Copied book blurb:
Where you ever in Quebec ? Were you ever responsible for a yard sale, for a bake sale or for the resale of overly ambitious hedgehogs? Even if not, join the celebration taking place in Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting of junk mail-fashioned sculptures, of hungry, angry, riotous quolls and of shiny, acrylic pantsuits. As you turn this book’s pages, you are invited to sigh, to pout and to otherwise chortle in unison with KJ Hannah Greenberg as she tells tales about raising modern children.
In Oblivious to the Obvious, the joys of nay saying gothic nail polish and the horrors of encountering roosting lizards are explicated. Children who argue over their portion of motel rooms, siblings who fight over car seats and youngsters who go into battle over whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher all are included.
In this book, family life is not merely one mom’s experience of shouting down the hall to demand that the kids lessen the decibels issuing from their stereos, Ipods, and stringed, electric instruments nor is it merely one mom’s exploration of teenagers’ uncanny fashion sense, of nursing toddlers’ surprising schedules or of elementary school children’s notions about how to construct good sandwiches (marshmallow fluff coupled with pickles chips ranks fairly high on such lists). Rather, Oblivious to the Obvious is also concerned with nodding at broken heaters, at flooding toilets and at scores of uninvited visitors, both human and multi-legged in nature.
Sit back and laugh as Hannah chooses, daily, between five minutes of sleep and hot water for her shower, as her furballs succeed in reigning supreme, except for when they knock over her antiques, and as her family’s craft materials breed faster than do most of her dust bunnies. Smile, too when Hannah’s children discover that there’s no more ketchup in her entire house or when they realize that the singular piece of athletic gear brother needs for a sporting event has already been absconded with by sister for a drama presentation.
It’s not remarkable to be possessed of a husband, of a bevy of children, of a home, and of a job. Sadly, however, it’s becoming increasingly rare to be able to beam about such assemblages. Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting can bring that solace back, can help you work your smile muscles and can aid you in stretching what’s left of your sanity.
Join Hannah in frenetic her romp through exhausted printer ribbons, busted vacuum cleaners, and tuckered out grandparents. Find your inner oven mitt, retrace your report card traumas, and laugh, just a little, over lice, brown rice, and the nice things most of us tend to say about smelly, sticky babies.
Oblivious to the Obvious will not get your kids to bed on time, will not remind your husband to leave you love notes, and will not cause your employer to give you a raise or to stop asking you to make coffee. Oblivious to the Obvious will, however, help you express amusement at such small things.
Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting is available now! Please visit Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting! for excerpts or go directly to Amazon to order.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
A House Divided
I'm trying to complete rewrites on my Science In My Fiction entry. I am also trying to keep little Mowgli under some control or at least observation. He's determined to crawl after the dogs, the cat, and any fancy that strikes him. I'm determined to produce a good story.
The story, however, is nearly as recalcitrant as the baby. Half of it is now in past tense, half in present, with switches in mid-paragraph. Since new sentences tend to be in present, I'm trying out the whole story that way; if it stinks, I'll try all-past. Plotwise, it's almost where I want it but I can't seem to see what it needs when the file is open, only when it is closed -- and then when I look for where to put the new bits, there's no such place.
The story is also supposed to have links to new scientific events which have inspired it. There are plenty of those, as I am something of a science nerd, but the roots go deeper than that. When I was eight, I was torn between becoming a veterinarian or a meteorologist (yes, always something of a science nerd). Or, of course, maybe a writer. This story has some of both of those, back when I was blissfully unaware of all the dreadful things vets sometimes have to do, back when climate change was a rumor instead of something every yahoo what's had a drop of rain fall on his head has an opinion about. At least when someone ventures an opinion on some story of mine, I can be confident they've probably read some other ones by other people as well.
Maybe that's why this story is turning out to be difficult. It requires research, but most of my stories either require it or come from it spontaneously. It's in a new voice, but what fun is a story in the same old one? But it also comes more from my own past and present than most, and is at the same time about the end of the world. This is a most uncomfortable literary apocalypse, then.
But enough grumbling. I must go recover the baby from the next room before he does something dreadful.
The story, however, is nearly as recalcitrant as the baby. Half of it is now in past tense, half in present, with switches in mid-paragraph. Since new sentences tend to be in present, I'm trying out the whole story that way; if it stinks, I'll try all-past. Plotwise, it's almost where I want it but I can't seem to see what it needs when the file is open, only when it is closed -- and then when I look for where to put the new bits, there's no such place.
The story is also supposed to have links to new scientific events which have inspired it. There are plenty of those, as I am something of a science nerd, but the roots go deeper than that. When I was eight, I was torn between becoming a veterinarian or a meteorologist (yes, always something of a science nerd). Or, of course, maybe a writer. This story has some of both of those, back when I was blissfully unaware of all the dreadful things vets sometimes have to do, back when climate change was a rumor instead of something every yahoo what's had a drop of rain fall on his head has an opinion about. At least when someone ventures an opinion on some story of mine, I can be confident they've probably read some other ones by other people as well.
Maybe that's why this story is turning out to be difficult. It requires research, but most of my stories either require it or come from it spontaneously. It's in a new voice, but what fun is a story in the same old one? But it also comes more from my own past and present than most, and is at the same time about the end of the world. This is a most uncomfortable literary apocalypse, then.
But enough grumbling. I must go recover the baby from the next room before he does something dreadful.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Testing -- Facebook link
I'm also trying to get more people into the Travelers' Tales group, so if you want to follow my latest writing and publishing news, please join!
Chasing the Baby
On The MoveThe baby is teething, crawling, kneeling, sitting, and doing his darnedest in the standing and walking departments. He's eight and a half months old, mind you, and I keep telling him there's no hurry. He disagrees. What he's not doing much of is sleeping.
In the course of writing that last paragraph, I pulled him out of a corner, sent him after a push-and-go toy, and...
and recovered a stray kibble of dog food from his grabby little fingers. It's no wonder I'm not posting much! Anyway, in the near-ish future, look for announcements regarding an online buddy's book, a review of my camera, and other such news.
Meanwhile, though, I will announce my own book, or rather ebook. Half-Sick of Shadows is now out at Shadowfire Press. I feel odd calling an ebook publisher a "Press," as nothing is pressed except perhaps time.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Where Have I Been?
It's been a busy couple of weeks. Shadowfire Press picked up a set of stories I've been working on for some time, and the first will be coming out May 21. For those of you looking at your calendars, yes, that is SOON. Half-Sick of Shadows will be available in ebook format, and soon after, perhaps, the rest.
This means that for the last few days I've been working on art request forms, taglines, and the like. For whatever reason, a fifteen-word tagline is much harder to write than an 18,000 word story. It comes off cryptic, or inadequate, or dull, or too much like a fortune cookie. The author bio is even worse, or at least it is if you've lived a writer's life: baking bagels, training dogs and shoveling kennels, flipping burgers, adjunct teaching, periodicals checkin at the library, and so on. I tend to think that a bit of variety feeds the muse. The muse may, at this point, get indigestion.
The little fellow is fine, though. He wallows around on (and off) a blanket on the floor, attempts to eat my laptop, swats at keys, and generally makes himself helpful. He's getting interested in Cheerios now, though has not yet worked out the art of putting them in his mouth himself. He'll eat them from my fingers. He's grabbing at them happily. The bridge will eventually connect here to there. I'm now finding that babies are crawling into all my short story efforts.
This means that for the last few days I've been working on art request forms, taglines, and the like. For whatever reason, a fifteen-word tagline is much harder to write than an 18,000 word story. It comes off cryptic, or inadequate, or dull, or too much like a fortune cookie. The author bio is even worse, or at least it is if you've lived a writer's life: baking bagels, training dogs and shoveling kennels, flipping burgers, adjunct teaching, periodicals checkin at the library, and so on. I tend to think that a bit of variety feeds the muse. The muse may, at this point, get indigestion.
The little fellow is fine, though. He wallows around on (and off) a blanket on the floor, attempts to eat my laptop, swats at keys, and generally makes himself helpful. He's getting interested in Cheerios now, though has not yet worked out the art of putting them in his mouth himself. He'll eat them from my fingers. He's grabbing at them happily. The bridge will eventually connect here to there. I'm now finding that babies are crawling into all my short story efforts.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Happy Earth Day, Dear Mowgli
I just signed up for Boobquake on Facebook. Earthquakes have been on my mind lately -- and probably a good many other people's as well -- and it's both a good experiment and a good excuse to wear something low-cut. Unfortunately, we have a design flaw in the experiment, namely, that there are so darned many earthquakes lately that it'll be hard to separate signal from noise.
Recently I was watching TV while nursing the little one. This happens a lot; he tends to keep my hands too full to do much of use, so I try to put it on something educational for one or both of us. This particular time, I was learning about the last great ice age and glaciation, and that the mass of ice on the center of North America was sufficient to bend the continental plate, heaving up such features as Florida.
You know. Nothing big. Just Florida.
Then we had a nice run of quakes and volcanic eruptions all over the place. This sort of thing makes me thoughtful, and that's like the TV-watching. There's more time for it these days when I'm pinned under a breast-feeding baby. Eventually I wiggled free and played with Google. You can get some very interesting scholarly papers from 2006 or so predicting that decreased glacier mass would cause reduced downward pressure on continental tectonic plates and therefore more volcanic eruptions and more earthquakes.
I noticed that the first few results said nothing about the corresponding increase in pressure on the oceanic plates. Granted, every inch downward the oceanic plates are forced is an inch less that the ocean rises to swamp continents, and that's great if you're on a continent and rather sucks if you're on an island. However, it seems to me that taking this pressure into account makes the melting of glaciers an even bigger problem. Surprise! It's all one planet, and when something changes in the atmosphere, that can affect the crust.
So, what can one worried mother, who would feel bad bringing forth a son into a world of lava falling from the sky onto the constantly trembling earth, do?
I can drive less, and decrease my carbon footprint (and expenses). I can eat less beef, and decrease the methane footprint. Surprisingly, a great many green choices save some green in the other sense: living on whole foods is cheaper than living on processed ones, and there's a lot less discarding of peels, cartilege, and so on in home prep, especially if you give yourself a jaw workout on the cartilege. I'm hoping to replace our energy-sucking fridge with one that would pay for itself in about two years. All of these are small acts by one small person, but it beats not doing them.
Naturally, this is when Georgia in its infinite wisdom thinks it'll help people's finances by NOT funding public transit. Whose finances, exactly? Public transit tends to benefit those who cannot afford to drive, and I'm not too clear on what they're supposed to do without it. Gas prices are supposed to go up right in time. We chose this house because there was a bus stop at the end of the block; being near public transit lines was the big selling point of this lemon.
Recently I was watching TV while nursing the little one. This happens a lot; he tends to keep my hands too full to do much of use, so I try to put it on something educational for one or both of us. This particular time, I was learning about the last great ice age and glaciation, and that the mass of ice on the center of North America was sufficient to bend the continental plate, heaving up such features as Florida.
You know. Nothing big. Just Florida.
Then we had a nice run of quakes and volcanic eruptions all over the place. This sort of thing makes me thoughtful, and that's like the TV-watching. There's more time for it these days when I'm pinned under a breast-feeding baby. Eventually I wiggled free and played with Google. You can get some very interesting scholarly papers from 2006 or so predicting that decreased glacier mass would cause reduced downward pressure on continental tectonic plates and therefore more volcanic eruptions and more earthquakes.
I noticed that the first few results said nothing about the corresponding increase in pressure on the oceanic plates. Granted, every inch downward the oceanic plates are forced is an inch less that the ocean rises to swamp continents, and that's great if you're on a continent and rather sucks if you're on an island. However, it seems to me that taking this pressure into account makes the melting of glaciers an even bigger problem. Surprise! It's all one planet, and when something changes in the atmosphere, that can affect the crust.
So, what can one worried mother, who would feel bad bringing forth a son into a world of lava falling from the sky onto the constantly trembling earth, do?
I can drive less, and decrease my carbon footprint (and expenses). I can eat less beef, and decrease the methane footprint. Surprisingly, a great many green choices save some green in the other sense: living on whole foods is cheaper than living on processed ones, and there's a lot less discarding of peels, cartilege, and so on in home prep, especially if you give yourself a jaw workout on the cartilege. I'm hoping to replace our energy-sucking fridge with one that would pay for itself in about two years. All of these are small acts by one small person, but it beats not doing them.
Naturally, this is when Georgia in its infinite wisdom thinks it'll help people's finances by NOT funding public transit. Whose finances, exactly? Public transit tends to benefit those who cannot afford to drive, and I'm not too clear on what they're supposed to do without it. Gas prices are supposed to go up right in time. We chose this house because there was a bus stop at the end of the block; being near public transit lines was the big selling point of this lemon.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Big and Tall Babies
I went shopping for a new sleeper for Mowgli yesterday. He's six months old now, and finally ready for those six-month-sized summertime sleepers everyone gave us in the belief they were getting things timed just perfectly.
Problem is, the nine-month size goes up to 27.5 or 28 inches in most brands. He measured as 28 inches two weeks ago at his well-baby checkup, and probably has added a half-inch by now. He's not fat, inclining more toward the bean-pole build of his father, but the distance from the shoulder of the sleeper to the foot is the part that matters, and lesser circumference about the waist doesn't help much.
The real problem, however, is that we've reached another point where the design changes to accomodate developmental stages. A twelve-month-old baby is presumed to be sleeping under a sheet, so his pajamas don't have feet and come in two-piece sets. A six-month old baby in those will wiggle backward and end up with the pant legs up around his thighs, the top bunched under his armpits, and drafts on places he's used to keeping warm.
We had exactly the same problem with newborn clothing, which Mowgli outgrew in his first few weeks. Newborn sleepers come with cuffs that could be turned over into little mitts. A newborn's circulatory system can leave him with shockingly cold hands without those little mitts, we discovered because we couldn't find any bigger sleepers that had them. Poor baby was also upset because he liked sucking on his mitts for comfort, and sleeve cuffs were apparently a poor substitute.
I may have to break out the sewing machine and learn to sew summer-fabric sleeper sacks. In this world of supersize everything, where are the supersized baby clothes?
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