Speaking of secrets . . . and traffic court . . .

My hub is so darn funny. When he's not looking for the remote control. And when he's not asking who turned the thermostat up past 68. He's not funny at all when he does that.


But otherwise he's a crack up.


Like yesterday, he came home from work, sat up to the table and said, "OH MY GOSH! I had a dream last night about the book."


Unlike me, my hub doesn't dream very often, so when he does dream, I listen.


Usually his dreams involve correctly predicting when I am pregnant, (except for that one time I was pregnant with twins he had a nightmare. (ba dum bum.) )


One of his dreams that didin't involve pregnancy happened several years ago. He sat straight up in bed at 2 a.m., his eyes on fire as he relayed his million-dollar-Oprah-Book-Club-New-York-Times-best-seller book idea to me.


It made me laugh. OUT. loud.


I wasn't sold on the idea. AT ALL. Partly because it's a secret story. A true, secret story. And the main character is still alive.


It's an intriguing story, yes, but a delicate story. About a man-who-must-not-be-named (whom you can call Voldemort), and a young-woman-with-child. A child by the man-who-must-not-be-named.


The delicate story is set in a tiny Mormon town in Southern Utah (The same town where they now serve Ho-Made Pies at the Thunderbird Motel).


If every good story requires conflict then this is a really GREAT story, because unfortunately for the young-woman-with-child, the man-who-must-not-be-named was already married. And unfortunately for the man-who-must-not-be-named, it was against the law to commit adultery in 1923. He ended up doing jail time and she ended up marrying some guy she didn't love named Jack.


Eventually she moved to California and died of a broken heart at 32. He moved to Provo and stayed alive long enough to raise his unsecret children a few miles from where I grew up.


Ironically I went to high school with his great granddaughter.


Ironically she went to high school with me too. His other great granddaughter.


It's probably a good thing I didn't understand irony at the time because even though I walked the same halls with my secret, half, 2nd cousin, we didn't run in the same circles.


In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think she may have been the inspiration for Ho-Made Pies.

See when the man-who-must-not-be-named and the young-woman-with-child went their separate ways, his side of the family got all the cleavage and my side of the family got all the religion.


Go figure!


So anyways, back to the dream. So my hub jumped out of bed and began pacing back and forth, his hands talking as fast as his mouth.


"Honestly," I interruped him. "I just don't know if I have the skill and the sensitivity to do this story justice."


But he didn't hear me. He was inspired. He even had all the metaphors and morals worked out in his mind, which he shared with great enthusiasm when we'd go for walks on the beach, or with my ex-door neighbor, Martha when she'd come over to bring me pasta salad, or with any of our extended family members who would lend an ear while sitting around a pool or on a dock or in a cabin at family reunions.


So last night at the dinner table he laid out for me his addendum to his book dream.

"OH MY GOSH!" he said, "I had a dream last night about the book."

That's where I left you dangling, right?


Okay, so are you ready for this, peeps?


It's the same true story with the same true characters, only he dreamed I should make the man-who-must-not-be-named a . . .


Are you sure you're ready for this?



A werewolf.



hee hee hee hee ho ho ho ho ha ha ha ha ha.


Oh goodness! Did you just spit your Diet Coke all over the computer screen too?


So I had to break it to my hub that a werewolf's been done. Sooooooo done. A vampire has also been done, as has an alien, an ogre, a mutant, a demi-god and a gangsta rapper. And I got it from a very reliable source that mermaids are next so I had to break that to him too.


But I've been thinking . . . you know what hasn't been done yet? A crash test dummy.


What if the man-who-must-not-be-named turns into a crash test dummy whenever the sun sets? Or whenever the full moon rises? He could be a smokin' hot, sparkly crash test dummy, who pops and locks and wears his cap backwards. His Kryptonite could be Code Red, and at the end of the novel a bunch of nursery rhyme characters could use light sabers to fight the law and break him out of jail.

What say you, peeps?

Speaking of the law . . . tomorrow I go to traffic court.

GULP!