Book Blurb Friday Saturday (?!) #15

First of all, let me thank Sandra Davies for telling me that Firefox is somehow responsible for my inability to see pictures! She is absolutely right—if I go in through Internet Explorer, pictures appear out of nowhere. Amazing.

Speaking of pictures, I am VERY late getting finished with my Book Blurb Friday from Writing in the Buff! Each week Lisa Ricard Claro posts a pretend book cover, and we are asked to write an accompanying blurb of 150 words or less. I got overwhelmed this week while my muse went on vacation, but at least it’s a short one at only 87 words. Hope you have a great weekend!

~Toast~

An alcoholic mother.

A woman aching to give her dying husband one last taste of normal life.

A young paraplegic who broke his spine in a simple game of backyard football.

A teenager who decided to rough up an old man just to take his beer.

All are linked by one thing: Each drinks a simple can of beer, and each makes a toast before taking that first swig.

But is it really a simple can of beer? Especially when it always makes that toast come true?


Be careful what you wish for.  ~Anonymous

Pupdate

Your thoughts and prayers meant so much when I thought our dog had been stricken by a stroke a month or two ago! Here’s an update. According to the vet, this was an inner ear problem sometimes called Canine Geriatric Vestibular Syndrome. He said there are several causes, and if it was due to something less insidious than a brain tumor, Buddy should recover fully within 14 days. Our beloved dog did recover, but it took a little longer than 14 days and he continues to have some residual effects. Does that mean it’s a brain tumor? I sure hope not.

In the meantime, we’ve all adjusted to this new way of being. Buddy is very old (15 and counting) no matter how you look at it. He still carries his head to the side. He occasionally stumbles and bumps into things. Sometimes he falls over when he shakes his head; he’s learned to stand next to us, and we’ve learned to reach out and steady him. In fact, we’ve steadied him so many times that he does what we call The Swoon: He’ll lean in to be scratched and just fall over if you’re not paying attention. He can no longer run without careening into things. He’s almost completely deaf and has been medicated for arthritis for some time. He has cataracts and one of those eyelid tumors that dogs get. The vet said it was too risky to do surgery at Buddy’s age, but it’s getting very close to touching his eyeball. What options will he have when that happens? I don’t know. I just pray whatever choices we make will be the ones he would make for himself.

Other than that, he seems quite happy and has actually earned himself some perks. He got so thin for a while that I started adding special canned food made for arthritic dogs mixed in with his kibble, and he loves it. I’ve elevated his dishes and moved the whole “dish throne” into the dining room because the rug in there is easier on his limbs and helps keep him from slipping. We joke that the dog is the only one in our house who actually dines in the dining room.

He has a bed in a very unattractive and inconvenient place right now: in the middle of everything. But when I move it to clean, Buddy stands in the spot and gives me The Pitiful Look until I put it all back. I figure his heart’s desire is to be in the midst of all of us, and this helps him to be there in comfort. He’s earned it.

He can still go in and outside and has learned to maneuver the two stairs again. This was the most important improvement of all. Carrying a sixty-pound dog down brick stairs is just not fun for any of the involved parties.

He still often whines, barks, and paces in the night for no apparent reason, but I hear that’s all part of extreme dog aging. Once my son got home from college for the summer, he started taking over so I could get enough sleep to function at work the next day. It helped immensely.

Like any care-givers, we are taking it one day at a time. We’re grateful for each one. And as always, we’re grateful for all of your prayers and good wishes!

What a wretched lot of old shriveled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind—the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship. ~George Eliot

Jarred Back to Reality

Last night I jumped out of bed thinking we’d had an earthquake. But when I consulted with my son, who usually feels them, he didn’t know what I was talking about. Had I dreamed it? After all, this felt different from the usual ones our area experiences—it was more of a roll than a jiggle. So I stayed awake for a while wondering what my subconscious mind was trying to tell me. Earthquake symbolism...hmmm!  Makes sense when you figure that our lives have been “shaken up” a bit with my daughter’s recent graduation!

Then this morning I heard we really did have one, a 4.2.  Oh.  So much for my dream analysis. Thanks to Jules for asking how we're doing!  You are very sweet.  Fortunately I don't think anything even fell over.

I don't have any earthquake quotes, so here's a line from a song that I like:

Some will fall in love with life and drink it from a fountain/

That is pouring like and avalanche coming down the mountain. ~Butthole Surfers, “Jingle of a Dog’s Collar”

Improper Poll: Secretly Watching

My daughter’s high school graduation was this weekend. And what do graduations remind me of, you ask? Or, more probably, you don’t…but I’m going to tell you anyway, although can you tell I am putting this off? Okay. Here goes. I used to be addicted to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

It’s true. This was the TV show version, which I discovered—as I’ve discovered most of my great TV loves—in syndication. It used to be aired late at night in my area on Saturday nights. My children were younger then, so I was overwhelmingly busy most days and evenings, yet had nothing to do on weekend nights.

For one thing, the casting director for that show must’ve had the most wonderful taste in men. Even the supposed nerds were hot. And how can you not love a little high school girl who calmly kicks vampire butt like that? Buffy was the ultimate liberated woman. She was feminine, smart, calm and powerful. She loved and respected men—just not the ones who attacked her, from whom she took not an ounce of grief. In retrospect, Buffy helped inspire me to do a little real-life-vampire ass-kicking (or out-kicking)…and for that, I will be eternally grateful. Even the name is wonderful: “Buffy!”…snort…. If by chance you’ve never seen the Buffy/Twilight Remix, it’s worth a look (and I am not a Twilight-hater, either). Go Buffy.

Do you have a show you’ve secretly loved but are a bit embarrassed to claim?

Book Blurb Friday #14

Once again, it’s Book Blurb Friday! I find this meme from Writing in the Buff so very addictive—not only because I enjoy the writing exercise, but because it’s so much fun to read all of the different and creative takes on one picture. Each week, Lisa Ricard Claro posts the pretend cover of a book. Our job is to write an accompanying blurb in 150 words or fewer. I apologize in advance to Kay Davies for taking liberties with her beautiful picture. I believe it’s 138 words this week.

~ Pepé: Les Premières Années de le Pew~

par Guy de Malpewsscent

(forward by Victor Pughgo)

We think we know the jovial Pepé Le Pew, but what was his life like before he became an actor for Warner Brothers? This shocking biography details Pepé’s lonely early years and his little-known dreams of a career in law enforcement.  Few knew that such a cloud of angst hung over Pepé at being treated as a social outcast due to his “problème d'odeur.”

Follow his frustrating attempts to earn a Master’s degree in horticulture while living in a small Paris flat where even the pelargoniums swooned beneath his putrescent paw.

And finally, see him pursue one unrequited love after another before eventually moving to the United States and finally coming out about his secret, cross-species attraction to..les chats.

“Heartbreaking” ~Elle Magazine
“Ou la la!” ~French Quarterly

Welcome to Jabblog, Sara, Kay Davies and Karen Lange! (If I ever leave anyone out, I apologize.  I can't see some of my followers in Firefox and have to switch to Internet Explorer.  It's very weird!)

Despair seems to afflict only those whose relation to life is a serious and potentially responsible one.~ from “Mockingbird Years” by Emily Fox Gordon

Ten Things: The Graduation Speech No One Will Ask Me to Make

This is in honor of my youngest child’s last two days in high school. Woo hoo! But no one ever asks me to deliver a graduation speech. I know—go figure. So here is the speech I find myself wanting to make. These are the ten most important things I wish someone had told me, or things I am working on, or things I learned the hard way. What would YOU add?

1. Some people would have you believe that kindness is synonymous with stupidity, empathy is synonymous with weakness, and honesty and respect are synonymous with naiveté. Don’t buy it. There is no accomplishment in selfishness. It takes a wealth of inner resources to be a giver—and a lack of them to be greedy. In the long run, the people we all remember and respect the most in life aren’t the rich or the beautiful. They are the ones who gave something to others—and not because it glorified them. They gave simply out of love.

2. Remember what Jane Austen said over 200 years ago. Marry a spouse with character. That woman knew human nature. She’s still right.

3. Beauty really is overrated. What’s more, beauty is a lot more common than I always used to think—it’s everywhere. And thank heavens for that. If you don’t see it, change your definition. If you’re concerned about how you look, work to be healthy, happy, and good. Then you will be truly beautiful to other truly beautiful people.

4. When you finish learning, you finish living. Always learn.

5. Laugh at yourself. You’re a cheap source of amusement and you’re always politically correct.

6. Be best to those who love you most. Too many people work to attain the approval of strangers while mistreating their loved ones. Avoid those people at all costs. Be loyal to the people who matter. Including yourself (go Polonius).

7. If that little warning light in the back of your mind goes off, don’t be an idiot. Listen.

8. Beware of people who habitually ask for pity…or those who habitually try to dole it out. Both are manipulators. The people who deserve the most respect tend to be the ones who show it to others. Seek them out and befriend them. If they respect you back, they will always be dear to your heart and your life. And really beware of those who operate on double standards. In fact, beware of inequality. Woodrow Wilson said, “You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.” Was he ever right.

9. Crappy things that are completely beyond your control will happen to you. Maybe they already have. It sucks. The good news is that being an adult means you can either change your situation, or failing that, change your response to it. Do one of those, or both, making sure your choices are positive ones that make things better for yourself and others in the long run. Then be thankful for the person you’ve become and for the crappy things that led you there. If you do that, you will make each of life’s gouges into a stroke of the sculptor’s knife, and in the end you’ll be left with a work of art called Wisdom.

10. Two of the most valuable possessions you can own are a good walk and a good laugh. Walk like you own the world and people will think you do. Laugh like you love the world, and people will know you do.

So…walk far and laugh a lot.


In honor of the occasion, I have two quotes, each from one of my all-time favorite authors :

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. ~Ray Bradbury

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind. ~Kurt Vonnegut

Improper Poll: (Green) Beaned

My daughter and I felt a little sick last week. No one threw up, but we occasionally felt as if we might be on the brink. But then, we are not thrower-uppers.

In college, I heard of a girl who routinely stuck her finger down her throat to barf up her dinner. I’d never heard of bulimia, so I tried it. I succeeded merely in drooling clear down to my elbow. By then I was so grossed out that I gave up. Now I know I'm not so unlucky that my body has the annoying habit of hanging onto food.

But anyway, while thinking about vomit, I was reminded of the time my sister threw up and a green bean came out her nose. I mentioned this to a group of friends once, and one of them volunteered that she’d had a similar experience with corn. Corn! Out the nose! Will wonders never cease??!

So naturally I am wondering if this phenomenon is confined to vegetables or side dishes or what. Have you ever vomited out the nose? Is this common, nasal vomitage? Is “nasal vomitage” a real phrase, or merely one that should be?

And do you have any puking stories to share?

Book Blurb Friday #13

Oh, how I love Fridays...especially during final's week, when I get the luxury of an actual lunch hour rather than twenty minutes!!!

Thank you to Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff for hosting Book Blurb Friday and also for forwarding this week’s picture to me so I could see it! I do have a Firefox update to install that I’m hoping will help me to see pictures again. In the meantime, Ms. Ricard Claro presents us with a challenge each week to write a blurb (150 words or fewer) to go with the pretend book cover. Am not quite as crazy about my blurb as I am the beautiful picture, but at least I made the limit at 150 words!

Welcome to Marie Sterling Wilber! I find her blog helps me learn about an art form I’ve always admired—photography—but never explored well enough. It’s worthwhile just to look at the pictures!

~Silent Night, Deadly Night~

Jason Rasmussen was handsome, intelligent, and married to his childhood sweetheart, the lovely and gentle Elise Rasmussen. But on Christmas night, Jason seemed to disappear into thin air.

Investigations revealed that Jason was medicated for bipolar disorder and Elise had had an affair with the boy who bagged her groceries. Had Elise had something to do with his disappearance? Yet it was Jason who had recently taken out a life insurance policy on Elise, and she had broken off the affair six months earlier with the claim that she still loved her husband. Had someone else had something to do with his disappearance? If so, who?

Most disturbing of all was the fact that absolutely nothing indicated Jason had even left home at all—there were no missing car and no tracks in the fresh snow…nothing. Or was there?

Silent night, deadly night
All is calm, nothing is quite right….

“…the rock-bottom requirement for any good partnership is that you want what’s best for the other person.” ~Gloria Steinem

Senior Sex(less) and the City: #18

Cute Guy
“Guess who likes you?” my friend asked me. “Who?” I asked. I wrinkled my nose out of habit.

For Valentine’s Day, I got a card from a friend. Two little girls were on the front. “Johnny likes you,” says one.

“Paste-Eating Johnny, or Booger-Eating Johnny?” asks the other. I wish I could find what I did with it, because I can’t remember the punch line. Something about enjoying my options, I think. But the point is, that’s how I feel. Amazingly, it was neither Paste-Eating Johnny nor Booger-Eating Johnny. It was…could it be??!!!

Cute Guy.

I squealed. “Really!?! Are you sure?! Did he tell you, or do you just think so? Does he like me, or does he LIKE me like me??!!” I made her repeat every single word that passed between them on the subject. Twice. Then of course I made her add in any facial nuances he may have used to convey the message. Then I giggled and danced around a bit.

Cute Guy is more than cute. He is smooth. He has chunky-but-clean man hands and a warm handshake and a winning smile. He smells good. Not good as in too-much-aftershave-good, but good as in his personal scent is good. Not that sharp, I-can’t-walk-up-a-hill-so-I’m-turning-red-and-emitting-sour-sweat personal scent. But a clean skin smell. That one. Oooh….

Then she mentioned his age. Oh. Oh crap. He is quite a bit younger than I’d hoped. I told my friend my age. Maybe it’s that she’s only seen me in darkened rooms, or maybe the fat distracted her from the wrinkles or something, but she thought I was younger. Oh, she says. Oh. She knows it, too—it’s too much of an age difference. And truthfully, I don’t blame him a bit. I wouldn’t date someone that much older than I am. I don't think I want to date someone that much younger than I am, either.  Some people can do it. I can’t. I want someone my own age.

Still. I’m unaccountably happy. Like the birthday card, I do have some pretty fun options. And age? I’m still giggling like a twelve-year-old.

Cute Guy liked me!



Welcome and thank you to new blog follower Dorothy Evans!

Improper Poll: A Day in the Life

Friday after work I checked out the news and found out I only had one day to live. Where did this come from?  I thought we had until 2012.  So all of a sudden I had to think about how I would spend my last day on earth.

I thought about things like drinking and smoking and trips, but in the end, I spent my pretend last day on earth almost like any other weekend, and I think that’s just what I’d choose. 

Except…my son is now home from college.  His mess follows him home like Schultz’s Pigpen, a pile of wet-clothes clutter that grows until it engulfs our house and garage like kid-kudzu. Kidzu? Krudzu? There are paper plates of petrified pizza and fingerprints and smeary half-filled glasses all over the house.  He shoots Nerf darts at his sister when she’s forced to pass his room, so in addition to the random shrieking, there are things like little darts all over. 

So I think if it were really my last day and I had time to plan, I would have hired a maid service.  And I did buy chocolate—the creamiest, milkiest chocolate I could find.

But here is today, one more day, a miracle no matter how you look at it.   

How would you spend your last day on earth?

Book Blurb Friday #12

Amazing that the week has gone by so fast and it’s another Book Blurb Friday already!  If you are unfamiliar with Book Blurb Friday, please check out Writing in the Buff, where Lisa Ricard Claro provides us with a weekly fictional book cover. The challenge is to write an accompanying blurb of 150 words or less. Mine for this week came in at 149 words. And welcome to new blog follower Liz Davis! Thanks so much and hope you visit often!

 ~Contra Band~

2111 A.D.: Funding for education has been cut so much (because who cares about children who can’t vote?) there are no longer any teachers—merely Educational Facilitators who screen for weapons and make sure that the children are getting their government-approved H-Tel Imagery lessons properly streamed into their nervous systems.

The arts are expendable, too, of course—except in certain government-approved E.C. Facilities—but art made of metal? Metal is too precious and must be used for important things like technology.

When sixteen-year-old Denver Bishop and his fourteen-year-old sister Fantom move to a new subcity, however, they find a storage facility for antique art that somehow missed being surrendered to the government…and there they find old-fashioned musical instruments thought to exist only in museums. Will Denver, Fantom and their friends be able to learn to play in secret? Or will the government find out and destroy it—and them?

Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang but the best. ~Henry Van Dyke

Improper Poll: Taboo Love

Here’s the thing. I am positively known for being conservative in some ways…especially when it comes to dress. Still, I harbor a secret love of…don’t tell…tacky watches. How they twist and curl, some of them quite literally snake-like, whispering “pick me” to some inner yearning!

Recently I found the mother of all tackiness. It beckoned from its eBay page, drawing me back again and again for stolen glances at this, my porn of the wrist. And there it was, so beguiling in its size, its sheer glittery-ness. And the colors!

I am weak, I admit it. When I gave in and ordered it, I was trying to fool myself into believing that maybe I could sneak it into normal life, tuck it under a sleeve so no one would know.

When it arrived, it had been shipped all the way from Hong Kong in a little box covered in stamps. Cost of shipping? Five dollars. How can that be? At that price I can’t help but picture somebody paddling very fast on a raft.

And then…oh, gracious. It is the hoochy-coochy dancing watch of all time, this glob of gaudy goodness. But worse—much worse—is the size. Huge, yes, but the hinged metal cuff size is made for Asian women. And although I am very small boned for an American of European decent, it puts me in sadistic watch-bondage, cutting off the circulation and corseting me in like Scarlett, leaving my wrist in an hourglass shape that would put Marilyn herself to shame.

Alas, I may have to come up with another use for it, such as decorating yet another thing on my desk. Still, I know that I just can’t give it away. So here it is.  Not the best shot, maybe, but it's surprisingly hard to photograph your own wrist.  You can see that it is creating dual muffin-tops on my wrist, which I had previously thought was about the only relatively fat-free body part I had.  I can't even show you the front.  I am too ashamed.

Do you have an object you love and just can’t explain why?

Book Blurb Friday #11

What annoys me most about Blogger’s being unavailable this week is that it just happened to coincide with the times that I was. So now I have some major catching up to do. Am starting with Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday—a meme which challenges readers to come up with a blurb of 150 words or fewer to go with a fictional book cover. I barely made it this week at exactly 150 words (not counting the title):

~Buried Past~

Eva Leighton led a quiet life. So quiet, in fact, that researching her family tree seemed like the perfect hobby.

But when her research uncovered a mysterious ancestor who shared her first name, Eva was driven to learn more. This other Eva had roared during the Roaring Twenties and then seemingly vanished. That she turned out to be her biological great grandmother was the least of Eva’s surprises.

Unidentified bones of a woman had been found in the Mojave desert, buried near a rusted Model A Ford. Eva transformed into a sleuth who, together with the handsome detective who was willing to reopen a very cold case, had uncovered far more than a family secret.

Eva had unearthed her great grandmother’s murder. But who had killed her? As she worked to learn more, it became clear that Eva’s life would never be quiet again. In fact, would history repeat itself?

“In the desert, an old monk had once advised a traveler, the voices of God and the Devil are scarcely distinguishable.” ~Loren Eiseley

Improper Poll: Ten Things I’ve Learned as a Mother

When I was pregnant with my first child, I naively believed that I would have soap opera children. You know—clean, quiet children who make an occasional appearance and stare in rapt attention while being taught valuable mom things? And then they would go nap.

If you are a seasoned mother, and even if you are not, you are now cringing because you know that God got me back for that big time. Ha ha! That silly God sure has a sense of humor!

As soon as my children were born, and in some ways before, they promptly taught me these things:
1. I am an utter and complete idiot who knows nothing.
2. My children do not belong to me. They taught me they belonged to themselves even clear back when my abdomen woke me up in the middle of the night for the nightly kidney-pummeling.
3. We have more to learn from our children than we have to teach them. If we’re lucky.
4. My children were the only ones I knew who did not nap from age two on. Ever. And they did this not merely just to torture me, but as direct punishment for wanting soap opera children.
5. I would not have a good night’s sleep again for the better part of a decade, and then they would interrupt my sleep again when they hit adolescence. I’m still not sure when I’ll get to sleep again.
6. I need to remember that the most valuable words I can utter as a mother are, “What do you think?” I should probably carry a roll of duct tape for my mouth along with my own private cue card printed with those words, because it’s surprisingly hard for me to remember.
7. When you are a new mother, and some older woman gasps and says (with judgmental horror), “Oh, I see you do it that way? Well, I guess the baby will be okay,” learn to laugh and ignore her. (And Lord help me never to be that woman!)
8. The best advice I ever got on mothering came from a parenting magazine, and I wish I could remember the author. It was to say these words when the child whines: “I’m sorry, but I can’t understand that voice. Could you talk in your real voice, please?"
9. Mothers don’t really teach. At best, we guide. But mostly we just love, and that is the best lesson there is.
10. I may be an utter and complete idiot who knows nothing, but still, by the absolute grace of God and lots of prayer and a few understanding friends, I still managed to get great children.

So today’s Improper Poll question is:
What have you learned either as a mother or from your mother?  Happy Mother's Day!

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly. ~Ambrose Bierce

Book Blurb Friday #10

This week I am especially grateful for Writing in the Buff’s Book Blurb Friday, in which Lisa Ricard Claro presents her readers with a fictional book cover as a challenge to come up with a blurb of 150 words or less to go with it.

This is my second blurb for this picture. The first one I wrote went with a children’s series I (literally) dreamed up years ago. And now, thanks to Ms. Ricard Claro, I am seriously thinking about getting back to it. So many, many thanks to her already! Whether I really do get back to that book or not, it’s been a lot of fun to think about again.

Anyway. I put that one away for now and came up with this one, trimmed and chopped and hyphenated to a mere149 words (not counting the title):

~The Miracle of Esterbrook Pond~

Ten-year-old Ray-Hope Fenwick made a discovery out by Esterbrook pond: a lady that only she could see appeared in the fountain every morning. What’s more, the lady told Ray-Hope that she would perform one miracle on May 6, 2011. Ray-Hope was so convincing that the crowds began to gather. Who would receive the miracle? And what’s more, who should?

Would it be Milos San Raphael, wealthy businessman seeking a cure for his Lou Gehrig’s before the disease progressed? Or the humble Grady family, hoping to heal their child? Would land-owner Elmore Esterbrook cash in on the water? And if the waters were miraculous, why didn’t little Ray-Hope cure her own brother of his autism?

Or had the child simply made it all up?

Follow twelve families in this masterpiece of good and evil as they struggle in the fountain’s waters…and discover for yourself the true miracle of Esterbrook.

(P.S. May the miracle today be yours!)

Our whole business therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen. ~Saint Augustine

Grief Divided

It was a beautiful day when I stood behind her in the Walmart line. She had a false-cheerful tone to her voice that bothered me without reason. And then I realized there was a reason. I knew that voice.

I always seem to get the worst news on a beautiful day. I’ve looked longingly out hospital windows at a flawless afternoon, where the birds kept on singing and the sun kept on shining from a startlingly blue sky as if to say, “No, everything’s fine with us, thanks!” Meanwhile, my own life slumped in agony at my feet.

Funerals for me have never been like in the movies, where umbrellas seem to sprout from the gloom like black flowers. In my life, the day has always been heartbreakingly beautiful as if to taunt me. The message is the same: Life goes on. You are alone.

Some of the greatest beauty in my life has been refracted through tears, like looking through glass blocks, because of course it’s not really crying if you hold your eyes wide open and refuse to let the tears spill out. We can’t be expected to bother others with our grief when it isn’t theirs to bear. That woman’s voice made me ache. It’s the voice I’ve forced out of my own mouth when something horrible had happened and I was struggling to function normally in a world that was lucky enough not to have to share my pain.

I looked up, and for just a split second, our eyes met. The abject agony I saw in her eyes at that second haunted me, haunts me still. She had Prison Camp Eyes.

I’m still upset, though I’ll never know for what we grieved, are grieving. I’m sending her my best wishes. I want her to know that life doesn’t really go on, unconcerned. Sometimes it stops and grieves too because it knows that we are all in this together. After all, we’re really only taking turns.

You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not. ~Epictetus

Improper Poll: It’s a Drag

Is there a small thing that you’ve really regretted? I don’t mean big things, but those little chances you passed up and now regret?

In my last Book Blurb Friday post, I mentioned a character who was a female impersonator. This reminded me of the time I passed up attending a “Miss Drag Queen” contest. It was held after the bars closed. I opted not to go because my children were young then and I was perpetually tired in those days.  But now I have to ask myself what tiredness is compared to an opportunity like that. Throughout all of the years since, I’ve thought of that as one of the adventures I’m most sorry I passed up in life, because how often does a straight Midwestern suburban mom—especially one who writes—get to attend a drag queen pageant? And this was in Omaha, so it was in fact a Nebraskan drag queen pageant. Let’s face it: life just doesn’t get much better than that.

I had gone to a party with my sister, who is involved in community theatre. The party was held by two gay men who hadn’t come out until after both were married with children. So they divorced their wives and began a less traditional blended family with about five children between them, sort of like the Brady Bunch, only with a male Carol. Very cool party, too—they had a mini-amusement park set up for the children and a mini gambling casino set up for the adults. Gamboling and gambling, ar ar.

Anyway. Is there anything in life you passed up and now regret?

Book Blurb Friday #9

As I’ve mentioned before, I can’t always see blog photographs (whether mine or those of other people), or I see them and then they disappear. For some reason I still can't see Writing in the Buff’s pretend book cover for this week’s Book Blurb Friday. Horrors! Fortunately our beloved Southern hostess, Mizz Lisa Ricard Claro, was kind enough to send it to me personally so that I didn’t have to suffer. And I’m so glad she did, because I think this one is very close to my pretend book—that is, the one I pretend I am going to write someday. Here it is, three words under the 150 word limit including...ahem...the rave reviews.

~Rhoda’s Trip~

Once brilliant Rhoda Homewood of Grand Island, Nebraska had stuffed her wild side into a suitcase when she married, forcing herself to become the perfect wife, mother, and art teacher. Now her youngest child was leaving home, and Rhoda’s life was turned upside down by the discovery that her husband had been funding breast implants for a miniature golf instructor named Echo. Rhoda’s old suitcase flew open—and the conservative trip to Hilton Head that she had been planning with her husband turned instead into the road trip of a lifetime with her former high school best friend, now a radical librarian, and her neighbor, an accountant by day and female impersonator by night.

What this trio of middle aged misfits discovers along the way is almost as much fun as the trip itself.

“Saucy satire…absurd humor.” ~G. I. Journal
“Comic and absorbing…but with heart.” ~ Savannah Sun

When a woman steals your husband, there is no better revenge than to let her keep him. ~Anonymous

Stylus with Style?

I've always pretty much done my own thing style-wise—which means I’m not at all stylish—so imagine my surprise when Sioux of Sioux’s Page awarded me a Stylish Blogger Award.  I'm so flattered!  Thank you, Sioux!

Here were the rules:
1. Thank and link back to the person giving you the award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Award 10-15 blogs who you think deserve this award.
4. Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award.
Thank you again, and here are my seven facts:

1. I’ve loved writing as long as I can remember and was lucky to have had quite a few teachers encourage me. The question for me has never been if I would write, but rather if I’d try to get paid for it.
2. I worked for precisely one morning as a telemarketer selling tickets to a thing called “Clown Capades.” After making one humiliating phone call, I got to wondering if there really was such a thing as Clown Capades. I suspected—and still do—that it was a scam. So I sat around rearranging my file box until lunch and then escaped and never went back.
3. My youngest child was intentionally born at home.
4. We usually had the smallest family on the block with only three kids. The family across the street had 13 children. The one behind us had 12. I thought five children was average.
5. Everyone in my family was into art in some way. At one time my dad was a commercial artist, my mom taught him how to paint, and one of my sisters was a graphic artist. We all had our “thing.” Mine was portraits. The rite of passage at my house was when we got our first set of oils. For the longest time I thought all families did that.
6. I was a theatre geek in high school and did props, makeup, acting and directing.
7. In college I did product demonstrations over summer, and once wore a sash and handed out bread samples at an Italian festival. In the words of the bakery owner who hired me (you have to say it with an accent), “That’s okay that you’re not Italian, honey—you look Italian!” One of my sisters attended the festival and left in an uncharacteristically gleeful mood. I know her, so I frantically looked all around my little booth. Sure enough, I found a sign taped to the outer wall that said, “Ho: $10 $2 FREE!”

If you follow me, I pretty much think you’re the most stylish person ever. So I will do what others before me have done and pass this—and the coveted “Sisters of the Quill” from a couple of weeks ago—to all of you. Pretty much all of my friends write, so please take either if you are so inclined. Thank you again, oh stylish Sisters (and Brothers) of the Quill! 

I must be moved by what I write, if you enjoy it, we both win; but my words must touch MY heart first. ~Jules of Trying to Get Over the Rainbow

Improper Poll: Improper All Over Again

It’s been a loooong week, so I’ve decided to reprint my Easter post from last year. It’s my all-time favorite. Do you have any entertaining suggestions on how to celebrate? And to help make up for my obnoxious sense of humor, I will end with a great quote. I wish you a holiday filled with peace and joy.

Back By Unpopular Demand! 10 Things for Losers to Do on Easter:

1. Try dying scrambled eggs instead. Practice making puking noises as you eat.
2. Put marshmallow bunnies in the microwave facing each other with little toothpick swords. Turn on the microwave and watch them blow up and stab each other. (See illustration.)
3. Make an ecologically friendly basket by recycling old margarine tubs. Use dryer lint for grass or better yet, go green by using real grass (and just pick out the ants and wood ticks). Substitute lima beans for jelly ones. I find that dried work better than canned.
4. For an extra special treat, hide the basket a year early so you really don’t remember where you put it.
5. As a creative and festive surprise for children, experiment with hiding other boiled proteins, such as crab legs.
6. All that candy spells u-n-h-e-a-l-t-h-y. Try filling baskets with less sugary substitutions for jelly beans, such as fish oil and flaxseed capsules.
7. On a budget? Instead of wasting eggs, experiment with dying other items in your refrigerator, like bologna.
8. For an amusingly ironic twist, fill children’s baskets with rabbits’ feet. For a REALLY amusing twist, add a sign that says, “Good luck, from the Easter BAHHHHHH!!!” Then sing, “Here comes Peter Cotton Tail, hobblin’ down the bunny trail….”
9. Crash a little kids’ Easter egg hunt, shout “Gotcha, you sum’ bitch!” and club the egg thoroughly with a baseball bat. Hold up the remains and ask someone to take your picture.
10. Mount half an eggshell on a trophy plaque and hang it over your fireplace. Next time someone comes to your door to tell you about their religion, invite them in and keep interrupting with, “Want to see what I bagged on my last hunt?”

When one has purified oneself, by the grace of God, to the point at which one can truly love one’s enemies, a beautiful thing happens. It is as if the boundaries of the soul become so clean as to be transparent, and a unique light then shines forth from the individual….The effect of this light varies….The bearer of the light…most often will be unaware of these effects. Finally, those who hate the light will attack it. Yet it is if their evil actions are taken into the light and consumed….The process may be painful to the bearer of the light….This does not, however, signify the success of evil. Rather, it backfires. ~ M. Scott Peck, M.D.

Book Blurb Friday #8

It feels good to get back to blogging with Book Blurb Friday, hosted by Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff! Each week, she posts a pretend book cover. The challenge is to write a blurb of 150 words or less to go with it. I really struggled with picking one quote this week...so finally settled on two.

And thank you so much to Sioux of Sioux's Page for the award! I hope to pass it along in the coming week along with Donna's "Sisters of the Quill" award, which I never got to pass along before my dog got sick.

Here's my Book Blurb Friday, at 139 words.

~Soul of Stone~

Annie thought she had married the sweetest man. But right after the wedding, it seemed as if her husband’s pleasant exterior crumbled. It wasn’t until much later that she realized appearances were all that mattered to this effigy of a human. Like a statue of Narcissus, the husband she had once loved knew only how to pose in order to manipulate others like chess pieces. Underneath it all, her husband was stone cold evil who never truly loved, but viewed others solely in terms of himself.

When she filed for divorce, Annie learned about the rest: the cheating, the tens of thousands of dollars he’d stolen outright, and always the lies he used to cover it all up. Yet again, he portrayed himself as the victim. She learned that divorcing a Narcissist means the worst is yet to come.

…most people are unsuspecting and are unaware of the degree to which they are being taken advantage of, used and abused. This unawareness is not due to a general lack of intelligence in people, but to their tendency to project their own range of normalcy onto others. Hence, their disinclination to suspect someone so profoundly depraved to be in their midst, carrying on an existence that is fundamentally and thoroughly alie (sic). But the character disordered conveniently regard this trait as evidence of intellectual inferiority and will take a twisted delight in the knowledge that they have so many fooled. ~Doug McManaman, “Narcissism and the Dynamics of Evil.”

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

An evil soul, preducing holy witness,

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O, what a goodly outside a falsehood hath!” ~Shakespeare, Act one, Scene 3, Merchant of Venice

…And it IS Happy

Today is Buddy’s official 15th birthday—at least the one we pretend is official, even though he probably turned 15 a while ago. Just two days ago, I wasn’t sure if he would make it.

Last week, I saw our dear dog crumpled and shaking on the floor and called a vet-who-makes-house calls. And then I lay next to him and sobbed my goodbyes.

But the vet—who called Buddy "beyond old"—said that what he has might not be fatal. Truthfully, we still don’t know. Since then, I’ve slept on the floor to keep him from hurting himself, cooked him special foods and then hand-fed them to him bite by bite, awakened every few hours around the clock to carry him outside in a towel (not so easy with a 60 lb. dog), run home during my half-hour lunch breaks to let him out, rearranged the furniture and rugs to help keep him from falling, kept records of his potty breaks, and cried with joy when he picked up a toy and barked out the window once more at a passerby. Yesterday he ate his first meal in almost two weeks.

And he’s been improving in tiny increments each day. He still has to be helped down the two stairs to the backyard and whines/barks whenever we try to sleep—I am beyond tired right now—but we’re hoping those too will improve. I apologize for having neglected your blogs these past two weeks.  Am hoping to start reclaiming my life.

Throughout it all I've been soothed by your prayers and good wishes. There are times I am certain I can feel them. I simply can't express how much that means to me.

I know that, no matter what, it’s only borrowed time. But the older I get, the more I realize it’s all borrowed—all of it. Now this one borrowed thing is all the more precious to us. As long as living isn’t a burden to him, we hope we have him around. When it’s time to give back our borrowed loved one, we’ll know we did the very best we could with what we had.

Now that’s a birthday gift.

Which reminds me—Chicken Soup for the Soul My Dog’s Life coincidentally came out last week just as we were dealing with Buddy’s illness. My story in it is called "The Last Gift."  If you are so inclined, please read the book and consider posting a review on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com, and thank you!

And welcome to new blog follower Josh Hoyt!  Don't forget to stop by his blog and diagnose your characters.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. ~Kahlil Gibran

Improper Poll: Meanderings of a Muddled Mind

Thank you all so much for your kind thoughts and prayers for our beloved dog! They really mean so much. He ate a tiny bit yesterday, which we’re taking to be a very good sign.

This week’s medical crisis reminded me that I just don’t handle exhaustion well. Not only do I get clumsy when I’m sleep-deprived, I make mistakes. Weird mistakes. Once after way too little sleep, I sprayed Bactine in my hair only because it had a green top like my hairspray bottle. And I’m sorry to say that’s not the only weird thing I’ve sprayed in my hair by mistake. Let’s just say roll-on deodorant can be a good thing. And if my coffee pot didn’t have a timer, I hate to think how often I would make either waterless coffee or a pot of hot water in the morning.

Now that I often use eye drops when I wake up, I find that I must hold up a mental sign that says, “Check the label, Forrest!” Needless to say, I could never be a medical resident. Am I the only one, or have you ever done anything goofy when you’re half asleep?

Book Blurb Friday #7...and Surviving

You know how it is when your normally hectic life gets a crisis added to it so that you go into Survival Mode? I've been in Survival Mode all week. Was sure our beloved dog Buddy was a goner with what I thought was a stroke. According to the vet, however, dogs do not have strokes. In fact, he’s certain that it’s an inner ear issue that he says has a chance of improving within the next week or so. In the meantime, Buddy can’t stand up or walk on his own without falling over or eat without throwing up.  It's been like caring for a newborn again—a really big, heavy, stubborn newborn. We could use your thoughts/prayers/crossed fingers that either the medicine kicks in or the motion sickness kicks out. I don’t know when I’ve been more grateful for a Friday in my life.

Which brings me to the beloved Book Blurb Friday, hosted by Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff! Each week, she posts a pretend book cover. The challenge is to write a blurb of 150 words or less to go with it. Here’s what I came up with last week at a skimpy 65 words.

~Quench: Poetry for a Thirsty Soul~

Just as a brook murmurs its song that refreshes the inner spirit, so does this marvelous collection of soul-quenching poetry speak to the thirstiest of 21st century readers. Prepare to immerse yourself in such poems as “Outcrop,” by T’Mara Goodsell, and “Exhaustion” by T. Powell Pryce.

Allow this marvelous collection of poetry to wash over you. It will quench even the most parched of spirits.

He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how. ~Nietzsche

Improperness: Then…and Then…and Now

The other day, Donna of Donna’s Book Pub discussed some forgotten words and phrases for writers including scrivener, scribe, and quill driver in an interesting post entitled "Forgotten English Word for the Day." I gathered that some of these were considered vulgar and slang words in previous centuries.

When she mentioned “brother of the quill” as a definition, the “Sisters of the Quill” award was born. The phrase alone gives me shivers, and lo, Donna has bestowed this coveted award…upon me! I’m so honored to be a “Sister of the Quill!”   **shiver….**  Thank you so much to Donna, Sister-of-the-Driven-Quill Extraordinaire! 

The whole thing got me thinking about slang words and phrases that have gone out of style. Years ago I learned it was a huge mistake to explain the colloquialisms of my own era to my children. Something about the language shift automatically caused us to switch roles. The one I mentioned was the 1980s phrase, “Gag me with a spoon.” I think my two children were maybe in 6th and 3rd grades then. I honestly thought they would giggle until they fell off their chairs or something. Instead, they horrified me by being silent for a while, as if contemplating the stupidity of my entire generation.

“A spoon? Is that possible, to gag a person with a spoon?” one of them asked.

“It would hurt,” the other contributed. “Why a spoon, I wonder?” For a moment I swear I thought one of them was going to use the word, “indeed.”  Then they merely shook their heads in shared disgust.

Of course it would have been much less insulting if they had fallen out of their chairs laughing. So today’s Improper Poll question is: Do you have any favorite words or phrases from the past?

Book Blurb Friday #6

Thank you to the lovely Lisa Ricard Claro for hosting Book Blurb Friday! Each week, she posts a pretend book cover. The challenge is to write a blurb of 150 words or less to go with it. Here’s mine, at 140 words.

~To the Ends of the Earth~

“Mack” Maconis and his wife Betsy spent the entire 42 years of their marriage planning a trip around the world. On the evening of Mack’s retirement party, just as all that they’d worked for was finally falling into place, Betsy unexpectedly died. The world that Mack had formerly yearned to see now seemed to crumble. How would he go on?

But odd coincidences kept happening. Old love letters turned up. Tickets appeared where they shouldn’t be. And finally, a poem Betsy wrote years ago convinced Mack that she somehow still had plans for him to follow their dream and take the trip, anyway.

This moving epic novel follows Mack through the stages of grief and self-discovery as he takes a journey that is as spiritual as it is literal. What he ultimately discovers will make you glad you went along.

Coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous. ~Albert Einstein

Can't Say I Wasn't Warned

It’s tornado season here in the Midwest. A few weeks ago, the sirens went off in the night. Tornadoes are supposed to come around dinnertime. It’s just common courtesy.

I have to get up at a time that qualifies as “night” in my book.  We also have a geriatric dog who occasionally decides that the bunnies under our deck require emergency, middle-of-the-night bed checks. So when I am awakened by yet another thing, I assume some sadist has devised more evil plots to keep me from sleeping. First I have to become coherent enough to figure out what the noise means, then I have to tackle the complex project of figuring out what to do about it.

What I did about it was what those legendary idiots do: I wandered out into the backyard to see if I could hear or see a tornado.  Then I turned on the TV to see if they really meant it. By that time my daughter had joined me in studying the map of the area that was painted in alarming swaths of color with a big red circle in the middle. “Why is it I feel like they keep drawing a big red circle over our house?” my daughter asked. It was because they were.

After consulting a while, the winds were picking up, so we decided to awaken the dog. This can be quite a project. When he’s not up conducting pre-dawn rabbit patrol, he is sometimes sleeping so deeply that I have thought he was comatose. This dog is no Toto; he’s a lab mix. After jiggling him for a while, we waved dog biscuits under his nose like smelling salts. This made him twitch and wag, so we had to stop and giggle a bit over those dog biscuit dreams.

After that entire process, which required more dog biscuits to lure him to the basement (because those old guys are experts at biscuit extortion), we remembered that we needed blankets and pillows….which were quickly usurped while we struggled with the ancient downstairs TV. Those old pups are also experts at finagling comfy places to sleep.

Thank heavens it wasn’t an actual emergency, because the whole thing took us about 20 minutes. They were giving the all-clear just around the time we were getting settled, so we hauled everything upstairs again…only to discover that it wasn’t the all-clear, after all, but a second round of tornadoes moving through.

The next day I discovered just before leaving for work that we had lost part of our fence. I found the dog standing on my neighbor’s patio with their newspaper in his mouth.

Sometimes that lab thing comes in real handy.

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain. ~ Sign I saw in a gift shop (Wish I knew the original author!)

Improper Poll: …and Putrefaction

Once again, Val Thevictorian anticipated this week’s Improper Poll topic. I mentioned this before in a St. Peter’s Journal column years ago, but when we lived in Savannah, Georgia, my daughter once informed me—via scream—that she’d found a mummified lizard in her bedroom. The clincher was that I had been carefully cleaning around it (this was back when I cleaned house) because I thought it was one of those rubber things you throw against a window to make it stick.

Also, here is a confession. I fairly recently blogged about our pond frogs. And I mentioned one of the original two just couldn’t figure out how to navigate the net I put over it in fall (I’d left a back way in). I wanted to believe he hopped away to someone else’s pond…but a couple of months ago, I found what appeared to be a frog-shaped piece of beef jerky sitting right outside the net. I keep thinking of Scarlett O’Hara’s line in Gone with the Wind right after she shoots the Yankee. “Well I guess I’ve done murder.” I truly feel awful about it.

Any more petrified critters out your way?

Book Blurb Friday #5

Hooray for Friday, hooray for shortened days at school (especially when they fall on a Friday), and hooray for Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday! Each week, she posts a pretend book cover. Our mission, should we accept it, is to write a blurb of 150 words or less to go with it. This week I tried to write a romance.  I really did.  But this is proof, I guess, that I am just not terribly romantic.  I counted 147 words.

~Tangle~

Nonia Capreolata was a young lawyer who had just moved to a small town where everyone whispered murky warnings about the forest where she liked to go jogging. Yet no one could give her any logical reasons to stay away.

When she met a tall, handsome stranger named Acer while out on one of her runs, she was immediately and uncharacteristically besotted. Now on a regular basis they met in the forest, where he seemed to live without having any real home. Odd, she knew, yet here she was, running like a woodland sprite on fleet feet, her breath quickening at the sight of him, majestic in the clearing, tall and strong.

She wound her sinewy arms around him, their love like a red red flower. “I can’t let go,” she whispered. And that was when she realized she really couldn’t. She literally couldn’t free herself from his poisonous embrace….

And so evil is parasitic. Its host is always a good. And since evil is a kind of non-being or nothingness, pure evil is impossible. Pure evil would be completely nothing, and nothing is not evil; it simply ‘is not’. Evil is a privation that requires a subject in which to inhere.~Doug McManaman

Improper Poll: Petrifaction

Many thanks to Val Thevictorian of Unbagging the Cats for inspiring this week’s Improper Poll question with her entertaining tale of a mummified MacDonald’s cheeseburger (see “Gone Furniture Fishin’"). That incident reminded me of the year my college roommate unearthed a petrified pizza slice from beneath her bed while moving out for summer vacation. Just as Val stated, it was perfectly preserved but shrunken, like a voodoo shrunken head of the food world.

Years later, when my daughter reached the age where they get those little kitchen sets with the rubber food, she would own a rubber pizza slice that reminded me a whole lot of that petrified pizza. Have you ever found mummified food?

Book Blurb Friday #4

Thank you to Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff for hosting Book Blurb Friday! Each week, she posts a fictional book cover (as opposed to the cover of a fictional book!) so that we can write a blurb of 150 words or less to go with it. Here’s mine, at 148 words.

But first, thank you to new blog followers Margo Benson, who is very clever with writing prompts, and Sandra Davies, whose blog is richly layered and artistic. Welcome!

~Unhappy Berthday~

The brochure promised dinner and an exciting melodrama performed with audience participation onboard the “Romantic Railway’s Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre.” Jane Miller thought it would be a fun way to celebrate her 40th birthday—while putting a little excitement back into her stale marriage to Tom. Little did she know that they would plummet into adventure like a runaway train….

When the character named Miss Eliza Pettypants turned up murdered in Berth 19, everyone marveled at how realistic the actors had made it look…until they realized that the unfortunate Miss P. wasn’t acting. Worse, the authorities seemed to suspect…Tom. Good old trustworthy Tom? What Jane would uncover while trying to solve who really killed Miss Eliza Pettypants was more remarkable than any theatrical production. And worst of all, Jane kept arriving back at the same destination like a circling train: Was Tom really a murderer, after all?

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind. ~Buddha

Le Bon Voyage

My daughter recently left for her senior trip to Paris. We stood in the black predawn in front of her school while some of the fathers loaded luggage, and I watched her getting ready to go off and have the experiences that I hoped would make priceless deposits into her bank-of-life. Oh, the flashbacks!

When she discovered that her first name is French, we had to check out language books at the library. One year she wanted a computer language course so she could study over summer. To this day we still speak what I call “Pepé le Pew”—a mix of the words and phrases I remember from junior high and high school liberally interspersed with English and made-up words that I’m sure should be French. But over the years she grew to instructing me, gently and politely, and recently I’ve noticed that her Pepé is completely lacking in Pew….

One year it was the Madeline books, the dolls, and the clothing. She painstakingly constructed a replica of the Eiffel Tower out of tongue depressors for a school project, and I found myself going on late-night emergency tongue depressor quests.

Once when she was little she proudly announced, “I know how to French kiss!” I stared at her gap-toothed grin and tried to sound nonchalant. “Oh?” She leaned in and gave me a peck on each cheek. “That’s how French people kiss!” she chirped. How I smiled back at her, bigger and bigger! “Yes,” I said. “It is, isn’t it?”

She is no slacker, working hard as she has at various jobs to earn money for the trip (in addition to paying for things we can’t afford since the divorce), while still putting aside some for her college. For nearly a year now, she’s been getting gifts with a decidedly French theme. She’s slowly accumulated new cameras and passport holders and luggage tags and gadgetry. We’ve been through the paperwork and the checklists again and again.

Now I hugged her close in the dark parking lot. She has become La Tour Eiffel, this thin, strong girl who towers over me, and I now am L’Arc de Triomphe. It might be her bank-of-life, but I was the one who felt rich at that moment. And I kissed her cheeks au revoir, and I sent her off to become her own fine (French!) future self.

“…little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women.” ~Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Improper Poll: Gone Furniture Fishin’

I recently had to dig through the sofa cushions to look for a highlighter one of my kids had borrowed. I was shocked. Counting both the sofa and the loveseat, I found: 2 pens, a very smashed dryer sheet (they are evil and they follow me), a small Christmas bow, a piece of ribbon, 1 pink Easter jelly bean, a chocolate-scented colored pencil, a tiny black decorative feather, the remains of a candy wrapper, and (amazingly), the highlighter I was looking for. Guess I should be checking under the cushions more often, but I had no idea that you could hold a scrapbooking party out of the booty obtained…beneath our booties.

So today’s improper poll question is…am I the only one with gross sofas? Or have you ever found anything interesting under your cushions?

Book Blurb Friday #3

Many thanks to Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff for hosting Book Blurb Friday! Each week, she posts a picture of a pretend book cover so that we can write a fictional blurb of 150 words or fewer to go with it.

But first, welcome to new blog followers Tony Benson (who is giving away books in a blog contest), Ellie Garratt, who currently has some great advice for writers, and Dominic de Mattos, who writes science fiction and so much more!

Here’s my #3 at 114 words:

~ Meeting Eddie ~

Stellah Rescher was a pampered debutant living a quintessential life of ease until everything she knew was shaken by the discovery that her biological father is really Eddie Frye, an alcoholic former candidate for the priesthood who is in and out of mental institutions.

Now this veritable stranger needs a life-threatening favor of Stellah, one that she doesn’t know if she can deliver.

In this delightfully gripping exploration into identity, responsibility and growth, the reader is invited to embrace this complex cast of characters as they struggle with the question of what it means to have a rich life. Meeting Eddie is more than a tale. It is a date with the human spirit.

“A very wise friend once told me she believes part of our journey here on earth is to forgive our parents….” ~Becky Povich

Improper Poll: Inner Rumblings

I have a noisy stomach. Okay, it’s not my stomach that’s noisy, but my whole digestive tract. The noise seems to be completely random in nature and is not associated with illness or any other forms of urgency. It’s as if my innards just occasionally decide to throw loud parties which involve lots of celebratory shouting without consulting the landlord, as it were. The medical term for this, which a friend told me and not a doctor, (because I’d be WAY too embarrassed to mention this to a doctor), is borborygmus. Apparently I have borborygmus.

So anyway, once in a small, intimate college classroom during a particularly quiet discussion, my evil borborygmus tenants decided it was a major holiday.

“What is the significance of the peach in that scene?” the professor asked. “Bbbllllorrrgglllorrrglorrgeeewww?” my intestines answered.

Really. What can you do? I couldn’t blame it on someone else. They all knew it was me. If I’d sat there just turning various shades of red to red-purple, that’s just pathetic. I had no choice but to laugh. I also apologized. People smiled and nodded. Ah yes, close to lunch time…but of course we all knew they were really just being kind because it wasn’t my stomach growling, but my intestines. My borborygmus. And it wasn’t so much of a growl as it was a drunken-sounding shriek.

The professor waited politely for the topic of my noisy digestive tract to die down and took another stab at it. “What does the narrator mean by saying….”

“Bbluggglelugglelugglegrrrrorrrrglloorrrg?” my intestines interrupted. This time, everybody else laughed. Except the professor. He didn’t laugh.

Should I have excused myself? I still wonder this. But that just seems like running away, which is exactly what it would have been, and all I could think of was that if I ran away, at some point I would have to show back up. And then I would be the Girl-With-Borborygmus-Who-Also-Ran-Away. Because-of-the-Borborygmus.

So I just sat there and laughed again—while turning various shades of red to red-purple—and mentally stomped on the floor of my intestines to warn them to shut up and stop throwing wild keggers because the rest of us were trying to have a quiet, serious discussion up here. Alas, the intestines paid no attention though the classroom became focused on nothing else. Everyone was eventually engaged only in listening for the next entertaining noise my digestive tract would make. The professor released the class early in disgust.

So I have the enviable distinction of possessing intestines which are able to cancel school. And you’ll be happy to hear that’s not my only bodily function story. So today’s Improper Poll Question is: Do you have a story about bodily functions, either your own or someone else’s?

Book Blurb Friday #2

So far I am really enjoying Lisa Ricard Claro's "Book Blurb Friday!"  This is only #2, but I've begun to look forward to it as my TGIF break after work.  I believe she posts the new ones on Thursday nights, but I don't allow myself to look until Friday, and then I write whatever immediately comes to my head.  I guess a little like a writer's Rorschach...which is literally a scary thought this week.

~The Groveyard~

The large Overton family couldn’t wait to move from the traffic and crime of the city to their peaceful new home in the woods.  But they soon found out that it wasn’t the pastoral escape they’d once believed.  One by one, the pets began to disappear.  Were they really all running away?  And then, when the family decided a tire swing was just perfect for that big apple tree out back, the unthinkable happened….

Where was little Nikky Overton?!

Just when things couldn’t get any worse, a mysterious child began to appear in the swing with a message:

Don’t.  Touch.  The Apple Tree.

(105 words.)

Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who. ~from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

The Truth Revealed

Maybe I exaggerated a teensy bit, but I do estimate that you couldn’t get a brush all the way through my hair for almost a decade. It was clean and everything, and the Rat’s Nest was usually hidden from view (especially for things like my Romper Room debut), but it lurked there mainly because no one in my family could withstand the blood-curdling screams emitted during attempts at Rat’s Nest removal. And cutting was out of the question. I was proud of the fact that I could sit on my hair.
Am pretty sure the candy striper who finally removed it, whose name really was something like Debbi, was a sadist-in-training who was eventually hired by a lesser known dictator to extract military secrets from prisoners of war.

I did learn to juggle in my late thirties. Not well, but to me it fulfilled enough of a lifelong dream just to learn to keep three balls in the air at once. Now if only I could do that figuratively....

I thought you’d think I’m too much of a “Carol” to have partied with Grace. This was not her heyday, by the way, and I was young enough—and she was sedate enough—that at the time I didn’t fully appreciate who she was.

When I picked the lie that I did, I forgot to consider that some of you might think it was impolite even to suggest that I can’t sing. I've had a long time to reconcile myself to it. My non-singing is so legendary that I giggled guiltily even typing such a whopper.

When my oldest was a newborn, I decided I would sing him to sleep just like those nice TV moms. I mean, how could he have any taste about the quality of my singing voice? Tabula rasa, right? So I took that swaddled baby and I rocked with him in the rocking chair and softly sang “Desperado,” because besides my horrible voice, I can never remember words to songs—except that one. And it didn’t sound too bad, if I do say so myself.

Even more amazing, it worked. He fell asleep in my arms. I was so proud! And then I noticed under the blanket…yes, I promise this really is true…his tiny fists were mashed firmly against his ears.

Plus I later read that newborns often respond to horrible noises by falling asleep.

As they grew, darned if those little “blank slates” didn’t moan, “NOOOO! Mom, STOP SINGING!!!” if I sang around them. Except during renditions of “Happy Birthday to You,” when they only snickered.

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind. ~Buddha

Just When You Think It’s Safe to Blog About Boogers….

You win two awards! Hooray!! In the order received, thank you so much to Linda O'Connell of Write from the Heart, good friend and inspirational writer who truly does write—and live—from the heart. Linda ever so tactfully emailed me about the booger post; did I mind having my work showcased…now? I told her the truth: my writing has been as blocked as my sinuses lately. That’s okay…I think maybe this is helping to jolt me out of it! And I think I'm supposed to post a picture of myself blogging, so here goes, but I couldn't clean my desk without compromising crucial Post-It note placement, so I didn't.

And thank you to Jules of Trying to Get Over the Rainbow, whose posts always seem to touch me deeply whether they are funny, serious, or—amazingly enough—both at once. In her case, I understand that I am supposed to tell you four truths and one lie. See if you can guess the lie:

1. I once partied with Grace Slick.

2. People have always told me I should be a singer.

3. I was on a show called Romper Room when I was four. The teacher had a mike around her neck with a long cord, and I remember tripping on it and choking her a little bit and almost pulling her over. At the end of the show, she had that Magic Mirror thing she’d look through and say, “I see Johnny, and I see Beth, and I see….” And I squinted and stared and searched, and she couldn’t see anyone. She was lying! I was horrified.

4. I didn’t grow hair until I was about three. Once I finally got hair, though, no one touched it. Maybe they were afraid it would fall out again if they messed with it any. So my hair just sat there, unbrushed, and grew longer and longer. A knot formed at the nape of the neck that became legendary in my family as “The Rat’s Nest.” As the hair grew longer, the rat’s nest grew bigger.

My sister called it “circus woman hair.” I was enormously flattered. I thought circus women were the most beautiful creatures in the world, and in fact aspired to be The Lady Who Dangles from Her Hair. She had this big, boofy hair, and they attached something to it and hoisted her up and spun her around in her sparkly costume like a human disco ball. It was the coolest thing in the whole world.

I figure The Rat’s Nest existed from age three until I was hospitalized for pneumonia at age ten and an ambitious candy striper insisted on combing it out. In addition to the agony I went through, what she extracted from my head resembled a small poodle and looked big enough for a whole family of rats. My hair was half its size when she got done. I figured there went my career.

5. I learned to juggle as part of a midlife crisis and still have a bit of a circus fixation.

And now, I pass these awards along to:

Valthevictorian at Unbagging the Cats.  I’m so proud that my nose-picking post inspired deeper analysis. And her Toenail Rug made me laugh so hard, my whole screen shook because I forgot to take my hand off the mouse. And the malcontent story….

Ella over at Ella’s Edge is a mother, poet, artist, and probably lots more I haven’t discovered yet...but I'm looking forward to reading more.

Sioux of Sioux's Page is either a kindred spirit or maybe that's just wishful thinking, but I always get a refreshing laugh at her clever, fun posts.

There were more I wanted, but I currently can't see anyone's followers including my own, and it's very frustrating that this has happened on top of not being able to see a lot of pictures.  If anyone knows what the deal is, please let me know! 

I hate, hate, hate being left out. Whether it’s not being picked for a team or being picked for a team and then showing up and realizing that the team doesn’t exist or that the sport doesn’t exist. I should have known…poop ball. ~Michael Scott, “The Office”

Improper Poll: Multiple Pick Jackpot

I dearly love the frank honesty of a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless, but whose birthday is today—HAPPY BIRTHDAY). We were discussing nose piercings, and she commented that she would never want a nose stud because it would impede nose picking. I agreed that would be a hazard. In fact, I’d worry that the inner apparatus would actually trap boogers, thereby necessitating further pickage.

I think I have the wrong look for a nose piercing, anyway. When my daughter was in middle school, one of her friends told me I look like my name should be Carol. I was shocked. No offense to Carols—it’s better than looking like a Tammy, mind you (because of course Tammys wear frosty blue eye shadow and tend to burn down the trailer court when they throw flaming frying pans at their common-law husbands)—but still. A Carol? The horror—she was right. And a nose ring just wouldn’t go on a Carol. If I had even halfway-good abs, though, I’d definitely get a navel piercing.

So today’s Improper Poll question is a multiple, and you get to pick (ha, get it?!) one or more to answer:

Would you get your nose pierced?
If your nose is pierced, is picking difficult for you?
If you had to have one piercing other than the ears, what would you pick and why?

Book Blurb Friday

First...oofdah, what a week! I hope to have time to blog about it later, but for now, please know that I can't wait to get back into blogland and check out all I missed this week.

And now I'm excited to try a new meme begun by Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff. Every Thursday evening she'll post a photo of a pretend book cover. In 150 words or less, we are to write a blurb that should go on the back of the book. Then we link from/to her site.

I thought I would play with this too long, but when she posted the photo (below), I wrote up something right away and giggled my way through it. Thanks, Lisa!

~The Deadly Sins~

Envie Prideland was a sixteen-year-old shoplifter who was tired of living in the poor part of town…until she accidentally stole the diary of snooty classmate Sinclair Greedly.

The secret that Envie discovered about Sinclair and her charming surfer boyfriend, Luston Slothby, would not only cause her to rethink her kleptomania and her struggles with poverty, it would leave Envie struggling to save the life of the unfortunate new girl in town, Gluttoni Angership.

This must-have young adult novel…will steal your heart.

(81 words.)

And welcome to new blog follower Ella of Ella's Edge!  I'm so flattered you stopped by and decided to come back!

“I used to be fun, but I had to give all that up. You can’t have two fun parents. You know that kid, Liam, who wears pajama pants to school and pays for things with hundred dollar bills? Two fun parents. Mark my words.” ~Claire in “Modern Family”