Credit Rumor has it there are people out there who are called "optimists." I call shenanigans. There's more chance of me riding a unicorn than meeting one of these other cryptozoologic wonders. But as someone who has an impressionable child, it's my job to keep those horrible sarcastic, doubtful thoughts far away. So how the heck does this get achieved? Warning: Amateur hour advice ahead! Medicate. Medicate, medicate, medicate. Take a thousand uppers, have too many Frappucinos, mainline caffeine. Do anything humanly possible to stay upbeat.  Create a panic room. But not the kind you use for an alien invasion or an insane president. This will be solely for when you feel the need to spew out every negative thing in your brain but don't want anyone to hear. Make sure you have some wine in there as you might be in there for a while. Have a questionable agenda. It's true. No one will suspect you're planning world domination if you're positive a

If you've been around for a while, you've heard me talk about mimes and a book with I refer to as SFLN. If you're curious to know more about it now's the time! What was called Scenes from Last Night is now up on Kindle Scout as SCAVENGER NIGHT. If you're not familiar with Kindle Scout, it's an initiative through Amazon that empowers the readers to select the books that will be published. Each book has a 30 day window where people can read a tag line, short blurb, and an excerpt. If you like what you read, you can nominate it and share it for others to nominate too. If you get enough nominations, you get a publishing contract and an advance for your book. Pretty sweet, right? Right! What's SCAVENGER NIGHT about anyway? It sounds like a horror book. It's definitely not a horror book. It's a YA contemporary with humor and mimes. For Leo, winter break always meant tearing it up at Chaplin Point’s annual Christmas scavenger hunt. Not this year.

Last year, my word for the year was strive . I felt it was a great word since I had a lot of changes in my life and it was a kind word which gave allowances if I backslid or did not succeed at something. Even now I still use this as a reminder to be kind to myself. Credit But strive was so 2017. We're well into 2018 and it's time to focus on the present. This year my word is "create." Create means to bring something into existence which has broad applications. I definitely had writing on the brain when I chose my word but it applies to other aspects of my life as well. Now I'm not consciously creating anything but keep this word in the back of my brain is enough to think outside of the box for solutions, for pursuing creative initiatives, for fostering a creative life in Munchkin. Do you have a word for this year? If you do, share it below and how you plan to incorporate it in every day life!

Happy Monday, Lurkdom! It's been almost a year since I last wrote and a lot has happened. Some of it great, some of it not so much. Regardless of what it was, I've been BUSY. Well, what the heck have you been doing? Parenting. A lot, a lot of parenting. Munchkin demands takes up a lot of time. But you know what? That's okay because she is the funniest, craziest, cutest Munchkin around. She loves the movies Trolls and Sing so much I can most definitely do monologues from both. She tells me to shush if I want to sing her to sleep and insists on eating apples in their natural, uncut, unpeeled form. With all of my time being consumed by my daughter I'm learning how to crunch in writing in different ways and that is an ongoing process. I'm trying to do more writing in the morning so I can spend my evenings doing things like watching movies with Hubby or crocheting or staring at the cat but I got to say this is a hard transition. I've taken up bullet journal