Happy Birthday, Bijoux.

The late, great Bijoux was born twenty years ago today. Our family has gone on with our lives, of course, but the impact she made on us, especially Jim and me, will be felt forever. So much love.

One of my favorite lines to use when someone asks me to sign one of my books is some form or another of this:

"I read once that memories are like photographs on the heart...she'll be with you forever; all you have to do is remember."

I'm remembering so much today. I'm so thankful that she was a part of our lives for thirteen years.

In Honor of My Birthday...

I'm only putting up an official post on *one* of my blogs today:

Suburban Scrawl

More book news tomorrow!

Just an Ordinary Day, I Guess...OR IS IT??

Well, after the "whirlwind" of birthdays lately (ha ha: the last two days!) I was going to be sorry to say that it is nobody's birthday today--in my family, that is. Then I was checking a couple of the blogs I now read daily and discovered that it is Kat's Mom's birthday today! Woo hoo! So Happy Birthday to Kat's Mom!

I have added Kat's blog down there to the right, as well as Katie's and Karyn's. (It must be a good day for women whose names begin with "K"!) *LOL* Check them out when you get a few minutes!

Book news? I am picking up my fancy-schmancy mailing labels from Julie this evening (yes, she designed those, too!) so that I can begin mailing letters to different types of businesses: pet boutiques, pet cemetaries, vets, shelters, and various publications to try to get reviews as well.

I finished the pet boutique letters yesterday afternoon. I am starting in the Chi-town area with those and "oozing" outward. Today I am hoping to get the pet cemetary and shelter letters done, and then we'll see how long it takes me to do the rest.

I placed my bulk order for books yesterday, so I can take my time on the "Would you please review me" letters. There are probably a million--okay, that's exaggerating, sorry--vets in this area, so that will probably take me a while.

Busy times! I work at the salon this afternoon, tomorrow, and Friday, so I guess the book is going to get squeezed in during the early a.m.'s for the next couple of days! (and I'm starting the countdown to Friday...)

Happy Birthday, Dad!

It's our Dad's birthday today! (which you would already know if you read the title of this post, but I thought I'd state it again.)

Dad is recovering from a hip replacement currently, and he is doing GREAT. He did a lap around the hospital floor he was on, on the afternoon he had the surgery done and he's been going going going ever since! I called him the day after surgery (Friday) and asked how he was doing; he said, "Great! I was just running around the hallways."

"REALLY?" I asked.

"Well, sort of...walking fast with the walker..."

It's that kind of hilarity that Julie and I (and the rest of the family) expect from Dad, and he rarely disappoints.

Obviously, Dad being my Dad, I have countless memories that I could share on this blog today. Unfortunately, the one that keeps popping itself up as the one I have to share first is how he ate Milk Bones in front of my friends when I was a teenager, to be "funny". I guess I don't have to add any detail to that...just let your mind do the rest. I was obviously horrified. But that's how he rolls. If you want the serious, pick another guy. If you want the Funny, choose my Dad.

Dad likes to be unpredictable, too. When I got a speeding ticket only months after getting my driver's license, I pulled Mom aside in the kitchen and told her about it. She was furious, and said the words that made me shudder: "YOU'RE going to have to tell your father." I went to bed, planning how I would tell him the next day in such a way that I would not be grounded from driving, but couldn't sleep because of the guilt. I got out of bed and went to where he was watching some tv show and slowly spit out my story, waiting for the hammer to come down.

"Well, you'll have to pay for it," he said.

"What?"

"I said, you'll have to pay for it. Hey, tickets happen. I get 'em, and I pay for them."

That was it.

I was so excited! Of course, his unpredictability went the other way, too: when I expected that something wouldn't be a big deal, well...it's his birthday. I don't have to give an example of that!

Another memory that stands out about my Dad is that, because of him, I still, at almost 39 years old, can call up in my memory the taste of dry washcloth in my mouth from the times when I had a really loose tooth that was hanging by a thread and he said, "Get me a washcloth. I'll pull it out."


Dad has managed hotels for years and Julie and I have benefitted greatly. When I was in fifth grade, I had my birthday party at the pool of the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza in Chicago.

In 6th grade, we lived (for the first part of the school year) at the Holiday Inn in Hurst, Texas.

We moved to Knoxville, Tennessee just before 8th grade and we lived at the Holiday Inn only about a mile from the site of the 1982 World's Fair. I had a cheeseburger from the restaurant almost every night for dinner, and we routinely went downstairs to bring sundaes up to our rooms for dessert. My friends loved being invited for sleepovers. But best of all, Julie and I knew what day of the week the video game guy would come to take the quarters out of the arcade machines. The hotel arcade was awesome; it had Pac Man, Centipede, Defender, Donkey Kong, and Burger Time. We would station ourselves in the arcade on that great day each week and wait for him, and he, probably "thrilled" to have groupies, set us up with tons of game credits before he left. Thanks Dad: because of you being a hotel manager and maintaing a game room, Julie and I had "Mad Skills" with the video games!

Julie and I were also exposed to lots of experiences that many kids weren't, besides having free reign over a hotel. We, being suburban children, took regular excursions to the city when Dad worked at the Ascot Hotel on Michigan Avenue and then the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza. We saw the museums, the parks, Buckingham Fountain, and more. We saw shows (the first one I remember is "Bubbling Brown Sugar", which we bought the soundtrack for. I can still hear it!) every now and then. Dad, along with Mom, also made it possible for me to participate in a CISV student interchange, in which we had a German visitor (Tina) stay with us for a month during the World's Fair, and then I stayed with her in Darmstadt Germany for a month the following year.

Although Dad has always been a television fan, sometimes our tastes don't see eye to eye. For example, wrestling. Ick. He used to watch that ALL of the time. I did, however, enjoy joining him in the family room when Roller Derby was on; that was always a good time. We also enjoyed shows like "All in the Family", "Emergency!", "Adam 12", and later, "Cheers" and "The Cosby Show".

As far as movies go, well, he'll watch almost anything. I do remember Julie and I getting into major trouble for watching "Mommie Dearest" one too many times. As an adult, I now understand why you wouldn't necessarily want your young daughters laughing and imitating the "NO MORE WIRE HANGERS" scene over and over again so I guess I should thank Dad for yelling at us...

Seriously though, that reminds me of the most important thing I think my Dad has taught me, and that is how to be a good parent. Mom and Dad had the bar set pretty high for us and we didn't always come through, but when we tried our best we knew they were proud of us because they told us so. Our parents still tell us they're proud of us, which is something that not too many thirty-somethings can say.

I see myself doing and saying many of the same things I was brought up with, and I know that it's working because the boys are growing up to be fabulous young adults. We eat dinner together 99% of the time, we spend time doing "family" activities, Jim and I try to be very involved with the boys' extra-curriculars, just as Mom and Dad always were with mine and Julie's...Although Dad and Mom don't live here, their values are helping to raise our family the right way, and that is something you can't put a price on.

So, in closing, I just want to say: Have a Happy Birthday, Dad! Don't get crazy and take a jog around the block or anything; watch some wrestling (ick) and enjoy yourself! We love you!

Happy Birthday, Beautiful!

Today is Julie's birthday. Holla! She's still the younger of the two of us (ha!). She can still say she's in her early thirties (barely), which is way more than I can do.

Being 4 years and 11 months apart, we had a naturally tumultuous relationship as little girls. I felt like she was always trying to get in my business and she felt like I was extremely bossy. Hmm. Maybe we were both right!

Being typically territorial, we spent lots of times standing with our toes right on the carpet line between the other sister's bedroom and the hallway, being extremely annoying but figuring it was okay because we didn't actually ENTER the room.

We did, however, band together when it was really important. Like when we got the Donny and Marie dolls. We put on lots of great stage shows with those things.

Or when we went nuts about the original Cabbage Patch Dolls, with our Mom leading the way. A Babyland General Hospital opened up in Knoxville, and our family became Xavier Roberts groupies, as you can see by this photo.
Mom even made an unintentionally creepy loaf of bread that resembled a Cabbage Patch baby head for him when he came to town to sign the butts of the dolls he created.

I brought her to school for show and tell when I was in 1st grade.

She was a big hit. Speaking of hits, the other thing that I had as part of my show and tell presentation was the Fisher Price clock that she bashed me in the head with during a car trip to Canada. (I don't remember which came first: the show and tell or the head bashing.)

We bonded under the big magnolia tree that was in front of our house in Knoxville. We spent hours on the weekends under the low branches of that thing, weeding what was sprouting up underneath. Those days of weeding instigated a lifelong disgust with gardening, so much so that Jim and Julie have had a running bet: she owes him a quarter if she EVER does yardwork again in her life. It wasn't until I saw the tree a couple of years ago and noticed that the current homeowners cut off the bottom branches and made it possible for two little girls to not have to crouch so low to do their weeding. Godspeed to the current children in that house! We paved the way...

Besides standing strong together on Remembering Ruby and all of the issues we overcame together with the book (I can't imagine having done this with anyone else), our other greatest time of banding together in the face of adversity was Black Thanksgiving. I won't go into the details too much, but we spent an entire Thanksgiving weekend taking inventory on our Mom's Beanie Babies, Cherished Teddies, Precious Moments figurines, and Hallmark ornaments. The Beanies were the killer, though. I can't go into it any more than that, or I might start crying and Julie might, also. It was a time we'll never forget, unfortunately.

In 1995, Julie, Mom, and I had our first Girls' Weekend. We went to the Mall of America and had a blast.

We shopped til we dropped, rode the roller coaster at Camp Snoopy, and it was then that I discovered--because of Julie's wise recommendation--that I looked fabulous in Coffee Bean lipstick by Revlon. (Thanks again!!)

Our next Girls' weekend was in New York City, as Julie had moved out there. Mom and I flew out and the three of us did all of the touristy stuff: Broadway shows (Three nights in a row: Ragtime, Grease, and Rent!), great food, the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and the World Trade Center.

Julie eventually came back to the Chicago area, and now she lives only about 20 minutes from us. She is always there for us, as we are always there for her. She is like a second mom to the boys: she is the only one in the world who knows them as well as Jim and I do. And that's important, because it makes it three against two.

At one point, after the boys went through phases of calling her many things (Joo-ie, Aunt Noodie, Aunt Doody, just Julie, etc.), she told them, "Why don't you just call me Beautiful?" So they did, for a while.

Another of the many things that I absolutely love and appreciate about Julie is how she has shown me so many "little" things that I never would have discovered on my own, for example, parts of New York that only a local would be able to share. After I went out there the first time and did all the touristy stuff, future visits were taken up with more "normal" things. She introduced me to Kate's Paperie in SoHo



as well as (right across the street) the most beautiful grocery store in the world, Dean and Deluca.



We have enjoyed lemonade from Balthazar together,



hot dogs and papaya juice--for breakfast--from Gray's Papaya, every day for three days straight.



She has introduced me to her friends who are awesome people. She doesn't take friendship lightly; she works hard at it and the people she includes in her inner circle care about her just as much as she does them.

We have dined at the Miracle Grill in the Village a couple of times (her favorite restaurant!),



and we've spent hours outside stage doors waiting for autographs after the many shows we've seen together, both in NYC and Chicago. We came up short, however, when we braved the Chicago winter waiting for more than an hour for Matthew Broderick and/or Nathan Lane after "The Producers" previewed in Chicago. Jim, not being a fan of the cold OR waiting for autographs, was a great sport as he stood off to the side like he didn't know us. Matthew! Nathan! If you happen to read this, e-mail me or just make a comment. We'll forgive you IMMEDIATELY for avoiding the stage door; we're sure you were just afraid of the love that was going to come your way...


Here's a slightly startled Christina Applegate, signing our Playbills after "Sweet Charity" in Chicago.

One of the funniest memories in recent history involves New York and Broadway shows. Jim sent the two of us to New York for a long weekend in honor of our birthdays last fall and, after seeing "Avenue Q" and getting our Playbills autographed,



we walked down the street to look for a bite to eat. We came upon a big row of posters and signs advertising the shows that were current Broadway shows. The first one was for Martin Short's show. We suddenly decided it would be hilarious to pose in front of these signs just like we do in front of the shows we really attend. We stopped a couple who was walking by and asked them to take a photo of us in front of Martin's sign, and they obliged.


"Yes, we imagine the show was WONDERFUL!"

We spent the next 30 minutes posing in front of various signs as if we were part of the picture and, I'm sorry to say, you're just going to have to believe me when I tell you that it was one of the funniest things ever. I guess some of what happens in NYC stays in NYC.

Julie is a great cook, too. She is not afraid to try new recipes, and our family has been the grateful beneficiary of many a gourmet meal. She has brought unbelievable culinary delights into our house, like Emeril's Italian Chicken with Spaghetti Bordelaise, Swiss Cheese Bread, Fruitastic Salad, and most recently a menu full of Mexican recipes that would have delighted any restaurant owner. (Yum. I think I'm STILL full.)


Though she's a fixture in the kitchen, the place you will find her more often than not is behind the camera.


She has photographed our boys within minutes after birth and every life stage from that point on (and her friends' weddings and children as well!). Her talents have given us the gift of being able to look at thousands and thousands of photographs and call up memories immediately as we do so.

Many of my greatest life memories involve this chick who was always my sister by blood, but now I am proud to call her my friend by choice. She is the best aunt any kid could ask for, not only to my boys but to the kids of her friends as well. She is full of life and really knows how to have fun or, as my friend Kate would say, "make her own party". She is thoughtful, caring, and generous both with resources and time. She is a blessing to her family and all of her friends.

Julie, Happy Birthday. You are more special than you could ever imagine, our sister, sister-in-law, aunt, and friend. Our birthday wish for you can be summed up in this photo from Dylan's Candy Bar in NYC:




We love you!