Updating at Warp Speed

Several things have happened since I last saw you. So without further ado, here’s an update:

Halloween came and went.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFMRwlAlF5k

I added a new bear to my collection and he promptly took over my favorite place to hang out:

My oldest son turned 19. He still doesn’t have a job.

My next oldest son was promoted from freshman football to varsity football and he got to play in the last two varsity games. He would have played in the final varsity game, but he was sick all week and missed two practices so he couldnt play. We can’t wait for next year. He will be the only Sophomore on the varsity team.

Everyone got sick with some weird stomach bug. I hope it was H1N1 because if so, we all had it and survived and should be good to go for the rest of the year. Right?

My kitchen cabinets have three shelves. Well, one cabinet now only has two shelves, but that’s ok because I don’t have nearly as many glasses as I used to since that one shelf decided it was tired of holding up all of those glasses.

At least 3 times in the last two weeks, I haven’t had more than three hours of sleep because my husband snores and when the weather changes, his snoring gets worse. As soon as I drift off, he wakes me up. Poor guy, he doesn’t do it on purpose, but one of these mornings, he’s going to wake up with tampons shoved up each nostril and a sock in his mouth.

Most nights, I only sleep about 6 hours anyway.

We had record heat. It was ni the 90’s all week. It’s November.

We had our fiscal year end at work and that inculded taking inventory. I worked 12 hour days and weekends.

Somewhere in all of that, I worked, slept, ate, cleaned, laughed, cried, lived life, made decisions and talked to my family.

At least I assumed I did all of that. I don’t remember much of it in the blur of my life.

So, I’m back now, but quite frankly, next week doesn’t look much better.

Finally, do you guys miss my posts or me coming to visit you and leave comments?

 

How Best to Procrastinate

Today, my friend and fellow author, Pat, is going to guest host my blog. Many of you may remember Pat from my “Why do you blog” blog.  I’m guest hosting over at her place today and I have a fun project, so come visit me over there and say hi. Pat’s Blog

You know how to procrastinate. Everyone does. Think how often you sit in front of the television mindlessly switching from channel to channel just because there is too much to do and you don’t want to do any of it. But stuffing your mind with crappy shows while stuffing your mouth with crappy snacks is not the best way to procrastinate. It gains you nothing but excess weight and unnecessary guilt.

This past year, to keep me away from my work in progress — a whimsically ironic apocalyptic fantasy — I have spent a lot of time perfecting the art of procrastination. In fact, this virtual book tour is a good example of how best to procrastinate. It was supposed to be a whirlwind tour — ten blogs in ten days — but the first person who agreed to host chose November 11, the second chose October 18, the third chose November 21. By the time I filled in all the intermediary dates (which gave me plenty of fodder for procrastination — I couldn’t be expected to work on a manuscript when I needed to query book bloggers, could I?) I ended up with a thirty-five day blog tour.

Bad, right? Two blogs every day for over a month (one post for the host’s blog, one for my blog to promote my appearance on the host’s blog) is a lot of work, but it also means thirty-five days of guilt-free procrastination! Just think of all I am accomplishing while I am not rescuing my poor hero (I left him sweltering beneath a tangerine sun). I get to promote my recently released book, Daughter Am I, a young woman/old gangster coming-of-age novel. I get to make new friends. I get to visit new virtual locales. And all to keep from writing. Not bad at all.

There are so many things one can do while procrastinating, but the best way to procrastinate is to do something constructive while not doing what you feel you should be doing. You can take things too far, though. If I ever find myself doing housework instead of writing, I’ll know it’s time to dig out my WIP!

(The first chapters of Pat Bertram’s novels — A Spark of Heavenly, More Deaths Than One, and Daughter Am I — are included in the free Mystery Sampler from Second Wind Publishing, LLC.)

Say What?

 

A friend of mine made a reference to an Electra Complex  so I looked it up. Wikipedia says:

According to Freud, a girl, like a boy, is originally attached to the mother figure. However, during the phallic stage, when she discovers that she lacks a penis, she becomes libidinally attached to the father figure, and imagines that she will become pregnant by him, all the while becoming more hostile toward her mother. Freud attributes the character of this developmental stage in girls to the idea of “penis envy“, where a girl is envious of the male penis. According to the theory, this penis envy leads to resentment towards the mother figure, who is believed to have caused the girl’s “castration.” The hostility towards the mother is then later revoked for fear of losing the mother’s love, and the mother becomes internalized, much the same as the Oedipus complex.

So I questioned my friend who has more training in this area than I do, and they told me:

In a nutshell: a woman with an “electra complex” is a person who has real resentment issues with certain other woman going back to an emotionally imprinted idea that her father was stolen from her by her mother.

So to you my dear blog readers, I say:

Come, lay on my couch and tell me: How does this make you feel?

 

 

Lost and Found then Missing Again

I’ve been working.

I swear.

So, I really miss everyone and I hope you haven’t forgotten me.

I will be making the rounds soon to say hi.

Until then, Please feel free to hop over to my sister’s blog and help her make fun of me. Or maybe she’s making fun of Molly Ringwald. I can’t be sure.

Suzette Vaughn

 What are sisters for? No really, because I’ve been trying to figure that one out for decades.

~ CC

Guilty Pleasures

 

If you happen to pull up next to me in traffic, when you glance over, I will be singing.

 

 

Unbearable

My kids lovingly refer to me as “Bear”.

The nickname started because I’m just not much of a morning person and if I attempt to talk too early, my words come out more like growling than speaking.

My growl is much worse than my bite but I guess I can be a pretty scary mom. A girl who liked my son refused to come to the house and meet me. She met my husband and the other kids, but I scare her.

My kids know the truth. I’m a big ole teddy bear. My daughter was in trouble for something a couple of weeks ago and I was laying into her in my mommy tone and she smiled, patted me on the head and said, “Mom, I still love you even though you’re yelling at me.”

 

 

 

As a side note, Happy Birthday to the Mad Hatters! I hope they reach Julie’s goal of 250,000 visiters by the end of the day on 9/11.

LIFE – All of the Moments Added Together

I’ve been missing for a week.

What do you mean you didn’t notice? Gee, thanks. I’m going to write anyway.

So, for the past week, I’ve been working like crazy and spending a little time living life. I’d much rather Live life like crazy and spend a little time working, but it just isn’t working that way. Someday it will.

Yesterday, my fourteen year old son played his first High School Freshman football game. He didn’t get to play Pop Warner or football in junior high. The closest he’s come to getting to play on a team has been the rag tag session of all of the neighborhood kids tackling each other in my front yard and throwing passes the length of the street. I assumed that Joey wouldn’t have enough experience to play and I anticipated he would be on the sidelines for the entire first game.

How wrong I was. This boy played defensive end for most of the game. I’m usually proud of this kid anyway. He is in three advanced placement classes, he is the first one to encourage other kids, he always treats his dad and I with respect and even when he picks on his little brother and sister, he doesn’t overdo it to hurt their feelings.  All around, Joey is just a great kid.

 He’s number 84.

Towards the end, he will turn and look at me and then you can hear the group of girls sitting behind me yell his name. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks he’s a great kid.

Here’s another short little video of him playing. It’s grainy because the camera was full and my battery was dying thanks to my younger children recording themselves jumping on the bed – but that’s another story for another day. 

 I cleaned out my camera, so next week I will get more video. Every Wednesday for the next couple of months I will be taking time out to share a few moments of life.

Sometimes, you just have to stop and catch a football.

 

~CC

Working for a Living

Much of my writing comes from the huge variety of jobs I’ve held in my lifetime up to this point.

My job history began at the tender age of 5 when my mother started her own business. As a child, I was paid to clear snow from sidewalks and driveways in the winter and mowing yards in the summer. I never received an allowance from my parents. They thought feeding, clothing, and sheltering me was enough payment for chores.

By the time I was thirteen, I had moved on to babysitting. I never got paid for babysitting my own sister since that fell in line with chores, but I did get paid for babysitting other people’s children.

When I was fifteen, I got a job washing dishes at my best friend’s grandmother’s restaurant. It was hard work but I got paid regularly.

I have also had the following jobs along the way in no particular order:

Busser, waitress, preschool teacher, US census employee, librarian, tax preparer, office manager, controller, executive administrator, accountant, author, mother, wife, secretary, accounts payable clerk, fraud accountant, accounts payable supervisor, purchaser, asset manager, auditor, bookkeeper, graphic artist, editor, tutor, apartment manager, cashier, Avon rep, answering service operator, fast food crew member, sandwich artist, credit counselor, and public notary.

I’m sure there were more titles along the way, but you get the idea. I’ve worked hard my whole life, often working two jobs at a time. It gets on my nerves to hear people say what jobs they refuse to do like they are too good to flip burgers or stand at a drive through window. There are always worse jobs out there.

So what’s the worst job you ever had?

A Birthday Party!

This isn’t my typical post. You aren’t going to find my usual snarkiness and sarcasm. What you will find that this is a touching moment for me that I think many writer’s will understand.

Today is the first birthday of my Publisher, Second Wind Publishing. I know, it’s probably not a big deal to you, but it’s a huge thing for me because I have been part of this company since the day the idea was tossed around. It’s been an incredible, life changing  journey and I am forever grateful to Mike for making it all happen.

~CC

Browse around a little, get an idea for who we are and what we’ve done. Stop by and say hi.

 

www.secondwindpublishing.com

Ten Lessons I Learned (The Hard Way): A Publisher’s Reflections on the First Year

What Second Wind Book Do You Wish to Read? You Might Get Your Wish!

Introducing the authors of Second Wind!

You want me to do what?

I’ve never parallel parked.

You heard me.

Never.

I have a phobia about parallel parking. Seriously. I took driver’s ed when I was fifteen and I completed the class with an A grade, but whenever we practiced parallel parking, I simply moved back in the line of drivers and didn’t actually parallel park. I took my driver’s test on my sixteenth birthday and I completed every task requested of me. Finally, the instructor and I are sitting in my car and there’s only one thing left to do.

“Okay Miss Collins,” he said. “If you could just pull forward and park between those two cars, we’ll finish this up.”

The car didn’t move.

I thought about trying it. Really I did. Instead, I turned to the older man in the passenger seat. “If I refuse to do it, will I fail the test?”

He frowned at me and looked over my scores. “Well, no. You’ve aced every part of the test. You pass whether you parallel park or not, but you might as well try.”

I put the car in reverse and parked it in a space in front of the building. (If you don’t parallel park, then what do you call parking in a regular space? It isn’t perpendicular parking or lateral parking?)

The instructor looked at me and I looked at him. He shrugged and said, “Congratulations. You are a licensed driver.”

That was over twenty years ago. To this day, I have never parallel parked. I’m an excellent driver and I handle a car well. I know that I could parallel park, but I don’t want to – ever, and I don’t even know why I have this issue. I just know that something in me prevents me from putting a car in that position.

What silly little things do you refuse to do?