Haven't Miss...ed a Thing

I’m under thirty, but I have been a Mrs. for over a decade. When I was first married, I was this quirky little administrative assistant and no one could bear to call me Mrs. Who could blame them? I was 15 years younger than most of the people I worked with, or I was the same age and it was too weird to call me Mrs. So, to stay respectful, but not to launch me into the same category as your next-door-neighbor’s mom – I got called ‘Miss Stephanie’. It was weird. Everyone knew to call me that – even people who had never heard anyone refer to me that way would instinctively call me Miss Stephanie.

When I ditched work and started having kids, I’d get my receipt at the grocery store and the cashier would say something like, “Would you like carry out, Miss?” And I’d glow because I was far from pretty after grocery shopping with two kids who had a tendency to run away. After a trip down the canned food aisle, I looked like Rosita from Sesame Street – wild hair like feathers EVERYWHERE.

The truth is the sales’ girl isn’t even looking at me. I could be seventy with a walker and she’d still pass me my shopping bags with a smile (probably meant for the hot guy leaning against the wall behind me) and say, “Have a nice day, Miss.” They can’t help it. Random people in sales don’t have time to figure out whether I’m married, divorced, gay, or a staunch feminist who only wants to be called Ms. Saying Miss is a nice cover-all that makes the person addressed feel young.

But you know what I like better than Miss., Ms. or Mrs.? I like Ma’am. That’s right. I’ve been through enough that I’m ready to cast off Miss like a torn coat and put on something a little more commanding – like Ma’am. It has a nice ring to it. Let me show you how it makes me sound like a drill sergeant; “Yes, Ma’am. No, Ma’am. Be right with you, Ma’am. Can I take your order, Ma’am?” Doesn’t that just make you feel good?

But no one ever calls me Ma’am. I don’t know who to blame. Is it me? Is it because I don’t pluck my eyebrows to oblivion? I was told that leaving your eyebrows a little bushy makes you look younger because kids don’t pluck their eyebrows. Is it because my hair is long and moms always chop their hair off because they don’t want the baby pulling it? Is it because Ma’am isn’t as sticky suck-up sweet as Miss?

It’s probably because the cashier doesn’t know the hot guy leaning against the wall is actually my husband and he’s smiling at me and not her.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

My lower lip quivered. I didn’t want to cry, but at the same time, I couldn’t keep silent. “Why won’t you promise me a rose garden?” I know it’s a metaphor for living luxuriously, but still – where’s my bleeding rose garden?

I love roses. I have six rose bushes in my front yard and every intention to plant at least one new rose bush every year until I die. I know – what am I going to do with all those roses?

You can learn a lot of things from the flowers, especially in the month of June – tee hee. Well, who doesn’t love Alice in Wonderland? One interesting thing about my roses is that they tend to change colours depending on their circumstance. My favourite rose bush has buds the colour of apricots. In the spring and summer when the sun is hot, they don’t stay that colour, but tan to a pinky peach. In the fall, they stay that apricot because there’s nowhere near the same amount of sunlight. My Black Baccara starts out black as pitch and by the end, only the outer petals stay black, the center is bright red.

Snip. Snip. You have to be cruel to roses. If you don’t prune them almost every time they flower, they’ll stop flowering. I cut mine regularly. My best bush had almost thirty buds on it last time I counted and we’re past the season. My roses flower over and over and over again until the bad weather comes.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the thorny rose. Out came the gardener and sprayed her with the hose. Off went the hose, no longer did it spray, so the itsy bitsy spider did finish her essay. No seriously – my roses have spiders. I am not normally afraid of bugs that are outside. My fear of bugs on the inside of my house is based on the idea that there might be more of them. So, if I’m outside and I see a creeper, I’m not normally bothered. It turns out that even though black and brown spiders don’t bother me. I’m terrified of the white ones. Who knew?

At the end of November I wrap my roses up to protect them from the bitter Canadian cold and dump snow through the hole I leave in the top of the wrapping every time I shovel the walk, which is sometimes every flipping day.

So far in the life of my roses they have been burnt by the hot sun, cut up, had spiders crawling all over their silky petals and had snow dumped mercilessly on them. The point is – roses are hardy.

Don’t give me luxury – give me a rose garden.

The Pant Boycott

That’s right. I’ve had it up to here with pants. And when I say ‘here’, I mean somewhere in between my hip bone and the fattest part of my butt. Really. I’ve had it and I’m angry. What is the deal with low-rise pants? I went pants shopping the other day and I went wandering through a whole mall, skipping only the most matronly looking of shops (you know the kind I mean, the kind that sell high-rise pants but only with those little pleats by the front pockets … shudder). I went through the whole mall popping my head in each shop asking, “Do you sell mid-rise jeans?” Only to be gawked and laughed at. Weren’t mid-rise jeans a myth, like unicorns and gremlins? Ha! I am somewhat less than amused.

This is the way I see it. We all have fat butts. Even skinny girls have fat butts. What can I say? It’s the nature of a butt. So, we can either have all our fat covered by high-rise jeans that make our bums look like giant balloons, or we can have our balloon butts cut off in the middle and look like … dare I say it … balloon animals? No seriously. Think about it. Doesn’t a girl’s butt in low-rise jeans look just like a poodle, but with a few fewer bum…ps. I know. I’m hilarious. Butt seriously, you put on the jeans, cinch the belt (otherwise they fall down even lower) and boom – every woman in the world has a muffin top.

The other thing is that when I was a kid, being able to see down someone’s bum crack was a bad thing. I may be old fashioned, but I’m still under thirty so you can trust me on this. I don’t think that’s changed, but it’s so hard to keep your pants up when they only come up so far. It’s probably because the man who designed them was probably thinking, ‘easy access’ as he was drawing them up. Bad guy!

I wasn’t going to bring this up, but there’s a conspiracy going on, but it’s not the type you’re thinking of. A plot so that every man in the world can check his woman’s panty colour just by standing behind her? Well that’s definitely a possibility, but I was thinking of something else. They’re doing this so that we all have to buy belts. Cause you know what? If it wasn’t for low-rise jeans, I would never need to wear a belt. I’m built like a Christmas tree. They call it a pear shape. My ample hips can hold anything up – hula skirts, screaming children, tool belts stuffed to the max. But I clearly can’t hold up the low-rise jeans.

Heck, I should just throw in the towel and buy a pair of suspenders.

My New Book: The Blood that Flows

Dear Readers,
Yes, it has finally happened. I've gone and made an ebook. I know. It's amazing. For years, I had readers write me and say things like, "This is amazing. You should get it published." Well, I couldn't do it with any of the books that I published on fanfiction.net or fictionpress.com, so this is a brand new story. Check it out. Gypsy Shadow Publishing decided to take me on.

Here's the synopsis for the back of the book:

I just wanted to root through Marshall’s files. That was my only reason for getting a job in a Private Investigator’s office. If I didn’t figure out what was happening to my sister soon … No. That was a lie. I knew what was happening to London. She was looking for a human and when she found one that suited her tastes, she was going to drink the poor sucker’s blood. If things went bad, he’d drink hers and then I’d have another mess to clean up. The last mess was her previous boyfriend. Yeah, I killed him, but you should have seen what he was about to do to her. I’m lucky that hasn’t come back to bite me, because vampire revenge is uglier than sin.

It's slated to go on sale online on October 1st of this year. That's less than a month away. Can you believe it? It'll be for sale on Amazon.com for sure and a few other choice spots. Just think of the joy of sitting down and reading my entire manuscript without the cliff hangers I leave at the end of each chapter just to entice you to come and read again next week. Well, there are still cliff hangers, but you get to go ahead a read the next chapter without waiting. Should be utter bliss.

I'm also going to announce 'The Blood that Flows' to everyone who has signed up on my favourite and alert lists. So if you came here to check out the big news, you'll probably hear it again. Also, instead of updating a piece of fiction online each week, I'm going to be updating this blog each and every Thursday. It's going to be like my old 'Wild Moon Swings' blog and you'll get to see why besides writing novels, I should also write a weekly column. I have some good stuff saved up and it should be a blast. So, please come check me out here every Thursday.

And as some of you may not have heard - I'm going by Stephanie now. Love is all around the world.