Eve Brown-Waite's Blog, page 14

The Best Mother (for Me) by Deb Meredith

Mothers always get a bad rap in the movies. They come off as crazy or haranguing, and either they don’t love their kids enough or they smother them. It’s just not fair.

Sure, I know lots of women who’ve had awful relationships with their mothers, but most of us moms are just regular people. We make mistakes and lose our temper, but we say we’re sorry. We’re proud of our kids, but at the same time hate to see them grow up and away from us. And we try our best to be the best moms that we can.

M

Double-mom bonanza, by Deb Katie

I grew up in what I like to think of as the most functional dysfunctional family in the world. After taking a few years to sort things out, my father, stepmother, and mother all learned to co-exist peacefully. My mother, like all ex-wives on my father’s side, was welcome at family events.

When I was a senior in high school, she even lived with us for a while.

Now, I love my mother. And I love my stepmother. But this was my senior year in high school, and I was doing that late-adolescence thing

In which Deb Kristina wants you to drop the guilt, already

Here’s a gift we mothers should all give yourselves this Mother’s Day week: guilt-free parenting!

If only it were that easy. On one hand we have experts, television pundits, the Supernanny, and advice magazines burdening us with restrictions and caveats far beyond what our parents could have imagined. Then, just when we think we’ve covered all our bases with PABA-free sunscreen, anti-porn computer software and cutting our grapes in half to prevent a choking hazard, other bloggers and pundits use

News Flash, May 10

Booklist says of Debutante Katie Alender’s BAD GIRLS DON’T DIE “This is a promising debut for a new young author and will be a popular addition to any YA collection.”

Speaking of BAD GIRLS DON’T DIE, Katie is amazed and thrilled that the book has spent several days among the top selling books in BarnesandNoble.com’s Teen Fiction/Mysteries and Thrillers category–even some significant time in the #1 spot! When not busy taking screenshots of this exciting occurrence, Deb Katie can be found picking

Wildlife Encounters by Guest Author Sarah Wendell

We’re very pleased to have one of the Smart Bitches’, Sarah Wendell, as our guest today on the ball. She’s the co-author of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels a tongue-very-much-in-cheek guide for anyone who is curious as to why romance novels are so popular, and for anyone who adores the genre and is tired of taking crap for it. From the deeper meanings of heroine archetype and heroic flaws, to the deeper meanings of deeper meanings, Beyond Heaving Bosoms looks a

The Strangest Encounter Yet, by Deb Eve

I know that no will be surprised to hear about my numerous wildlife encounters. It’s always given me great fodder for the party game, “Two Truths and a Lie” since people don’t usually guess that yes, I’ve had my lunch stolen by a monkey (this is NOT as cute as it sounds when you’re tromping through the Amazon jungle basin and the nearest place to grab a bite to eat is like an entire country away). Or that St. John had once narrowly escaped getting charged by a hippo by running into a (thankfully

Where the Wild Things Are by Deb Tiffany

Right now, we have a little deer situation in our neighborhood. Last week, my family and I watched as four, adolescent bucks strolled up to our neighbor’s front door, trampled the lawn, had a good look in their windows, then set about ravaging their bushes. It was the deer equivalent of toilet papering the place.

The raccoons are a little more Girls Gone Wild. Last week, they broke into my mom’s kitchen, and proceeded to shred cereal boxes, smash glass, canning jars, rip open bags of pasta and r

Wild, wild life by Deb Meredith

Unlike Lydia McKenzie in Posed for Murder, I was raised in the country. Wildlife in general doesn’t scare me. At least I’m not usually freaked out by the kind of wildlife that lives in Virginia. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had my share of frightening animal encounters.

I really hate snakes, and have no desire to pet one or–God forbid–keep one as a pet. Once I picked up what I thought was a piece of black rubber on the ground only to have a 3-foot black snake slither out of my hand. I stil

The cats, by Deb Katie

In our old neighborhood, which was near a school and a large shopping center and far from the coyote-filled hills where I live now, we had a pretty decent population of feral cats. They were cute, and I enjoyed having them around–there was one, a very pretty tri-color, that I named “Ardi” (short for Bacardi) and took pictures of through the screen door as he lounged in the late afternoon sun.

Little did I know, in those halcyon summer and autumn months, what the spring would have in store for

In which Deb Kristina gets over her fear of spiders (no she doesn’t)

What’s to fear about a spider, really? They’re small (mostly) and not really aggressive. I mean really, have you ever been charged by a spider? (If you have, I don’t want to know about it, and Deb Eve, I’m talking to you, here…) If nothing else, I’m pretty sure I can outrun a spider.

But all those legs! And they skitter! Oooh, how they skitter. I can almost tolerate a non-moving spider but when it starts to move my hysteria-meter tips into red. And you don’t want to be anywhere near me if I perch