When You’re High on Cold Meds

You really shouldn’t make important online transactions.

For the last two weeks I’ve had an ongoing, long-lasting cold that I just can’t seem to get rid of, despite my doctor prescribing an antibiotic and my going a little nuts on vitamin supplements and probiotics. It’s all good, though. I have an economy size box of Sudafed, another one of Nyquil, and an ample supply of tissues.

As it happened, last week was a really busy one for me, and while I canceled a number of things, I couldn’t cancel or rearrange them all.

For example, paying bills. None of those big companies cared that I was dying, as long as they got their money.

Apparently, sometime on Thursday, at a time when I must have been high on cold meds, I paid my mortgage. Saturday, I had no recollection of such an event. (Even today, I have no recollection of it.) And so, worried that I had forgotten, I went online and made the payment.

It wasn’t until I thought to double check my bank balance that I realized my massive error.

I paid my biggest, most overwhelming bill twice.

Oops.

And still, I have no idea when on Thursday I made that payment. But according to my online statement, I did pay it that day.

Note to self: When you’re living on cold meds, you are not as lucid as you think. Just. Stick to email and Facebook and don’t do anything else, okay? Okay. Oh, and also, you should call the bank now.

**Because of last week’s illness, and my lack of publicity attempts, I have decided to extend out the deadline for the October Give Back Giveaway until midnight, Friday Oct 21. Enter here if you’ve done something nice this month.

Story of the Scary Poisonous Creature with Enormous Teeth

Living with Teens can occasionally be amusing. And it's always entertaining. For example, take a recent experience.

We’re driving down the road with Happy, Smiley (Happy’s friend) and Sneezy in the back seat of our truck, when out of the blue, terrified screaming from behind us nearly causes my husband to swerve into another lane (yes, there was a car there).

Them: screaming and squealing like girls

Me: What? Is it a Spider?

Happy: No, it's a...a...slug and it's COMING CLOSER! *squeals again*

Husband: How did a slug get in my truck?

Sneezy: That's not a slug, it's a long furry thing with HUGE TEETH.

Smiley: Maybe it’s a snail.

Me: Whatever it is, it doesn't have teeth, I promise.

Happy: Stop the truck, stop the truck, STOP THE TRUCK! *practically climbs into sister’s lap*

Husband (after pulling over and dispatching the creature): Um, that’s not a slug or a snail. it's just a caterpillar. I set it free.

Smiley: You think that was scary, you should see when they turn into butterflies.

If you’ve read anything I’ve written about Happy and Sneezy, you know that they aren’t afraid of much. For girls, they’re pretty dang tough, sports-minded, and completely athletic. But when it comes right down to it, they’re still girls. As evident from the above story, not just in their love of clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Proof positive that people are truly complex.

And that, my friends, is why I write young adult literature, and also why I prefer to read it.

A Lifetime of Funny

Okay, so you know that road trip we went on last weekend? It required approximately twelve hours of driving. Six there, six back. I know a lot of adults who don’t like being in the car that long, let alone kids.

Before you ask, no, we don’t have a DVD player, portable XBox, Nintendo, or Playstation in our family vehicle. (I know—so archaic!) So what’s a family to do for that many hours? Well, we aren’t completely in living in the stone ages. We do have iPods. But you can only leave those little buds in your ears for so long. We hadn’t gone far before we were chatting, being silly and laughing.

During the drive, I remembered why I write for children. They’re infinitely funnier than most adults, much wiser, and far less jaded.

Take my nine-year old. We’re on the road, driving past lots of billboards. He looks up, sees an advertisement for a casino and, looking puzzled, says, “Two dollar craps? What the…”

He was so serious. So truly confused. I’m still laughing. And I won't even discuss with you the ensuing debate over whether it’s pay or be paid.

Not much later, we passed a sign. Watch for falling rock. My DH pipes up, “When I was a kid, my older brother told me Falling Rock is a lost Native American kid. I spent hours and hours of my life looking for that guy.”

We had a good chuckle over that, but it wasn’t hilarious until the next day. We passed a gray-haired Native American man hiking nearby, and one of the kids shouts, “Hey, I think I found Falling Rock!”

Yeah. We’re a strange bunch. But living life through the eyes of my children gives me a since of wonder and fulfillment that nothing else in my adult life ever could.

Besides, they’ll always keep me laughing.

If Life Were Like Facebook

©By Nichole Giles

If life were like Facebook...

Poking someone you’ve only ever met once would be a perfectly acceptable form of greeting.

You get to choose whether or not to be friends with someone—and you can take all the time you need to decide. Confirm or deny?

Hitting your family and friends in various body parts with different types of food would be considered a daily dinner ritual.

No one could make the claim that they had more friends than someone else unless it was really true.

Everyone in the world could be friends with a celebrity or two. Or fifty.

Psychics would lose their jobs because people could tell their own futures, including day and time of death, by taking a quiz.

You could ignore people without being obvious.

Single people would never again have to endure those tired pickup lines. Instead, the dating ritual would be reduced to super-soakers filled with love potion.

You could easily hide that obnoxious person who drives you crazy. They could keep being themselves, and you wouldn’t have to know about it.

You never have to wonder where your friends are, because everyone always checks in to tell you where they are and what they’re doing. Ex: So-and-so just went to the grocery store to hit the big toilet paper sale.

Having someone kidnap you to a foreign country would be considered a gesture of friendship.

TV would become obsolete as the world watched real-life personal drama unfold on their newsreel.

When someone made you mad, you could get back at them by tagging them in an embarrassing photo and sharing it with all of their friends, and yours too.

It would be completely acceptable to write on people’s walls.

And finally, everyone you know would have a successful, thriving farm.