I know…I usually keep my personal life out of my blogs, but hey, it’s my third wedding anniversary, and since these have been the best three years of my life, help me celebrate with a little piece of wedding cake humor. The picture above is of my mother and father-in-law’s wedding cake topper. It’s made of FROSTING and is from 1946. We found it on my mother-in-law’s bedside table after she passed away and used it on our cake.

Happy anniversary to my darlin’…the other pea in my pod. May our life together last as long as your parents’ wedding cake topper. I love you.

My fiancé stared at me in disbelief and then his face broke into an encouraging smile.

“What? You don’t think I can make our wedding cake?” I asked, miffed at his lack of confidence.

Maybe I wasn’t a trained chef but it’s not like I was self-taught or anything. Jamie Oliver, Emeril Lagasse, and Rachel Ray were some of my closest friends. I’d learned a lot from the Food Network.

For example, did my fiancé know that you don’t add the salt to lentils until the very end or they get tough? I was pretty sure I’d had some tough lentils at his house. Not that I was planning to put lentils in my cake, but if I were…well, I’d know how to do it right.

All I wanted was a simple, delicious, towering white-frosted cake. Sheesh, how hard could it be to stack a few layers on top of each other?

“We’re going to have a lot of people, I told my fiancé a month later, so I think I better make an eight-layer, four tier cake.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“We don’t want to run out!” I said.

“Yes, dear.”

He was learning fast. I knew I was marrying him for a reason.

One day the official cake pans arrived. I’d won them in a bidding war on eBay and I was not disappointed. Shiny and new, no dents, four sizes. Perfecto! Eat your heart out Martha Stewart.

Actually, it was Martha Stewart who saved the day. My neighbor thought my samples tasted fine, but she too was a worrier and picked me up a book called Martha Stewart Weddings. Normal brides use this enormous coffee table book to get ideas before ordering their cake from a real baker. I took it literally when the book said, “follow these instructions and you can’t go wrong”. After all, would Martha lie?

I’d decided on my friend Ed’s famous carrot cake recipe (which I later found out he’d stolen from the New York Times Cookbook), but I practiced with ninety-nine cent chocolate cake mixes and canned frosting.

Confidently I whipped up the batter, filled the pans and popped them in the oven. When they came out, they looked like any cake I’d ever made. Uneven and dome shaped on top. Hmmmm…

“If the layer is uneven, trim it with a bread knife,” suggested Martha.

If you’ve ever cut your own bangs because it seems easier than going downtown, trying to park, and paying a hairdresser full price for a few snips, you’ll know what happened to my cake layers.

If you’ve ever put on a third coat of nail polish before the other two are completely dry, you’ll know what happened when I tried to frost the layers that weren’t quite cool yet.

And if you’ve never done either of those things, well, you must’ve seen that rerun of The Brady Bunch where they build a volcano, right? Imagine a mound of mismatched, misshapen, layers of chocolate goo held together by straws (another MS tip to keep the layers from sliding).

The only place for this embarrassing mass was the garbage. But nooooo….my fiancé wouldn’t hear of that sort of waste. He ate the top layer himself. The rest he insisted on taking to the theater where he worked.

“They’re actors. They’ll be glad to have it,” he said.

“Well, can’t you tell them that you dropped it or something?” I asked. “None of them are going to want to come to the wedding if they see this.”

“They’re coming to the wedding for the beer,” he said. “And I’m not really a very good liar.”

“You’re an ACTOR!”

“But not a liar. You wouldn’t want to marry a liar, would you?”

“Yes! Yes, I would.”

“Sorry.”

I hauled the lump out to the car and placed it on the passenger seat.

“They’ll love it,” he said, kissing me and climbing in, tossing his shoulder bag directly on top of the cake.”

“YES!” I shouted.

The cake probably didn’t look any different but at least he wouldn’t have to lie. As it turned out, the actors’ only comments were, “Cool. We’re gonna have to stop for milk instead of beer on the way home.”

Oh, and for the record, I learned exactly what not to do from that practice cake and my four-layer, eight tier wedding cake turned out beautifully and tasted delicious. The ribbons around the base of each layer were there for decoration. If they just so happened to hide the gaps and the straws, well, I’m sure even Martha fudges on occasion.

The groom has requested that I remove the earlier picture of him eating his words, I mean the cake, and replace it with this romantic picture of “the official kiss”. The other pictures are the groom’s cakes (which I also made, in secret!), and something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. The garter fulfills the first three as it was my mother-in-law’s garter, and the shoes are new, matching my husband’s choice of footwear for the wedding (also a surprise for him!).

If the first five pages of your manuscript are not as good as the first five pages of this book, you better get back to them. This is the first chapter I am going to hold my writing up against from now on.

P.S. I know the whole book is great, even though I had to stop after five pages to write this because I read it years ago when it came out.

I usually don’t write about my personal life too much, but I’m hating that my website isn’t updated all the time like I want it to be, so today I’m going to give you my excuse. We are in the middle of a remodel/overhaul of our house/possessions. We are remodeling, which entails lots of phone calls, purchases, arrangements etc. We are also using this time to pare down and are selling a lot of things we don’t use regularly, like the canoe and the lawn mower (I know you’re wondering how we get away without using the lawn mower…let’s just say we have a very thoughtful neighbor who is often looking for a reason to get out of the house and so he mows everyone’s lawn in the neighborhood! Lucky us!).

Because of this, two things have fallen by the wayside…actually, three…reading, writing, and regularly updating my website. To add a bit more to the mix, my husband has booked himself a whole bunch of gigs over the next few weeks so we’ll be traveling (I get to be CD Girl and sell the CDs), and at the end of September, we are driving to Idaho to get my new writing studio.

Ain’t it cool????

Anyway, I hope to be back on the writing track by October. Wish me luck!

I got this book about fifteen years ago when I took a course from The Institute of Children’s Literature (great course). I’ve hung onto it because I remembered liking it so much. I’m paring down, getting rid of books (if anyone wants this one, drop me a line), so I decided to read it again before I gave it away.

It is a novel that was chosen as an example for the course. I am now having to guess why, as I can’t remember that far back. My educated guess is that it is an excellent example of setting and character development. The plot isn’t that exciting to me and seems a little tired, but it was written 22 years ago, so maybe it was fresh and new then. Probably. Anyway, it’s a worthy read. The character is twelve, and being in third person, I would classify it as Middle Grade, rather than YA.

I know Tuesday is Teen Topic day, but today we’re taking a little detour to music. As anyone who’s perused my website knows, I am married to a singer/songwriter/musician/actor. While he leans towards old-time music now, once upon a time, he made his living as a singer/songwriter under the name of Victor Mecyssne (he took my last name when we married) and his band was called The Ragtops.

Next week, he and his band are doing a reunion gig at the world famous Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. If you’re around, you might want to check it out. Tickets went on sale this morning at The Bluebird Cafe’s website. It is also possible to watch the performance live on the internet, although I haven’t figured out how to do it, from their site, so if you’re not in Nashville, check it out anyway.

To hear a sample of Victor’s music, check out his My Space page. He has a couple of out of town gigs coming up too, so if you’re in Illinois, check those out on his website.

It promises to be a fun evening. Hope to see y’all there!

So, I was all set to write about My Writing/Your Writing, but that’s on Wednesdays. Yesterday I did a Teen Topic which is usually on Tuesdays! As you can see, I’m obviously a day behind. I confess, this is because I was partying. On Sunday we went to a big music party at a friend’s farm, stayed over, and drove home on Monday. I think because you’re supposed to party on Saturdays and drive home on Sundays, I’ve been a little off all week. Now you’ll have to wait for my writing words of wisdom until next week. Which is actually kind of lucky for me because I didn’t really have a good topic, I was just going to wing it.

Instead I will regale you with Fifteen Things You Didn’t Know About Mosquitoes an article by yours truly that I wrote when I was doing a bunch of these pieces for The Tennessean newspaper. I’m not sure how funny you’ll find it, but it is interesting. By the way, we sleep outside every night during the summer, and may I just say that a mosquito net was the best $60 we’ve spent in a long time. They can see you, but they can’t get you! It’s like a one-up on the evil mosquito world. Bwahahaha!!!!

You’re just getting comfortable with your sweetie on the glider, the sun is setting, and the air is finally cooling off. But instead of sweet nothings being whispered in you ear, it’s the unmistakable whiny buzz of your not-so-friendly neighborhood mosquito. Take comfort. You’re not alone. On an average June day mosquitoes bite about 189,907,793,210 times. That’s worldwide. It just felt like it was in your backyard.

1. If you’ve got a slow metabolism and you’re tired of all those skinny people running around saying, “I can eat anything, my metabolism is so high.” you should know the real reason they’re always on the move is because the mosquitoes are after them. Mosquitoes are drawn to the carbon dioxide that humans exhale and the higher your metabolism, the more you emit.
2. So, you’ve put off that camping trip ‘cause you’re afraid of bears? Well, compared to mosquitoes, bears are a walk in the park. Mosquitoes kill more humans each year than any other animal.
3. In the case of the mosquito, it’s the male that loves flowers. The female loves you. Only the females bite (which probably doesn’t make you feel any better). But, hey, can you blame a girl for trying to feed her family? She needs your blood to produce a batch of eggs.
4. Depending on the weather, her stamina, and how many blood meals she can get, the female can just keep laying eggs over and over without even mating again. A female mosquito can lay 3000 eggs in her lifetime.
5. For some lucky people mosquitoes are just small nuisances, for others even a quick little bite turns into a red itchy blotch the size of a half dollar (guess which category this writer falls into?). The swelling and itchiness is your body’s response to the mosquito’s saliva.
6. Most mosquitoes live and feed within one mile of their breeding ground.
7. Citronella candles, incense, and some insect repellents work because they hide the body’s real odor which is one of the things the mosquito is looking for. The reason they don’t work great is because if there’s one thing mosquitoes can do, it’s track you down by smell. Their olfactory sense is up to 10,000 times better than humans.
8. Bats are your friends. One little brown bat can catch around 600 mosquito sized insects each hour! Bats do like a varied diet so they’re eating all the bugs in your yard, not just mosquitoes, but they really can help control the mosquito population. And they’re so cute! Build or buy a bat house and put them to work.
9. Bug zappers are NOT your friends. Unlike most bugs, mosquitoes aren’t drawn to the ultraviolet light. However, the bugs that naturally eat them, like dragon flies are. You’re killing the predators and getting stuck with the mosquitoes.
10. Garlic isn’t just for vampires anymore. When farmers noticed that garlic fields seemed to be mosquito free, a new industry was born. Highly concentrated liquid garlic can be applied to your lawn and shrubs to repel mosquitoes. Mixed with a little oil, it can also be sprayed on standing water to smother the eggs.
11. Deet is by far the most effective biting insect repellent. It’s a synthetic chemical which is essentially a poison that makes the mosquitoes want to dine elsewhere. Concentrations of 30% are recommended for adults, and although higher concentrations are available they can cause dizziness or allergic reactions. Never use products containing more than 10% Deet concentration on children.
12. For those of you who want to avoid the bites and the chemicals, there are lots of natural repellents available. They usually contain natural oils such as lemongrass, Citronella, peppermint, tea tree oil, catnip, and eucalyptus. They’re only as effective as you are diligent though because as soon as the oil evaporates you need another coating (every 10-15 minutes).
13. Why should you care about mosquitoes? They’re just part of summer, right? West Nile Virus has become a real threat in the U.S. The CDC has an excellent website with more information (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/)
14. And now for some good news (assuming you have deep pockets). You might feel like you’re a mosquito magnet, but there actually is a product called a mosquito magnet and that’s exactly what it does. By emitting a steady stream of carbon dioxide, heat, moisture, and octenol, it draws mosquitoes to it. They are then sucked into a net where it traps, dehydrates and kills them. These portable magnets run on propane and cost a bundle but have a reputation for being very effective.

Websites: http://www.mosquitobarrier.com/ www.mosquitoes101.com http://www.batconservation.org/ http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/

  This past weekend I was at a party and there were a lot of people there I didn’t know. Through conversation with one of them, I found out about a very cool summer job for college students that anyone with some internet savvy, research skills, and determination can do.

One of the men there had a daughter home for the summer between her first two years of college. She knew that all the jobs available to her were low paying, and because she lived in the country, there wasn’t much to choose from even if she did want to work away her summer for a pittance. So what she did was create her own “job” and it was to find herself scholarships.

She spent time every day working at this, looking for those forgotten, small scholarships that go unclaimed or are under-applied for each year. She set her goal to apply for at least five scholarships each week. She concentrated on the $200 ones or the $500 ones, rather than the $10K ones that everyone else was looking to win. By the end of the summer she had won $30,000 in scholarships for the upcoming school year! Now that’s impressive!

How did you pay for college?

As usual, I’m not blogging on the weekend, but I did update Need To Read. It’s worth checking out.