Jenyfer Matthews

Click the link below for a funny, funny, funny video – totally worth any upload time

timhawkinsguitar

Congratulations to Elaine – you won a copy of my book ONE CRAZY SUMMER! Send me an email and tell me your email and your preferred format!

There are no Dairy Queens in Egypt so I decided to stop by and treat the kids.

Another weird fact about me: going into a restaurant where I’m unfamiliar with the menu kind of freaks me out. I mean, it’s fast food. Which means you should make your decision fast, not dilly dally over the menu. It’s not rocket science, but I start feeling pressure from everyone else in there who already know what they want and then I can’t focus on anything. I freeze up. I know, it’s dumb. But we all have our quirks.

So picture me walking into a Dairy Queen full of Boy Scouts with two excited children in tow and trying to make a quick decision. I got the children each a small hot fudge sundae, my mother a Dilly bar, and myself? I wasn’t quite up to my usual peanut buster parfait and deciding on what to put in a blizzard was just too much for me at that moment, Boy Scouts crowding around, so I just pointed at a picture ordered a small Mocha MooLatte.

OMG. So, so good.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of looking it up online when I got home. Aside from the unfortunate name, the small (16oz of heaven) has 23g of fat and nearly 600 calories. Consume enough of those things and people will be moo-ing at me as I amble down the street.

It’s hard to regret it because it was that good, but I’m going to have to take a few more hikes to counteract that treat.

Don’t forget to stop by over the weekend when T.L. Gray will be my Friday Feature.

This made me laugh so I thought I’d pass it on

MEN ARE JUST HAPPIER PEOPLE

NICKNAMES

If Laura, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Kate and Sarah.

If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla and Four-eyes.

EATING OUT
When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in $20, even though it’s only for $32.50. None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.

When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

MONEY
A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.

A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn’t need but it’s on sale.

BATHROOMS
A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel .

The average number of items in the typical woman’s bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.

ARGUMENTS

A woman has the last word in any argument.

Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

FUTURE

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.

A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

SUCCESS

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.

A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

MARRIAGE

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t.

A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, but she does.

DRESSING UP

A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the trash, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.

A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

NATURAL

Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.

Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

OFFSPRING

Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.

A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

Told you it was funny

I got this by email and it was too cute not to pass along:

A boss wondered why one of his most-valued employees had phoned in sick one day. Having an urgent problem with one of the main computers, he dialed the employee’s home phone number and was greeted with a child’s whisper.

“Hello.”

“Is your daddy home?” he asked.

“Yes,” whispered the small voice.

“May I talk with him?”

The child whispered, “No.”

Surprised and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, “Is your Mommy there?”

“Yes.”

“May I talk with her?”

Again the small voice whispered, “No.”

Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, “Is anybody else there?”

“Yes,” whispered the child. “A policeman!”

Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee’s home, the boss asked, “May I speak with the policeman?”

“No, he’s busy,” whispered the child.

“Busy doing what?”

“Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the Fireman,” came the whispered answer.

Growing more worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter through the ear piece on the phone, the boss asked, “What is that noise?”

“A helicopter,” answered the whispering voice.

“What is going on there?” demanded the boss, now truly apprehensive.

Again whispering, the child answered, “The search team just landed the helicopter.”

Alarmed, concerned and a little frustrated, the boss asked, “What are they searching for?”

Still whispering, the young voice replied with a muffled giggle: “ME.”

This is pretty much what it’s been like at my house since school ended for the summer. Just so you know, if the issue is ever raised, I’m all for a year round school year.

Still, the bickering is preferable to the girl-drama that has been going on around here. There are three little girls in our building, in addition to my own DD – ages 8 & 9. Ideally, the two oldest and the two youngest would pair up and they’d all be happy and entertained. But you know that reality rarely works that way.

Instead what tends to happen is that one little girl defects and goes and plays either on her own or with a little boy. And two others compete for the affection and attention of the third (and oldest). Which always leads to trouble.

Lately, it’s been my DD who has been on the outs with them. It’s been a few weeks since she’s spent much time with any of them and I’m okay with that. Before, she would come home ranting about how she hated this one or that one – or crying because someone had said something nasty to her and excluded her from their play.

I try very hard not to get involved in these dramas, however angry it makes me to see DD hurt. They need to figure out how to deal with things themselves without parental interference. Also, what usually happens is they’ve long gotten over whatever the problem was and I’m still ticked off. If I were to involve myself the only thing that would happen is that I’d be on the outs with all their mothers.

It’s been harder to ignore recently though – particularly when the “in” girls add petty vandalism to their bag of tricks. Nothing they have done – so far – has been such a big deal. But what they don’t realize is that the items they are damaging are things that *I* bought and paid for so I have an interest in putting a stop to it.

So I did what I had to do. I told their mommies on them.

Girls can be such a pain in the butt with all their head games and cliquishness. (I know, I was a little girl once). This is one area where I think a man’s approach is better. Just slug ‘em and get over it…

Interesting facts about Gone With The Wind:

* The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1936.The book sold more than fifty thousand copies in a single day, was a bestseller for two years, and, by 1965, had sold more than 12 million authorized copies.
(from http://www.answers.com/topic/gone-with-the-wind)

* It is the only novel by Margaret Mitchell published during her lifetime, and it took her ten years to write it. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind)

* and it continues to sell 250,000 paperback copies in the United States each year.
(from http://www.answers.com/topic/gone-with-the-wind-novel-6)

* At home all day by herself, Margaret Mitchell occupied much of her time with reading. Regularly, her husband stopped by the library to pick up a book for her. One day, John informed his wife that she had read every book in the library, including the medical journals. Presenting her with a typewriter, he suggested she write her own book.

* Margaret wrote the last chapter of the book first.

* When it went to the publisher, Gone With The Wind had no first chapter.

* Margaret Mitchell first called the Scarlett character “Pansie.”

* The working title to Gone With The Wind was, “Tomorrow Is Another Day,” but another book at that time already had the title.

* Margaret endured much at the hands of her adoring fans. Once, a man from Tennessee appeared at her door, urgently needing to know if Scarlett and Rhett ever got back together again. His wife sent him with orders not to return without an answer for her bridge club!
(from http://www.rvfreewheelin.com/gwtw.htm)

I’m still reading Gone With the Wind, and I admit that I haven’t gotten very far. It’s a LONG book! My edition has 1011 pages. I’ve just passed page 150.

Clearly this is an award winning classic that has been adored by millions of people over the years. It won a Pulitzer for heaven’s sake! I know that when I read it, I’m judging it by more modern writing standards. Still, I can’t help but edit the book in my head (Who do I think I am I anyway?)

I’ve probably been ruined by the fact that I’ve seen the movie a couple of times, but as I’m reading I find myself thinking get on with it already! The action in the first couple of chapters is interrupted by long character sketches of Scarlett’s mother, father, suitors – just about anyone she comes into contact with really. I can only imagine what my own critique partner / editor would say if I tried something like that. “Show, don’t tell!”, “Can’t you introduce this information little by little throughout the story?” and “Information dump!”

Another problem that jumps out at me is the ever shifting point of view (POV) Most of the time it is an omniscient narrator which slips in and out of Scarlett’s head, but there is a paragraph here and there where we’ll suddenly pop into the head of whoever Scarlett is talking to. It might not bother someone who is just reading the story, but as an author, I sometimes find it difficult to ignore the technical aspects of writing. And things like ever shifting POV and excessive backstory really pull me out of the fantasy. I’m all about character development and long books don’t daunt me, nor do classics, but I have yet to lose myself in this story. I’m going to soldier on though. (get it? The Civil War? Soldiers? har har)

Aside from all of the above, Scarlett is a real twit. As I was reading about Gone With the Wind, I saw somewhere that Margaret Mitchell really wrote Melanie as the heroine of the book. She’s a little too insipid for my taste…but then again she’s got almost 1000 pages to improve.

The truth is, it’s always easier to edit someone else’s book than it is to edit your own. Actually, it would be fascinating to get a digital copy of this book and really take it apart and see how it turned out – and how long it would be in the end. Hmmm…

Okay – you caught me, I’m procrastinating again…

I gave myself a pedicure today – long overdue. I won’t give you details about just how much dry skin I sloughed off my heels but it wasn’t pretty. And it got me to thinking about just what is up with that?? My feet never used to require so much maintenance.

I attributed it to the climate – for a while. I mean, I do live in a desert and so more often than not I wear open sandals. It’s bound to be hard on the feet to be exposed to the elements so much. But now that I’m in Cairo where it actually is cold in the winter, my feet have been in socks and closed shoes for the last three months and they are worse than ever. That leaves me with only one logical explanation.

Age.

It makes sense. My feet were much lower maintenance ten years ago. And my children run around barefoot as much as I will let them and they have lovely feet. So the only answer left is that my feet have lost the blush of youth. I was so unprepared for that.

You don’t see a lot of advertising on beauty products specifically for feet. Unless shoes are considered a beauty product. Hmmm…that’s an intriguing thought. As if I needed another reason to indulge my love of beautiful shoes…

On the topic of shoes, I found a great website for teaching children to tie shoes – I even learned a few new tricks myself!

And after I resorted to the age old mother’s trick of bribery my daughter is finally learning to tie her own shoes. Money well spent in my opinion.

I’m not sure what it is about mother-daughter relationships that can be so difficult at times. Maybe it’s all the hormones flying around. Maybe it’s understanding each other a little too well. Maybe it’s that my daughter is a nut.

First of all, she’s seven going on thirty. You know the kid at school who teaches all the other kids the rude gestures and words? The one that tells anyone who will listen all she knows about sex (which isn’t much) That’s my girl!

And believe it or not, she didn’t get it from me. Well, not all of it.

That stuff I can roll my eyes and live with. The thing about my daughter that drives me batty is her gender identity crisis. She does her level best to act and dress like a boy at all times.

Outside of school (god bless uniforms!) she lives in nylon soccer shorts or sweats and loose tshirts. She won’t wear anything that’s the least bit fitted, nothing with a v-neck, nothing with glitter or sparkles or anything in any shade of pink or purple. I can’t tell you how many perfectly good clothes I’ve ended up giving away because she flat out rejects them. I recently put a moratorium on anyone buying her new clothes because it’s a waste of time and money.

I can’t reason with her. I’ve tried pointing out that I’m not a girly-girly either. I prefer jeans to skirts and red to pink myself. And yet, no one has ever mistaken me for a boy. She’s even complimented me on my clothes from time to time but does she follow my lead? Nope.

She has lovely chestnut hair that she refuses to let me style. She barely tolerates my brushing it. I took her to the barber and cut it in a short boy style once, in a fit of frustration. I loved it because I could finally see her lovely cheeks and beautiful smile. But everyone thought she was a boy so now we’re growing it out again. The irony is that many boys we know are also growing their hair out so she blends right in.

You know, I could live with her dressing like a boy if that was the extent of it. The ironic thing is, whether she realizes it or not, she’s excruciatingly girly in other ways. She agonizes over what to wear days in advance of an event. She rejects everything in her closet and weeps because she has “nothing” to wear. She loves shopping for shoes.

Hmmm…maybe there is hope for her yet…

It’s getting cold enough in Cairo that I can wear some of my winter clothes. Including my very favorite sweater of all time.

Dare I tell you how old my favorite sweater is? (14!) My sister bought it for me for Christmas (by request) the year I graduated from college. It was love at first sight. It was stylish and hip then, and like most really classic designs, it still is.

She bought it in a mall in Louisiana and I brought it along to Ohio and to North Carolina before packing it up and shipping it to the United Arab Emirates. Okay – not a real wintery place, but I thought it might get cold in the desert at night. (It does) Because of the fact that I have lived in such warm places, it gets worn infrequently and I *have* to lay it flat to dry because we don’t have a clothes dryer. Perhaps it has held up better than it might have over time because of these things.

It’s the color of oatmeal so it goes with nearly everything. And it has a fun dangly fringe along the bottom. It looks good layered and on its own. I can’t wait to see how it looks with my new shoes This isn’t all in my head – I still get compliments when I wear it.

I have to say that there are few pieces in my wardrobe that have had such longevity. Things either wear out or go out of style or I simply get tired of being seen wearing them. One benefit of moving so much is that I have an ever shifting audience so in my mind, my wardrobe feels “fresh” even when it’s not.

That last fact perhaps is in my mind. I was wearing the sweater recently when an American neighbor of mine complimented me on it. She kept looking at me and then said, “Did you get that sweater at {store name}? In the early 90s? My sister had one sort of like that.”

I guess if nothing else, the above encounter does demonstrate that it’s a sweater that definitely makes an impression!