After last week’s assault by dental types, taking pain pills like candy, and being stuck in the house for days on end, by Sunday morning I was climbing the walls.  I got up early (for our family), intending to take a book out on the deck and just read.  However, I’d been down for days, and though the three males did their best to handle kitchen stuff, it needed some TLC.  So I got busy cleaning it and doing other things I’d normally not want to do but was suddenly thrilled to be able to handle.  When the husband got up, I treated him to words he doesn’t necessarily love to hear from me:  ”I’m antsy.”

He gave me that worried, measuring look, as if he was trying to decide whether I was let’s-play-a-game-of-cards antsy or time-to-start-a-major-home-improvement antsy.

“Let’s go somewhere,” I said.

Yeah, that get-me-out-of-this-freaking-house-now kind of antsy.

Long story short, I sent one of the boys to find our old-fashioned, well-loved atlas and looked for something interesting between here and the Mississippi.  There, in tiny pink letters:  Eagle Cave.

Photo from Eagle Cave website

If you have boys, you need to take them to Eagle Cave.  It’s a privately owned cave, and its claims to fame are that it was Wisconsin’s first commercial cave and is the state’s largest onyx cave.  But better than all that mumbo-jumbo, during your tour, they pretty much give you free rein.

Part of the big room (photo from the Eagle Cave website)

Yeah, free rein in a cave, which meant for my guys: crawling down into the “Snake Pit” (which I am THRILLED to report has no snakes) and checking out the four tunnels that branch out from it, exploring the Hornet’s Nest, a side room in the cave (where the record number of people who have been crowded in at once is 32), climbing out on a major rock shelf/bridge, taking in the enormity of the biggest “room” in the cave (which, if I remember right, the guide said was more than 60 ft. wide), crawling into the Bear Den, seeing countless chunks of onyx, touching and getting dirty to their hearts’ content, and a bunch of other coolness.

"Diamond" ceiling...a bunch of 1-2 inch "straw" stalactites.

They learned some geology stuff too, but please don’t tell them that.

Our tour was just the four of us and the tour guide, who directed us through the cave, told us about each feature, then reliably said, “You can climb in there and check it out if you want.”  (Coming off a week of narcs, I stayed on the main path, but the other three came home filthy.)

After exploring, I still wanted to visit the Mississippi, so we headed west, through Prairie Du Chien, WI, and across the river to Marquette and MacGregor, Iowa.  Both towns had some quaint, touristy areas, but it’s hard to top the life-sized pink elephant on the Mississippi bank at the casino in MacGregor:

Pink Elephant. With a hat.

After a mediocre dinner in downtown MacGregor, we got back on the road and headed home. It’s a pretty, scenic drive, curving along the banks of the Wisconsin River for quite a distance, with bluffs, farms and a bajillion beautiful trees, but my personal favorite part was as we wound through yet another tiny Wisconsin town, the town of Gotham, and happened upon this bar along the side of the highway:

The BatCave

(No, we didn’t stop.  Mainly because two of us were minors.)

Surely I’m not the only one who loves going to the dentist?  Makes up excuses just to go in for an impromptu appointment in between the usual twice-a-year?

Wait, let me back up.  I’ve been taking narcotics for a week.  (And yes, as a matter of fact, it IS the dentist’s fault.)

So last Sunday night, I had Plans for Monday.  They consisted of lots of uninteresting (to you) things, like really getting busy on the subplots of my next book, diving into a new editing project, getting the kids where they needed to be when they needed to be there, etc.  I’d been to the dentist the week before because of a tooth that had been making my jaw hurt for months, literally (yeah, did you really believe the beginning of this post?) and he’d adjusted my crown so that my teeth would meet better and the bruised tissue beneath the tooth would begin to heal.  I’d stressed out and suffered from it for so long, but…that was over!  This was the new, healing me.  Time to get stuff done.

Except I woke up before 6am in Really Bad Pain.  That newly fixed tooth?  Yeah, not so much.  I called my dentist from a fetal position at 8am.  He worked me in at 9:30am.  Yay, relief!

Or not.

Three minutes after I got there… “Would you prefer to save the tooth or have it extracted?”

Well, let me see.  How about you just take an anvil to my head?  Or maybe you could run over my jaw with a backhoe?

Fine.  I’ll take the root canal.

He referred me to an endodontist for early afternoon.  Yes, same day service!  I’ve not felt so Special in quite some time, and I sure as hell don’t care to feel it again any time soon.

At the endo, my first startling discovery is that they don’t use nitrous oxide at this office.  Nor do they have any extra treats for over-anxious patients.

What.  The.  Hell????

So while the meek but I’m sure very nice assistant was attempting to do the “tap test” and the “cold test” on my VERY SORE FRIGGING TOOTH, I was flipping out on the inside. Problem was, there was so much swelling, I couldn’t open my jaw enough for her to do her thing.  She told me Ann would be in to do the X-Ray because she was very good at doing them when there was swelling.

Swell.

But instead of Ann, I met the doctor, who explained that he’d really love to give me a root canal (without laughing gas) because that’s what he did, but that my tooth was too far gone, and the infection too serious to mess around with.  And would I have someone to drive me to an oral surgeon right away?

Hello, all of a sudden, driving is the least of my problems.  But yep, Dad to the rescue.

Meek assistant asked me if I’d like to be put to sleep for the procedure or just numbed.  Three guesses what my answer was.

We (aka Dad) drove to the opposite side of town and we waited, since the considerate doctor was working me in.  I finally got called back, just ready to get rid of the pain.

Hi, yeah.  My jaw hurts.  When do I get to be knocked out?

Only they don’t usually knock out work-ins because you have to have not eaten for 6 hours prior.  Yeah, in spite of my pain, I’d eaten lunch.  (I don’t miss many meals.)

The non-meek, very appreciated assistant this time got me nitrous oxide.  Doctor gave me the first shot of novacaine and it started to numb me, but I hadn’t been able to open my mouth far enough to really do any good.  So he re-dosed me a few minutes later.  I had warned them that I always take extra novacaine but do they ever take me seriously when I say this?  Three guesses.

The doctor tested me in three spots.  Do you feel this?  No.  Do you feel this?  No.  Do you feel this?  OHHELLYESGETYOURHANDOUTOFMYEVERLOVINGMOUTH!

He re-dosed me yet again and I think I could feel the numbness in my toes.

And then 30 seconds later, the Evil Tooth was gone, out of my mouth, au revoir forever.  The nurse let me see it so I could tell it what I thought of it (remember they had let me have nitrous….)

So I’m down one tooth and am finally starting to feel better, although I still can’t open my mouth all the way.  And I know I just opened myself up to so many fine jokes.

Moral of the story?  Just keep on putting off that much-needed emergency dental appointment.

As a writer, I get a lot of non-writers asking me the same question or making the same comment:  I don’t understand how you can write an entire book.  Seriously, how do you do it?

I usually stammer through the answer because, much like writing a book, telling someone HOW to write a book is…tricky.  But today, I’m going to post my secret for everyone to see….

How I write a romance novel:

A picture is worth a thousand or so words, but I can clarify in 4 words:

Yep, that’s it!  That’s all there is to it!  In fact, if you can see the above pics large enough, I bet you could get a good start on your own romance novel.  Double dog dare ya!

It’s been a busy month in the Knupp house.  Not only did we buy a house and move, but I’ve started an editing business.  Blue Otter Editing.

(Why Blue Otter?  I don’t really know.  I like blue.  And I like otters.  And it seemed more memorable than Knupp Editing.)

Those who know me well know I love to edit — maybe to the extent that it’s a sickness.  Okay, more than maybe.

I got my start in professional editing a few years ago as a final line editor for a publishing company, but the origin of my punctuation infatuation goes back way before that.  In fact, I wholeheartedly blame my dad for it.

My dad was, at one time, a college English professor.  When I was in high school, he used to hack away edit my papers for my English classes.  I hated those red marks.  I strived to have less red, and luckily, my dad was insistent on explaining WHY he marked what he did.  (Although I’m pretty sure I didn’t feel lucky at the time…) Anyway, thus began my endeavor to understand grammar, punctuation, and all kinds of other style and editing issues.  Not to say I know it all, but the Chicago Manual of Style knows most of it and it’s been my BFF lately.

So, with indie publishing continuing to explode, I’m hoping for the opportunity to hack away copyedit some fabulous manuscripts. My editing style is meticulous and thorough, with a firm knowledge of the “rules” as well as an appreciation for when to break them.  Overall, I aspire to two things: 1) not letting errors get past me, and 2) not “messing with” an author’s voice.

If you know anyone who needs an editor, please consider sending them my way! The Blue Otter website is here. And for anyone who books a job before the end of July, there’s a discount.  (Details on the website!)