Movie: Conan the Barbarian

I knew if I waited long enough, Amazon would put Conan on Prime's watch-for-free list.  It wasn't terrible, either.

So, I watched it, basically for Jason Momoa.  I loved him in Stargate: Atlantis, and though his part in Game of Thrones was very small, I liked him fine there, too.  The actress playing Tamara has the most amazingly pale blue eyes I've ever seen.  In one scene, they almost look white, they're so pale.  Stunning.

Pros: Conan, at both ages, is pretty.  Tamara is pretty.  There are many naked breasts in one scene that are pretty.  The fights, however unrealistic, are pretty.  His friend, the thief King, is pretty.  In the love scene and aftermath, both Conan and Tamara are very pretty (though the actress has a body double, so presumably it's the double's body that's pretty).  As you can tell, this was all about the pretty.  lol

Cons:  The movie as a whole was mediocre, at best.  The script maybe had good bones, but whoever didn't make any inspired choices in translating that script into film.  I had no idea it was possible to make Rose McGowan unattractive, but they managed.  The end was kind of non-endy.

Also, lest people continue to think that watching TV is not educational, while I was watching the credits, I was able to tell the gender of many of the film's Slavic workers.  If the name ended with ev, ov, av (not too many of those), then I knew that person was male.  If it ended eva, ova, ava, then that person was female.  Where did I learn that?  Babylon 5, maybe?  JAG?  I don't even remember, just that it stuck in my head.  Another useless bit of trivia for that trip to Eastern Europe that will never happen.  :)

Was that barbarian/King played by the same guy who was the head dude on Terra Nova?  I'll have to look that up, if I remember long enough. 

Anyway, it wasn't a waste of my time, but I doubt I'll be watching it again.  If they got a different director, I might even watch a sequel, though I would not pay to watch at a movie house.  I hear tell they're making another Conan movie with Arnold back as Conan.  I can guarantee I won't be watching that one.

Review: Pantene ProV Silky Moisture Whip

After receiving this sample in the mail from VocalPoint a week or so ago, I tried it in place of my usual Biolage mousse.

I have not noticed a difference in the texture of my hair, nor in the frizzy/not frizzy ratio.  It also does not hold my style, what little style there is, as well as the Biolage.

It's easy to apply - I mean how hard is it to put mousse in my hair - but since it does neither what it is advertised to do, nor what I use mousse to do, I'm definitely not impressed.

I don't recommend you waste time or money on this one.

Three stars out of five, just because it comes out of the can right, smells good, and washes off my hands easily.

Moms and other mysterious creatures, part two

Now for my stepmother.  Again a woman I did and do love.  I don't like her much most of the time.

When she got me and my sister, I had been the head of our little family unit.  Even at eight.  I was the one who went to the store for food and milk.  I was the one who bought cigarettes for my mother.  Obviously this was before there were age restrictions on buying cigarettes and alcohol.  I sometimes picked up my little sister from daycare, and sometimes made dinner for the two of us.

Immediately upon integrating us into her household, CC made it known that that behavior was not welcome. I was an eight-year-old girl and she didn't want me parenting or protecting my three-year-old sister.  I think of all the changes she made to my life during that first year, I hated that the most.  I wasn't needed anymore.  I felt superfluous and useless.

I was allowed to call her by her given name for a couple of weeks, until my sister and CC's own daughter began doing it, too, and then she made me call her Mom.  Oh, did I rebel against that, but being the eldest-perfect-child-hero stereotype, that rebellion came out sideways, never head-on.

I was nasty to her.  I disliked her intensely - hated that she had married my father, and hated that she was trying to be my mother when I already had a perfectly good one (not so much from an adult perspective, but it was what it was), hated that because of her, I had been taken from my mother and was no longer allowed to see her.

On the other hand, she had five brothers and five sisters, so I had aunts and uncles galore.  My youngest uncle was twelve, and the next youngest was sixteen.  I simply adored the two of them, to the point of hero-worship, and they put up with me and my sudden constant presence at family gatherings.  In those days, nearly all of the original eleven were still located in and around Denver, so a family dinner on Sunday was a mammoth affair to my previously one-aunt, two cousins mind.  Though CC resented my place in her life, her family accepted me immediately and with open arms.  I am no longer close to many of them (I mean, it's nearly forty years later, after all), but I love them all, without exception.

I was the eldest of the grandchildren.  CC was only 22 at the time, and most of the other originals were not yet married, and none of those who were had children older than two or three.

As fractious as our relationship was, we came to some kind of detente, because she was the only mother I had for seven years.  She fed me, clothed me, taught me how to set a table regardless of who was coming to dinner, enforced manners and proper behavior, let it slide when I'd rather read than go outside, and put up with my bad attitude with questionable grace.

She also regularly beat me, slapped me, berated me verbally and emotionally, and took all her resentments out on my physical and emotional person.  From this distant perspective, I know that she did the best she could with what coping tools she had, but my inner child says it wasn't good enough.

There were moments, though.  When I came home devastated in the sixth grade because I'd gotten my first B, she put her arms around me and let me cry, and made sure I understood that a B was plenty good enough.  Perfectionist me didn't believe her, but not through lack of trying.  When she caught me sneak-reading the Playboys, she didn't berate me, but sat me down at the dinner table, made me look at them from cover to cover and asked me if I had any questions, reassured me that those women in the pictures didn't look that good in real life, that real women had hair on their legs and didn't have to wear makeup to look pretty enough.  When my sixth grade teacher (ah, Mr. McCormack!) spanked me for some transgression, she stormed to the school and made sure he knew that it was NOT acceptable for the school to spank me for any reason whatsoever.  After that, I had to run laps.  I'd rather have been spanked, frankly.  When I got my first period, she was matter-of-fact about showing me how to use the sanitary belt and how to attach the pads to it (yes, I am that old), and calmed me down when I was sure that everybody could smell that I was on my period.

We functioned on an uneven keel until the year my dad had a solitary tour in Korea, and was gone for an entire year.  Our little family had to learn how to function without daddy around, and my relationship with CC changed and was sometimes less antagonistic.  When he came back, we all had to learn to deal with that again.  Anybody who says it's only the active duty member who really sacrifices is full of shit.

Anyway, during what we now call the tween years, particularly while my dad was gone, beatings and threats to send me back to my mother (for some reason, I was terrified of this) were the norm.  Anything that went wrong, I got punished for it.  Any chore that needed to be done, I was assigned to do it.  Basically, anything that made her life easier was my responsibility.

Things happened when I was fourteen, outside the immediate family, and things came to a head with CC the summer I was fifteen, when I was walking from the bathroom to my bedroom, and CC randomly reached up and slapped me as I was walking past her.  I got completely still and silent (people who know me well tend to disappear on the exceedingly rare occasion this happens now), then shoved her into the sliding glass door and very calmly told her, "Don't. Ever. Touch. Me. Again."  She didn't ever beat me again, though she still yelled at me plenty.

I got through high school, nearly always on restriction or grounded from something (or everything), moved out as soon as I turned 18 in the middle of my senior year, and graduated.  Fiddled around, continuing to live a directionless life for a few years, then moved completely away, to another state, and got into therapy as a result of my aunt's inpatient treatment for something.  Learned a lot about myself during those five years, grew up a lot.  Came back to Texas and stayed in Dallas.  Since I left for Missouri in 1987, I've never lived full-time in San Antonio, though I have always considered it home and hope to return there in the very near future.

When I came to Dallas, I met and married my ex-husband, had Mrs. Potatohead ten months later (on our ten monthiversary, as a matter of fact) and CC all of a sudden got nice.  She bought the wedding announcements when we told her we'd gotten married, invited us to visit for the holidays and was generally a much nicer person to be around.  This lasted a while, I guess, but eventually she reverted to form.  She'd badmouth me to my daughter, talked about me to my sisters behind my back.  Again, I was the scapegoat for pretty much everything wrong in her life, though she was nice as pie to my face.  All kinds of lovey-dovey.

When Mrs. Potatohead  was old enough to spend time with my family on her own, CC was always happy to have her visit, creative with activities to keep her occupied, and generous with her time and material things.  We lived in an uneasy peace for years, with her being supportive on the surface, and ugly when I wasn't there to hear it.

CC kept up the surface support, even during some of my most trying emotional times, and I continued to accept this dichotomous behavior from her.  I've made my peace with it, and kinda figure she's given me what she's capable of giving, all things considered.  It's not good enough, but it never will be, and yet, it has to be.  It's all there ever will be.

Three and a half years ago, we had to move out of the house we'd been living in, and she offered to pay for an apartment for a year, if we'd move into the apartment she chose for us (that is, Miss Not-Yet-Potatohead and myself).  We made the move, Miss became Mrs, Mr and Mrs had Baby Potatohead, and Mrs graduated from high school in spite of everything.  My kid is something special.  Anyway, the year of financial support became six months, and with a fifteen-month lease, we struggled to stay in that place and pay all the bills, until Mr Potatohead went into the USAF.  He got out of basic training, started getting paid, and Mrs Potatohead started paying all the bills.  The child had become the parent to some degree, and I'm willing to bet part of her resented it.

During the last part of this, my truck started needing more repairs than it was worth, and I sold it.  We went without a car for quite a while, dependent on others to get us around for anything.  Nearly two years ago now, CC told me that if I could find a car I liked, she would pay for it, with one stipulation.  She was done with me.  I was to stay out of her life for good.

At last, after almost forty years, the gloves came off and she was honest about what she wanted.  I have to recognize the powerful moment for what it was, and I admire her for finally saying what she actually felt instead of catering to the party line that family is family and we should all be happyhappy together.  What a crock that is.

Last year, CC let me know via email that if I wanted to come over, I'd have to find a way to get there (remember I didn't have my car for a year because of that horrid mechanic).  My sister insisted this would be considered an invitation, but I found it less than gracious, and insincere, so I didn't bother making any effort to find a way over there.  I live half an hour away.  If she really wanted me there to any degree whatsoever, someone could have come and got me.

On the other hand, she sent bits and pieces of xmas dinner with said sister when she drove to see me on her way out of town.  I did enjoy the traditional family fare, even a day late and cold.  lol

I'm OK with not seeing her.  However, staying out of her life means that I don't get to see my dad, and I miss him something awful.  He last spoke to me at xmas, the month before she bought me the car I have now.  He sent me an email for my birthday that year, but didn't actually speak to me, and last year, I got nothing at all from him, not even a text message.  I'm trying to get to my happy place with that, but man it is difficult to do.  I'll admit that I had myself a little pity party over my birthday last year.  Staying out of her life also means that I don't get to see the rest of the family at Thanksgiving and Christmas, though Thanksgiving is usually spent with my girlfriend in SA.

As painful as it is to have my dad be out of my life, I prefer this honest-to-herself CC over the previous two-faced one.  If she doesn't like me, she shouldn't have to pretend that she does.  Much as I love her, I don't have to pretend to like her anymore, either.  I can live with that.

None of this should be construed as meaning that I am blameless and perfect.  I so am not.  I, too, am doing the best I can with the coping tools I have.  It's a wonder I'm still sane after all I've been through, as a great man once said.  :D  Actually, I don't think I am sane, but don't tell anybody.

Moms and other mysterious creatures, part one

I loved my mother always.  Sometimes I didn't like her much, though.

My mother and I had a strange relationship.  I lived with her for the first eight years of my life, and from all accounts, I was a happy child, content to be left to my own devices.  Then my dad got custody of us, he was PCSed to Thailand with the USAF, and I didn't see her for another seven years.  By that time, I was deep into the teenage years, and did not feel the need for nor enjoy having another mother figure, particularly not one with strange ideas about how I should behave toward her or in general.  I had things going on in my personal life that were traumatic and that summer was probably not the best timing to rekindle our relationship.

She tried to be a mother to me at first, and that just really didn't gel, so we eventually created a friendship that mostly worked for us.  She shared things with me that she might discuss with another peer, and I talked to her about things, even private things, comfortably, because that mother/daughter vibe just wasn't there for me.  I think she missed that, since I never stopped being her elder daughter in her mind, but I just couldn't make the transition back to being her daughter.

One of the things about her though, was that she talked about me a lot.  She'd praise me to the mountains, to anybody who'd listen, when other people were around.  However, she never made a point to say any of those things privately, and I kind of felt that she was proud of the idea of me, but not necessarily proud of the me that existed right in front of her.  I resented that she only seemed proud of me when there was someone to listen to her saying it.

By the summer I started seeing her again, she was fairly well-known in the local and regional pagan and Wiccan community and many, many people called her Mom.  I have to admit that I also resented the time she seemed to have for everyone but me.  I'll stipulate that it was my perception as a selfish teenager, and probably not the reality, though there were certainly times that I wanted to do something with her and she couldn't because she'd already committed the time elsewhere.  I guess I just thought that if I was going to go to all the trouble to come see her in the summer, she'd be available for me to see.

At some point, I got into therapy and started to grow up, intellectually and emotionally, and began to see my mother's behaviors from a more detached perspective.  This both helped and hurt our relationship, as I was able to see and accept her for what she was as a mother, and at the same time, I saw that she was stuck in a victim mentality.

I grew to hate that she couldn't take responsibility for anything in her life.  In her mind, everything happened TO her.  If something bad happened, she could (and did) always lay the blame on someone else.  Most of us know someone like this, I think.  I sometimes thought myself better than her, because she couldn't or wouldn't rise above this mental place and be her own person, and I had struggled through years of talk therapy to become a better, more emotionally mature me.

In the end, she was pretty determined that she was going to die relatively early, like her mother did, though my grandmother died from breast cancer.  My mother accomplished this through heavy wine consumption and chain-smoking and basically not eating much at all.  At the very end, when she was being taken to the hospital in an ambulance, she sent someone back inside the house for her cigarettes.  I always kind of laugh at that.

All of us kids saw her a couple of months before she died, and I was stunned to see how emaciated she looked, though in the pictures of that day, it doesn't show much.  By the time she died, my 5' 10" mother weighed less than eighty pounds, and she looked horrible.

During the last year or two, I struggled mightily with letting go of her and detaching myself from her negativity, because I could just get sucked down into that morass and never climb out, so I didn't spend a whole lot of time with her.  That was what I needed at the time, to keep my sanity, and I don't regret the decision I made to spend as little time with her as humanly possible.

I do miss her, though, these ten years later.  She always had good stories, from her own childhood and from mine.  She loved people and people loved her.  One of the things I tried to do in the wake of her death was to compliment random strangers, as my own strange way of honoring her memory (This was something she did that I always admired and wanted to do).  For an introvert like myself, it was difficult, sometimes to the point of tears, but it made me feel a little more connected to the woman I had adored when she was at her best.

Book: Balance of Terror by Kaz Agustin

Balance of Terror has a very good blend of fairly traditional scifi elements with bits of medicine, mercenaries, friendship, love, and sex.  I was a little confused at first about the motives of the two main characters, and the synopsis helped, but mostly, the book just jumped into the action, and things became clear pretty quickly.

The sex was politely written and not gratuitous, though not really necessary to the storyline.

I have to say that the best part of this book was the formatting.  Seriously.  I have read some relatively decent books on the Kindle, and the formatting is about 50/50 on whether or not it's going to be good.  Balance of Terror made it very clear where section breaks were, where chapters began and those things made the book so much more enjoyable.  While it was a good book all on its own, the formatting made it even better.

I received this book through Sandal Press Online, for the purposes of review.

Little bit of self-promotion

This is as good a time as any to remind you that if you're going to shop Amazon, I would deeply appreciate you going through one of my links, so that I make a wee bit of money from it.  (really wee, like 4%)

Thank you ever so much.

My contribution to yourholidaymom.com

Dear Adopted Holiday Child,

It can be hard to know what to say to someone who doesn't have support from their family over the holidays. My own daughter has been pretty lucky for the most part.  She always knew, because I told her repeatedly, that I didn't care who she loved, as long as they loved her back.  I used to tell her, "Boy, girl, purple alien, whoever," and though it came to be a sort of family in-joke, she knew deep inside that I meant it.  Others of her peer group weren't so lucky, and I saw the negative results of family or friend rejection firsthand more than once.

Maybe you've experienced some of that yourself. I can't erase that memory from your brain, though I wish I could.  Maybe you're feeling some of that rejection from your family or coworkers or people you thought were friends right now. So let me tell you this: You really do have people out here who love you just exactly as you are. You matter, especially to me.  I know what it means to be lonely in a room full of laughing people, and right now, at this very moment, while you're reading this, I am thinking about you and wishing I could make hugs into something tangible I could send through the internet.

One of my favorite childhood traditions, which I continue as often as I can as an adult, is hosting single Airmen at our family dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The guys were usually young, sometimes away from home for the first time, unable to be with their own families. While it's not exactly the same situation, they shared a feeling of loneliness at a time of year when every single thing we hear is about families and sharing and happiness and love and joy, whether we like it or not.

In my own home, as an adult, everyone is welcome as long as you come hungry.  Can you chop celery or fry up some bacon?  Can you sit on the couch and watch TV?  Can you improve on my family's cornbread dressing recipe?  Can you drink soda or set the table or help with the dishes?  Can you debate the relative merits of Battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5?  All of those things matter more to me than what you look like or whether you're loving an "acceptable" person. You'd be welcome in my home, as would anyone you'd choose to bring, and if you wanted one, you'd be entitled to a hug when you came in the door.

So remember that.  The inner me sees the you that's inside, with all your trippy little quirks and your hopes for the future, and I love you. I hope that helps make your holidays be merry in a whole new way.

Love, Mom Lucy

Definitely worth checking out, particularly if you are not sappy and prone to random weepiness like I am.  :|
YourHolidayMom

The Dark Side of the Moon

Well, not really.  But, yeah, kind of.

This is the time of year that what's left of my emotional stability takes a good, long look into the abyss and decides whether or not to take a flying leap for the rest of the year.

Some Decembers are really, really difficult.

Ramblings and stuff

Since the death last month of one of my daughter's classmates, and his memorial service, I've been in a heightened (deepened?) state of nostalgic melancholy.  I saw the classmate she'd been closest to at her freshman year, and that was almost as hard as being at Trey's memorial service, in some strange way.  G was a wonderful boy and he loved my daughter practically from the moment they met.  They became dance partners and oh, my kid was happy when she was dancing!

Then we moved, had to, leaving all her friends, including G, behind, and she really disliked me for a while.  I didn't have the money to drive back to C-Town very often, even if it was only twenty minutes away.  What?  I was unemployed.  I managed to keep the stupid cell phones turned on most of the time, and we had a place to live, so I kinda figured we were ahead of the game.  Driving back and forth so she could see her friends in person didn't seem like a necessity.

Anyway, I guess seeing G and remembering that one happy year of high school settled in and made some part of me wish that she could have stayed as happy as she was her freshman year, and that we could have continued to function as well together as we always had (with a few exceptions - no parent/child relationship is without tension).

Maybe it  mixed in with some belated empty-nest syndrome.  It's been a little over a year since she moved out completely, and all but stopped talking to me for a while.  Those first couple of months, while I was still packing and moving, weren't too bad, but I missed my grandson and talking to my girl every day something awful.  Then I couch-surfed for a few months, and being on my best behavior sort of meant not moping around about my kid or my dysfunctional family.

November was harder, because I was unable to make my annual trip to San Antonio to see my friend from high school and do Thanksgiving with her and host our Airmen and just in general be "home" with antiquing and breakfast tacos and Sonic drinks every day and all the Mexican food I could manage to eat.  I look forward to that recharge all year long, and though I understand her situation, I selfishly hated that it got in the way of my needs and wants.  I did my damnedest to sleep through Thanksgiving, since I had nowhere to go.

Having nowhere else to go was stupid, considering that my parents live half an hour away.  Last January, after my stepmother bought me a car (one cannot really effectively job search or work without a car in DFW), she came out and said that she wanted me out of her life and except for sending her birthday cards I've completely respected that.  Last Thanksgiving, it wasn't a big deal, because of my annual trip to SA.  But I was not invited to their house at Christmas, not even for dinner.  Unfortunately, her need to see me gone means that I don't see or speak to my dad, either, and it hurts that he's made no effort to contact me.  This year was the first time in my entire life that I didn't get even an email or text message from my dad on my birthday.  I cried about that, you can believe it.  Yes, I'm 47, but I don't think a girl ever grows out of needing her dad to call her on her birthday.

I wished pointlessly that I had my own place, so that I could put a Thanksgiving dinner together and make it an open house or something, so that I could see other people and not be stuck in my own dark and dreary head/heartspace.  Don't get me wrong, I am grateful to have a place to live that is not a box under a bridge, but it is just a roof over my head, and though he says I'm welcome to invite people over, I rarely do because this place has never felt like home to me.  I also hate the kitchen.  I mean, I don't like to cook anyway, but this kitchen in particular is definitely a relic from a bygone era.

I think I had a point to make, but if I did, I don't recall what it was, and I think I've rambled depressingly for quite long enough.  Gah!

On a more positive note, I am still madly in love with Battlestar Galactica 2003 and Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck.  I managed to get my hands on the first two seasons of DVDs and am really looking forward to seeing all those deleted scenes and other extras.  I'm trying to ration myself, though.  The distraction's gotta last through Christmas, because I just don't wanna think about another one without my family.

And on another bright note, my grandson, he is adorable!

My grandson

Ryan is not afraid to rock those stilletos and "help."  lol

I love that he's starting to say actual words now.  The other day, I got a video where he was yelling, "Honey!" at the computer.  Guess we know the favored term of endearment in my daughter's household.  :)

Book Review: Sold (The Auction) by Cheyenne McCray

Though I enjoyed reading it enough, it wasn't really anything special. There were about half a dozen grammar errors, mostly relating to tense, and in such a short work, those errors stood out more than they otherwise would have.

The auction to which the title refers was over fairly quickly, and the weekend at a resort which couples won was never referred to again. Too bad. It could have made for some intriguing situations.

Once the couple hooked up, there was too much time spent describing the toys and paraphernalia and his dungeon, and a lot of time on the female lead's intellectual responses, but hardly any time spent on how he was reacting, and very little time spent on actual sex. If I recall correctly, there are in reality only two sex scenes in the entire book, and most of both of them is spent talking about the toys and how gladly she is submitting to his will. I like to read about kink as much as anyone else, but this wasn't really very well done. I like to know that both people are enjoying the foreplay and the sex.

There's not really much buildup to the relationship, and the end of the story feels kind of tacked on, as if she'd run out of toys to describe and needed to end the book gracefully.

Someone else mentioned that this story was only good for eliciting a physical reaction. I didn't even get that much out of it. It really was an interesting concept/premise, one I wish the author had taken more time to explore.

This one was an Amazon freebie at the time I got it.

Book Review: Love Unscripted

I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley, for the purposes of reviewing.

Wow.  I haven't read a book in a long time that had so much extraneous information included.  I kept getting bogged down and outright bored with the play-by-play of where people were sitting or what they were wearing or the relationship state of someone unimportant to the overall plot.  The formatting sucked.  Quotation marks were used in place of apostrophes throughout, and that made this slow read even more torturous.  There were lines missing, or inserted two pages later, and lines breaks between chapters were frequently missing.  I'm hopeful that these issues are fixed in the actual published copies.

This book is written in first-person.  It's unusual, and not every author can make it work.  Though Taryn is theoretically 27 or 28, the book, particularly the beginning, reads as though she's just out of high school.  She's fixated on stuff that an older adult just wouldn't think too much about anymore, with totally juvenile thought processes about men and their relative hotness factors.

I really liked Ryan and Taryn at first.  They seemed to genuinely like each other and watching an actor fall in love with a "nobody" and vice versa was interesting.  Then, when Ryan left Taryn's city once filming was done, their relationship wasn't so easy and they each had issues with the other.  Ryan turned into an overbearing uber-jealous prick with anger control issues, and Taryn became a super-gullible untrusting brat, and it just went downhill from there.

The denouement was way over the top, though well-written, and then the end was just too treacly for words.  "I'm sorry."  "No, I'm sorry."  "I love you."  "I love you more."  "Let's live happily ever after."  Gag me with a spoon.  Yeah, I know.  The eighties called and they want their colloquialism back.

For me, this book was just too long, stuffed with too much unnecessary information, and the way the relationship played out was unbelievable.  Taryn's physical attraction to Kyle was given far too much emphasis, considering she's in love with Ryan, and whether or not she was attracted to Kyle had no meaning to the plot.

On the plus side, there were parts of the book that were extremely nicely done and touching.  The early days of the relationship had many adorable and funny moments, and though packed with a lot of tell rather than show, were enjoyable to read.

Hot and Cold

Sorry.  I suck at subject lines, and I was listening to Katy Perry. 

Good - Voted.
Bad - no bad there, except for the 40-minute line.

Good - smoothie from Smoothie King
Better - next one's free

Good - dinner at Cheesecake Factory
Better - half of it was free thanks to a gift card I earned through MyPoints
Extra Super Good Bonus - even though my favorite item is no longer on the menu, my fantastic waiter asked the kitchen if they could make it anyway, and they did.  Also, I got a survey on my receipt, and by filling it out, I got a $10 gift card for next time.

Good - saw Taken 2
Better - free thanks to a movie ticket voucher from MyCokeRewards
Bad - though it was still good, I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the first one
Good again - saw another trailer for Die Hard 5 and for Skyfall.  I am an unabashed John McClane and Daniel Craig 007 fangirl, and I cannot wait to see these two.

Best - CF and the movie house are in the same "mall," so I only had to park once

Good - Movie Trading Company is having a Buy Two, Get One Free sale through Sunday, and it applies to almost everything.
Better - Season 1, 2 and 2.5 of Battlestar Galactica were available at MTC, so I scored big!  Obviously, this means I'll have to start again at the beginning, so I can watch all those deleted scenes and whatever extras tickle my fancy.  Damn the bad luck.  lol

So, I pretty much got to show myself a good time tonight for practically nothing.  The only way it would have been better is if I had company.  On the other hand, when I'm alone, I can read my book without having to make conversation.  lol

Book: Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

When I first started reading Beautiful Disaster, I loved it. Big Man on Campus finds the one girl who seems immune to his charm and since he can't shag her, befriends her. Abby and Travis develop a lovely camaraderie, with hints of attraction and unresolved sexual tension, a friendship that serves them both well. The descriptions of campus life were fun and made me a little nostalgic for something I never actually experienced. The author dropped hints that Abby's life before was quite different from the life she is leading on campus, said prior life being pretty much her sole reason for resisting Travis' advances in the first place. Travis is in a fraternity, but is most assuredly not your typical frat boy, by far.

That love for this book lasted until Abby and Travis finally give in after a fraternity party and sleep with each other. You know it's just a matter of time, that it is going to happen, because this is a romance, right? Big Man on Campus Travis, the guy that all the girls are hot for, the guy that girls line up to go home with, doesn't even last five minutes, and makes no effort to satisfy Abby, sexually speaking. I can blame this on the author, because the entire episode lasted about a paragraph, but I still lost a little bit of the hero-love and respect I'd been lavishing on Travis. After that, I just couldn't see him the same way. By the way, the descriptions of the sex, while extremely mild and unsatisfying, were nevertheless graphic enough that I probably wouldn't suggest this for someone under fifteen to eighteen, depending on your personal line in the sand.

Even once they were sleeping together, things went pretty well for the couple, and they were happy for a little while. The big obstacle happens when Abby, her friend America, America's boyfriend Shep and Abby's Travis go to Las Vegas. It all goes downhill from there. Travis' reaction to the obstacle is just exactly wrong, and his inability or unwillingness to read Abby's body language about how important this is to her takes him even further down in my eyes. I also don't think much of Abby's unwillingness to tell Travis why this is so critical to her.

The resolution of this issue takes up pretty much the rest of the book, with Abby standing firm the vast majority of the time, and Travis spiraling down into what amounts to stalker territory. I was deeply disappointed by the change in Travis from the beginning of the book to the end, and felt like he was not even the same character. The book ends on a high note, but it was an unrealistic ending for me, too happy too soon with not enough effort on either of the characters' parts.

I did love the characterization, particularly of Travis' family when we meet them. Their immediate acceptance of Abby as one of them is really sweet, and the brotherly love and protectiveness is something she needs, I think, from men who aren't her boyfriend. America and Shep stand up on their own, and even the tertiary characters aren't cookie-cutter background characters for the most part.

I'm trying so hard here to review this book without saying what happens, because it's a big deal to the characters. I hope I've managed that. The first half to two-thirds of the book is really good, so I still recommend reading it. Your mileage may vary with the big deal and the group's reaction to it, so don't let me keep you from reading the book.

Though I did love more than half the book, my lack of connection to Travis as the book went forward colored my like enough to take it down a notch. I'd give it a 3.5, but it definitely lost more than a point in my view. There were mistakes which could have been either typos or formatting errors, and there were many places where capital letters should have been and weren't.

Random McRandyPants

And that is actually a pretty apt nickname for me today.  Well, this whole year.  In fact, I think I shall change my internet nickname everywhere to Random McRandyPants.  :)

Not only am I finally reading a good book, but also it gets bonus points for the proper use of the word "alumnus" to refer to one male former student. More bonus points because it's a favorite trope and I'm enjoying it. Yay! The last three books have been just not right.  OK, two of them outright sucked and the third was just vaguely pleasant.  And then...we get to the sex.  I guess I have been spoiled reading good fanfic, because I was like, what?  He kisses her and then they're having sex?  Where's the foreplay?  Where's the making sure she gets hers?  This guy has a reputation and the girls line up to do him and he's all five minutes in the sack the first time he makes love to the love of his life?  Apollo he is not, for sure.  I mean, he at least apologizes for not lasting five minutes.

Tonight, at OTB, this girl sat at a table near me, and her jean skirt was so short, I was sure she was gonna flash the whole restaurant.  Then, when she and her date were walking away from the table, he puts his hand out, right behind her ass, but then decided not to, I guess. I thought it was funny because his hand immediately went to her ass area instead of the small of her back.  Then, "Oooooops.  We're at On the Border, not the local biker bar."  lol

Sold two things today, one on Amazon and one on eBay.  Yay!  Two more things out the door to new homes.  I wish I could figure out what days the mailman actually comes to our house.  This is the no-mail-gettingest place I've ever lived in in my life.  At least three days a week there is nothing in the mail.  He doesn't even slow down as he walks past our house.

Still haven't been able to get hold of my girlfriend to see if she and her husband are doing Thanksgiving this year.  When he's deployed, I don't even bother asking, I just show up, but since he's home again this year (and I'm happy he's out of Iraq, really!), I have to confirm, just to attempt courtesy.  I do hope they are, though, because I look forward to seeing those Basic Training Airmen every year and hearing their stories about their hometowns and why they enlisted.  And since I'm a dirty old lady, I look forward to checking them out.  I'll be honest.  :)  A girl's gotta have *some* fun.

Random stuff about me - possible TMI

This is random stuff about me, but if you don't want to read some personal stuff, just move along.  I'm not pulling punches because some stranger from the Ukraine doesn't want to read about *that.*

I am a perv.  I can make a verbal sexual innuendo out of just about anything someone says.  And even if I don't say it, my mind nearly always goes there.  This is why I sometimes giggle to myself out in public.

I have Native American blood, about three generations back.  This is really apparent in my father - he's got that black hair that's so dark it almost has blueish highlights - and in my brother - dark skin and black hair.  Me, I am about as white-skinned as a person can be.  I like to say that I have red-headed skin.  Didn't get the red hair, but the pale, pale skin and freckles definitely hit me, and boy, do I have a temper when riled.

The hair on my body is divided into zones.  Above the waist (including my arms here) shades from dark brown on my head to light brown, almost dirty blonde on my arms.  Below the waist, it's all black.  This was very embarrassing in the sixth grade, when all the other girls didn't have to shave because their leg hairs were all light-colored.  My leg hairs are seriously black.  There's no missing them or ignoring them.  lol

I have one of those, what do women call it on a man?  A treasure trail?  And yes, it's black.  Since I am a woman of a certain age, I have been in communal showers in school, and have been camping where the showers were more or less communal, if not co-ed.  I've been asked why I don't shave it or bleach it or something.  I just don't see the point.  If someone gets close enough to me to see it, and he (or she) is squicked out because I have a line of black hair on my belly, then there's something wrong with them, not me.

Despite my struggles with self-esteem, practically my whole life, I'm about the least vain person I've ever known, and I've never thought I was ugly.  I've never colored my hair.  Never wanted to.  I've actually always thought the color of my hair is beautiful.  I don't wear makeup.  Not only does it make my skin feel very weird, I look ridiculous wearing it, and have been complimented plenty (usually a backhanded compliment) on how I don't need makeup to look good.  Unless I'm going to a job interview, I dress for comfort, not for fashion or to impress anyone.  I just don't care what the current fad is, and I certainly don't dress according to those what not to wear shows.  I am just totally comfortable in my own skin.  That doesn't mean that I always like what I see in the mirror, more that I just don't care if someone else doesn't like what *they* see.  My one concession to appearances is that I won't leave the house to go somewhere public without a bra.  Still, this is more about me than anyone else.

I'm beginning to have liver spots on my hands, and it reminds me of my grandfather, which makes me feel kinda old.  But again, to the suggestion that it's time to buy the fade cream, I said, "Frak that!"

Next to my hair, my eyes are my best feature.  They're a hazel that ranges from green when I'm in a certain mood (yeah, that one) to yellow when I'm really ill.  Otherwise, they change from greenish to brownish to goldish depending on what I'm wearing and what my mood is and what the weather's like.  Both my parents eyes are/were hazel.  Interestingly, my sister's eyes are blue and my above-referenced little brother's eyes are brown.  Go figure.

My love languages are touch and acts of service.  I tend to use these on other people more than other people use them on me.  It's somewhat difficult to determine someone else's love language in a public transaction or with an acquaintance I don't see often.  And it's not like people wear signs.  "I like words of affirmation."  "Gifts make me feel loved."  And whatever the fifth one is.  I can't remember.

I fell insanely in love with Battlestar Galactica 2003 when I finally watched it in August and September.  So much so, that I'm having trouble keeping up with my current shows, because I just don't want to watch anything that's not BSG.

I like erotica and smut.  I still insist on it being well-written, using proper grammar and spelling words correctly.  Also, it really needs to be physically possible.  If his tongue is in two places at once, I better be reading a scifi story with an alien male in it.  Yes, I am a Grammar Nag who is also a Smut Aficionado.  I am a woman of contradictions.  :D

I'm not quite sane, but I'm high-functioning insane.  There are things that if people had experienced them firsthand, they'd probably be having some intensive inpatient therapy.  I say welcome to my life.

In my late teens and early twenties, I was um, indiscriminate, to put it delicately.  Thanks to guardian angels or something, I never got any communicable diseases, and I've only been pregnant twice.  Lost one, had one.  Now that I'm older, the pendulum has swung totally the other way.  Any sex I get is ALL in my head.  I'm totally ready for it to swing back to the middle, preferably in the next year or so.  lol

Now, I have to do something from my supposed to list.  Methinks it will not be read an assigned book.  I have had crap luck with the last two.

Book: Magician's Peril by Paul A Wunderlich

This was a freebie sent to me by someone who asked me to review the book.  I hunted through my email, but can't find the website name.

Magician's Peril is fraught with inconsistent place names, proper names that are difficult to pronounce, and words so big that even I didn't understand what was going on most of the time, and I used to read dictionaries for fun.  Frankly, it read like someone for whom English is a second language, someone trying to impress people with his command of English, and failing mostly because he's using the words incorrectly.

A sorcerer sent out an evil spell for some dastardly purpose.  It infected a town and killed a bunch of people.  The story is told in six parts, allegedly by the daughter of the "mayor" of this town.

I had a really hard time reading this book, in part because of the repetitive telling of events.  It has taken me well over a month to read it.  By the middle, I really just wanted to make myself finish the book, and by the end, I was thoroughly blissed out that I was finally done.  I can't even tell you how it ended, just that it finally did.

The characterization was just not compelling enough to overcome the overwrought language.

To the author, I offer an apology that your first review here on Amazon is not a more positive one, but I just can't rate it any higher.  I'll give you two stars for effort.  It could be a really great story under all that.

Book: Primal by Raven and Lain Bower

I'm going to point you at J. Westfall's review because s/he said pretty much what I think about this book.

http://www.amazon.com/review/RXNAAQQ9TJ0L/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0081C6CLK&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=

In the beginning the poor writing, bad grammar and worse editing were not quite as apparent. As the book wore on, it all got worse. I was pretty much ignoring all that and was interested in the premise of the book, which was that of a person in Witness Protection who actually had some knowledge of paranormal creatures. It could have been really fascinating. Then, bam! The next chapter didn't have Wrey (previously known as Maria) and Arvon in it, but some other characters, apparently a bunch of thugs in the Rekin, some kind of mafioso.

It was evident to me from the first paragraph that this chapter had been written by a completely different person; wording, pacing, even editing were all of significantly less quality than what I'd read previously. Aside from that, it was boring. I took to skimming those sections and only reading the sections with Wrey and Arvon in them. By the end of the book, the better-written sections became not noticeably different from the thug sections in quality, and I kept forcing myself to keep reading. Not even the sex redeemed the story.

I was disappointed at the spot in the plot where the author(s) chose to end the book. It's definitely not the end of the story for Wrey or Arvon. Unfortunately for the authors, I don't give a crap. Unfortunately for the publishing house, I didn't bother reading or skimming any of the previews they stuck in the last 30% of the book.      

This was a freebie at Amazon (not any longer) and I just can't recommend it to anyone.

Book: Summer Nights by Susan Mallery

I received a PDF of this book through NetGalley for the purposes of review.

Annabelle was a fun character, and the Stryker brothers all seemed like good guys. I believed the slow growth of friendship between Annabelle and Shane, but didn't really believe the sexual chemistry between the two. To put it bluntly, they were boring. I was much more interested in Charlie the firefighter's desire for and journey toward motherhood than I was in Shane and Annabelle as a couple.

I absolutely adored the relationship that grew between Annabelle, who was all but terrified of horses, and Shane's "killer horse" Khatar. Khatar found a kindred spirit in Annabelle, who despite her fear of horses, was never afraid of Khatar. He loved her from the moment he met her, and even protected her from a snake in a chapter near the end. Funny how the friendship between the horse and the girl was far more intriguing than that between the romantic leads.

Shane had issues, all based on his previous wife, Rachel, and because of one sighting of Annabelle at a bar at the beginning of the book, painted Annabelle with the same brush, even after he started sleeping with her. It took a couple of fights with his younger brother, Clay, to get his head on straight, and for me, his turnaround would have been too little, too late, after all that distrust.

While I liked the book fine, it didn't whet my appetite to read any more of the Fool's Gold books, unless there's going to be a book about Charlie. Her issues and her need to be part of a family might be interesting enough to draw me in.

I've enjoyed other of Ms. Mallery's books, and hope to enjoy more in the future, but this one just didn't do it for me.

What dreams may come

Yesterday, I dreamed about visiting my kinfolk in Oklahoma, and toward the end of the dream, my cousin Zack walked in the front door.  Zack was my favorite cousin, and he died more than ten years ago.  He was the only one of my cousins who really *got* me, maybe because he was, too: twisted, perverted, vulnerable, lonely.  Yet he was always a gentleman when it counted.  Maybe because we were both onlys for a good period of time before we became eldests.  I don't know what it was about him.  But it was so good to see him in my dream that when I woke up, I was nearly crying for how much I miss him.

You know how they say that a woman will tend more often than not, to marry someone like her dad?  I don't know about the marry part, because my ex was nothing like my dad.  But when I'm deciding whether or not to be attracted to a guy, there's some truth to that adage - strong, silent, alpha when he needs to be, completely dry sense of humor; more often than that, though, any man gets compared to Zack, at least subconsciously.  Aside from the familial relationship, he was my ideal.  He's how I knew that there was someone out there who would get me and love me just the way I was, warts and all, who wouldn't be put off by my sexual innuendos in the most innocuous of conversations, or by my innate ability to flirt with anything human.  Now, as I close in steadily on the "halfway" mark, I have to wonder where that person is, because I've never found whoever it is.  Granted, for the last fifteen years, I've been actively not-looking, but that's beside the point.  :)

Back to the dreaming thing.  This morning, I was dreaming something, and the dream morphed, as dreams are wont to do, and I was tied up, with Helo from BSG looking at me *that* way, and then the dream morphed again, into something else I don't remember.  When I woke up, I was still stuck on being tied up by Helo, with my brain whining, "C'Mon, man!  I can't even get any action in my DREAMS?"  Perhaps that particular bit of the dream was the result of too much BSG smut, as if there exists such a thing as too much smut of any variety.  lol

And yes, I did just share perhaps too much information.  Look at the labels.  :D

Days go by....

I've been really struggling the last few days - maybe the last few weeks.  I'm just so sad all the damn time.  I cry over the stupidest stuff, stuff that usually will at least bring back happy memories.  Last night, I was overwhelmed listening to an REO Speedwagon song, and just bawled for ten minutes.  REO is generally really happy memories - good friends, great concerts.

I'm thinking I definitely have to get to the doctor and get back on my anti-depressants, and hope like hell that works, because if it doesn't, I don't know how much longer I can hold out.  And for frak's sake, I'm not talking about suicide.  No, I'm talking emotional breakdown.  Loonybin.  Inpatient stuff.  Thought scares the bejesus out of me.

Today was a bad day, sort of

There were moments when today was just a regular day.  I woke up early, after a really good hunk of sleep. I didn't have a headache.  I wasn't even hungry when I woke up.  I was a little melancholy, thinking about how long it had been since I worked at Six Flags, but nothing too serious.

Then, this afternoon, something happened.  Randomly, for no reason at all, I'd just start crying.  It was confusing and distressing and I really needed a hug.  Or two.  A couple of hours ago, it finally quit and things were back to "normal," if that term can ever really be applied to me.

Tomorrow I get to replace the battery in my newly returned to me car, and go to an appointment in Addison.    I can hope that today's emotional weirdness will not repeat itself.  I hate crying, but at least today I didn't do it in public.

Book: Diary of a One Night Stand

Reviewed for Addicted to Books

In Diary of a One Night Stand, Weis employs one of my least favorite romantic tropes: cheating spouse.  As I began the book, I thought it was somewhat refreshing that the heroine was a woman of a "certain age" and that she was taking her happiness into her own hands.  Then, turn the page, not only does she have a daughter, but also a husband, with whom she climbs into bed when she gets home.  At that point, she instantly became less attractive as a heroine, in my eyes.  While I could empathize with her feelings and her dilemma, I couldn't really condone the circumstances of her extracurricular activities.

Kara's husband, Cal, was a lawyer, and worked too many hours, even while he was recovering from heart surgery.  He started the book as something less than a villain, but more than the stereotypical clueless husband.  Kara was a lawyer with a different firm, and also worked a lot of hours.  She met Scott at some sort of business function, and he pursued her for a week before she gave in and met him for a tryst.  Their "relationship" progressed unreasonably quickly from there.

I found Scott to be extremely overbearing - making decisions for Kara and for Kara's daughter, Simone, without regard to Kara's wishes or stated desires.  Whatever the physical package, and as written he was both handsome and fit, he would have turned me off pretty quickly had I met him in real life.  He was the kind of guy who thinks that his money can buy him anyone's affections, and Kara was not strong enough to set some boundaries for him; she just let him steamroll right over her.

New Orleans is a fascinating city and I generally enjoy almost any fiction set there, but there was little in this book to identify the setting as NOLA beyond the frequent use of the city's name.

By far the best part of the book was Simone, a ten year old, horse-loving girly-girl, who sometimes possessed a wisdom beyond her years.  Her childlike, uninhibited joy in things was a bright spot in an otherwise mostly dreary romance.

The end was abrupt and much too simplistic, and the epilogue made me wonder a little about Kara's sanity.  Really.

Obviously, your mileage may vary.

TV: Battlestar Galactica (2003)

Back when BSG was on the air, I didn't really get a chance to watch it.  It was during one of the times when I didn't have cable, and trying to consistently get a friend to record it for me was just too much trouble.  Besides that, I was still pretty into the two Stargates, and wasn't looking for a new fandom.

But a few weeks ago, I was skimming through the Amazon Prime streaming looking for something to watch and decided to see if BSG was on the free list yet.  I was thrilled to find out it was, and went on an unintentional binge.  I watched the mini-series, Razor and all four seasons.  Then the last episode was over and I was in shock.

I've watched a lot of TV.  I mean, a LOT of TV.  As a kid, I was allowed to watch Sunday nights, you know, Marlon Perkins and Wonderful World of Disney.  That was it.  Any other TV I got was at other people's houses, and was rare.  I've kind of made up for it since then, between a former subscription to Netflix and my current Amazon Prime.

Anyway, Battlestar Galactica ripped out my guts, repeatedly, and put them back in differently.  I've never seen another show that so perfectly resonated with me - characterization, visuals, music, plot, relationships (friendships and otherwise - relationships are the main reason I stick with ANY show), premise.  Over a week went by and I couldn't even think of watching something else.  I hunted down some fanfic to ease the taste of POOF out of my mouth - you'd have to see the very last episode to understand that one - and went on a little reading binge.  Then, I started watching it all over again.  I'm taking my time this second time around, paying closer attention, noticing different things, and I'm still in love with this show.

Part of me wishes that I'd been able to see it during its heyday, and gotten involved in the fandom.  A bigger part of me knows that had I tried to watch this while the Stargates were still occupying my screen time, I wouldn't have connected with this show in quite the same way.  I'm sad that it ended after four seasons and there's nothing more except fanfic.  That's a little hard to deal with.

Yes, I'm aware I'm talking about a TV show, and yes, I'm aware I'm a little strange.  And?

Book: Pushing the Limits

I received Pushing the Limits through NetGalley for the purposes of reviewing it.

Echo and Noah are two very different teens whose lives intersect in the school counselor's office.  Collins is no ordinary school counselor, either; she's on loan from social services specifically to help at-risk kids.  Echo and Noah start out with very little in common other than being at-risk, for completely different reasons.

Echo is extremely depressed, trying to deal with the death of her beloved brother and an accident involving her mother, both the year before.  Noah's parents have both died, and he's struggling with how to get out of foster care and reunite with his younger brothers as a family and isn't sure that school is the best way to do that.

Collins assigns Echo as Noah's tutor.  Truthfully, he needs motivation more than tutoring and though at first they strike sparks, they begin to tentatively reach out to each other in friendship.

Echo and Noah begin to journey toward recovery, both separately and together, and the trip is poignant and funny and joyful and heartbreaking.

Secondary characters are lifelike, and one is the subject of a follow-up book coming out sometime soon - maybe late fall?

There are references to sex, without the ridiculous insistence on abstinence that is frequently so prevalent in books about teens.  Yes, some real teens practice abstinence, but there are plenty who don't, and this book is refreshingly full of regular teens of both kinds.

Pushing the Limits doesn't end Happily Ever After, and it would be a much poorer book if it did.  Instead, we get a glimpse of where Echo and Noah are, where they want to be, and how their individual struggles inform each other's progress toward health and happiness.

I loved this book, and am really looking forward to the following book.  Since I'm not a fan of the YA genre, I can't praise much higher than that.

So I somehow missed a whole month - money and health

I was looking at my blog statistics (I do that randomly because I enjoy seeing how far away people are from me) and noticed that it's been more than a month since my last blog entry.  Bad girl.  I'm not really into spanking, but if I were, this would be a perfect excuse.  Anyway.

I had a small windfall come in that has eased my financial crunch a great deal.  I mean, since I'm used to living on $50 or less a month, having several months' worth of income is like being rich!  I set up a budget to make sure I avoid spending it all in one place.  I've been there before.  When my mom died, I inherited a piece of land in Florida.  It took two years to sell it, and when I did, I just went crazy.  I didn't even spend it on important stuff, really, though I did buy myself a laptop and some educational courses online.  Mostly, it went to food (some groceries, but mostly dining out, a LOT), and clothes for the teenager.  When I think about how different the last four years would have been had I just put that money aside for a rainy day, I want to smack myself.  It was gone in less than a year, and I was right back where I'd been before, which wasn't terrible, but definitely wasn't great.  All that to say that I learned from that experience and from the last four years of having next to no income, and I've parceled out that money with a tight fist.  It's not nearly as much, but I bet it'll last longer.

My CPAP started sounding weird a couple of weeks ago, and I hoped like crazy that it would last me a few weeks until I could get in to see a doctor (which I can do now, more on that) and schedule a titration.  Unfortunately, it didn't last much more than another week, but I've had it eight years, and I've used it every single day without fail, so I guess I got my insurance company's money's worth out of it.  I plan to get it fixed so I have a spare, but in the meantime, I trolled Craigslist for a machine, and found one almost identical to mine that was only $100. Now a month ago, I would have been in a huge panic, because even that $100 would have been nonexistent, but I felt free to buy the used machine without undue stress because I'd "named" all my money (that's a Dave Ramsey thing, and some of what he says makes sense) and created a small emergency fund and a larger reserve fund out of that windfall mentioned above.  I went several nights without the CPAP and sleep sucked and so did the rest of my life.  I was muzzy-headed, I was exhausted all the time, and worst of all, I got heartburn.  I haven't had heartburn in nearly eight years.  Uck!  OK, maybe that wasn't the worst.  It also messed with my sleep cycle again, though frankly, that's so messed up that I never know when I'm going to be able to sleep at night or if it'll be daytime.  So I'm thrilled for several reasons:  I found a machine so much like the one I'm used to; I could afford to buy it; the person selling it was legit; my heartburn went away again.  Huzzah!

One of the first things I did when I had the money all settled was to rent a car for a week, so I could get some necessities completed on my own schedule.  While I had the car, I visited my storage unit and picked up a fairly substantial load from my storage unit.  I chose mostly my Amazon stuff, with an eye toward reactivating my Amazon store, but also fit other things into the nooks and crannies.  Then a week or so ago, a friend picked me up in her Tahoe, and we went to the storage unit again.  Between the two of us, we stuffed that Tahoe pretty full and got a really large portion of my stuff out of there.  Now I know that in the near future, I WILL be able to reopen my Amazon storefront and that will increase my income again.  Because I haven't had my car and couldn't ship things out, that has really cut into what little income I was used to having, so I'm thrilled that I can finally see the light at the end of that tunnel.

OK, back to that doctor thing.  I applied to the local county health plan, and got approved.  So while it won't be free, I can see a doctor again and get prescriptions for very little money, and that will reduce some of my stress as well.  I know that my health is not great, and I've pretty much been ignoring lots of little things because I knew that unless I wanted to rack up some serious ER bills for basic health maintenance, seeing a doctor was out of the question.  Now I can get in to see the doctor, get my blood numbers checked, get back on some meds (like for depression, not having meds has been a serious issue for me for the last two years) and maybe work my way up from Fair health to Good.  After all, I have a grandson I want to see again, and though his little sister isn't made yet, I want to meet her, too.

I've got other stuff, but I think I'll take that into a separate post, because this one's gotten a bit long.

Five Things I'd Tell the Teen Me

There is not enough money in the world to entice me into being a teen again, and yet, there are some things I might like to let the teen me know - things that wouldn't change much, but might make me more sane as I grew up.

High school is not your time.  You'll be cool someday, and some of those people from high school will wonder to your face why they didn't bother to know you back then.

Find something physical you love to do and indulge on a regular basis.  Trust me.  And on that note, it's not running.

There is no such thing as normal, so just quit wondering why you're not and figure out who YOU are.  I guarantee you're unique.

Those shares of stock mom buys you every year?  Make sure you always know where the certificates are because mom won't.

Some people in the family will never like you.  Let go of trying to please them and learn to please yourself.

And a bonus...take a different date to the Military Ball.  You'll both enjoy it more.

There is very little chance that any of us will have the opportunity to encounter our teen selves and impart any wisdom at all.  What we can do is pay attention to the teens around us today.  Find ways to share what we know in subtle ways.  Remember, we're adults, and as such, we know nothing in their eyes.  I've taken chances and shared my own youthful foibles with my daughter.  Other parents were horrified, but I wasn't a perfect teen.  I was miserable, and she deserves to know that and maybe, if we're both lucky, use that to make her own mistakes and choices.

Book: Fifty Shades of Grey - trilogy

Despite the furor over the Fifty Shades trilogy, I really had no intention of reading the books anytime soon.  However, my daughter lent me her copies, and I didn't see the point in wasting the opportunity to read them free.

Each book had its pros and cons, and what I remember, I'll list, but mostly this is about the trilogy as a whole.  First and foremost, the Fifty Shades trilogy is a love story.  It's not recognizable as a romance if you've spent any significant time reading romance novels, but it IS a love story.  

There's a lot of sex, and I do mean a lot.  You might expect to find all manner of strange and bizarre sexual practices in the books, judging from the labels thrown around in mainstream media, the most controversial of which is "mommy porn."  Ugh.  That may be a post in itself, but that label grates at me.

Christian is a practicing Dominant, and has had a succession of submissive lovers contracted to him over the last eightish years.  He meets Anastasia and without understanding what the attraction is, falls for her, hard.  He approaches her in the only way he knows how and offers her a contract as his submissive.  Ana not only is clueless about the relationship he's offering, she's never had sex at all, but she's equally attracted to Christian and after serious consideration, accepts his contract but keeps it from her closest friends.

Here's the odd part.  This contract, which is laid out in the book, is easily the kinkiest thing I read in all three books.  It outlines what could happen and asks Anastasia to define the limits of the relationship - what she will and won't do or allow to be done to her (her soft and hard limits), and it's pretty thorough.  Yes, you read that second sentence right.  There is almost no sex in the book that could really be deemed very kinky.  There is some anal play, which for some may fall outside the vanilla label.  There is some spanking and even whipping, some light bondage and one instance of not so light bondage and one use of what I think from reading another book is called a St Andrew's cross.  All the rest of the sex I remember is consensual vanilla sex between two adults, though definitely not all missionary vanilla sex by any stretch of the imagination.  There are toys involved, and lubes and certainly they use just about every room in the house and more than a few outside of the house.

That's not to say that the story is all hearts and roses, because it's not.  Anastasia is, as I stated earlier, completely clueless about the D/s relationship, and struggles with the issues her lack of understanding causes.  She forgets to use her safe word to stop something that is hurting her and blames Christian for her mistake.  She wonders constantly during the first book if she can really handle what Christian wants from her but keeps going back nonetheless.  Christian, for his part, is more patient and understanding than he would be with someone already in the BDSM lifestyle, though extraordinarily possessive, and intolerant of Ana's insecurities.  Christian is extremely resistant to the idea of a relationship that is not contractual.  He doesn't know how to do that, believes he is incapable, doesn't want to.

Now for the bad.  Overall, this trilogy could have used a more professional editor.  By that I mean one who wasn't so involved in the story that he or she failed to see fixable issues.  In the first book, there is an egregious overuse of the word "clamber" in all its permutations.  I'm not talking about ten or twelve times, either.  I mean easily over a hundred uses in a four-hundred-page book (Maybe shorter, I didn't actually count the pages).  The word continued to be overused in the second book, though not as extensively, and the third book had a totally different word or phrase that I got sick of reading (though I've forgotten it at the moment) and it didn't begin to approach the quantity of clamber in the first one.  There were grammar and spelling mistakes that could have and should have been caught and fixed prior to printing, enough that I thought more than once, "Wow, she should have gotten a better editor."  Probably I was not supposed to be thinking with a red pen while I was reading her books.   James has some skill to hone before she'll be really good.

After a while, I got a little tired of the lack of sexual imagination.  There was nothing here that I hadn't read before, certainly nothing to warrant the label "mommy porn" or any kind of porn.  Erotic, yes, sometimes.  Sexy, definitely.  Porn, not hardly.  Christian was supposed to be this dominant with a capital D, and he was in charge nearly always, but as he was portrayed in the book, he didn't have much imagination, or if he had it, he didn't use it.  There were several occasions when I read something and just knew it was going to get really good, and then was disappointed by the vanilla sex, albeit slightly rough vanilla sex.  Mostly, I think it was supposed to be kinky just because Christian was In Charge.  Whatever.  After the furor of the trilogy's over-the-top sexual escapades, I was disappointed to finish reading and realize that nothing truly different ever actually happened.  I've read kinkier flashfic.

On to the good.  E. L. James has some serious writing chops, and I would love to read more from her, assuming she hires herself a more competent editor.  I laughed and cried and got involved with the characters, and fell in love with Christian and Anastasia as they were falling in love with each other.  I want to read more about these two, and about their continuing adventures, and those of their extended family.  I can't give a much better compliment than that.  No one was two-dimensional.  

The sex was well-written, despite being rather too vanilla to live up to the hype.  There was no tab A, slot B boring description, though it was sometimes a bit repetitive.  The contract was pretty comprehensive, and showed at the very least that E. L. James researched the subject matter enough to adequately share something with which not all of us have first-hand experience.  The explanations of the contractual D/s relationship were written in such a way that it was interesting to read rather than being an infodump on an unsuspecting Anastasia/reading audience, though Anastasia was understandably overwhelmed several times.

At the end of the third book, there were some extras, including a small passage from Christian's perspective. Though I would not want to read the entire trilogy again from his point of view, there are at least half a dozen important forks in the road (certainly several from each book) where I would love to know what was going through his mind.  In particular, during that very powerful moment in the second book, I want to know what was going through him to cause him to make that not entirely conscious choice.

The epilogue, though entirely too long, not only gave us a happy enough ending, but it also totally left room for us to revisit Christian and Anastasia and to share further triumphs and tragedies.

Overall, while I was disappointed that Fifty Shades did not live up to the media hype with regard to deeply exploring the D/s relationship and the BDSM lifestyle in general, I truly enjoyed the love that developed between Christian and Anastasia and will likely read all three books again some time soon.  I did learn some new things about dominants and submissives and "laters, baby" made its way into my vocabulary.  :D

Book: Death of a Serpent by Susan Russo Anderson

I received a copy of this book for review through Reader Spoils.

Having never read any of the other Serafina Florio mysteries, I don't know if in one of the earlier books, more background is given. In this one, the writer just jumps on in to Serafina's life, including a summons from her close friend to view the scene of a murder at her place of business. Many, MANY people are introduced in the first few chapters - so many that I was very confused about pretty much anybody except Serafina and Rosa. Most baffling of all were the conversations Serafina had with Maddelina (?). I'm still not sure whether she's alive or dead.

It's never established how or why Serafina Florio is particularly qualified to solve a mystery, aside from the fact that she's willing to keep looking and is perfectly willing to nose into other people's lives. I didn't find the character of Serafina, or any of the characters, for that matter, especially appealing, nor was the mystery compelling.

I disliked the writing style, with its short, choppy sentences and weird frequently-backwards dialogue. Perhaps this type of dialogue is in keeping with that time period for Sicily, but it was pervasive and got annoying. Death of a Serpent was well-written, technically, thus the three stars. I found few grammar errors outside of dialogue (where I give it a pass, for the most part), and no spelling or homonym errors that I recall. In addition, because some local words and phrases were thrown in randomly, I learned some Italian in context (though truthfully, some of it, I wouldn't have known what the word meant except that I already knew a very similar word or phrase in Mexican).

Other people will enjoy (and obviously have enjoyed) the book, the dialogue, the syntax, the characters, the mystery. I didn't, but I can't really hold that against Ms. Anderson. The writing was good enough technically that I will probably look for other works by Ms. Anderson, but I doubt I'll read any more period pieces.

Book: Let Me In by Callie Croix

I am reviewing a copy I received through NetGalley.

Let Me In is a very short story about Marine Talia coming home from the Middle East for a three-week break. I enjoyed this story, and could have enjoyed it more.

There was some slight inconsistency/confusion regarding how long Talia had been friends with Angie, and that took me out of the story a bit too much from the beginning. Talia's issues with her mom didn't warrant so much attention. I found it difficult to believe that a woman, a Marine, as squared away as Talia is in her professional life would be so profoundly insecure about her mother's illness and how other people would see it. The romance moved a bit too fast for me - fast is somewhat of a necessity with such a short story, but in this case, the move from crush to submissive sexual behavior to a possible HEA was just too much for me. And I definitely had to suspend my disbelief on how fast her mother went from 60 back down to 0.

On the good side, Croix's descriptions of Talia's response to her mother's situation, and the interactions between them were stunningly well done. Angie and Talia's friendship and connection was easy to feel, though I never got how they met, since Talia's pretty much been out of the country the entire time they've known each other. I completely understood her attraction to Liam - he sounds all around like a really good guy. The sex was steamy enough, though there was very little of it. The characters, all of them, are interesting enough that I'd like to revisit them, get to know them better, hopefully in a longer story.

It was a fast, fun read, and I'll look for more by Croix.

Book: Improper Relations by Juliana Ross

Widowed Hannah, who serves a distant family member as a lady's maid, is in the family library working on something and since she wishes to remain alone, hides when she hears someone enter the room. She is both mortified and titillated to witness Leo, the youngest son, having a sexual encounter with a housemaid. Turns out, Leo knew she was there and approaches her with a proposition.

While the premise is a bit salacious, Improper Relations ends up being a sweet, albeit short, love story. What starts out as a learning experience for Hannah blooms into a romantic and emotional relationship for both Hannah and Leo.

As with any romance, there are obstacles, and the roadblocks in this story necessitate a tissue or two.

The ending was a bit too pat and the resolution was handled much too quickly, but other than that, this was a really enjoyable story, and I'll probably add it to my keeper folder to reread when I need a certain kind of HEA.

I am reviewing a copy of Improper Relations provided to me by NetGalley.

Book: The Siren by Tiffany Reisz

I am reviewing a copy of The Siren I received through NetGalley.

When I finished The Siren, my only thought was "Wow."  I'm still not convinced I can adequately convey what I think about this book.

First, I can't really classify it.  It is NOT a romance.  It does contain graphic sexual scenes, and yet I wouldn't consider it erotica.  It is a love story, but not a romantic love story.

Nora, Zach, Soren, Wesley are the four major characters - basically three male characters whose lives revolve around Nora's life and activity.

The very basic gist is that Nora is a well-known erotica writer who has something more personal she wants to write and hunts out a better publishing house.  Zack is a high-falutin' editor who looks down his nose as something so trashy as erotica, but decides to edit her book, as long as she does it his way and only his way.  Soren is Nora's past, her old Dom.  Wesley is a pre-med student, living in Nora's house and serving as her houseboy, to be politically incorrect, in exchange for room and board.

Some of Nora's past life is revealed to us in glimpses through her writing.  In addition to editing the book to Zach's exacting specifications, she writes pseudo journal entries, which she subsequently erases without saving.  These journal entries almost entirely relate to her past relationship with Soren, and it is in her relationship with Soren that I find my only real disappointment with The Siren.  Though she and Soren are presented as a sub and her Dom, their interactions strike me (in my admittedly limited understanding of the "alternative" lifestyle of BDSM) as closer to Master/slave than D/s, and Soren's power over her fear-based rather than love-based.  I never doubt that she loves him, even now, but I just don't see his love for her.  Maybe this is a failing in me that I am simply unable to really connect with the deep level of physical pain he "gives" her - how this can possibly be love.

There is a plenitude of sexually graphic scenes in the book that I did not find erotic.  Emotionally impactful, yes.  Erotic, no.  I felt like I had found a diary full of intimate passages about people I knew, describing how they came to be so connected.  I had no trouble at all envisioning Nora's love for each one of these men, and she did love them, though each one entirely differently.  And Zach's and Wesley's love for Nora was equally accessible.

The Siren is emotionally uncomfortable, in a good way, and the story continues unrelentingly to the end, and resolves in the only way it can.  It's not a Happily Ever After.  It's not even a Happily Enough For Now.  It's just the only way this book could end, the heartbreakingly right way for this story, or this piece of the story, to conclude.

I unashamedly admit to grabbing my box of tissues and blowing my nose through several minutes of "Wow." I will most definitely be looking for more work from Tiffany Reisz.

BzzCampaign: Sobe Lifewater with coconut water

I got to be in the Sobe BzzCampaign for their new Lifewater with coconut water flavors. I received coupons, a free bottle of Lifewater with coconut water, and a cute little lip balm, which sits by my computer. It gets used, of course. lol

Since I've been having transpo issues, I didn't get to the grocery store right away, but when I did, I found Kroger having a sale on Sobe, so I stocked up for my house-sitting gig.

While most of the flavors were tolerable when ice cold, I found that I didn't really enjoy the coconut water flavors. The sugar free ones, as usual, leave a funky taste in my mouth, but I did particularly like the fruit punch flavor of Sobe, and already knew that I liked the green tea flavor.

A successful campaign for me, just because now I know there are two flavors of Sobe that I really like, so I can keep both on hand for when I need a pick-me-up.

Review: Tampax Radiant tampons

I got a sample pack from Vocalpoint of Tampax Radiant tampons.

These particular tampons come in resealable packets, and are contained in colorful insertion tubes.

My period is less regular these days, and so I didn't get the opportunity to try them out as quickly as I planned.

Though I like the idea of the resealability, I don't like it in reality - the seal has a mind of its own, and closes itself randomly, making one-handed disposal of the used insertion tube pretty much impossible.

The insertion tube colors are pretty, though I really don't get the need to make them all pretty.  I mean, it's my period.  Who cares what color the damn things are?

I have the same issues with these Radiant tampons as with other Tampax tampons - they expand only sideways, in panels, rather than in one contained more or less tubular pattern.  For me, this expansion has two problems:  it makes them uncomfortable to wear (whoever says you can't feel tampons when you're wearing them is lying like a rug), and makes one more difficult to extract when a change is necessary.  In addition to that, the samples I tried didn't have a knot in the string.  This made a tampon change take nearly five minutes, most of which was pulling at, and losing my grip on, the extraction string.  Not fun!  And grrrrr!

They are usable, and will do in a pinch, but I won't be running out to buy them, and I'll be passing the coupon on to someone else.

For comfort and fit and leakage protection, Playtex Sport is still tops on my list.  Of course, not having a period anymore would be the very top, but.....

Five Passions

I have many more than five things about which I am passionate, but in no particular order, I'll share the top five.

My grandbabies.  Understand, right now, I just have the one, but if my love for him is any indication, I will be plenty passionate about all of them.  Being a gramma is unquestionably one of my purposes in life.

Babies in general.  I love babies.  I love babies of all shapes, colors, sizes and species.  In human babies, I'm fascinated by their facial expressions, the ways in which their burgeoning personalities express themselves, and I adore the way babies just love everything around them.  No holds barred.  I love holding them, talking to them, listening to them, watching them sleep (in a nonstalkery way, naturally), just everything!

Books.  I have been having a sizzling love affair with books for well over forty years now.  My mother read to me in utero, and I learned to read for myself well before kindergarten.  I love the way books smell and feel, and how a good one can take me someplace I've never been and make it seem as familiar as my own back yard.  I won a Kindle Fire in January, and despite my personal belief that I would never really be able to love an e-reader like I love books, I have to say that I am won over.  That little tiny thing currently holds the text of or links to over three thousand books, the vast majority of which were free, giving me the opportunity at any given time to read whatever genre or length of book I want, in complete privacy.  I'm astounded by how much I now put off reading actual print books in favor of reading "just one more" of my e-books.

Reading.  You might think this is cheating, listing it separately from books.  No.  I read anything I can get my hands on, from magazines to blogs to book reviews to product descriptions.  I've been known to read a cereal box is nothing else is available.  Granted, having that Kindle Fire makes it much less likely that I will not have a book available to read at any given time, but still, reading encompasses so much more than just books.

Movies.  I love action movies in particular, but I just love movies.  I love watching them, having rousing discussions about their merits, sharing my opinions about them, learning things about myself and my fellow humans through movies.  I am easily entertained, but still hate stupid movies.  I want smart entertainment, not that lowest-common-denominator crap that Hollywood churns out on a fairly regular basis.  I love movies that make me feel something - make me laugh or make me cry, make me wonder or question, make me change my mind.