It’s a Mother’s Day CONTEST!!!!

Come one.  Come all.  Step right up and enter to win a GRAND PRIZE for you or a mother dear to your heart this Mother’s Day.

What would every mother want?  A diamond ring?  No. (Could get lost while playing in the sand at the park!) A new MiniVan!  No. (Take it from my experience, after you hit someone in a minivan, they are not that great any more!)  A dozen roses! No (They wilt in no time, especially if you bought them at Walmart!)

Maybe something to bring joy to her heart.  Something to make her laugh…. and snort… and laugh some more!  Yes, you guessed it!  A Book!  YES!

Yes, a FREE autographed copy of my book Laughing in the Midst of Mothering!  Every mother you know needs a laugh!  This book can be yours (for your mom if you aren’t a mom) by merely entering your name in the comments section of this blog.

You have until May 5th midnight to enter.  On May 6th, after I sleep in, I will randomly draw one name from the list and announce the winner here on MSJ.  I will blast the name for all to see.  The winner will have 24 hours to contact me with an address for where to ship the book.  If person #1 doesn’t contact me, I will draw another name on May 7th.  :o)

It’s Time to Laugh!

My second book came out last week titled Laughing in the Midst of Marriage: Finding Joy in Being a Wife.  It is stocked full of humorous stories of married life guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.  I finished writing the devotional in March… and funny thing…. I needed to re-apply some of the truths even before it was in print.  Nice.  As we’re all in the married process, we’ll continue to live, learn and laugh along the way.

Knowing the book was coming, I’m not quite sure why I didn’t jump on the available time pre-book to get it on my website, but I didn’t.  Sorry!  It is in the works.  So if you are interested in purchasing an AUTOGRAPHED copy at this time (pre-LindaCrosby.com sales) there are a few options:

1.  Mail a check to me:

Linda Crosby 2416 W. Cordia Ln., Phoenix, AZ  85085

2.  Pay with a credit card through Paypal.  If you have a Paypal account this is easy.  Enter my email address:  rixgal@cox.net.  Next, enter the amount and click continue. Please make a note in the message box that this is for the MARRIAGE book.  (It’s pretty easy if you don’t have an account too, just a bunch of info to fill in first.)

3.  Come to my house and save on shipping.  Call first and I’ll have cookies coming out of the oven.

4.  Buy books at our church from now until Oct. 13th (and combine it with Tim Hawkins tickets for Date night Oct. 16th and SAVE $$!)

5.  Buy books from my sister, Christy.  She has a box of fresh ones sitting at her house.

The books are $10.99 plus shipping of $2.20.  (This is a MSJ discounted price! Oh My!)  TOTAL: $13.19 US Funds.  For multiple copies, please email me or leave a message here and I’ll cut you a deal on shipping.

Thank you so much for your support and love.  This is quite the adventure and I’m blessed that you are on this slippery ride with me!

Sweet Victory! (well, at least sweet progress!)

See?!  It worked!  I took a two day sabbatical from MSJ and cranked on my stories for my book.  (Laughing in the Midst of Marriage: Finding Joy in Being a Wife) I was so “in the groove” after Wed. night hockey writing time (wasn’t that phrased positively?!?) that I got back out of bed at midnight and wrote two more stories while the family sawed logs. 

Just so you know, I’m a highly visual learner.  I have to SEE progress…. on charts and graphs and calendars.  I’ve made all three for this book.  So I made a chart of all of the devotionals I’m writing, divided into the four wedding vows: Better or Worse, Rich or Poor, Sickness and Health, and Love and Cherish.  (I’m not doing “til death do us part….. those stories cannot be shared in this lifetime.)  Each story has  five columns to check off before I consider it “done” and they are: written (duh), moral, Bible verses, edited and moved to final document. 

I’m sure this is scintillating information for all of you, so I will continue.  I’m shooting for 56 stories and 27 have made it through to the final document so far.  I’m one shy of half way, baby.  This is good news, considering that I was only able to work on it six of the 18 time slots I scheduled.  The problem there was the SuperCon super hero dance deal.  It wiped out a week of work time for me.  (I’m still feeling the pull in my hip flexor muscles, BTW.) But I’m back in the saddle and quite focussed for a change.

See?!?  I’m a bit on the anal side, as well as visual.  I gave myself 20 two hour work slots for Feb.  The pink circles are progress.  Notice how Wednesday night hockey practice has been my saving grace this month?  I never thought I’d be happy to sit at hockey practice.  Ever.  But I am.  Just so you are aware of my progress, there are 57 two hour slots before the deadline.  If I got one story done EACH time, it’s clear sailing.  I just passed the 17th time slot and there are 27 stories completed.  As you can well imagine, I’m breathing easier than I was a week ago.  I was a tad nervous last week.

It did dawn on me last night that I never discussed how many stories the publisher is expecting.  Perhaps I should give them a jingle.  Stay tuned…. every other day or so…. for YOUR insider information on the writing progess of Laughing/Marriage right here at MSJ.

Le freak, c’est chic. Freak out!

Sing it with me…. “Aaaaaaaaahhhhh, Freak Out!” 

Enjoying every moment of non-stress Christmas break, I was spending a To-Do-List-Less day minding my own business, when BAM! 

Actually, I spent about an hour online last Thursday morning choosing a Conversational Spanish class that is offered at a local community college for eight weeks.  I knew it would be hard (due my 42 year old brain… and a 25 year gap from my last Spanish class) and time consuming (twice a week for 3 hours) but I feel like I need to take it before we go to Colombia.  I found the textbook.  I found the school.  I called Rick and informed him that we would need to find a ride to hockey for Keeve for eight Wednesday nights.  OK, then BAM! happened.

I phoned Michelle, my editor in Nashville, to report a printing glitch that was found in one of my books, Laughing in the Midst of Mothering.  (www.LindaCrosby.com) After discussing the hows and whys of printing boo-boos, she casually mentioned that the week before she had presented my next book, Laughing in the Midst of Marriage, to the board of the publishing house and they gave it the thumbs up!   Whooooooo Hoooooooo!  She mentioned September for having it out!  Thrilling!  Yes! 

We hung up… and the Freak Out part started.  Where in the world was the file folder with my “book”?  I was on the phone with my sister while digging through my bedside table, pulling piles out from under my bed, shoveling stuff off my desk.  It only took me about five minutes to locate the collection of stories.  Then I remembered the minor computer faux pas that “hid” my entire computer profile…. including all my writing.  GREAT!  Thanks to my new best friend in the world, Missy’s Ken, the files were recovered… but they are not in a working file.  So today I spent my free time transferring and copying files so I can get down to business.

All that to say, I’m so excited about the marriage book and I won’t be taking Conversational Spanish any time soon.

Wrapped up in Elvis

Remember back a few months ago when I was celebrating the end of my boys’ hockey seasons??? (https://mysistersjar.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/the-fat-lady-sang-tonight/) Well, it all started again tonight.  <sigh> There I was in my cute, little silver flip-flops and denim shorts wrapped in a purple and lime green fleece Elvis blanket in the ice arena.  (Thank God someone left it in the van!) I’m trying excruciatingly hard to have a good attitude about this.  It’s a lot of driving… a lot of time away from the family dinner table… a lot of money…. but I knew all this when I married a Canadian hockey lover.  One of his first purchases five years before we had children was a pair of size 3 flannel Edmonton Oilers pajamas…. then we had a daughter first…. so we kept the Oilers jams in a hope chest for EIGHT years until our son was born… then two more years til they fit him.  I should have caught on that there was a slight addiction problem.  I’ve named it H.A.D., Hockey Attachment Disorder.  I don’t believe there is a cure at present.  I’ve been H.A.D.

 The actual fleece!!

Back to my excruciating good attitude.  I’ve decided that I must make the best of my Wednesday night drive time (one hour total) and my sitting time (one hour total).  (This is for son #2…. I’m not counting son #1… hoping that Dad will always be available for him.  His practices require driving for 1.5 hours and sitting for 2 hours…. TWICE a week.)  Having a good attitude.  Having a good attitude.  Having a good attitude. O.K.

So tonight, sitting on a freezing cold bleacher bench, I coordinated two of my four calendars, my month-at-a-glance purse calendar and my weekly To-Do calendar with check-off boxes.  (Yes, a bit anal here, but anal people get LOTS done.)  I have not found a pre-made week-at-a-glance calendar that is compact but still has 6-7 lines per day… so each January 1st I make my own out of a Walmart notebook.  This year’s was quite fat, so I’ve used pages in the back for various lists, secret codes, etc.  One such list I happened upon tonight that I haven’t read since I made it in March.  It is the list of stories for a book I plan to write titled Squeezing Laughter into a Leotard: Devotions for Above Average Women.  It’s about weight loss and weight gain and weight loss and weight gain and weight loss and weight gain and God.  I was a bench or two away from several other hockey moms and dads, but as I read the story notes I laughed out loud twice and constrained myself several other times, so they wouldn’t think I’m completely nuts.  This was the burst of energy and kick in the pants I needed to direct my hockey time.  My laptop will now be traveling with my to the Ice Den each week.  I’m itching to get started.

Can I just say that if you have a rapid metabolism and are mortified when you’re bloated and need a size 5 …. you won’t comprehend the stories I’m writing.  You may think they are humorous, but you will NEVER understand with compassion what people who struggle with their weight deal with minute by minute.  It’s like a being married to someone with H.A.D…. you don’t understand unless you’ve walked in my skates.

Wish me luck.. better yet pray for God’s voice to speak truth to a hockey mom wrapped up in Elvis on Wednesday nights.  :o)