Most Dreaded Phrase in the English Language (first in a series):

"You! Yes, you there, with the look of sheer horror on your face. Stand up and introduce yourself!"

By now, it's too late to excuse myself so I can run to the ladies' room and check my teeth for bits of broccoli (and I don't even eat broccoli). All I can do is check my heels to make sure there are no strands of toilet tissue clinging to them like advertising banners behind an airplane, and hope there's nothing incriminating stuck to my backside when I stand.

"Tell us who you are, what you do, why did you come here, and how did you find out about us?"

The only way this can get worse is if they add, "Oh, and we see you brought your family, too! Wonderful! Won't you introduce them all?"

You have no idea how much fun this is in a place like church, where I usually have one kid splashing in the font and another munching on the communion wafers.

Fortunately, today I need only refer visitors to the profile on the right of this page (that's assuming I formatted everything correctly).

My youngest child is ten year old Baby Bear, and he is the only one still living at home. But that doesn't mean his two much older siblings won't provide their own share of fodder here.

My husband, Mr. Lucky, has recently retired after more than twenty years in the U.S. Air Force, and is home pretty much all the time now. But he got bored after a while, so instead of taking up golf or fishing, or even cruising for a trophy wife like other guys in his situation, he decided to spice things up by adopting a couple of beagles.

The irony? In regards to my writing, I can't help thinking I got a lot more done when the two older children were preschoolers, than I do now.

This blog will be mainly about my family, my writing, and my glamorous career as a homemaker; and how they all conspire to form a Bermuda-like triangle into which my sanity has disappeared.

And as it progresses, I hope to amaze and astound you with my ongoing, half-baked attempts to try and make links that don't stretch all the way across the page and beyond.