Sandra Rose Hughes

My husband and I a few years before our baby was born. For Christmas this year, I wrote a 75 page summary of my husband and I's courtship and the last 7 years of our marriage. He loved it and I really enjoyed writing it. I will include a few excerpts here. Bright blue eyes stared into mine and round cheeks grinned up at me as I reached over to wake our son this Christmas morning. By this Christmas of 2012, our son Bennett will be about six months old. When I hold little Bennett in my arms this holiday season, it is hard to imagine that there was ever a time before he existed. Even harder to imagine is the fact that there was once a time before Anthony and I knew each other- quite a long time (especially for Anthony), in fact, before we met, courted, and became a family. It was shortly before Christmas of 2002 when we met for the first time on a blind date to the Yule. Our mutual friend, Jennifer, was setting up my sister Carolyn and one of our friends, Becka, up ...

Most of my life sounds bucolic when I put it down on paper. I spent last weekend helping my husband work on cabinets for the house he is building us, carrying branches up to the grind pile with my baby and my dog, and collecting pine cones for our out-door fire pit. A few months ago, a friendly neighborhood tortoise wandered up our hill, thoroughly surprising all of us. I hope he will migrate across our property on a yearly basis.  During the week-days, I stay at my parent's house with the baby. My parents have high-speed internet and cable which is wonderful, and they have a house-cleaner and a gardener who come regularly, so I don't even have very many chores to do except for taking out the trash, keeping my areas picked up, and making dinner for everyone. Okay, it doesn't just sound bucolic- it IS bucolic. Too bad I don't have a sheep to round out the picture. The cat will have to do.

http://www.memphisflyer.com/CityBeatBlog/archives/2012/11/01/the-rubiks-cube-on-top-of-beale-street-landing I have three different writing projects I'm working on right now and I am enjoying myself immensely. You know those scenes in detective shows where the genius detective looks at the crime scene and he can just "see" how it all fits together and then wows and amazes the police force? That's how I feel sometimes when I'm revising my writing and the writing of others. Like it's all a Rubik's cube and I'm one of those people who can see all the answers. My primary project I'm working on is my Song of Three Manuscript. I was a little stuck for a while, but then I purchased fancy pens, highlighters, post-its, and a cute 3-ring binder to put the hard copy in. Then I tentatively opened the binder and started highlighting- I was soon in a happy rhythm! My second project is actually a book that my father wrote on preaching. He is an incr...

Do you know what the worst part of being a new parent is? THE TERROR. I wasn’t a fearful person before I had Bennett. I always figured that the worst that could happen to me would be dying, and if I died, there would be some sad people, sure, and I wouldn’t want to be them, but I would have lived my life well and would have had no regrets. I would wake up in heaven and be with Jesus and all would be well. Now I have a new worst fear: That Bennett will die and that it will be ALL MY FAULT. Every time I hear about a parent whose kid died in some terrible, preventable way (which has been a lot this week, for some reason), I just know I’m going to be next. At night, I wake up and stare at him while he sleeps just to make sure he is still breathing. Having his car seat turned away from me makes me crazy because I can’t see his face; I just have to believe that I really did strap him in there and put him in safely before I started driving. I have actually pulled over and stopped the c...

In high school I was a chorus member in the musical, "Damn Yankees." One scene takes place in "Limbo," a purgatory sort of place where Lola and Joe are banished after they displease "Mr. Applegate" (AKA Lucifer). Our "Limbo" was not this cool. As a chorus member, my job was to lurch around in a sort of depressing Congo line leaning on other chorus members as fog swirled around us and the stage was illuminated in red light. It was supposed to be sort of other-worldly, but that effect might have been lost by our cast's inability not to cough and sputter every time we breathed in the fog and our inability to be cool about having to lean against people of the opposite gender. We probably looked less like these cavalier doomed souls wandering through purgatory and more like tuberculosis ridden zombies with a terror of cooties. Cast Member 1: (whispers)Stop touching me! *cough* Cast Member 2: You stop touching me ! *cough cough* Cast ...

I am infinitely proud to announce that I completed my Nanowrimo novel! 50,000 words of novelly goodness now rests in my computer. I had WAY more fun than I thought I would and I love my first draft of Song of Three Sisters .

Treasure in the Belly of the Beast             The Knight-Eater crouched in our garage. In a fit of creativity and whimsy, my parents had painted a tall metal cabinet canary yellow. Then they added on a cartoony orange dragon tail with a suspicious bulge in the middle that wrapped around the cabinet. Thus, the "Knight-Eater" was born.             The Knight-Eater held the keys to an entire world of creativity and fantasy for my brother, sister, and me. Inside its belly, we kept brushes, paints, Plaster of Paris, dowels, yarn, and other remnants of old crafts my mother had attempted. But most importantly, the Knight-Eater held an old, scratched-up boxed set of books. Their worn pages were turned down at the corners where my mother had marked the pages repeatedly and the edges were frayed.             Every winter, my m...