The Wildly Eclectic Me

I just had to show off my absolutely beautiful Queen Elizabeth rose. :D I'm so freakin rose obsessed!

13 Reasons I Wish the "World's Largest Retailer" Shareholder Meeting Was Over 1. I hate traffic!!! No! I really, really hate it! I hate driving my car when there is no traffic much less when the streets are completely crammed with people who don't know how to obey the simple laws of pedestrian traffic. If I didn't have to drive the little guy around I'd so be driving my scooter every day. 2. If I don't get to see The Eagles, no one should!!! Yes, I'm bitter! Very bitter! I love The Eagles!!! *pouts and breaks into the chorus of Witchy Woman * 3. I want our parking lot back! They took over half of our parking lot! I want it back! I'm a bad parker, and it takes me at least four tries to get into those crummy straight spaces when the part of the lot we are allowed is full. 4. I'd like to be able to go to said World's Largest Retailer without feeling like a tourist attraction! Wow, look it's one of those "Arkansans." O...

Me: What time do you want to leave work, 4 or 5? (Tell me you want to leave at 4, hun, so I don't have to come and brave the traffic of this shareholders convention which is currently the bane of my existence.) DH: 5 Me: Okay sweetie, but just in case I am really late, it's because I was stuck in the horrible traffic from the shareholder's meeting. (You should leave with me at 4 so I don't have to come near this nightmarish maze of people and policemen blocking the roads so that people can walk wherever the heck they want to.) DH: That's fine, hun. Me: All right, sweetheart. (What is wrong with you? Anyone could have understood that I wanted you to leave at 4. You are so making your own dinner tonight!)

Once a year the university campus where I work is a place you want to avoid at all cost as it is host to droves of associates and shareholders in the largest retailer in the world. Now don't get me wrong, the people are always very nice, but the traffic is awful!!! Not to mention that there is something about moving in large numbers that seems to make people believe that they don't have to get out of the middle of the road. I was driving into a parking space and a couple of ladies walked into it when I was halfway parked and stood there. I mean just stood there. What would make you think that was a good idea? There was no one else driving nearby. They could simply have walked into the next parking spot. Did I mention that the parking lot for my office is RIGHT next to the giant temple that they erected. Ok, it's not a temple, but it might as well be the way the people flock to it in worship. Really. It's not that bad. It's not! I'm going to keep saying...

Oh my friends, I have an illness. It comes upon me once in a while and nothing will make it better save on thing! What is it? I'm addicted to Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs Perfumes !!! It's come upon me again! I'm craving some new scents! My absolute favorite one is Samhain! It's one of their limited edition scents so watch for it right before...yup, you guessed it, Samhain. That's Halloween for you muggles out there. ;) Another favorite, which needs replenishing, is Anne Bonny. It's named after a famous lady pirate. No, my love of it has absolutely nothing to do with my intense desire to be a pirate that I've had since LONG before the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were even a glimmer in anyone's eye. Really! That's not why! Ok, maybe a little. I'm descended from a French pirate, you know? At least the family story says he was a pirate, and his painting was allegedly hanging on the wall of pirates at the New Orleans museum in the Fre...

I don't know if you're aware of this, but CBS made a terrible blunder this week when they announced the cancellation of one of my favorite TV shows, Jericho. Since then there has been an internet outcry about this. I signed a petition that last time I saw was at about 20,000 people. So once the petitions have been filed and the message boards have been sieged what else is there to do? Well send the executives at CBS 22,000 pounds of peanuts of course!!! What else would you do? The very last word in the last episode of Jericho, or at least one of the last, was "Nuts." It's a long story, but one of the main characters was pretty much telling the head of the army attacking them to "screw you." Which I think is what CBS did to us when they canceled the show. Don't worry. The peanuts aren't going to waste. They are being sent out to a charity that redistributes excess food to the poor. So if you love Jericho and want to see it continue then go...

It's so complicated and costs too much and takes TOO long! Why does it take so long? In Denmark my husband could just go to the police station and take his application and he got one the same day. Is it because they have to do lots of background checks or something? Bryon, Nicky and I are going to Denmark this fall. We're leaving September 16th. Let's just hope that I get Nicky's passport back by then! Isn't it adorable that he has to have a passport! Well except for the whole having to apply for it. And that his passport will say he is 2 feet tall! *giggles uncontrollably* That is just too cute! We're taking him tomorrow to get his passport picture taken. That should be fun. Getting a 20 month old to stand still long enough to snap a picture... Ugh... Well wish me luck!!!

Happy Birthday, Fiona! She's not really 200 years old, but she did just hit 200 pages and 63,000 words. I'm enjoying writing this one immensely. Fiona has quite the little attitude! When I first starting writing this book, I thought she was sweet and adorable. Well she is! But she also has a temper that could take out an army! I didn't see that one coming.

Thirteen Things Lesley Needs to Get Done 1. Make A LOT of royal icing violets for a birthday cake My best friend's baby girl is turning two. *insert heartfelt awwww here* She's having cupcakes with icing flowers. :D I'm the resident cake geek so I volunteered to make the flowers. I finally managed to gather up all the stuff I need! My supplies have become somewhat unorganized since my little guy thinks that they are his personal toys. 2. Clean the whole house This needs to be done anyway, but my best friends are coming over to aid me tonight in the flower creation. 3. Weed the Rose beds I actually have my first rose of the year finally! It's not the color it was on the label...but oh well it's still pretty. 4. Finish the chapter I'm working on in Fiona I have my doubts that this will happen with the munchkin running rampant. 5. Feed my pet crow Okay, he isn't really my pet, but an ADORABLE little bitty crow comes to my bird feeder and eats everyday. I...

Thirteen of my Favorite Movies 1. Hook What's more beautiful than the idea that Peter Pan gave up the childhood he clung to for so long because he fell in love? 2. Joe Versus the Volcano It's so absolutely weird but somehow it works! 3. Shrek 4. Shrek 2 Oh come on! Who doesn't love these movies? I can't wait to see the third one. 5. Sean of the Dead This movie is the perfect balance between creepiness and humor! If you haven't seen it then do! 6. Legally Blond 7. Legally Blond 2 I secretly want to be Elle Wood!!! Pink is my signature color too! 8. The Little Mermaid This is one of the first movies I obsessed over. I had the soundtrack and still know every word to every song. Plus Eric was one of the first storybook princes that I saw who actually had a personality! Not to mention a name! 9. Interview with the Vampire Oh, how I love Anne Rice. They did such a great job with this movie. We won't even discuss Queen of the Damned though. *shudders* 10.Beaut...

You know, I was just thinking... I've not read a great deal of homosexual erotica by any means, but I was really thinking that it might get pretty darn complicated. I mean you couldn't use pronouns!!! If you've got a love scene between Jill and Tom, then you can refer to them and he and she the majority of the time, but if you've got Dan and Alan for instance, do you have to keep referring to them as Dan did this and Alan did this? I guess you'd have to. Because if you did anything else you would never have any idea who was doing what to who. This was another Hmmmmmm moment brought to you by Lesley Speller.

I have a question. I was just reading a critique of a query on a blog that I frequent and the agent said that you should not thank an agent for her time, because your time is as valuable as hers. I was wondering how people felt about that? Personally I think when you take time out of someone's day you should thank them. Regardless of those circumstances. I thank people at the store who check me out. I thank customer service people who I speak to on the phone. I don't think my time is one iota more important than theirs regardless of their position in the world. We're all on this planet for a very short time in the grand scheme of things and whether you're cleaning my carpet or delivering my baby the time that you spend helping me is that much time out of your life. You might only be doing it so you can feed your kids, or you may be doing it because you're just a nice, helpful person. I don't care why you're doing it. The end result is that you...

Okay! Now they weren't actually in my pants. So you think where might they actually have been? Well let me tell you! I don't get to ride my scooter very often much to my dismay. So whenever I have the opportunity naturally I take it. This weekend my darling husband and I decided to have Mexican from the place that is just about 3 miles down the road from our house. So I thought...Perfect!!! I'll make him watch Nicky and I'll go pick it up, then I'll get to take a nice refreshing scoot around the neighborhood. If only I had known! I saw an ant on the leg shield of my scooter, but I didn't think much of it. I seem to live in the ant capital of world. It's a constant battle to keep them out of the house. So I brushed little Miss. Ant off and opened up the helmet storage under the seat, took out my helmet, and went on my merry way. Remember always wear your helmet! Nicky agrees... Yes, that WAS just a blatant excuse to show you my adorable boy! So I p...

This is tooo much fun!

I love my little boy! I do! Adore him! Fawn over him! But sometimes he does the strangest things!!! He's playing in his sandbox with his best buddy and she's playing happily, but all he wants to do is eat the sand!!! He even dipped his pacifier in it! Like it was some sort of exquisite sauce. I mean ewww!!! The thought of even one tiny grain of sand getting in my mouth gives me shivers of ickiness!!! Aww...but doesn't he look cute doing it!?

Testing... Woot! I love it!

In the interest of making a prettier blog... I've made myself a header image. :-D

Thirteen Things You Didn't Know About 12th Century London Unless You're a Super Nerd Like Me 1 . There were 98 Parish Churches. That's only within the city walls! There were 10 more outside the walls of the city. And the original St. Paul's church, which was an Gothic cathedral with an ENORMOUS spire, not the pretty domed one we see there today. The Old church was destroyed in the Great Fire in 1666. 2 . They went ice skating outside the walls of the city in winter. They just didn't have the nice skates we have today. They tied bones to their shoes. Yes! Bones! I kid you not! And if skating around on bones weren't fun enough, the boys (being the boys that they were) played a game where two of them got going as fast as the possibly could and rammed each other. Men sure haven't changed much... 3. They Jousted...on Boats!!! Now we've all heard of jousting. Who hasn't seen A Knight's Tale? If you haven't you simply must because Heath Led...

OK, perhaps not... but Flashbacks nonetheless. I've been struggling making my main characters history work in Fiona O'Sithein, but I think I've found a way. Their relationship started in Arianna Penndragon, but there is verrrrrrry little mention of it. It naturally greatly effects their current relationship, and I was trying to figure out the best way to do it. I've been working with them both just remembering things, but it didn't have nearly the umph that it needed. So I'm moving on to full on flashbacks. Queue the wiggly screen and weird music here. Yeah, this is gonna work great! Now I just have to decide when they'll be remembering what! This should be fun! Muhaha! I'm totally going to screw with Beltran's head!

I discovered this on Nicky's Baby Shakespeare dvd. The Tale of Custard the Dragon by Ogden Nash I absolutely love this poem! It's sooo cute. I think I'm going to have to go buy myself an Ogden Nash book of poetry now.

Much to my husband's dismay and irritation about 19 times out of 20 within the first half hour of a movie I can tell you the entire plot of the rest of the film. I don't know if it's because of the insane numbers of movies I've seen in my lifetime and books that I've read, but usually the plot is completely laid out before me. Bryon asked me the other day if this annoyed me? That I knew exactly what was going to happen, and that got me to thinking. It really doesn't bother me. I guess it's because I never know for sure until the very end if I'm right or not. Also just because I know the story doesn't necessarily mean that I don't enjoy the journey. Also if they are about to do something really bad to me, like murder off the main character who I'm growing to like, I want to know it ahead of time. I think that's part of the reason I like romance novels so much. They might kill off some secondary characters in the course of the book,...

Baby Crack is how I refer to Baby Einstein DVDs. I don't know if you've experienced them yet. They have little puppets, toys, classical, music, some have poetry. The only one we had until now as Baby Shakespeare. Hey I'm a writer, which one did you expect me to buy? After about the 1 millionth time my son shouted BARD (Bard is the name of the poetic dragon who hosts Baby Shakespeare) at the top of his lungs pointing at the TV and then forced me to endure it again, I knew that it was time to buy some new ones. So we now are the proud new owners of Baby Noah - Animal Expedition and Baby Einstein - Language Nursery. He loves the animal one, but is not completely entranced by the language nursery one. It's neat though. It has like 6 different languages on it to expose children to different languages before they lose their ability to mimic any sound. It supposed to make learning languages later easier. At least I have more variety in the crazy films I'm forced t...

Thirteen of my Favorite Quotes 1. Well behaved women rarely make history. - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich I don't behave well at all most of the time, and I think this is just the perfect excuse not to. ;) 2. "Those who fight monsters should take care not to become monsters themselves. For when you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you." - Frederich Nietsche I respect and appreciate the work that the people who protect us do, but I'm sure glad it's not my job! 3. "There must be quite a few things that a hot bath can't cure, but I don't know many of them." - Sylvia Plath My darling husband believes that if I had a choice I would never emerge from my jacuzzi. ;) He's probably right! 4. "Ladies don't start fights, but they can finish them!" - Marie from Aristocats You better bet your booty they can. :D 5. "People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkn...

*rolling around on the floor laughing my arse off* I'm sorry ROFLMAO just didn't cut it!!! You simply must check out this page if you're a fan of fantasy! The Fantasy Novelist's Exam

You were warned... I have gotten virtually no writing done in days. I've been feeling sickly and exhausted and apparently that kills whatever creativity I have because I'm just meandering through the chapter I'm trying to work on. If I'm not enjoying writing it, who is is going to enjoy reading it! This is probably going to require some major rewrites. Of course, some things I've written that while I was writing I thought "Jeez this is pure and utter crapola" that actually turned out to be the best scenes in the book. So we shall see. I am looking forward to getting back to something that makes me giggle riotously while writing it or at least shiver in fear! I'm also terribly distracted! I just figured out how to read e-books on my Axim, and it's practically like reading a real book! Although it doesn't have that new book smell. ;) Right now I'm reading Daystar by Rene Lyons . It's great! Not to mention that I found the blog of ...