A super-spectacular day

Back in 1980, when I was 12 or 13, I bought a copy of MAD Magazine that came with this really cool plastic "flexi-disc" record featuring a novelty song called "It's a Super-Spectacular Day." It had multiple tracks in parallel grooves, so it played differently depending on where the needle of your turntable started playing the disc. The first bit of the song was the same every time, with a cutesy happy intro about the great day ahead, but you never knew which one of 8 different endings it would play, each describing a different way the day would disintegrate into something horrific. The lyrics are here, and sound files of all 8 versions are downloadable here (I was happily amazed to find these online recently).

Anyway, that's about how I feel right now, without the cheerful part at the beginning. 

So, do wake me up when September ends. Preferably in Texas. And then tell me whether my baby is a boy or a girl.

Moving stinks

Moving really, really stinks. I wish my 8-year-old would hurry and invent that transporter he's always wanting to invent so we could just transport ourselves and all our stuff to Texas without having to do all this moving business. Ecch. We're trying to get out by the end of the month, so my husband said today that our theme song should be Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends." But I can't wish for that, because then I'd miss my big ultrasound next week!

We signed our kids up for a 4-hour kids' night out thing at a craft place so we'd have time to work on the house uninterrupted tonight. So my husband just took them there...and it was last night. D'oh! All my fault, and I have no idea why I got confused about it. 

Oh, and GO, TEXAS LONGHORNS!

Writing & reading

Since leaving Austin, I've really missed the SCBWI group there. Here, the only thing I could find for children's writers was one critique group that met at a time when I couldn't go. There, I was used to large monthly meetings, many critique groups to choose from, and a couple of conferences or retreats per year. Here, the only conferences are in other parts of the state. In general, I've felt pretty cut off from the writing world since I've been here, apart from the Internet, though much of that is my own fault for not settling in more quickly or sitting down to write! But anyway...I'm going back, with a new appreciation of everything offered for writers in Austin. And since I'm having a baby soon, which will probably put me out of commission for a while (at least in terms of attending events), I decided that, income or no income, I'm going to the Austin SCBWI conference in October. It's just a one-day thing, but I expect it to be a breath of fresh air for my writing! I sent off my registration form last week.

Speaking of writing, I've read some this week. On the way back from Orlando on Tuesday, I started reading a novel called The Boy I Loved Before by Jenny Colgan. It's a British, chick-lit type thing, not something I'd normally read, but it has kind of a YA element, as the protagonist is a 32-year-old woman who wishes she were 16 again, and then magically is. (A bit like 13 Going On 30 in reverse.) But instead of going back in time to when she was 16, as she expected, she becomes 16 in the present day. It's a bit odd, since her parents also become younger, but no one else changes, and her old self no longer exists for most people, but several people she was close to still remember her the way she was.

At any rate, I read a few chapters of that, and then when we got home, I found in the mail an old YA book I'd ordered from an Amazon reseller--The Alfred G. Graebner Memorial High School Handbook of Rules and Regulations, by Ellen Conford. It's from 1976 and I remembered reading and liking it as a teen in the early 80s. I sat down and read it through immediately! I still enjoyed it quite a bit. It turned out to be episodic, with each chapter based on one idea or theme from the school handbook, rather than having one plotline running all the way through. But for a 30-year-old novel, I was surprised how modern it still seemed. I'd think any YA reader today could relate to most of it (and to my surprise, there was even foul language--mainly the "s" word!).

After I finished that, I went back to the first book and read until I finished that one, too! So, two books in one evening. The Colgan book was a fun read, and I was surprised that there were actually several points of overlap between the 1976 YA book I had just read and the 2004 adult novel. There were a few similar characters and situations, and just general riffing on the mindsets of idealistic young people.

The Colgan book ended up similar to Back to the Future, in that the protagonist, once restored to her regular age, finds she has changed the timeline in such a way that her whole new history is different (an accountant at the beginning, she discovers at the end that she's now a teacher), and of course everyone around her has a newly happy ending. I have some trouble with this. Yes, it's happy that she now has a life she likes better than her old one, and seems to be ending up with the guy she really wanted, blah blah blah, but wouldn't it be a little freakish not to know your own history, and for everyone else in your family and circle of friends to have a different memory of your life and theirs than you did? I'm not sure I could accept that so complacently!

A last hurrah in Florida

When we moved to Florida, we promised the kids a lot of things. Of course we would go to Disney World, Universal Studios, the Nick Hotel, and a whole lot more. All in good time. And now our time here is up, and we hadn't done those things. This week, the kids were off Monday for Labor Day and Tuesday for a teacher workday. Wednesday, there was supposed to be a space shuttle launch. We realized it was probably our last chance ever to see a space shutte launch, and since the kids' school here has already had 9 more schooldays this year than the school they're about to change to in Texas, we decided we'd let them miss school Wednesday to see it. Without income, we couldn't swing Disney or Universal. And probably shouldn't have done anything, but figured we'd have one last hurrah, and took them to the Nick Hotel in Orlando for 2 nights before the planned launch. Since they are 5 and 8 and Nick cartoon addicts, they had a blast. We stayed at the hotel the whole time, except for a short excursion one afternoon to the big Lego store at the Downtown Disney shopping area. The pools were really cool, they saw a lot of people dressed up like Nick characters (they know they are costumes, but are still drawn to hug them...), and we went to a show where my husband got picked to go on stage, get dressed up like a big baby, and have water balloons thrown at (or rather, to) him. It was a hit.

The weather looked like it would cooperate for the shuttle launch, for once (our first day at the hotel, the kids had to swim in the pouring rain!), but of course, the morning of the scheduled launch, it was called off for technical problems. Sigh. So for the second time, we had driven across the state to see a launch that didn't happen. Instead, on our way home, we decided to stop in Tampa and visit the Museum of Science & Industry. They let us in free with our local science museum membership pass--a good thing, since their ticket prices would have cost us more than we paid for this pass!

And now...we're home, where we have to get ready to move. Considering that we moved here just over 7 months ago, and half our stuff is still in boxes in the garage, you'd think it wouldn't be that hard to get ready. But it is. Is it ever! And I've been putting it off like crazy. I wish I were an organized person. Maybe after this move I will be? Ha.

I have more to say, on the topics of reading & writing, but I'll save those for another post.

Weirdest thing my son asked me...

...about moving back to Texas.

"Will we see cowboys?"

Keep in mind that this child has lived in Texas for 5 of his 5.5 years, and to the best of my knowledge, has never seen a cowboy. I'm not sure why he thinks we might see one this time! LOL.

Bye-bye, Florida

Long story short... My husband's department at work was dissolved and the multi-year project he was hired to work on was cancelled, so his job disappeared and we are moving back to Texas. We still have our house there and are only renting here, so it only makes sense, especially since there are far more high-tech jobs there. But, it's weird, and pretty unnerving when I'm 4 months pregnant! I'm not sure when we'll move, but probably in a month or less. (I did want to move back to Texas eventually, but I was hoping to do so with income!)

BOOOOKS!

My book is here!!! That is, our book is here, since a few of my online writer friends, as well as many other writers and illustrators, are also featured in it. That is, my contributor's copies of the Summer Shorts anthology arrived in the mail from Blooming Tree Press today! Hooray!

For those who get the book (and you should all buy one, if I say so myself), look for my poem, "High Dive," on page 69, and my short story, "Owen Nolan's Square-Wheeled Bike," on page 128. The whole book looks great! It features 360 pages of stories and poems for children (ages 7 up) by more than 40 writers, along with illustrations throughout by a variety of illustrators. I don't think it's officially released yet, but as soon as it is, I'll let everyone know how to buy a copy!

I also realized my second grader is old enough to read my story on his own now--I read it to him while I was working on an early draft, but that was probably 2 or 3 years ago, and I'm not sure he quite followed it. I'm pretty sure the story also changed after that. So I look forward to making him read it tonight or tomorrow and getting his reaction! (Though truth be told, both kids were just as excited by the free Blooming Tree Press pen than came in the package as they were by the book!)

Happy Birthday to me

Today is/was my birthday. As noted on my bio page, dolphins have been my favorite animal ever since I read Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Ring of Endless Light at age 13. I've seen plenty at places like Sea World, but hadn't ever seen one in the wild. Now that I live 20 minutes from a bay that's home to about 145 dolphins, I decided I'd like to see some for my birthday. So my husband took off work today, and we all went on a 2-hour dolphin watch cruise. The first hour was great...we were lucky enough to see a group of 3 dolphins, which apparently included a mother and baby, and they were close enough to see for at least 15 minutes. It was nearly impossible to get photos of them, especially with my slow camera, but here's one fuzzy shot. The water here is too shallow (4 to 6 feet!) for them to do leaps like they might in the open ocean.


It was, however, very HOT. It hasn't been as hot here as it apparently has been in the rest of the country--never seems to break 100, anyway--but it's very humid. It was 97 degrees with 65% humidity, and standing out on the open deck watching the dolphins for a while really got to me. I had to go down to the lower deck, which was mostly enclosed and at least had a fan, and I sat there nearly doubled over for 35 or 40 minutes trying not to pass out or get sick! The boat was very stable and there weren't many waves, but I guess I was just hot and dehydrated (and pregnant!). I think I missed another dolphin sighting during that time, but I didn't care. But after I rested a while and had 2 cups of water, I felt okay again. A shorter cruise would have been much better for us (the kids were bored by the end), but I guess they make them that long to increase the chances of spotting dolphins.

Because of the timing of the boat ride, my birthday meal plans got changed...we didn't feel like driving an hour away when it was already 1:00 and we hadn't eaten. I decided on Bennigan's, an odd choice because I've only eaten there maybe once in the past 10 years, but I decadently got both a steak and a bowl of French Onion soup! And luckily, they were so slow bringing the soup that they gave it to me for free! My 5-year-old spilled two drinks there after already spilling one on the boat...but we had a nice lunch. (Note: And my 7-year-old just dropped a drink in the kitchen as I was writing this!)

Later in the afternoon, we had a mini-party at home. I'd had absolutely no luck finding a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting at the local grocery stores a few weeks ago, after trying 7 stores, and that's what I wanted so I suggested to my husband that he try a local Amish restaurant that we knew served good chocolate cake. He ordered a cake from them, and when he went to pick it up yesterday, it was crazily lumpy. They felt so bad about it they offered to sell it to him for nearly half price, or to make a better one for today. He chose the discount cake, which is good because the regular price was too high! Today, it was even lumpier. But it tasted really good anyway! My presents included a "mask" drawn by my 5-year-old, and a 3D house made out of paper by my 7-year-old (with help from his dad), complete with a cute mail slot, tiny fake mail, and a bucket inside to catch it in! Oh yeah, and Oil of Olay from my mom! Talk about gifts that make one feel old... she also sent me an 80s compilation CD, which manages to take me back to my youth and make me feel old at the same time. ;-) She also sent along a foam tiara!

Who wants to be a superhero?

Yes, I saw the last 5 or 10 minutes of "Who Wants to Be a Superhero?" on TV last night...not quite sure I get it. (Does the winner get to be a real superhero? Now that I'd like to see.) But what really prompted this post was the topic of names.

Before I had my first child 8 years ago, we'd picked the name Kara as a girl's name. It was just a name I had liked since childhood. We had a boy, and then another, so Kara's always been on the back burner. Now, since I'm expecting again, I started considering it again, and just found out this year that Kara is the "real" name of Supergirl (most incarnations of Supergirl, anyway). Shortly after learning that, I found out some DC Comics stamps were coming out this year, including 2 Supergirl stamps. I planned to buy 3 sheets of them, one to use and 2 to save as keepsakes for my possible Kara. 

So...the stamps came out last week, and as I went to buy them online, I realized I had a dilemma. I'd just found out my baby might be a boy. Why would I need 3 sheets of stamps with Kara/Supergirl if I wasn't having a Kara? My husband said to buy them anyway--I could always just use them for mailing. But 3 sheets? They're not that cheap, and I don't usually like using special stamps on everything. I already have a lot of Muppets stamps, children's book art stamps, Disney stamps, author stamps, etc., and never want to "waste" them on bills, so they hardly get used. 

So I joked to my husband that our only solution was to find a boy's name that was the alter ego of one of the male superheroes on the stamp sheet... About 2 minutes later, I added, "When I said we should find a superhero boy's name, I didn't realize Nicolas Cage had named his son Kal-El." My husband asked what search terms I'd used to find that out, and I said, "I wasn't searching for it, I just happened to be reading an article on Nicolas Cage!" Which was true. At the very moment I'd been talking to my husband about the stamp problem, I'd been holding the lastest Reader's Digest open to an article about Nicolas Cage, which I was about to start reading. How oddly coincidental to read about his son Kal-El just a moment later!

That got me thinking... I wouldn't name a child Kal-El, or Clark for that matter. I kind of like Kent, but I don't want sons named both Kyle and Kent (I know, Kyle and Kara both start with K's, too, but I picked Kara first!). So I decided to look up the names of the other superheroes. The best one ws Plastic Man--Patrick--but I wouldn't name a kid after Plastic Man! Others included Arthur, Oliver, Barry, Guy, and a lot of other names I wouldn't use for my child. Then I learned that the name of the most recent Green Lantern is...Kyle, my youngest son's name.

I then looked up the rest of us, and discovered we all have superhero alter egos! My husband's name is Mark, and there's a newer superhero named Invincible (from Image Comics), otherwise known as Mark Grayson. My oldest son's name is Ryan, and it turns out the newest Atom is Ryan Choi (and Atom fits my little scientist quite well!). Finally, I looked up myself, and found a superhero named Alison...Dazzler, who was once even known as "The Disco Dazzler"! She's a singer who started out in disco, later moving on...also a mutant who converts sound into light and energy beams, and has been associated with the X-Men. Totally cracked me up! So now do I have to keep the superhero thing going with the 5th member of our family? Heh. They are coming out with some Marvel Comics stamps next year, so at least we could expand our horizons...

By the way, I bought 2 sheets of the stamps. If Kara doesn't materialize, I'll just use them. I figure they'd be great for my sons' birthday party invitations! And in my ongoing loyalty to all things literary, I also got a sheet of Katherine Anne Porter stamps.

Today...

• It is Bastille Day.


• It is Cow Appreciation Day.


• My youngest son is 5½ years old, and we'll be having a small half-birthday celebration for him (we started celebrating the kids' half-birthdays because his real birthday is close to Christmas, and a year is a long time for a small child to wait).


• I am 11 weeks pregnant with our third child! The due date as of now is Groundhog Day 2007 (February 2). We've had a few scares with a dental emergency I had and a car wreck I was in that totaled our van, but we've seen the baby on ultrasound recently, and so far so good! :-)

Shuttle-free Saturday

Yesterday, we sort of impulsively decided to drive across Florida to try to see the space shuttle launch. One hour, we averaged 70 miles an hour. The next, the traffic was so jammed we only made it 10 miles in an hour! Then we had to have a long potty break for our sons...so we weren't on track to make it there in time, and it was just as well for us that they canceled the launch 10 minutes before the scheduled time. However, at the place on the highway where we were when we heard on the radio that it was canceled, there were cars lined up everywhere along the shoulder of the road, some with binoculars, so I'm assuming we could have seen something from there if it did happen!

So there we were, after 3 hours of driving with no launch to see! We were nearly there by then, so we decided to go on to Orlando, which we had never been to before. Not to see some exciting theme park or whatnot...it was already nearly 4 pm, after all...but to eat at Fuddrucker's! Fuddrucker's is one of our favorite burger places in the world and we knew that Orlando had the closest one to where we live now (ugh!). So we did that. I had no idea Orlando was so much like a little Las Vegas! (At least on International Drive where we ate.)

Then it was already 6 but we figured we should do something there, and realized our science museum membership card from Sarasota might get us into Orlando's science museum for free. Sure enough, it did, so we had a nice evening at the science museum with the kids, and saw a safari film on their 8-story domed screen. Then drove back home afterwards, returning home at 11:30 pm! I was tempted to get a hotel room for the night in Orlando and try to see the launch again today, but we decided not to spend the money when they said there was still a 60% chance they wouldn't launch today, either. So, we may try again for a future launch!

In scarier news, right before we left town, I saw a big snake on our porch! It was moving fast, but appeared to be black and maybe 2½ feet long. It was headed off the porch, into some grass and plants, and we lost track of it...scary! My kids play outside all the time, usually even barefoot. Now I'm not sure what to do! I'm particularly freaked out because I know there is/was a water moccasin in the creek behind our house. They are swift, aggressive, and deadly. I am just hoping a water moccasin wouldn't have wandered that far from the water, but who knows? Shudder!

Oh, by the way, you're in imminent danger...

When my radio alarm went off this morning, I heard the DJ say my county was currently under a tornado warning. Warning. That means an actual tornado has been spotted. When I said I was moving to Florida, everyone said that at least hurricanes give you advance notice, unlike the tornadoes Texas is prone to. But yay, great, I get tornadoes here, too! So I jumped out of bed and turned on the TV. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing! I could not find ANY mention of this tornado, except in a small ticker running across the bottom of the screen on 2 channels: the national Weather Channel, and a local weather channel that just displays radar images & abbreviated forecasts, but does not have live humans on it. That's it.

The closest news channels are mostly from Tampa, and while some of them were discussing Tropical Storm Alberto, which is brewing in the gulf, many were just chuckling about whatever else struck their fancy and talking about national news. Hello?? I'm about to be blown away here and no one is mentioning it. The "Sarasota news" channel is only replaying taped human interest stories from the past week. They don't even have a ticker about looming danger. Meanwhile, the ticker on the other 2 channels is telling me to go immediately to an interior room of my home and put a mattress over my head. I was kind of in shock. My good interior closet was piled up with unpacked boxes & stuff like that & I tried to frantically start removing things. But I was furious, too. This county isn't even that big, so any danger they spotted is danger for me. In Austin, if there was a tornado warning anywhere in the viewing area, that would be all you'd hear about on any of the local channels, including the local news channel with mostly human interest stories. But here, I could get no information. I am not happy to live in a town without its own real TV channels! And the local newspaper only updates its web site once a day when it puts out a new paper, so I've never found a way to follow current or developing local news. The highway was closed down for hours one day when I was trying to take my mom to the airport, and I never could find out why, despite searching for relevant information that day and the next.

So, we never managed to get better information or get our kids out of their windowed rooms before the tornado warning expired, which was 15 minutes after I found out about it. The kids could have been blown away in their sleep if the tornado hadn't dissipated on its own. I finally found a Tampa station that at least seemed to be talking about the weather and showing maps that included Sarasota. We are all under a Tropical Storm Warning & Flood Watch, so I have no idea what I'm supposed to do or whether I should avoid taking the kids to their Vacation Bible School today that's only a few miles from the coast.

I am already at my quota of tornado warnings for this year (I rarely got more than one a year in Austin, if that), so right now Florida is racking up negative points in my book, as it surely will for the rest of the storm season, if we live that long!

17 years later

It's June 11, which means I met my husband 17 years ago today! We met at a Jason's Deli restaurant in Arlington, Texas (with mutual friends), so every June 11, we celebrate by going to Jason's Deli. There isn't one where we live now, so we drove an hour to Tampa to find one. Yum! They have excellent broccoli cheese soup--even our kids love it. Also huge stuffed potatoes, though I just went with the salad bar today. Anyway, that was a nice celebration, and we stopped at a mall on the way home where the kids and I rode on a two-story carousel.

Another big event this week was my 5-year-old son's dance recital for his arts preschool. This dance school has so many classes they have 10 nights of recitals--last night's alone had 33 acts. And tickets were $14 apiece, even for us! Eek. But his dance was REALLY cute, really good, and a real showstopper. Of course, part of the appeal was the adorable little boys in tuxedos (3 in this case, dancing with maybe 7 girls), especially when there were only 5 boys performing the whole evening! But my son did really well, knew his part wonderfully, & had a big smile to boot. He's quite the performer. Here's a pic I took of him before his first performance of this dance at his preschool graduation a few weeks ago:

Oh, June 11 is also Owen Nolan's birthday in my short story "Owen Nolan's Square-Wheeled Bike," coming out this summer in the Summer Shorts anthology from Blooming Tree Press! The date worked really well for my story, since I needed a date near the beginning of summer, but I picked that particular date because of meeting my husband that day. So, Happy Birthday to Owen, and I hope you got a good present this year. ;-)

Days of our lives

We had a really good weekend. Friday night, the kids went to a "kids' night out" thing, while my husband and I had a nice dinner at Steak & Ale, then went to the beach & just watched the ocean for a while. The next day was a full but pleasant Saturday. In the morning, the kids went to the circus kids' club, where they got to walk on a (low!) tightrope, balance plates and peacock feathers, juggle scarves, and do tricks with a hat. Then we had lunch, got haircuts, stopped for ice cream (and pinball--haven't seen that in years!), and later spent sunset at the beach my husband and I had scoped out the night before, with the boys playing in the water and digging in the sand. Other than one mini-meltdown my 5-year-old had at circus club when my husband dared to try to help him...it was a rather nice day!

Right now I'm having an unpleasant situation with a tooth infection that will probably require a root canal. This is particularly alarming at the moment for reasons I'll get into later...but anyway, I've been on antibiotics for a few days so I'm feeling much better, and tomorrow I have an appointment to find out what's really wrong and what will need to be done. Let's just hope the dentist's office doesn't make me wait TWO HOURS again or play Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in the room where I'm waiting again, or I may just pull my own teeth out! And the dr's waiting room I was in last week was playing Days of Our Lives the whole hour I was in there...it is not appropriate waiting room material, IMO, and made me long for headphones, or that root canal. Whatever happened to magazines?!

This will be a crazy week. The kids have Vacation Bible School every morning at a church that's really far away. I have a dentist appointment on Monday afternoon & a dr's appointment Friday afternoon, so those two days they're staying in after-care at the church (assuming they're still invited back on Friday after they stay on Monday...!). Wednesday afternoon, my 5-year-old has a dress rehearsal at a theatre in town for his preschool dance recital, which is a pretty big deal. Thursday morning, he has a kindergarten screening at the public school (testing what he knows, I guess), from which we'll have to rush to VBS. Then Saturday night is the big recital. We had to pay $14 per ticket to even go see it! Crazy. And Sunday we plan to go to Tampa, an hour away, to eat at Jason's Deli, because we met at a Jason's Deli (in Texas) 17 years ago that day!

We planned to go to Kansas at the end of the month for our niece's wedding. Her brother got married there yesterday and she is getting married there in a few weeks. But the airfare alone looked like it would be $2000! Then we'd have to get a rental car, hotel for a few days, and babysitting for our kids during the wedding... Looked like it would be at least $3000, and while we'd love to see the relatives, we couldn't swing that! But, I hope we can find some vacation option for this summer. I'd hate to do nothing at all! My husband's 20th high school reunion is next month in Texas, and I'd love to go to that just to go to Texas (burritos! decaf Dr Pepper!), but again, the plane fares we are finding are ridiculous. I guess it has to do with fuel prices.

My mother-in-law

Hey, this is cool, there's an article about my mother-in-law, who is blind and just made her own cookbook, in the Kansas City paper.

Hooray, it's a rotten day!

It's a gloomy, rainy day and I'm in a gloomy, worried mood and not feeling good. But I suppose that's appropriate because this is Oscar the Grouch's birthday, and time for our 3rd annual Oscar's Birthday Party! My older son started this when he saw something about Oscar's birthday in a Sesame Street Magazine calendar a couple of years ago--it's just a mini-party for our family. Over the years I've managed to get an Oscar shirt and socks for myself, and I found Oscar party cups & goody bags, & each of our boys will get icky goodies like a little toy trash truck, gummy bugs, and some Shrek "ogre ooze." I also found some streamers & stickers with Oscar on them. At our party, we will read a book about Oscar, drink green Kool-aid from bags (a little like trashbags), make "goop" from cornstarch & water (try this if you never have...it's cool!), spray green silly string, and eat dirt & worms (actually chocolate pudding with crushed Oreo bits and gummy worms in it). The first year we did it, we also made mini-Oscars out of green pom-poms, googly eyes, and film canisters for the trash cans, but I wasn't up for that this year. We cap the party off by watching videos of the Oscar songs "I Love Trash" and "Doin' the Grouch" (the latter of which is a dance-along video, & that's where they say to have a rotten day), and cap it all of with a showing of the movie Elmo in Grouchland, which Oscar is in. It's all a little weird, but...we're all a little weird, and tend to be an over-celebratory family in general!

Writing rewards

My son came home from first grade today with a "Certificate of Excellence" for "outstanding performance in WRITING." Under that it says "Awesome Author Award," and he also got a sparkly blue dogtag necklace with "AWESOME AUTHOR AWARD" screen-printed on it. I asked if he got it for writing a story, and he said, "I got it for a writing a good story." I haven't gotten to see the story yet, but it's apparently about a "shiny shell thief." I asked if everyone in his class got a certificate, and he said only one other kid got one besides him. So, I thought that was pretty cool! He has also written a couple of stories about Neopets lately (fanfic, if you will) that I thought were rather well done for his age. He's really going to give me a run for my money when he gets older, since I just write, and he can write and do amazing things with math & science!

As for me, I found a check in the mail today for my pieces in the upcoming Summer Shorts anthology from Blooming Tree Press. Hooray! Even though I sold the pieces about a year ago, this was the first money I've gotten from my writing since 2004, so getting that check made me feel validated as a writer again! I can't wait to see the anthology when it comes out.

An update that wasn't worth the wait

So I apparently said I'd post an update soon...guess I missed the "soon" part! And I'm still way busy. Right now we're trying to get ready for my mom to visit from Texas in a few days, and our house is so not going to be ready. We never really unpacked everything, & now we just seem to be shifting stuff around & I still don't know where to put anything. There aren't enough places and our things aren't organized well to start with. We also have to put together a futon for her to sleep on, and I don't know if it's going to get done. I'm a bit panicked. Then there's stuff going on with the kids' schools and the end of the school year coming up, and we have no plans at all for summer, except going to at least one wedding out of state. Everything feels very haphazard right now, and I'm not writing, either. I hope things will look pretty different in a few weeks.

Not down the rabbit hole

Just so you know, I am alive. Horribly busy. Planning to update soon, but between egg hunts & last-minute taxes, I doubt I can manage more than this today. So if you don't hear from me again, Happy Easter weekend!

Destined to be a Pepper

Check out this new Dr Pepper can design from my latest 12-pack:



It's hard to read, but it has a big 23, surrounded by the words "AUTHENTIC BLEND OF 23 FLAVORS."

23 has been my favorite number since I was a kid. And I live on Dr Pepper. That just seems...cosmically cool somehow.

And while I'm on the subject, I just found out that the Dr Pepper commercial with Meat Loaf singing "I'd Do Anything for Love" is online here. That's my favorite commercial in years! (All my favorite commercials seem to be drink commercials...my other all-time favorites are the first "Got Milk?" commercial, the one that was set at the Aaron Burr museum, and the Sprite commercial with the little animated sun that jumped off the orange drink bottle, causing the mom & kids to run for their lives.)