Found and Kept: Contest Winners!

Thanks so much to all the participants in the STRETCH MARKS FINDERS KEEPERS PROJECT! All those playing along received a signed copy of the book to keep and then were asked to pass along a few more to people and places where my prospective readers might be found.

I loved hearing where you went, how you made the Mafioso drop-offs, seeing your photos of your favorites. Folks left copies of STRETCH MARKS hither and yon, including:
* At a Disney on Ice performance, perched on a hand dryer in the ladies' room
* Behind a copy of Father of the Bride at a video store
* Strapped in a car seat in the baby section at Target
* In a lactation room (lactation room!) at the University of Iowa
* In pediatrician and OB offices all over the universe
* With various and sundry moms who needed a break and may or may not have looked like it
* Even with the members of the band Mercy Me! (Thanks, Stacia S.!)



...So many fun and inspired sightings. The winners of the photo contest, though, are those that follow. Linda H. schlepped copies of STRETCH MARKS on the way to visit her new grandbaby in Australia. She found two moms in Sydney and gave them the book.



See the Sydney Opera House in the background?


That baby is barely out of the hospital! Why is that mom looking so pretty and fresh? Where's the flab on those thighs and upper arms? Why is she smiling? Don't babies down under pass through the birth canal?

My other favorites came from Kate B., who not only made a creative gift out of the book and left it by the fireplace at a coffee shop, she also added her comments.







Linda and Kate will receive chocolate, a small token of literary love, and lunch to their favorite spot on me. Congrats, girls!

Thanks again to all! I so appreciate your time and willingness to have a fun adventure in the name of a good story.

Finders Keepers Grovel Post

Snow days around here. I'm talking about 16 inches, folks, which will put chilly, frostbitten hair on any chest, even those of us used to long winters. Marc has been a bit over-zealous with ye olde snowblower, though I've come to appreciate the fumes he now wears as a sort of rugged new scent. Perhaps he should market it, name it something like "Rustic" or "Exhaust" or "Stink, Stank, Stunk."

Thea's reaction to all the white stuff, unceremoniously dropped over every surface, is to point outside and say, "Uh-oh," over and over. It's cute and also, by the third day, depressing. I love the white, I love the sparkles, I love the long, indigo shadows lying languid on the snow. But do you know how long it takes snow this deep to melt? MONTHS. Maybe years, I don't know.



They look a bit severe, don't they? It's too cold to go play in the snow (high of 11 today), so we just put on our terrorist masks and PRETEND we're playing in snow. It's super fun.

In the meantime, I have more leisure moments to grovel to all of you Finders Keepers people. Remember my cool photo contest for the Grand Prize-O-Rama? Well, I kept getting these messages that folks had tried sending photos but were getting rebuffed by a wimpy quota. Today, in my leisure moments, I talked with my web folks to set up a different system. In the process, I hate to say all the photos you sent WERE DELETED. Gone. Into the hither-and-yon of the Internet that no one, not even Al Gore, can explain.

I FEEL HORRIBLE. AND I PRAY YOU DIDN'T DELETE YOUR PHOTOS. If you're still interested in entering, would you mind sending them again? I'm SO SORRY and EMBARRASSED and feeling like that teacher we all had who would point the remote toward the TV and mutter over the white noise about not being able to work the darn thing and what ever happened to slide shows?

Please forgive. Please send.

I'm off to dunk my head in snow drift. Uh-oh.