I’ve been wondering about this:

http://www.johnsonliterary.com/blog/2009/7/9/following-up-with-an-agent.html

I suppose this means that I can’t bug them after only two weeks.  I’m just kidding of course, that would be the fastest way to get a no-thank-you.

poor 18-wheeler

I have no idea how the Hot Wheels truck bit it.  I just know that it happened in my house.  These things are made of metal…to withstand children’s play.  The last time I scrubbed Max’s room it was still intact.  Really, maybe I should be glad that it lasted as long as it did in this environment.  And when I turn it over, I actually feel a sense of pride.  It’s stamped with the date of 1979, and since 29 is the last brithday I will ever celebrate, I was born that year (in November)!  Hey, where the heck fire did I get a Hot Wheel from 1979?  I don’t remember hubby bringing a whole lot of toys into the marriage, well, okay, maybe that’s all he brought besides his clothes…but I don’t remember any small metal cars.  It is a mystery, and I honestly don’t care enough to solve it.  I just feel a tiny twinge of awe at the kind of damage my kiddos can do.  It did not go quietly into that good night…that’s for sure.  RIP Blue Hot Wheels truck from Malaysia in 1979.

I have a confession.  I know it’s dangerous, but I have a habit of walking and daydreaming at the same time.  Daydreaming is an incredibly important part of a writer’s day–okay, my day.  Which leads me to wonder if when I shop and daydream could I write off whatever is bought?  For example, I could think of a story about someone croaking from a soda pop overdose while I’m buying said soda pop.  Food for thought, anyway (get it?  food…har har).

Unfortunately I would never be able to claim anything that I bought in Wal-Mart.  For me, it seems to be a black hole of creativity. –quick side note: whoever decided to put the bread at the back of the store is not on my ‘people I like’ list.  It is stressful trying to get through the whole store without crushing my bread!–  Anyway, I don’t think I’m the only one with this problem considering the faces of the people I see.  Mostly they look like they might lose a little drool at any moment.  Sometimes you get the sweet grandma with a sweet smile, or the super-nice foreign lady who askes (using modified sign language–quite creative) where the straws are.  But for the most part, there are not a lot of people you would want to strike up a conversation with.

1.  Writing short stories is fun.

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.

Here’s a random pic of Joey with a horse.  Enjoy…while I rant.

Please tell me I’m not the only person with this problem.  There is so much to do and I can’t seem to start on any of it.  My three day migraine bender was finally over when I woke up this morning…oh happy day!  So the haze has cleared to reveal….dun dum da da dum…chaos.  Grumpy, cooped up kids, piles of dishes and a generally trashed house has tempered the relief I felt at waking up without pain in every movement.

Why am I writing about it instead of taking care of business?  I’m slightly overwhelmed.  If I start on the laundry it will use the hot water that I need for the dishes.  Can’t start the dishes until I have some clean counter space….and it goes on and on like that.  When I get to the end of the list which takes quite a bit of effort in itself, I will start with that.  But for now I am doing a list item that doesn’t require figuring what came first, the chicken or the egg.  And when I’m done I can check off one thing I’ve accomplished.  That is, I would if I ever actually made a to do list.

All this has to be done and I’m so far from what I really want to be doing, working on book two.  Oh how I long for the days of hours of uninterrupted writing (also known as school days).

Oh, by the way, if there is ever a blog post you hate, or even mildly dislike, you can bet it was typed on a migraine day.  I’m like Jekyl and Hyde I tell ya…

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest (as if you had a choice).

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!!!!::

Why do I feel it necessary to check my facebook page everyday (and by everyday I mean several times a day)?  If I’m perfectly honest with myself it’s because I want to know what people are doing that I can comment about. Then I want to see how people react to those comments. Coming up with snappy things to type into the “What’s on your mind?” text box is practically an obsession.

My rules are few, but must be followed to perfection: nothing too negative, no swearing and most definitely nothing too personal. That last one can be hard when I find myself online at 2:00 in the morning due to a lack of sleepiness. By golly, I’m glad I don’t drink…who knows what would end up on my page if that were the case. For a brief moment I thought about googling ‘drunk facebook’ for research. I changed my mind when I realized that there was no valid reason for me to suffer.

The initial draw to facebook seems to be finding every last person that you’ve ever said more than five words to. For me this number seems to hover around 110. For a few people I know, the “friend list” reaches near a thousand. These people tend to be younger than myself by at least ten years. I guess I’m picky…if I really don’t know you I won’t confirm you.

Just think about Johnny Spasmodic from the first grade—you know, that red-headed kid with freckles on his entire face and teeth missing in all the right places—that you had a crush on. Fast-forward twenty-five years and you find out through the virtual grapevine that Johnny has gone off the grid in more ways than one and in one pal’s photo album you find he’s still missing those same teeth. Johnny may be a perfectly nice person, but do you really know him? Do you really want to, especially since he lives in Alaska in a converted fishing boat? Maybe you do, and if you do, you and I differ a great deal.

I do like checking in on a few old high school friends, church friends old and new, and my family. I’m also starting to find that using it for promoting myself and my work can be somewhat helpful. It’s a limited usefulness, but it lets people see who I am and a little of what I’m about. All in all I’d say that having a facebook page won’t make you but it certainly could break you. Proceed with caution my friends.

’nuff said…

I was so set on “robusting” my manuscript. Hubby says what I think, that the last half needs a bit more fleshing out.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, not sure which yet, a new character came to me right before I took a nap this morning, (yes, I know, I’m a brat). I fell in love with her and what’s going to be her story. I know it sounds so freakin’ nerdy and spacy to talk that way. I guess there are other ways I could say it, but that’s how it feels. Like this little girl just walked up to me and asked me to tell her story. So now I’m all itchy to get it down before I forget her.

Jessy’s her name and she’s incredibly unlovable…because no one has loved her. She’s a fifth grader who’s smaller than everyone in her class and most fourth graders too. The rest I can’t give away in case someone steals her from me…that would be pretty hard considering I have one reader…so honey, please don’t steal Jessy.