What's Up?

Hello! I've missed y'all and my time at the computer lately. Things have been so crazy here, I've not had time to play in Blogaritaville much! Here's a taste of what's been up with me...and I hope you'll leave a note telling me what you've been doing. And after all your Turkey Day doings are over and you've digested your food, come back by this weekend for a great contest with wonderful prizes. If you're a reader or a writer, you'll wanna enter! [No more hints for now. Aren't I mean? Mmwahahahaha!]

To say it was fun being an extra in the HBO series TREME would be an understatement. That's what I did at the beginning of the week. Got to be in on the filming for an episode at Commander's Palace in New Orleans for a Thanksgiving 2006 scene. If you're not familiar with this fabulous post-Katrina saga, you need to be. Cool cast, director, plot line! I think they said the second season will begin airing in April, so I'll let ya know if I "make the cut."

Now, how are your Thanksgiving preps coming along? Mine are just flying into place...because we're eating at Cracker Barrel this year! LOL. Family and friends are all spread out, plus it's *insert dark piano chords here* [bom, bom, bom...] hunting season, which means all the hunter men and women want to scoot out for the woods as soon as the last fork full of food is consumed. Yep, eating out is a great alternative to the "full bird spread" and all that cooking/cleaning involved in loading down the banquet table, y'all!

Besides, who can cook/clean/prepare with a whole like this in their kitchen ceiling? Yep, this is what happens in Gumbo Writer's world when we decided to have the attic insulated to save on utility costs for the Ledbetter clan. After a whole day of blowing insulation into the attic, a workman went to inspect the job and...well, you get the picture. So now, as we "speak," another workman is on his way back for the fifth time to work on patching/painting the large area that had to be re-sheet rocked. Soooo, no, Nana is not cooking this year in all that mess. But she is excited that her stepdaughter family will be arriving shortly. Hope they don't mind a few construction obstacles! Jessica and kidlets' visit reminds me to mention we'd all appreciate your prayers for her hubby who's serving a year in Afghanistan. The holidays are hard for them all. GOD BLESS OUR MILITARY AND THEIR FAMILIES!!!

Now, just to keep things really interesting, I've got an ethnography job (where you collect data for a research company) on Black Friday shopping and crowds. UG! But the money is good. LOL. Sooooo....I'll be out from 2:00 am til 7:00 am observing the insanity that is post-Turkey Day shopping. Oh boy.

So, no, I haven't gotten a lick of anything writing related done! How 'bout you?

Now...what've YOU been up to lately????

HAPPY AND BLESSED THANKSGIVING TO ALL YOU WHO CELEBRATE IT, AND A WONDERFUL WEEKEND AS WELL! XXO

At the Hospital

Sorry no recipe or writerly stuff this week. My "baby" (18, almost 6-ft. tall, and real hairy) has been trying to shake off a case of mono for over a month. Long story short, he had a relapse with a vengence. High fever, aches, an almost-closed throat from swollen glands, and feeling just horrible all over, and like his head was on fire. He needed more help than a fever reducer and a steroid were giving him.

Being at the hospital in the pediatric ward has been nice. The IV of fluids and meds has brought his burning fever down, so he's finally feeling human again. As a bonus (and so no one will steal him or give him to the wrong mom...LOL), we have matching paper ID bracelets! 

So, I'll see y'all next week. Until then, have a great weekend. Do something nice for someone in need...and also for yourself. :D  *hugs*

Friday Foibles ~~ An "EL OH EL" from the Family Files

Oh boy, it's the weekend! {Anybody wanna come help me with my daughter's garage sale...the daughter who's still sleeping when we have so much to do to get ready?!}

Before I unveil today's funny, how's about sending a few prayers to Louisiana and the Gulf area? Not only are we dealing with the BP oil spill disaster...now Hurricane Bonnie has us in her evil sites! Ug.

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Okay...this really did make me laugh out loud: daughter "Queenie" recently reached the age of majority, so my twin and a friend threw her a painting party at a local park facility. Everyone had fun, did some creative painting over canvas covered with modge podge-coated newspaper strips of a zebra striped high heel shoe, and natch, downed some good vittles.

The following is the thank-you card Queenie's father and I received for the twenty-first birthday bash. It's one of the perks that makes changing poopy diapers and dealing with teenage drama all worth it ~~

And just in case your eyes are as old as mine, the note says:

Mom & Dad,

Thanks for the AMAZING birthday party and for being such loving and caring parents. I couldn't ask for better role models. I love you both will all my heart.

"heart" Queenie

PS: Mom - thanks for the 9 months & 32 hours [32 hours was my labor time]
      Dad - thanks for the initial 10 seconds. :)

Pomp & Circumstance

Baby #3 is graduating tonight. I couldn't be more proud of him! "Court Jester" has been accepted into LSU's Chemical Engineering college, and starts a Trig. course this summer while working at a local electronics store. I'll be smiling big with camera in hand as my last little one marches down the aisle with his high honors stole gleaming. :)

Note to son ~~ Wonderful things and people await you. Choose wisely, embrace as much of the good stuff as you can, and remember how much you are loved! Now clean up your room! :D Love, Mom

*photos by novemberwolf

Signs of Spring/Summer & Mother's Day Montage

Thank you for your incredible support and words of sympathy and comfort you've shared on the loss of my mom last week. You blogger and real life friends, you...you are the epitome of the best of the Web and life. 'Preciate you!

May all the beauty in nature be yours, the time to enjoy it be plentiful, and the realization be ever yours that loveliness always surrounds us if we choose to see it. [See local visual aids below. Hehe.]

Happy Mother's Day to the moms, stepmoms, nurturers, givers, and take-care-of-ers! :) You are BEAUTIFUL!

Love, Angie ~~ who is rejoining the Blogosphere once again. Yay!

Sad Day

After an heroic 2-1/2 year battle with brain cancer, my beautiful mom passed away yesterday afternoon at home, where we'd cared for her through the long journey. I will miss her...have missed her for a long time already now, but am happy she has gotten her wings and flown far from her earthly cage.

You can remember her by doing this -- complain little [never once in 30 months did Mother complain, although it would only be natural to do so] and laugh long [Mom was still chuckling up until a few days ago].

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Thank you for your kindnesses, your prayers and thoughts. They are much appreciated. And especially to our Kathryn Magendie who's hosted several posts about Mom's health.

May love and passion for the things that fulfill you be ever present in your life! 


*Photo taken yesterday afternoon in front of my mom's house.

Shoveling Out!

Hey y'all! Boy have I missed you and keeping up with what's going on in your lives, with your writing, your holidays, this crazy cold weather we're having, and all manner of things.

With the help of the shovel over there, I *think* I've just about dug myself out of life's avalanche which has had me buried for the last weeks of my unexpected absence from the Blogosphere and Twitterville. Whew! Won't go into details (everybody's got their own set of problems), but I do want to say THANKS SO MUCH for your emails checking in to see if I'm okay and sending well wishes. I always knew y'all were the real deal, and I really appreciate your friendship and kindness.

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We've been working hard to get our winter issue of Rose & Thorn Journal out this Friday, so I hope you'll sign up for the quarterly newsletter (which is tres beautiful) so you'll get a reminder when new issues come out. Lotsa beautiful poetry, art and prose to warm you up this frigid winter season...so go sign up, ya hear? It's super quick & easy.   :) 

The new R&T blog features writerly stuff on Wednesdays, so add that to your hump-day To-Do list! Today there's a really interesting interview you writing people might enjoy. Here's a blurb: "Brian Wilkins is the editor of Scarab, a literary magazine for the iPhone." How cool is that concept? And there's also an interview with Kristina Darling that went up last week which gives readers a peek into the processes and thoughts of a poetry & prose writer.

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I'm going to be on a shortened posting schedule for the time being, which will give me time to visit your blogs. I'll put up weekly recipes (good, cheap, easy), writerly nuggets of all kinds, and fun foibles & jokes as I find 'em.

Love to all y'all. It feels great to be back!

Photo by pictureperfectpose

To Do List [Page 1 of 4]

Hello from your absentee Blogland friend! I've missed you terribly, but have been running 90-to-nothing trying to keep ahead of all the alligators snapping at my heels for the last month. Don't ask. At this point, with a kaput PC and various other troubles and woes, I'm more than ready for the new year to dawn...and hopefully it will be bringing better times with it.

How are you doing with your holiday preps? As you can see from page 1 of my own To Do list, I'm wayyyyyyyy behind this year. All my plans to shop ahead by supporting online vendors, artisans and artists mostly got sidetracked. And for the first time *ever* I didn't even put up a Christmas tree or decorations. (Wahhhhh!)

Anywho, as soon as I dig out from under life's avalanche, I'll be back on regular rotations here in Blogaritaville. Until then, don't forget about me, k?   ;)

Now...what's the biggest item on YOUR current to do list?

Missing You

Hello bloggy friends, and thanks to all of you who've checked in to see where I've been and if I'm okay!

I'm fine...just up to my eyeballs in alligators. {That's a local expression for handling a lotta problems at once.}   :) 

I think of y'all every day, hoping you're all doing great, getting ahead, getting ready for the upcoming holidays and/or making progress on your writing projects.

I'll be back tomorrow with a new Boudreaux & Thibodaux joke. Until then, hug your loved ones and take care of YOU.

Huggage, Angie

October Photos

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, ALL YOU BLOGGIN' GOBLINS!

Below are a few random photos I've taken in the last month, just in case you don't have fall festival or Hallo-weinie plans and would like a peek into my so-called life, or at least the things that make me grab my camera.  

Bandit, the cutest Boston Terrier ever, with his little piggy toy

from Aunt Kat (which he promptly tore to shreds after the picture).

Scale model of downtown Baton Rouge in the lobby of the Welcome Center.

A nice variety of textures, colors and natural items.

Best cheesecake ever from Gio's Mezza Luna - one of my fav. restaurants.

The gecko that ate my parents' neighbors' roof.

Mural on downtown New Orleans building by Louisiana artist

George Rodrigue. "Art is a timeless expression of a moment."  

Me (eww), Kathryn/Kat Magendie and Cynthia Toups

(Rose & Thorn's Managing Editor) at the Louisiana Book Festival

where Kat spoke about her book Tender Graces.

Primitive artist Alvin Batiste at work at the

Turning Leaf Festival in St. Francisville, LA.

Lovely roses in a buttery color with tangerine tips.

Kids swinging on an old oak's branch at the Turning Leaf

Festival. (Yeah, the leaves are all still green, but the festival

in the park was nice. Plenty of artists and crafters on hand.)

The Pecking Order

Do you believe sibling birth order predicts behavior, character traits, and even life success or failure rates?

Where do you fall in the birth order lineup?

Friday Foibles ~~ Marital Mahem

Hope you're enjoying these little TGIF fun-starters. Ah, the human condition, with all its warts and zits, hunh?

Today's entry comes from my own shameful personal case files.

Really, I'm a low maintenance, non-diva, decidedly un-fishwiferly type spouse. Very little is required to make me happy; common courtesy and consideration, honesty and equitable arrangements. Now, is that too much to ask, I ask you?

Things that bother my married women friends -- dirty shoes in the house, long spousal working hours (or God forbid, a job that entails  lots o' travel), loud personally offensive bodily noises, bad table manners, neglectful parenting practices, refusal to share household chores, sports addictions...you get the picture. Those things flow like so much murky water under my marital bridge.

But what does bother me (or, "get my goat," as is the popular old regional saying goes), is something I've fought valiantly, but without any success, to correct lo these 25 years now......



......I mean........REALLY?.......

And what's your relationship pet peeve?

Running Behind Again

Photo by JDAC

I've been AWOL from Bloggerville lately, and didn't have time to post yesterday, so you know things are crazy in my world with family stuff, getting the fall issue of Rose & Thorn ready, school meetings, house cleaning, cooking, blah blah blah. I think yesterday was the first time in a year and three weeks I've missed posting daily!

I'm remedying that today by doing some blog hopping to catch up on what's been going on with y'all. If you haven't entered the new book title contest, check out Monday's post and give it a whirl. There are some great entries already (50+ of 'em!), and they're fun to read even if you don't want to enter one of your own.

So...what's been sucking up all your free time of late?

More Than You EVER Wanted to Know About Me

Mandy over at Mandy's Life After 30 tagged me a while ago for this game, so I'm finally playing along. (I'm not tagging anyone else...being the bad rule breaker that I am, but if you wanna do it at your blog, feel free!)

Meme Rules: Respond and rework. Answer the questions on your blog, replace one question you dislike with a question of your own invention. Then tag a few people to answer the questions.

1) What’s your current obsession? Bad reality TV, reading, great food, learning more about my camera, writing....I better stop here.

2) What’s your weirdest obsession? My family would probably say it's how much I love picking zits. (Don't hate me.)

3) What are you wearing today? As usual, scrubs.


4) Why is today special? Because I ate lunch with a good friend AND I got a nap.

5) What would you like to learn to do? Take better photos.


6) What’s the last thing you bought? Lunch for a friend yesterday and dry cleaning I had to pick up.


7) What are you listening to right now? One son coming in the house, the dog begging for attention, and the sound of my fingers tapping on the keyboard.

8) What’s your favorite weather? Cool with no humidity -- rare things in Louisiana.


9) What’s your most challenging goal right now? Balancing life as a wife & mother of three (17, 18, 20) and taking care of my mom while trying to revise my ms and work on other writing projects.


10) What do you think about the person who tagged you? Great gal!


11) What's your favorite guilty pleasure? Eating food that's not good for me and catching a nap. In that order. One after the other.


12) Favorite vacation spot? Love the beach, but anywhere that's quiet and I can be in nature.

13) What would you like to have in your hands right now? A finished and lovely manuscript!

14) What would you like to get rid of? Clutter & negative/selfish people. 

15) If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go? To a deserted island with a good book. 

16) Which language do you want to learn? Agentese. :D


17) What super power would you like to possess? I'd like to be able to shoot rainbows out of my fingertips. LOL

18) What’s your favorite thing about the city you live in? Baton Rouge is an awesome conglomeration of cultures. A beautiful melting pot of flavors, peoples, foods, you name it.

19) What’s your favorite piece of clothing in your own closet? A vintage dress and coat with fake fur collar. And my thrift store pointy yellow cowboy boots!

20) What’s your dream job? Slush pile reader. And co-owner of a literary journal. Oh, wait....I have the second one! :)


21) What is the last thing that happened that made you laugh really hard? Some obnoxious gross thing my husband did last night.


22) Do you admire anyone’s style? My twin sister has great style and panache. I have none.


23) Describe your personal style. Slouchy, comfortable, blah.

24) Who’s fashion show would you want tickets to? I love some of the work on this season's Project Runway. (See guilty pleasure list above.)  


25) What talent would you like to have? Keeping mouth closed more often.


26) What are you most proud of? My kidlets, of course!


27) If you could choose one person to have lunch with who would it be and why? A famous Noo Yawk literary agent who's read my manuscript and could rake me over the coals tell me exactly what to do with/to my women's fiction manuscript.
 
Now, if you read through all that drivel, THANKS! How about answering #4 (Why is today special?) in comments and/or tell me what you think about memes?
 

Mondays Aren't Always Bad!

Photo by Tatters:)

What a weekend! Thanks for all your one-year-old Blogiversary and Happy 50th wishes you shared over the last few days. Friends like you? "That's what it's all about..." as the Hokey Pokey song says!

I've had lots o' good stuff happening lately (besides the couple of milestones), and I'm hoping the same for y'all. Here's the short list:

• 
  
  Received my contributor's copy of Christmas Traditions: True Stories that Celebrate the Spirit of the Season and a check. (Shoutin' out to Terri Tiffany whose story appears in the same anthology!)
• 
  
  Oldest son earned his Eagle Scout ranking, making his mom one proud old lady who's hoping to repeat the process with younger son next year.
• 
  
  Major major progress is being made on the building of our new website home and newsletter for Rose & Thorn Journal. Myself and Kat Magendie, author of Tender Graces and hard at work on her sequel Secret Graces, hope when we have our open house, you'll come check out the new digs for our shiny sweet literary journal. The fall issue will be out next month on the fifteenth! (**Major kudos to Team Toups for the webmastering and construction, and to Susan Kramer for the newsletter revamping!)
• 
  
  I'm gonna be guest posting at agent Rachelle Gardner's wildly popular blog. Wheee! Here's a bit of her announcement of the chosen twelve:

"A big thank you to the nearly 180 entrants in my guest blog contest! It wasn't easy, but I've finally had a chance to choose my Guest Bloggers for the rest of the year."

So that's the scoopage from Gumbo Writer. May your week begin and continue in the same good vein. And since I'm on a roll...anybody wanna come tackle this mound of dirty clothes in the laundry room for me? Okay, well I love ya anyway! :D

9/12/2009: It's Official ~~~

I'm old as dirt!

Wonderful daughter "Queenie" planned and executed a surprise party for her mom and Nanny (my twin sister) to celebrate the Big Five-Oh last night. Isn't the cake awesome? 

It was a fun gathering of friends, family, and a heaping pot of delicious jambalaya with fixings. Both sons were on hand to help out, and DH (that's "Dear Husband" today, instead of the normal "Deer Hunter") sweated over the jambalaya pot and provided the checkbook.  

WARNING: If you see photos on someone's FaceBook, or a grainy youtube video or any other cyber likeness of Gumbo Writer playing beer pong with teenagers, let's just say it's my identical twin Alaine. :D 

Happy weekend, and may you find yourself surrounded by the important things in life: good friends and family!

*Special thanks to sister Dee for taking my shift to care for Mom so I could attend the party; to Denise for hosting the soiree; to everyone who hauled ice chests, food, tables, the daquiri machine; to Patricia for loaning us the 70s CDs; to Stacy for the beautiful flower delivery, and everyone who was able to come celebrate the POOY (Passing of our Youth) with us!

If you're 50th is still looming, what do you dread or look forward to the most? If you've already "made it," how did you celebrate?

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

"Table for one, monsieur?"

That's my bad bad Boston Terrier asleep on the patio table. He's 7 1/2 months old and in need of obedience school, but he's beaucoup fun to have around. Let's just say he fits into the family well. 'Nuff said.

Seeing him sprawled on the tabletop asleep like this yesterday brought to mind a question for Monday's useless trivia/brain food/brain teaser topic:

If you could dine with anyone (dead, alive or even a fictional character), who would you choose? And, hey, dinner's on me, so knock yourself out. *grin*

Hope your week is productive and without an ounce of stress!

How Twins are Made

And here's the "old school" version of me (left) and my twin sister:

Please Help My Husband!

King Rufus may shortly be residing in the doghouse. Why? Because today is the 25th anniversary of our wedding day...and he has suggested several possible gifts for me to celebrate the big Silver Anniversary.

So far, so good, right? Yeah...but here are the ideas he's run past me so far and in his own words:

A.) "Hon, how's about a new rod & reel, or I can paint your old one silver?"

B.) "What about one of them 'Dykeson' vacuum cleaners with them roller balls? I think they're silver colored."

C.) "Wow...ya wanna new bass boat? I saw a fine sparkly silver one at Bass Pro."

D.) "How's about a new mixer?"

I would certainly appreciate your ideas on an appropriate gift for the mother of King Rufus' 17-, 18- and 19-year-olds...not to mention the twenty-five years of wedded bliss. And most assuredly he will appreciate your help so that he will not be banished to his new abode in the backyard.

Thanks.

For Better and For Worse

To my wonderful parents who, for 51 years, have been the embodiment of good marriage and true partnership. Love you.