my spring break

Spring break started. My whole week off of school to spend recovering from a very long quarter began today. I fully intend to keep busy.

Besides catching up on my shows (Boardwalk Empire, The Walking Dead, Supernatural, Deadwood, Big Love, Suits, Ghost Adventures, Sons of Anarchy, Mad Men, etc), working on the outline for my next book, catching up on blog posts and other internet related things, I also need to make a dent in my to be read pile. Because it's huge. I'm talking shelves upon shelves because I had a habit of buying books, but never enough time to read them. So I'm starting with these:

This doesn't include the eBooks on the iPad I'm going to tackle. I think this will be an interesting spring break. 

Peace and hugs.

Fun Lists

As a single mom, I rarely have time to do much of anything besides working, school and taking care of the house. And with the new job, I work the craziest hours so it's hard to even get normal sleep hours much less time for myself and my reading. There are a few books coming out this year that I'm so looking forward to reading, I've written them down on a list of must-gets and must-reads. I do the same thing with my favorite shows that are coming out on Dvd. Except I don't get to compile that until around May-ish.

Here's my list, in no particular (other than release dates):

Scarlett Fever - Maureen Johnson (Feb 1)

Heist Societ - Ally Carter (Feb. 9)

Dead-Tossed Waves - Carrie Ryan (Mar. 9)

Can't Teach A Old Demon New Tricks - Cara Lockwood (Mar. 30)

Nine Rules To Break When Romancing A Rake - Sarah MacLean (Mar. 30)

The Clearing - Heather Davis (Apr. 12)

The Cinderella Society - Kay Cassidy (Apr. 13)

Runaway - Meg Cabot (Apr. 20)

The Kane Chronicles: The Red Pryamid - Rick Riordan (May 4)

The Demon's Covenant - Sarah Rees Brennan (May 18)

Forgive My Fins - Tara Lyn Childs (Jun. 1)

My Soul to Keep - Rachel Vincent (Jun. 1)

Raised By Wolves - Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Jun.8)

Insatiable - Meg Cabot (Jun. 8)

Only the Good Spy Young - Ally Carter (Jun. 15)

Blue Blood: Keys to the Repository - Melissa De La Cruz (Jun. 29)

And Then I Found Out The Truth - Jennifer Sturman (Jul. 1)

Strange Fate - L.J. Smith (Jul. 6)

Jealousy - Lili Saintcrow (Jul. 29)

Misguided Angel - Melissa De La Cruz (Oct. 5)

These are the books I'm really looking forward to picking up and buying this year. Well, the first half of the year anyway. These are in addition to my growing number of books I have sitting in my house just waiting to be read. Those are the ones that yell at me on a daily basis. But that's another story for another blog. Ah, it's a good year for books.

My Life So Far

There's three things in the world I truly love doing, but I rarely ever have any time to do either of them: Writing, reading, and baking. When I was a kid my dream was to become a world famous pastry chef. I tried, oh, how I tried when I was 12 to help make the Christmas cookies. I begged my mom for days to make them so I could try my hand at baking. I got bored with the cookies before they hit the oven. There were more interesting things to do, like watching "Holiday on Ice" starring Nancy Kerrigan. Which was more important, of course, because when would I ever get to see that again?

So baking took a back burner in my life until I was about 20. But I still loved it, I still thought about it a lot. Even now, I try to bake as often as I can, but life and grown up responsibilities get in the way. I'd still like to try my hand at going to a culinary school. Maybe one day opening my own bakery or even working as a pastry chef somewhere awesome in the world. That dream is never going to die and one day I plan on making that dream happen.

My second love (I should mention that baking is my third) is writing. When I was 10 I wrote my first short story, one that wasn't mandatory for school and I still remember it. It was set during the WWII era and it was about a Jewish girl named Hannah, her 2 best friends and their families as they dealt with the outcomes of war. Of course, every character was based on someone I knew or someone I wished I knew. Hey, I was 10. As much as I loved writing it, I dealt with it in true Michelle fashion: I stopped working on it when it got too tough to finish which lead to ultimate boredom in the story. But I was determined to be a professional writer when I grew up.

I kept writing and stopping, writing and stopping. I started high school with notebooks full of stories, all half-finished, of course (to this day I have shelves of these notebooks in my closet). I spent most of my time writing in them instead of paying attention in school. I have a knack for words on paper, but my two biggest problems are confidence and the follow-thru. I have no confidence my writing is good and I have yet to finish any of the books I've started. I can say it's the normal issues of time, but it's not like I can't write when I'm working a weekend shift. No, I find there are more important things to take up my time so I can avoid my issues with becoming a failure. I feel like I won't finish a book because then I'd send it in. and someone would read it. Someone other than my mom and best friends (who, lets face it, are a little biased because they love me) and they might say it's complete crap. And then where would my confidence in my writing be? In a drain somewhere next to old salami. Lately, I've gotten a little better. I keep writing and going even though it's one of the hardest things I've done. I realize I'm not that bad of writer and I've even managed to write 123 pages. That's a major first.

Which of course leads me to my first love: reading (which actually goes hand in hand with writing, so I think it should just be a tie). Everyone in my family reads. It's like some kind of fluke gene that's guaranteed to be passed down from generation to generation. Our biggest thing is reading in the bathroom because it's the one place you can find some actual solitude. Let's face it: no one wants to know what's going on behind the closed door and they're not about to check (scratch that: everyone over the age of 10. Your kids will burst right in regardless).

What was the point of this blog? Not really sure. More a venting session, I guess, about the 3 things I love (outside of my family and friends, of course) that I rarely get to do often anymore.

It's All In The Genes . . .

Every parent always looks for similarities between yourself and your kids. It's a given to find more things in common. I can see myself in B, in a lot of ways. I used to think that it was her just copying me, but I've found lately that's not true at all. Her dirty looks are all me and the fact that she's always talking (not a bad quality, it's something I really love about her) and she's a big fan of being overdramatic. The last one I chalk up to the fact that she's a girl and it's just what some of us do sometimes. She catches onto any new kind of technology pretty quickly. Like scary kind of quick. She's the girliest girl I've ever met, dresses, skirts, and boots and all, but insists she's a "tomboy girl". She's a tomboy because she likes to play baseball and watch football (she's a huge Patriots and Tom Brady fan, just like her mama. You don't want to be in our house on game day). I love it.

But, I digress. She loves to read. I'm really loves to read. She can sit and read for hours if you'd let her. Everyone on both sides of the family are big readers, so it isn't much of a shock. She started reading "Harry Potter" around the end of June. She finished the first book about a month later. She really wanted to watch the movie (and all the rest, too), but we had a deal that before she saw the movie, she had to read the book first. She can be very stubborn (another family trait) when she wants to, so she finished, and we watched. She was absolutely enthralled and started reading the 2nd book the next day. She was done reading three weeks later (Tuesday afternoon, to be exact) and immediately began reading book 3. As part of our deal, we had a slumber party watched "Chamber of Secrets". She loved the book more, but the movie was pretty good, too.

She's finally starting to understand why I'm such a big fan of reading the book before I see the movie. I'd rather compare the book to the movie, so I at least know where the author was going with their idea. As silly as it seems, the whole books ruinned for me if I watch the movie first because then I'm always comparing the book, thinking in my head "well, that's not what happened in the movie". My brain works a little funkier than most.

It's amazing, though. She's really enjoying those books and is practically eating them up. She can't get enough of books in general. It's great! I love everything about my baby girl, because everything about her is just so her, but this is one trait I'm really proud she has.