Party Till the Chocolate Chips

The party last Friday night was a success. My outfit was suitable once I tied the waist as tightly as I could with a black scarf AND put on the highest heels I owned so as not to drag the pants on the ground. Here's a pic. Be sure to notice how Rich looks as if he's off to have the time of his life. It's because I and my sister-in-law had just been talking about dancing.



As it turned out, there was no dancing that evening, but we did have a wonderful time. The restaurant showed me why sometimes beef is actually worth $40 (but only if I'm not buying...) and that really good red wines even pair well with lobster. Basically, it was a killer restaurant. Yummy, even. The best mushrooms, spinach, and white au gratin potatoes in the world. Or at least in my relatively small realm of experience.

After dinner our group, which consisted of six couples and one single guy, walked across Glenwood to visit a private club called Havana's. It turned out to be a cigar bar (who'da guessed, right?) but it was cozy and comfy and had a dart board we monopolized for a couple hours. Damon beat the boss and the boss's wife was from Sweden so she kept saying "Hit the wall!" in a very dry wit which cracked me up. On the way home, Damon burst into a rendition of "The Greatest Love of All" by Ms. Whitney Houston. I did not know why he started it, but I joined in for all I was worth.

Basically, a very nice evening of luxury and good company that was fully funded by the company, liquor and all, or should I say "all the liquor?" Which was fine because Rich was the DD for me, Damon, and Angela. So it was a good night....

Followed by my Sunday morning plans to bake cookies. I've always baked chocolate chip cookies for Christmas season, often passing them out to neighbors and friends as I tend to bake way, way too many. I use the same recipe every year. The same recipe my own mother has used for years and years. (This year I even had a good oven instead of the horrible gas oven that came with the house. The door wouldn't even close on that monster. We pitched it last summer.) But the cookies. Oh, the cookies turned out badly and I cannot figure out why. I have a reputation for burning things and this batch of cookies isn't going to help. But because they turned out so ugly they are funny, I'm offering myself up for entertainment value. Observe, the scene of the crime.



How the poor things came out so FLAT, I cannot figure.



And how these came out both flat and BURNED is, again, a mystery.



Those of you who are married to people who can cook? Love them. Appreciate them. Eat THEIR cookies. And send me some, would you? I have none for my holidays now!

A Christmas Conundrum

Christmastime is here. My mood is cheerful. And yesterday Rich called with an interesting proposition. Did we want to attend his company's Christmas party? Now, usually we are not social people, choosing to hibernate a LOT, but this sounds like a good time with free food at a GREAT place. (http://www.sullivansteakhouse.com/)

So, we're in. I'm even looking forward to the rare possibility of dancing. Then it hit me. Quite literally, I have nothing to wear.

Today I worked my heinie off and booked it over to Goodwill to see if I could pick up something simple and easy. Um, nope. So I went into my guest room closet where my banished, too-large clothes live now until they all sell. It occurred to me that maybe, just maybe I could take something from my previous cocktail-type clothes and make it work. (In case you haven't guessed, I've been watching Project Runway....)

I pulled from my closet a knee-length black dress and a knee-length black skirt with black lace overlay. Simple, classy, I thought. And neither no longer hit me at the knee, falling instead all the way to that mid-calf length that turns even lovely legs into tree stumps. Hmm. But maybe the dress with a belt. Egad, even the belts are too big.

Let me take a little break here to say I realize it sounds like I'm bragging about the weight loss, but seriously? I have a closet of clothes that do fit me and every single piece is a t-shirt/tank top/capri pant/gym shorts/sweatshirt motif. Seriously. And we're in a financial crunch so no new clothes and especially no new clothes that I won't be able to wear ever again since I'm going to shrink even further before another "occassion" will arise. So back to the dressing room.

The black dress might work if I tie up the waist with a scarf, perhaps a solid black scarf if I can recall what I might have done with it. The lace skirt might do as well if I pin the waistband way up under my arms in order to keep the hem just above the knee. But then I don't have any tops that will fall correctly to camoflauge the fact that my skirt is masquerading as an empire waistline.

Then I saw something forgotten in the back of my regular closet. It was behind the few suit jackets that Rich owns, over in the rarely used section of clothes. It was a bunch of clothes covered in a dry-cleaning bag. They were things that belonged to my sister, Beth. Kristen and I divvied up the clothes after Beth passed and these few pieces were things she didn't think she would wear and things I can either recall Beth wearing or just looked like her to me. (One fine example is the pair of snakeskin printed pants. She was wearing those at karaoke singing "Good-bye Earl" and I'll never forget it. No way those things are ever leaving my closet.)

But also in that bag was a sweater she and I used to fight over. I'd steal it from her closet because it looked so good on me and she'd steal it back just to keep me from looking so good in it. (or because it actually belonged to her... you know.) I looked at it and remembered wearing it years ago, when Kevin was a baby, when Rich and I were newly dating. I put it on and it fit.


There is no better motivation for my positive attitude today. That sweater is hanging in the "wearable" section of my closet even now, victoriously signaling my return to a smaller size. There are so few items of clothes in there right now that it's a pretty clear signal and should be an effective one for me.

I can't wear it to the party, true. Not nearly dressy enough. But something will work out, or something will work just well enough to get me through for now. Besides which, it's a martini bar. After a couple drinks, no one is going to notice my safety-pinned waistline anyway.

I'm positive.

I hope you all have parties and good times with friends and family coming up soon. Enjoy them all and enjoy this Christmas season!

Optimism is Catching

It's been a weird year. Serious financial stress. The boy entered high school. I returned to the workforce. And more that I don't write about, though I know it must seem that I spill my guts entirely here in my blog. Any of these alone would be stressful but together they pack a whomping K.O. punch.

Luckily, I discovered the secret to survival. And not just survival, but a true, progressive survival. Enlightenment, perhaps. The secret is optimism.

Who knew?

Some of you are guffawing even as you read this. I'm so ordinarily full of snark but am now championing optimism? Oh, believe it, Friend. I have had too much proof in the here and now to be a doubter.

My job hurts me, physically. Though it's getting better all the time (due to callous development) there are still muscles making themselves known to me every day. Last week I had the utter joy of having two days off IN A ROW. What bliss! What utter wonderfulness!!! On the first day off I awoke with a serious sinus pressure headache and a scratchy throat of a cold. "Of course," my snarky self said inside my head. But instead of wallowing in my despair, I took some Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus and went about my day. And went about the next day, keeping myself drugged to the gills at all times. On the third day of the cold, the day I had to return to the workforce with TWO houses to clean, a total of seven hours of scrubbing mind you, I wo-manned up for it. As I drove my boy to school at seven a.m., mainlining coffee as we went, I said out loud: "I feel GREAT! I'm going to have a GREAT day."

Kevin, of course, thought I was joking. He had watched my cold progress and knew I was about to have a killer day. Plus, he's been raised to the ripe old age of thirteen by the Queen of Snark. He just knew I must be kidding.

But I wasn't. I was determined to mean it. Even as he laughed at me I repeated that mantra again. And I left for my workday with cold medicine in hand and a forced good attitude at heart. And it worked.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Plus, when I woke Saturday morning, my cold was GONE. (let's have a brief commercial break here in honor of Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus. I highly recommend it.) But more than that, my optimism was still with me.

I've used that mantra, and the good attitude that accompanies it, several times over the last few days. It really works-- dulling a bad mood, shortening a dull chore, enhancing a short break. The optimism is even now slopping over into goodwill toward the world in general since I couldn't wait to share this information with all my friends.

It's my gift to you. Use it well and enjoy it. And though you may not believe it will work when you first try, just try it wholeheartedly.

Pure in heart would be great too, but only if you can manage it!

Enjoy the blessings of the holiday. (And no, I'm not still taking the cold medicine.)

The Icicles of My Guts

Sometimes it's possible to question a doctor's opinion. Those instances can lead to follow up questions, corrected miscommunications, a healthy and fun exchange of ideas, learning more than you thought possible about the topic at hand.

Today was not that experience for me.

See, my weight loss is going GREAT. I'm thirty freaking pounds lighter now, even after Great Gravy Day. My clothes are bagging off my body and I'm beginning to see the hourglass emerging from the snow globe. Problem is, I'm FREEZING all the time. Duh, symptom of big weight loss, right?

Sure. So I went researching online (because that's just what I do when I want to know stuff) and came across one of those sites where professionals volunteer their time to answer questions in their fields of expertise. I figures, Yay! Free info! And I typed in my question, full of detailed facts and all pertinent information.

My question was what to do about the internal cold stemming from my ongoing weight loss.

That's what I wanted to know. Are there supplements that might kick my internal thermostat back into gear or is my only recourse piling on more sweaters and socks? Simple, right?

The PA who answered me asked questions to find the source of my sudden coldness. Questions about cardiovascular exercise for circulation, if I am a smoker, or if it's possible I have hypothyroidism. That's fine, questions to rule out possibilities are great. Then she went on to say that my coldness is not caused by losing 30 pounds, especially since I still weigh 195 pounds. If I weighed only 100 pounds she could understand the cold and it would be due to malnutrition.

Anyone else just crinkle their brow and say, "Huh?"

So, okay, I filled her in on her questions: plenty of cardio, no smoking, no thyroid problems. Check. And then let her know that lots of women who lose a chunk of weight get cold. Even women who still aren't yet skinny. To which she took exception.

Apparently she is disappointed when clients don't like her answers and "argue" with her. She hopes I find the source of my problem with my own doctor and that I can manage to find a way to stay warm this winter. And then she blocked me from further follow up.

Hmm. Her suggestion to speak to my own doctor was good advice. I called her office, reported my weight loss and internal frozen temps and she said, "Of course it's because of the weight loss. Pile on the sweater and let's hope you adjust. You got forty pounds more to go!"

Why didn't I just think to speak to her in the first place? Updated pics coming soon.

The Sounds of Silence.... Or Not

While I'm enjoying my time off and lying around the house doing NOTHING (yay!) some thoughts passed through my mind and I thought I'd share.

I added a new song to my profile page. It is The Foo Fighters song "The Pretender," and it's awesome. Like, Captain Awesome. (Anyone else watch "How I Met Your Mother" and just saluted Captain Awesome just now? No? Just me, huh?)

So... The Pretender. The chorus throws me into Sesame Street in my head every single time I hear it. It cracks me up. As soon as that chorus powers up, here come Bert and Ernie and Mr. Snufalupagus wandering through, headbanging a little. I won't say exactly why so you can go listen and report back on your own findings.

In other music news, my son has started a band. Sigh. The boy is the guitar player, his Girl FRIEND (uh-huh, so he says) is drumming, his buddy Tyler is singing, and their buddy Hippie is playing something. Tonight Kevin and Tyler are banging around the house here and have created a song, written it down, and are upstairs right now with Rich getting it recorded.

I have to say how ambivalent I am about this, if only because of the number of musicians I dated in the past and how incredibly selfish and unaccountable they can be. My heart kind of freezes up when I think of Kevin playing in a band. But he's a good musician and it's all kinds off fun for them and as long as they don't mind the Mom Supervision, I'm all right with it. Mostly. They do have an incredibly good name for a first-time group of kids. Go check them out over on their myspace page:

www.myspace.com/fallingfaster911.com

Strange the things that make you feel older than you should.

May all your listening be easy... and enjoyable.

The UnMerry Maid

Housecleaning sucks. I know I signed on to do this voluntarily and I know it's for a good cause. Turns out, I'm pretty good at it, too, if a little slower than I should be, but I can work up the efficiency. Thing is: it hurts.

My feet hurt, my knees are bruised like I'm a five year old in the summertime, my right hip aches for reasons passing understanding, my lower back is about to revolt, and my right hand is demanding my left hand learn how to scrub. I have blisters on my palms and I smell all the time of bleach and lemon-scented PineSol.

Worse than this, though, is the continuing physical exhaustion. It's eight-fifteen right now and I'm pondering how soon I can logically go to sleep. This has been going on for weeks now and I'm tired of being tired.

Surely, my body will acclimate, right? I mean, I never considered that a forty-five minute daily workout might not have prepared me for eight hours of actual, physical labor. But the truth is irrefutable. I'm a weenie. And a whiney weenie at that. A weary whiney weenie.

And, sadly, that's the best writing I've done this week. Too tired to stay up till eleven is one thing, but too tired to WRITE is a problem.

Thank God for a five day weekend, starting NOW!!!

For this evening, I'm going to make popcorn (real popcorn, not that microwave stuff...) and read a Nora Roberts. Her heroines tend to make me feel more aggressive and capable. That can only be a good thing.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and to all my English friends: enjoy Thursday!

Can't Life Always Be a Beach?

So the week at the beachhouse with twenty-five other women writers (and Roger)? Totally wonderful. The best thing I've done for my writing career to date. My hero, The Cherry, was charming and fabulous, just as reported. Each of the teachers gave out such good information that I've rushed right home to play with. Plans for next year are a go.

In short, there are no superlatives strong enough to say how fun and beneficial last week was. Who knew you could throw so many women together in a house and have them all come out friends? In the past, this has not been my experience. But last week, if three of us were gathered together, you could be sure there was a murder being plotted or some poor guy was being roped into fatherhood with his dead brother's baby. Fashion choices for our heroines were paramount, while our own clothes ran the gamut from cherry print pajama pants (me) to cute, girly tops with jeans (Allison) to lovely, long beach-walking skirts (Jenny). Food was good, margaritas were plentiful, Diet Coke flowed morning, noon, and night, and chocolate candy kept our blood sugar stabilized throughout the afternoon sessions. It was heaven.

At the end of the week, I returned home into a cloud of testosterone produced by the men in my household. Dog hair and dirt clots and ketchup stains, oh my. Halloween II on DVD, marching band competition, hot peppers, bicycle grease, skateboard tape, loud music, no conversation, hair products, dirty socks under my pillow (from Marlo, no less, the estrogen bond doesn't extend to dachshunds), hot dogs and tater tots, burping skills, Japanese movies, and video game stories.

The mild depression only grew with my return to my new housecleaning job. Bedmaking, vacuuming, streakless shines on mirrors, squeegie on shower doors, dust corralled and microwaves scrubbed clean. Suddenly, instead of simpatico storylines and genre-bending plot twists, my back ached, my feet hurt, and my fingernails began to break. Too tired to watch prime time and too addled to write, I started to wonder if I would ever snap out of the non-writer-crowd doldrums.

But last night as I was going up to bed at 9 pm, I heard guitars and poked my head into Rich's recording room. He and Kev were playing together, singing in harmony one of my favorite Concrete Blond songs, "The Darkening of the Light." My heart flipped over and I was at peace, back in Wife and MommyVille, and happy to be here.

Maybe it is possible to have everything. Each in its own time.

Oh, The Horror!

Sometimes I am dumb.

It's not a confession I make lightly, but this is one of those times I gotta fess up. I am dumb.

This is October, see. And starting a couple years back, Kevin and I began watching scary movies during the month of October, kind of gearing up for Halloween. The first year it was all about Psycho and The Sixth Sense. Both excellent and creepy, but basically non-gory and with little actual violence.

Last year was The Shining, both the Jack Nicholson and the Stephen King mini-series versions, and The Lost Boys. A little more psychological terror and a little more blood, albeit of the giggling, stupid, boy-wasn't-this-made-in-the-eighties variety.

Last night we kicked it up a notch. We watched the old, original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Yep, I'm dumb.

Rich is out of town, Kevin and I both get scared of scary movies (I don't KNOW why we started doing this.....) so of course, the thing to do was to turn on the scariest of the slasher movies sporting the creepiest family that has ever lived on film.

Ten minutes in, we were sitting smack up against each other, feet up on the couch, eyes bulging in horror and vowing neither of us would ever, EVER pick up a hitchhiker. (So, maybe there is some redeeming value...) By the end of the film, Kevin and I are nearly inside each others skins, hanging on for dear life and trying not to scream louder than the poor, stupid heroine.

When it was over, we both sat gasping for breath, horrified at the idea that we were going to have to go upstairs and go to sleep within the next couple hours. Luckily, we had an episode of "Chuck" on the TiVo that cleansed our shaken spiritual palates and made it nearly okay to walk upstairs in the dark.

Oddly enough, we both slept without nightmares and Kevin says he never once peeked under his bed. I can't admit to the same, but I will make the excuse that my bed is on risers and old Leatherface might have been able to squeeze his bulk AND his creepy old Chain Saw under there.

Tomorrow we will be getting "The Silence of the Lambs" from Netflix. Some things never change.

Jumpstart, aka, Autumn on an Island

This Saturday I'm off to the Isle of Palms in South Carolina. I'm leaving home for a week-long master class on writing, staying in a beachside house with twenty-four other women writers, soaking up business and craft advice from the pros each day during the seminars. I'm thrilled beyond measure.

Preparing for a writing trip is an odd experience. Clothing is nowhere near the top of the list of things to be sorted and gathered and packed, which might mean I end up arriving there with plenty of notebooks and pens and my laptop but only one pair of socks and three t-shirts. I've been making sure my works in progress and completed manuscripts are in my laptop, saved in the proper format, not to mention in good enough shape to SHARE with other writers. That's stressful.

Also, I'm not experienced at critiquing others work and we'll be doing that in groups each evening. That's stressful.

I'm kind of anti-social and I'm going to be sharing a bedroom and bath with two other women, not to mention a whole house with LOTS of other women. That's kind of stressful until I think about the fact that we're all writers, mostly of romance and women's fiction, and seriously, how could that NOT be fun? Chances are good that I'm going to get spoiled to that atmosphere and have to seriously reacclimate upon returning to my man-filled home.

There might have been lots of problems with me taking off like that for a week of me-time, but lucky for me, I have a son who doesn't mind his mother leaving him for a week, a mother who doesn't mind coming down to babysit --ahem-- provide supervision for my son, and a husband who will be working in that direct area of South Carolina for the majority of that same week. Which is cool cause it means we can go on a date or two while I'm there and ride our bikes up and down the beach. Yay!

So while I'll be popping in and out of here all this week and while I WILL have access to the internet all of next week, you may not hear from me a lot while I'm gone. But I'll be gathering material and you can be sure it'll be put to good use when I return.

The Updated Life of Beki

The major changes going on in my life (and the lives of those in my immediate trajectory) have continued, sadly, leaving me physically exhausted and with little time for MySpace gossip, er, I mean NETWORKING. But I'm here with an update before I fall asleep again and before I get so into my day tomorrow morning that Friday suddenly appears out of nowhere.

The debt diet is working big time. Our credit cards are relegated to a big block of ice in the freezer and I've gotten a job. Yes, a job. Stop laughing. I know I've explained (in a much earlier blog) all the different jobs I have held along with several instances of firing. But this job might be different. For one thing I'm an independent contractor so I can claim business expenses on the income tax return (which is a BIG deal). It's also a job to which I can wear jeans and t-shirts, no make-up and can completely shun a hairstyle.
I'm a maid. I can hear my brother and sister laughing right now. We'll give them a few seconds to stop and come back.

So I'm a maid. Kind of like Merry Maids but without the good attitude. I'm doing residential housecleaning which means a different home each day of the week, roughly eighteen hours of work each week and it's a surprisingly good-paying job.

The physical labor is something else again. I had no idea how bad it would hurt to clean house. Go ahead and laugh, but I really didn't. I have never been what you'd call domestic. I don't cook well and as long as there is no visible dirt, I'm pretty happy. I have always been able to deal with a certain level of clutter in the house and I'm not ever in a hurry to clean a bathroom floor. Ah, those days are gone. I went out each day last week and cleaned a house and then came home and couldn't help but to clean somewhere in my own home. It's a sickness, it really is. But at least it's something that will help pay down debt, allow me to still be at home when my boy gets home from school, and leave plenty of writing time to boot. And if on top of all that I just happen to learn how to efficiently clean a house, well, I'm sure Rich won't turn up his nose at that skill.

Fall TV viewing has only gotten consistently better with "Chuck," "The Big Bang Theory," and "Private Practice" keeping me entertained. I'm also adding to the list "Dirty Sexy Money," a show which definitely suffers from stupid title disease, but which gave me goosebumps when ending a recent episode with a verse and chorus of Concrete Blonde's version of "Everybody Knows," which is a Leonard Cohen song not to be sniffed at. I'd be a fangirl for sure, if only for that, but the show really is cool. Tangled and dripping with diamonds for sure, but very cool at the same time. Not at all Paris Hilton-y. Besides, who doesn't like Peter Krause? If we could call him "Casey" and bring in Dan to be a partner in his lawfirm, I might be in heaven.

My own personal non-diet-lifestyle-change is still going well. I'm another four pounds down at the moment for a grand total of twenty-six. It's a noticeable difference now. The other day I stole back from my son my "Dragon's Last Roar" high school grad t-shirt when I realized it fit again. It's hanging gloriously in my closet since there's no way I'm going to wear in public a shirt which proclaims I graduated high school in 1990. Why advertise?

I hope all of you, my friends, are doing well and moving forward with your own personal goals. Each big goal is only a series of little steps and each can only be met one step at a time. Take your time on the journey, experience each step and when you reach your goal, embrace the joy that comes with your success. I'm waiting, excited, to do the same.

Trimming the Fat, Vol III, In Pursuit of Health

Ah, the eternal quest for a healthy balance between what is good and what is good for you. I managed to ignore that quest for a little too long but over the last couple years have turned a corner, embracing exercise and healthy eating while vowing never to DIET again.

I can't diet. There is something inside my head that rebels if I even think that I "can't" have a certain food. Let's take brownies for example, as I am ordinately fond of those little gifts from Satan. If I tell myself I can't have brownies, I begin to see brownies everywhere. I believe I can smell brownies around me and I will hunt them down and demolish several at once, just to show that I can. I know, smart, right? Yeah, that'll show me to restrict my foods.

So instead of dieting over the last couple years I've rearranged my way of thinking about eating to some degree. It's mostly about fuel now with only occasional forays into Taco Bell or guilt-free Krispy Kreme snacking (only) while I'm at the beach. I can eat anything I want to eat and now, in so doing, I just don't. Instead, I tend to eat salad every day, often twice a day. I keep grapes and carrots on hand. I make sure to get seven handsful of fruits and veggies every day and I eat very little meat and only super-grainy bread.

I eat real butter but skim milk. If a brownie somehow wanders across my path, I'll eat it, but I'll leave all his buddies on the tray. I drink all the water I'm supposed to every day and only diet sodas and unsweetened tea in restaurants (which is really fine if you add a packet of Sweet&Low).

I also exercise three to five times a week using an elliptical machine, 8 and 10 pound weights, bicycle rides with my sweetheart, evening trail walks with a friend, and some (highly unskilled) yoga poses. After two years doing all this I lost a whopping six pounds. Not much encouragement, right? But I felt better. I actually wanted to be moving and my body hadn't ever been any closer to exercise than reading about it in a book. I felt that change and I jumped on it. I got my doctor to put me on a prescription to help with the weight loss.

Two and a half months in, I'm twenty-two pounds lighter. For the first time in years I'm getting really close to the good side of the 200 pound mark. Another fifty-few pounds and I'm in the best shape I've been since college. And possibly better because I certainly didn't exercise more than my beer-swigging arm then. So I'm feeling good right now.

On the other hand (there's always a dark side with me....) none of my clothes fit properly anymore and it's going to be a WHILE before I will break down and buy new ones because I'll just keep shrinking out of them at this point. So, while I am losing weight and feeling GREAT, I still feel stupid in my clothes. Luckily, I'm thirty-five now and I refuse to waste time worrying what strangers think of me. So my weird baggy attire will get me through a few more months and at some point in the future I will emerge from them, like a butterfly breaking free of its cocoon in the spring.

For now I'm off to find food for my solo dinner. Salad and something are on the menu and I know there's not a brownie in the whole house. Good weekend to you all!

Trimming the Fat, Vol II, In Which I Discover Great TV

You know how fall TV season is, right? Shows are hyped for months, you get excited by the sound of something, it airs once, maybe twice and then it's gone forever. I got sucked into the great big Black Donnelly's plot last spring before NBC ripped my heart out by taking it off way yonder too early. So over the last month or so, I've been waffling between excited a few new shows and being a gloomy gus over which would be cancelled first in order to make way for an even dumber reality show.

So what a surprise this has been!

I'm a huge Gray's Anatomy fan and dearly love the character of Addison Montgomery. So of course I was terrified to hear the word "spin-off" in relation to her name. But Private Practice has turned out to be quite a coup. Well done with quirky, interesting characters. The show has an entirely different feel than Grey's Anatomy which, in my view, is a very good thing. Go Shonda!

Next up on the viewing list was Chuck. Oh, my, is it fun. I cannot begin to tell you how much I love Chuck. Incredible story, good supporting cast, great lead actor. Funny as all get out. Someone is going to smack me down on this but I'm willing to say it's the most original show I've seen on tv (including cable, by the way) for quite some time. It's got sci-fi (lord, I hope it's FI...) and comedy and plenty of action. Just a very, very good show. I love it already and have moved it into the top five on my DVR.

So I wasn't sure about Big Shots. I hate that guy, you know, the dark-haired, unshaven smirky guy. I can't stand him and his face. But I love Christopher Titus and Joshua Malina and Michael Vartan is nothing if not good acting wrapped up in eye candy. But I wasn't sure about this show. I nearly deleted it from the Tivo before I even watched it, truth to tell, because there was so much else on there already. But I decided to give it a show. Knowing it was going to be horrible and shallow. And it kind of was both. There was enough that took me by surprise to make me give it a few weeks to see if it evolves at all. The really weird thing about it is the set up that these four guys are supposed to be the male Sex in the City group. Okay. I'll go with that. But they're married. Which might not be a big deal except it means that their wives are relegated to the backgrounds of their lives which kind of makes me loathe them all in subtle ways. What was that scene at the end of the one guy's wife's birthday party when all four guys left together? Hello, guys? Forgetting to take anything home with you?
The biggest surprise so far is The Big Bang Theory. I laughed so loud during the pilot episode that I scared my dogs. While it sounds easy and stupid (beautiful blonde girl moves in next door to really smart geeky guys) it's actually clever and focused and (gulp) real. These geeks sound like real geeks right down to discussing why Superman would have actually killed Lois Lane when he tried to scoop her up in mid-air. And the dumb blonde isn't dumb. Wonder of wonders, she's kind of normal and really only appears dumb in the face of the guy's outstanding genius. And the one geek with the hair and the many languages? I can almost guarantee that you KNOW this guy somewhere in your life. I do. And I'm not naming names. And one more thing: sarcasm sign. I need one of those, myself.

I still haven't revved up the energy to watch Cane or Dirty Sexy Money but the return of Heroes didn't disappoint and, surprisingly, neither did the return of Grey's Anatomy. Which was quite shocking, actually. I couldn't see a good way out of that Season Three ending hole, but again, Shonda does not disappoint.

TV is on a roll, big time. I suggest some good open-minded viewing, and maybe the network wonks can chill for a few weeks before they start cancelling things all willy-nilly and giving us shows like Beauty and the Bachelor Survive Kid Nation.

Trimming the Fat, Vol I, In Which We Reduce Our Debt

My brother and his bride gave me a book for my birthday last month. The book has made quite an impact on our little household so far. I read it and was inspired and then Rich read it and was inspired. We've begun making sweeping changes in the way we operate our home, our budget, our goals. The book was Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover.

Now, while we weren't in bad shape (compared to pretty much all other Americans), it's been a rough year. Rich's job has been horrible, giving him work when they have it and effectively just letting him be laid off when they don't have it. So while we are nearly always frugal and I am sometimes downright cheap, this year has caused a pinch that will be felt clear through Christmas of next year.

In the process of trimming the fat from our budget, working steely-eyed at clearing all credit card debt, and dreaming about paying off the mortgage, a fundamental shift has occurred in our relationship. It's been nice to partner toward a cause that will benefit us both and our son. It's been like a game so far to call our service providers and talk them down from their regular monthly rates, to call our credit cards and talk them down from their ridiculous interest rates.

I've been selling off items of clothing, home decor, pieces of furniture to build some cash to pay off some debt. Oddly, that's been fun too, though we don't really own that much of real value since I don't believe in buying furniture NEW to begin with. In our entire home we only have two pieces of furniture we bought new from a store and both of those were on massive sale when I got them. I'm just frugal by nature.

We've rediscovered Aldi grocery stores. Do you know you can buy a bag of snack chips in there for 99 cents? (and did you know that computer keyboards don't have a cent symbol on them? huh.) I'd forgotten what good savings live there. We've even cut back on things like pop (why buy soda when water is free and teabags are cheap?), fast foods, and convenience meals.

We're keeping the Netflix account because it's cheap to begin with and it's already keeping us out of the movie theaters on weekends. How many movies come out that you just HAVE to see on the big screen? The Harry Potters and anything with a superhero spring to mind. Anything else can be put off until it arrives in the little red envelope in my mailbox.

It's a good goal to have, controlling the household budget, reducing debt, and paying off the mortgage, but it's taking an effort for sure. And that's a good thing. May as well have something challenging to keep our focus on each other.

I highly recommend the book. And if you read it, go ahead and get your calculator out. You'll need it.

The Most Wonderful, Marvelous, Bad News!

I know it's been a long, hot summer. I know I've been lax lately on my blog upkeep. But I have some exciting news to share and it's better shared here where I have so many writers to exclaim and commisserate with me.

You know that partial manuscript requested by an agent earlier this summer? The one I've been waiting to hear back about with fingers crossed? Well, I heard back. She rejected me.

BUT wait! There's more!

It was the best rejection letter ever. She said my "writing is very good" and I "capture real life situations well," even explaining which part of a supporting character's story she liked especially. Best of all, she gave me usable criticism regarding what caused her to turn it down. Now, this is a woman with invaluable experience in the industry, a woman who has guided many authors into and through successful careers. This letter was a personal gold mine of information for me, and more than that, validation by someone who knows her stuff that I can write.

!!!!!!

Don't think I've gone completely off the deep end here. Would it have been better if she'd read the first three chapters and picked up the phone immediately to have me send the rest because she couldn't sleep until she knew what happened? Um, YEAH, that is the dream. She may not have been that excited by what I wrote, but she gave me hope that one day soon another agent WILL. Yep, I can write.

Hot diggity.

So for the foreseeable future my mission is to figure out how to write a good synopsis (so the next agent doesn't think the dead body turns the story in a completely different direction) and to take a good look at my heroine and see if I can make her a little more likeable, a little closer to the beginning. That doesn't sound too daunting, right? Well, except for the synopsis. That's a nail-biter.

Who's Snoopy-dancing with me?

Women Over Forty

Since my original posting of this blog a few weeks ago, I've been informed (thank you, Pamela) that the writer of the following piece is NOT Andy Rooney, but a syndicated columnist named Frank Kaiser. Please see the following snopes URL for full disclosure (not to mention the both hilarious and horrifying letter of similar tone written by Benjamin Franklin).

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/rooney2.asp

Massive disclaimer here: I DID NOT WRITE THIS. But I do love it and had to share. Though I'm not yet even close to my forties, I support this point of view wholeheartedly.

In case you missed it on 60 Minutes, this is what Andy Rooney thinks about women over 40:


As I grow in age, I value women over 40 most of all. Here are just a few reasons why:

A woman over 40 will never wake you in the middle of the night and ask, "What are you thinking?" She doesn't care what you think.

If a woman over 40 doesn't want to watch the game, she doesn't sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do, and it's usually more interesting.

Women over 40 are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it.

Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it's like to be unappreciated.

Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over 40.

Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 40 is far sexier than her younger counterpart.

Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell you right off if you are a jerk if you are acting like one. You don't ever have to wonder where you stand with her.

Yes, we praise women over 40 for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot woman over 40, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year old waitress.

Ladies, I apologize.

For all those men who say, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?", here's an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage. Why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage!

Somnambulism as French Drama

Hello all, and please help me welcome back my lost sarcastic self. I've missed her so! She arrived back in the form of a dream last night as I tossed and turned my way across the bed. (Rich is gone again. Sigh. Three and a half weeks now.)

In my dream I was a new mother again, terrifying in itself. (I'm not pregnant, Mom. Stop it.) But I dreamt that I woke up to the sound of my baby crying next to me from the crib. I stood and looked around for the crib but couldn't find it. The crying intensified and then changed into laughter, cackly insidious laughter that sent a chill down my spine and caused me to jump back into the bed looking for Rich. Who, of course, wasn't there.

I wrestled my way around the bed, shoving pillows aside, looking this way and that for my poor baby, finding nothing. I began to grow more and more panicky, knowing something was wrong, something was wrong, something was wrong. I turned on my bedside lamp and saw myself standing in front of me (wearing Rich's robe, for some reason. Was I perhaps standing in for him while he's gone, being my own voice of reason? Who knows?)

In a French accent I told myself to snap out of it. I don't have a baby anymore and I'm going to be tired all day long tomorrow if I don't stop having this dream. Oh, and let Marlo back in the room. She's out in the hall whining.

Huh.

At which point I woke up (kind of) and let Marlo back into the room where she hopped up on Rich's side of the bed and stretched out all the way to go back to sleep. My bed was wrecked, pillows in the floor and one corner of the sheet pulled off the mattress, so I fixed that and put myself back to bed, turning off the lamp and being grateful that my "baby" is a super-long dachshund.

I woke up tired this morning. After all that sleepwalking, I can't imagine why. But my sarcastic self is back with me again and I'm going to need her help with my manuscript revisions. My heroine is refusing to get happy.

But that's another story entirely.

Currently listening : Siamese Dream By Smashing Pumpkins Release date: 27 July, 1993

How Hot Was It?

So hot I gave up wearing mascara by day two.

So hot everyone was carrying cloths to wipe off the sweat.

So hot.... well, you get the idea. And if you don't, I'm too busy being thankful for air conditioning to illuminate you further on this point.

The church I used to attend in WV, before we moved so far away, sends its kids (from 2nd-12th grades) to camp every summer for a week. This year they were short on staff and since I hadn't gone up in several years, I was eager to volunteer.





This year's group was pretty small, only forty-seven kids in all and maybe twelve to fifteen counselors. On top of that, I knew most of the adults (though some of those adults were kids I used to counsel who grew up in my absense! Always a shock when that happens, isn't it?) but almost none of the kids knew who I was. Not that it made them shy around a camera.









So, did I get any work done last week? Um, no, not much. Did I have a nice, cool, relaxing vacation? (Hang on while the hysterical laughter abates) Not so much of that either. What I did have, by the end of the week anyway, was a deep love for these kids so many of whom were smart and funny and so caring of each other.

I realize this blog isn't of my typical voice, but it's what you get for rushing me (Phil!!!) and I think some of what I experienced this past week cannot be put into words.

Granted, the part where Kev and I left camp at the end and drove to Mom and Dad's where my brother came in from Nashville and all of us went and played laser tag and raced go-carts together? Yep, that part you could put into words, all right. That was so great that I'm scouting out laser tag facilities here in Raleigh so I can take visitors there instead of to all the historic sites! Who wants to visit Civil War battlegrounds and plantations anyway? Bah! Laser tag is where it's at!

Obviously I'm still loopy and catching up on sleep (and coolness... again, thank you Lord, for air conditioning). I need to get back to work, back into the swing of things in the current books. Book two revisions look promising. It's always funny how much you can surprise yourself with what you've written.


So I'll leave you now with a few more pictures and a promise of more and better blogging in the next few days. Big smooch to you all who kept looking in on me while I was away in the woods! Enjoy the photos. And check out the new ones in my photo section on the main page, too.




These are two girls from my cabin. One of them told me a long ghost story about a woman who hung herself from the ceiling fan in her kitchen during the big war of the mid-fifties. Someone found her hanging there and turned the ceiling fan on sending blood splattering all over the walls. All this to explain a fresh paint job in the uppermost cabin on the hill. I still haven't stopped laughing about all that. Nor could I bring myself to explain the relative newness of ceiling fans or to ask WHAT war in the mid-fifties. She's got a great career in theater ahead of her.






Wading in the river was a MUCH better idea than playing kickball on the last full day of camp.



Two of the sweetest kids you'll ever meet.




My new teenage son, soundly asleep on a ping-pong table. This is about what everyone looked like by then.

My Parents Have Joined a Cult

Maybe it's not really a cult. But they've definitely gone over to the dark side.

They've started listening to country music.

How this happened suddenly, right smack in the midst of their 50s, I do not know but I'm going to blame it on my brother and his move to Nashville.

Mom was actually trying to lure me into the cult by way of a song about ticks. Now, I don't like the great outdoors anyway. I certainly don't know what she was thinking trying to get me interested by way of a parasite.

I'm sure both my folks think I'm being snobbish for not liking country music and I have a sneaking suspicion that's what my sister-in-law thinks as well. She cannot fathom a person from WV who doesn't like country music. Well, pay attention as I set the record straight.

I can appreciate many genres of music and there is some country music I DO like. I love Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger album and also "The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty." There's something so wistful and melancholy about it, though I'll admit that I'd rather hear my father-in-law play and sing it.

I love Dolly Parton's "She's an Eagle," Sawyer Brown's "The Long Walk," "You're the One" by Dwight Yokum, "Anymore" by Travis Tritt, and most anything by the Dixie Chicks. Those girls have flair. And guts. But all those songs are deeply, deeply emotionally satisfying.

Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and "Walkin' After Midnight" are in permanent rotation in my singing-in-the-shower ouvre along with some Shania Twain and that one awesome song off the Pulp Fiction soundtrack called "Love is a Red Dress" by someone I forget. And which might not actually be a country song either, now that I think of it.

Johnny Cash is fabulous too, though I'll admit to loving his latter day covers of rock songs like "Hurt" much more than "A Boy Named Sue."

There are good songs in any genre if you care to look, or listen, for them. Though I'd gladly pummel Toby Keith to a pulp and then stomp his stupid hat for good measure. I'd even confess to being a big snob if liking country music means you must like Toby Keith. I hate that guy.

And it looks like that ends whatever goodwill I might have had today for the genre of country music. I know it's a highly debatable topic. Feel free to add your own thoughts!

Thank God for Dental Insurance

The boy has been up to his normal tricks. Actually, no tricks at all this time. He just spent the other day playing outside in the 100 + degree heat without drinking enough water and without coming in for lunch. When his grandparents took him out shopping he persuaded them to drop him off in Radio Shack at which point he walked in, blacked out and fainted, falling over a tv and breaking his two front teeth.


I don't actually have ANYTHING to say about this except it's weird how guys can't seem to keep their front teeth. My brother, my dad, my husband, HIS dad, my grandfather, my cousin and I'm sure many, many more have broken those specific body parts. What is that? Inner ear problem maybe? Whatever it is, I'm here to shill for Dental Insurance. It's a MUST. Without it this little incident would have ended up costing us thousands. Not to mention Kevin doing his very best Spike impersonation in the dentist's chair wouldn't have been nearly as funny for either of us.



So now his teeth are beautifully bonded and only waiting to see if they are going to die and need root canal work or hang on for dear life and NOT need to be crowned in a few years. I'm hanging on to the insurance either way.

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be 13 year old boys. Cowboys would be safer all around, I think.

Finally Out of the Closet

No, I'm not gay. I'm literally out of my closet.

I disappeared into the closet late yesterday afternoon and then again this morning, weeding out old clothes, pulling out the items "stored" there never to be used again. I now have a huge pile for Goodwill collection, and I'm considering putting Rich's Viagra t-shirt in since he's gone for a few days and won't miss it right away. That t-shirt was a joke gift for him but he loves to wear it. He says it's his softest shirt. Insert your own joke here.

After I'd terrorized the closet, I still had energy to burn so I started in on the vanity. Drawers of jewelry and make-up and hair products, oh my! You know how you come across make-up that you don't use and wonder why you bought it in the first place? This happened today and now I have on two different eyeliners and two different eyeshadows (none of which GO together), eyebrow pencil that looked good when I was blonde, and a lovely dark red wine lipstick which was the only piece I chose to keep.

So today has been cleansing, revitalizing even. Of course, what I'm really doing is stalling before I get to work on a deposition I have to type. I'd rather be working on the book, but bills come first, right?

(If someone can offer me a good excuse why I should work on the book before the paying job, I'd be grateful!!!)