Roll call! Is everyone okay after all those storms? My gosh, I was RIVETED to the Weather Channel Thursday afternoon/evening watching that incredible live feed of the gigantic tornado. You can see it here and here and here. I’ve never seen anything like it. My heart just goes out to everyone affected by this week’s horrible weather. Mother Nature was one angry woman the last seven days. She needs a serious attitude adjustment. Or a Twinkie. I truly don’t share this to be braggy, but I got the sweetest email from a reader Thursday that goes a little something like this:

Jenny, I am from Gadsden, AL, and I was reading your book last night while we were waiting for the storms to pass and I got to the part where it said when we hurt, God hurts. Thank you for that. I really needed it at that time. Please pray for my state. Thanks.

I can’t imagine how scary that storm must’ve been. I have definitely been praying for those affected by the recent storms, especially Alabama and my own state of Arkansas. If you are interested in donating to an Alabama relief program, I recommend the Red Cross or Samaritan’s Purse. There are also some serious blood shortages, so that’s another volunteering option that won’t cost you a thing, and you often get cookies in return!

Let us move on to lighter topics.
I am very blessed to get reader emails like the one above, and while I read each and every one, and definitely wrote back to this girl, I don’t get to answer or respond to them all. (This is the same story I give my students when they expect me to grade their papers.)

Many of the emails ask some of the same questions, so I thought I’d do my quarterly “here’s your answer” session right here.

Question 1: Why do you eat so much junk food?

Answer: Sugar makes my world go round. Unfortunately, it also makes my butt go round.

Question 2: Will there be a fourth Katie Parker book? (I get this one. A lot.)

Answer: No. But I think there might be an e-novella to tie some things up. In the very distant future. But the basic answer is nah.

Question 3: Will there be a fourth A Charmed Life book? (I get this one. A lot lot.)

Answer: No. Bella and Luke are still very happy. Let’s keep them that way.

Question 4: How do you feel about Obama’s birth certificate?

Answer: I don’t care. I have better things to do with my time. Like teach Miller sign language for “I’m about to hurl and need the trash can.” For those of you interested, this might be some good reading on the President’s Easter message. Deflate the hate.

Question 5: How do I get published?

Answer: You pray really hard and have a good day job.(Also see my FAQs for further advice.)

Question 6: Will So Not Happening be a movie?

Answer: No.

Question 7: Can I be in the movie?

Answer: Yes

Question 7: Will you fill out this five page questionnaire (in paragraph form, double space, Times New Roman) for my book report, due tomorrow morning at eight a.m.

Answer: Anything for you.

Question 8: Do you have have author friends?

Answer: Yes. We all get together about once a year and talk each other out of completing McDonald’s job applications. We have a few casualties every year, God bless ‘em.

Question 9: Can you name the main character in your next book after me?

Answer: For the right price, I’ll call her anything you want.

Question: Will you come teach at my school?

Answer: Only if I get to wear yoga pants. So get me a PE coach gig. I have zero qualifications for that, by the way. Other than a heart to serve. In yoga pants.

Question: You look at a lot of book covers. Do you ever see any that make you laugh?

Answer: This one at the moment. (Nice pants…)

Question: Is there a candy bar you won’t eat?

Answer: Crunch, Krackle, and a few choice others. It kind of hurts me to talk about it. I want to love them all, but a few of them are a disgrace to the candy bar name.

Question: Are you going to watch the Royal Wedding?

Answer: Does Lindsey Lohan have a rap sheet?

Question: Do you wish you were in London for the big event?

Answer: Yes. Instead I will just close my eyes and think of England.

Thanks for letting me answer all those here. Saved me a ton of time! My cabana boy-secretary-cat walker-frond waver has the month off, so I’m way behind on my correspondence. Have a great weekend. Be safe. And let’s meet back Monday and talk Royal Wedding.

If you’re bored, stop by and visit me today at Southern Belle View.

11 comments

Happy mid-week. Our weather escalated pretty seriously a few days ago, but all is well. Or will be by Thursday. Our local university even let out early for floods. I think that’s happened exactly zero times in the history of the school. They barely let out for snow. (Why I picked that institution of learning, I’ll never know. Their high attendance standards are borderline obnoxious.)  My own district let out early Tuesday afternoon, as well as surrounding schools. Many buses in the county couldn’t get children home with roads washed out and flooded. So some of my students who got out early were home by 2:30 and some, who had crazy bus rides were home by 7:30 p.m. One of my kids said, “I got home at 7:30. Ms. Jones, they dropped me off at (insert snarl)  Dollar General.” Like it was the corner of depravity and stale off-brand cookies.

On an unrelated note, I have never understood why the plural of bus doesn’t have two s’s. Busses. I also don’t know how to spell essess.

There You’ll Find Me is wrapped up, and I’ve given myself a huge break. It’s my first break in many years. I really needed it. But the problem is…I have no idea what to do with myself. I’ve already painted furniture. I’ve read some books. I’ve attempted to watch some TV. (American Idol, we’re through. Again.)  I’ve judged 500 contests. I’ve volunteered. I’ve planted a garden.
I know I’m supposed to be still and just chill out and recharge the brain cells, but I’m finding out I absolutely suck at it. Apparently I don’t know how to be anything but a souped up stress ball. Here are some of the things I have checked off of my recent to-do list.

1. Read about the creepy Olsen Twins in Newsweek
2. Googled to see if creepy Olsen Twins had had plastic surgery
3. Filled out job application for Olsen Twins fashion company, speculated to make them billionaires. Apparently they do not need a third partner who wants to buy in using fifty bucks and her Tupperware collection.
4. Watched Oprah
5. Recorded Hallmark TV movie because I never had time to watch them before
6. Deleted Hallmark TV movie because it was about an inspirational teacher and who believes that crap anyway?
7. Learned Wal-Mart is testing grocery home delivery and wrote them a poem called “I Love This Idea, and I Need Some Bacos and Cheese.”
8. Micro-managed a few people
9. Ate fried chicken
10. Read the rest of my Newsweek and pretended like I understood it
11. Ordered some running shoes that make me look like I have man feet. Gay man feet.
12. OD’d on peanut butter and decided it was a pretty good way to go.
13. Did one push-up
14. Did two crunches
15. Watched a lot of weather
16. Considered being a storm chaser
17. Doubted many curly headed girls get out in bad weather and chase storms
18. Decided against storm chasing
19. Ate Cheetos
20. Did a long division problem in my head
21. Made a list of things to buy in eBay
22. Cried when I realized some of the things on the list didn’t exist yet
23. Made a mental note to create a car that runs on polka music and marshmallows
24. Made a list of new jokes
25. Tried out jokes on Miller
26. Miller barfed
27. Put Miller up for sale on eBay

That’s my last few weeks. So help me out here. When you need to de-stress and unplug, what do you do?

P.S. I accidentally caught the last half of The Voice last night. I had zero interesting in watching it, but, guys…it was good. Like couldn’t turn it off good. It is NOTHING like American Idol. There is an encore performance tonight (Wed) on NBC. You gotta watch it.

18 comments

Congrats to winners of Departures:
Tammy C, who is good at making her life a musical (a must for any happy life)
Lily, who is good at eating ice cream (You’re among friends here, Lily)
Mary, who is a great hugger (more calorie friendly than ice cream)
Naomi, who is good at procrastinating (I totally don’t relate to this.) (Totally lying)
Katelyn, who is excellent at stressing out (eat more ice cream)
Bookwyrm, who is just dandy at lame jokes (Welcome to the club)

Winners, please email me (jen at jennybjones dot com) and send me your home addies, with “departures” in the subject line.

So it’s been raining for about five days straight. We’ve had about one foot of rain and it’s still going. The streets are flooded, my town is under a boil order, tornado warnings every night, and these would be the good points.

I just read a fellow teacher’s Facebook status that an alarm went off and our high school had to evacuate in the torrential rain. Really sorry I left early and missed that one…

I miss the sun. I miss warm weather. I miss dry feet. I miss going to bed without thinking, “Should I unplug my computer? Yes. I don’t want lightning to get it. Should I unplug my TV? No. I do want lightning to get it. . .”  This week has made me realize that even if I had known without a doubt that God said to get on Noah’s ark, I might’ve passed. Because cooping me up for forty days in heavy rains would’ve sent me over the brink. By day ten, I would’ve cannonball’d right over the edge. “Shut your face, Noah!”

One of my favorite walking trails is completely submerged and is now one with a nearby lake. I guess I won’t run ten mile sprints today then. . .Maybe tomorrow…

Noah would’ve had one high-maintenance woman on his hands if I had been on that boat. (And I always figure I wouldn’t have been anyway. If there was a .00000000001 percent chance of believing Noah, I wouldn’t have been in that small percentage, don’t you know.)  Sometimes I think if Noah had just worded it differently, he could’ve gotten more people on board. Like made the boat decked out with a theme. A casino river boat. Or offered forty days of chocolate. (Move it, Shem, lemme on that boat.) Or offered free wi-fi. Which in that day would be the equivalent of “free pigeon.” Or nighty dinners at the captain’s table. Or had an Acapulco deck like on Love Boat. Or lots of hijinks like on the Love Boat. Or had some mean Uno throw-downs.  Some laser tag. Or a little Murder on the Orient Express, where some passengers bit it, and we had to figure out who was the killer. (It’s Ham.)

Oh, well. I wasn’t on the boat, and I will survive the rain.
Have a lovely week. I’m going to think dry thoughts and plan my outfit for the Royal Wedding.

13 comments

Welcome to the Almost Weekend. Back in the day, schools had Good Friday off. No more. It’s hard to reflect on the Lord when I am working. It’s also hard to watch Good Morning America and Gilmore Girl reruns. Rude. (I also used to watch Dawson’s Creek reruns, until I figured out that no matter how many times they cycled through the entire series, Joey still wasn’t gonna end up with Dawson. Katie Holmes has never picked the right men.)

This week I discovered a new food blog.

Remembered why I love Tyler Perry.

Fell back in love with Weird Al Yankovic. (1:40 mark is my favorite)

Discovered what happened to “Chunk” from Goonies.

Had lunch at my favorite dive with super nonfiction author Holley Gerth, who writes amazing blog posts like this.

Discovered I don’t have to rent out Miller to make my house payment.

Found some cool Civil War photos.

Remembered to remind you about our contest.

And found someone who understands the joy of Easter. Or something.

Happy Weekend! Happy Easter! May your eggs be deviled and your heart be full.

11 comments

Don’t forget our contest for Departures. We have a lot of Christy Miller fans, but with 5 copies to give away, your odds are good! Better than my odds of getting out of school in May. . . or trying sushi. . .or listening to NPR. . .

Thanks to Twitter friend Amy Sorrells for alerting me to the new trailer for The Help.

I’m kinda surprised at the light-hearted tone in this clip. The book (Which you must, must read. Promise me you will.) has some humor and isn’t dark and depressing, but light is not what I’d call it. Makes me wonder if that’s the tone of the trailer or the entire movie. And while I think Emma Stone is a great actress and gonna be the next “it” girl, I would not have cast her in the lead. I saw Skeeter a little older and a little more…elegant, sophisticated. She was still one of those Dixie debutantes whether her heart was in it or not. But I’ll get over it. That’s totally a role of a lifetime for Stone. And Viola Davis as Aibileen? Perfect. Absolutely perfect. That woman could give Meryl Streep a run for her money. She’s brilliant.  Anyway, I can’t wait to see that movie.

Well, the royal wedding is upon us. Have you seen the T-Mobile ad?

Camilla is a dead ringer, eh? But Harry? Come on, you know Party Boy Prince Harry could dance better than that. He would never resort to Pointy Fingers to the Sky.

Lady GaGa has released her album cover.
It looks like something from one of our ninth grade computer classes. Like if our tech teacher left the room for a moment, this is what she would come back to on little junior’s screen. Artistically, I don’t even get it. Maybe she thinks she runs so fast, she’s a motorcycle. Or maybe all that makeup got in her eye and she didn’t see what she was doing. “Put my legs where?” Or maybe this is her soul crying out, “I just want to be a Transformer!”

We talked about book covers last week, and I forgot to mention one of my new favorites. I love, love, love it. This is Edge of Grace by Christa Allan.

Isn’t it awesome? I love how unique it is, love the movement of it and the striking colors. This book will be out in the fall, and Christa’s put her heart and soul into writing it. Can’t wait til it hits the shelves.

I’ll see you Friday. I’ve been painting Craig’s list furniture finds this week, and all those oil-based paint fumes are overtaking my brain cells. (Then again, could’ve been all the salsa I’ve had…)

Happy mid-week.

8 comments