Book Love

So sorry about my recent and unexpected blogcation. Every now and then I just get completely overwhelmed.

One thing that helped me get through the chaos, it turns out, was sitting down with LisaRicard Claro’s first book in the Fireflies Series, Love Built to Last. When the going gets tough, I often reward myself in ways that would make Pavlov himself proud, and this book felt like therapy (along with a little mall-medicating). In this case I did in fact salivate…over the story’s main character, Caleb Walker. Ooh, Caleb! How I wish he had a real-life, gracefully aging uncle!

Every now and then I read a book that draws me in like a hug from an old friend. I think about it when I’m not reading and plan how soon I’ll be able to relax and sink into the story. That was exactly how I felt about Love Built to Last.

Part of the magic of this story was that it explored not just the relationship between Maddie Kincaid and Caleb Walker, but a number of other relationships as well. Because this book was much more than a romance for me. It had quirky characters who were all connected. It had warmth, light, and nostalgia. It had a touch of Southern charm that brought back my two years living in Savannah, Georgia—yet it never felt regionally distinctive. It even had a story line about something else that's near and dear to my heart: rescue animals. It had a sense of humor, relatable scenes, authentic dialogue, and just enough heat to make the relationship between the main characters sizzle.

And it was just a whole lot of fun.

I’ve always admired Lisa’s clever and thought-provoking writing, but turns out she is also a master at crafting characters and their relationships. She captured small gestures and nuance so well that I was right there in the scene…and with no intention of leaving.

So how long before the next book in the Fireflies Series is out again?

Also, I am excited to report that my piece, “Powwow at CampSmooshabosom” is over at Sasee along with Linda O’Connell’s “Halloween Cats on the Prowl.” Be sure and stop by for a real Halloween treat!  

Writing is seduction.  ~Stephen King, On Writing

Cat Got Your…Wait, What?

            I recently discovered just how scary it is to witness something about two inches long scurry under the drape. What was scarier yet was getting up the courage to lift it to see exactly what was hiding there.

            Turned out to be…a skink. A lizard-y thing. A teeny, tiny baby one. When, exactly, Missouri got lizards, I have no idea, but I happened to recognize this one thanks to my years in coastal Georgia, where they’re called Blue Tails. I remembered from my time down South that if you’re trying to catch one, you inevitably want to grab it by the tail. The blue tail. And if you do, the tail falls off to allow the creature to run away.

"Fivelined skink" by Michael Holroyd - Own work; Camera used was a Canon PowerShot SD500. Cropping and sharpening in Photoshop CS2.. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fivelined_skink.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Fivelined_skink.jpg

            Cool, huh? Supposedly it even twitches.

            That’s what I’ve heard, anyway, not being a grabber of lizard tails myself (although I’ve poked at a few fire ant hills in my time). This valuable skink-knowledge I picked up chaperoning a field trip in Savannah when my son’s grade school class went to a local wildlife place to listen to a herpetologist. Picture Jed Clampet with at least one Ph.D. Also thanks to Dr. Jed, I remembered the little boogers are toxic to pets. Unfortunately, that sneaky skink escaped when I went to gather my lizard-catching gear.

In Georgia, I once dusted around a mummified lizard carcass for months because it was sitting on my daughter’s bookshelf with her toys and I thought it was one of those gelatinous decorations that sticks to windows. So I feared a similar fate for this little guy. Except I no longer dust as often, so he would’ve ended up much older and furrier.

            By the next day, it was clear by the vigil held on the other side of the drape that the cat had flushed out our lovely little lizard guest, who appeared unharmed…thanks, no doubt, to that missing blue tail of his and the fact that our kitty is clawless. This time I was prepared and able to put the skink outside, where he and his stubby tail wiggled off, hopefully to a place where he can hang out and regenerate a new one.

I was also able to locate the shriveled blue trophy, which was sitting, uneaten, next to the cat like a teeny strip of skink-jerky.

It wasn’t till it was over that I began to worry about how he got in. We’ve been working outside a lot, and I can’t help but think about the horse that little cowboy rode in on. To my repertoire of post-gardening spider-checks, I’ll be adding skink-checks from now on. 

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s own way. ~Viktor Frankl

Haunted Memories

I used to live on the edge of a forest just outside of Savannah, Georgia. On Halloween, especially, I miss the eerie beauty of the place, where acorns falling from monster Live Oaks sounded like Sasquatch crashing through the woods.

I still cling to the Spanish moss, tillandsia usenioides. It drapes my sunroom—my own way of remembering the way it dripped from those sprawling southern trees like the cobwebs of an ancient and ghostly past.

We had what Southerners called “Black Widdahs,” beautiful spiders, shiny black and leggy and delicate. I watched one once. She folded herself over that lipstick-red-hourglass almost protectively.

But my favorite thrill was watching the migrating blackbirds descend every fall. There were so many thousands that they darkened the trees just like a scene from The Birds. The sound was deafening and the air itself felt electrified. It was eerie and exciting and awe inspiring all at once, like National Geographic-gone-Goth. But the real magic came when they suddenly rose as one to leave. Every single one suddenly fell silent, as if someone had flipped off the volume switch, and they lifted in a hushed, magnificent cloud so thick and black that it momentarily blocked out the sun.

Happy Halloween wherever you are!


Conversation between two trick-or-treaters (as I opened the door while they were walking away): 
Trick-or-Treater 1: Told you that’s not what ‘No Soliciting’ means.
Trick-or-Treater 2: Then what does it mean?
Trick-or-Treater 1: It means hanging around and stuff.
Me: It means I don’t want people trying to get me to buy stuff.
Trick-or-Treater 2: Oh, we don’t want you to buy stuff! We want to take stuff. Your candy.

Improper Poll: When Bugs Attack

Last week's responses reminded me of the many bug encounters I’ve had throughout my life. One of them was when I was a teenager and a cicada flew into my hair while I was sitting around a campfire in the woods. My so-called friends did not rescue me, but instead ran away, pointing to my head with horrified faces. If hair came with an eject button, I would have detached the whole river-soaked business off my head and started over with a fresh, cicada-free batch right then and there.

But the most frightening was when I lived in Richmond Hill, Georgia, outside of Savannah, and was laying sod. I’d pick up a slab and slap it against my torso and walk it to where it needed to be. One of those times I dropped the sod, a furious mass of fire ants was left. On my chest. Like a bib you might wear for eating lobster, but picture the lobsters eating you instead, hundreds and hundreds of them, in miniature perhaps, but vicious and venomous and really really angry that you just moved their house, and with no rubber bands on their little pincer claws.

I had never encountered fire ants till I moved down South. But when I did, I was shocked that Southerners matter-of-factly train their children to avoid “fahr ant” nests and then go about their business as if it’s normal to have these subjects of a sensationalistic National Geographic special living all around you.

Fire ants masquerade as normal ants, but they have a bite that stings like fire, furious dispositions, and a talent for working with their brethren until they are one oozing mass of killer destruction. I admit that even as an adult, I couldn’t resist the temptation to poke sticks at fire ant hills just to watch them come boiling up out of the bowels of hell like a mini-volcano spewing a molten mass of teaming ant-fury. If the children were bored, sometimes we’d go on fire ant expeditions in the backyard. I know it was a horrible thing to teach my children, but those creatures never ceased to fascinate me.

Which is perhaps why I was always blundering into their nests.

During the Sod Incident, they were moving en masse up my shirt, mere inches from engulfing my face like the victim in a bad horror flick. As if in a nightmare, I remember trying to scream and nothing came out but a strangled little sound. “Urk.” Which is probably a good thing, because I didn’t need to attract attention disrobing there in my front yard. I was also flailing and running faster than I’ve ever run in my life. Once in my garage, I flung my tee-shirt as far as it would go and did a heebie-jeebie dance that lasted not only through a hot shower, but through the better part of an hour, and then returned periodically throughout the day…and ever since, as a matter of fact. I am in fact heebie-jeebieing right now.

Because although that was about ten years ago, to this day I panic a tiny bit when I see an ant, even the benign Northern kind. You never know if they’ve mutated….

Have you ever been attacked by bugs?

The Dillos Are Coming

It was on my way back from the college, which is due south of St. Louis, when I saw them. A deluge of dead ‘dillos.

I was shocked because I always thought these were only a Southern creature. When we lived in Savannah, Georgia, someone from Louisiana asked me if I had ever seen an armadillo. I told her yes, thousands. And I had even seen a live one once.

I met the live one in my backyard. It seemed quite friendly from what I could tell, armadillo faces being not so expressive. It reared up on its back legs briefly, seemingly to get a better look at me. I guess it could have been a gesture intended to be a threat of some sort, but that strikes me as contradictory in a creature whose underside is so obviously its most vulnerable part. It had the effect of making it look like a bald and hideous little dog that was begging.

It interacted with me just enough to convince me that it had to be a mammal. I went and looked armadillos up. They are, turns out. Really weird looking mammals.

But other than that one in my backyard, the begging one, all the rest of the armadillos in the United States appear to be lying dead on the roadsides. Here is my theory. I think scientists must have hybridized the little mutants by breeding possums with PVC pipes, the intent being to launch them at cars as some sort of nighttime speed deterrents. Only it doesn’t work at all, clearly. In fact, it seems there must be a secret sport wherein the contenders drive around at night with the express purpose of seeing how many they can get.

And this does fit with what I’ve seen of Southern men. So what surprised me was seeing ‘dillos this far north. I saw the last one not 50 miles south of St. Louis.

Gentlemen, start your engines.

"Nature is a whore." ~Nirvana

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Just got my hair cut the other day, and she managed to make it do cool things.

Of course it slowly undid itself as I was driving home despite the many products designed to subdue it. The hair eventually won. The hair always wins.

Except once. I lived in Savannah, Georgia for two years, and I once had a hair stylist there make my hair bouffant. I didn’t think my hair could ever do bouffant—I have hair that doesn’t want to do anything completely other than hang in strings. It doesn’t want to have a good wave, doesn’t want to hang straight…and definitely doesn’t want to be bouffant. That giant, bouffy hair was an amazing phenomenon to behold.

I had a hard time driving home because I wanted to look at The Hair in my rearview mirror—which wasn’t hard to do since it took up the entire thing. It was so big, I seem to remember that it hit the roof of my car. When I got The Hair home, I had to examine it carefully to see how she had done it.

All I can tell you is this: It’s still a mystery. It defied gravity. She hadn’t teased it at all. Powerful styling products were involved, but they always are. As I’ve said, my hair laughs at powerful styling products. After much examination, I finally decided it’s another Southern woman mystery. If you’ve ever known Southern women, real ones, I mean—I’m talking the kind who not only know what grits are, but how to pronounce the word with two syllables (“gree-its”)—you know that all Southern women seem complacently aware that they have charms that the rest of the country—or world, for that matter—doesn’t possess.

Now my hair, which was cut and styled by a non-Southerner, is hanging in its customary strings again.

Sigh.

When reporters started to ask at about 50 if I would have a facelift…the truth is I'm afraid I'd become like the guy with a bad toupee; when you're talking to him, you can't think of anything else. ~Gloria Steinem