In the last month I’ve reconnected with 3 old friends, out of the blue.  Be prepared to be amazed, if for no other reason than my 11th grade yearbook photo.  HA!

Close Encounter of the First Kind:  Okay, I’m 43 years old, so we’ll just get that fact out of the way.  You math whizzes would have figured this out on your own anyway. My high school class was to have their 25th reunion in 2007.  Nobody actually put it together, so we didn’t, which is sad.  But we do, thanks to the miracle of technology, have a Yahoo! Group Loop.  So I put in my maiden name and my website, wondering if anybody will check it out.   Last month I get an email from my very good old friend ”R” who asked, “Are you the same person whose parents wouldn’t let her read Faulker in AP English? My jaw is still on the floor.”  (I was very … conservative in those days.)  I was DELIGHTED to hear from her.  ”R” and I and a third girl named “A” were very good friends, hanging out in English and chem lab as we techies were wont to do.  So “R” and I chat and I ask if she’s heard from “A.”  She hasn’t, but ”R” and I make plans to reconnect the next time I’m in Maryland.  (Yes, that’s me at 16.  Don’t you love the glasses and the sausage roll curl?)

Close Encounter of the Second Kind:  I google “A” and find she is a marathon runner.  I mention this via email to “R” who is ALSO a marathon runner.  (I am feeling very plump by this point.)  Two weeks ago, “R” emails me that she’s organizing the next marathon and who is on her entrant list but “A”!!  So the three of us email and on April 24 we will have a mini-reunion in Maryland!  How fun! (BTW, I love this movie.  I do promise not to claim I invented post-it-notes.)

Close Encounter of the Third Kind:  Now this is the most amazing one.  I had a very good friend who lives in Germany -”AF.”  She and I used to travel the world together when I worked global systems for P&G.  When I left P&G in 2000, she and I lost touch.  I moved, she changed jobs, etc.  So Friday night I get this email, “Remember me?”  It’s “AF”!  She’s found a few of my German translations in the library in her village outside Frankfurt, Germany and got my email address.  We emailed back and forth, then I told her I live near Sarasota, FL.

Now this is the amazing part - she and her family are coming to Sarasota this week!  They’d been planning this vacation for some time.  They’ll do the Everglades, etc, but after 8 years, she’s flying into an airport 20 minutes from my house!  I can’t wait to see her again.

Oh, but ”AF” is a runner, too.  I’m feeling like I need to buy a Nordic-trak or something so I can keep up with all my old friends, LOL.

So have you met up with anyone unexpectedly?  Who? Did you attend your reunion?  Do you have any close encounters of the nostalgic kind?  Tell me all!

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I saw this on the web – a woman has made it her job to interpret personality types based on the sort of purse they carry. I am paraphrasing here, but I learned that little clutch purses suggest the carrier has a grip on life. She doesn’t need all the detritus of her day, she only needs the essentials, and she can party with the best of them. I think Rachel has one to match her shoes, and I bet she changes it frequently.

The grab and go purse is one I bet Claudia and Nicole have, all packed and ready to go. It’s got the stuff you need to jet off to Rome at a moment’s notice. But not too much stuff, because you would not want to empty the bag on the counter to find your passport, which is so not classy.

Big stand-up straw bags with lots of pockets suggest the carrier is over-organized. Everything has a place, and the clutter disappears. Apparently you can save a lot of time being this organized—imagine not having to sift through all those receipts in the bottom of your bag to find something! I wouldn’t be surprised if Sabrina or K-Ho had one, either (that’s what we’re calling her, right? K-Ho?). These are people who probably have a lot of baggage, but carry it neatly.

Ah, the Hobo! This is where I get on, and I’m guessing so do Suz and K-Ro. The Hobo, as you know, is a big, deep, shapeless bag with everything thrown in it. It suggests disorganization, chaos, and a rebellion against authority. However, the expert did say that a disorganized mind is a creative mind :-).

These are pictures of my purse. I change purses maybe twice a year. I carry a wallet made fat by receipts and not money. I have a make-up bag that doesn’t hold much makeup, but a lot of allergy medicine. I have an i-Pod, keys, reading glasses, sunglasses, a little notebook, and a tin of those Godiva pearls (if you don’t have a tin of Godiva pearls, you MUST get them!).

I also have a bottle of wine in my purse, for which the expert failed to give props to the Hobo Bag. You cannot carry a bottle of wine in a clutch or a grab and go. I suppose you could carry one in a big straw bag, but I don’t think there is a pocket for it. And lest you worry that Julia is banging as many highballs as computer keys—the wine was on sale and I wanted to save the earth. I told the clerk she could keep the plastic bag and I could slip that puppy in my ginormous, unstructured, chaotic, purse.

What kind of purse do you carry? What’s in it? What are your purse essentials? Do you change them with each outfit, or use one until the handles break?

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I’m a parent. That means that I did all the work for a really long time. Not only did I do the laundry, the shopping, the vacuuming, the dusting, the cooking, the pot scrubbing, the dishwasher loading and unloading, the mowing, the raking, the sweeping, the edging and the blowing, but I had to teach each of my three kids to do these tasks as well.

It wasn’t easy. Every parent knows that it’s easier to do the job yourself, in a quarter of the time, than to encourage, teach, browbeat your kids into doing it. When they’re tiny, they think putting a bowl into the dishwasher is fun. They run to get a rake when they see Daddy raking the leaves. This phase, this sweet phase, passes very quickly. Of course, they aren’t actually much use when it come to raking or washing, but their eagerness is adorable.

By the time they can actually do these mind-numbing, back-breaking tasks, they don’t want to do them anymore. The price of growing up. These are the years when you threaten, scowl, and snarl them into doing the work of maintaining a house.

Then come the years when all the battles are won; the kids both know how to do the chores well and have learned the futility of resistance to doing them. They are spectacular, free labor. Well, not really free; they do get full medical and dental.

That’s when it happens. After all the years of effort, after teaching them how to mow and vacuum and take out the trash, and after getting used to having these icky jobs done with no effort on my part, that’s when it happens.

They move out.

What household job did you hate the most as a kid? What job do you still hate the most?

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There you are, walking along the beach, the sun warming your bare shoulders, sand wet and hard beneath your feet as the waves cool your toes with each splash.

You’re here alone, enjoying life, soaking in the soothing waves, and just being you. That’s when you see him. Standing beside his million dollar house on the beach, his red Ferrari parked beside it, he watches you from behind his expensive sunglasses.

He’s beyond gorgeous and you think “Surely he’s not looking at ME. This man could have anyone — Beyonce, Jessica, even Hillary!” But as the seconds pass, you realize he is, indeed, looking at you.

Awkwardly aware of him, you continue on when suddenly, he makes his move, crossing the sand in long, hungry strides. You pause, uncertain, as he reaches your side and removes his sunglasses to reveal rich, brown eyes.

Looking deep into your eyes, he takes your hand in his, presses a kiss to the palm, and says, —

“___________!”

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Going through some of my keepers the other day, I came across two of my old favorites: Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon, and A Knight in Shining Armor, by Jude Devereaux. It reminded me how much I like time-travel, not only in books, but in movies like Back to the Future, Somewhere in Time, and the TV show Charmed.

Not everyone does, though. Some scoff at the methods of travel (a De Lorean? Really?). Some take issue with the physics (you should see the intense discussion of the physics of time travel at Wikipedia). Some just can’t suspend their disbelief.

What about you? Just for fun, here’s a little time-travel poll:

1) Have you ever read a time-travel romance? Did you like it? If not, why not?

4) What was the last time-travel romance you read?

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The other night I was SO mad at my kid.  She’d mouthed off at me again.  So without yelling or screaming, I picked up the phone, called her cell phone provider and had her cell phone cancelled.  It felt really good.  The customer service rep for T-mobile said ruefully, “I’m glad they didn’t have cell phones when I was a teenager, because my parents would’ve cut mine off, too.”

I’m a goddess who keeps up with the times.  I mete out high-tech punishment. 

See, back in the day when I was a goddessling, I would have lost TV priviledges - all three channels.  Whoo, baby, my parents held a frightening power.  I might miss that adorable Shawn Cassidy on Hardy Boys or maybe the Love Boat on Saturday night!  I shuddered down to my shoes at the prospect.  But now … so what?  If a kid misses their shows, a friend can TiVo it for them.  Parents must ratchet up the stakes.

I’ve developed a repertoire of discipline approaches, but I’m always looking for new material.  In the past I have:
1) Taken away the little memory cards for the PlayStation game, once for weeks.  No memory card, no stored games.  It’s worse than taking away the game system itself.  Bwahahaha.  Once I even threatened to ERASE the cards.  Zeus heard the ensuing wailing and gnashing of teeth all the way up on Mt. Oly.  Zeus snickered - he was impressed.  Zeus is a great fan of Halo 3 himself. 
2) Taken all the “cool” clothes and replaced them with “nerdy” clothes.  As behavior improved, I traded back one cool article at time.  This was particularly effective.
3) Removed key grooming articles, such as hair straigheners or makeup.  This is particularly effective at achieving instantaneous results, especially in the morning, for who can leave the house looking like … like … her Mom?  (Ouch.)
4) A blog on the topic by her mom that other moms of her friends might see.  Ooooh, I like this one.

Of course there is positive reinforcement.  Consistently completed homework means a trip to that awful store that she likes, and I hate, where the music is so loud I hear the echo of it three days later.  Obedience without mouthiness … wait.  I haven’t had to reward that yet.  Maybe when she’s not 13 “and a half, Mom” anymore.

So what have you tried?  What did your mom or dad take away that made you or your siblings straighten up and fly right?  Do you ever have to discipline yourself?  What do you take away from you?  Or are you now more in the positive reinforcement vein? 

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Sophia was born in Switzerland, raised in France and the United States, but says her heart resides in Regency England. Her ancestor, an infamous French admiral who traded epic cannon fire with the British Royal Navy, is surely turning in his grave. Before pursuing her long held dream of writing, Sophia was an award winning television producer, a congressional speechwriter, and a CEO of the Washington International Horse Show. She lives in the Washington, D.C. suburbs with her husband and two children.  Sophia first three novels won eight national awards, including Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award, Romantic Times’ Best Regency Award, and a spot on Booklist’s “Top Ten Romances of the Year.” Her most current novel, THE KISS, was released by HarperCollins just last week!

Welcome, Sophia!!

Often, I think life is nothing more than a haphazard game of chance filled with unspeakably embarrassing moments which frequently end in disaster. Yes, I am one of those, “the glass is half full types” ;-} As a result, it should come as no surprise that in my March Historical release, The Kiss, the heroine is saddled with great moments of embarrassment. But I think this makes her happily ever after all the more poignant, don’t you? Isn’t that why we cheer when Mark Darcy kisses Bridget Jones?

I think we should applaud our embarrassments. If there is any justice in the world, a gross amount of hideous incidents should result in our own happily ever afters. Well, since I was invited here to entertain you, and the fact that all the other guest goddesses have stripped the vine bare of details concerning the boring life of a writer, I propose that we dissect our own perfect moments of horror.

Now I’m not talking about simple embarrassments, like the time I fell over an uprooted palm tree while reporting live on camera during a hurricane in Miami. I’m talking about events that haunt you to the grave.

For example, I shall never forget the last interview I endured for a top secret security clearance while working for the federal government. I walked into a bare room and came face to face with one of the most incredibly handsome men I’ve ever met. He proceeded to tell me that he was tasked to ask very explicit questions to determine if candidates were blackmail risks. Now try and image Mr. Pierce Brosnan look-alike with the Welsh burr asking the most embarrassing sexual questions possible: who, what, where, how often-lassie, what positions, experimentation and much worse…well, I almost passed out from the tension. After about the tenth question I think I called him laddie inadvertently and began to laugh uncontrollably. How I passed the clearance interview, I’ll never know. I still have nightmares about the possibility of running into that blue-eyed Welshman again.

Alright, I’ve spilled my Bridget Jones moment, what’s your all time most embarrassing event? And do you think experiences like these make you a stronger/better person? Or maybe gives you an extra straw in drawing one of life’s hard-won happily ever afters?

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Have you had any really cool stuff happen in your life? A friend told me that last week she actually took her three teenaged boys out of high school to attend a rally for one of the presidential candidates because she thought it might be an historic occasion and she wanted them to participate in history. Her kids weren’t thinking about history, she says. They just thought it was “cool” to see the political equivalent of a rock star. But I’m sure it’s something they’ll always remember.

I can remember attending my first rock concert. And then another concert where the opening act was a group I’d never heard of before, but who went on to achieve superstardom. One of my coolest memories was watching Swan Lake danced by the Paris Ballet in the courtyard of the Louvre Museum. I also will never forget my first time seeing the incredible Mikhail Baryshnikov dance, or going to the Atlanta Olympics and seeing the U.S. Showjumping team win the team silver.

But there are lots of cool things I still would love to do. I’ve never seen a play on Broadway, for example, even though I’ve seen countless plays and musicals that made it to Broadway.

Have you seen or done some Really Cool Stuff in your life? Is there more you would like to do?

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If you travel from state to state like I do sometimes for book tours, it’s always a good idea to be up on their laws. Even the obscure ones.

Did you know:

1. In Alabama you cannot chain your alligator to a fire hydrant.

Do people in AL walk alligators?

2. In California women can not drive in house coats.

Good thing this isn’t a law here in Idaho. I drive in my pjs all the time.

3. In Illinois, dwarf tossing without a permit is illegal.

But you can toss a dwarf with a permit?

4) In Kansas, it’s illegal to hunt whales.

Isn’t Kansas land locked?

5. In Florida, men may not be seen at any time in a strapless gown.

Mr G. travels to Florida several time a year, so I better give him the 411 on this just incase he gets the urge.

6. In Minnesota, it is illegal to tease skunks.

And if you do, you deserve what you get.

7. In Nevada, it is legal to hang someone for shooting your dog.

Justifiable homicide.

8. In New York, it is illegal for a blind person to operate a motor vehicle.

Makes you wonder just how many blind people are driving around the big apple.

9. In North Carolina it is illegal to sing off key.

Guess I’d be arrest in NC.

10. In Tennessee, it is illegal to gather and consume road kill.

Words fail.

Do you all know any obscure laws in your state? Have you run afoul of any of weird laws?

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I have a key ring. It has my house key, my car key, and my Borders reward card on it. I believe in travelling light.

My key ring is kept in a wooden bowl next to the door. I walk into the house, the key ring lands in the bowl. I walk out of the house and the last thing I pick up is my key ring.

But in a drawer in the kitchen, I have a tiny pewter bowl that is full of keys. Overflowing with keys. Keys tumbling out. I don’t know what these keys are for.

Apparently I have a key collection and I don’t know how it got started. I never set out to collect keys. I don’t want these keys, but I’m afraid to throw them away. What if they are Important Keys? What if they unlock the vault? Not that I have a vault, but they must unlock something.

I’ve convinced myself that these keys must do something essential to my life, which is why I have them in the first place, and why I kept them in the second place, so I can’t throw them out now. The very fact of their existence in my kitchen drawer means that they are essential to my life. Even though I’ve never used them and I can’t think what they can be for.

You can see the vicious circle of my reasoning, can’t you? The keys Exist, therefore, they must have Meaning.

I should have paid more attention in my college philosophy class. I am clearly facing one of those If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C scenarios. I got a D in that class.

I think that means I’m stuck with my keys.

What are you stuck with? Do you have keys without meaning? Do you keep them or do you toss them? Will you come and toss mine? I lack the intestinal fortitude to kill a useless key.

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