I’ve had so much going on lately that I can’t decide what to blog about. Do you ever have those weeks/months/years where you have stuff on your mind and you are in danger of blurting it to total strangers? My friend Sherri Erwin was talking about Krispy Kremes yesterday, and when a random clerk asked me how I was today, I almost announced I want a donut. NOW.

Here’s a smattering of things that have been on my mind recently. Feel free to chime in or ignore me.

1. Have you seen the Real Housewives of DC? Just when you thought these privileged women couldn’t get any snottier, DC rolled in to show us they could.

2. Bachelor Pad: Why? And why am I watching?

3. Did you hear about the guy who tried twice to friend his ex on Facebook and got slapped with violating a protective order? Do people seriously think the internet doesn’t count? Makes me think of how anonymously rude some people can be on the internet. But even if no one knows it was you who left that comment on that blog (speaking figuratively here), doesn’t it still matter that you said something rude?

4. Jack London has moved to Phoenix and he did NOT take the chewed up coffee table. He refused! What am I supposed to do with it now? That wrecks my plan for new living room furniture. (Jack London starts classes today!)

5. My sister and I had a discussion about why you get those splitting headaches when its super super hot like it has been. Is it a lack of water (we both drink tons)? Is it food? (she doesn’t eat, I eat all the time)? What is it?

6. Moose, my six month old moose-like puppy, is being neutered today. I am a responsible pet owner but I still hate doing it.

7. When is it going to cool down?

8. If I paint my bedroom, what color should I paint it? And should I get a new bed cover, or go with what I’ve got?

9. I won a copy of The Red Queen by Phillipa Gregory from goodreads.com. They suggested I read the White Queen first. Do I have to? The Red Queen is sitting right there with such a great cover and I am dying to read it.

10. Do you know how hard it is to find pictures to fit some of these blogs? These pictures are as meaningless as my blog today

These are just a few things that are front and center at the moment. What’s on your mind? if you could walk into a room of goddesses and have the floor, what would you say? What are the little niggling things bugging you? And if you are living in a 70-degree summer day area, you better not say it here. You better not.

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Today is a big day in the London household.  Jack London is packing his little U-Haul and, together with his father and oldest son, is driving one thousand miles across the southwest desert–IN AUGUST–to go to law school.  Jack, you rock! It’s a whole new beginning, and I am so proud that he had the balls to do it at this point in his life.

But change is hard!  Surviving big changes is all in how you look at it. When Jack worries about living in a small apartment in a complex like a college student, I think how fun it will be to have a Love Shack in Phoenix.  Jack fears homesickness and missing his family.  I think he’s going to get a well-deserved break, and he will see them through video, and it’s not like he’s going to Iraq, he’s going to Phoenix, one non-stop flight away, and can come home.  In the meantime, he will have enough to occupy his time and thoughts and will be fine.  Oh, and he’ll see me once a month, when I make my trip to the Love Shack .  Jack worries about the debt he is taking on to follow his dream.  I think there is no gain without risk, and those things have a way of working themselves out.  Jack thinks I will be lonely.  I think I will be able to get my books in on time without killing myself and I am really looking forward to that!!

Several years ago, I decided that writing would be my sole occupation, and I quit a well-paying job and career in public administration. I had faith it would work out. I was excited about the new direction. It has worked out so far (eight years later, knock on wood), and while you never know what’s around the corner, I am very happy I went off on this adventure

There are more changes in store for us down the road, and I am ready for them.  I can’t help but believe big changes happen for a reason.  They shake things up, they make life interesting, and I am excited to see the course of the second half of my life.  I am also excited to see that Love Shack, and I will be visiting there next week to hang Jack’s posters on the wall (Jack will be surprised–he doesn’t know he is getting dorm-room posters). 

How do you handle change?  Do you embrace it?  Do you go kicking and screaming into change?  What big changes have you faced recently or do you see on the horizon?

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What a great week of blogging!  Our guest bloggers have been so thoughtful and interesting and I am having follow-up anxiety.  It’s like American Idol–I feel like my name is Pat Lester and I am following Adam Lambert.  Great job all the way around!

This has been an odd week for me.  Jack London is really, honestly, leaving to go to law school, realizing a dream he’s had for twenty five years, and it’s just now starting to hit me.  Many of my friends are in Orlando, and so is my publisher.  It’s been really, really quiet around here and I have discovered how much time I actually have to work when I am not distracted with men or emails.  It’s amazing!

Nevertheless, I have been missing the conference.  Here is something I don’t get:  Not one of my fellow goddesses has emailed me with gossip.  Not. One.  You’d think they might have heard something worth dropping a line, but nooooo.  All I get is silence.   I’ll remember this, my pretties!

My list of things I don’t get is growing.  Maybe I notice more, maybe I’m just getting crotchety, but I’m starting to wonder about a whole host of things.  For example, I don’t get why Whoopi Goldberg wears clothes that look like big potato sacks or serapes on The View.  I don’t actually watch The View, because I am writing (really!), but I have watched it twice this week.  Yesterday, they had the President of the United States on the show–I know!–and she wore this big black sheet looking thing.  What is that all about?

I don’t get this older guy in my hood who wear short shorts.  Shorter than the shorts here.  He has gray hair, a long thick pony tail, and a never-ending supply of Tshirts with logos, and those shorty-shorts.  They are always denim, and they end about where his leg meets his torso.  Why?  He walks every evening when I am walking Moose, and I giggle every time.

I don’t get people who text and drive.  I know there are probably some on this very blog who do it, but if you do, I’d bet you know you are playing with fire.   And people who text and drive are endangering me, too.  I don’t get it.

I don’t get my brother-in-law.  When we have a family dinner, he will come late, head right for the food without saying much to anyone, and dig in.  He was raised in the same family with people who have very fine manners, so I don’t get how he missed the wait-until-you-are-invited-to-dine rule.

I don’t get people who don’t pick up after their dogs!  Every day I am dodging some other dog’s leavings.  Hey, I don’t like it either, but I do it so you don’t have to dodge my dog’s mess.

I don’t get people who run at 5 in the afternoon, at the hottest time of day.  What is the attraction?  Heat stroke, that’s what!

What things do you not get?  And did you get a copy of ONE SEASON OF SUNSHINE?  Because I am giving away one copy today to a commenter drawn at random!

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I really loathe this time of year because it is soooo hot.  We are not experiencing record heat here in Texas, just regular old Texas heat, which is still miserable.  We hover right around 100 every day.  This is usually the point I go and join a gym just so I can run on a treadmill.  But I can only do that for so long because I get bored.

This year, for the first time in my life, I am getting up at six and making myself get out.  I can’t tell you how huge this is.  At various times in my life, I have tried to get up early to exercise, but I never managed to do it for very long because I am not a morning person.  At. All.  I have always been a night owl, and even when I have to get up early, I am very grumpy.

I won’t say I am successful every single day, but for the most part, I am.  And I have discovered something really cool — I love the early morning.  It’s so pretty!  It’s very muggy, but it’s cool, and even better, the sprinklers in yards are on, which is a great little cooling off.  The air is still, and you can hear the birds — I honestly did not realize that this happened every day.  I seem the same diehards every morning.  They are usually older, and they usually have dogs with them.  They all wave.  I wave back.  I don’t do that if I am out at 9 because I am too miserable to be sociable.

Then I discovered something else about summer that took me back a million years to my youth.  There is another part of day that is just as pretty — the part of day when the sun is sliding down behind the earth and the fireflies come out.  It’s hot, but it’s not unbearable.  There is a whole other set of people out at this hour.  They are usually younger, and they usually have kids with them.  They don’t wave so much because they are herding cats.  I remember being outside at this time of day when I was a kid.  We played kick the can until it was completely dark.  We went swimming about this time, too, because the water was too hot during the day.  My parents and grandparents would sit in the garage and snap green beans, and we would run in and out.  But we were always outside. 

What is your favorite time of day?  Are you a morning or a night person?  If you go outside, when do you go?  What are some of your childhood memories of summer?  And have you read ONE SEASON OF SUNSHINE yet?  (guess what…it’s set in summer!)

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You had a great aunt named Eldagirt Wirt.  That is no lie, I did.  I also had a great aunt named Clyde.  Her real name was Jean, but but for reasons I will never know, everyone called her Clyde.    Clyde was really funny, tossing out one liners like a true stand-up comic before there were such people.   She had jet black hair and chain-smoked, and she was married four times.  I have these very vague memories of her standing at the head of my grandmother’s dining room table (we had a formal meal every Sunday after church) and all the adults just bent over laughing.  To me, she looked like the crones in the fairy tale books.  But you know what?  I would give anything to have one of those Sunday dinners back so I could know how funny she was.  I would ask her why everyone called her Clyde.  I would get her to talk about her four husbands and why none of them worked, and why she moved to California and never came back.

My grandmother on the other side was a natural red head–bright red hair–and used to tell the story of how a boy asked her, and another ginger-headed boy,  to sit on the front of his car and be his headlights.  It had made her so mad.  And I can’t tell you how many times through the years I heard that story, and she’d get just as mad telling it again.  Mam-maw also ate onions like apples, and she told me Oil of Olay would burn my skin.  I would love to have her back and ask her what happened to her with Oil of Olay, and why did that  boy asking her to be his headlight make her so mad?  I think Clyde would have thought it was funny.

I thought a lot about these characters in writing  ONE SEASON OF SUNSHINE, which came out yesterday.  The book is about a woman who was adopted at birth who goes in search of her past.  She a fundamental need to know who came before her and why they gave her away.  She has a large adopted family with some colorful characters whom she loves very much, but as I wrote the book, I wondered how much of Clyde and Mee-maw I had in me, and if Jane Aaron was was going to find an Eldagirt or a Clyde in her family tree to explain her sense of humor or her curly hair.  If you want to know more about the book, and less about my nutty ancestors, I just happen to have a video for you.

Do you think about your ancestors?  Did you have any colorful characters in your family tree?  If you could bring one ancestor back to ask a question, who and what would it be?  Bonus!  Simon and Schuster is having a sweepstakes for One Season of Sunshine.  Enter for your chance to win right here.

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Remember I told you Jack London is going to law school and I’m not?  Claudia asked me yesterday how the big Move To Law School is going.  I told her it was like a divorce:  we are slowly putting all the junky stuff in the garage for him to furnish his apartment, and I am keeping all the good stuff.

This has led to some interesting discussions.  One man’s Must Have Furnishings is another gal’s junk, and vice versa.  But what is interesting is what HE thinks is something we must keep in the house, and what I think should go to his tiny little apartment in Phoneix.   I’ll be honest here:  Jack London’s idea of nice furniture is anything that has all of it’s original legs.  There are a couple of things I wanted to send with him, but he resisted.  “That’s too nice,” he said. 

So what did I do?  When I caught Moose the Puppy chewing on the coffee table, I did not stop him.  I didn’t stop him because I hate it and Jack L. thinks it is something that should stay with the Good Stuff.  The ruse worked.  The other day, he noticed the horribly chewed corners and said, “I guess this is an apartment piece, huh?”  Hooray!  Ugly coffee table goes to Phoenix and new coffee table comes to join the other Good Stuff!

I also have two chairs from Ikea that could possibly be as old as me.  I offered those for Phoenix.  He was horrified.  “You’d give THOSE up?” Oh, honey, in a heartbeat.  They have filled in spots in a couple of different houses where I didn’t have anything and thought, I’ll think what I need there, shop around a bit.  Never happens.  They just sit where I put them.  For years.  This is my chance to fill an empty space with something nice.

Fortunately, he has no strong opinions about dishes, so I can foist whatever I want off on him.  That means all the plastic Mighty Fine Burger cups, the old pans with the scarred teflon, and the millions of butter bowls that his mother sends food home will now end up in Phoenix.  Hooray!

But I do have some furniture that is not so nice, but I like.  I have a chair in a guest bed room that my mother had when I was born.  It isn’t very comfortable, but it has sentimental value.  He can’t have that chair.  I don’t think he wants it.  .

What furniture pieces would you let Moose chew on?  Do you have any sentimental furnishings, or do you replace frequently?  Do you have any quality pieces that you have re-covered?  Do you and your mate agree on what’s nice and what’s not?

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I was reading my horoscope the other day and it advised me to be at peace with my past. I thought that was such a weird thing for my horoscope to say. Why wouldn’t I be at peace with my past? Is it possible to not be at peace with it? I’m not the sort to live with regrets, and I didn’t think I had any until that moment. But you know what popped in my head when I read that? A really not-nice thing I said when I was eighteen years old that hurt a friend of mine. She wasn’t my friend after that. And I never apologized. Yeah, I’d like to take that back, but it’s obviously years too late.

Another regret? A perm from the eighties.
I have wavy hair. Why did I ever believe I needed a perm? I regret a couple of late night adventures and the mornings after. Men! Yes, I definitely regret a few men along the way. One (and he knows who he is, but alas, will never see this) was a lying, cheating snake from the moment he walked up to me. Hope he likes being roasted on a spit, because I have a feeling that’s where he’ll end up one of these days. I regret that I wasn’t smarter and didn’t see through him.

I regret having passed up a really good sale here and there only to find it back to regular price soon thereafter. I regret the late night bowl of cereal I had last night. I regret that, at times, I didn’t stand up when I should have and at other times, I didn’t sit down and shut up.

But these are all minor glitches in an otherwise really great life. I don’t regret the path I have taken or the person I have become. It’s taken years to learn how to be me, and I am still a work in progress, but I am at peace with my past…except for that really bad thing I said when I was eighteen.

So what pops into your head when you think of being at peace with your past? Do you have any regrets? Do you refuse to have them? If there was something you could go back and correct, what would it be?

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