Hell to pay to get in

Thursday, April 07, 2011: okay
i just ordered my pin for xyz...that should be safe right cuz it went through an official website? Anyways it came to exactly $200 BUT it looks really nice and professional so yay! anyways i'll see you next week cuz im not coming home this weekend

Friday, April 8^th 2011: What’s up? What did you do last night and how is everyhing going? Is it doable? Is pledging almost over? I transferred the money. Talk to me, Mom

yeah, pledging is fine its not bad or anything
saturday is the test and we all have get a 100 or we keep going with pledging so we are studying really hard cuz none of us want to pledge anymore cuz it’s like the hardest thing ever cuz everything has to be perfect soo if we dont all cross on saturday and we have to go another week i'm gonna lose it lol

if we dont do good on saturdays test that means we dont cross on tuesday and we go another week so it can be as beautiful as it wants to be outside and ill still hate everything so keep your fingers crossed that we cross!

I sent her a text message in the morning saying that Oma (her grandmother in Germany) lit a blessed candle for her and will keep it on all day. “Cool,” Alexandra texted back. All day Saturday, I was nervous and awaited the test results from her. After my writers’ group meeting in the late afternoon and no word from Alexandra I finally texted her:

?

She answered: What? The test is tonight and into the morning.

I texted back: Into the morning?!

She: Yup its all night u can come visit me at the looney bin cuz that’s where I’m gonna end up after all this is over.

A few hours later: Don’t text me, it has started.

I lit a blessed candle from Lourdes, France, and prayed a double prayer. Then hubby and I watched a movie with Russell Crowe, “The Next Three Days.” We couldn’t really enjoy it, being so nervous about how she and her group would do. At exactly midnight, just as we climbed into bed, my cell phone buzzed.

This is her text message from Sunday, April 10, 12:01 AM: We crossed!!! Don’t call me ill call u tomorrow.

We were so happy for her that we almost jumped up and down on the marital bed; eight long weeks of pledging, and she had reached her goal and survived.

The next day she called at noon. “Okay, I’m going to a birthday party now, I am freaking out with happiness, but this has been the most nerve-wracking experience in my whole life.” I said, “So the rest of college should be a breeze now, right?” and she said, it will.

Here is something that boggles my mind: Alexandra and I each had a goal, a dream, for the last few months. She wanted to receive her bid, pledge, survive the final week of pledging, and get into the sorority she had chosen last summer. My dream was to publish a book before I die. I was working on my sixth manuscript, a Young Adult paranormal novel titled Immortal Link. I felt in my gut that this would be the one that would make it. The writing, proof reading, rewriting, editing, waiting, changing things, querying agents, finally deciding to self-publish, creating the cover (with my daughter’s hand reaching for the indestructible, ghostly handprint of Alexander Campbell in cell #17 of the Old Jail in Jim Thorpe, PA), all these things consumed me since March of last year.

On Saturday, a friend helped me finish the cover on her laptop at our monthly writers’ group meeting, and I submitted the pdf files for the text and cover to CreateSpace which is connected to Amazon.com. The format got accepted a few hours later and I ordered my proof early Sunday morning.

Alexandra and I reached our goals on the very same day…