We had major drama this morning. The outside temperature hit 51 degrees, which I thought was too cold for shorts. I sent my son back to his room to change clothes. That’s when the tears and begging started.
I’m not sure when it happened, but sometime after my son hit the age of four, he decided he didn’t like jeans. He would whine and complain that they weren’t comfortable. Fair enough. I shopped around and found some that had a little more elastic, but each morning when it was time to get dressed, we had a knock down, drag out fight. He wouldn’t wear the jeans without sobbing.
To make matters even stranger, he loved a pair of black jeans that he had. They were identical in every way to his other jeans…they were just black. He wanted to wear those every day.
So this morning, when I ordered him to put on jeans, he cried and moaned and told me that everyone was going to make fun of him.
Son: NO ONE wear jeans in first grade, Mom. They’ll laugh at me.
Me: No, they won’t. Get dressed.
Son: Everyone else gets to wear jogging pants. Why can’t I wear jogging pants?
Me: Because their moms are nicer than yours. Poor you. You have a really mean Mommy. Now put the jeans on.
Son: I’ll never wear them! I’ll just wear shorts!
Me: No, you won’t. But you will lose all television and desserts for the rest of the week if you keep arguing with me.
Son: (bawling) I hate jeans! They don’t make me comfortable. Please let me wear jogging pants!
Me: You’ll be fine.
I’m really not sure where all of this came from. Did your kids, or did you, go through any fashion trends where they wouldn’t wear certain clothes? What’s up with that?
In other news, here’s a fun book cover. This is The Warrior’s Touch, out in Germany this month. I’ll admit, I get such a kick out of foreign covers. They retitled it “The Irish Healer.” I love the woman on the cover–she’s a great model for Aileen. The hero? Um, Connor has a bit more jewelry than I’d like. Those bracelets…woo. And the necklace…. Notice the halo around his head. :)The other thing that made me wonder was the mountains in the background. My fictional location is in central Ireland, so rolling hills is about the best you’ll get. I do think they’re pretty though. All in all, it’s fun to see what the art department came up with.
I stumbled across this advertisement at Forbes originally (They had an article about the world’s richest authors…hey, a girl can dream, can’t she??). It made me laugh, so I thought I’d share it with you for when your computer goes down and you call the help line.
I never played soccer as a kid. However, I was traumatized by being picked last for nearly every sport, so it is my sacred duty to be sure my kids never experience that. Thus, I’ve enrolled my six-year-old son in baseball and soccer. My husband, bless him, took the boy shopping for shin guards and other necessities.
Me? I know nothing about shin guards. They um..protect your shins? They come in all different brands and prices, and you cover them with socks. That’s about all I can figure. So yesterday, when my husband sent me back to the store to return a pair of shin guards that didn’t fit, I was a bit overwhelmed with all the equipment, needless to say.
The boy needed a new pair of soccer shorts and hubby told me to buy Umbros, in a size larger. I could not find that brand to save my life. So I opted to use my store credit (incidentally–new pet peeve. The credit card companies, in their quest to protect your card, are issuing cards to spouses with different numbers. It means you can’t return things to the store for your spouse and have it credited back to the card. Pain. In. The. Tuckus.)
But, I digress. I had a card of store credit and not a thing to spend it on. So I thought–hey! Soccer socks! How hard can that be? I don’t want to be washing those mammoth-sized socks every day (since he has practice and games 3 times a week).
They had pink. And red. And royal blue socks. Which might not have been so bad, except his team shirt is red. Kinda clashes. So I dug around and finally found black, hidden among the adult socks. When I got home, I mentioned my purchase to my husband, and he responded, “Oh, those. I didn’t like the socks they had there.”
You mean, there are regulations for socks now? Plain black socks won’t work?
I have much to learn, clearly.
Do any of you have kids who play soccer? Or did you play soccer as a kid? Anything else I should know about?
Incidentally, Her Warrior Slave is on sale now! I’m stoked!
Today, I’m blogging over at eHarlequin on my favorite Harlequin Moment. Click here to join in on the discussion and enter a comment to win a copy of a book of your choice OR a download of “The Viking’s Forbidden Love-Slave”!
By the way, Her Warrior Slave goes on sale at eHarlequin exclusively tomorrow! It will be in by the end of October. Thanks for stopping by!
I’m working on the new medieval (Ewan’s book) now, and one of the things that makes it interesting for me, is digging up new bits of history. His book takes place in 1180, and the Norman invaders were most definitely making a place for themselves in Ulster, Ireland. I was trying to connect Ewan’s bride to events happening at the time, and I stumbled upon an interesting fellow named John de Courcy.
John de Courcy built the castle of Carrickfergus in northern Ireland, after he led a campaign there in 1177. The castle was built and finished by 1180. I visited Carrickfergus in 2006 and despite the cheesy medieval statues hanging around, it’s a good example of twelfth century castle architecture. Ewan’s book, incidentally, takes place in 1180.
Interior gathering space in Carrickfergus Castle
This is an upstairs chamber within Carrickfergus, possibly a bedchamber or solar, from my best guess. They tried to make it child-friendly by putting a large chess set and a few other items in the room. One thing that impressed me was how much natural light there was in the chamber.
There were also many interesting things to see, like this salt cellar. I imagine John de Courcy must have had a fairly good income, to afford fun little decorative pieces like this. Not bad for a Norman knight.
salt cellar
Anyway, for me, part of the fun in researching a book is looking for the little details like these.
My daughter is starting to go on the mend, but she’s still sick today. As for me, I’m so glad not to be teaching–an illness that lasts 3-4 days is just brutal for a teacher. My kids always had a knack for getting sick just when my husband was out of town and during 3rd class period. But anyway, she’s bouncing around, singing and skipping, despite the 102 fever. I’ll never understand how kids can be that cheerful with high fevers. I would be half dead if I had the fevers she’s had this week, but she’s managing to keep her spirits up.
If any of you live in the southeastern or Virginia Beach areas, please come this Sunday between noon and four p.m.! There will be around 145 authors (including me) signing books at Town Point Park for the Books in the Park festival. Hope to see you there!
My little girl is still sick today, so the poor baby has been relaxing on the couch for most of the day. However, I was at the point where we were about to be eating cardboard for dinner, since I was out of just about everything. Yet, how do you justify dragging a sick child and infant to the grocery store? I should have gone last night. But after the long day of cleaning up sickness, fixing drinks, dosing Tylenol, yadda yadda, plus I hadn’t written a thing…I decided that I’d go ahead and get my daily pages done instead of shop. I just plain old didn’t wanna.
We are having a monsoon at the moment, with a nor’easter hitting our coastline. I keep waiting for the animals to line up, two by two. I decided to help my son out by not making him wait out in the rainstorm, so I buckled everybody up and drove him to the bus stop. It occurred to me that while my secondborn was drugged up on Tylenol, this might be an opportunity to grocery shop. After all, who else is shopping at 8:45 in the morning during a tropical storm? Turns out, we were about the only ones in the store. And Little Miss Skippy was just delighted to be out and about.
(Aside: have you ever noticed how much milk young children drink? Dear lord, I need a cow to keep up. 2 gallons a week, and we still run out!)
Anyhoo, I was gathering up all the things we needed and it occurred to me that today would be a great day to make chili. It’s cool outside, rainy, and with a one-pot dish, I could get it going early enough that it could simmer most of the day. Yum.
I haven’t made it in a while, and I was thinking out loud, telling my daughter that we’d have chili for supper. Her little eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I want hot food, Mommy.”
One thing that all mothers discover is that your child can go from zinging off the walls to flat-out sick in 0.5 seconds. My daughter came home from preschool yesterday with a 102 fever. Today she was home with me, and she went through ups and downs. The scary one was around noon when her fever shot up to 105. Those scare me, and yet kids can spike a temperature so quickly.
I managed to get her into the pediatrician, but it turns out it was only a virus. Can’t do anything except wait it out, so she’s camped out in front of the tv with movies and Gatorade.
The baby is screaming upstairs. He won’t drink a bottle, won’t take a nap, and is being a beast in general. I suppose he’s probably coming down with the same bug.
Today and yesterday I have been writing like a madwoman. I have days when the pages just flow, and I keep going as fast as my little fingers will type. Then there are the slow days when I know something isn’t right, but I can’t put my finger on it. I’ll rewrite a scene and delete pages for several hours, feeling like a complete hack because I can’t seem to make forward progress.
But so far, the story is starting to take shape. I’m very much a seat-of-the-pants type of writer. I like being surprised by my characters and sometimes they do things that make me say, “Ooooh! I didn’t know that about you!” And other times I want to smack them down and say, “Oh, no, you did not just do that. Tell me you didn’t do that!!” It’s a love-hate relationship between us.
What I really like discovering are the little details, the habits that make a character compelling. I’m re-reading one of my “comfort reads,” Nora Roberts’s Born in Fire. Her heroine Maggie likes her tea strong enough to walk. Those kinds of details make a character come alive for me, as well as the snappy dialogue. I’ve nearly worn that book out, I’ve read it so many times.
Some other books I’ve read 5 or more times are: Clan of the Cave Bear, Anne of Green Gables, Dark Lover, Lover Awakened, The Mists of Avalon, and Morning Glory.
I was heading off to go shopping yesterday for baby formula (can I say I will be so glad when the baby can have whole milk?!), when my daughter informed me she wanted to come along. “Can I buy something?” she wanted to know. Which means, “Can I buy something from the candy aisle that will rot my teeth out and send me on a two-hour sugar high?”
I said, she needed to use money from her own bank. She disappeared upstairs and returned a few moments later. I asked how much she’d brought. She held out a handful of pennies.
Me: Um, honey, that’s not enough to buy candy. Eight cents won’t get you anything.
Her: But I have a lot!
Me: But it costs much more than that. You need at least a dollar.
Her: Oh. Well, how about this? (holds out a folded dollar bill)
Note: The last time I checked, the girl didn’t have much more than pocket change in her bank.
Me: Where did you get that?
Her: (looks guilty) Um, I found it.
Me: WHERE did you find it?
Her: (shifts feet around) In (older brother)’s bank.
Me: Does your brother know about this?
Her: No.
I explained to her that theft was not acceptable, and she had to use her own money, not her brother’s. She seemed somewhat confused about this, because after all, she FOUND the money.
It all worked out, however. Her brother decided to join us, and he was fine with giving her a dollar as long as she cleaned his room.
However, when we reached the store, my son got the idea that he wanted to buy a toy with his dollar. I let him walk through the aisles, and his jaw dropped at the prices. He couldn’t believe that the Batman toys he lusted after were $19.95 and up. Even the cheap plastic light saber was $7.95. He was nearly in tears when we left the section because he really didn’t realize how much things cost. I reminded him that he could write down the price of something he wanted, save up to buy it, and then we’d go back. Still, he was very discouraged to find out how little a dollar really is. I think it was a good lesson for him.
Pretty soon, we’ll have to figure out the whole allowance thing. I haven’t decided whether to just let him have a set amount for spending money, whether to have him do extra chores, or what. What did your parents do for you when you were growing up? Mine gave me a set allowance of around $5 a week.
You mean, there are regulations for socks now? Plain black socks won’t work? 
I’m stoked!
