Joely Sue Burkhart

What, you don’t believe me when I say I’m losing my mind?  (Triple Book Giveaway this week, comment to be entered)

Last night, Middle Monster threw up in her bed.  No, she doesn’t have the flu.  No, I don’t believe she was sick.  She’d been rewarded with the chance to stay up 15 minutes later than her sisters, but when she went to bed, they were already asleep.  It was storming, thunder and lightning.  And big mean Mom and Dad wouldn’t let her sleep in their room.  So she threw up on her bed.  Solved that problem, didn’t she?  Of course by the time I stripped the bed and got her clean clothes, all three girls ended up in Mom and Dad’s room.  Yippee.

On the bright side, the Shadowed Blood came to pay me a visit in dreams last night.  Oh, dear.  It was quite a gruesome, terrible, bloody nightmare.  I was so excited I got nearly 1400 words this morning D&E before work.  That’s the most I’ve written in one sitting for quite a while…

I’m feeling a bit scatter-brained this month, this week.  The revisions to Letters still aren’t finished.  I’ve written about 5K on Gregar’s book, which is good, but not as much as I wanted.  Now I’m switching gears entirely to prep Beautiful Death for editor revisions. 

Why?  Well, you see, I had this small hatred of “had” for a long time, which Deena has patiently pointed out to me through the past 3 books.  BD was written back in 2005/2006, so to say that I’ve learned a thing or two in the past years is an understatement.  No sense in the editor wasting a ton of time fixing something I already know needs to be fixed.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about Beautiful Death after being gone from it so long.  It’s my rebellion child.  It dragged me kicking and screaming to Olympus, just as Isabella and Hades both were betrayed and taken to face Zeus in the end.  I had to get MAD to finish it.  Mad at myself, mad at the world.  In the end, I loved this book, because it helped me finish.  If I hadn’t finished…  If I’d quit a book again…

I really don’t know that I’d be here now.

So in many ways, BD saved me as a writer.  It was my answer in the darkest moment of my journey to-date.  So far, revising it has been like seeing an old acquaintance to whom a great debt is owed, and I’m feeling a little awkward and unsure how I can help it when it helped me so much.  I’m starting with those “hads.”  We’ll see what else needs gentle smoothing.

We had a horrid personal squick day yesterday with Littlest Monster.  Let me just say that I’m still washing everything in the house and I seriously contemplated dragging out all the beds and furniture and just torching it.

Thirteen Monster Tales  We have three girl monsters aged 9 (Princess Monster), 6 (Middle Monster) and 4 (Littlest Monster, soon to be 5).  Here are a few reasons I call them MONSTERS. 1.”Mom, the tub is clogged.”  Princess Monster gave the dog a bath — and a haircut at the same time. 2.”Mom, the toilet is flooding!”  Middle Monster flushed hair bands and a wash cloth down the toilet and blew up the sump pump.  Not once, but twice. 3.*screaming, wailing*  “Mom, Middle Monster shut Littlest Monster’s hand in the door!” 4.”But Mom, why can’t I sit on top of the swing set?” 5.Princess Monster came home with a bucket of snapping turtle eggs she found at Papa’s farm.  Thank GOD they never hatched. 6. After we looked high and low for TWO DAYS trying to find Princess Monster’s brand new stuffed poodle, Littlest Monster admitted *with a very cute grin* that she’d hid it so SHE could sleep with it. 7.At basketball practice, I suddenly realized that Middle Monster wasn’t wearing any pants.  “I forgot.” 8.”Mom, Dad’s pool chemicals taste yuck!”  *Hello, Poison Control???* 9.”Mom, can I wear flip flops to school today?”  *three inches of ice on the ground* 10.Middle Monster ripped open her diaper and ate poop when she was a toddler, but refuses to eat * because it’s yucky.  (Insert random normal food) 11.Nasty dark footprints tracked all over the carpet:  “But Mom, you told me stay on the sidewalk.  You never told me to stay off the grass.”  *where the dog poops* 12.It’s not a family dinner if we don’t discuss poop and pee at least once with lots of giggles. 13. I never knew something so cute would out-belch and out-fart their father.

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I’m setting this up the night before in case we don’t have power.  Remember that terrible ice storm about a year ago where we lost power for a week?  Well….  we’re having ice again.  The monsters were out of school today (Monday) and they’ve closed schools tomorrow, too.  We’ve got about 3-4 inches of sleet, frozen rain, slush frozen over and over on the ground.  It’s lumpier this time — last time we had straight freezing rain.

The odd thing:  the rain today came in a THUNDERSTORM.  It was so odd to hear the crashing boom of thunder and know it was slicker than snot outside.  Some of the breakers in the house blew and the lights flickered several times, but so far we still have power.  Whether we will in the morning or not, I don’t know.  It was raining again last time we took the dog outside after dinner and it’s in the twenties.

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Edited:  We lost power temporarily around 4:30 a.m. but were only down an hour.  Praying the lines hold…

Conversation word for word between me and LM (age 4):

LM:  “Mom, can we have another pet?”

Mom:  *we already have a dog that I have to take care of*  ”What kind of pet, sweetie?”

LM:  “Like a hamster, or a horse.”

Mom:  *that’s not so bad, if the hamster was really cute, and we can see Papa’s horses…*

LM:  “Or a giraffe.  I really want a giraffe, Mom.  Please?”

Mom:  *dies*

[Comment this week to win Lynn Viehl’s Darkyn series, including her latest release, Evermore!  Details here.] 

Here in tornado alley, we’re used to tornadoes. In MAY.  Not January! 

We were up several times last night because of tornado warnings in the area.  Within 30 minutes of us (north and west up I-44), two people were killed.  What that CNN report doesn’t cover is the damage to Republic’s schools (about 20 minutes from us to the east), homes destroyed in Highlandville (10 minutes south of us in our county), nickel-to-baseball sized hail, flooding, and straight-line winds that blasted through here between 3:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. That’s when we actually got everybody huddled in an interior hallway.  The windows rattled, the roof groaned, but everything held.

We’re all miserable this morning.  Even though we only had two “dangerous” times last night–one between 10:00 - 11:00 p.m. and the other 3:00 - 4:00 a.m. — the tornado sirens went off it seemed like continuously.  They are not even a block from our house.  Yeah.  The damned thing might as well have been in our living room, it was so loud!  MM was a basketcase, shivering, teeth chattering, about to throw up she was so scared.  She’s never done well with loud noises.

So we’re groggy this morning but no damage, thankfully.  (Needless to say, I didn’t getup D&E to write this morning!)  What’s the worst weather you’ve had recently?

Birthday Girl (age 9)

Day of Upward basketball - first game of the season

(MM’s first game)

She looks a little scared…

But Papa brought her birthday presents early (her birthday is 1/10)!

I’m Littlest Monster.  I’m cute and I know it.

Today is Princess Monster’s birthday.  The big 9 year old played basketball this morning, as well as Middle Monster (her first game).  It was great watching them both, although they played at the same time on side-by-side courts.  It was kind of like watching a tennis match, back and forth, back and forth. 

Papa from Mexico made it down for the games, lunch, and movies.  We started with The Bourne Identity.  Then watched The Bourne Supremacy while eating pizza for supper and birthday cake.  Then… Of course we couldn’t send him home without watching The Bourne Ultimatum.  What a fantastic movie trilogy!  The only thing better would be to have watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

Not much writing done, other than dumping my ordered (but not sequenced) notecards in the floor and having to put them back together.

With the monsters, this is about as wild and crazy as we get on New Year’s Eve.

Courtesey of WebWeaver

We started the morning off with a report from Middle Monster that her right ear hurt really really bad!!  So we did Santa gifts and stockings, then sat around waiting for her clinic to open.  Yes, they’re open 365 days a year, but on holidays, only a few hours, so we had to call as soon as they opened at 9:00 and get a spot.  They verified she DID have an ear infection, so she’s on antibiotics.  Thank you, Walgreens, for staying open on Christmas Day!

The monsters got Leapster Maxes from Mom and Dad (found online at Circuit City for nearly 50% off) and MM’s doesn’t work right.  Might have something to do with how she dropped it right out of the box…  We’re taking it back as soon as we have a dozen hours to spare standing in line.

That Man and the monsters got me an ergonomic wireless keyboard/mouse (that I picked out so it would be compatible with Windows Vista), and so I worked on my computer about 4 hours (not straight) last night.  Some pain, but it’s going to take me a while to get used to the new angles of the keyboard.  So far, I’m loving it! 

I let Princess Monster stay up indefinitely last night (or at least until I went to bed) since she’s the oldest.  I came through about quarter till 1:00 a.m. and she was sacked out in the chair.  Woke her up and sent her off to bed.  The two youngest monsters had gone to bed around 10:00 p.m., pretty late for them.  MM was the first one up this morning at 9:00 a.m. (except for That Man who had to work) and she’s usually the dead head in the family.  The rest of us dragged out of bed around 10:00 a.m.  It was wonderful!

We each got a new toothbrush in our stockings.  Mom’s and Dad’s pulse with a built in battery.  I was brushing my teeth this morning and Littlest Monster said she was going to peek out the window and see who was mowing the lawn.