Rita Arens's Blog, page 31

The End of the 70-Degree Summer

It's been unnaturally cool here right up until this week -- so much so that last weekend the two afternoons we spent at the pool involved a little shivering, and none of us had the gumption to try the lake. I remember visiting San Diego a few times and thinking how nice the weather always is there, day after day after day. And then Kansas City randomly had day after day after day of seventy degrees. Surely, we thought, they would stop after Memorial Day. Nope. Still seventy degrees, beautiful...

Why Do I Care?

The contractor was in my house fewer than five minutes measuring for a new door to go between the garage and the kitchen. He's the last contractor we'll need to finish up the remodel of Chateau Travolta's kitchen -- other than him, it's stuff we can do ourselves -- install the range hood, finish the baseboard, replace the hardware on the pantry shelves that don't actually work the way they're supposed to, install the pulls. Just this one last guy after we had to fire the cabinet installation...

"I Wish I'd Let Myself Be Happy"

I've read more books and articles than I can count about how the brain functions, how negative thinking becomes a very real rut, how worrying doesn't do anything but give you serious health problems. I became convinced that my stress reactions were more harmful to my health than French fries and adjusted accordingly. I'm very interested in being a happy person. It's a personal goal. I'm very goal-oriented, just work with me here.

I read somewhere people are happiest while exercising and somet...

Another BlogHer Anthology!

At long last, a project I've been working on with the other editors of BlogHer and Open Road Media has come to fruition! Today is the book birthday of BlogHer's first food anthology, ROOTS: Where Food Comes From & Where It Takes Us.

Isn't the cover pretty? ROOTS features the work of the following writers:

Mary
Ann Parker
Michael Procopio
Lucy Pearce
Somer Canon
Eugenia Gratto
Doris Marbut
Maki Itoh
Evangelina (Vangie) Sosa
Molly Stephens
Ina Kota
Yasmeen Hilmi Richards
Tammy Kleinman
Tori...

Hoggin Craft's New Blog

Hoggin Craft now has its own home on the webwith nine custom pigs currently for sale. You can also email me your theme and we'll custom-design one for you.

I Do Not Like the Texture of That

It finally stopped raining, so I went for a jog, and I discovered a new texture to add to the list of icky textures I carry around in my head so I will avoid touching them in the future.

SATURATED GRASS

It looks solid, but it's so not.

I also don't like the texture of:

Overripe bananas
Most cooked greens
Shag carpeting
Sheep

Getting Back into the Novel Groove

After I attended RT Booklovers, I came home and plotted out my scenes and updated my long synopsis of the new adult novel I'm working on now. (I've decided it's new adult, not young adult, because the story works better that way. Though I would like to write another YA novel. Really like writing teenagers -- it's such an exciting and also terrifying and also boring time of your life, all at once and every day.

Then I completely stalled out as we started spending every night ripping apart our...

And How Did YOU Spend Memorial Day?

First, there was rain. From my bed, it sounded nice and dreamy, the kind of rain that makes you want to record it for posterity and secure your mosquito nets as you drift back off to sleep on a peaceful Carribean island. Near a waterfall. And interesting birds.

Since we've been in Chateau Travolta for six years and haven't had water in the basement since that fateful first week, it didn't occur to me to check the basement for water until the little angel and I had donned our swimsuits to avoi...

Egg Shell, Egg White

Him: "Are you sure the kitchen walls are Egg White? We also have Egg Shell."

Me: "I'm positive. Absolutely positive."

Him: "I don't know. This doesn't look right."

Me: "I painted both sides of the wall the wrong paint color before. Do you need me to go pull up my archives for you?"

Him: "Okay, then. Egg White."

And then I stomped back to the foyer to paint the space next to the baseboards the WRONG COLOR OF WHITE.

Make it stop. Just make the painting thing stop. Guess what I'm doing tonight?

Things That Are Not Fair

I'm watching my husband spackle our kitchen ceiling. It's a new beginning for our kitchen, a new beginning five years in the making. But it comes on the heels of mass destruction just one state over in Oklahoma City, where tonight parents are wondering where their babies are.

It's not fair.

All I could think all afternoon is that it's not fair Chateau Travolta is still standing.

We had a tornado watch all day.

What leaves, what stays: It's not fair.

My daughter fears the tornados. She has tro...