Photo Friday: Beginnings

October 10, 20147 Comments

This picture actually features a beginning as well as a middle and an end:

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The top notebook (as well as the draft beneath it) contains my revisions for The Price of Mercy. I’m just over halfway through the rewrite/revision process, judging by total page count. Of course, I still have a lot of work ahead, but I hope I’ll be able to start querying in January. It’s definitely a stronger story now than when I initially queried it a couple of years ago (I still don’t know what I was thinking then).

But the bottom notebook holds a brand new short story that I started working on late yesterday afternoon. It’s not as fluffy as my usual work, but I hope it’s good.

Don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and check out her beginnings!

Photo Friday: Favorites

September 26, 2014September 28, 20147 Comments

Today is a pretty special day, so I have a pretty special picture to share:

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Five years ago, I married my best friend, and this is one of my favorite pictures from that day. It’s hard to believe it’s been five years – we’ve packed so much into so short a time, but I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. We’ve moved twice, added two beautiful boys to our family, and embarked on another remodeling adventure. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the next five years, and the five after that, and the five after that…

Don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and check out some of her favorite things! What are some of your favorites?

Photo 365 #43

September 19, 2014September 19, 20144 Comments

Cricket and I were looking through some of my Instagram pictures tonight. He kept asking who the people were in the pictures on my feed, so finally I flipped over to my pictures and asked him who the people were in the pictures I’d posted. He did pretty well, though I think sometimes he answered wrong just to be silly.

Cricket’s nothing if not silly.

But then we came to this picture:

And when I asked him who was in this picture, without missing a beat, he said, “Um, that’s my godfather and his princess.” 🙂

Photo 365 #36

September 12, 2014September 12, 2014Leave a comment

Bubbles is a goofy boy:

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This is one of his other birthday gifts. Apparently he’s pretty excited about the prospect of going hunting in a couple of years. I was excited that I caught this silly expression on film (in a manner of speaking, anyway).

Photo 365 #35

September 11, 201410 Comments

I was 17 when the twin towers fell. It was one of the scariest days of my life, and I was nearly 1100 miles away from Ground Zero.

I watched the events unfold that day on the news. I saw the first plane hit just before I left for school, and I spent the rest of the day watching the news – no one seemed able to turn it off. Everyone was in a panic.

Propaganda abounded in the days that followed – I still have a few things that circulated after the attacks. “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” is still a favorite song, and every time I hear it, I’m reminded of the days and weeks after September 11, 2001, when patriotism was at a high point and all my friends wanted to enlist to kick Osama where it counted.

But these stickers also hail from that era, as do the ones beneath them. And every last one depicts a peace sign, whether it’s one like in this picture or a frog holding up two fingers. I was afraid the attacks on New York would hurtle us headlong into a war the likes of which hadn’t been seen in sixty years. I feared my home would be the next target. I feared a lot of things, but I also prayed for peace.

Even at 17, I knew that not all Muslims are the same, just as not all Jews are the same, not all Christians are the same, not all Hindus are the same. Extremists and terrorists exist in all cultures, all religions, and we shouldn’t judge the majority of a culture by the acts of the minority. I hoped that my country would emerge from the ashes of that day stronger and more resilient.

Tonight, after supper was cleaned up and Bubbles had opened his birthday gifts…

Photo 365 #30

September 6, 2014September 8, 2014Leave a comment

I’ve been cleaning my office.

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These are two of the four tins stuffed full of notes that I saved from my high school years. I read through a few of them and couldn’t help laughing; my friends and I were big fans of writing in code, one friend in particular, and I’ve now lost the key to one of the codes we used to use. I found several notes written in said code and couldn’t read a single one. 🙂 There was, however, one note that utilized two codes, one of which I could read. Unfortunately, only one word was written in that code, so I now know who the note was about, but I’ve long since forgotten what it was about.

Good times, great oldies. Here’s to you, mis amigos! 😀

Photo Friday: Party time!

September 5, 2014September 5, 20143 Comments

Gotta love a party, man. In my family, September is full of parties: my grandpa’s birthday is today (he’d be 79 – miss you, Grandpa!), Bubbles’ birthday is a week from today (he’ll be 11 – how the heck did that happen?!), my cousin’s birthday is the following weekend, my anniversary is the week after that (five years sure have flown by!), and then the month ends on my mother-in-law’s birthday. That’s a whole lot of activity to pack into 30 short days.

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And yet, today’s picture has nothing to do with any of those things. Today’s picture is all about a party with great friends, thanks to a post I was tagged in on Facebook a couple hours ago. These three ladies have been my best friends for…well, forever, and I can’t imagine not having them to talk to and laugh with, even if we no longer talk to or laugh with each other as often as we used to do. Growing up has a way of making that happen, it seems. And yet, on those rare occasions when we do get together, it’s as if nothing has changed.

Gotta love it.

I hope you all have a happy Friday and a fantastic weekend! Don’t forget to see what Charnele’s got posted for this week’s prompt!

Photo 365 #22: The beginning and the end

August 29, 2014September 1, 20142 Comments

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. -Seneca

This post has been percolating for a good week now. Last Wednesday, I attended my great-aunt Janice‘s funeral with a heavy heart. She passed away the morning of August 17, after years of battling an assortment of health problems.

Wednesday, August 20, was her 66th wedding anniversary.

Her husband, my grandma’s brother, Calvin, is still living, and I couldn’t help thinking that burying your wife was a hell of a way to spend your anniversary. And despite Aunt Janice’s stated wish that we celebrate her life instead of mourning her death, there was a fair bit of mourning going on. She was a wonderful lady, after all, and we miss her greatly.

It was a lovely funeral – their whole family turned up to see her off to eternity, which is saying something because they had four children still living in addition to 18 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren. It’s been so long since I’ve seen some of those cousins that I couldn’t put names to faces – name tags would have been a huge help. 🙂 It was great fun visiting with them all again, but I wish the circumstances for the reunion could have been different.

Martha Stahl The strangeness of life’s ebbs and flows haunted me…

Photo Friday: Lasts

August 29, 20142 Comments

I had so many fun ideas for a photo post about lasts. See, I’ve got this post that’s been incubating for a week now, and it would be a perfect lasts post, but then I thought of this picture:

Oh, Gretchen, how we miss you!

This was my last official day of high school. Graduation day. Both bitter and sweet, I find it hard to believe that it’s been twelve years since this picture was taken. I’d love to say we all stayed in touch, but we didn’t. Well, three of us did, and I couldn’t be more pleased about that.

Here’s hoping I get to see you lovely ladies soon!

Don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and check out her post. Have a great Friday, and an awesome Labor Day weekend!

Photo 365 #20

August 27, 2014January 12, 20159 Comments

Today’s photo post is accompanied by a little piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the humid heat of an Iowa summer combined with the indescribable heat of a hot flash. It’s more an experiment in painting with words than anything else, and I hope I’ve achieved what I set out to do (which is to attempt to convey the misery of having a hot flash in high summer). Comment away and let me know how I’ve done!