Aww… Little Man Down

Yes, tis true!  Zoomboy is sick today, and I should have known.  He has been getting gradually too big to sit on my lap–not that it’s stopped him any, and hey!  It’s not like the mama-chair doesn’t have a six inch gap between seat and arm anyway, making it damned impossible to sit/knit/breathe in as it is, so why not?  But last night?  Last night I got one of those increasingly rare cuddles, with a kid on each side of me (remember when they happened every day?  *sniffle*) that lasted for more than two hours.

Ah yes.  That should have been my first clue.

My second clue was when he woke me up at four in the morning (and remember, I’m usually up to 12:30 a.m. as it is!) to wander around the house like a lost soul, looking for the bright red first aid kit that I have so wisely crammed all of our first aid necessities into so that I might find them at four o’clock in the FRICKIN’ MORNING when my kid wakes up with a sore throat!

It was in the car.  Mate found it at a more reasonable hour after I found MLM (most likely medicine) in the form of an unopened cough syrup purchased for reasons unknown.  It said cough suppressant.  I assumed that meant the kid wouldn’t be able to feel his throat to cough–and that was good enough for me.  Good enough for Zoomboy too.  He slept until the magic red back appeared–but that doesn’t mean Chicken isn’t still haunted by the specter of mom, hovering around her doorway at the aforementioned dark-fucking-thirty, going, “Have you seen the first aid bag?”

“No. Can I go back to sleep now?”

“Yeah, sure.  Knock yourself out.”

ZB, Chicken, and Squish are all in my bed now, watching cartoons, which is really sort of cute when you think about it, and me?  I’m revising a story that was supposed to be a quick, 20K paean to Bruce Springsteen, and which is now looking very short-novellish.  Yeesh.  Seriously– Elizabeth keeps asking why I’m not submitting as much.  I figured it out–I’m writing just the same, I’m just all writing LONG instead of SHORT! On the one hand, that’s good, right?  People don’t complain when you write LONG because they wanted MORE.  On the other hand?  Not as many releases when you write LONG.  You grow afraid.  “Will they remember me?  Maybe they’ll remember me.  Maybe they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah.  Amy Lane.  I used to like her work.  Then she broke my heart one too many times and went away.  I shall not buy her anymore forever.'”  Or, you know, something like that. 

So, anyway, I’m gearing up for New York– trying to figure out the place in Chase in Shadow that I should read.  I read someone else’s guidelines or suggestions for what to pick or not to pick–lessee:

Something that has not a lot of dialog in it–unless you’re good with voices.

Something that has only as much sex as you can stand to read to a group of people.

Something that doesn’t give away any spoilers. 

And I was like, aww, fuck!  The whole thing is (eye)balls deep in dialog–and a lot of it is IN CHASE’S HEAD!  And, HELLO, a lot of it is set on the GFP set, where, yeah.  Sorry.  Sex.  And the only parts that really aren’t?  Yeah.  At the end of the book where the character stops talking to himself quite so much.  

Oh yeah– and Tommy’s got a South Boston accent that I can hear clearly in my head but that I can not mimic AT ALL.  

So folks, should anyone have any idea where I should read from?  Yeah.  I’ll take suggestions.  Seriously.  

So wish my little man well–and Squish– I’m betting she’s the next domino to fall. (As Samurai Knitter said, even to a loving parent, every kid is Patient Zero.)  I’m betting Zoomboy won’t be going to tomorrow night’s King’s Game which he was REALLY looking forward to, and let’s all hope they’re both better by Monday.  It sucks to be home from school when there’s so much cool stuff to learn. 

Oh yeah–and the uber-cool picture?  If anyone’s having as much sunspot difficulty as I am, this just helps you to think that rabid-crazy elemental forces can sometimes be benign.