June 17th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Well it has been a couple of days since I last posted and I felt guilty the whole time. I really do enjoy doing this blog and after Sunday’s party, I think I will be going back to the almost daily blog.

Thursday my youngest daughter was supposed to go on her 8^th grade trip to Hershey but she got really sick and wasn’t able to go. I felt so bad for her, the kids look forward to this trip from the minute they start middle school. She got a pretty dress, new shoes and her nails done for the dance the night before, had everything packed and ready to go, then spent the next three days a total dishrag on the couch. Needless to say she was very disappointed.

Friday I went with my middle daughter, one of my girlfriends and her two sons to a murder mystery dinner in Jersey City. The food was delicious, the show was great, and I won for best actress.  I was chosen to be one of the suspects by the master of ceremonies before the show started and the character was required to meet everyone in the room. If I had known, I wouldn’t have worn heels!

Saturday I was at a friend’s daughter’s graduation party and she introduced me to friends of hers I had not met yet as her friend the author. Goodness! Well, it started a lengthy discussion and I ended up selling some books, but it was not exactly what I was there for, I felt bad. At least the graduate was outside and the conversation took place in the kitchen, so I guess no harm no foul.  Then a few hours later, a mutual acquaintance from church walks in and instead of just saying "Hi", she chimes, "There's our author." which surprised me because I did not realize she knew I was an author, then she surprises me even more when she tells me her book club just finished my book.

Yesterday we celebrated Father’s day with a nice dinner at my sister-in-laws. We got my husband a new grill because they no longer sell the grill guts to update his current grill. Quite a bit more than I planned on spending, but the new grill is really cool. It has a gas side and a charcoal side. It grills quick, it grills slow and it also has a smoker. I can’t wait until my hubby puts it together so we can play with it.

 

Hope you all had a great few days!

Your last challenge was:

 

One time my best friend and I…

 

One time my best friend and I were fishing in Maine with her parents on their boat. It was my third summer vacation with them, so we all were comfortable with each other and worked well together on the boat.  We would go the last week in July through the first two weeks of August, which was the time of year the mackerel were very plentiful. We were fishing with three hooks on a line, and before our sinkers would hit the bottom, all three hooks would have fish on them and we were hauling up full loads. With four of us on the boat, we needed it to be a well-choreographed dance or it would have been pandemonium. Well, sometimes, even with a well-choreographed dance, occasionally dancers stumble, and I stumbled. I was having problems getting one of my fish off the line, so I was kneeling on the deck struggling with the fish when my friend’s father brought over a full line. One of his fish flipped up and smacked me right in the face. Unfortunately, the fish still had the hook in his mouth and now the hook was embedded in the bridge of my nose with the fish still flapping from it.

 

Out of time, but the outcome was a trip to the ER and a small scar that I has a funny story to go along with it.

 

Your Next Challenge is:

 

It’s going to be the best vacation ever…

 

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.

June 13th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

As things are getting more and more crazy around here, I am coming to realize I might not have enough time right now to keep up with a daily blog; then again, this was initially supposed to be a two week project and now it has been almost two months. I hate to do it, because I truly enjoy writing the blog, but something’s got to give if I intend to keep to my EOY release deadline for Simply by Chance. I will finish editing the one book I committed to and read the two more I agreed to review, but then I am putting on my writer’s cap and putting my nose to the grindstone. I will still try to post a few times a week, but every day is becoming impossible. Think of it as I’m giving you extra time to take up a challenge.

I finally figured out yesterday why I was procrastinating. For the first time, one of my characters needs to die and I’m having a hard time with it. If I don’t write the next chapter, then he will remain safe. I know it is irrational and completely silly, but I get attached to my characters and the thought of one of them dying is upsetting. Yeah, I know, I’m a nut, but there you have it.

So the official countdown has begun. One week until graduation! If any of you out there are parents, you know what an emotional time this is, for us and for our graduates. All I know for sure is I will be packing an entire box of tissues to bring with me to the ceremony.

Your last challenge was:

 

 

As I look at our hands joined together now as they have been for so many years, I can’t help but think. Think of how young and wrinkle free they were the first time they joined on our first date. I spent so much of the time studying our hands, fingers laced in a perfect fit, I missed most of the movie. Since that very first time, I have noticed our hands on many occasions; at the beach when you tried to keep me upright in rough waves, across a candlelit table at dinner, entwined at the alter on our wedding, crunched during labor at our children’s births. Through the years more and more lines have appeared on those intertwined hands, each line a testament to what we have experienced together, what we have held each other hands through and I smile. True the hands are not as young as they used to be, but their comforting strength will never diminish.

 

 Your Next Challenge is:

 

One time my best friend and I…

 

 

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.

June 12th

Sorry folks, obviously no blog today. Time got away from me. I'll post after I drop my youngest off at school early tomorrow for her class trip to Hershey. Night y'all.

June 11th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Yeah, I know, really late today. My daughter’s graduation party is on the 23^rd and the invitations haven’t gone out yet. I hadn’t even finished making them. Anyway, I finished and sent the jpeg to get printed. I’ll be picking them up in an hour, then I have to hand address them because my printer is out of one of the color cartridges and of course Staples has stopped selling them at the store. UGH! If everyone was on computer, I would have just sent e-vites and been done.

As usual, I’m running around with my hair on fire, so today’s blog will be short & sweet and tomorrow’s challenge will be a photo.

Yesterday’s challenge was:

 

I feel like I’m forgetting something…

 

We have to be at the doctors in half an hour for the baby’s two week check-up. The doctor’s office is twenty minutes away on a good day, and of course, it’s snowing. Wouldn’t you know, the snow started just as I realized I was going to be late if I didn’t get the kids ready. I corral the four year old, get him in his snowsuit, get the baby bundled up and in her car seat. I run out to the car and start it so it will warm up.

I come back in and, “Mommy, I have to go potty!”

Seriously? He couldn’t have told me that before I got him bundled up like the abominable snowman? I don’t have time for this!

 

I get him undressed and shoe him off to the bathroom while I make sure I have the nine million things a baby and a toddler need crammed into the diaper bag.

 

“Let’s go Honey, we’re going to be late.”

 

“I don’t wanna go.”

 

“We have to go. Sissy has to see the doctor.”

 

“Is she sick?”

“No.”

 

“Then why?”

 

“Because she’s two weeks old.”

 

“But why?”

“Every baby has to go at two weeks.”

 

“But why?”

 

“They need to make sure she is growing big and strong and she need to get a shot.”

 

What was I thinking? I said the “S” word and now I have a blubbering four year old refusing to get off the potty. I don’t have time for this!

 

“Why are you crying?”

 

“Shh..sshh..SHOT!!”

 

“You’re not getting a shot.”

 

“They hurt!”

 

“YOU ARE NOT GETTING A SHOT, so please stop crying and let’s go.”

 

“But Sissy’s getting a shot and it will hurt her and she’s little.” More tears.

 

 

Ran out of time, but I will give you the quick summary of this actual event. I finally get my son out of the bathroom and dressed. I grab his hand and my keys and my purse and the diaper bag, lock the door, throw all the stuff into the car, get my son locked in his car seat, get to the end of our driveway when I realize my two week old daughter is still sitting in her car seat in the middle of the hall in the house. I knew I was forgetting something! In my defense, there aren’t too many mommy brain cells two weeks postpartum, and now at eighteen, graduating high school and heading off to college, I do not think being abandoned for three minutes when she was two weeks old has scarred her in the least.

 

Your Next Challenge is:

 

 

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.