Last week I got an email that Continental had an e-saver to NC that would save me $300 on a ticket, so my sister and I cooked up A Plan. We pulled out our extremely weak and rusty deception skills, and I bought the ticket to fly home as a surprise for Mother’s Day.

Lissa picked me up, and when we got to Mom’s house she was working at the computer. I sauntered in, said, “hey,” and kept walking.

“Hey,” Mom said, and turned back to the monitor.

Then she looked up at Lissa, and it was a cartoon moment of BWAAAAH??!? as she turned slowly back to me, then jumped up.

She didn’t try to hug me or anything for several minutes, just touched my face, grasped my hand, and stared at me.

None of us remember what it is like to be an infant and be gazed at by our mother for the first time. But I imagine this moment was a little like that. She stared at me as if I were a secret wish that she couldn’t believe had come true.

My flash fiction piece “The Perils of Polarity” is up today at Everyday Weirdness.

My story “The Unkindness of Raven” is now available in the anthology Cover of Darkness.

Although Terrible Things tend to happen to people in my stories, I don’t often write horror. This story took a long time to find a home: I got a lot of very encouraging comments in the rejection letters, but I got the sense that many editors didn’t know what to DO with it.

It’s sort of a ghost story, and sort of not. The opening scene is entirely true, from an episode that happened one day many years ago when I was walking with my friend (and blog commenter) Gwyn up Damen Avenue to Village Thrift: a crow dropped its dinner on us.

Crows are often carnivorous. It was a disgusting experience. Things were poked. With a stick.

All of the home improvement stuff makes me miss my father more than ever. He would’ve been so relieved that we were finally fixing things up, and he would have wanted to know every detail.

He would’ve sent me endless emails with links to building materials and how-to videos.

At some point, he would’ve jumped in his truck and driven all the way down here to help, and I would’ve listened to him and Dingo outside working, joshing with one another.

That would’ve been a thing to cherish.

We had a board fall off our chimney during hurricane Rita in 2005. Nailed it back up.

Our chimney fell to pieces during hurricane Ike in 2008 (a very scary few days), and rain cascaded into our living room. We tried to escape to Austin for The Duration, but (a) the insurance company told us we had to “remediate” or they wouldn’t pay for any mold damage and (b) my workplace was only closed for one day. One day! Dang, it is not like I am mission-critical or I have anything to do with patients. I could’ve happily worked from Austin for a year.

But I digress.

Our excellent insurance company gave us some money to patch siding and replace carpet. Then a few Enormous Life Things happened, as they do, and we somehow got to last month without having fixed the siding. Then our neighbor invited us into her yard. Where about a quarter of the siding on that side of the house was lying in her yard.

I hate home ownership.

So there were phone calls and estimates and walk-throughs and blah-di-blahs, and then all of a sudden a crew was starting in four days. So we have had trees trimmed, fencing removed, a stump ground, insulation replaced, siding replaced and painted, and two window frames rebuilt (one with a new window). After a weekend of painting and cleaning, we still have a bunch of painting and gutter hanging left to go, but already we no longer have the ugliest house on the block.

That’s a relief, but UGH. Loud, messy, expensive. And one project always necessitates three more. One of the windows that needed to be re-framed is in the master bathroom, and now we have to replace the tile. That used to be low down on the list and has been bumped up to first place.

In the middle of all that, one of Dingo’s brothers got married (to a wonderful woman) in Austin on Thursday at this awesome place followed by a fun and yummy lunch here, and although it was a fun day and a beautiful wedding and I’m thrilled for all of them, we were a mite stressed out about a mid-week trip out of town while our house was torn up.

Somehow I have to stick it out until my vacation in July. How this will be possible, I do not know.

In the meantime, happy writing news:

My poem “Laying Small Ghosts” was accepted for Jabberwocky 5;

“The Wolf I Want” made the Locus Online recommended reading list for March!