Sunday Sundries--Labor Day Late

First off, I hope everyone had a peaceful and pleasant Labor Day with family and friends. My husband and I both had to go into work, because people still need tech support and newscasts even on holidays. It was okay though, as we both got extra pay and I get an extra day off today. I have to say, I'm a card carrying union member and I remember my dad was a union member too. So many of the things we take for granted were the result of our forefathers and mothers wanting better lives for themselves and their children.

And that, my friend, is what Labor Day is all about, isn't it?

One of the bathrooms at work the other day had a messed up paper towel dispenser and I mentioned it to the maintenance guy, who turned out to be someone I'd worked with in Retail Hell over 25 years ago. He'd endured the pains of being downsized as had I. He made a disparaging remark about how he was cleaning toilets now and I hope he took my comments to heart. I tried to convince him never to be ashamed about doing honest work. When I was a store manager in a mall, I made it a point to take my turn cleaning the bathroom, sweeping the floor and taking out the trash. These are things that need to be done and no one should be "too good" to do them. Also, if the bathroom is nasty or not well supplied, it affects morale almost more than anything else.

I didn't want to bring anybody down, but these are some basic truths I needed to get down. Because:

Last year at about this time, I posted some things I'd found that described my characters. One of my main characters is Mary Margaret, a.k.a. The Virgin Mary, who is a tall, skinny, geeky gamer girl who has no idea how beautiful she is because she's spent her life in a practice room, in her garden or with her nose in a book. Here's her philosophy:

Her nickname from her dad is Princess. This is so her:

She's one of five sisters and gets her hero in the second series of books. One of her finest features is her blue eyes and I found this striking picture:

 
The first series of books is about her next oldest sister, Elizabeth or Lizzy as she's known to family. She is a no-nonsense, snarky Indiana State Trooper who meets and falls in love while out in Vegas for the oldest sister's bachelorette party. This describes her philosophy:

Here's another one, but I'm not sure if it applies to Lizzy or Mary Margaret:

These two sisters fall in love with two brothers, Will and Rob. Rob is a photographer who used to be in the music industry. I found this one to be true:

Well, not so much anymore, because of the transition to digital, but you know what I mean. His fondest memories of his father are of them working in the darkroom, developing pictures. When I was writing Rob at first, I started feeling he was almost too perfect. He was getting on my nerves, so I gave him some flaws. Two are he's an arrogant Leo, which gets on Mary Margaret's nerves and then he's dyslexic. This made me smile:

His older brother Will is a medically retired Marine who is more than a match for Elizabeth. He too has issues, but I tried to give him a sense of humor about them.

He truly is a sick puppy. Will loves that Elizabeth can cook and makes fun of his brother for going vegetarian. He has this on a T-shirt:

So, I hope this little insight into my characters and my mind was worth waiting for. I promise I'll do better next week, OK? Love to all and have a great rest of the week!