The 10th Annual Bellamy Family Summer Reading Contest

The Goal : Read as many NEW books as possible in the prescribed amount of time
The Contenders : Professional Bookworm Kaitlin (yours truly) and Little Brother Jonathan (who is technically the reigning champ, but this year he's going DOWN!)

The Rules :

• Contenders shall begin counting pages toward their final tally on the "start date," and not a day earlier!
• Every third book completed entitles the reader to a prize, to be decided upon by the Contest Referee, Kathleen (aka Mom)
• A full and complete page count shall be turned in NO LATER than midnight on the "end date." The contestant with the most total pages shall be deemed the winner, thereby receiving a Grand Prize as well as bragging rights
• No book that has already been read may count toward the final page tally

The Obstacles : Each contender has a full agenda off summer activities demanding their time and attention. They must use their free time wisely, while still fulfilling all previously scheduled summer engagements.

Start Date : June 20th, Summer Solstice

End Date : September 22nd, Autumn Equinox

Let the games begin!

The Chemo Cookbook

Chemotherapy : Latin for "these medications have too many damn syllables!"

For the past two weeks, I've been home in Greensboro with my folks. This is the longest I've been home since my mother was diagnosed, and it's been an experience, to say the least.  Two weeks marks a "cycle" in my family's life now.  Every other Tuesday is Chemo Day, meaning I got to live through Chemo Week and Normal Week while I've been here.  I've seen the ups and downs, and I actually attended Chemotherapy.

side note : I HATE HOSPITALS! end side note.

Now, there's not a lot I can really do to help out around here.  I mean, I've done yard work and I helped take care of the dog, but I can't speed the healing process and I can't pay the bills. What I CAN do is take over the kitchen.

You see, a nasty little side-effect of Chemotherapy is toll it takes on your taste buds.  My mom has lost most of her ability to taste.  Apparently, everything tastes like sawdust, or it doesn't taste at all.  And when your body is fighting against itself all day, you kinda need the nutrition.  Go figure.

There are so many different schools of thought on what to eat when you have cancer.  There's the raw food diet.  Stay away from sugars.  Eat this, not that.  But honestly, in cases like this, you eat what you can when you can.  If Mama's craving ice cream, then Mama's gonna HAVE it!  So THIS is an area where I could help.  I started researching (a special "thank you" to all the readers who responded to my REDDIT THREAD) and then I got to work.  After a rigorous day of taste-testing where I made about nine different things, trying to piece together what she can taste and what she can't, I have come to the following conclusion : GARLIC.  And Zucchini, apparently.  Those, she can taste. Oh and, weirdly enough, Tootsie Rolls.


This, while delicious, did nothing. Chicken with Sun-Dried Tomato and Basil Sauce. For her, it wasn't like tasting sawdust, but rather like not eating anything at all.
But for those of you who still have full command of your taste buds, I'd recommend it :) You can find it on my Pinterest, here!


These she could taste pretty well, and they're really easy to make! It's one of those recipes that you can adapt to fit your needs, so we're going to make them again with more garlic!
Very easy, mini chicken pot pies. You don't even need to make a dry crust, the Bisquick base cooks with it! The Lazy Chef approves :)

But THIS was our winner. Slow-Cooker Sesame Chicken. Easy to make, DELICIOUS, and very few ingredients!

Little tip for those of you trying to eat healthy, or just looking to add more flavor to your meals: Brown rice is so much better for you, but it's not nearly as tasty as white rice ... cook it in chicken broth!

Again, all of those recipes, as well as several others I'm planning to try, can be found on my "Pearls in the Kitchen" board on Pinterest. And now, I'm on the hunt for more recipes that are heavy on the garlic!  If anyone has anything to throw my way, please let me know!

When I get writer's block ...

... it feels like I'm trying to pull my own brain out through my eyeballs, but it keeps getting caught on the inside of my skull.

Thought Bubbles

I have never had a job that brings quite the assortment of random on-the-job thoughts as Disney World does. If real life had thought bubbles, here's a sample of some of the things you might see from me.

When I work at Tinkerbell's Nook, I spend all day going through that portal and shrinking down to pixie size. And then going BACK through the portal to the hallway and being normal sized again. No wonder I'm so muddled all the time!

12-year-old children with fully functioning arms and legs should NOT be riding around in a stroller. And Americans wonder why we're fat ...

Public Service Announcement : NEVER give Tigger a light-saber. The resulting "Darth Tigger" (as he likes to be called) will inevitably proceed to frolic around Crystal Palace, challenging the guests to duels and scaring poor Piglet out of his wits.

If I start singing "Just Can't Wait to be King," how many of the people in my line would sing along?

I should really learn to start being more aware of video cameras ... and not say really stupid things while someone is recording. I apologize for any horribly corny jokes I have made that were caught on anyone's family videos!

Is it fair that I'm getting paid to conga line with Pooh Bear and his friends? Who cares!

Funnel cake ... I wonder if there's enough time in my 15-minute break to change, run to the other end of the park, stand in line, buy a funnel cake, and get back in time to change and be on set by the end of ... nope. Mmmm, funnel cake ... I wonder if anyone in line has one. I wonder if I could convince them to go BUY me one ... I wonder if I would get in trouble for that ... Funnel cake is delicious.

“There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it." ~Stephen Fry

RIP Maurice Sendak

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

“There is no such thing as fantasy unrelated to reality.”

“. . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.”

“There must be more to life than having everything.”

“And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.”

Maurice Sendak

How much milk is in a goat?

As a writer, you can often make up your own rules. You can play around with the parameters of the world you set for yourself, and invent new ways of doing things. But at some point, if you're using any basic framework from the real world, you're going to have to stop and do some research. When you include swords in your story, you had better know what the sharp pointy part is called. And so, we stop and investigate whenever something pops up that we should know more about.

Herein lies the danger of research : a simple question in the hands of an inquisitive mind can turn into a three-hour internet scramble. New questions pop up, new theories emerge, and you can start to lose track of which book you were writing in the first place. The following is an actual outline of the path my research took me down last night, all surrounding a very simple question about goats.

How much milk is in a goat?

.Which led to a lengthy study on how goat's milk is different from cow's milk
..Which led to How to Milk a Goat by Hand
... Which led me to re-discover my passion for Project Heifer (which is, in my opinion, one of the most magnificent charities ever created, and if you have any questions about it please let me know:)


What moon takes the longest to orbit its planet?

The answer, by the way, is Neso, the Thirteenth Moon of Neptune. It takes a grand total of 9,373.99 days to orbit ...

.Which led to researching the names and backgrounds of Neptune's other 12 moons
..Which led to research about comets and other sparkly space junk
...Which made me wish I'd gone to space camp. For those of you who don't know, one of my biggest regrets in life is that I'm not a natural mathematician, because it was my dream to work for NASA. I would like nothing more than to be the head of Mission Control. I would like to be Gene Kranz when I grow up.

How much money does a stripper make?

... I won't go into too many details on this one, but it was coupled with investigations of the yearly salary of a bodyguard, and comic book art of Gotham City.

Granted, I did find plenty of useful information in last night's research marathon, but you can see the problem. Research ADD is a serious condition, affecting 3 of every 5 writers. And, at least in my case, causing a lot of unnecessary bookmarks on my browser that I can't bring myself to delete ... I swear, I will use it all one day!