My Favorite Children's Author...

I love to read. I have loved to read since I COULD read.

No matter where I go, anywhere in the world, I will be taking my books with me. Don't you dare try and make me get rid of a single one of them. I will b%#ch slap you into next week.

I love so many books, for so very many reasons. However, the books that have stuck with me from childhood and are still some of my favorites were written by one Roald Dahl. I still remember reading "The BFG" as a child and laughing my head off every time the title character went off speaking in his own silly way. I remember reading about Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory and wondering if--just maybe--I could someday find a golden ticket to take me inside of such an extraordinary place.

Every single one of Dahl's stories has an element of the twisted, even the macabre. "The BFG" is centered around bloodthirsty giants who snatch children and adults out of their beds at night and eat them like popcorn. "The Witches" focuses on wicked women whose entire purpose in life is destroy every child on the planet. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" sees children half drowning in chocolate rivers, carried off by super-intelligent squirrels, turned into blueberries and then juiced, and shrunk to tiny sizes and then stretched out again. As odd as it may seem, this element of twistedness is one of the reasons I LOVE Dahl's stories. He trusted his young readers. He believed that children could handle these slightly disturbing story elements, and he was right. Not only could children "handle" such things, they wanted to be a part of the story.

They wanted to accidentally end up locked in a room with every single witch in the country.

They wanted to be snatched out of their window in the witching hour by a BFG.

They wanted to be there, because in every single Dahl children's book, the child is the hero. Always. In "James and the Giant Peach", the title character is a seven-year-old boy. During his incredible journey on a giant peach with a bunch of giant insects HE'S the one calling the shots. They all look to him as their leader, their captain. And he leads them all successfully through danger and difficulty to a new life filled with opportunity. In "Matilda" (probably my very favorite of Dahl's stories) the title character is a six-year-old girl with beyond-genius-level intelligence. Not only that, but she's clever enough and brave enough to find ways to punish the wicked adults in her life, outsmarting and outmaneuvering them all. Eventually it is this tiny girl who saves her beloved teacher, Miss Honey, from the evil clutches of the Trunchbull.

Do you see now why I love Dahl's work so much? These stories are fun. They are creative. With every book, a whole new world is created, and every one of those worlds has an element of magic and wonder, and yet it's just believable enough to--just maybe--be real. And in these magical worlds, ordinary children are led by extraordinary means to do incredible things.

Roald Dahl never underestimated children. He saw their abilities, their potential. I firmly believe that adults look at kids and overlook all of the things that they are truly capable of far too often. Dahl never did. He knew they could handle little kernels of the dark and twisted. He believed in magic, and helped them to believe in it too. He made kids the heroes and heroines of his books, because he believed in them. What a vote of confidence to give his young audience. That, I believe, is why his stories are so well loved by so many.

I, for one, fully intend to raise my kids with these stories. I want them to believe in themselves. I want them to believe in magic. I can think of no better way to encourage these beliefs than to make sure that they are familiar with the worlds created by Roald Dahl.

Crazy Hacking Cough, and a Pretty Rough Morning...

I've got a cough right now. It's driving me (and probably the rest of my family) completely bonkers. It's one of those that comes from somewhere around the sternum, and when you have a coughing attack, it racks your entire body and leaves you sore, dizzy, exhausted, and a bit nauseated with a pounding headache. And you're pretty much coughing on and off for weeks afterward. Ugh. I'm pretty sure I've already lost one lung, and I can only hope I'll be able to hold on to the other.

Anyway, enough about that. 

This morning, our daughter AJ woke up at around 1:30, went downstairs to look for us, and--seeing no one around--proceeded to curl up in my recliner chair and start crying her little heart out. When Ty and I ran down to see what was wrong with her, it was clear that she was utterly terrified. Her eyes were wide, the pupils hugely dilated--despite the fact that she'd been sitting in bright light. When I picked her up she buried her tear-streaked face into my shoulder and held onto me as tightly as possible, then looked up at her daddy for extra reassurances. We both comforted her as much as we could, then I took her back to her bed, wiping away her tears as I tucked her in. She reached up, and grabbed at my hands, holding them fast as she tried to stop crying and be brave. I stayed by her side until her breathing slowed, her body relaxed, and she finally fell back to sleep. 

As for me, I went back to bed, and after a ridiculous amount of coughing and tossing and turning...I got to sleep as well.

Then, at around 6 AM, in that strange place between waking and sleeping, I heard a vaguely familiar beeping sound. As I continued to wake up, I realized what it was I was listening to: Our security alarm had been tripped. I ran downstairs and cancelled the alarm--but too late. The signal had already gone through. 

Why did I just up and cancel the alarm with no further investigation? Because I knew exactly who'd tripped it. After punching in the code, and while waiting for the inevitable call from the security company, I ran out to the garage to retrieve my daughter. 

Oh yes. Apparently AJ had woken up, come downstairs to look for me, and then started worrying that I was out in the garage. I brought her back inside, and set her up on the couch with a blanket, watching Curious George on Netflix. Her big brother had woken up at the sound of the alarm going off, so he sat with her while I went back to bed for another hour before I had to get up to get CT to school. Sigh. 

Needless to say, poor AJ had a pretty rough night. Here's hoping tonight will be better for everyone. Before she went to sleep, I made sure she remembered that when she wakes up she should check in at Mom and Dad's bedroom before going downstairs. Hopefully, that will prevent any further occurrences. 

Either way, between coughing my effing guts out all day long for the past 2 days, and only getting a few hours of broken sleep last night, I feel pretty tired right now. Kind of zombie-ish, really. Yet, I felt the need to log on and write a rambling blog post. Oh yes. You didn't realize you'd be enjoying the pure craziness that is my writing while I'm really freaking exhausted, did you? Well, now you've seen it, and I only hope the internet will forgive me. 

Well...There it is...

Spring semester is over. I took my last final on Monday afternoon. As I drove home from campus, I was still mulling over my test, wondering what I got wrong, and hoping I interpreted the audiogram at the very end of the exam correctly. When I got to my mom's house to pick up my daughter, Mom wasn't home--she'd taken AJ with her to run some errands. I called her, told her she could drop AJ off at our house when she was done, and started putting my things away.

"It" still hadn't hit me yet.

AJ came home about 15 minutes later, ran through the front door and gave me a big hug, thrilled that I was home early. I picked her up, and kissed her sweet little face. I sat down with her, and looked over at the place where my backpack was sitting, realized that I didn't need it anymore and THEN "It" hit me. I'M FREE UNTIL AUGUST!!! No classes, no homework, no studying, nothing but enjoying the awesomeness of my chiddlers.

Oh, and reading. I plan to acquire a nice big stack of books and consume them one by one during any and all of my spare time over the summer. Any suggestions? (Note: I don't like horror/slasher stories. Seriously, they freak me out. I can't go there. Oh, and nothing sad or depressing. I can't handle that either. I get depressed for weeks. I'm still traumatized by the time I read "Jude the Obscure," and that was almost nine years ago. Yes, I realize that I get far too emotionally involved in the fictional world of books, and I'm okay with it. But I'm open to most other options.)

Anyway, this feeling of pure, unadulterated freedom gave me a high that was reminiscent of my high school years. All that was missing this time around was yearbook day. I was practically skipping for the rest of the day--I still get a bit giddy when I think about it.

Now I have to stare down the hideous, fully loaded barrel of my neglected house. Now that my mind is no longer occupied with (obsessing over) the reading and interpretation of audiograms, the anatomy of the ear, and finding formants on a spectrogram, I'm starting to really notice just how bad things are around here. The bathrooms need cleaning (Seriously, scientists could find all kinds of intelligent life in there). Dusting and vacuuming needs to be done (Don't breathe too deeply around here, you'll probably get asthma). I've washed laundry this week, but I haven't folded it yet (It never ends! There will ALWAYS be more dirty laundry!!! Make it stop!) Don't even get me started on the kitchen--(I'm pretty sure a family of trolls has moved into at least one of the cupboards. I can't get one of my saucepans without having to solve a riddle.)

Sigh...Does anyone have a house elf I can borrow? (If you don't get that reference, read Harry Potter immediately. Trust me, it will up your awesomeness by about 1000%. You're welcome.)

Now I will leave you with a picture of some applesauce cookies that I made. Yes, yes they are fabulous.

You should really wipe that drool off your chin. There you go.