I woke up “hearing” some edits I need to make to the WIP I’m working on – After the Fall. That got me emotional. This story goes deeper for me than any I’ve written. And then I started thinking about the day. Bittersweet. I’m going this morning to share some thoughts, and say some words at a friend of mine’s mother’s funeral. She passed a while back, but her birthday is tomorrow (I THINK) and Kristen decided to have a CELEBRATION OF LIFE. She would have been 95.
When I was writing “Lulu’s Loves,” I had a deep conversation with Frenchie – if you could have known her, you would see how a sassy name like French (Frenchie for fun) fit her. We were at a Christmas gathering and I was new to the job I had then and knew only a few people at the event. (There’s a fine line for me between E/I for me. If I’m in a group of people I know – I AM A FLAMING EXTROVERT. That night, the INTROVERT that lives in my body was raging. I saw Frenchie and we took a walk and talked about everything. At 93 at the time, she was sharp and full of thoughts and conversation on a lot of subjects. She was interesting, engaging, and fun. During the walk, my writing came into the conversation and she shared some very insightful thoughts on that subject.
When I was doing my acknowledgements for “Lulu,” I wrote about that evening with her, and Kristen asked me to share that at the gathering today. I was rereading what I wrote and Alis was there too. Alis is always there, but today it’s as though she was giving me the push to be confident as I speak (the EXTROVERT will be there today because the room will be filled with many people I know).
As I’m typing this, there’s a breeze blowing outside – I only know this because the wind chime I hung a couple of weeks ago on the front porch is softly sharing a melody with me – peaceful and calm. I needed that this morning.
Pray for Kristen and her friends today as we say “au revour mon ami” to Frenchie.
Thank you so much to Jen Wildner Just One More Page for creating this beautiful sign-up sheet!
See??? Who said whining doesn’t pay off! Jen, it’s beautiful.
This has all of my books listed.
If you are NOT in the US, contact me and I’ll work it out – I’ve shipped out before!
Greetings friends, (I’m pretty sure that if you stop by to read my thoughts you have to be my friend!)
Today is a bittersweet celebration day.
Celebrating that Timeless is live – Andy’s story is finally available for you to catch up on what he’s been thinking all this time. The Rock and Roll Series spans over about forty years and Andy’s kept a lot of things bottled up. Letting go is freeing. I hope you’ll check out the ENCORE (I love that my friend Francine called it that.)
Also – Amazon bundled them, so if you haven’t read the first three – you can purchase them all:
or maybe you loved the 1st three so much and are excited about the ENCORE that you want to gift them all. https://tinyurl.com/yc9vcetk
If you have read the first books, I hope you fall in love with Andy all over again.
I love and appreciate all of you who have followed OUR journey.
Release day always makes me think of my mom. Alis would already be done reading this book that just released today – she DEVOURED words. I think she is part of each story in some way. I always slip “something Alis” in. This time, she’s a special part of the end of the book, in my “After Thoughts” and I have to thank my friend Judy for the idea of adding what you will find there.
But today I’m thinking of Alis even more. Today is not only release day – it’s my birthday and I miss her most on holidays – and YES! MY BIRTHDAY IS A HOLIDAY! 🙂
My earliest memories of birthdays included “MY SPECIAL CELEBRATION” which, until I turned 16 or so was always what she thought was my favorite – because I was a girl – and girls liked pink… so my cake was ALWAYS cherry chip, with pink frosting and cherry vanilla ice cream. As I got older I told her that it really wasn’t my favorite – she acted shocked! I told her that I loved her carrot cake and that I was a plain ol’vanilla ice cream girl. After that she baked her recipe – 14 Carat Cake – I have it and one day I will tackle the work involved. She made it for Gene and my wedding cake and each time I look at the recipe I think of all the love it took for her to bake that cake for me each time she did. I settle for Publix’s carrot cake (almost as good, but missing the love) now.
One of my other birthday memories was her telling me, or calling me later in my life to tell me (and I can almost relay it word-for-word):
“Do you know what I was doing (however many) years ago today at 3:42 in the morning? I was crying, because you were a girl and I knew your dad wanted a boy.”
And then she would tell me how wrong she was, that my dad loved me and bragged on me being the most beautiful baby in the nursery…
As you get older – this is my 58th celebration of life – you remember things more fondly. They become TIMELESS.
Welcome back. The page wouldn’t let me post, and I’ve been MIA for a bit, but you are always welcome – and encouraged 🙂 – to join us on the Facebook page. I try to post something there every few days. If you don’t follow, the link is below and there are several opportunities there for signed books. Check out the good reads page as well. I don’t want you to miss your chance 😉
Things are happening! Things are happening FAST and I’m exanxilated!!! It’s not a typo and don’t even try to look it up – I made it up! ha ha! (EXcited, ANXIous, eLATED!)
If you haven’t been following along: I thought I was done with the Rock and Roll series – it can no longer be a trilogy any longer 🙂 when I hit submit on Feel Like Makin’ Love, but YOU wrote to me telling me you needed more. You told me that I’d left unanswered questions that YOU needed me to answer… And as he’d done since the beginning, Andy came to me in the middle of the night and said, “WE AREN’T DONE – YOU HAVE TO FINISH THIS.”
I listened, and the next thing I knew… well you’ll just have to read Timeless to see what he told me to tell you <3
I’m excited to share Andy’s encore with you! We’ll be celebrating on 7/13/17 so join us here:
This thought kept me awake last night and finally, I had to get up and try to clear my head.
The news last night was so unsettling. I’m not shy to say that Mr. Trump was not the person I saw leading our country, but I don’t see the senselessness of the destruction that took place (and I’m afraid to look at what has happened overnight). This man is who was elected and I PRAY for him to be MORE than I expect from him. I PRAY for him to turn my thoughts around and be MORE kind than some of the things I’ve seen and heard. PLEASE let him be MORE, because for him to fail… well, the only way I can even think to say it is this…
IF HE FAILS WE ARE SCREWED.
Let this new day be one of the HOPE Mr. Trump’s successor had us think about for our future. I, for one, don’t want to see a world without HOPE.
And so…
On that note… Going through chaos to bring change is what I am praying for. I have some changes ahead that I HOPE AND PRAY will bring some peace of mind back to Gene and I. I’m making a work change that will bring me closer to home, but more importantly, closer to Gene. I’m currently spending about three hours in the car round trip each day. Soon it will be less than an hour. I never thought about the commute time as a WHOLE when I took my current job. I will say – because I try to find a POSITIVE in everything – I’ve learned a lot in those hours each work day for the past five months – a lot about me… You can’t spend that much time stuck in traffic and NOT have time to think. 🙂 Some days its been prayerful thoughts – no one can make that commute without praying! Some of my thoughts have been about the future, and some have been hopeful thoughts that “ALL GREAT CHANGES ARE PRECEDED BY CHAOS,” and that something better is coming.
I am ready.
I’ve learned a lot about people in these past months – first of all: LEAVE FOR WORK FIVE MINUTES EARLIER PEOPLE! But really… I’ve learned that people can become family and I will miss the family I’ve made at this job. Five months isn’t really a long time – like a 1/3 of a year – but it’s long enough to learn who is good – and I like to surround myself with GOOD people – life would suck if there were only assholes. Write that down – it’s profound! Ha ha ha! I pray that these people – this family – stay in my friend bucket.
As the chaos passes, I pray that I can get back to Andy first, and then to Josh and Chellie, and whoever else pops in my head. Thank you for waiting for me.
I think I shall quote Matthew McConaughey from his 2014 Oscar acceptance speech and THANK my friend Judy Gasperini for sharing it with me…
“There’s a few things — about three things, to my count, that I need each day. One of them is something to look up to; another is something to look forward to; and another is someone to chase.
Now, first off I want to thank God because that’s who I look up. He’s graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human hand. He has shown me that it’s a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late Charlie Laughton who said, “When you got God, you got a friend, and that friend is you.”
To my family — that’s who and what I look forward to:
To my father, who I know he’s up there right now with a big pot of gumbo; he’s got a lemon meringue pie over there; he’s probably in his underwear, and he’s got a cold can of Miller Lite and he’s dancing right now. To you dad — you taught what it means to be a man.
To my mother, who’s here tonight, who taught me and my two older brothers — demanded — that we respect ourselves. And what we in turn learned was then we were better able to respect others. Thank you for that, Mama.”
To my wife, Camila, and my kids, Levi, Vida, and Mr. Stone, the courage and significance you give me every day I go out the door is unparalleled. You are the four people in my life that I want to make the most proud of me. Thank you.
And to my hero, that’s who I chase. Now when I was 15 years old, I had a very important person in my life come to me and say “Who’s your hero?” And I said, “I don’t know. I gotta think about that. Give me a couple of weeks.” I come back two weeks later — this person comes up and says “Who’s your hero?” I said, “I thought about it. You know who it is?” I said, “It’s me in 10 years.”
So I turned 25. Ten years later, that same person comes to me and goes, “So are you a hero?” And I was like, “Not even close. No, no, no.” She said, “Why?” I said, “Because my hero’s me at 35.” So you see every day, every week, every month, and every year of my life, my hero’s always 10 years away. I’m never gonna be my hero. I’m not gonna attain that. I know I’m not, and that’s just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.
So, to any of us, whatever those things are, whatever it is we look up to, whatever it is we look forward to, and whoever it is we’re chasing — to that I say, “Amen.” To that I say, “Alright, alright, alright.” To that I say “Just keep living.”
