Kathleen Shoop - Author of the Last Letter
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Back for the moment

9 / 7 / 05

Sorry for the string of bad posts–I’m drowning in my revisions as I struggle to tighten things up and create a new small subplot…It’s coming along, but I’m in panic mode–If I don’t get through this–I’ll never be able to blog again–better to bear down and do it than drag it out…

Don’t forget to go to The Mommy Blog to help with donations…

Be back soon.

Kathie

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The Mommy Blog Hurricane Relief

9 / 5 / 05

Anyone interested in giving money to hurricane relief might want to look at what Mindi is doing at The Mommyblog…I know people are giving at lots of different places, but take a look.

More posts later…busy revising…must focus…must keep moving…

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Family photo in “About This Site”

9 / 4 / 05

Hey there everyone–I have a photo up for all to see–yes that’s me with the aforementioned “bob.” More to come.

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Yea Me! Revision Breakthrough

9 / 3 / 05

After four days of ruminating over how to implement the changes my agent wants to see, wasted time staring at the first page of my book like it was a priceless antique vase I was about to break, not being assured I could get the pieces back together again, I did it. I broke it.

Relatively small changes seem big to me when applying them over 400 pages, but there’s no cure for insecurity like plowing ahead as though I actually know what I’m doing. And in the end I do…only 330 pages left to go.

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Angry Housewife

9 / 2 / 05

I don’t want an angry bitter blog, but I can’t listen to FEMA man on television say the people in the N.O. convention center are eating two meals a day while NBC cameras illuminate the filth and desperation of people who have lost everything that makes them who they are.

I don’t like Bush, and I don’t want to read like an insane liberal Bush hater, but it is his responsibility to lead his country and solve this problem. He should have demanded airlines haul the poor masses out of the city before the hurricane and housed them at all the empty bases. “Eighty percent got out,” yeah, those with money and families beyond the borders of N.O. Thank God he got his last bike ride in to ensure for a little longer we have the healthiest president ever.

He should with some kind of passionate angst (the kind he is hopefully feeling) demand these babies and their parents are taken to safety. Demand the elderly are given what they need.
I don’t sense at all he identifies with the people who are begging for their lives.
And I think it has less to do with race than it does with poverty.
It must be too frightening or simply too difficult for him to imagine he could ever be in that position.
If NBC can get in there and family members who are looking for their relations can get there, then there is no excuse.
And I don’t care that Bush called the way this is going “unacceptable,” he’s more fired up about steroids than he is about this…
Congress moved with lightening speed when the Terry Shiavo (sp?) stuff was gong on, but now they think getting aid to these people by Sunday is somehow “fine.”

I couldn’t be more disgusted. They are not “On Top” of anything except, I’m sure, W’s next planned hiatus.

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Hair or There?

9 / 1 / 05

That is the question–the non-essential, non-life threatening I don’t have to steal diapers and formula for my dehydrated babies question…Should I cut my hair?

I must fess up. Since I’ve taken panty inventory and discovered purchasing a three pack in the Giant Eagle is indeed as odd as I feared (thanks fellow housewives), I’ve begun to fix my gaze on all aspects of my “presentation.”

Yeah, I know looks don’t matter. Biggest lie ever told. Granted, judging people as valuable or not, good or bad etc. based on looks is not fair or right. However, I think taking care of yourself can say a lot about a person–how they’re feeling about life.

So I’ll say it, for two years I’ve felt like crap.
And my hair–is evidence of it–glaring at me like a raging mass of snakes. It’s not that bad, but I haven’t had a hair cut in two years!!!
I did cut some layers into my grown out bob a month ago.
That doesn’t really count.

After getting out of the hospital with my first Multiple Sclerosis flare-up, I got my hair cut.
And haven’t since.
For the first year, every day was a struggle punctuated by simple joys of family and writing. But as far as being the old me, my formerly active, thin, cute hair most of the time self…It wasn’t happening.

I’m finally getting back to feeling like myself (after countless false starts) and realize I need a haircut.
My best “do” is the bob, which I think can only return to once I lose the weight I gained…That’s right fellow housewives, I didn’t gain baby weight, I gained MS weight.

And now it must go–together with the hair…

So excuse my occasional weight update posts.
I know they are in some ways superficial,
but for me will mean so much more.

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Bush and his silly dog…bike ride…month long vacation….I can’t take it.

9 / 1 / 05

Hey ladies,

I banned TV coverage of Katrina today.
My friend Michele and I were glued to it yesterday.
It left me saddened…
It should.
But a break from the viewing in lieu of some prayers is a fair trade-off, yes?
Not that the poor souls in LA can take a break…
So, what can I do?
I will donate money, but what else?
I see on other blogs all these people offering their homes…
That’s amazing, but I can’t help being a little suspicious of the offers…
that’s cynical and crappy of me,
If ever there was a reason for Federal gov. intervention, this is it.
Come on, get these people to all the bases that are supposed to close this year.
Bush and his silly dog…bike ride…month long vacation….I can’t take it. There must be something else we mothers can do. Clearly it can’t be left to the most powerful man in the world. (sorry to my conservative friends, but come on.)

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Assertive Problem Solving

8 / 31 / 05

I’m sure this will come as no great shakes for most moms out there, but I finally reached the end of my patience for getting no sleep every night and came up with a plan…got the kids new “character” pillow cases, hauled out Jake’s safety bed rail so to create a fort-like sleeping experience and announced that each one must stay in bed, no questions asked. They both nodded as though they understood perfectly what I was ordering them to do…we’ll see…deep in the night..think positive Kathie, think positive.
Balancing out my lack of sleep and complaints about life’s miniscule aggravations is the staggering Hurricane situation…all those babies and children and their horrified parents. Of course they’re running out of stores gripping all the pampers they can get their hands on. This is surprising?

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Lost in a sea of…

8 / 30 / 05

urine. Two nights in a row I had to clean up accidents in the middle of the night. The first night was Jake, we let him have too much water before bed…he had been swimming all day in the hot sun and we figured his body would absorb it. Wrong.

Last night when he made his nightly pilgrimage into our bedroom, I gave him a detour to the bathroom and thought the problem was solved. It was for him. But around midnight Beth padded in saying she was wet. She isn’t potty trained so that was no biggie, but upon investigation, it looked as though the diaper had failed. She must have rolled over in some funky way that left a gap between her body and the diaper because the diaper was barely full and the bed was puddled…

This wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t woken up every couple of hours by one of them demanding I make an appearance in their bedroom or showing up in ours. I scurry to the screaming child’s room because if one of them wakes up the other…By the third time that I’m awoken I can’t get back to sleep.

My neurologist told me the best thing I can do for MS is get a lot of rest…Don’t see it happening. Fellow mothers, houswives, a little help? How can I get these kids to stay asleep?

Kathie

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My thoughts and prayers are with…

8 / 29 / 05

the folks in Louisiana and surrounding areas. Mother nature is indeed a stunning force that always causes me to question whether I’m giving enough to the world at large because in the end life is so short.
For now, our kids come first, what better gift to the world than compassionate, smart people, but then I think of all the things Bill and I used to do to help people before the kids were born and it brings me down.
They were all small things, working directly with a few families and people, but we saw the results of our interactions on their faces and in their homes. We still do what we can, but it’s not the same. I know someday, when the kids are little older we can do more…til then…

I took a quiz that discerned the type of sense of humor I have.
According to the test, I am slayed by clean, spontaneous, dark humor. Exactly.
According to my sister-in-law, I’m just a jerk.
Not her words and not what she means exactly…but my siblings, father and grandmother find nothing funnier than a fall down some steps,
we don’t mean to laugh, it simply, comes.
Said sister-in-law thinks justice will only be served if one of us meets our demise in some type of “funny” falling/tripping/ embarrassing accident. She may get her wish as my having multiple sclerosis causes my leg
to drag unexpectedly when running…I have yet to see someone busting a gut from seeing me fall, but I always laugh, after I check for injuries that is. I never can erase the image of what I must have looked like out of my mind.

This brings me to last nights television viewing: Entourage and The Comeback. Entourage was okay, but because it was so great all season, it’s held to an incredibly high standard…so last night it was only okay. Jeremy Piven rocks–no one funnier on TV, but some of the humor is slipping where “the boys” are concerned. Bag the Mandy Moore brooding thing for the love of God, please.

The Comeback is getting better and better or it’s simply sinking into my psyche, like a song you can’t get out of your mind. It made me laugh out loud a few times, but most notably the end when Valerie socked the Grande Obnoxious Pauly G. in the belly causing him to throw up the entire pizza he wolfed down, which in turn made Valerie puke. It makes me laugh even now. Good stuff. At least my humor is clean…I have that…

So how does all this fit with the fact I can’t pass a homeless person on the street without giving him money, have housed homeless folks under my front porch, bought really bad, but very doted upon artwork from the homeless? Could it be the universe compelling me to make up for laughing at the guy who took a spill with five bags of groceries in his arms. In front of the girl he was on a first date with… Maybe I am a jerk.

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