Steeping Beauty, available as an e-book on Amazon, started out as a series of e-mail updates Dara Bettencourt (a member of my husband's extended family) wrote to keep friends and relatives updated on the sometimes wacky, sometimes poignant situations in her life.
Dara has a theory that if you walk into the back of a Wal*Mart store, you will discover the gates of hell. Unfortunately, a Wal*Mart on a windy day is not the only place where she seems to encounter evil. She walks into a doctor's office just in time to hear a nurse end a story with, "...and that's how I got the plague." Not exactly what you want to hear from someone who's about to give you an examination!
It's not only people who have medical drama. In "To Purr or Not to Purr," Dara writes about taking her cat, Misty, to the vet. "I was surprised by my loveable kitty and her suddenly vicious behavior," she says. "When the nurse tried to pet her Misty hissed with full honors. I think she may have been disturbed by the sight of the nurse's earring. It had obviously fallen out of her ear, slid down her face and landed on her tongue just this side of her gag reflexes. Misty was concerned for the nurse's safety, I'm sure."
There's no telling what Misty would have thought if she'd followed Dara to school - Dara is a substitute teacher. Teaching everyone from preschoolers to high schoolers, she encounters children who improvise weapons from plastic utensils, a boy with pants that sag so low his belt buckle hits the floor and a girl with contact lenses that make her pupils look like black crosses. If you think the kids can be hard to deal with, the adults are even worse.
Add to this tales of personal ads from cannibals, a goat with a bladder control problem, a post-hysterectomy pregnancy test and a date with a sniffer and you have 'Steeping Beauty!'
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