A Cough In The Night: A Parent’s Nightmare

A Cough In The Night: A Parent’s Nightmare

I’m a light sleeper. This needs to be said upfront. If there is a noise in the night I hear it. Except for my own snoring.

One of the most frightening noises in the night I’ve found, as a parent, is the child’s cough in the night. Not just any cough. THE COUGH. The one where you hear it and your think to yourself, “whelp, looks like I’ll be doing laundry at 2:30 AM”. That cough.

You are usually okay if it’s just one cough. I mean, hey, humans (yes, kids are humans) cough. But if you hear a bunch of them, strung together, and that last one sounds a little…wet? You better get yourself on your horse and in that kid’s bedroom. Oh, and on your way, grab whatever trash can, bucket, snow boot you can get. What you catch now, you won’t have to clean up later.

This happened last night, which is why I’m writing. I hear my 4 year old son in the other room, cough, and fight or flight kicked in. I got there in time, only without the bucket. That’s when I called for my wife for backup.

To be honest, though, I think I’m a bit lucky in this regard. I have a co-worker who has this happen like once a week and all night. Ours are more like twice a year and one and done. Stuff happens. Kid feels better. I wrote that last sentence because I don’t believe in jinxes. Fingers crossed.

So, whatever. I’m a bit tired today, but my wife has it worse. She’ll be home with both sickies today, most likely watching Disney all day. Maybe they’ll watch Wreck it Ralph again. That’s a good flick.

Zita The Spacegirl

Zita The Spacegirl

Zita’s life took a cosmic left turn in the blink of  an eye.

When her best friend is abducted by an alien doomsday cult, Zita leaps to the rescue and finds herself a stranger on a strange planet. Humanoid chickens and neurotic robots are shocking enough as new experiences go, but Zita is even more surprised to find herself taking on the role of intergalactic hero. Before long, aliens in all shapes and sizes don’t even phase her. Neither do ancient prophecies, doomed planets, or even a friendly con man who takes a mysterious interest in Zita’s quest.

Zita the Spacegirl is a fun, captivating tale of friendship and redemption from Flight veteran Ben Hatke. It also has more whimsical, eye-catching, Miyazaki-esque monsters than you can shake a stick at.

Part of the reason I have this blog is to tell people about cool stuff. Well, this is some cool stuff.

I picked up this book, Zita the Spacegirl, last Thursday at my daughter’s book fair. To be honest, I picked this one up for me because I had heard good things about it and it looked cool. And I figured my daughter would be into it. Well, it’s been four days and I’ve yet to read it. But not because it isn’t a good book. I just haven’t had the chance to get my hands on it.

Since last Thursday, my daughter (6 years old), has read Zita the Spacegirl four times. Pretty much every time she has picked up a book since we got it, she has gone for Zita. When she isn’t reading Zita, she has been telling me little bits of the plot (without spoiler alerts, grr). This makes me so happy.

I’m picking up the second book of the series from the library today and was happy to read that there is a third book on the way.

So, yeah, if you have kids buy this book. If you don’t have kids, still buy this book. It has space and robots in it.

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Lost Story Followup

Lost Story Followup

A follow-up from yesterday’s post: Long Lost Stories.

Yes I did go looking for my notebook when I got home last night. And yes, I did find it.

What? You’re wondering, perhaps, if I opened it up and took a peak? If so, was it any good.

You know what, I have to say it wasn’t too bad. There are some parts I would change, but it was supposed to be a first draft anyway. You know what, how about I just open up the bad boy and show you what I found.

Excerpt from the long lost moleskine reporter’s journal that has gathered dust in my bedside table since 2006 (as much as it kills me, I’m writing as-is, not cleaning anything up):

Luke awoke from his dream with a single thought in his head: I have to visit Mom and Dad and find my Dinosaur Encyclopedia.

Already the details of his dream were fading like an ice cream headache; what just a moment prior felt so urgent was now just a memory. What remained was a desire to hold the favorite book of his childhood once more.

Luke contemplated calling his parents at that moment and asking them if they knew of the whereabouts of his book. He quickly changed his mind once he realized it was 3:23 AM and a call at that time would probably kill his mother. Luke had once called his parents at 12:30 AM on New Year’s Eve to be met by his father’s voice frantic that his mother had seen Luke’s phone number on caller-id and had fainted, thinking something horrible must have happened to him.

Luke turned off his nightlight and fell back to sleep, this time dreaming he had won the World Series, only he wasn’t one of the players but was instead the baseball and had felt extremely lucky the opposing team consisted of tiny infants who were up way past their bedtime. Luke remembered none of this upon waking the following morning though he did wonder why he was suddenly so cross with his baseball bat.

Okay, I lied. I did clean up some of the more egregious writing. Not all, but some.

If my counting was correct, this notebook contains roughly 14,000 words. I don’t know for sure why I abandoned the story, but most likely it was because I hit a wall. Maybe if I read through it now, after all these years I can make something of it. It’s worth a shot, I suppose.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong – A Comic You Must Read

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong – A Comic You Must Read

From the About page of Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, a new webcomic by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks:

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong is a graphic novel collaboration between author, Prudence Shen, and comic artist, Faith Erin Hicks. The comic will be updated for free to read here at nothingcanpossiblygowrong.com, leading up to the release of the print edition coming May 2013 from First Second Books!

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You wouldn’t expect Nate and Charlie to be friends. Charlie’s the laid-back captain of the basketball team, and Nate is the neurotic, scheming president of the robotics club. But they are friends, however unlikely — until Nate declares war on the cheerleaders, and the cheerleaders retaliate by making Charlie their figure-head in the ugliest class election campaign the school as ever seen. At stake? Student group funding that will either cover a robotics competition or new cheerleading uniforms — but not both.

Bad sportsmanship? Sure. Chainsaws? Why not! Nothing can possibly go wrong.

Page 1 - Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong
Page 1 – Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

 

Above is the first page of Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong. I dare you to try to tell me that doesn’t make you want to read more.

I’ve known about Faith Erin Hicks’ work for a while now, having first heard about her excellent webcomic Friends With Boys a while back via boing boing. Recently, another of her works, The Adventures of Superhero Girl had gone into print. What had somehow managed to escape my attention, however, was that she has another webcomic, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, which she is working on and serializing at this very moment.

How I discovered Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, is kind of a funny story. I was on the aforementioned boing boing and saw mention that they were hosting a new podcast: Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. Pretty cool, I though. I enjoy podcasts. Then I saw mention of Faith Erin Hicks, also cool. Then I saw that my college roomate, Jasen Lex was one of the hosts of said podcast. Sold! Note: listen to the podcast, it’s quite good.

So, back to Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong. Having first heard of it on Monday, I went over to check it out and managed to blow through all of the 220-ish pages in one sitting. It’s that good. The art is fantastic and unique. The characters are funny and the story is just enjoyable.

What I want you to do is go over there and give it a try. I bet you’ll be hooked too. Then, go ahead and pre-order Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong. My only regret is I can’t read the entire thing RIGHT NOW.