Oh my gosh, I miss my blog and I hope I haven’t turned away any of the readers I have come to know and love….but Beth was admitted to the hospital because she stuck a bead up her nose.

And it got lost somewhere in her body. They weren’t sure where it was so she had what amounts to surgery to make sure the bead wasn’t in her lungs. It wasn’t.

This was good, but boy it made for a long thirty six hours and all the recovery time.

No sleep on those crazy cots in the hospital. But she was a trooper. I hate to compare my kids and would be horrified to know that I’m pigeon-holing them, but if it had been Jake in the hospital, I might be dead from stress alone. Beth is so easy going it’s almost sick…she is so easily calmed. Jake is not…no matter what the situation…believe me, he has his great points without a doubt, but easily being soothed is not one of them….anyway all is well, now.

Jill! Ms, Shiela and Mimi also garnered some votes, but I think the image of Jill’s lady, flying down the hill while nude, put her story over the top….Email me with your address, Jill so I can send your prize…Thanks for participating everyone…another contest will follow soon.

Quietly though… as you can see by the example below. I read this in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and this and a group of other letters were culled from nola.com

William Rhodes wrote, “We had worked and paid our house notes; the property next door we bought as income property for our old age. Now, I’m 60, and because I had no insurance, I Have NOTHING to pass on to my children except the knowledge of “How to Unclog Sewer and Drains.” Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, will you please keep us from being homeless; or if it is Your Will, take me from this world, so at least my wife will have my $30,000 life insurance, and maybe they can use that as a down payment for a little home they can call their own. I feel so sad.”

It is stunning to think that there are roughly a million people displaced and destroyed, yet they’re already fading into the background of our minds. I am so glad this (and other excerpts) was in the paper this morning. To have nothing, in the sense that this man has nothing, is simply unfathomable on an emotional level. I feel sad. This guy’s devastated and from where I’m sitting, broken. But who am I to think he must feel worse than simply “sad.” I’m sitting in my kitchen, sipping coffee from my favorite mug while Beth and Jake play dinosaurs…there is nothing for me to do beyond giving money and for that I feel disgusting.

So, I’ve been made aware that some men have traversed the site and gone away, unheard because of my little hostess blurb…
So, officially this site is and actually has been open to men.
I’d love to hear their perspective of life on the home-front…
Really I want to know…

The other reason today is Man Monday is due to my ride on the turnpike to visit my writing gurus at fatplum.com.
There I was headed up the PA turnpike when a white pick-up truck buzzed by and settled in the lane in front of me…
no biggie there, except, riding in the back were two men.
One had pulled his hood over his face and pulled the hood string so nothing but his hands were visible.
The other guy was sincerely and objectively the cutest guy in America–
a blonder, shorter haired Matt McConehey (wrong spelling I know).
He sat, arms crossed, wind whipping through his sun-tinged hair.
I could tell from a safe space cushion, at 65 MPH his eyes were piercing blue…
no really,…
all I could think was whatever joker was manning the vehicle, was going to wreck and catapult the two egg-heads in the back into Ohio.

Anyone who is familiar with the Pennsylvania turnpike can picture it.
Jersey barriers narrowing the lanes to thin ribbons…
huge trucks blowing by, jack-asses on motor cycles darting in and out of traffic…
and I’m behind the cutest guy in America, sure he was about to meet his demise…
I would have to rescue him from the rubble, explain to his parents what happened…
It would be a complete tragedy on so many levels…

These two guys sitting on something which had them perched high above the cab behind them, begging to die. If it were me, I’d be plastered to the floor, spread eagle spouting the Our Father until we came to a stop. Who were these two guys flipping off destiny with such gusto? Maybe he wasn’t the cutest guy in the world…
not the smartest, for sure.

As we cruised into the toll booth, I finally got my close-up…
Wedding ring…
And confirmed, cutest guy in America…not the kind you ever see in Pittsburgh…
As they turned left and I went right all I could think about was his wife…married to the cutest guy in America…soon to be strewn across the highway…

Give me your stories folks…don’t hold back!

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.