March 12th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

For the first time since my daughter started going to college in Vermont, I’m a wee bit concerned. Okay, I’m a mom; I’m a whole lot concerned. Snow started up there early this morning and it’s not supposed to stop until six tomorrow night. Between four this afternoon and seven tonight, they are supposed to get a foot of snow. Yeah, do the math, that’s four inches an hour. When all is said and done, they may end up with around two feet of snow. Holy Moses!

I can’t remember, but I’m hoping she doesn’t have a late class on Wednesdays. They have already cancelled classes once this year because of the weather, so hopefully they will do the same today, and possibly tomorrow. True she only has a few hundred yards to get to just about anywhere on campus from her dorm, but in a blizzard, a few hundred yards might as well be a few hundred miles. I hope she calls today to let me know how she’s doing.

So, last night’s speaking engagement went well…I guess. It was a little strange speaking to a group when my mom, my mother-in-law and three other ladies who have known me since I was a teenager were in the audience. I talked for about twenty minutes or so and answered questions about writing and publishing, and how I was still learning all the ins and outs of this insane profession.

Based on listening to what the ladies were saying, I was able to determine a good many of them also enjoyed reading mystery novels as well as romance novels; so I was able to give my friend, Linda Rawlins’ books a plug too. I was happy to see them all right down the titles of her three books right along with my books. I know I have said it before, but if you like mysteries, you really should read The Bench, Fatal Breach, and the newest in the series Sacred Gold. I’m not saying this because Linda and I are friends, I’m saying this because they are truly amazing.

You’ll be happy to hear, just because you won’t have to hear me complaining anymore, my taxes are finally finished. All that remains to be done is for my husband to sign our state return so I could mail it in. I did find it annoying that because my return required a Schedule C, I was not able to file it electronically unless I paid an e-service to file it. Hmm, a buck and a quarter for postage or fifteen bucks to send it electronically. I’m thinking that’s a no-brainer. I’m also thinking that since it was my business’ fault I couldn’t file for free, then postage to mail my taxes is a justified business expense. (Not that I think the IRS would disallow or even bother taking the time to look at $1.25 charge.)

With my taxes finished, I can now get back into my routine. Today I plan on finishing up the edits on Corporate Blues. Then, as one final set of eyes before it goes to print, I am going to send the file over to my mom to review. She has caught typos missed by my editors in the past, so this time I’m giving it to her BEFORE it goes to print. Hopefully the edits won’t take all day and I can also finish the dreaded blurb for the back of the book and get it and the ISBN# over to Matt so he can finish the cover. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to get everything finished and have printed copies in hand buy April 12^th so I can have my new book with me at the PPL Author’s Day. If I finish, then tomorrow and Friday I am going to completely devote to the other book I'm editing so I can give the author another installment this weekend for him to work on. (I ended in a preposition, shoot me.) :)

Alright, if I don’t get going, I’ll never get finished. I hope y’all have a fantastic day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

When will it ever end…

When will it ever end? I’m sure I’m not the only one asking this question this winter. We have now had six months of winter weather, and with the latest band of storms coming through, it doesn’t look like we’re quite finished yet. Oh sure, Mother Nature has teased us with a few mild days, but then she immediately slaps us back down with frigid temperatures and frozen precipitation.

This never-ending winter is starting to affect everyone. Have you noticed how short tempered folks are lately?

Yeah, that was really short. I just couldn’t think of anything more to write. See, this winter is affecting me too. When will it ever end?? LOL

Your Next Challenge is:

Scratch that, reverse it…

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.

March 11th

Hi, it’s Christina –

My poor Bananabeans. At fifteen, her back molars have finally decided to break through, and she is absolutely miserable. She can’t chew, even soft stuff. She’s living on Motrin. Today for lunch, I packed her a smoothie. Hopefully it will only be another day or two before the tooth breaks all the way through and she can be pain free and be able to eat again. The last thing that child needs is to lose any weight!

Yesterday’s detour to the other side of Vermont wasn’t too terrible, but it was far enough away that I ended up having to fill my gas tank three times during the trip instead of only twice. King Arthur Bakery was a neat place. The store / gift shop was great. My mom got me an early birthday present. I like the plain silver cookie sheets, the ones with no coating, and they had them on sale, so she got me three. Yeah!!

After I put all her purchase in the car, she had three bags worth, we had lunch in their café. Let’s just say, if I’m ever in the area again, I won’t be eating there again. I had the butternut sage soup which had so much sage in it it tasted more like lamb then butternut. I had a Reuben (did I spell that right?), and the pastrami had the consistency of a rubber band. Even the iced tea was terrible. My mom, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed the fresh turkey sandwich with Cabot cheddar and cranberry chutney, she ordered.

I don’t know how restaurants who have peculiar food combinations on their menu survive. It’s ok to have one or two, but every item? Personally I think that’s suicide. You have to have some staples without adding things like apple fennel or quince to every item on the menu. There were probably a dozen choices on the King Arthur Café menu, and I can honestly say there was something unappealing on each choice. These are supposed to be master chefs at this place, yet no one realized pairing a dominant spice like sage with the delicate flavor of butternut, the sage would completely take over? Seriously? Anyone with a nose could figure this out, even without any kind of formal culinary training.

Lunch aside, it was a nice afternoon. Since we were now in a section of Vermont I was not familiar with, I plug home into my GPS. It wanted to take me on a route through Mass, then through Hartford (a traffic nightmare), and finally over the Tappan Zee Bridge to home. I really hate going that way, so we elected to take Route 9 across the bottom of Vermont, which eventually wound its way to 7, then 787 and finally to my usual way home, Route 87.

Let me tell you, Route 9 has a whole list of drawbacks to be considered a viable alternate route. It is a twisty, turny, pothole laden road with steep inclines and descends. On the plus side, it is much more scenic than traveling the thru-way. At one point it had us going through Molly Spark State Park. I asked my mom if she had any clue who Molly Spark was, and she did not, so I looked it up this morning. (I know, I’m a dork. When traveling I see someplace named after someone, and I don’t know who that someone is, I look it up.)

Molly Stark, wife of Revolutionary War general John Stark, became famous because of her husband's battle call of "There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!” That and she was the mother of Freedom Fighter, Caleb Stark. Okay, am I missing something here? I’m sure she was a lovely lady, and any woman who raises eleven children should be given a medal, but I don’t see how she warrants a State Park to be named after her. Perhaps some of my Vermont readers can enlighten me.

Alright, I’m going to wrap things up now and go be nosy. Our town is blowing up at the moment and I want to see if I can find out what’s going on. Every emergency vehicle we own has rolled by my house, lights flashing, sirens blaring. When fire trucks from the far side of town roll up here, something major is going on. The last time this happen was when Agnes DeWitt Girl Scout Camp’s main building was hit by lightning and burned to the ground.

After I’m done being nosy, I need to make my hubby some lunch, get him out of the house, FINALLY finish the taxes and get the FAFSAs filed. Oh, by the way, Lys didn’t get the RA position at school, so no break on housing this year. Better luck next year.

I hope y’all have a wonderful day, and happy writing!

March 6th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Really late today, I know, but I had several things to do before I could get to my blog. My son sent me a text last night asking if an essay about survival interests me. Translation, he needed help on one of his college essays. Now, in the past “needed help” required a whole lot of work on my part, but I told him sure, email it to me. He has been working all sorts of crazy hours at work – to the tune of seventy plus hours a week – and going to school at night; so I wasn’t really surprised he asked for help.

I opened the email first thing this morning, and boy was I pleasantly surprised. Other than correcting a couple of erroneous commas, replacing a redundant word, and correcting his continuity of tense in ONE spot, the paper was fine just the way he wrote it. Proper English has never been my son’s forte, so seeing the progress he has made over the past couple of years has warmed my heart. It was just a silly little paper, one which probably isn’t worth a whole lot toward his overall grade, but it was well done and he made me very proud. I know, sappy proud mom moment, but I wanted to share anyway.

You’ll be happy to know Lys is feeling a lot better today. Yesterday afternoon she returned to the land of the living, and today she wants to drive over to a camp not too far away so she can put in an application. She also wants to make a few other stops, but we’ll see how it goes after our first stop. She may be surprised at how quickly she gets tired after being so sick for four days.

I have given up waiting for the bank’s website to send me my log in information, so I will be stopping at the bank today and asking them to print the one statement I’m missing. After that, it will only take me a few minutes to plug in the information and update the Schedule C with the new numbers. Hopefully, with the Schedule C completed, my taxes should only take an hour or so to complete, and then another half hour for the FAFSA and I WILL BE DONE!! It’s hard to believe I ever enjoyed doing this type of work, but at one point in my life, I truly did. Silly child!

Today was Dani’s last late arrival, so I wanted to surprise her with breakfast (not my forte). I saw a photo on Facebook where the person put a piece of bacon right inside a pancake, and I thought cool, Dani likes pancakes, and she loves bacon, so let’s give it a try. I got the bacon all crispy, whipped up some pancake batter, assembled them, and with a big smile on my face for not screwing up, I handed Dani her breakfast. After a few bits she asked why I was feeding her raw bacon. Apparently, even after the bacon is fully cooked and extra crispy, the pancake batter makes it all gooey again. Needless to say, breakfast was an epic fail and I will NOT be making pancakes and bacon like that ever again. What can I say, live and learn right?

Okay, Lys is ready to leave, and the quicker we get her errands completed, the quicker I can get back here and finish those dang taxes. I hope y’all have a great day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

(I’m going to step WAY out of my comfort zone here) Your challenge is to write a poem – silly or serious, rhyming or not – the choice is yours

It’s a poem you say I need to write

The mere thought fills me with dread and fright

Several cohesive lines of rhyming verse

I worry of sounding trivial, or juvenile, or worse

Don’t fail me now oh illusive muse

Let me come up with something I can actually use

Make it inspirational, or funny, or light

Please help me now so I don’t fret all night

Alas I must hang my head in shame

Defeated yet again, and poem was its name

Your Next Challenge is:

Create a holiday (you can thank Lys for this one)

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.

March 5th

Hi, it’s Christina –

I remember now why I am no longer an accountant. I find it tedious and annoying. Reconstructing a year’s worth of income and expenses is a pain in the butt! Plus, I cannot locate one month’s bank statement which is driving me crazy because I put them all in the same place every time I get them. The only thing I can figure is it got mixed in some junk mail and I recycled it by accident. Now I have to wait 48 hours for the bank website registration to go through so I can print the statement from there. It’s okay, I still have six more months to reconstruct while I wait.

I took a break yesterday and signed up for April’s Camp NaNoWriMo. Instead of starting a new project, I have decided to finish Faerie Tale Queen in the hope I can get it published before the end of the year. Just like I did in November, I will post a chapter every few days. I found by doing this, I really kept myself on track. Now I’m just hoping the folks who were reading along the first time can tell me where I left off with the postings. I know I wrote more after NaNoWriMo was over, but I can’t remember if it was two or three chapters and I don’t want to repost ones that were already read.

The time has come to get Dani out the door, and I REALLY need to work on the taxes, so I will forego the challenge for today. I hope y’all have a wonderful day, and happy writing!

March 4th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

I got to sleep in a little today because they are doing HSPA testing for the high school juniors, so the other three grades get to go in three hours late. I was pleasantly surprised my internal clock allowed me to do this, I’m not usually so lucky. I did wake up at my normal time, but then I rolled over and went right back to sleep. This may seem boring to all of you, but I’m excited. That was the first time, in I don’t know how many years, I got seven hours of sleep in a row.

Lys is still running a fever and still feeling miserable. She’s taking antibiotics as well as Motrin every six hours. I just gave her her fourth dose, so hopefully she will start feeling a little better by the end of the day. She has been good about drinking even though her throat is really sore, and last night she even ate a bowl of oatmeal. I was worried about her taking the antibiotics without having any food in her stomach, but it doesn’t look like I’ll need to worry too much. After I bring Dani for Dunkin’ Donuts (she’s been begging for days, so I relented) and then drop her off at school, I’ll make Lys some eggs. They should be soft enough that they don’t hurt her throat and heavy enough to pad her stomach from the meds.

Today I will continue gathering everything together for my taxes, and hopefully by tomorrow I will be organized enough to put the information down on the proper forms. Although I had everything written down in my appointment book, what I really should have done from the get-go was have a monthly income and expense report. It’s taking a bit of time to get everything set up properly, but if I do it correctly now, and enter everything on a monthly basis from now on, future years will be a breeze.

As a writer you need to wear so many hats, and so many things take time away from actually being able to write. Obviously you need to be a writer, but you also need to be a marketing agent, a PR specialist, a social media guru, an editor, an accountant, an event coordinator, a research analyst, a public speaker (oh, I forgot to tell you, I have a speaking engagement next Tuesday…yikes!), and I’m sure several other things I’m forgetting to mention or haven’t come across quite yet. This past year has been a learning experience to say the least. There have been high points and low point, and I have stumbled a few times, but I am learning. Thankfully, there have been other Indie authors out there willing to lend their support and advice. I cannot imagine what kind of disasters I would have gotten myself into if I had to do this completely on my own.

Okay, I need to go get lunches made and get my hubby out the door. I hope y’all have a phenomenal day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

Oh, that will never work…

Science projects. I hate science projects! I hated them while I was in school. I hated them when I had to help my oldest two children with theirs, and I still hate them now while I’m helping my youngest child with hers. We’ve had to build ecosystems, volcanoes, apparatus to keep an egg from breaking when dropped from great heights, and mousetrap race cars. As if those weren’t challenging enough, now we need to build a roller coaster – with a loop, none the less. Are you kidding me? Are we in high school or engineering graduate school? To top it off, it needs to be made from scratch, no prefabricated pieces, and it needs to be made small enough to be able to be transported. Good grief!

After days of sketching and scrapping the sketches because we realized the designs would never work, we came up with a simple design; one which simply used gravity and centripetal force to make it work. Now all that was left was to transfer what was on paper to an actual working model and to pray it would actually preform the way we had planned.

Thank GOD, this roller coaster project was one the kids had to do in class and not as a take home project, because I seriously doubt I would have been able to help with this one, and I am positive we would not have been able to build it in the two weeks allotted. It does amaze me at how much more difficult projects have become since I was in school. The stuff they are now learning in junior and senior high, we weren’t learning until we got to college.

Your Next Challenge is:

(I’m going to step WAY out of my comfort zone here) Your challenge is to write a poem – silly or serious, rhyming or not – the choice is yours

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.