The Meltdown and Rain Boots

"Don't you want to wear your rain boots, Bacon Hoss," my daughter says.  She looks over at me at the sound of the soft "noooooo" I tell her and sees my eyes roll back into my head.  My daughter doesn't realize her mistake until she the excited "yes! yes! yes!" coming from Bacon Hoss.  Now he's fixated on the idea of wearing the Batman rain boots.  I sigh.  I don't know where the boots are.  We are late.

But we are always late.  It's part of having kids.  If we need to be somewhere and it takes 30 minutes to get there in the car, we have to begin leaving the house an hour earlier.  Little Hoss has started picking up on this and asks why we have to leave so early now when we go places.   I smile and on our next scheduled appointment somewhere I tell her to learn and watch.  "Time to go everyone!  Get in the car!"

25 minutes later everyone finally has on shoes, coats, socks, pants and Bubba Hoss eventually is able to seat belt himself in between telling me Star Wars facts that not even George Lucas can tell.  But we can't go because now Little Hoss has forgotten her book and has to go back inside to get it.  Eventually, everyone gets back in and I point to the clock.  25 minutes from the time I uttered the words "time to go" and by the time we actually start the car.

I think my daughter learned a good lesson but she is too young to really get the subtlies that are required when you parent  She's only 11, a bright 11, bu still a young kid.  And I can't fault her for trying to help get us out the door.  She was going to put on the toddler's rain boots for him, isn't she helpful?

What she didn't know is that I had already thought of this.  I should pat myself on the back because there have been days where we have left without any shoes on and had to turn around and come get them.  Today's problem though is that I can't find my toddler's extra special awesome Batman rain boots.  This is why I had the Spiderman shoes in my hand.  If I put them on fast enough he wouldn't realize they weren't the right ones.

And it's not even raining, not that that matters.  Bacon Hoss goes through phases and currently, we are on a Batman and Barbie phase, an interesting combination of dream house and bat cave.

"Honey, I don't have your shoes.  You have to wear these," I tell him as I watch his eyes clothes and the waterworks come.  That's the next stage we are at, a meltdown at everything.  Not the right shoes, let's scream and cry about it.  The Ipad run out of juice, that's a meltdown every time.  The moon isn't full, you better believe that is a reason to scream.

"Alright hon," I tell Little Hoss.  Go find the shoes.  She looks at me like I'm joking.  I am not.  She started this mess she can go ahead and get all into it.  Maybe it's a bit cruel or maybe this is the best lesson for birth control a young girl can have.  Either way, I'm not moving.

No one ever puts their shoes back where they are supposed to go.  It's simple.  There is a shoe basket.  The shoes go into the basket.  Then you wake up the next morning and put your shoes on and hopefully, you have remembered to put on your socks first.  This is where we find ourselves now, my daughter looking for Batman rain boots on a sunny day.

I sit back down and give helpful hints.  "Check behind the couch," I tell her.  "If they aren't there, look in the oven."  Yup, I've seen shoes end up in the oven before.  Don't know why.  I used to ask why when things like this happen but I find that no explanation can make me understand  Now I just take it as par fo the course.

Little Hoss eventually finds the boots for the toddler.  He gets himeself up off the floor and she puts them on.  There, we are ready to go.

"Hey Bacon," my 9 year old now jumps in.  "Do you want to wear your special creeper sweatshirt?"

Sigh, eye roll, slight muttering under my breath.

My toddler loses his shit again when he realizes that the extra special awesome creeper sweatshirt isn't hanging on the hooks which is conviently located next to the shoe basket.  We start over.

"Bubba Hoss.  Go check the oven.  And if it's not there look in the shower upstairs."

The Book and 50,000 Words

Last week I hit 50,000K mark on the word vomit that is slowly becoming my book.  It’s a nice little milestone to reach and one that I should be proud of.  That’s me being humble.  So fuck that.  

I hit 50K words on “the book”, the mythical thing that has been in production for freaking forever.  The ideas have been floating around the head for years but things kept getting in the way.  There is an actual plot, plot points, characters and their development, subplots and interactions, themes, the whole shebang.  I’m pretty pumped.  

“The Book,” which should always be capitalized now and spoken about in whispers, has taken shape.  The story that was abstract in my head is now in physical form.  I’ve given this thing life and hopefully, there is a soul in there.  But what if it’s an evil soul and causes world destruction as it matures into a finished manuscript?  Is it the Hitler of books?  

Screw it, so be it.  It may be the most colossal piece of trash ever created but it has been CREATED and that’s the point.  If it’s going to be evil then let it be the evilest.  I will love it anyway.

 There is no need for me to print off the pages, to actually have a physical manuscript.  But I do it because sometimes late at night I like to pick it up and hold it.  I like to feel it’s weight and pet its pages.  Is it doing ok, does it need anything else?  Perhaps a good plot twist, maybe more developing in the first act?  The Book doesn’t talk back but one day it will.  

It’s far from finished.  I don’t have any magical word count to reach.  But when I write I never really do.  I just tell the story until the story is done.  Most of the time, I have an idea in my head and see where it takes me, making little pit stops along with way.  

But The Book is different.  There’s an outline, a convoluted and large outline that is it’s own being as well.  It took me two months just to do that outline and it’s constantly getting a makeover to make it look pretty.  It does a good job of linking one plot point to another, to being the roadmap of The Book.  I know where the story ends and I know how to get there.  I just have to keep writing, keep chugging along to tell the story.  

The Book is a funny story, the ups and downs of what happens when a grown man tells his children “Please stop breaking shit, the moms are starting to look at us weird.”  Oh, there are hugs and kisses in there, on those beautiful pages.  There are also stories of my son whacking my car with a hammer and my daughter flashing her goods to some Mormons.  

The book will be finished sometime over the next month I think, maybe two.  The first draft of it will anyway.  Then I will go back and change it, dress it in something pretty, letting the words act as accessories to what I hope it will eventually look like.  But for right now, it’s still a young book.  

But it's MY BOOK and at 50K words it’s growing up just fine.