Black swan, white wine

Sorry, ladies.

(The above is actually a pretty good book, filled with quality novellas and short stories, and Misses Datlow and Windling should in no way be blamed for the fact that I have consumed so much Black Swan Riesling tonight that my nose is numb. They are good editors. I own many of their anthologies.)

I have been absent, mostly due to the vagaries of being a married mother with a full-time job going to school-part time, whose kids keep coming down with a variety of childhood ailments and whose mother has Stage 4 cancer. The past month and a half have brought many adventures, including the following:

Action Hero can TALK. Boy, can he ever. He has moved from babbling to being able to carry on coherent conversations.

Boy Wonder can COMPLAIN. Boy, can he ever. His favorite phrase is, "No fair!" This is trotted out on nearly every occasion on which he is displeased. He cannot have a third cookie? NO FAIR. He cannot have a treat because he has spent the past half hour teasing his brother until he cries? NO FAIR. He cannot have Kool-Aid for breakfast? NO FAIR. The sky is blue? NO FAIR. He also recently said, "You have RUINED my LIFE!" (You know, I think that was also concerning Kool-Aid for breakfast.) I was not expecting that for another seven years at least.

As dinner was cooking the other night, I heard a loud popping noise coming from inside the oven, and thought What the hell? Investigation revealed that the cookie sheet, on which the Tater Tots were cooking, had bent, as cookie sheets usually do in hot ovens, so I determined that the pan had just bent unusually loudly, and wondered if we perhaps had mice too, and if one of them had been startled when I turned on the oven. As it turned out, neither was accurate*; instead, the lightbulb inside the oven had burst, and rained down slivered-glass destruction upon the Tater Tots, as I discovered when I removed them from the oven. The kids were slightly less thrilled with the carrot sticks and cucumber slices that were hastily cut up to replace the Tater Tots, but only slightly. They like carrots and cucumbers pretty well. Especially cucumbers. Boy Wonder would happily eat a garden full of salt-sprinkled cucumbers, and Action Hero just likes to eat.

Earlier this week, I was thinking, "Gosh, I never really get one-on-one time with Action Hero. He is like Boy Wonder's little sidekick." And Fate laughed. And that very night, my darling little sidekick woke up at midnight coughing his head off with a horrid attack of croup. HERE'S YOUR ONE-ON-ONE TIME RIGHT HERE, said Fate. Action Hero is doing well now, although still a touch viral and feverish. Poor dear.

Still, my children are cute, I have an astonishing GPA considering that I am a married mother working full-time and going to school part-time (thank you, reading comprehension skills), and my mother is doing quite well, considering.

Thank you for your support. Will go enjoy Riesling buzz now.

*KNOCK ON WOOD. Loudly, and with great vigor.