We have just recovered our sofas. Or rather, we’ve PAID someone to reupholster and reinforce sofas we bought seven years ago brand new. Seven years? Do your sofas wear out that often? We have three children, and during that time have had two different pets, so it’s entirely possible that we are quite hard on our sofas. We also live in a city of four million people with no central heat or air, so the windows are often open, which leads to pollution and dust, which leads to a layer of black dust on just about everything. We’d also been fairly lax in our enforcement of any kind of no-eating-the-vicinity rules. Oh, there were rules. We were just lax. 

So all that to say, now that the sofas are freshly reupholstered, NEW RULES. And my funny-bunny husband typed them up for us and has them ready for all of us to sign. Here, for your amusement:

Sofa Rules

To show our respect and honor to God for what He has given us and to value not His gifts but to value Him we will abide by the “sofa rules” and understand that there will be consequences and punishment for any choice to violate said rules.

Rules:

· No feet on the sofa (attached or un-attached; actually, especially un-attached)

· No jumping on the sofa of any form (jumping up and down, flying through the air to land on it, double-twist lay out triple helix back flips, etc.)

· No food or drinks on the sofa. (I’m referring to pre-digested food but now that I think about it I am declaring the sofa a “no-hurl” zone.)

· No fighting or wrestling on the sofa (with the possible exception of some low-impact thumb wrestling)

· No pens, pencils or crayons or paint on the sofa. (this rules out any planned paint-ball wars that might ever exist in the apartment)

· No un-humanoids on the sofa (this would primarily refer to any future pets that we might have but also could refer to future ET friends or lower life-form boyfriends)

· No sharp instruments on the sofa (primarily pencils, scissors, screwdrivers or knives but also would include swords, battle-axes, machetes, or spears)

“I understand these rules and will hereby agree to them, seek to abide by them and acknowledge that any failure to do so will result in punitive actions being taken that might be unpleasant and undesirable to my person.”

Signed:_______________________________________________________________________________

Signed:_______________________________________________________________________________

Signed:_______________________________________________________________________________

Signed:_______________________________________________________________________________

Signed:_______________________________________________________________________________

Look at that! It’s been three weeks since I’ve posted. Oh the shame. Rather than allow you to believe I’ve just been sitting around eating bon-bons (ahem.) let me catch you up to speed on what’s gone down in Casa Dempsey over the past three.

1. We are actually back in our home in Brazil after being away for almost a year. We had a great number of bags to unpack and an entire house to organize. Bags unpacked, check. House organized? Moving on . . . 

2. I have written several thousand words on my WIP since our return. I have an August 1st deadline to show something to my agent, but um, I’m getting sort of shy about showing it to her. I’ll be finished by then, I’m positive, with the first draft. But it is a messy draft. There are gaps and threads that I just dropped. And it’s not the book she thought I was writing. (Or at least it doesn’t need to be once I start revising this draft.) So I’m wondering if I need to do a revision before she sees anything. You know, a book only gets one chance to make a first impression. 

3. EXCITING NEWS!!!!!! Did I get your attention? I am so excited to announce that I have accepted a job as the librarian at The American School of Belo Horizonte, an International Baccalaureate Pre-K through 12th grade school. You are hereby invited to visit! And be sure to point me toward books that I need to include in our collection. I have lots of planning, preparing, organizing and development work ahead of me. I will be surrounded by books! I will be surrounded by children and teenagers! I have a feeling I’m going to love it.