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15 Books – In no particular order


Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends,or not because I am all about free will, but link back to me (unless you list them in the comments) because I’m interested in seeing what books you choose.

1.) The World According to Garp by John Irving

2.) Gone with The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

3.) The Car by Gary Paulson

4.) The Stand by Stephen King

5.) Captains and Kings by Taylor Caldwell

5.) I’ll Take Manhatten by Judith Krantz

6.) Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume

7.) Night Shift by Stephen King (short story collection)

8.) The Alchemist by Paul Coehelo

9.) Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

10.) The Belegariad (five book series) by David Eddings

11.) The Dragon Riders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

12.) Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

13.) The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

14.) Firestarter by Stephen King

15.) The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein

Interesting point of fact, except for The Alchemist and The Car, I read all the others by the time I was twenty-five, and I have read all of them except The Alchemist more than once.

Going Back to High School for the Monday Meme


I borrowed this meme from Stella who thinks she found it on Brighton the Corner Where you Are.

1. Did you date someone from your high school?

No, I didn’t date. I had one date when I was a sophomore that was the result of interference from a friend. She took it upon herself to tell a guy that I liked him and then turned around and told me he liked me as well. It was on the date – dinner at Pizza Hut on JFK Ave that we discovered that we didn’t like each other, and that our mutual friend was well-meaning but we wouldn’t be going out on a date again.

I had crushes, but the only time I acted on one, he ended up being “gay” or at least bi-curious with a mutual friend who didn’t think he was gay at all but was.

I didn’t have the confidence in myself to attract attention except when I was writing. I wrote a soap opera (that I still have somewhere) that kids would pass around at lunch and hound me for new pages. But I was fat, had big plastic framed glasses, unbelievably short butchy hair and dressed quite badly. No dates.

2. Did you marry someone from your high school?

No, I did date a guy from my high school when I was in college. I hooked up with him at the end of summer vacation just before my junior year. He was working at an auto-body shop in my hometown painting cars and doing some construction work. He was very muscular but dumb as a rock, and he was quite serious about me. I continued to see him a bit into the fall but I was also dating at school and eventually broke it off because he was clingy and I apparently didn’t want a boyfriend badly enough to use someone.

3. Did you car pool to school?

I always walked to school. It wasn’t far.

4. What kind of car did you have?

It wasn’t my car technically; it was Dad’s, a ’72 two door Dodge Dart. It was sweet.

5. What kind of car do you have now?

I drive the ’07 Avalanche.

6. On a Friday Night…what do you do now?

Hang with the husband.

7. On a Friday Night…where were you then?

Until I got a job at the mall, I babysat every Friday night for the Walsh kids. After I started working, I usually pulled a Friday night shift until 7 or 8 and then met up with friends for a movie or just hanging out. Small town meant cruising around and hanging out in parks or other abandoned looking places.

In the fall though, it was marching band at the football games when the team played at home.

8. What kind of job did you have in high school?

I worked at a cafeteria. It sucked. The boss was sexually inappropriate and emotionally abusive. I worked there two years and the first summer I came home after college.

9. What kind of job do you do now?

I was an English teacher for twenty years. Now I write.

10. Were you a party animal?

Party? I did party a bit as a senior. I was a late bloomer. I partied quite a bit as a sophomore in college and that was about it.

11. Where you considered a flirt?

I am considered one now, but as a teen I was painfully shy.

12. Were you in band, orchestra or choir?

Band. I joined as a junior not knowing how to play an instrument and ended up second chair bass clarinet. I played by ear which was helpful because I never took reading music seriously.

13. Were you a nerd?

That goes without saying.

14. Did you ever get suspended from school?

Almost. I was a gypping princess and when I got found out the Dean was not too happy, but I cried my way out of it, the only time having an alcoholic father and a crazy druggy brother was an asset.

15. Can you sing the fight song?

Huh?

16. Who was your favorite teacher?

I didn’t like any of them.

17. Where did you sit during lunch?

As a junior and senior I went to all three lunches (I was the gyp princess) and sat in the café or down in the practice rooms by the band room.

18. What was your school’s full name?

Wahlert High School

19. Where did you party the most?

People’s houses or we would drive over to Wisconsin to grab a bottle of wine and head for the park. We didn’t drink often until the end of senior year.

20. What was your school’s mascot?

A golden eagle

21. Would you do it again?

High school? It sucked. I couldn’t wait to be older and away. That’s the way kids should feel about their teenage years too, in my opinion.

22. Did you have fun at the Prom?

I was never asked, so I never went. It’s not like it is today when kids can simply dress up and go with friends in a large group. It was about dating and therefore very exclusive.

23. Do you still talk to the person you went to the Prom with?

That person doesn’t exist.

24. Are you planning on going to your next reunion?

I went to my twenty-fifth with Rob. It was boring.

25. Do you still talk to people from high school?

A few of them are still in touch with me via Facebook mostly.

26. What were your school colors?

Blue and gold? I don’t know.

As always, I would love to read about you. Here or link back to your blog.

The TGIF


I don’t really experience TGIF since “retiring” from teaching. Friday is a day like Saturday or the fifth of July. My work is writing and despite not paying at all well, I answer to no one but me.* Weekends are vacations that allow me more  physical time with Rob, but we are in touch throughout his workday and he comes home for lunch, when we don’t meet for lunch in town, so I can’t say I am deprived of his company by the work week the way some couples are.

This week has been disorganized. We are out of the tent trailer and all crammed into the master bedroom as that is stripped and most of the new sub-floor is down. The lack of curtains has been a bit of an issue. Being a month away from Summer Solstice means that the days are lengthening. Dusk falls at just a bit before eleven at night and the sun is up again in all its brilliance by 5:30 in the morning. Even so, Baby has not woken with it as was her wont. She is so like her father, needing pitch darkness in order to fall asleep and stay asleep. I never had room darkening shades before Will. I enjoyed being waked by the sun. Not so my vampiric late husband and our child of darkness.

Rob is up with the dawn and I need to start doing that too. I have decided to change up the writing schedule and work on fiction for an hour in the early morning and consider anything else that comes my way through the day gravy. Life just has a way of derailing writing and until there is a nanny or housekeeper or personal assistant at least to help out, I have decided that I will simply go with the flow. Writing will be done in the morning. Getting up early never hurt me when I was teaching and it won’t hurt me now.

A quick update on Nephew1. Do you remember the story I told about his mother last June during our visit to Iowa? She arrived at the house one day in a tizzy because LawnMowerMan had apparently had a stroke which turned out on further examination by a real doctor to be sciatica. Nephew1 is his mother’s son.

Yes, he does have a serious medical condition. His asthma is not to be taken lightly and he and his father were doing just that. This led the first doctor who saw him to read him the riot act and outline the very dire consequences of not following one’s asthma protocol. Death is a very real outcome for severe asthmatics as is lung damage. Nephew1 only heard about 20% of what he was told beyond the “you could die” and the fact that at fifteen he deems himself too old to allow his grandmother – the responsible adult – to accompany him in to see the doctor – led to the misunderstanding and worry on the part of me, my mom and DNOS.

Nephew is still unwell but he is now getting the attention he needs and is taking his asthma seriously.

However, a new situation cropped up unexpectedly yesterday afternoon. I called my mother and found her prepping for a lower GI. In case you have never had one, it’s similar to prep for a colonoscopy but is a series of x-rays. Why? Well, I was perplexed. She’d had a colonoscopy shortly after Dad died and was given the standard “see you in five or six years”. She was not told that a deformity was discovered that impeded a full scoping and she would need follow-up in 6 months.

Yes, she was a bit disturbed and planned on having words with her doctor today. I would have had more than words. I don’t trust doctors anymore. I went through hell trying to convince doctors that Will was physically rather than mentally ill. I had similar problems with my own health about 8 months after Will died when everyone was content to write off my stomach issues as “grief” rather than the non-functioning gall bladder that it was.

Mom was calm. She said she’d call today though I will probably not wait and call her first, but I feel too far away again.

The weather has finally taken a summery turn. I got my zombie story mailed off last weekend and am nearly done with the companion story. There is probably a full novel in there but not now. I joined Authonomy last night. It’s a place to post novels in progress and get feedback from other writers, editors and even agents. I will let you know when I have a draft of Night Dogs and my memoir up. Give me a month or so. I am also thinking about applying for sessional work in the college of education at the U of Alberta. Anthony Trollope’s advice to writers was to always a have a day job. He work for the post office his whole life despite being a successful writer, so he must have a reason for such advice, eh?

The pen name? Christie from Christopher, which is a family name. My great-grandfather, Crazy Christie, is the beginning of the chain that has included, among others, one of his sons, a couple grandsons (it was Dad’s middle name) and a few great-grandsons. And then Cox, because it is my name. The one I started out with a long time ago when I first decided I was a writer but didn’t realize how much of a writer I really was.

Christie Cox. That’s my fiction pen name. I’ll get a link up to my writer’s site soon.

Enjoy the last weekend of May. I plan to.

*And that is not always a good thing but it’s a post for another day.