Free!

It’s here!  The short story my husband has been working on the past few weeks, Barrel of Fun, is now published and free for a few short days on Amazon.  Grab your copy while you can, and tell your friends! 



Barrel of Fun [Kindle Edition]

 

Dane Tyler (Author)

Book Description

Stanley Danslow is a two-bit private eye. He’s not Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade, though. Danslow’s the guy you go to when you think your spouse is cheating on you, or the insurance company thinks Joe Blow’s running a worker’s comp scam.

So when the beautiful Mrs. Tellinghousen comes in and asks Danslow to check out her husband, who she thinks just might be a killer, he’s a little out of his depth.

He doesn’t find out just how much he’s out of his depth until he’s in way over his head.

Clipped from Barrel of Fun: Dane Tyler: Amazon.com: Kindle Store

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Cozy

I had a husband home from work today, which was nice.  🙂

It’s nice to enjoy the company of the person you’re married to.  You’d think that after all these years, we’d have run out of things to say by now.  But no.  Not us.  We can chat with each other all the time, pretty much non-stop.  And when there are silences – a rare event! – they’re comfortable silences. 

It’s a beautiful thing.  🙂

It’s weird – whenever the weather looks like this, the phrase, “Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day,” always goes through my mind.  So much for sunrise today!

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Creature Feature

See this? LOL This is me and Darc watching one of his horror movies together. It’s a perfect illustration of why he mostly watches horror movies by himself. 😀

While he was on vacation this past several days, I made sure he got to watch a lot of movies.  He loves them!  Somehow, watching the creepy, scary stuff relaxes him.  Me, I jump through the ceiling – which is half his entertainment, I’m sure.  :roll:  I guess it takes his mind off day-to-day stuff in a way that other movies can’t.  Maybe it’s the analysis factor.  We just can’t watch movies – we have to dissect them, figure out the plot, try to guess the “whodunit” part, all that kind of stuff.  But he doesn’t seem to do that with horror movies.  I suppose, when it’s a werewolf movie, there’s simply not a lot of guesswork involved, not a lot of plot, so his brain can just veg for a while. 

Hopefully he’s nice and relaxed as he heads back to work today.  He got a ton of movies in, this vacation.  Me, I realized I need to dust the cobwebs off my ceiling.

Do you like to watch horror movies? 

Happy New Year!

Image Clipped from Creepurtainment – Cheezburger

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I’ve seen the light!

Well, strings of them actually.

It’s an established fact that one of the biggest reasons why I refuse to get a real tree at Christmas is because of the lights.  I tried it a couple of times, the last time as a young adult, and I swore, never again!  Not that I don’t adore the wonderful fragrance of real Christmas trees, oh I love it lots.  But I hate the needles and I hate the sap and I feel guilty and I hate the needles, and let’s not forget the awful, stabbing needles!  I remember still vacuuming them up in the summer when I was a teen and my mother had gotten a real tree for some reason the previous Christmas. 

So, I don’t do the Christmas tree lights.  Honestly, my way of doing the lights even on a fake tree is to take the whole pile of wires and just kind of toss the mess at the tree like a bridal bouquet.  Catch, Tree!  Which drives my husband absolutely insane.  We both tend to be perfectionists and mostly in similar areas, but this is one where we’re polar opposites.  He loves Rockwell-esque Christmas tree perfection and I’m more of a “no worries, nobody will see that side anyway” kind of tree decorator.  

But this is why we get pre-lit trees.  No muss, no fuss.  Years ago, when we had a big tree, I used to just put it in a giant mattress storage bag, lights, ornaments, tinsel and all, and just haul the thing out to the garage.  Easy-peasy! 

This spring however, we were able to put up an Easter tree, using one of the little colored Christmas trees we picked up last winter.  I took it out of the box and set it on a bookcase and when Darc got home, the first thing he said was, “Did you do the lights?  That looks horrible!”  To which I replied, “I don’t do lights, remember?  That’s how it came out of the box.” 

So, the following weekend, he proceeded to remove the lights from the tree to re-do them the right way.  And I have to say, it was the weirdest strand of lights we’ve ever seen in our lives.  It was basically 2 loops, one slightly larger than the other, with a plug.  There was no beginning or end, it was just these 2 loops.  What the … how are we supposed to work with that?  Well, him, not me!  I didn’t even supervise! 

It must have taken him over an hour to get the lights back on.  The kids may or may not have learned a new colorful word or two.    It was one of those projects that should have been short and sweet, but became frustrating and tedious.  All for just a few lights on a little tree! 

But who makes loops of lights?  It even sounds weird.  Light loops.  Loopy lights.  Looped lights.  *sigh*  Just plain weird.  I get loopy just thinking about it!

Anyway, the lights got done eventually, all by Darc, all by himself, with no help from me.  Because, you know, I don’t do lights*.  And the kids and I got the tree decorated in time for Easter.  Yay! 

*But I will do windows.  Occasionally. 

Thankfulness

I dunno, that leaf looks more to me like it’s saying, “Leaf me alone!” than “It’s not easy being green.” 

Darc seems to be recovering and I am so thankful for that.  Those of you with spouses know how hard it is to see them suffer and not feel well. 

Also, thankfully, no one else in the house seems to have gotten sick either.  The kids and I aren’t showing any signs of anything so unless this thing has a long incubation, we just might have skated by this one.  Major whew! 

I am also thankful for tissues.  I don’t know how may boxes Darc has gone through, but can you imagine if we still lived in handkerchief days?  No, didn’t think you wanted to go there either. 

Theraflu also ranks on my list of thankfulness this week, because it helped him feel better. 

Plus, tomorrow is the 1st day of Autumn, woo!  I love Autumn!  The long hot summer is over, the leaves are turning so many lovely colors, and the night air has a wonderful hint of chill in it.  Football is a weekly feature now – at least I can follow the scores online even if I can’t see games.  Warm apple cider with cinnamon sticks, mmmm.    Autumn is blessing and bounty and I’m thankful it’s finally here. 

Do you have anything you’re especially thankful for this week?

Time for Bed!

My husband doesn’t get sick very often, but when he does, I know just the thing.  Some comfort food, something warm to drink, and sleep. 

I’m a firm believer in babying sick people.  Generally, it’s kick them off to bed, wait on them hand and foot, make them sleep until they get well.  You’d think I’d have at least one member of the family down sick at any given time, based on that, but fortunately, we’re a fairly healthy bunch. 

I used to have a neighbor who couldn’t be in the same room with her kids when they were sick.  She told me that sick people made her angry and she couldn’t stand to be around them because she constantly wanted to yell at them to get up and quit being sick.  I just can’t get there.  People don’t get sick on purpose – well, okay, maybe some really crazy people – but in general kids don’t do that because they like to run around and play too much to be okay with being sick.  How could you yell at your kids for being sick?

Anyway, Darc is down.  He’s been coughing all day and I know the poor guy’s going to have a heck of a rib ache tomorrow.  I’m not even confident he’s going to feel well enough to go in to work tomorrow either.  If you’re the praying kind, he could sure use some right about now.  Thanks!

And how are you feeling?

The Write Stuff

So, how many pens nibs are too many, exactly? 

We’re coming up on the end of the proofs for this most recent tech book my husband wrote.  You might remember the deadline he had to finish the thing a couple of months ago.  Recently the proofs have come back to us so we’ve been going over those and making sure everything is like it should be.  Thank goodness this editing team has done a much better job than the team on the last book!  I’ve hardly flagged any corrections to be made, and that’s a beautiful thing.    It’s almost completely done and then Darc can focus full time on his fiction and that is also a beautiful thing.   

In other news, tomorrow should be the end of an era, of sorts, and I’m hoping to bid a not-so-fond farewell to my old adversary, Back Pain.  Wouldn’t that be awesome if it went away? 

I might end up with a newer (to me anyway) stove.  We keep smelling gas – never a good sign.  They came today and tightened a connection, but I could still smell gas after the maintenance guys left.  I’ll see how it is tomorrow, but I think something’s wrong with the thermostat inside the oven itself, and not the connection to the gas supply between the oven and the wall.  We’ve had it for 5 years and I don’t know how long it was used before we moved in.  It’s probably time for a replacement anyway. 

So that’s my news.  How’s by you?

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