More 2008 best books

We’re back to the grind, and of course that all comes with caveats, as one son came home early from school with a fever, the supposedly fixed broken window on my car came off the hinge, thereby leaving half the things that I needed to accomplish undone.  Tomorrow will be determined by my son’s status, in terms of health.  He is sound, sound asleep, slept through the other boys’ trumpet lesson, so you can imagine. 

What will happen next? 

Puttin’ away decorations and lights.  The boys passed through briefly, pretending to help.  Liz and I did it instead.  Maybe next year, we’ll have help, the year before we lose them to teenagerness. 

Probably get back to real blogging soon, when the boys go back to school.  I want to try to get those Book Passage photos up as well, since they didn’t work last time.  Going to LACMA later on today, then to Jeff’s for football this evening.  The end of holiday break means taking down the lights soon.  

I had forgotten that my next door neighbor Bob had asked if we had a piano tuner, and I gave him Simon’s phone number.  Bob and Mel were over the other night, and Mel mentioned that Simon was coming over Friday (which is now today) to tune their piano.  I had been meaning to call Simon since June, so I hoped to piggy back on their appointment.  And, in fact, Simon was available, and the boys got to watch him do the tuning.  It was so cool, to use their phrase.  And he pulled about ten pencils and erasers out of the piano as well.  They sat down to play, and not only was the music even more beautiful, but they said the key action was easier and much improved. 

Nothing so wonderful as in-tune instruments. 

She’ll probably kill me for this, but my lovely, lean wife informed me that she is wearing blue jeans that she bought in college.  They fit her.  Perfectly.  That is MMMPH number of years ago — my sons are 11 and we were married for, ahem, numerous years before that, and together four years before we got married.  As you may know my age, let’s just say she was something around, oh, I don’t know, 4 years old? when we met, because she looks that young.  I mean, come on.  Wearing blue jeans from college?  I think my 11 year old sons could wear the jeans I wore in college.  Okay, maybe they’d be long on them, but I was absurdly thin back then.  The older boy is wearing 27 inch waist jeans (he is a lean fellow himself) and I remember wearing 28 inch jeans in high school, and I was not any fatter in college.  Got a draft number for Vietnam (293) and would have been exempt because I weighed too little for my height.  I have, ahem, made up for it since. 

Blue jeans from college.  Argh. 

Things are getting a little loose around here in terms of freedoms for my sons.  Independence, here it comes.  Part of that is their advancing age, but the other part is they are taking advantage of us, but also of the slower days.  We had an extra five days that we didn’t expect when family was ill and we didn’t travel.  We have squandered away the time in excellent fashion, and I have been glad of it.  It felt like Christmas Eve was on a weekend, and I’ve been having Thursdays and Fridays ever since.  Today must be Saturday.  Friday will be Monday and I’ll expect the boys to go back to school.  So there will be extra surprise days off.  It’s been a nice time.  

I imagine I will have less and less to say about Sweetsmoke as time goes on.  I am about to start the next book, about which I will be writing as little as possible (less than a handful of people know what the new project is, and I intend to keep it that way), and that will be my focus.  I am happy that the basic information (and history) will be here for those who are just discovering the novel – a slow process of discovery, about which I am only just learning — but the ongoing blog thing seems to be something that requires big loud opinions about politics or sex, not necessarily the small, untidy ramblings of a writer.  So I will continue to chat in my own way to friends and family and those who wish to tune in.  It’s rather nice to have a small place to just blather, and here I will continue to be.  By the way, what I meant about the slow process of discovery reading the novel is that many people who own the book have a pile of books to read, and pick and choose based on different criteria.  It takes time to read an entire book, and you have to feel ready to pick up this book or that.  Sometimes you just want a friendly little read, sometimes humorous, sometimes something with more meat and guts to it.  So people are now discovering it slowly, and hopefully word of mouth will spread.  In the movies, there are reviews on the day the movie comes to theaters and people go or they don’t go. 

And as I’ve always said, if people don’t want to read the book, no one’s going to stop them.  That is a bastardization of a Yogi Berra quote, thank you. 

I’m not sure why, but I posted a photograph here, and it is not coming up.  Hmm.  I’ll have to check that out and find out why.  I know it was working on my office computer.  If anyone visited earlier in the day and was curious as to why there was no post, now you know.  

It was, by the way, a photo of the novel at Book Passage, with the “Elaine’s Picks” sign in the foreground.  

We had planned a trip to Petaluma to visit cousins, going to drive today, hoping the Grapevine (Interstate 5) would be open with all the snow and storms hitting it, perhaps going up the 101 instead… I had dragged one of my sons through his head cold, was fighting off my own… and we would be there for my nephew’s birthday.  What a bummer to have your birthday the day after Christmas.  Damn.  I was even going to spend a couple of hours in Copperfield’s Bookstore in Petaluma signing books.  Seemed like the perfect thing to do, as people might be returning books and HARK! an actual author signing his book to you!  

But the phone call last night from my brother changed everything.  Three of his four children were busily vomiting, stomach flu.  And so we are here for the week.  Very disappointing for all.  

The only nice thing is, we have no plans.  I know we’ll squander this time, and maybe that’s a good thing.  But freedom arrives, and we’ll have to use in unwisely.  

Hope your Christmas was merry.