We’ll get to the professional bio in a moment. I thought you’d actually like to get to know me first before going glassy-eyed at another bio that should be read in the voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher.
I have a serious mental and emotional block about picking up dry-cleaning. I have to get the ‘Your-stuff-has-been-here-for-six-months-and-will-be-trashed’ notice before I can bring myself to pick things up.
I am a huge fan of rap and reggae, and I have been told that watching me try to rap or sing reggae is a sight not to be missed. Too bad 99.99995% of the people in the world will never see it.
Every spring, I get really ambitious ideas about gardening. The garden path to hell is paved with gardening. By July, I have too many plants and am engaged in an end-times battle with cabbage moths and slugs.
I am fierce, unafraid, and unapologetic. I have to be, living with a kidney transplant and having survived a lot of other ‘ish’ in my life (you seriously wouldn’t believe me if I listed it all out). People ask em all the time where my positive attitude about life comes from, and my answer is a simple statement of logic:
A: There are only X number of minutes in one’s life. When you’re done, you’re done.
B: I am terrified of death and dying. I like being alive, thank you.
A+B=C: Why on earth would I waste my precious minutes of life being angry, resentful, unhappy, or worried?
(And yes, there is a difference between being aware and planning ahead for possible outcomes and plain ol’ worrying about them.)
Addendum to Conclusion C: we can’t always choose what happens to us, but we always have a choice about how we deal with it. This choice is the only thing we have absolute control over in our lives. Therefore, I choose to be happy.
(And yes, it’s not always easy to do in the moment, but choosing happiness is a habit you can develop with practice, and practice takes practicing not wishful thinking, which brings us back to choosing to practice happiness, which turns this whole thing into a philological Mobius Strip.)
Popcorn is probably my all-time favorite food and what I would take with me to a desert island.
Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairytale because the heroine is smart and ends up being the one who saves the hero through the transformative power of love.
My mother ruined Cinderella for me at an early age by tacking on her own epilogue: “So, Cinderella married the prince, and for a while, they were happy. Then, she realized she didn’t like her in-laws and saw that the palace maids didn’t clean very well. So, she went back to doing what she knew best: cleaning the palace every day.” I am forever grateful that she disabused me of this particular happy ending and gave me Beauty and the Beast to read instead.
My father was a psychologist, and my happiest memories are of sitting on the couch with him and talking about psychology – especially Abnormal Psychology, which he taught for many years as a professor. I was the only eight-year-old who could explain the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. Take from this what you will.
I am not athletically talented, which is a minor tragedy since I love running and rock-climbing. When I go to the beach, I cannot sit still on a towel and bake. I have to swim, run, walk, and pick up armfuls of stones and shells.
My husband is a quiet man. This is perfect because though I am loud and proud on the keyboard, I am a fairly quiet woman in person. Though we love joking and talking, there is an infinite pleasure for us in simply and quietly sharing the same space.
My husband is also an aircraft mechanic. This leads to interesting things happening in our house. One Christmas, I got a hand-crank pasta maker. While I cooed and clucked over it, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully and said finally, “You know, I could put a motor on that thing.” There was also the time he repaired the broken spoon in my lunchbox set with a nut and bolt. And, the bungee cord chip clip incident.
Denny Basenji was my first dog and will forever be my soul dog. I had him from the age of nine weeks to his passing at the venerable age of 15 1/2. My only regrets are that he got to catch a squirrel, and he never achieved world domination. He was a very good boi, and I will miss him forever.
Meadow and Bandit arrived in time to keep us from sinking into despair. I now know what it’s like to be the mother of twin toddler piranhas, and I’m pretty sure that Meadow is *this close* to starting a doomsday cult. It’s a good thing they are so cute.
I’m an INFJ, which makes achieving my dream of doing comedy a little tricky…which is why I write books instead.
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That should suffice, I think. And now, for the perfect, polished presentation of Cait Reynolds:
Cait Reynolds is a USA Today Bestselling Author and lives in Long Beach, California with her husband and two insane puppies. She discovered her passion for writing early and has bugged her family and friends with it ever since. She likes history, astronomy, Jack Daniels, jewelry, pasta, and solitude. Not all at the same time. When she isn’t researching something that is bound to get her on the FBI’s radar, she writes.