by Sarah | Apr 4, 2013 | All About Me, Dance, Personal
From awkward girl.
To graceful swan.
From deep shyness.
To shining star.
The shoes had the power to lift the soul where she lacked inner strength.
Once those shoes were on,
Once her feet touched the hardwood,
Once the spotlight shone down on her.
Nothing else mattered.
Not the teasing.
The bullying.
The horrors of wicked peers.
It all fell away.
The shoes didn’t hold the magic.
She did.
She just didn’t know it until many years later.
When she shoes mostly lay at rest.
The power she found in dance.
Was always in her.
The A-Z Challenge has over 1900 participants, all blogging from A to Z this month. Check them out and see if you can’t find a few new favorites!!
by Sarah | Apr 3, 2013 | 45 before 45, All About Me, Books, Bucket List, Changing Tracks, I'm A Writer
There were so many things I could have done for C.
Cystic Fibrosis, Colors, Cannonball, Canada…
But I chose [amazon_link id=”B00BEMN5SC” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Changing Tracks[/amazon_link].
Of course I’m a little biased. Changing Tracks is my first published novel. It’s the first in a series, and the characters just make me giddy with happiness on a regular basis.
It was another check off the bucket list when this one came out on February 8th.
I’ve been blessed to have friends read it (and communicate back to me their thoughts WHILE reading, which was hilariously fun)…and strangers alike.
In several months the next book in the series will be out, and I’ll get to keep telling Jane Doe’s story…all while continuing to find new characters and stories to write in the background.
I’ve got a great job…and Changing Tracks helped make it officially a job. 🙂
Blurb:
There’s nothing simple about forgetting your past.
Cole Mitchell runs the busiest saloon and brothel in Dominion Falls. He keeps his women at a distance, unwilling to relive a past he worked hard to forget.
Until the night Jane Doe falls into his saloon bleeding and near death. She wakes with no memory, only the firm belief someone tried to kill her. In the strange world of amnesia she manages to find solace in Cole’s arms and he finds home in hers.
While they work together to solve the mystery of her appearance, their pasts – her lack of, and his buried – build a barrier between them.
To make matters worse, Jane’s past isn’t willing to let her go. A stranger proves he’ll kill to keep his secrets safe. With those she loves in danger, Jane’s errant memory is all that stands between them and death. Cole can only do so much to protect her, will it be enough?
Buy Links:
Secret Cravings Website
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
All Romance Ebooks
Bookstrand
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The A-Z Challenge has over 1900 participants, all blogging from A to Z this month. Check them out and see if you can’t find a few new favorites!!
by Sarah | Apr 2, 2013 | 45 before 45, All About Indiana, All About Me, All of Us, Bucket List, Indianapolis Zoo
Two years ago when I first made my 45X45 list, I added a little something that I thought would be easily accomplished. Something that I’d always wanted to do, but hadn’t because I always came up with an excuse.
Seeing the butterflies at the Indianapolis Zoo. It was a special display they had annually with all of these butterflies. I’d heard such beautiful things about it. I wanted to take my camera and nestle in and stay forever.
So, to keep myself from using the “It’s too expensive to take us all” excuse, I bought our first zoo membership.
That was the year the butterflies went away. I was sad, but we still put that zoo pass to very good use, and have not hesitated to renew our membership every year since.
This year? The butterflies have returned! A couple of weeks ago I got to go to a special event before it opened, take my camera, and wipe that sucker right off the bucket list. And I have the pictures to prove it. (although when I go BACK this week, I’ll make sure to take my zoom lens that I forgot last time, so I can really get those close up and personal shots. ~ahem~)
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by Sarah | Apr 1, 2013 | All About Me
I’ve started this crazy thing called the April A-Z Challenge. As my writing blog has taken off and is keeping me very busy, this poor old blog has been neglected. I thought that the A-Z challenge would be a great way to get my mojo moving again, as it gives me a clear guideline for every day but Sunday. Maybe that will give me time for nice weather and me actually living again to have blog posts to write (a sick & cabin-fever filled house is not inspirational). And so…it begins.
I’m not much of a drinker.
Really.
Ask anyone I know and they may be hard-pressed to think of a time I was actually drunk, and if they can it was many moons ago and I wasn’t really drunk.
I believe I can still, at 36, count the number of times I’ve been truly and deeply drunk on one hand.
I enjoy an occasional glass of super-sweet wine. A random margarita or sweet martini. (Are we sensing a trend?)
I’m the one at the party that sips her mixed drink (or, more likely, pop).
I have no great drunken tales to tell.
My best story is about the time I was walking with a guy that thought he might have a shot (he soooo didn’t) around the hotel at the Star Trek convention (yup, nerd-alert). I was pretty buzzed, and talking away happily. The sober voice in the back of my head was still active and made me stop mid-sentence and turn to face the guy. I looked him dead in the eye and said. “I know I sound like an idiot. I can’t seem to stop the words from tumbling out. I swear I’m not an idiot.” The turned and picked up the sentence I’d dropped and kept talking. Soon as we got back into the lobby and I saw my friend I abandoned him for her and we went around offering everyone in the hotel pretzel rods with a ridiculously pitiful attempt at a leer.
And I remember every minute.
And I never passed out.
And that is true of all the times I’ve been ‘drunk’.
by Sarah | Mar 25, 2013 | All About Denver, All About Kennedy, Cystic Fibrosis, Special Needs
Cystic Fibrosis.
The word hit me like a ton of bricks the first time Dr. A used it to refer to Kennedy.
My only experience and knowledge of the word harkened back to the TV show “Touched by an Angel.” The special 100th espisode “Psalm 151” that had guest stars Wynonna Judd (as the mom) and Celine Dion (as herself).
An 11 year old boy with Cystic Fibrosis that knows he doesn’t have much time left. He has a ‘list’ of items to complete…the final one being “Go to heaven.”
In the episode we saw a young child with the disease. We saw examples of chest percussions being performed (done by hand, not vest).
We saw an 11 year old die.
With that as your only experience, and a doctor telling you, “Don’ research on the internet, the stories will terrify you, let me talk to you first”…you sort of get a little freaked out.
Okay, you get a lot freaked out.
Dr. A’s reassurances that the diagnosis doesn’t mean what it did as many as 10 years ago did little to help my nerves.
Only living it has eased my sense of panic.
Seeing my kids live normal lives.
Is the worry still there?
Do I have a little heart attack at every high fever? At every cough?
Yup.
But with two kids living with it, and living well…suddenly having a bucket list at 11 doesn’t seem like quite as much of a possibility.
You just may have to remind me of that next time we’re in the hospital.
Deal?
by Sarah | Mar 22, 2013 | All About Molly, All of Us, Failure to Thrive (FTT), Special Needs
[flickr id=”8579444004″ thumbnail=”medium” overlay=”true” size=”medium” group=”” align=”left”]Last week Kennedy got it. That nasty bug that spiked her fever and gave her some time over a bucket, and then in the bathroom. It lasted about 4 days, during which she was mostly “okay”…able to eat crackers and keep down Gatorade.
She went back to school on Tuesday, and no one else showed signs of sickness. I thought for certain we’d avoided the curse of the “traveling” virus that would go from family to family.
Then, first thing yesterday. 6:30AM in the morning.
It struck Molly.
Hard.
So much harder than it hit Kennedy.
For over 12 hours she couldn’t keep anything down.
Nothing.
Not even sips of fluid.
By about 7PM I was really worried. I checked her weight.
Molly is about 50″ tall and is about 48lbs – already severely skinny from her FTT.
At 7PM last night she weighed a measly 42.5 lbs.
Dark sunken eyes, bad color…she almost looked like a skeleton. She could walk to the bathroom, but barely. She asked for help getting back in bed.
Not sure of the next step I called a local 24hr nurse service and they confirmed my worries and we headed to the ER.
After an hours weight in a packed ER we finally got a room (the room reserved for psych cases that had no amenities like TV or phone, and whose chairs were weighted down and almost impossible to move.).
A lovely doctor stopped in the room before we even had her on the bed. Talked with us for a few seconds and ordered an IV drip and Zofran. The IV tech was in the room about 1 minute later. It took a little work to find a vein, but find one they did.
Molly? Took her first IV like a champ. There was a little whimpering, of course, but over all she was amazing.
A couple hours later, our Molly was back. Sparkling personality and all.
Amazing what anti-nausea meds and a liter of fluids can do for a girl.
From awkward girl.
