Endless Summer Creations

My "Johnny" has now been published in the Kindle Store!

Blood alone does not a family make... I began working on this project two years ago. I followed the directions this project took me. I originally had much more written but have pared most of it away, down to the essence. I am indebted to my beautiful son for concepts and inspiration. It's fitting that I'm publishing this on the day Hurricane Irma is bearing down on us. I love my husband, son and my family of colleagues. I am blessed to have that love. And my wish for all of you is that you feel the irreplaceable love of family every day, no matter who your family may be or how you came together. Love, Carly Purchase Kindle Edition Purchase Paperback Edition  

By Joseph Jacobs John Dickson Batten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Shelley and I were friends almost immediately.  However her father did not like me.  The only reason I can imagine is that my family was too poor for him and that he did not consider me fit to be around his daughter.  Despite how her father felt about me, the moments when he was away at work as a lawyer, and when Shelley and I were together were the thrill of my life.  We did everything for fun, it seemed like there was nothing we couldn't do, no fun that we couldn't have.    Her house was an entire wonderland within itself.  An enormous granite-walled mansion, there were four floors of enchanting adventure for us.  The first floor held a kitchen where we made all kinds of goodies, an adjacent playroom where we played house, Barbie, watched "It's A Living," "Silver Spoons," "Small Wonder," "Dukes of Hazzard," "Laverne & Shirley," two mag...

People will tell you where they've gone They'll tell you where to go But till you get there yourself you never really know – Joni Mitchell, “Amelia” Long before the unemployment and economy crisis began, I never saw job security as a sure thing.  Maybe that’s because I began my legal career as a temp.  I grew accustomed to floating around, constantly experiencing different personalities and environments.  I somehow never entered a job envisioning it as my home for the next twenty or thirty years.  As a result of my rather nomadic career-style, I have had the benefit of learning from many different people.  My working life began when I was about eleven.  I would mow our huge lawn and my dad would then give me $30.00 for an hour of riding lessons.  I also worked down at the local food Co-op to earn “work credit” to earn discounts off grocery purchases, as any customer could do.  The work credit could then be sold to others and this p...

By KUHT [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons Every now and then, someone comes along who is truly beyond compare in what they give to our world.  Even in our corporate society’s ravenous quest for more money, the qualities and accomplishments of some things or people are so singular that they have not yet been duplicated.  This is certainly true in the case of Fred Rogers, better known to the world as Mister Rogers. Millions of kids in my generation grew up with Mister Rogers.  Even though most of us only knew him through a TV screen, his incredible love for us surged right through that barrier.  As he constantly told all children, “You are special,” “There is no one else in the whole world exactly like you.”  He seemed to understand all of our feelings and let us know that it was okay to feel what we felt, even if it was fear, anger, shyness – anything at all.  That was just part of kids being themselves. And interestingly, though Mister Rogers has ...