All Rileyed Up

Just over a month ago, I moved to large lot of land in rural central California. I went from living across the street from a liquor store and walking distance to nearly everything to living walking distance from my mailbox and little else. The nearest gas station is about 15 miles away and it’s only open during select hours.

There have been some growing pains, but my favorite reason for being out here is to see the kids running and playing where kids ought to run and play: outside.

We go on nature walks and look for something different every day. We’ve found nests (one of which looks big enough to be an eagle or hawk nest – The Boy was a little wary of that one. The hawks scare him a little… I do admit, their circling and soaring can be a little unnerving). We’ve also found baby trees (collectively dubbed “Twiggy” by The Boy), distinguished between the calls of different birds (we can only clearly identify the owl, the rest we just imitate), spotted funnel shaped webs housing funnel spiders (terrifying for mom, exciting for all else), pointed out the different colors of leaves and types of trees, stargazed, and with all this, worked up a bit of a sweat on account of the extra walking running around.

This is a big deal to me, and it turns out, a big deal to a lot of people. Children in the US are increasing in obesity — one of the stats I read was more than fifty percent by 2011. Meanwhile, the amount of time children spend outdoors has declined fifty percent in the past 20 years. Coincidence? Hmm.

The great outdoors. They’re not as far as you think. And despite how wrecked our economy is, the government does still fund national parks and every city has local parks to support kids gone wild. Use them. And if you still need a little more prompting, visit the Forest Service’s website, Discover the Forest.

Discover the Forest

The Plan for the Weekend:

Drive to Orange County on Saturday. See family and friends. Spend night at friend’s house. Attend baby shower on Sunday. Enjoy food and conversation at restaurant. Drive home.

The Reality:

It’s never good when your car starts to sound like a lawnmower, I suppose. It also isn’t comforting when the speedometer swings back and forth between 0 and 120 like it’s been possessed. Least exciting of all is when these two things happen simultaneously and you are precisely halfway between home and your destination with no friends or family nearby, nor anything besides a stretch of interstate going through the heart of California ag country (ie, middle of nowhere).

I called AAA for a tow which cost me $4 a mile after the first seven miles, and when your starting point is BFE, you go well over that free seven miles (to the tune of $84 – that’ll teach me for not buying the premier membership).

After dropping my car off, I went to the airport where the only open car rental places in Bakersfield were located. They refused to rent a car to me. I didn’t have a major credit card. I had a credit/debit card. Using a debit/credit card required an additional $200-400 deposit (depending on the car rental place), but that money wasn’t on the card because it was in my wallet. Did that help? No. You remember that old song by Wu Tang Clan where they say “cash rules everything around me”? Well, I don’t think car rental places thought much of those lyrics. Three separate car rental places told me they didn’t accept or handle cash. I had two people (husband, mother in law) willing to give their credit card over the phone and receive and sign and fax back an agreement to them, but no, that’s not acceptable either. Talk about uber-lame.

The tow guy gave me a ride to a hotel which had no problem using my debit card and I suddenly found myself with a free night to myself. Hey, a silver lining! I was looking for that! I spent my free-for-a-night evening vegging out and watching The Express and Sex in the City on HBO. I also discovered a TV show on MTV called America’s Best Dance Crew hosted by the guy on Saved By the Bell (the one whose character dated the girl who went on to star in Showgirls) which was entertaining for about 15 minutes before I got irritated by all the commercials.

This morning, I woke up, enjoyed my free breakfast, went swimming, and watched a lot of CNN talk about health care coverage – can I just say that I love James Carville and Mary Matalin?

Husband and the kids drove 3 hours to pick me up and when we neared home, the kids asked to go to the movies, and I thought to myself, why not. Guess what we saw? G-Force. Guess what else? I laughed. On a weekend like this one, you have to take the laughs that come to you.

Funnier than you’d expect. Assuming you expected it to be stupid.

One year ago, the world was introduced to Alien Hunter Daniel X in The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Daniel’s adventures now continue in Daniel X: Watch the Skies by James Patterson and Ned Rust.

Daniel may look like any other teenage boy, but do not be deceived: he can create his friends and family out of thin air, control minds, leap tall buildings in a single bound, the whole shebang-a-bang. He uses his powers to hunt alien outlaws, who are known to him via a perpetually updating list called The List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma.

In the first book, Daniel took on Bad Alien Number Six. In this book, he tackles Number Five, an entertainment mogul alien described as “Kind of an alien version of Aaron Spelling, if Aaron Spelling were a few degrees more bloodthirsty than Attila the Hun.” In the next Daniel X book, it looks like he’ll be fighting Bad Alien Number Three. Someday, Daniel will face Bad Alien Number One, AKA The Prayer, AKA The Alien Who Killed His Parents.

Like its predecessor, Daniel X: Watch the Skies is fast-paced, filled with smart mouth teenagers, rock ‘em sock ‘em action sequences, and grosser than gross aliens. The emphasis in these books is definitely on the gross factor: alien stench, appearance, and appetite range from gross to grosser to Paris Hilton. Which brings me to an important point about these books: never forget that they are written with the purpose of interesting boys in reading. Boys think gross is funny and/or cool, so a book full of gross aliens ought to appeal to them.

Boy readers will also respond well to the protagonist: though Daniel is an alien himself, he is still full of raging teen boy hormones, from his thoughts on his pseudo-girlfriend, Dana, to his reaction to the pretty blue-eyed girl at the diner, Judy Blue Eyes. When Judy tells him her last name is McGillicutty, his immediate reaction is “I was tempted to tell her name sounded just like a substance, magillakedi, that’s excreted by a three-hundred-pound centipede-like creature from Frizia Nine and is one of the three worst-smelling compounds ever discovered… but then I thought better of it.”

Offhand, I think a boy will find that funny.

While I don’t recommend the Daniel X series to adults or teenage girls doodling Mrs. Edward Cullen all over their notebooks, I feel safe suggesting it to boys ages 8-15, especially ones into alien stories. I also applaud Patterson and co for targeting this demographic, because it’s a hard one to tap into what with competition in the form of video games, skateboard parks, and BMX stunts.

On a final note, I’m just going to share my favorite passage from Daniel X Watch the Skies, without ruining one little bit of the book’s plot:

“You guys own both Jackass movies, don’t you?”
“Dude. And T-shirts,” he said, lifting up his buddy’s sweatshirt to show an “I (heart) Jackass” decal.
I like humans; I truly do. But, sometimes it amazes me their civilization ever got off the ground.

***

This book review is part of a MotherTalk blog tour.

You can also read my review of the first Daniel X book here and my review of Maximum Ride 3 (from Patterson’s other YA series) here.

Did you ever get into a lull where you hadn’t posted for a while and then when you tried to get back into your posting habits you felt compelled to write something of substance, a decision that ultimately resulted in prolonging your ability to post something because nothing you wrote was good enough to be that oh-so-special return post, and then you had to tell yourself to quit overthinking things and just write whatever the hell you wanted because it’s your blog and you do what you want and how much substance went into your old posts anyway?

That dilemma – in addition to moving and organizing the new home, repairing the new home (rather, watching Husband repair things), preparing for my new job, studying for the CSET, dealing with the financial aid office of my college, having both kids home all day long with no new acquaintances out here yet for them to play with, figuring out the new juicer, and considering adding sit ups to my nonexistent exercise regimen – has been occupying my thoughts and time.

It’s certainly those things conflicting with my ability to write and concentrate and not the fact that I have TV again. Oh yeah. Husband signed us up when he hooked up our phone. It has led to me watching lots of silly things which is exactly what I promised myself I wouldn’t do. Among the less silly things I’ve watched was Highlander the original movie. Oh wait, did I say less silly? I don’t deny I enjoyed this movie quite a bit, though I favor the TV series more, but I must point out a ridiculous scene that in addition to pushing the limits of my suspension of disbelief (in a movie that, let’s face it, requires a good suspension of disbelief) indicates what the 80s man considered ideal in an 80s woman: if a man puts a knife in your hands then stabs himself with it while your hands are still on the handle then appears to die then stands back up and explains that he is immortal and cannot die, your reaction would just NOT be to start making out with him. It just wouldn’t.

And now for something completely different: the deer here have a death wish. I swear, I have slammed on my brakes more times in the past three weeks to keep from hitting a deer than I have in the entire rest of my life. Of course, that latter number is zero, so any number would have beaten it. Regardless, the deer here have a death wish. GET OFF THE ROAD!

You talkin’ to me?