Susan Sey's Blog, page 7

RWA 2013!

Okay, I’m in Atlanta with 2000 of my closest friends at RWA 2013, so this will be blessedly brief.  And I cannot promise that I will be able to respond to comments so I’ll apologize in advance for ignoring people.  I’m sorry but internet access isn’t what it could be at the Marriott.  Plus I have drinking to do.  Sorry. 

I’ll make it up to you next blog by dishing all the dirt
 on rooming with Joanie & Caren. There may be incriminating photos.  Time will tell.  For now, you’ll just have to be content with this photo retrospective of RWAs past.

Enjoy!  I’m off to the bar.

 

First, a selfie of me and Joanie by the Statue of Liberty at RWA 2011 in NYC!

 

 

And who could forget the day I met the Naked Cowboy in Time Square?  Not this romance writer!

 

Joanie took this picture of me showing my true colors as a Grumpy Old Soul in Anaheim last year.  (We ditched business for a trip to the Magic Kingdom.  Don’t act so surprised!  It’s the happiest place on earth & we’re happy ever after types, in spite of our Grumpy beards.)

 

 

This is the massive sock bun I created for myself for the literacy signing at RWA 2012.  Nobody mentioned how tremendous it was, but I knew they were all looking.  Huge.

 

And last but never least, here is me and my darling Inara, taking silly selfies all over Disney at RWA 2012.  Because there are not enough sillies selfies of us in this world, & we aim to correct that situation.  Love!

 

So how about you?  Do you take ridiculous selfie to share with the world, or are you one of those “oh don’t take my picture I don’t have my face on!” types?  (You know, people with dignity.  I have none so I don’t identify, but I see them everywhere.)  Share!

Slumber party!

So I have a house full of girls tonight. 

Yep. We’re having a slumber party.  

It’s nobody’s birthday or anything.  We’re just lucky enough to be part of a circle of families that all have two girls about the same ages as ours, & it’s become our routine to swap overnights every so often.  The kids love it, & the parents get a date night that doesn’t end until after breakfast.  Which is awesome.  

Because when you’ve been married with kids for ten-plus years, you sort of forget what it’s like to wake up when you’re done sleeping rather than when a six-year-old lands on your bladder.  You forget that you used to go to the movies on a whim.  You definitely forget what a luxury it is to swear in the car without long-lasting and embarrassing repercussions.  

Last week we were the lucky ones.  Our friends took the girls & we went to see the new Star Trek movie.  We had dinner before & drinks after, & took a nice walk, too.  It felt incredibly indulgent and decadent, all that kid-free time.  Ours for the wasting!  We haven’t had time to waste in YEARS, & I’m not going to lie.  We enjoyed the heck out of it.

But tonight’s our turn for the full house, & you know what?  I’m enjoying the heck out of that, too.  

Because it won’t be very long before my girlies are past the stage where it’s cool to invite all your friends to the house & run around like crazy people.  Pretty soon it’ll be all about being OUT of the house, seeing and being seen in all the right places, which are–presumably–not parent-infested locations like our home.  It will certainly not be cool to put on your jammers, watch movies in the basement & laugh like loons until the wee hours.  

So tonight, when I’m shouting down the stairs for the kids to please, for the love of tuna salad, pipe DOWN and go to SLEEP, I’ll remind myself how fast these years are passing, and how much I’m enjoying the precious children.  I’m sure that’ll do the trick.

So how about you?  Did you do sleep overs as a kid?  What do you remember about them?  Love them?  Hate them?  Still do them?  Share! 

 

Good for the Soul

Some people are lucky enough to be born where they belong.  Some people have to look for their place for years & years.

Some people get to live in that place that fills up their soul.  Most of us just have to visit it from time to time.

Some of us get lots of places that feel like home.  Some of us get only one.

Finding this place is like meeting your spouse.  You see it, there’s this electric click & you think, “Mine.”  ”Here.”  ”This one.”

For me, that place is the north shore of Lake Superior. 

I was well into my twenties when I discovered the north shore.  This is ironic because I grew up in Michigan.  The Great Lake State.  I know my way around the HOMES.  (That’s Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie & Superior, for those of you who didn’t grow up in or around the mitten.)  And yet, I never saw Superior until I was an adult.

To be fair, Superior is up there.  Way up there.  A solid six hours or so from where I grew up.  But one summer I got a wild hair to take a job at an outdoor and environmental education program in Minnesota’s arrow-head region–that little triangle of land wedged between Lake Superior and Canada.  

I’ll never forget driving into Duluth, cresting that last hill & finding the lake waiting for me.  It was vast and forbidding, and it sparkled like broken glass, the kind you know will cut you if you touch it but you just can’t help yourself.   It was that exquisite combination of beautiful and dangerous that we all love so much when we spot it in a hero.

I fell in love with it like I fell in love with Mr. Sey.  He took my hand on our first date, something inside me clicked & I thought, “Yep.  This one.”  I saw Lake Superior, something inside me clicked & I thought, “Yes.  Here.  Mine.”  I’ve been back at least twice a year ever since.  (On a semi-related note, I’ve also been happily married thirteen years this summer.)  

It was a rainy fifty degrees as I packed up for our first camping trip of the year on Friday.  We hit the campsite in the dark, set up our tent in the damp, and crashed out.

We woke up to this.  A glorious, perfect, temperate, sunshiney Saturday, full of hiking and reading and digging and scrambling.  Now I probably spent more time packing than I spent camping.  And I know I spent more time doing laundry and unpacking afterwards.  But I wouldn’t trade that glorious Saturday for anything.  And why?  Because when I left home I was tired.  Cheerless.  Weary.  Empty.  When I came home, I was full.  It was enough.  And sometimes enough is everything.

How about you?  Is there some place that you return to again & again?  A place that fills you up when you’re empty?  Tell us about it!

 

At the Cottage…I mean Cabin….

Happy Memorial Day, everybody!

Like many of you, I’m at the cottage this weekend.  Excuse me, I mean the cabin.  Not my cabin, let me be clear.  This is a friend’s cabin.  We’re lucky enough to have wonderful friends who own a cabin, and they invited us to spend the holiday weekend with them.  So here we are enjoying the lake in the north woods.  This is us above.  We’re watching the kids catch frogs & the men catch fish while we open a bottle of wine & discuss, well, everything.

We’re having a grand time.  And that was what I intended to write about when I sat down. 

Then I tried to title this post & got hung up.

Because here’s the thing:  we live in Minnesota, and the woods/lake we’re currently enjoying are in northern Wisconsin.  Therefore this structure I’m inside?  It’s a CABIN.  

Now I grew up in Michigan, where if you said “cabin” you were talking about Laura Ingalls Wilder stuff–a historical, pioneery thing build out of trees stacked up like Lincoln logs.  The little houses on northern lakes that we flee to when it gets too hot in the city?  Those are COTTAGES.

Also, we Michiganders ice fish out of shanties, not fish houses or ice houses like they do here MN/WI.  

And when a Michigander says ROOF or ROOT, she’ll pronounce the OO like you would in ALOOF or HOOT.  Minnesotans/Wisconsinites would pronounce the OOs like you would in GOOD or SOOT.    

Now I actually like this for the most part.  This is the upper midwest–we don’t actually have a discernible accent, & I’ve always wanted one.  So I kind of cherish these little regional difference in language.  Every now & then, if you’re really lucky, you’ll hear somebody refer to a drinking fountain as a “bubbler.”  I find this delightful.  

But the other day my kid came home from school and told me she’d been given “rut beer” at school for a special treat.   And I realized that she was growing up with a Minnesota accent.  And I didn’t know how I felt about this. 

On one hand, how fun!  An accent in the family (however tiny.)  Wheee!

On the other, my kid & I now look at the same word and think different things.  And that strikes me as…unsettling.   We’re family.  We’re blood.  We should speak the same language.  And mostly, we do.  Except for this tiny little point where we don’t.  And I just don’t know how I feel about that.

So tell me about where you live.  Does it come with an accent, or regionally-specific terminology?  Does your spouse/partner/kid have an accent that’s different from yours?  How do you handle the differences?  Are they invisible?  Amusing?  Cause for argument?  Share!

stockphotos courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

 

 

Three Simple Rules to Family Vacations

Well, that’s that.  Disney came, Disney went, and we’re back to reality around here.  

Those of you following along at home will be delighted to know that Team Wicked Awesome  successfully completed our Disney Race.  On the left here is a  photo of me & my running buddy/trip planner extraordinaire Sarah just before embarking on the Expedition Everest 5k at Disney’s Animal Kingdom last weekend.  We’re dressed up as our favorite Disney villains, of course:  Sarah as Cruella DeVille from 101 Dalmations, me as Ursula the Sea Witch from the Little Mermaid.  I obviously couldn’t make my long, dark hair do Ursula’s bleached blonde spikes, so I settled for slapping on a light-up octopus fascinator & calling it  day.  

In addition to being adorable, however, we were also fast!   We managed to place 6th out of over 500 women’s teams.  On the right down there is me and my victory fist crossing the finish line. 

But I’m not here today to talk about my race.  No,I came home from this vacation with three key learnings.  Three vacation practices that have revolutionized my ability to take a vacation with my family & actually enjoy it.  And I’m going to share them with you. 

1)  PREPARATION/PLANNING.  

This sounds ridiculous, I know.  I mean, who takes a vacation without planning it?  But you’d be amazed at the amount of blow-back you can get from family members (who shall in this post remain nameless) who believe that trip planning kills spontaneity & therefore enjoyment.  They resist any effort to create plans, budgets, agendas, bullet points.  It is suggested–subtly–that any commitment beyond hotel reservations or airline tickets is over-thinking things. 

Ignore these people.  They are trouble.  Plan the heck out of your trip.  Don’t even bother attempting to get familial buy-in.  Pore over your guide books.  Buy attraction tickets and make dinner reservations six months in advance.  Make day-by-day agendas!  Wheeee!  You will not be sorry.  Trust me. 

However.  (You knew there was a however, didn’t you?  There’s ALWAYS a however.)  Please see #2 below.

2)  BE FLEXIBLE.

The key to all this planning?  You can’t get attached to your lovely plan.  When you vacation with family–and I was at Disney with my kids, my husband AND my parents, so we’re talking three generations–you have to be prepared to flex.  Everybody’s not going to want to do the same thing at the same time.  There are different levels of energy, ambition, interest.  Plus, what seemed totally do-able six months ago in the dead of winter when it was just you & your guide book might not be entirely feasible after three days of going hard in the summer heat.  

So when you’re building your lovely plans, make sure to build in escape hatches & loop holes.  Alternate agendas for the tired & the wired.  Opt-out clauses for golfers.  (This was key with my parents.  We bought them three day park passes as compared to our four-day passes & they went golfing mid-week rather than doing Hollywood Studios.)   Pay attention to the mood of your brood, & offer options accordingly.

Which brings me to the all-important lesson #3:

3)  VACATION IS NOT A DEMOCRACY.

Somebody has to be in charge of vacation.  If you sit around the breakfast table every day trying to achieve consensus on what we’re going to do today, you’ll likely still be sitting there at lunch, embroiled in inertia.  I know this because I am the third of four kids, & now that we all have spouses & children & dogs & such, our holiday gatherings aren’t family get-togethers so much as a week-long effort to mobilize the troops.  

Successful vacationing requires a leader.  It requires somebody who’s willing to slap an agenda on the breakfast table & say, “Here’s today’s plan.”   When/if objections arise, you then offer up your opt-out escape hatch alternatives.  But because you planned so well and so beautifully, you have those lovely dinner reservations or tickets bought in advance.  This gives your day some structure, a guidepost of sorts.  It’s very stabilizing to know that something is happening at a certain place & time, so everybody can meet back up for the day’s peak experience. 

Now I had the impression (likely from those same family members who are remaining anonymous for the duration of this post) that this sort of dictatorship was frowned upon by vacationers, but it is actually received with much gratitude.  People make decisions so much faster & more effectively when they’re presented with three distinct options rather than a whole buffet of choices.  So let them sneer at your six-months-out dinner reservation.  When the day comes, you can take your satisfaction in watching your vacation unfold like clockwork.

So there you have it.  Susan’s Simple Rules for Taking your Family on Vacation.  And all it took was 40 years & about as many vacations punctuated with melt-downs, shouting-matches & endless discussions regarding where we should eat. 

So how about you?  What are your tips & tricks for a great vacation?  I would love to add to my body of knowledge!

The Crisis of the Purse

So!  My Disney trip is coming right up!  

Did you know I’m going to Disney?  I am!  I may have mentioned it earlier this month.  I may, in fact, have devoted an entire blog to it.  It’s possible.  I’m a little obsessed. 

But for those of you who missed the memo, I’m off to Disney in a week!  This time my excuse is exercise.  Seriously.  My Disney-loving friend Sarah & I are doing the Expedition Everest run on May 4, a nighttime 5k around Disney’s Animal Kingdom.  We do like a good work out you know. Dressing up in costumes and riding roller coasters after hours is merely a bonus.

Our team name is WICKED AWESOME, so named because a) we’re awesome and b) we love Disney villains.  Sarah will be Cruella DeVille from 101 Dalmations, while I will be Ursula the Sea Witch from the Little Mermaid.  I made myself an octopus fascinator recently (glue guns are wicked awesome!), & I spent last evening sewing myself a sparkly purple running tutu.  It’s adorable.  I tried it on for my husband and said, “Hey, look!  I’m Ursula the Sea Witch!  What do you think?”

He said, “I think you’re about 200 pounds short of the mark, but I like the tutu.”

He’s a card, Mr. Sey.

So I think I have my costume in order, & I’m prepared to rip off a few sub-eight-minute miles.  Training-wise, costume-wise, I’m ready.

Family-vacation-wise, I’m similarly prepared.  I have the Unofficial Guide to Disney for families, I’ve downloaded the Lines app, I made my dining reservations ages ago & have my tickets waiting for pickup.  There’s only one problem.

My purse.

Seriously.  I’m having a purse crisis.  

Because no matter what you do, no matter how cute it is, your purse is a liability at an amusement park.  

First of all, you have to carry it.  And it’s hot and heavy.  And other people want to put their stuff in it, which makes it hotter and heavier.  Ick.

Second, you have to figure out what to do with it on rides–how to protect it from water, spinning, speed and the occasionally up-ending.  (I do lover roller coasters.  Did I mention?)  The whole idea of purses is that you keep your important stuff in there, right?  You don’t want all that important stuff shooting out of the spinning teacups like buckshot or marinading in a couple inches of water after the Khali River Rapids.

Third, you’re inevitably going to set it down somewhere–restaurant, bathroom, etc.–and try to walk away from it.  Especially when your hands are full of kids and their stuff.  This is especially likely for me as I have girl children, and therefore have solo responsibility for bathroom breaks while my husband snoozes in the shade outside.  Disney bathrooms, as you might guess, are about the size of shopping malls, with about as many entrances & exits.  Getting everybody bathroomed, sanitized & back out the same door we came in is a herculean feat.  Hanging onto my purse–however precious it may be–is low on my list of priorities in such situations.  

Now I know I’m not the only person to struggle with this issue.  The Disney guides I’ve read address it explicitly.  Their advice?

Wear a fanny pack. 

It’s convertible.  Wear it on your fanny when you’re walking around.  Turn it around to the front when you’re on a ride or in a restaurant.  It’s small so it’s not hot or heavy.  Plus you can’t pack it with other people’s stuff.  It’s just big enough for yours. 

It’s easy to protect from ride damage.  Line it with a ziploc for those wet rides, or put it inside your shirt.  It zips fully closed and is attached securely to your person.  It’s ideal. 

The argument I personally found most persuasive?  Get one for each kid.  Make her carry her own sunscreen, waterbottle, camera, autograph book, etc.  This spoke straight to my heart.  (And my weary purse arm.)  My kids are way old enough to carry their own gear.  And they will.

But for me?  I’m struggling. 

Because I hate fanny packs.  It’s nothing personal.  I didn’t have a traumatic fanny pack-related experience once upon a time or anything.  I just hate how they look on me.  I’m already short & my bottom is the curviest part of me.  It doesn’t match the pipe-cleaner splendor of my arms, anyway.  That’s for sure.  So, yeah, this is totally a personal phobia, but I dislike drawing attention to my already pronounced bottom with…well, another lump.  

Oh, Susan thy name is vanity!

A fanny pack is totally the right solution here. I know this.  The question is, can I put aside my vanity long enough to embrace it?  Surely if Rihanna can do it (see photo), I can?

And if I can’t….what are my alternatives?  Because I refuse to bring my big ol’ purse and Sherpa around the entire family’s gear.  

Help? 

Disney, Take Two…

Hey, so guess what?  I’m going to Disney World!

Get out your mouse ears, ladies, because I’m totally tuned to the Disney channel these days.  I am excited about this trip!

But why?  It’s not like I haven’t been to Disney lately.  I have.  Kind of a lot, actually.

Just last year the RWA conference was in Anaheim, remember?  So of course I blew off like two full days of (expensive) educational opportunity to go play.  First I dragged our own Bandita Joanie to the parks where she patiently indulged my desire to try on hats with dwarf beards all day.

Later, I dragged our beloved Inara Scott on over so she could patiently indulge my desire to take silly selfies all day and suck down astonishing amounts of Diet Coke.  (It was hot.  She was impressed.  She later live-tweeted my each and every bathroom break.  Ah, friendship.)

And just two years before, of course, the RWA conference ended up in Orlando when Nashville found itself unexpectedly underwater.  It was like a sign from God.  GO TO DISNEY.  Who was I to argue with God?  I went to Disney, and again dragged Inara & Joanie along with me.

Okay, so to recap:  Disney Land, July 2012. Disney World, July 2010.  And–I’m just going to admit this–right in between?  In May 2012?  There was Disney World again.

Yeah, those last two were just a few months apart.  But it wasn’t my fault! 

See I have this friend, Sarah.  And Sarah’s fervent & passionate love for all things Disney throws mine in the shade.  And she talked me into running the Expedition Everest 5k.  

This is essentially a 3 mile run through Disney’s Animal Kingdom after hours, pausing every mile or so for an obstacle.  (Think hay bales, cargo nets, etc.)  Then there’s a scavenger hunt, capped off by a late-night party complete with roller coasters.  You can do the race solo, but it’s more fun when you sign up as a team.  And run in costume.  And I do love costumes & teamwork (& roller coasters!), so…

But here’s the thing:  Who goes all the way to Disney for one day of park fun?  We felt honor-bound to make a long-weekend/mommy vacation out of it.

I won’t lie to you.  It was awesome.    (It helps that Sarah’s an honest-to-goodness Disney-endorsed trip planner.  First there was the running & our own personal roller coaster rides.  Then there were massages.  At some point there was a private segueway tour of Epcot & creme brulee.  I’m not kidding you.  Email me here and I will pass along her contact info.  You’re welcome.)

But are you spotting the trend here?  I have been to Disney three times over the last three years without my children.

And my children have informed me that this is a miscarriage of justice.  A perversion of the natural order of things.  And more importantly, it cannot continue.  The next time I go to Disney, I am contractually obligated to take the kiddos. 

And I am going back to Disney.  

 Because my friend & I?  Our little team of Moms Who Run?  We placed 14th out of like 800+ teams.  And we hadn’t trained, nor did we run very hard.  The instant we saw our results we were like, “We are coming back here next year, in shape, and we are winning this thing.”  We made a solemn vow.

So the first weekend in May, we’re in it to win it.  We’re heading back to Orlando, families in tow this time, and winning that damn race.  Or coming as close as we can.  And then I’m taking the next week off & doing the parks.  With my family. 

So, all that is a very long build up to today’s burning question.  How do I make this park experience incredible for the family?  We  will have one day at each of the four WDW parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, & Hollywood Studios.)  I will have with me:  1 husband (age 44), 2 children (ages 6 & 9), and 2 parents (mine, ages undisclosed but think early 70s.)  Varying levels of fitness & interest.  I have consulted with Sarah.  I have the Unofficial Guide to Disney with Kids downloaded, along with touring plans & the LINES app.  I think I am prepared, but I want to hear from you!

Have you been to Disney with kids recently?  What are the top three things you’d recommend for kids at Disney?  Real peak experiences?  What can you share?  

But most importantly, do you love my dwarf beard?

Don’t Make a Peep….

Sound advice, probably.  Don’t make a peep.  I’m blowing it off, though.  I’m making a peep.  

Three dozen of them, in fact. 

Yes, indeedy, our local paper just published a recipe for making Peeps at home, & I’m totally going for it. 

Why?  Hell if I know.  I don’t even like Peeps.  

You know Peeps, right?  Those weird, rubbery marshmallow chicks that turn up in Easter baskets every year to inspire either fervent devotion or horrified cringing in the lucky recipient?  The ones with the kind of cult following that inspires people to re-enact famous scenes from history using them, or to recreate famous works of art?  

Yeah, those.  I’m going to make those.  Again, you ask, why?

I honestly don’t know.  

I don’t want to recreate the Mona Lisa with them, or make a diorama of George Washington crossing the Delaware.  

I’m not a big marshmallow fan, either. 

 But my kids like them, we’re actually having Easter at home this year, & the recipe told me how to make colored sugar. 

Colored.  Sugar.

Sold!

Sometimes this just happens to me. Sometimes a recipe just grabs me & I have to try it.  Even if I don’t particularly want to eat the results.  Which, in this case, I don’t.  I love sweets but since I turned 40 & the ol’ metabolism took a dive, I have to be choosy about indulging.  I don’t want to waste my precious junk calories on anything that doesn’t make me swoon. 

But look at the pretty sugar I made!

So, yes. I am wading into this battle.  I am going to make Peeps, even though the recipes calls for a pastry bag and a candy thermometer.  

You might want to pray for me.  I’ll post pictures. 

So how about you?  Do you ever make recipes you don’t want to eat?  Do you buy cookbooks just to read them?  (I’ll confess, I totally do this.)  What do you do with the results of your culinary endeavors if you don’t want to eat them?  And–most importantly–are you a Peeps person?  

Oh, the horror

 

I love the movies.  Love them with a burning passion.  

Part of that is my birthright.  I’m from a long line of movie lovers.  My parents go to the movies every single Friday night without fail.  I want to know what’s playing & how it’s being reviewed by the semi-retired set?  I call my folks.  There’s nothing they haven’t seen.

Another part of that is being Irish.  We Irish folk appreciate a good story well told, never mind the medium.  (We particularly like those new theatres where you can have a beer with your movie, but that’s a different post.)

But I think the biggest part of my love affair with the movies is being a child of the 80s. I was in middle school when we got our first VHS, & it came with a REMOTE CONTROL.  Good god, the luxury.  Who cared that it had a cord & plugged into the VHS?  It was a REMOTE.  We could now watch movies with homemade popcorn from the comfort of our couch without bankrupting our parents.  (There were four of us kids, & taking us to the movies had recently become prohibitively expensive.)  Heaven!

As for myself,  I was a fan of the romances.  (Surprise!)  The PRINCESS BRIDE, the CUTTING EDGE, Jane Austen’s EMMA (the Gwyneth Paltrow version)?  That’s some solid entertainment right there.  

My little sister, however?  She was into horror movies.  The scarier, the bloodier, the better as far as she was concerned.  And since we were children of the 80s–did I mention?–this meant Friday the 13th, Children of the Corn, and Nightmare on Elm Street.  Urgh.

As you might imagine, choosing the nightly feature in my childhood home regularly involved fisticuffs and coin tosses.  Winning was always preferred, of course, but there was something to be said for losing, too.  Yeah, the movie blows but there is nothing like providing some scathing color commentary on a movie that your annoying younger sister is trying to enjoy.  That’s entertainment gold, right there.

So I have watched a lot of horror movies.  And this is what I have learned:

Beware the previews.

Seriously.  It’s the previews.  The movies themselves were never that scary.  Gross, yes.  Truly scary?  Not usually.  But the previews?  Holy crap.

See, at some point in every movie, they have to drag the monster out from under the bed.  And once they do, there goes the terror.   But previews?  Whoa.  Those are nothing but an all-you-can-eat buffet of terrifying suggestions, an invitation for your imagination to run wild.

And you know what?  I have a fantastic imagination.  

There was this one preview–I think it was for Children of the Corn #47 or something.  It was about three seconds of film time, nothing fast or fancy.  It was a shot of an open bedroom door & the darkened bedroom beyond it.  That’s it.  

Then suddenly a little boy staggers across the doorjamb in silhouette, just his shadow.  No detail.  But I understood immediately that something was wrong with this boy.  My conscious brain took another beat to catch up, to put together what exactly was wrong.

The top half of the figure was a boy.  The bottom half was…what?  I’ve never been sure.  A goat?  A donkey?  Some kind of farm animal, assuredly.  I surmised from the staggering that this unnatural stitching together had just happened, & all concerned parties were struggling to come to terms with the new normal. 

Okay, I have the heeby-jeebies just writing that.  It’s an image I see in my worst dreams even now.  

I suspect that if I just figured out which movie this was & watched it, it would neutralize the terror.  (See theory above re: dragging the monster out from under the bed.)  But I can’t bring myself to do it.  I’m just too afraid.  I’m messed up for life regarding the Frankensteining of little boys & farm animals, & you know what? 

I blame my sister.  

Family.  Sheesh.  

So what about you?  Have you been permanently scarred by movie or a book?  A TV show?  Something you saw that you wish you’d never seen?  Is your sister to blame, or did you do it to yourself?  Share!

 

 All images courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net. Mouse over for artist attribution.

 

 

 

Love in the Land of Lakes!

So you all know I’m from up north, right?  

Now, when I say “up north” I’m talking about that hardy, chilly stretch of the north-central U.S. bordering Canada.  Let’s say roughly Wyoming through Michigan.

Up north is where it snows October through March, & we take it in stride.  

Up north is where we have mosquitoes the size of bread plates, and people insult you by saying simply, “Well, that’s different.”

 

Up north, we’re at the very top of what folks on either coast refer to as “fly-over country.”  Because they prefer to just fly over it.  Nobody in their right mind would go there.  Because–did I mention?–snow.  Plus large mosquitoes and deadly subtle insults.

Me?  I love it here.  But I didn’t always.

Now I was born and raised up north.  In Michigan, to be precise.  (The mitten state!)  But I knew I wasn’t made for winter.  My senior year in college cemented this conviction.  I remember the day itself–April 1, 1994.  I had just walked to class through a blinding snow storm, the kind with such fierce winds that you have to empty your pockets of snow upon arriving at your destination.  And as I was scooping snow from my coat pockets (I am not making this up), I said to myself, “That’s it.  I’m getting out of here.”

I graduated one month later & took the first job south of the Mason/Dixon line that came my way.  (Thank you, Houston Independent School District, for the opportunity.  I quite enjoyed Texas.) 

That said?  I lasted three years before I moved back up north. To Minnesota this time.  And I haven’t budged since. 

At this point, you may be questioning my sanity.  (Because, to recap:  snow, mosquitoes, insults.)  

But here’s the thing.  In exchange for snow, mosquitoes and “that’s different,” I got heat, bigger mosquitoes (!) and “bless your heart.”  Even exchange, that.  But I also got snakes (the large, poisonous kind) and alligators.  (Alligators!)  

In exchange for wind chill factors, fall colors and spring flowers, I got a rainy season.  And I discovered that I will happily take a few weeks of -50 windchill over three months of 37 degree rain any old time.

But it was the water that finally did it. 

I missed the lakes.  

I might’ve mentioned that I grew up in Michigan, also known as the Great Lakes State.  Fun fact?  You can’t go more than six miles in any direction in Michigan without hitting a body of water.  You’re never more than 85 miles from a Great Lake, either.  As a result, we Michiganders view time in & on the water as our birthright.

I spent my childhood summers at the family cottage, right near the tip of the mitten.  (I’m the little one in the photo, if you’re wondering.)  Days at the cottage were all about fishing, swimming & water skiing ourselves into exhaustion, then baking ourselves dry on hot wooden docks.  Nights were all about bonfires on beaches, storytelling under the stars, then bunking down in rickety screened-in porches where we slathered our peeling backs with Noxema and listened to loons laughing on the lake.  

Now, it must be said:  they do have lakes in Texas.  Of course they do.  But when we say “lake” up north, we mean deep, clear, cold water you can swim in.  When they say “lake” down south, they mean warm, shallow, muddy water full of crazy things I don’t want to swim with. (Alligator gar, anybody?  See photo.  See also:  yikes.) 

So I realized–finally–that up north is simply who I am.  It’s in my blood.  It was no mistake that I wound up making my forever home in Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes. For me, home is always going to be the place where the trees are tall, the winters are white & the lakes are so clear you can see straight to the bottom.  

So when my local RWA chapter decided to put together an anthology centered around falling in love in the Land of Lakes, I couldn’t resist.  I don’t often write short–it’s crazy painful for a long-winded girl like me–but if you read my summer release KISS THE GIRL, you know that my heroine Nixie is saddled with…let’s call it a difficult family situation. Specifically her aging sex-pot of a movie star mom.  Ah, Sloan.  The villainess everybody loves to hate.  Now Sloan ended up with a happy ending of her own, but because it happened largely off stage, even I didn’t know quite how Sloan bagged her man.  And I was curious. 

So I wrote it.  

If you’d like to know exactly how that played out, check out UNWRAPPED, my contribution to LOVE IN THE LAND OF LAKES which is–of course–set proudly on the shores of Lake Superior.  

Click here for more, or just check out Susan’s website!

So tell me, is there a place in the world that particularly speaks to you? Do you live there, or just yearn for it?  What says home to you like nothing else?  Did you always know that, or did you have to move somewhere that didn’t have it before you realized how important it was?

One lucky commenter will win her own e-copy of LOVE IN THE LAND OF LAKES, so don’t be shy!  Share!

Images courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.  Mouse over for artist attribution.