Book Review: The Road

This story is deeply disturbing, gripping, painful and wonderful

Read it

Dear Spotty Chop you were 45 months old yesterday

When I have been picking you up from school or Nannie and Papas you have been throwing your arms around me saying I’ve missed you so much all day today.

We have been playing Chaotic. We stand in the library, “spin” the locator, you tell me what land we are in and then we choose what monster we are going to turn into. Then…WE FIGHT

I see big problems ahead between you and your dad. You two are very alike and I think may kill each other. I will be in bed with the covers over my head, call me when you are done.

We have been trying harder to eat as a family at the dinner table instead of in front of the TV. You are not thrilled, but I think with practice we will get better. We used to eat at the table all the time. I don’t know why we stopped.

You won’t eat squash

You love to kiss our eyes

You now say “sorry my bad” correctly, but we have no idea where you got this from. Uncle Paulie taught you to say “Peace out” so maybe we do know…

You have been calling your daddy “sir” and saying things like “yes young man”.

You are constantly on our ass if we say a “bad” word. This actually makes me happy. You have been saying damit a lot, but when I told you that it would make Nannie unhappy you started to say gramit. You are using it pretty consistently which tickles my funny bone.

You have been thoroughly entertaining Nannie and Papa. When Nannie forgets things you have been saying “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR BRAIN?”

You have begun to notice a few words out of context. Which means? You will be reading in no time. This is so incredibly awesome to me. I can not wait to begin reading longer stories with you.

When daddy plays video games with you and he is having a hard time with a section you climb behind him, wrap your arms around his neck, lay on his back and tell him “I’ll protect you”.

You like to show a lot more independence when it’s just you and your daddy. You brush your teeth and get undressed all by yourself. You also actively seek out your daddy to play with, you sometimes tell me to go away.

You told Nannie the other day that a kid in school kicked you. Nannie was OUTRAGED. “Who would dare kick my Spotty Chop? Why did he kick you?” You said you didn’t know. Nannie kept asking and eventually you said “well maybe it was because I PUNCHED HIM HARD”, when Nannie said that was not nice and she was not pleased you told her, “well maybe I was lying.”

You are having night terrors again. Not as bad as they were, but we are spending one or two nights with you screaming and crying and being un-consolable. I really hope you grow out of this. I know you don’t remember it, but it makes me sad.

You have pretty much stopped taking naps for us. You still take them at school and sometimes for Nannie. The good news is that you are falling asleep around 8-8:30 and your daddy and I have been able to spend some time together.

I can’t wait to see how you handle X-Mass this year. Love ya tons!!!

A brain by any other name…

The other night Spotty Chop was getting ready for bed when I realized he was wearing big boy underwear.

“HEY, you can’t wear those to bed wack job” so he pulled them off while I turned around to grab a pull up.

“LOOK MAMA” he yelled as I turned around. He was pulling at his scrotum.

“A brain!”

I struggled not to laugh, in my head I’m thinking, well, ya, it’s wrinkly like a brain, but how do you know that?

Boy Toy was snickering “yes son, soon enough that will be the only brain you think with, but for now we call it a ball sack”

“NO IT’S MY BRAIN…MY BRAAAAAAAAAAAAINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn”

And we wonder why boys are the way they are…

Book Review: Myrren’s Gift

The Quickening Book One
Our story starts with death, which is not such a bad way to start a story.

Loyal General Thirsk best friend to King Magnus gets wacked saving the Kings life. Magnus promises to treat Thirsk’s children like his own. (Actually better) Wly at 14 is now the General of the Legion (tradition) and has an instant antagonist in Celimus, the King’s son. Celimus is everything that Wly is not, flashy, handsome, sly, cruel and an all around shit. King Magnus was hoping that Wly and Celimus would become as close as Thirsk and he were and that Wly would be a good influence on him. Not so much, Celimus drags Wly down to the dungeon to see a young girl tortured into giving a confession just to see Wly squirm. Wly gives the girl a sip of water because that is all he can do. He goes to see her put to death and with her last breath Myrren gives him a gift of sorts, she asks Wly to keep her dog.

Things only get worse from here.

Celimus beheads Wly’s best friend and brother in law and then forces Wly’s sister to carry the head to the dungeon where she will be staying until Wly comes back with an agreement from a neighboring kingdom. Of course Celimus has planned on having him killed, what he didn’t figure on was Romen the mercenary. There are twists and turns and beautiful strong women and not so strong. Throw in a smidgen of magic, crazy kings and a situation that was….unexpected and you have what I hope to be a good series.

So…how you doing?

We have been having a swell time over at the beloved homestead. I worked from home last Thursday and around 1:00 pm I was talking to my boss who was in London, suddenly all the lights went out and my phone died. So I did what any normal person would do and said “hello hello? Are you there? Hello????” Spotty Chop came to tell me that the lights were out. So I wandered around the house making sure that it was all the lights and not just a blown circuit or something. I called up the electric company to see if they knew what was going on, and they said they would have a crew out right away.


I made another call to a co-worker on the crackberry, explaining that I had no electricity. As I was talking I realized that my new black out curtains really blacked out. I couldn’t see a Frelling thing. So I went towards the window. Unbeknownst to me Spotty had been playing with Boy Toy’s surveyor crap and had left the tripod in the middle of the floor. My foot got tangled. I fell. I yelled. My co-worker laughed. I took aspirin, and a few hours later I realized that I wrenched my back something FIERCE. Called Boy toy to see when he would be coming home. He said in an hour, so I told him what happened and that I needed to take a Vicoden.


1 Vike rarely does anything to me, but if I am home with Spotty I prefer having Boy toy around just in case. However as it takes at least an hour for me to notice that I took the frelling thing I felt confident that if anything were to kick in, he would be home. As I am waiting for him to come home I grab candles. Unfortunately all I can find are Yankee candles, ordinarily not a bad thing, but with darkness coming on I needed lots of candles, and wouldn’t you know that none of them were the same scent? So I don’t have enough candles, it is getting progressively darker, even with the blackout curtains open and the flashlight that I kept out of the camping bin expressly for a situation like this isn’t working, I tried changing the batteries but no luck. So I hobble downstairs and open the cabinets with the camping bins, did I mention that I was using a tea light to light my way? I put the tea light down and reach up (over my head) to grab the camping bin that I think I want. It is pitch black except for the TINY little tea light over in the corner. As I muscle the bin down something smashes me in the face. It is a queen size air mattress. I fall back and almost take another tumble, but this time with 20 or 30 lbs of camping crap on top of me. I may have cursed a bit. But I found a light, and our lantern. Which I know is propane and can’t be used in doors, but at this point I didn’t give a rat’s ass and figured we could open a window worst came to worst. I drag everything upstairs and realize that the house is still too frelling dark. So I get out some cake and bread pans and start lining up tea lights on the mantle and wood stove. Both of these are behind an iron gate so I do not need to worry about Spotty. I had just lit about 40 of them when…the lights came on. YEA. So I go around the house blowing out all of the candles. Boy Toy comes home, and about 4 hours after the first Vike which has done less than the aspirin I decide to take another one. This one settles the back pain down. BUT…WTF my right hand starts to hurt. I am up half of the night because my hand is ACHING. I REFUSE to take another Vike. They are not pez, I have a limited supply that I keep on hand for the kidney stones. Plus as an addictive person I am constantly questioning when I take them “Do I need it? Or just want it?” Boy Toy reminds me that I did fall, which is why my hand hurt, but for Frell’s sake. I took two Vikes, my hand should not hurt!
Why am I telling you this? Because my point was actually that we have not had internet since a week ago Thursday. But then I got distracted by my tale of woe. But the cable guys were out last night and…YEA internet