Well, seems I made a big Oops last week. I forgot the blog. My mom came down with an infection and we spent Monday morning at the doctor – thankfully we were able to catch it in time before she got so sick that she wound up in the hospital again. Then we had an unexpected blessing with a house for mom near me available and we had to do some fast moving and fancy footwork to pull all the pieces together. On top of that I had to prep for my long drive and great babysitting adventure starting Tuesday. I am very very sorry  the blog slipped through the cracks!
 
Now we go from the oops part of this post to the Oma part.  First, Oma is grandmother in Dutch and German, and homage to my maternal grandmother’s Dutch roots. Many of you know that I’m a grandmother and I have a sweet, and of course delightful (most of the time lol), two year old grandson.  I am coming to the end of my time to spend four  days just baby and me while his mom and dad went to an out of town wedding.
 
Let me tell you, having raised two kids from toddlerhood to adulthood there is a lot of time to forget what it’s like to have a two year old! I think I know now why I was skinny when my kids were toddlers and now, well, now I’m not. LOL. I’m also adding a question to my list of things to ask God when I get to heaven to go along with who really killed Kennedy, what really happened to Emilia Earhart, and where is Jimmy Hoffa. Now I’d like to know why did He design children with no responsibilities to have so much energy and older folks with massive to-do lists, well, not so much energy!
 
And did I mention I’m also Oma two four cats? Yep, one daughter, four grandkitties. The big fluffy one named Mr. Sofia (long story for another day) used to live with us when my then single daughter was home. My son-in-law came with a shy tuxedo that I had rescued as a feral kitten years before. Then as a newlywed couple they added Phoebe, a black kitty with a heartshaped white patch of fur on her tummy, to the mix. And then last but not least, they adopted the ever friendly Leo. A gray tabby, Leo was a barn cat at the in-laws family farm. Now he’s a suburban cat and the most affectionate of all – as you can see by the photo of him determined to stop me from writing ​and then later shown above with him snuggling with my grandson and me.
 
Tomorrow I get to travel back home, back to my ordinary routine and hopefully back on schedule to finish Picture Perfect. It was due today but I may have been a tad distracted the last few days! LOL.  If you haven’t preordered Picture Perfect yet – pop over to the coming soon page and get shopping! (P.S. Yes there will be a paperback available soon too!) 
 
Do you like holiday stories? What’s your favorite kind of story? I’d love to know! 

Sorry I’m a little late today -  it’s been a busy weekend. We had to make some changes at my mom’s house and as her dementia downgrades, getting her on board can be challenging. On the bright side I managed to get in 8000 steps walking back and forth inside her house! 
 
So, my mom’s computer room and art room are now combined – though it’s kind of sad because the truth is she will never be able to do oil paints again. It’s simply too hard for her to remember all the steps. But she still uses her computer so we’ll have that up and running as soon as I get a hold of her internet provider.
 
With the larger room empty, we moved the furniture around and are prepping for my cousin’s arrival next week. She and her hubby are going to use mom’s house as home base for the next year to help us keep an eye on Mom while they relocate to Texas.  The timing has been wonderful that we can be a blessing for both sides. Now that we’ve gotten over the hurdle of moving rooms around, Mom is very excited that my cousin is coming.
 
All the changes in society are bringing more and more of my relatives to Texas. We’re actually very pleased that this is coming together. Next on the list is another cousin from the other side of the family who may be moving here with his family from California. My daughter is very excited at the prospect of having so much family within driving distance!
 
Today has been a day of catching up on words. I know y’all are expecting Neil and Honeymoon for Five in the spring – and that’s not changing –but now we’re adding a little Christmas book.  Yep – We’ll be sharing Christmas with the Harts!  I’m pretty excited.  The title will be (so far) Picture Perfect.  I’ll know in a few days more about covers and release dates, but now I need to get back to typing!
 
In the meantime I’m sharing one of Mom’s paintings from 1956. It was one of her earliest and I didn’t even know it was in her closet. So we found a frame (she has a bazillion frames in the garage) and now it’s on my wall!

I freely admit I love the ocean.  Don’t necessarily want to be ‘in’ it but love being near it or on it!  This past week was spent mostly on the shores of St. Pete’s Beach in Florida. Every couple of years I attend a writer’s conference held at a popular resort. Though it’s not my favorite hotel (especially this year with rats—yes rats—running around the beach bar area at night), the views are always stellar.
 
My good friend, author Olivia Sands convinced me to join her in the ocean on our first day. I honestly can not remember the last time I stood in the ocean above my ankles! It was warm and pleasant and we even had a dolphin swim past us. Of course my first reaction was to reach for my phone, which sensibly was on the shore LOL! That’s one of the pitfalls of being ‘in’ the water rather than near it—no photo ops!
 
Today I’m back in landlocked North Texas but delighted to be in my own home. As much as I love traveling, and I do LOVE it, it’s always nice to come home and sleep in your own bed and be loved on by two dogs who think the sun rises and sets around you! But if you ask what was the one thing I really missed about home while enjoying the sunny shores of Florida—my teacup warmer. LOL.  This morning as I slowly sip my tea that has been perfectly warm for two hours now, (it’s a mini mug size hot plate like thing that is on my end table and plugged in always) I realized just how much I missed that!
 
Here are a couple of photos of my working week, including a last day photo with the wonderful authors Susan Stoker, Elle James, and Olivia Sands!

Here's a view from my room - you can see why I say the views are phenomenal!  And thankfully the only rainy day was the day afternoon I arrived - after that it was all blue skies and sunshine! (and heat lol) 

​Are you an ocean or water person too? (even if like me you don't go in it lol) 

​This week is short and sweet – I have landed in not-so-sunny Florida for a writers conference. Even under the cloudy skies, it’s still nice to see the ocean.
 
Having grown up within a short drive to a handful of beaches on the East Coast, living so far away from water is one o the few downsides to North Texas. I’m hoping to get my fill of squawking birds and rolling waves to last me another year!
 
Will share more photos next week if the sun ever comes out
 
Just curious – anyone else enjoy walking on the beach?  

​Are you a techie person? I’m not. I even struggled with digital cameras when they first came out. I loved my 35mm. Had no trouble with apertures and other things, but figuring out how to take a photo without accidentally filming was not my strength. LOL.
 
It’s only gotten worse through the years. I am constantly having words with my phone. It does not cooperate. And my computer. Oye!
 
Well this weekend I got struck with technology mishaps in spades! We are trying to set up my website to sell autographed copies of books – well – we as in my help and the mouse in their pocket LOL.  Of course, everything is in building not-ready-for-prime-time stages, and I should know better than to touch any of it.
 
But, I got an email from a newsletter fan pointing out an error  with a cover. So in my eagerness to be expedient, I went in and changed the cover, hit publish, and set all the incomplete work live! O-M-Lord! Who is dumb enough to do this on a Sunday morning! Apparently ME! Lol.
 
A panicked call to my daughter who is much more tech savvy than me, and we worked through undoing some of what I’d done. Only accomplishing some meant I had to get on the computer with chat support, and after telling me that the part we couldn’t figure out couldn’t be undone, I was in full on freak out mode.
 
Fortunately, a few more minutes of interaction and the guy (assuming it really was a man named Daniel) undid it all for me and I didn’t have to lose too much of the work that had been done.
 
Are you a new gadget and technology person or do you run and hide under the bed, refusing to upgrade like me ? LOL. 

​Hello!  I hope you all enjoyed the long weekend. I love holidays that involve a little extra time away from real world responsibilities. Of course that means I’m a wee bit late with my Monday blog.  My daughter and her family were here for the weekend and went on their way this morning. It’s always hard to see them go.
 
I do have one good thing behind me. Last night I sent my most recent flirt to my review team. They get first eyes on my finished work, help with typos, miscellaneous errors and miscommunications. After that it goes off to the general public. I don’t write a whole lot of flirts, but this time I went back to the Aloha world for a few minutes.
 
Originally it was titled Night and Day but when the short story was done, it didn’t fit anymore so we changed it again. Now it’s The Cat’s Meow. J  For those of you unfamiliar with my flirts  - they’re snippets in the series world. I call them glorified meet cutes. They remind me of the old television show Love American Style. The first step to what we all now would eventually be a happy ever after.
 
Which means now I get to focus all my attention on the new series – I’m chugging along with book one. Have a pretty good footprint – although my daughter, editor and friends all agreed the first scene had to go and I need to start with the second scene. Oh well, I liked a lot about the original opener, but anyone who asks the advise of professionals around them and doesn’t follow it, is pretty foolish. So, we start at scene two and onward we march!
 
Make sure you’re signed up for my newsletter as those folks get a free copy of the flirts before they go on the open market J
 
Enjoy the rest of your week and share what you did this weekend! 

 And let me tell you this weekend, mine was a doozy.  I am one of those people who is always doing a million things at a time, always rushing around (how I broke my toe) and never has an empty to-do list.
 
I’m also the sort who loves my family and will usually put them first. Like most mom, it’s second nature for our interests to take a back seat to what’s best for the family. I truly believe my family knows I would do anything for them, including march into hell and back.
 
Sadly, you sure wouldn’t have known that this weekend. I have been wanting to get something long-lasting and maybe even a little fun for my grandson for his second birthday. Another friend told me that silver dollars were a great gift. One for every year. So they look forward to getting them, can play with them on their birthday, and will have an investment all at the same time.  So I went ahead and did that. Sorted through an old box of my father in law’s and picked out the nice silver dollars. In my mind, birthday responsibility solved. All I have to remember is a small cake when they come next week to celebrate my grandson and husband’s birthdays together.
 
All set- right? Wrong. Saturday was a long day. Nothing went quite the way I planned and I spend a couple of hours working on an action plan for my mom’s care for the next six months or so. Rather distressing to have it in plan, but that meant I was late for my weekly dinner with a friend. In my car, hurrying to meet my friend, I called my daughter to update her. She answers the phone greeting me as Oma which cues me that she’s with my grandson. I say hi baby boy, Oma loves you. Then I move right into, I’m running late and want to update her. My daughter in her sweet voice asks, ‘Don’t you want to say something to Carter?’ – and I’m like – and this is a quote – ‘Not really’. See where this is going yet? I continue, ‘I’m running late and don’t have much time and I want to update you on Gramma.” To which my daughter chuckles and says ‘That’s okay, you can wish Carter a Happy Birthday next year.’ OYE!
 
Fortunately, my daughter still loves me and if no one reminds him, my grandson will never know!
 
Does your family make a big fuss about birthdays? I’m going to have to get in the habit!
 
Enjoy your week! 

​Am I the only one that doesn’t have time to do important things but then miraculously finds four hours to spend rearranging furniture? Yep – that’s what I did this weekend. Broken toe and all, I spent hours with a friend moving furniture from side to side.
 
And how did that start you ask? Well, I’m a bargain lover and when I spotted these two lovely chairs for sale on my neighborhood page, I ran and bought them. While I think they were beautiful (it’s the striped chair in the photo that looks yellow but isn’t lol), turns out they were too big for the space that I wanted them for. I did not realize that my previous armchairs were as small as they are (though I should have since they’re uncomfortable and why I wanted to replace them) nor did I realize how big these chairs are – which is probably why my six foot tall husband thinks they’re perfect LOL.
 
So, now that I know they don’t fit in the existing spot, my friend volunteered to help me move furniture around and even with my broken toe we did just fine. Though we did wind up like that old joke, back where we started from a few times lol.
 
In the end the arrangement wasn’t really very different and yet it was indeed very different. We went from a predictable square footprint to a diagonal positioning. Though we had to downgrade from two arm chairs on the end to only the one new one, relegating the second new chair to a bedroom. Once we decided that the arrangement even though a bit different really showcased the rug and my grandmother’s barley twist table, then I found myself hobbling around the house adding little bits. Pulled some throw pillows from one bedroom, a foot stool from another (which means I have one less junk collector in that room lol), moved knick knacks around, shifted end tables back and forth or from room to room, and of course now I have a new list of things to keep an eye out for when garage saling to complete the room!
 
I really do love changing things up a bit, especially when it doesn’t cost much money! I’m thinking maybe it’s time to rearrange my bedroom and see how that goes!
 
What do you think? 

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Oh how I wish I were back in Paradise enjoying a breakfast of stuffed French toast! I love the beach (photo from Hawaii 2013) and I love the warm weather, so Hawaii is a perfect fit – no matter where you go, you are never very far away from the ocean.  And I do love the smell of sea air! Do you?
 
Anyhow, why am I reminiscing about the beach? Well, I thought it would be fun to go back to the world of the Big Island Dive shop for a short visit. While letting the new series ferment so to speak lol, I took a break and jotted down a little flirt at the Surf’s Up.  It’s at the editor’s now and should be available to my newsletter subscribers pretty soon. In the meantime, here’s a preview of the cover.  Isn’t it cute – a bit different from the earlier flirts but reflective of my mood I think.
 
For those of you not familiar with my flirts, I think of them as snippets of a TV show. A scene where you get to catch up on what’s going on in that book world through character cameos.  They actually remind me of the old television show Love American Style LOL.  Yeah, I’m dating myself with that one!
 
As for daily life here in North Texas, I made it through another week with the broken toe and no setbacks. It’s still purple and slowly healing but every day is a step closer to being done with the stupid orthodic shoe!  I especially hope the foot is healed enough for real shoes by the time I leave for Florida next month. Every year there’s a writer’s conference at Florida’s Gulf coast and whenever I can, I go. I just don’t want to be hobbling at the beach!
 
I also want to be in good shape for when the State Fair rolls around. This will be the first year my grandson is old enough to enjoy the children’s events and I’m looking forward to that. Do you have a popular State or County fair near you? Do you make it a point to go?
 
Heading back to work now, with my feet up of course lol, and will report in next week!
 
 

​Well this has been a very busy week. My daughter went out of town for a long weekend and hubby and I got to keep the grandson. Of course, just to make things more interesting, I broke my little toe the night before she left. So Oma (that’s me) has been hobbling in a post-op shoe and a sandal for six days!
 
Thankfully, it was only the pinky toe and not a lot of collateral damage. I’ve broken toes that have left me as challenged as with a broken ankle and I am beyond grateful that even though I hobbled slowly, with the help of ibuprofen and the right support, I hobbled! Including all morning at the aquarium with friends!  Considering my little one is not quite two, he did really well. He adored the big catfish swimming around him and then later literally ran circles around Oma while waiting in line for the lunch restaurant to open. Such a good kid. We’re blessed.
 
Next day Pawpaw (that’s a Texas thing and I’m still not sure how it should be spelled lol) did most of the play time including in the swimming pool. That old pool is held together with glue, spit, and love most of the time (hasn’t been replastered in the 25 years we’ve lived here!) but the little ones love it and I am very thankful to have it!  I’ve included a favorite photo because grandson’s face is so happy!  It looks like he’s inherited his Pawpaw’s love of water. I love being on or near water but not in it. The only time I usually get in the pool is when I need to do physical therapy for an injured limb lol. Though I don’t plan to need that anymore!
 
After several days running after a two year old, I freely give major kudos to all the authors out there who manage to write and care for young families. Despite my good intentions, no writing got done. I did manage to keep up a bit on business, but the creative side was too pooped to pop LOL. What I would love is a week away with a small group of authors in a peaceful place for iron to sharpen iron and get these projects hammered out, but I don’t see that happening any time soon - sigh.  I’m still struggling with the new series and if anyone knows anyone who is a dog trainer or a military k9 handler – have them give me a shout please.
 
Say a prayer and cross your fingers and toes that I get LOTS of work done this week.