Please help me welcome Marie Force - she wants to know "Do You Sweat the Small Stuff?"

Marie Force is guest blogging today - let's give her a warm welcome and see if you can top her messy room horror story below! There's a prize for two readers who comment! Personally, I think I could give her some serious competition with my daughter Kelsey's room, but I'm not sure I can even talk about it without getting teary! (sniff) Welcome, Marie!

Do You Sweat the Small Stuff?
I have a 14-year-old daughter who started high school this fall, was quickly elected class president, and has been caught up in all things high school ever since. We just survived our first spirit week and homecoming weekend, complete with the dance “pre-party” at our house. The open invite went out to the freshmen class, and we ended up with about 60 kids, who were beautifully dressed and even more beautifully behaved—at least while they were with us! My daughter is a great kid with one notable character flaw (other than the teenager attitude, which I’m told will pass—years from now...). Her room is a disaster area. I’m not talking messy. No, I’m talking central landfill.
Now, we run a pretty tight ship around here. My husband is retired from the Navy, and is neat to a fault. In other words, he cleans up after me, which is highly irritating! We’re on her about the room all the time. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess that my teenage bedroom was just like hers. (Shhh, don’t tell her.) My mother used to say that when I cut tags off new clothes, I dropped them on the floor. Guilty as charged. Let’s just say my apple didn’t fall far from the tree in that regard. My mother used to muck out our rooms when we were at school and told us much later that we never once asked for anything she chucked. She was very proud of that track record. Toward the end of her life, she made this startling pronouncement: “I wish I’d spent less time haggling my kids about their rooms. They both grew up to have lovely homes.” Stop the presses!
This past summer, my cousin heard me griping about my kids’ rooms and reminded me of my mother’s famous words. I sent her a “shut up now please” glare, which only egged her on. “Emily, Jake, come here,” she said, a glint of the devil in her eye. “I have something very important to tell you—something your grandmother would want you to know.” Fink. I revoked her maid-of-honor for life status after this incident. (In truth, that’s about the fifth time her status has been revoked for bad behavior.)
My mother died five years ago at 67 after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. I think her message was clear: life is short, don’t sweat the small stuff. I agree with her for the most part, but when the landfill bedroom begins to creep into the hallway, am I not supposed to react? If I live by my mother’s credo, the answer is no. What about if rodents take up residence in there? Ignore it? (Update: Emily spent eight hours cleaning the landfill on Sunday—we suspect this was a thank-you for hosting the party the night before, but we can’t be certain because we didn’t dare ask what brought this on. All we know is we can see the floor again. Sing halleluiah! We’re enjoying it while it lasts. . .)
I make a concerted effort not to sweat the small stuff in the rest of my life, but in my books, I’m all about the tiny moments that send shock waves rippling through ordinary lives. A single look, a snippet of conversation, a brief encounter, and life is never again the same. In “Line of Scrimmage,” I featured a flashback to the moment a decade earlier when Ryan first spotted Susannah at a campus hangout. The University of Florida’s star quarterback was forever changed by that brief meeting with a woman who had no idea who he was—and didn’t much care when she found out he was a “stah,” as we say in New England. A conversation in an airport while awaiting a delayed flight changes the lives of Michael and Juliana in “Love at First Flight.” Life plans fly out the window, and everything they know for certain is upended. A series of small moments becomes a tsunami that takes them on a ride they could never have imagined, ending in a happily ever after they fight hard to achieve. It doesn’t take a “big dramatic event” to change a life. I wrote a book recently about a guy who accidentally knocks a woman off her bike and then insists on caring for her until she’s recovered. He steps off a curb and finds true love. Could it be any simpler?
Do you sweat the small stuff in your life? How do you feel about small moments vs. big moments in romance novels? Are your kids’ rooms a mess? (Tell me the truth!) One final kid room story. . . Years ago, when we lived in Florida, the kids had vanity sinks with drawers on either side. I opened the drawers in Emily’s room one day to find Pop Tarts stashed on both sides. Now, if you can top that, you might win a copy of one of my books. I’ll be giving away a signed copy of each book, so in honor of Halloween week, let me hear your horror stories!