Did you cry when your baby stepped into that school for the first time?

Last Thursday, The Kid–my baby boy–donned his six-sizes-too-huge backpack and the most stain-free, collared shirt I could find, and went to school. For real–not this ‘daycare-is-school-too’ stuff. No, a real and true school with all the accoutrements. Music room crammed into the basement? Check. Old-fashioned, subterranean gym? Check. Metal detector in the entrance? Um, yeah–check. I’m still scratching my head on that one, but check.

I was not going to cry. Really. I’ve been successfully dropping The Kid off at daycare for almost three years. We have a quick hug, I remind him to keep his hands, feet, and all other objects to himself (really), and he’s off without a look back, as am I. No drama, no hysterics. Just a quick and painless morning. That’s how I like it. Why should the first day of kindergarten–a mere nine days after his last day of daycare–be any different?

Well, for starters, I’m something of an emotional sponge, and there were more than enough teary moms hanging around school to start to get to me. Luckily, we met up with my friend (not sister) Leah’s husband and their two boys. Men, if you didn’t know, do not get all choked up about the first day of kindergarten. Walking to school with a man was surprisingly calming. I was good to go.

So The Kid, the man, and the boys and I all roll into school on what is, hands down, one of the craziest days of the year. The line to get through the metal detector was about 30 deep. The kids don’t have to go through it, but the grown ups do. Ironically, my purse set it off. The guard took my purse and handed it to me around the detector without checking my purse. I’m not yet clear how this makes The Kid any safer. Maybe I’m just rocking the ‘mom’ vibe extra hard.

Anyway, we go to class. His teacher is standing the hall, directing the children (read: herding cats). She’s also handing out little baggies to the parents. I take mine and immediately forget about it as I work on getting The Kid to hang up his backpack, get his name tag, and remind him to keep his hands, feet, and all other objects to himself (really). Quick hug, quicker” love you,” longer “BEHAVE!”, and I’m out the door. No tears. Not even a lump.

I’m halfway down the block, musing on where the time has gone and also how much longer until I can eat a snack, when I realize I’m still holding the baggie. Upon closer inspection, there’s a cotton ball, a tea bag, and a single tissue in it, as well as a note. The cotton ball was for something soft, the tea bag was to relax, and the tissue–well, that’s just self-explanatory. I’m still good. Until I get to the last line on the note.

“Thank you for entrusting your child to me. I will take care of all them.”

Oh, that was low. LOW.

So, by this time, I’m almost a block away from the school. I’m wearing business casual attire, and I am not holding the hand of a young child. To the rest of the world, I don’t really have a good reason to cry in the middle of the morning. I manage to hold at ‘teary’ and make it to the car, where I sing along with Lady Gaga until I’m good enough for work.

The next weekend, I find out my loving, caring family had a pool–a pool, I tell you!–on whether or not I would cry. And not a single darned person picked ‘teary.’

I WIN.

I’m not ignoring you, faithful reader(s). I think about you a lot. I take pictures to share with you. I plan great blogs for us to be together with (over?).

But life keeps happening.

Everyone’s finally healthy in the house, and the war against the fleas is down to small border skirmishes. The Kid finished daycare, so he was home with me for three days before school started. We had fun things planned, plus ‘homework time’–to get him into the habit of doing it, and to give me a chance to check facebook and write a quick blog.

But then My Gram had a small medical emergency, the pools closed a day before I thought they would, and . . . life just happened. Unfortunately, not often in the fun way.

School started yesterday. Hopefully by next week, I will have adjusted to the new schedule, where I don’t have to leave my house before 8, instead of by 7 every morning. I know that sounds like a good thing, but not much productivity happens when The Kid is still in the house.

So tune in next week, when we will return to our regularly scheduled life, filled with crazy Authorial happenings and rocking fun Mom things!

No, I’m not telling you. I’m asking you.

The Romance Writers of America’s annual conference just ended in Orlando, Florida–which means it’s time to start preparing for the RWA next year! I’m especially keen on preparing because I didn’t go to Orlando this year–and given how sick The Kid was and how flea-ridden the dogs were, turned out to be a mistake on my part. (Okay, yes, it’s a good thing I was here to take care of the stomach flu and strep throat. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.)

I’m going to New York, baby. And I’m taking The Husband and The Kid with me. They’ll run around and do crazy things like see Mary Poppins on stage (The Kid’s aunt Weet is a drama teacher. We’ve raised him to appreciate musical theater!) and a Mets game while I meet and greet, and then we’ll spend three days together climbing several thousand stairs to the top of the Statue of Liberty.

Here’s the thing, though. New York ain’t cheap for one person. For three people? Plus conference fees? I need a plan to help ‘defray my costs,’ which is Husband-speak for ‘make it cheaper.’

So I’ve got a plan. I’m going to submit a proposal to present a panel discussion on the current state of Cowboys in Romance today. Obviously, I write ‘new’ westerns, with a fresh take on contemporary Cowboys and Indians. I’ve already gotten the wonderfully talented Kaki Warner to agree to do it with me–Kaki is a ‘new’ voice writing historical westerns, and her books are amazing. My Agent has also agreed to sit on the panel, and Kaki was going to see if her agent would join us. We are good to go. All I have to do now is submit the proposal for the panel discussion.

Um, help? The previous proposals I’ve submitted for conferences were basically me calling up the organizer and saying, “Do you want me to do a presentation?” and the organizer going, “Could you? That’d be great.” But RWA gets hundreds–possibly a thousand–proposals. What should I do to make my proposal stand out?

I’m so open to suggestions. Thanks!

Summer in the City, back of my neck gettin’ dirty and gritty…

Yeah, that’ll be stuck in your head for the rest of the day now. You’re welcome.

Anyway, we’ve done something I’ve wanted to do for a while now–prove to The Kid that Chicago exists outside of winter!

As you may recall, due to the husband’s work schedule, The Kid and I normally venture north during the winter. It’s cold, it’s dark, and we normally crash on my old friends J and B’s futon-like couch. (I don’t know what it is–not a couch, but not a real futon. The Kid loves it, though.) Which is all well and good, but there’s a whole ‘nother side of Chicago that exists when the sun shines.

J and B recently went and had themselves an adorable baby girl, V, and we were invited to the naming ceremony–in July! Yes! A good reason to visit Chicago in the summer! So I loaded up The Kid and my mom (Hi, Mom!) and we hit the road.

We went up the new Chicago-Kansas City Corridor instead of up Hwy 55, and it was a much more relaxed drive. I recommend it. Luckily, we stopped in a town called Peru, Illinois, for the night–lucky, that is, because  NASCAR was racing in Joilet that weekend and the third hotel we went to literally had the last rooms between there and Chicago. They had a pool, which, as any parent of a small child knows, is vitally important for everyone’s survival if the child has been in a moving vehicle for more than two hours.

The next morning, we made it the Chi-town. I lived in Chicago for almost six years before we moved away, but that was five years ago. I always get a little nostalgic when I go back. At least until we hit gridlock. Then I’m ready to go home.

 First stop: The Lake! Now, it may actually be cooler by the lake, but the temps were in the 90s that day, so ‘cool’ was relative. The Kid had only seen the lake, frozen solid, through the Aquarium glass before–and certainly never done this before:

Note: I remembered to pack his water shoes! Score one for Mommy!

Ah, the crazy times. Really. I lived there for how long? And believe it or not, this was the first time I’d ever gone down to Montrose Beach on a hot summer Saturday.

After The Kid consumed/wore his Spongebob Squarepants ice cream, we headed down to the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Ave. for those who don’t know). The Mag Mile is one of the best shopping districts in the nation, plus it’s got cool architecture. Our first stop was the bridge over the Chicago River, where The Kid was just positive those were the biggest boats he’d ever seen.

He was fascinated by all the activity going on–right until this flew overhead:

Note the helicopter flying below the top of the building? Note the large, bulbous projectile on the helicopter’s nose? Turns out, they were filming Transformers 3 downtown (for like the next month) and the helicopter was getting the aerial shots. I haven’t seen either of the first two (I’m the sort of person who reads movie reviews seriously), but I’m kind of curious to see if any of the human specks might be us . . .

Anyway, the Mag Mile was the likes of which The Kid had never seen before. A middle-aged woman was doing disco kareoke all by herself; ‘inner-city youth’ were doing hilarious choreographed routines, and then there was this guy:

He blew The Kid’s mind. For several blocks after we saw the robot guy, The Kid was still trying to wrap his head around whether or not he was a real robot. I hope Robot Guy takes that as a compliment.

Shortly after this shot:

I did one of the craziest things I’ve ever done–I took The Kid, still sticky from the ice cream and sandy from the beach and sweaty from the walking–into Nieman Marcus and told him not to touch anything. Call me sadistic, masochistic, or just plain nuts, but I did. I even browsed the racks (Oh, it was the world’s softest cashmere coat–on clearance for $3,789!) and tried on and bought a sweater (comparatively, on clearance for $44). The Kid found an open space with the husband chairs–well, not really husband chairs, because normal husbands wouldn’t be caught dead sitting in those things, but still, the idea holds–and ran in small circles, right in front of the Burbury display. Needless to say, we got exceptionally prompt service from the helpful staff–except from the bouncer posted by the furs. He just glared at us as we kept moving. Because The Kid managed not to take out any displays, we went next door to the Disney store and bought him a Woody doll to go with his Buzz. They’re the best of friends now.

We had hoped to go up in the Tower formerly known as Sears after spending quality time with baby V, but then this happened:

and my mommy decided she didn’t want to be in a very tall building so much after all. If you look close, though, you can see a rainbow right over the hazy Tower Not Named Sears Anymore way off in the horizon. And, frankly, after gridlock in the rain, I was ready to head back to the hotel.

After the naming ceremony, we headed home, stopping at an antique store along the way and somehow managing to dodge a storm that looked like it was going to flatten Peoria. It was a short, crazy trip, but dang it, it was Chicago in the summer!

The Kid is already asking when we can go back.

So, as you may (or may not) have read last week, we went to Branson and saw Brule’. Awesomeness ruled.

But there was so much more the the vacation than that! We did other crazy stuff, too.

We ate lunch at Lambert’s, home of the Throwed Roll. We played sidewalk checkers outside.

Notice the bright sunshine? By the time we got done with lunch, it was POURING. We got incredibly wet making a run for the car.

Yeah, like that.

We went to Dick’s Five and Dime, an old-fashioned general store. Those with a more delicate sensiblity may want to look away:

Of course, those who find the fact that Dick’s saw fit to stock marshmallow rope candy in the ladies’ bloomers section of the store should look again. I thought it was hilarious.

Because we all forgot our swimmy suits at my folks’ house, we went to Bass Pro to get some more–only to find that they don’t carry kid’s stuff, and only slender women buy clothes at Bass Pro. (No worries: A lovely Lane Bryant was nearby!) The Kid took a picture of me with a bear:

At least he didn’t drop the camera.

We went to the Stone Hill Winery, where my wonderful husband bought me a case of cream sherry. While we were on the tour, listening to a hilarious man named Bob explain how they carbonate their carbonated wine, a Zydeco band showed up. Really.

A Louisiana bus tour with a child-prodigy accordion player showed up, handed out beads, and broke out a concert on the lawn. Only in Branson!

We went to the Dixie Stampede, where I took pictures of the horses. Not the building, the flower garden in the shape of a huge butterfly, or the cast of actors. Just the horses.

See the special saddle? This guy was one of the two horses who jumped through a flaming hoop with a rider STANDING ON HIS BACK!! Absolutely amazing.

It rained. The sun came out. It got humid. We swam in a pool. We hit the outlet malls. We drove a long, long way. Then we left The Kid with my folks for the week on our way home–and the real vacation began!