How bad does a book have to be?

I generally enjoy reading and can keep my internal editor quiet for the most part, but I read a book yesterday that just set my teeth on edge. I was twitching with the need to red-pen it.

Out orf respect for the author, I won't mention the title here, but I will give the basics on what annoyed me.

This tiytle mostly focused on a teen who must go overseas. Her mother hooked up with an Australian guy online and mom has planned a getting to know you trip. Mom and daughter lived in NYC.

The first thing to strain the believability for me was that they had a spacious four bedroom apartment in NYC, with two live in staff. Mom was an employee in an advertising firm and admittedly does okay...okay, not fabulously, but okay. A four bedroom apartment in NYC and two live in staff costs a mint. What would an apartment like that cost? 4000-5000 a month I'd think and that is conservative. Add salaries for two live-ins and mom surely must be making in the 250,000 a year or so range. A quick browse of Craigslist shows apartments in the 4000-6500 range.

Anyway, the heroine and her mom seem to live a comfortable life, but I didn't get the impression that they were doing so well.

The heroine's speech patterns needed a lot of work. This is an urban NYC born and bred heroine and in the first few pages she's talking like an Australian or a Brit. Not only that, she didn't speak like any teen I've ever heard. The author and editor dropped the ball here!

The book was a pleasant read once I was able to put these gripes aside, but these items did annoy me.

Can you put your internal editor aside?

Thursday Q of the day

One of my mailing list does these every day and I thought maybe I'd try to be more active on my blog and these would give me a jump start. I promise only to post the fun or interesting ones!

Come answer these in replies!

1) If you had to name the craziest thing you did in your youth, what would it be?

2) If you had to name the most dangerous thing you did in your youth, what would it be?

My answers:
1)Ran off to concerts in Boston.

2) Riding out a hurricane as a 13 yr old and taking care of my 10 yr old kid that I'd just met who turned out to be my stepbrother a few years later.

This was totally NOT of my doing. My mom and her then-boyfriend were locked in at work and they decided to uproot the kid and I and take us to their nursing home. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay in the building so they put us in a building about 200 yards away, an old Victorian house that had been reorganized into an office building on the ground floor. Upstairs were a bedroom, bathroom and two sitting rooms and that was where we stayed.

There was no food, and we were pretty freaked out. Add to that that we didn't even know each other...

After about 6 hours, we got it into our heads that we needed food so in the middle of this Cat 2 hurricane, we ran the 200 yards to the main building, wind whipping and that hurricane taking our blood as branches hit us.

Needless to say, after we ate and raided the vending machines, we waited until the eye of the storm passed over to return to the Victorian.

Current events-a bit melancholy

I've been wondering why the Terri Schiavo case has been resonating with me and I finally hit upon why after visiting a yahoo diagram that showed the process of starving to death over days.

My dad was a great guy, almost more a friend than a parent. Life cicumstances kept us apart a couple of years when I was a teen. In August of 1998, I recieved a call that he'd been rushed to the hospital. A minor surgery revealed that he was riddled with multi-system cancer and he was given a couple of months to live. He hung on for five long months...

He finally lost his fight when he was a mere 62 pounds, down from his pre-diagnosis high of 185 or so. He was a little stocky and 5'11"...imagine a man that height at 62 pounds.

It was hell. He was 100% aware and 100% conscious until the last day and he had cravings...he'd wistfully mention food like pizza, when all he could tolerate were ice chips.

And yet he was so damn brave. He never complained a once.

I'm not going to get into a political debate here, because I don't feel that is the purpose of my blog. I sort of went off on a tangent here...

I just thank god that we didn't have to make the decision Michael Schiavo had to make for Terri...that as terrible as his pain was, my dad was able to greet death on his own terms.

My prayers are with their families. May they someday find a measure of peace.

I. HATE. CARS!

We have two cars. Currently only one runs. Here's my tale of woe!

When we were driving back from Ohio a few weeks back, our car(a wonderful SUV that we've owned since 2001) smelled funny. There was this burning rubber smell that permeated the cabin. Mark and I checked the tires, etc and couldn't figure out the problem. Remember that the car broke down in January and we'e still paying off that bill.

Fast forward to the week before the trip from hell (my last entry). The car wouldn't start. Mark's mechanic towed it to his shop, had alook at all the fluid levels, and determined that it was just a loose wire or something, so we felt confident taking it to Rhode Island. It gave us no problems whatsoever in RI.

We returned home on Monday (smoothieless and tired but the car ran fine!) The following Thursday (nearly 2 weeks ago), we went to go to the grocery store and there was this ominous sound of metal clunking against metal. We quickly returned it to the driveway and Mark looked under it, but couldn't find any problems with it. Still, we both felt that this was a bad sign.

The following day, we went to a car dealership. This dealership was having all these deals where they paid off existing loans, etc. Well, since we owe a few thousand more than the blue book value, this sounded like a great idea! NOT! Turns out they'd give us about 1/20th of what the car was worth in trade in and offered to roll our loan into a new loan, so our monthly payments would be something like 700.00 if we bought a 3 yr old car from them. Um...no! There's NO way we could do that.

A few days later, Mark took the car to a transmission specialist and got the bad news. The transmission is totally gone and there are metal shavings in the pan (whatever that is). It'll cost us at least 4500.00 to fix it. This is on top of the 1700.00 we're still shouldering for the repairs in January.

Thank God we have a second car, because THIS one won't be getting fixed for a few months .

I hate cars :P

My kingdom for a smoothie!

This weekend, my husband and I had a road trip to do. My brother and his wife were having their third official (fifth overall) wedding reception. They've been married five MONTHS. My husband and I have been married 3.5 years and we've had ZERO receptions, but that's a whole 'nother post!

We were expected there, obviously, especially since we couldn't make their wedding. 'There' is 475 miles away. Because we were away last week, Mark couldn't take any time off work, but he planned to leave early on Friday.

Mark got home at 5 Friday evening, We HAD to be in town by Saturday at 1 in the afternoon. I wanted to leave early Sat. morning, but Mark wanted to get going immediately. He had planned out a route that would take us away from the terrible DC rush hour traffic and we'd rejoin the highway at Baltimore. Okay, no problem. We'd get in at about 2 am, but we could sleep in a bit.

We got on the road about 5:05 and slammed right in to the traffic stream. It was TERRIBLE. These roads, while picturesque, were one lane roads, with an average speed for about 7 mph. Then, the death knell started. A relatively minor accident shut down the highway in front of us for an hour.

After four HOURS we'd traveled about fifty miles and decided to stop for a bite to eat. After dinner, we pressed onward. We knew we'd have to stay in a hotel, but we wanted to get as far as we could before giving up.

We decided to stop at midnight, seven hours after we began. Normally, we would have been at least 350 miles in to our journey. Instead, we were about 125 miles in. We stopped at a charming little town (don't drown in my sarcasm) called Carneys Point. It was just over the huge Delaware Memorial Bridge and featured drive through bars, tattoo parlors and large groups of teens walking the streets at midnight.

We went to the first hotel...150.00 for a room. The hotel was MAYBE a 3 star hotel and the parking lot was full of partying teens. No way! There were a cluster of hotels nearby, so we abandoned this overpriced one and carried on.

The second hotel was similarly priced. Skipped that one.

Then we found it. 'THE' hotel. It was a Quality Inn/Econo Lodge. The prices were much more reasonable. Now we know why! The woman at the front desk was very nice and directed us to the 'back building'. Okkay!

The back building was located about 50 yards from the main building. Imagine every horror movie that takes place at an abandoned building or hotel. There, now you see the place we nearly stayed. The building was a low brick building, set off in a thicket of neglected grass. The grass was...oh...knee level? There was no security or secured entry in this building, you just walked in and were confronted with dimly lit corridors.

We put the key in the door, the little light obligingly blinked green so we pushed the door. It didn't open. We pushed again...nope. There was a gap of about 3 inches at the top but that door wasn't going to move.

We dragged our bags through the corridors and drove back to the main building. By this point, I was thoroughly creeped out. There was NOBODY staying in that building and horror movie scenarios were flashing through my exhausted mind.

The lady at the front desk gave us a room in the main building finally. It was QUITE the room. Beds sagging toward the pits of hell, ineffective heating unit, bathroom was...disgusting is the only word for it. At that point in time, we didn't even care! I had a nifty 4 hours of chilled sleep on the concrete bed, while Mark managed 6 hours.

We set off knowing we had about 5 hours of driving ahead of us. It was 6:30 am, so we had a couple of hours to spare. Or so we thought! Who could have IMAGINED that traffic would be just as heavy as it had been the night before. At 12:55 we rolled in. I didn't even have a chance to set my bag down or go to the bathroom before I was whisked off.

Mom and I returned home to the largest of disasters. My brother, SIL and her family had stopped at a McDonalds about 20 minutes away from my folks' place. WHY they stopped at a McDonalds when my folks had this shindig catered and enough food to feed a few armies is beyond MY comprehension. Anyway, his MIL fell and hurt her hand. My brother called from the hospital. AN hour before the party was to start, we had NO idea if the guests of honor would even be there! And if so, when. Mom was frantic, not to mention rather peeved. Stepdad was just disgusted that they would even consider not attending, or even dropping in to say hello. Of course, we were all worried about her hand.

The party was....um...interesting. A group of relatives that I hadn't seen since my mom and stepdad got married 17 yrs ago. They had absolutely no interest in me, since they'd only ever met me once. They stayed in a cluster of about fifteen people and didn't communicate with the rest of the guests.

My mom's side of the family was a bit more sociable, so Mark and I had a couple of people to communicate with, including my cousin and his long-time girlfriend who were just delightful.

My brother's mom and stepdad kept to themselves, which is a good thing. His stepdad is very much a letch and I dislike it when drunken middle-aged men speak to my chest, or give me hugs and their hands slip into inappropriate places. Of course, to keep the peace, I just put up with it and try to remove myself from his clutches as soon as possible.

The guests of honor and my brother's in laws arrived about three hours after the party began. His MIL's hand may be broken but the doctors couldn't come to a consensus on that. They seemed to have a good time, pretty much keeping to themselves, but his brother in law spent time with my cousin and his girlfriend, Mark and I.

The party finally wrapped up at about midnight and I collapsed into bed more exhausted than I had been in ages.

I told Mark that he was to set the schedule on when we'd return home. He decided that we'd leave about 11:30, so we'd be home before ten. Ha, again famous last words! The trip home was almost more interminable than the trip up. Traffic was heavy but slow going and the rest stops....shudder!

WHY, oh WHY are people so darn disgusting? In three rest stops in a row, there wasn't a clean bathroom stall. To say that they were disgusting is an understatement!

And the elusive smoothie....sigh! I got it into my head as we entered Connecticut that I wanted a smoothie. I had my fill of sodas and a smoothie sounded both healthful and yummy. Thus begins the saga of the smoothie!

Rest stop 1. We go in, it is disgusting. We walk up to the McDonalds that anchors said rests top. They only have Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite and bottled water. Okay, I'll have a bottled water....wait its 3.95 for a .5 liter bottle? Um...no freaking way!

Rest stop 2. OOh it has a coffee shop in there. If I can't get a smoothie, I can certainly get an iced tea or something. The bathrooms are, as usual, disgusting beyond belief, but I can handle this. Yummy, tasty smoothie on the horizon! Come to Mama, smoothie!

DENIED! The coffee shop not only didn't have any smoothies (though their sign proclaimed that they had ten different flavors). They didn't even have TEA. What kind of coffee shop doesn't even have TEA???? They did have 4.95 .5 liter bottled water if I wanted it. Um...no thanks!

The next rest stop was some distance away but we knew that it had a Dunkin Donuts, which carries Coollatas. I changed my chant to 'My kingdom for a Coollata'. We arrive there--restrooms in the same disgusting condition--and I race up to Dunkin Donuts, money clenched in my hot little fist and a hopeful look in my eyes.

DENIED! They didn't have any Coollatas that day. Can I have an iced tea? Nope, no tea. What is this? The Boston Tea Party revisited??

We walked around to the dozen or so other stalls. I even thought I'd slum and get an ICEE, but guess what, the ICEE machine was BROKEN :P Thankfully, THIS rest stop had a store that offered bottled drinks so I got a 3.50 bottle of Snapple to quench my thirst.

By 8 that evening, Mark and I were still 2.5 hours from home and were fading fast. After grabbing a quick dinner, we decided to stay in a hotel. We were asleep within fifteen minutes of checking in.

We arrived home yesterday late morning.

Amount of hours spent driving=27 (not including hotels)
Amount of hours spent at destination=19 (including sleep)
Number of smoothies consumed=zero

I need a vacation. Anyone know of any all inclusive resorts that offer all you can drink smoothies??