No Way---This is Not Your Mother's Book

         When our son went off to college, I was scared. Scared that no one would be there, standing over his bed and uttering the magic word ("Bacon!") or holding a cup of ice water over him...because if one of those things wouldn't be happening, my son wouldn't be getting up in time for his classes...

This is The Boy. We thought he'd never make it through Drury, but he did...with honors.

         When my daughter's slow-pitch softball team was short a player, I was happy to fill in as catcher. The pitches came over the plate slow as molasses. It would be a cinch. And then, while the players on Virginia's team were infield, I could "play" with my granddaughter. But then I got the awful news: since I was catcher, I had to also bat. And I am famous for being unable to hit anything smaller than the side of a barn. The result was embarrassing for me, and hilarious for everyone at the park that evening...

         Our son got so many tattoos while he was in college, when I counted them, I ran out of fingers on one hand and was working on the fingers on the other one. My husband and I begged him to stop until the frontal lobe of his brain finished forming...then he could make a mature, informed decision. But then he had the idea of getting a tattoo of his parents--a portrait of us--to honor us. Yikes! 

         When I was pregnant at 19 with my daughter--my first--I swore this would be my one and only child, so I was not interested in investing in lots of money for maternity clothes. I wore my husband's jeans--unzipped--leaving my huge Shamu-stomach covered by the long smock-style maternity tops of the era . (Hey, it was the 70's.) And I borrowed a pair of double-knit burgundy-colored maternity pants for "nice occasions. I wore those reddish pants so much, I just knew that right after I gave birth, I would be able to slip into my regular clothes and I could burn that polyester monster in celebration. But would I be able to see them go up in flames immediately after I delivered my after-birth? 

       These are all stories that I have submitted or stories I'm finishing up to submit to the Not Your Mother's Book series. Pat Nelson is looking for a few more stories about parenting and grandparenting. (But hurry. She almost has her anthology filled.) Linda O'Connell is looking for more stories about families. And Dianna Graveman is on the hunt for more tales about being a mom and being a mom-to-be.

         Think edgy. Think snarky. Think twisted with huge dollops of funny. And think about submitting. Quickly.