OMG There’s a Flower Growing Out of it!

Here are a few pearls of wit from my kids, to be filed under category, you gotta love ’em”

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The other day Princess and Cherub were wrestling on the couch and this was the conversation I overheard:

Cherub: (presenting buttocks) Smell my butt

Princess: No way!

Cherub: Come on, it’s grown into a flower

I was laughing too much to reprimand her for, I assume, attempting to fart in her sister’s face.

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One night this week we were playing ‘What am I?’ with the girls. Princess was giving clues like; I have lots of wheels and a big body and I drive on the road. Hubby tried to help Cherub out by whispering ‘Truck’. Having misheard his clue she shouted, “Dragon!”. When Princess said no, it was a truck, Cherub rolls her eyes at her dad, as though he were quite dense. “I didn’t think it was dragon!”

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While playing the same game, it was Cherubs turn to give clues. This was how it went:

I have no legs, no arms, no face, no anything at all.

The answer in case you were wondering (we all were), was “I’m a cup”

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Last week Princess and I were in the supermarket, going through the chilled food section. Rubbing her hands up and down her arms, she commented, “I’m cold. You can tell because I have chicken pops.”

I then had to explain the difference between Chicken Pox and Goosebumps. Why do we name these reactions of the flesh after birds?

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One night when I was putting Cherub to bed, I asked her, “How much do I love you?”. She spread her arms out wide to show I loved her as far as I could stretch my arms and beyond (she’d done this before, you see). On this particular night I asked her in return, “How much do you love me?”

Cherub replied, “Six.”

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Recently Princess was on the phone to her grandparents. Her grandma asked her how she was, to which Princess responded, “I’m perfect of course!”

Nothing like the confidence of a six year old 🙂

Have a great weekend,

Sami

 

Aussie Extravaganza

It was Australia Day yesterday, the 26^th of January. To celebrate the Divas are hosting an Australian extravaganza in the Samhain Cafe from 7-9pm US time tonight the 27^th. Hope you can join us for some fun and maybe a few freebies too :).

DID YOU KNOW?

 An Australian invented the notepad. For 500 years, paper had been supplied only in loose sheets. Then a stationer from Tasmania named J.A. Birchall decided that it would be a good idea to cut the sheets in half, back them with cardboard and glue them together at the  top. And where would we writers be without notepads?

Australians eat 260 million meat PIES a year, around 13 per citizen. That sounds about right

Australia was the second country to grant women the right to vote. The first was New Zealand in 1893.

It has been reported that the first European settlers in Australia drank more alcohol per head of population than any other community in the history of mankind.

Australia’s first police force was a band of 12 of the most well behaved convicts available.

The Australian Lyre Bird is the world’s best imitator; able to mimic the calls of 15 different species of birds in their locality and string the calls into a melody. Also been known to mimic the sound mobile phones.

 In 1832, 300 female Convicts at the Cascade Female Factory mooned the Governor of Tasmania during a chapel service. It was said that in a “rare moment of collusion with the Convict women, the ladies in the Governor’s party could not control their laughter.”

Rebels, the lot of us.

Hope to see you in the cafe later tonight!

Sami

I’m Seeing Double — Standards that is

Warning: Opinionated ranting ahead 🙂 

I was reading a book earlier this week and I came across something that hit my ick button. The hero, whilst in the midst of making love to the heroine, was thinking back to his first sexual experience which was when he was 14yrs old. Then he goes on to state the sex was with one of his mother’s friends who had initiated the encounter.

W. T. F?

Imagine the genders were reversed in this scenario. You have a heroine thinking back on her first sexual encounter and she blithely remembers that it took place when she was 14, with one of her father’s male friends who seduced her. We’d be pretty disturbed, right? That’s rape after all, even if she consented. It’s a violation. So why in romance novels do we so often see heroes whose first sexual encounters were at some abnormally young age—and with a much older woman? Why is it okay for an older woman to seduce a teenage boy if when the genders are reversed we’re horrified? The answer at least from my perspective is that it’s not okay. Where’s the equality? I know there’s a perception that teenage boys are all dying to do it with an experienced woman (and yeah I laughed pretty loud when Finch finally landed Stiffler’s Mom), but at 14? Nope. Too young. Too gross. At least Finch was in his last year of high school and presumably 18 or near to it. A woman in her thirties seducing a 14 yr old is just wrong.

I don’t think it makes a hero seem more virile or skilful if I learn he was seduced by a much older woman when he was a teen. I think it makes him seem like a victim whose opinion of women in general might well have been warped by his experience. Just as you’d expect a heroine who had been molested as a teenager to have serious issues to work through. What do you think? Am I being too sensitive? Are there any similar double standards in romance novels that steam you up?

Sami

What Were You Doing?

Tomorrow is the official beginning of schoolies week on the Gold Coast here in Queensland. This is a week (actually three weeks) during which students who’ve now completed high school party like there’s no tomorrow, a teenage romp probably not dissimilar to what readers in the US might know of as Spring Break. This is a festival which always attracts much media attention, most of it negative, but all in all one where kids from several Australian states get together and have a great time celetrating their newfound freedom from the tyranny of high school–before they’re required to enter the workforce or plan for University or college.

If there was such a thing as schoolies week when I left school, I hadn’t heard about it. I lived in a relatively small beachside town, so our celebrations amounted to bonfires on the beach, parties at the cool kids houses (to which I was rarely if ever invited), and the school formal—something much like a prom. Now, I left school in 1988. Yes, that long ago. I thought it would be fun to think back on what was going on back then—the things that made up the soundtrack of my young life.

Fashion: By 1988 we’d moved on from fingerless gloves and glow in the dark GO GO Tshirts. We were somuch cooler. We’d discovered SHOULDERPADS

Song I remember dancing to most often: “I’ve had the time of my life” from the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack

Album that absolutely everyone owned: Kick by INXS (and yes it would have been on record or TAPE)

Band I locked myself in my room with most often: U2

Must watch weekly watch: Miami Vice, Dallas and Cheers

Guiltiest must watch pleasure: Days of Our Lives. I just loved Bo Brady!

Movie everyone saw at the cinema: Cocktail with Tom Cruise, Elizabeth Shue and Bryan Brown

Movie I wish I hadn’t seen in public: Beaches (cried like a baby at the cinema watching it with my best friend)

Movie I loved then but still love now: Die Hard the original

Movie I loved then but am embarrassed now to admit I loved: Twins with Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger

Movie whose title didn’t seem inappropriate at the time but now does: Working Girl

Movie that was the best for ogling: Tequila Sunrise (Mel Gibson AND Kurt Russell, oh yum)

Books I was reading:

A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking (okay so no I’ve never gotten past the first 3 pages but it was published in 1988)

What I was really reading: Books by Sydney Sheldon, Jackie Collins, Leigh Nichols (who later turned out to be a pseudonym of Dean Koontz), LaVyrle Spencer and many and various category romance novels which I’d discovered only the year before.

So it seems a lot of my memories revolve around movies and books. That much hasn’t changed. So what were you reading/watching/listening to the year you left school?

Sami

At Last!

I was going to sit here and type out a long involved post about what a long couple of years it’s been, how I’ve struggled with my writing and with confidence in my writing and with knowing where I was going and what the hell I was even doing trying to be an author anyway. I was going to, but you know what? I’ve officially cracked open the champagne—figuratively and literally—so now all I want to do is kick back with this glass of bubbly and relax.

Why? Because I can finally announce that I have signed another contract.

Yiiiiiippppppeeeeee!!!!!!!! 

My firemen and their lady Erica are finally going to be published. Samhain has contracted Erica’s Choice. No details on release dates or anything yet, but I wanted to share the news and bask a little. And while I’m at it, offer up a special thank you to the rest of the divas for lending me support and encouragement when I sorely needed it, and a kick up the ass when I needed it too.

Hope everyone else has a great weekend. I plan to,

Sami

Creepy Crawleys

I’m over at the Samhain Blog today talking about fears and creepy crawleys and one of the most horrifying experiences of my recent life. Do stop over there and say hi.

Wishing everyone a crawl-free weekend,

Sami

Leather and Attitude

Oh, the leather

Posted my From the Vault post over at Sami’s Scribbles, a great old Suzi Quatro and Chris Norman duet called Stumblin’ In. I used to looooooove Suzi Quatro, matter of fact I still do. She looks mighty good for her age and is still rockin’ out. But that early stuff? Absolutely blissful. 48 Crash, She’s in Love with You, The Wild One, they were excellent songs. Pop songs, basically, not all that much different than other pop songs. So what was it about these particular song I loved so much?

I realised the difference was attitude. I loved Suzi’s attitude. As a young girl whose main other choices of music lyric often revolved around men who treated their women badly and the women who couldn’t live without them, I can’t tell you what it meant to hear Suzi scream out ‘I’m a red hot fox I can take the knocks’ or ‘if you can’t give me feelings with old fashioned meaning then just stay in love with yourself’ . And the leather… drool. I wanted a leather jumpsuit so bad I nearly ached. But alas, this was never forthcoming.

I believe in the power of subliminal influence. I believe children absorb what’s going on around them, the hidden messages they receive from advertising, television and music, long before they can ever comprehend the meaning of it all. It has an impact, for better or for worse, one that all the lecturing from parents or school teachers can’t shake. This is why it distresses me whenever I hear a modern song with a woman singing about being beaten down by a man she can’t help but love anyway or how she uses her body to get what she wants because this is suddenly supposed to be the definition of feminine power. Our femininity is powerful, yes. But misused it is a detriment to our collective sense of self; a denial of the truth that we are more than our bodies, more than our looks or our age.

There were so many female musicians who taught me lessons I still carry with me today, that helped make me what I am (I guess you might call that a woman with attitude :)). Aside from Suzi there was Joan Jett, the epitome of cool ‘80s rock. Cyndi Lauper, who showed it was possible to be totally, wackily different and still be a success. Madonna, who taught me about sexual identity and what it means to have one, irrespective of whether there was a significant other in your life. I love these women for what they gave me. My attitude.

So what about you? Anyone to add to this list?

Have a great weekend,

Sami

(stepping off soap box now)