I feel like I'm starting to neglect this blog. No, no, I'm not going to shut down, but just know that I'm blogging elsewhere (email me/comment and I'll let you know) so that's taking up a lot of time. Especially when both are start-ups. One I feel like I'm the ONLY non-professional writer in the group. At first I didn't notice it, but the owners set up a yahoo group and when people starting introducing themselves, I kept reading professional editor/author/writer/you get the picture in everyone else's bios. ACK!

I'm also doing some research for what I hope will be a pretty hefty blog post about recent Chicago events as well as a mini-book review of a book I'm trying hard to get thru right now. It's a great book (the big pink on on the right), but finding time to read is ACK!

Speaking of which, Amy's set up a new blog for her 20 books summer challenge. She wants to read 20 books this summer and has asked for anyone (that means you!) to join her on this insane challenge. Of course I signed up! I'm crazy, have little time for reading, and well, I'm me. I'm doomed thou. I know I won't "win" this challenge as Rachel is in. She goes thru books like I go thru Twizzlers! OK, now I know that Amy will say, this is a personal challenge. Ha! Right. She's just as competitive as me. ACK!

I also just spent almost an hour downloading photos from our new camera. The monster takes UBERsized photos and the hubby is in love with the camera. Which means he racks up some major MBs quickly. He took 600+ at Ella's dance recital. Yes, the new cam has that function where you just hold down the button and zapzapzap photos are taken. Which is why no one has really seen the dance recital photos. ACK!

AND someone whom I've had very little interaction with in my many moons at work has decided to nominate me for an award. AND since we don't know each other well, I had to supply her with a few names of people who could give her the info she needs to submit the nomination. ACK ACK ACK!!! Of course, I have someone else I want to nominate, so I'll work on that all the while knowing my lil nomination will go no where.

Lastly...the hubby's off this weekend for a training. Ella & I are single gals Friday and most of Saturday. My youngest sis is in town this weekend and will whisk Ella off somewhere on Saturday afternoon. Yes people I may some time ALONE at home! OMG, what will I do?!? Then the baby nephew turns one on Monday so his party is Sunday. That also means my dad will be in town and that means that him & my younger sister are kidnapping Ella from Sunday to Wednesday. OMFG, what will we ever do without her for FOUR DAYS!?!

whew! I'm just tired thinking about all of this. Off to blog on Amy's book blog.

Labels: blogging, Books, Ella, misc, writing

I did get my first check that says "freelance" on it. $50 that will go towards mi vida feminista.

Would it be too geeky to photocopy it before I cash it? Or just never cash it? Nah...I'm cashing it.

Labels: writing

About two months ago I made it public that I wanted to write an essay to submit for the "Maternal is Political" collection. 2,000 words have never seemed like so much since college. I've fallen about 200 words short and honestly I'm not happy with what I have written. But right now is my last chance to send it in by the June 1 deadline, so off it will go! I'll just wait for the October 1 notification date to come and pass acknowledging my rejection ghost-letter.

Labels: writing

Parenting Beyond Belief has its own blog and I was reading thru is last night. I ran across a post about death. Death seems to be on the BIG questions that comes up when you talk about raising kids without religion. How do you explain it? But this post focused more on the phenomena that once someone is dead, they are immediately canonized. The hubby likes to joke that just once, just once that he'd like to see a report on TV about some guy who died in a tragic manner that a neighbor complains, "He was the biggest @$$. Never helped anyone without it benefiting himself."

My first experience of the weird immunity we grant to the recently dead was at my dad’s funeral. I was thirteen and he was forty-five, my age next year. I loved my dad. He was a good guy.

Still, the eulogies offered by Dad’s friends and colleagues struck me as…weird.

I remember one colleague of his saying, “Dave didn’t have an enemy in the world.” “He was always thinking of others, never a thought for himself,” said another. “Everyone loved him.” “He loved his family more than any man I’ve ever known.”

Okay. I guess.

Like I said, he was a good guy. But this was my first experience of the genuine canonization of the dead that is socially mandated. Although my dad was funny and smart and hardworking and endlessly curious, he also lost his temper frequently and even sprained his thumb once. Oh, while beating me, I left that part out. I had been a shit to my younger brother, again, and Dad had come off a 60-hour week, and he couldn’t find it in himself to not sprain his thumb on me.

I'm often struck with this subject when I'm at wits end about my mom. I hate to say that sometimes the way I get myself out of my rut is to remember the crappy things like when she told me that I'd just flunk out of college, so why get my hopes up about applying. She did later apologize during another fight that she just said it because she didn't want me to go. That's my mother's love for ya.

Reading Amy's post about her dad's funeral cemented the idea that we need religion or whatever we call it to make it thru the bad days. I've met only a handful of people who seem to thank their deity for the good days. But I think we all fall to our knees when we need help. And honestly, that's not such a bad thing. And just like religion, we need to remember the good things about people when they die. Hopefully those at the things that help us thru our loss. And maybe even make us laugh when our hearts are torn to shreds.

So while the practice of bending over backwards for the recently dead is strange and sometimes unfaithful to who that person is, I excuse at least those closest to the dead for it. It's all apart of the healing process.

That said, when I go (at a very old age and in my sleep) please put on one hell of a dance party. And if my death does make the news, say something about my bad grammar if you want to say something bad about me. *wink*

Labels: Books, goddess, writing

Last week, MotherTalk hosted a blog tour for a book about parenting and religion. The book, Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Caring, Ethical Kids Without Religion, takes the side of those parents who want to raise their children in a secular vein, without religion. We think the publication of this book gives us a chance to blog about religion and our families and the ways we parent, from a variety of angles.

This Friday, May 25th, we thought we'd invite everyone to blog about religion: what we do; what we don't; what our kids like, or don't; what we argue about; what we feel great about, or guilty of... the list goes on and on and the sky's the limit, bonanzas are all about conversation.

I'm in a mixed marriage. I'm a tree-loving, goddess-worshiping pagan. The hubby is a true Catholic. He likes to label himself that because as far as he's concerned he pretty much lives by what the Bible says, what Jesus would REALLY do, and not so much what TPTB rant about. I'm also a recovering Catholic, so you might really categorize me as a pagan Catholic. I identify a lot with the ethnic part of Catholicism; the way native Mexicans merged their pagan religion with Catholicism.

What we do is celebrate Christmas & Solstice and Easter & Ostara, althou I have to admit to being a lazy pagan and not really getting my butt in gear to do a ritual on any holiday. I personally celebrate Halloween and Samhain. I do believe that this year I will bring Ella into my celebration and get in gear with a real ritual for Samhain. (Yes, long-time readers more angst about my late mother!) I wear a goddess around my neck, the hubby wears a cross. The hubby prays each morning and evening and crosses Ella before we leave her somewhere. He's even teaching her how to cross herself. I rub my goddess when I need a little more strength or peace.

Tonight Ella went on and on about how if I die, she'd have to get a new mommy. Oy...Just what I need. I did talk about heaven. I do believe in a heaven/summerland, where we all go, except the most evil, when we die. (If the Catholics are right, save me a place in Hell, k?) But I phrased it as, "Most people believe..." Hopefully as she grows and keeps hearing that phrase, she'll understand that we want her to find her own path.

We don't go to church. The last time either of us went to a church without a wedding or funeral happening was me. Shocked, eh? Being a pagan can be lonely. So I tried out a UU church nearby. It was nice, but I dunno...Maybe later. And honestly I'm too busy to find a coven to really get involved with. Yeah, I know...Don't ask. I'm just confusing like that.

The only thing I feel guilty about is that Ella doesn't have official godparents. Having those seemed to be comforting to me as a kid. Maybe when she's a tad older and can understand what it means, we'll figure out some type of ceremony we can do in the backyard or at a UU church. The two couples who would be her godparents already know who they are. We told them as much around Ella's birth. (Reminder...get that damn will done!)

I hope that this this and that way of infusing religion into Ella's life keeps going as well as it has been. She's just shy of 4, so we have a long way to go. I do wonder what it'll be like when her friends start asking about it. Then again her best friends are one Jewish boy and one half-Jewish, half-some type of Christian girl (the dad doesn't talk about it). So being half-pagan and half-Catholic won't be too weird. Being my daughter will be tough enough!

All that said, I do fear how I'll be able to teach Ella to respect religion when fundamentalism runs rampant in this world. From fundie Christians in this country telling us who we can love and when I can reproduce to fundie Muslims in Iraq stoning girls to death just for falling in love with someone outside her faith. I guess we'll just borrow from the Catholics and hate the follower, love the faith. Or something like that.

Which brings me to our only big argument about religion - Catholic school. Living in Chicago, it's tough to find a good public school and with all this BS-"School Choice" it's almost impossible. Which forces us to look at private, independent, and *gulp* religious schools. Catholic schools are out. Period. No discussion. OK, maybe a little. But the hubby has to do the research and present the case. I can't give money to an institution that continues to lie and cover up about child rape and then call me out for being pro-choice. And that's just the beginning.

I think the best thing for her is to be exposed to as many different faiths as possible so she can choose or build her own path.

Labels: blogging, Books, Ella, family, feminism, goddess, writing

As my faithful readers have noticed, I've picked up quite a bit of work reviewing books over the past year. It started out with me posting my own reviews of books that I read, loved, and needed to tell my sliver of the world. I'd dare say that 90% of the books I read are not on the NY Times best seller list, heck make that 99%. That same percentage are women authors and at the same time feminist works of literature as well. I feel it is my duty as a feminist book reader to tell you all to go pick up that book and read it as well.

One bit of advice I keep getting over the years as I attempt to hone my craft as an activist/advocate is to write, write, write...and read. What better way for me to sharpen my writing than to blog about what I just read? As a kid I hated writing book reports because they seemed so lame - even as I chugged them out 2-3 times a week. I read a lot of short books. Hey, the teacher valued quantity as well as quality.

Thanks to Get Them Blogging and MotherTalk, I'm just about up to my ears in books to read & review. Three years ago if you had told me that 1) I'd get free books in the mail just for blogging about them and 2) I'd have time to read them all, I would told you to get outta here. This experience has been fabUlous. It has forced to pay closer attention to the writing of the books I read instead of just getting lost in the story. My book club kinda did that, but there's something about putting words out into the blogosphere that makes me take that job a bit more seriously.

You can imagine the fury that went thru my mind when I read on Echidne of the Snakes that a book reviewer, Richard Schickel, is a tad pissy that us bloggers are taking his work:

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work, among other qualities.

I'll admit that I'm not trained to write reviews, but I guess that's why I get paid in books. One of his main arguments is that my opinion doesn't mean poop:

Opinion — thumbs up, thumbs down — is the least important aspect of reviewing. Very often, in the best reviews, opinion is conveyed without a judgmental word being spoken, because the review's highest business is to initiate intelligent dialogue about the work in question, beginning a discussion that, in some cases, will persist down the years, even down the centuries.

Looking back at my archives and the number of comments I get on book review posts, I'd have to say that I'm not adding much to "intelligent dialogue about" the book (see what happens when you don't comment!). That said, most days I have at least one visitor who comes here because they were looking for a review of a book I have read.

Schickel wraps up with the flawed logic that because writing a print review is permanent, that blogging a review is somehow temporary:

The act of writing for print, with its implication of permanence, concentrates the mind most wonderfully. It imposes on writer and reader a sense of responsibility that mere yammering does not. It is the difference between cocktail-party chat and logically reasoned discourse that sits still on a page, inviting serious engagement.

Tell that one to anyone who has ever posted something stupid on their blog and had that show up high on their Google name list. In what seems to be a hastily written blog post criticizing bloggers who are criticizing Jessica Valenti's book, Jill wrote some iffy statements. She then comes back to apologize for those statements. Tell Jill that her blog post isn't permanent.

I emailed a few other book reviewer bloggers (are we bobloggers? borebloggers? ha!) and learned that this is NOT Schickel's first pooping onto us bloggers. Am I feeding into what must be his HUGE desire to be heard on this topic? Yeah, but blame Echinde for that. I get as many readers a day as she gets in about 10 minutes. *wink* Schickel threw this blog-bomb out there way back in March at a writing conference:

And then suddenly, he veered off course and said that blogging is for idiots. That no one reads a blog except your mother and maybe your cousin, and that it’s stupid to write without getting paid for it. If I heard him correctly, he described blogs as the “near beer” of the writing world.

The irony of this is that the SAME day he said this, his daughter's book was part of a "blog tour" over at MotherTalk. Hmmm...I wonder what the next family dinner was like...Bread anyone?

The thing is that we've all been here before and will continue to have to defend our blogging honor. "Real" journalists still debate whether bloggers should have media credentials, "real" videographers will argue whether or not CNN asking for video has ruined media, and now we have a "real" reviewer wondering if my itty bitty blog with barely 40 visitors a day is hurting his career. My, what a fragile ego we have.

What I have seen in my short time in blogging for books is that it is a community event. I go to other blogs to read what others have to say. It's half-review and half-book club. Just as I don't really care what Rich R. has to say about movies, but love to read Steve's reviews on Gapers Block. It's not just that I adore the owner of GB or that it's online, but I know Steve is far geekier than I am and so if something makes him laugh, I can pretty much guess correctly if it will do the same for me. IOW, I can relate to Steve. Just as I hope that those reading my reviews can relate to me. I can't relate to RR nor do I relate to most mainstream book reviewers. Plus, I rarely read mainstream stuff (I'll return to that next week).

Will I stop reviewing books? Not as long as they keep coming free to my mailbox from the PUBLISHERS. Will my writing get better? I hope so.

Labels: blogging, Books, writing

I have one book review and one pseudo-review/response. The book review includes a drawing for a free book. Sure I love Rachel & Amy, but I was hoping some of you lurkers might want it and show yourselves. The deadline for the drawing will be Tuesday, May 22nd at 5 pm Chicago time. So get to it!

Another book review will be up next week. Yup, I'm a book reviewing machine! This one will be the toughest one yet due to the content of the book and that it's fiction. Not science fiction, but pure fiction. Maybe even a chick lit book. Since I don't read many of those books, it's hard for me to think about this book. No hints on how I like it!

I included this cartoon that a friend emailed me last week. Now doesn't that just make your Monday?

Labels: Books, writing

MotherTalk poses this question:

Dangerous Boys by brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden, reminds us of the days before our culture banished the jungle gyms, and stopped kids from playing in treehouses, running go-carts, and whittling wood with a Swiss Army knife to make a bow and arrow. After a single-page introduction lamenting over the ways we keep our kids from experiencing risk and adventure, The Dangerous Book for Boys mixes recipes of outdoor fun with small-chapter information ranging from great battles, the seven wonders of the ancient world, parts of speech, and how to tap Morse Code.

• Have we made childhood too safe? Are we too afraid for our children, too scared to let them wander, ride bikes around the block, take risks? What are the real risks, which are imagined, and how do we navigate these, as their moms?

I haven't read this book and I don't plan on it. Why? Because the basic premise is that only boys can be dangerous. For a better blog post about the gender issues, see ginmar's post. Yes dear readers, I'd rather focus on the dangerous aspect of this prompt than to tackle the gender issue.

Still with me? Good.

Spend a few minutes with Miss Ella and you'll know that I'm mothering a pretty dangerous woman-child. She loves to jump, jump off of things, climb, jump off, run, and all the great things I remember doing as a kid. I had deep pride in the fact that by 5th grade I knew how to run and flip myself over a fence without ripping my clothes or skin on the top of it. I'd ride my bike up and down the street and then do pop-a-wheelies off a homemade ramp. I made it with a piece of plywood and a brick. Yeah, real safe, eh? I'd spend hours in my tree, reading or just watching the world go by. There was one summer where I'd sneak up to the roof and jump off. Don't be too amazed, we lived in a small one-floor house.

Have we made childhood too safe?

Yes and no. A few weeks ago Miss Ella was rollerskating with a neighbor. The neighbor girl, K, didn't have knee pads, wrist guards, or a helmet on. Heck, she barely had her skates on right! I sat there watching them thinking about when I was a kid skating. Who wore protection then? Seeing yesterday and today skating together made me think that maybe we are too safe today. Then Ella fell and laughed. That's when I knew that her pads were not just keeping her safe, but also making it more fun. She likes falling down and without kneepads, there wouldn't be much laughing. I know that too well.

We didn't have much money growing up, so bikes had to last a long time - even if the brakes were dying. I was racing home one night and took a corner too fast. I wiped out...BIG TIME. I cried the last 2 houses home. I was mad. Mostly at the fact that we were so poor that I was riding a bike without brakes.

On the flip side, there are so many times when the hubby & I butt heads about Ella being too dangerous. Is climbing up on the stoop too dangerous? Is it more so because of the 50 lb flower pot sharing the stoop? Is jumping off the jungle gym really that bad? Especially now that most playgrounds are softer than a gymnastics floor. Ok, maybe it is. But still...a girl's gotta have some fun, right?

In other ways, childhood is safer for great reasons: seat belts, car seats, no riding in the back of the pick-up, on and on. But play shouldn't be just about safety. There needs to be some danger. Why? So that we can push ourselves. If we never take those risks to jump just a little farther than we should, we might not take that large leap move out of our parent's home at 18. And what a bore we'd grow up to be.

Technorati tags: MotherTalk, Fearless Friday

Labels: blogging, Books, writing

Freshman year of high school. That is when I peaked.

I won honorable mention in a local writing contest and I earned a spot in our journalism class aka the school newspaper. I also earned a spot on the color guard which practiced during 5th period which meant I needed to move driver's ed - to 8th period. End of my journalism career. Looking back, that decision somehow meant that I wasn't a serious (good) writer. For Goddess sake, I chose to wear a silver sequin headband while making simple geometric shapes on a football field while twirling a flag over beginning my op-ed career (which is still beginning). Yes, my mom was pretty disappointed I chose flags over a red pen.

Almost 20 (!) years later I'm taking back my pen and finally listening to my muse*. This time she often wears pigtails and calls me "Mama."

"Writing Motherhood" is just the book this novice writer and mama needed. Lisa Garrignes begins out uber-cheesy but ends up having that perfect nurturing and supportive touch. I have to admit that both the harsh self-critic and anti-self-help book reader in me went into the book wanting to not like it. Sure some book some woman wrote targeted at mommies is going to help me write. Um...yeah, she did.

First, suspend your attitude. The fact that Garrignes calls our notebook a "Mothers Notebook" and the pages within "Mothers Pages" made me gag. But I got over it. Garrignes parallels and fuses both my desires to write and figure out this crazy thing called parenthood. This is best showcased in the chapter entitled, "Good Enough." By this point she's already gotten me buy a "Mothers Notebook" (not that its a hard task. I'm addicted to blank books.) so we're deep into this book. She recounts a moment of super-perfectionism and a "Bad Parent" moment and then brings it back to writing. "Just practice telling yourself over and over, as a mother and a writer, that good is good enough, and in time you will begin to believe it." I told ya there was some cheese. But you know what? It's just the right amount.

Instead of homework or exercises there are writing invitations. I tried the first few and was comfortable with them. They quickly turn into real assignments that due to my deadline I couldn't attempt them all. This book is really not one to read all at once and put away. It is a working book. This one needs you to work along with it and I do plan to go back and work on my "Mothers Notebook." Hey, it's in my bag, that's the first step!

I would recommend this book to someone else who is afraid of writing or afraid of sharing your writing and is a mom. The whole book is about mothers who write and while all the suggestions should be applicable to anyone, I think non-moms would get tired of the play date stories quickly. I really try not to work from an essentialist point of view, but I gotta admit, Garrignes is right. Being a mom is chock full of stories - ours & our kids' stories.

Other reviews at Mother-Talk. Get the book from Women & Children First.

Due to my inability to give someone my zip code, I have two copies of this book. Whoever emails me or comments on this post will be in a drawing for that book. Deadline is Monday, May 21, 2007. If you comment and don't want the book, I'll just keep drawing names until I get to someone who does want it. So don't let that be your excuse to lurk!

* I have to admit that I did keep a journal off and on from about junior year in high school until Ella was born. I've also kept a spotty journal for Ella since she was born. But it's 90% safe thoughts in case someone finds it. I've had that happen and it wasn't pretty. Not one itty bit. Fear of many things has kept my pen in my pocket all these years.

Labels: Books, writing

MotherTalk posed this prompt to its readers in light of the paperback release of Arianna Huffington's "Becoming Fearless:" let's all blog about overcoming fear—at home, in relationships, at school, of our bodies, in parenting, at work, and in leadership.

So what have I done to overcome fear? When I seriously consider this question what quickly comes to mind are all the things I am still afraid to talk about, do, or consider. I use to be much more fearless before the hubby. His more grounded & cautious nature has pulled me out of the clouds - some days - and helped give up some of my more reckless/fearless habits. That said, as I grow up and I guess mature, I've become more fearless in many ways. One particular way was when I took my current job.

My job is a dream job and when you are asked to do what you've been working so hard to do, you freeze. You question your ability to write a simple sentence, add single digits, and speak a coherent thought. I mulled over my decision with everyone I knew and I think that old guy in Lincoln Square who feeds the pigeons. I believe I was searching for that one person who would tell me, "No,Roni, you are not ready. Wait." Luckily I didn't run into that person.

I did however run into people who questioned my ability to do other things like, um, be president of a board because of my new job. Not that said person's ability to run said board was deterred when said person took a new job two years prior. Oh, no. And because of the overwhelming support from family & friends, I was able to see thru that person's bull. I didn't get that gig, but a huge veil of BS was lifted and I was outta there. Now that was fearless. Leaving a community that I had grown to love and I thought loved me back. It had become part of my identity, but loved ones were able to show me that I could still be Roni without being Roni from BS-ville.

That brings me to my final and conclusive thought. Being fearless is addictive and much like a snowball. It grows with each new day, with each new issue tackled, and with each new decision made. And you can never get enough of it. It makes you frustrated when you "need" to be fearful for whatever reason, rational or not. It's brought me to the brink of recklessness again...but with a much more mature heart.

Labels: blogging, Books, writing

I got my first rejection letter today.

I have to admit that this whole writing thing is tough solely because of the rejection. My inner perfectionist is not a tough chick. She's soft & mushy (much like the outer coating) and hates rejection. Thus she likes to stay nice & safe inside.

But I'm trying to take it on the chin like a big girl and just move on.

It did help me to actually start to write for the other call for submissions.

I'm so use to working towards winning, that it is really hard to think that I need to fail a few hundred times before I actually do win. Of course, it's not like I win all the time anyway. Ugh...ok, back to writing.

Labels: writing

You all have permission to kick my ass until I say that I have submitted my proposal for this:

Call for Submissions: The Maternal Is Political

Writer-mamas, how do your political views affect the way you parent? How has motherhood shaped or transformed your politics? How does the act of mothering serve as a form of activism in your life? What important work is being done at the place where motherhood and politics meet? Shari MacDonald Strong is seeking essay submissions for a literary anthology about mothers who are changing the world; about the relationship between motherhood and social change. The deadline is June 1, 2007. Selected essays will appear in the anthology The Maternal Is Political (Spring 2008, Seal Press). For more details, see the submissions guidelines at Shari’s blog. (The call for submissions will be posted on Seal Press's website in the next few days.)

Thanks Literary Mama!

Ideas on topics I should focus on are most welcome.

Labels: feminism, writing

Taking 2 days off of work has never hurt so much. And I'm taking 2 more next week, well I'm traveling for work, but still 2 days out of the office. Oy...this is gonna really hurt!

I think I caught up with my emails. If I missed yours, just poke me. I'm squishy, it won't hurt.

Some questions were posed in my comments, so here it goes:

1) Goddesses can wear capes. They are goddesses, they get to wear what they want. Which explains my fashion choices. And yes, purple is the color of choice for this goddess.

2) Abstracts...ok, they seem like a lot, but they aren't really. The hardest part of writing a good abstract is knowing your conclusion and being willing to give away the ending. This is not a formal way of writing one (you can find that here) but this is how I do it. In all honesty, it should be the last thing you write. But since many calls for books, articles, etc. ask for an abstract, you have to think about it as a Cliff Notes version of your future book chapter/article. It should be about 200-300 words long, cover your idea for the article, include the reasons why YOU should be the author, and give a little background of the idea. Sound hard? It is. At least for me who likes to ramble on and on...What you should remember is that this is all that the reviewer will read about your idea, what would make them contact you about writing a full article?

3) My writing. I'm moaned about wanting to do more writing since I left college in 1997. People have given me advise here and there. I read A LOT, but I haven't been writing as much. So I'm trying to write a lot more than I usually do.

whew! I think that's it. For now. I have a blog post about Jessica's moaning about the second wavers in my head. Hopefully tonight after I get our taxes done (I swear I will!) I can get it out the door. I'm starting to find it highly amusing that I like to take such "high profile" articles and thorw in my 2 cents for my 4 readers. But it's all about the process, right? And not the fame, right? Aw, I'm just tired and a little pissy. Time for more of Carol's chocolate chip cookie from Whole Foods. YUM!

Labels: blogging, goddess, writing

As some of you know, I'd like to do more writing. I have 2 calls that I think I could totally write for, but you know what? I forget. I have them bookmarked and get all excited about them. Then when I even think of starting, I can't even figure out where to start. So I go off and do other things (work, blog, surf the web, laundry) and then the deadline passes.

Any writers out there want to give me some advice on how to get on the wagon? I see the wagon, it's slowing down, but alas when it gets to me, I turn the other way.

Well, off to do laundry! Can't waste a day at home with the washer & dryer empty.

Labels: writing