Some parents...

My kid had a birthday party to attend Friday night and another for Saturday night. I was supposed to pick up at 8 on Friday, but got a call at 7:30 asking if he could spend

the night—two other friends were staying over as well. I said okay and dropped off an overnight bag. At 9 the next morning I got a call saying that the parents of the child wanted to take the boys swimming. Okay, I packed up my kid’s swim trunks, beach towel, sunscreen, etc. and dropped off. At 5:30 that day---uh huh that long—my kid arrived home looking like a freaking lobster. He could be the spokesman for the Red Lobster chain. No costume needed. Shoulders blistered, body completely red. Every step he took was painful.

The parents of his friend sped out of my driveway. Yeah. Good decision. It seems that the boys were left at the lake without parental supervision! Can you hear me screaming? I pray you didn’t hear all of the swear words I used when I found out. We’re talking about fourteen-year-old boys who can barely remember to brush their teeth let alone use sunscreen and NO parent around to remind them to do it.

So what kind of parents are we talking about here? Where is their brain power? I remember a few years back and another birthday party, this one involving one of my girls. She’d been invited to an overnight on a horse farm. Sounded pretty cool. They were all going horseback riding. They were in sixth grade. Then I found out that the overnight was going to be in the barn and a sixteen-year-old girl and her boyfriend were going to chaperone these girls and BOYS! Yep, it was a boy-girl sleepover. Now maybe I was thinking back to when I was sixteen, but no way in hell do you let a sixteen-year-old and her boyfriend sleepover together and be chaperones for a boy-girl sleepover. Boy-girl sleepover? WTF? My kid DID NOT go. And she hated me for it, too.

The last party I had at my house was a birthday party for my oldest. A total of forty-two kids. Boys and girls. The girls were staying overnight and the boys had to leave at 11. It was a pool party. The kids started arriving the MORNING of the party—yes, at 9 that morning I already had six kids in the pool plus my own. I had sleeping bags, cots, blow up mattresses, all set up in the house and an RV that could sleep another ten or so out in my backyard by the pool. It was a great party. The kids had a blast. But I stayed up just as long as they did and they didn’t settle down until 5 a.m. At 3 I looked out my window to see five girls on top of the RV—about 12 feet in the air—shaking their bootys and flashing everyone their boobs! The boys were indeed gone, thankfully. But that is when I made the decision—NEVER AGAIN. Too much responsibility.

I’m one of those people who takes responsibility seriously. If you leave your child with me, you better believe I will take care of him/her. And that bunch that night proved to me I was just getting too damn old for the job. Has anyone besides me had experience with parents who basically did a lousy job of taking care of your kid when they were clearly responsible for his/her well being?

http://tessmackall.com

Smelly scents

Science fiction erotica author Shaunna Wolf joins us today. Her stories are hot, hot, hot, but her humor is cool. Help us welcome her. :)

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Today is my birthday, I'm not a party kinda person so there won't be any drinking, staying out all night or clubbing, and since my husband is not in the state at the moment, there won't be any birthday sex. No one will stop by either. When you live with several non-domestic type critters, people tend to honk the horn and wait for you to come out to them on the rare occasion they do come by.

So I decided to do the next best thing: go shopping. I don't mind shopping too much--I'm mostly an in and out kinda woman. I know what I want, have a list and coupons and, zoom, in I go prepared to battle the surging crowds and shortages of things on sale.

Being it's my birthday, I got to thinking about birthdays past, get out the good china and the glasses my mom collected when I was a kid. She got them out of Tide detergent. They even had a picture on the box of the glass inside--the box was bright orange, the box of Cheer next to it blue--nothing on those boxes said anything about what the stuff inside supposedly made your clothes smell like. The focus was on getting your clothes clean.

Now, packages scream Ocean Breeze--have you ever been to the ocean? Why do I want my clothes to smell like seaweed, dead fish, and salt air with an over scent of ozone? How about Spring Rain--wet blacktop and worms anyone? Everything seems to need a screaming scent designed to make you want to buy it sure that you must stink like a dirty litter box if you don't. You can't even pick up a magazine without being assaulted by these stinking scents.

Your car should smell like new even if it's old, your house must have a scent for every room, and your clothes should smell like they just came out of the dryer even if it's ten days later--is that after they were worn--that would be some trick. Where was that miracle the last time I went camping?

It's not so much that I object to scents, I like to use candles, melting scents and incense--I have critters after all--my main objection is this:

Why do I have to pay extra to have something unscented? Would you pay extra for a car without seats? A computer without an operating system? Foam contraception without spermicide?

Of course not, we wouldn't buy it. So why do we pay extra to get a product without stinky stuff added? I mean they add dye, they add scent, they add bleach, so why do I have to pay more to get less? Either the companies are stupid, or we the consumers are . . .

Personally, I think the companies think we are brainless. Like the people who think milk comes from a factory, like a soft drink, and not from cows at any point in its production. I have had arguments with these out of touch people who end the argument with, "Well, maybe your milk comes from a cow, but mine doesn't." Umm, ok. Maybe they are the CEO's of the charge-more-for-less-companies.

Sitting in their corner office, they have a picture of the factory where their product comes from, stuff delivered in a big tanker truck--now that it has arrived, it has to go through dye removal, that costs money, and then scent removal, that costs more. Yeah, that's got to be it.

And like thinness, everything points to the idea that we need to smell like Musk, or Black Ice, or whatever the popular idea is . . . really? Raccoons smell musky, no way I want to smell like that, and Black Ice, I've never gotten out of the car after doing donuts on it to get down on the highway and sniff it, so how do I know if I want to smell like it, but there it is--the media says my house etc. should have long lasting freshness in the form of these scents, and if I don't want to smell that way, well there you go, get your wallet out it's going to cost you more to have the scent removed.

Maybe I should move to Italy, as a culture, they accept that people smell like, well, people. Homes smell like Mama's meatballs and sauce. And windows get opened and comforters get hung out of windows to catch the morning breeze, true morning breeze fresh. All I have to do is sell my house, get a plane ticket, buy a house in Italy . . .

I saved forty-six dollars on my grocery bill, with coupons, including the $3.00 off on Tide free and clear making it only .50 cents more than the smelly stuff and a lot cheaper than moving to Italy.

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Blurb:

Jezren Darksky left Earth behind for the lure of the stars, and to escape her life on the streets. Accepted into the renowned Night Bird Warrior's Guild she never expects to find the love of her life in the form of an alien man and then lose him. After chasing three fugitives across ten worlds, and nearly losing her life in the process, Jezren returns to the Guild Home world to mark her husband's death. Lonely and guilt-ridden, Jezren makes a discovery in the arms of another non-human man that will change her life forever.

Excerpt:

"You shouldn't have tried to touch my sword. If my hand hadn't been on it..." She poured another shot of whiskey and tossed it into the fire. The flames flared brightly, lapping up the alcohol in a quick burst.

He reached with a serpent's speed and caught her hand. "I didn't want to touch your sword..." He cleared his throat and grasped her hand tighter. "I have to touch you," he whispered.

Jezren made to pull her hand out of his. He touched his lips to the back of her hand. Very slowly, his tongue slid over her flesh, long, thin at the tip getting thicker near his lips. Like his lips, it was a lighter shade of blue than the rest of him and cat rough. Jezren sucked in a breath, quick, hard-she made a small attempt to take her hand away.

He continued to stare at her, his gaze locked with hers. His ice-blue eyes now looked tinged with purple. Whiskey fire burned through her insides and streaked into her loins when he wound his tongue around one of her fingers, not just once, but in two blue swirls. He slowly pulled it back into his mouth-sliding it off one finger before circling the next one.

Jezren shivered, sure her sudden desire would be soaking the chair seat soon. Using her free hand, she took a sip of the costly amber liquid in the small bottle. She'd already had too much, not so much she couldn't think for herself, but enough that he, with his seductive tongue, had won her will.

"Perhaps," she whispered, "I should know your name." He continued to wrap and unwrap his tongue around her fingers. He turned her arm and pushed her sleeve up so he could lick the inside of her arm.

"Names, what does a name really matter?" he asked without stopping his attention to her arm.

She gasped, aware of others in the room staring at them even though she'd closed her eyes, the heat growing between her legs hotter already than the fire in the hearth. When he stroked his nails down the now sensitive flesh of her arm, she sat up straight and stared directly at him. She reached to touch his braid-her fingers meeting with smooth strands of silkiness. He laughed in a soft way that sung on her nerves and made her squeeze her legs together in self-pleasure. She could no longer sit still.

Shifting positions, she pushed the bottle to the side and leaned toward him. "I have a room," she whispered.

Catching her by surprise, he pushed his mouth against hers. His tongue rasped across her lips, probing, but waiting for her permission. She parted her lips and let her tongue touch his. His mouth tasted sweet, overlain with the smooth touch of the whiskey. Only by pushing against his chest with her palm could she make herself move back from him.

A flash of laughter came to her, Din'arik's. Jezren had repeated an oft said thing among the humans at the academy-Din'arik resembled a demon-who knew what he might expect from a human woman or what his "thing" might be like. So many of the human women who came to the academy were such proper prudes. Among the students, there had been two groups-those who stayed with their own kind, and those who deliberately sought out other races for both friendship and partnership. Jezren had almost learned the hard way that not all races were compatible with each other-barbs being the least of it.

His musical laughter came again, and at last his deep voice, shaking, almost unsure. "Lady, you will enjoy me-I have been with human women before," he told her. His tongue went around her fingers again, promising pleasure in other places.

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There's a Hole in the Bucket

M/M author Jaime Samms joins us today. As I read her blog post, I wonder if she is married to the same man as I am. (g) Nah! This is just a male affliction.

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In all that follows, as with anything I write, I ask you to keep two things in mind. First, I'm a writer and an artist. Hyperbole is a tool, not a sin. Second, I write from life. I'll let you decide where the following post falls on that continuum :)

I'm pretty sure most of us are familiar with the song: "There's a Hole in My Bucket" You know, there's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, a hole. Then fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, then fix it, dear Henry, fix it...." and so on.

I think it's time we re-wrote the song for modern times, and we can base it on, well, my morning so far.

It's Saturday morning. Hubby has already promised to take the kids to dance class and leave me free to do my thing for the day. So we all sleep in, and when I finally crack an eyelid to look at the clock, I see they have about forty minutes to dress, eat, pack a lunch and dance clothes and go catch the bus. I gently wake hubby, and he mutters something, the only clear word of which is 'coffee.'

Good enough. I can oblige, seeing as how I need some too.

I get to the kitchen (keeping in mind, I've been working out of the house all this past week, as well as finalizing my latest MS for submission, and he's been home with the kids.)

Me: *at the door to the kitchen* "Uh.... Hubby?"

Him: "Mmmfffrhh?" *heads to the shower*

Me: "The coffee pot is buried, dear Hubby, dear Hubby, the coffee pot is buried, dear Hubby, buried."

Him: "Under what is it buried..." (I'm lazy, you fill in the rest)

Me: "Under dishes, dear Hubby...dirty dishes."

Him: "Then wash them, dear Wifey...wash them." *heads for shower*

Me: "Pizza boxes in the sink, dear Hubby,...and crumbs"

Him: "Recycle them, dear Wifey...recycle"

Me: "The bins are all full, dear Hubby...overflowing"

Him: "Then empty them, dear Wifey....downstairs." *heads from shower to bedroom*

Me: "But the stairs are all blocked, dear Hubby....break my neck falling."

Him: "With what are they blocked, dear Wifey...with what?"

Me: "Clean clothes, dear Hubby...your shorts."

Him: "Well fold them, dear Wifey...fold them." *rooting through his dresser for clothes*

Me: "Where should I fold them, dear Hubby...oh where?"

?"

Him: "At the table, dear Wifey...the dining table.

Me: "But the dishes dear Hubby...they're everywhere."

Him: "Oh shit!!!!! We're late!" *pokes his head out of the bedroom* "Did you wash my underwear and socks this week?"

Me: O.o

So, they did leave eventually. I did the dishes, washed the laundry left sitting in the washer (again), hung up a load, folded the week's worth of clean stuff, emptied the kitchen recycling into the bins downstairs, and swept the floors. Poured myself a nice warm cup of coffee in preparation for getting on with writing and opened the fridge to find the cream carton was there....empty. I settled for milk, reached for the sugar bowl to find it...wait for it....empty. *sigh*

So now I'm off to the corner store for cream and sugar, and you know what? Don't care if I have to pay twenty bucks for them. I work three full time jobs around here. I bloody well earned cream and brown sugar in my coffee!

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Blurb:

Tyler should know; as an ad executive, the packaging is what sells. And Jake is quite a package. So what if neither long-time friend Marty nor his landlady think much of Jake. Tyler is determined not to see the dark side of his lover, but when the truth becomes undeniable, not even an evening soaked in martinis will let him hide from it.

Weathering Jake's lies and secrets gets easier under the sheltering support of new friends, Libby and Steven. In fact, Tyler figures a lot of things might get easier with gorgeous, attentive Steven around.

Tyler should have known better. Again. Not even someone as seemingly perfect as Steven Jessop comes completely as advertised. This time, though, Tyler has to make a decision. After all, even if what you see is not what you get, Steven's imperfections might just be what he's always wanted, if only he can sell Steven on giving love another chance.

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Social networks and website for Jaime:

• Jaime Samms website
• livejournal
• Face Book
• Twitter: JaimeSamms

Knickers!

Repost from another blogspot.

On Monday, because I’d let the housework go to hell the previous week, I decided I’d better clean. Properly. Not just one of those quick tidy-ups. So the bathroom thought Christmas had come early, and so did my cooker.

Now, I rarely clean the inside of my cooker. Disgusting of me, I know, but I also know there are many others out there who don’t do that either (come on, admit it!). Said cooker had started to, err, smoke a bit and smell when I turned it on. That might have had something to do with the charred cheese that drips off pizzas (highly bugging) and various other bits of food that seem to jump off the trays while cooking.

A weird side of me wonders if food indeed has feelings, deciding it’s bloody hot in there, and attempts a break-out.

Okay, forget I admitted I think odd things like that…

Anyway, Husband, the dear, had the week off. As I don’t clean on weekends unless I’m feeling insane (he does it), he rarely sees me when I’m cleaning. I kinda forgot he was home and did my usual sing-and-dance routine, paying particular attention, and going at it with much glee, to the part in Aretha Franklin’s Respect where the backing singers go: Whoop!

So, I’m cleaning away…

What you want! WHOOP! Baby, I got it! WHOOP! What you need! WHOOP! You know I got it!

And then I remembered he was home. So I said, “Pardon me, dear, but this is how I act when I’m alone.”

Note those words, my beauties…

About an hour later, after leaving the spray oven cleaner stuff to do its work, I decided it was time to wipe that off and have a sparkling oven again. One where I can actually SEE through the glass door. (Don’t… I’m foul.)

So, I proceeded to take off my jeans.

Hubby looked at me as though he thought the same as the bathroom (Christ, Santa read my mind…) and asked, “What are you doing, love?”

“I’m taking my jeans off,” I said.

“Umm, is this another one of your daily rituals I’m unaware of?” (Possibly thinking: Just what does this woman do when I’m at work, for God’s sake? I thought she wrote!)

“No,” I said. “Just going to clean the oven.”

His confused face was TOO funny, and I went off to do my scrubbing in just my knickers, bra and top.

There was a reason for this mad behaviour. I’d been wearing white jeans. I’ve made the mistake in the past of cleaning while wearing this colour, or wearing black and getting a great big bleach splash on my clothes. But, you can bet your bottom dollar that now, when Hubby emails during the day and asks, “What you up to, love? Everything all right?” and I answer, “Cleaning the windows…” he’s going to be praying to the dear Lord above that I’m fully clothed and NOT outside with my knickers on show!

The Wrong Funeral, or Why I Am Not Catholic

The hilarious and quirky Helen H. E. Madden brings us a tale of humor and poignancy.

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So Marci asked me to write about something funny for a guest blog post. I tend to write about whatever is on my mind at the time, and recently the topic has been religion. You see, my husband is a good Catholic boy, by which I mean he is Catholic, he is male, and he knows how to keep me happy in bed. I, however, am not Catholic, but I have learned over the years that being married to a good Catholic boy means I sometimes have to endure being dragged to church. Around our house, we refer to Christmas and Easter as "Drag-Your-Buddhist-to-Church Day" and everyone takes bets as to how long it will be before I burst into flames once I'm seated in the pews.

This past month, thanks to my daughter taking First Communion, I have been dragged to church repeatedly, so often in fact that people have started to ask, "Have you been barbequing, or is that hickory smoke perfume you're wearing?" These comments are inevitably followed by the question, "So why aren't you Catholic yet?" You see, there is a process by which I could be transformed from a godless heathen Buddhist to a good Catholic, but I have vowed never to go through that process. And why would I never do that, you may ask?

It's because I once went to the wrong funeral.

Yes, you read that right. See, here's what happened. I first started going to church with my husband early in our marriage. On one of these visits, I was cornered by a gruff old man with a booming voice and bushy eyebrows that looked ready to crawl off his face and eat me alive.

"What's the matter with you?!" he blustered as he shook his cane at me. "I see you sittin' in church, but you don't sing any of the hymns. What's wrong? Your mouth don't work?"

"My mouth works fine," I replied. "But I don't sing the hymns because I'm Buddhist."

"What?" he bellowed. "You're NUDIST?!"

"No, Dad!" said his daughter, coming up behind him. "She said Buddhist, not nudist."

"Oooooooooooh..." the man said. Then he turned back to me and snorted. "Too bad, the other would have been more interesting. By the way, my name is Bill."

And that's how I came to be friends with Bill. Every time I showed up at church with my husband, Bill would come up to me and ask if I was ready to convert. He always started these conversations by serenading me with an Irish love song. He sang very beautifully and very LOUDLY, so loudly that everyone in the church always knew when I was there. Once, Bill ran into me at a Barnes and Nobles, and he started singing to me there too. It scared the hell out of the sales clerks, but it made me completely fall in love with the old guy.

Right after the Irish love song, Bill always asked me the same question. When was I going to convert? "Come on," he'd say. "I'll be your sponsor. I'll teach you to be a bead mumbler, a fish eater! We'll have fun."

I always demurred. "Thank you, Bill. I know you'd make a great sponsor, but I'm just not ready to convert."

"Well, get ready! I'm an old man. I can't die until you convert!"

"Well I guess you're never dying," I'd tease.

Then one afternoon, I got a phone call from the church.

"Hello?" a woman said. "Are you on the funeral tree?"

"The what?!" I replied.

"The funeral tree. You know, when someone dies, we call two people and then they call two people and they call two more people and so on and so on..."

"Sounds too much like a Faberge commercial to me," I said. "No, I'm not on the funeral tree."

"Oh, well then I guess I should tell you that Bill died."

That stopped me cold. "What?! I don't believe it! Bill died? When?"

The woman gave me the details about how Bill had suffered a massive heart attack two days earlier and his funeral was to be held that Saturday. I tearfully told her my husband and I would be there and I hung up. Sobbing, I called Michael and passed on the bad news.

"Bill died!" I cried into the phone.

"What?! When?"

And so I told him the details.

"Oh honey," he said. "I'm so sorry to hear it. We'll go to the funeral mass on Saturday, okay?"

I sniffed and sobbed and said okay, then hung up the phone and spent the rest of the week being miserable. On Saturday, I put on my nicest dress and rode with Michael to the church.

"I still can't believe Bill died," I kept saying, over and over and over again.

"Me neither," Michael would reply. "He was so intent on getting you to convert."

We arrived at the church and got out of the car. As we walked through the parking lot, we kept repeating ourselves.

"I just can't believe he died!"

"I know. It's such a shock."

"Seriously! How could Bill just die like that? He was supposed to convert me first!"

The conversation continued all the way into the church. As we were sitting down in the pews, I said it again.

"I cannot believe Bill died!"

"Neither can I," Michael said, a strange look suddenly coming over his face. "Because he's sitting right over there in the choir!"

"WHAT?!"

Sure enough, Bill was alive and well and sitting in the choir, waiting to sing for the funeral mass. I jumped out of my seat and raced over to him.

"You're supposed to be DEAD!!" I shouted at him.

"Who, me? Oh no, that was Bill Smith who died last week. I'm fine. Say, when are you gonna convert?"

And then he started singing 'My Wild Irish Rose' to me.

A few years passed. During that time, I had two children, both of whom were baptized at the church. Bill was there to congratulate me at each event, always ready with a love song and his plea for my conversion. Sometime after that, we moved to a different parish, and I didn't see Bill as often anymore, which was a shame. The one day I was flipping through the newspaper and I ran across an obituary for...

You guessed it. Bill.

He had suffered a heart attack and passed away a few days before. This time I knew it was him. There was a photo of him at the top of the obituary. In tears, I called my husband, this time to let him know Bill had really, truly died.

"Honey, I'm so sorry," he said. "We'll go to the funeral mass on Saturday."

So once again, on Saturday I dressed up and piled into the car with my husband and our girls. All the way over to the church, Michael and I reminisced about Bill and his Irish love songs, and once again we kept saying the same thing over and over again.

"I can't believe he's dead! He said he couldn't die until I converted!"

"I know, honey. I can't believe it either."

"And he's really dead this time!"

"Yes, he is. We both saw the photo in the newspaper."

"But I can't believe it. How can Bill be dead?"

All the way to the church, we kept repeating ourselves. In the parking, we said it over and over again.

"I can't believe he's dead! I just can't!"

And then, just as we reached the sidewalk leading up to the church doors, a car pulled up. A young man got out of the front seat and walked around to the back of the car. He opened the door, and out stepped...

Bill.

If I could have died of shock, I would have done it then. Instead, I turned to my husband and screeched.

"IT'S NOT POSSIBLE! HE'S DEAD! I SAW HIS OBITUARY!"

Michael just stared, his jaw slack. "I know! I saw it too. I don't understand!"

I started tearing my hair out. "This isn't happening! This can't be happening! I cannot have gone to the wrong funeral for the same man twice!"

At that point, Bill turned and smiled at me.

"Good afternoon, madam. What lovely children you have! Tell me, are they both boys?"

Boys? BOYS?! I looked at my girls in their pretty pink dresses and then glared at Bill. He smirked at me with his usual charm.

"Hey, do you guys like music?" he asked.

Oh, this was it. Any second now, Bill was going to start singing Irish love songs to me. I thought I would faint. But then something very strange happened. Bill reached into his suit jacket and...

He pulled out a harmonica.

"You two girls know the ABC song?" he boomed to my daughters. They nodded and he smiled. "Good! Then you can sing along!"

So we walked down the sidewalk together, Bill playing the harmonica and the girls and I singing the ABC song. I had never, in all the years I had known him, seen Bill play a harmonica. It also occurred to me then that I had never seen Bill wear a VFW cap either, and didn't he seem a bit shorter than usual? I mean, yeah, the man was dead, but getting shorter wasn't supposed to be a side effect of dying, was it?

When we reached the doors of the church, the young man who had escorted Bill out of the car came up and fussed.

"Enough with the music!" he told Bill. "Don't you know this is a funeral?"

"Oh, a funeral is it?" Bill blustered. "Did you guys know this was a funeral? I didn't know we were going to a funeral!"

I started to giggle. "You know, I know who's funeral this is, and I don't think he'd mind a little music."

Bill smiled at me. "I knew him too, and he wouldn't mind at all."

Then the young man took Bill into the chapel and my family and I went to the reception area to meet Bill's family. When I found Bill's daughter, I asked her a question.

"Say, did your dad have a brother?"

She snorted. "Oh yeah! And they look exactly alike!"

"Oh thank god!"

Then I told her about how we had gone to the wrong funeral a few years earlier and found her father still alive, sitting in the choir. And I told her how we had all had a heart attack just moments before when her uncle arrived at the church. She laughed so hard, she had tears coming down her cheeks.

"Thanks for that!" she told me. "I've never heard a better story at a funeral in all my life. Dad would have loved it!"

And so that's why I will never convert to Catholicism. Because I know, even though I've been to his funeral twice now, Bill is still out there somewhere waiting to convert me. And so long as I don't convert, that man can never die.

I look forward to hearing what Irish love song he sings to me the next time we meet.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Helen E. H. Madden, also known as Cynical Woman, is a writer and artist who quit her lucrative day job years ago with no idea what she might do next. Since then, she's written and produced 165 short stories for the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast (http://www.heatflash.libsyn.com). Her erotica short story collections, "Future Perfect" and "Welcome to Mundania", are published by Logical-Lust (http://www.logical-lust.com). She is currently podcasting her second novel, "The Little Death," a tale about telepathy, government conspiracies, and the dangers of the human touch.

Helen's art projects include her webcomics, "The Adventures of Cynical Woman" and "Rats!" She also runs VeryScaryArt.com, an online gallery of children's artwork about scary stuff. She is very much in love with zombies right now, but that's probably because she is one, and could someone please explain the concept of "sleep" to her? Because she's never experienced it herself.

Visit Helen's websites at:

http://www.cynicalwoman.com
http://www.heatflash.libsyn.com
http://www.veryscaryart.com

Twitter - http://twitter.com/#!/Cynical_Woman

Why can't hair just stay where it belongs?

I am not talking about the hair on my head. I rarely spend time doing it. Even when I dress up, in order for curl to stay, I have to use Dippity-Doo and hairspray. Like everything else on my body (or so it seems), my hair has a mind of its own.

I've had hair in socially inappropriate places for a long time. I think I started getting lip hair just after puberty. Fortunately for me, my sister is a beautician and could "rip my lip" once a month or so. Now, ten, or so, years later, the fur has decreased quite a bit...except for that one hair that has turned into a dark, stiff whisker. (sigh) While I can see it now, when I reach my mother's age, I don't know if I will be able to. At which point, I'll have one long hair curling over my lip and perhaps fanning out into a moustache. It will be soooo attractive!

However, the once somewhat dense hair from my lip has migrated to a scar on my chin. Okay. Not just a scar. That hair that started as just one has long since multiplied and spread from the scar to a few patches on the chin. It's not soft hair either. It's prickly and coarse. And some of it is transparent, or so it seems. I can't see it, but I sure can feel it. If I touch that area and feel a prickle, it will drive me crazy until I've plucked that sucker out. God help me if I am in the car or some other place far, far away from my tweezers. I will be fixated on that damn hair the entire time. Conversation is nearly impossible. Any thought but getting that hair out of my chin is nearly impossible. (Obsess much?)

Now, this chin hair drives me nuts. How does it grow so fast? Seriously, I can pluck them daily, and it seems that a "new" one appears as if by magic by the evening. But you were just strip-mined, you damn pieces of *&#@!

Why couldn't other parts of my body be that efficient? Huh?

For instance, why doesn't my metabolism process fat and sugar that quickly? Hm? No more cellulite for me. That would be really nifty. And why doesn't my skin rejuvenate as quickly as that so that I don't have any wrinkles? I could handle that too. But, no, I have to have chin hair on Miracle Gro.

It's just so wrong.

And, as a woman, if we have hair growing out of the chin, on your lips, or a stray one poking out of the cheek (which I've seen on my older relatives and could soon be my fate--ARGH!), if we don't pluck, wax, shave, or get a laser treatment, we will be marked as a bearded lady. While a man who may be afflicted with man boobs might be ridiculed a bit, but he does not get quite as much as a woman with facial hair. (Dude Look Like a Lady. Yeah, yeah, dude look like a lady.) Perhaps it's because he has facial hair and that little doohickey between his legs. (g) All right, saying "little" is unkind, but, at this moment, after a bout with the tweezers in front of the mirror, I am not feeling particularly kind. So, forgive me if I disparage them just a little.

Pant... pant... pant...

All right, I think I need to go lie down for a bit. These chin hairs have me all worked up.

Where Have They Gone?

Author Cherie Reich joins us today and discusses something that I think many of us have found, much to our dismay. Why? Why do companies do this? I don't have an answer, but I think Cherie has a good idea of what to do about it. (grin)

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Although they say you shouldn't pick favorites, I do. It's human nature to have favorite items, but what do you do when those great things disappear?

A few years ago, my favorite soup was Campbell's Old Fashioned Tomato Rice Soup. I would eat it one to two times a week. No other soup could measure up to the rice and tomato within. It went perfectly with cheese and crackers. A real soup you could scoop up and enjoy. Slowly, we realized that less and less of the soup was in the store. We and quite a few other patrons would scour the soup aisle for a single can of Old Fashioned Tomato Rice Soup. It was the first aisle we went to in every store carrying soup. When we found the cans, we would buy them all, not leaving one for someone else. Stingy? Yes. Do I regret it? No. Then there were no more cans. No more favorite soup. And, no, it's not the same using tomato soup and adding rice. It really isn't, so don't suggest it. The tomato part of the soup tasted different. They took it away.

I've slowly grown use to Campbell's Healthy Choice Tomato Soup, but nothing compares to the tomato rice soup. It isn't the last thing gone either.

I started using John Freida's Weather-Control Conditioner. It worked pretty well, but it was getting harder and harder to find it at Walmart. It, too, disappeared, but I've moved on. There're always other types of conditioner.

I could get over the conditioner. I still miss the soup, but nothing prepared me for the next item to disappear.

I used to eat Yoplait YoPlus Strawberry Yogurt. It was the absolute perfect yogurt. Sweet but not too sweet. A perfect consistency, not too liquidy and not thick like Greek Yogurt. It had real pieces of fruit in it. My cat Romeo even loved it. I ate it every day religiously. Then it became hard to find. I would scour Walmart, Kroger, other grocery stores. Sometimes I would find it. Sometimes not. Then they removed the price tag from the shelves. No more Yoplait YoPlus Yogurt. The most perfect yogurt in the world was gone. It's been a couple months. I've tried all sorts of other yogurt. Right now I'm eating Activia yogurt with the granola. It's…edible. The granola really helps. It's not the same. Not at all.

They also took the cat treats I had been getting.

Where does it end? Why remove an object that people buy? That people love?

Bastards! Everyone of them.

Is it just me? Or have you found old favorites disappearing off the shelves never to be seen again?

Perhaps it is time for a horror story…one of sweet vengeance against a certain company.

I'd really like my yogurt back.

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Author Bio: Cherie Reich is a writer, freelance editor, and library assistant living in Virginia. Her works have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, and her horror ebook Once Upon a December Nightmare is published by Wild Child Publishing. She is a member of Valley Writers and the Virginia Writers Club and placed third in Roanoke Valley's Big Read writing contest.

Links:

1. Website: http://cheriereich.webs.com
2. Blog: http://cheriereich.blogspot.com
3. Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/bookworm0753
4. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/authorcheriereich