Thanks!

A big thank you goes out to my friend Josh! He helped me adjust the website so everything is easier to find and the title of my blog looks just the way I want it to. It took a significant amount of time, therefore this a huge thank you for helping me out with that Josh. :D Doesn't the site look so much better now?

Cheers!

Why I'm an Expert at Getting Bad Smells Out of Carpet

Sorry for the slight break in posts. It's been one of those weeks.

*** Warning Mommy Graphicness in this Post ***

So I had thought my son was beginning to outgrow his acid reflux. He'd gone from medication morning and night to just at night, and recently his nightly dose was decreased by half. Then Sunday happened.

For those of you who don't know acid reflux has a number of different symptoms. For Everett this manifested as throwing up. A LOT. Sometimes as many as four times in 24 hours. Most of the time he'd throw up two times one right after the other.

The worst of this was when he was almost 9 months old. In a matter of three weeks about 15 of the 21 days he threw up. I was SO done. I remember talking to my pediatrician—so stressed about it, only to be told I had to wait for him to grow out of it as he was already on as much medication as his weight allowed. I had to deal with this on my own most of the time as my husband Tim was usually at work.

When Everett threw up it wasn't just a small puddle on the floor. It spurted out of him, covering him and me, making a splat mark the size of two placemats on the floor. A couple of times when Everett threw up I was so overwhelmed I'd burst into tears. (Not to mention how difficult it is to clean up myself and Everett when all he wanted to do was play in the throw up ) The worst was when Everett was facing me or cuddling into me and then started throwing up. More often than not this would result in everything disgusting going all over and down my shirt. I will spare you any other gross details.

Suffice it to say I was getting extremely sick of the smell in my house. I tried everything I could think of to get the smell out. Nothing worked. After a number of internet searches I came across a site with the answer.

This last Sunday Everett threw up twice in his crib after a solid month and a half of not throwing up at all. The positive in this being that he didn't throw up on Tim or I. That and I was able to get the smell out of the carpet.

The answer? Scrub your carpet with whatever cleaning products you prefer until the throw up (or similar gross smelling stuff) is cleaned out of it. Use a spray bottle filled with water and spray the entire area where the throw up was.  Keep spraying until your carpet/couch/etc is soaked. After this generously dump baking soda over the wet carpet. Leave the area until the water has completely evaporated. Lastly vacuum up the baking soda. Voila! Bad smells gone. Yay.

I'm learning to deal with Everett's throwing up, but when your kid is throwing up it's definitely a huge downer. Though now that you know how to get the smell out of your carpets it's got to be a little bit easier to handle now doesn't it?

Cheers!

Writing Contest, Mermaid Books, and Spray Parks..... This is my life.

Isn't it amazing how many different things go on in your life? Or the many different 'hats' you wear?

Today I found out about a contest where you submit your first 500 words from your manuscript and you can possibly win 1000$ and a chance for representation from Catherine Drayton. Needless to say I'm pretty stoked about it! If any of my author friends are interested submit your entry here. I entered (obviously :P ) check out the first 500 words of my manuscript on my Lasera blog here. So when I entered this contest I was wearing my 'author' hat and trying to be professional but I was also very excited about the prospect of gaining representation and some needed extra cash from my writing.

I browsed today a number of different websites and a friend's goodreads list all about mermaid books. Watching a movie about mermaids in Pirates 4 and then seeing so many pictures of women swimming and performing as mermaids, can I help it if I put on my 'giddy as a teenager' hat and day-dreamed about being a mermaid?

And then yesterday I went to a spray park here in Calgary with a number of other mom friends and totally and completely enjoyed visiting and seeing how much fun my son had playing in the water. The sun was shining and the water was cold and it was a great afternoon. But for that entire time I had my 'mom' hat on and loved talking about our kids and the different things happening with each of us.

We all have many different hats that we wear and that's what I love to learn about new people, and about people I've know for years. What kinds of hats are in their lives, which ones are their favourites, which ones did they try on and find they didn't like? What hats do you come back to again and again?

I wonder what new hats I'll discover tomorrow?

Cheers!

Why Hermione is Amazing!

Just having gone to see HP7 part 2 at midnight last night my brain's on a bit of a Harry Potter kick. Love, love, loved the movie by the way. Everyone should see it! - Mischief Managed- :D But today I happened upon a really great article about the huge benefits of having a character like Hermione Granger out there as a female role model.

Hermione

She makes it cool to be smart - as her smarts saved lives many, many times. She also worked hard to be so, she read tons of books, studied, and asked questions. Hermione was never demure and spoke up when she had something to say. The last few lines of the article really say it all for me, if I ever have a daughter (crossing my fingers) UPDATE Jan 2013: I did! :D See: My New Joy
I really hope she'll see how great it is to be female and that we can kick butt and be good at whatever we set our minds too.

Yeah I love this :D

Cheers!

When good writing gets in the way of your writing...

Gah. Gah. Gah. Gah.

So I had an enlightening conversation with my mother the other day. She said that if she had a really busy week she'd have to make a point of not visiting the library so that she could actually get stuff done. I think for me personally I'm going to have to go one step farther and hide my library card.

I'm in the editing stage of my manuscript right now. A difficult and slow going process. Maybe that's why I'm reading so much. (I recently reread Shannon Hale's fabulous Goose girl series -- check out her awesome site/blog here: Shannon -- and I finished the entire Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull. -- here's his great site: Brandon.) Much to my husbands dismay this meant that very little else has been done.

Sadly all this reading cuts into my writing time. But I can't seem to get my nose out of the book in order to get my fingers to the keyboard. Do any of my other writer friends have a hard time with this? Or even just anyone in general. I know a lot of you moms out there have a hard time putting those books down. Any tips or tricks on how to do so?

So I guess I'll have to keep out of the library for the next little while if I want to make the deadline for my book. Sigh..... but there's so many great books out there!

As much as the reading takes away time from other good important things, here's to books that are written well enough and engaging enough to make me forget about all those other things I should be doing!

Cheers!

The Strange Workings and Writings of a Mind that Skips Too Far Ahead of Itself

"Wow. I tell you what— wow!" I just read over a document I'd labelled as 'Science Project Novel'. Looking at the info on my computer I typed it up almost two years ago. Apparently my brain jumped faster than my fingers could type because it makes no sense at all. If you're a writer of any sort you'll understand that sometimes as you're typing you think everything will come back to you when you read it again. This time it definitely didn't. I actually laughed out loud when I read it. So enjoy the convulsions of my mind and see what you can discern.

>>>

magazine worked for a while..... sending things away but she didn’t know what she was doing and once she saw the title she freaked out and once she told people it stopped working as well.

in front of a whole bunch of people her sister disappeared (shoe lace pulled one way after levitating

 no one wants to believe their eyes

she reads a couple things to say off the magazine but then realizes....

We’re all just a science project!!

Magazine ----- Literary science alliance

----step through the magazine is one way........

many different instructions....... 

Community centre w/cafeteria and pool

everyone thinks she’s crazy in her class and no one believes her.... her sister gets sucked in to the other world and she has to rescue her

pull a shoe lace this way at this spot and you’ll get sucked in

she had to go to an info (?) counter and hand in a form for a blood test.... lady at the counter hear her complaining and tells her that she passes on this test to them but that she can do it if she want........”they get this paper? and just this? so i can send them a message? send my sister a message?”

 she has to open a portal above the cafe conveyor belt using the key from inside the detergent by the dish washing machine in the caf .... then hold her paper above it paper disappears in a white light opening that closes and shuts

So pretty crazy hard to understand. Hope it made you laugh. And that you caught a glimpse of the crazy inner workings of an author's mind.

Cheers!

How on Earth did I keep my head in the sand that long?

So three days ago I 'discovered' goodreads. I know I know. Right? How does an author not know about goodreads. Well suffice it to say that I'd heard it mentioned many times in reference to other authors or agents (or the like). When I would see the term 'goodreads' I simply thought of other sites where it's a small number of people writing the reviews. I had no idea it was a social site for reviews of books until I saw it on Medeia Sharif's site (http://www.medeiasharif.com/) She had a button to 'Find Me' on goodreads. I clicked on it not sure how she could be found on that site and I never looked back. Many many thanks go out to her. :D

I absolutely positively love goodreads! A place to review books you liked or didn't like, hear what other's think about a book before you read it, find other books similar to what you already read and a place where you can recommend many of your favourites to others.

So I suppose I've now been inducted into the official 'I'm a real author' guild. Here's to good reading, good writing and sharing it with others who share your love!

And —of course— here's (another) link to good reads:     goodreads

Oh and is it bad that in the four days I've been using my goodreads account the to-read list is now 27 books long? Good grief.

Cheers!