More interesting than the irony of pre-cleaning your house before the maid arrives, you can find my Wednesday post at Adventures in Writing. Today, I talk about the important and beautiful word, cattywampus.

WOO WOO win a copy of that baby!

And I still have it.

by Katherine and John Bakeless

I love this book. I still read it on occasion. I believe I bought in in the fourth grade via a Scholastic school book order. I wrote my name in it several times, just to make sure everyone understood it was my book. I even wrote my phone number in it. I even took a pin and punched out my name in the back cover, in case someone who couldn’t see wanted to know who owned the book.

My oldest, of course, read it two years ago, I think. I learned to read in the third grade, not the first, as he did.

Spies of the Revolution is a well written, sometimes suspenseful look at American and British spies. If you’re a teaching parent, a used copy would be a fine addition to your library. This singular book made me very interested in US history, much more so than any other book I read/was forced to read as a child.

So there I was, dreaming about nothing in particular last night, when I happened to drive to my dream vacation home in Colorado (which, by they way, is beautiful in the late spring), and thereupon notice that my dream self has quite the assortment of firearms lying about his modest home.

Yeah, see, right there I should have known this dream wasn’t going to be pleasant.

This dream self was on vacation. Turns out I am a therapist. It’s a nice day, so I’m walking into town. I’m trying to buy cigars at the local smoke shop (don’t ask), when the proprietor asks for some counseling. The conversation goes something like this:

“Mack, Bud, I’m on vacation.”

“Ah, ok,” he said, looking troubled.

I sigh. “Tell me about it.”

“I was dreaming I was really sick, and then this voice inside my head told me to find people looking scared and bite them. That it would make me feel better.”

Ooooookkay. “So, Mack, did this voice say anything else?”

“Yeah, it said if I found people who didn’t look scared, that I should sneak up on them instead. Safer that way. What does that mean?”

“Zombie dreams are simply watching too many horror movies, Mack. If you’re taking vitamins or eating cheese before bed, you might want to avoid that. Those things can make dreams more vivid.”

“Ah, ok.”

“Did you say anything back to this voice?”

“Naw. Too busy puking out my dinner and blood. It was gross. Take the box of cigars, on the house.”

So now my friend Kevin walks up as I leave the store with my newly acquired box of goodies. Kevin looks at the box and says “score!” Apparently he was on a coffee run, because he hands me a big coffee. We start walking back to the house.

“Man, that barista was hot, but everyone knowing we’re therapists now kind of blows. She totally unloaded on me about her nightmare,” Kevin said as he rolled his eyes.

“What, did she dream about some voice whispering in her mind to bite people to make her feel better?”

Kevin stops.

“Yeah, how did you know?”

That’s when the person across the street stops walking her dog, leans over, and pukes blood.

I won’t go into the details of what happened next. Let’s just say that we didn’t have nearly enough ammunition or gas. What happened to Kevin was just about the most disgusting thing I’ve ever dreamed about. And what happened to me, well, that was worse.

Memo to self: no multivitamin before bed time. Avoid vacation homes in Colorado in the spring. And stop playing Left 4 Dead 2.

I will admit this does all sound like the start of an outline. I’ll file it away under Z for zombie.

I think of short skirts.

Oh come on, you had to have seen that coming!

I remember the first time, as a hormone-drenched teenage boy, my girlfriend wore a short skirt.

Now, as a fine American hot-blooded young man, I had an appreciation for girls in short skirts. However, short skirts should come with a warning label:

*WARNING*
IF YOU WEAR THIS
YOUR BOYFRIEND WILL
TURN INTO AN IDIOT

So there she was, prancing out of her house (this girl liked to prance), in a short skirt.

Jenny (named changed to protect the guilty): “What are you staring at?”

“Buuuh.”

“Hello? McFly?”

“Uh, sorry. That’s a great skirt.”

“Thank you!”

“Ok, you’re still staring,” she said.

At this point, I give myself a little shake. “Sorry, it’s just that, I can be sitting right by you and place my hand on your thigh and, you know, connect with actual flesh.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s like candy without the wrapper!”

“You know, I can be sitting right by you and my fist can connect with your face.”

Heh. Jenny was always the spunky one.

Anyway, where I was going with this? Oh ya: The short story contest I’m entering actually has a June deadline, not May as I mistakenly thought.

So I am still working on that sucker, which is good, because I blew past my deadline suffering through the MAN COLD.

It’s turning out to be darker than I was thinking. The short, not the cold. That’s mostly over. The cold that is.

Sadly, there are no short skirts in my short, but there is prancing.

Like the certainty of an Epic Diaper after introducing the baby to guacamole, you can find me this Wednesday at Adventures in Writing. Today I talk about research.

And snot.

But mostly about research.

Kiersten White succumbs to literary machinations in the form of 140 words a shot and admits her addiction to Twitter. As my original 4 readers of my blog can tell you (that’s half my readers, folks), I knew deep down Twitter and Kiersten were made for each other. Made.

In other news, I’m sicker than a dog. At least it’s not the flu. I’ve tried writing but I just can’t form coherent paragraphs. This short post made me want to take a nap.

Bleh. Say it with me, folks: bleh!

Not only was I sick on Sunday with a cold (the infamous MAN COLD), which still lingers in my body, I had a fever induced lucid dream in the wee hours of dawn.

I’ve talked about lucid dreaming before, where you are not a participant in some dream-world, but a in full control of your actions. On paper, this sounds good, doesn’t it?

Well, it rarely is. It is confusing and sometimes frighting. Imagine waking up, only you’re in your bed with someone who isn’t your spouse, sleeping away next to you. You are confused. Did you cheat on your spouse and don’t remember? If so, why is she still here? Is this really your spouse, and the other person some dream? Or is this some crazy nut-job who kindnaped your wife and is about to get all whacko on you?

See, I told you it wasn’t fun.

Subscribing to the nut-job theory, I got up and checked in on the kids. They were sleeping. So I went back to bed, contemplating the best way to approach this person. At this point I was sure I was dreaming.

But I wasn’t 100% sure. Eventually, I closed my eyes and “went back to sleep.”

Now, in a normal dream, a person follows along in her brain’s view of reality, like a first-person perspective movie, with little thought on what they are doing. The vivid, lucid dream is mired in rational thought.

So, when I woke up again, this is where the fun starts. Yup, that’s my wife. But am I still dreaming? If I get up and go pee, will I wet the bed? How can I tell? Basically, I had to lay there for twenty minutes, wide awake, before I could “believe” that what was around me was real.

Anyway, not much of a writing topic. Just so you know, Anthony is a little strange.

I do sometimes have a lucid dream that doesn’t contain a false awakening. I would be lying if I told you that wasn’t a little slice of dream awesome. Most of the time, unfortunately, I’m confused, and the irony of not even having my anchor available, from my last post on this subject, is not lost on me.

And this MAN COLD sucks.

I’m writing a short story. For the 8.3 followers of my blog, as you may recall, short stories are the reason why I had writer’s block for years. I sucked at it. Big time.

But, this one is turning out rather well, now that I have written four books (FOUR? FOUR!). It’s for a contest, with the only genre no-no is erotica. I read the rules and said, “I can do that.”

I have a 7,500 word limit, and I’m going to nail that sucker with some good old-fashioned charter driven sci-fi.

Who wants to read it? I’ll be done by the end off the week. Comment or send me mail.