Overlooked Orchid

There are some days when I love the thought of energy pills, like today for instance. I was up from Sunday morning all the way through until about 8am this morning….Than I layed down, and was back up at 10am. It’s now 6pm and I’m starting to drag, and yet if I lay down now, I will be up most of the night again. Some energy to get me through a few more hours would be great. Anyway, I’ll take what little energy a pepsi can give me, and do a bit around the house to keep me moving…a nice hot shower, and I should be good until about 2am *LOL*…Yep, crazy hours, that’s me!!

The outdoor lighting was spectacular, but nothing less could be expected when her Dad and brother got together. They had the lights set up so that it could almost be bright as day outside, but they also had it to where you could have just dim, mood lights as her brother had called them, and just about every setting in between. Lights for in the summer, to keep the bugs at bay, lights for the winter to cast a warm friendly glow.

The luxury watches were covering the dresser. She had found probably close to a hundred of them tucked in dresser drawers, still tucked in the original boxes that they had been purchased in. Her mother had always had a thing for watches. From the simple to the elegant. the classic to the gaudy. Her mother had had a watch for ever day of the week, every occasion possible, and still some that she was sure had never been worn.

The air tools were hung up on the garage wall. It almost seemed as if they were a wallpaper or something, because there were so many. Her father had always loved tools, especially air tools. Every Christmas and birthday the family had gotten him more tools, for lack of something else to get him. It became a family joke really. Now, well, that was gone…a memory..something that was both sweet in remembrance, and bitter too, because there would never be another Christmas or birthday for him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

MARY CONNEALY is an award-winning author and playwright, married to Ivan a farmer, and the mother of four beautiful daughters, Joslyn, Wendy, Shelly and Katy. They live in Decatur, Nebraska. Mary is a GED Instructor by day and an author by night. And there is always a cape involved in her transformation.

Mary has also written Petticoat Ranch, Golden Days, and her latest, Alaska Brides that will debut in August.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Let yourself be swept away by this fast-paced romance, featuring Grace Calhoun, an instructor of reading, writing, and arithmetic, who, in an attempt to escape the clutchs of a relentless pursuer, runs smack dab into even more trouble with the 6R’s – widower Daniel Reeves, along with his five rowdy sons. When a marriage is forced upon this hapless pair – two people who couldn’t dislike each other more – an avalanche isn’t the only potential danger lurking amid the shadows of Calico Canyon. Will they make it out alive? Or end up killing each other in the process?

Running from her Abusive foster-father, a man intent on revenge, the prim and perfectly proper Grace Calhoun takes on the job of schoolmarm in Mosqueros, Texas.

As if being a wanted woman isn’t bad enough, Grace has her hands full with the five rowdy and rambunctious Reeves boys?tough Texan tormenters who seem intent on making her life miserable. When, in an attempt to escape from the clutches of her pursuer, Grace is forced to marry widower Daniel Reeves, father of the miniature monsters, she thinks things couldn’t get any worse. Or could they?

Daniel Reeves, happy in his all-male world, is doing the best he can, raising his five boys?rascals, each and every one. Since his wife’s death in childbirth, Daniel has been determined never to risk marriage again.

When God throws Grace and Danielt together?two people who couldn’t detest each other more?the trouble is only beginning.

Will this hapless pair find the courage to face life together in the isolated Calico Canyon? Or are their differences too broad a chasm to bridge?

If you would like to read the first chapter go HERE

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On a personal note, I really liked this book!!! It leaves it wide open for more books to come too, which I really hope there will be more, because I really would like to see what happens to some of the people in the book!!

I’m really not too sure what else to say, because I don’t want to give away any of the good stuff from the book, but I recommend you read it. It is funny, endearing, and heart-wrenching all in one!!

Family happenings (the category title) is putting it mildly!!! Acouple of months ago, I ran into an old friend, who just happens to be the Aunt of my girl’s biological father. In any case, we talked a lot, and started hanging out again. She told me that her sister (the girls Nana) had cancer, and wasn’t doing well….She told me a lot about the girl’s father as well….what he had been up to in previous years, and miscellaneous stuff. In any case, she asked me if I would consider meeting Karen (Nana) again. I thought about this for weeks. She, Ange talked to Karen about it as well…my fears, my uncertainty…..She kept reassuring me that it would be okay, that nothing bad would happen….that Karen, and Ronnie (girl’s father) wanted nothing more than to see the girls and I. That was pretty hard for me to swallow, considering past experience, but I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that the Karen would die, without the girls ever knowing her.

So I sat the girls down and I talked to them about it. They have always known about their Father, always…so it’s not like it was a big suprise or anything, other than the fact that they wanted to see us. I say us, because that is exactly how they put it!! They, at every step, have put the girl’s wellbeing, and security over their desires. Anyway, the girls said that they would like to meet this family. So I set it up with Karen that we would come to the town where she lives, and have dinner with her, her husband, and Ronnie. I layed out ground rules of how this would happen, and they agreed.

The day came for the meet…I had told the girls the plans to meet for dinner, but that just wasn’t exceptable to them…*LOL* They wanted to go right away!! Well, I put them off for awhile, but than decided, why not?? It would give the girls a chance to get to know Nana a bit before meeting their father and Papa….so we went up a bit earlier….The girls played, and when they weren’t “bugging” Nana, Karen and I talked….Alot!!!! We aired out a lot of the things from the past…

Papa came home, and the girls were thrilled…*LOL*…He sat out on the porch with Karen and I, and the girls chattered away to him….He was a happy man, you could tell that, and that is going some for Steve, as he is a quiet, and rather scary man!!! *LOL* Megan got a little chair and sat it over beside Papa, and kept scooting the chair closer to his….He would sit a certain way, and she would do the same thing…It was so precious!!!

Ronnie came, and Megan went running out to his vehicle and jumped into his lap. Her idea, not mine….I was standing in the doorway, and started crying, wishing she wasn’t so eager to see him. I went into the kitchen and Karen followed, rubbing my back and talking to me….Ronnie came in, (I had mostly stopped crying) and gave me a side-arm hug asking how I had been….It all seemed so normal that it hurt!!

I once thought that I was a part of this huge, loving family, but than things happened, things were said, and I closed myself and my girls off from them. We have talked a great deal about this, and nobody blames me for doing that, they understand why I did it….I understand why I did it….but now it hurts, knowing how much the girls have missed out on….how much they (the family) has missed out on. I know the past happened the way it did, because we were all very different people than we are now.

In any case, that was almost 3 weeks ago….Since then, we (Karen, Ronnie, and I) have all done a lot of talking…The girls and I went to Ronnie’s wedding (weird, I know), and met his new wife. She seems like a great person, and we get a long well together, at least at this point. Ronnie has seen the girls acouple of times, and has talked to them on the phone….We are not rushing this….Letting the girls set the pace basically. Which is why he is called Father, instead of Dad, because they know there is a difference, and they and I, am waiting for Ronnie to prove that he is ready to be a DAD this time around.

I am still scared to death that my little girls will get hurt…that he has popped back into their lives, only to pop back out in a few months…but I hold my fears at bay, with a wait and see attitude. It may sound harsh to say, but I’ve already told Ronnie that if he screws up this time, there won’t be a next time, until the girls are 18. I will not put my girls through an emotional ringer time and again just to please him, and so that they have a father….Won’t happen…I am taking my chance this time, and praying all turns out well!!

I knew the risks going into this, I think about those risks on a daily basis, but I can’t deny the fact that I feel this was the right thing to do. I felt it before the meeting, and I feel it now!! I wish everyone understood how I feel!!

I think the thing that surprises me most about all of this, is how open armed they have greeted me. ME!!!! Okay, I knew they wanted to see the girls, but they have made me feel so welcome, so much a part of the family. I have such deep feelings about this, but that is not for here…or at least not for now…

Anyway, enough for now.

Perusing the yellow pages wasn’t helping her pick out a Chicago personal injury lawyers any at all…There were hundreds of ads, how was she supposed to know which one was good. She had a good case, she knew she did, but it would still take a good lawyer, and one that wasn’t just out for her money. “Was there such a lawyer?” she asked herself. It seemed, in her very limited dealings with lawyers, that money was all they really wanted…No, money without having to work hard to get it.

Okay, glass sinks are a new one on me…*LOL* I’ve heard of porcelein sink, and stainless steel sinks, but never glass ones. I wonder how easy it would be to break them?? I’d hate to drop a dish, and my whole sink break!!! *LOL* Surely they are more sturdy than that!! In anycase, I think I’ll stick to the good old stainless steel or porcelein!!….

Living in Outer Banks was an experience all it’s own….one that she had waited her whole life for. She had grown up moving from place to place as the mood struck her family, but she had been “odd man out” as she had always wanted a place to stay. And now she had that…in the one place that she never expected to end up….In the town where her ex-in-laws lived. Oh, it had been years since she had been married to their son, but still, it still seemed odd to be here, to be welcomed into their family like a long lost daughter.

I just love the internet, at least most of the time…*LOL*…You can shop online, you can play games online, you can get life insurance quotes online, you can research probably any topic that interests you, you can stay in contact with friends and family, and you can make new friends online as well…The possibilities are endless I think. However, I remember as a kid, never having internet, and I got a long just fine. Nowadays, the thought of having no internet sends me into a panic of sorts…