9/24/2013

Coco Crisps + Reddick Whip = Victory Pie!

Happy #museday!

I was raised to raise my nose at spectator sports. Our family would DO things while others were sitting on couches, drinking beer, drooling, screaming in unison like an idiot choir. We'd garden, draw, hike, read, or go visit grandma. But I married a sports fan, and in loving him, I have learned to love the ball seasons in my own way.

This weekend, I made a video based on my Walk-off Pie recipe from last year's streaky baseball season. My son, the aspiring filmmaker, was a very useful Techie. He helped me figure out how to turn the kitchen into a studio, held the camera on the tricky shots, and did a great a walk-on at the end.

The most annoying thing was not the way batteries ran out on the second-to-last shot, but the clicking noise the expensive fancy HD video camera I borrowed made a clicking noise when it zoomed. It was a tough call but in the end I took my own advice not to be a perfectionist but to get it out there. Life is short.

There were a few best things... the magic of editing (thank you, Adobe Premiere), being creative with my kid (his favorite scene was the table-clearing...), and the best surprise of all: THE PIE WAS DELICIOUS! We left it in the freezer and ate it the next night as the Broncos whipped up and up on the Raiders.

My crazy cook friends and I have always dreamed of doing a variety show. Maybe this is my opening salvo. (Mmm, salvo.)

Oh, and here's one more factoid. The shirt I'm wearing is homemade, too. It's a relic from our early days of parenthood, when I couldn't afford the licensed variety for a father's day gift. To avoid complete licensing failures, the child-sized one said "A-Ok-land" on the back. This one, which my husband has kept, says "Auckland A's" on the back, since Oakland doesn't start with an A....

9/01/2013

The Bullying Antidote COBBLER


In SUMMER, 2013, Hazelden published The Bullying Antidote, culminating a 2-year writing adventure with my mother, and kicking off another one: publicity.

Writing and publicity require two opposite states of mind. One is introverted and quiet; the other is extroverted and chatty.

Here's a link to the Zorgos blog, where I'm chatty about bullying a few times a month.