The Northern Invasion (again)

She's here! Yankee Cousin is here!

We picked her up at the airport this morning. Yay!

So what if I don't have a refrigerator anymore? (Died yesterday)

So what if the ding dang refrigerator is only seven years old?

So what if my refrigerator before this one lived 29 years? 

So what if I have more company coming Thursday? (Cowboy Cousins from Texas)

So what if the new part of my NEW SEVEN YEAR OLD Refrigerator won't be here until Wednesday or  Thursday?

Thank God for friends who let you use their freezer and coolers.

Thank God we have water and electricity, which includes air conditioning.

Right?

Right!

Giving Fair Warning

You must use extreme caution tomorrow morning, or you might catch me on your television.

Yes, once again, I am going to stun the airways for half an hour with my incredible beauty, unbelievable wit, and charm you with a knee slapping excerpt from my newest novel.

I can hardly wait.

But, of course, I'll have to 'cause I can't see myself and be myself at the same time.

Lucky for me (and all of you, of course) the show will rerun at 6:00 p.m. That way all of you can watch it again!

All kidding aside (if I am actually able to do that), I will be on the local channel, ETC Tv3 around 11:35 tomorrow morning. Cherie Martin and I will be chatting about who knows what, not I.

It usually sells a book or two, I have a good time, and when I watch the rerun it isn't near as painful as I expect. I figure I don't look too bad for an old woman.

So, tune in or tune out. 

The choice, dear reader, is up to you.

BAD Dog

You 'member when I told you Mama would be the one to find THEWHEEL, and I was right. She did.

I may be a year old only, but I know 'bout THEWHEEL. And Mama.

Anyway, I was VERY GLAD. And I was VERY EXCITED, too.

Me and Daddy went to THEWOODS where there is wonderful grass (that doesn't smell bad anymore), to play with THEWHEEL.

Then, I was BAD.

At least, I think I was. Daddy did not call me BAD, but I felt BAD, anyway.

See, we played and played. Then Daddy did something different. He held THEWHEEL way up high and I jumped!! HIGH!! And got THEWHEEL in my teeth.

But my Daddy acted strange. He made a funny noise and he looked all scared at his finger. There was lots and lots of red stuff they call BLOOD coming out of his finger and we had to leave THEWOODS, quick!

Mama saw us and got me and got Daddy in the house and made him stick his finger under running water, like a BATH.  Then she put smelly stuff on it, and funny things they called BUTTERFLIES, but they weren't. I see BUTTERFLIES outside and they are beautiful and can go way high in the sky. The things were little and brown and stuck to Daddy's finger.

Then Mama called and talked to a dokter and Daddy left and when he came back he had STITCHES in his finger.

Mama laughed and said Daddy got bit by his own dog, and the dog didn't even know it.

I know it, all right.

And it makes me sad.

I am a BAD dog.

Even though nobody said so.

The Old Home Place

If you, like me, were raised in the same place all your life, you know what the old home place means.

The house I was raised in (partly till I was seven and my grandparents moved to the country, then fully when we moved into their house), is usually the house I dream about when my dream involves being at 'home'.

It is obviously deeply ingrained in my heart as well as my brain. The two front rooms, which was the original part of the house, was occupied at one time before my grandmother's birth (in 1900) by her parents.

But yesterday, as I was walking from the garage to our house, I noticed that the house was looking like a home place. The plants are all mature and settled, lots of roses blooming as well as other flowering plants. The earth doesn't look raw, the trees are big, the house looks kept up, but as though it's been there for a while.

Home.

Until yesterday, I still considered us as living in a new house. I know, I know, we moved in 30 years ago this month. But for me, time has gone by so swiftly, I am no longer logical about its passing.

We watched the house go up, we furnished it, we planted, we nourished, we raised a child. We loved dogs and cats, we enjoyed company of all shapes and sizes. Santa has come and gone over twenty times. We've seen dogwoods bloom, summers so hot you sweated when you blinked, fall colors that took your breath away and snows so deep the landscape changed to unrecognizable - except for the house.

We built the house to be our only house until we truly get to go Home.

Of course, I have no idea if I'll be able to be here until I take my last breath. Some people are fortunate and do, some cannot.

I don't know how you feel about the house in which you live. It may be some place you can't wait to move out of, it may be brand spanking new (really) and the rooms echo because you're saving up money for rugs and furniture. It may be falling down around your ears.

Paul said to be content in all things, regardless of our circumstances. And he was absolutely right.

But I will say I feel so greatful that God Almighty has allowed me to have a home I love. It's not a mansion, many people would find it too small. But it speaks to me in a way that things can sometimes.

Home is where the heart is? Maybe.

Or maybe it's just where we can take our shoes off, breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy our life on this planet.

Isn't that more than enough?

EEEEEEEE Books

So, like, this old dog (me) is trying to learn a new trick.

Woof.

I had a very generous young man attempt, with more patience than you can shake a stick at (can you shake a stick at patience?) to teach me how to convert one of my novels to an e-book.

Easy! You say. People do it all the time! You say.

Those may very well be true statements. I don't really know. I am almost positive they are true statements if the people you speak of are under, say forty.

Ever since they entered the workforce, part of the "force", is being forced (or as far as they are concerned, insert play for force) to use technology. It's second nature to those in their mid-thirties downward.

I hatessss them all, my precious.

Well, except for the nice young man who has, with more slow speaking, repeating language than a kindergarten teacher with a room full of just-off the-turnip-truck students. Who maybe don't speak the same language as the teacher. Plus, they are wearing ear plugs.

Sigh.

However; believe it or not, progress is being made!

I converted my novel into an e-book! But the format was all wrong! Too much empty space! Nothing should be centered on the page! All fonts should be the same! The indention for each paragraph was too big! No page numbers!

So, my font is now uniform. I have cleaned up empty space through Chapter Eight. Also,through chapter eight, things are not centered, the paragraphs are the correct indentations.

Ah, but the page numbers? No, sir. I click on remove page numbers. I hear laughter. Ain't gonna happen, not no how, not no way.

I guess I will be calling my patient young man again.

He told me to, anyway, as soon as I got all that mess cleaned up. And I will finish.

Eventually.

Redecorating

Take a look at some of the new stuff on my blog site. To your right, you will see the title of all my books, and how to contact me to purchase them. Notice they are all under twenty dollars!  Wow! What a steal!

Ahem.

If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page you will discover some pictures.  These are all (except for posters and book covers) snapshots of book signings over the years. It's not all I have, but I didn't want to bore you.

I haven't changed a bit,  have I?

Well, not much.

I will soon be adding audio so you can hear a tidbit of each book, perhaps helping you decide if you would like to purchase that particular book. It might make  you say, "Oh, yeah, I want that book." Or it might make you say, "What is wrong with that woman?" Since I will be the reader.

Either way, it should give you a few minutes of entertainment.

Hope you enjoy the changes. I'll keep you updated as they  happen.

See ya!

Where is My Dunce Cap?

I swan, after attempting several technological feats and accomplishing absolutely nothing, I am amazed that I can put my feet in front of each other enough to take a step, much less two words together to make a sentence.

Why, oh why, can't I figure this mess out?

I want to add a slide show of photographs showing different book signings. Just a few. I spent a great deal of time picking them out, and uploading them to the computer. Daughter says it would be no problem to put them on my blog. 

No can do.

There is a song I've sung that I love, and I wanted to put it up on facebook. The file is too big. (whatever that means).Daughter says I'll have to upload it to YouTube, then I can put it on my blog page as well as facebook.

Nada.

I want to experiment and see if I, me, myself, can convert one of my novels to an e-book. Simple, says Friend.

Ha, says I.

Today I have longingly looked at a manual typewriter in a catalogue.

I know how to load the paper. I know how to change  a ribbon. I know how to type on it.

Anyway, by the time I figured out all the stuff I couldn't figure out, I was too tired to work on the novel I'm writing, which, at least I can do.

If I wasn't so tired, that is.

Little Secrets

I know it sounds bad.

It may even be bad.

But I've done it, more than once.

At first I was embarrassed and told no one. Then my family found out.

I've gotten so brazen I told someone else to do it the other day.

I admit it.

I've googled myself.

Oh, the first time is thrilling. There your name is, on the Internet, man! It tells about my books, my blogs and other weird stuff (some of which I don't know what they are talking about). 

There are pictures of other women whose name is spelled like mine, and I bet they don't like that one bit.

I've also noticed when you type in my name at amazon.com, sometimes Hill Harper comes up. He is an actor and an author. I bet he doesn't like that one little bit, either.

Anyway, google yourself.

One time won't hurt, will it?

It's Here!

Hear that?

That is the sound of my new kitchen flooring being put down. The noise is a sander, I reckon, and the house sounds like a giant dentist is at work.

Which explains the nervous tic I've developed.

We spent all day Saturday and a good bit of time last night moving everything out of the kitchen and off the pantry floor.

My kitchen is fair sized - about twelve by sixteen or eighteen or something like that.

But I was surprised to find out it held enough stuff to stock an entire subdivision in Marietta. 

Maybe more.

And the filth? Oh, lawd. We clean out from behind the refrigerator on a regular  occasional  yearly almost never basis. I hope this teaches us a lesson, after we overcome PTSD, to start vacuuming out from back there at least twice a year.

Now, our stove is a drop in and appears to be sealed tight. It is a gas stove, and we don't mess with moving it. Heck, I hardly mess with it at all, ifyouknowwhatImean, andIthinkyoudo.

So I was appalled when the fellers moved it and there was nightmarish stuff back there, too.

They didn't seem too surprised, or maybe they were in such a state of shock no emotion showed on their faces.

I've waited five long years for this floor. We updated the kitchen a bit then, but as I've said, we ran out of money. It seems every time after that, when I had the money, some strange need came up and there went my cash.

If I was rich, I would have got my first choice in flooring. But I'm not rich, so we quickly ran over to choice number two.

I think I can live with it for thirty or so  years. That's how long I lived with the floor they are covering up.

And I don't figure I have much more than thirty years in me, if that.
Heck, I might go Home before they finish the floor.

If that happens, I wonder if Husband knows where the checkbook is.

Flares!

I admit it, I am a caldiumaholic. 

I know there is no such word, but I am one anyway.

I love plants, and caladiums are my favorite. I read that there are over 1000 variations of their leaf colors, but I've only seen seven or eight.  My favorite one is a medium green with bright red specks all over it. It is hard to find.

I bought coughs, er, some yesterday, along with a Boston Fern and four or five other types of plants.

I have two porches, and I live in the south. I must have lots of plants on each porch, right? 

Of course I'm right.

I didn't see any geraniums, but I'll get one if I run into one later on.

I saw lots of begonias. My grandmother loved begonias. I can't grow 'em, I can only kill 'em.

I even avoid glancing at them at garden centers for fear my gaze will murder them all with one fell swoop.

We brought the truck load home, and of course I had to go lie down because the concrete floors are a no-no for me. (But I have to, once a year, you know - caladiums.)

Poor Husband worked a steady afternoon potting plants and re-potting some that needed attention from the long winter in the sun room.

My porches look gorgeous. 

Come by and sit a spell.

Husband will join us as soon as he recovers. Early autumn is my estimation.