Thursday, June 26, 2008

Germany's in the finals

I have a house full of happy/miserable boys. Miserable because they stayed up well past their bedtime. And happy because Germany will go on to the finals.

I'm all for Germany winning. I'm all for the boys watching soccer. I'm not as convinced my boys should watch the final game on Sunday night. Can I put up with the aftermath of bickering, sniping and tears once again?

Oh, come on, Mom. It's almost summer. Hmmmm.

Okay. One more night.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Picture Books

I'm not sure I get them.

I thought I did. I've been receiving personals, invitations to send more and I had been feeling increasingly confident that I understood the format. Then a critique came in. Full of questions. I thought we weren't to describe things. I thought things should be left for the illustrator. I must have thought wrong. Now I don't know. I think I'm back to square one.

Maybe, like everyone else, I need to think about longer works.

Maybe, it's time to move on.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Special Visitor!

I had the honor of hosting a real, live picture book author. Carole Boston Weatherford is spending some weeks touring about Europe and made a stop near me.

Unfortunately, she had to endure the roofers starting work the day before her arrival, a hectic 3-game baseball week and the normal chaos of my 3 sons. I'm not sure she was well rested or calm after leaving our home, but she certainly was gracious.

Most exciting was the chance to tour Olympic Stadium with her and discuss her new book, Jesse Owens: Fastest Man Alive. Can't wait to read it with my kids!

I wish her well with the rest of her visits.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Tanning the old fashioned way?

I have to confess, since getting precariously close to 40, I have been taking more time and care with my appearance. I’ve been believing more adverts, trying more products and spending more money. I try not to be gullible. I try to choose fixes that seem logical and simple to use. That being said, I was disconcerted to discover that the learning curve for self-tanning cream is much steeper than I anticipated.

The first question that comes to mind is, why? I’ve never before felt the need to look tanned. I’m going to go with the best answer I have, why not? It seemed so easy. Slap it on and in 3 days, voila, a sunless glow. Everyone else can do it. It’s easily purchased and affordable. Yeah, why not?

So, I slapped it on. Everyday for 3 days. Perhaps because I’m new to this cure-in-a-bottle thing, I didn’t take into consideration some vital points.

1. How you slap it on. I might have had more success if I applied it evenly. The big white patch on my right thigh stands out a bit more than I'm comfortable with.

2. Colour match. I neglected to account for the colour difference between my legs and my naturally sun-kissed arms. I suppose wearing some widely patterned shirt may make this less noticeable.

3. Where you slap it on. I stopped at the bottom of my legs, as you would. I look like I went wading in a yellowish pond and forgot to take off my white ankle socks.

In my favour, I knew enough not to experiment on my face. Live and learn. Guess I had better go back and read the instructions and find out how to remove my tan-in-a-bottle.
 

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