1.  @benwhiting twitters all kinds of useful writerly information.  all day.  Oh! and he’s a fellow Fort Worthian.

2.  Hubby is officially on vacation!!! YAY!

3.  3 weeks down, 5 to go…

4.  Got stuck on this mom’s blog today.  She is hilarious!

Mr. Threepwood

5.  Guybrush Threepwood is the best character name ever.

6.  I’ve written approximately two sentences on my current project this week.  That is not a good thing.  ugh.

7.  Found another cool site just today.  Rachelle Gardner is a lit. agent.  Her site was listed on the Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers.  I’ve not even scratched the surface yet.

8.  Urgh, cannot find my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird!  I have looked everywhere…it’s driving me batty.

9.  I have had approximately eight cats in my lifetime.  Only one has ever come when she is/was called.  She is the best kitty ever and her name is P.J.

10.  Watched J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life last night and was riveted.

11.  I haven’t seen The Half Blood Prince yet, maybe tomorrow.

12.  A week without a new House of Grey episode is a sad week indeed.

13.  Grad student Blair Hurley has a super info blog.  She posts a really interesting pic weekly to get the creative juices flowing.

14.  I’m as excited about Wizards on Deck with Hannah Montana as my kids are.  wow. that’s sad.

15.  I don’t know why I’m surprised when I look under my daughter’s bed and see that it is stuffed to the wall with toys, books, clothes, etc. I did the same thing as a kid, but it’s shocking to me that my perfect little angel would do something so devious as shove everything under her bed in order to get her room “clean” faster.

2.  I found a new site, http://www.querytracker.net/index.php that is REALLY cool and helpful.

3.  Getting traffic to my blog is a lot of work for little results (so far)…does anyone have any suggestions?

4.  I wonder why mattresses go on such deep discount for the Fourth of July…freedom=sleep?

5.  One week down from when I sent my full manuscript out to an agent…just seven more to go!

6.  Sometimes doctors are just as clueless as the rest of us and sometimes schools make the right decisions.  This is shockingly different from what I’ve believed for many years.

7.  One of our cats, Cally, likes to leave “presents” on our front porch things like bunny ears, a mouse tail or birds legs…he always eats the best part and I guess he thinks he’s being generous by giving us the leftovers.  Not that long ago I burst out laughing when I saw that he left us part of a hot dog.  I really hope he didn’t have the nerve to hunt it during the actual cook out, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

8.  It’s very nice to have the Bird home from camp, but it isn’t so great doing the laundry he brought with him.

9.  I was going to put a pic of my dog on here, to prove that my dog is uglier.  That’s why we got her.  We went to the pound about 5 years ago in search of the most unadoptable dog in the place and chose our dear Lola.  When I looked at the pic though, I realized that she’s very photogenic.

10.  “Make it or Break it” is better than “Secret Life of the American Teenager” but not nearly as trashy…yet.

11.  I can’t help it, I thoroughly enjoyed “Princess Protection Program”.

12.  I have one minute to come up with 3 more things!!!

13.  Stuffed Salmon Bel Mar from Target it AMAZING…try some!

14. I wonder when I will watch a show or movie for adults…I just love the kid stuff so much…shout out to iCarly!

15.  This is number 15.

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.

I should’ve taken a pic of them this morning before I drove them to their last day of the 2008-2009 school year. Equally as happy, not quite as scrubbed and coiffed. I think my oldest was wearing a shirt that was missing a button or two. That’s what living in the trenches of having three school-aged children will do to you. After 170-some-odd days of packing 3 lunches (510 in all), surviving hours of homework a day (some of which seemed designed to be homework for parents), signing my name countless times, lamenting the bad grades, cheering the excellent, two science projects, social studies and language arts projects it comes to an end today.

There will be awards ceremonies for the children, as there should be…they worked hard. But we, as parents do it all for the love of our kids…so that they can learn better, do better…be better. I for one am ready for the break. But I know in less than three months time, my kiddos will stand just as scrubbed and coiffed as in this pic, ready for a new year full of work and opportunity.