Booking With Manic: Emily Giffin Winners!

Winners HERE!!!

A Mother's Day to Remember

I wrote this a while ago, but it still holds true today: A Mother's Day to Remember. If you don't see a pop-up with a mom and a pink-bowed girl, you may have to click on the YELLOW Special Features Tab.

Happy Mother's Day. May your day be filled with blessings, laughter, and yes, a little bit of chaotic craziness. Because where would we be without that?

And check the previous post, cuz there's still time to enter the contest to win Emily Giffin's Love the One You're With ... Click here for contest details!

Happy Mother's Day!

Contest Time: LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH

****UPDATE: Request from Emily--She has asked that if you get a chance, please check out her website and her TOUR DATES HERE! (And she's got some cool giveaways too-just sign up for her newsletter!) She'll be in a lot of different cities and may be visiting your town! She said she wants to meet cool people! ... NOW, on with the contest!

This one is a BIGGIE for me! And I'm so excited to be able to offer a chance for FOUR of you to win AUTOGRAPHED copies of Emily Giffin's new book, Love The One You're With.

Here are some photos of MY Emily Giffin book collection, and yes, I would grab these suckers in the event of a fire (after pulling my three children out of course) ...





You'll notice the copy of Baby Proof is not a hardcover but is actually an ARC of the book, which in industry terms means Advanced Reader Copy. This copy was EMILY'S COPY. I mean, she READ that copy. After she was done speaking when I first went to see her, she asked the audience, very charmingly, "Are there any questions?"

My heart was pumping furiously and I was scared to death to ask the question I had on my mind, but I did it ... I blurted out:

"What does one have to do to get a copy of THAT book!?" And I pointed right at THAT BOOK she had on the podium. Because since it was an ARC, the book was not coming out for like two months, and she wasn't even promoting Baby Proof at that point. I think she was promoting Something Blue at that time.

She laughed and actually said, "I'll mail it to you."

WHAT?

So, she did! How amazingly cool is that for a bestselling author to just mail her copy of her ARC to a fan when it wasn't even coming out for a couple of months? Who would DO THAT? An awesome person would, that's who!

Here's a picture of my writer friend Elyce, Emily and me (or is it I?)


Then Swish and I saw Emily at the Midwest Literary Festival and we were like her front-row posse and before she took to the stage, she left her sweater with us, and Swish and I wondered if we snagged Emily's sweater and put it up on eBay, how much could we get for it, or if we put it on, would we have the Emily Giffin muse? But, we didn't steal Emily's sweater for two reasons: 1. That would be wrong. 2. It would never fit me!

Swish, Emily, me at the Midwest Literary Fest.
Emily told us that when we smile we should touch our tongue to the back of our teeth or the roof of our mouth to make the smile look real. Apparently, I did whatever the wrong thing was in this photo!

OK, enough about me and my love for Emily and her books! Here's your shot to win an autographed copy of LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH!

Leave a comment telling me why you LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH. And who says it has to be a spouse/partner/lover? Could be a friend, co-worker, blog-pal, parent, pet, barista, UPS guy, whomever!

OR, tell me a story about a time when you had a run-in like the one Emily writes about in her first chapter. My good friend Sharon just had a run-in with her ex from 20 years ago, and she just called me screaming, "I AM SO GOING TO WIN THAT BOOK!" How random that she reads Emily's first chapter about running into the ex, and she JUST ran into the guy who sent her a container of all green M&Ms when we were in college. Thank God she looked hot. Thank God her hubby was there and he looked hot too! Thank God her ex is not looking so hot now!

So, tell me a story -- One about why you LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH or what happened when you ran into the one you thought was THE ONE.

BUT DON'T WORRY ABOUT WHAT YOU SAY IN YOUR ENTRY! Because as long as you leave ANY kind of answer (not perverted or inappropriate, of course because we here at Manic Mommy are NEVER perverted or inappropriate!), you'll be entered to win a copy of the book because I'll be choosing winners at RANDOM a la a Booking With Manic drawing on Monday, May 12.

You have until Sunday night, May 11, to leave an answer to be entered to win a book. And make 'em good, cuz Emily will be reading them too! But don't worry, it's all RANDOM!

So, dish it my friends!

Emily Giffin Fans ...

Get ready for a big one ...

It happened exactly one hundred days after I married Andy,
almost to the minute of our half-past-three o’clock ceremony.
I know this fact not so much because I was an
overeager newlywed keen on observing trivial relationship landmarks,
but because I have a mild case of OCD that compels me to
keep track of things. Typically, I count insignificant things, like the
steps from my apartment to the nearest subway (341 in comfortable
shoes, a dozen more in heels); the comically high occurrence of the
phrase “amazing connection” in any given episode of The Bachelor
(always in the double digits); the guys I’ve kissed in my thirty-three
years (nine). Or, as it was on that rainy, cold afternoon in January,
the number of days I had been married before I saw him smack-dab
in the middle of the crosswalk of Eleventh and Broadway.

From the outside, say if you were a cabdriver watching frantic
jaywalkers scramble to cross the street in the final seconds before the
light changed, it was only a mundane, urban snapshot: two seeming
strangers, with little in common but their flimsy black umbrellas,
passing in an intersection, making fleeting eye contact, and exchanging
stiff but not unfriendly hellos before moving on their way.

But inside was a very different story. Inside, I was reeling, churning,
breathless as I made it onto the safety of the curb and into a
virtually empty diner near Union Square. Like seeing a ghost, I
thought, one of those expressions I’ve heard a thousand times but
never fully registered until that moment. I closed my umbrella and
unzipped my coat, my heart still pounding. As I watched a waitress
wipe down a table with hard, expert strokes, I wondered why I was
so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed
utterly inevitable about the moment. Not in any grand, destined
sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has
of imposing its will on the unwilling.

After what seemed like a long time, the waitress noticed me
standing behind the Please Wait to Be Seated sign and said, “Oh. I
didn’t see you there. Should’ve taken that sign down after the lunch
crowd. Go ahead and sit anywhere.”

Her expression struck me as so oddly empathetic that I wondered
if she were a moonlighting clairvoyant, and actually considered confiding
in her. Instead, I slid into a red vinyl booth in the back corner
of the restaurant and vowed never to speak of it. To share my feelings
with a friend would constitute an act of disloyalty to my husband. To
tell my older and very cynical sister, Suzanne, might unleash a storm
of caustic remarks about marriage and monogamy. To write of it in
my journal would elevate its importance, something I was determined
not to do. And to tell Andy would be some combination of stupid,
self-destructive, and hurtful. I was bothered by the lie of omission, a
black mark on our fledging marriage, but decided it was for the best.

“What can I get you?” the waitress, whose name tag read Annie,
asked me. She had curly red hair and a smattering of freckles, and I
thought, The sun will come out tomorrow.

I only wanted a coffee, but as a former waitress, remembered how
deflating it was when people only ordered a beverage, even in a lull
between meals, so I asked for a coffee and a poppy seed bagel with
cream cheese.

“Sure thing,” she said, giving me a pleasant nod.

I smiled and thanked her. Then, as she turned toward the
kitchen, I exhaled and closed my eyes, focusing on one thing: how
much I loved Andy. I loved everything about him, including the
things that would have exasperated most girls. I found it endearing
the way he had trouble remembering people’s names (he routinely
called my former boss Fred, instead of Frank) or the lyrics to even
the most iconic songs (“Billie Jean is not my mother”). And I only
shook my head and smiled when he gave the same bum in Bryant
Park a dollar a day for nearly a year—a bum who was likely a Range
Rover–driving con artist. I loved Andy’s confidence and compassion.

I loved his sunny personality that matched his boy-next-door,
blond, blue-eyed good looks. I felt lucky to be with a man who, after
six long years with me, still did the half-stand upon my return
from the ladies’ room and drew sloppy, asymmetrical hearts in the
condensation of our bathroom mirror. Andy loved me, and I’m not
ashamed to say that this topped my reasons of why we were together,
of why I loved him back.

“Did you want your bagel toasted?” Annie shouted from behind
the counter.

“Sure,” I said, although I had no real preference.

I let my mind drift to the night of Andy’s proposal in Vail, how
he had pretended to drop his wallet so that he could, in what clearly
had been a much-rehearsed maneuver, retrieve it and appear on
bended knee. I remember sipping champagne, my ring sparkling in
the firelight, as I thought, This is it. This is the moment every girl
dreams of. This is the moment I have been dreaming of and planning
for and counting on.

Annie brought my coffee, and I wrapped my hands around the
hot, heavy mug. I raised it to my lips, took a long sip, and thought
of our year-long engagement—a year of parties and showers and
whirlwind wedding plans. Talk of tulle and tuxedos, of waltzes and
white chocolate cake. All leading up to that magical night. I thought
of our misty-eyed vows. Our first dance to “What a Wonderful
World.” The warm, witty toasts to us—speeches filled with clichés
that were actually true in our case: perfect for each other . . . true
love . . . meant to be.

I remembered our flight to Hawaii the following morning, how
Andy and I had held hands in our first-class seats, laughing at all the
small things that had gone awry on our big day: What part of “blend
into the background” didn’t the videographer get? Could it have rained
any harder on the way to the reception? Had we ever seen his brother,
James, so wasted? I thought of our sunset honeymoon strolls, the
candlelit dinners, and one particularly vivid morning that Andy and
I had spent lounging on a secluded, half-moon beach called Lumahai
on the north shore of Kauai. With soft white sand and dramatic
lava rocks protruding from turquoise water, it was the most breathtaking
piece of earth I had ever seen. At one point, as I was admiring
the view, Andy rested his Stephen Ambrose book on our
oversized beach towel, took both of my hands in his, and kissed me.
I kissed him back, memorizing the moment. The sound of the waves
crashing, the feel of the cool sea breeze on my face, the scent of
lemons mixed with our coconut suntan lotion. When we separated,
I told Andy that I had never been so happy. It was the truth.

But the best part came after the wedding, after the honeymoon,
after our practical gifts were unpacked in our tiny apartment in
Murray Hill—and the impractical, fancy ones were relegated to our
downtown storage unit. It came as we settled into our husband and wife routine.

Casual, easy, and real. It came every morning, as we
sipped our coffee and talked as we got ready for work. It came when
his name popped into my inbox every few hours. It came at night as
we shuffled through our delivery menus, contemplating what to
have for dinner and proclaiming that one day soon we’d actually use
our stove. It came with every foot massage, every kiss, every time we
undressed together in the dark. I trained my mind on these details.

All the details that comprised our first one hundred days together.

Yet by the time Annie brought my coffee, I was back in that intersection, my heart thudding again. I suddenly knew that in spite
of how happy I was to be spending my life with Andy, I wouldn’t
soon forget that moment, that tightness in my throat as I saw his
face again. Even though I desperately wanted to forget it. Especially
because I wanted to.

I sheepishly glanced at my reflection in the mirrored wall beside
my booth. I had no business worrying about my appearance, and
even less business feeling triumphant upon the discovery that I was,
against all odds on an afternoon of running errands in the rain, having
an extraordinarily good hair day. I also had a rosy glow, but I
told myself that it was only the cold that had flushed my cheeks.

Nothing else.

And that’s when my cell phone rang and I heard his voice. A
voice I hadn’t heard in eight years and sixteen days.

“Was that really you?” he asked me. His voice was even deeper
than I remembered, but otherwise it was like stepping back in time.
Like finishing a conversation only hours old.

“Yes,” I said.

“So,” he said. “You still have the same cell number.”

Then, after a considerable silence, one I stubbornly refused to fill,
he added, “I guess some things don’t change.”

“Yes,” I said again.

Because as much as I didn’t want to admit it, he was sure right
about that.

# # #
Goosebumps? You're telling me!

Contest begins tomorrow! And there'll be more than one or two or THREE winners!

Diva Asked for Eggs!?!?!

Diva Gets Eggs:



Mommy Knows How to Make Things All Better:

KISSING FROG WINNER / DIVA B'DAY TRIP RECAP

Congrats to B, at B's Blog, Running with Scissors, because she has won He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: A Memoir of Finding Faith, Hope, and Happily Ever After by Trish Ryan. Trish chose her entry from more than 45 entries on first/worst/best kisses!

This is what B. wrote about her first kiss:

I'll go with first kiss. It was with a boy I was "dating" in 8th grade. We walked to the local elementary school's playground and sat under the slide. After a long while of awkward silence he said, "I want to kiss you." I said, "Ok, is this going to be one of those kisses that I need to take my retainer out for?" He replied, "No, you can leave it in." How much of a dork was I?!?!? He then gave me a very sweet kiss on the lips.

Trish said this about the contest and why she chose B. as the winner:

Omigosh, this was a fabulous contest idea ... what hysterical stories!

In the end, my heart is still with B., who asked if she should take her retainer out. As a girl who spent seven years of my early life squirming in an orthodontist's chair, this story hit way too close to home for me not to declare her the winner!

So congrats B, and please email me at manicmommy@comcast.net! There were sooo many great kiss stories though! I have to say I'm really glad I didn't have to choose the winner to this contest!

Now, about our little weekend getaway--

Diva and I had such a fun trip! We went to CONNECTICUT! They sang Happy Birthday on the flight to her and everyone around us wished her happy birthday and were sooo sweet to her she felt famous! On our way there, we sat next to a really nice man (who I later discovered told the flight attendant about her birthday so that's why they sang to her). I was telling him about how we were visiting my sister because Diva said for her birthday she wanted to go visit her cousins.

I was explaining how my family is all about pulling all sorts of silly surprises, and how my sister's father-in-law was supposed to pick us up from the airport, but her husband had let it slip that my sister was actually going to be able to leave work early to pick us up. I then explained how our family is nuts about these types of surprises, like the one time when we were living in Philly, but went to Chicago to visit MY in-laws when I was pregnant with Tukey. I had gone to take a nap and when I woke up, standing over the bed were MY PARENTS, who came to Chicago from Florida to SURPRISE US! I told this whole story to the guy sitting next to us on the plane. I'm sure I bored him to tears.

I told him this, fifteen minutes before we landed: "Knowing my family, my parent's probably arranged to be here this weekend too."

Sure enough, we get off the plane, go outside to find my sister (who I'm not supposed to know is picking me up), and a car door opens and it's MY DAD!

MY PARENTS TOTALLY FLEW TO CONNECTICUT TO SURPRISE DIVA AND ME FOR DIVA'S BIRTHDAY!

And it was so cool! And it made me so happy!

We had a very quick but very fun weekend, which included watching, believe it or not, soft porn on HBO (The Bunny Ranch--have you ever seen it? I haven't--we don't have HBO!) with MY PARENTS and CRACKING UP!

My brother-in-law and I had a Pancake Throw-Down Saturday morning, which I almost lost only because he uses the batter where you actually have to put eggs and milk in it, and I don't so I almost screwed up the consistency. But my secret? Chocolate chips, vanilla and cinnamon, and yes, I am still the champ, thankyouverymuch! We saw Nims Island, drank some wine, ate some filet mignon, cracked up watching 40-Year-Old Virgin.

I bought matching High School Musical jammies for my niece and Diva, and of course, Spiderman jams for the little man. And we totally got to bond. I am IN LOVE with them. I don't get to see them nearly enough! I snuggled up in bed one night with G-man, and he's all like, "Tell me a story about Captain Hook." I'm like, Cripes, I haven't made up stories in like forever.






But then one totally came to me! About how Captain Hook was at the grocery store and he wanted some Peanut Butter Captain Crunch cereal but he couldn't get it down from the shelf because of his hook arm but then Tinkerbell came flying by and even though they didn't really like each other Tinkerbell totally helped Captain Hook get the Captain Crunch cereal and then they fell in love and got married, and then they went to the peanut butter aisle and got some PETER PAN PEANUT BUTTER!

Isn't that a GREAT MADE-UP STORY!?!?

Then he asked me to tell him to tell him a story about a freaking CURTAIN!

So I did. Cuz he's like three and way too adorable for words.

Then we flew home today and Diva had awesome balloons from her Nana that said Happy Birthday so again she got all this attention of people asking her if it was her birthday and we got front-row seats on the plane and sat next to a very cool prego chick from San Diego (Hi Tara, if you're reading this!), who the flight attendant thought we were friends cuz we talked the whole flight!




At home, Mr. Manic, AJers and Tukey greeted us, and one of the best compliments I could have had was when Mr. Manic said to me, "You know, I can see how some days you get frazzled with them. They get wild."

SEE! They DO MISBEHAVE! They can get crazy! It's NOT ME WHO'S CRAZY ALL OF THE TIME! It's those crazy wild cub bear boy children of mine!

So Mr. Manic said he "lit it up" a few times to get them in line. They had a huge balloon for Diva, and we went out to dinner for her birthday and then took a family walk, and now it's Sunday night and everyone's in bed, and I'm on my way.


Happy Birthday Beautiful Diva Girl! Thanks for wanting to spend the weekend with me! And yes, in case you couldn't guess, she had her fair share of chocolate this weekend!

Peace UP!

Why Is It OK To Do This?

I'm going away for the weekend with Diva, who is turning NINE tomorrow! My baby girl is NINE! How did this happen? Pretty soon she'll be getting her period and zits and turn into a bitchy whiny teenager. So, I'm taking her away for the weekend while she still loves me and wants to hang out with me. While she still thinks I'm the coolest person on earth. Because I can only fool her for so long. Happy Birthday Baby Girl Diva! I love you! You can read the story of her birth here. She almost didn't come to be. I'm so glad she's here!


And here are two stories I will share with you, the first happened a couple weeks ago when I was sick:

I'm sick right? So why is it that Mr. Manic's been out of town the whole weekend and he gets home and I've finally gone upstairs to take a nap because I've been sick. You've seen the video right?! I WAS SICK! I closed my bedroom door, put on comfy jammies, big thick socks cuz I'm freezing, wrapped myself like a burrito in five blankets and fall asleep.

Tukey comes in when I'm comfortably comatose, head buried, the door had been closed. He wakes me up to ask if he can ride his bike.

"Where's dad?"

"He's downstairs taking a nap."

LIKE WHY THE HELL DO THEY THINK IT'S NOT OKAY TO WAKE HIM UP WHEN HE'S ON THE COUCH WITH THE TV BLARING WHILE HE'S 'NAPPING' BUT THEY CAN COME UP AND UNRAVEL ME FROM THE COVERS OF MY SICK COCOON TO ASK ME IF THEY CAN GO OUTSIDE????

Is this in the mothers' job description?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Then yesterday, Tukey and I are at Tar-ZJAY and I need to go get a water from the Starbucks so I consider for a flash of a half-second leaving him on a bench to eat his cinnamon pretzel while I run over to the Starbucks counter, then decide not to leave him. But then he says he doesn't want to come with me.

"You have to come with me. What if someone kidnaps you."

"No one's going to kidnap me."

"Someone could kidnap you. There are bad people in the world. You don't know what other people are thinking. Someone might want to take you away from me."

"Mom, no one's going to take me."

"Tukey, just get up and come with me, it'll take two seconds."

Reluctantly, he gets up and starts walking with me and I continue my kidnapping lesson. "You just don't know how things are, Tukey. You're adorable, someone could just want to steal you away from me..."

From out of nowhere, this lady, about my age, walks by with her Target cart filled up, and she says, "I'd take him home."

My response? Full of gratitude: "THANK YOU!"

And then I started cracking up, like Wait a minute! I'm thanking this strange woman for saying she would kidnap my cute kid? But really, I was thanking her for bringing home the point that there are strangers out there that could possibly want to take my cute little boy away from me.

Wait? I don't get how my mind works completely?

Anyway, while I'm gone this weekend, don't forget to share your first or worst or best KISSING TALE and Trish Ryan will choose a winner of her book, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: A Memoir of Finding Faith, Hope, and Happily Ever After when I return.

Peace UP!