The Great Shower Debacle

For that last few years I have been sharing a bathroom with my girls, whilst my husband uses our upstairs deluxe shower, double sink, toilet with hurricane-five-rated-flusher for his own.

Sharing a bathroom with kids presents all the predictable challenges, my new bottle of shampoo is empty—but Ariel's hair sparkles... Every morning the floor of the tub slick with gobs of conditioner and sprinkled with plastic horses—of which all parts are pointy. The bar of soap is mashed into the drain.

Every morning I dash to the shower while the girls are eating breakfast, pick up the toys (when did the floor get so far away?) and toss them in the basket. The basket over-balances and toys and slimy water slide all over the bathroom floor. I pick up the toys (again with the floor being far away) and use one of their towels to mop up the water. Then mop a little farther to get this smudge and that smudge. After the floor is clean, (pretty much) I pull down the shower curtain, which is wrapped up around the bar, and turn on the shower. I dig my fingers into the soap bar and pry it off the floor, trying not to slip as my toes grasp for purchase, then I rinse off the slime from the drain.

I shower.

Good morning, babies.

It occurred to me recently that the girls are not babies anymore. They are older (nearly three and seven) and more sensible now, and they can even go up and down stairs...independently. I'll just get up fifteen minutes earlier and take a shower upstairs in the grown-up's shower, where a bottle of shampoo lasts about four months. So for the last three weeks or so, that's what I've been doing. Sometimes the girls wake up and can't find me, and panic shouting for me. Leaving me to shout back, “I'M IN THE SHOWER… UPSTAIRS. ALMOST DONE!!” (I discussed the change thoroughly, they're just disoriented in the mornings.) Sometimes they wake up early and come upstairs with me, sometimes they sleep through it all.

This particular morning they were awake…

We were all snugged in my bed awake—yes, exactly like a pack of dogs, mmm-hmmm. Then about ten minutes later my alarm sounds. I get out of bed and tell the girls I'm headed up for a shower. I start rooting in my underwear drawer while Boots, garbed in a blanket, slides out the door. Berzo insists on having her warm cocoa first. For reasons too tedious to explain I refuse and tell her that I'll make it for her after my shower. She leaves the room also garbed in a blanket and kicks our cat, Rogue, out of her cat bed and lays in the cat bed, awaiting her coco. Boots is up at the top of the stairs, on the landing, playing with her Furreal dog. Bra and panties in hand, I step over Boots and get hung up in her blanket.

“I'm going in to take a shower, come in if you want…” I say as I disengage from her blanket.

Then I head into our ridiculously huge master bathroom, slide the door open, turn on the shower and step inside. Ahhhh. A little over five minutes later (seven maybe?) I step out and dry off, mopping the towel through my hair and I hear a familiar voice shout, “Amy!?”

“Tricia?!?” What the hell? I wrap up in my towel and go for the upstairs door just as my neighbor gets there. “Is everything OK? Is something wrong?” I blurt out, looking for my girls, who are just behind her with red rimmed eyes looking sheepish.

“Boots and Berzo were outside screaming and crying for you.”

“What?!?”

“Yeah, I was sleeping and heard something…”

Sure that something was wrong (e.g. me stroked out on the floor) she ran outside to see what was going on.

“I can't find my mom!” was the statement from the kid I tripped over to get into the shower. Tricia, remembering me telling her about the “I'M IN THE SHOWER!” yelling because they can't find me, she thought, I bet she's in the shower. Tricia brought my girls back inside and could hear the water running. She ran up the stairs and there I was dripping wet, wild eyed, wearing only my towel and my what-the-heck-is-going-on face.

She explained what happened… I apologized profusely for them waking her up and thanked her for rescuing our other neighbors from the same fate...

“That's my girls, humbling me a little more every day,” I said.

Now hanging on the inside of our front door, I diagrammed out a proper procedure for what they can do if they are unable to locate me.

I had been chastising myself lately for being remiss in teaching Boots how to use my phone to call 911, now I'm glad. Instead of my good friend and neighbor, Tricia, it might have been a troop of fireman at my upstairs door… whilst I dripped in my towel.

Hummm, on second thought...

Book Review - Lies of Locke Lamora

Powell's Books · Barnes & Noble

Scott Lynch ©2007

If I were to do a one word review for this book it would be: Badass.

Feel free to stop reading now, the rest of this review is basically fluff, but since I have a particular fondness for writing fluffy book reviews I will proceed.

Oh good, you decided to come along.

Synopsis:
Locke Lamora is the leader of a gang of thieves dubbed the Gentleman Bastards. This group of orphaned young men were educated and trained to become masterful thieves by a man called Father Chains. Chains was the Eyeless Priest of Perelandro, the thirteenth of the twelve gods, Lord of the Overlooked. Father Chains was not eyeless.

The city of Camorr was built upon the Elderglass ruins of an alien race, interlaced with canals infested with wolf sharks and other niceties from the Iron Sea. Duke Nicovante reigned over the nobility and lawful citizens, and Capa Vencarlo Barsavi reigned over the lawless. A Secret Peace existed between these two men, the nobility were to be left untouched and Capa Barsavi would be left to manage his gangs—which he did—ruthlessly.

Locke: “So I don’t have to…”

Father Chains: “Obey the Secret Peace? Be a good little pezon? Only for pretend, Locke. Only to keep the wolves from the door. Unless your eyes and ears have been stitched shut with rawhide these past two days, by now you must have realized that I intend you and Calo and Galdo and Sabetha to be nothing less,” Chains confided through a feral grin, “than a fucking ballista bolt right through the heart of Vencarlo’s precious Secret Peace.”


YES!

And this is just the beginning. The first hundred pages ticked by, the next hundred flew, the next three hundred had me up late at night with burning eyes. It found me yelling, “Just a minute!!” as I stole time from Hillsboro to get back to the sultry heat of Camorr. Then in a flash, it was over. I set my book down and said something brilliant like, “That. Was. Aweeesome.”

One Complaint: Alchemy exists in Camorr—and boy does it ever. It is applied to everything. There are alchemical lights, alchemical fruits, alchemical liquor, alchemical drugs, alchemical formaldehyde, alchemical make-up, alchemical toilet paper that removes all poo leaving a scent of roses behind. Just kidding on the last one, but it felt like that.

The rest—golden.

With GRRM like brutality, we lose several favorite characters and favorite villains. I always admire authors who can expend so much effort building characters only to kill them off. It would be like spending months building an incredible sand sculpture, then sending some toddlers to stomp all over it. Then instead of lamenting the lost effort, the artist then goes ahead creates something even better.

The plot gets so tense at times I would audibly sigh with relief when it was over. “Are you O.K.?” I heard more than once. In idle moments, or sometimes not so idle moments, my mind would wander back into the story to figure out where it would go next, or to guess at the fate of a imperiled character.

Backstory is given in small digestible chunks that is relevant to current action in the story. At first the sojourns into backstory was annoying and a little confusing, but either it got better or I got used to it and I started appreciating the context it brought to the story.

Best of all there are more books! Second best of all—this book stands on its own. It did not end in the middle of a story, nor did it, in the last hundred pages, invent a dozen new stories then end… Unlike some other authors I know. (Oh yes, I'm looking at you GRRM and Pat Rothfuss.)

Just kidding, love you guys—beards rule!

Book Review - The Orchardist

Powell's Books · Barnes & Noble

Amanda Coplin ©2012

This is a beautifully written book with a well developed sense of place. The language is lovely, I could smell the grasses mingling with the flavors of ripened fruit and undertones of earth. The long grasses tickled my legs as the warm wind stroked my hair. Sweat beaded and rolled down my back as I worked. I saw this place, this orchard, in full color and vigor. I felt the character's pain and longing, and at times terror. It was a gorgeous set-up for a story.

But the story sucked.

During the first two hundred pages I was absorbed. I felt it was going somewhere. I kept guessing how back story would tie into current developments. I anticipated dramatic plot twists and satisfying turns. (E.g. I really wanted the baby that Talmage was raising to be a descendant of his sister that disappeared when they were kids.)  But nowhere in the three hundred pages that followed did they come. The characters grew old and their story threads died with them. Nothing came full circle. The last remaining character, without ado, sells the orchard—one of the most delicately written characters—which then changes hands several times and eventually runs feral. 

But she dreams about it. Psssht. Whatever.

I closed the book feeling depressed and disappointed. It was fiction, but it could have been real; where a lot of stuff happens, you're frustrated and disappointed a lot, there is beauty too, then you die. I couldn't find the purpose or point to this story.

Not really why I read fiction.

On the other hand, this book is revered by many.  So it's likely that I am just odd....