Harris Kids You've Got Talent!!

There are tons of reality TV shows scouring the country for talented fresh faces of all ages. They could really save a lot of time and just come by my living room...because my kids are supremely talented. I know you're thinking I'm biased since I'm their mother. There's nothing more annoying than the Mom that has the wonderfully talented and gifted child. Yes it's fabulous that little Susie could read at eighteen months and do trigonometry by the age of three, but do I have to hear about it every thirty seconds? By the way Susie just set the cat on fire you might want to check on that.


Back to my fabulously talented kids. Really their abilities rank on an almost mystical level that keeps me scratching my head in slack-jawed wonder. If they up their game any further I'm going to have to start looking for magical schools housed in castles in the English countryside in which to enroll them.


Whenever my husband or I travel at least one of our children will become sick. Now I don't mean they get the sniffles or a tummy ache, I'm talking high fevers, asthma attacks and projectile vomiting. The kind of illnesses that test a parent's mettle. I can't tell you how many times I've coached my husband over the phone from some distant location on what medicine to give and at what dose. Nor can I count the number of visits I've made to the pediatrician's urgent care hours while Grandma kept the healthy kids because Dad was away.


We can go months with no major illnesses, but print a boarding pass and you might as well buy the pedialyte. It also appears they are able to intensify their illness based on the complexity of the trip or difficulty of the family's schedule. Case in point, while Jay was on a four wheeler trip he had no cell phone service. The only way to reach him was when he called me collect from his cabin in the evenings. (I didn't know you could even make collect calls anymore, except from jail.) So with no way to reach him you can be certain that one of the children would test their abilities. Caden, our seven year old, had been on antibiotics for three days for a sinus infection. The morning after Dad left Caden spiked a fever and his death rattle cough became so excruciating no one in the house was sleeping. Off to urgent care went to find out my whiz kid had developed a secondary infection in his lungs after the sinus and ear infection, but the antibiotic appeared to be taking hold and would work well against pneumonia too which is where we were headed. An added steroid would help the crackling in his chest.


Super! We had avoided a hospital stay. Now it would only be eight hours until his father called and I could let him know. Maybe it was better this way, what he didn't know wouldn't keep him from enjoying his trip. He had prepared so well to make his absence easy on us, but how do you prepare for the terrific trio and their infectious talents?


I'm curious what talents do your kids have?

When Did I Become That Person?

At some point in our adult lives we all ask the question 'When did I become that person?' For some of us we will ask it many times. When did I become that parent that negotiates with video games? When did I become too old and un-cool to recognize the band that won the Grammy for album of the year? Or most curious for me of late...when did I of all people become a dog person?

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting where they conducted an ice breaker exercise that required everyone to declare if they were a cat or dog person? A side had to be chosen no one could remain in the middle. I have always been, with out a doubt, a cat person. As a child I carried kittens around and read books about cats. I even took pictures of my cat with me to college. However, on a chilly March day in a hotel meeting room in Chicago I found myself floundering over which side to choose and as they say it went to the dogs.

Its natural for some children to fear dogs. I on the other hand had a mortal terror of all things canine. Until I was about twelve years old a beagle could bring me to sobbing hysterics. There had been a run-in with a well meaning collie that tried to herd me as a toddler by nipping at my heals.

So how you might ask did I come to consider myself a dog person? It's all my husband's fault. Three years ago when we moved into our current house we promised our son we would get a dog at some point because we now had plenty of yard space and we weren't to close to the road. As a couple we discussed how to best approach adding a dog to the family. We decided that since our oldest was getting ready to start kindergarten we would wait until we were established several months into the school routine and then we would look for an adult dog that would be calmer and easier to handle. So one Sunday afternoon several weeks before the start of school I came home to find my husband with a puppy.

To say I was an unhappy spouse would be the understatement of the year.

The first words he greeted me with were "It's not permanent, we can try him out for a week as a foster and if he doesn't work out I can take him back." Riiiiiight, I'm going to tell my three bright eyed children sorry the puppy didn't work out we're going to take him back to the rescue shelter that saved him from a life of abuse and neglect. I'm certainly not that person.

Here was the thing about Buster, as the puppy came to be named, he had been abused as I mentioned and had never in his five month life been out of his crate. He was terrified of the kids, open space, his food bowl, toys and his own tail often startled him. Anything and everything frightened this dog into head to paw shaking with one exception. Me. I was the only thing that gave Buster any sort of peace. We would sit together on the deck those first few days and he would just lay against my leg while I petted him. After awhile I was able to introduce him to some toys and the backyard.

Maybe it was that initial bonding experience, but ever since when something that could be emotionally overwhelming needs done with Buster it falls on me. I took him through six weeks of obedience school, I find him when he's lost and take him to the vet when he's hurt.

There's one small caveat to all this, I'm deathly allergic to dogs. I don't mean that if I pet a dog I might sneeze a little. This is more like airways closing I need my inhaler allergies. If you've never seen hives form then you should come on over. Buster just needs to lick me and you can watch the hives magically appear in under sixty seconds. You might say it's a toxic relationship.

Buster is still afraid of everything and I'm still trying to train him. Just this week I sustained an injury while trying to teach him to fetch. When sixty-five pounds of pure muscle plows into you at full tilt it leaves a mark. Then he looked up at me with that pitiful apologetic face and I couldn't help but hobble over to pet him...and then wash my hands. Maybe I shouldn't say I'm a dog person, I might just be a Buster person.

I promised and update on the book so here it is! The re-write/edit is underway. Most of the time I write and don't look back, so the re-write is going to be an interesting journey. I've found some nice little pearls and then I've gone "did I really just start five sentences in a row with the same word?"

Here's a juicy little teaser from the book for you.

The mayhem reached a fevered pitch but Devin knew no medical miracle would save him as she slipped quietly out of the room. She was halfway down the hall when her commander Captain Morris stopped her.

“Dushane! What the hell are you doing? You look like something out of bad horror flick. Get in there and get stitched up!”

She heard most of what he said, but the adrenaline rush was over, the loss of blood was catching up with her and a wave of grief was threatening to crush her. The last thing she heard before she hit the floor was a stream of curses from Captain Morris.

That's all you get for now!

Lost and Found

My manuscript is done! I finally found the time, solitude and inspiration to finish the novel...and then I lost it.

Now I don't mean I had an emotional breakdown or I lost my creative energy or even that I deleted a few pages of the book. I physically lost the whole stinking thing.

As every great tale of woe begins, it all started when I was sent to Chicago for training classes. Generally these meetings are brutal ten hour affairs, but I brought along the manuscript just in case I had some free time in the evenings. After all I was closing in on the final chapters. However, this meeting went very differently and on the second day of class we finished at noon.

I scurried off to my room and placed the do-not-disturb sign on the door, breaking my train of thought for fresh towels was not part of the plan. Five hours later I found myself typing the words 'The End'. I swear I heard actual hosannas being sung down from the heavens. Or maybe that was just coming from my phone when I called home. Regardless, the Harris family was doing the happy dance.

I should say we were doing the happy dance. Let's skip forward a few days to when I'm in O'hare airport ready to return home. I've just checked my suitcase and the polite young man at the counter wishes me a safe flight when I reach for my carry-on. I have no carry-on.  The feeling is akin to losing sight of your child while shopping, but I know my bag is not going to pop out from behind a rack of clothes. People around me are beginning to look concerned that I'm going to be ill, that's entirely possible because by now I've realized that I left my backpack on the shuttle bus to the airport and I have not one contact number to begin a search.

Thank heavens for the ability to search the Internet from your phone. I begin by calling my hotel, but they didn't set up the shuttle service my company did. Start over. Call some of the other members of my class to see if they have the head trainer's contact information. No one does, but they'll text me if they find it. Start over. At this point it is after six o'clock on Friday evening and my flight boards in two and half hours. I'm not a crier by nature, my husband could probably count on two hands all of the times he has seen me cry, but I was about to break down sobbing right there in the airport. In desperation I start calling random shuttle companies. Sounding like a lost soul while traveling brings out the helpful side in people, one operator even had me describe the bus so she could ask the drivers what company it might be.

Finally I catch a break and a text with a contact number. I reach the head trainer who finds my predicament very amusing. He thinks I left a suitcase on the shuttle. Really? Do people often dash into airports without their luggage? At least I left a black backpack on a black floor and I did have a purse, bottle of water and a suitcase to carry while I was rushing to catch an earlier flight. We both call the shuttle company and guess what? It's after five and they're closed for the weekend. I vehemently refuse to leave Chicago with out my bag. Not only is the flash drive that my novel is saved on in that bag, with my writing journal I might add, but my corporate laptop is also in that bag. Well that lights a fire under chuckles. He tells me to sit tight he knows a guy that knows a girl that has a cell phone number.

Twenty minutes later we have success and faillure. The shuttle has been found and the driver pulled over and located my bag. Again the heavens open and the angels sing! However, the bus is on its way to a pick-up in Milwaukee and my bag won't be back in the Chicago area until after midnight. I've never been so tempted to hop a cab to Milwaukee. Voices of reason intervened and a representative from the shuttle company assured me they would overnight the bag to me.

Like leaving my fourth child behind I drug myself through security and boarded the plane. Coming home is always lovely, but I was not settled until that box arrived.

Is it appropriate to hug the FedEx guy?

I've Been Outed

For the past two years I have kept a secret. I've indulged in this secret during peaceful lunch breaks and in the quiet hours of the night after children are tucked in bed, lunches are packed and laundry is folded. It is such a closely guarded secret that the few souls that know of it have made blood oath promises to throw themselves upon a thousand sharpened daggers should they ever speak of it. Well...they at least promised to buy me shoes.

All that changed when I attended a simple scholarship charity event. Somehow by the end of the day I had been photographed and interviewed by the local newspaper and my excruciatingly carefully guarded secret was about to be published in a three county area. I am a closet writer. For two years I have been laboring on my first novel and at just over 80,000 words it's almost complete. At least until the re-write begins.

There it's out in the open, but why stop there? Since I'm coming out of the closet might as well go full on drag queen right? So I've decided to start a weekly blog following the often humorous sometimes disasterous tales of my circus routine life, that includes juggling family, church, work and chasing my dream of becoming a published author. You probably won't have to look to hard to find a bit of yourself in this column and that's what is all about...we're not alone, somebody else has been in your boat too. So I hope you enjoy my stories about trying to keep all my balls in the air and the trials and triumphs of writing a book.

Happy Reading
Chastity