The thing is, while people’s comments came down in just about every possible position on censorship and what is or isn’t appropriate levels of violence in kids’ novels, one common assumption was that it’s the parents job to pick out appropriate books and watch over their kids’ reading.  And I heartily agree, so no problems there.

The difficulty is that some commenters strongly implied that if a parent isn’t reading all their kids’ fiction books before they can fall into the child’s grubby little paws, they’re a bad parent.  Or, at least, not terribly involved and perhaps a tad irresponsible.

Nonsense.

As a parent, I know my kids’ interests, discuss books with them, and chat over life, the universe and everything.  It would be easy to argue that my greatest challenges as a mother is stepping back and allow my kids space, to let them grow in independence.  But I haven’t the chance of an ice cube in the Sahara at noon of pre-reading every one of the books my kids read.  I’m sure with kids that read a book every other week, that could be done.  Maybe if they read a book or two a week.  But it’s not unusual for a child of mine on a reading kick to consume four or five books in a week.  Often big fat books, mind.

Uhm, folks, they’ve got more free time than me–I can’t keep up with that!

And what about families with a wondrous, reading child plunked down in the midst of non-readers, or casual readers?  Who is going to guide that child’s fiction consumption?  To assume that every reading child is followed around by a parent with the time and energy to pre-read or read in tandem every book consumed by that child is just naive.

Now, as I writer, I don’t want anyone censoring me.  I believe in being true to the story, and those story truths might/will offend some parents’ sensibilities and could expose the reading child to everything from bad grammar to weird world views to, yes, violence that is not helpful or healthy for that child.  Kids develop at different rates, and also go through stages of their life–while dealing with grief, for example–when some otherwise appropriate and true to story content isn’t going to be right for them.

But, there’s an easy fix!  If people would be honest in reviews, and discuss the nitty-gritty of fiction, that would help.  Even better would be the publishing world adopting a simple content guidance system, so parents and children would have more to guide reading selection.  Kids could still read books that push their boundaries, but parents would know which books really needed that pre-read and plenty of in-depth discussion.  Teachers could better inform parents of the content in books kids were reading in school.  This would also help parents know how to guide children through a series which gets progressively more mature in content.

There wouldn’t be any need for spoilers, either.  Just a general guide that would supplement reading categories–like Young Adult–which don’t necessarily give any clue to the appropriate audience.  After all, my understanding is that “YA” includes everyone from age 13 to 26, and let’s face it, that’s a pretty broad category.  I’m not sure why books don’t come with a content guide, but it seems to me that putting information into the hands of the prospective readers is a win-win.  And that doesn’t seem so bad.

Then I headed home in the rental and found that it had bad brakes.  I called back the rental car place, which I shall call ’Pentarise’ to protect the guilty, and they informed me that I could hurry our thirty minute drive back and they might be able to put me in a pick-up.  I declined, and they offered to let me call all the car rentals around and see if one of them would be willing to swap me into one of their cars.  I took a deep breath and suggested that he find me an alternate car, since he’d driven this one just before handing it over and failed to mention it had bad brakes.

Eventually they located a car…at least, I think you can call it that.  It’s way too attention-grabbing for my style.

But at least it’s wheels.  I drove the twenty minutes to that Pentarise and made the car swap.  Only to find that the agent planned on taking my $25.00 gas deposit because I’d used (he claimed) 3 gallons of gas in driving the bad-brake rental to the new Pentarise so I could make the exchange.

This was the point at which I almost claimed a moment of infamy.  The headline would have read something like ‘Woman attacks rental car agent over 3 gallons of gas.  Purse is new and terrible weapon of choice.’

Fortunately, the agent in question realized his demise was imminent and backed down.  I shall now sink back into the blissful ranks of the anonymous, and enjoy a quiet evening.  Be warned, though.  I may make the biggest batch of cookies yet known to man.

That you live over an hour drive away from the lister, in another city, and would they mind bringing the item to you or meeting somewhere halfway?

Look for yourself, and see what I mean.

Heading the best dressed list, we have a fru-fru dress in scorching pink–was she trying to go as a giant tube of lipstick and hope we’d excuse the pun?

Next is banana girl in an outfit kindergartners’ would balk over.  Heck, even teenage boys know better than to dress like this!

Third is a cosmic montage that I personally don’t mind, but is certainly no more tasteful than its worst dressed counterpart.  The biggest difference seems to be how well-poised the star is, and that can vary from photo to photo.

Moving on down the list we’ve got a girl who stood back while they splashed on a bucket of tar, certainly a bold fashion statement, but whether in good taste is debatable. 

Then there’s a girl wrapped in an old funeral home curtain, a woman who’s still attached to the dressmaker’s bolt of cloth, and later on the list, a lovely red dress that looks like a mermaid pulled on a skirt so she could masquerade as human.

Last on the list is a truly stunning cosmic gown on a woman who can’t decide if she’s wearing maternity or not.  Delightful.

But then again, maybe I’m not being fair.  There’s really very little difference between this list and those with the worst dressed woes, but if pressed I’d give the best dressed gals the fashion nod.  After all, maybe they’re just doing the best they can with the material at hand, and it’s the designers who’re cross-eyed, punch-drunk, and desperately passing the green stuff.

Now, if said Uhaul had been mine, that would be alright.  If it had belonged to a sister, cousin, or neighbor, I’d grumble but still be okay.

But it didn’t belong to anyone, so far as we could tell.  The very afternoon that we finished picking up the last of our big stuff from the house someone plunked their uhaul down, locked it up, and left.

For two days.

Now, remember.  They had no way of knowing that we’d taken all the big stuff out, and in fact we were still picking stuff up and generally working in and out of the house.  Of course, since the driveway was filled to over-flowing (I did say 24 Foot Truck, yes?) we had to work from the curb.  There was also the concern that at some point the HOA folks would slap us with a fine, since the truck had clearly been there longer than the codes allow.  We were also still showing the house, since it still hasn’t gone under contract.  So, on the third day, I decided the uhaul had to go.

I’d already called the 1-800 number, and asked them to pass on a message to the owner that it was not welcome.  Now I called the tow trucks.  It took a bit of doing to find someone willing to tackle a 24-footer, but a couple hours and a few oil stains later, the uhaul was gone.  Incidentally, we discovered that it was full of stuff.

All very odd, but the tow-truck driver assured me that it happens all the time and we thought no more of it.  A week went by, and it faded into the background with all other weird incidents we tell each other at parties.

Until, that is, our agent got a phone call.  The lady on the line was very put out, wanted to know where her uhaul was.  She didn’t say, ‘my illegally parked, trespassing abandoned uhaul’, though she could have.  But the best part?  This lady is the same woman who has so far made two offers on our house.  Laughable offers which were based on a bogus willingness to rent-to-own, in which she paid less than half the mortgage, required us to pay her agent up front whether she eventually purchased or not, and in which we, the landowners, paid a large deposit in case she, the tenant, broke or destroyed anything during her stay in our home.

Her second offer, which she turned in to us despite it being worse than the first and despite our having coolly turned down without encouragment the first attempt, had her move in date set for–

You guessed it.  The same day the uhaul showed up in the driveway.

Well, I wish her well in collecting her uhaul, but can’t say I’m sorry to see the last of her.

Terribly articulate of me.

The jist of the article is that, regardless of what possible effects climate change is having on tropical storms, the damage and loss experienced in the wake of these storms can be laid at the door of over-building in cities and crowding along the coasts.

Now, I’m not immune to the appeals of the ocean.  We have our week of bliss on Hilton Head Island, SC, bought and paid for.  ‘Course, we did pick a property with plenty of mature wetlands surrounding and laced throughout it, and a lower density of people than most, but that had more to do with personal preference than a desire to leave the coast undisturbed.

What I find astonishing is the number of people who behave as if there is no danger or risk in building along the coast, or that whatever risk involved should be picked up by insurance companies and the government, rather than those individuals who choose to brave the storms and plunk themselves down in its path.  When nature does as she will do, and smashes all the lovely little sorbet houses into so many piles of driftwood, everyone acts a little shocked and saddened, as if the unexpected has happened.

Uhm, no.  We’ve been getting hurricanes all along, folks.  This isn’t new.  And regardless of any climate changes one way or another, we’re not masters of the elements yet.  If we build it on the coast, the storms will come.

On the other hand, I’m also a historian.  I’ve studied one nation or culture after another rise and fall.  Each makes stupid economic choices in fat years, and surprisingly enough, pays for those short-sighted choices eventually.  The first lesson every historian learns is that history repeats itself.  No country or nation has ever been immune to the eventual consequences of their own choices.  And swallowing comfortable lies only prolongs the buildup, and therefore the impact of the smash when the whole teetering structure finally comes down.

So, despite the fact that arguing against a bailout could possibly qualify as shooting myself in the foot, that’s still the stance I’m taking.  Better to lose a foot then pretend the gun’s not loaded and hand it off to my kids as a gift to their future.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/j7MCohPgkXo" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

And let me just say, keeping track of the versions can be a royal pain.

It should be simple.  Version 1, 2, 3, etc. ad inifinity.

But it’s not.  First off, when I send a story to a new place, I generally save it with that pubs name in the title, such as:

The Greatest Story.Pro Magazine.rtf

Or some such.  This helps me keep track of what formating I’ve used, since many magazines have different specs, and avoids my accidentally sending the story off with the wrong title or cover letter.  However, when it comes to re-writing, that can make it a pain because I may have cut one version of the story down, not because I thought it was better that way, but just because it needed to hit a lower word count.  Incidentally, I probably tweaked here and there and might have made other improvements to the story while I had it open.

Of course, that means that when it comes time to send it to market C, I have to try and mesh the different versions that were sent to A and B, without losing any of my precious edits.  Add in the critiques of friends, both online and scribbled on hard copy, the use of online submission forms, or, worse, different versions being saved on different computers based on whether that computer has Wordperfect or Microsoft Word, and the whole thing can wind up a real mess.

>Rolls Eyes<

And I’m generally a very organized person, and keep careful track of all the specs on my stories.  I pity the poor writer who gets half way through the process before realizing they should have been using an organizational system from the start.

Of course, then I’ll have three weeks in which to get us packed, moved, and settled in the new house.  But let’s focus on one thing at time.

And we’ve reached another mile-mark.  I’ve been kind of watching over my shoulder for the moment our car broke fifty bucks to gas up.  We might have hit it recently except the tank wasn’t getting all the way to zero.  At any rate, today I put in fifty-two dollars of gas, and we weren’t even on empty pulling into the station.  Hallelujah.  We can now look forward to a monthly budget of over $200 (I have to gas up once a week) and rising in order to run this family from here to neverwhere.

Good thing we’ve got just the one car, I s’pose.

I have the kind of contacts which soak overnight in a peroxide solution.  They get nicely cleaned, and by morning the peroxide’s neutralized.  Then, I keep a saline solution at hand, and squirt a bit of that in the contacts before putting them in my eyes.  Until this morning.

We’ve been traveling three out of the last five days in a giant circle which took in Great Smokey Mtn. National Park, Mammoth Caves, and DC.  I was tired.  I couldn’t see well (not atypical for someone who has yet to put in their contacts) and the bottles are both white and blue, with similar lettering.

Except, of course, that the peroxide solution has a red tip.  A lovely shade of red which nicely matched my eye once I stopped screaming, got the contact out, and the foaming subsided.