Sometimes I Out Do Myself…

When this is posted, I’ll be in the midst of sugar cookies and sprinkles while I occupy the crew for a few hours while the boy makes his Santa appearance at a neighborhood party.  This totally cracks me up because the boy?

The skinniest man on the face of the planet.

But regardless, so as to not run the risk of the little ones recognizing him, I’m keeping them and we’ve decided that we wanted to make special cookies for Santa.  So I’m sure there will be sprinkles and dough everywhere.

So glad we’re doing this at his house and not mine!

But after he returns home, I plan on stealing him for a few minutes (I’m hoping for at least five uninterrupted minutes, but with four kids, that rarely happens) so that I can give him one of his gifts.  There are many under the tree for him, but this one is special.

And in addition to being a gift for him, it’s a dream come true for me.

I’ve been teasing him unmercilessly for weeks about what it could be and here are a few of the clues that I’ve given him…

• it’s pink, purple and green with black accents
• it’s an untangible gift that he’s given me, that I’ve taken and repackaged into something tangible for him
• it will make him laugh, think, and tug at his heart strings
• it’s homemade
• it’s won’t matter if he likes it or not, it makes me very happy

He’s baffled.

So you wanna know what it is?

That’s right…

A book.

That I wrote.

And published.

It’s a real live book that you can buy.  I’m sure that it will go unsold to anyone but me (I’ve bought 3 copies) but it doesn’t matter.

The idea came one night out of the blue.  Because the boy has no computer, he’s never read any of the stories, and it’s not a big deal, but I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to share some of my best with him?”

I was just going to print them out but then I decided to go all out.  I mean, really, it was supposed to be a simple, inexpensive gift for him.  Nothing major.

But before I knew it, it snowballed.

I picked some of my favorites from the almost 800 posts that I had and threw them in a word document.  Then I formatted, reformatted, and formatted again to make it the right size.  Found some typos that I needed to fix and formatted and reformatted again.

What I thought would be an inexpensive gift (the actual book cost me $8 and some change) turned into one of the most expensive if you take my hourly rate and multiply it by all the time that I put into it.

But it came on Saturday and when I opened it, I was thrilled.  For one, it got here in time for Christmas.

But for two, my dream to have a published book, something that we had an extensive conversation about one night, and in which he pushed me hard and wasn’t accepting any of my excuses, was a reality.

Isn’t it pretty?

I have Beth at Ruby & Roja to thank for that.  She did an awesome job.

So who knows if he’ll like it.

But I’m sure he will.

Want to see a preview?

You can go to the publishers site and check it out.

For now, I’m going to go and stare at it some more.

Until next time…