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9:00 p.m.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
So November has come and gone and now we prepare for Christmas. Can you
believe it…. I’ve not only finished my shopping, but
today, I completed my wrapping. Woo—eee!!!
I edited another outstanding book, a touching realistic romance EVAN’S
CASTLE, by
Tracy Fabre. She’s an outstanding writer and has
created characters we care about, laugh with, and shed a tear for. And I worked
extremely hard on my own editing as well. Count the days, folks. Less than
three months till release date of TALES OUT OF SCHOOL, February 29.
Check out the great review Luke Reynolds wrote for me on my “Books”
page. Like me, he’s an educator and an author.
It’s getting cold around these parts (South of Boston), in the
twenty-degree range all week. Ugh! It’s making it tough for me to get out to walk, so I’m becoming too sedentary. Tomorrow, I’ll go
out to the bogs for sure. The cranberry harvest was outstanding with color,
accompanied by the squawk of Canadian geese making their annual migration.
And the Pats are 12-0. Only one thing better…. ~S~
5:00 p.m.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Oh my, what a day! The Red Sox World Series Rolling Rally on DuckBoats through the city of
And we have the Pats, too. Life is Good. ~S~
8:30 p.m.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
I’m happy to report the Red Sox have started their postseason play
properly with a 4-0 win over the Angels. WooEee!!!
And the Pats, they are in their own world with wins in all four of their games
so far. We’re in sports heaven here in
Enjoy the long weekend.
9:00 a.m.
Friday, August 31, 2007
So, here it is, the last day of August. It’s been a lovely summer here
in
Have a great Labor Day Weekend; it’s designed for relaxation and rest.
Try not to overdo it. ~S~
7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Today my husband and I celebrated our 36th anniversary. We
took our bikes down the Cape and rode twenty miles starting in Sandwich, then
traveling the length of the Cape Cod Canal, and winding around
And the Red Sox still lead the Yankees by 5 games. Go Sox!!! ~S~
8:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
The wedding was wonderful… three days of celebration. I now have a
lovely daughter-in-law and see my son happier than he has ever been. Months of
planning paid off in a big way; everything was simply perfect. Even my mother,
who’s 86 years old, made the effort to travel 250 miles to northern
8:08 a.m.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
I have shopped…. and dropped…. To say I am whipped is an
understatement. I engaged in a six-day, non-stop mission to find an outfit for
Kevin’s wedding. I could be finished. I chose a lovely mauve two-piece dress
from Jones of New York. The top is lace with a little ruffle cap sleeve and the
skirt is a peachskin crepe over taffeta. No hemming
required!!! I bought a lovely pair of Aigner shoes
that looked great with the dress and a Liz Claiborne purse that also looked
great with the dress, but…… the shoes and bag did not look good together. So I
shopped some more, went online, and finally ended up at a bridal shop to have
shoes and bag dyed to match. They had a lovely pair of shoes, absolutely
perfect for me, but they turned out to be flower girl shoes and only went up to
Size 4. Anyway, the consultant there helped me, and I ended up keeping the
shoes from Macy’s and getting a custom dyed handbag from the bridal shop. The
outfit looks wonderful, and also has a matching one-button sweater in case it
gets chilly later in the day. I’m all set, except I’d prefer that the purse
have a shoulder strap, so I may pay a visit to the fabric/craft store to see if
there’s some lacy ribbon I could add. I have a lovely rose quartz necklace I’d
be willing to sew on, but it’s not quite long enough.
I actually tried on a tummy cincher, and it made me look excellent. I
would have bought it, if it had a zipper, but instead there were about thirty
hooks and eyes to fasten. I thought that was very impractical. I also checked
into a Wonderbra. Oh my….. I never, ever looked like
that. Considering I’m the mother of the groom, I felt that look was a bit
inappropriate. But I realized that between the tummy cincher and the Wonderbra, it’s possible to shape your body to look
entirely different than it really is.
Not everyone has returned his response card for the wedding and they
were due back June 7. What do you think of that?
~S~
9:02
a.m. Thursday, June 7, 2007
How’s this? I told you I’d be better about posting.
Last night I had the most enjoyable evening at a party with many of my
colleagues from way back. It was so good to see them and share a few laughs
about our many years together in education. Two of my very dearest friends were
shocked to hear that I have not yet bought an outfit for Kevin’s wedding. They
offered to take me shopping, insisting that I go to Saks, Lord & Taylor, or
Bloomingdales. One was a little appalled that I would consider buying something
off the rack. Well, you see, it’s like this. The wedding is going to be
outdoors, at the residence of the bride’s grandmother, so I really don’t think
a “mother of the groom” dress will work in this case. I have to go to
I’d like to thank all of you who wished me well last night. And I wish
the same for you, in all of your wonderful retirement travels and endeavors. I
love you all…. We should do that more often.
~S~
9:11
a.m. Tuesday, June 5, 2007
A few people have chastised me for not blogging
more frequently, so I’ve promised to be better. This time my excuse for not
writing is that I’ve been too busy. My younger son, Kevin, is getting married
on July 7, so there have been many preparations and activities. His lovely
fiancée, Maygan, wanted a little cap sleeve on her
gown, and the bridal salon seamstress said she could do it (before she bought
the dress). But when it was delivered, all agreed only a strap could be made. Maygan was quite down in the dumps, so…… I offered to try
to do something.
I made two practice samples to show her what I thought I could do, a
flowing gathered sleeve cascading down the top of her arm. We chose a beautiful
satin fabric (she really loved it) and came home to work our little fingers
off. But when we put that material next to her dress…… it was a different color
white. Oh……. (expletive deleted). Then a brainstorm. She had some extra chiffon
from which they made the strap, and we overlapped it on the satin. Was
it ever elegant. My mother had called me to watch the classic movie It
Happened One Night,
in which Claudette Colbert wore “one of the most exquisite wedding gowns in
Then this past weekend we went up to the gorgeous Northeast Kingdom of
Vermont, where the
Let me catch you up on Memorial Day weekend. I had planned to blog then, but our older son, Scott, came to visit and we
had a great time walking all around Plymouth, Massachusetts, about ten miles
from here: touring the Mayflower, the Grist Mill, Plymouth Rock
and then sitting down to a fine seafood dinner overlooking Plymouth Harbor.
Life is good. ~S~
11:51
a.m. Sunday, May 13, 2007
Good Morning, everyone. The sun shines brightly in
I am so psyched……. StoneGarden gave me the release date for TALES OUT OF SCHOOL. Mark your calendars…… February
29, 2008. Is that cool or what? Is that supposed to be a good luck day? It’s
the fifth Friday in February. The last time that happened was 1980, the year
Scott was born, so I think that’s pretty darn cool. In the meantime I have to
do a bunch of formatting and editing, which I really love anyway.
I’ll try to be a little better
about posting more frequently. I’ve been into the http://www.stonegarden.net
forums, so if you’d like to blog with other authors,
you can check out that site. The publisher is a great guy, and seems to know
quite well how to handle us nutty writers.
Peace and love. ~S~
8:39 a.m. February 14, 2007
So, it’s been more than two
months since I’ve posted. I was asked, “Is that because you’re too busy, or so
not busy there’s nothing to post.” The short answer—both. First it was the
holidays, then we went to
Happy Valentine’s Day. Tell all you love how
much you care for them. ~S~
8:08 p.m. November 21, 2006
I fixed my links—no more bugs in the website! That’s what getting up at 6 a.m. will do for you. Happy Thanksgiving. ~S~
High Noon, November 20, 2006
My first blog entry—so exciting. In fact,
everything about TALES OUT OF SCHOOL has been enormously exciting for
more than two years now, which is the answer to the very first question I was
asked—How long did it take me to write TALES OUT OF SCHOOL. It’s
been an odyssey. The first manuscript was five hundred plus pages written in
present tense with a very interior point of view. Then I took a writing class.
(One would normally take the class first and then write the book, but I didn’t
know how much I didn’t know, and anyway, that’s just not the way it happened.)
So after the first writing workshop, I revised into the past tense. Then, I
read some books on writing. (One would normally read the texts first, but
that’s not the way it happened.) So after reading the books on writing, I
revised again.... into third person. Then, I read some books by bestselling
authors and got some new ideas—namely more interesting settings...... hence,
the