Yay! I emailed the lucky lady last night and I’m just waiting for her to get back to me before I let you know who won.

*Update* She got back to me. Congratulations Gail! She said she was doing the happy dance all the way out her door this morning.

Love it!

Okay, I still have a goodreads drawing going here if you haven’t entered. It’s for a signed print copy of PUSHED and I will be starting a new “build a giveaway” soon when it gets closer to PERSUADED being released. I’m also working on talking my narrators into visiting my site and doing a giveaway with some audio codes for not just my books, but the huge backlist of authors this couple has done narrations for. Do any of you guys listen to audio books?

Now onto Honey. As most of you know, we’re in the middle of a remodel and Honey did the unthinkable. He touched MY stuff. He actually packed it up and put it into storage. *gasp* I had no idea how much of a control freak I was until I was losing sleep over not getting my giveaways in the mail immediately after they ended. That’s my thing, but it’s kind of hard to do when the stuff you’re giving away isn’t available to pack up. Eek!

No worries now. I can assure you Honey will NOT be doing anything like that again. Between me nagging him every day and him having to spend two hours on two different Sundays going through the storage unit he’d packed so beautifully, this will never happen again. Promise.

Other than all this, we’ve had an interesting couple of weeks. The flooring we ordered and then had to return because they sent the wrong color the first time, arrived for the second time not right. Here’s the conversation.

Honey puts four tiles down in the corner of the living room, and I hike a brow at him. “Who is that for?”

He scowls. Did I mention when Honey does this his eyes get all dark and glassy? “You’re joking, right? This is the tile you ordered.”

I didn’t even blink. “No it’s not.”

“But it’s the bone color you wanted. See?”

Like he had to pick up one and stick it under my nose. This nose knows that the frigging tile he was trying to sell me on was wrong. “It’s not the right tile. This one has the irregular edges I didn’t want. It has to go back.”

And *looks right at you* when I say it I really mean the whole ton of a shipment the tile company loaded on skids in his truck.

“I’m not taking this back. Now you’re just being picky.”

*Head snaps around so I can glare up at him* “Picky? It’s the wrong style. I could have lived with the wrong shade the first time better than this.” *cough, cough* Not that I would have but…

“So now you tell me.”

Okay, I get it. He was just as frustrated as me with these screw ups, but unlike him, I was prepared to do something about it. Yes. It was time we looked at this a different way. “If they can’t get this right, I think we should go with the wood I chose in the first place. You know the one. It cost three times as much and will take you twice as long to install.”

He blinked and then took a deep breath. Two actually, before he gave me a “touché” grin. “We’ll have the right tile here by Wednesday.”

As he walked off it occurred to me. The sneaky bugger knew it was the wrong tile all along and had already anticipated my reaction. What did this mean? I was going to have to watch him like a hawk. Did I ever tell you about the time I picked out paint for our living room and he had a crew come in to paint the whole place while I was working? Would have been a nice surprise if he’d picked up the right color. Get this. He lost the sample swatch I’d given him that morning that had the paint brand and tint mix formula on it, so he decided to wing it.

Yeah right.

I picked a light taupe color and what I walked into was poo brown. The upside of that disaster? I talked Honey into believing he was color blind and couldn’t ever be trusted with these kinds of decisions again…but then, after this tile color issue, maybe the guy is color challenged and I haven’t been lying to him all these years.

Oh, well. Let’s forget about paint, shall we? Here’s hoping that one day I’ll have my floors done. *le sigh*

On a better note I did receive some very good writing news recently. I’ll be sharing that with you soon. But for now, check this out. Last Friday, after working out all the good news details, I decided to celebrate. So when Honey got home I asked him to make me a dirty martini. I love them. That’s why I reserve them for being a celebratory drink. *gives you the side-eye* Otherwise I could turn into a lush suffering from massive salt retention. I love the olives, but they don’t love me. You know what I’m saying? But I digress. Where was I?

Honey and I had just sat down to enjoy the cocktail hour when my son sent a text me. (Normally I don’t text when I’m sitting with anyone unless it’s the kids, so…) Here’s the digital conversation.

Hi Mom. How’s your day going? Are you working?

Hey, babydoll (yeah he’s 6’3” and all grown up but he’s still my boy) things are great! I’m sitting here celebrating with a martini.

At this point I expected him to shoot back something along the lines of, “What’s the good news?” Or “What are you celebrating?” At the very least I expected, “????” This would explain why I had to stare at my phone screen for a few seconds before I fully comprehended his words. This is what he sent back:

Called it. Dad IS an alien.

I about died laughing when I realized autocorrect had changed martini to Martian. Honey wasn’t amused until I assured him he could be one of those Predator alien guys not the little green ones with the really big eyes. He was okay with that. *shakes head* Men!

Speaking of shaking heads. Imagine me leaving the cool confines of my office last Saturday afternoon and braving the 90+ degree weather, going out to our backyard. Why, you may ask? Well, after having the power company working right outside my office window all week, making all kind of noise trying to correct a buried cable, I was in no mood to listen to more grinding, sawing, and banging. All of which Honey was doing. I get out there and Honey looks like he’d been swimming in a swamp. He was soaked and filthy. Did I care? Nope.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m fixing the hole in the fence.” When he stood a mountain of debris fell off him and I actually stepped back the second he used his shirt to wipe the copious sweat off his brow. “I thought it was going to be a simple job, but it’s too close to the footing. I had to…”

All I heard was whomp, whomp, whomp, blah, blah, until he finished with, “It will be solid and tight when I’m done.”

*Insert me scratching my head here* In terms of jobs needing to be done around our property? The small hole you couldn’t see behind the bushes was right up there, in my mind, with the time he painted the laundry room instead of installing the bigger sink I’d asked for. Or, even the time I asked him to re-grout the kids bathroom and he changed the toilet instead.

“My question to you is this. Why did you feel the need to take down half the fence and fix an insignificant hole I never even complained about when we have hedgezilla that needs to be trimmed, or those flagstones that need to be leveled. You know, if you’re bound and determined to suffer heat stroke this afternoon one of the projects that truly needed doing would suffice, no?”

“Bunnies.”

I don’t know about you, but hearing caused me to hear crickets. “What about them?”

“Madge (for those of you who don’t know this is my mom and she lives with us) saw the hole and she’s worried that the coyotes are going to get inside the yard and kill her bunnies.”

Alrighty! Couple of things wrong with this. First, yes the coyotes run through the golf courses at night by our house that’s true, but they don’t come into the residential neighborhoods. Second, even if they did, the hole in the fence was too small for them to get through. And third? These aren’t pet rabbits. They aren’t Madge’s bunnies. What they are though, are the little varmints that eat our lawn, flowers, and vegetables. So snow globe moment here as to why he was barricading them into the very place (that would be our yard) that we wanted them out of.

I explained everything to Honey, and all he did was shrug. “Madge was worried about them and the break in the fence was stressing her out. I’ll get the other stuff done as soon as I finish with this.”

Aw…

And there’s me. Feeling like a big bag of flaming poo for being so snippy about the noise and stuff. He was putting my mom’s mind at ease. What a great son-in-law. So what did I do? I cut out of work early for the day and helped Honey in the yard. We both looked like we’d been bathing in a swamp a couple of hours later, but it was worth it. When my mom came over for dinner the next night she had a list of wildlife she’d seen in the yard during the course of the day. As she recited it, both Honey and I kept our lips zipped but we were exchanging meaningful glances – I can tell you that.

This is Madge. “I saw, cardinals, blue jays, and mocking birds. The bunnies, they live right under my bedroom window. I also saw a snake, an egret, and the hawk. Oh, and of course all the squirrels.”

Ummm…you notice anything about that list? If you rearranged it slightly you’d have the circle of life…or, ah, death thing going on. But since Honey couldn’t fix that, we both stayed quiet on the subject.

I love my mom!

I love Honey too.

What I don’t love is the rabbits! I don’t even want to think about them multiplying.

Truthfully, I can’t because for the next while I’m going to be too busy working on PERSUADED. I’ll be posting teasers for that book soon. Maybe this weekend.

Oh, and next week should be interesting. Honey is going away and already he’s pulling out the macho-can’t-live-without-me guy checklist stuff. Items he’s purchased? Batteries, extra water, and matches? Seriously? I’m living in a well-equipped home and he’s buying me camping supplies. *looks right at you* I have four more days to go before he leaves. I can hardly wait. What do you want to bet he brings home some fishing gear or bow and arrow. I think the only thing he hasn’t covered yet is the culmination of the zombie apocalypse or a pandemic happening to me when he’s away. Although, now that I think about it. He did stock up on face masks. I thought they were for when he sands the drywall, but maybe they’re a “just in case of the plague” supply. I’ll be sure to let you guys know what else he buys. He’s cracking me up.

Have a great rest of the week! And as always, thanks for stopping by!

Riley