cari · ouweneel

It’s that end of the school year time where things are getting crazy – field trips, music concerts, plays, teacher appreciation, graduations, retirements, etc. et. al. It always makes me a little insane. So with only three weeks until the end of school, I have to bust my rear end to finish my YA manuscript. I think I can do it but probably I should be working on that instead of sharing my proud mama moments with you now.

 
Both Hansel and Gretel showed pieces in the School Districts Art Show this year. So talented (I’m not biased or anything)!

 
I’m looking forward to another weekend of baseball tourneys and volleyball games. Next  week: the school play and teacher appreciation (oh and um, I think Mother’s Day fits in there somewhere - let's not forget the behind the scenes people who make all these accolades possible!). Oh yeah and I can't forget: finish novel.

Current Mood:

busy

I just read a new blog and thought: Careful, love, this makes you sound incredibly naïve. And then I gasped with horror and thought: What if someone reads my blog entries and thinks the same thing? And then I thought: Of course they have. I’m over it already.

I’ve definitely gotten to the point in my life where I go out of my way to avoid small dinner parties and social gatherings because they make me feel awkward and uncomfortable. I absolutely dread the question: “What do you do for a living?” The agonizingly polite half smiles frozen on faces when I reveal that I am an unpublished author are a patented form of torture. “How nice,” is the standard remark accompanied with a slight nod. People are of course too polite to say otherwise but I can positively feel the eye rolls. Or worse, the envy.

That’s the nastiest. Vultures who act interested in my literary efforts but are really just picking my brain for any secrets or revelations I can throw them, because they too, imagine themselves to be bestselling writers. Scavengers who think they can glean information from me so they do not have to put in the work themselves. I had one “friend” brazen enough to tell me so to my face!

Now some of you might think that I’m being too harsh but I would say otherwise. There are those genuinely interested in my life and work and aren’t afraid to talk about it in an honest manner. I always welcome thoughts on writing, if they have dabbled themselves, what they are currently reading, favorite books and the like.

I’m not stupid, I know the difference.

But the slugs who are not willing to put the time, money, energy or sacrifice into their own craft of writing but consider themselves to be artists with unpublished pieces of work, unwritten of course because they just don’t have the time. Forgive me, whilst I return their shameless assumption and request for me to drop everything and help edit their novels with a polite shake of my head and a frozen half smile.

Current Mood:

bitchy

I recently had dinner with a couple of college friends who were in town. It was a heart warming experience to spend some time reminiscing, catching up, and perusing old photos from a time gone by. The history shared between old friends provides a comfort that can’t be easily manufactured. Although we haven’t seen each other in over fifteen years, we picked up immediately where we left off and consider each other very fondly.

The three of us are now middle aged with spouses and children and the encompassing adult responsibilities associated therein. We were astonished at how quickly the conversation turned from chatting about our carefree college days to the more serious topic of being an adult and the joyful burden of raising children in todays world. At one point I exclaimed, “Did it feel this difficult for my grandmother’s generation? Nobody thought to tell me of it!”

I’ve spent a time or two feeling resentful about our inability to prepare citizens for the unexpected trials and tribulations in being a grown adult and the responsibilities that are associated with getting married (I’m tired of compromise!) and owning a house (I hate yard work!) and having children (I miss my sleep when they are sick at night!). Yes, at times I would prefer to stomp around and fume likes a three-year old.

Nevertheless, there is just something truly remarkable about life experience that only an accumulation of years can bring to the table: a certain gravity to one’s demeanor but also an ability to disregard the things that just aren’t that important and an increased quality to incorporate the word “no” into one’s vocabulary without the notorious hangover of guilt.

The reality is this: if you are blessed to live long enough, bad things will happen to you. It doesn’t matter how good you are or how much education you have or money, what you look like or anything at all, really. And if you remain in judgment and think you’re better than, well then I pity you. You aren’t looking at your life very truthfully. Perhaps it’s time to wash the fog off those rose-colored glasses and consider the gift in embracing the depths of your most unfortunate experiences life has to offer…things are not always what they seem. Here is a perfect example of that:

All the best,
Cari

Current Mood:

contemplative

Good to see you again. It's been awhile.

After a brief hiatus working a part time job, I am happy to report that I'm back and anxious to share with you again! I am super excited about my current wip. I’ve got about two hundred pages of crappy first draft that I will spend the next two months finishing to forward to my critique partners.

In the meantime, I wanted to share that I celebrated Read Across America this week with my son’s class at his school library by reading aloud from a selection of my favorite books. Naturally, I loved, loved, loved, sharing stories with the kiddos and listening to what they were currently reading and excited about. They were so genuine and could totally identify with the joy of a good story. Also, I chatted it up with the school librarian about the latest reads, trends among youth, etc. LOVE librarians!

On that note...

Did you know that this year is the 50^th anniversary of A Wrinkle in Time? I will have to re-read in honor of it being one of my favorite childhood stories.

What about you? What have you been up to lately?

Current Mood:

energetic

My BFF sent me the link to this TED talk – which pretty much describes a woman healing herself of MS by eating tons of vegetables. So with my busy schedule these days, I’ve been trying to eat more veggies and pay attention to ingesting less sugar, exercising and blah, blah, blah.

Well, it’s kind of working. I feel better and I haven’t gotten sick which is pretty amazing and I believe I owe it all to kale. Naturally, my family has come along for the ride because until they do the grocery shopping they pretty much have to eat what I put on the table, which last night was a white bean kale soup. However, my kiddos drew the line when I replaced the weekly bag of Doritos with this:

 
Okra spears.

I thought it was a great idea but it tastes sort of nasty (and I like okra, but the kind of crispy deep fried ones they serve at Cracker Barrel). It instigated a lot of eye rolling, deep sighs and shakes of the head as though they thought I might’ve gone over the edge this time. Probably so. But until further notice…eat your vegetables! 

Current Mood:

accomplished

A friend called me the other day and said she wanted to get in touch now that the holidays were over and things had settled down a bit.

For who? I wanted to ask but didn’t. It took all my self-restraint to not break out into howling laughter over the phone but I thought of my mother, who raised me better than that.

So if you don’t follow my tweets, I need to tell you that I survived my son’s ten-year-old NERF gun war slumber birthday party last weekend. Now I know there are parents out there who do not let any type of guns, play or otherwise, into their home and I understand that. But I married a man who’s mother didn’t let any guns in the house (play or otherwise) and he grew up to require a personal arsenal; for elk hunting, going shooting in the mountains, and just general male bad-assness, I suppose. And so having observed this phenomenon, it makes me think that if you resist something it tends to backfire...so to speak.

Before the party, I literally had a bottle of Ibuprofen at the ready, suspecting that I would have a migraine by the time it was all said and done. Without a doubt my experience has been that my son and his friends are way harder on my furniture and house than my daughters, so I really was preparing myself for the worst. We cleared the downstairs of breakables (rather like when they were three years old) and bought camouflaged spray paint to decorate cardboard boxes we’d be saving through Christmas to build makeshift trenches.



I bought dog tag party favors and military tattoos and downloaded war sounds from iTunes. To top it all off, Walmart graciously expedited a camouflaged birthday cake.



Here is the thing…it was the easiest, most well-behaved birthday party I’ve ever hosted (and that includes my daughter’s six year old princess birthday party where there were some serious melt downs).  Who knew? The boys separated into even teams and very methodically rotated members so that it stayed fair. The rules of engagement were fiercely adhered to: no arguing, no crying, no fussing—you got hit three times you were dead, that’s it. They played NERF gun war from five o’clock in the evening until ten thirty at night, breaking only ten minutes for pizza and another ten minutes for cake and ice cream. At one point, I was so envious of their fun, I broke in on the action as army medic and wrapped their war wounds with pretend bandages (yellow party crepe paper and scotch tape). Watching them work together then cover for each other and yell, “Go! Go! Go! Go!” arms waving frantically, pointing out well protected hiding places behind large pieces of furniture and running around with dog tags flapping around their necks, all with the sound of B-52 bombers flying through the air, is an image I will not soon forget.

An active imagination is one of the greatests gifts on the planet.

Use it.

You might have some serious fun.

Current Mood:

surprised

I have to admit that the month of December kind of makes me a stressball. So much to do, so little time to do it in kind-of-a-thing. I keep thinking each year I’m going to quit making the Christmas cookies from scratch and get them at the store, that instead of trekking up to the mountains to hand chop our Christmas tree we'll just buy an artificial one, etc., you can see where this is headed. But really, once you have kids, it can feel impossible to change the traditions. So until then, enjoy the pics!

You can see the pain etched on our faces as we try to smile in subzero temperatures.





Hard at work cutting our Christmas tree (yes, my son is only wearing a fuzzy sweatshirt - I have to pick my battles, so please don't judge!)





My Knight In Shining Armor, apparently auditioning for a new super hero role in the upcoming X-Men film: beware of TREEMAN!!! ARGGGHHH!!!





Sasha's disappearing act.



All the best!

Current Mood:

stressed

1. A happy birthday to My Very Popular Blog celebrating two full years of blogging success!
2. A rejection on a request for full from a top notch agent. Now the overriding consensus is that I’ve got a good middle grade story, with great voice, writing, pace, etc. but not enough of a unique selling point for agents to feel as though they can sell it to editors in this lean market. I suspect my second middle grade book suffers from the same ailment, so I’ve decided to switch gears for the moment and try something that’s been on the back burner for a year now.
3. My kids are growing up too fast. Instead of wearing the cutesy Halloween costumes this year, they decided to scare the crap out of everyone instead. Take a look:

Seriously...

What my daughter looks like after losing sleep at a slumber party.

      
          3. Another strong indicator that time is whizzing by: they used pillowcases to haul their Halloween loot this year and the orange plastic pumpkin buckets sat tucked away in the basement. *sniff*

          4. I'm recovering from a cold. I had feeling I wasn't gonna make it through these busy weeks without getting sick. Soon our schedule will slow down (I should know better than to even write that).

That’s all for now. Have a great November!

Current Mood:

sick