This year we got our Easter Eggs from Nukie Nuclear Power Plant!

I was welcomed home to North Carolina by the IRS, garden weeds, birthdays and an Easter Egg Hunt to plan. Hello Spring!  I hit the ground hopping.

Fortunately, the Apex Chamber of Commerce was en route to the bakery where I had ordered party foods and birthday cake.  I picked up my copy of the Apex Magazine.  I am so appreciative to my hometown Apex Chamber of Commerce for featuring my story in this year’s edition of the Magazine. 

When I see this photo, what I remember is that I had a bald spot on the top of my head at the time (which, fortunately, is not visible due to the angle of the camera). I had been diagnosed with stress related alopecia.  A lot has happened since that photo… for one thing my hair grew back!

My Dimple Dumpling & his dad.

This March, the Dimple Dumpling, mentioned on the dedication page of my children’s book about nuclear power, turned 20 years old.  He still has the dimples, but my son Jordan is no longer a dumpling.  On Easter, my daughter Tabitha, who along with her brother inspired Tickles Tabitha's Cancer-tankerous Mommy  turned 22 years old. I am now the mother of two adult children.  I don’t feel near as old as their birthdays make me.


Even the neighbor kids have grown up on me.  I was stunned to discover two of my Cancer Dancers will be heading to high school next year!

For those grown up kids, and as a tribute to my book about nuclear power, this year we got our Easter Eggs from Nukie Nuclear Power Plant and put on a glow-in-the-dark Easter Egg Hunt.  It was the brilliant and bright idea of my daughter, who recruited her brother and her boyfriend, and even some unsuspecting adults, to help stuff 600 plus eggs with glow in the dark items.  

Nuclear Easter Eggs.

The results were awesome!  Wish we had more photos, but what took hours to plan took the kids a few minutes to find. 

Taxes, Easter and birthdays are now sweet memories. My media moments are archived on audio and print, and behind the scenes I am getting ready to head to Alabama for my next author school visit.


This time last year, my daughter, Tabitha, and I were loading mousetraps with orange Ping-Pong balls and filming the video explaining what makes a nuclear plant nuclear. 

Tabitha & our neighbor Deven Robtoy.

My neighbor called to ask where we crouched when the tornado that devastated parts of our region of North Carolina swept through.  She and her children had been in the bathroom.  Tabitha and I had been happily preoccupied and clueless about the weather. I think of that day every time I play the video to a school group.

I never imagined then all the schools I would visit and the laughter that video would provide to so many elementary students or the behind the scenes story I would tell them about it.

Pinning the tail on the bunny.

While on the road during my last school visit I was interviewed, along with athlete Brian Jordan and educator Mindy Keller, by Neil Haley, host of the Total Education Network. Neil airs an educational talk show seven days a week that focuses on local and national education news.  Neil has been in education for years, but a children’s book about nuclear power?  That got his attention.  You can check out my interview here:

Listen to internet radio with Total Tutor on Blog Talk Radio


         

Charleston Chew the Easter Pug.

Nuclear Power: That's how Santa lights his Christmas lights!

My elves have been busy and I owe my children big time for this one!

December is always a busy month and this year it's also the launch month for Nuclear Power: How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works! 

What's the worst-best reindeer gifts you ever received? That's the topic I'm addressing when I speak at the Apex, North Carolina Rotary club on December 8th.

Then I'm looking forward to going to Bay City, Texas where I'll be the guest author at a booksigning event at Lisa's  Main Street Wine and Coffee Bar on Saturday, December 10th.

On December 17th I'm getting an early Christmas present as I watch my daughter Tabitha  graduate from North Carolina State University as one of her college's Valedictorians!

Hope there's a moment to do some Christmas shopping in there somewhere. Ho Ho Ho!

While the weather outside soared to triple digits, I was inside Progress Energy’s air-conditioned Energy and Environmental Center at the Harris Nuclear Plant, on an Energy Safari with Senior Community Relations Representative, Kim Crawford, my son Jordan, and about forty Wake County, North Carolina fifth graders and their teachers.

It was a good day to learn how nuclear power plants produce electricity and even better day to point out it takes electricity to power our air conditioners. 

Last year students participating in the Wake County Energy Camp  were recruited to be my personal guinea pigs for my nuke book, which was still a work-in-progress.  This year’s students got to critique the finished product.

Despite the air conditioning, I was perspiring with nervous anxiety.  These were not just any guinea pigs,  but children that have an aptitude for the sciences. It was obvious from the get-go we had several future engineers in our audience.  

What a relief to receive the endorsement of the experts! 

The only thing hotter than the weather was Nuclear Power: How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works!  

If you would like to be trendy just ask me for suggestions. I have the dubious distinction of being a step ahead of convention, at least among the middle-class suburbanites that surround me. Which means I’m viewed as a dim-witted, oddity by the vast majority of the general public, and all my family members.

I’d like to point out not long ago Barack Obama was viewed as a dim-witted oddity, even without taking his ears into consideration, and look where it landed him!

Being a dim-witted oddity is how I came to own a publishing company. Fortunately, just about the time my company was established and my book went to print, a celebrity named Rosie O Donnell had become a cancer awareness trendsetter, she recommended my book and I didn’t appear so dim. My light lasted about as long as a match.

Trendsetting I’ve discovered only earns one admiration if you’re well known, well off, or not well acquainted with anyone doing the admiring.

I thought I’d risk public humiliation and write about a few of the trends I’m participating in at the moment. They’ve got to be worth writing about as every one of them have provoked some type of self-righteous indignation, or malicious laughter, and I’m once again being viewed as a dim-witted oddity.

Perhaps in another few months or years, I can point back to this Blog and prove I’m not dim, some people are just too blind to see the light.

Trend #1: My commuter marriage. We’ve been practicing it for three years now, my husband Randy is at present working at a 3M plant in Alabama while I live in North Carolina and our children finish high school. It’s not my favorite trend and not for the reasons you might think. Being an oddity I like to move around and I’ve been miffed, I’ve had to stay put.

Trend #2: It’s my favorite daytime guilty pleasure and I confess it’s the reason I don’t get much written some days. It’s not the soaps or the ladies on The View that has me mesmerized- that’s so yesterday. Nope, the only Squawk I listen to comes from the men of Squawk Box, Mad Money, and the Kudlow Report. Which brings me to…

Trend #3: My dirty little secret. It’s such an embarrassment. My husband would rather talk to his colleagues about my breast cancer than tell them this one! I’ve taken up Day Trading. Who knew math or financials could be so darn interesting? My daddy, who loves poker and has the reputation of being very good at it, always said, a professional Gambler never gambles. No, the professionals leave gambling to the idiots trading stocks on Wall Street. Oh, but I've enjoyed being an idiot, trading is just sinfully fun. I hold until I can take some off the top then as Cramer would say, I sell, sell, sell. I’m not the only woman I know doing it either, I’m not naming names but one of my dear childhood friends, had the courage to admit it on Facebook. She who had never even bought a Lotto ticket has been playing the stock market!

Trend #4: I’ve ditched the work out and joined the party! I’m attending Zumba classes. The other night I went to a Zumba party. This trend has probably been around for a while in the Latin community. What took the rest of us so long? Oh I know it must have been our children. After a little demonstration on my part, my children told me they never wanted to see “that” again and wished they could erase that visual from their minds. They’ll just have to get over it because for the first time in like – ever -- I’m actually looking forward to an exercise class!

Trend #5: “Crack Open a Book” children’s programs pertaining to cancer. It’s like
deja vu. As I received the same apprehensive response when I first penned Tickles Tabitha’s Cancer-tankerous Mommy. A cancer education program for school children is a great idea- but is it really necessary?

Trend #6: My next children’s book. It’s taking me longer than it takes plastic to decay. I’m sure that’s a surprise to most my extended family members who think I don’t work, at least not a “real” job. Mine is an “imaginary” position, one where I watch the books fly off the shelves and sell themselves. With all that free time I should have been done already! I know it’s a shocker but writing is work. I’ve been at work writing a children’s book about nuclear power plants. Go ahead and laugh, but so you know, they laughed (behind my back) when I wrote a children’s book about cancer too, right up until Rosie O Donnell recommended it on national television.