Jolene in Real Life

Blogspot has made some changes, not sure if I like them, but that may just be because I haven't figured out how to navigate it yet.  Also, I tried to get to the site by simply entering the address in the bar, but it was slow to load.  Actually it's still trying to load as I write this.  So I decided to just google it and click on the link.  Have no idea why, but sometimes this helps.  But on the first page for a search on "blogspot" there was no link to the actual website.  Then I tried "blogspot.com" and still the website was not listed!  I finally tried Bing and got lucky.  It really should not have been that hard. Anyways... So inspiration struck again at such a random moment.  I was walking my son home from school when we were passed by a guy carrying another student on his shoulders.  It was raining and she was wearing a sweatshirt that I am guessing was his since it was way too big and he was now in a short sleeve t-shirt.  I imagined she had forgo

I signed up for the Romance Writer's of America Conference in Anaheim this July.  I'm a little apprehensive, but I am incredibly excited.  I've already printed out the list of workshops and have marked the ones I am most interested.  Though this isn't my first conference.  I attended one in Edmonds, Washington called Write On The Sound (WOTS) a few years back, but haven't made it back since because of either budget or time constraints.  It had some great workshops, but this big one down in California has so many more and even research workshops.  For example, there is one on real-life hostage negotiations to help writers add realism to their hostage scenes. Our family was already planning a trip to San Diego around the same time so we just decided to roll it all into one which means my husband and two kids will be down there with me.  That should be interesting.  My husband will have to entertain the kids the all day while I'm in meetings.  We'll be switchi

Just got back from the dentist today.  I hate having my teeth cleaned, yet I look forward to going to my cleanings.  That's because I get the nitrous oxide.  When I first started going to my dentist on a regular basis, I confessed my anxieties about having metal scraping at my teeth.  They gave me Valium to get my foot in the door and the nitrous to keep me in the chair.  Since I no longer have the panic attacks just thinking about going to the dentist, I have forgone the Valium.  But I won't go without my gas.  And as I was laying there enjoying the tingling sensation spreading down to my toes, I began to think about what a miracle it is that I'm not a drug addict.  Last weekend I had a monster headache.  Earlier in the day I took Aleve, but that didn't last long.  I was trying to think of something to take that was strong and would relax me without being a sleep aid since those make me groggy all the next day.  I remembered that I had some leftover vicadin and decided

Being an Agnostic household, we don't actually celebrate Easter.  Not in the traditional sense at least.  On occasion we have attended brunches when invited, we even did an Easter egg hunt last year as part of a family get together.  But we did it the weekend before since other family members had real Easter plans.  Friday night when I was putting my kids to bed, my older son, asked me how many days until Easter.  When I told him two, he squealed with glee.  I was a bit apprehensive only because I was worried he was expecting something from the Easter bunny.  But when I asked him why, it turned out he was excited for an egg hunt.  An egg hunt I could handle, in fact it would be good for the kids.  Anything to pull them away from the television, right? Since I had exhausted my supply of plastic eggs (translation: I had thrown them out) I needed to run down to Target on Saturday and buy some more.  But then after I got home from the gym, I decided to wash and detail not only my car