Sink Your Teeth Right Through My Bones, Baby

Otherwise known as how I'm turning 41 this June. Yes, 41. Forty-one. The big 4 - 1. Ol' One and forty.

Aside from finally remembering how to spell 'forty', I've come to the unpleasant understanding that despite how I'm well on my way to decrepitude (occasionally feeling every second of it; believe me), I still almost constantly feel as completely unprepared for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as my kid, who is seven. Hell, sometimes I feel he's way more together than I'll ever be.

Anyone else feel like that, out there in the blogosphere? Like a total fraud who is going to be discovered for the completely green, soaking-behind-the-ears newbie to life in general that she actually is? At least sometimes?

Of course, I also get to add to it the small but sad daily reminders that I'm no longer 20-something and cute but 40-something and matronly. It certainly doesn't help that I live in a small city where the average age is something like 24, because of the big community college and huge university, each with their multitude of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed boys and girls running around. All of them so cute and vital and young enough to be my offspring.

And yet in my heart of hearts I feel like I've barely made it to 18, which is at least the legal drinking age in Montreal. If I felt like drinking, but I don't have the same tolerance I used to.

Yes, oh best beloveds, I am now on Twitter. You can find me there either via Aundrea Singer or Taste_is_Sweet. I haven't tweeted anything yet in terror of it disappearing into the ether with a deafening and humiliating silence. Because I'm assuming that, like LJ, if you follow someone you can read their tweets, but no one will read your tweets unless they follow you, right?

I feel like the new kid in the high school cafeteria, here. Does anyone want to be my twitter friend? I promise I don't pick my nose in public and I bathe regularly.

I just had someone die horribly in the novel I'm writing. On page six. Of a fantasy novel. At least it wasn't a main character. And I'm probably going to kill someone else by page ten.

I thought I'd share because I'm a little shocked that my attempt at having something exciting after a history!yay! prologue ended up with death and mayhem about three pages into chapter one.

Yay?

College Station. Deep in the heart of Texas, home of the Aggies, the Candy 95 radio station, and the occasional tornadoes. Like the one that almost hit us tonight.

Yeah. Nothing like that awesome gut-churning moment when your son's My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic show is interrupted by a grey screen with the National Weather Service warning for a tornado scrolling across it replete with blaring alarm.

Not a tornado watch, unfortunately, which just means you need to check the local KAGS ('K-Ags'! Like the Aggies! Get it?) every so often and maybe worry just a tad. No, this was a Tornado Warning, which means, 'better move your ass to an indoor room before the spinning whirlwind of death descends like the fist of an angry god'.

We've had tornado watches before, and warnings, and once a tornado even came so close that it paused just south of our little manicured subdivision before dissipating. But all that was before we had a kid. Nothing ramps up the adrenaline rush of the bleating National Weather Service TV alarm like having your son sitting in your lap and so scared he keeps asking if it's time to go hide in the bathroom. The poor little guy was freaked out enough that despite our assurances that the heroic weather dude would let us know when it was time to go bathtub-diving, he ended up so exhausted with worry by the end of it that for the first time in literally a year he actually announced he was going to bed, rather than commence his usual thirty-minute negotiation.

Luckily the tornado went all, 'Surprise! I'm heading downtown!' while I was moving essentials to the bathroom and decided to menace my excellent friend anna_bird instead. In the meantime I shared OMFG TORNADO! texts with my neighbors and found it mildly amusing that the very excited weather dude started telling us we had to worry about hail and flash floods instead of tornadoes. Hail the size of eggs? Floods deep enough to swim in? No problem, weather dude. We got a garage, yo.

(And yes, on the news they were warning the local idiots to please NOT GO SWIMMING IN THE FLOOD WATERS. BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, IT'S A FLOOD AND YOU MIGHT DROWN.)

An hour later it was as if nothing had ever happened, except for the new swimming hole and people with egg-sized dents on the roofs and hoods of their cars. A tornado even hit next door in Burleson county (hey, tornado! What did that Fedex distribution center ever do to you?), but here, nothing. My beloved child is sleeping soundly and safely in his bed and my husband and I are watching late-night television like any regular Friday night. Phew.

But I'm checking the KAGS station before I go to bed, believe me. Just in case.

Nothing like realizing three hours after your rather conservative, definitely homoskittish and practicing Catholic parents-in-law have already settled into the guest room where you keep your various action figures that you forgot to put away ( this greeting card )made by the awesome pixiequeen10thk.

Oops.

If I'm really lucky, neither of them noticed the very large picture of John and Rodney kissing while Rodney is handcuffed to a wall. Or they didn't think that the action figures were actually kissing. Or that there were handcuffs. Or something. Yeah.

(Psst! Bid for my stuff at help_japan!)

Some of you might be wondering why the hell I posted this in my Live Journal yesterday. Well, now that things are resolved, I will be more than happy to let you guys know what happened.

But first, please allow me to give appropriate context:

( This is scintillating! I swear! )

Back to Part One



I'm distressingly unphotogenic, but I am pleased to say that I hit with eight out of nine shots on the revolver. That's Art next to me. He taught all twelve of us Brazos Writers how to load, aim and shoot an 1800s Revolver, rifle and shotgun.

( Rifles are easier to aim than handguns )

Either Live Journal has given me a bonus for renewing my paid journal, or someone paid for me to have five more icons. (I only just discovered this by accident, while clicking through my info page, otherwise I would have mentioned it sooner.)

O.o

I suspect the latter. I don't know why I've been so gifted, but wow, that was a really nice thing to do! Thank you, whomever it was, very, very much. :D

Now I actually need to add more icons....

Health warning of the week, O best-beloveds: be careful about using baking soda when you run out of 'Tums'.

This came up because ( of the epic fail )

I have embedded a video I took and hosted on photobucket. The problem is that the video includes a link back to my photobucket page which includes complete access to my account.

What I need to know is, do you guys know if anyone else who clicked on my video would be able to access my account information? Or is it just me because the site recognizes my ISP or something?

Help? I'm really clueless about this stuff, and I can't post the entry until I know for sure I won't be inviting people to mess around in my photobucket account. Not that I've got anything truly awesome in there, but you know.

Thanks!