Old Favorites

A while back, I read a discussion about keeper books. The question was do you ever go back and reread them, and the answer, for most, was no. Weird, I thought, but after considering it a while, I realized I agreed.

One of the first romances I ever read -- like tons of other authors -- was Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss. I loved that book. It's been more years than I'll admit to her, but I still remember the characters' names, details, etc. Damn, it was something!

But when Robert was stationed at Camp Lejeune, I met regularly for dinner with a couple of writer friends, Judith and Sandy. One night they invited another friend of theirs, another writer, of course, to join us. She'd come more recently to romances than the rest of us and had never read Shanna. We raved about it so much that she scrounged up a copy of the book, read it, and was appalled. Let's face it -- early-day heroes were assholes and heroines were often spoiled, whiny and/or weak.

To see if she was faulty or my memory was, I dug out my old keeper copy, read a few chapters and put it away. It wasn't as good as I remembered. In fact, I've never been able to think of the book the same way since. F*ck.

I'll reread a book that I really liked -- remember, I just reread all six Harry Potters (nope, haven't read #7 yet; it's going to be a reward for getting some other stuff done). But I won't reread the books on my keeper shelves. I loved every one of those books dearly. If the story or the writing doesn't live up to my memory of it, I don't want to know. I just want to look it and remember how damn much I enjoyed it the first time I read it.

Where's winter???






Rachel4:25 PM

When Jupiter Aligns with Mars

Friday night: the kiddo and pregnant wife were in town for his high school reunion, and we met them for dinner at a local steakhouse. Naturally, we were about ten minutes late. They, for some ungodly reason -- knowing that we are often often often late -- were thirty minutes early.

While waiting for Robert to get home from work, I got dressed in my favorite summer dress -- multi-orange-hued tropical flowers on a black background -- and I'd even shaved my legs! (Not on my list of 50 Favorite Things to Do.) I fixed my hair -- which is Intense Red Copper again -- and selected sandals to show off my tootsies -- which are Vould You Like a Lick-entstein? (don't you love OPI color names??) -- and sat down to do my makeup.

My makeup table is an oak rolltop desk, and it's got anything you could possibly need to do a fabulous makeup job (except running water). It's stocked with an eye-popping array of Bobbi Brown (and the occasional other-brand freebie that Saks gives when I'm being particularly generous). But it's not that easy to manage a fabulous makeup job every time. I can give the reason in one or maybe two words (depending on whether it's a compound word or really just two words).

Eye liner.

It smudges. It goes on too thick. It goes on uneven. It smears and leaves little dark shadows where you clean it up. If you get one eye done nicely, then it's inevitable that you'll do the other eye too thick and have to go back and forth trying to even them up without winding up looking a ghoulie of the night.

Bobbi Brown has the coolest eyeliner -- it's a creamy gel and it gives you a fair shot at getting it on where it's acceptable. I have it in sepia. black plum, espresso and cobalt blue, and I love it.

Friday night -- are you listening closely? -- Friday night my eyeliner was PERFECT. Best I've ever had. Better than even the girls at the Bobbi counter have ever done. Thin, even, smooth lines that one corner to the other. On both eyes. PERFECT.

After dinner, DIL pulled out the ultrasound pictures of grandbaby. Okay, I admit, I really, really wanted a girl. I felt a moment's disappointment when I found out it was a boy. I asked if there was any chance the radiologist had read it wrong. Uh, no, proud papa said. "Trust me."

He wasn't kidding. There's a shot of said child, showing no modesty at all, with his legs splayed and the clearest view imaginable in utero of his, ah, appendage. He is definitely a he.

I thought back to the ultrasound of the kiddo days before he was born, when I couldn't find anything on the screen that remotely resembled a human, then looked at grandbaby's pix. The face is sooo clearly a face -- eyes, little nose, mouth, ears, chin. You can see his arms and hands, his legs and feet, his weenie, his itty bitty testicles. Amazing pictures.

Three months, roughly, until the big day. I can hardly wait! Rachel8:19 AM

200 posts!

Who'd've thought I'd stick with this long enough to hit 200?! Not that I'm a quitter -- could never have gotten where I am publishing-wise if that was the case. But I do like to take a break now and then. Like, oh, a few days off here, a few months off there, a few years over there. It's like my quilting -- I started a wall hanging about fifteen years ago, and never quite finished quilting it. (With a grandbaby on the way, maybe I'll get that out and have a go.)

Or my cross-stitching. After completing an absolutely gorgeous cross-stitch of the Navy seal for Robert, I started on the Army seal for the kiddo. It's probably about 90% done. It was going to be a Christmas gift the year he came back from Iraq -- then the year he came back from Afghanistan -- then the year he moved back from Italy. I'm thinking surely I'll have it done in time for his retirement.

But here I am, with two hundred posts. How cool is that?

Wonder if I'll make 300?







Rachel3:10 PM

Sleep Deprived with Harry Potter

I told you that I was going to catch up on all the HP books before the new one came out. I've finished all six books and am now watching the second of the movies. I had an invitation to see the new movie with Liz and her gorgeous daughter last week in Dallas, but as it happened, I didn't make it. I'm planning a weekend down there next month, so maybe we can do an HP marathon then.

While I'm a huge fan of Harry, if I had young kids, I don't think I'd want them reading them. Maybe it comes from reading the books back to back, but holy cats, if Harry turned into a raving maniac, I'd understand. This boy's life has been and still is hard. Losing his mum and dad, living with his abusive relatives, facing danger regularly, then losing Sirius and Dumbledore . . . The books are way too dark for me to give to a young child. Maybe I'll buy Cameron the grandkiddo a set and give them to him when he turns . . . oh, twenty.

Today has been the longest sleepiest day. I got up at my usual time, around 7:30, and got the dogs out and fed, then kenneled. Went to the office, worked for maybe ninety minutes, fell asleep at the desk, then took a five-hour nap! I know, once it gets past an hour or two, it's no longer a nap. After getting up and working another few hours, I fell asleep again, lay down again and slept another hour and a half. And as I write this, I'm yawning, even though I've got several more hours' work to do before I turn in. Is there such a thing as sleeping sickness? Because I think I've got it.

Old joke I was reminded of today: A young man and woman in Arkansas get married and go off for their honeymoon. The next morning, the groom's father is surprised to find his son home again, and without his bride. "What's wrong?" Pa asks. "Why aren't you with your new wife?"

"It was horrible," the son says. "We made love last night, and she--she was a virgin!"

"Well, you did the right thing in leaving her," Pa replies huffily. "If she's not good enough for her family, she's not good enough for ours." Rachel9:49 PM

Holy cats

I can't believe how long it's been since I've dropped in here. I thought it was a couple days, maybe four, and it's been eleven. Wouldn't it be cool if I could say I'd accomplished an incredible amount of shit during that time? But I try not to lie.

What've I been doing? Mowing. Running errands with Mom. Scratching. I got a nasty rash while working in the yard -- the one time I did it without gloves, wouldn't you know? So I'm taking one medication for that, and damned if I didn't get another rash, which requires another medication. Okay, I can handle that. (Though, honest to God, I'd rather be in pain than itch. The itching from my one and only bout with poison ivy ten years ago damn near killed me.)

So Saturday I go to the office and see a scorpion trying to get in the door. I set my stuff down and squish the scorpion to bits (I don't react well to stings from them, either). I hear a buzz, and an instant later it felt as if my jaw had exploded. A damn wasp had nailed me but good. In the time it took me to get to the house, I had a huge welt growing.

My rashes, bites and allergies are all medication-specific, so the stuff for one rash doesn't do a thing for another, and the antihistamine for my usual allergies doesn't slow the reaction to stings at all. I hate all stinging, biting, blood-sucking beasties and would wipe them from the face of the earth given the opportunity. Yes, I would give up honey forever if it meant never getting stung again.

Granted, I don't care for honey a whole lot unless it's floating my latest batch of baklava. Anything else, I can pretty much live without.

Today's weather: Wa-hooooo! No rain. But dang, it's hot!!






Rachel4:56 PM

Happy 5th!

Yesterday, Today and, apparently, Forever:

We celebrated the Fourth at my uncle's house yesterday afternoon/evening, and had a great time, even if the temperature was set to London Broil. Now I know how food baked in water-bath feels. Holy crap! Hot and humid as hell. Like my hormones were stuck in Super-Hot-Flash mode.

Not as many of the relatives came this time, but we still had fun. My cousin Kyle, who's in college, makes a mean chili and cooks pretty good burgers, and we had new potatoes and grean beans, potato-cheese casserole, chips and dip and -- of course it wouldn't be a family get-together without sweets -- homemade sherbet, cake, cupcakes and bread pudding.

I don't know if I'm mellowing as I get older or if it's got something to do with impending grandmotherhood, but I had a good time with the kids last night. There was Caitlin, our little princess, and Colton, who's so sweet -- and so amazingly stubborn for a two-year-old. Chase, who thought everything in the world was a snake (his favorite firework), and Hailey ("will you take me for a wong walk in the gwass?") and Charlie, our teenaged bullrider who looked awfully cute with his straw cowboy hat, and Lindsey, who loves school and couldn't remember my name longer than the second it took me to say it. And Hayden, who preceded every ear-shattering bomb and rocket with "Fire in the hole!", and Ranger, who's related to one of my cousins by marriage, which makes him pretty much family, and Rachel, who's gorgeous and probably wouldn't appreciate being lumped in with the kids now that's she just about out of college. (Though I think I was married and pregnant before I was allowed to sit at the adults' table at family holidays.)

The kiddo and wife (have I mentioned pregnant wife??) didn't make it home, but they're planning a visit later this month when her birthday rolls around. Hopefully next year they and grandchild will be here for his introduction to one of our family rituals.

My uncle Eddie loved fireworks, and when I was younger, we often celebrated the 4th at his house. I remember him telling all of us kids one time years ago that the longer we clapped and oohed and ahhed, the longer the fireworks would last. He died about twelve or fifteen years ago, but I thought about him last night as I sat holding his granddaughter, the aforementioned princess, on my lap, telling her to clap and ooh and ahh to make the fireworks last longer.

All in all, it was a pretty cool evening. Even if it was hotter than hell in July. (Oh, wait, I'm sorry -- "hell in July" is Oklahoma.) Even if we did get a deluge (fortunately, after dinner, and fortunately it passed in time for the fireworks. And the kids had a great time playing in the rain, though it made our "wong walk in the gwass" awfully wet.)

Hope your Fourth was great, too -- and that your Fifth has been none too shabby.

Rachel5:29 PM

The Coolest Show on TV

History Detectives is back for its summer run! Yea!!!

I caught this show's first episode a couple years ago purely by chance and haven't missed one since. It's on PBS and comes on Monday nights after Antiques Roadshow, and it's really cool. There are four regulars -- Wes Cowan and Elyse Luray, who are appraisers, I think, and Gwendolyn Wright and Tukufu Zuberi, whose backgrounds are in history. And people contact them with stuff that has some historical significance attached to it and they try to figure out if it's true.

These people are so smart and knowledgable that it's a huge thrill when *I* know something they don't. Doesn't happen very often, but last season it did. A woman in New Mexico had a photograph taken on the 101 Ranch, which she thought may have belonged to her great-grandfather or something and was in NM. I was bouncing in my seat, shouting, "I know, I know, I know!" I've never been there -- can't tell you exactly where it is -- but I know it's in Oklahoma. Of course, they eventually figured it out.

And the show's even educational without making it feel as if you're learning. Last night they did a segment about a WWII drinking game called Short Shooters. It was interesting. This guy wound up with a ten-shilling bill signed by all the Allied hot shots -- Churchill, Roosevelt, Patton, Eisenhower. Pretty damn cool.

My snort for the day: In an interview, Stone Phillips asked Ellen Degeneres if she was ever tempted to get a little dirty with her comedy, and she replied, "**** no." Rachel9:02 AM

New week, same old same old

Saturday:
Sunday:
Today:

Me:

This week I read a review of a book that features an uber-manipulative secondary character, and the review complains about the heroine's inability to recognize her "mechanizations." Say it with me: machinations.

No-brainer of the week: from a local news story about rain and its effect on fireworks: "If fireworks get wet, they aren't much good."

Pisser of the week: desperate for something to read that's very different from what I'm currently writing, I skimmed the bookshelves at the grocery store Saturday afternoon and found the newest Sunny Randall paperback. I love Robert B. Parker's Spencer books, watched the first two Jesse Stones in the last week or so, and have enjoyed the previous Sunny books, too, so I picked up the new one. First thing I noticed was its size -- it's that new taller-than-a-regular-paperback but not-as-wide-as-trade-paperback. I don't know the reasoning behind that particular size, but I don't like it. It doesn't fit well on the shelves, doesn't fit as easily into my purse. And it was $10.95. Eleven freakin' dollars for a paperback??? No wonder book sales are down. I'm an avid reader, but no way I'm paying thirty bucks for a hardcover or ten bucks for a paperback.

I set only one goal for myself last week -- to finish the current manuscript -- and didn't make it. In fact, for the past three or four days, I've been "just" thirty pages from the end. And the sad thing is, I have been writing. Whole bunches. Just not stuff I can keep. The problem is that pesky word count publishers insist on these days. I've run out of book while there's still story left to tell. So now I have to tighten and skip and gloss over some stuff so I can get the ending in. I hate feeling like I have to rush a story. It's like there's this big neon arrow pointing to various spots saying, "Motivation simplified," "Characterization short-changed," "Plot cut." And I'm pretty sure those arrows show up in the readers' copies, too.

Rach, preparing to rig up a boat if it doesn't dry out soon!!!!
Rachel9:09 AM