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I wanted a lot of things in my life.  One thing I never wanted was for my family to let me go to work with two different types of shoes on my feet.  I looked like a dementia patient and there will be a family meeting later today.  What has happened to the accountability of my husband and daughter?  But I digress. During my Roy Rogers and John Wayne days, I wanted to be a cowboy.  Tubby smashed that dream; “You can't be a cowboy-you are a girl.”  The joke is on him; medical

The two topics I was told repeatedly I should never bring up in conversation.  Which has probably led some to assume I was slower than average.  Mom had a quote for that, too: “Better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove any doubt.” The first presidential race I remember was between a guy named “Nixon” and a guy from Minnesota named “Humphrey”.  Tubby filled me in on the details.                  “His name is Hubert Humpdink Humphrey.  You h

January That time of the year seems endless.  By the age of five, I was already walking around like I was eighty years old, bent over and mumbling, “Please, Lord, let me live to see spring again.”  By the time I was old enough to learn about the ice age in school, it was old news to me.  I lived through an ice age each year.  Glacier?  Try navigating around the shit-berg of manure that had fallen off the spreader and frozen in place.  There is a statement that Eskimos have

New Year's Eve in Las Vegas. A night of fireworks and drunken revelry on the strip. Or, as my clients refer to it, “Amateur night.”  Our night will be spent feeding an anxious German Shepherd CBD calming treats and listening to Willy Deville to drown out the fireworks on the strip.  You may question the choice of music, but through trial and error, only Willy Deville's full concert videos will keep Charlotte from literally throwing herself against the window.    This morning

Christmas Letter Once more, I waited until the last possible moment to do the family Christmas letter. On the plus side, this year I have a blog to post on, so that is something, I guess. Not much new on the homestead.  Charlotte is getting blinder each year. You really know you’re alive when a morbidly obese German Shepherd of indeterminate age blindly runs into the back of your knees before you have your morning coffee.  She gets a bit excited when it’s time for the animal

Thank you for the great reviews on Amazon! I am so grateful for your kind words and thrilled that the book reached an audience. What started as a few short stories for Lilly has become something people enjoy reading! As we say in our family, "Well, my flabber is ghasted!" In keeping with the Holiday season, tonight's blog is about the perfect Christmas present. Of course, it centers around the Christmas Queen, Mom. The Christmas after I left, Mom decided to decorate the

Amazon reports that White Trash Rising-Lessons My Mother Taught Me has sold 38 copies! Thank you to everyone! The book is the story of my life, from my mother's pregnancy with me, through Lilly's birth, to my divorce three years later. It is a story of learned behaviors, trauma passed down through generations, and how these patterns affect a person's choices and decisions. It is also the story of the good times and the saving grace of friends and family. This week, I've

White Trash Rising has a five-star rating on Amazon. I've sold 35 books so far! A big thank you to everyone who has faith enough in my writing to buy a book! The Christmas tree is up, and it's time to start watching our favorite Christmas movies to help get into the spirit. I was thinking about the old black-and-white movies on TV continuously this time of year. This is also the time of year when parents lie to their children, Elf on the Shelf, Santa and the reindeer, a

First of all, to those who went on Amazon and gave me fantastic reviews, THANK YOU SO MUCH! I am up to 33 books sold now, surpassing my expectations! Word is getting out! If you go to Amazon and search for June Cartino, you'll see White Trash Rising; you can review it at the bottom of the page. I love the increase in blog visits. If you want to refer someone to this site, just Google "WhiteTrashRising"-my blog will appear. I am trying to do a daily holiday blog post. E

White Trash Rising is selling well on Amazon! Thank you to everyone! If you like it, please write a review. If you don't like it, please message me and let me know. I appreciate feedback! I am watching my daughter and my husband put up the Christmas tree this evening. Observing my two Italians working cooperatively is entertaining. It looks like the death knell for the tree this year, I am hearing predictions for a new tree next year. I am in my comfort zone; the familia

So many people and stories didn't fit into White Trash Rising (available on Amazon and Kindle). I don't know if there are enough bits and pieces to fit into another book, but I am trying to sketch it out. Here is a chapter about the first summer after my divorce. Let me know what you think! In the summer of 2006, when I got divorced, Lilly was three and a half years old.  Within two weeks after Bowling Ball left us, Lilly was talking more than ever in Headstart, talking end

I have sold 29 books so far! It's exciting to get the pictures of the book arriving. I am so grateful to all of you who had enough faith in me to buy my book! Please put a review on Amazon about the book, let's see if we can get this project up to an even 30! If you like the book, please put out the word: search June Cartino on Amazon and White Trash Rising is the first thing that pops up. Want to share the blog? Google White Trash Rising and it leads to my blog. I met

I have sold 27 books in a little over a week! Wow! I was counting on selling one, thinking I could guilt my sister into that at least. Please put a review on Amazon for me! I hope everyone enjoys the book and finds its message of survival and strength empowering. It does get dark, but then, life gets dark. And, as in life, what is seen as an ending is often only the beginning. The message is that we can carry the patterns of the past with us, but we can move beyond them

The book is selling great! Thank you to everyone who bought the book or Kindle version. I hope you enjoy it. John, one of my involuntary volunteer editors, told me it was the kind of book you had to finish once you started reading. I love getting the texts with the pictures of arrival, seeing a part of me all over the country. Sadly, it is too big to fix a wobbly table leg, but it can replace an entire sofa leg if necessary! The enormous size seems daunting, but only becau

Wow! I can't believe how many books have already been sold! Thank you, thank you. I sincerely hope you enjoy the book and the journey. Now that this one is out and about, I am going back to my other two ones that I have been tinkering on during this process. The first one is tentatively titled: What to expect in God's waiting room. It is the accumulation of 40 years of nursing, twenty-one of them spent as a nursing home administrator. It is meant to be a source of inf

WOW! In 24 hours, my book: White Trash Rising-Lessons My Mother Taught Me is #17 in rural humor and #166 in Humor Essays! Thank you, everyone! I hope you enjoy the book. I appreciate each one of you who bought it! If you like it, please leave a review. Amazon uses reviews to advertise the book. Let's see what this monstrosity can do! If you don't like it, you can leave a review too! Today's blog post is one of the ideas that didn't make the book. Each family has it

The book is out tomorrow, Amazon.com White Trash Rising. The Kindle version will be released at the end of the week. I am a nervous wreck! Will it be any good? Will people get bored? What if they hate the serious stuff? Will they see what the message is about, and how it carries patterns of behavior through generations? Will my brother decide to finish me off with yet another invention? And of course, OMG it is HUGE, is anyone going to read the whole thing? (I use

Two more sleeps until the book is available in paperback on Amazon. You can pre-order the Kindle version now; it is available on December 15th. In contrast to yesterday's posting, this one is serious. Because, well, overall, the book is serious. Okay, it's more like 50/50 serious because, if you know me, I can't be serious for too long. Some of this is in the book but a lot of it was edited out for space. How does generational trauma work? Besides studies showing it aff

Tuesday, December 2nd, is the big day! Search for White Trash Rising on Amazon.com or search my name! If it is not crap, please leave a positive review! Other than a glass of wine on Shabbat or a sip of John's beer, I don't think I have actually been "drunk" since New Year's Eve, 1999. The words from Animal House finally got through to me. "Fat, Drunk, and Stupid is no way to go through life." A few lines about the eighties: The More I Drink There was an unspoken rule t

Tuesday is the big deal. I will have a book for sale on Amazon. Still amazes me. I wrote a book that is almost 800 pages long. It has moments of humor, sadness, horror, and struggle. I show the reader the reality of generational trauma and how it haunts. Your parents are your teachers; their words and their actions teach you how to react, how to cope, and infiltrate every relationship. In turn, they learned from their parents, and so on. We carry with us the trauma of