Neil Gaiman's Bottle of Milk

Depending upon how you look at things, my kids are either very fortunate or dismally unfortunate. They get great stories all the time about, well, everything. So there is the story about the Troll Bridge and Goblin Town and, now, there is an excavation into Goblin Town going on that I haven't remembered to go take pictures of, yet, but I need to so that I can do a post on that, and, of course, DRAGONS! Sometimes, especially my daughter, the kids get exasperated with me because they have such a difficult time getting merely mundane answers from me. Sometimes, I almost feel bad about that.

Sometimes.

I mean, no one has ever just gone to the store or gone outside to play or, even, just gone to the bathroom. He's been abducted by aliens. And, when he comes back, he's been replaced by a robot duplicate or, possibly, a clone. We're never just having chicken for dinner; we're having dinosaur or, depending upon how many times I've been asked that question, one of the children.

And I might would feel bad about it except I hear my children, delightedly, repeating those stories to their friends.

All of that to say that I loved Neil Gaiman's new book, Fortunately, the Milk, about a father who has to go to the corner store to get milk for his kids' breakfast cereal (because, otherwise, they would have to use orange juice, which is not okay on cereal) and get abducted by aliens on the way home. This was a story after my own heart. It also has dinosaurs.

My own stories don't have enough dinosaurs, I don't think.

It's an illustrated book but not, really, a picture book. The one I have, the American version, is illustrated by Skottie Young. His art is whimsical and funky and fits well with the tone of the book. That does not stop me from also wanting the UK version of the book, illustrated by Chris Riddell, which is not so funky but looks no less interesting. Not that I will be getting a copy of the UK version, because I don't want to pay the shipping on it.

So, yes, the story is whimsical and funky and just a lot of fun, taking off at weird tangents. It has everything you could possibly want from a story like this: aliens, dinosaurs, pirates, time travel... okay, well, it doesn't have cowboys, so I guess it doesn't have everything, but it has an awful lot. If you have young kids (or, even, if you don't), this is a great book to pick up. I'm sure it would make an excellent bedtime reading book. Even though I don't have young kids, I may make mine sit down and listen to it anyway.

Maybe, that way they'll know I'm not the only one that does this.

Let's go for a walk... Part 8: The Ruins

It's been a while since we've been on a walk with my dog, so I figure it's about time to do that again, especially since I got sidetracked, last year, by A to Z and never told y'all about the ruins. Actually, I did mention them back in the post about Goblin Town, but I didn't go into too much detail.

This area was first settled by the Russians. They set up here in the early 1800's in order to hunt these guys:

The sea otter. The sea otter has the thickest fur of all other animals, so their pelts are very valuable. You know, more valuable than gold and all of that. [As a total aside, they were hunted to near extinction by 1900, at which point less than 1% of their estimated original population was left, as few as 1000 of them still in the wild (from a population that may have exceeded 300,000 in 1800). No, it wasn't just the Russians that did this, but they were (mostly) responsible for it in this area.]

What the Russians found here, though, was more than just sea otters. They found an area infested with goblins, goblins that also hunted otters but not to the extreme that humans did.

Initially, the Russians set up Fort Ross.

The fort was to defend against goblin attacks. They even joined forces with various Native American tribes to fight against the goblins that were being agitated by the swelling numbers of settlers.

Eventually, the Russian-American Company collaborated to build a stone fortress just down the creek from where I live. It must have been an impressive structure based upon the ruins that are still there. You can see the outline of how big the structure was in the remains of the foundation.

The goblins didn't take kindly to the building of a castle in the midst of their lands, so they mustered their various tribes for a large assault against the humans with the intention of driving them out of their lands. It was a terrible battle. Vicious. Bloody. The creek ran red with the blood of the fallen for weeks.

The humans lost. And the goblins tore down the castle, leaving no stone upon another.

But it came at a tremendous cost to the goblins. The survivors were forced to join together into one tribe just to survive. Retreating to their tunnels,

they have remained hidden through the years as the humans came back and completely overran lands that were once theirs.

However, of late, they have once again been growing bold and can often be seen crawling out of their tunnels at dusk to scavenge for food and other bits and pieces of things they find useful.

We're almost out of ear twigs...

Last week, my daughter had a birthday. It was the last single digit birthday in our family. It makes me... melancholy. It's not that I don't want them to grow up; I do. I just miss what they were. I especially miss when my younger two would nap on me, one on each arm. Ahh...
>sigh<

Anyway, a birthday for my daughter means a sleepover, so our house was full of little girls Saturday night. My boys, wisely, chose to be elsewhere. In the evening, we took a walk down by the creek so that I could show them all the sights like the entrances to Goblin Town and the Troll Bridge (for those of you that have been around for a while, you'll know that I've talked about these places in my Let's go for a walk... series). They got to see ducklings in the creek, troll nests, the special flowers that allow you to hide from trolls by covering up your scent, and, even, a goblin dashing into one of the entrances to goblin town. Okay, well, I'm the only one that actually saw the goblin, but I didn't make it up! Honest. Most of the girls have been exposed to my book, The House on the Corner, so they expected stories of trolls, I suppose. During the walk, many of them came up to me to whisper, "I believe..."

But this story isn't about the sleepover or the walk.

My daughter has been asking to get her ears pierced for years. Long ago, we made a 13-year-old rule. This rule came about because, at about age 6, my oldest son wanted to get his ear pierced. We felt this was too young. 1. He was only six, and that's a little young to be making permanent life decisions. 2. There was no way he would be capable of taking care of his ear while it healed. So we made him wait. It's one of the few things that he has steadfastly held to in his life, the desire to get his ear pierced, so, when he turned 13, we took him to  get it done. Mostly, he was able to take care of his ear  on his own; although, with him, it was kind of like having them brush their teeth; you have to tell them over and over and over again. Every night. I mean, we still have to check in with him about how long it's been since his last shower (because, at 16, we kind of think he's old enough not to have to be told to go take one, unlike his younger brother whom we have to badger into the shower under protest every time).

But my daughter's not like that. She's the only one that will spontaneously take care of her teeth without being told to. Not every night, but, sometimes, when we start telling them to go brush, her response is, "I already did," and a breath test bears that out. Unless, you know, she's just sucking tooth paste from the tube. And she has her own established showering schedule that she adheres to in an almost religious manner. She even makes sure that I know when her laundry hamper is ready; whereas, the boys will often get up and discover they have nothing clean to wear (and let me tell you, those discussions are so much fun).

We (meaning my wife) decided that we could break the 13-year-old rule for ear piercing, because my daughter shows all the signs of being able to take care of her ears while they heal without us having to be on her about it (unlike, say, her accordion practice) all the time. So, on her birthday, we took her to have her ears pierced (as it turns out, she was the only girl in her class with unpierced ears, which may explain why she has been so desperate to have it done). She was quite brave about the whole thing, and the lady doing the work was surprised when she sat through the first ear and let her go on to the second ear. Evidently, most girls break down after the first and don't want the second one done. However, after they were both done, she did want a hug, so that was nice.

The piercing lady showed my wife and daughter how to take care of her ears after that. There are a number of options for cleaning, but the simplest, really, is Q-tips. That's not what the woman demonstrated with, but we figured that they would work best. The only issue is that we don't really keep Q-tips around. We only had a small bag of them left over from the move last fall and had never bothered to buy more. But my wife showed my daughter how to dip them into the solution and clean her ears with them anyway. Which brings us to the night after...

One night after the piercing and my daughter heads to the "grown up" bathroom to get her own Q-tips for the very first time. She retrieves what she needs, cleans her ears, and cleans up after herself. My wife asks her if she needs any help. "No, Mom..." My wife asks her if everything is okay. "Yes, Mom..." There is so other discussion mostly centered on my daughter exerting her independence and ability to take care of everything on her own. Except for one thing, after everything else has been said and done, my daughter pipes up with, "Oh, but, Mom... we're almost out of ear twigs."

I was so glad that I was where my daughter couldn't see me, because I laughed. I mean, I really laughed. But I also loved it. "Ear twigs." That is so awesome. Like I said, we don't keep Q-tips around. No one had called them by name. My daughter gave them a very sensible name. That's what we call them now. She doesn't know they have another name, and that's how we want it. I'm sure, at some point, she'll find out, but we love "ear twigs," so we haven't told her.

And isn't that what writing's about? Looking at something and making it your own. Taking something normal, common, cliche and twisting it just a little to make it interesting and unique again. I could care less about Q-tips, but I love ear twigs. You shouldn't be surprised if they show up in a story some day. At least the term even if they aren't still cotton swabs.

Let's go for a walk... Part 3: Goblin Town

[Note: Tib part 8 is up >points to the Tiberius tab above<. You should go read it and let me know what you think. Next week (I hope), look for some changes in the Tiberius tab.]

I'm waiting for the dog to eat, right now, so that we can head out on our walk. She seems more content to be taking a nap, though. You know, I think that's what that saying "a dog's life" is all about. Naps. I want one of those. But... this post is not about napping, it's about walking.

As I've mentioned, we have a troll bridge off to the right down the creek path. But, if you go to the left, there is something completely different. Goblins. Actually, the goblins are sort of everywhere, but the closer you get to the troll bridge, the scarcer the goblins become. Not that we've actually seen the goblins, but we know that they're there. "How's that?" you might ask. Well... here's how:

This is an entrance to Goblin Town. There are many of them along the path, especially if you go left out of the park. Trolls eat goblins just as readily as they eat people, so there are not so many entrances to Goblin Town if you turn right and none near the bridge where the troll lives.

The dog finds the smell of the goblins very interesting, and she always wants to explore the doors to Goblin Town, but goblins love to eat dogs (they're a delicacy), so we do our best to keep her away so that no lurking goblin can reach out and snatch her up. Of course, goblins also love to eat little children. They're so juicy and tender! They especially like to throw children into pots and cook them up in a stew. They'll eat adults, too, but it's not their preference.

This is another entrance into Goblin Town. If you look closely, you can see the warnings painted on the door. Although, goblins love to catch people, they also don't like uninvited guests, so they paint warnings on everything to keep people away.

The trail isn't safe after dark. Daytime is mostly okay, though. Goblins don't like sunlight, and they tend to stay underground during the day. I've heard that sometimes they creep out on really cloudy or rainy days, but we've never seen any. Yet.

A better view of the "keep out" warning. It's written in goblin language, though, so I'm not sure how it actually translates.

This is one of the main entrances into Goblin Town. A fortified entrance. It's like a concrete bunker. It was getting late as you can probably tell by the darkness of the picture, and I had to run before I could get a better picture as I heard the concrete lid start to slide open. Not a place you want to be when the goblins come out!

Some time ago, there was a battle between the goblins and the early human settlers in the area. Here is a picture of the place where the human's fortress once stood:

The foundation is all that's left, so, as you can see, the goblins won this great battle and drove the humans out for a while. Drove us out. But, you know, I didn't know those people, so it's kind of easier to just think of them as the "humans."

There is a new watchtower built to keep an eye on goblin activities in the area. I thought I had some pictures of it, but I'm not finding them. At any rate, it's disguised as a practice area for the local fire department, but some of us know the truth. It's a good cover for all the personnel that come and go that are busy monitoring the goblins.

Which brings us to the end of today's exploration of the path where we walk the dog. My kids enjoy learning about the "history" of the area, and my daughter, especially, asks lots of questions about the entrances to Goblin Town. She has even mentioned becoming a goblin hunter and going down to wipe them out. The boys generally just content themselves with singing that song from the animated version of The Hobbit.

"Down, down to Goblin Town..."