Backyard Landscaping Like a Boss

Matt. Seriously guys, there is no man on this planet more awesome than my husband. He loves the outdoors, landscaping, gardening, planting. And thank goodness for that because, in my world, the thought of even something as simple as mowing a lawn sounds horrible.

Not to say I don’t like the outdoors. I do. It’s just that most of the activities I enjoy doing outside involve water and relaxing next to it.

Put me on a beach, beside a river, lakeside, in my pool. Give me a canoe, floaties, a low-seated chair that allows me to dig my toes into the sand while I read a cheezy book.

Ahhhhh……

Raking, pruning, hoeing, and tilling? Uh, no thanks. Nature is supposed to be about having fun, breaking away from the mundane life of a rat on a wheel. To me, landscaping, gardening, is not spending time in nature. It’s torture. Especially under the hot Arizona sun.

But, my husband enjoys taking on all of that stuff. He feels a huge level of pride when he completely transforms the front yard from ghetto weed garden to Zen-raked gravel perfection.

And he should take pride.

I won’t deny that it always looks great, but I also won’t deny that I’m thrilled I wasn’t the one who had to get it to that point.

But he’s a virtual rock star with a pitchfork. Or, in this case, a tiller.

So, our general plan is to break up the monotony of the backyard and install an area where we might actually hang out. Somewhere other than our covered patio. The grassy area in our backyard has been nothing more than a waste of water and excuse to use the lawn mower for far too long.

The time has finally come to put our money where our tiller is and get to work!

Just like the pool refill and bar project, this backyard story is probably best told in photos. Things are moving pretty quickly around here so by the end of this weekend we should have even more done out back. I’ll be sure to post another update when we get the rest of the materials installed.

You’ll see in the photos that there’s two patches of lawn, those will stay, and a whole bunch of dirt. Within the dirt areas around the outside, Matt wants to plant some small ground plants, some trees (palm and citrus) and then fill with a pea-stone sized, sand-toned gravel.

That same gravel will fill the outside edges of the inner rectangle of dirt, and set up inside that we’re building a concrete paver patio and fire pit.

Before getting started. Though, to be fair,
we already did a bit of retaining wall
and brick removal in the far back right corner
in order to have the block wall painted.

Not sure how this part of the process became my job.
A couple blisters and aching biceps later and
about half of the brick is gone. Most of it needed prying
out from under lawn, hence the 2 foot crowbar.

First pass with the tiller, a brand new tool for Matt.
He loves when I take pictures of him mid project!

Second pass (maybe more?) and lawn is finally
disappearing into soil. I really shouldn't
complain about my aching biceps after pulling,
like, 300 bricks. My husband is going to be jacked.

Oh yeah, did I mention that, because of the state
of the crabgrass type lawn, Matt had to rake out
after every pass and sometimes in between? Yeah.

Two days tiller rental and she's ready for digging!

Seriously, he totally crushed this job. There's a bit more to do to
even it out but we'll be out there digging, tamping, laying weed block,
raking out gravel, and building a fire pit in no time!
Please pass the marshmallows...

And, yes, before you ask, I do plan to help out with some of this (mostly the paver/pit areas because I’m a boss at that part). It’s far too hot out there already for Matt to try to do all of this on his own.

But, solar rings are already floating in the fresh, clean pool. So, you can bet your ass I’ll end my workday with a fruity drink and a swim!

• • • • • • • • • • •
In addition to this drivel I also write books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Learn more on my author page.

Finally, I can Breathe Again

Last weekend I had the total pleasure of sharing in the surprise birthday celebration that I planned for Matt and 23 of his relatives and friends.

Before I go any further talking about this particular soiree, it will help to understand the title of this post if I back up to about 3 months ago when this party first started taking shape. As a manner of comparison, for my 40^th birthday all I asked was to be let in on the day and time I had to be wherever I was being taken. Matt obliged me that information but I knew nothing else.

He never asked for the same.

And I knew what I wanted to do for him as the words…

“I don’t know what to do for your birthday, you have to help me, tell me what you want.”

…came out of my mouth back in early 2016. Because this year he’d be turning 40. This year was a huge milestone birthday. And I knew just how he was feeling about hitting that magic number.

In one word, freaked.

I remember when I was getting closer to the big four-oh. In the months leading up to my birthday I swear to you I was convinced I would just up and croak before I ever got there. Now I know everyone says ‘forty is the new twenty’ or whatever other platitude they like hearing themselves say out loud, but to me it was hard to imagine myself getting older.

Yes, despite the graying eyelashes, sagging boobs, slowing metabolism, I somehow managed to delude myself that I was still in my twenties or something. So when Matt admitted that he was kind of losing it over the upcoming day, I was just glad the party planning was already set in stone.

Because nothing makes a person feel younger than getting together in a room, filled with people they love, to laugh, cheer, eat, drink, and do all that ‘be merry’ stuff that makes life the best thing ever.

I chose to surprise him with renting a suite at Chase Field, on opening weekend, then filling it with 12 of his good friends, and get his dad and step-mom in from California, and get family in from Tucson, and get his mom in from Mississippi, and somehow manage to convince his sister and her 3 boys to make the trek out here from Boston.

And by some miracle of chance, all 23 of us (plus the handful of people at his office who also knew what was going on) managed to keep the layered secret since I first asked people to express their level of interest in buying their ticket to the game, and celebrating Matt, back on January 5.

Can I just for one second take a minute to acknowledge just how difficult it is to keep that much awesomeness inside your body? Especially considering:

• I’ve never kept secrets from Matt in the 17ish years we’ve known each other.
• He’s usually the first person I see at the end of the work day and I like recounting my day with him.
• I work at home, alone, so I like to yammer on for a while after he gets home.
• I just don’t lie. Ever. To anyone. Not anymore. I mean, when I was a kid, sure, but as an adult that seems pointless.

Boy was I ever wrong! The good news is I only had to tell one lie during all of this scheming and plotting. Amazing to say the least.

So are you ready to relive the whole experience along with me? Here’s how the timeline went…

January: Who’s in?

January: Holy crap, everyone is in?

January: Start thinking about where to house people.

February: Collect money from everyone – PayPal, shove cash in my pocket at a happy hour, stop by after work and drop cash just moments before Matt gets home (there was a lot of that kind of stuff).

February: Pay the first half of the suite rental fee / repeatedly hunt down the ticket rep.

February: Start the process of our home’s refi (meaning we shouldn’t put new, expensive purchases on our credit card and obviously the extra added challenge I really needed during party central planning stages).

February: Start formulating how I/we would get Matt to the ballpark. Deposit the last of the money from outside sources. Pay a huge chunk of the credit card bill & pray it won’t be an issue for the refi.

March: Email Matt’s boss/our loan officer to fill her in on the situation (AKA: don’t ask Matt about huge charges on the card, ask me!)

March: Final payment to suite rental. A small lull in party stuff ensues.

March: Close on the refi and (because Matt doesn’t know we will have people sleeping here), start doing construction again all around the house. Silently curse at my ladder every time I walk by it.

March: See about 100 new gray hairs starting to sprout while I try to maintain my composure because despite all the running to pick up/drop off, plan, email, etc. back and forth on party business, I still have to work every day, clean the house, do the life stuff I always do like there’s nothing else going on. Develop twitch over left eye.

March: Watch as my frayed nerve endings start jumping out of my body and realize there’s nothing I can do about it. Sweep dead nerve endings under area rug to be dealt with in April.

April: Finally! But wait, my in-laws, I hear, have plans and can’t house family. I start texting and making calls. Nobody responds in the ten seconds I expect them to respond in. Sheesh, how rude!

April: Oh shit, where will my SIL stay if my in-laws aren’t free? Agita takes hold.

April: Calls back and forth with my MIL – we can split the cost for a hotel stay. Begin researching hotels with a shuttle from the airport and/or are walking distance to Chase or our house.

April: There are zero hotels available in greater Phoenix. This is high season. You can stay in Scottsdale for $400 a night, but only 4 of you, not 5.

April: FIL & StepMIL save the day, the plans they had are altered, all 4 of the Boston fam can stay at the RV, plus I don’t have to lie about where I’m going at 10PM on a Thursday night because they have a vehicle big enough to pick up SIL and the kids at the airport.

April: I manage to exhale just a bit while I start doing the happy dance.

April: I tell Matt my mom is also coming up for the weekend and have to lie when he questions why – the one lie!

April: Coordinate with my sister and mom to be the drivers to the ballpark and arrive for early set up.

April: Consider hugging my friends and not letting go when they agree to put up my MIL for the night before the party as well as agree to be the carpool loading station for the bulk of the group.

April 6: Create an actual flowchart for the timeline of Friday’s events because I’m afraid of forgetting some small detail that will throw off the entire thing and cause my already thinning skull to implode.

April 4-7: Finish the small construction projects that need done for safety when family is in town, work, dry run to the ballpark so I don’t get lost, ensure Boston family is in safe and sound. Drop tickets for friends who won’t be able to meet up with the carpool caravan. Drool on myself and pass out on the sofa at 9PM just about every night.

8:20AM Friday April 8: Matt leaves the house late for work, like really late, for the first time maybe in his life. The moment the garage door closes I fly through a shower because I need to get to Sky Harbor to pick up my MIL, which happens with no drama but lots of traffic. We get breakfast then head to the mall to waste some time and catch up (this was really nice, I don’t always get time with my MIL because she lives pretty far away). My mom arrives at our house to drop some stuff. MIL and I head over to meet mom (praying Matt doesn’t come home for lunch or something). Mom and MIL take off for the afternoon. I haul ass up to the Musical Instrument Museum to drop tickets and a parking pass to FIL, StepMIL, SIL & nephews. I haul ass back home so I can clean before the rest of the Tucson family arrives for our “normal weekend” routine.

4:18PM April 8: I sit down on the couch with a snack, finish it, and go to get up to put my plate in the sink when I realize my legs will literally not move. Sit staring at the wall for about ten minutes while my brain does a hard reboot. Cannot compute. System failure. Switching to back up brain for next 24 hours. Running at 11% capacity.

5:00 – 5:15 April 8: Pray my mom remembers how to get to friend’s house to drop MIL, get text from Matt – he’ll be out 15 minutes early! Text friend to make sure my mom is on the way back.

5:22 April 8: Stare out front window praying the mom mobile rounds the corner before Matt. She does! We get bags inside approximately 4 minutes before Matt rolls into the driveway. Wendy & BIL roll in about 6:00. Drinks and a fun evening ensue.

Until Saturday mid-afternoon our weekend contained nothing out of the ordinary – Matt made a couple runs to Harbor Freight to do a project that morning, the family got showered and ready, and when Matt booted the compressor they all took off to go meet the crew of peeps at our friend’s place.

Then it was just the two of us.

And I knew he was going to want to lie down for an afternoon nap so I had to tell him something.

“Do you love me?”

“Of course.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

“Okay, then you have 15 minutes to finish this project before you have to be in the shower.”

“I knew it! I knew something must be happening this weekend!”

And at 3:06PM on April 9 we were on our way to Chase Field. I took a weird route to throw him off. But it’s impossible to hide a ballpark. He started getting really excited. He knew there would be at least 3 people at the game because they left our house early.

I text Wendy to tell her we arrived.

We head to suite level and he about loses it because he never sat in a suite at a ballgame before. I text Wendy that we’re a few minutes out.

We arrive at Suite 5 and I tap then he enters the room…

Countless phones are up recording his reaction as 22 amazing people yell SURPRISE!!!!!

And let me tell you something right now. All the stress, panic, exposed nerve endings of the last couple months? TOTALLY worth it at the sight of his face when he scanned the crowd and discovered just who was there to celebrate him!

As the day wore on (into the wee hours of the morning with the after party back at our place of course) small bits and pieces of the planning and scheming were revealed but mostly it was a time where Matt could be with so many people he loves. People he doesn’t get to see all that often.

My work was done. He was pretty much over the moon. And as far as I’m concerned, that sounds so much more fun than being over the hill.

• • • • • • • • • • •
In addition to this drivel I also write books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Learn more on my author page.

Friday Night it was late…

Music can transcend time and place. It can make us feel more than we ever thought we could. It can make us laugh, make us cry, and every host of emotion in between. For me there are some songs that speak to me about a time and place even though I never heard the song while having the time/place experience. It’s just that sometimes the words are so evocative of something I’ve lived that the song takes me there. Today’s first track meets those criteria.

I’m talkin’ about a lifetime plan…

Years ago, long before Matt and I were an official couple we used to get together randomly for weekends in either New York or in Boston. I like to tell people we were pseudo dating for the three years before we decided to make the leap into a defined relationship. Before that we were just “friends” but our nomadic personalities were so perfectly matched there was no chance we weren’t going to be together…eventually.

Hurry don’t be late…

I was a traveler back then too. These were the days before 9/11 when I could pack up a tiny overnight bag and fly down to North Carolina for a weekend leaving only thirty minutes before a flight to get through security and get on the plane. If I left work at lunchtime on a Friday I’d be in Raleigh by dinnertime, have a whole weekend to chill, and be home before the clock struck ten on Sunday night.

I can hardly wait…

When I went to see Matt in New York it was the same story with my drop-of-a-hat travel enthusiasm except most of the time I jumped on Amtrak to get there since it was cheaper and easier than flying.

A couple times I took the train all the way to New York and Matt met me somewhere either on Long Island or otherwise but the majority of the time we met somewhere in the middle. And that somewhere was New London, Connecticut. About halfway (give or take) for both of us to travel it was the perfect spot to meet up. Not to mention it was always far less crowded and insane than the New York train stops.

The only thing with New London is that it is a popular launching point for other places that travelers can get to via ferry, train, or car so the town is full of people in transition.

Once I was headed out to Fisher’s Island to visit the vacation home of my sister’s then serious boyfriend and I took the train into New London to connect with the Fisher’s ferry. Matt took another ferry out to New London from The City to meet me for dinner before I hopped on my ferry to Fisher’s. I tried desperately to convince him to call in sick the next day and come over with me but he said he couldn’t. Instead we just got some food and hung out for a while.

I said to myself ‘when we’re old’…

The town didn’t have too many options back then for places to eat but we both loved Thai food so we ambled on into Bangkok City, the restaurant choice on State Street. It wasn’t anything too fancy – dated carpet and furniture with lots of kitschy “western friendly” décor – but we were hungry and there were hours before either of our boats departed. I got the Tom Ka Kai and Matt got a beef satay for our appetizers. The food was delicious otherwise I never would have remembered what either of us had because we didn’t stop yapping each other’s ear off all afternoon.

Who knows what we talked about. It didn’t matter. We were spending some time together, in each other’s space and smile. We were figuring out that we were falling in love.

We’ll go dancin’ in the dark, walkin’ through the park…

After our meal we decided to walk off some calories and I wanted to smoke a little weed before getting on the ferry. So we headed up the block to the corner of Union where there was a small park with a couple of benches. After the short walk there we plunked down on the park bench and continued to talk like no words would ever be enough.

After a short while and a couple hits from my pipe, the Fisher’s ferry was in dock and ready for passengers. But we weren’t done talking. We weren’t done spending time together even though the schedule was telling us we had to be. There was family waiting for me on the other side and I was very likely in roaming mode on my cell phone back then so there was no way to call and cancel. Matt and I hugged our goodbyes and both took the correct ferry to our individual destinations.

But we weren’t done. Not by a long shot.

Not too long after that we officially got together, engaged, and married. For the first handful of years after we got married we made a special point to go back to New London, sans train and sans pot, every year on our anniversary to have a fantastic Thai meal at our favorite little spot. It was still the perfect place for conversation…

And reminiscing…

May’s Month of Music

Reminiscing – Little River Band (iTunes first track)

The Obvious Choice is J is for Jennifer…

…but this whole blog is about me so wouldn’t that seem a little like a cop-out or cheating? I mean there has to be something more unique I can find to report on the benefits of the letter J right? I said so yesterday and don’t want to be considered a liar or anything.

So let’s talk about something else, like June for example. June is going to be a big month this year. I’m turning forty in June. That’s supposed to be some kind of milestone right? I don’t feel forty. Well, after eleven years of gymnastics assaulting my physical being my body sometimes sure feels it. Sometimes even older (like when it rains and every joint in my body starts pointing and laughing at me). But mentally? Mentally I’m hovering somewhere around twenty-two.

Just old enough to drink but just young enough to be lazy with no one barking at you for it.

At least that’s how I spent most of my early twenties. Weekends weren’t filled with responsibilities or commitments unless they involved going to a ball game, the club or getting a real meal with family as opposed to eating Kix or Ramen every night.

Maybe if I went to less ball games and clubs I could’ve spent more on food. But let’s be serious, it wasn’t like I wanted to cook a steak on the stove top in my craptastic second floor apartment in Everett. Plus it wasn’t like I could even access the stove with the piles of dirty dishes cluttering it up.

What those dishes were used for is beyond me now. I remember a lot of things about that apartment and time in my life but what I ate while living in it isn’t one of them. In fact at one point the dishes got so out of hand it was easier and cheaper to just throw them all away and buy new ones.

No that’s not a joke. I was twenty-two and lazy remember?

Not much changed when I finally moved into my own place at twenty-seven. There were plenty of times a guy would come pick me up for a date, friends or family came over to visit and I’d just take the piles of dishes from the kitchen and stack them up in the tub behind the shower curtain.

I figured if anyone who came over was bold enough to peek behind that curtain then they deserved to see the specks of pasta sauce and old chunks of who knows what festering on my stack of bowls and plates. I moved them so those people wouldn’t have to see the nastiness in my kitchen.

The only time I remember doing dishes in that studio apartment was when I was having an overnight guest. I wasn’t mean enough to tell them they had to shower at the gym or something. So I guess that means I did dishes at least four or five times while living there before Matt moved in with me.

Thank god for Matt. He actually was the only guy who stayed over (before we were officially dating that is) that I did dishes for. When I said overnight guest I meant more like friends or family coming in from out of town. Guess that should’ve been my first clue that Matt was the keeper.

And this year he’s supposedly planning a party for my (alleged) milestone birthday in June. I don’t know how many people he’s inviting or who might show up but I’m just thankful we have a dishwasher.

Posted for April 2013 A to Z Blog Challenge J is for June

Sir Matt

There are days when I feel like my husband should be knighted for his awesomeness. Or maybe proclaimed to be a saint. Because most of the time he just can’t help doing the right thing without a single moment of hesitation. Saturday August 18 was one of those times.

Normally this knee-jerk reaction to him needing high fives for being a good-person-overachiever has to do more with the fact that he’s somehow managed to put up with my ass for the past thirteen or so years. But on Saturday Matt just jumped into action like there wasn’t a question about it.

Late afternoon on Friday my Mom came up and planned to spend the weekend. We hung around for a couple hours and chatted before Matt got home. While we were hanging out the movie “It Could Happen to You” came on and we ended up watching the whole thing sitting there in our bathing suits. We were getting in the pool but that movie is so dang cute neither of us wanted to stop watching.

So what does any of that have to do with Matt’s newly bestowed title? Well Nicholas Cage plays the leading man, Charlie Lang, a cop in NYC who never fails to do the right thing when it comes to being a decent human being. His wife in the flick (Rosie Perez) can’t understand how he could have promised half of their lottery winnings to some random waitress (Bridget Fonda). But Charlie doesn’t back down on his promise. He never stops being a kind, generous and wonderful person despite all the crap that gets thrown at him.

The movie came out in 1994. I promised myself after watching it that I would find a guy just like Charlie as the leading man in my own life. Maybe he screws up occasionally, maybe he isn’t perfect, but somewhere deep down in the depths of his soul he’s just a decent and kind human being.

Well by some miracle of fate, I happened to find the real life Charlie and even more odd, they’re both from New York!

On Saturday morning we all discussed taking a road trip to somewhere none of us had ever been before. With Sunset Crater chosen as our destination, we hit the open road and headed north toward Flagstaff. The place was pretty cool, lots and lots of lava flow rocks from the volcano that erupted only about 1000 years ago. But the place we really wanted to see was up the road – an 800 year old pueblo that was mostly still standing. Um, cool!

We made it there about an hour before sunset and headed up the short path to this former house on top of a rock. There were two other groups there at the same time as us (which was weird because it was in the middle of nowhere. On our way up the path the couple with the fancy-pants camera set-up made their way back to the parking lot with a scowl. I wanted to say ‘gee, sorry to interrupt your photo op in this public state park’ but kept my mouth shut. The other group was a mom and what looked to be her two teenage children.

Mom, Matt and I explored the various rooms and the last three people eventually left. We had the place to ourselves so we acted a little dorky and took a whole bunch of pictures. Like this one taken earlier:

We headed back out to see that we weren’t alone in the parking lot. The minivan with the small family was still sitting there. Which I thought was strange because they’d taken off at least fifteen minutes before we made our way back to our car. The daughter was walking towards us. All of a sudden I hear “Excuse me, can you help us with a tire? We have a flat.”

Oh no.

Here’s what it looks like out there:

Um…

Luckily they had a jack and a spare. But this was a minivan, not a car with a trunk or a Jeep with a tire mounted to the back. Take a wild guess where the tire was located? Give up? Yeah, it’s under the vehicle. You have to use this weird contraption that forms the shape of a T and release some cable – done from the inside the vehicle - in order to drop the thing down so you can access the donut.

Now my phone chose this exact moment to die so the most important pictures weren’t even captured. Stupid roaming killing my battery too quickly!

But here’s a free piece of advice for everyone out there – NEVER approach a writer who is currently working on a suspense novel when she and her family are in the middle of nothingness, without another soul around, the Ranger’s station approximately two miles away, and a situation that is way too obvious as a trap because she won’t actually believe all you need is help changing a tire until you’ve already driven away with a donut attached to your car.

Here’s how the situation went in my head – the teenage boy takes the contraption shaped like a T, knocks Matt over the head with it and then kidnaps Mum & me to sell us into some kind of underground slavery ring while Matt lies bleeding out at the end of a dead end street in the middle of the desert.

Yeah, I really gotta find a way to separate fantasy from reality.

Because the actual scene looked a lot more like this:

Yeah, yeah. Perhaps I’m just slightly biased as to the inherent sexiness of my husband in a crisis situation but I think all five of us who were standing there watching him jack up that minivan to replace the tire would agree that he’s pretty kick-ass.

And nary a tire iron swung at anyone’s head during the entire experience. Imagine that!

They thanked us profusely and said “can we give you anything for your trouble?” Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly wouldn’t accept a dime from someone in this situation, we were all just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, but I thought it was kind of them to offer anyway.

Matt said “all you can give me is the knowledge that you get home safely tonight.” Seriously, who’s in charge of the sword on the shoulder thing? I’ve got your candidate right here.

Sharing Is Caring

Or something like that. I’m not really one to take a cue from a giant purple dinosaur on the clichés I follow in life, but there have been a few developments around here recently that I want to let everyone know about. And I like to imagine you all enjoy reading about my mundane life – you know, that you all care.

However, just like in a book where a writer should never double reveal**, I’m feeling like most of you might know all this already because we’re friends or follow each other on other social networks. So if that’s the case, well, tough crap because I’m posting it anyway.

Yeah, I know Barney isn’t much for the cursing. Well too bad, this is my blog and I’ll share as I see fit damn it.

First major thing that happened is my husband was officially diagnosed with high blood pressure. Scary, freaking crash-cart dangerously high. He found out back in February but decided to live in denial for months until his father all but dragged him to the doctor himself. I’m not going to go into all the details, if you want to read about his / our journey with getting healthier this past month I encourage you to check out what I wrote as a Guest Poster on the EcoEtsy team blog called “Changing Our Lifestyle Choices to Improve Our Health”.

The good news about this is that Matt went back to the doctor just this morning and not only is he in much better shape than his first visit but he’s been given a lowered dose of the medication he was originally prescribed. Hooray! And it’s only been one month. And we haven’t even started exercising yet. Nor have we quit smoking. This is all due to a lowered dose of medication and diet alone. I’m proud of him, proud of us, and glad I’m going to have him around for another few healthy decades.

The most major thing that happened to me recently however no one really knows about except the few family members I’ve shared the news with in person. Through an old friend’s husband my book has been placed in circulation at the Newton Public Library in Massachusetts.

Holy shit!

Never felt that excited before, truly it was one of the coolest feelings in the world when she told me that he got authorization to purchase a copy on Amazon to place on the library shelves. And then I started thinking about how I can get more copies into libraries so I did some research…

The Newton library is part of the Minuteman Network which includes numerous locations in and around the northwest suburbs of Boston. If a person were to request my book the inter-library network could deliver to Lexington (for example) from Newton. And apparently the more people who line up to request it, take it out and return it the more copies can be purchased.

Say I know a lot of people in Lexington (per example above). If all those people requested copies from Newton be delivered to the LPL (and there’s only the one copy in current circulation) it’s pretty likely that Lexington will get authorization to purchase copies for their shelves too. And so on.

So for all my friends and family in and around Boston who have library cards for the Minuteman Network, can I ask for a huge favor? Next time you’re looking to pick up a few library books can you request Ripple the Twine as well please? Even if you’ve already read it, even if you own a copy, I’d be so very appreciative for anyone who has a chance to request it, pick it up and return it. Even if it gets returned the next day. It will really help.

In other book news…

My MS2? Yeah, I don’t know how to write out the sound effect of a raspberry while I give a double thumbs-down but that’s the general deal with that book right now. I hate it, hate the story, hate the characters and hate that I felt forced into it every time I sat down to work on it. So I kind of said to hell with convention and started MS3. I’d kicked around this idea last week and followed my gut into an entirely new world.

It’s very different from my first novel. Genre wise I mean. And I kind of don’t care. I’m over 4000 words in so far and plan to get at least another 2000 written today. I’m doing a CampNaNoWriMo so a goal is to get the 50,000 words out by August 30 but my real goal is to get the novel written. I’m guessing for a suspense I should be in the neighborhood of 75k.

And in the spirit of that I guess I need to get back to working on this new book so I have something to share with the SSWW Critique Group this Wednesday.

August. Gonna be a busy one!

**Double reveal - when the narrative shares a scene and then a character talks about the exact same thing in dialogue. It’s redundant and generally used as a device to expand word count. Seen as almost an insult to the reader, because if the story was written well to begin with they wouldn’t need to be reminded of the plot point twice. Readers aren’t idiots, they can, and do, keep up.

Happy VD!

Two weeks ago...

What we said out loud

Me: I think we should do Valentine's Day this year.

Matt: Okay.

What was really said

Me: Even after thirteen years together I like to keep you guessing.  Good luck with pulling this one off, buddy!

Matt: She can't be serious???  Well, that's great.  Guess I'm screwed...and I actually enjoyed being married for a while...

There have been a few reasons for not really celebrating holidays like Valentine's Day or our anniversary before.  And they're all my reasons.  As most of you know by now our inner personalities reflect very stereotypical dude/chick qualities.  Only I'm the dude.  Matt is definitely the more romantical one. 

He's the one who used to leave little notes saying how much he loves me for no real reason other than it was a day that ends in a 'y'.  He wants to hug me in the middle of the living room for absolutely no reason whatsoever on a Tuesday at 8:46 PM.  Whereas I rarely remember our anniversary or little things like wearing my wedding ring out in public sometimes.  He wanted "Into the Mystic" as the last song at our wedding, I wanted to be introduced to "Welcome to the Jungle".  Yeah, it’s like that.

I truly felt that if he wanted to give me a present he didn't need the freaking Hallmark Corporation telling him what day I was supposed to get it.  We're supposed to love each other enough to give fattening, expensive, high-pressure gifts all year long right?  It probably sounds like a cop out but I love him every day, he loves me every day.  We don't need to participate in the world's biggest "I don't know what to do but I have to do something so here's this heart shaped locket you've never mentioned you like" holiday to prove our love. 

So what the hell was going on with me two weeks ago?

Well, all kinds of stuff lately has just been swimming around and I caught a little bit of a romantic bug.  It kind of hit me how I used to be super gooey and squishy back in high school when I started pulling out old journals to work on my current zine series.  Jenn ♥'s ________ is all over the place.  No, seriously, like ALL over the place.  Sometimes I even crossed out the first guy and just re-wrote a new guy's name when I fell in love the next time.

"Yes its true what you have heard about me, I fall in love every time..." - Melissa Ferrick

To be fair, I'm not some cold bitch or anything.  No way I'm about to be evil to someone so openhearted, that's not my style!  I'm the one who grabs for his hand when we’re walking down the street; I like to surprise him too.

And surprise him I did two weeks ago with one little phrase about one little holiday.

I knew I wanted to do something kind of gag-gift related for him, but I wanted super squishy cards.  Our relationship isn't all about lace and frills (seriously, even he has limits, he's still a guy for goodness sake!) so there wouldn't be any of that going on.  I went out and picked up a bunch of hilarious stuff while he was in Texas at a work thing last week.

Not hilarious to the whole world type stuff though, everything was an in-joke between him and me type of gift.  I got him an Angry Birds fluffy pig, a pack of playing cards with trivia that have an image from "Saturday Night Fever" on them, and a travel mug that actually plays "Free Bird" through a tiny speaker in the bottom (among other stuff).  I knew he’d love everything because that’s just Matt. 

He cracked up at every single one of them.

Oh, yeah, and we exchanged last night.  Because that's another thing about me, I don't ever wait to open gifts.  Who knows what could happen in 5 minutes, 5 days, 5 months...if there's a gift in front of you why on Earth wouldn't you just go for it?!?

Matt waited until yesterday to go & buy my gift.  He couldn’t exactly be subtle about it or anything, as of this moment we only have a joint bank account and one car.  What was killing me though was that he wouldn’t even give a teeny hint what it was going to be.  On the way out the door we exchanged:

“It’s something you’d never expect from me.”

“Divorce papers?”

*Eye roll, kiss goodbye* “I love you, see you in a bit.”

“Drive safely, love you too.”

So then I was left alone to consider just what in the world he was going to get me.  Left alone for close to an hour.  Torture much?  I thought, maybe it would be a Kinect because we’ve been saying for a couple weeks how we should get one. 

But that just isn’t Matt’s style. 

But he said I wouldn’t expect it from him.

But even still, he wouldn’t get me electronics on VD.

When he got back my mind was spinning but also I couldn’t wait for him to open his gift.  Like I said, he loved them, and I was so happy he did.  And to be honest I was relieved that I’d suggested it then pulled off a totally successful Valentine’s Day for the first time in probably 8 or more years.  Again, like I said, I am in touch with my inner-guy-ness.  I was nervous.

Then it was time to open mine.  He handed me an envelope with “I love you :-)” on the front and I could feel it was a couple pieces of paper.

“Wow.  It really is divorce papers.”

*eye roll* “You’ll like it I promise.”

He didn’t get me a card but hand wrote me a super cute note that will go in my Matt’s notes over the years scrapbook and I unfolded the other piece of paper; the one that matched the cloudy looking yellow envelope.  All I saw was Divinity Tattoo.

My jaw dropped to the ground.  Suddenly, him saying in his note that there’s something I’ve been talking about doing for a long time but haven’t yet, made complete sense.  It was the best damn Valentine’s Day gift this girl ever could have received!

For a while now I’ve been carrying around a drawing that encompasses some very important stuff to me personally.  It is super rough and all but absolutely exactly what I want an actual Artist to recreate into something out of this world good for my first ever piece of body art.

“Wow buddy, you’re brave.  Cause really, nothing says Valentine’s Day like buying your wife some pain.” – Chick in the tattoo shop

I can’t freaking wait.

@CrunchySquares Make My #MouthWater

We were watching Hawaii 5-0 last night (because I’m a red blooded American girl and yes Alex O’Loughlin has quickly shot up to make it onto my celebrity top five list -- are you with me ladies? I mean, hello hot, and he even [finally] smiled during last night’s episode too, amazing!…but as usual I digress) and I have this unusual ability to be looking directly at the television but mentally I tune out anything that isn’t of interest. Like most commercials.

It freaks Matt out because he’ll start laughing and/or say some off handed comment about whatever is on the screen and I’ll just reply with ‘what?’, even though I was looking right at the television I had pressed the mute button inside my head.

For some reason last night though I happened to notice that at least ten companies have stopped putting their own website address at the bottom of the screen and simply have a backslash Facebook link where you can Like their whatever it is they are.

When I saw that a popular cereal was advertised with a Facebook page I said ‘well of course they’re on Facebook, everything and everyone’s on Facebook these days’. Matt replied ‘yeah, and twitter’ and I started laughing hysterically.

Matt is not on twitter. Matt is on Facebook but really only on Facebook like once a week (if that). Matt wouldn’t have a computer if it wasn’t for his love of surfing real estate (read: his version of porn). Matt wouldn’t own a cell phone if it wasn’t for wanting to keep in touch with his gorgeous wife (yes, for those keeping score that would be me).

But I’m on twitter, in fact I’m kind of a big old internet slut because I’ll open an account just about anywhere if I think its going to be good for shameless self promotion. I’m a writer and I’m pretty likely self-publishing my books so truthfully it just makes sense to connect with as many people as possible. And because I’m on twitter I know just how giggle inducing it is to think about a cereal being on twitter.

When I had wiped the tears of hysterics away I responded with ‘what would a cereal even say in 140 characters?’

To which we spent a commercial break discussing the finer points of crunchy goodness and how cereal could talk all about its sweet side.

Or maybe it’s the kind of cereal that has a dark side. Its profile could read ‘Buoyant. Enjoy floating in white liquid from cows, beans, rice and almonds. I’m baked, baby.’

My side hurts from laughing about it every time I think of logging onto twitter and seeing ‘RT @CerealLuvr Thanks for crunching on CrunchySquares! @CrunchySquares rocks my sugary world #letsgetmarried’

Has it gotten this out of control? Readers, please tell me if you’re on twitter and if so if you follow cereal of any kind. If you do follow cereal, which are your favorite tweets? The organic and all natural or the highly processed sugar coated kind?

#mouthwateringandhungry

Obstatunity Comes from Strategery

When the move was nine months away I opened a savings account.

When the move was six months away I changed my yahoo weather alert to Phoenix.

When the move was four months away I started selling a few random items on craigslist, Matt began talking to the complex we liked about a second floor unit, we sent a letter to our landlords to let them know (and crossed our fingers they’d let us out of the lease early and with no penalty), and I brought my car in to have a major service done so it would be all spiffy to tow a trailer 3000 some odd miles.

When the move was three months away I knew that we weren’t going to be able to pull a trailer behind Little Car, that we’d have to get a truck, that we would have to wait another week or two before submitting an application, and that Matt was supposed to have a meeting with his boss to discuss how the whole telecommuting thing was going to work.

Now that the move is a little less than two months away I know that our current apartment has been rented (freeing us from the potential of having to buy out the last couple months of our lease), that no one in Boston seems to be interested in a super cheap commercial grade paint sprayer, that I have to sell my drum kit (because hard side cases are just out of the moving budget), that we’re about set on the truck rental, and that we’re approved for the apartment.

Oh yeah, and also that Matt doesn’t have a job anymore.

Last week Matt and his boss sat down to chat about the finer points of his work from home position. Yes, we all know that means the money. The position wouldn’t change, as predicted, and with a couple new loan officers coming on the workload was sure to increase (which is good considering from all I’ve heard the entire office is sitting around listening to birds chirp since the rates went up recently). Plus he’d be making a really healthy bonus structure on every file he processed.

In about 2-3 months when loans brought in by the new dudes actually start to close.

*insert hysterical laughter here*

But, the thing is, we’re going out there with some pretty good fundage in the bank so I said if he thought these new L.O.’s were going to produce relatively quickly that maybe it would be a viable option after all. That’s when he told me that the proposed plan accounted for his hourly wage only being compensated after the loan closed, that the hourly wage is about a 65% pay cut from what he’s making now and obviously he only gets paid a bonus (read: also his hourly wage) if the loan closes.

Wait, what?

So essentially his job could end up being a work for free from home position, part time (because he’s only allowed six hours per file).

Well, hell, where does he sign up for that?

He doesn’t. Phoenix is certainly less expensive than Boston but it ain’t 100% less expensive, you dig?

The following day he promptly told his boss that he couldn’t consider taking that offer and ever planning to eat again so he countered back with, admittedly yes, still a pay cut but more like a 25% reduction. His boss said he’d think about it.

So a day or two or something like that went by and Matt came home and said ‘The word of the day is obstatunity’ to which I promptly responded ‘Say what?’

His boss didn’t take his offer, didn’t counter back and Matt had to say that he’d in turn be saying goodbye, likely to the entire company (though he’s had a resume on file in the corporate help desk/support office for a few months too but not looking likely they’re hiring anyone in the near future, let alone him).

He’ll work out his final 2 months and then his boss will be left with only one person in a similar role in the physical office. Someone Matt has trained as best as he can, shown the ropes of his sixteen years of experience in the business, tried to teach how to detect fraud and whatever other awesome stuff he’s shown her that he tries to tell me about at night while my eyes glaze over and my brain goes to my happy place.

Its not that I don’t care about his work, I do, but truthfully I only really care that he comes home happy he was able to do something that got him jazzed all day, like investigating fraud or training, and not the actual work itself. I left the mortgage industry eleven years ago and I will never look back. It bored me to tears then and frankly…well you get the idea.

So he repeated his now Matt coined word of obstatunity again and explained that it was the blending of obstacle + opportunity. That out of the obstacle would come great opportunity, that we were still getting the ‘eff up on out of here (seeing as though that was half of the opportunity in the equation) and that for the first time in his professional career of late he not only had more than two weeks to find a new job but that his boss was fully aware of the situation, cool with it and able to act as a reference.

I promptly asked him ‘Is obstatunity born of strategery?’ -- another classic Matt used term -- and his response was something about the need for strategery to take advantage of the obstatunity but how they really are two totally separate things. Okay, I could buy that. Then he sat down to post his resume on all the career sites.

With a smile on his face and lightness in his heart.

Neither of us are truthfully all that concerned, he’s already targeted a bunch of positions, gotten calls from recruiters and follow-up emails to complete online assessments from companies as well, so it’s not like he won’t have something, now the question is what sector of the business does he want to work in (because from the tiny bit of information I’ve been able to absorb before mentally checking out of most financial industry conversations, Matt takes to training his peers and fraud detection like red to a tomato).

With the current state of the economy there has never been a better time to dig deeper into a fraud detection position. He knows his shit, that much I can say; I know that he’s even been responsible in the past for FBI intervention in some cases. Cases that led to imprisonment of the perpetrators of the crimes. Which is kind of key in uncovering fraud rings right?

And it just so happens the hot bed for fraud detection companies are in the Phoenix area right now…

Now that’s strategery.