I have made excellent Lemon Drop martinis. They were a big hit at a dinner party.

I have been told that my brother-in-law received a new liver and is now recovering, post-transplant!

I have purchased a bunch of art supplies—what fun—to work on my art journaling class.

I have played numerous games of Uno with my five year-old and seven-year-old.

I have seen my own writing in our newspaper. A book review for an exercise book that I wrote in December was finally printed today.

I have visited my dad’s new home, about two hours away.

I have listened to Buddy Guy sing the blues. My husband is playing the CD downstairs right now.

I have watched What Not To Wear while exercising on our ellipse machine.

I have eaten an In- n- Out cheeseburger.

1. I’ve been keeping very busy lately with house and personal projects, and an art-journaling class that I’m taking. The class is so fun and offers a new twist to my writing. Letting my amateur artist out to play is a kick. Fortunately the girls have lot of art supplies, so I don’t go crazy getting all the great stuff in the art stores and catalogs.

2. The mug in front of me contains coffee, not tea. I’m determined that my crappy sleeping will not affect my days. At least til I crash this afternoon.

3. I scared myself walking in the hall, seeing my reflection in the mirror. I had forgotten that I grabbed two of the girls’little bright colored barrettes from the kitchen to hold my hair out of my eyes as I write. Thank God I didn’t answer the door like that.

4. We are having a new recipe for dinner tonight that I found at allrecipes.com. I needed a new chicken breast recipe, and Amy’s Garlic Egg Chicken apparently is in their Hall of Fame. It’s been marinating all night. We’ll see.

5. I’ve been informed that there are only 8 days left of preschool and 19 of first grade. What?? I’m actually looking forward to lots of time with the girls this summer but I just can’t believe that we will NEVER go to Noah’s Ark (the preschool) again and that J. will move up to the big-kiddedness of 2nd grade. You just gotta enjoy each stage, with its perks and its challenges, because the days pass by so quickly.

6. Doesn’t it seem like every TV show’s season finale is having someone die? Is there no other way to be interesting or dramatic? Maybe there isn’t, it just seems pervasive.

7. The weather has been sunny and lovely here lately, and now RAIN is actually predicted for Saturday when we are entertaining another family. Drat. I’ll just have to make some good cocktails to keep everything cheerful as the kids are all indoors.

Here are some quotes about writing that I like. Do you have any favorites you’d like to add?

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.
--Thomas Sowell

Writing is like anything else. You fail, you pick yourself up, and you try again. When you’re discouraged, you eat ice cream.
--Anna Quindlen

"The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe."
--David Hare

"Learn to write about the ordinary. Give homage to old coffee cups, sparrows, city buses, thin ham sandwiches. Make a list of everything ordinary you can think of. Keep adding to it. Promise yourself, before you leave the earth, to mention everything on your list at least once in a poem, short story, newspaper article."
--Natalie Goldberg

"One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a better place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now."
--Annie Dillard

"You have to allow yourself the liberty of writing poorly. You have to get the bulk of it done, and then you start to refine it. You have to put down less than marvelous material just to keep going to whatever you think the end is going to be—which may be something else altogether by the time you get there."
--Larry Gelbart, scriptwriter

“You just sit down and write everyday for three or four hours. You do it like piano scales until you have a story to tell.”
--Anne Lamott

The theme today actually IS unusual—that is, what’s unusual about me. I just can’t say the word “unusual” without singing the Tom Jones song. Anyway, this meme came from Emily of Mad Mommy Chronicles. The idea is to share six weird or interesting facts about yourself. Hmmm….only six?

1. I have shot a gun, as a child. I recall the backfire practically knocking me down.

2. In high school, I swam against the then-current (1984) Olympic gold medalist in my event because she was on a rival high school’s team. Guess who won.

3. My sisters are twins and I was terrified that I would have twins myself. The fear was compounded when it turned out that we had to seek fertility treatment.

4. I passed a lie detector test (while lying), which was part of the hiring process for a summer job. A few years later I received a check for $820 out of the blue, as part of a class action settlement against that employer, who used lie detector tests for hiring and promoting.

5. Although I made the dean’s list in college several times and graduated with honors, I really don’t think I’m that smart or articulate. When I excelled at work, I also thought it was not that great of an accomplishment—that I’m really a fraud.

6. My husband was my college roommate during my senior year. We, uh, liked each other pretty much right away despite the fact that I had a long term boyfriend back home.

If you want to share a weird fact or two about yourself, I’m listening…