Rants and Raves

Rants:

- Alex Trebek's attitude, as though he really knows the answers on Jeopardy. HE'S READING FROM CARDS.
- The girl who keeps showing up in yoga in BIKINI BOTTOMS! 
- Airline prices to Europe. WHY SO HIGH?
- Airline prices to Canada. WHY SO HIGH?
- Students at school. WHY SO HIGH?
- Tax return. WHY SO LOW?


Raves:

-Yoga (minus BBG) Especially Sunday night restorative yoga.
- Bundles of Daffodils at Trader Joe's.
- ebooks from the library. 
- The bestie is coming to town this weekend!
- Shark Tank. The best show on television. (on a Friday night at least...)
- Reading at Book Soup on May 6!
- Pitch meeting next week.
- 3 more weeks of school.

More raves than rants, which makes it a great day!

Thanks, and a Rose

The Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure was a fantastic experience. Below is the letter I sent all the donors. I will for sure be doing this annually:

Yesterday was the Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure, and thanks to you I contributed nearly $2,000.00 to the cause.

It was a beautiful day, a hilly course, a supportive atmosphere and a lot of fun. (Did you know ankles can hurt? They can! They do!)

There were thousands of people there. With so many people "leaning in" it felt very hopeful that a cure is imminent.

Afterwards, I attended a party at my friend Patreece's home. I've known Patreece since Kindergarden and when we reconnected at our elementary school reunion a few years ago, she'd been battling breast cancer. She is about to celebrate her 5-year mark from the day she was diagnosed - and is now cancer free. I just know how involved Miranda will be with this cause once she is done with her ordeal.

I have attached some pictures. Thanks, again, from the bottom of my heart.

xo

 At the finish line...

 Patreece and her mom doing the electric slide    

                                                                                                  Party food


I am now at my favorite tea house dealing with taxes, a freelance project, grades, essays, emails, travel plans and the like...

 Rose tea makes everything manageable...

Tea and computer...

I am so grateful to all the donors to the upcoming Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure event. I reached and exceeded my goal several times and kept having to raise the thermometer to keep up with donations. Just because I stopped doing that doesn't mean you have to stop! Click here to donate any amount. This will be the first 5K I've run since 9th grade, when my friend Lori and I giggled our way through some UCLA course. I have two friends dealing with breast cancer and that is just two friends too many.

On another note, I need to kvell about yoga for a second. This past month has been one of the most stressful on record (details later, in another blog post) and my primary therapy has been yoga. I've been a recreational yogi for years now, but something shifted recently - a new source of comfort and calm washes over me as soon as I'm on the mat. The harder I work my body, the quieter my mind gets. I've never pushed myself to such limits physically before and the rewards have never been greater or more obvious. Yoga literally saved my mind last month. 


I'm reading this book for the second time and devouring every page:

Hey, and this book is on Kindle sale for a mere $2.99:

And by the way, how are YOU? Why don't you let me know in the Comments section.

xo
mc

Bunny Love

I'm over at the Girlfriends Book Club today, writing about the time I visited the Playboy Mansion to try and promote my book!

Racing for the Cure

On March 23 I will be participating in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure here in Los Angeles. 

Won't you please consider donating to this very crucial cause? It only takes a minute, and every penny counts.

Please click here to read my reason for participating. Thank you for your consideration.

Teach, Tutor, Write, Sleep, Repeat.

My life lately has been teach, tutor, write, sleep, repeat, week after week after week I'm grateful for the work, and especially for the flow of words lately, when things have usually been stagnant. There are some big changes on the horizon, and I will be writing about them soon, but for now: teachtutorwritesleeprepeat.

One thing I'm very excited to announce is that this book is ready for preorder on Amazon and will soon be coming to a bookstore near you. Caroline Grant and Lisa Harper have put together a terrific and thoughtful anthology about food and family and community and I'm so thrilled to have an essay included in it. (My childhood friend Max also has a beautiful essay in it - one about his mother. In fact, our pieces are back-to-back in the book, which is kind of fun). My author copy arrived yesterday and I curled up on the couch to read a bunch of essays. What a treat!

I finally saw Lena Dunham's film "Tiny Furniture" and have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it way more than I enjoy "Girls". I can't imagine writing and directing that good of a film at the tender age of 22. Hell, I can't imagine doing that now! I thought it was candid, raw and had a lot of heart. On a side note, Emily Nussbaum's recent New Yorker review of "Girls" makes some amazing points about "women's stories". I found it particularly interesting, I think, because my writing has been branded as "Women's Fiction", a title that has served my writing well, but that I loathe. (Don't get me started on the term "Chick Lit," which has finally gone down in flames... whatever happened to "novels"? As in, "I write novels"?)