Humour

Making A List

No, I’m not making a list, like a grocery list, or a checklist of tiny furniture I need to buy at the Miniatures Fair I’m going to later, or an excel spreadsheet of all my clocks—the list I’m talking about is a very prestigious longlist. The longlist for a humour competition I recently wrote about where my entry was number 69 on THAT list, which I found hilarious but everyone else was too mature to snicker at. Yes, to my absolute shock and delight, my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do was selected for the Leacock Memorial Medal For Humour longlist! That book, based on this little blog, was found worthy of being long-listed beside well-known Canadian funny people like Rick Mercer! (If you’re not Canadian, you might not know who that is, but trust me, he’s hilarious).

I knew that the longlist was being announced last Tuesday, and I hadn’t heard anything at all. I wasn’t sure if they let people know ahead of time, so I messaged a friend who had been longlisted twice in the past and he assured me that people only found out when the announcement was made. I don’t know if that was REALLY an assurance because then I was like, great, another week before I find out I didn’t make the cut. Then on Tuesday morning, I was getting ready to go shopping, and my email alert went off. The subject line said “2024 Leacock Medal Long List Announced”. I reluctantly opened it, wondering which big names in Canadian humour had gotten this accolade, and I squinted at it because I couldn’t find the several many pairs of reading glasses that I have scattered around the house but can never seem to find in a pinch. Then my squinty eyes widened as I saw what looked like my name. And I say, “looked like my name” because it WAS my name but it was spelled incorrectly—instead of Craig-Whytock, it said “Craig-Whytack”. But the name of my book was alongside it, and with sudden jawdropping surprise, I realized that I was actually ON the longlist. I felt faint. So I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken:

Me: Oh my god oh my god!
Ken: What? Are you okay? What happened?!
Me: I made the longlist for the Leacock!!
Ken: What?! That’s amazing!
Me: I think I’m going to cry!

But it was real. And then my daughter sent me a CBC article where my name was mentioned (spelled correctly, thanks, national broadcaster) and it started to sink in. And when it did, I was faced with another horrifying realization: people were going to read my book, and what if no one else thought it was funny, and everybody was like “Why the hell did they pick this piece of crap?” and “Wow, this lady is superweird” and “She has way too many clocks” and “She used the word f*ck 39 times in one book!” As Yoda would say, “The imposter syndrome is strong with this one.”

But the best part of all this is that I got an email from their director of communications yesterday (and yes, my name was still spelled incorrectly even though I’d told them, and even though they’d apologized, but I said ‘Don’t worry, it’s just an honour to be on the longlist’) offering me STICKERS to put on my book covers. GOLD STICKERS (well, they call them bronze but they look gold to me). Is there anything better than stickers? Even the word is the best: sticker sticker sticker sticker. The finalists, who are announced on May 21, get even nicer stickers and while I know I won’t make the finals, it would be cool if I did because the grand prize is $25 000 and the two runners-up get five grand each, and you can only imagine what I would spend some of that money on (hint: tick tock).

‘Excellence in Canadian humour’–find it here, folks. Sticker sticker sticker sticker…

It’s The Little Things Part 2; Online Launch Party for Charybdis!

The link to the online launch party for Charybdis is at the end of this post, so if you don’t want any humorous content first, you can skip right down to the end, but trust me, you’ll be missing some hilarious sh*t.

Anyway, it’s been another quiet week with a couple of notable exceptions. First…THAT BUG IS BACK. Yes, I woke up on Tuesday morning to another notification that there had been movement detected on my kitchen camera at 2 o’clock in the morning, and yes, it was that same bug. How long do house centipedes LIVE? Is this guy the Methuselah of insects?! And what the hell is he eating?! I looked it up and according to the google, house centipedes eat OTHER ANTHROPODS, which is so cannibalistic and creepy but then again, I’m not surprised that something that looks like the alien in ALIEN eats insect flesh. But then the article I read went on to say that if you have frequent sightings of house centipedes, “this indicates that some prey arthropod is in abundance, and may signify a greater problem than the presence of the centipedes” and OH MY GOD DOES THIS MEAN THERE ARE MORE FREAKY INSECTS IN MY HOUSE?!!  Then again, the sighting hasn’t been “frequent”—it’s only the one leggy dude waving at us like “Hey, just haunting your kitchen AND your dreams” so hopefully he’ll run out of food soon.

But the other thing is that I’ve definitely gone down the rabbit hole of miniatures, because a couple of weeks ago, I was at the antique market and I found a bag of vintage dollhouse furniture and a tiny voice in my head whispered, “Buy it. You know you want it. You can do something cool with it.” So I DID buy it and then it sat on the breakfast room table for 2 weeks until Ken whispered, “I can build you a box to put this doll furniture in” which he did. And suddenly, I became a fanatical miniaturist, and I created an entire “Antique Store Office Sanctuary” which now I want to live in and if I could only shrink myself down to 1/12” size, I would totally do it, just to live in my tiny room. Here it is, and I adore it so much:

The Persian rug is actually a mouse pad and I got all the tiny books from Amazon. I already had the Antique storefront from some wall art that I cut apart, and the wallpaper came from a book that I had bought years ago full of William Morris style wrapping paper that I podged on, and I had the trim and created the ‘paintings’ and HOLY SH*T I’m becoming obsessed and I really want to make more miniature rooms, but we all know what happened with the clock fixation, am I right?

In other news, I’m over 8 chapters into my new book “Nomads of the Modern Wasteland”, which centres on a group of people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic future, woven together by the poetry of TS Eliot. It’s actually going to be a novella, which is a mini book, so that tracks.

Also, the book launch for Charybdis is on May 26th in person, but if you’re a friend of mine who’d like to celebrate with me but you have NO WAY of coming to Ontario, Canada, my publisher has very graciously set up an online celebration for June 1 and you can register here–it’s FREE!: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/charybdis-by-suzanne-craig-whytock-launch-party-tickets-884105522417?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=1

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Well, I guess the most exciting thing that happened last week was the eclipse. And it WAS truly exciting, I have to say. Ken and I drove to my aunt’s boyfriend’s place (it’s always so weird to say ‘boyfriend’ when people are in their late 60s, isn’t it, like he’s not A BOY, he’s a grown-ass man with grandkids, but I digress) and the whole fam had gathered to witness the event. I’d ordered those special glasses from Amazon, and I checked very carefully to make sure that they were legit and not going to render us all blind (as a side note, one of the larger towns near here ordered eclipse glasses also off Amazon and then had to recall them when they found out that they were knock-offs and not approved by NASA or whatnot but mine WERE and it’s been almost a week and I still haven’t gone blind). When we woke up on Monday morning, it was quite cloudy and Ken was being his typical gloom and doom self, going on about ‘cloud cover’ and wind speed and ‘chance of precipitation’ like the Weather Channel was paying him to give me his opinion, but I would not be dissuaded. “It’s going to be perfect,” I said, with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who has never given a sh*t whether or not she was wrong about anything.

We left shortly after lunch to drive down to the lake, and on the way, there was blue sky on the horizon. “See,” I said. “It will be FINE.” I said this with all the confidence of a late-middle-aged woman who recently ran outside and across her front lawn in the pouring rain in her stocking feet and screamed “Get the f*ck of my street!” to an asshole in a pick-up truck who was trying to deface our Pride crosswalk by doing a burn-out on it. I got photographs of the truck AND his license plate—the jury is still out on whether or not the cops will do anything about it. Also, we had to leave Atlas behind, and a friend was going to give him lunch and let him out, but I had to message her and remind her not to let him out between 2:30 and 3:30 because he’s such a dope that he’d probably stare at it barking until his retinas burned out. She responded by sending us this picture of him on the couch, safely relaxing in the house:

At any rate, the closer we got to the lake, the more sporadic the cloud cover was, which filled me with incredible optimism. We arrived and hugged the family—Mom and Dad were there, along with my other aunt, and a couple of friends. We had snacks and wine, because what the hell is the point of watching a phenomenon of nature without ‘nature’s more fun grape juice’, and then sat on the deck. Waiting. It was still cloudy. The eclipse was supposed to start around 2:30 pm and right around then, the wind picked up and the clouds began to move. By 3 pm, the skies were blue and clear. We all had our glasses on, breathless with anticipation and freaking out that the clouds would return—but THEY DIDN’T, KEN, JUST LIKE I SAID.

It was an awe-inspiring moment. I’ve never in my lifetime seen a total solar eclipse and holy sh*t, let me tell you, it was worth the wait. And the best part was that Ken had his really good camera, and he got some amazing shots:

Don’t Blink Or You’ll Miss It

Last weekend, the local Lions Club had a charity auction. It was pretty good as auctions go, especially since a lot of area businesses donated brand new items. I bid on a few things, like some Lego for Kate and a bunch of old spindles that I told Ken he could use for outdoor woodcrafts. Then the auctioneer put up a new Blink home security system. We already have a Blink camera in the kitchen that I use when Ken’s away overnight. It’s hidden inside something (I refuse to be more specific, but I promise we never use it when we’re home with other people and I can assure you that I have never forgotten to turn it off and then been mortified at a notification featuring a clip of me dancing around the kitchen island while I cook), and unless the lights are on at night, it won’t pick up any movement that triggers the camera.

Anyway, I bid on the security system and got it for a really good price. So on Thursday night, after researching and reading the instructions and getting the exterior cameras set up, Ken mounted them outside the house on either side of our porch. That’s when I realized that when I armed them, it would also turn on the kitchen camera. But that’s okay, I thought, since there’s nothing in our kitchen at night. And then I woke up on Friday morning to TWO notifications that the kitchen camera had been triggered around 3 am and there were video clips and OH MY GOD, YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT I SAW WHEN I REPLAYED THEM.

And if you know me at all, you’re most likely thinking that it was a ghost. And you would be wrong. IF ONLY it was a ghost, because it was not.

Take a second and try to guess what it could have possibly been. I’ll wait...

Here is what I saw on the screen of my phone, and I really hope you can watch it:

sheer-terrorDownload

H. R. Giger has nothing on this thing and all I know is that it’s still in my kitchen somewhere and I will never be able to dance there again…

In other news, my new novel Charybdis is getting excellent reviews–here’s one by the Founding Editor of a prominent Canadian review site, The Miramichi Reader. Being compared to Edgar Allen Poe made me scream almost as much as when I saw what was on my kitchen camera:

Things ‘To-Do’

Earlier this week, I looked at my list of things to do, and realized I hadn’t yet booked the hall for my book launch for Charybdis. We’ll be doing a Zoom launch with my wonderful publisher, JC Studio Press in the UK, but I’ll also be doing an in-person launch for family and friends towards the end of May. So, as I said, I looked at my to-do list and then promptly forgot about it because a to-do list is only valuable when you’re actually looking right at it, and I probably should have a to-do list in my car that says ‘Look at your to-do list’ because that’s where I was when I suddenly remembered that I had NOT, in fact, called the hall in Princeton. Princeton, Ontario. And I specify that for reasons which will shortly become clear.

I was in my car, driving (and I don’t know why I needed to specify THAT because what else would I be doing in my car—reading?) and I was super-excited because I had just gotten an email from Value Village offering me 40% off on accessories and that, of course, includes purses, and I’ve been doing very well lately in the fancy purse resale market, and if I sell enough purses, I can justify keeping a couple of the really nice ones, right? But suddenly I had an epiphany about calling the hall, and even though you’re not allowed, I was on a deserted back road so I got out my phone and googled Princeton and District Museum and Archives. It should be noted at this point that I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses, but I wasn’t SUPPOSED to be reading (note: this set of circumstances apparently negates my previous sarcastic comment about reading in the car quite devastatingly, doesn’t it?) and I saw the number to call and I hit the button, activating my car phone. The phone rang and rang, then someone picked up:

Man (groggily): Hello…?
Me: Hi…is this the Princeton Museum?
Man: Yes, but we don’t open until 10. You’re calling a little outside opening hours.

At this point, I was confused. It was 11 am. Was he drunk? Because he sounded drunk.

Me: Okay. Anyway, I was in the library branch yesterday and the librarian told me if I wanted to book the museum for my book launch, I’d have to call because your hours are hit and miss.
Man: We’re open every day, 10 to 4.

Now, I was even more confused. I know for a fact that the museum is NOT open every day—in fact, I was there yesterday and it was NOT open. But the man was obviously drunk so…

Me: I had a book launch there last year, and I’d love to book the museum again—everybody loved the space so much.
Man: You had a book launch here last year? What’s your name?

I told him my name.

Man: I don’t recall that. You say it was last year?
Me: Yes. We used the theatre space and the hall. When would be the best time for me to come by and pay for the rental? I’m just heading to Brantford right now so if you’re there until 4, I could be there around 2.
Man: Brantford?
Me (thinking, Wow, this dude is HAMMERED): Yeah, just up the road. Like literally 20 minutes from Princeton?
Man: Where are you calling from? Like, what province? Because I’m in British Columbia…
Me: WHAT?! I’m in Ontario.
Man: So on the other side of the continent then? I don’t think you’ll be able to make it by 2.

Can you believe that there’s actually ANOTHER place also called the Princeton and District Museum and Archives in this country? Yeah, I’d called a town in a time zone 3 hours behind my own, so no wonder he sounded so groggy—I’d probably woken him up, although why the museum man was even answering the museum phone from his own bed is anyone’s guess. And then I compounded my lack of geographical knowledge when I told Ken about it:

Me: And then he said he was on the other side of the ‘continent’. What a dummy—I think he meant COUNTRY, lol.
Ken: You know we’re part of the continent of North America, right?
Me: Look at these cool purses I got today.

At any rate, ‘call Princeton Museum in Ontario’ is still on my to-do list.

In other news, Charybdis is out in the world and so far it’s been getting excellent reviews so thank you to everyone who’d taken the time to give it some stars or say something nice about it—it means the world to me!



Lost In Translation

You may remember that Ken and I recently turned part of our house into a space for a Writer’s Retreat and it turned out beautifully. But the one thing I really wanted, the secret library door, had proven to be logistically not possible. The weight of the books alone would make the door possibly pull off its hinges, and other options, like buying books and cutting them down so only the spines were attached was financially not feasible. But then I was on Amazon and saw this amazing wallpaper/sticker type deal that looked like books on a shelf and was long enough that it could be simply stuck to the door, giving the illusion of a bookshelf that would hide the entrance to the library/writing room. I ordered it and it arrived last week. It was in a long tube, so I unrolled it. You may be shocked to learn that it wasn’t quite what I expected.

Me: Those books are REALLY big, like bigger than what a book should be.
Ken: They didn’t look that big in the Amazon picture.
Me: I don’t know if this is going to fool anyone.
Ken: I can always put molding on it to make it seem like there are real shelves…

Some of the books had plain spines, but some of them had titles. And then I started looking closely at the book titles…

Me: What kind of book title is this? ‘Tales Of Homeopathic Gherkin’?!
Ken: This one says, ‘Conquest and Mushroom’. I don’t think these are real books.
Me: I’m inclined to agree.

The titles of the books were all, with one exception, absolutely bizarre, like someone had taken perfectly normal book titles and then translated them into another language, and then translated them back, like the way the movie Twister was translated into Run! Run! Cloudzilla! in Chinese . The one exception was King of Darkness, which could very well be someone’s take on Lord of the Flies or Dracula or something like that. But I thought, just in case anyone asked, that I should have a synopsis of each of these books so that we wouldn’t take any flack for our cheap and obviously reverse-translated weird-ass secret library wall. So here are the books that grace the entrance to the writing retreat, and here’s what they’re about:

1) Tales of Homeopathic Gherkin

This charming collection of stories focuses on a young man in a bit of a pickle after eschewing traditional medicine in favour of herbal remedies. That is, until he comes across Sally Zucchini, an Italian naturopath who shows him the joys of a good brine bath. It’s a truly ‘dill’-ightful read.

2) Brave Slipper

Brave Slipper is the story of ‘the other slipper’—the one Prince Charming DIDN’T try to jam on Cinderella’s foot. Alone and bereft of her partner, the crystalline orphan embarks on a rescue mission to save her sibling from being ground up, melted, and turned into a bong.

3) Conquest and Mushroom

Speaking of bongs, this fun romp centres on a troop of conquistadors who experience a group hallucination after imbibing some homeopathic fungi. Believing that they are now famous disco dancers, they take the world by storm with their ‘hustle’.

4) Spell Ingredients

I-N-G-R-E-D-I-E-N-T-S

5) Dawn Fly Stuff

In the vein of Apocalypse Now, this intense war retrospective was made famous by the line, “There’s nothing like the smell of RAID in the morning.”

6) Sapphire of Magical Sniper

Raised in a small village on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, Steve The Sorcerer finds fame when he discovers the Holy Sapphire of Sparta. Using its magical powers to destroy his enemies, mostly other two-bit magicians and by destroy, we mean reveal how they do their card tricks, Steve becomes known as the Magical Sniper (and also, ‘that dick, Steve’). Until the Sapphire is stolen by his arch-nemesis, Vlad the Impersonator, a pseudo-magician slash ventriloquist who hides the precious gemstone in his dummy, also named Steve. When Steve goes missing (the dummy, not the dick), the whole world of magic is in an uproar. Will Steve be found in time to help Vlad get on Canada’s Got Talent? Stay tuned!

7) 2037

The year is 2037. Suzanne finally has her secret library room…

Cat In The Hat

A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law messaged me. She was out shopping and had picked up a book that she thought I would like. “What kind of book?” I asked. She sent me a photo of herself holding it. The picture was a little out of focus, but it was a cat. The cat was wearing a hat. “It’s a book about making hats for cats,” she responded. How cool is that? I thought. I can learn how to crochet, or knit or something. Maybe I could make a bunch of hats and sell them at the market. I’m no stranger to the textile arts, if you may recall, having halfway completed a patchwork quilt for my daughter before giving up completely and letting my neighbour finish it. And when I was a teenager, I knit myself not only a scarf, but also a whole sweater. It took months, but I did it, and now, I could see myself in the wing chair by the fire, merrily making head cozies for kitties.

And then yesterday, my brother and my nephew came for a quick visit.

Nephew: Hi, Auntie Susu. Mom said to give you this.
Me: Oh, my cat hat book! I can’t wait to start knitting little cat hats.
Nephew: Uh…I don’t think you knit them.

He pointed to the cover. There, above the very large title Hats For Cats: How To Craft Fetching Headgear For Your Feline Friends, was a much smaller title that read “Cat-Hair”. The book is “Cat-Hair Hats For Cats”. Yes, the entire book, all 136 pages of it, was how to design and create hats for your cat using their own cat hair—collecting it, rolling it up, and then shaping into…hats. For your cat. The authors of the book describe themselves as a “fun-loving couple from Japan” who use the hair from their two cats to make hats and then make their cats wear their own hair as fashion accessories. Except one of their cats died 4 years ago, and they still use his hats and put them on other cats’ heads, which I suppose is no different from a human wearing a human hair wig, the hair from which belonged to someone who died, which I imagine happens more than we would care to know about. The introduction to the book ends with the statement “Making these hats has become our life’s work”. According to the book, they’ve made more than 160 hats to date, and all I can say about that is HOW MUCH HAIR DO YOUR CATS LOSE?!

There are several chapters, including ‘Animal Hats: Transform your cat into different animals’, like cows, elephants, and koala bears. There are Birthday Hats, Graduation Hats, Holiday Hats, and one called The Coonskin Hat, like it’s not bad enough that you’re putting your cat’s own dead hair on its own head, but now you’re shaping it like roadkill?

But the best section was Character Hats, with the perennial favourite and everyone’s obvious choice: Amelia Earhart, a hat with aviator goggles made out of cat hair with the recommendation that you can finish the outfit off with a jaunty red scarf.

And I’m not trying to make fun of this book (well, maybe just a little), because it’s obvious that the people who put it together WORSHIP their cats, and to be honest, after going through this entire book, it IS kind of adorable in its own weird way. Just like me. And now, since I no longer have a cat, I’ll need to go to my neighbours’ houses on a pretense and secretly brush their cats because The Princess Leia is something no cat can live without.

Ho F*cking Ho

Not Today, Satan; Things My Mother Left Behind Release!

This week, I had to get blood taken. I absolutely hate having that done, but my new family doctor wanted to do benchmark bloodwork before Christmas and it showed that my cholesterol was slightly elevated:

Me: What would cause that?
Doc: Mostly diet.
Me: Ahem…does drinking wine cause high cholesterol?
Doc: No, not really.
Me (internally VERY relieved): I’m prepared to cut any food out of my diet that I need to.

Turns out that the foods she identified were potatoes, salmon, steak, rice, and pasta (even the gluten-free kind). So yes, literally ALL the things I like to eat. She recommended the Mediterranean diet, and I’ve been trying to follow it, but there’s only so much chicken and quinoa a girl can eat. Otherwise, I eat pretty healthy foods and thinking more about it, that’s a complete lie and I should be surprised that my cholesterol isn’t worse. So anyway, on Thursday, I went to the lab to get blood taken.

Lab Tech: When was the last time you ate?
Me: About 45 minutes ago. I had fries from McDonald’s and a Pepsi. Considering this is a cholesterol test, that wasn’t a great idea…
Lab Tech: Haha. NO.

I rolled up my sleeve and turned my head, and when the needle went in it really hurt. I looked back and the tech had a perturbed look on his face, and then I remembered that he was taking blood from my right forearm, you know, the one with the words THE SEVENTH DEVIL splashed across it underneath devil eyes.

Me: I should probably explain—it’s the title of a book…I mean a book that I wrote…it’s not about Satan worship or anything…well, there are demons in it…anyway, I have one on my other arm too!

I showed him my left forearm and The Dome tattoo which graces it but he still didn’t seem convinced. He just muttered, “Okay,” and then handed me a cotton ball to stop the bleeding. In retrospect, perhaps the bulk of my lower arm wasn’t the best place to get a large devil tattoo as I’ve had to explain it on more than one occasion to a medical professional holding a large needle. And to add insult to injury, I got my lab results back yesterday and my cholesterol is STILL high–not quite as high as before, but still slightly higher than it should be. Screw you, quinoa. (Although I actually like quinoa, so maybe I just need to cut out the Mickey D’s).

In other news, Baxter House Editions has just released its second publication: the gorgeous poetry collection Things My Mother Left Behind by Susan Richardson. Susan writes the blog Stories from the Edge of Blindness and hosts a phenomenal weekly podcast called A Thousand Shades of Green. Things My Mother Left Behind is about the undeniable connections between love and grief, joy and pain. It is an exploration of one woman’s journey through the loss of loved ones, loss of sight, loss of control and innocence. It is about escaping into darkness and discovering light.

You can buy it here!

Battle of the Build; Cover Reveal for Charybdis

As you may remember, last week I completed a miniature book nook, and I enjoyed it so much that I ordered another. It was a gothic-style library, and I was super-excited when it arrived. That excitement quickly faded to perplexity when I realized it was from a different company with VERY different expectations. Instead of stickers, it was just paper that I was supposed to glue to the little pieces of wood. Okay, I thought. I can buy some glue. Because the kit didn’t COME with glue. I went out the next day and bought white glue and a glue stick, just to be on the safe side. After I got home, I took everything else out of the box, and looked at the instructions more closely, and they were very weird. It was like if you asked a Roman General to create directions for assembly based on his life experience. Here’s the first example, on the cover page:

“The actual object will PREVAIL”? Am I in a battle to the death with this thing?!

The next set of instructions on the inside page was equally ominous:

 Bad enough that this thing might STAB me, if I fight back, I lose my rights and interests? Do I need a lawyer watching me put it together, just in case? My brother, who has a PhD., is a lawyer—perhaps I should invite him over for wine and a quick skirmish

I finally started to assemble everything, beginning with several stacks of tiny books. It was starting to get minorly enjoyable, because they DID look like tiny books even if the covers were photocopies of bizarre books that made no sense in the context; for example, a cover with an electric guitar on it. But just as my stacks were almost complete, I was forced to get violent as per this instruction:

“Make it open”? You’re god*amn right Imma make it OPEN! I was really getting into the spirit of things now. The build progressed and things got infinitely more difficult as I had to glue tiny pieces of wood onto other tiny pieces of wood and then let them dry. And I’m not the most patient person in the world so I learned about letting things DRY COMPLETELY the hard way. But letting things dry completely was a double-edged sword, as I discovered:

Ken: *snickers*
Me: What are you laughing at?
Ken: Nothing. *snickers again*
Me: Seriously, what’s so funny?!
Ken: No, really…haha!
Me: WHAT?!!
Ken: See the world map that you glued to the wall?
Me: So?
Ken: You glued it on upside down.
Me: WHAT? Oh no! And it’s completely dry! Why did you have to tell me, dammit?
Ken: YOU MADE ME.

Okay, so we all know that geography isn’t my strong suit and you have to look REALLY hard to see the map. Finally though, I was nearing the end, covered in glue, clamps and elastic bands everywhere, and all I had to do was attach the lights to the ceiling and close it all up. Except that the instructions were wrong and it took me two tries, getting the light attached twice and realizing twice that they were the wrong way. And then:

I DID, you aggressive Praetorian. See, this is why the Roman Empire fell. Terrible instructions.

In other news, my new novel Charybdis will be coming out soon, thanks to my wonderful publisher Jane Cornwell and JC Studio Press. Here’s the cover reveal, and it’s amazing!

Synopsis: When Greta Randall stumbles across a rare volume of Victorian poetry in a local antique market, she could never have imagined that it would take her on a  journey through time. The secrets she discovers along the way may shed light on the book’s mysterious young author, Louisa Duberger, but at what peril?

Ring A Ding Ding

Last Monday, I was getting ready for work. The last step is usually to put on all my rings before I head out the door. I love rings—I wear them on five different fingers and both thumbs (great for drumming along to songs on my steering wheel) and I’d like to wear them on all my fingers but I think we all agree that would be overkill. Most of them are sterling silver bands of different types, and over the years, Ken has treated me to a couple of Tiffany’s sterling bands, which are my pride and joy. So I was putting on my rings, and I fumbled the last one. It fell, hit the edge of the cupboard, landed on the floor and rolled towards the kitchen island. “Ah damn!” I muttered as I dropped to my knees, just as the ring disappeared under the edge of the island. But the island has skirting board surrounding it, so I wasn’t too concerned—just scoop it back up and put it on, right? But when I peered under the edge of the island, it was nowhere to be seen. I was perplexed—had it careened off the skirting board and ended up somewhere else? Time was getting tight—I never leave for work a second before I have to, and any delay will make me very late. So I did what any normal person would do—I yelled for Ken:

Me: I need help!
Ken (loping down from upstairs): What’s wrong?
Me: My ring—the one that looks like a laurel wreath—rolled under the island and now it’s gone. Can you help me look?

He looked under the island and couldn’t see it either. Then he scoured the kitchen with me, shaking out rugs, moving aside furniture—no ring. He pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight to look under the island again.

Ken: There’s a hole under here from when we moved the sink to the other end.
Me: THAT hole? No way it’s big enough for a ring to fall down. I mean what are the chances that a ring could roll across the floor in a perfect line towards that hole and then manage to fall down it without getting stuck? (Puts finger in hole) See, my finger barely fits and I’m doing it on purpose. A ghost took it. That’s the only explanation. I have to go to work—can you stand in the middle of the kitchen and yell “Give it back!” for me?
Ken: The hole goes down into the basement. I’ll take a look and call you if I see it.

On the drive to work, I was pretty distraught. It was one of my favourite rings and fairly expensive, and after about ten minutes, I pre-emptively called Ken.

Me: Did you find it?
Ken: Maybe…
Me: Where are you?
Ken: The basement. You know the old cistern down there? I think I see something glinting in the far corner of it.
Me: Oh no! How can we get it out?
Ken: The only thing I can do is climb up over the wall and crawl into the cistern.
Me: What?! Wait until I get home.
Ken: No, it’s okay. Give me a minute—I need a broom to sweep away all the cobwebs and then I’ll get the ladder. I’ll call you back.
Me: I’m not hanging up until you’re out of the cistern!

And then he put the phone in his pocket. I could hear the muffled sounds of him moving around, the ladder being brought into the house, and then a lot of clanging and grunting. Then “I got it!”

Me: It WAS my ring?! OMG. Wait, are you out of the cistern yet?
Ken: No, I put my phone on the ledge. I must have been in here before because there’s a milk crate by the wall that I can stand on to get out. Give me a sec…sh*t, I’m stuck!
Me: What?!! Hang on honey, I’m turning around and coming home!
Ken (laughing): Just kidding. I’m out. And I have your ring. I can’t believe it fell through that tiny hole and ended up in the cistern. Good job it was dry.

Good job, indeed. And now, I can never get mad at him again. I mean, he CRAWLED INTO A COBWEBBY BASEMENT CISTERN for me.

In other news, since Ken and I both got so invested in the miniatures show I told you about last week, for Valentine’s Day, Ken got me one of those Book Nook kits and let me tell you—it’s the best thing ever. This one is a little bookstore, and we just finished building it. It’s quite addictive–in fact, I’ve already ordered another one, and if things go well, I might be auditioning for Best In Miniature Season 4.