Why Is Everything Such A Hassle?

Yesterday I had my hair cut and colored for the first time since early November. I was the two-toned kid, with 4 inches of brown and 5 inches of streaked blond brown with ends that had seen better days. Looking good, now. I did this in prep for Edgar's week in NY. It is bad enough to be the unstylish country cousin, even the pudgy unstylish country cousin without being the bad hair etc. country cousin, and might I add the cousin who hasn't published a book since 2003, etc. etc.?

But my hairdresser is great and he is even reading my book as is one of the other stylists. He liked the "descriptive" passages, which I suspect is damning with faint praise, but anyway. . .
I go back to Wellesley for my hair, and bopped into E.A. Davis to ogle the Lily Pulitzer clothes. So cool. So summery. So very Nantucket. Drool. Prices too high. I debated, and decided not to try anything on in the unlikely event that it fit. E.A. Davis is never a hassle.

We were having lasagne for dinner and I needed parmesan cheese and lettuce, so I stopped at Shaw's. Bought a wee box of black raspberries, so I had three (count 'em) 3 items. Took my understuffed basket into the 10 items or less check-out line. The clerk had already scanned the stuff the woman in front of me purchased, and then she began to pack it up, and I realized about the 3rd grocery bag that this woman must have had AT LEAST 20 items. That Shaws is always a train wreck. So, one might expect that the woman would turn and apologize. Maybe no one was behind her when she unloaded her week's groceries. Nope.

Maybe I had a right to expect that the check-out clerk would apologize for holding up the line endlessly. Paper and plastic and the woman's own bag (just one!) and was that a debit or a credit card yada yada.

Nope. Instead, a cheery, "how are you, today?" Now, how is anyone, especially us type A's who must wait and wait in the quick ten-items-or-less (not fewer) line for endless minutes for the rude feeling-so-priveleged shopper? I said "fine," with a chiliness that must have given her a clue. Still no apology. Not even a breezy apology.

Certainly no abject apology. That would come later.

On to the dry cleaners. Opened the door, and the woman who works there was sitting at her desk. She didn't look up. I did a double take. Hmmm. Her eyes are closed. She is erect, and therefore not dead. This woman never looks exactly healthy, so this was a legitimate consideration. I said, "excuse me."

She woke up with a start and starred at me. Abject apologies. My god, you would think they had lost the cleaning, which has actually happened, but not there. I had two "groups" of cleaning and no cash, so I whipped out ye old charge card, and for some reason she rang the cleaning up in three groups, but she had to key in a lot of numbers and the charge machine was SLOOOOOW, just like the Shaw's checkout line. I didn't understand why she couldn't add 10.00 and 19.65, after all it wasn't a quadratic equation, but this math seemed to be beyond her ken.

In the meantime another customer came in and waited and waited and waited, just like I had at Shaw's, and I was tempted to apologize, but hey, I wasn't the sleepy, slow, abject one.

Finally, with three charge receipts for $29.65, I was out of there. No other hassles. It's a wonder I didn't get rear-ended driving out of the parking lot. This is the center where all the truckers stop at the Dunkin' Donuts because there's a big parking lot. Sometimes you have to wait there indefinitely, but when the wait is long, we will feel virtuous and skip the donut. Never a bad idea, skipping the donut, especially is you are the not-very-stylish country cousin a little pudgy and not recently published.

Alas,

Grapeshot

MWA 2008 Edgar Awards

Let's hear it for some great new novels. I have Ken Bruen's Priest on my "next read" list. Everyone involved in Crimebake and/or Level Best Books is also pulling for "The Catch" in the Still Waters Anthology. A new writer's first published story is nominated for a prestigeous award. How cool is that? Mega-congratulations to Mark Ammons.

BEST NOVEL

Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (Henry Holt and Company)
Priest by Ken Bruen (St. Martin's Minotaur)
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House Books)
Down River by John Hart (St. Martin's Minotaur)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR

Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
In the Woods by Tana French (Penguin Group – Viking)
Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard (The Rookery Press)
Head Games by Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
Pyres by Derek Nikitas (St. Martin's Minotaur)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

Queenpin by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
Blood of Paradise by David Corbett (Random House - Mortalis)
Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks (Serpent's Tail)
Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill (Hard Case Crime)
Who is Conrad Hirst? by Kevin Wignall (Simon & Schuster)

BEST FACT CRIME

The Birthday Party by Stanley Alpert (Penguin Group – G.P. Putnam's Sons)
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
by Vincent Bugliosi (W.W. Norton and Company
Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn't Commit by Kerry Max Cook (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
Relentless Pursuit: A True Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn't Quit by Kevin Flynn (Penguin Group – G.P. Putnam's Sons)
Sacco & Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders and the Judgment of Mankind by Bruce Watson (Penguin Group – Viking)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction by Patrick Anderson (Random House)
A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational by Maurizio Ascari (Palgrave Macmillan)
Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction by Christiana Gregoriou (Palgrave Macmillan)
Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (The Penguin Press)
Chester Gould: A Daughter's Biography of the Creator of Dick Tracy
by Jean Gould O’Connell (McFarland & Company)

BEST SHORT STORY

"The Catch" – Still Waters by Mark Ammons (Level Best Books)
"Blue Note" – Chicago Blues by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Bleak House Books)
"Hardly Knew Her" – Dead Man's Hand by Laura Lippman (Harcourt Trade Publishers)
"The Golden Gopher" – Los Angeles Noir by Susan Straight (Akashic Books
"Uncle" – A Hell of a Woman” by Daniel Woodrell (Busted Flush Press)

BEST JUVENILE

The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Shadows on Society Hill by Evelyn Coleman (American Girl Publications)
Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn (Clarion Books)
The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh (Hyperion Books for Young Readers)
Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things by Wendelin Van Draanen (Random House Children’s Books – Alfred A. Knopf)

BEST YOUNG ADULT

Rat Life by Tedd Arnold (Penguin – Dial Books for Young Readers)
Diamonds in the Shadow by Caroline B. Cooney (Random House Children's Books – Delacorte Press)
Touching Snow by M. Sindy Felin (Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing – Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Blood Brothers by S.A. Harazin (Random House Children's Books – Delacorte Press)
Fragments by Jeffry W. Johnston (Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing – Simon Pulse)