Vacating in Denmark is not bad. The bed
mattresses are ROCK hard.
Rock hard beds and Cara's don't mix well.
Even with a great effort at trying to stay up late in order to get
the most out of it, I keel over at around 11pm. By 11:30 Cara the
body drags me off to bed by my eyes. The eye lashes are pulling me
towards it by using the structure of the carpet. Blink by blink. All
because I have to move and/or turn every 1.5 hours or so, or I'll
ache too much to sleep and by 8:30am the next morning, I have to get
up no matter how much I try to sleep in just a bit more. Vacating can
be such hard work, I tell yah! :P
Other than rock hard beds and fighting
general tiredness, I'm enjoying myself immensely. I just saw a beautiful rainbow. Sickening, isn't it?!? I've got nothing to
tell you that isn't dead boring, so I'm going to give you some of the
stuff I rambled on about during the summer while up at Vintland.
***
This is what I wish would have
happened.
This is sometime during the summer when I noticed that some of my favorite authors were attending book festivals in the UK and I started pondering on how to get there and what excuses to use, so that I could possible spend that much money. There wasn't any book festivals with all of these gathered, or at least none that I know of, but this was before I had checked them out, while the possibility seeds were sown...
I'm in one line to get my King of Thorns
signed by Mark Lawrence and Helene is in another to get Red Country
signed by Joe Abercrombie. I'm already holding the copy of Blinding
Knife by Brent Weeks in my arms, my arms wrapped around it like the
treasure it truly is. (or will be – I might be fast forwarding that
statement to Oxtober sometime after I've actually read it). And while
I'm standing there waiting for the person ahead of me to disappear,
so that it can be my turn, I hear someone calling my name and
Helene's annoyed voice; “Mom!” I look up and Joe abercrombie's
voice: “You really from Norway and chose this festival for your
first Mother/daughter trip abroad?” And I reply: “Yes.” and he
invites us to join him for dinner together with a bunch of other
authors and Mark Lawrence takes time to write me a personal greeting
and I feel like a queen for a little while.
Then I fast forward to the dinner and
China Mieville asks me if it is true and I reply “yes” and he
continues: “You drag your daughter to a book festival, forces her
to stand in line and dare call it a Mother/daughter trip?!?”
And suddenly I'm hated by everyone and
immediately wins “Worst mom of the year” prize. I naturally start
pouring down wine, get wasted and behave obnoxiously and when some
stranger, who incidentally stays at my hotel, loudly declares he's
taking his leave, Joe Abercrombie says that's my ride, that I should
ride with him to the hotel and let my daughter have at least some
fun.
The stranger naturally turns out to be
a sociopath who, when I refuse to have sex with him, throws me out of
the car in the middle of a destitute, creepy industrial area.
I get robbed by a bunch of TV-babies
and threatened at gunpoint and then get rescued by another
non-sociopath stranger, who brings me to my hotel, whereupon I freak
out and have a miniature breakdown in the lobby, because even if I
can act tough when I need to, I always go down like a house of cards
afterward, when I know I'm safe – and someone sees it and then
everybody knows, even Runar, and then he'll realize that all his
fears about me being naive and completely at risk when on my own, and
he'll never let me out of the house, ever again, which, you know,
will really suck. And I go
FotherMucker!
And I realize that perhaps, when it comes down to it, it
is a good thing that some of my dreams don't come true.
...did I just explain luck in practice as well?
