A-Z Blog Challenge....here we go!

I was talking to some twitter friends last night and found out about this blog challenge. It sounded like a good way to wake my blog back up, since it's been on vacation for a little while.
So the challenge is easy enough and it's great for networking.

Blog posts have to start with the assigned letter of the alphabet on a certain day. I got so into it last night I wrote out three quick blog posts with pictures and saved them. This morning, I couldn't get it to copy to my blog, so here I am starting over again...just my luck...

So here's the first one...

A.....is for Australia

I want to visit there for sure before I die. I want to visit the Australia Zoo and then Perth and Alice Springs. I love their accents so much I have two characters in my manuscript from those two cities. I know Alice Springs is in the desert, but that's ok. It would still be great to visit there for 'research' purposes...everybody nod your head and agree with me. 

Come visit me fellow A-Zer's ...my posts will always be short and sweet!
 

New Blog meme

I haven't updated this in a while. Teacher evaluations have been looming, which for me, are now over. Praise the Lord and pass me a strong drink, lol. This whole new evaluation process has been....stressful, if nothing else. It's a whole new set of hoops to jump through and some are harder for us music, art, PE, guidance and librarian types just because our subjects are taught differently. Hopefully, by next year, they will tweak this system and it will be more applicable to us and still benefit our kiddos, which is why we're teaching to start with.

So, I know you don't want to hear me whine about my evaluations or the wreck I was in on Monday...so I'll get on with the new meme I was tagged in by my buddy, Dean over at www.deanswritingtime.blogspot.com

First of all, let me just say 'Thank you Dean for tagging me.' I'm waving now. :)  I appreciate you thinking of me. I was thinking since I've been a little more absent from twitter and blogging lately that everybody would forget about me. Out of sight, out of mind, you know? So I definitely appreciate not being forgotten about.
Also, in the same meme, my buddy Cherie over at www.readywritego.blogspot.com tagged me in the same meme. She said she thought it was because I was popular...she's so funny.

So both of my blogging/twitter buddies have awarded me:

Thanks guys!

So here's the deal with the blog award. You know memes...there are always these rules you have to follow.

1. I have to create a blog post about the award...which I'm doing right now...so, check that one off.

2. In the same post, thank the blogger that tagged you and put a link to their blog in the post. Done that. Check.

3. Nominate 15 other people for this award and let them know. That one will be a challenge. I'm not sure I know 15 people...hm...I may have to cheat on that one...lol I'm not sure whose been tagged and who hasn't, so there will probably be some repeats. I'll cruise some blogs to see.

4. Post 7 random things about yourself. This one will be interesting. I think instead of looking to see what other people have written, I'm going to post the first 7 things that pop in my head about myself. My brain is full of several random thoughts at any given moment, so this part shouldn't be too hard. 
    
    
     Random things about me:  Hm....

     1. I just painted my kitchen maroon and really dark brown...like dark chocolate.. I LOVE IT!

     2. I'm a really fast typer if I'm typing words that I'm thinking of, but if I'm looking at something, I'm constantly having to go back and          correct stuff. Took a typing test recently and figured this out. I completely sucked on the test.

     3. I love my cat. I mean, I really love him. He's so funny. He climbed my ladder in the kitchen when I was painting. He asks me to               pick him up and he snuggles my shoulder like a baby. He's the furry son I never had... and he fetches hair ties.

     4. I suck at bowling, but I still like it.
    
     5. I'm addicted to coffee with any kind of sweet creamer in it. Preferably fat-free french vanilla, which is why I'm so freakin' over              weight.

     6. I can burp really loud and it makes my husband laugh every time I do it if he's close.

     7. I love Australian and British accents. Wish I had one. I have to stick to my southern/country one.


Ok, I think I'm done now. My daughter, the youngest one, is yelling from the living room overwhelmed and excited about everything she's seeing on the Kid's Choice awards show. And I'm having trouble thinking about typing when she's yelling at me to watch it..lol. So kudos to Nickolodeon. They've put on a great show again and I've got one kid that will watch it over and over when it goes on demand. ;)

Insecure, but stubborn

I've heard more than once in the last week how fast February seems to be ticking by. I kept thinking it was just me, but I think there are many of us that feel like time is flying by. Maybe it's because I'm older. Maybe it's because I have a daughter, who is-as of Wednesday night- a senior cheerleader. Maybe it's the fact that on Thursday, my baby girl will be thirteen. Yikes. I'm not sure what's going on, but every one around me seems to be aging.  Why do I still feel the same? In my head  anyway.... I can see my body aging. I'm not that out of touch with reality..which sucks completely, by the way. But I can't stop it, so there's no need to worry about it.

Sometimes I feel like I've mastered a lot of issues I had growing up and even into my early adulthood. And then sometimes... I'm the same insecure girl, whose afraid of change, to try new things or is so paralyzed by not doing something really well, she won't even try it. I thought I'd gotten over all that, but then sometimes, that part of my personality rears it's ugly head again. Just when I think I've finally grown up enough to overcome it, here it comes again...booooooo.

It effects my self-esteem and then I question why in the world I'm even trying to write a novel or fool with a blog. Luckily, I'm just stubborn enough not to let it stop me for long. I do feel like it slows me down some, but it won't stop me....

This is my stubbornness made into a bull. I'm also a Taurus, so it sorta fits me. When I make my mind up about something, no matter what it is, I put my head down and dig in until I've achieved what I set out to do.

 

                                                                

Having Trouble

I remember how fired up I was about writing when January started. Then school started back and my time dwindled down to nothing...again.
It drains the force that drives me to write and then I feel like everything that appears on the computer screen is crap. Just feels like it's all crap.

So....what to do....delete it and start over ....again. It's not the first time and it won't be the last.

I've been SO distracted for the last few weeks. I've been having to teach writing to a 5th grade group of students, which I've NEVER done. With little or no direction, I had to just wing it and get ideas from people that have done it. Thank the Lord for Debra and Maribeth, two of my old teacher buddies.

So now that's over and I can go back to my regular third graders I was working with before. Tomorrow will be the day the 5th graders take their writing prompt. The way the new state teacher evaluations are run, a percentage of our evaluation comes from how well these kids do on their writing prompt. Can I just say that the pressure is on like never before? I had three weeks to help these kids raise their score. Will they remember anything we talked about??? It's completely out of my control now, but it still is disheartening to think, if  a kid has a bad morning or doesn't get to eat breakfast, that they may rush through it or hardly write anything at all because they don't like the prompt.

5th grade boys can be like that...."I had to write about being a raindrop--that's so stupid"...true quote.

I can't do anything else about it now...I just hope I helped a few of them. I'm hoping now that all the writing group stuff is over, maybe my brain will be a little less distracted and my mood will improve too.

Seems like lately I've been battling the yuckiness of depression. Too many clouds and not enough sun, I think has been the culprit.
We'll see how February goes....stay tuned.

Congrats to my friends!

I've talked about these 'writer people' I hang out with on Twitter before on this blog. They are a creative, talented, fun group of writers and I'm so glad to know all of them. I have some congratulations to hand out and a plug for both of their blogs because they are both awesome people and I think you should know them.

The first is Anita Grace Howard. She mainly writes YA and adult fantasy with a romantic slant. That sounds really good because they're her words, not mine...;) I think she's had an agent the whole time I've known her and has been working on her book "Splintered" for awhile. She disappeared off of Twitter for a few months to work on edits to give to her agent and then ....BAM! It happened. She got the 'CALL' a few months ago and 'Splintered' will be on the shelves in Fall of 2012!  She will soon be able to say she has a book on the shelves in bookstores. How cool is that??? Her blog is 'A Still and Quiet Madness' and she Tweets @aghowardwrites. Follow her...she's lovely and wonderful. :)

My other congrats goes to another Twitter writer buddy of mine: Robert K. Lewis. He tweets @robertklewis and writes crime fiction and noir. He got 'The Call', as he wrote on his blog, 'Needle City' today! Coolest thing ever! I think if I keep hanging around all these published authors, it's bound to happen to me sooner or later, right??? He said he's been working for 8+ years on getting published, so to finally hear that it's actually happened is still surreal for him. I think I'd be walking around in shock for a while too, if it were me.
 
I'm so proud of both of my friends and I hope when their books come out, you will buy one or both. Since they're my friends, I'm promising to both of them I'll buy a hardback copy of their books because I love them both as people, but also because I know their stories will be good. Their work will be great because they constantly strive for perfection in their writing.
All their hard work has finally started to pay off and it is SO exciting to me to see my friends succeed!
I'll keep you posted on the dates of when their books come out so you can order them too. :)

Cheers to Anita and Robert! *holds up wine glass full of Beringer to toast with* Well...from this picture, looks like I already drank it..lol
**Clink**  :)

CAPE--Challenged Athletes Playing Equally

My youngest daughter has autism, just in case you're reading this and didn't already know that. Luckily, in our very own town, we have an organization called C.A.P.E. that we are proudly a part of.

CAPE stands for Challenged Athletes Playing Equally. This organization is non-profit and is the brain-child of Rick Ryan. He was an accountant that coached baseball for 20 years in our county. Over his years of coaching, he noticed special needs kids, usually a brother or sister of one of his players, that would stand at the chain link fence and watch. They never got the chance to play and he thought that was a terrible waste. After years of that fact bothering him, he decided he wanted to do something about it and CAPE was born.

Through CAPE, my daughter has found friends she can play sports with in an understanding and modified environment. They play basketball, soccer, baseball, bowling, and hockey and just LOVE it. It has brought her more confidence and gives her some much needed exercise once a week.  
Here is my daughter playing basketball a two seasons ago. She's learned to dribble, pass and shoot. She makes baskets a lot of the time too. :)

They have a short documentary on their website www.capetn.org. I'm excited about it because my daughter and I were interviewed along with some of our great CAPE friends.

The only downside is listening to me talk...I hate that...;)

New Year, New Focus!

So here we are...2012.
All the 'end of the world movies' have been playing a lot lately. The end of the world was supposed to be in 1999, if anybody remembers that New Year's Eve...it was a big one. We all thought the world would crash and blow up when the calendar flipped over to 2000.

And look at us...we survived.

I'm not saying it's not coming...we'll blow up eventually....or freeze or something. Probably warm up too much the way Global warming is, but for today, since that's all we have anyway, I'm going to work on my book(s)

I have a serious writer friend @JWDreamkeeper critiquing my manuscript, so my focus has sharpened. When I say 'serious' writer friend, I mean, she actually knows what she's doing and is giving me some freakishly awesome advice. Her eyes can pick out mistakes a mile away, and believe me-there are plenty. So I have a fire lit under me again. Editing is SOOOOOO hard. I get bored looking at the same chapters over and over, but it has to be done.
Right now, she's actually getting my first draft of everything, because I had to start over... again. But lucky for me writing is a skill and the more I do it the better I'll get.

So this post is to tell everybody I'm fired up again about writing. I never completely lost my writing spark, but I felt like I was treading water instead of moving forward. I feel like I'm moving again and it feels FANTASTIC!

So I wanted to give a shoutout to @JWDreamkeeper for offering to help me. She's doing this out of the goodness of her heart, which I SO appreciate. She has NO idea how much she's helped me so far. So, this is her plug.

You need to click on her Twitter name and check out her blog. I've linked her blog on here twice, just in case you missed it the first time.
If you're on Twitter and you like writers or just really great people, you need to follow her. She is awesome...:)

Happy 2012!