Taking the Road Less Traveled

Romantic Times Review!

Born at Midnight
C.C. Hunter 4 ½ Stars

Great for fans of Vampire Academy. This book has it all, from vampires to werewolves to witches and shapeshifters. There’s romance and action, ensuring readers won’t want to put it down. Hunter – Christie Craig in her YA debut – packs on the twists and turns, and then leaves you hanging with an amazing hook ending, just wanting for more.

Taking the Road Less Traveled

Have you ever suddenly decided to try a new path—veer away from the norm, try something different and call it an adventure? Have you ever realized you might be in a bit of a rut? For those of you who know me, you know I’m a big advocate of trying new paths. But if you really know me, you know that I’m dyslexic and I’m . . . helplessly directionally impaired. And if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s getting lost.

Let me make myself clear. I’m not talking paths as in life decisions. I’m talking paths as in roads, or sidewalks as this case is. Not “lost” as in what you want to do in life, but lost as in…Where the hell am I . . . and haven’t I already seen that dead thing once? (Don’t worry, I’ll explain the dead thing in a minute.)

Now, not everyone who is directionally impaired, or challenged, is dyslexic. Some people are just easily turned around. And if I find myself out and about with a person who is like this…Well, we’re pretty much crap out of luck. And that’s what happened the other day.

Me and my friend, another writer, (whom I shall leave unnamed) walk for about an hour, five times a week. Now, here’s the part you might find hard to believe. We walk in our neighborhood—our neighborhood where I’ve lived for eighteen years and she’s lived for only thirty.

On our designated mornings, we brave the outdoors. Each morning, we take the same path. I mean, we’re so busy chatting about writing that we seldom even notice our surroundings.

This particular morning, I had a beauty appointment to get my eyebrows waxed, so we headed out early. I would have an hour after my walk to clean up, before running out to have hot wax placed on my unruly eyebrows and yanked off. (Hey, my beautician does a better job and it’s less torture than plucking.)

Anyway, it must have been something about the change of time that inspired the need for another change. “Let’s try a new path,” she said. Yeah, it was HER idea. Not that I didn’t go along with it. It was a beautiful, sunny day.

However, I must have had a premonition, because I told her, “If we get lost, we can call it an adventure.”

“Right,” she said and grinned. How likely was it that we could get lost in our neighborhood?

Very likely, as it turned out. We were twenty minutes into our walk when she said… “I don’t have a clue where we are.”

“We can always knock on someone’s door and ask for directions,” I said laughing. “We can lie and say we just moved here.”

Now, at a good forty minutes into our walk, at which point we should be heading back to our houses, we find ourselves back on the main street of our subdivision. We’re proud of ourselves. We ventured off our normal path and probably added a good ten minutes to our walking time. With confidence, we headed home. We walked. And walked. The beautiful day started feeling too warm. Sweat dripped from my brow.

One of us stated that our adventure had taken us farther into our subdivision that we’d thought. But we kept moving like little troopers. “As long as I’m not late for my brow waxing,” I said, jokingly.

We passed something on the sidewalk. Something that wasn’t breathing, and appeared to have gotten acquainted with the bumper of someone’s car. “What was that?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” she said, “But I’m pretty sure it had fur.”

“Oh, I saw the fur, I’m talking about the organ outside the fur? Liver?” Grimacing, we kept walking. And walking. It wasn’t just my in-need-of-a-waxing brow sweating now. My clothes were soaked.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if we were walking the wrong way?” she said.

“Yeah, that would be funny.” Doubt etched into my voice.

She heard it. “I know we’re going the right way,” she said. “I pass that green house all the time.”

“I’m sure we’re almost there” I said agreeing. Onward we go. And go.

Finally, she spoke up, “If we get to the end of this street and see the grocery store that is at the opposite end of our subdivision, I’m calling my husband to pick us up.” She hesitated. “Or I would if either of us had a phone or if either of us had a quarter.” We chuckled. And then all the sudden we saw it. The grocery store. We had walked the wrong way…for miles. Faced with the harsh reality of our mistake, we did the only thing we could…we laughed some more.

“We could always ask someone to borrow a quarter,” she suggested.

I stared at her sweaty, tired appearance, and I knew I looked worse. “They’d probably offer to drive us to a shelter,” I told her. “And we might have to explain how we got lost in our own subdivision.”

We started back. When we got to the dead object with its exposed liver, we decided it was a squirrel. And we also decided that it hadn’t died in a hit and run, but had met its fate trying to find its way home. By the time we got back, we’d walked a little over two hours, and I was about fifteen minutes late getting my brow waxed.

“Traffic?” my beautician asked, knowing it’s not like me to be late.

“Nah,” I told her. “Just . . . got caught up in an adventure.”

So do you ever get lost? Get turned around? Have you ever seen a squirrel’s liver? Do you wax or pluck your eyebrows?