Lisa Roecker and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

My humiliating day has become something of a holiday tradition. Hope you enjoy my humiliation! May your holidays be merry and bright!

Let me preface this by saying there were a lot of events leading up to this day. First off, my friend and I took our sons to see The Fantastic Mr. Fox the night before. In retrospect it probably would have been a good idea to do some research around the plot and to consider going to an earlier showing.

Here's a transcript from my hilarious friend recapping the evening for you. Keep in mind that her husband was already semi-annoyed that she chose to keep Jack's bestie out this late "on a school night."

Dad: How was the movie?
Jack's bestie: Good.
Dad: What movie was it?
Jack's bestie: Don't know.
Dad: Well, what was the movie about?
Jack's bestie: Don't know. Ask Mom.
Dad: You don't remember anything about the movie? What was one thing you remember about the movie?

*dramatic pause*

Jack's bestie: There was this really good part where the farmers got their shooters and started shooting at a tree and the foxes. There were lots of guns and it was really scary and they were really bad men.

*dramatic pause*

Dad: Great.

Fast forward to the next morning.

8:00 AM - Jack drags himself out of bed. Gets very excited to learn that he can wear his pajamas to school for the big Snow Day Party. He refuses to go to the bathroom, but I decide to call it even since I don't have to force him out of his pajamas and into his school clothes.

8:51 AM - Drop kids off at school and find out that several parents sent in their money for the class gift a day late which leaves me about two hours to buy additional gifts for the teachers. Being the room mom really is a bitch.

9:05 AM - Arrive at mall to purchase gifts for teachers only to find out the mall doesn't open until 10 AM.

9:06 AM - Place emergency call to uber talented sister to see if she can whip up some personalized stationary for the teachers.

Stacey: (sounding hoarse and groggy) Hello?
Lisa: Hey. How long does it take you to make stationary?
Stacey: (sounding suspicious) Why?
Lisa: Just wondering...
Stacey: I can make it quickly. When do you need it?
Lisa: In an hour.
Stacey: *coughs*
Lisa: Did I wake you up?
Stacey: I was just taking a little nap.
Lisa: Crap.

9:30 AM: Arrive back home to place PayPal order for the stationary to make sure Stacey actually accepts payment. She's notoriously bad at cashing my checks.

9:39 AM: Check Jack's class list to see who paid for the gifts and who didn't. Realize that I gave Stacey an incorrect spelling for one of the teacher's names. Swear profusely and call Stacey immediately.

Lisa: Have you already printed Mrs. D's cards?
Stacey: Yeah....
Lisa: $%^&
Stacey: What?
Lisa: I spelled her $%&^*(& name wrong.
Stacey: %$#&
Lisa: I know. Just forget it.
Stacey: No way, I'll print new ones.
Lisa: I love you.

9:55 AM - Leave my house, double check the door is locked and head to my car. Reach into my pocket for my keys only to find they're not there. %$#&. Check under the door mat for spare key, not there. %$#@.

9:56 AM - Cry a little.

9:57 AM - Grab the Little Tykes slide from the garage and drag it around the perimeter of my house trying to break in through one of our windows only to find they're all locked.

10:05 AM - Notice that I can't feel my hands anymore.

10:06 AM - Find Jack's Lightning McQueen gloves in the trunk and stuff my hands into them.

10:07 AM - Begin trying all the windows again. One last try before I call Stacey and beg her to drive me to Jack's school. The grip on the McQueen gloves gives me just enough leverage to pop open one of my family room windows.

10:08 AM - Marvel at how easy it is to break into my house.

10:09 AM - Try to squeeze past Christmas tree in my huge down coat.

10:10 AM - Fail. The entire Christmas tree comes crashing down.

10:11 AM - Cry a little.

10:20 AM - Cards have been picked up and I'm off to Jack's school.

Editorial note: Loyal readers will remember that there is a bat shit crazy woman in Jack's preschool class who insisted that all of the food at the school party be made of fruit and air. Just a quick reminder as she proved to be yet another leading factor in Lisa's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Day.

10:46 AM - Arrive in Jack's classroom and witness bat shit crazy mom flipping out at one of the other parents for bringing cupcakes.

10:47 AM - Hear bat shit crazy mom telling another parent about her son's clown phobia. She just wanted to verify that no one was planning on hiring a clown for the end of the school party in JUNE. JUNE!

10:48 AM - Bite my tongue so hard that I taste blood.

10:49 AM - Help the children make Marshmallow Snowmen.

10:50 AM - Stress eat a Twizzler.

10:55 AM - Try to assist the kids in getting their snowmen into little personalized bags to take home. As I'm helping Jack he bites the head off his snowman and laughs at me.

10:56 AM - Practice yoga breathing.

10:57 AM - Stress eat another Twizzler.

11:09 AM - Treats have been distributed and Jack eats them all within seconds and wants more. I quietly tell him that he's had enough and he screams "This is the worst party ever!" and throws his juice box across the room.

11:10 AM - Do the walk of shame across the room to pick up the juice box and practice my yoga breathing.

11:11 AM - Stress eat another Twizzler.

11:12 AM - Teacher asks me if I'll be taking Jack home after the party and I smile brightly and say "Oh no, he has extended day today. Remember?"

11:13 AM - Teacher cries a little.

11:30 AM - Call my husband to inform him that I'll be enrolling his son in military school and he reminds me that it was my decision to keep him out until 9:30 PM the night before.

11:31 AM - Cry a little.

11:32 AM - Stress eat all of the remaining Twizzlers.

11:34 AM - Call the aforementioned hilarious friend to relay the events of the party, specifically the new information about the clown phobia. Hilarious friend claims she's going to start doing carpool dressed as a clown.

11:35 AM - Come dangerously close to peeing my pants.

11:47 AM - Back home. Assess damage to our Christmas tree.

11:48 AM - Cry a little.

11:49 AM - Remind myself that at least I'll get a decent blog post out of this.

December 19th

Today I'm thinking of all of the parents. All of the children. All of the brothers and sisters. All of the friends. I'm thinking of an entire community, devastated.

Today I'm thinking of my husband and his brothers who lost their brother 9 years ago. I'm thinking of his parents who lost a son. I'm thinking of my kids and my 4-day-old nephew who were never able to meet their uncle.

I'm thinking that all of this loss, all of this sadness could have been avoided if we lived in a world without guns.

Today I'm going to light a candle to remember them. All of them. And today I'm going to pray that our country figures out a way to put a stop to this violence. Join me?

Win a FULL Manuscript Critique from LiLa

We all have dreams.

Laura and I dreamed of being published writers. We dreamed of seeing our books on shelves. And we pinch ourselves every single day that our dream actually came true.

As dreamers, there's nothing we love more than helping others achieve their dreams and we have a friend Kate who has a dream of owning her own bookstore. And now that our favorite independent bookstore, The Learned Owl, is for sale she has a chance to make that dream come true.

But she needs our help. And your help too, if you're willing. Right now Kate is hosting a fundraiser to help earn capital towards the purchase of The Learned Owl and we would love it if you would consider donating toward Kate's dream. Think of it like karma. A dream for a dream.

Of course, you guys have dreams too, right? And I bet some of you dream of being published writers. If being a published writer is your dream and you donate to Kate's campaign, we will enter you to win a FULL MANUSCRIPT critique by the crazy Roecker sisters. That's 4 published author eyes on your writing. And if you're interested, we'll even schedule a phone call with you to discuss your work within one month of you sending it to our little old inbox. We can talk all about your writing and how amazing it is and whatever suggestions we might have to make it even more amazing. Or we could just gossip about Bravo. We're pretty good at that too.

And we'll even throw in signed copies of The Liar Society, The Lies That Bind and the super-secret first chapter of Third Lie's the Charm. Oh, and we'll send you an ARC of THIS IS W.A.R. as soon as we get our hot little hands on one.

SO, if you're interested in entering our contest and helping Kate achieve her dream, make a donation, send us an email at lisa-laura@live.com to let us know or leave a comment on this blog post with your e-mail address. We'll choose one winner on Monday, January 14th!

So what do you say? Want to make some dreams come true? WE DO.

Happy Birthday, Elana Johnson!

 

 

 

Dear Elana,

Happy Birthday! In honor of your special day, we want to take a moment and celebrate the top 100 51 10 reasons we love you. As you can see, it was hard to narrow to 10.

 

10. Elana Johnson is hilarious. Her emails always crack us up, we look forward all year to WriteOnCon underbelly chats and are even lucky enough to hear Elana LIVE. Yes, we've talked. Be jealous. She's funny. Really, really funny.

 

9. Elana is freaking smart. An emotional plot? Wha? Yeah...

 

8. She can query like no other. Getting ready to send your manuscript out? Download this. NOW. You'll thank us later.

 

7. Elana loves bacon. Can you ever love anyone who doesn't?

 

6. She has something to say. And you can depend on her to actually...ahem...say it. Unlike, oh, I don't know, a couple sisters we know. She blogs! Regularly! And she's helpful and funny and awesome!

 

5. She has really cool hair. Like Vi from Possession. Laura got a really bad haircut before leaving for college. It single-handedly ruined her college experience. Not many people can say that just like not many people can say they have cool hair like Elana Johnson.

4. Elana will eventually take over the world. So get on board. She has ideas and they're really big and she's so generous, she'll always let people hang onto her coattails.

 

3. She's figured out how to clone herself. We're not entirely sure how she's done it, but there are multiple versions of Elana running around accomplishing everything she does in the same amount of time it takes us to brush our teeth in the morning. It's an art.

 

2. The girl can write. Elana's books introduced us to drop dead gorgeous boys with names like Zenn and Jag and Gunner who fight to take control of their own lives and help the girls they care about do the same. They make you take a step back and consider the lives we lead and the society in which we lead them and make a smart statement about power and the abuse of it.

 

1. Elana is one of the most selfless, encouraging, supportive, giving, compassionate people we know. She always has time to listen or help or guide or connect. It might seem like Elana's dropping everything to help a friend and that's probably because she is. We are so honored to know Elana and our writing community would not be the same without her. Happy Birthday to one of our first friends in these parts. We love you and are so proud of everything you've accomplished!

 

Now go win ALL of her books! Click the image above to enter and tell us why you love Elana Johnson and her books in the comments!

 

Freeview Friday

Since we're too busy writing Third Lie's the Charm to be much use in the blogosphere we figured it was only fair to give you a sneak peek, so here's a little, completely unedited snippet for you:

Bradley Farrow was broken and somehow looking at him felt like looking in a mirror. His face had been rearranged by grief. He was still beautiful, but now he was more Picasso than Rembrandt and I wanted nothing more than to slide his features back into place. To change him back into the Bradley he was before....


Eek! Aren't you just dying to know what has gorgeous Bradley all torn up? All will be revealed...next year. Sorry, this was kind of mean. In happier news, we've seen the final cover for the third and final book in The Liar Society series and holy BALLS, you guys, it's awesome. Stay tuned for a cover reveal soonest.

Happy Friday!

Tell the Truth Tuesday

1. I got in a fight with some jackhole on Twitter about Suri's Burnbook. Nobody messes with Suri on my watch.

2. I just sent Laura an email that said, "Follow the outline or die." Yup, you guessed it. We're in the midst of drafting Third Lie's the Charm. Get excited. This book is going to be epic. As long as Laura follows the damn outline.

3. Jack got in trouble with the principal at his school (who just happens to be a 70-year-old nun) for throwing seeds at recess (Yes, really. It's so random.) and now he has to eat lunch with her tomorrow. You'd think he was being sent to be interrogated by Abu Nazir. I seriously had to bite my lip to stop from laughing when he was sobbing on my lap about Sister Linda and eating lunch with her and how she was so scary. Jack: 0 Irrational Catholic fear: 1. I will bet you $100 that I get a call from the school nurse tomorrow saying that Jack isn't feeling well. Good times.

4. I'm in a mood this week. A MOOD. Don't email me or talk to me or send me anything important because I'm feeling super crotchety. Just ask Laura.

5. You guys should bid on this. Good cause, awesome books. Make it happen.

What's your truth this Tuesday? SPILL because I'm in the kind of mood where I'll cut you if you don't.