I’m thinking about giving a theme to my Friday blog post.  It has to be just vague enough to encompass everything since I am an expert at nothing, unless you count procrastination… and it MUST have alliteration so as to be interesting enough to read.  I suppose.  There will be no guidelines, no specific rhyme or reason…just fifteen things (experiences, thoughts, or interesting things I read about) from the week.  It may suck, and it may never show up again since I naturally rebel against anything scheduled or regimented.  Here goes…

1. Reading and writing all day long is not good for the waistline so I am sitting on a big blue yoga ball.  Not really sure how this is helping anything…

2. Quality is MUCH better than quantity when it comes to friends.  Someone who will spend the time to figure out how to get her fist pic in a link for your blog is a TRUE friend.

3. My song of the week: I’m Not Here from the Treasure Planet soundtrack.  Listened to it many times this week, so naturally I will hate it next week.

4. I bet Johnny Rzeznick never gets his name spelled correctly.

5. Too much fun is not good for kids.  They turn into little monsters if you let them get too worn out.

6. Husbands don’t like it all that much when you blog about them catching the house on fire.

7. Starting a sequel is hard when you decided not to write down all your ideas (thought there was no way I could possibly forget–then I went to sleep) for it when writing the first.  Lesson learned.

8. Online chats can be more fun than frustrating if it’s with the right people in the right forum.

9. Monkey hula shirts are sooo cute.

10. You can use a slip ‘n slide without knocking the wind out of your lungs.  At least my kids can.

11. Writers are some of the nicest, most helpful, supportive professionals.  As a newbie, I expected to be ignored for awhile.  Every writer’s blog that I’ve commented on has been replied to.  Great advice has been given, and these people are published!

12. House of Grey is a totally rad  podiobook.  www.houseofgreybook.com  It’s up for several Parsec awards…Way to go Collin and Chris!!!

13. Even the biggest celebrities are mortal…yet immortal when they leave behind piqued imaginations, new ideas and an example of either how or how not to live life.

14. I won the Dad lottery.

15. Funny or thoughtful?  I vote for funny, although thoughtful can be nice….no….funny.  By the way, I ditched the yoga ball 8 numbers ago.

Yes folks, it is a new day and what a good one it is!  The picture above is of my fist and it is awaiting your bump.  I suppose if we are going to be fist-bump buddies I should explain.

Have you ever had one of those days where it seems like nothing goes right?  Of course (see honey, I CAN use the correct course) you have, everyone has.  I had one of those yesterday.  No math was studied by Max (middle child, and no, that is not his real name), no chores were done by Joey (youngest, a girl despite her pseudonym), and hubby and I couldn’t say anything without offending the other.  Nothing really bad happened, especially since we completed our June trifecta (hard drive death, fire, a/c kaput) on Monday when the air conditioning went out.  It was just a grumpy day.

I will try to use less parenthesis as I tell the rest of the story.

The oldest, Bird, is out of town for Scout Camp and I feel like I’ve lost my right arm.  I had no idea how helpful the big guy was until he was gone.  He’s getting an extra huge hug when he gets back on Saturday even if he will hate it.  But I’m getting off of the subject…again.  This tends to happen when I get really excited about something…suddenly I want to talk about anything and everything.

After we all went out to buy water toys for the kiddos and had a healthy dinner at Jason’s deli we came home, I straightened up a bit, then I checked my email.  Simply put, I got a positive response to one of the queries I sent out about a month ago.  They want to see my manuscript.  I flew over the moon.  The kids did a happy dance and asked if it meant we were rich.  We laughed.

Even though I know this is only a teeny tiny step, it is a step in the right direction and it feels awesome!  Send a pic of your fist when you comment if you can!

::I usually do not condone the use of so many exclaimation points, but in this case…eh…I don’t care!!!!::

6-14-09 Fire

The great Parker fire of ’09…

It shocked, it amazed, it smelled…bad.

My sweet, long-suffering, adorable husband kindly offered to make dinner Sunday evening.  Actually, he didn’t offer, he just did it while I took a late afternoon nap.  So there he was, elbow deep in batter, dipping chicken breast in said batter when the small pot filled with super hot oil (the dial had been set to HI for about ten minutes or more) went up in flames.  I was told that it was licking the bottom of the microwave that’s mounted above the stove.  In a panic, hubby did the first thing that came to mind…he doused the pot with water.  Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew this was the wrong thing to do, but in the state of mind he was in, the back was way too far away to access.

The smoke alarm wailed, I awoke, thinking that hubby simply burned some food.  I got the shock of my life when teenage son burst into my room and announced, with a wild look, “uh..o..uh…fire!” and ran out.

In the kitchen the drama continued.  Hubby ordered teenage son to open the back door.  He then grabbed the handle of the flaming pot.  In the five long steps it took him to get to the back door, the fire was menacing his arm.  He tossed the thing out the door where the oil landed just shy of the porch.  Oil and flame are nothing like oil and water.  They like each other…very much.  Soon after it landed, we were choking on the smell of melting vinyl flooring.  I shoved the kids out the front door and yelled instructions from across the house while fanning the front door trying to get rid of the suffocating stench.

The pic above is of the mess after it was cleaned up…scrubbed actually.  I cut out the melty pieces of flooring and tossed them along with the bottom of the door that keeps this wretched June Texas heat out.  That’s why the lovely blue towel is there, it is a sad substitute.  I could not get the black off the door and wall for anything.  I even used my emergency only cleaner, goof-0ff and it did almost nothing.  This means I get to paint the kitchen as well as redo the floor.  And I’m okay with that.  A little kitchen redecorating is a small price to pay for an unburnt family.  The lesson learned: no napping while cooking with oil is being done.