Liz Flaherty - Romance Author

Synopses.

2012-01-23T04:55:00.000-08:00

I'm over at Word Wranglers today, talking about synopses.

Yes, pumpkin spice...

2012-01-17T05:02:00.000-08:00

Today, I'm answering a few questions for friend and CP extraordinaire Kristi Knight. http://kristiknight.blogspot.com/2012/01/pumpkin-spice-tea-author-liz-flaherty.html Hope you come by!

Trends....

2012-01-16T06:31:00.000-08:00

I'm at Word Wranglers today, talking about trends. Come on over.

Magic and the muse...

2012-01-09T04:10:00.001-08:00

I'm over at Word Wranglers today, talking about Magic and the Muse. http://wordwranglers.blogspot.com/ Hope to see you there!

Manic Readers...

2012-01-08T04:29:00.001-08:00

I'm at Manic Readers today http://manicreaders.com/blog/index.php/2012/01/liz-flaherty-on-quilts-and-one-more-summer/ talking about books and quilts and grandkids. Come see me!

2012-01-07T11:30:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry--it's a rerun. But it's been busy here lately. One More Summer came out last week and I gotta tell you, the fifth book is as fun and exciting as the first one. Thank all of you for adding to the fun part, and speaking of exciting...

Since I’ve grown older, I write a lot about...well, about growing older. About grandkids and the unkindness of gravity and how to stay married when single looks like more fun. About how difficult the workplace is for those of us over 50, the fallibility of my knees, and how much I don’t like any rock music written after 1975. I wonder what’s happened to television and movies and I canceled my subscription to “People” magazine because no matter how beautiful and thin they are, I just can’t bring myself to continue reading about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

I also write that getting older is cool. It’s fun. Mentally and emotionally, it’s a whole lot better place than being young ever was. “Because I felt like it” is a good enough reason for doing something. “Because it was there” really is a viable reason for going somewhere. You can say “just because” any time you feel like it because...well, just because.

Then there is aging’s learning curve. About coming to know that the calendar that hangs in the laundry room is necessary, not decorative, because the truth is that I can no longer remember even the most basic of appointments. If my daughter asks me to pick the kids up on Thursday and it is only Monday when she calls, I tell her to call me again Wednesday night because I know I will forget and I am afraid I won’t check the calendar. While I hate missing a nail appointment, it’s worse if my grandsons are left waiting for the Nana who doesn’t show up.

I had laser eye surgery, so after 30-some years of wearing glasses to correct extreme nearsightedness, I can see 20/25 without correction and am thrilled to do so. However, I’ve learned to have reading glasses on every table in the house, in every purse I might carry, and in both of our cars. This comes in handy for reading menus, the back blurbs of paperback books, and warning labels on medication. (This is very necessary, because the consumption of medication has gone up proportionately with my age.)

I’ve learned that if I overuse joints, they will hurt a lot and if I underuse them, they will stiffen up in a matter of hours. I know that, while I can still work eight hours at my job, there is little of me left over for the rest of the day. Being someone who was unable to sit still for more than 10 minutes at a stretch, I used to sneer at people I considered couch potatoes; only now do I realize they weren’t potatoes at all, merely a long curlicue of peel that’s left after the potato is all used up.

Even with the coolness and the learning, there isn’t a lot of excitement. Sometimes I miss that. I’ll bet you do, too.

Oh, but wait...

The boyfriend—that’s my husband of two-thirds of my life—and I have rediscovered bowling. The truth is that I greatly resemble Ma Kettle as I approach the lane and my score would look more impressive on the golf course than it does at the bowling alley, but it’s fun.
We’ve discovered, as Lauren Bacall would say, the thea-tuh. We’ve seen comedies, musicals, and dramas, all of which have left us breathless. We’re going to see Scrooge in a week or so, to sit on the front row and have our disbelief suspended for a couple of hours.

I’ve rediscovered the charm of sitting on bleachers. Although I don’t go nearly often enough, there’s still nothing better to watch than school-age kids playing sports or singing Christmas songs on an elementary school stage.

And there’s where being older comes in handy, because regardless of things I’ve forgotten, there are more that I remember. I never walk into the theatre, the gymnasium, or a restaurant to be a critic. I walk in to be entertained, to be excited, to eat that which I haven’t had to cook. I know by now that it really doesn’t matter who wins or loses; it’s how the game is played that makes it worth watching. Perfection doesn’t matter; for the most part it’s unachievable and not much fun. It’s the doing, the watching, the music and the laughter, the unexpected three-point shot that are fun, are exciting.

So go ahead, live a little. Be excited.

Till next time.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T04:16:00.000-08:00

I hope you have a splendid 2012. My book, ONE MORE SUMMER, is out tomorrow--yay--and I'm blogging at Cathie Dunn's site today.http://cathiedunn.blogspot.com/ I hope you come by and see us.

Watch for my website changes coming up, and a weekly visit to the Window Over the Sink, featuring other authors and me, too.

Next stop...

2011-12-29T04:51:00.000-08:00

Today I'm visiting with Sarah Grimm over at Off the Keyboard. Hope you come by!

http://authorsarahgrimm.blogspot.com/

Visiting....

2011-12-28T04:23:00.000-08:00

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. It's time for the writer in me to hit the road again. Today, I'm with Emma Lai talking about plans for the New Year. I hope you come by!
http://emmalaiwrites.blogspot.com/?zx=4a8d494d7be2b972

I'm visiting...

2011-12-20T13:11:00.000-08:00

Seems like I'm getting around a lot lately. My Christmas trees are over at Cheryl St. John's parade of trees. My pictures aren't as clear as some, but I still love my trees. :-) http://cherylstjohn.blogspot.com/

I'm also spending the week at Marie Tuhart's blog. We don't write the same kind of thing, but writers are unfailingly supportive, and I appreciate hers! http://www.escapetoaneroticfantasy.blogspot.com/?zx=e3b5291f26074f07

On the 22nd, I'll be at http://rachelbrimble.blogspot.com/.

We're taking the week off at Word Wranglers.

More later, but that's enough for now! I'll post another Window Over the Sink next week. Till then, have a great Christmas!

It was Christmas of '94...

2011-12-18T16:25:00.000-08:00

...when I wrote this particular opening of the Window Over the Sink. I hope you enjoy it.

There are people out there who have their Christmas shopping done. They are the same ones who bought all their wrapping paper, Christmas cards, bows, and tinsel last December 26.

They also keep all their Christmas shopping receipts in a separate place, like a little green and red folder, and they know at all times where that folder is located. If they have real Christmas trees, they remember to water them every day and they take them out of the house before all the needles fall off and embed themselves in the carpet.

These people's tree ornaments match each other. The ethereal angels or brilliant stars they use do not cause the trees to lean drunkenly. There are never full strings of non-working lights on the trees and the lights all twinkle at the same speed or they chase each other merrily around the branches.

Their Christmas cookies and candy are made and frozen well ahead of time and they have plenty of decorative tins and baskets on hand so that all they have to do is add a pretty handmade bow and they have an instant gift for the unexpected guest.

I decided many years ago, on a Christmas Eve when I was sewing the last ruffles on my daughter's Christmas dress at two o'clock on Christmas morning before she and her brothers rolled out at five, that when I grew up, I was going to be one of the people I've been talking about.

My first step in that direction was to buy wrapping paper the day after Christmas for the following year. Then we moved to a different house. It just seemed foolish when we were already moving 10 times as much stuff out of the old house as we moved into it to also move 12 rolls of paper and 50 bows, so I gave them away instead of moving them. Then, two weeks later, I went out and bought all new because we moved in November, for heaven's sake. (Moving is not good for one's thought processes. While I did not move the wrapping paper, I did move several boxes that remain unopened in the attic 17 years later.)

My next organizational move was to buy and address Christmas cards as soon as they hit the shelves, which was somewhere along about July. I even addressed them in green ink to make them look properly Christmas-like. Then I proceeded to lose them, along with the complete list of addresses I'd called all over the country to compile.

My sister-in-law Lynn, bless her cold little heart, found them long after Christmas had passed, nestled behind the microwave oven. Fifteen years later, I'm still telling her it's none of her business how often I clean behind my appliances. Or if I do.

Then there's shopping.

Occasionally, I start it in August. More often, I start in October and now and then in November. I've discovered that it doesn't matter when I start Christmas shopping, I finish it on Christmas Eve. Last year my husband and I were only two of the 3000 people in Walmart at 11 o'clock on Christmas Eve morning and we decided we would never, never do such a foolish thing again.

At least until this year.

Because, all advice I've given freely and unasked to people not withstanding, I've given up.

I'm never going to be one of those people who have Christmas organized. I will always be a day late and a dollar short and my favorite Christmas tree ornaments will still be the ones my kids brought home from the first grade. My tree top will still be crooked and I'll always have needles embedded in my carpet even though we have an artificial tree. The cookies and candy will always be made at the last minute if they're made at all and eaten warm off a dish towel lying on the kitchen counter.

What it amounts to is, at least as far as Christmas is concerned, I am like Peter Pan: I won't grow up.

I hope you won't, either. I hope you have fun shopping and wrapping and decorating. And don't forget the giving. It's the very best part of it all.

Till next time.

Familiarity breeds...what?

2011-12-15T03:53:00.000-08:00

I wrote this after Christmas in 1991. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Mark Twain said that familiarity breeds contempt, and in all honesty, I tended to believe it. Marriages go down the tubes with astonishing regularity; people speak with disdain of their home towns, their families, the schools where they were educated; parents abuse their children and grown children turn their backs on aging and disabled parents.

Rather than being cherished, familiar things become monkeys on our backs. Even I, who so oppose change that I will be ready when bell bottoms came back because I still have my old ones (they're size eights; who am I kidding?), become disenchanted with the sameness of day-to-day life.

But then the holidays came.

For the first time ever, I decorated our Christmas tree by myself. There were no kids around to argue about what went where, how early was too early to put the tree up, or whether to play Christmas carols or Guns 'n Roses while hanging garland. No one cared who made the blue ornament in the first grade, whether the garland on the tree was gold or white, or if the bottom branches drooped in the back. (They did. They always do.)

There was no one there to warn me that the lights that operated perfectly spread out on the living room floor wouldn't so much as blink when placed with scientific precision on the tree branches. There was no one there to remind me that there was only one outlet in the corner where the tree stood, which meant that twice a day someone would have to move all the packages out of the way and do a military low crawl under the tree in order to turn the lights on and off.

There was no one there to tell me I would be the low-crawler because I was the shortest.

I could have done with some familiarity.

I did my Christmas shopping without anyone tagging along showing me everything they wanted, which was everything that (1) was out of stock until February, (2) was available only in teensy weensy and gargantuan sizes, and (3) cost more than the house, my car, and their shoes.

This freed me to shop with ease and at leisure, which meant everything I bought was (1) the wrong size, color, and brand, (2) was what I liked rather than what they would like, and (3) cost more than the house, my car, and their shoes. It probably would have been better if someone had tagged along.

I bought all the ingredients for Christmas baking, figuring that when my daughter came home for the holidays, we would fill the house with the familiar scents of cinnamon, chocolate, and sort-of-burned cookie edges. However, we never found the time to bake, so the house smelled like the primer my husband was applying to the kitchen walls, the laundry my son brought home from college, and chocolate covered cherries.

But familiarity won out.

Going home from one shopping excursion, I heard the faint sound of music from outside and opened my car window in the 20-some-degree temperature to determine its origin.

Standing alone in front of the drugstore beside the customary red bucket, a man in a Salvation Army uniform played Christmas carols on a horn. His hands and cheeks were red from the blustery cold, but the notes from the horn were as true and sweet as if they'd come from Gabriel's trumpet. I continued home happier, my soul soothed by the songs I had been hearing my entire life.

Christmas morning at the Flaherty house was the same hubbub it always is. Paper and ribbon was everywhere and everyone, including the family in Germany whose presence was so sorely missed, loved everything. Suddenly on Christmas morning, color, brand name, and cost meant nothing. It was the giving that mattered.

So maybe Mark Twain was right, but I read another quotation just the other day wherein George Ade said that familiarity breeds contentment. I think I like his quotation better.

Till next time.

Over at Word Wranglers...

2011-12-14T05:13:00.000-08:00

Kristi's interviewing Christine Bell today. Stop and see what she has to say. http://www.wordwranglers.blogspot.com/

Welcome to the bathroom wars...

2011-12-13T08:03:00.000-08:00

I wrote the original Window Over the Sink for years. For the local newspaper, for a couple of shopping guides, even for my first website. Lately, a few people have asked about some of those columns, so I've spent some time digging through them. I thought I'd give you a hint of what is to come. This one was written in December of 1990-something. All I'm sure of is that kids were in college. Let me know what you think.

For the past 14 years, we've lived in a big old farmhouse back a bumpy lane. It is the perfect house for us, with plenty of bedroom space, a laundry room that doesn't require me to climb steps with the 15 or so loads of clothes I wash each week, and a kitchen where people like to congregate. It also has one teensy, tiny, hole-in-the-wall bathroom.

When a house contains three teenagers and two adults, which this one did for a number of years, that one bathroom makes for a lot of ugliness.

Regardless of groundless rumors and old wives' tales, men rather than women are bathroom hogs. After all this time of brushing my teeth at the kitchen sink and combing my hair in front of the four-slice toaster, I feel qualified to make such a dramatic statement. In the time it takes for my husband or one of my sons to wash his feet, my daughter and I can both take a shower; shave our legs; wash, dry, and style our hair; and read a chapter in the book that always lies on the back of the john.

The men of the house, naturally enough, deny this. It is easy for them to do so, as they have not spent entire days of their lives sitting on the stairs outside the bathroom door praying for the little room's occupant to come out on a wave of steam and Irish Spring so that they could make a mad dash for it before their father or son or brother appeared to take up residence for the next 45 minutes. (Yes, that's really one sentence. My writing's come along some since then.)

It was terrible in the days when none of the kids drove and we all actually went places together. The scenario went something like this.

4:00 PM. I say, "I'd better take my shower and get ready to go."

My husband looks at his watch. "We don't have to be there for three hours."

Like any other idiot, I agree and decide to wait.

4:01 PM. First son takes shower.

4:46 PM. Second son takes shower.

5:31 PM. Husband takes shower.

6:16 PM. Daughter takes shower.

6:30 PM. First son goes into bathroom to comb hair. He is joined by second son and their father.

6:45 PM. Family gets into car to leave. Mother is still dirty and isn't wearing any makeup. Daughter is combing her hair in the car. She smacks a brother in the eye with a brush-driven elbow and third world war ensues. Husband and sons look very nice. Mother is ticked off. Big deal. What else is new?

It's not so bad anymore, with one of the sons grown and with a bathroom of his own and the younger two away at college. Since I get up at 3:30 in the morning, it's usually no problem if I stay in the bathroom for a whole 20 minutes if I want.

But then Christmas break came along. I got up the other morning and stumbled in my usual way into the living room, trying to get my glasses on straight and find my way to the coffeepot.

And there is my younger son, on the couch in front of the television. When he saw me, he flinched, never having realized people really looked like that in the morning, then he got up, turned off the TV, and greeted me.

And went into the bathroom.

I brushed my teeth at the kitchen sink, combed my hair in front of the toaster, and dressed in the laundry room. Sometimes there's no sense in fighting the battle when losing the war is a sure thing.

Life Without Apostrophes

2011-12-12T02:50:00.000-08:00

I don't post here much, and you're right: shame on me. I've become more proficient with doing things here, have even learned to add pictures. See cover to the left--or maybe to the right--center? That's not where I put it! Oh, well. Maybe proficient was a little too ambitious of a word.

Anyway, the website's being worked on, and WINDOW OVER THE SINK is coming to the internet. Not just me writing it, but other writers as well, who mumble along and have as good a time at it as I do, so stay tuned. Let me know what you think. When it happens, I mean. I'm not there yet.

The new book's coming January 2, though it's up for pre-sale on Amazon and B & N. I hope you stop in and pre-buy. :-)

I ended my first college class with an A. Well, duh, said my friend Debby, it was a writing class. But different writing than I'm used to, and I was only so-so at it, which bothered me a bit, but do you know what? They didn't want me to use contractions! I told the instructor in my last paper that I just wasn't ready for life without apostrophes. I want to fit everything in, you know, and sometimes that means shortening some things--like dusting, cleaning out from under the car seat, and words like did not, would not, et cetera. Oh, I mean etc.

I'm making this a short one, but want to wish you Merry Christmas in case I don't get back. I'll try to keep you informed when the old newspaper column finds new life here, and I hope you like it.

Till next time.

The rules...

2011-06-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

We went to the Miami County 4-H fair last night. Ate the best supper we'd had all week, watched the Clogging Clovers, talked to people. Went through the merchants' building and through the exhibit building. I had two blue ribbons on my entries, but I think they give most of us adults blue ribbons just so we won't feel bad.

We walked around, looking at photography and gorgeous cake decorating and things constructed from Lego blocks. Since I sew, I slowed down to look at the apparel projects. One skirt jumped out at me--well, not literally, but I noticed it right off. It was lavender. Kind of shiny. Kind of swirly. Everything I love about little girls.

And it didn't have a blue ribbon, but a red. I squinted at the judging sheet and read that the project hadn't met all the requirements. Oh.

I was disappointed. Not in the skirt, or in the little girl who sewed it, or even in the judge who made the decision the rules say she's supposed to make. What disappointed me that 4-H rewards following the rules more strongly than it does outcome. I've raised children, I know rules are necessary--sort of--but I think joy is necessarier.

You know, the kind you find in a shiny, swirly, lavender skirt.

I think she should have gotten a blue ribbon.

Happy 40th Anniversary...

2011-05-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

I wrote this ten years ago. It’s been printed a few places, but never here. I’m posting it today because it’s Duane’s and my 40th anniversary and it’s a happy one. I loved him so much all that time ago when we were young and slim and all of life was ahead of us. I love him more now.

What’s it like, you ask, being married to the same person for over 30 years? How do you do it?
Well, it’s like this.

You know every word of his body language, can identify every freckle that dances across his shoulders when he walks into the sun, can buy him a year’s wardrobe in 15 minutes flat counting the time you spend writing the check and asking the store clerk how her kids are doing. You know better than to cook tuna casserole even if you like it, that a sure way to get him to talk to you is to start reading a book, that if you’re not feeling well, he’s most certainly feeling worse.
You’ve learned by now that there’s no possible way you can be in love every day. Sometimes, let’s come right out and say it, he’s just a jerk. Sometimes, since we’re not holding back, you’re a pain in the neck. On those days, you look at each other with glazed eyes and wonder which lawyer to call. Then you go to bed, mumble “I love you” with doubtful sincerity, and lie in the dark and mentally parcel out the furniture, the dishes, and the retirement accounts until sleep overtakes you.

There are days, indeed, when Peggy Lee’s voice echoes in your mind, Is that all there is? In the time when you had a flat stomach and naturally glowing skin and hair that was …well, a different color than it is now, this isn’t what you counted on, was it? Once you got the kids raised, you were going to travel, wear expensive clothes, dance the night away. You were going to have fun.

Okay, you say, if it’s that bad, why do you stay married?

Well, because, that’s why.

Because he can tell by the set of your chin if you’ve had a bad day, because he’ll bring home takeout food just when you’re positive you can’t cook one more meal in this lifetime, because he tells you he thinks you’re really cute and means it even if you’re not wearing any makeup and you haven’t sucked your stomach in.

He still takes the street side on sidewalks because that’s the way he was taught, tells your daughter she’s almost as pretty as you are, and never reminds you you’re getting more like your mother every day. He knows the words to the same songs you do and he doesn’t mind that you can’t carry a tune in a bushel basket. He doesn’t laugh when you can’t finish singing Puff, the Magic Dragon because you are in tears you can’t explain. He just tucks his arm around you and hands you a tissue and kisses the top of your head where the roots are starting to show a bit.

Well, fine, you say, but isn’t it boring?

Oh, I suppose, once in a while.

But a long marriage is like the sun. It’s there every day and night, sometimes hidden by dense and sulky cloud covers, sometimes blazing red and vital and exciting. During cold spaces in your life—and life offers a lot of those—marriage wraps itself around you and keeps you warm.
The other side of that is that long marriages are uncomfortable now and then, like when you and your spouse disagree on matters of fundamental importance, such as values, religion, politics, money, and thermostat settings. And you do disagree about these things even though you think you never will. This is when you look at him and think, Why am I still married to this person who is so wrong about everything?

Maybe because, when you get right down to it, the marriage isn’t boring, but a definition of fun you never imagined. And then there’s the irrefutable fact that when the world is out to get you, it has to go through him first. Or, trite as it sounds, perhaps it’s glued by those promises you made when he was just safely home from Vietnam and you were a size five, the ones about loving and cherishing and sickness and health...you know the ones I mean.

Or maybe because, like the sun, marriage is different most every day. Those differences are what have landscape painters and photographers lying in wait for sunrise and sunset. Some days they go inside in disappointment because the cloud cover hangs low and dismal over the show, but on other mornings and evenings they sit spellbound and work as fast as they can, holding onto the light for every precious second.

And there you go. There’s the answer to the questions, What’s it like, being married to the same person for over 30 years? How do you do it?

You just hold onto the light.

Happy Anniversary, Duane. You're the love of my life.

Ruth J. Hartman

2011-04-23T05:24:00.001-07:00

I'm interviewing author and fellow Hoosier Ruth J. Hartman on Word Wranglers today. Stop by and say hello! http://wordwranglers.blogspot.com/

Come see Holly Jacobs...

2011-04-16T04:07:00.000-07:00

Stop by Word Wranglers this weekend and catch my interview with the never-resting Holly Jacobs. http://wordwranglers.blogspot.com/

Thank you, military...

2011-04-11T03:22:00.000-07:00

This post was a Window Over the Sink newspaper column in November commemoration of Veterans' Day. I didn't post it here, I guess, because it's both localized and family-ized, but I am putting it here today because of how close government has come to shutting down lately. I don't know, or particularly give a damn, whose fault it was. I only know military enlistees are underpaid anyway and that there was real discussion about whether they would be paid at all.

That's just wrong.

John Thomas and Amos Ash were residents of Miami County, Indiana. They fought with the 20th Regiment of Indiana. They died at Gettysburg in 1863.

Uncle Mart was ten years older than Aunt Ethel. They were married forever, but they never had any children. That always seemed odd to me, but it really wasn’t. They adored each other and never needed anyone else; they were a complete family unit unto themselves. He was bald and funny and liked to fish. He served in the first World War. The Big One, some people said.

I don’t remember what his name was, but he and his parents were visiting my family when something happened and they had to return to their South Bend home at once because he had to catch the next train back to his duty station. The day was December 7, 1941, long before I was born, but I still remember the empty look on Mom’s face when she told the story.

Thadd was a baker in the navy during that war, the second of the World Wars. The one more people called The Big One. A couple of years after he came home, Thadd and Mary got married and they had five kids.

His name was Wayne. I was at his going-away party before he left for Vietnam. He was young and smart and eager to serve his country. There was a girl at the party who looked at him with soft eyes. We laughed a lot, had a good time, and wished him luck when we left. We were used to it, I suppose, to saying goodbye and hoping for the chance to say hello when they came back home, so we didn’t give it that much thought.

Wayne, though, and Mike and John, to name but a few, came home in flag-draped coffins. We watched the news, read the papers, wept. We remembered smooth-faced, laughing boys and mourned with the wives and girlfriends and mothers who would never feel the same again, with fathers silent and stoic in their grief. We acknowledged empty places and heard remembered laughter and voices echo through them.

I married the second of Thadd and Mary’s kids after he came home from Vietnam. Like the Korean Conflict, no one ever called it The Big War, but to the ones who served there, and the ones who waited at home, they were big enough. Long enough. Sad enough.

When Desert Storm happened, we watched and waited and feared and prayed. Same with Iraq. With Afghanistan. With all the other wars and conflicts and skirmishes where Americans have served.

A short time ago, the city of Logansport, Indiana welcomed Sgt. Kenneth K. McAnich home. The hearse drove slow and solemn through streets lined with flags and people, the Patriot Guard riding protective escort against those who might not be respectful. It’s symbolic, this ceremonial farewell we offer our fallen warriors. I’m sure it does little to fill the echoing empty places created by their deaths. But it’s all we can do.

My husband remembers how people looked at him in airports when he came home from Vietnam. How they sneered and then looked away. I saw the same thing in Indianapolis, when among the celebratory crowds coming home at Christmastime walked a lone soldier, carrying his duffel bag and staring straight ahead. Forty years later, those who served in Vietnam know it wasn’t them people hated; it was the war. But they still remember.

We all hate war. All of us. Thank goodness we’ve learned how to welcome home those who fight in them. We’ve learned to applaud them in airports and on planes, to buy their lunch once in a while if they’re behind us at the cashier’s station, to say thank you and mean it. That’s why November 11 is Veterans Day. It is not a day of celebration, although rejoicing in freedom is probably never wrong. It is instead a day of remembrance and honor to the men and women who have for 235 years and who continue to serve in the preservation of that freedom. Thank you to all of you. God bless you. God bless America.

Till next time.

Spend some time with Word Wranglers...

2011-04-03T15:38:00.000-07:00

Word Wranglers are friends who are reaching out this month. Forgive the strange formatting--I can't seem to make paragraphs! During April on http://www.wordwranglers.blogspot.com/ we're featuring published authors month! Come by each day and see who we showcased that day! Coming up, we have Piper Denna, Avril Ashton, Monica Burns, Larissa Ione, Tiffany Clare, Stacey Kennedy, Pepper O'Neal, Becky Zanetti, Mary Abshire, Desiree Holt, Aimee Carson and Shirley Jump, to name a few! We have already had one special guest--come see who!!! Love to see you there!

Because of Joe

2011-03-31T10:09:00.000-07:00

March is drawing to an end. It's been a different kind of month. Some good. Some not. I'm just posting here real fast to let you know Because of Joe has been re-released by Wild Rose Press in digital format. It's got a lovely new cover.

I'm working on things, easing my way into retirement. I'm enjoying it, but...like I said, different.

See you next time, with more to say. I promise!

Rest in peace, Ms. Taylor

2011-03-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

I didn’t like Elizabeth Taylor’s voice. I had no respect for her throw-away attitude about marriage. Even as a kid, reading “Photoplay” magazine when my mother wasn’t looking, I was both appalled and held on the cusp of disbelief by her excesses. Other than National Velvet and the original Father of the Bride, I don’t think I ever watched one of her movies all the way through.

But, Lord, she was gorgeous. No amount of surgical enhancement will ever be able to replicate those violet eyes. The big hair that went out of favor with everyone else years ago never looked out of place on her.

When she was married to Eddie Fisher, I read an article about her in one of the “big” magazines of the day. (They really were big, too; Life, Look, and Saturday Evening Post had enough content to last you all afternoon.) She was getting ready to go somewhere and her feet were in pain from an illness or a surgery—I think she had all of them at one time or other—but she slipped them into spike heels, saying, “First things first.”

I didn’t agree with her about the shoes—I’m very fond of comfort—but it was a lesson in priorities. Sometimes all the i’s can’t be dotted or the t’s crossed, but you still need to go ahead and do what you have to do.

Another quote from her came from a talk show she was on once—I think it was probably Oprah. In a Q & A session, an audience participant asked her a personal question. Ms. Taylor just smiled demurely and said, “A lady never tells.”

Although her adventures in marriages, both her own and other people’s, precluded me thinking of her as a lady—at least defined in any way I understood—I have come to appreciate her response. I wish more celebrities would use it.

On the day of her death, someone called her the “greatest movie star.” I agree with that. No one, including Ms. Taylor herself, thought she was the greatest actress. But she was always the star. Today’s performers show up on red carpets with gazillions of dollars worth of borrowed jewelry and clothing, revealing all kinds of body parts. One of them even dropped the f-bomb when she accepted an Oscar. There are, it seems, no limits to what they will do to gain attention. All Elizabeth Taylor had to do was show up.

In her later years, she became a philanthropist and—I can’t think of a better way to put this—a friend. She probably did more toward the funding of AIDS research than nearly anyone else. She left her four children, all of whom grew up under the umbrella of her scandal-riddled life, a legacy of generosity, love, and kindness.

I think maybe I was wrong. She was, after all, a lady. Rest in peace, Elizabeth Taylor.

Nothing new under the sun...

2011-03-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

I’m in a strange kind of mood today. It’s Sunday morning, the time I usually sit staring out the front window, picking at my cuticles, and wondering what I can possibly write about this week that I haven’t written about before.

Except it’s not the same time. It’s an hour later this week. At the rate I’m going, my hair will still be wet when I get to church and I might still be wearing this robe that’s seen better days. Judging by the eastern sky, which I get up and look at when I grow tired of the view out the front window, it might still be dark outside.

But I’ve written about Daylight Savings Time before. I hated it when I wrote about it. Still do.

I check the news online in the morning before I do much of anything else. The horror of earthquakes and tsunamis contributes to my melancholy mood. Is this something humankind has caused over the years, by messing with things that should maybe have been left alone? I don’t have a single scientific brain cell, nor do I have facts of any kind to back up that thought. But I still wonder, though I think I’ve written about that before.

I read the political section of the news and flinch at its content. I was a union member for most of the years of my working life. I wasn’t lazy, never got rich, never expected payment I had not earned. Neither did most of the people I knew. There are some, of course, who take advantage of whatever system is there, but it doesn’t have to do with them belonging to a union; it has to do with who they are.

I have kids and friends who are teachers and grandkids in the public school system. I spent Friday morning at the elementary school just up the road, cutting quilt blocks for students to decorate with Dr. Seuss characters. They listened, laughed, and learned. I enjoyed. Earlier in the year, I spent a day with high schoolers. Many of them did not want to be there, they weren’t interested in someone old enough to be their grandmother who wrote a newspaper column and romance novels. But they listened, sometimes they laughed, some of them learned. I enjoyed. In those two visits, I doubt I did one thing to help even a single student to ace his or her ISTEP scores, but I don’t think their days were wasted. I know mine weren’t.

There are problems, lots of them, in public schools, but should those problems be solved on the statehouse floor by people whose agendas have more to do with other things than with what actually goes on in most classrooms? Or should they be solved by people whose primary interest is in covering all the educational bases rather than just some of them?

But I have written about politics and education before.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 says there is nothing new under the sun. (Which did, two hours into my struggle with writing this, finally come up.) I imagine that’s true, and goodness knows, I don’t come up with much that’s new for this column. So maybe this week is just a reminder.

That if you dislike (or love, for that matter) Daylight Savings Time, you need to let the lawmakers know. They are there to represent their constituents, not their own personal interests; it’s up to you to tell them what you want.

That disasters are everywhere. They’re terrifying and large beyond what I can comprehend. Even though I’ve written about them before, I don’t want to do it again. If you pray, please do. If you give, please do that, too.

That politics and education are everywhere, too. The bad part is, politics have grown too important and education not important enough. We need to get our priorities straight once and for all. That way, even though I might write about politics and education again, I’d be able to write funny. Because it’s not funny right now. Not the least little bit.

And I guess I need to be reminded that not all days are happy ones and not all moods are good. That—Ecclesiastes again—there is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. Maybe this time of earthquakes and internal strife is our time to mourn. I hope we dance soon. And then I’ll write about it.

Retirement's learning curve

2011-03-08T07:13:00.000-08:00

I like learning, which is a good thing, because there’s a definite learning curve to being retired.

First thing you need to figure out, said my friend Cindy, is to say No. If the request is for something you don’t want to do, just don’t do it. This would be a whole lot easier, I’ve discovered, if I didn’t want to do everything at least once. So far, I haven’t had to say No because I haven’t wanted to. (Except for when another friend, Debby, suggested skydiving. I have a vein of cowardice that runs full width and very deep.)

Second thing on the short list of learning is to make a list. If you live in the country, as I do, and don’t intend to move inside city limits, as I don’t, you need to make a list of Things To Do before you go to town. Filling the car with gas takes too much of a retirement check to even think of driving 26 miles round trip for only one thing. Usually, when I get home, I will give my husband all the details of where I’ve been and what I’ve done. The other day, I just said, “I stopped at eight places!” and started to tell him what they were. Duane said that was good, but he didn’t particularly care to hear about all eight of them. I don’t know what his problem was.

Third, in addition to making a list, make sure you keep a calendar. (While you’re at it, remember where the calendar is.) I keep one in my purse and one on the laundry room wall. What is unfortunate is that sometimes the information on both calendars doesn’t jive and I end up needing to be two places at once. I managed this just fine when the kids were growing up (refer to an old column—I’ve told you about this way too often), but I’m not so good at it anymore.

Fourth, establish a routine. I only say this because I’m almost certain it’s a good idea. But I haven’t done it yet as I’ve discovered that not having a routine is really fun.

Fifth, be careful what you commit to. I told Duane that when I was retired, I would devote 15 minutes a day to housework. This is not a joke; it is an illustration of just how much I don’t like “domestic engineering.” At the risk of sounding like I’m bragging, I will say I have stuck to that. Some days, like the ones when I clean out a junk drawer, I’ve nearly doubled the 15 minutes. Other days, I kind of stretch out how long it takes to make the bed because I really don’t want to do anything else that has to do with…you know…housework. When I get the aforementioned routine established, I’m going to cut back to 10 minutes.

Sixth, when you wake up and it’s snowing, it’s perfectly all right to roll over and go back to sleep. Or get up and drink coffee and not feel guilty. Either one works. You can also do this when it’s not snowing.

Seventh, cooking is fun when you’re retired. So is looking up recipes and deciding maybe you’ll try them later. Or not.

Eighth, it’s amazing how much stuff you can consign to Goodwill or Salvation army in 15 minutes. And if you get the bag into the car to deliver before someone else gets home, he’ll never miss it. You can put it at the end of your list of errands you ran while you were saving gas, and he will have stopped listening before you get to, “I gave away the jeans you haven’t worn since 1977,” anyway.

Ninth, if your mind wanders and you can’t remember what you were going to say next, it’s okay to just…uh…

Till next time.

Word of the week: consistency...or maybe not

2011-03-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

The word for the day is “consistency.” I never realized, until I was pouring cereal this morning, how often consistency—or lack thereof—shows up.

I’m cheap. Oh, not that way—I’m way too old to even go there—but cheap in that I’d rather pay two bucks for a generic item than three for a name brand. Except for sometimes. Like when cheap cereal has a different consistency than the name brand. I may feel a little silly paying more to have something feel right on my tongue, but I still pay it.

I don’t consider myself a picky eater (though my mother always did), but I won’t eat mashed potatoes with lumps, large curd cottage cheese, or tapioca pudding made from the bigger size of ball bearings. And yes, I know they’re not real ball bearings; they’re pearls, but I always thought ball bearings sounded like more fun. Whichever term you use, it’s all in the consistency.

When I was raising kids, everything I read, heard, and figured out for myself had to do with consistency. Whatever you said the first time, you needed to stick to it. If the curfew was midnight, that’s what it meant every time; it didn’t mean eleven minutes after. No allowances were to be made for being caught by a train, running out of gas, or having too much fun and losing track of the time.

I’m learning to make quilts, which is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. The first lesson in making quilts is to sew with a consistent and precise quarter-inch seam allowance. I’m not there yet, by any means. My blocks tend to be a little crooked even though I’ve just about worn out my seam ripper.

Most of us want consistency in the work place. Preferential treatment leaves dissent and ill will in its wake; so does making a scapegoat out of someone.

Consistency in weather is something Hoosiers laugh at. Like promises in politics, legitimate gas prices, and no-calorie chocolate cake, it would be nice, but I’m just about positive it’s not going to happen.

Which leads me to think maybe consistency is overrated.

As in refusing to eat food because its lumps bother me is something that I would probably think was goofy if someone else said it. Aren’t you glad you didn’t?

As in, though I should have been a lot more consistent when the kids were growing up, that particular ship has already sailed. If I had it to do over again, I might do a better job. Then again, I might not. I really like the end product that was achieved without consistency.

I’ve made three queen-size quilts and lots of child-size ones. To date, no one has complained because my seams are crooked.

Even in the workplace, where we would all hope for equality, compassion has its place. Sometimes rules need to be bent or downright broken; sometimes one employee is more important than another; sometimes you just need to damn the torpedoes and do the right thing.

Which leads me to—my goodness, I’m doing way too much thinking for one short column—the truth of the matter. In all but the question of weather and possibly food, if we usually do the right thing, or try to, consistency will take care of itself.

Till next time.

Sad on Sunday...

2011-02-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

I’ve written enough columns over the years that it’s probably not a real surprise that I repeat myself occasionally, and I hope you don’t feel cheated by it. I update the content so it doesn’t look too much like a column with a Farah Fawcett hairdo, but I do apologize if you’ve read this before, didn’t like it then, and now you’re being annoyed twice.

I thought depression was something that happened to other people. Mothers who’d just had babies and were overwhelmed by the endless and huge responsibility of it all; middle-aged men who’d lost their jobs and didn’t know where to find new ones; people who’d suffered emotional losses of such magnitude I couldn’t begin to imagine how they felt. Being on the self-righteous side, I also thought you only really suffered from depression if you gave into it, if you didn’t outrun it with a healthy sense of humor, or if you just wanted people to feel sorry for you. Average people, people like me, didn’t get depressed.

A little over nine years ago, I stopped smoking. I knew I only had enough will power to get me through about 20 minutes without a cigarette, so I did it with medication. I didn’t care if I was a coward; it worked, and the side-effects of the medication were minimal. I’d always said that if I didn’t smoke, I’d gain 50 pounds--not a good thing if you’re short and small-boned, which I am--and I’d suck down antidepressants like they were candy. I was joking, okay?

Well.

I’m not going in to how much I weigh, but I did gain some in the year after I stopped smoking, and never lost it―food a great replacement for nicotine. But the other thing that happened in that year was that I found out depression really does strike average people. To borrow a term I heard often then, I hit the wall.

Since I’m one of those people who always have the symptoms described in articles about diseases (it’s amazing I’ve lived this long!), it was no surprise that I had several of the indicators of clinical depression. You know what they are. You’ve read them in the doctor’s office while you’re waiting or at Wal-Mart or Kroger’s while you’re taking your blood pressure. You’ve read them and thought, “Hmm...” because you had a couple of them. Sometimes. But then they went away, so you were okay.

But what happens when they don’t go away? What do you do when you were sad on Sunday afternoon and you’re still sad at bedtime on Thursday? When you’re so tired you can barely get through the day but you’re sleeping way too much? Or what about when you’re hardly sleeping at all? When nothing’s fun anymore? When you can’t see an end to feeling hopeless? When, even though you’d never consider suicide yourself―oh, of course, you wouldn’t―you understand people who do?

When I hit that wall, I was one of the lucky ones in that I never for one moment thought suicide was an answer. I was seldom sleepless, never slept too much, still had fun. Sometimes. But working an eight-hour day exhausted me to the point that I never really wanted to get off the couch after I got home. I looked around at my husband and kids and grandkids―yes, even them―and was bewildered because, Good Lord have mercy, how could I possibly be unhappy?

But I was. Oh, I was.

I didn’t really want to start smoking again, but I knew I’d be happier if I did. What was worse--to die of lung cancer or of depression? “I don’t know what to do,” I told my doctor. “Maybe I need to smoke again. Just some, not a lot.”

“No,” he said. “No. I know what to do.”

So he gave me a prescription and talked to me a long time about clinical depression. “You’ll be fine,” he promised. “Maybe six months, maybe longer. But you’ll be fine.”

I hated taking Zoloft. It was for weak people, people who gave in to being sorry for themselves, people who wanted others to feel sorry for them. I’d try it for a little while, but it wasn’t going to work, not on me, Mrs. Average.

But I would try it for six months. That should get me over the hump, and maybe I wouldn’t start smoking again. I could always blame the weight on it. You know, I couldn’t lose weight because I was “on medication.” No one had to know I was a spineless wuss who was taking antidepressants.

Six months became two years. Not that it took me that long to feel better―that’s how long it was before I got the courage up to stop taking the Zoloft. What if I feel that way again? I thought. I would surely die from it. But stopping was painless, and depression is only a distant memory. But it’s a memory that can make me miserable in a heartbeat, make me question myself if, just once, I happen to be sad on Sunday afternoon.

But I am all right, I remind myself, because by Thursday night at bedtime, I have forgotten the sadness. I feel good. No, better than good; I feel wonderful. I haven’t smoked for nine years and three months. And I will never, ever take any of it for granted again. It is a gift.

About Congress...

2011-02-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

I visited the U. S. Senate in 1965 on a trip to Washington, D. C. with a friend and her family, sitting my five minutes in the visitors’ gallery at the top. I was so enthralled by seeing Everett Dirksen and Ted Kennedy in person that the tour guide had to tell me twice to “come along.” Dirksen was talking in that gravelly voice of his. I have no idea what the discussion was about, only that everyone listened.

Tonight, I watched (and listened to—I’m patently unable to sit still for over two hours) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. This movie, with Jimmy Stewart and Harry Carey at their best and Jean Arthur at her most appealing, was released in 1939. On the off chance that you haven’t seen it, it’s about a naive scoutmaster who is appointed to fill a vacancy in the Senate. He runs smack-dab into political corruption, but he doesn't back down; instead, the movie climaxes in a filibuster on the Senate floor. Jefferson Smith, played by Stewart, talks for hours, losing his voice and coming to a black moment over a pile of letters on a table that clogs my throat up even after seeing it at least a dozen times.

I didn’t see the movie till long after my visit when I was 15, but I remember thinking something like that really could happen, because I’d been to that big room and seen for myself how people behaved there. I thought the mere presence of the place would cause corrupt politicians to slink away and—if we were lucky—shoot themselves as Claude Rains attempted to do in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I thought surely most of the senators in that place, and their ideological brethren in the House of Representatives, were like Jefferson Smith, there to represent the people in their districts in support of the country they loved.

Memory—the older you get, the more convenient it gets—convinces me I was right about that. It did really used to be that way. But it’s not anymore. Because now they seem to be there to cater to lobbyists, to rip each other to shreds, to try to push forward their own agendas while decrying everyone else’s in wounded and righteous rhetoric.

Make no mistake about me and my rose-tinted look into the past. I like having computers, that my wages were never gender-based, that medicine has made such huge strides in healing and quality of life, and many, many more things about today’s world. I’d be lost without cruise control, electric windows, and even television. But sometimes, in some ways, I’d like to go back.

To manners and respect and feeling safe. To dressing for comfort and average being fine and dandy and majority rules. For standing up, as Jefferson Smith did, just because it’s the right thing to do.

And I want congress to go back, too.

Till next time.

It was the best of times...

2011-02-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

Remember how A Tale of Two Cities started? “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” I’ve always thought living with teenagers is like that. Adolescents are so funny and smart and energetic. And awful. Let’s not forget awful. They can turn every sweet dream into a nightmare. And the other way around. No matter how badly a day begins, its ending can be made deliriously happy by a hug from a kid. And then, all of a sudden, they leave. I remember so well, all three times, when my kids went away to college. I thought—selfishly, I suppose—that whichever one was leaving had been part of my every day for 18 years and now my life was going to change irrevocably. (Their lives were changing, too, but that’s incidental. Remember selfish?) I was excited for both the kid leaving home and for Duane and me. And, just for me, sad. Gosh, yes, sad.

Fast forward…oh, a long time. I’m ending a job where I’ve spent over 30 years. I was one of the lucky ones who always liked most of what I did, who found ways around the parts of it I hated, who loved most of the people I worked with. There were long and boring days, when I thought it would surely kill me to work there until retirement, but the years were astoundingly short.

Near the tired ends of those longest days, customers would say, sometimes bitterly, “At least you have a job.” And they were right. It was one that provided a living wage and benefits that aren’t found that often anymore, too. All I had to do was work really hard and grit my teeth when customers were at their cantankerous worst. When my kids were in school, I had to master being in three places at one time. (It can be done. Ask any mom.) When I was so tired I didn’t think I could face driving to Logansport one more time, well, too bad. I could and I did. I made the mistake of saying, in boastful wonder, that I’d driven that 50-some mile round trip for 30 years and never hit a deer. It was only a few weeks later that Bambi’s father and I had a radical misunderstanding on State Road 25.

I am so grateful for all of those things. And for the ability and the desire to work hard, the fact that the wages and benefits were enough, the 90-some percent of customers who were nice to deal with, and the kids I got to be with in three places at once.

Like Mr. Dickens said, “…the best of times…”

So last Thursday, after two days of calling in and whining that I was snowed in, I worked my last day at the aforementioned job. I took in my uniform shirts to give away. I accepted congratulations and hugged people all day long, laughing a lot and sniffling some and thinking, I’ll never do this again, every time I performed a task. I posed for pictures and said, yes, I was very excited. And sad. Gosh, yes, sad. When the day was over, I stood at the time clock for the Lord knows how many-eth time and just looked at it, thinking once more, I’ll never do this again.

“…the worst of times…”

I’m writing this from the snowy side of a mountain in Vermont. (That was redundant; everything in Vermont is snowy.) I’m using one son’s computer while yet another walks around with a blue-eyed nephew held high in his arms. Family members have skied and snowboarded. We’ve gone to a concert and eaten way too much. I talked to my daughter and found out that the grandson who was sick is feeling better, that she’s fed the cats in my absence, and that it’s snowed more in Indiana, too.

It’s Sunday night and I’m not thinking about going to work tomorrow or the next day or the next. I’m pretty sure the ache of missing it will dissipate soon and I, who love routine, will establish a new one for myself. I’ll write more, sew more, maybe even find the bottom of the pile of clutter on the kitchen island. I’ll walk and ride the Trail and spend time with people I haven’t seen nearly enough of in recent years. It will be, as in retrospect they all have been, the best of times.

National Wear Red Day...

2011-02-01T17:08:00.000-08:00

This Friday is National Wear Red day in the United States. While I know every day, week, and month seem to have one special connotation or another, Wear Red is one that matters to all of us. It’s about heart disease in women and the odds are pretty good that you are or will be one, or you love at least one.

It was thought for longer than any of us wants to acknowledge that heart disease was an ailment confined to men. Only in recent years has it come to light that it is the Number One killer of women. Like many of you, I’ve read and heard more statistics than I can possibly absorb, so I’ll apologize for the repetition, but here are some things you need to know.

• As women grow older, their risk of heart disease and stroke begins to rise and keeps rising with age.

• If you have a family history of heart disease, this increases your risk. So does being African-American. Women who've had a heart attack are at higher risk of having a second heart attack.

• Smoking is a major cause of cardiovascular heart disease among women.

• High blood cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease.

• High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart attack.

• Physical inactivity is not your friend. The American Heart Association recommends accumulating at least 30 minutes of physical activity on most or all days of the week.

• If you have too much fat — especially if a lot of it is located in your waist area — you're at higher risk for health problems, including high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, high triglycerides, diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

• Adults with diabetes have have heart disease death rates that are two to four times those of adults without diabetes.
These statistics are from the American Heart Association, and they’re not kidding, not the least little bit. Unfortunately, they are dead serious. We need to pay attention, because we all have things to do. Projects to finish. Jokes to tell and tears to shed. I know that no matter how we do or don’t take care of ourselves, life’s time clock isn’t ours to punch. That said, I think we should do all we can to keep from clocking out early.

While writing this, I thought about the women I care about. My mother-in-law, granddaughters, sister and sisters-in-law, nieces and friends. And my girls. Especially my girls. My three daughters by birth and in-law, mothers and wives and professional women who pack 30 hours into 24-hour days and eight days into seven-day weeks. I love them, and I am so very proud of them, too, but I worry about them doing too much, trying to be everything to everyone. So it is for them I will wear red this Friday. I hope you join me.

Till next time.

About service...

2011-01-25T17:31:00.000-08:00

Because I have not yet said anything Pollyanna-ish in this column—yes, I know this is only the first sentence, but I’m having a time getting started—I will say this: I really kind of like all this snow. No, I am not sick, although I have been this week, but you don’t want to hear about that. I’m getting better. But I’m looking out the front window as I write this, at the field across the road where the deer pose for us on nearly a daily basis. Male cardinals come to rest on dark logs and bare tree branches and stand out in bright and beautiful relief against the snow.

Last Sunday morning, the entire field—and everything else—wore a sparkling coat of ice. I know it’s something that happens every winter, and every winter I’m amazed by it. A few weeks ago, I wrote about finding color in winter. I didn’t realized that white gives us that color just because it’s such a splendid backdrop.

Common sense tells me this column would be more interesting if I had something to complain about, but the truth is, by the time I have a viable gripe, it’s usually already been covered by another columnist or someone writing a letter to the editor.

So I’ve been thinking about service. Please don’t ask me to explain this. It’s said that the mind is a terrible thing to waste, so I don’t waste it. However, it often doesn’t work in a straight line.

Sargent Shriver died recently at the age of 95. He had a life of wealth and privilege, was a part of the Kennedy family, and a partner in a law firm. He was also the first director of the Peace Corps and supported myriad social services and programs, Special Olympics (founded by his wife, Eunice Shriver), Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, Upward Bound, and Foster Grandparents.

Everything I’ve heard and read about him leads me to believe he was a hands-on person. He did more than attend meetings and smile for the camera. He showed up. He volunteered.

There is, I will admit, a downside to volunteering. There are many volunteer positions that would be paid ones if it were not for greed. I’m sorry for that. If I knew a way to fix it other than all volunteers staying home, I would suggest it, but I don’t.

The upside is a whole lot bigger. For the volunteer him- or herself, there are the unequalled perks of feeling good about what you’re doing and of being well enough to be of help to someone else. I know a lady who volunteers tirelessly at a nursing home. The fact that she’s older than many of the residents doesn’t slow her down one iota.

Then there are the receivers. The ones who benefit from the time, goods, and talents donated. While I know there are those who live their lives with their hands held out, there are more who pay it forward, who do for others because it was done for them when they had need.

We encounter volunteers much more often than we know. They are the ones who keep the wheels turning and the music flowing and the laughter louder than the complaints. They are the cardinals showing bright against the snow, the crystals of ice sparkling in the sun. They’re the ones who always show up.

Just like Pollyanna, I’m glad they’re there and I thank them.

Till next time.

Second guessing...

2011-01-18T10:56:00.000-08:00

Ronald Reagan was never my hero. He still isn’t. But today I read that one of his sons is saying (in a book, of course, that I’ll just bet the junior Reagan got a hefty advance on) that he was showing signs of Alzheimer’s as early as the third year of his first term as president. I have not read the book, nor do I intend to, but I did read an excerpt from it.

Now, I have absolutely no medical training, nor do I even have caregiver expertise in Alzheimer’s, but in the excerpt I read, the president didn’t sound as though the disease was there and making quick progress; he merely sounded…well, old. Which he was. And he did more to make us realize that being old wasn’t a bad thing than nearly anyone I can think of, for which I thank him, but now there is the question. Was he just old, or was he running the country while he had Alzheimer’s?

Abraham Lincoln, who was always my hero and still is, has been much more closely examined all these many years after his death than he was in life, and it has been decided he suffered from depression. Well. He lost the first woman he loved and went on to outlive two of his four children. He was president during the war in which the country under his charge tore itself completely asunder. What did he possibly have to be depressed about? Plenty, it seems to me, but was it just depression from life’s slings and arrows or was it deeper and darker than that?

Second-guessing seems to be a pastime we’ve become particularly fond of. Ever since the shooting in Arizona, I’ve been reading about how no one tried to step in with Jared Loughner. Neighbors are coming out of the woodwork to tell what a strange home life he had, though they didn’t seem to have said anything about it before the shooting. Did his parents actually raise him with the goal and realization that he was a madman? I just don’t quite believe that.

Remembering that we do still have a First Amendment and that we are intent on stretching its parameters just as far as they will go, exactly what should someone have done that would have prevented what happened? Who really, truly knew he was going to wake up on a January day in 2011 and wreak havoc and indescribable pain at a grocery store in Arizona? When someone writes a book about the shooting in 100 years, how will it play out? Who will be the bad guys? Sarah Palin with her crosshairs? President Obama? The talk radio voices with their one-wing-or-the-other rhetoric?

Looking back over this, I see a lot of question marks. I’m sorry for that. It’s not good writing, especially since I have only questions and no answers—I count on people much smarter than I am to supply those. But I’m also sorry that those questions will be answered in the future by people who weren’t around at the time, who didn’t see the blood or bury their child or even feel sick as they watched the news. The questions will be answered by second-guessers, and I can’t help but wonder how accurate they will be.

Till next time.

About criticism...

2011-01-12T04:17:00.000-08:00

Criticism is just a really bad way of making a request.

No, I didn’t say it, but I wish I had. Diane Sawyer quoted it from someone she’d interviewed, then pointed a pistol finger at the side of her head and said, “Genius.” She was right.

For the nearly 40 years I’ve been married, I have hated television. Not because I think all TV is bad, but because in our house, it’s on every waking moment of the day. When the house was full of kids and noise, the TV was the loudest noise of all, because not only was it on, people were watching it. From my point of view, which is admittedly only half the equation now and was much less then, nothing that was said on TV was as important as anything that was said between us. This argument has been shot down for 40 years. I have complained about the one-eyed-monster that lives in three rooms of our house and criticized its watchers for…well, you know how long by now.

I, on the other hand, want to read the news. And everything else. I read the newspaper daily, but get most of my news from the Internet. I am annoyed when I want to read a news story and end up instead with a video. If I wanted video, I would watch TV. (Just another argument I’m losing.)

I also like to read for entertainment,not watch TV. Until Duane bought me a Kindle, my books and magazines cluttered every flat surface in the house as well as the bookcases, my car, and several boxes in the attic. Not being particularly neat in any event, this clutter has never bothered me. It has, on the other hand, driven Duane crazy for, yes, 40 years. Before he gave up—as I did with TV—he was critical of my clutter and of the fact that I have to read things to get them; I can’t always absorb what I’m being told.

We have come to an easiness with the passage of time. He turns the TV down, though never off, and tries to listen to me even if what I’m saying lacks importance. I buy my books electronically and try to keep the magazines in semi-neat stacks, though I fail way too often. Because we like each other a lot, we’ve also learned to make some allowances for the other person’s quirks.

I can’t help but wonder if we’d have learned much faster if we’d just asked more often instead of criticizing.

We had elections in November, with all the newly elected people being critical of their predecessors and promising big changes and promising to keep their promises. Within two weeks of swearing in, we’ve seen broken promises and heard constant disparagement of how the new folks are doing the jobs they haven’t even learned how to do yet. The criticisms from both sides of the ideological table are vitriolic and downright mean. Fact-checking is tossed aside in favor of having the loudest voice.

Over the weekend, an Arizona congresswoman was shot. During the same siege, six people died, including a nine-year-old. Before the blood was washed from the scene, before anyone knew if Gabrielle Giffords would live or die, blame, accusations, and criticism were being bandied about like stray bullets.

None of those things do either Ms. Giffords or the rest of us any good. Until we learn to respect each other and each other’s points of view on everything from religion and politics to butter versus margarine, we will neither grow nor grow up. It is not necessary that we agree, nor that we all like each other, though I admit it’s easier when we do.

I said—over and over—that I wasn’t doing New Year’s resolutions because goodness knows history shows I never keep them, but this is one I think I’ll work on. Instead of criticizing, I’m going to try requesting when I want something to be different, and maybe I’ll take a long look in the mirror while I’m at it.

Till next time.

New Day, New Year

2011-01-04T12:36:00.000-08:00

I love mornings. Despite my earlier complaints about time changes—and, believe me, I’m still complaining about them—my favorite time of day is the silent hour before the sun wakes up and the 15-minute masterpiece in the sky when it does. When it is warm enough to sit on the porch with coffee, I can almost hear the colors settling in, deciding whether to go with purple this morning or stick with the red that always makes us do the “ahhh” thing. Then there are mornings like this one, when all is in shades of gray. When it’s way too cold for coffee on the porch because the only sound you hear is the falling of the wind chill factor.

Unfortunately, and maybe wrongly, these shades of gray are how I often think of winter once Christmas has passed. Sunny periods are short and often bitterly cold. The wind will steal your breath without so much as a “sorry” as it rushes past. Days are short, nights long and dark. Even the most hopeful among us often despair that spring and brightness and warmth will ever come again, even though we know it always does.

It’s the New Year, time to get used to writing 2011 and figuring out how to say it. Do you say “twenty-eleven” or “two-thousand-eleven” or just “eleven”? Do you still stumble over the term “21st century” even though we’re well into it? More than any time since the long nightmare of the year of 9/11, I’ve heard people sighing with relief at the last turn of the calendar. Whether for emotional, financial, or other reasons, the people I know are hoping for better times in 2011.

I’ve been one of the lucky ones. Our seventh grandchild was born this year, the job I’ve worked and liked for 30 years is winding down and I still have my natural hair color. Yes, really I do. It’s my choice to cover it up. The holidays were spent with family and friends and I only gained five pounds or so, bringing the year’s total to…never mind that.

Even so, though I liked 2010, I’m always ready for New Year’s. It’s like the morning of the day, when you have time for your own thoughts, your own dreams, when you believe everything’s possible.

It is.

But if the New Year dawns gray like this morning’s sky, it’s up to you to find the color and hear it settle in. If you think, as the paragraph above admits I too often do, that all of winter is cold and gray and bitter, that’s exactly the way it’s going to be. However—I always have a however; it’s one of my favorite words—if you remember that the days are getting longer now and the nights shorter, if you convince yourself that spring is just around the corner, being blown in by the breath-stealing cold, you’ll start to see streaks of red and orange and purple in the gray. And your New Year will be like morning. Make it a great one.
Till next time.

The joys of the empty nest...

2010-12-28T17:38:00.000-08:00

I hope you’re enjoying the holidays and that you don’t mind if I serve up a rerun I wrote a while back. I thought it was preferable to writing about New Year’s resolutions I don’t have a prayer of keeping.

There are just the two of us living at home now. All the kids are married and have homes and lawnmowers and telephone bills of their own. They have children, cats and dogs, and cars they have to pay their own insurance on. Sometimes our house sounds too quiet and feels too empty. I can no longer hear even the distant echoes of someone yelling, “Make him stop looking at me,” or “Make her come out of the bathroom. She’s been in there for two years.” Like my mother-in-law before me, I need a family fix when the silence and the emptiness begins to bother me.

Mom was always so glad to see us when we went to visit her in Southern Indiana, encouraged us to come more often, and cried a little when we left. Not a lot; it was more like she just held a Kleenex in one hand and her eyes got shiny.

I used to look in the back seat to make sure we hadn’t managed to leave any children behind, then turn to my husband and say, “We’ve got to get down here more often. She misses you and the kids so much.”

He would then say something profound like “uh-huh” or “you’re right” and we would head north. Now, the fact that he admitted I was right should tell you something. In those earlier days of marriage, admitting the other one was right just wasn’t done unless it was a matter of Grave Importance. Nowadays, we say “yeah, you’re right” real quick because we know it’ll stop the argument before it starts and very few things are Gravely Important enough to argue about.

Since he did agree to the Importance of visiting his mother, we would always make plans to visit more often. I hoped the fact that we had these good intentions made her miss us less, because, of course, the plans didn’t materialize. When you are 30-something and have three children who participate in 27 organized sports apiece in addition to the homework they don’t do until it’s three days late, plans have a way of falling apart right before your eyes.

But we made it there a couple of times a year anyway. We slept all over her house, ate everything in sight (she’s a spectacular cook), monopolized the television, and promised to visit more often. Then we’d leave for home again, with Mom standing at the door waving her Kleenex.

Twelve or so years ago, for the occasion of their brother’s wedding, our older children and their families were at our house. We had such a good time. Since I’m not the cook my mother-in-law is, I sent people to town periodically for chicken or pizza. They slept all over the house — I had to lay grandchildren sideways across the sofa bed in order to use the computer. No one monopolized the television only because one of the grandkids hid the remote and no one knows how to change the channels if you have to get out of the chair to do it. I shopped with my daughter and daughter-in-law, played Scrabble with my sons and son-in-law, and waved to my husband in passing. I tried to act like I wasn’t giving advice when I was, like I wasn’t tired when my eyelids were at half-mast, and like it didn’t bother me that my son and brand new daughter-in-law were moving 1000 miles away when it did.
It was, all in all, a splendid weekend.

When the last car drove out of the lane, I stood in the yard and waved. I probably had a tissue in my hand — or a paper towel; I can never find the Kleenex when I want one — and my eyes were undoubtedly shiny. Then I went into the house and sat on the love seat and listened to the silence. My husband sat in the chair, his hand curved around his rescued remote control.

We looked at each other, smiling, in our blissfully quiet and empty house. I said, “As glad as I am to see them come, I’m just as glad when they leave.” It made me wonder just what kind of a mother and grandmother I was. I not only fed them carry-out, now I wanted them to go home.

Before I could make guilt into a family pet, my husband picked up the phone and punched in Memory Dial One. “Mom? All those years ago, when we’d leave and you’d stand there with your hankie, you weren’t really crying, were you?” He listened a minute, then said, “That’s what we thought.”

He hung up and looked over at me again. “She was crying, all right, but it was with relief.”

All heroes don't wear uniforms...

2010-12-21T17:36:00.000-08:00

Have you finished shopping? Have you started cooking? Are you enjoying this most sacred and beloved of holiday seasons? Are you feeling really tired but really happy? I hope so.

I was sitting in the chair at Hairtique while Denee did something about my roots this morning when I heard someone in the background mention carrying grudges. I frowned into the mirror—and a frowning woman with a headful of aluminum foil is not a pretty sight, believe me. This is Christmas, I thought. We do not need to talk about grudges.

Then I thought about gifts. (Aluminum foil on your head intensifies the thinking process. At least, that’s the story I’m sticking to.) I love giving gifts, like receiving them, enjoy coming on something old and cherished and giving it to someone who will love it as I have. I am oh-so-fortunate that I don’t really need anything, nor do I even want much. Exept, like Gracie Hart in Miss Congeniality, I really do want world peace, which brings me to grudges.

What better gift to both the giver and the receiver than tossing off a grudge borne too long for whatever reason? It’s free, it’s loving, and it’s huge. Unlike many of the things we wrap, it will be remembered forever. Just when the receiver thinks she’s forgotten it, it’ll turn up at a time and place when she needs it most.

And while we’re at it, what better gift to anyone on your list than the one of time, watching “Jeopardy” with your grandmother when you need to be doing something else; reading Green Eggs and Ham for the 100th time when the supper dishes are still languishing on the table; shoveling the snow from your neighbor’s path? What better gift than sharing a sustained, gasping laugh over a cup of something warm and comforting? What better gift than listening in silence to someone who needs to talk? What better gift than saying, “No, you don’t look fat,” simply because the person needs to hear it?

In the post office where I work, hundreds of parcels addressed to “any soldier” have crossed the counter this holiday season. Some are sent by parents and spouses whose own particular soldiers have requested care packages for friends who don’t receive them, some by veterans, some by people who just want to do something. The senders have spent countless hours assembling the boxes, then stood in line cheerfully, filled out Customs forms, and paid $12.50 a pop to make the day of someone they don’t even know. It seems all heroes don’t wear uniforms.

But all heroes give. Whether it be forgiveness, time, laughter, empathy, money or most difficult and most importantly, of themselves. Giving, from the very first Christmas with the birth of a child who grew up to give all, to now when so many have forgotten or no longer believe, is a primary “reason for the season.”

With that, I wish you the merriest and safest of Christmases. I hope you have family time and more food than you need. I hope you get whatever gifts your heart is crying out for. And I hope you give.

Till next time.

2010-12-14T04:13:00.000-08:00

It is December, the time of retail dreams. Or nightmares. It can go either way. Although my job is not precisely retail, I do spend many hours each day working with the public. December’s our busiest time, and I come home at night with both my feet and my smiler worn out. On the way home today, when I was congratulating myself for not screaming, “HURRY UP!” to a customer who wouldn’t move, I thought a behavior list would be a good idea. You know, from the point of view of the person behind the counter who has sore feet and a smile that’s fraying around the edges.
Then I thought—it’s a long drive home; lots of time for thinking—I should also make a list for folks on the other side of the counter. I was a consumer before I was a public servant. Sitting here hungry and half asleep, I’ve tried to decide which list to start with. In the interest of being fair, I flipped a coin.
The person behind the counter won the toss—winning depending on how you look at it. Therefore, if you are the clerk/cashier/whoever-else-is-serving the public, here are a few basic rules.
• Say please and thank you and smile. While you’re meeting the customer’s eyes. If you look over his right shoulder, all bets are off.
• Stay off the phone unless being on it is your job.
• If the bill ends is $5.23 and the customer gives you $20.25, know how to count the change back. Don’t wad it up and put it in her hand.
• If someone jumps the line and you catch him, tell him kindly he’ll have to take his turn. You can grind your teeth, but smile while you’re doing it.
• If your friends stop by to visit, tell them to go home.
• If you’re bored, don’t look it. Stay busy.
• If you don’t know the answer to a question, find someone who does.
• Use lots of hand sanitizer.
• If you haven’t had a complete 10-minute break since the second week of August, well, sorry. That’s just the way it goes. It’s not the fault of the customer in front of you.
• If a customer gives you a hard time, call him names in your head and hope he walks out in the rain to a flat tire, but don’t take it out on the next customer. He’s innocent.
• If you’re required by management so far up the corporate ladder they have nosebleed to ask stupid questions of the clientele, just ask them. You can’t get out of it and everybody knows you didn’t make them up.
• Don’t make fun of anybody in front of a customer. Even if you’re funny, chances are good someone will hear you who’s either hurt or offended by your attempt at humor.
And now, if you are a customer, here’s a list for you.
• Leave your cell phone in the car.
• If you’re writing a check, have it made out as far as the amount. Don’t fill out your check register while people behind you are waiting.
• Leave your cell phone in the car.
• If you have a complaint, be civil about it. Ask to speak to a manager. Chances are good the person waiting on you can’t help you, but they can help the people behind you.
• If you think you know their job, forget it. Unless you’re doing it on that particular day in that particular place, you don’t.
• Leave your cell phone in the car.
• Don’t hand over a fifty to pay for a candy bar. The cashier’s change is limited.
• If you can’t speak English, bring along someone who can. The person behind the counter can’t help you if she can’t understand you, and being multilingual isn’t on most people’s job descriptions.
• Don’t complain about the prices. The person taking your money doesn’t set them.
• The service person is not your babysitter. Don’t expect them to do everything for you.
• If you need to blow your nose, do so. Bum a tissue if you need to.
• Leave your cell phone in the car.
I’m sure I’ve left things off these lists, but they’re a good place for all of us to start. I hope you have a good week, whether you’re shopping or selling or both. Till next time.

Well loved is better...

2010-11-30T16:10:00.000-08:00

I’m not a collector. I’m also not a saver-of-new-things. About the only thing I collect or save up is dust, and I’m told that’s not in demand on the resale market. While I enjoy other people’s collections, I don’t want any of my own. (In a disclaiming aside here, I will admit to having more fabric than I’ll ever get sewn and two more laptops than I actually need, but I’m not collecting them. Exactly.)

To try put my shattered focus into semi-one-place, let me try this again. I don’t save things for “good.” I don’t have Sunday dishes or company towels or candles that have never been lit. The quilts I have from previous generations are on beds, not put away to be passed on. I’ve learned not to maintain a three-size wardrobe, because even if I lose enough weight to wear the smallest size, I don’t like the clothes anymore.

My grandkids’ drawings are not kept neatly in scrapbooks for them to have and laugh over when they are grown; they hang on the refrigerator until the paper is yellow and curled and has footprints on it from hitting the floor too many times. Sometimes they hang there even longer. My first granddaughter’s drawing of a lion is held in place by a business card magnet. Mari was probably five when she drew the lion and she’s now in her third year at Ball State. I might take it down if she drew me another, but then again I might not. I like it where it is, the way it is.

The drawing would probably look much better if it had been kept clean and flat for fifteen years, but I would not have enjoyed it every day. I wouldn’t have taken a fresh mental snapshot of our own little red-haired girl each time I looked at it. I wouldn’t remember the day of her birth so often.

A few years ago, my daughter-in-law Tahne gave us a set of Christmas dishes. My first thought was to use them just during the holidays, and then only when we had a sit-down meal. This way they would not get broken and sometime in the future, the aforementioned granddaughter would inherit them and look at her mother and say, “What am I supposed to do with these? I don’t think Grandma’s washed them since 2005.”

Instead, we use the dishes all the way through the holidays and whenever else we feel like it. That none of them are broken yet is both miraculous and maybe a clue that they are meant to be used and enjoyed whenever the mood strikes, not just at Christmas.

Christmas, by the way, is the reason I’m writing this. I know I’m not saying anything original here. I’m pretty sure there are Lifetime movies based on this very premise. But we’ll get and give gifts at Christmas, which is going to be here in about fifteen minutes, as quickly as time’s going these days. Some of those gifts will be complete failures, some will be okay, some will be fun, and some will be keepers. Ones you put up to use at the perfect time and the perfect place.

I hope you don’t—keep them and put them up, I mean. Use them. Wear them out. My other daughter-in-law, Laura, made me a quilt as a reward for quitting smoking nine years ago. It’s queen-size, beautiful, and never gets too far from my bed, but I told my son I thought maybe I should put it away so it wouldn’t be worn out when it came time for Laura’s and his son to inherit it. He said he thought something well loved might be a better gift than something well preserved. I didn’t put it away.

Collecting isn’t bad, by any means, but I’m kind of glad I don’t. I’d rather wear the things in my life out by enjoying them. I don’t want the gifts I give or the ones I receive to be keepers. I’d rather they were things remembered than things passed on to the next generation in good shape.

As another side note (remember my little problem with focus), remember what my son said about well loved being better than well preserved? I think that goes for people, too. Even though I’d like to be a whole lot better preserved than what I am, well loved is better. I wish it for all of you. Till next time.

Happy Thanksgiving...

2010-11-24T16:23:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday that kind of gets lost in the hoopla that is pre-Christmas. We enjoy the day, the food, and the football, but then it’s on to Black Friday and the 20-some shopping days till Christmas. I am not, you understand, really complaining about this. The truth is that I like it. The other truth is that I miss the way Thanksgiving used to be. This is one of the ways I know I’m getting old, and that’s okay with me. I like old.

We used to go to my aunt’s house in Goshen, Indiana on Thanksgiving. I thought Aunt Nellie was rich because she had a whole second kitchen in her basement, complete with comfortable furniture and a wind-up Victrola with a whole stack of thick records. In the afternoon, after we’d eaten dinner, the men would sneak upstairs and smoke and watch television while the rest of us stayed in the basement with board games and old records until it was time to eat again. I don’t remember anything that was said, or even a lot of the people who were there, but I remember laughter flowing like music through the big basement, filling the concrete-walled expanse with warmth and comfort.

“What are you grateful for this year?” was always asked right before we started eating. We only had turkey once or twice a year and I’d have preferred my enjoyment of it not be interrupted, but the grownups didn’t really buy into that.

“Try this,” Mom would say as I filled my plate, forking a slice of the cranberry stuff that slides out of the can whole. “It’s good.”

“No, it’s not,” I’d say. And I wouldn’t have to try it. Ever. I could eat what I wanted.

No one went shopping on Thanksgiving afternoon because the stores were closed; if you ran out of something, you did without. If there was football on TV, I don’t remember it, because after watching Macy’s parade, I was off to the basement and the Victrola. And the food.

The food probably wasn’t all that healthy by today’s standards, but that was never mentioned. We just ate and at the end of the day, we took containers of leftovers home with us. As the youngest, I always sat in the middle of the back seat, where I would promptly fall asleep and tip over on the brothers who had the window seats. If they pushed me back and forth, I slept through it.

In retrospect—the older you get, the more retrospect there is floating around—I’m grateful for the warmth, the comfort, the laughter that still slips along my nerve endings as I remember Thanksgivings past. I’m grateful for memories of tinny music and tables groaningly full of succulent food. I’m thankful for the memory of Aunt Nellie, who served as the unwitting model for the heroine in Home to Singing Trees. She buried two men she loved and still continued to live every minute as though it were a precious gift.

Which all of our minutes are, and maybe that’s where our gratitude should begin.

Aunt Nellie wasn’t rich. Her house—and its most excellent basement—were small by today’s standards. But the moments spent and the memories generated there are the stuff of Hallmark commercials.

Thanksgivings in my family aren’t like they were then. There are too many of us, for one thing. For another, the demands of life, jobs, and school often make a full day of celebration an unreasonable expectation. For yet another, I don’t believe anything was as good in real time as it is in memory, which is yet another gift.

But I’ll be cooking this Thanksgiving, for whoever shows up. I’m taking two hours off work on Wednesday because there isn’t time to do it all on Thursday. That extra time has become a tradition all its own: making sure there are dollars in my pockets for the Salvation Army buckets when I do a last run-through at the grocery store, buying turkey bags because I’m not positive I have any—I always do, several boxes at the back of the cupboard. At home, I’ll make pies and brownies and not cook supper.

On Thursday, we’ll have turkey, mashed potatoes with tons of real butter and not a drop of two percent milk, and dressing I may or may not make from the box. No can of cranberry sauce will cross the threshold, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I asked my grandkids what they’re grateful for.

As often happens, I have reached the end of what I'm writing only to discover the beginning is wrong. Normally this means I mutter a lot, delete the first two paragraphs and with gusting sighs, start over again. Not this time.

All I was really wrong about was when I said I missed the way Thanksgivings used to be. I don’t. I am oh-so-grateful for the minutes and the memories those days were. But I’m just as thankful for all the blessed minutes we have now, and the memories that are made in those joyous pieces of time when laughter flows like music.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. Till next time.

Saturdays...

2010-10-27T03:44:00.000-07:00

Saturday has always been my favorite day of the week. Still is. But I've enjoyed recent weekdays off, sleeping late (if 6:00 AM qualifies as late) then writing for hours on end instead of the minutes I allot before work. Doing laundry at leisure, ignoring dust just as I do on every other day.

I do things on these days off that I haven't done for years. I bake more, cook more, make things from scratch just to see if I can. Or should. I let my hair air-dry, don’t wear makeup, and don’t get dressed until I can no longer avoid going out into the world. I iron pillowcases and handkerchiefs. I sit and read when I should be doing other things, then do other things…oh, when I get to them. Or if. There wasn't time when I was younger and fuller of energy and much, much thinner and Saturday was always the best day.

Buying groceries—or anything else, if you actually make the commitment to going shopping when it’s not even Christmastime—is a breeze on a weekday. Aisles are less crowded and more stocked. Admittedly, there aren’t as many friends and acquaintances to stop and talk to and make plans to have lunch with “someday,” but there are compensations for that; you can be in and out of the supermarket and on the have-a-nice-day side of the drive-through at Dairy Queen in a heartbeat. You say you didn’t know about being rewarded for grocery shopping? Why else would drive-throughs be open when it’s not mealtime?

One of the nicest things about weekday-offness (yes, I know that’s not really a word, but it should be) is that people seem to have more time. They are not looking at their watches to see when the next appointment is and wondering if they can possibly fit in one more thing before they have to be there. You can get to places while they’re truly open, instead of dashing in at 5:01 and saying, “Oh, are you closing?” Duh. No, they were locking the door because they didn’t have anything better to do.

You can actually return phone calls during “regular business hours”—you know, the hours you’re normally working and can’t call people? (This is assuming you are important enough to get to talk to real people when you make phone calls. Unless I’m calling my immediate family, I don’t usually rate that high, and I think some of the family’s getting iffy.)

There is a quietness to Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday that is lacking on Saturday. Oops, I have to back up on that one. Tuesday is, in many establishments, Senior Citizen Discount Day. If this occurs at the time of month when many seniors get their retirement checks, you’re a whole lot better off staying home. Anyone who thinks younger people are the only ones without manners has obviously not been run over by a senior citizen on a mission. Although I realize many retired persons need walkers or scooters, I’m convinced some of them just take them along as weapons. The difference is they almost always apologize after they flatten you on the sidewalk.

So, let me start that thought again. Wednesdays and Thursdays are quiet. They’re good days to tie up a table too long at lunch, to linger in fabric shops or bookstores, to meander through crisp autumn leaves and reflect on how blessed you are.

Sometimes, I don't mind being older and heavier and not quite so energetic. And I love laundry and the smell of clothes as the iron slips over them. And the sounds of leaves and the birds chattering their way through them. Sometimes any day's a Saturday.

I hope you have many of them.

Till next time.

Hey, Mom...

2010-10-14T03:27:00.000-07:00

My mother died in September of 1982. She raised five children to adulthood and buried a little girl at three, something she never got over. It took having children of my own to realize that no one ever does. She was a good housekeeper, made the best cookies and homemade bread imaginable, and had a way with potato soup. Although she worked at the instrument factory in Elkhart until she married Dad, she didn’t work outside the home again until we were grown and gone, and then she was in demand as a caregiver.
Ours was not the kind of mother-daughter relationship you normally read about. We disappointed each other often. We argued a lot. I never seemed to please her, so after while, I stopped trying. I was in the midst of being a wife and a mother and working a job and in the process of doing that, I was a terrible daughter. Even all these many years later, it’s hard to type that. Hard to admit it.
It wasn’t that we never had peace. We did. We laughed together sometimes. When she was ill, I took her for treatments once in a while, though not often enough, and stopped for lunch at places she liked. The last words I ever said to her that I was sure she heard were that I loved her and would see her later. She said, “Don’t go. It’s going to be so long,” and those words haunt me still. Because even though she asked me to stay, I didn’t.
My first book was published in 1999 and I was so excited I could hardly stand it, but I sat and held the book and cried because she hadn’t lived to see it. “I wish she knew,” I said to my husband, and Duane said, “She does.” I hope he was right. My faith says he was, but my inner voice just reminds me that I wasn’t a good daughter.
I was in my early 30s when Mom died. When my kids approached that age, I went into a private panic because what if history repeated itself? I wasn’t nearly ready to leave them. I still had things to tell them, things to show them, advice to offer that they might not want but would listen to cheerfully before disregarding.
You don’t stop missing your mother with the passage of time. The gap in your life that was left by her leaving doesn’t fill up with other things. It loses its sharp edges, but it’s still there.
Why do I suddenly feel compelled to write about my mom, something I’ve never done a lot of? Her birthday was in April, Mother’s Day in May, the anniversary of her passing a month ago yesterday, so why now?
Because October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.
It’s time to make an appointment for your mammogram if you haven’t already had one. If you can’t afford it, call your doctor’s office. Yes, I know. A federal medical panel determined you don’t really need a mammogram yet, and even if you’re already getting them, they said you don’t need to do it as often.
I don’t care. I don’t care what they say. Get one anyway. I was still in my 30s when I had a biopsy. Thankfully, it was benign, but the lump showed up in the mammogram I had, not because I found it on my own.
The U. S. Postal Service sells Breast Cancer Research stamps. They’re $11.00 a sheet, but $2.20 of that goes to research. They’re pretty stamps, they’re a reminder to everyone who notices one on an envelope, and they help a slew of people. At least in October, you might buy a sheet. You could stop in at the post office on the way to your mammogram.
If you know someone who’s doing the Breast Cancer Walk, support them. Pledge money, pledge time, make the walk yourself if you have the time, health, and resources.
Breast cancer isn’t just the disease of the month. Even though research and improved drugs have made its statistics somewhat less terrifying, it still manages to reach every family you know.
Yes, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, but once it’s touched your family, you’re aware of it forever. Mom died in 1982, but she was ill for a long time before that. Although there were good times in the last seven years of her life, there were horrific ones, too. Even if you were a bad daughter, even if you’re an incurable optimist, when you remember those horrific times and how someone you loved suffered, it twists you up with a grief you can’t get enough mammograms or buy enough stamps or walk far enough to diminish.
So that’s why I wrote about my mom. To help keep you aware. Maybe to talk you into making that appointment or that donation. And to tell her I’m sorry I wasn’t a better daughter. If I had it to do over again, I would be.
But sometimes there aren’t any do-overs. I guess I wanted to remind you of that, too.
Have a good week. Make that appointment.
Till next time.

Saturdays...

2010-07-31T13:45:00.000-07:00

...have always been my favorite days of the week. Still are. But I've enjoyed my recent weekdays off, writing for hours on end instead of minutes early in the morning. Doing laundry at leisure, ignoring dust just as I do on every other day.

I blogged on Word Wranglers today. Hope you stop and visit.

Duane and I were laughing today because of things I do that I haven't for years. I change our sheets every singlie week instead of every couple. I iron pillowcases and handkerchiefs (yes, he uses one every day, a real cotton one.) There wasn't time when I was younger and fuller of energy and much, much thinner and Saturday was the best day.

Sometimes, I don't mind older and heavier. And I love laundry and the smell of clothes as the iron slips over them. Sometimes any day's a Saturday.

I hope you have many of them.

Looking ahead...

2010-07-29T03:25:00.000-07:00

I'm home on sick leave this week, a raging case of bursitis and tendinitis. Easy to treat but still painful. But it's giving me a view of what it will be like in six month when I retire. I have to say, it's looking good. Maybe I'll even blog more than four times a year!

Wishing a happy birthday to Mari, our oldest granddaughter, who will be 20 tomorrow--how on earth did that happen? She'll be in her third year at Ball State University this year. We're so proud of her.

What am I reading? Patricia Rice's THE WICKED WYCKERLY and Robyn Carr's A SUMMER IN SONOMA. Both of them are fun reads and both writers make me downright jealous with their voices.

I'm looking for a "theme" for my blog. I've considered naming it "Window Over the Sink" after my long-time newspaper column. Hmmm... Any ideas?

Don't forget, HOME TO SINGING TREES will be out in October!

Spring time and babies...

2010-04-22T10:01:00.001-07:00

I do love spring, and we've had an extraordinary April here in North Central Nowhere. I've taken a few days vacation to create a long weekend and am sitting at the dining room table with my laptop. I can see acres and acres of hayfield from where I sit, not to mention thousands of bright yellow dandelions. The house is quiet and I want to be creative, but mostly I am drousy.

It is the best of times.

April 2 was a most delightful day for our family. Eamon Samuel Flaherty, our seventh grandchild and fifth grandson, was born to Laura and Jock, the youngest of our children. There is little in life to compare with the joy of a new baby. Here he is. The picture is sideways, but I can't seem to turn him around. Let it suffice to say he's beautiful.

I've read many books since getting my Kindle, and am still enjoying it immensely. I'm reading Mary Balogh now--Lord Carew's Bride. Her books are always satisfying and she puts me smack in the middle of the Regency period like no one else!

Happy Birthday to my friend Becky Blackburn today. We've been friends for 45 years--since the cradle, right, Beck?--and my life would be so much poorer without her in it.

Have a great spring!

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2010-04-11T09:13:00.001-07:00

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New book!

2010-04-09T16:22:00.000-07:00

See? Isn't it pretty? I'm not sure yet when it will be out, but The Wild Rose Press is going to issue Home to Singing Trees and this is its cover. I'll talk more about it later. Promise!

Well, okay, I guess maybe later--I can't get the picture to load!

Have a great weekend!

Going back...

2010-03-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

I have a Kindle! I put it off for a long while because of how much I love the feel, scent, and sight of a paper-and-ink book in my hands. But then one of my girls, Tahne, got one. And she loved it. A friend got a Nook. And she loved it. I looked at the mountains of books lying on nearly every flat surface in my house, not to mention the bookshelves. And I didn't love it. It was time, I decided. Oh, yes! said the roommate, who has no appreciation for the number of books I have...everywhere. But, I argued, I didn't want to spend the money. I'll buy it for you, said the roommate. He really has no appreciation. So I said okay.

I ordered it, it came, and I looked at it for a couple of days. "I don't know what to buy," I said, "without running my fingers over the spines, looking at the covers, and reading the blurbs."

You can do that with the Kindle, except for the spine part. But it's different. Way different. So I bought my own book. Boom! In about a minute, there it was: The Debutante's Second Chance.

Wow.

But I didn't, you know, want to read it. I needed to buy something to read.

A friend, Janet Dean, had a new book out--The Substitute Bride. So I bought it for the Kindle. Boom! It's a mail-order-bride story, a good one, and it was fun to read. No, it was a lot of fun to read. I took my time over it, relished it, loved every word.

I was heartbroken last year when the only bookstore close enough for me to go to closed (I won't go to Waldenbooks anymore, but that's a whole 'nother story) and I had to buy most of my books at Wal-Mart or the grocery store. Or else I ordered them from Amazon and waited.

Did I mention Boom!

Since getting the Kindle, I've read Robyn Carr's new one, a lovely one by Marta Perry, The Five Little Peppers Grown Up (yes, really), and then, once again, I was stumped. So I bought one by Jenny Crusie, an old one I thought I might have missed. The Cinderella Deal.

Yes, I had missed it. And it's lovely. One of her very best and very funniest, and I'm taking my time over it, relishing it, loving every word. I didn't feel the spine, can't smell the paper-and-ink, but you know what? I can still laugh out loud at the humor and feel the tenderness slipping along my arms.

Walking through the house, I passed a flat surface without a stack of books on it.

It was dusty.

Oh, no, what have I done?

Happy New Year!

2010-01-11T18:55:00.000-08:00

Lord, I have no imagination, do I? Well, having admitted that, I hope you had wonderful holidays and that the New Year really is happy.

I've been busy since we talked. I finished a book and sent it off to my editor. I hope he likes it. (A mantra I have repeated approximate 1000 times since hitting "send" and shipping the manuscript off.) Now I've dragged an unfinished story out from under the bed and am blowing dust bunnies off of it. Sometimes when I go back and look at something I wrote a year or two ago, I repeat another mantra--you know the one: "What were you thinking?" But not this time. This time, I'm thinking, "Hmmm..." and I'm really liking it.

I've also been sewing up a storm. I sew gowns and blankets for hospitals and nursing homes. I don't sew all that well, but I enjoy it. I hope the bright colored gowns and warm quilts offer joy to someone else, too.

I spend way too much time on the computer doing things besides writing, but I've been visiting a few blogs lately and enjoying them. One of them is Word Wranglers. Pay them a visit. They're a fun bunch.

The book of the month for January is Forbidden Falls by Robyn Carr. It's another Virgin River story and what a good one it is. Enjoy--and if you've never read her books before, she has a long and invariably good backlist.

Say yes to mammograms...

2009-11-30T19:24:00.001-08:00

Okay, I know this is pink. I know it looks dumb on this blog, but, hey...we're talking about breasts here. Boobs. Jugs. Tatas. Other euph--I've forgotten how to spell that word--that are even less elegant. And we're talking about breast cancer. You know, that nasty disease represented by that ribbon over there?

We've got some "experts" saying don't bother with mammograms, don't examine yourself. I'd venture to say most of them have not buried their mothers or sisters or daughters. Most of them don't know and celebrate the survivors the way those of us do who knew and loved women who didn't survive.

There are some places to look at. One of them is Cheryl Reavis's blog. http://cherylreavis.blogspot.com/ Another is Kathleen Eagle's discussion on the http://ridingwiththetopdown.blogspot.com/ Look at these. Read up on survivors--see how many of them recommend you skip this year's mammogram.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T10:33:00.000-08:00

I hope you and yours are having a glorious day. I haven't been here to blog in forever and I'm sorry about that; I've also accepted that I'm never going to be very good at it. This is only one among many, many things I'm not good at, and I'm okay with that, too.

I'm on the wind-down on the story I'm working on. I've got about 20 pages or so, a chapter and some, and I'll be able to type "The End" and get started on one my favorite parts of writing: the rewrites. Where I go over the whole manuscript and tie up the loose ends (I have lots of those) and take out the unnecessary "thats" and "she saids." I make sure the secondary characters end the story with the same names they started it with and try to keep eye and hair colors consistent while I'm at it.

But first I have to write the last 20 pages, the moment of hopelessness (which I'm in the middle of; it lasts an hour or so in the book but takes me a week to write!), the "aha" moment. I have say goodbye to people I've come to know and love and I have to be convincing about it. It's hard. And I'm okay with it.

My kids are all grown up, and today we're not seeing any of them. It's kind of lonely with just the roommate and me and the cats. But everyone's healthy. I think they're all happy. So I'm okay with it.

I'm glad I didn't have to work today, sorry I'm working tomorrow. But I have a good job in a time when there aren't that many of them, and I like it more often than not, so...yeah, I'm okay with it.

I'll leave you with that, I think. You're a grownup so you know life isn't always wonderful or perfect or even happy, but if, most of the time, you're okay with it, well, you're ahead of the game.

Have a great day. In case I don't make it back--you know how I am--have a Merry Christmas, too.

Happy Summer

2009-07-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

July's such a time of celebration, isn't it? I hope you're enjoying it. We are. We had a nice 4th of July with my extended family and just came back from General Butler State Park in Kentucky, where we spent the weekend with the boyfriend's side. All of my kids and five of the six grands were in one spot, which is just about as happy as it gets for me.

RWA's National Conference is this week in Washington D. C. this week. I wish I was there, as I always do, but it's never at a good time or place for me. I went one year, when it was in Chicago, and I loved it, but I wonder how it would be now. I'm so much older and my interests are different.

Books of the month--I've gotten away from that, haven't I, so I'll name a few. First up is Cheryl St. John's The Preacher's Wife. I'm less than halfway through it and forcing myself to put it down between chapters so that it doesn't end too soon. I've also been reading Mary Balogh's newest series. While I freely admit to preferring her shorter books, the long ones are wonderful. I've been reading Carla Kelly's as soon as they come out--I think the ink's still wet when I start reading--and loving every talented word of them.

Have a great July. Find something to celebrate!

As kids-in-law go...

2009-05-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

...I have been extremely blessed. I have three, have had them all for a long time, and fully intend keeping them forever.

This month's entry is about the first one, Tahne, who's married to Chris and the mother of my only two granddaughters--one of whom just finished her first year at Ball State and the other who is a volleyball player extraordinaire. But I regress; it's their mother I'm talking about.

Her birthday was over three weeks ago, but I'm behind putting this in. This will be okay with her, I think; she knows she's my girl. During that week in early May, she also celebrated her wedding anniversary and earned her Master's degree. Not that she was excited, but she texted me, "...no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks..."

When she went to Paris, she brought me back perfume. From Germany, a Hummel figurine. She wouldn't have to do anything more than love my son and their children--I imagine that's what all mothers-in-law really want--but she loves me and the dad-in-law, too. It's a bonus.

And the feeling's mutual.

The start of it all...

2009-04-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

It was April 7, 1970, and I thought the wind would never stop blowing. And I thought I'd never go into labor. And then I thought I'd never get out of labor. Life as I knew it was just about over. If I ever got out of labor, that is.

After 22 hours, I did. And this is what happened. Well, no, not exactly this. He was 22 inches long then; he's about six and a half feet now. And he's fun. He's long married to Tahne and the father of Mari and Tierney. Just as his dad and I lived for many years on bleachers, that's what he and his wife do now and they enjoy it as much as we did.

I used to say the reason it took me so long to have him was that it was rough giving birth to the basketball. It was in his hands for years, and he was so much fun to watch. I miss it still.

Duane called him on his birthday and said, "Your mom's talking about what she was doing 39 years ago today. Again." And I was. Because it was, you know, one of the very best days of my life.

Love you, Chris.

Happy Birthday, Laura...

2009-03-11T15:58:00.000-07:00

Laura's our youngest--well, actually, I guess she's married to our youngest, the one you see in the entry below. But Laura's been a part of our lives since her junior high days, long before she became Jock's wife, Fionnegan's mother, or a pharmacist. She's smart and talented and funny, and eventually the other girls and I will forgive her for being a size two.

This is Laura. And Fionn. You seldom see one without the other.

Seven years ago, I finally decided that yes, okay, I would quit smoking. Maybe. But I was doing it with medication and a coach. Laura was my coach and she promised she would make me a queensize quilt if I stopped smoking. To make a long story short, I did and she did. The quilt hasn't been off the bed since. She says I have to give it back if I start smoking again and I think she means it.

I'm not giving that quilt back, and I wouldn't give her back, either. She has perfectly good parents of her own, but she's still ours. Her birthday was this week.

Love you, Laura.

And then there were three...

2009-02-25T17:51:00.000-08:00

It seems so long ago in some ways--good heavens, I didn't even have a computer when my youngest son was born! But in others, it's like the blink of an eye.

We named him Jeremy Sean because #1, we liked the Irishness of Sean, and #2, it was the only name we didn't fight about. For the first few weeks, we called our cotton-topped baby Jeremy. It was, after all, his name. But then, he somehow became, in the baby games my husband played with him, Jock O'Flaherty, and then, inexorably and irretrievably, Jocko. This is what he looked like.

He grew up, as they do, way too fast. His high school football careeer was one of the most fun things we experienced as parents. He was a running back and a kicker and a constant surprise.

Married to the woman I would have chosen for him if he'd let me (though it never occurred to him to even ask my opinion) and the father of Fionnegan, Jock is a source of pride and still a constant surprise. His birthday is February 26.

Happy birthday, Jock. Love you.

Happy 60th Anniversary!

2009-02-14T05:32:00.000-08:00

Harlequin's celebrating by giving away free books! Go to http://www.harlequincelebrates.com/ and get yours.

I can't speak for you, of course, but I grew up reading Harlequin Romances. I think I learned more geography between those paperback covers than I did in school! Not to mention about love and happily ever after and the empowerment of women, three of my absolutely favorite things. I can't begin to describe the thrill it was when they published The Debutante's Second Chance.

It was through Harlequin/Silhouette that I discovered Kathy Seidel, Nora Roberts, Muriel Jensen, Jackie Weger, and--the comfort read of all time--Betty Neels.

In my own celebration, my book of the month is any one written by the women listed above. You can't go wrong.

And guess what day this is! Yup, the biggest romance day of all. Happy Valentine's Day to you all and especially to Duane, my own hero.

And to Jimmy...

2009-01-23T19:18:00.000-08:00

In the interest of fair play, it's time to write about Jimmy. He and Kari were married fourteen years ago, at which time he became our our third son. He fits right in with the others both in age and behaviorally (this can be a Bad Thing!). In addition to being the love of Kari's life, he's also a great dad to three of our grandsons: Skyler, Shea, and Connor. He's a math teacher and a football coach and, in the jargon of a confirmed romance writer and reader, a hero.

He's also having a birthday on the 24th. Happy birthday, Jim. Love you.

Happy Birthday...

2009-01-17T20:26:00.000-08:00

Thirty-seven years ago on January 17, I went into labor. I had taken a bath and noticed I couldn't get completely dry--a bad thing in our chilly little rented house in mid-January! However, the reason was that my water broke, not in a gush like the first time, but in a quiet little ongoing trickle.

Well, the roommate came home from work--he worked nights; what fun--and said very calmly, "We're going to town. We'll stay at Mom's." We, you see, lived 13 miles from the hospital. His mother's house, on the other hand, was a only few blocks and absolutely no train tracks away. So we packed up Chris, the sleeping two-year-old, and my three new nightgowns and went to town. Chris and the roommate promptly fell asleep while I...didn't.

Several hours later, when things were only a few minutes apart, I shook the roommate. "Hey," I said, "it's time."

"Uh-huh." Pat, pat, pat on my huge stomach. "I love you, too, honey." Pat, pat, pat.

"Now, I think," I said, and then not so calmly. "We need to GO."

Several hours later, a nurse said, "Hmm..." and then the doctor came in and said, "Hmm..." and I said, "WHAT?" and the roommate said...oh, who knew what he said? I wanted to know what "...hmm..." meant.

What it meant was, for the second time, I was going to have a breech delivery. In case you've never had one, it's a whole lot like parking a schoolbus in a one-car garage. (I know this isn't a real good analogy, but just as I was 37 years ago tonight, I'm tired.) Like the mature adult I was (I was, after all, 21), I wailed, "I want a caesarean!" The doctor agreed, since I wasn't very dilated and there was plenty of time. The roommate breathed a sigh of relief, and a surgical team was hastily assembled. But we never made it to the operating room, there wasn't any need for surgery, because...

Fifteen minutes later...

Awkwardly and noisily, weighing just a little over six pounds, Kari Christine Flaherty came into the world in her own way and her own time. It was one of the very happiest days of my life and of the roommate's life, too. Chris is still reserving judgment, but he did give up on asking us to send her back.

Now she's married to Jim, has three boys of her own (ALL of them born by caeserean; what a wimp!) and is a Special Ed. teacher. She's given us many, many more happy days since that first one, not to mention a few anxious ones.

Happy Birthday, Kari. We love you.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-13T18:07:00.000-08:00

Oh, I'm sorry, I've done it again, haven't I? I really was going to do better. This is why I don't make New Year's resolutions!

It's cold here in North Central Nowhere! Single digits and below. I have little patience with winter after Christmas, and I feel the cold way into my bones, but every now and then the sun peeks out and gives me hope.

Anyway, I hope everyone had wonderful holidays. We did, seeing all our children and their children except the ones who live too far away, and we talked to them.

I'm watching Biggest Loser as I watch this, and being so ashamed of myself because I'm into couch potato-ism these days. My friend Debby's walking up a storm, but it seems once I walk into the house after work, that's it for me. The Boyfriend's going to the gym and looking splendid. I'm proud of them, but still...well, just still.

The book of the month for January is one I'm reading right now: Simply Perfect by Mary Balogh. In a word, wow! I've always been a fan of Ms. Balogh's and this story is doing everything to reinforce that position.

Till next time.

Happy Thanksgiving...

2008-11-23T04:21:00.000-08:00

...again!

So what's new? It's been busy here in North Central Nowhere. I'm back to work. Still writing--word by excruciating word! Winter's come, I'm afraid. There've been snow-dustings and mornings when the car's shivered when I opened her door. But all is well. Three of the grandboys are playing basketball, one grandgirl playing volleyball, and the oldest grandgirl--gasp--is home from college for Thanksgiving (how did she get that old?). The youngest grandboy, Fionnegan, is four and just into being cute and funny.

Almost forgot--book of the month is ALL the romance anthologies that are out now. I don't like all of the novellas necessarily, but there are a ton of good ones! The one that comes to mind, and forgive the lack of titles, is the historical one that Cheryl St. John "headlines" in. Her story's great and so are the others. Happy reading!

Hope you have a splendid holiday!

High Speed Internet Oh My!

2008-10-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

It's official! I've joined the 21st century! A cute young fella named Jake attached a satellite to our porch roof yesterday and so I now--even here in North Central Nowhere--have high speed access. I guess it's not as fast as some, but compared to dial-up, I am now at the NASCAR level of Internet. I've registered at Facebook--go over there and be my friend; I'm a little lonely--and have spent way too many hours playing over the past 14 or so hours.

Yesterday I received a "decline" on a book of my heart that I had submitted to a publisher that looked like it would be a very good fit. I have been in this business many years now, but I've never developed the kind of thick skin required. I should be able to say "oh, well" by now, and go on about the business of writing a new story. However.

Instead, I will spend a few days mulling over a decision to quit. Because, you know, I'm not really any good. The books I've sold have been flukes. I'm too old. Too tired. Can't write. Can't even think.

Well, that's done.

So, when I get finished up here, I'll return to my laptop and to my WIP. I'll struggle some. But then I'll write some more. And maybe someday I'll sell another book.

Thanks for listening!

...and Autum Rain

2008-10-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

It's raining today and I'm lazy. Watched a movie this morning, though--a great thing to do on a rainy day--and wanted to talk it up for a minute. It's an older one, of course, but no less good for a bit of age. It's The Other Sister. I don't even know who plays the title role, though she's great, but I would watch it just to see Diane Keaton and Tom Skerritt. Well, actually, to lust a bit over Mr. Skerritt.

After while, I think I'm going to bake. Has anyone made yeast rolls using Bisquick? They look so easy that I think I'll try them, even though we can never eat the whole batch. That's just one of the things I miss about having a full house, having baked things disappear as soon as they come out of the oven. My grandkids are pretty good about inhaling cookies and brownies, but they're not here all the time.

Have a good day!

Autumn Leaves

2008-10-21T18:26:00.001-07:00

Happy Halloween! It's been a beautiful fall here in North Central Nowhere. My foot's coming along nicely, thank you, and it'll be back to work in a few weeks.

My book of the month is one I haven't read yet, but it's on its way. Penny Porter writes some of the best essays there are--all about kids and animals and life in whatever warm place we call home. Some of those essays have been compiled in a book called Heartstrings & Tail-Tuggers. The book, which is hard to find now but will be re-released in March, is on its way and I can't wait!

Till next time.

Two days in a row?

2008-09-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you're home. Usually, on Sunday, I get up and watch sewing shows on TV (Sewing With Nancy and something with Sue Hausman and Martha's Sewing Room.) I do this because, even though I'm not all that good at it, I dearly love to sew. The part of my office that is not dedicated to papers, pens, and unfinished manuscripts is dedicated to a sewing machine, a serger, and a sewing table. It is, as you might guess, a rather large and extremely messy room. I love it here. Oops, I forgot what I was telling...

After the sewing shows, I go to church. Ebenezer UMC--otherwise known as the little church on the corner--is right across the road and they know if I'm playing hookey. This means that sometimes I go to church for the wrong reasons, but I'm always glad I went anyway. I like to think the Lord is glad to see me there, too.

After church, I come home and whine the rest of the day because I have to go back to work on Monday. I know, I know, this makes no sense at all. I like my job, for heaven's sake. But that doesn't mean I want to do it.

However, I'm on sick leave right now, because of my foot. While I can't do my job--eight hours on my feet, smiling--I can do most everything else. The cool thing about that is that today--Sunday--I can do it without whining about having to go back to work tomorrow!

So have a good Monday. I may eventually even do this three days in a row!

September Song

2008-09-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

I always think of September as a gentle time, when the colors are throttling up for October and nights are cool. A good time for most things. High school football and crispy apples and the delicious smells that are peculiar to autumn. The cornfields are emptying out and the air is...well, cleansing, I guess. I can't think of a better word.

I had foot surgery this month, so I'm on a long, meandering sick leave. I could work, yes, but I can't stand up for eight hours, which is what my job entails. I must admit, I like being home, working on my laptop before daylight and sitting on the front porch with the cats. I'm even enjoying some TV, which I never do, and watching old movies, which I always do.

Speaking of movies, Paul Newman passed away today. My condolences go out to his family. And to all of us. He was a loving and giving man.

The boyfriend and I spent a few days in Vermont early this month, getting some quality Pappaw and Nana time with Fionnegan, the youngest of our six grands, and his parents. We're planning an Ireland trip in 2009. I can't wait, but I'm scared too--I don't even have a passport!

Book of my month is COURTING MISS ADELAIDE, by Indiana's own Janet Dean. Janet writes with September gentleness and joy. This is her debut book, but it won't be her last!

Class Reunion

2008-08-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

It was my high school class reunion. My 40th--yikes! About 70 of us, including 42 classmates from the original 92, met at the local museum (Would that be the museum of ancient history? asked my daughter Kari), where we ate and drank and talked and talked and talked. (Actually, if you want to see where we met, it's here www.miamicountymuseum.com)

I was not a mover or a shaker in North Miami High School's class of '68. I was more of a sitter and talker. But 40 years after the fact, when most of us are a little heavier and a lot grayer--well, some are grayer; many use a lot more hair color, myself included--it doesn't really matter who moved and shook and who didn't. It was just fun to see each other and finish each other's sentences because even though our lives have gone off in a starburst of directions, our beginnings were the same.

The subject matter of conversations was different than it used to be. We used to talk about our kids and now we talk about their kids. We used to talk about beginning new jobs and now we talk about winding down the ones we've had for a long time. Many of of have retired. Many more of us are thinking about it. What will you do? we ask each other, and we are pleased that no one plans to be bored or go quietly into that good night. We made noise and had sometimes raucous fun when we were young and I believe we intend to continue that into our old age. With somewhat less agility, of course.

Do you still write? people asked me. And I shrugged and mumbled and said I didn't know if I really did or not. But I do. Of course I do. Writing's like breathing to me, so I'll always do it. And I want to go to college--which I've never done--and volunteer at this place and that one. But I'm not sure, I told my friend Patty who has suffered such great pain in recent years and still looks wonderful, what I want to be when I grow up.

Some of us know. Nan is going to play more golf. Call me, I said. I'll go along and ride in the cart and drink. No one wants me to play golf--I'm godawful--but I'm a good rider-alonger and I'm fond of margaritas. You know, the frozen kind with very little booze but a lot of delicious slush. Marsha's going to play bridge. Jim's wife Becky, who is not a classmate but is funny and puts up with Jim :-), doesn't know what she's going to do, only that it will be whatever she wants. Many will travel more, will do more on ebay, will spend more time with the kids' kids.

And in five years, we'll meet again. Someone asked if our next gathering would be in the nursing home and Jeann said, No, probably the retirement center--the one after that will be in the nursing home. And that'll be fine. We'll talk and talk and talk and hug each other hello and goodbye and discuss what we want to be when we grow up just as we always have.

Wasn't it Dickens who started a story with, "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times..." I'll cut that a little short in reference to the the class reunion. It was just the best of times.

Summertime, and the living is...busy

2008-06-24T16:37:00.000-07:00

Someone mentioned that I don't blog much, and she was right. I'm sorry, I moaned back, but the 24 hour days just aren't long enough anymore. And they're not. I'm just so tired all the time, I whined to a friend recently, and she said yes, everyone is. We are.
I remember summers of going to 40-some baseball games when my sons played on two different leagues. I remember the summer I sewed dresses for two flower girls, three bridesmaids, and my daughter the bride. I remember when we had a garden the size of--oh, I don't know, but it was way too big. If memory serves, there were only 24 hours in a day then, too, but somehow they lasted longer.
Well, complaining aside, it's a nice summer here in North Central Nowhere. The days are lovely and warm and the nights are lovely and cool.
I saw Mari, my oldest granddaughter, graduate from high school. I sniffled through the whole thing and I am so proud of her.
My daughter Kari and I went to Shipshewana, Indiana to the biggest flea market I've ever seen. We walked around until my feet were falling off, but I got two sets of sheets and we ate some truly excellent chicken and noodles for lunch.
My third grandson, Connor, played T-ball this summer. He played for the Yankees, and my husband said the Yankees were a big team from New York. Connor gave him a disapproving look and said No, they were from kindergarten.
I hung hummingbird feeders on the front porch as I always do, and was disappointed not to draw the usual crowd of the little birds. Until I realized we'd drawn another crowd. Two pairs of orioles feasted on hummingbird nectar for several weeks. They left as suddenly as they'd come.
Deer congregate in our 3-acre yard. They drink water from the low spot and chomp on whatever deer chomp on. (Last year it was two new trees; they apparently don't like the ones we planted this year.) We sit on the back porch and watch them. They stare up at us once in a while, then go back to whatever they were doing.
Oops, I need to throw a reading commercial in here. Kathleen Gilles Seidel's Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige is a splendid addition to the keeper shelf. Likewise Pamela Morsi's Last Dance at the Jitterbug Lounge.
As I read this, it seems as though I'm spending these summer days watching life rather than participating in it. And maybe I am. But I'm enjoying it, every single too-short day of it, no matter how much I complain.
I hope you are, too.

Let it be spring...

2008-04-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

PLEASE!!!!

In all honesty, winter in Indiana didn't start in earnest until after Christmas--they need to let me do something about that calendar--but I swear it's lasted for years.

In all other honesty, not much is going on. My job keeps me busy, plus I allow plenty of time for the blahs. I've never watched much television, you know, because I don't like anything that's on the 250 channels we are alloted by our satellite provider. (You can only watch all the movie renditions of Jane Austen books and "Murder, She Wrote" so many times.)

However.

When it's winter for months and months at a time and your current WIP seems to be indefinitely stuck on Chapter Six, it's amazing what you can watch! I watch M*A*S*H reruns, "Reba" reruns, "Andy Griffith" reruns--do I detect a pattern here?

That being said, it's time for all you romance and women's fiction writers out there to turn from the TV screen to the computer one and get going on an entry to PASIC's Book of Your Heart contest for 2008. The contest is a winner every time. Here's the link http://www.pasic.net/contest.html
Don't miss your chance to have your entry judged by booksellers from every corner of the country.

Well, there's a platter of brownies in the kitchen calling my name (I can hear it--"Hey, chubby, come on down..."). I wish you all a happy spring.

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-13T13:35:00.000-08:00

Hello! I'm sorry I'm not a better blogger, really I am! However, the truth is that I'm lazy. Anyway, I hope you're all having a great February and that you particularly enjoy Valentine's Day. I also hope you love somebody special and that they love you back.

Basketball's all over Hoosierland these days. Our high school teams are doing especially well. The girls won their sectional--GO WARRIORS!--and now it's on to regional.

Snow's all over, too, and it's been cold, but at least in February, I get hopeful that spring will come.

Speaking of reading, if you get a chance to read Kristin Hannah's newest one, FIREFLY LANE, don't miss it. She's never written a word that wasn't worth reading.

Have great days and God bless you.

Romantic Times Nominee!

2008-01-12T18:39:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm excited. THE DEBUTANTE'S SECOND CHANCE is a 2007 nominee for a ROMANTIC TIMES VIEWERS CHOICE AWARD for best Silhouette Special Edition. Oh, sorry--I know I'm probably shouting, but...well...I'M EXCITED! You can go here and check it out.
http://www.romantictimes.com/books_awards.php?type=book&level=1&year=2007

I hope everyone had wonderful holidays and that you're not having too much trouble getting into the swing of 2008. We got to spend a few days with the Utah branch of our family and it was a great time. (There was a small matter of spending most of a day in O'Hare Airport on the way home that I could have done without, but it was a small price to pay.)

Till next time.

Sweet December

2007-12-09T10:49:00.000-08:00

I don't remember her name.

She was young, blondish, a wife and mom, a schoolteacher. She was only one of the horde of customers who braved the post office last week. I'm a window clerk there, or a retail sales associate, depending on your correctness quotient, and I almost flinched when I saw her. My feet were already falling off, my smile at half-mast, and I didn't think I could say, "May I help you?" one more time without a mid-afternoon shot of caffeine to get me through. I didn't think I could face a customer with seven boxes, two of which were huge, all of which required clumsy customs labels. As luck would have it, though, I got her at my window.

The parcels were for her brother in Iraq, she said. She hoped the customs labels were okay. Her students had helped her fill them out. Helped her pack the boxes. It had become quite a project.

Seven boxes. Uh-huh. That was quite a project, all right. My back was starting to hurt.

Yes, the boxes were for her brother. And his friends. There were individual boxes inside the boxes that he was supposed to divide up. Wow, I said, how many of his friends are you sending to?

Thirteen, she said.

My eyes watered.

Except for these three, she went on, pointing to three smaller boxes. Those three were sent to three individual soldiers. Because they never got anything. They didn't have wives or moms or girlfriends, evidently, and she wanted them to have their own parcels this time.

My eyes overflowed and I sniffled. I'm sorry, I said. I'm a watering pot. Oh, me, too, she said.

We prepared the packages, putting on the customs forms and Priority Mail stickers and massive amounts of postage. My students said I must be rich, she said, to pay all this postage. I'm not, though; it's coming out of my kids' Christmas money. They're little, two months and five years, and they won't know it's a little on the slim side.

I blew my nose and I said, But they'll know when they're older, and they'll be so proud, because it's such a good thing you're doing and such a great thing you're teaching. They'll be proud to have been a part of it.

I gave her the postage total and took her check and wished her and her family a Merry Christmas. After she left, we re-weighed the parcels so that I could pay the oversize fee that had come up on the computer screen, the one I'd seen but she hadn't. But it didn't come up this time, and my big contribution ended up being 55 cents.

I thought over and over of three soldiers who never got any mail and who would get those three boxes, of the students who learned about loving and giving and addition and filling out forms, and of the pretty young teacher . The one I didn't want to wait on. The one whose name I can't recall.

But I'll never forget her.

Happy Thanksgiving...

2007-11-21T17:53:00.000-08:00

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving, doing what you want to do. The boyfriend and I are going to be on our own and our dinner will be comprised of what we want: one turkey--which equals just tons of turkey sandwiches--and one pumpkin pie. I have to work Friday, and then we're going to spend the weekend with two of our kids' families, eating lobster and shrimp. This is a tradition of theirs that I'm anxious to get used to.

I'm thankful for many things this year: family, health, writing. I lost a dearly loved aunt in September, but she lived a long and--I think--happy life, so it's hard to grieve too much. The year contained the hardest six month I've ever spent in the work force, but I survived and so did the women I work with. I feel like singing "we are the champions, my friends" really loud, but no one ever wants me to sing.

I hope you have a great holiday. Till next time.

2007-11-06T17:49:00.000-08:00

Well, our high school team didn't win sectional, but I went to the championship game and it was--I can't believe I'm using this word--AWESOME! Those kids were so good, so dignified in their loss. As the mom of one of the coaches, I wasn't quite as dignified, maybe, but I was certainly proud of them. So let me have a little moment here to just say GO WARRIORS! and then we can just go on with our conversation. Oops, sorry, I do need to say GO COLTS! first.

I wrote an essay for Senior Women, one of my favorite websites in the world. Go visit if you have a minute to spare. http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/flaherty/articlesFlaherty30.html

Not much going on here these days, other than it's getting COLD and I still have summer-thin blood. Oh, and we changed times again, which makes me cranky. I'm one of those Hoosiers who was perfectly happy never having to go through the house changing 47 clocks every spring and every fall. I still feel that no matter how many times you change the clocks, there are only 24 hours in a day and in the months of November through January, only two or three of those hours are daylight! However, that's only one of the arguments I've lost in this lifetime.

Speaking of politics, I'm reading journalist Connie Shultz's memoir ...and His Lovely Wife and enjoying it immensely.

Have a good week. Till next time.

The goblins'll get you...

2007-10-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

...if'n you don't watch out! Anyone else remember James Whitcomb Riley? Nothing feels more Halloweenlike than having someone read "Little Orphant Annie" aloud to you. Of course, it probably helps if you're in the fourth grade like I was the first time I heard it, but it's never too late.

Even though I'm not that big on Halloween, the boyfriend and I always buy a couple of bags of candy and turn on the porchlights on Halloween. Then, when no one comes except the three grandkids who live fairly close, we proceed to turn off the lights and eat the candy.

Have a howling good time!

A little of this, a little of that...

2007-10-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

If you're not doing anything this Saturday, the 13th, from 1-3, I'll be signing copies of THE DEBUTANTE'S SECOND CHANCE at Waldenbooks in the Logansport Mall. If you don't want the book, store manager will have cookies on hand, as well as lots of other books...

Speaking of books, I just finished the last of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Wow. I have no clue how many hours I spent reading the seven books, but not one little bitty minute of it was wasted. Ms. Rowling is--as Henry James notably said Louisa May Alcott was not--a genius. I thank her for the pleasure.

Just a reminder--October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Don't forget--let me repeat that--DON'T FORGET to get your mammogram. If you can't afford it, call your doctor's office and tell them you can't. They'll help. Or go to www.thebreastcancersite.com/ They'll help, too. Do it.

It's church summer time in these parts. Even if you don't attend services, be sure to attend church suppers. The proceeds go to help those in need, and the food its outstanding!

Till next time...

Fall Colors...

2007-09-29T06:14:00.000-07:00

If you've never lived here in North Central Nowhere, where Nothing Ever Happens and there's Nothing To Do, well, hey, I'm sorry. We're slippery-sliding into autumn right now. Even though the temperatures are still climbing into the 80s on a lot of days, they're also diving headlong into the 40s at night. This means that if no one was looking, some of us would run the air conditioning during midday hours and turn on the furnace when we get up in the morning. (I can't do this because the boyfriend always notices things like that.)

But the colors here--I'm writing this in only one of them--defy description. I remember being so surprised that Vermont in October really does look like calendar pictures. So does Indiana. Plus I'm pretty sure our entire state smells like apples and cornfields and burning leaves. (There's a pig farm down the road that distributes an entirely different smell, but that's only certain times of the day, thank goodness--and carnivore that I am, I do really love ham and pork chops. Sigh.)

Well, I see I'm wandering here, when all I really wanted to do was brag about fall in the Midwest, where it truly is glorious. It sounds like Friday night high school football and crunching leave and feels good. Even though the truth is that things really do happen here and there really are things to do, those of us who were born here love the reputation we have. I think we like knowing something the rest of the world doesn't.

Except that I just told, didn't I? Oh, well...have a good day, everybody.

Cheryl St. John

2007-09-16T17:31:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited! I'm off to visit Cheryl St. John's blog this week. There'll be a drawing for a few books (including my first one, Always Annie, published a looooong time ago), plus some good conversation, so stop by at http.//cherylstjohn.blogspot.com/ and join in.

In other news, my favorite son-in-law, Jim, is an assistant football coach at our local high school--where Duane's and my children and I all graduated--and the Warriors are now 5-0, having broken an 11-year standoff by a regional nemisis.

Have a great week.

Hello to Marion, Indiana

2007-09-08T19:46:00.000-07:00

I'm playing around with color a little here, maybe because it's late and I'm sleepy.

I'm going to be signing books at Waldenbooks in Marion, Indiana on September 15 between 2:00 and 4:00 PM. I'll be glad to see you if you come!

It's going to be a busy day, too, because some friends and I are going to see Gary Puckett that night. Anyone else remember him from his Union Gap days? What a voice he has!

I'm also going to visit Cheryl St. John over at her blog as soon as I can get over there. It's been a hectic week here. Hope you're having a good one!

Thank you...

2007-08-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

Last week, a boy from the town where I work was killed in Iraq. The words look so stark as I type them. They look, I guess, the way it felt when I read it in the paper. I didn't know him, don't know his family; the grief I feel at his loss is only a pinprick compared to what those who love him feel. And yet...

Signs of support and gratitude showed up in front of churches and stores and homes this, the flag at our office flies at half staff, other flags--usually out for the 4th of July and Memorial Day--have come out now. It makes me think of the weeks following 9/11, when we all flew them not only as an "in your face" gesture but also because our grief was unspeakable. Symbolically, we dried our tears with the flag. We were all changed in that week.

And now we are changed again, those of us who stood alongside the street to help escort a dead boy to his final resting place. Veterans stood straight and saluted as the hearse drove slowly past. The procession of vehicles seemed to go on forever. It included at least 100 motorcycles that rode in a pack, their drivers staring straight ahead.

We cried as we stood in silent support. The mail carrier across the street, those among us who are mothers and know the worst thing possible has happened to one of us, the fathers who know it, too, even the children who waved tribute flags as the dark, sad cars passed.

There is nothing I can do, nothing I can say here, that hasn't been done and said before. So I will only say Thank You to all who serve, and hope that those families who lose their loved ones will find their grief lessened by the knowledge that we all share it.

2007-08-12T16:28:00.000-07:00

The boyfriend Duane and I--okay, we've been married for 36 years; I'm just trying for a little excitement here--took a trip down memory lane this weekend. His memories, not mine.

We went 250 miles to Rhodelia, Kentucky to the picnic at St. Teresa's Catholic Church. This is the parish where my father-in-law grew up, across the hollers from where my mother-in-law's family lived. We like to go to the picnic because Mom can't anymore. We call her while we're on the road and she visits "back home" vicariously, reminding us where to place flowers on the graves of family members long gone.

It was suffocatingly hot and humid, we were both tired from a week at work, and I wasn't prepared for anything special. Except for the food, of course. The food at St. Teresa's is superb.

But when we got there, we walked through the museum in the old school, seeing Flaherty cousins in class photographs and in a big writeup from a 50s newspaper when Duane's grandmother had only 84 grandchildren. We saw pictures of the priest who was my husband's namesake.

We laid down dimes for the cakewalk and I won within fifty cents, choosing macadamia cookies. It took the boyfriend more than a dollar, and he took a pan of brownies. We put our names on our prize sweets and left them on the front pew of the church where it was cool. When we went back to get them, someone had taken my cookies, and I wondered if God was reminding me gently that I did just join Weight Watchers--again.

There were reunions with cousins so long unseen that Duane didn't know them until someone took him around and introduced him. And reunions with cousins seen more recently but not on this common ground where they could say, "Remember when?" and they all would. Remember, I mean.

It was a lovely day despite the heat; the friendliness of the little parish made it so. As we drove away, we called Mom again, telling her who we'd seen and that there are no fresh graves in the little cemetery down at Ammons. I mentioned a name and she said, "Oh, my, I was in love with him," and she and I laughed long and loud in a way that women understand and men never will.

Duane and I talked about the day as we headed north, about the pleasure and sometimes the pain that nostalgia can bring. We laughed about the macadamia cookies and I ate one of his brownies.

And the memories? They're mine now, too.

Happy Birthday

2007-08-02T03:08:00.000-07:00

...to me. Not that birthdays thrill me a lot, but having the book coming out soon is making this into exciting time. And while we're talking about birthdays, my oldest granddaughter Mari turned 17 the other day. It kills me seeing her grow up, but her first 17 years have been much easier on us than her dad's were. :-)

We've had a really nice summer here in Indiana, and we're paying for it now. It's HOT and it's MUGGY. This is the way I remember August being when I was a kid. It's better now, with air conditioning everywhere, but it's still hot.

Oh, have you been over to the eharlequin website? I'm featured in the authors' section. It's so cool!

Oops, need to go to work. Have a good day, everyone!

Emotional eating

2007-07-28T12:11:00.001-07:00

I'm on the high side of the 30 pounds I've gained and lost at least 10 times in my adult life. I blame it on work, which has been extraordinarily stressful, but I wonder if I'd be doing food overload even if work was going okay--in which case would I say I'm just fat when I'm happy?

Counting down...

2007-07-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

It's getting down to excitement time for the book and me. I got my free copies in the mail day before yesterday and have been like a kid on Christmas morning every since. Now the site's up--isn't it pretty?

The book won't be out for a month or so. It's kind of like when the kids were little and it didn't seem as though time moved along very quickly (you remember, when you didn't sleep through the night for something like 17 years), but then all of a sudden they were grown and gone. I'm anxious to see this "kid" on the shelves, but not anxious to see it gone!

Hope you're having a good summer!

Oh, my gosh, a blog

2007-07-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

All I've ever done is send in comments, and then only after I misread the security code a couple of times and had to start over.

So, what would you like to talk about? Husbands? I have one of those, have had for 36 years. I've about decided I'll keep him, though there are still days I wouldn't mind loaning him out--a feeling that is entirely reciprocal, I might add. Duane was and is my hero, the father of my kids, a wonderful grandpa to our six grands (stick around--I'll send pictures!), and a musician whose voice and guitar give me heart's ease whenever I hear them.

Or maybe you like cats. I do. We have two, Gabe and Jessy, or maybe I should say they have us. Since I'm housekeeping challenged anyway and don't want to mess with either a litter box or cat hair on the furniture, the cats live outside. This means that the front porch is required to give them all the comforts of home. They have a nice insulated house out there (it's a doghouse, but we haven't told them that), several sets of feeding dishes, toys, and brushes. They also have the porch swing (it's a people swing, but we haven't told them that, either), an entire set of lawn chairs, and a glass-topped table that Duane insists they don't sleep on. (We have told them that--they don't listen.) The cats have long hair, so naturally the front porch does, too. It's a nice porch, really. Just don't go out there wearing black and for heaven's sake, don't sit down!

We can talk about writing if you like, about what it's like to try to start a new career when you're 56 and kind of tired. But mostly, we can just talk. So get comfortable and tell me about your day--I'd love to hear it.