Halloween was never one of my particularly favorite holidays, I can’t even recall a single costume worn as a child.  In my legal-to-drink years my only concession to costumery was to paint my face dead white and create a two bloody-looking holes on my neck…Vampire Victim, of course.  That allowed me to dress normally (read: lots of cleavage) yet still participate, even if only in token fashion.

Now that I have kids, the emphasis is all on them of course.  (Though a few years ago we all dressed as pirates, even me who stayed home to pass out treats.  And Husband definitely enjoyed the ruffled shirt removal later.  :D  Oops, TMI.)  This year the Girlchild is a ninja and the Boychild is a classic Bela Lugosi-type vampire, though he informed me this morning that he did not have that freaky feeling in his stomach this year, which I think means this should definitely be his last year begging for handouts trick-or-treating.  

This year we’ll be trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood since Nana moved away, which means near-teenagers without costumes expecting to be given candy, and carloads of kids being driven over from nearby neighborhoods.  I expect to swear off the entire thing FOREVER by about 9:47PM EST tonight.

Oh look, ponkins!

I found more than a little common ground with the heroine Harry, and the vivid, maybe-sort-of British colony painted by McKinley, more Middle Eastern desert than India, spoke to my own childhood years in Saudi Arabia.  The Hero and the Crown, the prequel to The Blue Sword, was a natural next choice, and uses the same spare, straightforward narrative style.  

I re-read both of these books at least once a year.

I’ve tried other McKinley books over the years.  Deerskin was so harrowing that I’ve read it exactly once and shied away from it like a frightened horse ever since.

The Outlaws of Sherwood, naturally a Robin Hood retelling, is a decent enough juvenile version of this tale, featuring the cast of regulars from childhood forward.

Sunshine, a new take on vampire mythos, was a very entertaining read, and hopefully extends to sequels in the future.

McKinley has also done multiple retellings of fairy tales, but I generally prefer original stories so haven’t sampled those.  So, it was good news to me to find a new original story coming out this year, Chalice.

I’m halfway through it at this point, and really, very, seriously disappointed thusfar.  The narrative is…fragmented, to be kind about it.  The timeline skips between past and present, and while that can be a legitimate backstory-filling tool, it’s somehow very jarring in this book.  There’s also a leaden quality to the whole thing.  I am dreadfully interested in Mirasol’s bees, and the amazing honey, but I don’t know how many endlessly looping conversations and inner monologues I can plow through to get to the resolution.  

I’ve always had a problem with books that plop you directly into a fully formed universe/society/what-have-you, with nary a word of explanation or exposition, and simply expect you to get it.  CJ Cherryh is a HUGE perpetrator of this kind of writing, which led me to swearing off her work decades ago.  There are ways and ways to make a reader feel welcome in a new world, and simply ignoring them seems kind of arrogant to me.  

So, thusfar, Chalice is not living up to my expectations.  I’ll soldier on, of course…a book must be read, after all.

Schlepped the kids to the doctor yesterday for a checkup. Boychild is huge…something we already knew just from standing next to him…he’s 5′1″ tall at age 11.  The doctor says if he keeps growing at this rate (which he thinks unlikely), he’ll be 6′3″ by the time he’s done.  He’s been complaining of pain in his knee lately, right under the patella, which Doctor man believes is Osgood-Schlatter’s disease.  It occurs in (mainly) boys of this age and disappears in their late teens.

I ask you…if it up and spontaneously disappears, should it really be called a DISEASE???   Or just a Syndrome.  Maybe an Inconvenience.  I officially object to the use of the word Disease in this instance.  Dammit.

The Girlchild is also huge, 4′5″ tall, which was evident in the way she towered over the classmate that escorted her to the office for checkout yesterday.  This soccer season should be interesting.

Turns out both kiddos needed a booster shot yesterday, the Chicken Pops vaccine (I can’t be the only one who calls it that…), which came as a surprise to the Girlchild.  An unpleasant surprise.  As tough as the little bird is, she is the biggest needle fraidycat on earth, she just does not dig pain of any stripe.  Unhelpful in the extreme was the bitch whore cow of a nurse administering the injection.  She demanded that I physically restrain Boychild (who could give a crap someone’s sticking a needle in his arm) so he wouldn’t, I don’t know, turn into the frickin’ Hulk and eat her up yum?  Then when Girlchild started her tear-ridden floor show, Nurse Wussypants acted like the child had suddenly grown spikes and an insatiable bloodlust for forebrain-stunted immigrants, and scurried over to the door to shriek for help.

Here is where I Lost My Cool.

She does not need to be physically restrained, much less by a complete stranger, I snapped.  Nurse Wussypants blinked at me.  Get over here and give her this injection or I will do it for you, I snapped again.  I Do. Not. Have. patience for horseshit of this variety, particularly where my children are concerned, and I sincerely do not give a damn if that cow locked herself in the supply closet for the rest of the day, ala Elliot.  If she doesn’t have the intestinal fortitude to deal with her chosen profession then she needs to get her ass into the nearest call center and start answering Verizon helpdesk requests in a way guaranteed to make the caller wish for a meteorite strike on their own residence, just to End The Agony.

Is it really too much to expect that you’ll deal with intelligent people at any given time, or has the population density become so, er, dense, that it’s statistically impossible?  Whatever the case, I’m not backing down.  Especially when this is the very same doctor’s office (albeit different doctor) that was responsible for this nightmare.

Here, have a picture of our cat collection, and their favorite catnip pusher supplier.

Yes, lots of bluster, and liquids flung everywhere.

So we’re looking at high-ish winds and between 2 and 5 inches of rain. WhatEVAR. That’s a regular Saturday around here.

So, about the new look… As I cried said before, I was using a photoblog plugin to adapt wordpress into a photobloggy sort of application, and all that went very, very bad during the upgrades to 2.6. So, rather than troubleshoot someone else’s crappy code, I’m going back to a more bloggy sort of layout, which surely pleases me in the archive department. Thumbnail images as archives are great for a pure photoblog, but not so helpful when you also write words to go along with.

But I’m also still a very prolific shooter, with a whole lotta flowers, flutterbys and general scenery lying about, so the image up top will randomly rotate as you visit/navigate/generally reload pages. Yes, it’s a huge honking image, sorry, but in that I still wish to remain photobloggy. At least the body images will be about 200 pixels smaller in this layout, to make room for the spiff-tastic sidebar over there to the right.

Yes, I said spiff-tastic.

I have to go glare at the remnants of Fay now, who since I started this post has dwindled somewhat in her trek across lower Florida, and rather resembles a semi-incontinent ex-paint huffer…

Yes, wandering around in circles and occasionally piddling in corners.

Those of you using Wordpress note how it shrieks at you to upgrade whenever a new release comes about. Generally, this is a good idea, as fallow versions tend to become script kiddie targets, and next thing you know, your server is spewing Vi@gr@ spam and your sysadmins are giving you the fuck-eye.

Despite the immense number of plugins I was using, as well as the squirrelly (unnecessarily-) PHP-coded theme, I upgraded.

We’ll just gloss right over the next three days, shall we? Suffice it to say, I have done a fresh install of WP 2.6 and exported my entries from the old install into this new one. There will be days and days of tweaking ahead as A) this theme, er, is not up to my standards, and B) we’re scheduled for a hurricane enema from Fay tomorrow.

Coriander and Nancy, I’m sorry, but in the process of recovering my old blog I had to do a restore from backup, and your last comments were blitzed into oblivion. Please don’t take it personally, I love you, I rly ryl do.

See you all on the flip side.

There, was that enough excuses for today? Good. Onward…

Imagine my DELIGHT in coming back from vacation to a collection of cannas that looked like this:

Open up the tattered sticky leaves and you’ll find this little bastard:

Yes, it’s the delightful canna leafroller, who, post-destruction and metamorphosis, is a sort of nondescript butterfly called the Brazilian skipper. Now I’m a notorious photographer of the butterflies, even specifically plant things to attract them, but let’s see…do I want the six foot tall gorgeous-foliaged plants with beautiful blooms or small nondescript sort-of butterflies? No contest. Bacillus thuringiensis to the rescue!

Spray once a week for best results. The cannas are already making new leaves, huzzah!

I WILL result to chemical control in my garden, people, but I will do my very, very best to avoid killing the beneficials, which means spraying in the morning to avoid the evening pollinators, and in every case possible using something that specifically targets a certain pest, like the Bt, which only lunches caterpillars. Yes, certain butterfly species will take a hit but last I checked they were nowhere near endangered.

Just save your sympathy for those bastard milkweed beetles who utterly killed my specifically-planted-for-monarchs milkweed. ‘Cos those bastards are next.

UPDATE: Nothing says loving like something in the oven a cortisone shot directly in the knee joint. Ow. Again. Ethyl chloride sprayed directly on the injection site is a wonderful thing, though. Watching the needle bend on the first stab attempt, then sink three inches into your flesh is less entertaining somehow. The relief was immediate, though it felt like an additional golf ball’s worth of fluid had been inserted behind the patella, and the nausea was a distinct turn-off. Still require assistance getting up from chairs/couches, but in general, progress seems to be, er, progressing.

Thanks for all the comments/emails, much appreciated! The doctor says I must be “Queen-like” for the next week…so come, my subjects, and finish weeding my veg garden!

…and boy were we PISSED.

You wait four years for a sequel to a movie you really enjoyed, and instead of a story, you get needlessly elaborate CGI creations. Interesting to look at, sure, but at the expense of every other aspect of the film? Seems the studio should be asking some questions…

It wasn’t just us disappointed…the entire theater was near silent for nearly the entire film. I counted three times when I heard any sort of a chuckle or exclamation from anyone. In a nearly 2 hour movie.

This is the same writer/director who did the original Hellboy, so I have to assume something has just come loose in his brain since Pan’s Labyrinth…the rave reviews for the visuals in that film made him think that was all we were looking for, perhaps…which surely does not bode well for The Hobbit films. The Hellboy characters deserve much better treatment, and they sure didn’t get it.

Last weekend we saw Get Smart, and did not stop laughing the entire time. Steve Carell is still Steve Carell (see airplane lavatory scene for an example), but he is capable of also being someone else (ie. ACTING), unlike others we could mention (*coff* Ben Stiller, who only ever plays that one angry, clueless guy), and did a fine job as a Maxwell Smart who was both inept and ept at the same time. I remember very little of the television show, but Husband assures me this is faithful to the Smart character. He may have appeared hapless but things always fell out in his favor in the end.

Anne Hathaway is, for lack of a more original word, luminous. The camera adores her, and she had the opportunity to Sydney Bristow her way through several scenes, with slinky dresses, hooker wigs, and do-me make-up. Dwayne Johnson is likewise appealing, just as amiable and likeable as hell. He seems like the kind of guy you’d like to have over for dinner. Which virtually guarantees he is an abandoner of kittens.*

Speaking of kittens, it is five days and counting to vacation time, and seeing our kids for the first time in nearly four weeks! I miss them to the point that I’ve started making kitten slideshows with silly little captions to amuse them long distance, like this one.

The little buggers are growing fast, and making chasing a string into an art form. This shot of Hermes still makes me laugh til I snort. One kitten is often funny, but two are endlessly hysterical.

*That is a JOKE, people.

Mia Michaels, who I swear is fae (and was ROCKING the one-shoulder top last night), is a hardass, isn’t she? Telling Will he’s been carrying poor Jessica all season. That was harsh, lady. And what’s with mooning over Thayne? Tell me, fellow SYTYCD watchers and/or dance experts…is he really all that? He has got to rein in that Joker smile, for sure, otherwise he’s pretty generic to me.

I have to say I was ready to hate Katee after the unnecessarily dramatic audition shows, but damn if that girl doesn’t make the rest of them look like club dancers. She also makes her partner Joshua, who is seriously impressive on his own, look like he has lead in his shorts.

Comfort, bless her heart, is just boring. Not so much from a technical standpoint, she just doesn’t have star quality. Same for Chelsie…fantastic technical dancer, but boooring.

Kherington (my gods, her mother should be SLAPPED) has turned out to be far better than I expected her to be. And she’s just adorable.

The rest of the group is kind of ‘eh’ for me. And if they do not completely remove the sodding Quickstep from the rotation, I shall lodge a protest. It’s an idiotic dance, that apparently no one can do well enough to please the judges. Dump it! Bring in some more world dance!

Since we’re on a pop culture tear here, I have a couple of authors to complain about. I read all sorts of things, but do have a fondness for stories with strong female characters…and why wouldn’t I? I, myself, am a strong female character. It is fine, of course, for the character to be clueless, immature, whatever she needs to be in order to start her progression towards whatever she is to become, but I swear to Zog, just how many sequels am I expected to sit through while the heroine does the exact same thoughtless shit, makes the exact same stupid mistakes, and experiences not one whit of personal growth?

Vicki Pettersson and Michelle Sagara apparently have mortgages to pay off, because I’ve read three books in series from each of them, and in each their heroines are just as self-centered and self-serving as they were in the first books. This appeals to who, exactly? People who like to watch others fail? As fun as that might be in real life (sarcasm), reading it in a fictional character’s journey it is just irritating. Your editors did tell you, ladies, that there must be some sort of progression in your books, did they not? If not, I’d get new editors, or at least figure that shit out for yourselves.

If the authors are attempting to portray anti-heroes, they are failing at that as well. The characters are just stubborn (not even in a cute way) and wrong in almost everything they do, which then gets rubbed in their faces by morally superior secondary characters…yet the heroines still do not change their ways. And they’ve been that way for THREE BOOKS now.

Well, ladies, I give up. Your “heroines” can plod on in their journeys of no-discovery without me. I’ve given you each roughly 20 dollars for the privilege of being frustrated and bored, and I can honestly get that for free just by turning on my television. Ta.

I called a phone number.  An answering machine picked up, with a terse, “leave your message,” about the same time a tossed pen impacted my thumb-bone in a painful fashion.  I did not leave a message, figuring I’d call back later when my thumb didn’t hurt quite so badly, and when someone might be home to answer the phone.

Phone rings.  It’s a sullen teenaged voice, “You just called?”

Er, yeah.  I really HATE that.  If I had wanted to leave a message, I would have, son.  Cunningly enough, you have in place an actual answering device to handle said calls, and you choose to filter all calls through said machine, ergo, if someone does not leave a message, then it must not have been important.

“Had I wanted to leave a message,” I replied carefully, “I would have done so.”  And hung up.

Not the most charitable of responses on my part, admittedly, but, as detailed above, I really HATE that.

The phone rings again.  “Um, yeah, did someone there just be rude to my son on the phone?”

The phrasing is not exact but I think illustrates the inelegant grammar of the caller quite nicely.  I explained to her that I did indeed call their number, but by mistake.  A white lie, I admit, but I was already fairly torqued and would be damned if I’d be dealing with them in the matter for which I had originally called.

“What number did you call?” she asked.  I had to laugh, and asked her why that mattered…I got an answering machine and hung up.  And I found it exceedingly rude to be *69-ed by a complete stranger, had I wanted to leave a message, I WOULD HAVE!!!

“Well, it was RUDE to CALL my number…” she shouted.  I lost it, both my temper and my hold on the near-hysterical giggles.  “How is it rude for someone to put your telephone to the use for which you presumably purchased it?!?” I yelled right back.  “Have a nice night, y’idiot!!”

*blink*

This evening’s email brought a little gem from a woman intent absolutely excoriating me for having a hand in a law firm’s posting of a blog entry that made mention of her friend’s motorcycle accident death.

“Erm,” I explained, “I did a site design for this domain over two years ago, but I have nothing whatsoever to do with the CONTENT they choose to put on their site.  Not to mention they A) aren’t even using the site design I made for them, and B) operating under a completely different site concept (used to be a personal blog, now a site for personal injury lawyers).  Take your complaints to the site owners, lady.”

She actually writes back, still with the lambasting, saying I clearly was also culpable in profiting off her (no-doubt) dear friend’s death because I am credited with the design of said lawyer’s site.

I confess at this point I became rather pointed, the specifics of which I shall spare you, my gentle lamb-like readers.

I find I do not react well to rudeness these days.  Bringing it to the perpetrator’s attention, in as sarcastic and cutting a manner as possible, is so much more satisfying.  This goes for phone calls, emails, grocery store visits, what have you, I’m not picky.

I haven’t the faintest clue where to lay the blame for the increasing lack of courtesy in the world (though our instant-gratification society is a big old front-runner), but I’ve Officially Had It.  Like Ms. Violent Acres here, I’m all about pointing out the rudeness these days.  Husband has been doing it for some time, a skill of his of which I remain in awe.  I usually am so very aghast at the rudeness that I let the Golden Repartee Moment slip by.  No longer, by gum.  If you’re rude, I’m going to call you on it, and maybe next time you’ll remember to NOT be rude.