A Brief Respite

Today, aside from the midnight wake-up call from Baby, has been better. If I had remembered to give screaming, whining baby some Motrin before bed, he might not have woken me up, demanding pain medication. Duh. Mea culpa.

Anyway, today I have gone with the mantra that drugs are a Good Thing for teething. I also picked up some of the teething tablets recommended by Beth and also some Ambesol. Hopefully, that will make it all better. But for the love of Heaven, I want these teeth to break through soon.

I remind myself that this, too, shall pass.

This weekend I made Amish Friendship Bread for the first time. My neighbor gave me the starter mix and I had the fun of squishing a Zip-Loc bag for ten days, keeping the fermentation going. It’s an amazingly moist bread, and the smell of cinnamon and sugar is to die for. I like texture in my breads, so I added a generous cup of chopped pecans and a mixture of dried cherries, blueberries, and cranberries. Here’s a link to a starter if you don’t have one. I kept my starter in a gallon bag, and it worked fine for mixing. Here’s a recipe for the bread from Cooks.com:

Note: DO NOT USE METAL BOWL OR SPOON - DO NOT REFRIGERATE.

DAY 1 - Do nothing. DAY 2 - Stir with a wooden spoon. DAY 3 - Stir with a wooden spoon. DAY 4 - Stir with a wooden spoon. DAY 5 - Add: 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk. DAY 6 - Stir with a wooden spoon. DAY 7 - Stir with a wooden spoon. DAY 8 - Stir with a wooden spoon. DAY 9 - Stir with a wooden spoon. DAY 10 - Add: 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk. On DAY 10 - make the Amish Friendship Bread.

First pour off three 1 cup starters. Save one for yourself and give the other to 2 friends.

Pour remaining batter into a large bowl and add the following ingredients:

1 c. oil
2 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. milk
3 eggs
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 c. nuts, chopped
1 lg. box instant vanilla pudding
**Michelle’s addition–one 5 oz bag of dried blueberries, cherries, and cranberries.
Pour into 2 well greased and sugared loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes (longer if glass) before removing from pans. This does real well in the freezer. Makes a delicious sweet bread.

STARTER:

1 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1 c. milk

Start instructions with day 1.

My instructions said to bake at 325 for an hour, but that wasn’t long enough. I think you have to use your judgment. Anyway, since the holidays are coming up, you might want to try this!

Screaming Teething Babies

My son is a few days shy of eleven months old and STILL doesn’t have a tooth. But they are close. I can actually see one of the two front teeth peeping from behind his swollen gums. For the past four days, I have been about ready to sell the child. He has been whiny, moaning, and in general the crankiest thing I’ve ever seen.

It’s pretty bad when the child grabs a plastic rattle, rubs it all over his gums, and then offers a slobbery, dripping rattle to you as if to say, “Want to share?”

At times like these, I’ve found that the teething rings and frozen popsicles don’t do much to help. Tylenol or Motrin, that’s the way to go. I can tell exactly when the pain medicine has worn off–it’s Jekyll and Hyde. I tried on Tuesday to let him go without any medication, but he fussed all day and was only able to take twenty minute naps. Not good at all.

I think he’s getting four teeth at once–the two top and two bottom ones, and that’s likely the reason for all the pain. If the darned things would just break through the gums, I think he’d be fine. Instead, he has those awfully swollen, red gums. Poor baby.

Do you have any tips you could offer? Was there anything that helped your child get through teething, aside from meds?

Crossed Eyeballs

Last week I received one more round of tweaking revisions on Wedded to the Enemy, and I’ve read about 70 pages today. I’m trying to finish these up by next week, which is very doable. In the meantime, I’ve printed out what I’ve written on Ewan’s book and am trying to work on the pacing.

It’s funny how you can be 160 pages in and feel like you’re only just cracking the surface. I have a treasure hunt subplot, and it’s been tricky weaving that into the background of the romance. But it’s getting there.

In the meantime, tomorrow is my birthday. I always love how my kids are–they are SO excited for me. My son already made me a card saying that he loved me and hoped I had a happy birthday.

And you know, that’s really the best gift I could receive from the kids. That, and a two-hour nap from the baby.

Deliver Us from School Fundraisers

My son dragged me to a PTA meeting tonight. They’re kicking off the annual school Spell-A-Thon, which roughly translated, means Give us money to sponsor your child in their weekly spelling test and we’ll give them cheap dollar store prizes to make them go door to door.

I hate fundraisers. I’d rather just give the school money, and have them not brainwash my child into believing that he MUST raise $1000 dollars to get his classroom a pizza party. Good golly, Miss Molly.

When I was growing up, I vividly remember trying to sell candles and gifts. You know, those fourteen dollar tins of chocolate caramels that were nasty-tasting? And the mixed nuts that were smaller than a jar of Planters, but retailed at $19.95? My poor neighbors probably hid when they saw me coming. I managed to sell enough to win one of those walkman speakers. The darned thing plugged into my walkman and worked for about a week before it broke. My hopes and dreams were shattered, and I saw the dark side of fundraising.

In high school, I sold nuts. It actually wasn’t bad, because a neighborhood lady did a lot of holiday baking and my nuts were cheaper than those at the grocery store. My parents dutifully supported me, but alas, there were no prizes.

(Aside: The only fundraiser that I fully support is Girl Scout Cookies. Oh, for the love of Thin Mints. Heaven, I tell you. I buy wayyyyy too many of those.)

My four-year-old daughter came home with a fundraiser for the Yankee Candle Factory. FOUR. YEARS. OLD. You’ve got to be kidding me. And we pay preschool tuition. Um, that catalog kind of made its way into the circular files. Shh…

What fundraisers do you despise the most? Or which ones do you actually like?

Choosing a Halloween Costume

It’s Columbus Day and everyone is home except my son, who had school today. Poor kid.

I’ve been balancing my time between writing the new book and working on revisions on Wedded to the Enemy. My blessed editor found a few more tweaks that need to be made, so I’m working on those in the evenings. Now that I’m staying home, it’s hard to figure out how long it takes me to write a book. It used to be 5-6 months, but I’m thinking it’ll be shorter this time around. Normally I can only work on one book at a time, but I’m afraid if I stop writing the new book, I’ll lose track of where I am and what I’ve written. So, I’ll give it a shot, trying to work on two books at the same time. Here’s hoping.

We dragged down the Halloween costumes from the attic this weekend. My daughter, bless her, wants to be Cinderella. She already has a dress-up gown, so she’ll wear that, and we’ll do up her hair and add some make-up. So easy. My son has decided he wants to be Batman. He already has a Batman mask and black cape, as well as a toy utility belt he got for his birthday, so I’m just trying to come up with something for his torso. I’m thinking black jeans and a black shirt of some sort. I can’t see buying him a twenty-dollar costume that he’ll wear once.

The kids asked me what I was going to be for Halloween. “A really mean mommy,” I told them. They stared at me and said, “But Mom, what are you going to dress up as?”

(You know, because I’m already mean, every day of the year… )

What about your kids? What will they be for Halloween? Or if you don’t have kids, what was your favorite costume as a kid? For me, it was being Miss Piggy.

Review from Super Librarian

Okay, I’m still drooling over the UK cover for Her Warrior King. Here’s another, for fun. This is the cover of “The Viking’s Forbidden Love-Slave.”

I seem to have a thing for shirtless men. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, oh no. Nice chests are a good thing.

But I still loooove the UK cover. Mmm. Mmmm. Good.

Onto another topic…I met a super cool librarian at RWA this summer, and I read her blog because it’s really quite a hoot. If you love romance like I do, you really should read Wendy’s reviews. I decided to gird my loins and send her a review copy of Her Warrior Slave and she has the review up here. All in all, she made me laugh in several places, and I think it’s a good review. You can see what she thought.

I believe she’s also going to review my Viking love-slave book, and see this is the one that scares me a bit. I’m a big girl, and I can handle that some people are going to like my books, and some aren’t. I’m okay with this. Really.

But I’m very curious as to how the Viking one will pan out. See, in the space of 50-60 pages, you don’t have a lot of room for a sweeping love story. I went for all-out fantasy and escapist reading. Who wouldn’t want to be carried off by a hot Viking man? Think–beach read.

It’s meant to be fun, something to make your waiting room time go by quickly if you’re reading it on a PDA. I’m hoping it comes off that way, and fair warning–this story is definitely the hottest one I’ve written so far. (Vikings are pretty steamy guys, so you have to watch out for them.)

Anyway, here’s a link to an excerpt. This was the story that Missie helped me title “Sweet Savage Sven.” I really think the editorial team should have gone for it. Can’t imagine why not. But I now have a title with Love-Slave in it. It really doesn’t get much better than that.

More Fun with Book Covers

I found the cover art for the UK version of Her Warrior King that goes on sale in December. Wow. That is one HOT cover.

I do think the people look like Patrick and Isabel, and yowzer…I think I have nekkid people on my book.

Man, I love my job.

The Grand Purge

My family came into town last night and today we spent the entire day going through baby paraphenalia. I’m not planning to have ANY MORE kids, so I’m getting rid of a ton of infant gear. It’s amazing how much stuff piles up from having a baby. You have clothing that’s 0-3 months, 3-6, 6-9, 12 months, 18 months, 2T–and every possible season. It’s truly frightening and overwhelming. And each time a child outgrows something, I have to do a wardrobe purge and either put the clothes in the attic for the next child or donate them to charity. The entire process of going through every single clothing item is so daunting that I avoid it for as long as humanly possible.

But it’s getting there…slowly…

Still, there are some nostalgic moments, particularly with my daughter’s clothing. I look at her first Christmas dress, her first Easter dress, and I can hardly believe she was ever that small. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of those moments. Many outfits have a memory.

Do you ever feel that way? Or is it just me?

Pumpkin Shopping

As a kid, I loved picking out the perfect jack o’lantern. It had to be nice and fat, with a good surface area for carving. I wanted my pumpkin round, and without any green, spotty parts.

We usually wait until October to buy our pumpkins, and this weekend, my kids informed me that it was TIME to buy them. There is a local pumpkin patch that sells about two hundred different pumpkins of every size and shape. I took the kids there, prepared for a nice debate about which one to get. The deal was, they had to carry whichever pumpkin they selected (I figured that would keep things reasonable).

My son trotted over to the section with large pumpkins. I was prepared for a debate over which one to buy. Should we get a twisty stem pumpkin? A tall narrow one? A fat wide one?

My dear boy picked out his pumpkin in thirty seconds. The boy is clearly a male shopper. My daughter had hers in about the same timeframe.

Me: Don’t you want to look around some more, see if there’s another one you like better?
Son: No, this is fine.
Me (to daughter): What about you? Are you sure this is what you want?
Her: Yep, it’s fine.

Clearly, they did not inherit my shopping genes.

Have You Ever Read an E-book?

I have a confession to make. I’ve never read an e-book. I am a traditional, book-loving person, and there’s nothing like the feel of pages. I love my books to death, and I had the horrible habit of earmarking pages as a kid. I would often have 2 or 3 books going at the same time.

But in the next few weeks, I am about to have my very first e-book only release. All of my books are available in electronic form already, as well as print, but “The Viking’s Forbidden Love-Slave” will only be electronic. The idea behind these short stories is that you can download them to your PDA, cell phone, or electronic reader, and take them on the road with you. You can read “Love-Slave” in your doctor’s waiting room, on the subway, or anywhere, really.

While this sounds very cool to me, I’ve never actually done this. I don’t own an electronic reader, and on my laptop, I’ll probably have to use Adobe Reader to access the story. I’m thinking of doing a series of blog adventures for those folks who have never downloaded a story. Sort of a How-To series. But that means I’ll have to actually learn How To Download it, myself.

For those of you who ARE e-book savvy, Penni forwarded a link to me, that Her Warrior Slave is one of this week’s electronic picks! It’s on sale at eHarlequin here for 25% off (scroll down). If you’re looking for electronic copies of my other books, those are also available.

So, quick survey. Am I in the minority? Does everyone else read e-books regularly, or are you like me and have never tried one? If you have read e-books, want to share what you know?