Book Excerpt: Building a Home

Here, an excerpt from my novel and work-in-progress, Monday Night Bike Club:

They built their house, officially, in the middle of nowhere. 


They spent hours after work, after college classes, before breakfast and during lunch working on the house. It was his idea, a terrible one she thought. 

Her dad had looked at Lainey and said, “Your Aunt Emily built her own house too.” 

“Great,” she said.

“It took them 8 years,” he answered.


They were 22 and 23, so young and foolish and idealistic, she sees now what her dad was thinking. They had set about it with a $20 how-to book from the little store downtown. They dubbed it “The Bible,” the closest to religion they’d ever come. Nick had worked at a lumber store for five years by then, spent all his working hours with men building houses and garages and kitchens. 

Lainey wasn’t a natural at the job and about a month into the job nailed an entire wall flat to the floor. She'd spent an hour measuring and marking the length of each board with a fat carpenter pencil, balancing the boards on the saw and cutting a smooth edge. Each time she cut she imagined a blade taking her arm off. 

GTW Editorial: Girls Night Out Imminent

Here's fair warning: A Girls Night Out is imminent. You might consider attending GTWoman's Ultimate Girls Night Out, but mostly we recommend that you attend any GNO you can get your hands on and watch the magic unfold.

While there's plenty of magic that can happen at a GNO, we mostly applaud the magic that happens outside the official agenda, the kind you can't get unless you commit to something different than your usual Friday night.
Case in point:

The Commitment: Kids, work, family, men. All fair game for your Friday night attention. But there's something entirely decadent about marking a big fat circle on your calendar and declaring out loud that you will be leaving the house, leaving your man, leaving work on a certain night... that just happens to be the same night your girlfriends are making the same noises about.

When a slight hesitation travels through the house, you'll sense your family's surprise that Momma is making a solo plan. When this happens, you will feel a shock of your own. It's then that you realize how long it's been since you've taken a night to yourself. They've forgotten you do such things, that you own heels, that you wear things in those holes in your ears.

Motherhood: The Yoda Song

The 1985 Yoda Song started it. If you have kids who love Star Wars, be sure to introduce them to Weird Al Yankovic's song all set to the "Lola" song. (Which is, unfortunately, catchy.) The kids played it over and over. And then they asked for more music like it. So. I've taken it one step further and started using music to send subliminal messages.

Exhibit A: Weird Al's wildly popular "Eat It" song. I suggest you put this on the CD you make them but make sure to react to it as if it was a mistake. You do not want them to think you like this song, nor that you quote it at every meal you serve them.