Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Stuff

Awesome Lyrics – The Probability of You and I Resuming Our Courtship is Extremely Low

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Awesome Lyrics is a series where I make sense of popular songs through a comprehensive translation.

Today I tackle a lyrical translation of “We Are Never Getting Back Together” by Taylor Swift.

I recall when we originally stopped seeing each other. I communicated that I was fed up because we had been separated for several weeks when you told me you wanted some time apart. This made no sense.

But then you returned and told me you had longed for my company and gave your solemn promise to mend your ways. You asked me to have faith in you. But, if you’ll recall, it was not 24 hours before you violated the very trust you had so desperately pleaded for.

I voiced my anger and dislike in the strongest possible terms. We terminated our relationship. But then you reached out to me via telephone and my amorous feelings returned.

Sadly, yesterday evening, we were forced to cease our association once more.

I’m finally at a place where I can communicate with utmost assurance that the probability of you and I resuming our courtship is extremely low. EXTREMELY, extremely low.

You may want to have a dialogue with your network, or correspond with my associates, or even interact with me personally. But the fact remains that the probability of you and I resuming our courtship is exceedingly slim, exceedingly.

I may look back with fondness on the times you sought to engage me in verbal conflict and I was duped into participating loudly and indignantly. At these times, you would withdraw and seek personal clarity through listening to independently-produced music, which you felt was superior to the recordings I have made.

This evening, I received another telephone call from you. However, it pains me to inform you that the probability of you and I resuming our courtship remains extremely low.

As stated previously, whether you discuss it with me or with the people with which either of us closely associate, the chances of a reconciliation are close to zero.

I previously entertained the notion that our relationship would last indefinitely. And I formerly said I could not close the door completely on reuniting with you at some juncture.

[He reaches out to me via telephone and pontificates that he still feels an amorous connection to me and it wears me out to the point where my energy is depleted entirely. This is likely due to the fact that I am convinced there is no longer any chance of a reconciliation, really any chance at all.]

The probability of you and I resuming our courtship remains practically non-existent.

A Stranger Things Birthday Party for Laylee – BARB IS ALIVE!!

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A couple of weeks ago my friend’s husband came to pick my kids up for church youth night. He is also my friend but this story feels more dramatic if I refer to him as “my friend’s husband.” While he was waiting for them to get ready, he asked me a question.

“Does this Saturday work for Laylee’s birthday party or would you rather do it next week?”

I had no response to this.

A. I’ve never had one of my friends’ husbands approach me about the timing of my teenage daughter’s birthday party.

B. I had momentarily forgotten that she had a birthday.

“I mean,” he continued, “We’ll want to have it fairly close to her actual birthday. We could do it at my house, but I’d rather do it at yours.”

What.

This only made it worse. I mean, he’s a good friend, but. What?

It turns out that, as he was driving the jazz band carpool, he had been talking to Laylee about the “locked room” party craze. He’s super creative  and wanted to plan an elaborate puzzle like that. And so they hatched a plot. Mike would spend hours creating a locked room/puzzle birthday party for Laylee and her friends, one of whom was his daughter.

It was just that no one had told me about it. So. The confused face.

Once I was up to speed, we got to work. Mike did all the mad genius stuff and I set the mood.

The mood?

Retro 1980s Horror Show That Half of Laylee’s Friends Aren’t Allowed to Watch Because it’s Practically too Scary for Me. Perfect. Here’s how it went down.

The girls arrived at our 80s abode and we fed them dinner. Eggos. 80s dance music was playing.

As they were finishing dinner, I knocked at the front door, dressed as Joyce Byers. This was convenient because I just recycled my Halloween costume.

Joyce was crying as usual and told them to come out on the front porch. It was an EMERGENCY! You see, she believed that Barb was ALIIIIIIIIIVE!

While we were out on the porch, Dan and Mike threw grey thrift store sheets over everything to make it Upside-Downy and then dimmed the lights and flipped on some blue ones.

Joyce told the girls they had to go into the Upside Down and save Barb.

Back inside, Chief Hopper awaited to tell them how the puzzle worked. Everything they needed to unlock the secret door under the stairs and save Barb was on one specific book shelf and table. Then he gave them a walkie talkie and told them to contact him if they needed assistance.

The way Mike set up the puzzle, there were three numbers they needed to find that corresponded with three stickers next to a padlock.

The first riddle involved them sorting books by height. Each book had a letter on it. When sorted properly, the letters spelled Tolkien. When they looked in the Lord of the Rings books, they found a clue to another detailed puzzle. Once solved, that puzzle gave them the quote “rings for mortal men.” There are 9 rings for mortal men in LOTR, so the number was nine.

The second riddle involved an unfolded cootie catcher. Remember those little paper folded fortune tellers from when we were kids? When they folded it and held the points together, it contained a musical staff with a line of music. When they played the song on the piano, it was the theme from Star Wars.

In the Star Wars VHS tape on the shelf was an oddly cut out piece of paper. There was another piece of paper with similar markings on the table. They had to hold up the cutout paper a foot above the table paper with a flashlight shining through it.

The combination of the projected light from the first paper and the symbols on the second paper spelled out the word “quinze”, which means 15 in Portuguese. Good thing there was an English/Portuguese dictionary on the table. The second number was 15.

For the third and final clue, there was an 80s Troll puzzle half-assembled on the table. They had to put it together, squish it between two cookie sheets, flip it over, and read the message on the back. The message contained 4 quotes they recognized from Harry Potter books. Now, I know Harry Potter is not 80s appropriate, but we needed to pick books the girls would all be familiar with and time is irrelevant in the Upside Down.

They found the correct books and in their pages were the pieces to a brightly colored Sudoku puzzle. The colors matched the colors of M&Ms in a jar on the shelf. They had to solve the Sudoku puzzle, count the number of M&Ms and then do a math problem with those numbers, giving them the final number for the code.

They unlocked the door.

And found this VHS video from Barb inside.

She was ALIVE!!! And she’d left them some rad treats. Scrunchies, Coke glasses, hot pink nail polish, and makeup bags with Nerds inside.

Here is a picture of the girls watching Barb’s message. I love the older kids’ delight contrasted with Wanda’s horror. Eaten by monsters? Gross.

And I let them eat cake.

And monsters ate no one.

Bucket of Awesome – Ambassador Invitation

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***Update – The Bucket of Awesome Ambassador Program is drawing to a close, but please sign up below if you’d like to be on the mailing list for future updates and activities.***

It’s happening.

The third, and possibly most epic, Drops of Awesome book is almost here. It arrived at my publisher from the printer and hits shelves and interwebs March 7th! Sign up at the bottom for an early look at the book.

Bucket of Awesome: The Your-Life’s-More-Amazing-Than-You-Realize Guidebook has been in the works for over a year and I am really proud to share it with you. It’s a book with two purposes:

1. To improve your life by changing the way you tell your story.
2. To give you a framework and thought-provoking questions to help you record your personal history in an engaging and positive way.

Change your story by how you tell your story – Drops of Awesome style.

If this idea speaks to you like it yammers to me, I’d love to have you join our promotional team as an Ambassador of Awesome.

Ambassadors of Awesome for this project will receive an advance digital copy of the book and an invitation to join a closed Facebook group where we can share our Bucket of Awesome journeys and talk about our progress.

In return, you agree to receive email from me and the Familius team and help us get the word out about the book through participating in as many of the weekly missions as you can. I would love your help telling the world how Awesome they are. We’ve had so much fun as a team with the past two books. (As a side note, we are building the list from scratch so please sign up below if you’re interested in joining us, even if you helped us with a past project.)

Let’s fill these Buckets UP.

Select “Ambassador of Awesome” to join the team!

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required



Please Dub Me


Save Lunch Time and More – Great Deals from Familius

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I’m not sure how much longer the mega sale is going to be running at Familius. 50-70% of some of their bestselling titles. For example, they’re selling both of my books for cheaper than I can buy them with my author wholesale discount ($6 each!).

There are also a ton of other great books, fun, quirky, useful, interesting, well-designed books that would make great Christmas gifts.

I have no affiliate link with Familius. Hey, wait, why don’t I have an affiliate link with Familius? Not that it would do me much good with this sale that’s going on because they’re practically giving the books away for free.

Here are a few I purchased that I recommend:

Unplug and Play – 50 Original Group Games that Don’t Need Charging ($8) – With family coming in for the holiday this is a great resource for fun, original activities to do with all kinds of groups.

Mix and Match Lunchbox ($12) – This is probably my favorite. It’s divided up into cards that you can mix and match, a protein, a whole grain, and a fruit/veggie course for thousands of creative lunch combinations.

Shakespeare for Kids boxed set ($8) – My kids had a great time at the Shakespeare Festival last summer and this is an awesome way to help them learn the storylines of some of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.

The Stevia Solution Cookbook ($5) – We are so sugar addicted. I love this moderate approach to replacing some of the sugar in your diet with a natural alternative. To be honest, I’m just digging in and haven’t tried the recipes yet, but I like what I’ve seen so far.

Happy shopping!

Love and Fat-free Cheese – Book Tour

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I got the chance to devour Crissy Sharp’s romantic thriller Love and Fat-free Cheese this month. It was a fun brain vacation and distraction from the all-too-serious life that’s happening around me. I was honored to be part of her book tour and excited to read something outside my usual genre.

From the Cedar Fort website: “Fat-free cheese is okay—unless you’ve tasted real cheese. Juliet Easton learns this about love too as she uncovers who truly loves her, and who is using her to get to the secret she knows about the disappearance of her sister’s fiancé and the pharmaceutical conspiracy he plans to reveal. Can she protect her loved ones’ lives and her heart? You’ll be hooked from Asiago to Zamorano cheese in this suspenseful and hilarious romantic thriller.”

Juliet is an out-of-work statistician, looking for a job. She stumbles across employment, romance, and some unexpected mystery and intrigue in this light-hearted novel. I like her character. The world of the book comes alive for me. And the mystery is engaging enough to keep me turning pages, without being so heavy that it stresses me out.

I’ve read chick lit and I’ve read mystery/suspense but I’ve rarely read the two of them together and I like the combination. I don’t love the predictability of most romance novels so the mystery in this one is a nice added oomph to the usual girl meets boy office romance.

Where chick lit usually leaves me feeling pretty meh, this one kept me guessing and It was a fun departure from the non-fiction and historical fiction I’ve been reading lately. If you’re looking for a beach read, or something to read on the plane as you head home for Thanksgiving, give this book a try.

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212 The Extra Degree: Extraordinary Results Begin with One Small Change

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Today, we start with a science lesson.

Water boils at 212 degrees. So, at 211 it’s just hot water. But at 212 it boils. And boiling water generates steam. Steam can power a locomotive.

That’s a huge difference with just one additional degree.

This is the premise of Sam Parker and Mac Anderson’s motivational book, 212 The Extra Degree: Extraordinary Results Begin with One Small Change. I read an advance copy this summer and it was a great, short read. The whole book is just 88 pages long but it left me feeling inspired and motivated to make a few tiny changes in my life.

Sound at all like Drops of Awesome to you? Me too! I really enjoyed this new analogy, one more way to think about how sometimes it’s just one tiny effort that can make all the difference.

In fact, the book has a similar resonance to 523 Ways to Be Awesome.

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“How many opportunities have you missed because you were not aware of the possibilities that would occur if you applied a small amount of effort beyond what you normally do?”

I would add, how many times were you too defeated to apply more effort because you didn’t recognize how well you were already doing? Drops of Awesome.

The book contained short success stories and familiar quotes about courage and perseverance. One of my favorite was the famous quote by Thomas Edison, “Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

This quote resonates with me because I don’t always exhibit great stick-to-it-iveness and I often find myself wondering, what if I REALLY tried? What would happen then?

I comfort myself in my failures by saying, “If I’d REALLY tried, I could have been awesome at hip-hop dance, or filmmaking, or basket weaving. I just didn’t choose to give it my full effort.”

Sometimes committing fully is scary. What if I try my hardest and fail? Then there would be nothing left to give and I would know my best effort is not enough. That’s not something I want to know all the time.

Right now I’m standing on the edge of a situation like this.

I have written professionally for the past 10 years and I always told myself, “If I didn’t have kids at home… if I had more time… I would make writing a full-time career and I would be super successful.”

And now the kids are in school and I can still find all kinds of excuses to not go all-out with writing as a business. What they all boil down to is, I’m scared. I’m scared of spending the next few years working around the clock, only to fall on my face.

But reading this little book helped me crystalize something in my mind. I don’t have to worry about failure. I just need to turn up my effort by one tiny drop at a time, by one degree. And never give up. Or, at least if I give up tomorrow, then I need to un-give up the next day.

What are you afraid to commit to? A better relationship with your spouse? A community service goal? A career? Weight loss?

What could you accomplish if you stopped focusing on what-ifs and fears and started just focusing on increasing your effort? One degree.

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means, I may receive a small commission if you choose to purchase something from a link I post. Don’t worry, it costs you nothing. Thank you for supporting my website!

Better Essentials Oil Review

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I have a complicated relationship with essential oils. Several friends whom I respect and adore love them! There is a neverending stream of stories about how they have improved people’s health and well-being. They smell and feel amazing. I own a ton of essential oils…

But I’m not totally convinced that they do everything people claim they do. And I don’t really like the business model of several of the companies that sell them. And I don’t know that there’s a good way to tell across the different companies which one has the superior product. Because they all say they have the superior product. And they all say they can prove it.

I have been pretty faithful to one brand because I have so many friends who sell it and they swear by it. Its packaging is also pretty and they swear they are totally superior in every way to other brands. And I’ve had success with a few of the oils.

Grapefruit energizes me. Their digestive blend relieves my kids’ stomach issues consistently. Peppermint and frankincense mixed together sooth tension headaches.

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I even signed up to “sell” it, although I’ve never sold a bottle, just so I could get the “discount” and accrue points. But every month I have to place an order, even when I don’t actually need anything. Otherwise I lose my points. This bugs me.

If the product is so good, why do you have to use tricky sales tactics to get people to keep buying it? And, if all the people who are signed up with the company “above” me get a commission off my purchase, why don’t they just charge less for the oils? The prices have to be massively inflated for so many people to be making so much money every time I buy a bottle of lavender.

So, when I got an email from Jen at Better Essentials, I wanted to give her oils a try. She sent me a few sample bottles and I really liked them. They are well packaged, pour well, and smell and feel similar to their MLM brethren.

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The thing is, I do not have a deep-seated belief that essential oils cure everything. I don’t know of a good way to scientifically test them. But their extraction processes seem similar to those of the other companies and on the surface they seem comparable.

Now let’s talk about pricing. Better Essentials market themselves as being high quality with a lower price and they are a lower price than full retail of the other companies. But no one really pays full retail with the big companies. Either you sign up to get the “wholesale” discount, or you get the discount from one of your friends who sells the oils.

Better Essentials oils are very closely price-matched to the wholesale prices of the other companies. So, essentially you paying the same price, but you don’t have to sign up and pledge your loyalty to The Man. If you want to buy something, you just buy it. The end.

So check them out. I liked the free samples they sent and I will likely buy from them again sometime in the future.

***I received free product to sample for this review. All opinions expressed are my own and I received no monetary compensation for this post.***

Pete the Cat’s Magic Sunglasses – Put Me In The Story

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I’ve been a little bit obsessed with personalizing things lately. For Christmas I got all my nieces and nephews InchBug labels with their names on them. Then for birthdays this year, they all got monogrammed fleece blankets.

One of my favorite new things to personalize are books. So, when Put Me In The Story reached out to see if I would be interested in having them personalize a Pete the Cat book for one of my kids, I was excited to volunteer.

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Thusly, I am on the official book tour of Pete the Cat’s Magic Sunglasses.

My daughter adores Pete the Cat so I was thrilled to upload her picture and share a few personal details so the book could be printed with her in mind. The process was really simple. I think it took about 5 minutes and then I waited for the book to arrive.

I think it got to my house in about a week and I saved it until a moment when I thought she could really use a special pick-me-up.

Well, since my surgery, she’s been a bit of a basket-case, weepy, whiny, needs her mom to help her with everything. (And she’s not the only one!) So, as I’ve gotten more mobile, I’ve been pouring on the love. Lots of extra hugs and special story times, and today I pulled out the book.

She freaked out as soon as she saw it was Pete the Cat.

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And then she noticed that her name was in the title.

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AND THE BOOK WAS DEDICATED TO HER!!!

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Every page brought huge grins and excited gasps, smiles and giggles.

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She could NOT believe that they had a street called THOMPSON PKWY.

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And she was the sunshine.

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Overall I thought they managed to personalize the book just enough without going overboard or cheesy. It felt fairly seamless and Wanda was thrilled with it.

I would consider this a home-run gift, a gift she clutched to her chest and carried around for a good chunk of the afternoon.

Many of the books on the site are picture books, so they would be a fine gift for younger kids as read-alouds but I think the magic happens when you give one of these books to an emerging reader, someone who can discover all the places where her name appears and be delighted.

Apart from the personalization, it was just a really sweet book with a great message about looking on the bright side and deciding what perspective you will have on life. Do you want life to be awesome? Then look for the awesome!

Put Me In The Story is currently running a giveaway of a couple of personalized books and a book bag. Here’s the link to enter. I’m going to do it because I’d love to give away more of these books as gifts.

Enter via the Rafflecopter by doing any of the following:

  • Sharing your Sunglass Selfie! Share a selfie of you and your child wearing sunglasses with the hashtag #MagicSunglasses
  • Sharing a Tweet
  • Signing up for Put Me In The Story’s newsletter

*I received free product to review for this post. However, I only ever give my real opinions on this blog and none of this text comes from the company.*

Sad, Mean, and Sort of Enjoyable

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I love the way Wanda’s mind works. I’m sure I still love the way Laylee and Magoo’s minds work too, but unlike with Wanda, I’m not privy to a constant stream in voice and writing of every thought that has ever passed through their brains. I have an open internet connection to Wanda’s thoughts. The older kids send me text messages.

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On the walk to school yesterday, Wanda asked, “Do you know what a patteroller is?”

“Nope.”

“It’s that thing where the cops carry a big stick around and if you don’t go to school or do something else bad, they hit you with it.”

“I was not aware of this.”

“Yeah. We learned about it in music class. There’s a song that says, ‘Run children run. The patteroller catch you.’ I just like to think about that.”

“Well, I have two things to say to you. One. Did you know there’s an even more polite way of referring to a ‘cop’? I like to call them, ‘police officers.’ Two. I don’t think police officers chase kids with sticks anymore for skipping school. I think that song was written a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” she replied, “It’s from… like… 288 or something.”

Yes. It’s a song written about local law enforcement when Diocletian was emperor of Rome. Those were serious times.

She spends a lot of time thinking and overthinking everything and then telling me about it. Take this simple homework sheet for example.

The teacher read Goldilocks and the Three Bears and then asked the kids what they thought about it.

Check yes or no. Was it good or bad?

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Sort of.

Why, sort of?

Wanda responds.

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And it makes sense. It IS sort of a sad and mean kind of story. Chick breaks into a family residence, uses or destroys all their stuff while they’re out battling the obesity epidemic with some family exercise. When she’s caught, she books it. What kind of a story is that?

Sad, mean, and sort of enjoyable.

40% Off Drops of Awesome Books for Mother’s Day!

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6tag_150316-142725Familius is offering a discount of 40% off both Drops of Awesome books plus several other great titles now through Mother’s Day. They’ve curated a nice collection of Mother’s Day gifts.

As a bonus, if you order two books, you get a copy of Motherhood Realized for free.

I like free stuff as much as any Oprah audience member so I thought it was only right to pass this along.