Like many
writers, I'd rather tell you a story than tell you
about myself. I'm a wife, a mother, a daughter, a
sister, a friend, a native Oklahoman. There — end
of story. But it seems that's never enough to satisfy
anyone but me. Editors, publicists, reporters, readers
— they all want to know more. Okay . . . I spent
sixteen years moving around the country with my
husband, Bob, who was in the Navy. Our son, Brandon,
went to more schools than he can remember, mostly in
the southern part of the country. We lived in Southern
California, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North
Carolina. It apparently didn't do him any harm, though,
since he's now making a career in the Army, and has
lived in Georgia, Colorado, Korea, Italy, and Iraq, and
will soon be adding a stint in Afghanistan to the list.
Once he gets back from there, he's getting married to a
lovely girl who already seems like part of the family,
and, yep, I admit, I find myself occasionally thinking
about grandbabies to come.
I love dogs. Love 'em, love 'em. We have four right now, and they're all spoiled rotten. I'd have forty if I had room for them. We live in the country and could really use a cat to help control the mouse population, but every cat we've ever gotten has escaped the first chance it got. Wonder if the fact that the littlest of our dogs weighs more than fifty pounds has anything to do with that?
I love music. Spring in Oklahoma. "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." (Though, please, someone take that bullhorn away from Ty!) Solving puzzles, both crossword and jigsaw (especially of Charles Wysocki's work!). Riding in my husband's black Z28 on a warm summer night with the T-tops off. Really good barbecue (Mac's in Skiatook, Oklahoma — well worth the fifty-mile drive). Cooking — usually. Cleaning up — not at all. I'm convinced that if God had wanted me to clean, he wouldn't have given me such severe dust allergies.
I love how-to shows on TV. I once asked for a pair of earrings and a cordless drill for my birthday. Lately I've been eyeing the table saws every time I go into the home improvement center, and I'm currently in the middle of faux painting the floor in our house. (Did I mention that the four dogs are all male? No more carpet for us!) I like making repairs/changes myself, though sometimes it would surely be easier to call a plumber/electrician/whatever. It may take me forever, but I usually do succeed. Well, there was that time Brandon and I were replacing the bath tub faucet and we broke the pipe, on a Sunday night, no less, but we won't talk about that. I love working in the yard — though not with flowers. Don't get me wrong — I love flowers, too. I think it goes back to the night I missed stepping on a copperhead by an inch or two, and it slithered into my flowerbed (after my husband assaulted it) and died there. Sticking my hand in all those flowers to weed and deadhead? Huh-uh. Ain't gonna happen.
Speaking of copperheads, I love seeing them dead, along
with all the scorpions and fiddleback spiders that find
their way to me. Any summer with fewer than ten killed
copperheads is a good one around here. I love —
more or less — the other critters who live here.
There's a buck with something like sixteen points who
lives down by our pond, along with a bevy of does and
the usual fawns. We have a den of coyotes down there,
too, who take frequent shortcuts through our yard at
night (and occasionally during the day — nothing
scares me like coming face to face with a big coyote in
the middle of the afternoon). One neighbor has horses,
another has emus, and another has llamas, and I once
came across an ostrich on my morning walk, escaped, I'm
guessing, from the exotic animal farm down the
road.
I actually love exercise. I try to work out at least
four or five times a week. In summer, I let digging
tree stumps, mowing, Weed-eating, hauling branches to
burn, shoveling dirt and gravel, etc., serve as my
workout. The rest of the time I walk. Right now I'm
challenged by a Leslie Sansone walk-aerobics DVD that's
quite capable of kicking my butt. Soon, though, I
expect to complete the entire six-mile program without
collapsing when I'm done.
And sometimes I love doing nothing at all. Lying around, watching Dr. Phil or "Law & Order," reading, daydreaming, surfing the Web, and . . . oh, yeah, writing. I love writing. Most of it. Not doing a synopsis, though . . . or revisions, for that matter. And I'm not thrilled with book signings, though it is cool to meet readers. And God save me from public speaking. I firmly believe you should do what you're good at, and not do what makes you sick (or look like an idiot). Public speaking makes me both sick and look idiotic, so I try to avoid it. Like the home repairs, I usually succeed.
Okay, so tell the truth . . . you learned more than you ever wanted to know about me, didn't you?
