I've decided to bite off a challenge. I might be crazy but it sounded fun. Basically, the challenge is Blogging From A to Z. You use a letter of the alphabet for each day.
So I am gathering little pieces of trivia, story ideas, book reviews, and anything else I can think of to accomplish this feat. I can't promise each post will be a masterpiece, I hope that there will be something for everyone.
And now I am off to do more research, maybe right a few more words, and try to figure out why this year seems to be flying by at the speed of light. Along with why it is late March and we have freeze warnings in the Deep South along with thunderstorm warnings.
See everyone on April 1st for " 'A' is for April!"
Thanks you so much to Mary Montague Sikes of Notes Along the Way on my nomination for a coveted Liebster Award. The Liebster Award is given to bloggers with fewer than 200 followers. It is such an honor just to be nominated. The rules are as follows: Liebster Award Rules:
1. Thank the blogger who presented you with the
Liebster Award, and link back to his or her blog.
2. Answer the 11 questions from the nominator; list
11 random facts about yourself, and create 11 questions for your
nominees.
3. Present the Liebster Award to 11 bloggers, who
have blogs with 200 followers or less, whom you feel deserve to be noticed.
Leave a comment on the blogs letting the owners know they have been chosen. (No
tag backs.)
4. Upload the Liebster Award image to your
blog.
Eleven random facts about
me
1. As a child, my grandmother used to singe my hair instead of cut it because she heard cutting ruins naturally curly hair. 2. I love to travel and would love to have been a globe trotting flight attendant. 3. I'm allergic to penicillin and mangoes. 4. I rode the Mindbender looping roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia 54 times without ever getting off. 5. I wrecked my mother's car 8 days before I had a driver's license. She was not amused. 6. I believe our souls life on past our physical death. 7. I've always been shy, which some people have mistaken for being a bitch. 8. My husband and I met at a gas station. 9. I have more books than bookshelves but I can't bear to part with any of them. 10. As a child I wanted to be a jockey. 11. I tend to sometimes be brutally honest, which again people mistake for bitchiness.
Eleven Answers: 1. Knowing what you know
today, what would you choose to be (profession)?
Why? I would still be me, it's taken a long time to grow into a person I am comfortable with and get along with, why would I change that?
2. If you could live
anywhere in the world, where would that be?
Why? I would live several places: the beach, the mountains, wherever the mood takes me. The world is a constant adventure.
3. Would you rather
visit the mountains or the sea?
Why? Both. Each moves my soul in different ways.
4. Tell about your
favorite
dinner. Deep fried lobster with a hollandaise type sauce at Chops Lobster Bar in downtown Atlanta. Best. Lobster. Anywhere.
5. What part of your home most inspires
you? My family. No matter where they are, they are who I get out of bed for on a daily basis. 6. Do you like to read fiction or
non-fiction? Both, it just depends on the subject.
7. What is your favorite
book? I re-read "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy whenever I feel blue. I also re-read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" whenever our fabulous government pisses me off.
8. Did you have a favorite subject in school? History. It fascinates me.
9. How many vacations
would you like to take each year?
Where? I would make my life a vacation if I could. In reality we take two, one in each of our off-seasons at work. In the summer we usually go to the beach and the winter always depends on the weather. Sometimes we ski, sometimes we visit family in warmer climates.
10. Do you prefer to fly
or to
drive? Fly, but I do love a good scenic car ride.
11. Are you an extrovert
or an introvert?
I am an introvert whose life and job have forced her to become an extrovert.
Eleven New Questions for New Nominees:
1. What inspired you to start blogging?
2. Where do you spend most of your time when writing, developing the story or editing?
3. What childhood memory brings the biggest smile to your face?
4. If you were given three wishes, what would they be? Why?
5. Where is your favorite place to vacation? Why?
6. What are you most afraid of?
7. If you could redo one thing in your past, what would it be?
8. What is your favorite classic movie?
9. Where is the strangest place you ever found yourself?
10. If you could have one night with any person in the world, who would it be? Why?
11. Short hair or long hair?
I'm checking out blogs and gradually adding to make my
list of 11. If you have time, I hope you will accept and follow the instructions
for the award. I'll keep track of my growing
list here, so check back often:
Next week I will be among the several hundred authors / bloggers participating in this Blog Hop. I must confess this is my first 'rodeo', so to speak. While I blog quite a bit and on a variety of subjects, this time I am joining others on a topic. I'm excited!
As I have often stated, opinions are personal and not everyone agrees with everyone else. But that's what makes the world so interesting. Discussing and arguing, freely exchanging ideas, ah the possiblities are endless. But enough about that.
What do you
love about Autumn and Fall? What does it remind you of? What about reading? Do
you think it's a good subject to read? Well, as authors, we
are always ready to share our Autumn stories and why we love snuggling in the
cold. *wink* Starting on Friday and ending on Oct 22nd, over 200 Authors and Bloggers will share their
favorite things about those sexy men we know and love.
And while we do that, we are EACH doing a
giveaway. Yep. There will be over 200 giveaways on each blog hosted by that
Author or Blogger.
But that's not all....
We have THREE grand prizes. You as
a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered
to win. Yep, you can enter over 200 times!
Now what
are those prizes?
1st Grand
Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet
2nd Grand
Prize: A $50 Amazon or B&N Gift Card
3rd Grand
Prize: A Swag Pack that contains 10+ paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover
flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more! Plus - each blogger will also be doing a drawing for their own give aways
Check back in on November 9th and let's hop around together!
Just a quick note with my thoughts on the current issues around the country:
1) - Hurricane Sandy - Truly a monster of a storm when you can be affected by the storm more than 1000 miles from the center of the storm. I am glad all my family and friends are safe, and my thoughts and prayers go out to those not as lucky. Having gone through more than a dozen hurricanes in my life, I am glad that another area of the country go socked for a change. (Not really - I hope everyone knows that is only a joke!)
2) - Election 2012 - I promised my family I wouldn't get on a soap box about the elections, so much as I would love to sound off I will only say this. Don't forget to vote. It is a right many people have died protecting. Do not use that right without being informed as to each candidate's positions.
3) - Halloween - I hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween. The Charlie Brown special has been played, the pumpkin's have been extinguished and I took my grandson in love out for his first trick or treat. He was dressed as a Transformer. It was magical.
Don't forget to join in on the Autumn's Harvest Blog Hop, sponsored by Carrie Ann's Blog Hops! Be sure to leave a comment to be entered into a drawing to win a $10 Amazon gift card from me, and entered to win the Grand Swag Prize through Carrie Ann. Dates for the hop are November 9th through November 12th.
As June progressed, I finally got all the turnip greens out of my garden, and it seemed things were well on their way to a fabulous summer. I peeled and chopped and canned zucchini and summer squash while dreams of mountains of beans, rivers of sweet peas and bushels of tomatoes danced him my head. Once again, Mother Nature had other plans.
That's right - we have another drought on our hands. Just as my corn was tasseling and the bean pods were plumping, the rains went away. For more than three weeks, not a drop fell from the heavens. When the grass starts crunching under your feet, then you know it's dry out there.
So, I harvested my cucumbers (apparently they like it hot!), and squash and monitored the damages. Both my helpful hubby and my father-in-law pronounced my garden dead on more than one occasion, only to see me harvest baskets of potential pickles. My corn popped inside the husks but the beans popped out in full force, leading to a basket so full I had to have my son carry it to the house.
At last I relented and pronounced the harvest done. Some seeds were extra prolific (Squash of all kinds, cucumbers, pole beans) while others never ever popped through (carrots, peppers, peas). But for what did come up I reaped gold.
My final tally for the first Reece garden is: 20 quarts of beans, 15 pints of pickles and pickle relish, 5 quarts of summer squash and onions, 10 pints of lemon honey jelly, 8 pints of zucchini pickles, and 3 quarts of pickled butternut squash. All in all not a bad haul.
The tomatoes came in slow and never in any great quantities, so I just shared them with friends and co-workers. We got 5 full grown pumpkins, which were ready by the end of July. I am saving mine for Halloween. The biggest failure was no watermelons. I love watermelon in the summer. This year I had to resort to grocery store melon. Boo.
I gathered seeds from all the produce that I could and I intend to try again next year. No winter garden, I'm not ready to fight another battle against turnip greens. No, we are going to plow, rake, plow, rake, and hope for cleaner dirt next spring. I had a lot of fun, recalled a lot of good times with my father, and I wouldn't trade a callous or twinge in my carpal tunnel for anything else. Good times from the simplest thing - a new memory to join the many from childhood.
Thanks for listening to my summer saga. It might not sound like all that much fun, but trust me. It was a blast.
Once we decided to do a garden this year, the decision on what to plant was left up to me with hubby's stamp of approval. Corn, beans, peas, tomatoes, watermelons - all standard Georgia garden fare. With the ground prepared and the seeds ready we set out the rows and off to the races we went. All the squashes, beans, peas, melons, in three short hours we had seeded an area more than 1000 square feet. Happy and pleased with a job well done, we headed off for our first week of waiting.
Anxiously I watched the weather report, glad when radar showed rain heading in our general direction. The weekend took forever to come around again. Sunday morning arrived at last and I bounced in the car like a kid on the way to see Santa. Just when I could wait no more, we turned down the street, up the long winding driveway, then past the garden. I could see little green shoots beginning to poke through as we headed to the main house.
Church seemed to drag that morning, and lunch was forever. Just when I thought I would burst from anticipation, we arrived back at the farm. Changing into work clothes I race out to my little slice of heaven to find...
Turnip greens. That's right, turnip greens popping up all over my nicely plotted garden.
Imagine my surprise. Covering the entire garden, in my neat straight rows and in between, anywhere there was a spare inch of fertilized earth, were little turnip green leaves. Apparently the previous fall, for a winter garden, one of the helpers on my father-in-law's farm had planted turnips, harvested the greens but left the turnips themselves in the ground. With the warmer weather and the fertile spring rains, those little suckers just popped right out, heedless to the fact they are winter crops that cannot survive the hot Georgia summers.
So my first full Sunday as a gardener was spent identifying and pulling little turnip greens while trying to not pull up actual seedlings that were wanted. This is when I discovered what a non-outdoors man I married. He couldn't identify weeds from plants, didn't like having to pull so many wrong plants, and within 45 minutes had abandoned me completely to sit on the front porch drinking ice tea while I sweat and pulled and cursed turnips with my every fiber.
This fall I will turn fifty, a point of dread for me since my mother turned fifty. Of course I was only 8 at the time and thought my mother would shrivel up and die. I mean, really - half a century seemed ANCIENT! Of course, as the magic age has steadily approached my opinion has changed. I know I won't shrivel up once my birthday arrives. Or at least I hope not.
But in preparation for this momentous occasion I decided to learn new skills, or resurrect skills not used since my childhood. First up on the list: plant a garden for the purpose of canning and freezing food for the winter.
My father's family were farmers and every year, no matter where we lived, there was always a garden. Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, not to mention trips to the big farmer's market would provide plenty of fresh vegetables for the months when good produce was hard to find. While it isn't such a necessity to have a personal garden any more, nothing can beat the taste of good, fresh produce.
Helpful hubby promised to be of assistance and my father-in-law plowed the garden up at his farm, about an hour north of where we live. After carefully searching the Internet for heirloom seeds (plants which can produce seeds for replanting) I made my selections and off we went to create our first garden together in 25 years of marriage.
Little did I know that I have married the only man in North Georgia to never have spent any time in a garden!
Join me for my series: So... You Want to Plant a Garden! as I provide a play-by-play commentary on my summer project. It will make you laugh. I promise!
1) My mother was in a math honor society, my father was an aeronautic engineer and I have problems adding 2 + 2 without a calculator.
2) There was a family portrait of my great-great-great-great-great grandmother where the eyes followed where ever in the room you were standing. I would not go into that room after dark unless all the lights were on and someone came with me.
3) I love old movies. It is great to share with my parents movies they saw during the 30's, 40's, and 50s.
4) When I was in elementary school, my grandmother used to pick me up from school every day. It started being embarrassing about 5th grade, especially after the police stopped her one afternoon for driving 15mph in a 45.
5) My husband and I have worked together 24/7/365 for 17 years. It works because we are usually never stressed at the same time.
6) When I was a child, I used to think that if I didn't do things in the same order every day something bad would happen to me. That was the beginning of my OCD. I still do the same routine every morning: shower, moisturizer, teeth, makeup, hair. Steve thinks I am really weird.
7) I always wanted a dog as a child, but my mom and dad both had issues about dogs.
8) One of my favorite memories of my dad is from when I was a teenager. I worked at Six Flags and he and I got home from work about the same time every morning (God bless the night shift!). We would sit up for hours and discuss every time from politics to religion to absolutely meaningless crap, but it was great because it was just us two.
9) My brother, sister and I all married left handed people, but only one of our offspring is left handed (my sister's daughter).
10) My first boyfriend was from Cumming and grew up on a farm.
11) I had a near death experience as a child. It has shaped my view on Heaven, God and the afterlife ever since.
12) I love horses and always wanted to work with them until I found out there was no money in it. I love the time I spend volunteering at Blue Skies. Winston Churchill once said "There is something about the outside of the horse that is good for the inside of a man" and i firmly believe that is true.
13) I am scared of certain heights. I cannot dive, but I love roller coasters. I love glass elevators, but cannot stand at the edge and look down. I think it is because I was pushed off a high dive as a child. (By my swim teacher of all people!!)
14) My children are my greatest accomplishments. They are each amazing in different ways. I know they will be close even after Dad and Mom are long gone.
15) I would rather read a good book than watch a bad movie. Do not try to understand my reading tastes - they range from biography to science fiction. One summer I decided to read nothing but Russian novelists.
16) Soon my first book will be published. I think everyone will like it. At least, I hope so.
17) My sister and I were never close until we got older.
18) If I am your friend, know that I will stick up for you till hell freezes over unless you throw me under the bus. Then - it is on.
19) When we retire I want to spend at least a year travelling with Steve and the dogs in an RV. Afterward we can settle down and live out our days.
20) If I could go back and start again from, say 9th grade, I cannot think of many things that I would change.
21) My favorite sport is soccer.
22) I didn't think this would be as hard as it has been.
23) Why do we park on driveways and drive on parkways?
24) I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. The game itself (GO Steelers!!!) gets too slow.
25) I love my family and pray for them each every day.
I had dinner the other night with three of my closest female friends. Due to schedule conflicts we hadn't been together in almost a year, and the conversation was fast and varied. One is expecting to become a grandmother for the first time while another will have both children in college. Two were going back to work as teachers of children with learning disabilities. After all these great and life changing events, it was my turn.
When I mentioned I had a publisher interested in my book I also mentioned this blog. Linda asked me, "What is your blog about?" and I had to stop for a moment. What is this blog about and for? So, after spending several days pondering the topic, I finally came to a decision.
This blog is my journal, my take on things around me and the way I see the world. It isn't about what I wore on a particular day, or great places to eat around town where I live. It isn't about my children in general or anything in particular. This is what I think, feel, experience, write or hear within a defined period of time.
So this is me, being me, for the first time in a long time. There will be posts on my books and writing, my family and friends, triumphs and tragedies. According to the rules of conversation as handed down by my father, I will blog on everything except politics, religion and the Great Pumpkin. Well, maybe politics if I can't hold the irritation inside any longer.
Northern born, Southern raised, youngest child, biggest mouth - all terms used to describe this child of the 70's. My father was an aeronautic engineer and my mother a librarian. Personally I can't add without a calculator but I do have a passion for books. And I usually have an opinion on everything.
Grab a cup of coffee and come along with me, I have a wealth of topics I want to cover. Tomorrow I think I'll cover something totally different - like the new weather patterns or the lack of good network television during summer months. But whatever it is, I know it will be all me.
Well, two more days and March 2010 will be history. Let's look at what has happened around the globe this month. The Democrats ramrodded a health care reform bill through Congress even though 85% of Americans don't want it, the weather went wacky all over the country dumping record amounts in the NE, and I have still not heard from any reputable publishers about CATALYST.
The first item is one of the three areas I choose not to discuss in public. The other two are religion and the Great Pumpkin. But, if the general population has not figured out we are rapidly sliding down the hill toward becoming a Socialist nation then they deserve what they get. I highly recommend reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged to anyone with a mind still capable of making independent decisions. It will give your life a direction and affirmation.
As for the weather, Mother Nature has obviously hit menopause. I would assume we are heading toward global climate change on a magnitude not seem in humanities lifetime. Does that mean we are the cause of this change? Not completely. I think these cycles of the earth are normal. God set into motion a living system, complete with chaos theory. Free will is not confined to people.
I am working on a new book. Nothing related to science fiction or fantasy, this book is in honor of my daughter and our two horses, Bella and Penny; and all the other horses who find themselves in rescue centers. If you love horses, then join the movement for responsible breeding of horses, especially Thoroughbreds. The reckless search for the next great racehorse unfortunately leads to many wonderful not so great horses have to find homes. I will never let I horse I own or care about be sent to the kill pens.
My closest friends came for dinner Sunday to catch up and provide support for my son's godmother and her daughter. Stacey lost her husband last year to ALS, and there are still some sore spots, but it was wonderful for them to come up and enjoy some fellowship with old friends. I pray for her everyday.
My husband has to have tests done tomorrow first thing for his heart. I ask everyone to pray for his protection and that nothing extreme is wrong. Updates to follow as I get them.
Why, when you tell people you are working from home, is their first response to ask if you are playing hooky? Is it because that is what they would do? I really do work from my home. That's why I have a laptop computer. Everything I need to do my job, with the exception of my physical office can be found on or forwarded to my laptop.
Now, I do take longer breaks than I would at the office, to change out the laundry or start dinner or ferry children around. But that happens around checking my emails, updating contracts, updating my blogs, and working on getting published. In truth I work harder at home than the office, just at my own speed not anyone elses.
Today, for example, I am in a quandary. Do I agree to sell my book to a company with a questionable reputation, or to keep pushing letters and samples of the book to major publishing houses? Honestly, I think I am good enough to see the book directly without any financial output on my part. Am I that naive?
While I work on my next book I am going to be prayerful of this situation. I may also consult someone wiser than myself. But I will not let it stop my writing. Someone out there is going to get it. And I'll be ready when they do.
And when it gets published, I will throw such a party for everyone who has believed in my and this project, as to shame other parties.
