The Write Spot, LLC

Two new press releases

Just added to the online portfolio, press releases for:

• The MOMS Club of the Tri-Town Area's Book Fair Fundraiser
• The Carbon Valley Academy's Second Annual Golf Benefit

Day in the Life: Diaries from Women Across America

I am one of the 210 excerpted day diarists This Day in the Life: Diaries from Women Across America that will be published on December 27, 2005.

For more information on this project, please go to the This Day: Diaries from American Women II website.

Or check out the first book This Day: Diaries from American Women

UPDATE: September 16, 2005

Editor Joni B. Cole emailed me my excerpt (and included the one before and after mine). It's really teeny, but I'm still proud to have been part of this wonderful project. Plus I get to be between an Olympic athlete and someone working on the Atlantis research vessel.

8:30 a.m. Head to breakfast in the cafeteria at the Olympic Training Center. I am so thankful for the cafeteria because it means I don’t have to cook. Tara Nott-Cunningham, 32, Michigan

8:30 a.m. Between Nathan the drill sergeant and the crabby baby, I just want to go back to bed and hide under the covers. Anne-Marie B. Nichols, 39, Colorado

Crisis mode. One of the winch computer monitors goes awry, all readings are flashing red. Véronique Robigou, 45, Washington (on the research vessel Atlantis)

Stirred, Not Shaken (Brain, Child Summer 2004)

In the last issue, we asked what or who has been the biggest influence on the way you mother. We don't parent in a vacuum, right? It's a question that we were curious about, and we were surprised by the answers (especially by how many readers learned from their mother's negative example). We thought we might draw some conclusions here, but we don't know that there are any to draw, really. However, we do know that we want to party with Anne-Marie B. Nichols, the author of the eight-and-a-half-ounce cocktail recipe.

Stirred, Not Shaken
When I was writing up my influences, I felt it had to be some sort of recipe. However, I couldn't figure out whether it should be a cake recipe (I like to bake and decorate cakes), some sort of witch's brew (a touch of the goddess), or a secret formula (maybe in aerosol form). I decided on a cocktail because lord knows all us moms with kids under five--I have two, four-year-old Nathan and one-year-old Lucie--need a good stiff drink now and again.

My mothering influences are a bit of this and a pinch of that, just like a good cocktail:
4 ounces – what my parents did right
2 ounces – the opposite of everything my parents did wrong
1 ounce – the way my spouse was raised
1 ounce – those motherhood and parenting books that actually made sense
1/2 ounce – how my friends parent
4 dashes – my children's personalities
1 twist – common sense
Stir gently. Strain through trial and error. Serve with humor and patience. Avoid exposing to parenting magazines, baby gurus, and media pop psychologists. Adjust daily to fit fatigue level.