MetroCare Services Meal for the Minds Luncheon
Yesterday, I had the honor of speaking at the MetroCare Services Meal for the Minds Luncheon in Dallas, Texas. MetroCare services 60K consumers, children with disabilities whose families are lower income, throughout Dallas County. God's work, I call it. The luncheon was at the magnificent Belo Mansion and featured an Edible Auction of the most beautiful desserts. How I longed to bring a cake and a fork onto my flight home! Before the event I was on Good Morning Texas on WFAA ABC. Here's the interview.
Welcome! Come to Boston to meet Kat Cavicchio in my new e-book House of Cards available through Amazon on Kindle and supported devices!
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Happy 16th Miss G!
Miss G is now "Sweet 16!" We celebrate on her big day earlier this week, but Dad was traveling at the Gift Show in Atlanta (where he spent her 1st, 2nd, 3rd..... bdays!) so we saved the cake for tonight.
(Weird, I flipped the photo in my save file but it shows here sideways. We are not sideways. Sorry for the head tilt.)
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Kim On HuffPo: What Makes a Good Father?
Boys, Men, Howard Stern and Father's Day
Hi, friends - happy summer! I wrote this for HuffPo - please pop over there to comment?On Thursday night I attended a party at Magnolia Bakery on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. The hostess was a radio personality named Lisa G. who is also the newswoman on The Howard Stern Show on Sirius Satellite radio. If you've read my book All I Can Handle I'm No Mother Teresa you know I am a huge Howard Stern fan and have been for almost 20 years. Sure, it's incongruous for a buttoned down, Lilly Pulitzer wearing, Fairfield County CT autism Mom to throw out a "Bababooey" as easily as "Honey, where's the plunger and the snake!?" But I love to laugh, am a fan of the irreverent and Howard Stern has gotten me through some rough days and nights during this autism journey. When someone yells, "Does anyone remember laughter?" I say "YES! It's on Howard 100!"
While at the party, which featured not only the delicious cupcakes for which Magnolia is famous, but an assortment of home baked treats by both Lisa G. and Stern Show SuperFan extraordinaire Mariann From Brooklyn, a beautiful woman (that's she in the photo with me) who is also Howard Stern's biggest fan bar none, I struck up a conversation with a 31-year-old woman I'll call Ayesha. The topic of my children came up, and we talked about a friend of hers who has a child on the spectrum and whose husband pooped the bed in terms of caring for him. Or her.
And then she asked me a question that made me put down my cream cheese chocolate chip cookie bar (and that ain't easy for me to do) and think hard. It went something like this: "What traits should I look for in a man I can consider as husband and father of my children to make sure that doesn't happen to me?"
Well color me Cookie Puss and call me Debbie the Pet Lady. I didn't have an immediate answer. It wasn't the sugar haze I was reveling in either that made me think hard. But I thought of my own husband of 20 years Mark, and how he has stood by me and our three beautiful daughters, Mia (17), Gianna (15) and Bella (11) through thick, thin and thin enough for an electron microscope. I shared this thought with her.
Beside the basic kindness and generosity that you'd look for in a husband and the more superficial attraction, it's impossible to know who will rise and who will sink like a stone when adversity moves in for a long stay. There are no guarantees, which is why traditional wedding vows cover all the bases, good and bad, though there isn't bride alive who pays attention to worse, poorer or sicker on her wedding day. I sure didn't.
This weekend is Father's Day. I'd like to thank my husband for acting as our family anchor even while he keeps us afloat during tough times. It's not easy to watch your children suffer and struggle. Not a father watching his son -- or a man whose every instinct is to protect his daughters.
Thank you to all the Dads who stand by their families. I wish I had better advice for Ayesha. I got lucky. I hope she does too. Did you?
Sunday, May 06, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
April is not OK
Today is the 17th anniversary of the bombing in Oklahoma City, OK. Swing by Fox News if you're so inclined. Nothing on the home page. Pop over to MSNBC. Nothing on the home page.
How is it that the nation has simply "gotten over" the horrific day when a deranged man who looked a lot like many of us white Americans murdered 168 men, women and children? From the Memorial website: On the morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked a rental truck with explosives in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and at 9:02am, a massive explosion occurred which sheared the entire north side of the building, killing 168 people.
April is also "Autism Awareness Month," although our kids are also forgotten in so many ways. Our government has sat by and calculated how to hide the unfolding catastrophe that is swallowing families as greedily as the brick and mortar crushed so many in Oklahoma on that terrible day. Autism rates have skyrocketed from 1 in 250 just a few years ago to at least 1 in 88 today. 1 in 54 boys. If you are a woman of childbearing years you should be quaking in your boots. Autism takes the entire family like a bomb. Nothing is ever the same even where there is joy and happiness. NOTHING is ever the same.
There are Tim McVeighs behind this epidemic. They hide in high places. We've elected them. They work in the media. They create laws and medical edicts you must follow. They set policy. They know. They loaded the truck and haven't taken their foot off the gas pedal yet.
I visited the Oklahoma City memorial several years ago courtesy of autism. We went to a Chiropractic clinic there, after mainstream medicine had told me to take my kids home, love them, watch them seize and suffer and then prepare for a group home.
It is a simple, moving memorial of elegant chairs. I'd like to sit down and rest. Not this month. Not ever.
Friday, April 06, 2012
Monday, April 02, 2012
Light it Up TRUE.
By Kim Stagliano
Today is April 2nd. Some are celebrating Autism Awareness Day. I am not. To me, today is like Good Friday and Yom Kippur - somber days of reflection.
Above is a photo of my daughter's leg. She has autism. A week ago, I put her into the bathtub, and while undressing her - was visually assaulted by these two angry red scratches - parallel, as you can see.
I touched them. She winced. She did not say to me, "Mama, I hurt myself doing such and such." I held back tears and examined her wounds. Did she scrape against something sharp under the kitchen table? I've been feeling under surfaces ever since, trying to find the nails or screws that bit into her tender flesh.
I have no idea how my child was so badly hurt. She was at home all day. She can not speak to tell me. My daughter has autism.
Take a look at her leg. The scratches. The black.
The BLUE.
Kim Stagliano is Managing Editor of Age of Autism. Her new novel, House of Cards; A 
Kat Cavicchio romantic suspense is on SALE for $.99 as an ebook and is available from Amazon in all e-formats now. Her memoir, All I Can Handle I'm No Mother Teresa is available in hardcover, paperback and e-book.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Dan Olmsted on Leroy New York Injured Girls: Beyond the Buildings.
My colleague at Age of Autism Dan Olmsted is an investigative journalist. He was with USA Today when they launched and wrote the "Age of Autism" series for UPI. He and his writing partner Mark Benjamin broke the story of Lariam, a malaria drug given to US soldiers, causing neurological damage that lead to murder suicides. Here he takes on the poor girls of Leroy, New York, who have suffered tics and Tourette's like syndrome - and have been told by neurologists that they are "hysterical" - and have a Conversion Disorder. Which is doc talk for "it's all in your head."
My colleague at Age of Autism Dan Olmsted is an investigative journalist. He was with USA Today when they launched and wrote the "Age of Autism" series for UPI. He and his writing partner Mark Benjamin broke the story of Lariam, a malaria drug given to US soldiers, causing neurological damage that lead to murder suicides. Here he takes on the poor girls of Leroy, New York, who have suffered tics and Tourette's like syndrome - and have been told by neurologists that they are "hysterical" - and have a Conversion Disorder. Which is doc talk for "it's all in your head."
By Dan Olmsted
Health experts say they’ve eliminated every possible environmental and infectious cause for the “tics” afflicting 12 girls at LeRoy Junior/Senior High School in New York state. They’ve scoured the building for mold and carbon monoxide (nothing, they say), considered illnesses that might cause the symptom (none), even checked on vaccinations (not all girls had the same shot).
However thorough that workup may have been, it seems to have stopped at the schoolhouse Exit sign. Except for checking a log of pesticide spraying, there is no evidence they considered toxins in the schoolyard or on playing fields. Yet the symptoms occurred during mild weather when students would have been outside, and the school grounds are surrounded by intensively farmed land from which chemicals could conceivably have seeped or drifted.
The school is required to keep annual pesticide logs that were reviewed by a consulting firm looking into environmental factors, and therefore pesticides were ruled out. As best I can determine, that’s as far as it went.
That may not be far enough, given that parents and some of the students involved don’t accept the psychogenic diagnosis they have been given, and that a number of Web commentators familiar with the school have raised concerns about the grounds and how the relatively new building is sited.
Public health officials remain adamant that the case is closed.
"The LeRoy school is safe,” Jeffrey Hammond, a spokesman for the state Department of Health, replied Friday after I raised the issue in a telephone call. “The environment or an infection is not the cause of the students’ tics. There are many causes of tics-like symptoms. Stress can often worsen tic-like symptoms.
“All of the affected students have been evaluated and some have shown signs of improvement. Vaccines (Gardasil) have been ruled out."
While the department has been careful for privacy reasons to avoid naming the illness, a doctor treating the girls has now gone public, with their permission, by calling it “conversion disorder.” Known less gingerly as mass hysteria, the diagnosis is rooted in 19th century Freudian psychology: Stress or trauma is subconsciously transformed into physical symptoms that can occur in several people at the same time.
In part because the LeRoy diagnosis took months to emerge, and in part because many people – including parents and affected children – find conversion disorder a suspect explanation, multiple theories continue to arise. Those include concerns about the school building and grounds, expressed in online comments:
-- An environmental study “would be the first logical step, knowing that the school was built in a swamp and that a number of classrooms were underwater the first year as well as the gym you would think it would be the first thing the school would address- even if only to disprove it.”
-- “Girls started feeling sick in September, sounds like pesticide spraying At the end of summer before the fall to protect late crops.” (The girls’ symptoms began as early as September 10, according to published accounts.)
-- “Have the doctors considered that the condition may be related to the school's having been built on swampy land? Water in the building continues to be a problem. A second story that should be pursued by the press and others is why this new school was built and why it was built on this particular piece of land.”
A quick look look at Google Earth (click the plus sign to see the school and grounds in detail) 
Farming, despite its idyllic image in American lore, is a highly chemical-intensive practice, and Western New York is no exception. For that and other reasons, it can be dangerous. In October, a few miles west of LeRoy in Genesee County, two people became ill when a pesticide being applied to a potato field wafted in their direction. The substance was a toxic fumigant being injected into the soil in preparation for planting this year’s crop. Officials said humidity might have helped spread it.
Obviously, that incident had nothing to do with the LeRoy illnesses, but it does give a sense of time and place missing in accounts of the area, as well as suggesting weather is an unpredictable vector.
But in such a scenario, why would only girls be affected? That's unclear, but there are a number of possibilities that environmental triggers could help explain. For instance, in some cases of mass illness in high schools, the victims were male football players and the problems were traced to toxins where they played. Being male was not a susceptibility factor, but it pointed to the exposure nonetheless. (In another case, marching band members suffered the same problem for the same reason.)
It is possible that more has been done to consider toxins outside the school building, but if so nothing has been done to communicate it to the national media.
In fact, opportunities continue to be missed. The two consultant reports and the school district’s official statement make no mention of looking for anything amiss outside the building itself ,except to note the water supply comes from neighboring Monroe County's public system. "No history of building water damage or site contamination was found," it states.
Neither the district nor the consulting firm it hired would talk to me Friday when I told them I was seeking information on whether risks outside the school building had been investigated.
--
Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism and co-author, with Mark Blaxill, of “The Age of Autism – Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-made Epidemic,” published by Thomas Dunne Books.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
House of Cards by Kim Stagliano FREE This Weekend!
My gift to you - FREE download of my funny, fast paced romantic suspense House of Cards. Don't forget the Kindle app is available for every device except your toasters and Nooks! Scroll down my blog for a free chapter too!Book Description:
Bounty Hunter Stephanie Plum would think her life is easy compared to Kat Cavicchio's. When a car crash with a New England Patriot lands her sister in the hospital, Kat has to move in with her brother-in-law to take care of her young niece and nephew – with autism.
The windfall accident settlement should turn around her financial woes and help the kids too, until the football player kicks his last field goal in a gruesome murder that lands Kat's entire family in the cross hairs of a drug dealer who thinks she is hiding something from the football player that he wants. Can a sexy State Trooper throw a Hail Mary pass and save her life before the clock runs out on her life?
Q&A with author of House of Cards, Kim Stagliano
Question: Which books or movies influenced you in writing House of Cards?
KS: My life as a Mom of three girls with autism is pretty stressful (understatement of the year there) and so I read and watch movies for entertainment and laughter. I'm a big fan of the Farrelly Brothers comedies and love offbeat, irreverent humor. I created Kat Cavicchio in the hopes that readers will want to meet her again and again, like Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, Rita Mae Brown's Harry Haristeen and Meg Cabot's Heather Wells.
Q: You wrote a Memoir called All I Can Handle I'm No Mother Teresa and you blog and write for magazines. Why did you decide to write fiction?
KS: So I can kill people! OK, maybe not. Fiction gave me the freedom to have a character say things that would sound dreadful coming from me, a real Mom. It's fun to create a world where you control the events - good and bad - and write the ending you want. If only life were so easy.
Q: Is House of Cards an "autism book?"
No more than Jodi Picoult's House Rules would be called an "Asperger's book." House of Cards is about the growth of Kat Cavicchio and the arc of her Italian American family's life. Sophie and Dom are characters whose autism shapes them - they help Kat learn who she is and how to grow up.
Q: Is House of Cards "your" story?
No. It's definitely fiction. Kat is flakier than I am (though my husband might disagree). She is terrified of responsibility and hasn't found herself even at 30-something. I'm much more uptight and buttoned down than Kat. And I prefer dark haired men like my husband to her blond State Trooper. I drew from my experiences with my girls, Mia (17), Gianna (15) and Bella (11), but Kat's story is hers alone.
Q: You were in advertising and marketing, then had the girls and stopped working to care for them after you learned they had autism. What made you decide to start writing?
KS: My husband Mark was out of work, writing gave me a chance to vent my frustrations on paper and was more socially acceptable than tippling sherry at 9am. I learned I have a "voice" that welcomes readers, makes them laugh, and entertains.
Q: Where do you find inspiration?
KS: Friends, family, the news and favorite authors who've paved the road far ahead of me. As an author and Managing Editor of www.AgeofAutism.com, I've had the privilege of meeting parents all over the world, in person and through cyberspace. We share stories of the vagaries of raising kids on the spectrum; the joy, the love, the frustration, our hopes and dreams and even our fears. I incorporated those emotions into House of Cards.
Q: Anything you'd like readers to know about you?
KS: I drink far too much coffee, love kickboxing and am a prolific baker. I'm addicted to FaceBook and Twitter. I'm scared to death of what the future holds for my daughters - but keep moving forward. I'd love to have readers join me. And if you have a child on the spectrum, I'm always available to offer support at KimStagliano@gmail.com.
About the Author:
Kim Stagliano is author of All I Can Handle I'm No Mother Teresa. She blogs for Huffington Post, TodayMoms, writes for Autism File Magazine and other national publications. She lives in CT with her family.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Coffee And Coromega!
I've been working on my health since January of '11. I started kickboxing. First I went two times a week. Then three. Then, as I got to know the participants and Shihan who owns the dojo, four times week. So now I go up to six times a week - every class offered. I was eyeing the Karate classes.... But I was too chicken to sign up. In September Shihan placed a uniform in my hand "You try." (Italian accent.) I tried. I now take 3 Karate classes a week. So the exercise part of health is well covered.
Food: I'm a terrible eater. I don't love to eat to begin with - and after making so much food for the kids, I kind of don't care what I eat. At my yearly (millennial?) check up my blood work was excellent - except for low Vitamin D. I try remember to take my Trader Joe's D every day. I also started Coromega - to get fish oil. Damn if it doesn't taste good enough to remember every day. So far so good. I'm also taking a Dr. Mercola protein shake I make with berries and coconut water every day. Love it.
Looks like I'll be going back to Las Vegas in April with Mark. April in Paris! (The hotel.) Swimsuit weather will arrive early for me.
What are you doing for your health?
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Today is my birthday - here's a free chapter for you! And please download my new ebook. Thanks for making 48 great! (OK, tolerable.)
Free! Chapter 1 House of Cards by Kim Stagliano
Click HERE to purchase House of Cards for just $2.99. Please "like" the book on Facebook and when you're done reading, leave a review. Once purchased, you can lend the book to a friend using the new Amazon lending program. And you can download to lots of devices - iPhone, computer, Blackberry, Droid and more. You can find the Kindle Apps HERE.
Chapter 1
The cloying smell of a caramel apple wrapped in candy floss announced that Janelle Goldman from accounting lurked near my cube. I don’t know when perfumers decided to drop the millennia-old floral concept and replace it with the scents of food groups favored by small children (like vanilla, strawberry and the ouch-my-teeth-ache sugary aroma of Janelle’s so-called “perfume”). If I wanted to smell like candy all day, I’d let the damn M&M’s melt in my hands, not in my mouth. She was looking for my time sheet, and I was nowhere near finishing it. As usual.
I turned to my computer, pretending to get down to the drudgery of writing press releases for the planet’s most boring company, in the hopes that Janelle would see a busy little bee and leave me alone. Or at least toddle off to report to my boss, Margaret, that I was hard at work. Janelle is such a boss’s pet. Two weeks ago, I’d been summonsed into the corner office for a dressing-down over late projects, unbilled hours, and an unfortunate difference of opinion on what constitutes a full work-day. Janelle didn’t bother to hide her glee that I’d been put on probation.
There’s no good way (or time) to lose your job. From this I know. About eighteen months ago, I earned an “early retirement” from a competing PR firm for late projects, unbilled hours and—well, you get the point.
I wasn’t looking forward to another pink slip.
As Miss Hostess Snowball and her saccharine bouquet drifted off, I breathed a sigh of relief and got back to business: my own. I logged onto online banking. Checking accounts are similar to the press releases I write, in that red ink on the screen means “you need to change this.” Only I couldn’t edit my checkbook into the black. My car payment had bounced by $7.32. Close, but Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp. was not going to cut me any slack. The rent had cleared. Thank God I’d paid it as soon as direct deposit hit my account. The Maxima was too small to live in, and I loved my house.
The paltry $65 in my wallet had to last until the next pay day, which was (I clicked to my calendar) eleven days off. I transferred $200 from my dwindling savings account into my checking to cover the car payment and my cell phone bill, again breaking my promise to my parents that I’d tidy up my finances.
Oh, well. I always managed to land on my feet and walk away whistling. This month’s worries would work themselves out too.
My name is Kat Cavicchio, and I’m the youngest in a family of four kids. I call my sisters and brother “good, better and best.” You can see where that leaves me. I’m the only female in two generations to have been divorced. I had split with my college sweetheart at age twenty-eight after three “un” years with him. Unhappy. Unfaithful. Unreproductive (thank God.) I dumped every reminder of him possible, including his ludicrous last name—Sprenkle. What the hell was I thinking when I married him anyway? Kat Sprenkle. It sounded like a brand of kitty litter.
Despite her liberal bent, my mother lived in fear that I’d never find another husband and would end up lonely and poor. You can take the Italian out of the old country, but blah, blah, blah.
My constant money woes troubled my father, who had never made a fortune as a college professor but had taken appropriate care of his finances, allowing us kids to have a happy childhood, and him and Mom a comfortable pre-retirement. I had a tendency to eat more meals in his kitchen than my own, which was all the proof he needed of my near-insolvency. He was concerned that I’d hit up my 401K money once my savings were gone. I was about six months shy of calling Fidelity. I’d have to put off quitting my job until another day, or decade, unless my next interview panned out.
With any luck (except my own), my days of writing press releases for Acme were coming to an end. No more writing sentences like: “Acme Computer Systems seamlessly integrates high-level platforms, software, and services into high-value, low-risk information infrastructure solutions that help organizations maximize the value of their information assets and automate more of their overall infrastructure.” Can anyone actually read a sentence like that without drifting into the ozone?
I was actively looking for a new job. How long can a girl dream up gobbledygook for dry-as-toast clients? In Boston, where I was born and raised, a huge chunk of the available biz was in the medical, biotech or software industries.
I wanted to work for a consumer-goods company. You know—write about a product I could actually use and understand. But there weren’t any tanning-bed companies in Massachusetts. By the grace of God, and monster.com, I’d just spotted the perfect job opening at a toy company that had relocated its sales and marketing staff from Providence, Rhode Island to a new office complex, minutes from my house in Newton, a suburb west of the city.
The mere thought of not having to ride the lumbering 502 bus from Newton Corner into Copley Square every day made me smile. The bus itself wasn’t so bad, thanks to my Sirius app, but the 15-minute walk from Adams Terrace up to the bus stop in rain and snow was tedious.
The prospect of free toys was also appealing. Most of my friends were popping out babies with alarming regularity, and my sisters each had two of their own. Every month, it seemed there was a birth, birthday, Hanukah or Christmas, all requiring a gift from old Auntie Kat. Plus, the salary at the toy company was $17,000 more than I was making on the agency side. That’s a lot of toys. And black coffee for me.
I packed up my bag and headed into the lobby to sneak out for my interview, hoping to avoid my boss. My luck held until the elevator doors opened, revealing a heavy-set older woman in a khaki-colored pashmina that encircled her bulging torso like a boa constrictor.
“Kat! Off for an early lunch?”
“Er, hi, Margaret. No, I have a dentist appointment today. I sent you an email, and I have my laptop, so I can work on the Pettengill new product release from home.”
“Of course. Goodness, your teeth have been bothering you lately, haven’t they?”
BUSTED. Think fast.
“It’s my wisdom teeth. I might have to have them pulled. The dentist referred me to an oral surgeon, so I’ve had a couple of appointments. I’ll call you later.”
As the doors closed, I sighed. I needed another story to cover my interviews. By now I could have had a full set of dentures.
Once I escaped my office, I walked to the parking garage on St. James, enjoying the crisp fall air. Since the 502 non-stop bus only runs at rush hour, I had to drive in and park on interview days. I grabbed a twenty-dollar bill from my purse to cover the exorbitant daily parking fee. “Hi, Gus,” I said to my beloved, white Nissan Maxima. Gus was four years old, and I still had another year’s worth of payments. I needed the job at Child’s Eye Toy Company.
The sky was bright blue and the temp hovered around 50 degrees, a perfect late-autumn morning. We’d be peeling off layers by 2 PM., as Indian summer warmed the final days before winter started encasing us in freezing gloom. Cruising out the Mass Turnpike west, toward the hotel over the highway that marked my exit, I groped for my Bluetooth in my purse to call my pal Connie Waldstrup.
“Hi, Kat, what’s up? I’m between meetings for a few minutes.” Connie was a lawyer with one the biggest firms in Boston.
“I’m on my way home for my interview and thought I’d check in. I’m a little nervous.”
Connie laughed. “With your interview track record you ought to be. You need to relax and just be yourself. Or maybe just be a quieter version of yourself. You tend to ramble, Kat. You’d die a thousand deaths in a courtroom.”
“That’s why I didn’t go to law school, but thanks for the Dear Abby moment, Miss Smarty Pants. And listen to you—you haven’t had to interview since Harvard. Trust me, it sucks. I get flustered and my mouth takes over my brain. Damn!”
“What’s up? Traffic?
“No, there’s a car in my spot. I’m home. I’ll catch up with you after my interview.”
“Good luck, Kat.”
Adams Terrace was a dead end, with two duplexes on it. Since college, I’d lived happily in one half of the first duplex. It was a tight squeeze when I was married; my ex-husband Jeff took up far too much space just by standing in a room. The house was perfect for a single, not-so-tall gal like me, with five rooms, including a cozy master bedroom (especially since I was the master) and a slant-roofed, third-floor aerie.
My mother’s grandparents had lived in this very house as newlyweds, when they first came to Boston from New York back in 1916. Their marriage had stood the test of time a hell of a lot better than mine. Then again, the lifespan of the fruit fly was longer than my marriage. How they had seven kids in the tiny duplex was beyond me. My great-grandfather found a job in a knitting mill in Fall River, and they moved out of Newton shortly after my grandfather, Augustus Romano, turned six. Mr. D’Alessandro, my landlord, who lived in the duplex next door, had been Papa’s playmate back when there was a chicken coop and coal bin in the yard. Mr. D, as we called him, was a lifer in “The Lake,” which is what people called Nonantum, the Italian section of Newton.
The other half of my duplex was inhabited by interchangeable college kids, who came and went with the semesters. Once I’d crossed thirty a couple of birthdays ago, even the good-looking guys became less interesting to me, and I’d become invisible to them.
Mr. D., a nonagenarian widower whose fading memory meant I could pay my rent a few days late when necessary, was leaning against the railing on the stoop of his house just a car’s width away from mine.
“Hi, Mr. D., how are you today?”
“Not too good, Katharina. Not too good. My son is here…” That explained the car. Rocco, the jerk, was in from New York. Rocco was like a velvet Elvis painting come to life. He wore a jet-black toupee, a Diamonique stud in one ear, and a gold chain that could have tethered the QEII to a dock. He was in his early sixties and claimed to have made his money in produce. Only if they sold oranges at the Belmont Park race track, I figured. I had to go through Rocco to get anything fixed in my house. Rocco thought I’d repay him for his work in warm, soft currency.
Like the time right after my ex-husband moved out, when my dishwasher broke, and Rocco schlepped up from New York to confirm that I wasn’t just angling for the thrill of a new Kitchen Aid before he authorized the repair.
“Hi, Rocco,” I’d said. “Come on in. Mind the puddle on the floor.”
“Usually the puddle is there after I’m done,” he answered with a creepy leer.
I shot him a dirty look and went back to washing the dishes in the sink. I thought he’d just open the dishwasher, pronounce it dead and go back to his dad’s.
“I think I can fix this, Kat. Just let me reach under the sink here to…”
“Get your freaking hands out from between my legs, Rocco!”
The guy had a double-digit cringe factor. But his Dad was a nice old man and we considered him family. Rocco? Not so much.
Mr. D’Alessandro’s reedy voice trailed off, and he raised his hand to stop himself from saying any more. “OK, Mr. D., I’ll talk to you soon.” I smiled at him and darted into my house to freshen up for my interview.
My closet was crammed with clothes, half on hangers, half shoved on shelves. Why line up the clothes perfectly if you’re just going to pull them down in a few days? Let’s see, what’s the best choice to wear to a toy-company interview? I opted for a navy dress with matching swing jacket and added knee-high boots with a medium heel to up the funk factor. The jacket hid the fact that the dress was loose on me. I’d lost a few pounds off my 5’3” frame, dropping to 111 pounds, and I’m not bragging. I have uncooperative curly brown hair that’s only revered in New Jersey malls, circa 1988, and my feet are an ungainly size 8. When I get too skinny, I resemble a Q-tip with feet.
Twenty minutes later, I skipped out to my car only to find I’d been partially blocked in by a gleaming Lexus SUV. The driveway hadn’t seen that much traffic since Mr. D’Alessandro had set his pot of linguine on fire two months ago, and half the Newton fire department showed up. I squeezed past the SUV, aware that it cost more than I made in a year. I caught sight of the license plate which read, “ISEL4U.” A realtor? Plus the greedy son and the failing landlord who occasionally thought I was Katherine Hepburn? Uh oh…
***
Kim Stagliano is Managing Editor of Age of Autism. Her new novel, House of Cards; A Kat Cavicchio romantic suspense is available from Amazon in all e-formats now. Her memoir, All I Can Handle I'm No Mother Teresa is available in hardcover, paperback and e-book.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Merry Christmas!
Did you get a Kindle? Other cool device? iPad, Droid, new computer or Mac? Download my new romantic suspense novel, House of Cards today! Just $
2.99.Download here!
Did you get a Kindle? Other cool device? iPad, Droid, new computer or Mac? Download my new romantic suspense novel, House of Cards today! Just $
2.99.Download here!
Friday, December 23, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
I'm grinning from ear to ear: "It's a book!" House of Cards, a funny, fast paced romantic suspense is now available in e-book format. (Paperback in 2012.) The book is pure fiction - not my life - been there, wrote the book (ha ha All I Can Handle the Memoir). I hope that House of Cards will be another way to tell the world about the autism epidemic and what it does to an entire family - in a zany, fast paced chick lit style format. And well, I got to kill someone finally, and that ain't bad!
Click HERE to purchase House of Cards for just $2.99. Please "like" the book on Facebook and when you're done reading, leave a review. Once purchased, you can lend the book to a friend using the new Amazon lending program. And you can download to lots of devices - iPhone, computer, Blackberry, Droid and more. You can find the Kindle Apps HERE.
Here's a taste:
My name is Kat Cavicchio, and I’m the youngest in a family of four kids. I call my sisters and brother “good, better and best.” You can see where that leaves me. I’m the only female in two generations to have been divorced. I had split with my college sweetheart at age twenty-eight after three “un” years with him. Unhappy. Unfaithful. Unreproductive (thank God.) I dumped every reminder of him possible, including his ludicrous last name—Sprenkle. What the hell was I thinking when I married him anyway? Kat Sprenkle. It sounded like a brand of kitty litter.
Despite her liberal bent, my mother lived in fear that I’d never find another husband and would end up lonely and poor. You can take the Italian out of the old country, but blah, blah, blah.
My constant money woes troubled my father, who had never made a fortune as a college professor but had taken appropriate care of his finances, allowing us kids to have a happy childhood, and him and Mom a comfortable pre-retirement. I had a tendency to eat more meals in his kitchen than my own, which was all the proof he needed of my near-insolvency. He was concerned that I’d hit up my 401K money once my savings were gone. I was about six months shy of calling Fidelity. I’d have to put off quitting my job until another day, or decade, unless my next interview panned out.
With any luck (except my own), my days of writing press releases for Acme were coming to an end. No more writing sentences like: “Acme Computer Systems seamlessly integrates high-level platforms, software, and services into high-value, low-risk information infrastructure solutions that help organizations maximize the value of their information assets and automate more of their overall infrastructure.” Can anyone actually read a sentence like that without drifting into the ozone?
I was actively looking for a new job. How long can a girl dream up gobbledygook for dry-as-toast clients? In Boston, where I was born and raised, a huge chunk of the available biz was in the medical, biotech or software industries.
I wanted to work for a consumer-goods company. You know—write about a product I could actually use and understand. But there weren’t any tanning-bed companies in Massachusetts. By the grace of God, and monster.com, I’d just spotted the perfect job opening at a toy company that had relocated its sales and marketing staff from Providence, Rhode Island to a new office complex, minutes from my house in Newton, a suburb west of the city.
The mere thought of not having to ride the lumbering 502 bus from Newton Corner into Copley Square every day made me smile. The bus itself wasn’t so bad, thanks to my Sirius app, but the 15-minute walk from Adams Terrace up to the bus stop in rain and snow was tedious.
The prospect of free toys was also appealing. Most of my friends were popping out babies with alarming regularity, and my sisters each had two of their own. Every month, it seemed there was a birth, birthday, Hanukah or Christmas, all requiring a gift from old Auntie Kat. Plus, the salary at the toy company was $17,000 more than I was making on the agency side. That’s a lot of toys. And black coffee for me.
I packed up my bag and headed into the lobby to sneak out for my interview, hoping to avoid my boss. My luck held until the elevator doors opened, revealing a heavy-set older woman in a khaki-colored pashmina that encircled her bulging torso like a boa constrictor.
“Kat! Off for an early lunch?”
“Er, hi, Margaret. No, I have a dentist appointment today. I sent you an email, and I have my laptop, so I can work on the Pettengill new product release from home.”
“Of course. Goodness, your teeth have been bothering you lately, haven’t they?”
BUSTED. Think fast.
“It’s my wisdom teeth. I might have to have them pulled. The dentist referred me to an oral surgeon, so I’ve had a couple of appointments. I’ll call you later.”
As the doors closed, I sighed. I needed another story to cover my interviews. By now I could have had a full set of dentures.
Click HERE to purchase House of Cards for just $2.99. Please "like" the book on Facebook and when you're done reading, leave a review. Once purchased, you can lend the book to a friend using the new Amazon lending program. And you can download to lots of devices - iPhone, computer, Blackberry, Droid and more.
Kim Stagliano is Managing Editor of Age of Autism. Her new novel, House of Cards; A Kat Cavicchio romantic suspense is available from Amazon in all e-formats now. Her memoir, All I Can Handle I'm No Mother Teresa is available in hardcover, paperback and e-book.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Congratulations to David Lender, whose Amazon e-book Vaccine Nation reached #1 in the Legal Thrillers category and is #2 at the time of this writing. Download yours today. If you don't have an e-reader, the paper version will be out after the first of the year.
David Lender is the bestselling author of thrillers based on his over 25-year career as a Wall Street investment banker. He draws on an insider’s knowledge from his career in mergers and acquisitions with Merrill Lynch, Rothschild and Bank of America for the international settings, obsessively driven personalities and real-world financial intrigues of his novels. His characters range from David Baldacci-like corporate power brokers to Elmore Leonard-esque misfits and scam artists. His plots reveal the egos and ruthlessness that motivate the players in the business world, as well as the inner workings of the most powerful of our financial institutions and corporations.
Check out the Vaccine Nation premise:
Dani North is a filmmaker who just won at the Tribeca Film Festival for her documentary, The Drugging of Our Children, a film critical of the pharmaceutical industry. She’s also just started work on a new documentary on autism. When a pharmaceutical industry vaccine researcher hands her “smoking gun” evidence about the national vaccination program seconds before he’s murdered right in front of her, Dani finds herself implicated and pursued by the police.
Dani realizes what she’s been handed could have crucial implications on upcoming hearings by a Senate committee. A key issue the Senate committee will consider is whether Congress should continue the immunity it granted in 1986 to the pharmaceutical industry for claims by parents on damage to their children from the U.S. National Immunization Program. That puts Dani on the run in a race to understand and expose the evidence. That is, before the police can grab her, or Grover Madsen, a megalomaniacal pharmaceutical industry CEO, can have her hunted down by his hired killers. Madsen knows exactly what Dani has and how explosive it is for the pharmaceutical industry: it has the potential to make the tobacco industry’s lawsuits and subsequent multi-billion dollar settlements seem like routine slip-and-fall cases. Madsen uses all his company’s political and financial resources to track Dani.
Vaccine Nation is a fast-paced thriller about an award-winning documentary filmmaker who is handed “whistleblower” evidence about the U.S. vaccination program, and then races to expose it before a megalomaniacal drug company CEO can have her killed.
Visit David's website to read about all of his books and to read the first chapter of Vaccine Nation. Tell your family and friends to download the book too, so it remains on the list of Kindle recommendations throughout the holiday season. Is fiction stranger than the truth?
Yesterday was my daughter's 17th birthday. We celebrated with cake and presents, like any other family. She delighted in her Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer snow monster toy that shakes and sings Holly Jolly Christmas (another Stop & Shop present, and you know what I mean if you've read my book.) She glanced at the Love's Baby Soft perfume set. We helped her open her cards from family.
She is seventeen years old. Here she is on the day she was born. I was two weeks away from my 31st birthday. A friend posed a question on Facebook last month, "If you could be anywhere at anytime of your life, where would you be?" My answer is in that photo. The moment Mia was born was the happiest of my life, bar none.
When I was seventeeen I was a senior in high school. Mia is in "tenth" grade. Friends and I giggled at this Rick James song - understanding the lyrics were a bit naughty. I had a boyfriend, my driver's license and felt as grown up as could be, ah seventeen.
This morning, Mia was watching this before school.
Mia's first word was "Grover," the furry blue monster from Sesame Street. A year ago I met Bob McGrath from Sesame Street ("Who are the people in your neighborhood?", Bob) while out for dinner in Manhattan. I burst into tears telling him what the show has meant to our family, and how Mia still watches, long after the ABC's should have turned into the birds and the bees.
I've been making gluten free birthday cakes for over a decade. I'll make them until my gnarled 
I was sad yesterday. I even cried a few times as I remembered the brief period when Mark and I were just new parents of a bouncing baby girl, and not autism parents. Today I'm fine. Mia will be OK and we'll give her the best life we can. We adore our girls, and we have a good life, if different.
I've picked myself up, brushed myself off and started all over again with my regular day. Until July 11, when Gianna turns 16....
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Baby Belle
2002?? Lord I can't recall. Just as well. Long haul. Very long haul. And miles to go before I sleep to quote my Dad's favorite poem.
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