Things I Do That I Really Should Not Do

1. Watch The Housewives of Beverly Hills. You know, when I was a college student and I had just finished a round of brutal exams, I needed total zombie TV, and by that I mean: stuff that would not, even accidentally, make me think. Back in the day that was Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Now after a week of getting my kid to do math homework (just as brutal as any exam) THOBH fills that spot for me quite nicely, thank you.


Plus, I like to have conversations with the girls in my head. "Hi, Lisa! How the hell do you stay upright on those shoes?"

2. Eat Crispy Bacon potato chips. You can only get them in Ireland and the UK, and even there the Crispy Bacon flavor packets are few and far between. When I see a bag, I'll fight to get there first and scarf it down as if I'd been starved for a week.*


3. Read Twilight - NO, it's not Melville. In fact, it's literary crack. I'm hooked. So stake me.

4. Lust after a certain jailbait actor. *Cough* Rupert Grint *Cough* Old enough to be his mother *cough*

5. Continue to buy frozen cherries even when they cost nearly 5$ for a small bag. I have to have them for breakfast with my yogurt. HAVE to.


6. Tap my toe along to the most vapid tune ever written. That is correct; I've been known to hum to "I Love You Like A Love Song, Baby." Couldn't help it. Is it so bad it's good? We may never know.


7. Play computer games right after I put my kid to bed. No, not Skyrim nor WoW, but that's only because I know, if I started playing those games, I would be so hooked I couldn't stop. I do have some boundaries.

*perhaps I opened out the bag and licked it afterwards. This is a confessional, after all.

The End (Spoiler alert!)

After finally finishing The Lamplighter's Special, my sequel to The Night Watchman Express, I've learned one thing: Endings are hard to do. It is a very difficult, complicated thing to increase suspense and interest  in a group of characters, and arrive at a conclusion that is either happy or sad, in a way that balances the beginning and the middle of the book.

Seriously, I'm just realizing this. You'd think it would be obvious. Miss Writer starts her book, develops a plot, and therefore she must find a satisfactory way to end that book. However, I don't think I'm all alone in having this difficulty. I heard, for example, a lot of people criticize the final book of the Twilight series.  Ditto with the Harry Potter series. (For the  record, I rather like the chapter that begins, "Nineteen Years Later....") Stephen King is well-known for having a hard time with endings; his son, in Heart Shaped Box, seemed to have inherited the tendency.*

There must be some good endings  out  there, though. and by good, I mean well-done, finely executed. Here are some of my favorites:

1. The Shawshank Redemption - The scene of Red walking across the beach to see Andy Dufresne still gives me chills. The credits roll, and I like to imagine what  happened next. Did the men hang out, go to a little Mexican place and have some food and a few "Bohemia style beers?" Did Andy introduce Red to a nice woman who lived nearby? Did they settle down there at Zihuatenejo? I like to think they did.

2. Apollo 13 - That last  line of the  narration is incredible. "I sometimes catch myself looking up at the Moon, remembering the changes of fortune in our long voyage, thinking of the thousands of people who worked to bring the three of us home. I look up at the Moon and wonder, when will we be going back, and who will that be?"

3. The Road - I didn't see the movie. The last paragraph of the book, however, describing the beauty of river trout, is pure horror. 

4. Frequency - This movie won't win any lifetime awards, I suppose, but my husband actually stood up and cheered (in our family room, not a theater) at the end.

5. "Reader, I married  him..." But of  course.

What endings  to movies or books (or songs, or poems, or anything) have you enjoyed? Please share them in the comment section, because I'm still working on that ending thing.

*Do go and read Heart Shaped Box, though.  It scared the bejeesus out of me.