Too Many Books

This weekend, hubs spent $300.00 on a lawnmower. Yes, you read that right. Three.hundred.smackers. I feel it is my wifely duty to make sure he gets his money's worth out of said purchase. Just sayin'. In related news, I, Amber Leigh Tidd Murphy, do not have green thumbs. Tasks like mulching and weeding and sowing and reaping are really not in my arsenal of talents. That's why my neighbors have cutespice flower beds and I have overgrown shrubs and some out of control greenery from a failed attempt a few years ago. (I want to call it very all very organic  looking, but that would be a lie. What it is , is a hot mess.) (Though I don't dig outdoorsy gardening, I do prune the interior. Let's not get carried away.) Now, I could go all writerly here, and use some lame metaphor about weeding and pruning ones first draft, but since I haven't completed my MS, I am not allowed to do that. I sent my inner editor packing. She's currentl...

Participating in The Beta Club yesterday was so much more fantastic than I could have imagined. The critiques I received were heartfelt, constructive, and inspiring. (The compliments made me blush a little, but also caused me to wear a giddy grin for the majority of the day.) If you did read it, thank you. Thank you! THANK YOU! (If you didn't, what the what?! Go here and read it, like I told you to yesterday.) I plan to post my rewrite here soon. (Get excitedspice!) Moving on. Since I was a little giddy yesterday, I decided to take a leap and integrate "spice" into casual conversation... in addition to my (completely addicting!) use of the word as an amplifier in my blogwriting. So, when I came back from lunch, I gave the following weather report to my work husband coworker: "It's very hot and humid outside. Also, it's windyspice!" He was all, "WTF?" So I explained spice -- how I use it writing to magnify things. "For ins...