Beds and Tornadoes

What a weekend. We received our government subsidy Friday and spent it on Saturday. Uncle Sam should be so proud of us. We totally blew it... on a king sized bed!! Very exciting stuff here. But as we were walking back to our car to go buy sheets for.... yes, our new king sized bed!!, my husband looked up at the sky and said, "This isn't right." After a cool rain that morning, he felt it was too hot and muggy. The atmosphere was messed up, he claimed... meaning a bad storm was about to hit. And hubby was right.

His pager went off a few hours later. So, he dropped me off at his mother's house while he left for storm watch patrol. Our county didn't receive any damage, but the one south of us saw action. Since the wind and rain swept through our area quickly enough, Hubby came back to get me within an hour of leaving. But on our way home, we could hear another county bleeding through his police scanner. It was absolute chaos down there. Every first responder was talking at once, and they were all asking for help, claiming they had a critical patient or a car flipped over in the middle of a field or a gas line leaking. They needed to close down highways so they could land multiple helicopters. My husband and I looked at each other, grateful the storm hadn't come a little more north.

From the national news, I've heard twenty-two people are dead from this tragedy. The woman whose spot I now work at the library lost her home. It's the only thing on our local news. An infant was lost and a set of parents saw their seventeen year old daughter die when two trees fell on their trailer home. One man was holding onto his wife, covering her and she was killed. I listened to all these accounts and I felt awful for these people, wishing I could do something to help. Thank God my local news website (KOAM) has provided information for me to do that.

MRW Meeting

I'm glad I'm a member of Romance Writers of America. My chapter group, MRW (Midwest Romance Writers) is so wonderfully helpful. Last night, Alfie Thompson gave a spectacular program about point of view. I'd learned about it in college, sure, since my major was writing. But that was very generalized and broad based. Alfie narrowed it down to writing for the romance genre and explained why you use different points of view for different types of stories.

I just want to blab all and share everything she said, but she worded it more eloquently than I ever could. You should just buy her writing help book, Lights! Camera! Fiction! It gives all sorts of great writing advice. Her presentation really jazzed me up. I wanted to call in sick to work today and stay home fixing all my POV mistakes.

I also wanted to call in sick because I'm dead tired. After getting off at work at 4pm yesterday, I drove two hours straight to make the meeting. Then, after we adjourned at nine, I had to drive the two hours back home. And this morning, I got up to return to work at 7:30 sharp. Yuck.

But it was totally worth it. Can't wait to do it next month again.

I'm excited I made the trip though. I'm a country girl, raised on a dairy farm, so I've never done any big city driving before. Biggest town I ever navigated was 15,000. But this meeting was in Kansas City. Granted, it wasn't in downtown KC, but I drove during rush hour and it got a little crowded there. I'm just so proud of myself for making it without wrecking or having a nervous breakdown. Let's me know I can accomplish something anyway.

Feet Secrets

I've heard through the gossip bin, that a friend of a friend of mine has never seen her husband's feet. I know this has to be true because, well... who would make that up? And it has me wondering... why? If he has some odd defect or he just isn't into showing off his toes then, okay, he doesn't expose them to outsiders. But this is his wife we're talking about, his partner, his soul mate, the mother of his child.

I wouldn't be able to handle the secrecy myself. There isn't a mole on my husband's body I don't know about. And personally, I'd feel hurt if he tried to block a thing like that from me. It'd make me question what else he was hiding.

Keeping something so private seems like it'd take a lot of fun out of your life too. I mean, what about showering with your loved one? Or swimming? It'd have to get pretty hot in the summer. And what about sleeping? I put on those warm, fuzzy socks in the winter when my feet are cold, but I usually have them kicked off by morning. I cannot sleep with something on my feet.

The whole thing has me thinking about writing too. This is something that would make a great detail. It could be packed with a load of symbolism too. A heroine could really learn her man the moment the socks come off!!

Well, this has been my Andy Rooney moment. Check back later for more crazy blogs.