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At first, I was hesitant to read a book about the tensions between blacks and whites in Mississippi during the 1960’s. I mean, haven’t we seen enough of that through Mississippi Burning and other such movies? Don’t they all end with some lead character getting beaten to death or something? No thanks. But Kathryn Stockett’s version of 1963 Mississippi is different. Beautiful in some ways. Heartbreaking in others. In “The Help”, there are three main point of view characters. Skeeter, a 20-something girl who has just graduated from the University of Mississippi and moved back home to live with her…

Yesterday’s drive was no fun. It was very long and I was oh so tired. I’m home now, but I’m exhausted. Overall, the trip was a lot of fun. I feel like I did a successful job splitting my time between my siblings, friends and parents. (A skill that must be studied and learned for many years before it can be perfected, lol.) Getting back into routine is never easy. Especially when you’re this tired. Will write more tomorrow.

I’m heading back to see my family in Georgia this weekend. For a long Easter weekend, really, since I leave tomorrow and won’t come back until Monday. It sounds so simple, but to be honest – going home can be complicated. I want to see everyone who is important to me, but with only a few days, it’s not easy to spread my time around in a way that makes everybody else happy. First, there’s my mother. She pretty much wants me to be with her the whole time. I think she’s beginning to understand more and more that I’m…

Okay, so we don’t really have a pet squirrel. There just happens to be a squirrel in our backyard most days. And in our front yard. And on our roof. And in our trees. He seems to be a friendly little thing. I don’t feed him or anything, but most afternoons when I open the back door to let Snickerdoodle (our pomeranian) outside to go potty, the squirrel is there, hanging out and watching. G had a theory that since Snickerdoodle has a bushy tail, maybe the squirrel thinks she is also a squirrel and not a dog. Hmmm…. maybe…

Last night, when G and I went to bed around 12:30, there was still about four and a half hours left on a tornado watch. G went right to sleep, but I stayed up reading for a bit, listening worriedly at the cracks of thunder and lightning and the pouring rain outside our window. Around 1:30, I finally fell asleep. The weather didn’t seem too bad. Just the occasional windy sound that rattled the neighbors’ wind chimes or the little bit of lightning that sometimes lit up the sky. Throughout the next few hours, I slept very light. With every…

No Golden Heart “call” for me yesterday. I’m not surprised, but I’m disappointed. And I’m definitely not alone. There are over 1000 other people feeling the same way today, and I know that some of them, maybe even most of them, are talented writers. The votes just didn’t come in their favor this year. And that’s part of the thing about writing and wanting to get published – disappointment is just part of it. It comes with the territory, so to speak. Some writers collect rejection slips by the hundreds before finally selling a manuscript. For some writers, it took…