Poor Sir Tipperton! I held up the baby dress for Maddie Mae last night after I mended it. The poor tom kitty took one look at it and ran and hid under the sofa!!

Bess and I had an argument. She is having a hard time believing that the script for THE book won a Gold Award. Finally,..I told her off at a certain website...where scifi fans meet. By next week,..Bess and I will be best friends again,..but I wonder about the flurry, that my big mouthed rant at the website, will cause?

The joke is,...Bess was one of the original people,..who warned me about posting at that website!! She,..now,..lurks there on almost a daily basis,..but I have never seen her post there.

I have a new niece,..Maddie Mae,..and I am preparing a bag of goodies for her. My son and his friend,..trying to be humorous,..took the little outfit I had picked out for Miss Maddie Mae and put it on Tipper,..my unfixed tom cat!! I came into the living room this morning to find Shawn chasing Sir Tipton around the living room.

The poor tommy was wearing booties on three of his paws,..a little white lace dress and bonnet and was diapered with little white lacy panties,..pulled on over the diaper!! He also had the new Gerber's bib, which I just got the other day at Maxie's Baby Boutique,..trailing down the front of the new dress that I'd bought for Maddie!!

I caught the cat and removed the baby clothes. Bill told me that he was sorry and is going to take us all out to dinner on Saturday and promised to get me a new outfit for the baby!!

I wonder just WHERE my son got his "warped" sense of humor from? Groooooaaaan!!!!..I think,..I know!

So,..last night by relay phone through Rosezelle,..I found out that the script for Walking Free won the Gold Award at the World Fest houston Film Festival!! My head is still spinning from all of this and I have very little to say about all of this!!

My son took me out to a pizza buffet for lunch today to celebrate!! I ate a type of spirilly pasta that tasted heavenly when i covered it with mushrooms and cheese and ranch salad dressing! I would go back to that restaurant just for the spirilly pasta!!

There were twenty seven different types of pizza in that place, and I went hog wild and ate ate least ten or twelve different pieces of it! Luckily,.. the slices of pizza were only two fingers wide!! Oh yummers! I am in total love with fresh spinach and mozerella pizza!!

I shall celebrate properly when i see what kind of publicity the award garners in the newspapers!! It is that all important publicity that could lead to what all of us want most,..more book sales or even a movie!!

Being chased around a grocery store by a determined book-bearing person, who demands that you sign said book for them and will not let up,..sounds like a joke,...until YOU,..yourself,..are the person, who is the "chasee," and you are being "harassed" by a chaser!

And when you knock over a "cart-load" of ripe tomatoes to escape such an enthusiast,...guess who ends up paying for the tomatoes? Out of the chaser and the "chasee,"...the person, who is doing the fleeing usually is the one, who has to shell out!!

Put yourself in Rosezelle's position,..you are almost totally deaf,..someone comes walking rapidly over to you waving a book and pen,...you are in the hospital and waiting news about your very ill husband,..a "reader" of your books comes trotting over and demands that you put pen to paper and sign your name for him or her.

Then,..that person leaves and comes back with another book,..and another book,..and another book,..it TURNS out that this person..OWNS... a bookstore and is charging an extra dollar or two for autographed books!! And there sits poor Rosezelle,..she does not know if her husband is going to live or die and all the greedy bookstore owner can think abut is, "Oh! There sits a well-known local author, who is fingerspelling with another woman,..who resembles a picture in one of my best-selling books! I'll just hop on over there and get some autographs, and to devil with the fact that someone in their families could be sick or dying,..I'll just get what I want from them!!"

This really did happen,..by the way!!

And,..yes,..I was the person,..who had to pay for the afore-mentiond..tomatoes!! Happily for me,..this does not happen very often!!

Most folks, who want a book signed,..are VERY NICE and polite people,..who're eager to share "how the Nellie Book changed my life stories" with Rosezelle or myself. I love hearing these stories..what I can understand of them,..but I hate the people, who harass one to make money off one, or who make you pay for the tomatoes!!

Quietness rules the world. Another night sets in with its' darkness. Outside a rich beige moon illuminates the small assemblage gathered on top of the lids of our three garbage cans!! I hear a "tenative," "Meeeerrrrrrrow! Rurururrrrrrrr! Reeeeeeeoooooooooch!"

The soloist has begun his opening "Cat-chair-to" for the unappreciative humans, who wish to sleep this night on our block!

The back-ups in this feline "groove-group" hove off with the chorus for the "kitty-cantata,"..Meeeeeeee! Meeeeeeroooooow! Oooooooooooooooh Roooowers-meooooowers!"

My husband gives me a black look. I sigh and get my kitty carrier and a few over-ripe fish heads outside and leave the cat carrier door open...a few feet from the garage.

The singers' noses fill with the rich smell of rotten dead fish head!! The concert ends as abruptly as it begans as the singers investigate the cat carrier.

I slam the door on at least two of the group and place the cat carrier in the light of our outside floodlight. There sits my missing Mr. Baxter and his "little" friend Missy Calico More of the More family, who live next door. They stare out at me. I am a monster,..who has imprisoned them!!

I figure better me than the neighborhood "catcatcher," who is paid by "city hall" to deliver "nuisance" kitties to the county pound!

So I'm not going to Houston,..I'm on a "medically-restricted" diet,..and Mr. Baxter,..my chewed eared black Thomas cat,..has taken an unannouced leave of absense from our house and lives!! What next?

So I am not going to Houston, Texas, It's settled. My primary care doc said that she would not be responsible for me if I took off with the possibility of DVT so eminent. Flying is not among my approved actvities! I am not arguing with her.

I am not "..dying to win," I don't have to be. Daryl, Rosezelle,.myself and Carol Hoffman have already won...a place in the Houston WorldFest Film Festival and that is "winning" enough,"..indeed! I can get my little plaque or statue or whatever through the mail and it will look just as good on top of my TV as anything else does up there.

I have stated that I wanted to go to that awards ceremony so badly that I would take an Amish buggy to Texas just to get there. Well,..since it would take too long to get there by buggy and I'm not allowed to fly,..I'll just have to stay home..and work on my next book! :D

Internet wars can be unreal. I am convinced that some folks use them as their only purpose for being!

Shrugs.

That's the problem of the combatants,..not mine.

Rosezelle's arguments do make very good sense and there is no need for me to go off on a tangent if I don't get to go to the Houston, Texas World Film Fest. I think that is what that grand shindig is called.

Next summer,..I will want to go to see the stage play about Nellie and me and I will want to go to Kentucky to launch THE BLACK HEART BOOK with the whole crew. There is a group trying to organise a busload of folks, who want to see this play, and all of those folks seem to want to cheer us all on and wish good luck to the play on it's opening!!

Rosezelle says that she will get a special car for us to ride in to go to the opening of the play, but I might buy a bus ticket under the name of Stanelle Yodere and sit in the middle or back of the bus.

I would wear my assistive listening device, which has head phones,..and anyone looking at me would think that I was listening to a tape or disc!! In truth,..I would be listening to what the folks around me were saying about the play!

Heh! If anyone would look at me with any curiosity,..they would see a quiet woman in a dark dress,..who speaks to any and all who would speak to her,..but basically sits scribbling notes about the ideas, that the people around her inspire in her head!!

If I could stop taking all of my blood pressure meds,..my hair would be curly again and with all of the weight I am losing,..I would look nothing like I do in my online images!! I would be the only person, who would know that I was a major charactor in the play that we were all going to see.

In my point of view,..it would be nice if ALL of life could be like that or could have been like that over twenty five years ago when the TERRIBLE thing happened. Still I am thankful for the "now time."

Easter. It's a wonderful holiday! The whole family gathers and as usual,..EATS! I'll have to at least have a ham and a chicken cooked,..fresh green salads,..at least two kinds of fresh warm hot breads..(probably banana nut bread and corn muffins),..and...

DAAAAAAAAAAAMN IT! I JUST WON'T DO IT! THIS TIME, NO PIES AND CAKES!! I'M GETTIN' RADICAL! I DON'T FEEL ALL THAT GOOD AS YET!!

So the Easter menu is as follows:

Sliced honey ham

Roasted chicken wst dressing

Banana nut loaf

Corn muffins

Mashed potatoes

Noodles and my chicken gravy

Green salad

Peas?

Fresh baked sugar cookies (2 dozen...iced and covered with sprinkles).

That is enough to feed a small army!! And there will only be five of us here!!

With all of the involuntary sitting that I have been doing this winter,..I was informed the other day that I have as strong a posibility of DVT...(Deep Coronary Thrombosis) as Rosezelle does.

I know what this is leading up to: a no go to the Awards Ceremony in Houston. Rosezelle tried to softened the blow the last time I talked to her, but it makes no difference. I will be talking my way through all of the possibilities, but it will make no difference. I cannot change the structure of my anatomy and physiology.

As Rosezelle said, "What good is flying down to Texas to accept an award only to drop dead with a blood clot in your lungs only a few moments later?"

I think that she is stretching the point, but "Dying to win"..was never my game plan.

(Being nasty) Rosezelle knows that I have the stories and the quips and the shape of my second book..(tentitively..titled: AND STANDING TALL),.. inside of me,..she also knows that she has to pry them out of me!!

And if either of us kicks the bucket at this point, THE BLACK HEART BOOK,..(she has refused to change the spelling of Heart to HART as she knows what my reference points are!!)..will die at it's birthing and since this is HER story,..she'll do anything legit to keep it and me going...including skipping the Awards Ceremony!!



RAAAAAAAAAAAAAATS!


On the bright side,..as an Easter Present to our entire family,..Shawn took us all out to a restaurant last night for a fish dinner!!

BIGTIME HOGTIME! I had two pieces of fried North Atlantic Cod and french fries!! Fried foods!! My forbidden fruit!!

Gawwd!!!!!

..I enjoyed it!!

Should I push my luck and go to Houston, Texas?

SHE could get blood clots again. The last time almost killed HER. I remember the waiting in the hospital and the wondering and not knowing if SHE was going to live or die.

NO awards ceremony is worth going to if there is the lightest chance of a risk to her life. When I told her that I had a story to tell,..she listened. For that, I will be eternally grateful to HER.

Whether or not I go...is another story.