On Friday I got to see my favorite living author Neil Gaiman. He read a chapter from his new book The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It was creepy and sweet and funny in the way of great fairly tales and I cannot wait to read the rest of the book.
We got a bit of a late start and then got stuck behind a bad accident on a back road we took to save time, during rush hour. We got headed into oncoming traffic by Google (someone tell me how to report mapping problems to Google please, the Clara Barton closes south bound traffic for evening rush hour) and the whole time we were driving in I was scanning twitter to see how far things had progressed, with the book signing line, and the arrival of Neil Gaiman. I was afraid that the 6 pm on my confirmation sheet was the beginning of the reading but as it turned out 7 pm was the reading and 6 was just seating. We made it by 645, starving hungry and really nervous about all the people. I have a rough time with large groups of people but I hoped from things that Neil had said on his blog that at least it would be large groups of very nice bookish people.
The funny thing is when I looked around the audience I wouldn't have pegged them as such. They were rowdy, and as excited as I was in a generally buzzier way, but when he read, 1500 people barely breathed. When he gave a shout out to his punk-cabaret wife Amanda Palmer, screams and cheers erupted. I was so surprised, though I cant say why I should have been, to find myself with this alien group of people who clearly love the things that I love.
As we were quite late, we sat in the very back and when the time for signing came we were quite high in the numbering. So I lay down on the back seats and David read the book and 3 or 4 hours later it was turn for signatures.
The line moved quite swiftly and I scooted behind David for some sense of distance between myself and the nervousness of actually standing before a hero. David brought The Day I swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish , Kiernan's current favorite Neil Gaiman book to be personalized and I brought Chu's Day, Megan's favorite book ever; you should see that girl running around the house pretending that she has to sneeze, hilarious!
We put the kids names on sticky note paper and attached them to the books across from where the signature should go and suddenly we were there.
Something that you probably know about me (or at least suspect) I am a bit of a completest ... that is a nice way of saying obsessive. I have read nearly everything by Neil Gaiman (not the Duran Duran book and not some of the magazine articles and not yet the new book) and I have watched all the interviews on YouTube, and I have gone back to read all of his blog entries starting in 2001. I follow him on Twitter and Tumblr ... like most fanboi types I know a lot about his life: about his wife (easy in this case as I was a fan of hers anyway before they got together) and his pets and his assistants and his house and his kids and it all sounds a little stalkerish when you put it writing hahaha...
I started following him because I like his writing of course, but I kept following him because he seems like he is such a good person. After all that following, I am fairly certain he is a really good person. So I as I stood there in front of him responding to his questions about Megan and watching him put little X's by her name I felt so surreal and then in the next moment when he complimented my tee-shirt suddenly it felt like I was talking to a real person who was also this author (whom?) I know so much about and he liked my tee shirt. When we walked off the stage I was euphoric.
End of Neil Gaiman section.
This is the wallpaper that must go. It is in the upstairs hallway.
Getting wallpaper off is time consuming and messy and a little dangerous with little kids around.
I harnessed the power of Plants vs Zombies - boy, by drawing various characters on the walls and having Kiernan attack them with paste solvent. He is critical of my art but the doom shroom passed muster.
Completely unexpectedly, on Saturday morning, when I stopped with the truck at my dads house, to pick up a ladder, I was presented with the most beautiful assortment of plants for the yard. These included but were not limited to: roses, lavender, a fig tree, a persimmon tree and tons of grasses and daises. The 40 ft ladder was a bit terrifying in both transport and operation but all is well.
After some Heave Ho with the ladder and 3 adults, Kiernan's screen is fixed and I feel much less like he is going to go shooting out and onto the pavement if I open his window.
David used the smaller ladder to climb onto the garage roof to spray off the moss and lichen and then he climbed onto the shed to caulk a leak in its roof. It was a ladder kind of weekend. There was ladder painting and curtain hanging and spackleing and light-bulb changing (more LED lights for the basement) and even some ladder Zombie chasing.
We are setting up the guest room for our visitors from Japan. Kathryn and Erena are arriving this week. This bed will eventually be Megan's but we got the special girly bedding especially for Erena. It is going to be hard to be 3 with such jet lag and so much newness.
Here is Megan test driving the bed and Erena pre-jet lag.
Finally last night before it got dark I attacked the hedges and brought them into some semblance of order. They are now semi uniform in height and off the walkways and the walls.
Its a good start.
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