Loving Memories Of My Grandma Arlettaz

Grandmas are the best! My Grandma Arlettaz (Harry’s mother) was always active. She became a widow when my dad was only three years old and never remarried. She was a very thin old lady when I knew her who loved me very much. I found some old slides of us together which was the inspiration for this post. She helped my mom take care of me when I was born and got the blame when I needed glasses in first grade because she let me sit too close to watch TV when I had the chicken pox. I used to love staying at her house over night sometimes.

What A Lift After A Hard Day At Work!

After a very busy day at work two weeks ago after just starting a new assignment, I came home and checked my email to find this:

From: Rebecca
Subject: I Got Your Book!
To: "karen&Gerard Zemek"
Date: Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 4:43 PM

Karen, I am so excited I wanted to tell you-- I ordered your book and just came in from Amazon today!!! It looks SO COOL. I am looking forward to reading it. I've been wanting to read it ever since you first blogged about it-- Praise God I got a new writing job and am able to afford books!

I will be writing a review on it soon, on my blog. I flipped through it a little and am very blessed by the Appendix D. :D When I'm done reading it, I'm going to give it to my kids to read, or perhaps we will read it together after dinner every night.

Congrats on a really nice book! Did you ever write a post about how you got a book published? I think that is an incredible feat. I'd love to read your story about that.

Rebecca

I actually did write a post about how I got published. It's "How I Found A Publisher" on my PNN blog at http://karen.pnn.com.

I was happy to hear she was 3/4 of the way through when I asked if she started reading it yet two days later. She said her son hijacked it and she hadn't seen it all day.

Be sure to read her review at Freaky Frugalite.

To find out more about my book and why I wrote it, read the Foreword here. Maybe you would like to order it too. There is a tab at top that says "Buy Book" which takes you right to the page on Amazon.com where you can order it.
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A Tip For Parents—Split Those Shakes!

Growing up, my mom used to cook a big dinner using the slow cooker. For several years we always had mashed potatoes, a vegetable, brown-n-serve rolls and some kind of meat for Sunday dinner. It would always be ready when we got home from church and tasted great!

When I started writing my book, I asked my brother and sisters if they had any funny memories about dad and my brother mentioned that he remembered how dad would always fix our dog, Brownie, a special plate on Sundays. I had forgotten about this. Brownie loved these Sunday dinners too!

Keys, Keys, Keys--One Of Harry's Hobbies

The mind is a funny thing sometimes. As forgetful as my dad was, he could remember what each key was for and he had a whole lot of them. For awhile, he even had a little locksmith business going after he retired. He spent a lot of money on this endeavor, which my mother was not happy about, just so he could help people who needed a lock or key. Sometimes he’d be called on to help someone who locked themselves out of the car or house. Often the church would ask him to change their locks and make more keys for them. He did it so often that the Pastor’s son referred to him as the “key man.” Dad always liked to have his clump of keys hanging on his belt, all of them—they were too heavy to keep in a pocket! This was his main reason why he didn’t want the sweat pants I bought for him.

The very first key I ever got from my dad was for a ladder dime bank. It went to a little tiny lock that fit on the bank that said “turn dimes into dollars.” I got a lot of use out of that and saved a lot of dollars over the years with it. That key was a very tiny silver one with notches on both sides. I even had a diary with a lock on it, but I never bothered locking it—I never really wrote anything very interesting in there. During the 80s, I painted a big plaster key for dad that he hung in his living room! I tried selling it but no one else wanted it so today it hangs in my hallway. I'm glad I still have it.