The famous line of Al Paccino’s, “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in” has been running through my head the last week or so.  I’m back to work in my old industry.  I really and truly feel like I’m in the mob and can’t get out.

My only consolation is that I’m working with Ava again.  It’s been a year since we worked together.  I had a really great time working with Kelli and her husband, but unfortunately the money and benefits of the old industry won out.  Apparently, my sanity and disposition are not as important as weekends off and cheap insurance.

Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbtttt.

One good side effect is that I suspect my writing will get back to normal.  I’ve been on a three and a half month break from writing anything new.  I can’t begin to imagine why that is…I’ve been under less stress and certainly haven’t used my brain as much as I was before.  Either way, the page count dropped seriously low and today I wrote four new pages.

Thank goodness, because poor Thomas and Francesca have been waiting impatiently to get to the opera so I could royally screw up their lives.

I have entered the cover of Out of Heaven in a contest.  The website is RateMyCover.com  Here is the link to my entry.  Hopefully it takes you right to my entry.  I”m crossing my crossables.

Just a reminder that this is what you’re voting on.

Vote Now! Vote Often. 

Thank you.

I am so tired.  Really completely exhausted.  This weekend was Sassy’s 7th birthday and we had an incredibly full weekend.  Friday evening was her Fine Arts night for her school – she was singing and dancing as a firefly and an ant.  Saturday The Bandit had a soccer game and then Sassy had a ballet recital – this time she was cotton candy.  Sunday we had a dinner with the family at my mom-in-law’s house.  But the big event, the one I am still trying to recover from, was Saturday. 

Sassy had a slumber party.  I really have no one to blame but myself.  I came up with the idea.  I tracked down the mommy’s and convinced them that My Honey and I are not pedophiles (or even Republicans for that matter) and we can be trusted with their children.  I came up with ideas to entertain them through the night: Twister, baking cookies, painting fingernails, and watching kid friendly movies.  Sassy and her friends were over-the-moon excited about the party.  By Friday, they were vibrating.

Over the course of the night the following occurred:

*Sassy decided everyone should meet Roscoe, the Idiot Dog, and I had forbidden her from letting him in the house.  I wasn’t so foolish to believe I could control 5 little girls and the maniac dog too.  All of them scurried out of the house and around the side to the gate – barefoot.  Then I got to perform minor surgery without the benefit of a scrub nurse, strait jacket, or Lidocaine to get all the stickers out of their feet.

*We had a major, major nose bleed.  I was dealing with girls in another room when the issue was brought to my attention.  I jogged down the hall to find blood all over the tile floor and an entire roll of bloody toilet paper in the toilet.  It took a good 15 minutes of dedicated ice application and nose pinching to make it stop.

*I was nagged incessantly about the fingernail painting before I finally got the stuff gathered to do it.  I no longer have varnish on my dining room table thanks to the now empty bottle of polish remover.

*Once the girls found the cat….well, life as he new it ceased to exist.  The cat is seeking enrollment in Witness Protection. Let’s just say they loved him very thoroughly.  They drove him absolutely crazy before I was able to kitty-nap him and shut him safely away in my bedroom. Even then, I had to shoo the girls out of my room several times and, at one point, out from under the bed that my husband was sleeping in all in an effort to drag the cat out from hiding.

*I found not one but two pieces of gum stuck to my kitchen floor.

*I dried tears when someone was mean to the birthday girl and later broke up a fight over a “crystal” rock that involved separatingthe combatants in different rooms.  More than once I channeled Rodney King with the “can’t we all just get along” speech. 

*At a quarter after midnight, I finally shut things down and demanded that the 3 girls that were still awake (including my own) go to sleep.  I collapsed into the restless sleep of a hunted criminal at 12:30.

*At 5:15 the next morning – less that five hours later – I was awakened with the news that one of the girls threw up.  Deep sigh.  I then did a load of laundry that included a sleeping bag, pajamas, two pillow cases and a pillow.  I also washed the girl and her hair.  Then I got the delightful and gag inducing honor of scrubbing the carpet.  I felt terrible for the poor thing and managed to smile and assure her that it was all OK.

*I made 346 waffles.  Some people informed me that they liked pancakes better and I assured them in no uncertain terms that waffles  and pancakes were the exact same thing – only with syrup reservoirs which is infinitely better than just plain pancakes.  Besides, short of being deathly allergic to wheat, butter, eggs or maple trees, they were going to eat waffles and they would like them.

*The party ended at 9am.  When one kid’s mom showed up, the little darling decided she didn’t want to go home so she hid.  It took us 15 minutes of searching to find her.  I was just relieved that her mother had actually seen her in my house that morning other wise I’m sure that she would have thought I lost her.  Anyway, I did that old bouncer routine – “Last call.  You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”  I finally found her under Sassy’s bed.

*All the girls except one were gone by 8:45.  I told My Honey that if that child’s mother wasn’t there by 9:01, said child would be sitting on the curb waiting.

I texted Kelli during the festivities.  While she did express sympathy, she also seemed dumbfounded why I would ever have agreed to the whole thing anyway, much less have come up with the notion myself. 

The experience was painful but, and I can’t believe I’m actually writing this down, it really wasn’t any worse than I expected.  Except for the blood and puke and the lack of varnish on my table – the girls were all well behaved if rambunctious and polite with their pleases and thank yous.

I wonder if a slumber party is like laboring to have a baby.  You know how nature allows you to forget how really wretched laboring was so that you’ll be willing to do it again?  Do you suppose I’ll be able to forget the trauma of this slumber party and allow my home to be infested with five squealing little girls again?

Not any time soon I assure you.   It seems to me it’s time for some other deluded mother to learn her lesson.

My uncle over at Newmexiken.com has been alerting all those that are interested in the concentrated evil over at Facebook.  Of course, I have a face book page – 2 actually.  Alright 3, but one is abandoned but they won’t let me get rid of it and it only adds to the general confusion.   That’s why I hate Facebook.  Unfortunately, it’s a necessary evil in this day and age of self promotion, so I have my personal page and a fan page for my author self. 

I know that there are all kinds of very serious concerns over security and privacy over there, but that’s not my problem with Facebook.  I very rarely do anything with my pages.  So much so that people have asked me why I bother.  I have so much other writing to do that I can’t possibly waste computer time with that nonsense, except that I know from a marketing standpoint it’s not nonsense so I turn my attention to it every once in a while.  And every time I do I get sucked into a black hole of chatting.

I was chatting with two friends while trying to write this post, in fact.  It’s damn near impossible to write anything intelligent while having two separate conversations.

Regardless – the pages are there and I am getting much better about updating them.  Find my page at Amylynn Bright and of course, Kelli Daymor is there also.  Ask to friend us.  We’ll say yes.  And there’s always a very real opportunity you can get me to chat, too.  Apparently, I’m always up for a distraction.

Yesterday, The Bandit got his dearest wish.  Alright, not his dearest, dearest wish.  I haven’t yet figured out how to get a rodeo bull on the space shuttle.  Damn NASA won’t return my emails.  But I do what I can.  The wish that came true was a relatively easy one considering.  The Bandit got bunkbeds!  His father and I set them up yesterday.  It took approximately 73 hours.  That’s why I didn’t post last night.  I could no longer lift my arms.  Typing was out of the question. 

In a moment of complete synergy, the name of the beds were The Bunk House Collection.  Once we explained that a bunk house is where the cowboys sleep, I swear I could feel the planets aligning and all was right in his 5 year old universe.  We already had cowboy sheets and a cowboy quilt.  He has 5 pairs of cowboy pajamas.  AND NOW he has a cowboy bed. LA!!

Needless to say, the bunkbeds were a huge hit.  Instead of a ladder, there is a set of stairs.  Each stair pulls out into a drawer.  Within an hour, he had a myriad collection of junk in there: Happy Meal toys, random army men, marbles, Hot Wheels cars – basically quintessential boy stuff.  He and his sister ran up and down the stairs a gazillion times, building a fort on the top bunk. 

Bunkbeds are all fun and games until someone leaps off the top bunk in an effort to swing on the ceiling fan.  Stay tunes – I’m sure there will be all kinds of bunkbed shenanigans to report.

Something exciting happened at work this weekend.  We had all resigned ourselves to another uneventful weekend of tedium.  However, thankfully it was not to be.  Something happened Friday that keep us talking all weekend.

First I should tell you that Kelli, her husband, and I all work for a national company that resells cars.

On Friday, a young couple brought in a Volkswagen they were interested in selling to us.  One of our team members was assisting them and the rest of us were milling about the showroom in a lack luster fashion.  I looked out the window and noticed what seemed to be a lot of exhaust coming from our parking lot near the Volkswagen.  Then there was A LOT of exhaust.  Before I could register what was really going on, our guy ran into the showroom and announced in an adrenalin charged voice, “Call 911!  There’s a car on fire!”

Well, that woke us up, I assure you.  Pretty quickly the small amount of smoke billowed into a large amount of smoke and much of the Volkswagen was eclipsed.  By now, all of the employees and customers were gathered around the windows watching the fire.  Kelli was quite alarmed by this as she was sure the car would explode and we’d all be killed by flying glass.  I was hoping that would happen, well the broken windows anyway, because maybe then they’d send us home.  Aren’t I a model employee?

Anyway, the fireman came very quickly – in under 2 minutes.  The other ladies and I were very excited about this as any opportunity to see firemen ranks high in our list of Guy Ogling Moments.  So imagine our disappointment when the big, red truck, sirens blaring, rolled to a stop right next to the burning car, directly in front of the showroom windows, and out jumped afireman in a full hazmat suit.  The man was covered – head to toe.

“Did you see the Fire Department was here?” Kelli asked one of the girls from the business office later that day?

“NO! Were they hot?”

I’m sure they were.  They were completely covered and it’s like 90 degrees out there,” was Kelli’s snarky reply.

The whole thing was a major disappointment from a “hot” fireman stand point.  Granted, I’ll concede that there was a cool car fire and all that, and we had stuff to talk about all day, but it was a total let down as far as any ogling opportunities were concerned.

Kelli and I were considering setting something else on fire but only if this guy shows up.

Hello "hot" fireman guy.