? Positive thinking, yo.

Speaking of writing books (we were, weren’t we?), Scrivener has lived up to my expectations. I’ll be buying a license. It is so cool to have the whole thing right there and so organized. I just wish I knew how to pronounce “Scrivener”. Does it have a long I sound or a short I sound? The first E makes it seem like the I is long, but the guy who named it is British and sometimes they throw in extra vowels. I think there may be an abundance of vowels in the UK and they just want to get rid of them. I don’t know about you, but when I speak with someone and they tell me all about how great something is and then they pronounce the name of the thing WRONG, it makes me question everything they said about it. How can you love something so much and not know how to say its name? Are you a nut? Well, maybe I’m a nut, because I love Scrivener and I don’t know how to say its name. Heck, I haven’t even paid for it yet. I hope that after I pay for it, they will send out the top-secret email with a pronunciation guide, but rarely do these types of things actually happen.

I was cleaning out the pictures from my cell phone and found one of a hideously decorated life-sized donkey that was sitting in the back room of a pizza place we went to during the Beach Torture Event. The pic isn’t worth posting, but trust me when I say that the thing looked like it was designed by an angry, blind mental patient. I don’t know how they can expect people to eat and enjoy their pizza while sitting in the same room with that thing. Then again, this pizza restaurant is located right on the boardwalk and it’s likely that most everyone who eats there is already in shock, wondering where all their money went. Most likely, their money went toward the 75 games of Skeeball they had to play in order to win their kid a plastic whistle. Skeeball, by the way, was probably also designed by an angry, blind mental patient.

whew. I told you to buckle up, didn’t I?

I have a five-dollar coupon for Borders and so I’m planning on going there and using it soon. I hate for those things to go to waste and they know it. I’m looking for Black Duck by Janet Taylor Lisle, Rules by Cynthia Lord and maybe Queen of Cool, by Cecil Castellucci which has just been released in paperback, so why not? These are all titles that are not available in our library. Yet. Wait until I get finished reading them and/or receive my first royalty check.

My own middle grade novel, which is tentatively titled Middle Grade Novel in an obvious nod to Daniel Pinkwater’s Young Adult Novel and also my own lack of imagination in titling, is coming together. It is amazing how the more work I do on it, the more work there is to do. Even worse, the more work I do on this first book, the more ideas I have for a second. I really need to focus on the first one, however, since actually finishing a book is a goal so many “writers” don’t achieve. I will. Maybe it will be great, and maybe no one will ever see it. Either way, it will be complete.

and the second book will be sooo cool!

Maybe one of them will get me an agent. And hopefully, that agent is not an angry, blind mental patient who is out to get me because of my blog.

Gaaaa

Let’s see. The high temperature here in sunny Maryland today was around 100 degrees. Gaaaaa!

The high temperature in Dublin, Ireland (where I threaten to move my family every summer) was around 64 degrees.

Do you see now? Do you? Huh? Well, do you?

new discoveries abound

Curse you, Cecil Castellucci! How dare you directly affect my writing life. AGAIN! Kidding, of course. Through Miss Cecil, I’ve discovered writers such as John Green, Maureen Johnson, Markus Zusak, Jo Knowles, etc. The list goes on and on. I’ve read a lot and I’ve learned a lot. Now, Cecil has a link in her blog to a program called Scrivener, which may be exactly what I’ve been looking for. It is like a workbench for book building. It looks completely cool. Later today, I’ll be diving in for a trial run. I’ll let you all know how it goes.

The Beach Torture Event went well enough. The family had a mostly good time and it wasn’t too bad for me. I didn’t have to spend much time on the beach, although I know that the eleven other people I was there with were getting a bit aggravated with me because I had no interest in what everyone else was doing (sitting on the beach for hours). I guess they just couldn’t understand how someone could dislike doing that. I can’t figure out how doing that doesn’t drive them crazy with boredom. Despite the fact that I didn’t spend much time at the beach, I still felt pretty busy all week. I did visit a very cool children’s book shop called the Children’s Book Garden, where I picked up a copy of When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt, which I’m not finished reading yet. I also paid a visit to my favorite Ocean City, MD attraction, the Wheels of Yesterday museum and giftshop. I just love that place.

So, all in all it was a decent vacation, but I’m glad to be home. School starts in three weeks and the kids’ sports practices start this afternoon, so the busy time is upon us.