List: Ways to be prepared for anything at your kid's game!

Lacrosse has been a lot of fun, but lately I started reminiscing about the first season she played.  We loved watching her learn the sport and even though they lost all their games back then, they had smiles on their faces and determination.

But for a new parent, things were different.  My memory of me and my husband, proud parents, included pulling up our hoods, zipping up tight, wrapping our arms around ourselves, and praying we didn't freeze to death.

Because some days it is really warm at your house, but the game is at a higher elevation and an open field so the wind whips right through you.  Other times, you feel cool in the shade, but out on the field, the sun is burning your skin.  Then there are the days where you forget it's a double header, plus warm-up time, no trees in sight, and you come home looking like a lobster.

So while we started out by carrying a couple canvas folding chairs and a jacket, we ended up with a nifty little bag that has kept us comfortable.  I've watched other seasoned parents carrying armloads of gear to the field, bringing other kids to help them carry and I think maybe I've figured out the right mixture.

1. I started with this (diaper) bag because, well, I sell Avon so I got it really cheap. I gave away the insides to someone I knew who just had a baby.  It's been perfect (for two)! It's about 17 inches wide, 12 inches tall.  You don't need anything enormous.
2. Buy two 1-yard pieces of polar or cuddle fleece at the fabric store. These make great warm blankets and they're pretty adorable.  Make sure the pattern will embarrass your athlete. In December and January that fabric goes on sale really cheap!  Roll them up.  Two fit perfectly in this bag.
3. Tuck in two umbrellas.  Much like soccer, they only cancel lacrosse if they see lightning strike the field or the snow is deeper than an inch.  Umbrellas protect you from those rainy days, but also help cool you off parasol-style on the relentlessly cloudless, sunny days.
4. Slide a zipper case first aid kit down one side.  I know they have first aid on the field, but it never hurts to have your own, right?  I tucked some allergy pills in the kit.  Sometimes you find yourself at a field near farms and those allergies you think are mild can act up quite a bit!
5. In one pocket we carry tissues and I stick Avon's bug guard / sun screen (two birds, one spray bottle!) into the same pocket.  
6. We can get two water bottles in there, too.
7. Strap a couple baseball caps to the handle if you don't wear one regularly.
8. Throw an old jacket or extra blanket in the trunk of your car just in case.
9. One folding chair per person. Over at Home Depot, they sell these things for less than $10 - I even picked it up on a rare $4.88 sale! - they hold our (not skinny!) weight, they are light to carry, and they happen to come in orange (my daughter's team is orange and blue).
   

Seriously, this is all we have needed for three years (starting the fourth season in the spring).  It's small enough that I carry the bag in my trunk all year (you never know!) and it's convenient to carry out to the field.

What about you?  Do you think there should be more on this list?

Self Published Authors Are Not Always Publishing House Rejects

I've always written.  When I was 12, something I wrote got me in trouble; not because it was controversial, but because it wasn't clean, LDS, happy unicorns eating cotton candy.  The upheaval caused by that story didn't stop me from writing, it stopped me from sharing.  A few intimate friends still knew I wrote.  Now, I am still guarded.

All those years, though, I wanted to be published.  I wanted to share my words with others who needed to hear them.  I entered a few contests where I got lots of compliments, but never won.  I feel I am in the good-writer-but-not-amazing-writer category.  Some where, maybe egotistically, around 8 on a scale of 1-10.  I feel a lot of novelists who get published are around 7-8, too, but they know people who know people.  I know no one.  The ones who get discovered without knowing anyone are 10s and frankly that's only about 1% of published novels.  That's today, though.  Tomorrow I'll believe I'm a 2.

I didn't want to be published for fame and money at first, but people start to fill your head with the idea that legitimacy is the only purpose to publication and as you get older, your idealism and reality try to meet; thinking you could actually pay the bills by doing what you love.

Then you hit 40 and realize you may never pay the bills with what you love and that people hate their jobs so that they have something to write about.

You also might realize that you love writing, but you hate selling your novel or trying to convince some arrogant publisher's assistant to let said publisher read your novel by reducing yourself to a 3 paragraph query letter.  Yeah, I sent out a few.  Of course I got rejected.  It didn't hurt my feelings because this is the thing about writing BOOKS.  You take 300 pages to get your point across FOR A REASON.  Agents and publishers want a hook to sell your book; this makes sense, but they don't really want to hear about the book.

In a self-loathing as well as self-righteous sort of way, I suppose, I think most self-published novels are crap.  I think the majority are not well written or well edited.  Something must be wrong to they would be published by a major publishing house, right?

And yet self-published novels are becoming hits.  Some of them are poorly written; filled with salacious erotica adapted from fanfic (don't knock it until you've tried it.  These are people who aren't afraid of being hackneyed pulp writers, and yet their ideas are new, fresh, beautiful, creative, and all the things that we are told are not what makes good writing.  It can be the MOST ARTISTIC WRITING in the world!) and some are great, but go completely unnoticed.  You are responsible for your own marketing, but if you are struggling to pay your bills, there may not be enough to justify a comprehensive marketing plan so you plug away, hoping you'll get lucky.

Some do. Some don't.

But I remembered the days I wrote and it wasn't about the money.  I just wanted to share my words with people who needed to hear them.

So I turn to self-publishing not because the big houses won't have me, but because they don't even know who I am.