Observations on Dieting OR OH NOES, NOT ANOTHER DIET BLOG!

So I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, which is usually rich material for blogging.  Last week I looked at the appointment on the calendar and then looked at my scale and thought, "I should go on a diet."  Then I looked at HIM, the man to whom I'm married, and said, "You should go on a diet, too."  HIM looked at me and said, "But why?  Why me?"  I said, "Because I have all the power."  HIM said, "I'm leaving you until you stop dieting."  (Most of that conversation was really in my head.)  In my head I yelled back, "AND I'M TAKING ALL THE HALLOWEEN CANDY!"  Then HIM screamed, "NOES!  Don't take all the Halloween candy!  Please!"  Then the whole imaginary conversation denigrated into what my version of Pulp Fiction should have really been about, because I went on a diet and my brain immediately broke.

Observations:

1.) Dieting sucks.  I walk by the Halloween candy every day.  My daughter, who got a ton of candy, doesn't really eat it much.  (So not my daughter.)  I'm not even talking about the yucky candy like the dum dums or the gummy bear package.  (I don't know which sick bastard gave her a package of pretzels but I hope he got TP'd.)  She's not eating the Snickers bars or the Three Muskateers bars, or, horrors of horrors, the Reeces Peanut Butter Cups.  I don't know who could not eat the Reeces Peanut Butter Cups, but they must be a zombie.  Therefore I've come to the conclusion that my daughter is a zombie because she won't eat the Reeces Peanut Butter Cups.  (Conversely I'm sort of proud of her.  When she wants something she gets it, but mostly it's good just when she feels like it.  There's no eat the candy until she pukes, unlike how I was when I was ten years old.)

2.) I'm sick of salads after seven days.  I'm not even eating them more than once a day.  This was the menu for the week.  Brekky muffin with poached egg.  Green leafy salad for lunch.  Yogurt snacky poo mid-afternoon.  Regular dinner with low carbs.  I've lost six pounds in one week but I hate it.  I want to barf if I look at a poached egg again.  I want to smother everything with cheese, lots of cheese, mounds of cheese.  Salads suck.

3.) HIM is a cheater.  Not the kind where he goes off and finds wild women, but the kind who cruises past the vending machines at his work.  (What I imagine he says to the vending machine: "Hey, baby, looking good with G4.  Give me that chocolate nougat yumminess.  I have a few extra quarters.")  I don't work there, you see, and he knows I don't work there.  Plus I can't tell the people he works with to watch him to make sure he's not diet-cheating.  (That should be shortened to di-eating.  Get it?)  But hey he eats his brekky muffin with the poached egg.  (I added spinach, mushrooms, and green onions to it, so it wasn't completely bland.)  Then he does his lunch.  By the time he gets home he's ravenous.  Then I go to bed and eats all the Cheezits in the house.  HIM sucks.

4.) The half gallon of vanilla ice cream in the freezer that's been there for about a month is calling my name like a diabolical fiend from the realm called Diets Will Fail!  "CAREN!" it calls.  "We need you to eat us!  We taste good!  We're vanilla-y good!  We will melt in your fat mouth!  Come to us!"  Leftover ice cream sucks.

5.)  Watching television is pure f**king torture because I've come to realize that those sponsors know exactly when to play the food commercials.  Arby's.  Hardee's.  Red Lobster.  All of them, criminals. This is what they say: "Look, here's our super ultra fatty food that you must eat, b*tches!  You want it!  And we have mounds of cheese, too!"  I bet they have a group of fat testers who tell them stuff.  "Put the commercial on right about 8 p.m. when all fat people are wavering dangerously.  Make sure the cheese is dripping and there's bacon on everything.  Play upbeat music.  Make eating fun, delicious, and sexy."  TV sucks as much as dieting.  (I tried sticking to the kid's channels for Cressy, but you know what, you can salivate over an Easy Bake oven commercial.)

6.) Exercise sucks.  Right now I'm doing walkies.  I walk for 30 minutes a day.  I walk my ass off.  So I get home, sit down, and then I can't get up.  What the he-ell?  And my hips hurt.  What do my hips have to do with walkies?  Is this some arcane sign of old age that no one filled me in on?  Walkies suck.  Old hipbones suck, too.

7.) I need to interject something about the cat we adopted recently.  Splotch was a free range cat, i.e., someone lost him or dumped him.  He was that way for years which is why he wants lots of love and LOTS OF FOOD.  I call him Hoover Cat.  Hoover Cat weighs 15 pounds now and the vet has told me that Hoover Cat needs to loose weight.  However Hoover Cat wants to eat...everything...now.  So I decided I have to hide the food from Hoover Cat.  One would think that Megaroy, the other moron cat, would have lost weight, but somehow Megaroy has gained a pound too.  I always think it's a big laugh when the vet tells me that my cat(s) are fat and need to loose weight.  It's not like I don't have to listen to that from my doctor because, oh, yes, I do.  Now I have to listen to it from the cats' doctor, too.  This sucks.

In conclusion, everything sucks.  I want a cheeseburger.

On Writing OR Who Knows What Fat Woman Will Say or Not Say?

 Every once in a while I get a letter from a reader who says something like, "I liked your book...but..."  The but is usually in reference to something I did wrong.  I do make mistakes.  Of course I make mistakes.  Every writer makes mistakes.  It doesn't matter how many people go over the manuscript because the mistakes will still be there.  A recent typo from Deadsville: The man came out wearing a flowered shit.  We all know that most people don't wear flowered shits.  I hope that most people don't wear flowered shits.  I've never personally seen a flowered shit.  It's possible I will never personally see a flowered shit.  In any case, it was supposed to be flowered shirt.  I actually caught this one when I did my first run through.  I even posted it to Facebook because if I can't tease myself, who can I tease?  So I thought I fixed it.  Then I gave the manuscript to my first editor, who also caught it because it hadn't been fixed.  Somehow I neglected to fix it.  I gave it to my other editor, who missed it, because she's human, too.  Then my husband and all of my beta readers missed it.  (Or I missed that my beta readers caught it and then I didn't fix it...again.)  Then I missed it again on my final read through.  So it came out in the ebook and someone commented on Facebook how hysterical it was that I had left it in.  (I could pretend at this point in time that I did it on purpose, but I didn't.)  So it's fixed in the paperback copy but I haven't gotten to revise the electronic copy yet, so it remains there, a testament to flowered shits everywhere.

Okay then, my mistake.  My bad.  However a letter from someone said, "I liked Deadsville but it had all these misspelled words and words used incorrectly."  It was the "all these" part that got me.  I want to know where I went wrong.  Give me an example.  I can see some homonyms possibly happening.  It's possible I used a word incorrectly.  (I'm sure there's a few in there.)  But why would someone write to an author, say that, and then flounce away without giving a few examples?

I read quite a bit myself.  I do catch typos in books, but it doesn't really bother me.  Poor formatting irritates me more.  Occasionally plot details annoy me.  I remember reading about a character who had acquired a Cobra.  (A real Shelby Cobra, not a replica, or the Cobras from the 2000s.)  Then the character threw something into the backseat and I went, "Oh no they dint."  But did I rip out a nasty email to the author and chastise her authoric impropriety?  No, I did not.  It was an honest mistake and not worth emailing the author at all.  (Besides which someone probably already beat me to it.)  Every once in a while I hear someone lambasting The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (You can see why they cut the name down for Hollywood).  In the original novel Crusoe strips down (some argument about how much he stripped) swims out to the wreck of the ship he came on, and then fills his pockets with biscuits.  (Nekkid and without pockets being the problem here.)  But no one is complaining that this error on the part of the author makes Robinson Crusoe less of a classic.  (And I'm not comparing myself to Daniel Dafoe in any way.)  My point is merely that authors make mistakes.

In any case, when I do get a letter from a reader, complaining about mistakes, and they name the mistakes, I usually politely thank them, note the errors in my big list, and make sure I know to correct that in the next revision.  I may not be able to correct each one right away because it takes a little bit of time to come back to the revisions.  I'm just about wrapped up with all of my backlog.  I have three more books to do.  Dial M for Mascara, Missile Rats, and The Life and Death of Bayou Billy.  These are my worst selling books, so I've taken my time on getting back to them.  I usually offend people when they read Bubba and then they buy one of these and expect Bubba, so I warned people in the description of Bayou Billy, but for some reason, people aren't reading the whole description.

This is truly ironic because I think Bayou Billy's plot is the best one I've ever come up with.  However, in the end of the first chapter is where I usually lose most of my readers.  If you've read it, you know what I'm talking about.

I don't mind people telling me they didn't like something I wrote.  Thank God we have the right to do that, but it's the mixing up of grammar and objectivity that bothers me.  English is hard enough as it is without throwing in the susceptibility of people to believe that if they think it is so, then it must be correct, and worse, it must be the only one that is correct.  This is what is called subjectivity.  When an editor tells me, for example, that I cannot use italics for when my characters are thinking, I'm inclined to ask, "Why not?"

And now I'm denigrating into the realm of Let's-Break-Rules-Shall-We?

I recently got a letter from Mark Coker, who is the CEO of Smashwords, about an event that was ongoing, and I wrote back to thank him for his efforts on behalf of indie writers.  If it were up to mainstream publishers, none of the indies would have a voice, much less one that people want to argue with.

Okay then, I now shall dismount from my high horse and go back to writing Bubba and the Ten Little Loonies, for I have rules to break and grammar to fracture into teensy weensy wittle pieces.

All Bevill Ebooks on Sale!

Yup.  Everything is on sale.  If it isn't free already (Bubba and the Dead Woman, Veiled Eyes, Sea of Dreams, The Moon Trilogy) then it's $.99, so grab it quick.

Of course, I will say that Bayou Moon is not published by myself, but by Macmillan, so I can't reduce the price on that one.  Sorry.

My list on Amazon here.

My list on B&N here.

My list on Smashwords here.

And don't forget to search for C.L. Bevill on iBooks or iTunes because they're all on sale there, too.

Don't forget that you can give ebooks as gifts, too!

Stuff, More Stuff, Random Stuff, Stuffity Stuff

Let's see.  Today I shall probably ramble.  Rambling is good for the soul.  I suspect that rambling is a way of dealing with mental issues.  If people could only ramble more we wouldn't need Prozac.  (Just an opinion.)

This doesn't work in my house because they both
talk about it, before, during, and after.

Life with adopted cat.  Cat number 1 thinks that Cat number 2 sucks.  Cat number 1 thinks that he will turn his nose up and slink off.  Cat number 1 also thinks that we suck for adopting Cat number 2.  Cat number 1 decided that he will now sleep on Cressy's bed in protest and never darken our bedroom doorstep again.  Fine by me, I like having my half of the king sized bed to myself.  If you haven't woken up drenched in sweat because a cat is draped over the lower half of your body, well, then you just haven't lived life to the fullest.  (This is also applicable to dogs, who know for a fact that the bed isn't just for humans.)

Not sure what happens when Cat number 1 bodyslams
Cat number 2, but it's like the WWE, cat style.
Sometimes it's like sumo wrestling.
I should really get the camera out next time.

We have inlaws visiting.  Cat number 2 thinks this means his life is over and goes and hides in the garage.  But he can't just hide.

He's not really this fat, but his tummy flaps when he runs.

No, Cat number 2 climbs up into the engine compartment of the 1954 Chevy truck in the garage and takes cover over the engine.  How he managed to get his chubbiness up there, I do not know.  (Don't tell the cat but the vet says he has to loose weight.  Don't tell the vet that I can tell she's looking at me suspiciously.  I can't help it if Cat number 2 hasn't learned that the food will not be yanked away if he doesn't eat it instantaneously.  Totally not my fault.)

I couldn't find one where the cat was in the engine compartment of a car.
Who knew?

HIM, the man to I'm married, went on a motorcycle trip with my FIL.  Cressy went to an overnight funfest with friends.  (I think their parents bit off more than they could chew.)  I watched cheesy horror movies on the Syfy channel all evening and then some The Walking Dead marathon.  (The Governor is cool; did you know he has a British accent in real life?  That didn't come out right.  He's British so he doesn't really talk like the Governor, which messes with my mind.  But then so is Rick and Maggie.  If Daryl had a British accent my mind would be totally blown.)

I love the Simpsons.

But then I also watched the cheesiest movie ever.  Chain Letter.  You remember about ten years ago when everyone emailed all the chain mails we got to everyone we ever knew or would ever know or met briefly at a convention and felt like we should know them?  Well, this movie decided that that still happens.  And the bad guy would keep track of everyone who deleted the chain letter, then go kill them in a horrid, gory fashion.  Well, dah-am.

This is the most messed up movie poster ever.
What the hell does the bar code mean?
I don't know because I fast-forwarded
through too much of the movie.
I would have noticed two chains coming from
the garage and I almost never back up my car,
because basically I can't back up very well.

In the beginning there's this girl all duct taped up and chained in the garage.  She opens her eyes and realizes she chained to...dadadah, the two cars in the driveway, which is bad news because they're pulled in backwards and her parents don't notice that there are chains coming from the rear going into the garage, which is open by about a foot and a half.  So off they drive, turning up their radios, because if they actually noticed anything, the movie would end.  And then I started fast-forwarding through the movie because it was beyond stupid.  It turns out that the girl in the garage is actually the end of the movie and we're forced to go back and see what happened first.  The first kid gets the chain letter, and his sister forwards it, then cinematic mayhem ensues in a bloody fashion and I can't figure out why all of these kids, beautiful, attractive, intelligent, are all alone in their big houses with a guy who likes to use chains.  Furthermore, I can't understand how the guy with the chains can keep up with all the people the chain letter will have been forwarded to.  I think the serial killer would have a mental breakdown because he missed some.  In fact, he probably had to hire an assistant to keep up.  (I'm trying to imagine the advertisement for assistant serial killer.) Anyway, that movie was about 90 minutes long.  It was about 20 minutes when I was done with it.

This doesn't have anything to do with the movie, but I thought it
was funny.

Of course I couldn't sleep in an empty house, not necessarily because I had been watching scary-ass movies all night, but because there was a rumble in the litter box.  Cat number 1 decided to bite Cat number 2's ass.  (He does.)  Cat number 2 takes it for a few minutes, then bites back because it doesn't feel good to have one's ass bitten.  (So I've heard.)  Then the shizz started to happen.  All the way down the stairs, through the living room, out on the porch, back from the porch, back through the living room, and back up the stairs.  Sound effects were included.  (Translation went like this.  "EFF YOU!"  "NO, EFF YOU!"  "NO, EFF YOU AND THE GERBIL YOU RODE IN ON!"  "I'LL NIP YOUR TUSHY!"  Etc.  It went on like that until I was wide awake.  (I think they wore each other out because there wasn't any blood around.)

This segues nicely into wanting ice cream at 2 am.

Then I get up to see if there's any ice cream left in the freezer and remember I can't eat it because I'm not supposed to eat at night at all.  Of course, I eat it anyway.  (It's ice cream, it's in my house, and no one is looking at me.  That's enough of an explanation.)  Then I spend half the night in the recliner watching more The Walking Dead episodes from the last season.  Man, those bitches at Terminus are in big trouble.

Only five hours until season 5.  Whoopee.

Myriad Stuff OR Myriad is Another Word for Lots

Warning: Author might randomly go off on a tangent.  Look, a squirrel.

It's Confessions of a Fat Woman so it has
a fat squirrel.  Go figure.

First off, it sucks that Longmire has been cancelled.  I want to know who got shot in the cliffhanger.  I want to call up Simon & Simon's guy and ask him if he knows.  I want to spit in A&E's general direction.  I generally don't want to do stuff like this but dammit, they didn't have to cancel after a cliffhanger.  Thffpt.

I couldn't find a funny Longmire meme, so I went with a cool one.

Wait.  I found one.  Wonder what people in Wyoming think of
Longmire.

Second, I've come to the conclusion that our household does not attract neurotic cats.  No, it's far more insidious.  Instead, the cats come to us normal and we make them neurotic.  That's why we have neurotic cats.  I think the new cat needs psychological help.  I think the old cat needs anger management therapy.  Telling the old cat, "Just use your indoor claws," doesn't work.  "Take a deep breath, Megaroy," doesn't work.  "The new cat is not a threat to your felininity," really doesn't work, plus I made up a word.  Somewhere there's probably a cat therapist who just said, "Oh."

Here kitt-ee, kitt-ee, kitt-ee.
This cat looks like he could chew through your arm.

Third, yes Bubba fans, I'm writing Bubba 6 or Bubba and the Ten Little Loonies.  It's happening.  I'm estimating around Christmas time for all the bubbaness to flow from me from my fingers down into the keyboard and onto the word processing program.  I'm not trying to be cute, but it's a little hard to do a series.  I want it to be right.  I want people to enjoy the book.  I don't want people to say, "It's just like all the rest," or "She has jumped the shark."  (I don't remember Fonzie jumping the shark, but hey, I don't think I watched that show that much.)

I haven't done a Bubba 6 cover yet, but
I found this one, which I need to look
up on imdb.com because I have
to watch a movie called Bubba the Redneck Werewolf.
I just have to.

Fourth, squee, The Walking Dead is coming soon.  Squee.  Squee.  Squee.  In case you didn't know I love The Walking Dead.  I'm not sure why.  It's a little more grim than my usual fare.  But the zombie jokes I get to tell.  Whee.

Okay, this was lame.  But he kind of looks
like a zombie.  That would have been a better
title.  Zombie Hobo with a Shotgun.
Yeah.
Why don't they come to me for
Hollywood titles?
I kick ass in making up titles.
(Bubba and the Dead Woman, right?)

Fifth, Deadsville isn't selling that well.  I'm disappointed but it happens.  I'm not sure exactly where I went wrong.  I tried to write something that I thought would sell.  It didn't happen.  Therefore I've come to a decision.  I'm going to write what I like to write.  That's the joy of being an independent writer.  I get to do what I want and have fun doing it.  Like writing a blog about how we make cats neurotic.

End with a joke.  (You have to imagine the drum roll.)

There ya go.

Deadsville is Out!

 

 

Deadsville is Available!

Tavie has just died, but that isn’t the end of her existence.  Instead, she ends up “living” in Deadsville, where the dead play games, look for entertainment, and wonder when they will move on.  Reapers walk the streets occasionally, taking “deadies” who are ready to move on.  All of that’s normal until two deadies are murdered in a way that the residents of Deadsville have never seen before.  They need someone to figure it out before more bad stuff happens.  They need Tavie, that is, Detective Tavie, as she was known in the living world.  Tavie isn’t exactly happy about the promotion to Deadsville Sheriff.  She sees gods of the dead, people who died in bizarre ways, and is presented with a mystery that requires unusual creativity to solve it.  And that’s all before the dust settles from her arrival in the land of the dead.  Nothing in Deadsville is ever boring.

Deadsville – An Urban Fantasy/Mystery

 

Available at B&N here

Available at Amazon here

Available at Smashwords here

Random Stuff OR I'm Just Going to Blog Whatever

I'm polishing up Deadsville.  It's at the formatters and I have to fix stuff before it gets epublished, which happens.  In the meantime people keep asking and I'm all like, "Soon.  Soon.  Soon."  It's not that I mind people asking.  (I don't.)  It's just that it's a little frustrating for me because this part is out of my hands.  I would rather be all super uber controlling.  Anyway, soon.  Soon.  Soon.  Here's the teaser cover.

She reminds me of Kay Lenz from the 70s.  Who remembers
Kay Lenz?  I think she was most famous for being married to
David Cassidy for a few years.  I was totally
jealous because I thought David Cassidy was hot
stuff.  Shaun was pretty hot, too, but I don't
remember who he married.  Oh those preteen
hormones.

In other cat news, the new cat is all like "Pet me, pet me, pet me."  The old cat is like, "Why are you petting him, bee-yotch?  Now I have to eff him up."  Then the moron jumps on the cat with no name.  The cat with no name (who does have a name but it doesn't sound as cool as the cat with no name) decides he's had enough of the moron cat and swats him upside the head.  The moron cat decides his manhood has been insulted and jumps on the other cat again.  Hissing and yowling commence until they've had enough.  Usually the breakaway collar of the cat with no name is the only casualty.  Feline melodrama.

The cat with no name likes his food, I'll tell you that.  We've never owned a "fat" cat before.  The vet told us we need to put him on a kitty diet.  He weighs 15 pounds and he's supposed to be around 12.  (I haven't told the cat yet.)  When I get up at 3 am to pee because my beloved daughter broke my bladder when I was pregnant, the cat with no name assumes I'm getting up to feed him, because what else would humans be doing at 3 am?

It's a Westside Story thing.

He mmrrrrs at me, follows me into the bathroom, and I just adore (not) being watched while I take care of business, then he tries to trip me while he leads me out the bedroom door and down the stairs.  (If he can lead me downstairs I will go into the magical place where there is FOOD, and it will be dispensed unto the cat with no name who turns into Hoover Cat.)  Instead I go straight and climb back into bed.  Then the moron cat gets up to straighten out the cat with no name and more melodrama ensues.  This is concluded by me finding ear plugs to put in so I can go back to sleep for an hour or two.

I figure this is what is happening when I can't see.  I can hear it, though
even with ear plugs.

Let's see.  It's hot and humid in Alabama.  That sounds like the name of a bad country song.  I'm going to melt if I have to put up with this much longer.  I don't even think the cats like it that much.  They come in from the enclosed porch with their little ears back.  The moron cat is clearly pissed at the cat with no name for the high humidity and blames him accordingly.  ("You did this, asshamster.  I'll eff you up again.")  But the cat with no name weighs more than the moron cat.  (That weight is good for something.)  So it ends up being an acrimonious draw.

I know it doesn't really fit with hot and humid, but I liked how the cat
was ninjaing the dog.

Finally I have started writing Bubba 6 or otherwise known as Bubba and the Ten Little Loonies unless I come up with a better name.  But then I figure who else could I insult?  Say this out loud, "I yam sew wee todd did.  I yam sofa king wee todd did."  Say it faster.  There, I've probably insulted everyone else that I previously missed.  (I did that to my father-in-law once but it wasn't funny because he never got the joke.)

I read a recent review of Bubba and the Zigzaggery Zombies in which the reviewer complained that I had too much political commentary in it.  I might have to go back and re-read it again because as I recall I pretty much dun both dems and repubs equally.  I might have dinged the tea party, too.

Okay, I'm out of cute memes, so I'll leave you.

Moron Cat Vs The Cat With No Name

Okay recently I was forced into accepting a stray cat into our household.  Pretty sure my arm was behind my back.  For some reason I made the mistake of feeding the cat from up the street, who looked anorexic, and the dinner bell rang for every stray within a mile, plus raccoons, possums, and possibly a few chubacabras visiting from the Caribbean.


Okay, who knew they make milk bones
for Chupacabras?

First came the Cat with No Name, a white with charcoal gray-spotted cat who we couldn't quite get a good look at the under the tail to determine the gender.  (Turns out he was a neutered male.)  Then there was a skinny cat with white socks who was all male.  (Not neutered, really not neutered.)  The one with the socks vanished.  (I don't think good things happened to him.)  Then another cat showed up, a black one with a white bib and paws.  He was horribly skinny.  He was also not neutered and very friendly.  So he got to go to the vet first.  Turns out he was sick with feline leukemia and worst of all, had no teeth in his upper jaw.  The vet said he'd had a hard life.  I take no joy in admitting that the best thing to do was to have him put down.  (I know people are going to hate me for it but we have a healthy cat and he's already gotten worms from one of the strays.  It's sad but we couldn't take care of the sick one.)

I am not a monster, I swear.

Since that cat had feline leukemia I thought for sure the Cat with No Name would have it too.  They'd been hanging out and sharing food bowls.  I had just got the cat to trust me when we dumped a towel over his head and shoved him into a cat carrier.  (Which is the sort of thing that happens on docks or at frat houses.  Sometimes at republican and democratic conventions, too.)

It turns out they make a lot of sad cat memes.

So after $250 later we found out that the CWNN was disease free but not very happy with the amount of needles that had gone into his butt.  HIM and Cressy both went on a shopping spree at Petsmart and the CWNN came home with us, rechristened Splotchy, because I don't get to name pets anymore.  (I wanted Dr. No or Sarcamanga or something cool like Goldfinger.)  Everyone was happy but me and the new cat.

Now I'm just getting silly.

Megaroy, the Moron Cat, was not pleased.  While it was great that cats hung out on the porch and gave him worms (True story.) it was not great that they came inside, inside his terra firma, his abode, his turf.  Splotchy went under a bed and stayed there for about two days.  Then he tore out all the berber rug in front of the bedroom door.  What fun and joy.  Then he realized the grub was free and the darkness under the bed wasn't so bad.  He came out, started exploring, and Megaroy was further alarmed.

The return of...da da dah...LadderCat.

Two weeks later and Megaroy has thawed out but is dismayed that Splotchy doesn't want to play let-me-bounce-you-into-the-floor and is not impressed by the sideways scamper.  Splotchy could also be known as the diagonal cat who longs to trip you while going up the stairs.  If your leg and his side aren't connected the universe is wrong.  This is a cat who is looking for a pet to happen.  He pretty much ignores everything but pets and food.  We might have to put him on a diet.

Yesterday cat WWWIII occurred.  Megaroy has decided that sniffing Splotchy's butt is the thing to do.  Splotchy has decided that he'll put up with it until he didn't.  Much bad language ensued with things like "Get your fricking nose out of my butt, diphose!" and "If your butt didn't smell so bad I wouldn't have to sniff it up, dingwa!"  And Splotchy has now conquered Megaroy in a display of street cat dominance that left Megaroy in the dirt.

Our house is never really boring.

And there he is...Splotchy.

Minutia and Other Random Stuff

Warning: Fat Woman may use big words like minutia and minutiae and expect readers to understand them.  Ranting may be involved.  Subjects could be changed very quickly.

I just learned, just now, that the plural of minutia is minutiae, and I feel compelled to share it.  There you go.  With that in mind I found two memes relating to minutia.

I need this t-shirt.

Then here was a classic explanation of the difference between minutia and minutiae.  (There's an extra e in minutiae.  Also it's plural.  Just sayin'.)

Could not be simpler.

So now for an abrupt change of subjects.  Recently someone complained that...wait, I have to insert a spoiler alert here.

For anyone who hasn't read Bubba and the Zigzaggery Zombies, I will be making a reference to the plot of the same and I don't want anyone to say, "OMG, Caren, you totally spoiled it by making me read the blog before I read the book.  You wanker."  Or something like that.  So attention, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler.  If you haven't read Bubba and the Zigzaggery Zombies, and you desperately want to read Bubba and the Zigzaggery Zombies, but just haven't got the chance, DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT.

Spoiler for George R. R. Martin.
(Why does he have two middle names?)

See you did it anyway.

All right, recently someone complained that I skipped the whoopee scene between Bubba and Willodean.  There it is, in a nut shell, no pun intended.  They actually complained that I skipped the scene and what the hell was I thinking by doing so.

Consequently, I was thinking about the complaint.  In all honesty I think the Bubba series aren't the kind of books where a gratuitous scene should be included.  Furthermore I hate coming up with ten synonyms for the male member, (penis, tool, peter, phallus, Johnson, schlong, willy, wait I have to stop to laugh) and I've been known to giggle while writing such scenes.  Basically I don't usually write them.

I went looking for romantic memes and I found pulp fiction covers, which are almost as good.  (This counts as a change in the blog, but don't worry I'll get back to the other thing quickly.)

 

I love this cover.  I might have to go and read this
book.

Anyway back to the complaint.  I decided that I would write the Bubba/Willodean love scene and post it on my blog.  Just for those critics.  Here it is:

Bubba looked into Willodean's eyes.  Willodean looked into Bubba's eyes.  The bedroom door shut.  Several minutes later, "WHOO HOO!" was heard. 

There you go.  That's as explicit as I'm going to get with that.  Just for that one complainer person.

But to make up for it, here's some more funky pulp fiction covers.

This looks newer but it's also really cool.

I love this one, too.  It doesn't get any more
succinct.  She wakes up screaming.
It's implicit.
 

Who doesn't like a jungle babe looking at a
great ape whipping men?

Seven bone chilling tales.  Seven.
Golly.

And my favorite...

If you're going to have a radioactive redhead,
she should be a badass.  It goes without
saying, although I said it anyway.

All right.  Enough blathering.  Back to Bubba 6.

The ER of Doom OR How I'm Not Allowed to Go Back to the Hospital Anymore

In last week's exciting blog, I encountered Pier 1 and its clerk, AKA the Woman Who Cannot Ask for Help and is Wonderful at Standing Around With Her Thumb Up Her Bleep.  (I should call her Bleep for short.)

After I drove myself home, which was basically a huge fricking mistake, I tried to tough it out by calling my general practitioner and making an appointment.  The nice lady on the phone suggested I just go ahead and go to the ER, because 1) they could do something about the pain, and 2) they have an X-ray machine.  (I'll come back to these two points later.)

I totally didn't do this.

I called the hubster, or HIM, the man to whom I'm married and said/whined, "I've had an accident and need to go to the ER."  HIM said, "Be there in a jif," or something like that because I honestly don't remember what he did say.  (It might have been, "I'm in the middle of having something probed by aliens from Alpha Centuri, but they'll understand," but I was in too much pain to pay attention.)  I do remember finding a bottle of ibuprofen and the ice bag.  Some years later he showed up and helped me out to the car.  By the time we actually got to the hospital I was feeling marginally better.  However, I couldn't walk, talk, or chew bubblegum.

Once I checked into the ER, riding in a wheelchair, the real fun began.  I began my stint in the ER waiting room in a genial mood despite the fact that my calf felt like someone had reached inside my muscles and yanked several out, spit on them, tied knots in them, and then shoved them back in.  I got my vitals taken fairly quickly and explained to the nurse that I did not feel good.  I think they wrote "booboo on leg" on the form.  I believe that was a mistake on my part.  I should have insisted they write "horribly mangled, agonizing, ruptured muscles that have me writhing in pain" instead.  I should have begged for morphine and/or vodka.  I'm convinced that if I had done that I would have been seen faster.  A corpse would have been seen faster.

If a cartoon character had shown up in
my ER, they would have been seen
before me.

Now don't get me wrong.  I do understand why the man with the chest pains has to be seen first.  I totally get it.  I understand why the man who chopped off the tip of his finger with a machete had to go before me.  (Not making this up.  Seriously, the man who came in after me did chop his finger off via the machete method.  Unfortunately neither he nor I was in the mood to get/give backstory.)  I get why the meth head who was having convulsions and frothing at the mouth was going before me.  However, there was a couple who was there before me and both had hospital bracelets on, and both chatted constantly on their phones while waiting for a doctor/something.  I think they were at the ER to have a physical.  There was a hooker there who possibly was having STD tests.  There was a man there riding in a motorized wheel chair who looked like one of the humans from Wall-E.  (Coming from a fat woman, this is highly critical.  I wanted to tell him, "Just get up and walk because you're working that chair way too good."  Seriously, he could have stopped on a dime after racing through the chairs in the waiting room.  He zipped over to the bathroom and then back again so easily it was like he had a license for it.)  (Secretly I was jealous that I didn't have one.)

I was waiting for something all right.

Therein commenced the waiting.  Waiting.  Waiting.  Waiting.  As the ibuprofen began to fail and my leg began to throb like bongo drugs, I got snarkier and snarkier.  In fact, I think HIM wanted to leave me at the ER so that he could run away to Africa and become the guy who takes people on safaris.

This would be the title of HIM's blog.

Or something like that.  HIM probably would have taken penguins at the South Pole over my snarkiness.

I don't know why I stuck this in here.  Probably because I thought
it was funny.  This is how I see myself while I was waiting
in the Emergency Room.

Whilst I was waiting/moaning/complaining, one poor clerk came to get my insurance information.  Poor woman.  Then I waited so long they had to take my vitals again.  The man who took my vitals again got into a conversation about how cool Tom Cruise was in Oblivion and I said that Tom Cruise probably would have gotten seen in the ER before me even if he had the weird thing on Oprah's couch.  (The young man didn't really care for my opinion.  Go figure.)

HIM had to leave (the lucky bastard) to go pick up the little girl at Girl Scout camp.

My daughter thinks this is funny.

AFTER three hours, I got wheeled back into a room.  There the nurse took some more vitals and told me to take my top off but not my jeans.  I was confused because I was sure I had injured my calf muscle and not my boobs.  SERIOUSLY, a woman named Frechandra, named after her father Fred and a woman named Sandra, wanted me to loose my t-shirt but not my pants.  (Shouldn't that have been Fresandra?  Fredsandra?  Frandra?  Safredra?)

Anyway, I waited some more.

This funness was followed up by Frechandra wanting me to take a pregnancy test.  I informed Frechandra that not only was I 50 years old, but my tubes had gone buh-bye in a tubal ligation event back in 2004.  She said unless I had a hysterectomy I had to pee in a little cup and make with the hormones/or no hormones to prove it.  I got a box with the appropriate stuff in it and apparently medical science has improved because now women get a little funnel thing instead of having to aim for a 2 inch cup.  (All the women reading this are sagely nodding their heads.)  Who hasn't had to wipe off a cup?  Hmm?  Let's just say I can't hit the little cup any better than I can sink a basketball in a hoop.

I was informed I was not pregnant.  I think my eyes rolled back into my head at that point in time and bounced off the back of my brain.

HIM returned with the little girl.  The little girl cried because I was in the hospital.  I said it was okay.  I said that she could wait on me at home, serve me ice cream, and be my slave.  She cried some more.  Then I said she didn't have to wait on me.  She stopped crying.

If you have to have crutches, go big.

Finally, the doctor came.  The doctor didn't have a sense of humor.  She asked what was wrong.  I said I had reached for the wrong thing and she said, "Huh?"  Then she felt my leg.  She asked where it hurt, while squeezing stuff and while I writhed in agony.  When I was able to speak again, I told her.  She said something about possibly having torn some muscles, take over the counter stuff, keep off it, go to the doctor after a week if it didn't improve, and not to let the door hit me on the ass on the way out.

So four and a half hours later, I hadn't been X-rayed, I hadn't gotten any bleeping thing for the pain, and I had wasted time and money at a place where the nurses look at you like you're a criminal.  Also I discovered I wasn't really pregnant.

Where was this when I needed an Ikea meme
last month?

But hey, I have all the material for a nifty blog.

Anyway, it's a week later, and it's slowly improving.  And people wonder why I hate doctors, hospitals, and medical personnel.