What’s in a name?

August 5, 20132 Comments

Names are stories, and in those stories are a person’s identity and culture. -Icess Fernandez Rojas

I love that! It’s so true, too, at least for my stories, anyway. Think of it: a whole story, a saga, if you will, all summed up in a single word. Now that’s mind-boggling.

Have a ‘tough’ name that Starbucks can’t handle? Welcome to my world | Icess Fernandez Rojas (theguardian.com)
Spoken Word Poetry: My name, my identity (theafricanstreetwriter.com)
From a name to individuals to legacies (seesano.com)

Campfire tales

July 25, 2013July 25, 20134 Comments

So, after my last post, how about something a little lighter? I’ve been camping three times in the last month and I don’t think I’ve recounted any of our grand adventures! How the heck did that happen?!

Okay. Enough exclamation marks. Maybe. 🙂

So in June, we had planned to visit the (I assume, having never been there myself) lovely Volga Lake. Thanks to Mother Nature, we were forced to change our plans and we wound up visiting scenic Pine Lake instead, right smack in our own backyard. It was such a nice park that we decided to return in July, which turned out to be perfect because I got called into work (our camping trips straddled the week-weekend divide). So in June the weather was lovely, the river was perfect for tubing, the hiking trails were excellent, and we had a great time.

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But our first trip in July was a little more eventful…

The post of many feels

July 14, 2013July 14, 201328 Comments

I found a lump in my breast.

It could be nothing – Dear God, I hope it’s nothing. Please let it be nothing! – but it could be something. And if it’s something, then it will be my very worst fear come true.

My mother died of breast cancer at the age of 31, just one year after diagnosis. Hers was an advanced and aggressive cancer; her doctors offered her little hope. But she took what little they offered her and fought bravely for a year for us, for my dad, my sister, and me. She battled hair loss and weight gain and nausea and everything else that goes with being a cancer patient, and when she finally succumbed to death, she was smiling.

I am not as brave as my mother.

Finding a lump in my breast – and worse, finding I had cancer – has always been my deepest fear.

Tuesday already?

July 2, 2013July 2, 20134 Comments

Hi, everybody! Thank you all for stopping by. I know it’s been a bit quiet here lately and unfortunately, I think that trend may continue for a while longer. Between the upcoming holiday, my impending camping trips, the new job, recovering from Saturday’s successful garage sale, and something else that I’m not quite ready to discuss in detail (though I did vaguely mention it on Twitter yesterday), I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment and something’s gotta give. Sadly, I think my writing is it.

So, I’ll try to pop in here as often as I can. I’ll try to do the same for Facebook, even though I know my presence there lately probably isn’t what it ought to be. And Twitter? I’m still searching for a mobile app to replace my beloved Tweetdeck. If anyone has any suggestions for apps they love, I’m all ears (though for the record, I’ve tried HootSuite and I just don’t like it as well). Let me know in the comments! Maybe then I’ll at least be able to keep up there.

Until next time, folks, have a happy Fourth and stay safe.

Yay Friday! :)

June 28, 201316 Comments

Multitasking: I found the portal to Lokana while hiking at Pine Lake on a family vacation. Family time + research FTW! 🙂

So, it’s Friday. Woohoo! It’s been a week of big, exciting things around the country, and it’s been a week of big exciting things right here in my own backyard. It’s going to be a super busy weekend, too. So what am I doing to prepare?

I’M WRITING, Y’ALL!

I’ve been working on Remnants again the last couple of days, and it feels great, but I can’t get my inner editor to shut up, which is irritating. I have a buttload of revisions left to do on The Lokana Chronicles, but I really need a week or so of peace, quiet, and no internet to get them done. 🙂

Still, it feels wonderful to be enjoying my passions again. I’ve missed playing with my camera and visiting imaginary worlds and the people that populate them. And since I’m starting a new job next week, it’s nice that at least a little bit of the change going on in my life is change that I enjoy (not that I’m not excited about the new job – I totally am).

So for now, it’s back to writing. Big things are in the works and I need time to prepare. Have a great weekend, everybody!

A super moon for the birthday boy!

June 26, 20139 Comments

Yesterday was Cricket’s birthday. Can you believe he’s three already? I can’t. How did this happen again? And how do I make it stop? If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know – I’m also open to options for keeping the older two small. 😀

It’s been quite the week at Casa Kauffman, which made for a grumpy birthday boy yesterday morning. He was up pretty late (for an adult, never mind a two-year-old) Sunday night and didn’t nap on Monday, so you can imagine the fun I had that night. By last night, he was in a better mood, but I still had to coax him into the car when I went to pick him up from daycare. This is how the conversation went:

Keep reaching

June 20, 2013Leave a comment

When we’re little, we … dream big. We look up at the stars and we imagine that we only have to grow up in order to reach them. Most of the time, we grow up and never look at the stars again. –Cristian Mihai

Cassiopeia Star trails (Photo credit: weatherphotography.co.uk)

I read that quote earlier this evening. If you don’t follow Cristian’s blog, you should. He writes the most amazing posts. Anyway, as I was reading the post I linked to above, it got me thinking about all the ways in which I used to look up at the stars as a kid. I remember studying them in Girl Scouts and learning all the myths that went with the different constellations. It was fascinating stuff, but eventually, I, too, stopped looking up at the stars. My eyes had turned to the heavens of my own making instead.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to do great things. I’ve always wanted to be a famous author; I can’t remember a time when that was not what I wanted to do with my life. And I’m frustrated right now because as I’ve gotten older, other aspirations have crept in around the edges of my one burning desire, fighting for room to live and grown on their own, leaving less and less time for my passion. It’s not that I’m not passionate about the rest of my life – I am – it’s just that, right or wrong, I feel my time growing small. I feel I’ve not done what I was sent here to do. And I feel like I’m suddenly ill-equipped to pursue my most cherished lifelong dream.

All that said, I’m not giving up. They don’t make ’em much more stubborn than me (except for maybe my kids, but that’s another story :)). Recently I’ve been looking up at those same stars I used to gaze upon as a little girl and I’ve found my zest for this writing life renewed; the drive I thought was flagging has suddenly dropped into a whole new gear I’d never before been aware of. So here’s hoping that somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, the right agent and publisher are ready and waiting to take The Lokana Chronicles and me under their wing. Mentor me! And help me whip my story into shape, no matter how much I might whine, please. 😀

Keep reaching for those stars, people, whatever your particular star might be.

Cristian Mihai (artandmindofcariann.wordpress.com)
A Quick Reminder That There Is So Much More Than Life On Earth (buzzfeed.com)
I have loved the stars too fondly…by Cristian Mihai (Reblogged) (shatteredandshining.wordpress.com)

I’ve got sunshine

June 11, 201315 Comments

It’s another beautiful day here in Central Iowa! We’re still dealing with some flooding, but at least the rain has stopped coming every darn day. Unfortunately, that happened a little too late for a lot of people, some of my family among them. I’ve been adding pictures to my Flood of 2013 Pinterest board – the water levels are just amazing. Even now that the constant rain has stopped, more or less, the rivers and creeks are still awfully high. A lot of fields still have standing water in them.

But that’s not what this post is about. My brain is currently being pulled in three different directions, so today’s post is going to be light and pretty. That’s right, it’s another photo post! After all, who doesn’t love pictures?

“What? Haven’t you ever seen a guy eat cake before?”

A little bit of sunshine on a cloudy day. 🙂

No, it’s not blood. Someone had fun with the ketchup while Mommy’s back was turned.

And Cricket’s frown got turned upside down…literally! 🙂

Gotta love silly father-daughter pictures. She makes the best faces. 🙂

I don’t know why my face is in focus and Thumper’s face isn’t, but it’s still super cute.

So that’s a brief look at what we’ve been up to lately – eating cake, playing in ketchup, and making faces (and writing like mad when I can find a few minutes of silence). This weekend we leave for our first camping trip of the season and I’m looking forward to family togetherness and more camera fun. And my Tomcat will be returning from two weeks with his dad, which will make it extra special. So if I’m even more absent than normal in the coming days, zat’s why, my lovelies. I promise to return with pictures a-plenty and perhaps even a fish tale or two!

Flooding could bring bumper crop of mosquitoes (siouxcityjournal.com)
Potential for wet weather in the next two weeks, residents urged to keep flood protection in place (coralvillecourier.typepad.com)
Twenty years after the Great Flood, we dread the next deluge (kansascity.com)
Wet weather not welcome in Iowa Great Lakes (siouxcityjournal.com)

Bedtime stories

May 30, 2013Leave a comment

I hope everyone’s staying dry tonight! As far as I can tell, the rain has finally stopped for a while, thank goodness. It was nice not to have to talk over the rain as I read Cricket and Thumper their bedtime story tonight.

I grew up watching Reading Rainbow. Anyone familiar with the show may remember that they read the title of the book, followed by the name of the author and the illustrator. I watched A LOT of Reading Rainbow as a kid and, as a result, when I read books aloud, I read them the same way: I start with the title, then the name of the author, and finally, the illustrator.

Seymour teases me about this particular quirk; clearly, he did not grow up watching Reading Rainbow. But I don’t really mind. I’m not going to change the way I read any time soon. But that’s not really the point of this little story (I can take a little good-natured teasing, after all – my grandpa was known among our family as “the big teaser,” after all). The point is that tonight, all my bedtime story efforts paid off in a surprising way: Cricket asked for a bedtime story by name.

One of the stories we’ve been reading at bedtime is A Sleepy Story by Elisabeth Burrowes. I’ve always loved Richard Brown’s illustrations for this story and when I ran across it one day as we were preparing to move our bookshelf, I pulled it off so that I could read it to the boys. It was one of my favorite stories when I was little and now they love it, too. Or at least Cricket does – Thumper doesn’t really seem to care what story we read, just as long as we read something. They do both love Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, though. Not that I blame them – who doesn’t love that book?

Anyway, I thought it was adorable that my two-year-old asked for a book by name and I had to share. At first I was just going to post this on Facebook, but then I kept typing and typing and then I decided that maybe I should just make a blog post out of it after all. 😀

So there you go. Cute kids, books, cute story. Happy Thursday, everybody!

Is the bedtime story in decline? (time4sleep.co.uk)

Water, water, everywhere…

May 29, 20134 Comments

Photo courtesy of the Marshalltown Times-Republican

If you follow me anywhere else online, you’ll have seen by now the various flood pictures I’ve been sharing (seriously, much like the water, they’re all over – both my personal and public Facebook accounts, Flickr, Instagram, and soon Pinterest as well). Despite that, I’m going to post some more here anyway. The extent of the damage won’t likely be truly realized for a long time yet, and the recovery will probably take years if this turns out to be anything like previous floods have been.

I know I’ve mentioned the Flood of ’93 several times already, but we had another major flood just five years ago that I had forgotten about until a friend mentioned it on Facebook. I mean, I didn’t really forget, but I had forgotten that some of the severe flooding had been so close to us. All you seemed to hear about was what happened in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, but there was plenty of severe flooding in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area, too, and I had forgotten that. I think the reason that ’93 is stuck in my head has to do with my mom; seeing all the photos she took of the local damage really imprinted the severity of the disaster on my tender little psyche. The flooding in 2008, while devastating, just didn’t have the same personal connection for me that the floods of ’93 and ’13 have.

Anyway, we drove through quite a bity of flooding again on Monday as we tried to get home.