Guess who just walked in?
She was very hungry (but not thirsty), and slightly damp.
Wiser? Well, we’ll see. . .
“Grimsdon” by Debora Abela
Generally when I go to a writing con, I try to read as many of the participants’ books as possible before I go. I didn’t read any of Debora Abela‘s books pre-con, because she’s best known for “Max Remy Super-Spy”, which is too young even for me (my reading level is about 9 and up 🙂 ).
But then she opened her comments by saying, “All kids’ writers face the problem of what to do with the parents. In Grimsdon it was very simple – I killed them.”
Naturally, that meant I had to read it. As a bonus, it’s set in a flooded city, and is written for a slightly older age group than her other books.
I was right to be excited: the world is haunting and brilliant (I especially loved the underwater scenes), and the obvious Global Warming theme is brought up without massive preaching.
The characters and writing style are great too, with plenty of tension between the young protagonists.
There’s just one problem: the plot. The book survives on the Rule of Cool – implausibility in fiction is fine as long as it creates a truly awesome situation or world – but the resolution completely backs off from coolness to good sense. Worst of all, it makes 90% of what the characters have been through utterly pointless.
I think non-writers would be a lot less sensitive to this flaw – at worst, they’d feel mildly disappointed by the ending. But it was a real shame all the same.
The book is winning a whole bunch of awards all the same.
Right now I’m re-re-re-reading one of the “Samurai Kids” series by Sandy Fussell, which is aimed at around 9-year olds while simultaneously being one of the best (even the most literary*) series I have ever read.
*without ever being boring.
Belucci’s Restaurant
It’s a pretty, pretty Italian place in Woden (Canberra). CJ and I ate there last week in an effort to entice my body to take on more food. It worked well at the time.
I love all the wood, glass, and brick – with highlights of marble and steel. One of our friends did the lighting. This photo was taken with CJ’s phone, and doesn’t do it justice.
We took photos of the (rather nice) food, but I can’t stand to look at them again, sorry.
Pregnant women are infamous for vivid dreams. Last night, between 1am and 8am, I dreamed the following:
A pleasant afternoon with my long-dead grandparents; sneaking lemonade cordial into a radio station where I was due to read out 1 Kings (from the Bible); the pregnancy side-effect of mushrooms growing out of my hair, forehead, and the roof of my mouth (that dream also featured Lily and Marshall from “How I Met Your Mother) – oh, and my blood turned green; kissing a girl (who was displeased that I’d suddenly turned goth since we began dating); learning to drive a big rig during Christmas traffic.
*shrug*
The fears
These are/were my fears, in roughly chronological order:
 1. Infertility.
Well THAT’S no longer an issue 🙂 I did gain 7 kilos from the mere thought, all the same (handily, I’m so sick I’m losing weight faster than a crash diet. . . yay?)
2. Miscarriage.
Not a big issue – plus, again, the intense nausea is reassuring.
3. Annoying strangers approaching me to tell their labor horror stories. My plan for this goes as follows:
Random stranger: Are you pregnant?
Me: Yep! Fifth time lucky – well, fifth child. Third pregnancy.
Random stranger: You had. . . triplets?
Me: Yep. See you later.
I’ll let you know if it works.
I gathered horror stories from friends pre-pregnancy (some are truly horrific) as a kind of innoculation.
Wacky conversations so far:
One friend seemed to suggest that I should go on a raw-food diet. To which I say HAH!
Another friend told me she was throwing up so much all through her pregnancy that she lost three stone and was eventually induced. (Had a great birth, though.) At the time, I thought, “Well, *I* won’t be constantly throwing up.”
One person (who has a gift for giving terror-inducing reassurance) told me (the pregnant woman with the anxiety disorder), “The most important thing about labor is you MUST STAY CALM. Otherwise your body releases adrenalin, and it hurts SO much more. And don’t scrunch up your face at all, either – that tightens things “down there”, and completely screws up the whole process.”
4. Labor itself (just not thinking about it).
5. Some kind of deformity (see two weeks ago for the squid baby – which CJ and I would love JUST AS MUCH), particularly one that took away Mini-Me’s chance to become independent one day (for his/her sake and for mine).
6. I accidentally maim or kill the child (or, less scary, something or someone else accidentally maims or kills them).
7. Colic. CJ was, and my niece was too (but she was treatable). I’m not a huge fan of screaming – and I hate the thought of my baby being in pain for months on end.
8. Kid is rude/rotten/mean/in pain/grows to hate me. Bound to happen. All I can do is my best, and choose to accept that they’re an individual in their own right. They’re my responsibility (less so as they grow older), but not an extension of me. I am not just a mother – I am also a wife, writer, friend, and human being.
9. Mini-Me is mentally ill – like me, my mum, and her mum. (I think I’m the worst – but hopefully that’s because my biodad was somewhat useless, and left when I was tiny. Which is enormously encouraging, because CJ is brilliant – very much the same type of man as my second Dad, who did a fine job raising me.) There are some things we can do to ameliorate mental illness and/or reduce the chance of passing it on. I can teach resilience by modelling, by letting my child fall and learn to stand up, and by valuing contentment over being unusual/special/hyper-meaningful (in my opinion, writing/art/dancing/etc is very bad for mental health). Whatever happens, I made the choice long ago that if they ended up like me, they were still a worthwhile individual who deserved to exist.
10. Kid has ADD – like his father and grandfather. It’s not a big fear, and we can help it by not letting them near a TV or computer screen for the first two years. (Or at least, we can try.)
That WAS my list. You’ll notice nausea didn’t even make the top ten. So much for that.
Today I’m at 8 weeks, which means I’ve dealt with two weeks of nausea and I probably have four to go. Next week I’ll be halfway.
I’m sleeping about twelve hours a day, which certainly helps. Thanks to Maxolon, I’m able to eat or drink something three times a day.
In unrelated unpleasant news, our younger cat Ana has been missing since Saturday. I don’t have high hopes for her.
If you are in the Woden area or Northern Tuggeranong, please keep an eye out. She is tortoiseshell and white, semi-longhaired, with two large bells on a collar around her neck.
Sandcastle
From my not-so-secret vault of spare awesomeness:
This type of sandcastle requires a meeting of sand, water and something solid. You make it by scooping up very wet sand and drizzling it onto a solid surface. My mum taught me how.
The beach is Bar Beach (I think) at Merimbula in January this year.
“Send sleep, vodka, and bacon. . .” (PG)
Chuck Wendig did another brilliant post on his new baby, and I couldn’t resist reposting it below (remember, his blog is often MA). The original is here.
*PSSSHHcracklehisss*
“– you hear me? The stuff’s everywhere — black tar — came pouring out of diapers — could lay shingles with this stuff OH GOD HERE COMES MORE OF IT –”
*kkkkpsshhhhfsssss*
“– haven’t slept in days — seeing things — cherubs with wings, but not like out of a greeting card but like out of the damn Bible — so many eyes — fiery swords — chubby cheeks –”
*weeooooFSSHHHHcrackle*
“– think they’re cute but they’re deadly –”
“– energy levels low, rations dwindling –”
“– everywhere you go it’s always there watching waiting peeing –”
“– alert, alert, this thing’s got witch nails, it killed Samson, merciful Jesus it killed Samson! –”
“– we thought we controlled it, but no, no, it controls us! –”
” — such hubris, we thought we understood the parameters –”
*KKKKFSSSHHHHHBSSHHHH*
“– OH SWEET SID AND MARTY KROFFT IT’S CRYING AGAIN WHICH MEANS ITS HUNGRY — “
” — send sleep — vodka — baaaacon –”
CARRIER LOST
TheLittlestPenmonkeyBeseechesYou
The baby is well.
He’s covered in the acne of an 8th grade math nerd.
He’s still trying to tear off his own face with his komodo claws.
He still looks like we enrolled him in Baby Fight Club.
He sometimes smiles. He likes dancing to the Beastie Boys. His poop has transitioned from the foul black hell-slurry to something that looked like swamp mud to something that looks like deli mustard.
He’s good. And we’re pretty good, too.
This amused me
De Grandpre-de Pique (1808)
Monsieurs de Grandpre and de Pique discovered that their mistresses were actually singular, a Mademoiselle Tirevit cheating with both of them. Rather than kicking her to le curb they decided that honor – and sanity – both needed to be shot at. FROM THE SKY. They ascended to 2,000 feet in hot air balloons and started blasting at each other. De Pique managed to miss an entire hot air balloon with a blunderbuss and therefore deserved everything which came afterwards (de Granpire’s buckshot through his balloon and the ground through his everything.)
Read more: Dueling | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/funny-4231-dueling/#ixzz1JfeHk3u5
Be advised that although this article is pretty safe (PG for swearing and some amusing violence), the cracked.com site is often MA in both pics and words.
Ten Things Teen Writers Should Know
John Scalzi (NYT bestselling author) writes a good blog, with occasional writing advice.
This is one of my favourites articles (you’ll have to click through to see the picture of young John Scalzi.
Hm. It keeps crashing my computer when I try to cut and paste a section. Here’s the address again anyways:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/04/27/10-things-teenage-writers-should-know-about-writing/
And here, as always, is a cat pic from the files:
Throw Up
There’s a great deal of difference between a pregnant woman who claims she’s “really very, very sick” and hasn’t tried a single medication – and a pregnant woman who is on the strongest possible nausea meds and still throws up just because she walks past some food.
To all the medical personnel who gave me disbelieving looks this week – I told you so. Â
Being a vomit expert thanks to my days at sea (did I mention I threw up while working aloft? I did? Did I mention it was also raining? Well, it was), I already knew that the best thing about throwing up is the fifteen minutes afterwards, when your body actually thinks it’s solved the nausea problem and leaves you alone for a moment.
So I cleaned up my own chunder, drank water, and (gag) brushed my teeth.
I don’t feel better physically, but psychologically I’ve gone from a quivering jelly of patheticness to someone who is having a genuinely bad time and handling it pretty okay.
A sixth birthday party
A couple of weeks ago, my nephew turned six. I enjoyed it roughly as much as he did. Here is his cake (and a toy he described blithely as a “turtle sharpener”, which for some reason made me think it sharpened knives. Those are pencil holes in its back, however):
The bottom layer is vanilla (with chunks of white chocolate). The middle layer is strawberry (with real berries) and the top is chocolate (with real chocolate chunks). There’s cream between each layer, and the top has chocolate icing, white chocolate swirliness, and sprinkles. Lots of sprinkles.
Nuff said.
Felicity Banks 