Help! I’m all alone…I need “friends” at my new MySpace page.

Girl has built me a rockin’ MySpace page for which I am going to pay her. I was delighted with what she put together and she was delighted that I offered her cold, hard cash. It was a win-win situation.

But now, the problem is, I got no friends out there in MySpace world. Check it out and send me a “friends” request. Even if you don’t have a MySpace account, check it out. Just click here.

And I’m on my way out of town so give me a day or so to accept you on my friends list.:wave:

And one last addendum…it is still under construction. She’s got to add a few things and tweak here and there.

I’m afraid this photo isn’t coming through very well as it was taken with a cell phone. Girl and I saw this hawk on the way home yesterday. It was HUGE. We sat in our car watching it forever as it sat waiting on top of this wood pile for some critter (we suspect a mouse) that was inside to show itself. It had beautiful markings. I quite frequently see hawks, but never one as close as this.

Girl looked at me and said, with a bit of awe, “Hawks really are your totem aren’t they?” I think so. I see them frequently and they always seem to “speak” to me.

Animal totems and their meanings are incorporated in my December Blaze, THE BIG HEAT. Think about an animal you see frequently, that seems to “speak” to you, it is most likely your primary totem. And then there are totems that come to us in times of need. When I was working through the revisions on THE BIG HEAT I was stressing and worrying that I was getting it right. I walked from my office to the front door. A wild rabbit sat in the front yard, practically at the bottom of the front steps, munching grass and some clover (we don’t have the pristine yard). It looked up at me, looked back down and kept munching. It came back every day for the next four days until I finished those revisions. I finished the revisions and I haven’t seen it again since.

Take a second and check out this link to animal totems. If you feel like sharing, I’d love to know your totem.

My mother has a plethora of health problems, most of them stemming from bad choices — high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and Type II diabetes. She has to self-monitor the blood pressure and check her sugar every morning.

So, last week she goes in for blood work so the doctor’s office can keep an eye on how she’s doing. Before her appointment she checks and her sugar is good at 124. She goes on to the doctor. They draw blood but the urine sample isn’t forthcoming so they send her home with a little cup. After lunch the cup goes back and later that afternoon she meets with her doctor. Doc tells her that her blood sugar level reading is 190 and they’ll need to consider insulin injections. Mother has the freak out and I must agree that things are heading south when she’s looking at daily injections instead of that nice little pill she pops now.

“I told him we’re not even going to talk about those shots. I don’t want to do those shots.”

He gave her two weeks of monitoring the blood sugar levels twice a day and then he’d meet with her again. I explained that he’s not trying to upset her or be mean. I then went into my rah-rah spiel about how it wasn’t up to me or him or anyone else, but it was really up to her. I suggested exercising more than she has been and keeping a closer eye on her food choices and blah, blah, blah. I should just make a tape of myself and play it back for her periodically since we have this conversation…oh, maybe once a month. And I did ask her what she had for lunch and it was the same thing they have every day, a ham sandwich.

She says she doesn’t understand how the reading went from 124 (hers) to 190 (theirs) and quite frankly I’m a little stumped by this as well. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but I tell her to just keep monitoring it daily and if it was a mistake and her numbers look good it will all be a moot point, the doc will drop the injections issue and she can keep taking her pill.

But she cannot let it go. She calls me once a day for the next five days, worrying this like a dog with a bone, sure that somewhere along the way they came up with a faulty reading. She thinks they mixed her results up with someone else’s. The tech reading it read it wrong. They wrote the info in the chart wrong. She even calls the doctor’s office to talk about this but they, mercifully, are closed.

I tell her she’s driving me crazy, herself crazy and now she’s about to start on driving her doctor’s staff crazy. THEN she asks me to call my friend who is an RN and ask her if they take the blood sugar readings from the blood work or the urine sample. Hmmm. And this would be a critical question, why?

“Well, after I left his office that morning when they drew the blood, I did stop by McDonald’s and got me a sausage biscuit and an apple pie. And then I had a glass of apple juice.”

For a diabetic with high cholesterol and high blood pressure this translates to the following equation: White bread + high fat + high sodium + more white bread + sugar + more sugar = disaster.

“And you ate this before the urine sample?”

“Well, yes.”

“And you got a sausage biscuit AND an apple pie…why?”

When she answers her tone is a mix of defiance and exasperation, as if I’m a simpleton. “Because I wanted both of them.”

:wallbash::wallbash::wallbash::wallbash:

For five days she’s managed not to mention this little salient fact. It wasn’t that she hadn’t told me the truth, she just hadn’t told me the whole truth…the part that put the responsibility back at her feet. :cursing::fryingpan:

“Well, I think that solves that mystery, don’t you?”

Nothing immediately comes to mind that is even close to as good as a tomato fresh out of a garden. We “make do” year round with the hothouse variety but a fresh ‘mater with a little salt and pepper…incomparable.:bowdown:

Last night a culinary disaster befell our family. First, let me set the stage for you. The DH loves to turn himself loose in Sam’s Club and BJ’s and come home with all sorts of things I would never buy. His latest — beer-battered tilapia and battered clam strips. I like tilapia. I buy it often enough in the FRESH FISH section. Occasionally I pan fry it for fish tacos. I don’t buy a box of frozen beer-battered sticks.

Anywho, on with my less-than-riveting tale….

The DH had a rough day at work. I had planned to make big salads for dinner but given his yuck day I decided to treat him to an at-home feast reminiscent of Captain D’s (one of his fave fast food stops — the man is quite the fast food king). I shoved the beer-battered tilapia, clam strips, and some frozen french fries that had been in the freezer for God knows how long into the oven. Myself? I prefer crunchy. Crunchy clams, crunchy fries, crunchy beer-battered fingers. Okay…so maybe I added a few minutes…possibly more than a few…to the bake time.

Honestly, it all looked good, but the first indication I’d been overzealous with the timer came when Girl couldn’t get a fork into the beer-battered finger. It was too hard. “Uh, I think you might have over-cooked the fish, Mom.”

Bless her little heart, it was an understatement. We could have held off an attacking force with those tilapia fingers.:doh:

But I have trained my people well. They doused it all with ketchup, ate it and even murmured the required (my requirement) “Thank you for making dinner.” However, I came downstairs from my shower later and caught the DH in the kitchen sneaking a can of soup because he was still hungry. Poor guy. Captain D’s has nothing to worry about at Chez LaBrecque.

Dinner tonight? We’re having salad. I’m pretty sure I can’t screw that up.

My big insight during the movie: It must suck to be Harry Potter.

Last night after kickboxing, Girl begged for Steak-n Shake for dinner. For you poor souls without a Steak-n Shake — it’s thin hamburger patties and fresh-made shakes. I am not a shake fan but I must confess I love their chocolate shakes. So, I ordered water, a salad with chicken, cranberries, grapes, walnuts with no dressing…and a junior chocolate shake (you know the portion size usually for the kiddie crowd).:cooldance:

Girl looked at me and said, “Mom, you’re having a shake and a salad? That’s just wrong.”

I thought it was rather brilliant. :happy2:

Whew! Thank goodness I’m done!!:evil:

Last night I FINALLY finished up reading/critiquing/scoring/ranking the entries I was sent to judge for the Unpublished Maggies contest. This morning they’re in the mail. I’m not whining, I’m just saying…it’s a LOT OF WORK.

Each person entering the contest submits the first thirty pages of their manuscript and also a synopsis. The contest coordinator has the name of the person submitting but we judges don’t. Okay, so I have a packet of six submissions.

By the time you factor in the synopses, we’re talking about roughly 200 pages. It’s not as if I can skim them, fill out a scoring sheet and be done. Different contests are structured differently, but in my chapter’s we are instructed “please give each entrant a detailed synopsis of their strengths and weaknesses, and write your comments directly on the manuscript.”

I’m reading for pacing, active voice, sentence structure, characterization, conflict and whether there’s enough plot to carry the story for roughly 280 pages. I am blunt. Not rude, but straightforward. I really don’t know any other way to say “This is irrational behavior” or “This doesn’t make any sense” and better that they hear it from me than submit it to an editor that way. I also make sure that I put in smiley faces when there’s a particularly nice passage. I live for the smiley faces that my copy editor puts on my manuscripts.

I’ve spent two weekends and several evenings working on these. Girl wandered into my office last night and asked, “Are you almost through with those critiques, Mom?” Yes, hallelujah, I was typing up the last one.

Let me just say, one more time, I have the UTMOST respect for what my editor does. I could not do this on an on-going basis. It’s exciting when you read a submission where the writing’s great and the story elements are there and you know this person is going to sell this book in the next couple of months or so if they go in with a little tweaking. It is not so great to be reading for all of the above when you know the person has a very long way to go and you’re not even sure where to tell them to start because it’s all so off the mark. No editing for me.:wallbash: I’d much rather be on the writing end. The one making the mistakes. :doh:

I will say that I’m a very good critique-er. I’ve got a good eye for looking for all of the various elements. Unfortunately, I lack this clarity with my own stuff. Oh, well, such is the nature of the beast.

Guess I’ll go make some mistakes on my current wip.:wave: