Alone in the Dark (or How Do You Turn on the Lights?)

My family just got back from vacation. Or most of us did. My oldest son actually elected not to go this year. That's okay. He's 19, and he had other things he wanted to do. Like staying connected to the Internet because his girlfriend is in Florida, right now, so going off for a week during which he would have no contact with her at all was rather more than he could deal with.

Him staying home was actually convenient for us, too, because he was able to take care of the cat and water the garden, which is now sporting a baby pumpkin.

The night we got back, I asked him, "So how was it?" You know, how was his first stay at home alone. Not only was this his first extended stay at home; this was his first just overnight stay at home alone. Yeah, we don't get out much.

I used to get left alone like that a lot, I suppose. Well, not for anything extended, because my parents didn't ever go off, either, but they would sometimes go down to my grandparents' overnight, and I would stay home. Once I was in high school, I was always busy, so, unless my mom let me know at least a week in advance, I already had something I was doing on Friday afternoon when she would say, "Hey, we're going down to the farm; do you want to come?" That was actually rather frustrating, because I liked my grandparents and the farm.

They went away for an extended trip when I was 17; I don't remember why. It was during the school year, though, so I couldn't go. My mom was worried that I would be scared and made arrangements for me to stay with someone if I got too scared to stay alone at home. Because, yeah, it would have made my mom scared, so she couldn't imagine any way that I could make it for the four or five days they would be gone without hiding in a corner from fear of the boogeyman. Or something. When they got back, she couldn't believe that I had not called my emergency backup number and gone to stay there.

The closest my son has come to being left alone, though, is that sometimes when he gets up in the morning everyone else is already gone. Usually, he doesn't even bother to eat in those situations because, you know, self-feeding and all of that. Honestly, despite buying him some easy to prepare foods (i.e. microwavable), we were a little worried we'd get home to find out that he hadn't eaten for a week. Surprisingly, all of the food was gone.

But, anyway, I asked him, "How was it?"

He said it was fine. He said it was fine except that it was a little dark.

"Huh?"

He said the first couple of nights he kept thinking, "It's so dark in here," and he couldn't figure out why. Granted, it's pretty bright outside until, like, 9:00, so it took him a while to notice that it was dark, and that's around the time he generally goes off to his bed with his laptop, anyway, so it wasn't exactly inconveniencing him. But he didn't know why it was dark, not until the third night when he realized...

He hadn't turned on any lights!

He said it was because he's never had to turn on the lights. Meaning, they are always already on, and he's not the guy who turns the lights on, so it took a while for him to realize that they were off.

We had to laugh.

It is, however, a good illustration of how we might not think about things that we don't generally deal with, even common things. Things like turning on the lights. Or using a microwave oven. Or, like me today, trying to download songs onto my daughter's iPod, which I had never done before and couldn't figure out at first. Seriously, I thought those things were supposed to be intuitive or something. I think I should just be able to set the iPod on top of the CD and have the iPod do it.

So that first night that my son finally figured out that he needed to turn the lights on? Well, he went to bed and closed the door to his bedroom, because the boys do that to keep the cat out. The cat likes Lego. To eat. Their room is like a big buffet, so they have to keep the door closed all the time. Anyway, my son went to bed and, while he was lying there, he realized there was light coming in under the door, and he couldn't figure out why there was light because no one else was home, and he started wondering who could have turned on the lights...

Do you see where I'm going with this? He also never turns off the lights, so he hadn't done that, and it took him a moment to realize that he was the one who left the lights on. heh

Really, he's a smart kid. Mostly A's and all of that.

But we still laughed. Again.

The Last 10 Days

Where I've Been

And on either side of where I've been,
Here's what I've been doing

It's been a very busy 10 days, and the 5 softball games each weekend are pretty rough. But there has also been some writing happening, so all is not lost!

I'd Rather Be Writing

If you've been following along, you'll know that I finished the actual writing of Shadow Spinner back during January. ["Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree" is still available as a FREE! download today!] That means that since then what I've been doing is editing. Have I mentioned before how much I hate editing? I'm pretty sure I have, but it may have been awhile.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't hate editing in general so much. For instance, lately, I've been doing editing for Rusty, which is good. For one thing, I get to see his work before everyone else, but, also, I get to help him get it out to everyone else, because he has some stories that people need to read. I've also been editing various works of my creative writing students, which is not quite so likable as editing for Rusty, but that's frequently because I'll get to the end of something to find it not finished. Which is not to say that it wasn't turned in as finished, but it's quite apparent that the student, after writing 1000 words (which is a lot for many of them), just decided to be finished rather than actually finishing the story, and, then, I have to go take it back to the student and say, "Hey, you need to add an ending to your story." This can often result in me never seeing that particular story again as the student has lost interest in it and moved on to something else (which is less a middle school problem and more a pre-published writer problem), but it certainly means that I will have to edit the same story a second time when I get it back (sometimes still not finished, so repeat), which is a waste of time. [Remember, these are middle school kids. The only issue here is that we're getting close to the end of the school year, and I'm trying to get their completed stories in so that I can get them ready for the second Charter Shorts collection.]

However, when it comes to my own work, I hate editing. Once I've finished writing it, I just want to be finished writing it. If you get what I mean. I'm not one of those speed writers that can whip out a 40,000 word novel every two months and, then, spend the next four months revising, rewriting, editing. I hate all of that stuff, so I spend a long time with my work when I'm doing it the first time. It does, at least, cut out the revising and rewriting. It doesn't matter how careful I am, though, I can't make the editing part disappear. Spell check is great, and I'm able to catch an awful lot doing my initial draft, but it doesn't catch things like left out words (my bane!), homophones, or things with an "s" tagged onto the end for no apparent reason (Seriously, I have no idea where they come from or how they get there. Why does my brain want to make so many things into plurals? If you know, please tell me).

What it all really comes down to is that I would rather be writing. And, now, after over a month away from any serious work on any project, I'm starting to feel it. I get... all antsy. Kind of irritable. When I don't feel like I'm getting enough writing time in, I get... well, my wife says I get cranky. I don't think I've been cranky yet, probably because I am having time to work even if it is editing, but I'm starting to feel that way on the inside. It's like... I don't know... It's like being dissatisfied with everything all of the time. I mean, geez, Brother's Keeper is calling to me! Yelling at me, actually. "Finish me! Finish me!" And, to make matters worse, my side project, The Destiny Murders, is also poking at me and saying things like, "Finish him!" It's kind of a Mortal Kombat kind of thing. I say that because it reminds me of how my kids are when one of them is waiting for another of them to get off the computer.

"You've been on for an hour; it's my turn!"
"Just give me a moment!"
"How long is that gonna take?"
"Just a moment!"
"But it's my turn!"
"Just let me finish this!"

That can go one for 20 minutes, sometimes. And that's what the inside of my head feels like right now. Yeah, it's not really a lot of fun.

Of course, you can add to that the mounting pressure of A-to-Z which I had intended to be finished with by now (the writing of the posts) but which I haven't even started researching yet.

Thinking about it, I think the inside of my head feels like the inside of a bag with a couple or few cats in it.

I often see where people are talking about how they've taken a break from writing for a while and how good it was, but, really, I just can't take it. Seriously. Last summer when we were off on vacation (the first vacation in more years than it's worth adding up), my favorite part of it was sitting out on the deck in the mornings with my mocha and writing. And, when we went to Disneyland, I wrote a whole short story (which will be available as soon as I have a cover for it (unless I feel compelled to do another editing pass ("don't do it!" (that was one of those other projects objecting)))). All of that to say, I don't want a break. I'm no good with those. They make me all itchy on the inside.

Basically, I'd rather be writing.

Let's go on Vacation! Part 2: The Menu

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I didn't think to take pictures of any of this part of the trip, mostly because I was busy cooking and, then, eating the food. It just didn't occur to me to tell someone to grab the camera and take any pictures, especially since I'm generally the guy taking the pictures. Maybe next time though.

What to eat on a vacation is always a big deal. Okay, so it may not really be that big a deal to most people. Most people eat out all of the time anyway, so eating out while on vacation is rather expected. However, we don't eat out all that often. We don't even eat out once a week. Even counting pizza, I don't think we eat out more than a couple of times a month. Of course, camping isn't exactly about eating out, but we also didn't want to spend a week eating cheap, crappy hot dogs and stuff. Besides, hot dogs cost more than, well, all but the expensive cuts of steak.

Don't believe me? Go check it out. Generally speaking, at least at Safeway, hot dogs run about $5.00/pound. In my mind, that's freaking insane. Chicken doesn't cost that much. Pork almost never costs more than that, and, just this week, I got some really nice New York strip steaks for $4.99/pound. Why would I even consider paying that kind of price for hot dogs when I can buy steak instead. By the way, lunch meat is the same way (even bologna), which I can (kind of) understand but not really. It just goes to show what we're willing to pay for convenience.

I suppose my family is not very convenient. Actually, I know this to be true.

In the end, camping food ended up being very much like home food. That was the decision, at any rate. But let me put this into context: this was a camping trip with the in-laws (my wife's father and step-mother), and  they were rather difficult to pin down about how the whole eating thing was going to happen. Let me put this into more context: for years, they have taken my kids camping once or twice a year. When they go camping, they've always done the typical thing: eat lots of hot dogs and s'mores; they weren't really prepared for how we were planning to eat, and, I think, because we (my wife and I (really just me)) aren't into the whole camping thing, they figured we wouldn't know what to do when we got up there. However, having a stove, a real stove, to cook on is one of the reasons I wanted a cabin. A stove and a bed, see. So they brought lots of hot dogs. And bacon. And marshmallows.

We brought real food.

Needless to say, they ended up eating with us for most meals. Most means all of the dinners and about half of the breakfasts (we didn't really "do" lunch (there was never any need, because breakfast was so big and good no one would be hungry until around 4-5:00 anyway)).

 By this point, I bet you're wondering what, exactly, we had for our dinners. Well, let me tell you!
Tuesday: rib eye steak, salad, bread
Wednesday: pork fajitas w/ sauce that we made, homemade ice cream (pineapple coconut)
Thursday: spaghetti, garlic bread (there was supposed to be salad, but, um, the refrigerator kind of froze it, so there wasn't much left worth eating (I did give it my best shot, though, but I just couldn't do it))
Friday: grilled salmon, salmon mac (mac 'n' cheese with salmon mixed in), kale chips (one of my favorite things! (it's something I make from fresh kale, not something we buy)) [and my father-in-law provided grilled chicken]
Saturday: hamburgers (I make the best hamburgers. Seriously. We kind of can't go out for burgers anymore because of it.), homemade buns (and my wife makes the best hamburger buns (we also make pretty much all of our own bread (except sourdough)), yam fries

Those were our evening meals. The in-laws were astounded. They decided that camping is better the way I do it. And it was nice to be cooking for people that appreciated my cooking (as opposed to complaining about it (as my kids do (because they still think sugar and carbs are the best things in the world))).

In no particular order, the breakfasts were
ham and cheese grits (the in-laws had never had grits before, so this was a new experience and, unless they were lying (and I'm pretty sure they weren't), they really liked them -- grits, good grits, are not the easiest thing in the world to make)
blueberry pancakes (homemade with fresh blueberries, of course (my wife doesn't like pancakes, but she loved these))
biscuits and sausage gravy (my favoritist breakfast in the world! (when it's done right))
French toast (my kids' favoritist breakfast and made with homemade bread (it's awesome))
All of these were accompanied by scrambled eggs and bacon (except the French toast, which just had bacon, because it's already covered in eggs). The last morning was just scrambled eggs and bacon as we were trying to take as little back with us as possible. We succeeded in eating all bacon, but we had to tote eggs home again.

All of that and there were 'smores basically every night. That made my daughter, especially, extremely happy.

So there you go... who wants to go camping with me next year?

Let's go on Vacation! Part 1: The Place

Last week, I went on vacation. In many ways, it was the first real vacation I've ever been on. Not that I've never been on a vacation before; there was my honeymoon almost 14 years ago, but, for some reason, a honeymoon doesn't feel like a "vacation" to me. And there was one other family vacation about 6 years ago, but that one, also, did not feel like a vacation. Probably because my kids were too young. I took them on vacation, but I didn't get one out of that deal. But this one... this one was good.

It was up at Trinity Lake in the Trinity Alps. We stayed at the Trinity Lakes KOA and rented a cabin.

Our cabin, which is, evidently, their "best" cabin, although we didn't know that ahead of time.

The view up the road to our cabin which is down at the end.

The view out of our bedroom window.

The general area as seen from the lake.

I'm not really much for camping. I'm sure that goes back to a traumatic camping event from middle school (story for another time (yeah, I know I'm always saying that and never getting to those "another times," but no one ever reminds me!)), but I've discovered that cabin camping is pretty good. Actually, it was kind of the only way I would consent to go camping. Not that I said it that way, and I would have gone even without renting a cabin, but I wouldn't have really enjoyed myself. In the cabin, though... it was good.

And there was a deck with a picnic table and, down below it, a creek. We kept the window open in the bedroom all the so that we could hear the creek at night. Oh, it was so nice. And sitting out on deck in the mornings with my mocha (sometimes while writing) was... incredible. Other than being repeatedly interrupted by one of my children (who shall remain unnamed), it was possibly the most peaceful thing I've ever experienced.

A view down to the creek from the deck. Yes, I know you can't see the creek. Listen carefully, and, maybe, you can hear it.

So that's the overview. Tall trees, big mountains, bubbling water. No Internet. No outside connections at all. That's a nice thing about not owning a cell phone or iDevice. And no withdrawal symptoms, either, which was somewhat surprising but not at all unpleasant.

Yes, yes, you may envy me now. We are tentatively planning to go back next year. I'm already looking forward to it.