February 20th 2015 Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Good Morning! Funny story – as you know, Paulie, Dani & I are going up to Vermont this weekend to celebrate Lys’ birthday a week late. We are leaving before daybreak tomorrow and coming home Sunday night, so obviously, we need a place to stay Saturday night. So on Monday, I logged on to the Marriott website, selected the Burlington-Williston Fairfield Inn, where we usually stay, and booked our room. However, just as I finished the reservation, something wiggy happened with the computer.

When the confirmation of my reservation still had not arrived by yesterday, I called the hotel directly to confirm. Susan, the hotel’s manager picked up the phone. She laughed when she heard it was me, and said she saw on my Facebook page that I was coming up for the weekend. She was probably wondering why I hadn’t made my reservation yet, but I had, or at least I thought I had. It didn’t matter, Susan got everything straightened out, as she always does.

When we brought Lys up to school in January, there weren’t any rooms available at the Fairfield Inn, so I had to book at another Marriott up the road. It was nice, the people were nice, but it just wasn’t the same. I LOVE the staff at the Fairfield Inn. They make it feel like my home away from home. I’ve stayed there so much over the past two years, most of the staff knows me by name, and I theirs. Other than my issue with room keys (which happens everywhere I go), there are rarely any problems, and if by some freak chance there is a problem, they are on top of it like white on rice.

So, if you are ever up in the Burlington Vermont area, and find yourself in need of a hotel, I highly recommend the Fairfield Inn Burlington-Williston at 2844 St. George Road in Williston. It’s about fifteen minutes from Burlington. It’s right off of Route 89, and there are a ton of shops and restaurants all up and down Route 2A (St. George Road). The rooms are clean, the staff is amazing, there’s a pool (if you happen to be there during the tiny window when you can swim in VT), and they serve breakfast.

I told you I would tell you about yesterday’s photo challenge. My daughter, Dani Rose, took that photograph, and believe it or not, that’s her eye. I guess you could call it a self-portrait. Those eyelashes are real – they are so long you could practically braid them, and even though you cannot tell by the photo, her eyes are such a dark brown, they are almost black – a far cry from the light grey eyes she was born with (which lasted all of two weeks).

Initially I thought she would have blue eyes like her brother. PJ is the only one who has blue eyes, and I’m still a little baffled by that. My eyes are blue and Paulie’s eyes are hazel (½ blue, ½ brown). By my calculations, the gene pool for eyes should have been ¾ blue, ¼ brown, so how did only 1/3 of our children end up with blue eyes? I realize brown is more dominate, but still…

All three kids have different eye colors, each beautiful in their own right. PJ’s are that rich azure you can only compare to an August sky. Lys’ are a warm brandy with gold facets that have you picturing sitting by a roaring fire in a mountain cabin; and Dani’s are like a finely polished chestnut wood, deep, rich, mysterious.

Okay, enough of that. Today I have to get over to Costco to pick up Lys’ cake. When I’m finished, I’m hoping the temperature will have climbed to at least double digits, because I have to clean out the car. At the moment, it’s 3° and that’s without the wind chill. If it doesn’t warm up some, the heck with it, we’ll be driving in a messy car. It’s just too dang cold to be out there for any length of time.

Just so you know, we are leaving around 5:30 tomorrow morning, so there is very little chance I will be able to get a blog post done before I leave. However, I may be bringing my computer with me up to Vermont. I haven’t decided yet.

Alrighty, let me boogie. I hope you have fabulous day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge is:

Who turned off the heat?

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.

March 26th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

I’m having some serious issues shaking the cobwebs out this morning. My day started in a panic when I woke up at 6:45 because my alarm didn’t go off. (Dani’s bus comes at 6:46.) I ran into her room like a crazy lady yelling, “Get up! Get up! Get up!” I’m so proud of my teenaged daughter, who got up, got ready and got to school on time, and didn’t grumble once about having to rush around like an nut because mom overslept.

We were out the door and pulling out of the driveway by 6:59, and got to school at 7:08. Needless to say, I did not have time for a cup of coffee before we left, and even though I have had two already this morning, they don’t seem to be working. I don’t do it often, but I think today warrants a third cup.

Although I did not have time to wash the kitchen or bathroom floor, I did get the entire house straightened up before the survey people arrived yesterday. They were two lovely ladies, one of which was here from Brazil, and shocked me when she admitted she was thirty years old. I would have sworn she was a college student here doing an internship. Anyway, they stayed exactly an hour, asked all sorts of questions about the personal care products we use, and even took photos of some of them, then handed me a $100 Visa gift card and left.

Let me tell you, that was the easiest $100 I have ever made, and I have decided that since steak is on sale this week at ShopRite, and my family is coming over for dinner next Sunday, we will be grilling steak for dinner (yeah, I’ll have to freeze the steaks, but it will only be for a few days, so they’ll taste fine). So, I need to get thirteen steaks, thirteen nice sized baking potatoes, a few fresh crowns of broccoli, and I’m going to as my mother-in-law to make corn, since everyone loves her corn.

So all that’s left is my birthday cake, which I’ll pick up from Costco late next week, and everything will be done. Costco makes this layered chocolate trifle cake that is absolutely TO DIE FOR. It has layers of dark chocolate cake, dark chocolate mousse, light chocolate mousse, white chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache, and shavings of white and dark chocolate. It’s an orgasm for your mouth. It takes great restraint not to pick one up every time I go to Costco. Heck, one time I was craving it so much, I threw a party at my house so I had an excuse to purchase the cake. True story, LOL.

Since there are only five days left until April 1^st, AND on April 1^st I will be starting Camp NaNoWriMo again, AND will be working on Faerie Tale Queen, AND I will be posting a chapter every few days on Facebook so you can read along, AND since this is a continuation of November’s NaNoWriMo story, I will post three chapters every day on Facebook between now and April 1^st, so you can get caught up, or refresh your memory, and don’t have to hunt through all my old posts in order to find the story. (Yes, that sentence was an editing nightmare, but it served its purpose.) Please remember, the chapters posted are exactly as I have typed them, they have not been edited AT ALL, so there are bound to be MANY mistakes. If you’d like to point any out, that’s perfectly fine, and I don’t mind, but know I haven’t even reread the work yet, which is something I do before it goes to the editing phase. There are still holes which need to be filled, and I have to go back and tweak some things as the story unfolds. Okay, enough said, I’m sure you can figure it out.

I did manage to get the one editing piece off to its author yesterday, so today, it’s on to the next one. I’m currently on page 307 out of 630. That means I need to edit eighty-one pages a day. Now, that may not seem like a lot, but trust me, it is. Depending on how many edits there are per page, the average is about fifteen pages an hour. One saving grace on this one is, the author has been getting my edits in installments, so for this second half of the book, I can abbreviate my comments and he’ll know what I mean, or simply highlight something and not even have to leave a comment because he’ll understand.

On that note, I should get going since I need to be on page 388 before I can call it quits for the day. I hope y’all have a wonderful day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

That was the most bizarre combination I have ever seen…

I love mutts. I find they are a much more desirable pet than a high-strung, high-maintenance, pure bread. One of my mutts, Mitzi, was a combination of a Shepherd, a Sheltie, a Pomeranian, and a Corgi. She looked like we stuck a German Shepherd in the dryer and shrunk her. She was the sweetest and smartest dog ever, one I doubt I will ever stop missing. Now we have Colby, who is a Collie Golden mix. He is a gorgeous dog. He looks just like Lassie, but in varying shades of gold.

I also recently saw a puppy who was a mix between a Pomeranian and a Husky. Oh my goodness, talk about a beautiful dog. He was the size of a Pomeranian and had the same hair like a Pomeranian, but he was black and white like a Husky, with a Husky’s piercing blue eyes. I know I have said that after Colby’s gone (which won’t be for at least another ten – twelve years), that I didn’t want any more dogs, but after seeing that Pomeranian/Husky puppy, I would have made an exception.

Now, those are all instances of a mutt combination which has turned out incredibly well. There is one I remember quite distinctly that did not turn out as well. Baby was my mom’s best friend’s dog. Please don’t get me wrong, Baby was a very sweet dog, but she was the most bizarre combination I had ever seen. She had a snout, if you could call it that, like a pug, the tiny head of a wire haired terrier, the fur of a border collie and the body of, well, a potbellied pig. She was hideous looking, but extremely lovable. 

(true story - other than Colby, the pictures were pulled from the internet, and are not the actual dogs, but as close as I could get.)

Your Next Challenge is (I’m going to cheat and use one of the prompts from last night’s writing group):

Write a story about a Ghost and something Red (it can’t be blood).

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.