Make the most of your day

By: KATE FRATTI

Bucks County Courier Times

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say they’d like to write a book, I’d buy a yacht the size of the New York public library. Most of the nickels used for the purchase would have been paid to me by me.

As a girl, it was my dream to be a very fancy bestselling author, and to this very day, I have a nagging sense I never was intended to be a dutiful suburban wife, mother and local newspaper columnist.

Rather my soul’s work – which I’ll take up in the next life – is to write steamy novels from a loft in the south of France. The book jackets will say something like, oh, I don’t know, “The author, who is very thin and beautiful and rich, resides with her lover Thor in Antibes.”

In this life, I’ve never even begun a manuscript, dirty or otherwise, and it’s why I so admire Mary Fran Bontempo of Southampton, Chrysa Smith of Jamison and Carmen Ferreiro-Estban of Doylestown. They are three very different women who have written very different books – none of them raunchy – and each used a different approach to get her book published. These days, the friends meet with women’s clubs and writers groups to detail taking a manuscript to market.

Carmen’s young adult novel, “Two Moon Princess,” was published by Tanglewood Press. She is under contract for the sequel. Chrysa, a veteran freelance magazine writer and dog lover, self-published her juvenile fiction series, “The Adventures of the Poodle Posse.” Mary Fran has published a collection of essays called “Everyday Adventures or As My Husband Says, ‘Lies, Lies and More Lies.’ ” She prints to order.

Mary Fran’s outlook on family life is a hoot. So, too, is the outlook of the three authors’ friend and collaborator Pat Achilles of Doylestown. Pat is an illustrator and cartoonist. (I subscribe to her “Monday Cartoon,” which arrives in my e-mail at the start of the work week.) She is the one who brought Chrysa’s books to life with her fun drawings.

Advertisement Now, Pat’s collaborating with her friends on a new venture – a blog called Not Ready For Granny Panties (notreadyforgrannypanties.com). Other blogs for women seemed to be focused on the younger set, especially young moms, Mary Fran said. Why not develop one for girls in their 50s who’ve survived all that mommy stuff and lived to tell about it.

Central to the anti-granny-panty message is this: There’s no sense waiting for everything in your life to be in order to start having some fun for yourself. The day never will come when your aging parents, your kids, you husband and your boss are all happy and healthy on the same day. The house never will be perfectly clean, or in perfect repair, and you will never weigh what you want. Best to get over it, and get on with your life.

Notreadyforgrannypanties.com isn’t about inspiring women, or teaching them, or rallying them to do battle – political, environmental or otherwise, the bloggers said. It’s simply about providing a little “refresher” at whatever time of day or night a woman has a moment to take a break from her routine.

“We ran the race; we did the drill,” Mary Fran says. “Now I want a glass of wine and 10 minutes to myself.”

The blog is set up to be navigated easily, Carmen says. One click and you’re where you want to be. Topics include dining, day trips, clothes, trends, books and movies, and the quirkiness of daily living.

“We’ve reached the point where a good laugh, a good book, good food and, OK, a wrinkle cream that really works, can make our day,” reads the blog introduction.

It resonates with me. Getting rid of your granny panties to join in some fun and make the most of your days seems to me very funny, sage advice.

What do you think?

September 17, 2010 02:10 AM