She's My Cherry Bomb

My cousin, one of the best people I know, needs some cheering up.

I've thought about the best way to do this for awhile and Elizabeth Dittygave me the idea of writing down my wondrous thoughts and memories of Nikki so that she can read, remember and hopefully smile. Nikki's going through some major hardships right now and I'll admit that it's hard to know how to react or what to say. But, I've always loved Nikki from the bottom of my heart and although it is sometimes it's easier to turn away or pretend that the insidious 'C' word doesn't exist in my bright and shining cousin the best thing I can do for her right now is to use the few gifts I have to lift her spirits.

Nikki and I were the founding members of the 4-cherry bombs. I was 10, she 11 and I believe Evie and Allyson were also 10. Yes, there were four of us. We were so clever. We were also at Space Camp. Yes, it was awesome.

The first cousins (on my mom's side of the family) went to Space Camp together. In order of age we had Tricia, Kellee, Nikki, Sean and me. Tricia and Kellee were far too old at the wise ages of 14 and 12 (thereabouts) to hang out with lowly 10 and 11 year olds and so were in a different program than Nikki, Sean and I.

During our week long adventure at Space Camp, Nikki and I practically ran the place. Or so we like to believe. We recruited the other two girls in our group to make a club, still fondly known as the 4-cherry bombs. We would later write each other countless letters on Lisa Frank stationary drawing bunches of cherries all over the paper. We were that cool. The four of us fell in, and out, of love with our pre-adolescent male counterparts. I'm pretty sure none of them ever got over us and our awesomeness.

I still remember very clearly the scavenger hunt that we, the four cherry bombs won. Although, I'm sure Sean would dispute who won. I remember our mission to Mars and the flag hanging debacle (there were no hooks thank you very much!) I also remember bonding with Sean after I threw up on the centrifuge thing. Yeah, I was that girl. I remember our bunk and how I grabbed the last top bunk available and almost immediately regretted it. Spiders. Ick.

When not lording our awesomeness as the best four girls to ever walk the halls of fake mission control, Nikki and I spent our time with her brother Sean tormenting our older sisters. Every time we saw them in the cafeteria or in any other public place we would run up to them and give them the biggest hugs we could. It annoyed them greatly, but then again, that was kind of the point. Sean and I also became pretty obsessed with air-heads there. I think I made myself sick eating air-heads and freeze-dried ice cream.

We've always been close, especially the three of us. The thing is, I love my family and I have a special fondness for Nikki because she's my cherry bomb. She's my Kiki. So many times I would lay on the floor of her bedroom giggling with her at the JTT posters that plastered her walls telling her about my latest crush. I've never known someone to weather storms with the grace and dignity that she does. She's lost two fathers, grandparents and now she's fighting for her own life.

So yeah, it's hard to know what to say and how to react. I wish I could just go to her house, play bumper pool with her and Sean (and inevitably lose) and then lay on her floor and whisper and giggle until morning. In my heart, I know that everything will be fine. Better than fine even, everything will be great, no matter what happens. I believe that there's still plenty of hope and life and love for my dearest cousin and her fight is far from over. She just needs a little boost. If I could find some freeze dried ice cream and Lisa Frank stationary, I'd totally send it to her, but for now this will have to do.

I love you Kiki, no matter what happens, you'll always be my favorite cherry bomb.

20 Steps to Writing and Presenting MoH Wedding Toast

*ahem*

Step 1: Think about writing awesome speech for months

Step 2: Write awesome speech in moleskine for safe keeping a few days before wedding

Step 3: Make it to the reception with your speech

Step 4: Avoid stepping on the Bride's broken foot while pacing out your nerves

Step 5: Down a flute full of champagne

Step 6: Stop pacing and pretend to pay attention to Best Man's speech (which goes on too long)

Step 7: Down another flute of champagne

Step 8: Take microphone from Best Man

Step 9: Fumble with microphone and moleskine, then remember to set down champagne flute.

Step 10: Introduce yourself even though the DJ just did that for you.

Step 11: Completely forget to look at nicely written speech in moleskine and vomit out some words that make little sense.

Step 12: Blush

Step 13: Look at Speech.

Step 14: Recite Speech while injecting random word vomits here and there.

Step 15: Make Bride AND Groom cry with awesomeness of Speech-even though you word vomited a few times.

Step 16: Hug Bride, once again, avoiding broken foot.

Step 17: Hug Groom, try not to break HIS foot.

Step 18: Pick up Champagne flute and daintily sip for Toast

Step 19: Down rest of Champagne

Step 20: Ask waitress for another glass of Champagne

Books Books and more Books!

Hello again! I know, I need to update more frequently. The good news is, I'm almost out of my writing lull. The bad news is I'm ALMOST out of my writing lull.

But, that's not what this post is about. I need some advice, more specifically, I need some book buying advice.

Some of you may remember (although there's no blog post about this) back in January 2008 the flooding of my apartment and subsequent ceiling collapse. Yeah, not pretty. Anyway, pretty much the entire bookshelf and its contents were irrevocably destroyed along with a handful of books laying around my living room. Our renters insurance gave us 2 years to replace our damaged stuff and we've saved the books for last. Why? Because they didn't give us any seed money for the books so our replacement cost is out of pocket then we're reimbursed. However, we only have until January to get this done.

So here's what I need, suggestions on which books to purchase. We have about $1200 (yeah, the damage was THAT bad) we can spend on new books and we are not required to get exact titles. I will be replacing some exact titles, but I don't need to do all of them and I don't want to replace all of them exactly. So, anyone know any good books? :D

You can visit my Goodreads website here which has a decent list of books I've read in recent years. So, if you want to take the time, maybe you could suggest books NOT on that list?

Thanks for your help! I appreciate it!

*ahem*

So, it's been awhile.

But that's okay right? Honestly I just haven't had much to say.

I don't know what's up with my word count meter, but it's wrong anyway (like 10k too low) so I'll see if i can fix it soon.

My current project is actually editing my dad's novel. Editing is hard. I'm glad I'm not an editor.

Anyway, I'm still trudging along on BoR. Actually, I made a decent amount of progress prior to starting my editing project. I'm going to hop back on the writing bandwagon in April with Screnzy (although I won't be writing a script). I think I have a pretty clear view of where BoR needs to go and while I don't think it'll be easy to get there, once I hunker down it'll go somewhat smoothly. Maybe. We'll see.

In other news, Daren and I have owned our house officially for a year now. Exciting huh? It's nice to own your own home, it feels more like ours everyday. We're going to start uprooting the ugly bushes in our front yard this spring. I'm looking forward to it. :)

I hope to keep up with my glog more frequently from now on! Check back for updates!