A man asked me for a book on personal finance, and I showed him Dave Ramsey’s book Financial Peace Revisited. I had discovered the book recently and loved it. Dave Ramsey is a personal finance guru who teaches old-fashioned, common sense money advice, and the book goes from showing how people get into financial trouble to how to get out of that trouble to how to save for your future, how to retire with dignity as he puts it.

With the economy scaring people, I know many are looking for ways to shrink their budgets and stretch their money. Having financial troubles can put a horrible stress on a marriage. Whether you fit any of those scenarios or are in good shape but would like to pick someone’s brain, Financial Peace Revisited is where you need to go. The book is one of the most helpful, encouraging, and fun books on money. It’s well worth your time and money.

Well, that’s probably the only non-fiction book I’ll ever review here. Now back to our regularly schedule fiction.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

And over.

In case you were wondering but were too afraid to try, letting the peanut oil in that clawed jug leak all over your garage floor overnight leaves your house smelling like overcooked meat.

In case you were wondering but were too afraid smart to try, cleaning up a couple gallons of peanut oil with newspaper only leaves you with a wonderful example of how long eternity is.

But I’m still thankful.

There is Oil Dry.

Let’s just say Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds comes to mind. You drive by a field and suddenly there’s a black cloud flying up into the sky. The road ahead is covered in black until a car approaches. Honestly, I’ve never seen flocks of birds this big.

But I did see the coolest thing last week. I was, again, driving home from work, and in the distance I could see a black cloud of birds together in the sky. But they weren’t flying anywhere. Instead, they were shifting within the same space, and their shifting caused variations in the shading of their bird cloud. Different shapes as more birds flew to one side and then moved down and up. Reminded me of the fish in Finding Nemo, the ones that formed into shapes for Dorie to guess at and mocked Marlin for being whiney.

So it was very cool to see birds doing almost the same thing in real life. And much more comforting than thinking about The Birds.

Really. For this suburbanite, Kansas is not the safe urban environment I’d expected.

Where do I begin?

First of all, there are bugs here. No kidding. Lots of bugs. This was a shock to me as I had not realized how much Chicago had mastered the art of destroying bugs. (Except for those 17-year cicadas this past summer.) Yes, Chicago has ants and some bees and wasps. But seriously, the city and suburbs are bug free compared to here.

Here two massive spiderwebs appeared overnight outside our front door and our garage door. Massively massive spider webs. Complete with thumbnail-size spider keeping watch from the web’s center. Sheesh, it looked like we were decorating from Halloween.

And then of course, there’s the issue of going out in the evening and leaving your porch light on. Which is worse? Fumbling for the right key in the dark or letting the hordes of bugs drawn to your light enter the house with you? We quickly decided to fumble in the dark.

There are even bugs in busy areas, right outside shopping malls where cars and people are coming and going constantly. I’ve almost stepped on a praying mantis, a moth the size of my palm, a numer of grasshoppers and crickets (too many to count), and even a walking stick. I tell you, this place is a bug collector’s paradise.

And then there are the snakes.

You heard me. On my first day in my back yard, I walked out the door, looked down at my feet, and saw that I’d almost stepped on a snake.

So what if it was a garter snake? I’d never even seen one before. Man, am I sorry to have that thirty-some year streak ruined. I tried to act calm (my daughter was right next to me). And before long the thing flew through the grass and left. But frankly its speed freaked me out too.

Lest you find yourself laughing at me, let me really scare you. There are copperheads in them thar woods.

There’s a couple in our church who have some land and live off a gravel road. Evidently copperheads like rocks. They’ve seen copperheads on that road and have run them over and killed them. (Our friend says you drive back and forth over them until you’re sure they’re dead. Just so you know.)

Another man in our church was visiting this family. He was driving down their road on his motorcycle and saw a copperhead up ahead in the road. So he decided to peal out on the bike and kill it. (Again, should you ever find yourself on a bike with a copperhead in front of you, you HAVE to peal out on the snake to kill it. File that one away, okay?)

But sadly, after he pealed out on the bike, he looked behind himself and didn’t see the snake lying dead in the road.

Or slithering off to the side.

He jumped off the bike to see if it had gotten somehow wrapped up in the bike and was about to bite him. Thankfully, it hadn’t

But it gets better. There are rattlesnakes here, too.

Another family in church was cleaning out their window wells a few years ago. Their son, not realizing what it was, picked up a baby rattler by the tale. He found it all cozy in their window well. Thank goodness we don’t have window wells. They’d never get cleaned.

Lastly, there’s the sky. I’ve never given all the ozone theories a thought, but here there are little holes all over the sky. You can see them best at night. Little white dots all over. Kinda pretty, if it weren’t so scary.

I tell ya, Bear Grylls has nothing on me.

So I started listing them for him — Illinois (duh), Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, Kansas (double-duh), Nebraska, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, South Dakota, and California (obviously flew there).

I was really surprised by how big that list was. Twenty-five states. Some I’ve only driven through, but that still counts.

Now I know some of you have been to many more than twenty-five states. Let’s see who’s been to the most!

A picture flashed in my mind of a woman scrubbing her clothes over those scrubbing boards (was there a technical term for them?) and saying, “What we need is someone to invent a machine to wash clothes for us.”

And then I pictured a woman sitting beside a running river, her hands in fists as her bearskin floated away with the current, and she said, “What we need is someone to invent a container for water so our bearskins quit floating away.”

Okay, don’t know if that last lady ever existed or not, but needless to say, I felt pretty silly for complaining about having to hang up my machine-washed and -dried laundry. Maybe someday there’ll be a machine to hang up clothes (someone please get to work on that!), but for now I’m thankful for my washer and dryer.

Long may they live.

Erica Vetsch at On the Write Path gave me the Rockin’ Girl Blogger award. No, it’s not for my musical accomplishments (which are none). It’s for my blog.

Thanks, Erica!

I get to pass the award on to other blogs I think are worthy, and to be honest, this is hard. The ones I read daily have just been given the award as well, but oh well. Right back at ya’, guys!

Kaye Dacus at Write Time, Write Place (she gets deep down into fiction-writing techniques)

Georgiana at Georgiana D (just fun stuff from a fellow writer)

Erica Vetsch at On the Write Path (another fellow writer with fun stuff)

Camy Tang at Camy’s Loft (a just pubbed writer who talks a little bit about everything)

Novel Journey (I LOVE this blog — great author interviews and behind-the-scenes publishing industry news for book lovers and writers alike)

Want to know the story behind it?

We have a Legos Star Wars video game, and my kids were playing it together. One of them was Darth Vader whom we all know has force powers. Evidently “Darth” wanted to get into whatever Child Two was doing in the game, and so “Darth” used his force powers in the game to move Child Two elsewhere. This happened over and over and over until Child Two got upset and called for me to make him stop using the force.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but we’re not as talented as all that!

Have a great Fourth of July, everyone!