August 29, 2006

Thunderbird

As I was surfing today, I came across a post happy about rain in West Texas ... and I remembered living in Austin ... the beauty of the thunderstorms.

I can't resist sharing the rather stream-of-consciousness comment I left there:

I miss the thunder boomers. Big, old crashing thunder ... the trees blowing in the wind before the rains begin ...

The sky starting to go grey, then black, the daylight turned to a dim dusk, the trees showing the undersides of their leaves, white, as the winds blow ... the first fat drops of rain striking slowly and loud enough to hear the individual impacts on the cement sidewalk ... or the hard packed and cracked clay-dirt. Watching the drop penetrate and spread.

Flash of light, head snapping up just in time to catch the tail end of the jagged tear in the sky and then ... the low rumbling that goes on for seconds, minutes.

Running pell-mell for the house, running through the house while mom's yelling at me to not run, tearing open the sliding glass door and watching the storm from the comfort of the screened in porch.

Thunder crashing ... rain now pouring from the sky in torrents of white noise, the grass instantly standing taller and already more green ... the beautiful contrast of the dark thunderclouds, dark black-grey and the light underside of the leaves.

Feeling the cold mist of the rain dissipated through the metal screens ... the tangy taste of the metal ... the acrid smell of the lightning jumping from cloud to cloud and cloud to earth. Kindergartener's shaky and jagged line of lemon yellow across a crayon black and grey sky ... count ... one mississippi ... two missisippi ... dang, that one was CLOSE! The breeze ... the smell of fresh rain ... of things growing. A child's feeling of daring the world ... mom's fears that the lightning would seek me out and strike me dead before her eyes ... a joyous rebellion and invincibility and independence ... all dancing together with the lightning to the beat of the thunder and the melody of the rain.

I could spend hours just watching. They never lasted long enough. And sadly, in Indiana, we just don't get 'em like that.

Specifically written for Red ... both for asking me to write every day ... and for giving me a great topic.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:57 AM | Comments (5) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

July 28, 2006

Redneck Penny Loafers

It's been a long couple of weeks. So I give you my tuff guy picture in which I am both tuff and taking care of my little sister, all at once.

Mom made me that vest ... fortunately the skirt she made me will NEVER appear on this blog. I think she made me wear the skirt all of twice, so she could take pictures of her prowess as a seamstress. I insisted that cowboys wore JEANS not jean SKIRTS. Sheesh.

We were living in Austin and I wanted to be a cowboy. My grandfather, as I understood it at the time, was a cowboy. What I discovered later on is that while he did work in the cattle industry, he was a buyer of cattle for Armor meat packing ... and he wasn't really a "cowboy" in the strictest sense. However, I begged to go to work with him one summer day because I was certain he was a real cowboy. He kept telling me that he was not a real cowboy, but I was positive ... who else but a cowboy would spend that much time with cows??? And besides, while he didn't live in in Texas like a real cowboy, Oklahoma was close ... probably close enough to work.

As we drove into his work, he began shooting down my ideas one by one. He did not ride a horse. (He did have on a cowboy hat, though ... and boots.) We drove a bit further. There were no horses at work. This I refused to believe for several, several miles. Finally, he got it through my thick head that there really weren't any horses at the "ranch."

"Can I ride a cow, then?"

Well, I mean, hey ... if I couldn't ride a horse, cows were kinda horse shaped, right?

It was several more miles before he convinced me that I would not be riding a cow, either.

Apparently cows, according to Grandpa, are too stupid to be ridden like horse. Any thought of ever being a vegetarian completely went out the window at that point. To my mind, cows will always be too stupid to be anything but meat. (Not meant to be offensive to vegetarians ... just the way I was raised.)

It was the summer after that little episode when Mom made my cowboy outfit ... to go with the six-shooter that Grandma had already gotten me. A trip to Shepler's later led to not one, but TWO cowboy hats and a pair of boots.

Now, my mother was convinced that I would not become some li'l redneck chile. So, anytime I began to evidence a touch of an accent, Mom and Dad both corrected my pronunciation. Repeatedly. And the cowboy boots and cowboy hats were definitely NOT to be everyday wear. In fact, the cowboy boots weren't even leather ... Mom insisted that I get the bluejeans boots. Now, I was just as enthralled with them as with "regular" boots ... largely because the boots had a "back pocket" in which I could put a penny. I guess they were really redneck penny loafers of a sort.

At any rate, I certainly thought I was more than cool in that outfit. Ready to save the whole world.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:29 PM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

July 24, 2006

Barnett & Scott

One of my most favourite Sci-Fi writers ever is Melissa Scott. She's got some amazing books, Night Sky Mine, Trouble and Her Friends, The Jazz, Dreaming Metal. She writes both SF and cyber books ... and I say cyber without the punk, because not everything in that sub-genre is truly punk. Trouble and Her Friends leans toward cyberpunk, while Night Sky Mine and The Jazz are less punk and more "just" computer driven. (All the while having excellent plots and delightful characterization ... I can't read a book if there's not some well-drawn characters in it.)

My partner, A, had introduced me to Melissa Scott in 1999 or early 2000. I think I started with Trouble or maybe it was Dreaming Metal. But, I was well and truly hooked. You see, I grew up reading every Robert Heinlein book I could get my hands on and while I'd read all of his stuff and little bits and spurts and forays into other SF, I'd kind of wandered off into more historical fantasy books like Kurtz's Deryni series (and yet I'd missed the Barnett/Scott books somehow). SF had gotten too far away from story and characterization for me. So reading Gibson and Sterling and Stephenson was getting me back to SF ... and discovering Melissa Scott really sealed it.

In fact, I was chatting with some online friends, the Banshees, and was telling them (in 2001) that my cancer had returned and that I was to have a bone marrow transplant. Everyone was asking what books I liked to read, trying to get a care package together so that I would have something to do during my minimum stay of 21 days for the transplant. Dawn was ecstatic when I listed Melissa Scott first (or nearly so ... honestly, I don't really remember the list of authors and books now). Turns out Dawn knew Melissa, contacted her friend and next thing I knew, I had some autographed books from one of my favourite authors. I was over the moon! Ooops, so to speak, I mean.

I got through the transplant in just 17 days instead, and the books were a big help ... even though my attention span during those 17 days was about that of a hyperactive gnat on crack.

So, when we were in Texas last week, we went to Half Price Books, my Mecca. They don't have Half Price Books quite this far north, and I'd been looking forward to showing that chain off to A while we were down in Texas. Naturally, we came home with a slew of Scott books that we'd not been able to find locally.

Today, A was surfing the web looking to see what new books Scott had written recently. She discovered this first:

Melissa Scott is a science fiction author from Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis University, and earned her PhD. in comparative history. She lived with her partner, author Lisa A. Barnett, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire until the latter's death on May 2, 2006.

From Wikipedia

I was shocked.

I've never been one to much pay attention to "celebrity's" lives, but this still completely shocked me.

» Death   Fantasy writer Lisa A. Barnett, born 1958, died this morning [May 2, 2006] at her home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from brain tumor. She and her partner Melissa Scott published three fantasy novels together, The Armor of Light (1988), Point of Hopes (1995), and Point of Dreams (2001), the last of which won a Lambda Literary Award in 2002.

From Locus Online

Turns out, Melissa Scott hasn't written prodigiously lately because her partner has been battling breast cancer for the past three years. And despite one hell of a battle, the cancer metastasized and moved into the brain.

They were together for 27 years.

I go in for my five year checkup in August ... five years since the bone marrow transplant ... and I hope for yet another clean bill of health. I guess I'm officially in remission or officially "cured" if I'm clean this August.

I think of Lance Armstrong, who grew up just a town or two over from me in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, who kicked a really serious cancer right back in the same spot that it tried to kick him. Me and Lance went to the same hospital for our major treatment ... and within just a couple of years of each other, I think. I can remember my mom telling me when she read about this upstart boy in Plano riding his bike around and winning contests, asking me why I didn't do something "special" like that. I just continued writing my short stories and beginnings of novels and didn't comment.

I think of Melissa Etheridge kicking the cancer back.

And I really mourn that sometimes no matter how hard you kick back ... no matter how hard you struggle and fight and do everything you're supposed to do ... sometimes it just doesn't matter. Sometimes the dice or the cards or the random number generator just doesn't roll your way.

I have never met Melissa Scott nor her partner, Lisa Barnett, and I have the feeling I'm the poorer for it. But it's amazing how deeply I can mourn someone I've never met.

I've added a link to Melissa's blog in the sidebar of the main page ... I'll get around to adding it on all the pages later on. It's well worth the read ... and it's not all depressing, either. In fact, if you enjoy the way I wrote some of the travel posts, I think you'll really dig Melissa's blog as well. I laughed completely outloud several times. She's got an amazing sense of comedic timing.

The last thing I expected this evening was a sucker punch like this. But I imagine it's only a pale reflection of the sucker punch felt by those who actually knew and loved Lisa.

What an odd and random world we live in.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:15 PM | Comments (3) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

July 12, 2006

Candy Bar

I'm going to tell you a wee bit of a story. The names and places are mostly all changed up, but the essential details are true. I was reminded of this story today during my vacation ... because today I stopped in the tiny little sandwich shop where I worked when I first moved out of the house at 19. (Stick with the story ... there's a murder in this one ....)

Once upon a time, there was this awesome little sandwich shop chain called Gio's. The owner, Giovanni, of course, was a refugee from Hell's Kitchen, but had been in Texas long enough to have lost most of his accent, if not his pattern of dress and love of fast, hot cars. He was married and had four kids, so naturally he was a family man to the core. (Uh-huh ... I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, too.)

There were two Gio's in Arlington, another in Coppell, and a brand new one in Dallas. Things were beautiful.

The first time I met Giovanni, I had been working in the original store for just a few weeks. All I knew was this big dude holding a young girl walked into the mostly deserted restaurant and asked for "a bit of pickle." Now, we sold pickles, half pickles and quarter pickles. So, I asked him if he wanted a half or a quarter of a pickle. He replied that he just wanted a bit of pickle. He cocked his head toward his kiddo, "For her," he said.

Wanting to get everything exactly right, I decided he meant a quarter pickle, sliced him one, handed it to him and then moved down to the register and rang him up. "Sir? Sir, that'll be 27 cents, please."

Richie, our store manager, about dropped his jaw to the floor, and I'm certain that his eyes popped out of his head, hit his thick, military grade glasses and then popped back in to their sockets.

"You rang him up????" Richie exclaimed.

"Well, yeah, he ordered a bit of pickle."

"Do you know who this is?"

Gio, waved Richie aside, chuckling. "No, no, no ... she was doing her job. It's already rung up, let me pay."

That was the first meeting with the infamous Gio. I quickly learned that I had been lucky. Sometimes Gio would scream at someone for the same thing. Sometimes he'd threaten them. Sometimes he'd fire them. He had the stereotypical Italian anger issues. I thought that was odd. I'd never met anyone who embraced a stereotype before, but Gio reveled in the stereotype of the Italian goodfella.

Then, I discovered the reason for Gio's quick flips between being magnanimous and being, well, scary as hell, to be honest. More than once I saw Richie blanch while on the phone with Gio. I saw another manager, Thera burst into tears after talking with him.

Dude was a coke addict. Probably dealt the stuff, too, given his Cadillac sports car. He was magnanimous to the extreme while high ... and a real a-hole right after he came down. And there was no telling which way he'd be until after you'd opened your mouth and stuck your foot firmly in it.

An example ... Gio brought his kids into the store fairly regularly. One day, he brings in the whole family and little Frankie comes barrelling up to me, cuts in front of the sole customer in the joint and demands a candy bar. I tell him to get one from the machine. He looks at me in utter disbelief and says:
"Do you know who I am?"

I looked this 10 year old brat straight in the eye and said, "I know you're not going to pay for the candy bar. Now, you can let me serve this customer and then I will take you back to the cooler with me and let you pick your own, or you can sit out here and wait until I'm done with this customer and take whatever thing I give you. Your choice. Which do you want?"

Thera stared at me from across the room ... she made shooing motions at me to go get the candy bar for the brat when she thought Gio wasn't looking.

I finished up with the customer, Frankie sat absolutely quietly in a chair nearby and waited pretty patiently for me ... considering he was about 10, he did really well. When I finished with the customer, I called to him to come back into the cooler with me and pick out his candy bar.

I never did have a lick of trouble with the boy after that ... but I did hear my co-workers talk about how he completely ran over them. He was daddy's boy and they were all afraid of him and Frankie knew it.

I refused to fear a child, and, to be honest, while I'm not sure I would behave any differently today, I would be far more afraid than I was that day.

You see, a few months later, I began putting all the little pieces together. Keep in mind, I was all of 19 and had led ... well, not exactly a sheltered life, but I did think that things you see in movies and on TV were just things that happened there. I didn't know that "based on true events" really meant that this shit sometimes happened for real.

One night, a Friday night, we were fast running out of our special bread. No bread, no sandwiches. Richie called the baker in Dallas and then looked for volunteers to drive the hour, hour and a half round trip. We were all young idiots and didn't even think of asking for mileage. If I'd known what we were driving into, I'd have asked for hazard pay, because of course, I said I'd go. We got directions and took off for one of the sketchiest areas near Deep Ellum (remember, this was late 80s). Now, I'd been out to Deep Ellum before and was cool with that. But this neighborhood, whoa. I mean, this was a bad neighborhood. Enough so, I stayed in the car and kept it running while my co-worked literally ran to the door, snagged the bread and RAN back to the car.

I felt stupid when I got back to the store with the bread ... I mean, we'd not seen anything actually happen. Sure the neighborhood was terribly run down. Sure, there were some odd looking guys just hanging around in the doorways of some of the abandoned buildings. But nobody did anything. I mean, streetlights aren't always lit everywhere you go. The world's an imperfect place, light bulbs fall out all the time, right? (Get the movie reference and I'll give you 20 BlogMad credits.)

The next week, though, I was a bit vindicated. We didn't have a baker anymore. His bakery burned down.

Then, Thera let me and another person in on the real story.

Actually, our baker had been shot between the eyes.

Then the bakery was burned down, after the workers were told to leave.

It was a mob hit. Gio was connected. He wasn't playing at being a Goodfella, he really truly was one. Perhaps on the periphery, perhaps not.

And, while no one ever said it ... there was the fear that this hit might have been a warning to Gio.

Things were getting worse at the stores. The Dallas store went under. Then the Coppell store. He lost the sportscar. He was edgy all the time.

I found another job.

I still love Gio's, though. It's a great little sandwich shop. So, of course, I went back there today and swapped stories with the current employees. Almost everyone from "my" time period was gone. Richie, Greta - the main store managers, operations managers ... gone. Gina, VP of the company during the hey-day ... long gone. Thera had left about the same time I had.

I found out that little Frankie ... Gio's son ... went to Padre Island for spring break his senior year. Always one to live for today, to enjoy his priveleges, including his sports car.

Seventeen. Padre Island. Spring break. Sense of entitlement. Sense of invulnerability.

I was glad to hear that Gio apparently stopped his coke habit as I spoke with the employees tonight. But I have to wonder if he cleaned himself up because of the mob hit, or because he lost almost all of his stores.

Or because Frankie didn't come back from Padre that year. Because Frankie'd wrapped his car around a tree doing God knows how many miles an hour.

You know, I have to wonder ...

If someone else had told Frankie to sit down and wait his turn, would it have made any difference at all?

I was so happy to eat at Gio's tonight. I was happy to see the food was the same, sooooo delicious.

But I'm haunted by the picture of Frankie waiting so patiently in that chair for me ... just so he could come back to the cooler and pick out his own candy bar. It was a small thing for me at the time. But remembering the joy on his face when he got to go to the back room ... this was a big thing for him.

It's odd when you suddenly miss someone you met only fleetingly, some 15 or more years ago. When you realize he oughta be about 28 right now ... securing himself in his career ... and instead, he's been dead for about 10 years now.

I can still see him so clearly, sitting in that chair, alone, in the dining room of the store.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:51 PM | Comments (6) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

June 15, 2006

World Cup Feets and Hands

So, back in the day, late 70s, I lived in the most perfect city in the United States: Austin, Texas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know many of you Americans will claim New York or Chicago or even the sprawl of the OC and LA. But nothing beats the beauty of the Texas hill country and the bustling combination of big city and country that surrounded Austin in the 70s and 80s.

Well, back in the day in Austin, the big kids and the little kids did NOT play together in the schoolyard. But David Tapia, despite having the same birthday as me, was a bit bigger than most of the little kids, so he often got away with hanging out and watching the big kids play.

He brought home the most fascinating game we'd ever heard of. Feets and Hands. We all admitted it was probably Feet and Hands ... but that didn't sound as cool to us.

David hurriedly organized the neighborhood kids in his backyard. Nancy and I were one team. David and John and Debbie and my little sister were the other team (I think ... we might have gotten one of the little kids). The object, he said was to score goals. Well duh. We picked out two planks on the fence on one side of the yard ... and two planks on the other fence on the other side of the yard. Okay, we had our goals duly marked.

"Now," David said, all important at teaching us lesser mortals a sport, "you try to kick the ball into the goal."
Easy we said.
"But," he added, "you can only use your feet. Except, you can yell out HANDS at any point in the game and then you can only use your hands to handle the ball. And if you use the wrong body part, then the other team gets the ball."
Cool, we said.

We must have played our version of "football" or "soccer" for weeks like that. The Tapias dad snickered at us on a regular basis when we'd scream out HANDS and begin flinging the ball around, only to have someone else holler FEETS. The playing field was generally utter chaos. Particularly once David observed an older kid perform a head shot and tried to tell us that we now could also yell HEADS. That particular call was pretty much only used once by each of us until we discovered that it hurt to do that with a fully inflated ball ... and it hurt differently to do it with a mostly inflated basketball.

When I moved to Arlington a couple of years later, the biggest game at recess was something I'd never heard of: soccer. I was so very confused to discover that "hands" was a penalty call, not a way to handle the ball. And after our convoluted rules, I just couldn't see the magic in the simple way my new school friends played this "soccer."

Watching the Germans play yesterday, I do see the interest now. It's certainly more interesting to me than baseball or American football ... though arena football is a far better sport than NFL football. It's complex, it's difficult and it's kinda fun to watch someone in total control of his skills, simply run a hair too fast and almost lose the ball, his balance and everything all at once. Seems to me it's more of a sport than a lot of the commercialized junk I see most of the time. After all, it's grass, some dudes and a ball. There's no high tech bat to make the ball go farther. There's no "Eh, he slam dunked the ball, so we'll ignore the travelling." There's no, I'm 8' tall and 500 lbs, so no one's going to knock me over. It's skills based. It's a HUGE field, so there's not generally a great rapidity in scoring.

In a lot of ways, it reminds me of skateboarding ... simple equipment ... people pushing each other to excel. In skateboarding, you get a bunch of skaters together and they try to outdo one another with their skills. Sure, there's no goals to score, but there's a very solid emphasis on fitness and skill. I just don't see that same emphasis on skills and love of fitness in many American sports anymore. I suppose that's why I find the NBA and even college basketball boring anymore.

Or maybe I've just become an old fogey who just doesn't get it. Wait, an old fogey whose favourite sports are skateboarding and snowboarding? Well, I guess it could happen.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the Ecuador v. Costa Rica game today ... too bad I won't be able to watch it at all since it takes place during my work day. (And I can't bring myself to tape a sports event unless it's skateboarding/ snowboarding.)

Wonder if I can teach any of the neighborhood kids Feets and Hands?

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:12 AM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

June 6, 2006

The Gas Station

I'm going to tell another set of stories on my poor bug-phobic sister and then I'll leave her alone for a while. But I should probably also say that she's not nearly this much of a wuss anymore.

Picture it, Texas, during the energy crisis (no, not this one) ... two youngsters on their way to the promised land: DisneyWorld. What? Oh ... I've been watching old episodes of Golden Girls in the afternoons while I vegetate after getting home. Apparently Sophia is contagious. At any rate, we were preparing to head across the country from Texas to Florida so we could go to Disney World. My sister was all of 3 and a half and I was just 7 and a half. I was beside myself despite knowing that it would be a two day trip in a very packed Delta 88.

Grandpa drove and we reached New Orleans and drove through the French Quarter briefly on our way. My sister and I fought over who was sitting next to grandma in the backseat ... this was a complicated debate because it meant having to sit in the middle of the long bench seat and be squashed by a sibling on one side and grandma on the other side.

And, of course, these were the days before iPods or Walkmen, before GameBoy ... Advance, DS or plain-ole plain-ole. We had a set of car bingo "cards," one of those magnetic face dudes (that I eventually tore apart to see just how soft those magnetic filings really were ... cuz they looked soft), and some books.

Somewhere between Disney World and home, we made a pit stop at a gas station. It had a nice restroom, white tile - pretty palatial for the time. Naturally, as the kids, my sister and I made a beeline for the stalls. Just as I'm ahhhh, relieving the pent up tension of the trip, my sister begins screaming.

Three year old. Room covered in ceramic tile. Great set of lungs. Ummm, OW. Mom and Grandma finally get out of her what's wrong: spider.

Now, in the stall next to my sister, I am trying to finish up frantically before this huge nest of tarantulas comes and eats me alive. Because that MUST be what's happening to my sister given the amount of terror in her voice.

I am hurriedly trying to escape my stall before these hideous creatures come over to my side and I'm also positive at this point that my poor little sister is obviously dying given the horrendous screams coming out of that gas station, reverberating restroom. However, in my panic, I'm twisting the little knob to get out of the stall too far. This particular design let you turn the knob half way to open the door. I am frantically turning it all the way one way ... can't get out ... and all the way the other direction ... can't get out. Finally, I keep pressure on the door as I turn the knob and it pops open. I flee to the safety of my grandmother's arms. Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty ....

"Go crawl under the stall door and let your sister out of there," my mother tells me.

WHAT?

Sure the kid is still screaming and therefore still alive, but come on ... it's been like eleventy minutes of solid screams in there ... surely she has been bitten so many times that she's going to die. And now Mom wants ME to go in there?

At this point I turn into a babbling fool.

My sister has barely stopped screaming to breathe. I am now under the impression that she can scream while drawing breath in as well as while exhaling. I'm also certain that is only a matter of minutes before she inhales spiders and stops making that infernal racket.

Mind you, I'm sad that my sister is obviously dying of spider bites ... but not so much so that I want to risk joining her in death by crawling into that spider's nest of a stall where she's been mutilated by foot long spiders.

Mom insists that I crawl under the door and rescue my sister because I'm smaller and I'll fit. I'm terrified. Petrified. This is when Grandma begins telling Mom that she should let my poor little sister out. Mom insists that she won't fit under the stall ... baloney, she's at least as scared as I am at that point. Plus, it's kinda undignified.

During the argument between Mom and Grandma, I discover the groove in the lock to the stall. I calmly insert my fingernail, frantically look at the floor for the swarm of angry spiders ... and begin slowly twisting the lock open. Finally I have it.

My sister has absolutely no mark on her. She's still screaming.

There is no swarm of tarantulas. There are no tarantualas. In fact, I don't even see the spider at first.

I go in, lead her out by the hand.

The first moment I can remember of older sibling disgust.

Daddy longlegs.

There is a single daddy longlegs in the corner of the stall.

Poor thing was probably terrified by all the commotion.

As we finally finish our tasks, wash up and leave the restroom, there's practically a crowd of people carefully not-looking at us as we exit. My sister is still kind of hitching and snuffling, but I'm rolling my eyes and completely unconcerned anymore. My mother, on the other hand, is utterly mortified. The Public Service Announcement commercials advertising the Child Abuse Hotline have just recently been introduced around the country and my mother is certain that everyone at the gas station has lined up at the pay phones to call the cops on her for so obviously beating her child half to death and back.

I didn't know it then, but that was my introduction to my sister's bug phobia and a good preview of what we'd be dealing with at Disney World in the days ahead. (Apparently the Mad Tea Cup ride was the perfect ride and even the It's a Small World "roller coaster" was too much for her. Well, she was just three.)

A daddy longlegs ... sheesh.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:44 AM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble