Time flies
My little girl was about 7 or 8, I think, in this picture.
Today my darling little girl started her last semester in college. In about months, she will have her BA in English Lit, and God willing, will have a job working in publishing. I’m so proud of her.
Here she is at The Londoner celebrating her 22nd birthday.
Topics: Crazy life stuff, Family, kids | No Comments »
Sword & Illusion sold!
I don’t know if I can say sold really because the publisher doesn’t pay advances, but earlier this week, Steve and I signed a contract with Astraea Press (www.astraeapress.com) for the publication of Sword & Illusion! The editor said her reader couldn’t put it down and even said it was better than The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings!
I am sure that’s a little over the top, but at least she liked it!
I’m so excited about this!
I’ll keep you updated as more information becomes available.
Topics: Books, Writing | No Comments »
More smiles from my son.
Going over Noah’s backpack, I see he got marked down in conduct for saying, “What the heck” in class. I asked him why he said it, and he said:
“Trinity was looming over me and I said, ‘What the heck?’”
“She was looming??” He got mad at me and said, “You don’t get it.”
“No, I do and I am so proud of you for knowing the word ‘looming’ and using it correctly.”
He’s nine and said, “She was looming.” Who cares about getting marked down in conduct when my little boy with Central Auditory Processing Disorder used the word looming correctly?
——
Later, we were getting in the car to head out to school. Noah has his own planet, Treenix, and has a made up language, Foo Language, that the people on Treenix speak. It tends to be a lot of baby talk type sounds – merp, ferb, meep, barm – stuff like that.
As we were getting in the car, he said, “Marmer harmer. That means, okay, Mommy.”
I said, “How do you say Mommy in Foo Language?”\
“Harmer. Daddy is Darmer.”
“Why does he get a D and I get an H? Is it ‘harmer’ because I’m mean?”
“There’s actually a G in it but it’s silent.”
——————
So, see why I’m laughing today?? 
Topics: Crazy life stuff, kids | No Comments »
Adventures of a SHE in growth
I am in growth!
I have known about the Sidetracked Home Executives since about 1993 or 94, when my husband was in graduate school and my daughter was very young. I heard them on Focus on the Family and they spoke to me.
Anyway, I have been “in the box” off and on for years. I spent a lot of time doing Flylady which is kind of an offshoot of the SHE system. I met a lot of wonderful Flylady friends, some of whom I still keep in touch with, but I honestly feel the box system works better for me.
It’s easier to carry the 3×5 cards around from room to room to know what to do next rather than a big binder, and I think it’s easier to add or take something away from the box, too.
Anyway, I bought myself a big card file and set things up from the Happiness File, another book by the authors of the Sidetracked Home Executives which is like my get organized bible.
With Christmas come and gone, I decided that Dec. 26 would be my New Year and I would get back on track with Weight Watchers and my home.
I searched all over for my box and my organization books. Yes, I get the irony of not being able to find the box and books that help keep me organized. Finally, I found them on the floor next to my husband’s chair. He’d been watching me go through, literally, every drawer and shelf in the house trying to figure out where these things went. See, about a month or so ago, I had planned to get back in the box and i knew exactly where I had done that planning – on my side of the sofa/recliner he sits in. Everything got moved for Christmas and I knew the stuff had to be nearby. He must have moved them off his end table to the floor!
So, I spent a good chunk of yesterday figuring everything out again and planning my days/weeks/months. I knew that today would be a half cleaning day and I would do all my before bed stuff so we’d be ready for today.
THEN:
All the drains in the house backed up. It was pouring outside and we have a huge, lovely live oak tree outside our front door and we thought we’d handled the root problem, especially since we had a “weed” tree (I don’t know what it was the but arborist said no one actually plants those trees) taken out of the yard, too.
Guess not.
We quickly packed up all of the stuff we would need and headed to the in-laws’ house to spend the night since we couldn’t flush anything.
So, now Roto=Rooter guy’s been here and we’re back. But my card file system is already out of whack as today was supposed to be a cleaning day and Steve said we needed to run to the store to get cleaner as the toilets backed up into the tubs.
I didn’t get home until after 10 am which messed up my morning plans. However, the system is new-ish to us and this happens every time I try to get back in the box. Not the drains but something pops up to throw me off the system.
I figure I’ll do what I can card-wise today and just keep going. It’ll be better than it was, if not perfect. Flylady says that you’re never behind, you just jump in where you are. She also says even housework done imperfectly blesses your family.
I will keep going.
Topics: Family, Flylady, In the Box, organization, Personal, SHE | No Comments »
As 2011 Comes to a Close
Here is my modern take on the annual Christmas letter. This will end up on Facebook where I “live” and most of my friends and family are there, or at least their kids are so it is my hope that everyone who needs to will see this.
What can I say about 2011? It was a pretty good year in a lot of ways, but as years go, it had its ups and downs.
Noah started the year preparing to take his First Communion and playing basketball with a team at the YMCA. Juliette was starting her second semester as a junior in college and beginning to stress about getting a summer internship.
Steve and I were continuing our same jobs, he working for CCT and worrying, at least at the beginning of the year, whether he would have a job by the end of the year, with budget cuts at the university. I was, and continue to be, still working as Mom and CEO of the Brandt family, as well as writing fantasy novels.
Noah moved from basketball to soccer, still at the Y, and we began to notice that he wasn’t as competitive as the other kids. He was content to have fun and play, but winning wasn’t as important to him. He joined another basketball team in the summer, and while we loved his coach who took great pains to explain the plays and the goals of the team, even going so far as to design a play that worked to Noah’s strengths, passing and blocking, after that “season” finished, we decided not to sign him up again for a team sport. His non-competitive, easily distractable nature seems to lend itself to less athletic pursuits.
In March, Steve and I attended a writes’ conference in Houma, LA, where we each pitched our latest books to an agent. She told me to try to cut 35,000 words from my book and contact her then.
I cut 29,000 and sent her an email in August. To my surprise and delight, she remembered me but said she was much busier than she expected. She suggested I try to find other representation and if that was unsuccessful, to contact her again in December. I did, it was and I will be sending her another email by the end of the year.
Steve decided not to contact her again because he feels his book needs more work that he has time for at the moment.
On a side note, our friend Jo Templeton also pitched to the same agent at the same conference and while she, too, was unsuccessful in getting representation, the agent’s words helped her plot the second and third books in her series and her first one was picked up by Crescent Moon Press, release date to be announced.
Speaking of Crescent Moon, I took a job with them as content editor. At the moment, I have three books I’m working on, but it looks like all three will be finished, or my part, anyway, soon, and I hope to see them released in 2012.
Noah took his First Communion on May 15.
Juliette started a book review blog, Paperbacks and Frosting, and while she didn’t get a summer internship, she is now finishing up one she got for the Fall Semester, with Paige Wheeler at Folio Lit.
Noah went to soccer camp this summer again, and took swimming lessons.
We did not go on a family vacation due to timing issues and conflicts in scheduling, and all of us have decided we can’t let that happen again. We need to take some time off!
Noah, Juliette and I did Vacation Bible School again this year, and as always, we loved it and it was exhausting! Next summer will be interesting as the school is undergoing major remodeling and it will probably interfere with VBS, as far as space and ease of movement throughout the school/church campus.
In August, my sister-in-law Elizabeth and I met up in Nashville for five days before school started. It was a lot of fun and we saw lots of touristy things and even went to a show at the Grand Ole Opry. We’re considering making this trip an annual event, although the venue will change.
Steve traveled a lot this year, more than usual as he has been given more and more responsibility as his seniority at CCT increases and because some people left due to the anticipated budget cuts which didn’t happen as expected. He went to Seattle twice and several other places this year.
At the beginning of October, my in-laws took us all to Shreveport to the Red River Revel, a big art fair. It was a lot of fun and we spent a little too much money, but we’re hoping to go back next year.
Thanksgiving was held our our house this year after two years of spending it in a condo in Orlando. I think just this week we finished all the turkey leftovers!
Our Christmas tree is up and all the presents have been bought!
I hope your 2011 was a good one and that 2012 will bring you all you desire, but most of all, I hope you receive all you need to become the person God created you to be. Some of those gift may be in the form of trials. We know that gold is refined in fire, and that the cross comes before the crown. May prayer for you all is that you receive joy and happiness and love but most of all perseverance and strength.
You are all my friends, but more than that, you are a soul God loves and Jesus died for. You are more precious than gold and were created in the image of our God.
For that fact alone, I love you. Not for what you may do or what you have done. Not for who you were or who you may become.
You. Just you. You are loved!
Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year to all!
Topics: Christianity, Christmas, Family, Friends | No Comments »
Define slavery
This morning, after breakfast, my husband told Noah to put his breakfast dishes in the dishwasher.
Noah, in typically dramatic fashion, said, “I’m just your slave.”
Steve said, “You’re my slave? Because you have to put your dishes in the dishwasher? You need to understand slavery and what it really was.”
Noah is a history geek. He doesn’t understand history, but he knows a lot of stuff – dates and things.
Noah: Oh, I know. Abraham Lincoln ended it.
Steve: Yes. There were more people than just him, but yes. Let’s talk about these dishes. Who ate breakfast off of them?
Noah: I did.
Steve: Slavery isn’t about taking care of dishes you ate off of. Who does the laundry in this house?
Noah: I help.
Steve: You help Mommy sometimes, but who does the laundry? Who makes dinner?
Noah: You guys.
Steve: So I guess we’re YOUR slaves.
Topics: Family, The Boy | No Comments »
What keeps me from writing….
…when it’s not National Novel Writing Month, which I won, by the way!
I actually got to over 50,000 words on Tuesday (thank you, Rowdy Girls), and felt miserable yesterday with what I think is a sinus thing as I had a headache for three days.
Anyway, I had a brief doctor’s appointment this morning and headed off to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. Oh, I did get about two pages written in the waiting room of the doctor’s office where I found a convenient outlet, so yay!!
I got some gifts at the mall and came home by way of our local Target to get wrapping paper and some other gifty/Christmas-y stuff.
Tangent – What’s with the Justin Beiber wrapping paper and ornaments???? Seriously???
I get Toy Story, Thomas the Tank Engine, even Sponge Bob. Those are kid things and cute, for the most part.
But Beiber??? And there was blue Beiber paper that said Happy Holidays??
I just don’t get it. I don’t get the pink, orange, blue and teal ornaments, either nor the glittery fish ornaments in those colors, but whatever….
Anyway, I went to the checkout and chatted merrily with a wonderfully friendly woman, and it was looking to be a fabulous day.
Until I ran my RedCard through.
We got an email a while back saying we were late a payment on the RedCard. I didn’t see how that could be as I pay every bill when it comes in, but when I paid bills two weeks ago, I sent in the full amount and thought no more about it until today.
I came home, called Target and found out that they haven’t gotten ANY of our payments!!!
Six months ago, we had this issue with payments for the RedCard were going to my husband’s old Target Visa card. That was settled easily, and I changed the bill payment record with our online banking to the RedCard number.
Turns out I typed an 8 where there should have been a 9.
That’s an invalid number and our bank should have been redepositing the payments because Target should have been bouncing the checks, but that hasn’t happened at all.
Now it’s only three months worth of payments but it is enough to damage our credit rating.
After I talked with a nice Target woman on the phone and went through the online banking screens and discovered that the money was not put back in our account, another woman came on the phone and said she had to talk to Steve. His name is on the card, he’s the primary account holder and he needed to just tell her that he’s aware of all this.
I guess we have to find out where the money went – who’s been cashing these checks and get our money back and our account dealt with.
That’s why I didn’t come home and dive right back into The Pigsty Princess!
Topics: Crazy life stuff, Writing | No Comments »
Readers, Rowdy Girls, and If Nora can do it…
I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve done it before, but this year I’m very excited because I took the time to plot out a book beforehand, mostly. I had about 3/4 of it plotted before I started writing on November 2.
(November first is a Holy Day of obligation for the Catholic Church and I don’t write on Holy Days or Sundays – those are days of rest.)
When I’ve done this in other years, I ended up “winning” (having 50,000+ words at the end of the month), but I didn’t end up with a book or even something that could be edited into a book. This year, I really think I can finish this and it will be a “real” book.
Because of my work with Crescent Moon Press, I had to miss a few days of my own writing, but today I’m only about 11,000 words from winning.
About a week or so ago, I read an article in the London Guardian (I think) that someone posted on Facebook. It was about Nora Roberts. I have to assume that if you are here, you know who she is, but for those few who always wander in looking for Doctor Who stuff, I’ll just say she is the Queen of the Romance Novel.
She’s super prolific and her fans are as fanatical as they come. I’ve been to several conferences in New Jersey that she attended back in the 90s, but I rarely stood in line to get her to sign a book because I always figured there were other authors just as worthy without the lines. I have this “Pie in the Sky,” “Pay it Forward” attitude that if I buy your book today, maybe you’ll buy mine when it comes out.
Anyway, I know lots of people love Nora, but I was always prepared to believe she was a prima donna or something. There are lots of reasons for this, which don’t matter now.
The point is that I read that she writes every day, all day, and something clicked in my head. I need to focus more on getting lots of words written every day.
This week, Thanksgiving week, my husband took the week off. He’s doing NaNo, too, and Monday we spent the whole day together. Our son had the week off, too, and he’d spent Sunday night with his grandparents. Steve and I went out to breakfast, then to lunch and sat together on our sofa and wrote all day. (We wrote in the coffee shop, too.)
I wrote over 6,000 words that day!
I think in terms of pages and that’s over 24 pages. A definite record for me.
The next day, Steve went to work because he had to teach a class, but even doing some laundry and cleaning the kitchen and going to the chiropractor, I wrote about 5,000 words – (approx. 20 pages). I proved that I could do this!
So I’m so excited about my new found productivity.
My critique group, The Rowdy Girls, has met a few times to just write. They were here last night and we worked for about four hours, just writing. Okay some talking, laughing and drinking wine, but I did end the day with 5,566 words written.
Heartla met today and we wrote for an hour.
After the meeting I had to run to Walgreens to get a Rx filled for my son. I had to wait, and fortunately there is an outlet near the chairs so I pulled out my computer, plugged her in and wrote.
When the prescription was done, the clerk apologized and asked if I’d just gotten all set up. I said no.
“I’m a writer so I try to get new stuff written whenever I can,” I said.
“I understand,” she said. “I’m a reader.”
I immediately pulled out my card and handed it to her and told her about our Readers’ Luncheon. You never know where you might find a new reader.
I hope she stops by here and says hello if she does. She made me smile today and gave me more motivation to get new words written!
Have a great day everyone, and please say hello if you stop by!
Topics: Friends, reading, romance, Rowdy Girls, Writing | No Comments »
Is Facebook so bad?
Recently, I had the good fortune to reconnect with two of my cousins on my father’s side through a group on Facebook for people with Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD). This is the disease that is on my father’s side of the family and which is the reason I had my transplant ten years ago.
I actually got a friend request from a woman whose name I didn’t recognize, but I figured she was a writer as a lot of my Facebook friends are writers. When I clicked on her page I saw her maiden name which is the same as mine and that she had, among her friends, a man with the same name as another of my cousins.
Before I had a chance to send her a message to ask if we were indeed related, I got a note from her saying she found me through the PKD group. It turns out she has a page on Facebook searching for a kidney donor as her PKD has worsened.
I thought this was such an exciting thing (Finding her and seeing that she’s taking a non-conventional route to finding a donor) that I sent a note to all my writing groups, sharing this information.
My email program must have a glitch because apparently, although I sent this about 15 days ago, people are just now responding and I’ve gotten some surprising comments.
In one group, the discussion quickly turned into a “rant” about how Facebook is terrible because of all the private information that is now available to anyone and how the world is all so “social” that real live, face to face, interactions are dying.
I started to write a response because I think some of that is wrong and some is true but not the fault of Facebook or even the Internet itself, but I decided that would serve no purpose. Instead, I decided to write a blog post instead.
Periodically, I find some of my friends on Facebook freaking out because “people can find your phone number” so easily. I’m not totally sure why this is so bad, but I guess these same people don’t remember that even though no one I know uses one anymore, phone books are still printed and they are specifically designed to allow people to find your phone number.
It used to be a thing. If you wanted to talk to someone to invite them out or give them information or just chat, you’d look up their name in the phone book and voila, there was their number! Plain as day, right in print!
How did we ever manage to avoid stalkers? And you know what, your address was right there, too!
Crazy.
Another criticism I’ve read of the Internet and Facebook in particular is that we’ve lost the ability to have face to face relationships because we’re living our lives virtually.
Well, I don’t have any scientific data on this, but personally, I don’t see how we can “live our lives virtually” for real. Most of us still have to leave our houses to go to work or to school, and we have to leave to do many things that are just part of life. I actually feel like I spend most of my time running errands when I’d rather be at home writing. The Internet/Facebook hasn’t changed the way I get groceries or pick up my prescriptions or go to the dentist. And I have to deal with people in all those arenas, face to face. Facebook hasn’t changed that.
However, something it has done is given me friends, true and real friends, in far away places. For instance, right now, I have a friend living in the Northeast who I met through a group of romance authors who were formerly in the military. She and I have shared our weight loss struggles and she sent me a message, through Facebook, that I inspired her to join Weight Watchers and we’ve been supporting and encouraging one another through messages back and forth.
I have another friend that I met in 2006 when I went to the RWA National Conference. She wishes she lived in France but she really lives in the Midwest. We’ve chatted about a lot of things and interests we share through Facebook and I don’t think we’d be this close if it weren’t for the Internet.
I’ve reconnected with family members spread far and wide, as well as high school and college friends. I’ve listened online to a radio station in Harrisburg, PA online because one of my dear college friends did the traffic in the mornings.
I don’t worry about stalkers, which seems to be a big concern with other people in regard to the amount of information and photos that go online. Facebook, for me, is a kind of backup for all my photos and scrapbook pages.
I understand there are weirdos out there who want to look at pictures of kids for sick reasons, but I don’t think it’s any riskier to put pictures of my kids out there for family and friends to see than it is to let them actually be outside. There have been sickos throughout time. Facebook didn’t create them. Any guy with a camera could take his own pictures of anyone’s kid if he really wanted to. I would rather that my friends could see how cute my kid is than worry.
Someone said that because of how easy and social the Internet is, people have forgotten how to write letters.
Nonsense.
I have moved five times since I got married and every time, I’d cry in my friends’ arms and they’d promise to write. I would get to my new home and be horribly lonely for my friends back home and write letters (this was back in the late 80s/early 90s – no easily accessible Internet) to the friends back home with my new address. I can count, 25 years later, the number of letters I received in reply on the fingers of one hand.
The Internet didn’t kill letter writing. Among most people, it was never quite as alive as those who are nostalgic believe. My mother was a great letter writer, and she would write me twice a week for years, until cell phones made it easier to call and postage kept going up and up. When I was young and in school, I wrote letters. Lots of letters, but rarely did I receive anything in reply, even from boys I was dating over summer vacation.
Some people just would never write letters, even without Facebook.
I realize that some people will never accept social networking, and that’s fine. For me, though, I always hoped the Internet would be a place to meet people and that’s what Facebook is.
Like everything, it can be abused and a few bad apples can spoil it. I just don’t think they are the majority and I don’t think any technology is inherently bad.
I welcome your thoughts.
Topics: Friends, Personal, RomVets | 1 Comment »
Motivation returns
was down .8 this week, but while that’s good, considering I didn’t track anything last week, that’s not what’s on my mind right now. My husband asked me an insightful question. He knows I’m not where I want to be and this weekend I was very down on myself. This was the year I was supposed to make goal (on Weight Watchers and a couple of other things in my life) and at the end of October, I don’t feel any closer.
He asked me where I was a year ago. I love that WW now puts the weight on our page automatically so I don’t have to remember to do it. I looked up where I was at the weigh in at this time last year and I was .2 pounds heavier. It’s not a lot but it’s something, darn it!!
I started watching Biggest Loser again. I watch it on Hulu.com as we don’t have cable and I’m behind everyone else. However, watching those people always motivates me.
I stopped going to the gym when my sciatica started acting up and I can’t run or do any jumping stuff so the classes I liked to go go are out. I started using my Wii for exercise, but lately all I do is Walk it Out, which, while it’s a good “game” and I love it, I know it’s not challenging me. I don’t even get too tired doing it anymore. So, I asked my loving, supportive husband if he’d go to the gym with me tomorrow night to make sure I do something. He said he’d watch our son and let me go so we didn’t have to send him to the grandparents. Also, it’ll give my husband a chance to do some writing.
I even put this on the calender. I’m going to do it!
There are 8 weeks left in 2011. I can’t get to goal (unless some miracle occurs and I lose more than I generally do every week), but I can get closer. If I lose a pound a week, I would be closer than I’ve ever been!!!
I’m going to try. I feel so psyched about this. I just hope this feeling lasts!
Topics: weight loss | No Comments »
