Look At Me & My Big Bad Self

A little background.

I'm not a night person. Staying up until midnight on New Year's is a real stretch and I have been known, on occasion, to brag to people on the nights I make it up past 10.

So when my best friend Trisha came for a visit this weekend, she took me off guard when she suggested we eat dinner out not before the 7:30 pm comedy show we were going to see, but after.

"But...the show may not end until 9," I said.

"Exactly," she said.

"But...I usually eat at 6."

"Today you'll eat at 9."

"Are restaurants even open that late around here?" I asked.

She stopped talking to me for awhile after that.

I wasn't always this way. Trisha and I were in fact reminiscing about our college years where one didn't start thinking about showering and getting ready to go out for the evening until around 10pm, and we wouldn't be caught dead leaving the apartment before 11.

I am proud to report though, that my husband and I, both "Can you read in the other room instead of here in bed? It's 9:30 and I'm trying to sleep" type people, not only made it out past 10, we were the 2nd to last group to leave the restaurant, which I think should count as closing the place. (Amazingly enough, a number of restaurants are open past 8pm. The things you learn).

We had fun too. Not just I'm-doing-this-to-prove-I'm-a-good-sport fun, but real, actual fun.

I hope this doesn't get out of hand. We may just turn into wild people and rent a movie tonight and stay up until midnight watching it.

Call the police. The college party-animal is back.

A jury of my peers?

I've written a manuscript (you're not allowed to call it a book until it's published) for middle-graders (8-12 year olds) titled "Millicent Powers Picks A Pet."

I like it, and I can't say that about all my writing. But I'm on pins and needles at the moment. I met Ed, a writer friend of mine yesterday for lunch (http://www.freewebs.com/edmundrschubert/index.htm) and gave him the manuscript to read and critique. Actually, Ed has an 8 year old daughter who offered to read the manuscript, which is even better. (Sorry, Ed)

The reason I'm anxious though, is that after our lunch, Ed was heading to his daughters school to teach a workshop on creative writing to fourth and fifth graders. "Hey," he said, "If there's time, I'll read them the first couple chapters of your manuscript and see what they think."

YIKES!

Sending manuscripts and query letters to agents and publishers is hard, but having a group of 9 and 10 year olds critique my work may be brutal. I'm psyched he offered to do it, but I don't know that tact and constructive criticism is at the top of the list with this age group. So I'm waiting to hear back from him.

Small ice-storm here today. A friend is coming to visit and I'm picking her up from the airport later this morning. I've been burning candles and potpourri all morning, trying to make the house smell inviting. I want the scent to last as we won't be home for several hours after I blow everything out. So right now the cats are walking around gagging on the, I admit, overpowering stench of honeysuckle that's permeating the house.

I'm a big fan of scents. I love things that smell good. I apply either perfume or scented lotion to the pulse points on my wrists at night because I like curling up with my hands under my cheeks and smelling a light lavender scent. Other smells I really like:

• Fires
• Obsession for Men cologne (I will attack any man wearing it. Yum! I love it!)
• Chocolate chip cookies or apple pies, while they're baking
• Garlic (I know, but I still love it)
• Musty basements. Just b/c it triggers the memory of the musty basement we had as a kid where I rode my tricycle around while Mom did the laundry.
• The first sniff from a jar or bag of just-opened coffee
• This lavender-pine kitchen soap and handlotion set we found
• The smell of laundry fresh from the dryer
• Babies. They have almost an absence of smell which is so pure and fresh. They haven't hit the years of lotions and creams and perfumes and hairspray and all the other crap we put on our bodies. They just have that newborn smell.
• Citrus

Things other people like the smell of which I can't stand:

• Newly cut grass
• The smell right after a rainstorm
• Pine-sol (Ha! That's a shout-out to my hubby)

You've got to be kidding me...

It's like a poorly written sit-com. Squirrels in house. Perky upbeat couple determine to battle squirrels. Chaos ensues. In the end, cute furry rodents belittle couple, to audience's delight.

Critter Control was back out yesterday and reset the squirrel trap. I watched out the upstairs window this morning as a squirrel climbed into the trap, nosed around, and then merrily scampered out. My only thought was, "You've got to be kidding me."

I know if I go out there and wave my hand in the trap the steel door will slam down, so I'm leaving well enough alone. But to stand and watch the little beasts roam in and out of the trap while indulging on free food...it's all a bit much.

Had to turn in my author bio for the several stories potentially being accepted for Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul. Had a big to-do with several friends on whether or not it was appropriate or a turn-off to refer to my cats as "demonic" in nature. Half liked it and thought it was funny. Half thought it would be a turn-off and ruin sales. Other options were "nefarious, malicious, conniving, unsettling," and a few others. Here's what I ended up going with:

Dena Harris is a freelance writer, humorist, and public speaker whose work has appeared in magazines and newspapers around the country. Her humor book, "Lessons In Stalking," recounts Dena and her husband's faithful service to their two cuddly if somewhat demonic cats and is available through her website at www.denaharris.com.

Watcha think? I went with demonic but now I'm regretting it. Maybe it is too harsh. There might still be time to change it.

And don't go looking for the book just yet. I'm in the process of publishing.

Tie Game?

The creature lives. We think.

Here's what happened. They guy who came to take the squirrel away stuffed some newspaper into one of the holes under the eaves where he thought the squirrels might be getting in. We were to block up the other eave, which we did.

"If it's a gray squirrel, it'll shove that paper right out in order to get out," our Critter Control man told us.

So the next day I heard...noises...coming from a new place. Not under the stairs, but in the walls closer to the eaves where we'd blocked the entryways. There was no growling, but I heard scampering and shaking, as if prison bars were being shaken by prisoners in warning right before they riot.

I called my husband at work.

"What if we've pissed them off by capturing one of their own?" I whispered.

"Why are you whispering?" he asked.

I scrunched back further underneath the bed and covered the mouthpiece with my hand. "Because I don't want to give away my position."

On the bright side though, we heard no activity this weekend. And this was the weekend we got our first snow. (They told us 3-5 inches of the white death was coming and the whole state stock-piled bread, milk, and toilet paper. We got an hour and a half of snow, about 1/2 inch, and it melted in the blazing sun the next day).

I thought for sure with the snow and cold temperatures if anything was outside it would come in and we would hear it. The fact that we didn't makes me happy. Maybe...oh please, oh please...maybe they really are gone.

Or maybe they're just waiting, planning their revenge.