The Craziest Stories Are Always True

So I'm about finished reading The magnificent shattered lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee by their son, Dodd Darin. I've read many biographies from classic stars such as Natalie Wood, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon and what I've come to realize is you just can't make this stuff up! The demons that lurk in the stories of real people far exceed anything I could conceive of.

The book itself is riveting and very well told for both people through chronology and quotes from those that knew them as well as quite a bit of information from Sandra Dee herself. The funniest thing I learned is that her mom lied about Sandra's age when she began modeling/acting and apparently, this didn't get around too much, even to this day and age. If you look at IMDB for instance, her birth year shows as 1942 when it really was 1944.

I developed my love of the old actors and movies from my mother. The difference is she loved them as performers and never liked knowing too much about what they were really like in life because it disillusioned her. I'm the opposite. No one is ever as perfect as they're portrayed in movies and I probably wouldn't like them if they were. Who wants to know about someone that 1 dimensional? And how crappy would you feel knowing someone that was perfect in every way?

Every person has flaws. As a writer I find the flaws are what give the character depth and I'm most impressed by those that can perform even against the greatest tragedies in their life. Sandra Dee for instance performed like everything was ice cream, rainbows and innocence when she had a very hard life and sad childhood. Natalie Wood performed even more powerfully and sought difficult roles because of her tragic life. I admire anyone that can rise above the worst and make the best they can of their lives. Cheers to those out there that do that each and every day.

You Get What You Pay For

In the search for savings I often resort to buying store brands such as Smith's bread. It's 10 for $10 and well, I'm not a big bread person so I'm not picky. However, you get what you pay for. My husband loves bread and complains about how thin and crumbly it is which leads to me buying one brand for him and another for myself which isn't really savings. However, if it doesn't matter, it certainly beats a coupon of $1 off something that's nearly $4 anyway and you can have it for a lot less. All a matter of taste. Most non-name brands work just as well but if you have someone in your house that loves something, you might want to make it worth the purchase.

Something fun for little ones is that every third Thursday a month, Southtown Mall has a "kids club". Free to join and my daughter even got a sport bottle and balloon out of the deal.

Shop Smart

For some reason, the line from Army of Darkness came to me for this post, "Shop smart. Shop S-Mart." Well we don't have an S-Mart but in the movie it looks a lot like Walmart which I just get agitated even being in the parking lot let alone going into the store so I don't shop there. When I was part of a double income family and my parents mentioned shopping at several stores to get the best deals I used to scoff, "Time is money." Well when you're not making money, time is something you can and should be able to afford. So this past weekend I did my first several store hits. I got cleaning supplies including a huge jug of detergent at Shopko-unbeatable price! Then the next day I proceeded to hit Reams and Maceys and followed up on Sunday by going to Smiths. Between those 3 grocery stores I saved about $36 dollars, that includes using those trusty coupons I now clip. With that little shopping spree I have about 2 weeks of breakfast, lunches, dinners-give or take a few items that I'll always need to shop for such as milk and some produce.

Will I do it every time? Very likely, no. But each store was competing for business this time around with case lot sales and such so now was the time to try it. At least on this venture I discovered where I could find items I couldn't find anywhere else. Such as chicken pastaroni-only at Reams now it seems and they also carry my Wild Strawberry energy Crystal Lite which is my "coffee". Harmons used to be where I shopped when I had those steady paychecks and occasionally I was still going back there for that Crystal Lite brand or their freshly made taco bowls. I bought a bake pan set which makes those just fine and have no plans to go back to Harmons as they are without a doubt, the most expensive of the stores. Reams has the best French Bread-very soft and fluffy.

For those with young children looking for something free to do when it's cold and yucky outside, I'm a big fan of tot time at the library. They have sooo many activities ranging from babies to adults. Check out their event calendar online. My daughter enjoys the tot time and then of course, playing in the kids section and pulling all the books off the shelf. It's something to do when it's cold and wet for outdoor playing.

Backstory

So this was really meant to be my first post on this cleaned out/revamped blog. I've read blogs, I've blogged for work and family but never really been a "blogger". I like to write books and I like to read them even more so I tend to view things from a writer's perspective, occasionally hearing a narrative in my head or seeing someone at the store and thinking, "I wonder what their story is." Because honestly, that's the thing. Everyone has a story but you rarely ever get to KNOW it.

Mine is well...I worked my way through college with plans on being an editor and an author. Of course, the whole deal was a catch-22 really because every place I looked into wanted someone with the schooling AND the experience. The catch being I had to work 50 hours a week for a company that did tuition reimbursement in order afford college so I didn't have the time to get the experience other than editing my work and that of friends and family which doesn't really play out on the resume' deal.

So I changed jobs, was promoted to a supervisor position and during that time I worked on my book Deadly Pride and found a publishing house to publish it-yay! Not long after I became a mom. I was able to continue juggling things: work, kid, 50's housewife cleaning/cooking but my writing took a dive. I was lucky that I'd finished the sequel to Deadly Pride and written Immortal Protector during my pregnancy-I knew it'd be a long time before I was writing again and boy was I right! In fact, this is probably the most writing I've done since I had my daughter.

When my daughter was nearly 2, things became too hard-hard on her and on me with the separation and well my company was cutting people. I became a full-time mom. So now I've had to start budgeting things differently. I started clipping coupons-gasp! Which I'd never done before because I wasn't worried about the money and honestly didn't have the time. I got on coupons.com but that still wasn't enough. And doing online surveys which can sometimes be more time consuming than they're worth when you have a toddler clamoring for your attention. Recently I read Point, click, and save: Mashup mom's guide to saving and making money online. Now I have subscribed to so many coupons/savings/deals newsletters I'm bombarded most every day as well as on freelance sites where even now, I still hope to land an editing gig. As much as I love to read, I can't imagine a better job because when you edit, you don't need to worry about writer's block!

So for blogging on this site, it may be for deals, experiences, parent/child activities and perhaps the occasional book posting-either something I've read or written or tried to write. I also am trying to jump start my author site so we'll see how both or either of them go. The key to writing they say, is just write and I've been tapped for creative energy lately but being an English major, I can ramble on with the best of them. :) Ciao for now!

New Book

I had planned to get around to doing a full on intro for this blog, kind of a background on me and what to expect from this blog but I ended up working on my new book instead and finally had it e-published yesterday so yay! Let's start with that!

Immortal Protector now available in Kindle and soon to be available in paperback from Createspace.

More detailed info coming, when my 2 year old gives me a few minutes. :)