And life goes on

What’s the affirmation for today?

It is my dominant intent to look for what I want to see.


I haven't blogged in quite a while. So much has been going on and so much of it I didn't want to re-live even one more time in a blog, so I just plodded along, trying not to think. But I can't do that forever because life goes on and I must too.

So I say au revoir to my funny, smart, thoughtful, and beautiful sister, Leslie, who left this earth way, way too soon. You were loved so much, Leslie, and you will be missed. You can count on it.

The Smith Girls
Back, Left to right:
Carole, Stephie, Sherry
Front: Kim, Leslie, Pam

An Important Women's Health Issue

What’s the affirmation for today?

I act on my inspirations without fear.

I don't usually post things like this, but this particular women's health issue should be taken seriously. I urge you to talk to your doctor as soon as possible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Important Women's Health Issue:

Do you have feelings of inadequacy?

Do you suffer from shyness?

Do you sometimes wish you were more assertive?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, ask your doctor or pharmacist about Margaritas*.

Margaritas are the safe, natural way to feel better and more confident about yourself and your actions.

Margaritas can help ease you out of your shyness and let you tell the world that you're ready and willing to do just about anything.

You will notice the benefits of Margaritas almost immediately and with a regimen of regular doses you can overcome any obstacle that prevents you from living the life you want to live.

Shyness and awkwardness will be a thing of the past as you discover many talents you never knew you had.

Stop hiding and start living, with Margaritas.


*Margaritas may not be right for everyone. Women who are pregnant or nursing should not use Margaritas. However, women who wouldn't mind nursing or becoming pregnant are encouraged to try it.

Side effects may include:

Dizziness, nausea, vomiting, incarceration
Erotic lustfulness
Loss of motor control
Loss of clothing
Loss of money
Loss of virginity
Table dancing
Headache
Dehydration
Dry mouth
And a desire to sing Karaoke

WARNING:

The consumption of Margaritas may make you think you are whispering when you are not.
The consumption of Margaritas may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them.
The consumption of Margaritas may cause you to think you can sing.

Be Careful What You Wish For

It began Tuesday night, or rather early Wednesday morning, when I came home from working a 21-hour shift. We were submitting proposals with a 6 a.m. deadline, and that usually means I’m working all day and all night. So I stumbled in at 5:30 a.m. bone tired from sitting at a computer all those hours, and I noticed it immediately. The faint odor of a reptile. I don’t think it was dead at that point. I can smell a snake in the house, dead or alive; I’ve had plenty of practice.

That night when I came home from work I smelled it again but that was another long day (I'd slept 3 hours that morning and gone back to work a normal day) and I went straight to bed after feeding the cats. You might be wondering how one sleeps when they know a snake is in the house. Well, quite frankly, I knew it wasn’t in my room. There was no smell there. But I didn’t turn on the fan like I usually do to drown out the sound of the cats. I figured if the snake did make it to my room, the cats would let me know by the racket they made trying to catch it.

Finally, Thursday night I started looking. And I looked and I looked and I looked. Eventually I ascertained that the strongest smell was near the sofa, and I hate that. That means moving everything out of the way so I can turn the sofa over and look into the bottom. It’s a big sofa and not easy to turn over, but I managed, and then I used a flashlight to look through the gauzy black material that was stapled to the frame. Once I almost had a heart attack because I thought I saw something really big in there. When I got up the nerve to touch it--with a yard stick, that is, I realized it was a wadding of the black material. I didn’t find the snake, though. I really wish I had looked harder that night because I think it was still alive at that point.

The next day, Friday, I was off work and determined to find the snake because now it was definitely dead. And I found it. When I turned the sofa over this time, it was stuck on the inside of the gauzy material (it wasn’t there the night before) and it scared me so badly that I dropped the sofa. I knew it was dead, but it was a pygmy rattlesnake, so I reacted without thinking. The snake came loose and dropped to somewhere inside. I ended up shoving and dragging the sofa to the curb in time for Friday’s trash pick-up.

I’d been thinking about getting rid of that sofa for some time. It was in excellent condition since it had barely been used (everyone always sits in the recliners in that room), but I saw a TV commercial for a bed where they said something about how many pounds dust mites add to a mattress in ten years, and I’d had the sofa over ten years. But the sofa was so pretty, what with its floral pattern of rose, pink, mint green, tan and pale blue. I told myself I’d get rid of it when I had a better reason, but I guess the dust mite thing did bother me, because a couple of times I wished I had a better reason.

So be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

Looking for Lizard Poop

What’s the affirmation for today?

I recognize my potential and my ability to manifest my desires.

There’s a lizard in the house. At least I hope it’s a lizard. There’s definitely something in the house, and with the low 40’s cold snap we’re having in Florida, I guess something else could have sought refuge from the cold. But I don’t want to think about that, so I’m saying it’s a lizard.

How do I know? Because my four cats keep sniffing around ... under the dishwasher, under the sofa--all the places where a lizard can hide. And Dylan, my Maine coon, gets so excited when he sniffs around the sofa that I’m definitely suspicious. He jumps up on it, jumps down, rolls around, makes that funny sound that Maine coons make, and jumps back up. Then he takes off after Mini, his favorite wrestling partner when he’s excited. They are chasing each other around the family room as I write. Mini has the advantage. She’s small and can slip behind furniture to areas that Dylan will never be small enough to see again.

So, I should be looking for lizard poop. Not that finding the poop will necessarily help me find the lizard, but all information helps in the hunt. I like to find them before my cats do so I can take them back outside.

Interestingly enough, I’m not the only one looking for lizard poop. Most of the people who end up on my blog are looking for it--after Coral’s Smith’s breasts, that is. (BTW, Coral Smith’s breasts aren’t here, if that’s what you came for. In fact, they don’t seem to be anywhere, except, I assume, on Coral Smith. Yes, I went looking for them too. I can only withstand so much curiosity.)

This is where semantics technology would come in handy. I mentioned coral honeysuckle in one of my blogs, my name is Smith, and I wrote a blog called Naked, Naked, Naked, about my cousin who takes her clothes off in public places. Put those terms together and I guess it equals Coral Smith naked, Coral Smith’s naked breasts, naked Coral Smith, naked breasts on Coral Smith, etc.. -- according to my blog counter anyway, which lists the top 100 search phrases that led people here. The software solutions company I work for is a leader in the field of semantics technology, so I’m thinking about talking to our renowned Chief Scientist, Dr. Richard Hull, about this Coral Smith's breasts search problem that’s resulting from Google’s poor semantics technology searches. Or not.

Anyway, zillions of searches for naked breasts I understand. The lizard poop search, however, was a complete surprise. More surprising was the fact that my mother knew what was going on there. I say surprising because my mother doesn’t know what a Google search is, let alone a blog. But when I jokingly told her that my blog was a big hit and why, she told me that smoking lizard poop gets you high (she heard it on TV) and that it’s becoming a real problem. Mystery solved. (BTW, there are no instructions for finding and smoking lizard poop here, if that’s what you came for.)

Oh, well. I didn’t get up at 4 am to search for lizard poop--or to write in my blog. I got up to plug away at my Ohio University self-paced course-credit-by-examination psychology class, “Child Development” because I can't work on book #2 until I finish this class. I wouldn’t have signed up for it if I’d known I would get an agent so fast (did I mention the fabulous Helen Breitwieser who probably thinks I'm working on book #2?), but now that I’ve paid my money, I want to finish it. It’s quite interesting too. Did you know that left-handers process speech differently than right-handers and that while only 1 out of 10 people are left-handed, a higher percentage of musicians, architects, mathematicians and artists are left-handed because left-handers excel in skills needed in those professions? And that they are more prone to kidney problems? Oh, wait. That’s reading problems. And no, I’m not left-handed; I just have horrible writing. Guess I’d better be more careful writing my notes or I won’t be making a very good grade on my test!

Till next time...

Almost A Gentleman by Pam Rosenthal

What’s the affirmation for today?

In every task I first seek JOY; all else follows.

I just finished a fabulous book: Almost A Gentleman by Pam Rosenthal. I read the excerpt on the author’s website because we share the same agent and I was looking at my agent’s authors. I read a lot of excerpts from a lot of books of all types, but unless there's a dukely hero and/or a sweet, innocent English heroine, I usually don't buy. This particular excerpt called out to me. Shouted, actually. So I went to Amazon and bought the book, and am I glad I did.

The heroine (Phoebe) is masquerading as a dandy and has been for 3 years--since the death of her abusive husband, her little boy, and her unborn baby in a carriage accident…caused, of course, by her abusive husband, who was trying to terrorize her. Rather than go back into society as a widow and then have to act as women were expected to, plus take another husband, etc., she faked her death and turned herself into Phizz Marston--an enigmatic, stylish gambler desired by both sexes.

The hero (David) is a country earl who is just as passionate about his responsibilities to his earldom and the political issues which affect the common man as he is about his horrifying attraction to Phizz Marston. Don’t worry. He finds out the secret early on, and he wouldn’t have acted on his attraction if Phizz hadn’t turned out to be a woman… In the scene where Phoebe realizes that David knows her secret, she enlists his help to track down the person who has been sending her nasty, threatening notes. Figuring this out so that she will be safe is the external plot of the story and I think the author did a great job of keeping the external plot going at a good pace without eclipsing the internal conflict or letting the latter eclipse the former.

The internal conflict comes from Phoebe’s heartache over having lost her son and not being able to have more children--thanks to the accident--versus David’s desire for a family. That’s why he came to Almacks in London to begin with--to find a bride because his only son is grown and he’d like more children. I don’t think I’m giving anything away there since I figured out early on that there had to be more to Phoebe’s great distress over seeing children than just having lost hers, though David doesn’t find out for some time about the doctor’s prognosis for Phoebe. Also, Phoebe is reluctant to really consider marriage because hers was so awful and she’s been happier masquerading as Marston than she ever was being herself. That’s no wonder since she probably never really got to be herself (this goes back to the way women were supposed to act), so there’s some emotional angst there too, vis-à-vis her willingness to change her entire life to fit David into it.

I wasn’t sure why the book was published as a Kensington Brava, which is an erotic romance line, because I don’t think there was any sex to speak of for the first 200 pages, unlike many erotic romances where the sex can begin on page 1. Once the sex did begin, there was plenty of it to be had, but it didn’t seem forced by the author because Phoebe was a mature woman who had been pretty much sex-starved her entire adult life, and the attraction between Phoebe and David was very intense. (Heck, the attraction between me and David was very intense. Well, okay, one-sided, I guess, but very intense just the same!)

I liked that Phoebe and David were both honorable people because I tend to like honorable people as the hero and heroine. Yes, they had faults, but not nasty ones. I liked that they both had good friends who were there for them (and I especially liked the secondary romance that arose from that). I liked that Phoebe was independent without being one of those stubborn, ridiculously childish, too-stupid-to-live heroines that many historical romances resort to when trying to show a heroine who is headstrong. But what I really liked was the way the author showed the emotional changes that took place in Phoebe.

Rosenthal was very clever in the way she went about this. In the beginning of the book, as soon as we know that Marston is Phoebe, he becomes a she. In other words, when we are introduced to Marston as a man, in the character’s point of view the pronoun is “he.” Marston did this, Marston did that; he always thought this… etc. After we know that Phoebe and Marston are the same person, the pronoun in the character’s point of view is “she.” As Marston, she did this, she thought that. We see the character as Phoebe pretending to be Marston but always really as Phoebe.

But when Phoebe makes the decision to return to her life as Marston, thus giving up a future with David, the pronoun is “he” again. “She” slips once and thinks about David but immediately forces that from her thoughts and is back to “he.” To show how miserable Phoebe appears to be, Rosenthal uses Kate’s (Phoebe’s best friend) point of view, which lets us see Phoebe as an unhappy Marston, but keeps us removed. We are simply observing Martston as he thinks about trivial things such as fashion, but we are not involved in his (or Phoebe's) feelings. Since we know Phoebe so well now, this makes Marston seem to be a separate person who is no longer a part of Phoebe, and therefore, Phoebe seems to no longer relate to Marston as a part of her. I don’t think she ever actually thinks, Gee, I no longer feel like Marston, but we see that she is no longer content in that life.

Bottom line is I loved the way the author wrote this story, though I would have liked to have seen the villains taken to prison. The scandal would have been wonderful!!

But no matter what, I can’t wait to read this author again.