Okay, I love music. I write to music. When I am exercising, music blaring in my ears, I create my characters and see them thrust into bizarre situations all set to music…and so when I actually write, music becomes intertwined in my characters lives. It will either be seen as really cool or really dumb…but it makes me happy. So, I discovered on the morning that the whole hurricane debacle started, a singer on VH1…Marc Broussard…his song called “Home.” It’s about him going back to Louisiana after being on the road–a real bluesy rock song that is the best thing I’ve heard in a long time. Marc is twenty-one or something, but has the voice of an…I don’t know what…but it’s hard to believe the voice you hear comes out of the guy you see. The song has kind of haunted me since the whole hurricane thing, but pick up his CD called Carencro–it’ll be well worth it.

In celebration for finishing round two of revisions, Bill and I went to see 40 year-old Virgin. This kind of movie makes me laugh…slapstick, mixed with heart-warming moments of self-realization or bonding with friends…I’m a sucker for that…something below the surface that I can’t identify, finds the utterly stupid, utterly hilarious…

So, for those of you looking for laugh out loud every minute movie experiences, go see 40 and then see Wedding Crashers….Oh was that one good. Maybe because I’m totally infatuated with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, not to mention the rest of the guys who are usually in their movies…sorry to expose myself this way…I have a Ph. D. does that make me seem less stupid, now???? Prob. not. More on reality tv and a new season of fantastic shows to watch…I have a Ph.D…I have a Ph.D. Sometimes I wonder if I had to get one to compensate for all the crappy tv I love so much…don’t hate me for this post…

1. Your husband will watch his step…(I know this won’t last forever, ladies)
2. Putting something down on “paper” often demystifies a problem.
3. It feels good when people respond to your problems and joys.
4. A record of your life–I am in love with history–family histories especially. (this could backfire as well, I realize)
5. It makes you feel as though you’re part of the larger world…love seeing comments from people everywhere.

Well, Bill read my Grumpy Husband post, laughed a little, and spent the last week pointing out all the things that fly in the face of my entry…I suppose I have to bite the bullet and blog when he does something great….or just okay….you decide which it is…

Okay, we just got our bathroom redone in record time–one week from demolish to ahhhh–I didn’t even get a chance to leave cranky renovation posts, because there were none to leave.

But the bathroom is miniscule and door opened in so that when you were on the pot, the door would be at your knees…if it were open…like it always is when you have kids who never leave your side…So Bill comes up with the idea of getting the guys to build in a pocket door!!!

Bravo Bill, it’s perfect. I feel like I died and went to a spa.

Then as we were looking for the shower curtain and rug, etc. for the bathroom, Bill eyed the perfect rug to pull in all the colors from the bedroom…that one doesn’t sound so great on paper…but he insisted it was equal to pulling me from raging flood waters…which he did do once when we were dating…He might just let me fend for myself next time.

So, there it is, for now…

Here I am, finally back from round two of my super-duper revision process! I haven’t slept well in two weeks, being jolted awake at exactly four am, not by the kids who have been doing that for the past four years, but by my characters–running through my mind as it searches for just the right way to weave in my subplot…It’s almost painful until I figure out exactly how I’m going to make the changes, but now, the calm has arrived. I’ve shaved 15,000 words, added a subplot, humor, and given one character just slightly more voice–enough to make you say–wow, I love her now!!!

Don’t mean to brag, just deleerit from lack of sleep…And lest you worry, my head will enlarge to the point I can’t safely enter and exit doorways…Don’t! For by the time this is sitting in my agent’s office for a week (It’ll go out at the end of next week–round 3) I’ll begin my spiral into self-asorbed fear that with all the changes I made, none of them were right…..

Details coming soon.

This list is total spur of the moment, tomorrow could yeild a completely different list…Give me yours….

1. war
2. natural disasters
3. multiple sclerosis
4. time–never enough
5. people without life skills and not enough help in acquiring them
6. power
7. Education system

Top Seven that Rock

1. music
2. time–I’m planning to live another 64 years…lots of room for everything.
3. people in education
4. human resiliency and opposable thumbs
5. tomorrow
6. my book (positive thinking…)
7. my family and friends…no one is luckier (me, not them)

Give it to me people–what’s on your list for the day?

I’m a sucker for chance, an opportunity, the hope that I could easily fall into an obscene amount of riches, simply by luck.

Lottery Tickets–I don’t usually buy them. But if I happen to glance in their direction and start thinking about the fact that the winning scratchoff ticket simply has to be amongst the pile I’m staring at, well I’ll buy one. Somebody has to win. I might even go on a lottery ticket bender…one a time for a few days. Not blowing the mortgage, but not very smart either. Unless I win. That would make me smart.

Publishers clearing house/surveys with $$$ attached–Yesterday I got a household survey in the mail. It was going right in the garbage until the bolded words on the back caught my eye–YOU COULD WIN AN EXTRA $500…Not an obscene amount of money, but enough to get my “Somebody has to win,” mentality kicking…Same with publisher’s clearing house…there are moments when I’m filling those out that I truly believe old Ed will be standing on porch during the Super Bowl…

Slot machines–my first encounter with slots was when I was 20, visiting my college roommate in her home town of St. Helena, CA. We spent a week in Lake Tahoe, where, get this, there were slot machines in GROCERY STORES. Underage? No matter, it always took a few pulls before someone asked me for ID. After they saw my glazed eyes and the way I defended “my machine,” against a bossy ninety-year-old woman they would leave me alone.

While swimming in crystal clear Lake Tahoe, we caught a glimpse of a money clip–bulging with bills. We could barely rescue the thing and open it fast enough–you can imagine the images filling my mind…Reality was eleven dollars…that’s it. To us it wasn’t a bad take. Something for nothing…but I still think of that now. If only it had been stuffed with hundreds of hundred dollar bills…

We also took a trip to Las Vegas where for the first time I was made aware you could cash your pay checks in the casino–I knew then I would never trust myself to live in LasVegas. I’d literally lose my house…

Now, with the way publishing goes, I almost view getting my book published as winning the lottery. So much chance involved…yet, SO much work getting the book to the point it could ever be considered for publication. But still, as I fantasize about hearing the words “We sold your book to _______ publishing,” I can’t help thinking it will feel as though I’ve won the lottery. And I can’t wait.

Well,

Summer is officially over and for the first time in years I’m sad to see it go. Summer used to be my favorite time of year. But with MS being exasperated by heat and having toddlers who couldn’t be occupied with “activities” or trusted to listen at the pool, I have looked at summer as a thin sliver of hell.

But this year, things were different. Beth and Jake were old enough to follow directions, learn to swim, and experience the awe inspiring long summer days filled with nothing but sun and exploration of their environment.

And it felt like that for me again. Sitting at the pool (Okay, I rarely sat) watching them enjoy the water, playing imaginative games, and tuckering themselves out, took me back to when I was a kid. That summer sensation was back–it had been lurking inside my skin since childhood ended.

Because Bill travels a ton and is always gone at dinner time, we would have dinner at the pool, heading home with just enough time to read books and snuggle the kids off to dreamland. These were good days.

Not that the pool didn’t introduce a plethora of political parenting issues, but what’s life without people to ruffle your feathers? Nothing like ten different parenting styles clashing in two feet of water. All in all, knowing there was a place for the kids to run and eat and swim, and for me to have mothers around going through the same things as me, made for the best summer I’ve had in a long, long time.