Amy J. Bennett

Compassion India

April 28, 2009 by Amy 4 Comments

I’ve blogged about Compassion a few times. You may have noticed the badge I have on my right sidebar. That’s not just random advertising. Compassion is an organization that helps children all over the world in poverty. You sponsor a child for $32/month. Lord knows we spend that much in Starbucks…in a week sometimes.

This week there are a group of bloggers visiting India on behalf of Compassion. They’re seeing how Compassion works first hand. One of the bloggers Pete mentioned in an email that I should go on one of their trips. My first response? My heart couldn’t take it. I’d have so many tears I wouldn’t be able to see straight. After reading their posts for today I’m realizing I can hardly take just reading about it. And maybe Pete’s right…maybe that’s exactly why I should go if I ever get the chance.

Two things I have to share that particularly hit me today. I twittered on Sunday about having the song This is the Day stuck in my head. Then the only video that Pete posted today was of an Indian boy singing that same song. What a WOW moment.

The second is Melissa told how 4 year olds are left home alone all day while their parents work. FOUR. The same age as Lexi. My heart just broke thinking of all those children by themselves. What could they possibly be thinking? Who helps them when they’re hungry? Who hugs them when they hurt themselves? It’s unfathomable to me.

I highly recommend you following them on Twitter using #compassionindia, reading all their posts this week (blogs listed below) and most importantly, sponsor a child. We CAN do something about this.

*Update*

The picture above is our newest Compassion child Jayapriya. I had the girls sit with me and told them what we were doing. Lexi sweetly said, I’ll give her some of my church money. I told her I had the money I just needed help picking which one we’d help. All three of us pointed at Jayapriya when we saw her. She’s so precious!

Weekend Recap

April 27, 2009 by Amy Leave a Comment

Another weekend has flown by.

Friday afternoon I got off work and the four of us took off to dinner and shopping on our own. And no, that doesn’t happen too often. I think we were all hungry and cranky and we needed a pool liner. The Japanese restaurant was in the same parking lot and I said just go there. The kids had never been to a Japanese restaurant and they ended up having a fantastic time. They loved watching the guy cook and he was great, paying special attention to them. The kids loved learning about chopsticks. I was proud they both tried the salad but neither liked it. The soup was a hit though. Emma LOVED the noodles and steak while Lexi went for steak and rice. Lexi declared at the end that “it’s the best day ever”. They were begging to go back for lunch the next day but with our bill, it will be a LONG time before we go back.
We didn’t order a pool liner on Friday. But we need to. It’s already getting into the upper 80s here and we need to get started on it. You might remember that we got a hole into it at the end of last summer after we had just bought it the summer before. But I’m not bitter about it.
Saturday we got up early and went to paintball with our youth group. I was there just to take pictures. Unfortunately the workers wouldn’t let me get close to the courses and the girls and I ended up leaving early. Apparently too early though as I missed the best one and where Scott got this war wound http://twitpic.com/3yyy3.
MIL ended up coming by and taking the girls for the afternoon. I ran a few errands and then laid down and ended up taking a 3 hour nap. Fantabulous.
Saturday evening we had dinner at Jake and Jill’s for our Sunday School class. I made Paula Deen’s corn casserole that turned out fantabulous as well. http://bit.ly/10Nm0E The girls went with us but were overall well behaved. They kept Jake and Jill busy as well as a 7 month old who was so cute belly-laughing at their antics. They ended up falling asleep before we left.
Sunday was church, CVS and more church.
I’d also like to point out we finally got our XM radio set up in the car. I had grabbed the Spanish version of the instructions and may I say that I actually was reading them out loud?? I guess my teach myself Spanish courses actually paid off. The fact that we still had to call to figure it out is totally unrelated. *ahem*

The girls have their yearly checkup Thursday and I’m hosting another Mary Kay party on Thursday (anyone need anything??) and S has her ice skating recital this weekend but other than that this week should be pretty standard.

Sunday on Monday

April 27, 2009 by Amy 3 Comments

The last 3 weeks we spent time watching Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. We had seen it years ago when it first came out. I cried like a baby when we saw it. In particular, watching the relationship between Jesus and his mother affected me as a young mother. How could she watch him suffer so?

Most of us in the class had watched it before but yesterday. We discussed the things we had missed the first time and there are two things that I knew but just hit me hard.

One, in the movie and in most arenas, Satan is portrayed as someone dark and ugly with hands that need a manicure and an evil sidekick. Sometimes he has horns and tail. Certainly we’d know to stay away. But isn’t that exactly opposite to Satan in our lives? He and his temptations are beautiful. Like Bella to Edward in Twilight (oh yes I did) she was his own brand of heroin. That’s what Satan does. He makes sin gorgeous. That one specific sin we could fall to. You think you’d love it. You’d think it’d be fun. You think you HAVE to do it. Never does Satan make sin look like the horrible thing that it is. Only when you’ve said yes and you’re miles down the road does he show his true nature. Then, he looks ugly. Then you see the consequences of what you’ve done. Then you see the hurt and the regret and the pain. Never doubt that Satan can be beautiful. The Bible says Satan is like a lion prowling for us. It also says we like sheep have gone away. It is when we close our eyes and go blindly into sin that we are entrapped. Let us be wise to the nature of Satan and have our eyes wide open to what we are being drawn into. And not saying that the things of God are not beautiful but that’s just it…we need to be discerning!

The second eye opener was realizing why Jesus says “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” on the cross. Why indeed? Can God forsake his Son? Did Jesus regret what he had done? No, in fact, that is the moment that Jesus, fully man, took on the sins of the world. God, in his holiness, could not look on him in his sin and for a split second in history had to turn his face from him. For me, even more proof that Jesus took on MY sin on the cross.

We went on from Sunday School to a church service yesterday where God showed up and we actually had church instead of playing church. Can’t tell you how much I needed that.

Like Father, Like Daughter #3

April 23, 2009 by Amy 2 Comments

Don’t know what #1 and 2 were? Go here.

Honest to goodness this is starting to concern me.

We’re in the van on the way home from dinner tonight and Emma asks if we can buy sparkly pipe cleaners at the store this weekend so we can make ALL KINDS of crafts with them. Then Lexi pipes up.

“Mommy, can we PLEASE buy some toilet cleaner?” Really? I mean, out of nowhere she asks for this.

“Are you talking about the things that make the water blue?” It’s the only thing I can figure would interest a child.

Emma chimes in, “Mommy, it’s those things that hang on the inside that make the toilet clean.”

Lexi becomes insistent. “No. Mommy it’s just toilet cleaner. I saw it at Marissa’s. It makes the toilet clean.”

“Don’t you think our toilets are clean?” I say, a little hurt.

“Yeah.” Lexi agrees.

“So you just want them extra clean?”

“Yeah. Can we get them please?”

Really? I’m starting to think I should hold her birthday party in the cleaning supply aisle of Wal-Mart.

American Idol Top 7

April 21, 2009 by Amy 1 Comment

Lil – First off, Lil pulled off that little black number she was wearing. She’s proportioned just right for that and wow. As for the song, I finally felt like she wasn’t trying to be someone else and she didn’t date herself 15 years. Still no “moment” from her but much better than previous weeks.

Kris – I love Kris. He continually does well and really makes a song unique and always, “downloadable”. I’m going to sound like Paula but he has such a nice tone to his voice that you could push play on his songs and listen all day. And he’s such a cutie.

Allison – Allison can SANG. There is no doubt about that. I love that Pink-ish vibe she has and she sounded fine. But was this a song I’m going to do download? Nope.

Danny – Danny really scared me with that screaming at the beginning. But after that, Danny did what he does best…puts some soul into a song. Do I see myself downloading this one? Probably not but the guy can sing. No doubt.

Adam – I literally was stomping my feet. I do not want to like Adam. But here he was toning it down again and he’s absolutely amazing. He has an excellent voice and when he sings a ballad, you get his emotion too and I just loved it.

Matt – Matt came back with a vengeance tonight. I’m not a fan of that song but I think he did really well with it and I’ll be sad to see if he goes after his near-elimination last week.

Anoop – From the first few notes it was just bad.

I’m going to put them in order this week:

Adam
Kris
Danny
Allison (interchangeable with Matt)
Matt
Lil
Anoop

17 Again Movie Review

April 19, 2009 by Amy 4 Comments

I’ve tried to give this review a little time. I really don’t want every other sentence to be Zac Efron is so HOT. But I’m still thinking it could turn out that way. Let me try to hold back and get a decent review out.

Heather gushed about the screening last Monday and the ever dependent movie critic, she was right. I was gushing about it as soon as the credits were rolling. And no, not just about how hot Zac Efron is.

The movie basically is about a guy named Mike who gets his girlfriend pregnant in high school, gives up a basketball career to raise a family and grows to resent his wife. Twenty years later they’re divorcing and he wishes he could do it all over again. He gets his wish and is put back in his 17 year old body. He thinks he’s been given his chance to be 17 again only to learn he was sent back to save his family. His older daughter is dating the uber popular but bully basketball star while his younger son is the recipient of his bullying. He poses as the new guy in school and helps them through their troubles as their new friend. And not to mention he wins his wife back in the process.

Well, let me tell you. It sounds a little campy but it was a fantastic movie. Here are my thoughts:

Zac (yes, because we’re on a first name basis) said in an interview that this was a transitional movie for him and I couldn’t agree more. At 17 he is a popular, confident basketball player that apparently can dance too. And yes, he does even get out on the basketball floor and does a dance with the cheerleaders. Sound familiar? But then you see him playing a 37 year old the rest of the movie and he honest to goodness was believable.
His best friend played by Thomas Lennon (I Love You, Man; Hancock; Reno 911!) was absolutely hilarious. Him and Zac were a great comedic pairing. The “You look like Clay Aiken” line was one of my favorites. And paired up with Melora Hardin (Jan from The Office) was gold.
Zac’s character Mike being 17 Again and in his family’s life made for some well, interesting dynamics. On the one hand, he’s fighting for his daughter telling her how much more she’s worth than her current boyfriend and she ends up falling for Mike. You were plastered to the back of your chair at times when the two of them were together going “Ewwwww!” Which was odd because there is Zac, hot guy himself, with a beautiful teenage girl and you’d think they would be the two you’d be rooting for but you can imagine how awkward those scenes were. And then there is Mike with his wife. Except now he’s 17 again and he looks JUST LIKE he did when he was 17. His wife is automatically drawn to him and in one scene they end up dancing and almost kissing. On one hand you’re rooting for them because he’s winning his wife back but part of you is weirded out because she’s 20 years older than him. And then ANOTHER part of you is cheering because OMG Zac is with someone 20 years older than him. RAWR, where’s my cougars at??

All that to say, it’s a funny, heart-warming, clean movie that you should go see!

Twitter’s #QueryDay

April 17, 2009 by Amy 1 Comment

I ran past the #queryday hashtag on Twitter today and somehow became hooked on it most of the day. Basically what happened is a few agents took questions from the Twitter public about query letters and answered them publicly with the #queryday hashtag. Honestly, I hadn’t thought about a query letter since school. And while I don’t see submitting my non-novel in progress, I think it’s possible I might have one good enough one day to submit. And really, some of the advice was directed towards the book itself, not just the query letter so I loved that.

I know a lot of bloggers are aspiring writers so I thought it might be helpful to share the tweets I favorited today. A big thanks to all the people who gave such great advice.

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davidalexanderm@angelajames One thing TV drummed into me: get into the story as late as possible, and out as early as possible. #queryday

RachelleGardnerIf I can change my two-spaces-after-a-sentence habit after 25 years of typing, so can you. One space is standard in publishing. #queryday

RachelleGardnerTip: If you want to draw me into your novel, don’t write your query in a dry, boring, uber-business-like and/or academic style. #queryday

RachelleGardnerTip: Don’t send us something outside of our guidelines and try to impress us with how “out of the box” you are. It’s been tried! #queryday

RachelleGardnerTip: If you mention a previously published book, better make sure I’ll be able to find it on Amazon because I WILL look it up. #queryday

RachelleGardnerTip: I prefer your query NOT tell me what a great movie your book would make. If it has movie potential, trust me, I’ll notice. #queryday

ColleenLindsayAttached entire manuscript and a head shot. Fail. #queryday

RachelleGardnerChristian writers: Best NOT to say you’re going to explain something about the Bible that no one has ever understood before. #queryday

RachelleGardner@TerriMo I do everything by email. No need for hardcopies… everything goes on my Kindle. #queryday

achelleGardner@TerriMo Never, never, never phone an editor or agent unless they’re YOUR editor or agent. #queryday

RachelleGardner@MaricarMac No need to reveal entire plot in query; give the set-up and premise; make me want to read it. #queryday

RachelleGardnerTip: A query that talks only about the THEME of your novel is rarely effective. You need to tell about the STORY. #queryday

ColleenLindsay@luckychica Humor very very hard to sell unless you have a major platform or are a well-known comic. #queryday

DanielLiterary@moonbridgebooks Yes it’s fine, most agents expect it. Don’t really need to mention it. #queryday

moonbridgebooksIs it okay to query many agents at once; if so, do we need to tell agents this? #queryday #queryday

DanielLiterary@Selestial I don’t like to hear anything about series in a query. Often scares me off. #queryday

BostonBookGirlPass: The entire query is about how important it is that this person tell their own story. The query is written by someone else. #queryday

RachelleGardnerReality check: If you are your family’s breadwinner, plan to keep your day job even after you sell several books. #queryday

DanielLiteraryIf you don’t do enough research to address me by name or at least by my agency name, you’ll almost certainly be rejected. #queryday

DanielLiterary@ChristaCarol Only if you get huge traffic. 5,000 unique visitors a day at least. #queryday

RachelleGardner@gempari We need word count, not page count, to determine if it’s something we represent. #queryday

RachelleGardner@jennnixon Most agents only want to know if you WON a contest. The finals, MAYBE. Other than that, it’s not helpful info IMHO. #queryday

RachelleGardner@waterfallbooks I rarely find mixed comparisons helpful (“Jane Austen meets Frank Peretti”). Works in Hollywood but not for me. #queryday

skyladawn#queryday Don’t name more than 3-4 characters in your synopsis. I’m not going to keep them all straight. Just give me the MAIN plot.

michellewitte#queryday Last advice before I start work: Keep your spirits up. If you’ve written a great book eventually someone will want it. Persistence

ElaineSpencer@Daylilie222 depends on genre, & of course there are excptions to evry rule, you could have gr. novel at 50k, but that is not norm #queryday

LeighEllwood#queryday Titles can matter in romance. My mostly female readership might be turned off by “Biker Sluts Weekend in Vegas”.

RachelleGardner@christinerose You don’t need comparative titles in the query, but in the PROPOSAL, you do. #queryday

skyladawn#queryday Don’t send me a manuscript without any dialogue in the first twenty pages. Really. Don’t be afraid of people talking!

RachelleGardnerTip: DON’T say “the book gets exciting in chapter 5” or “the pace really picks up toward the end.” Make it shine from page 1. #queryday

BJMuntainRt @RachelleGardner loves queries that are straight-to-the point and don’t try too hard. The matter of fact approach is refreshing #queryday

ElaineSpencerIf ur novel is over 120k I can’t help but be a little afraid. Plz explain why (or at least acknowledge) ms is so lengthy #queryday

RachelleGardner@janastocks Listing comparable books is important, it puts yours in context, shows u know your market, helps agent “get” your bk. #queryday

RachelleGardnerWhen people send queries on Christmas, New Year’s, Easter… I WANT to auto-reject on principle! But I don’t. #queryday

RachelleGardnerFor me, previously self-published is totally irrelevant. Neither helps nor hurts. See my posts: http://bit.ly/spTIb #queryday

JoeBerkowitzAnd never sidestep the comp titles issue by saying “there’s never been any book like this before.” There totally has! Find them! #queryday

BJMuntainRT @RachelleGardner Query that makes me laugh is a great thing! Whether or not the book is for me, it definitely gets my attention #queryday

RachelleGardnerTip: This may be hard to hear, but I suggest you avoid being in a rush to get published. Take TIME to develop your craft. #queryday

RachelleGardner@mbsmith090801 You must include the genre. Publisher, bookstore, consumer all need 2 know! Find books/websites that discuss genre. #queryday

BostonBookGirlUnnecessary query info: I assume you have edited your work, have a writers group and have shown this to someone who likes it. #queryday

RachelleGardner@AdelleLaudan Depends on whether I feel assaulted. But cursing’s often used as shortcut; u should be able to express self w/o it. #queryday

LeighEllwood#queryday What kills the yes in a potential ms? For me, improbable situations, and characters who aren’t endearing.

zumayabooks@TheaRauth Beginners can replace lack of creds with info on how they prepared manuscript–critique, editor, whatever. #Queryday

DanielLiterary@jjochwat If I were a writer trying to find the right agent, I’d pay for access to Publishers Marketplace.com. #queryday

RachelleGardnerTOP reason I say “no” to queries is the story doesn’t sound unique, fresh, exciting. The problem isn’t the query, it’s the book. #queryday

American Idol Top 7 Results

April 15, 2009 by Amy 4 Comments

I usually don’t blog about the American Idol results but wow! I don’t know about you, but tonight was one of the best American Idol moments EVAH! Here’s the thing. Simon is right. Matt can’t win. I “hands down” put him in the bottom two last night. But watching American Idol tonight, I was literally chanting and clapping SAVE MATT! I have a few reasons why. Lil deserved to go home after last night. Lil has YET to deliver a stunning performance and Matt has at least done that. There were only two weeks left to use the save and it would have been a big bummer had it not been used. And dude, it was just good TV. I have never, ever, ever seen the crowd as hyped as it was during a results show save the finale. The other contestants were out of their seats chanting, the judges were out of their seats. *I* was out of my seat. What’s even better is next week we get to see the drama unfold of TWO contestants leaving the show. Whoo Hoo!

I know the judges were happy about it.

And look, even Simon was happy with himself after it was done.