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Travel Tuesday: Massachusetts

Travel Tuesday: Narnia

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Merry Christmas!

Travel Tuesday: New Hampshire

Fog in New Hampshire

Travel Tuesday: Boston

A rainy day in Boston

Travel Tuesday: Mount Washington

Mount Washington, NH

What Was On My...

...November... Agenda: NaNoWriMo, a visit from my in-laws, a visit from my family, hosting Thanksgiving Nightstand: I am the Cheese (again), Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose , and  Horten's Incredible Illusions . Head:  a hand-knitted and felted beret. It's been cold! List of Gratitudes:  apple-cranberry pie; bathtubs; buttons; chapstick; chiropractors; comedy; dry wood to start fires in the fireplace; fresh eggs; flash lights; good recipes; herbs; ice cream; jam;  liquid measuring cups; maps; Neutrogena Norwegian formula hand cream; pencil sharpeners; rearview mirrors; sharp scissors; spoons; slippers; salt & pepper shakers; soap; towels; tissues; universities; vegetable broth; Vitamin C drops; words; zippers. Mind: the brain. The brain's chemistry. Memory. Neurology. Neurologists. Life. Death. How it all fits together into story. This has been a whirlwind month, brought to you by the letter F. Friends. Family. Food. Fatal chicken diseases. Fleece.

NaNoNonsense

Well, friends. I did it. I wrote a brand new novel in less than 30 days. It is very, very rough, but it is there in fledgling state, and I will proclaim February to be NaNoRevMo: National Novel Revision Month. Care to join me?

Travel Tuesday: Plymouth, MA

Plimoth Plantation, MA

Travel Tuesday: Istanbul

Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Travel Tuesday: Istanbul

The Blue Mosque

Travel Tuesday: Istanbul

What Was On My....

...October... I'm a little late this month because of what was on my: ...agenda NaNoWriMo preparation, visit from ma mere, Halloween festivities. ...nightstand Horten's Marvelous Mechanisms. A fun middle-grade read. I'm looking forward to the next one. ...desk revisions of middle-grade humor, sample chapters for a different middle-grade humor, and outline for NaNoWriMo novel. Phew. ...knitting needles a rainbow ombre woolen cowl for my sis. Upcoming: a pumpkin alpaca/silk chunky weight cowl for moi. ...counter the food dehydrator, working at constant capacity, dehydrating the bushel of mutsu apples I picked up last week. ...mind A new story. Though I don't like to talk about my writing while I'm drafting, this new project has to do with memories and the workings of the mind. It's going to be difficult to write for many reasons, but the advice to write what you think you can't pushes me to step out of my comfort zone. So I'm letting

Travel Tuesday: Plymouth, MA

Old Burial Hill, Plymouth, MA

Travel Tuesday: Rochester, New Hampshire

Sunset and a storm

Saying Goodbye

From the earliest days of married life, you watched from the window as the Gingerbread Man left. You watched him as he left to walk to class. You watched him as he got in the car to drive to work -- the Honda, then the Subaru, then the Saturn, then the Ford. After the Ford became scrap metal, he biked to school. Four years of biking year-round in Michigan -- it's no wonder you watched him back then; he might have returned to you as an icicle. When degrees were granted and school was finished, you watched him drive away in the Toyota as he went to claim the other side of the desk at the university. Sometimes, you watched him commute again by bike, though not in winter. You've watched all these years, catching a last glimpse as your love went away for the day. Coat on, a skip in his step, car door slammed or a bike helmet clipped on. Sometimes he sees you and smiles and waves. Often he doesn't, and you watch unobserved from the window. When you've watched until th

Travel Tuesday: New Hampshire

Why

You find yourself in the midst of a crowd. It's a brilliant fall day, the day of the cross-country middle school league championship. Runners in different color jerseys stretch and mingle while they await the start time. You are wearing your mom-hat, there to cheer on the oldest gingerbread boy. You find him. He is eating. Nine times out of ten if you were to go looking for the gingerbread boy, he would be eating. Such is the life of a growing boy. You wish him luck and offer him water and carbs. The girls are scheduled to run first. The course follows a trail through the woods surrounding an immaculate golf course then doubles back to end yards from the starting point. You and the youngest gingerbread boy follow the crowd of parents as they line up at the edge of the starting point. You cheer for the girls as the gun signals the start, then you follow along to the one-mile mark, the place where the girls emerge from the woods to skirt the edge of the golf green. Someone ha

Travel Tuesday: Beverly Shores, IN

Beverly Shores, IN, location of much mirth and many writing shenanigans

Travel Tuesday: Munich

Glockenspiel, Munich, Germany

What's on my...

...september... ...Agenda: Septemberfest (in which I annually face my fear of heights and climb the rock wall), Country Fair (snapping photos of the gingerbread boys participating in the blueberry pie eating contest, the sack race, and the tractor pull), end of our CSA  (good-bye my weekly five pounds of tomatoes), picking and canning peaches, and the third annual Quirk and Quill writers' retreat ...Nightstand:  An odd assortment.  Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain; Doll Bones; The True-Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp; The Suitors of Yvonne; Very Good, Jeeves; I Am the Cheese ...Stovetop:  Apple sauce and apple butter. Quarts and quarts of it. ...Catalog of Fears:  Dying chickens, spiders, saying the wrong thing, missed flights ...Desk:  Novel #3, CATHEDRAL. Revisions, revisions, revisions. ...Mind:  Memory loss, brain connectivity, creativity, winterizing the chicken coop I look forward to September with all the energy a mother with boys at home for the summer

Hiccups

When the hiccups strike, there is one tried and true remedy that you use: your husband. You go to him and he wraps his arms around you and you feel calmness washing over you. Your blood pressure drops. Your breathing deepens. You relax, and the hiccups go away. Tonight the youngest gingerbread boy sat by your side as you read to him. He hiccuped. You suggested he get some water. "But I can't reach the glasses. Can you do that thing? That hug thing?" So you open your arms and he settles in, chest to chest. You can feel him relaxing as you hold him. The hiccups disappear. But you stay that way, enjoying the feel of his bean-pole body against you for a short time. Love is the best defense against hiccups.

Travel Tuesday: Heybeliada, Turkey

Travel Tuesday: Athens

Kerameikos Athens, Greece

The Great and Powerful Oz

In a rare departure from insomnia, you slept last night, and you dreamt that you woke up. It was later than you would have liked. You went to a grassy hillside to wash your hair, shampoo and conditioner at the ready. You kneeled down, flipped your hair over your head, then carefully poured a pitcher of water over it. When it was all wet, you reached for the shampoo, but it was gone. Water dripping into your eyes, you peeked under your curtain of hair to look again, but there was no shampoo, and there was no conditioner. You called your sister's name, shouting it with irritation. "What did you do with my shampoo?" She clicked her tongue. "Nothing!" Then she flounced away to finish getting ready for school. In the meantime, water was dripping down your back, and it was 8:15 now. You didn't have time to wash your hair anymore, but what could you do? Your hair was all wet. "Mom!!! Where's my shampoo?" Your mom came, and with rightful indign

Travel Tuesday: Oxford

Oxford, England

Untethered

Finding yourself without a computer makes you strangely giddy, untethered, though any normal person would feel frantic at the potential of losing three novels, countless other writings, and years of photos. Instead, you danced in the kitchen this morning. You canned tomatoes. You renewed your acquaintance with your drawing pencils. You made muffins. You feel seventeen again. Perhaps because when you were seventeen, people didn't have computers. Well, some people did, but there was no email, no internet, no Facebook, no time wasters. You couldn't read someone's blog from Tennessee, because there were no blogs. No vlogs, no podcasts, no technobabble. In fact, there was not much babble of any kind in your life yet, either. You hadn't started writing fiction. Now, without a computer, you cannot work. You are on an enforced vacation. The computer shop said they might have the computer for as long as six days. The bad news is that it might be kaput. The good news is

Laughing at the Rota Fortunae

Yesterday, you and the Gingerbreads hopped in the car and drove south. You had plans of traipsing through a museum and introducing the gingerbread boys to the famous Russian Faberge eggs. Which you did. It was lovely, and the eggs were magical. And then it was time to leave, which is when the fun began. Rain, rain, and more rain. Heavy rain. There was a strange sound coming from the rear passenger tire, like something was caught in the treads. The Gingerbread Man checked it, but saw nothing. Ten minutes later, you'd got yourself a certified flat tire. The Gingerbread Man pulled off the highway, and as every good father should, made the gingerbread boys participate in the act of changing the tire. Except the tire won't be changed. Car jacked up, lug nuts off, donut at the ready...but the tire won't budge. The Gingerbread Man hammered at it with the wrench. He tugged. He lowered the jack. He hand-tightened the lug nuts and drove on the flat, hoping the weight of the

Travel Tuesday: Hagia Sophia

Mosaic, detail Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Hallelujah

You've waited. And waited. And waited. Biding your time through June. July. August. Day to day, week to week, month to month, tending to immediate needs: food, clothing, shelter. You knew that the time would come. Soon. And now it's here. The blank canvas of a day. School's in session, and the words you've kept at bay all summer are ready to burst forth out of their dam, flooding onto the page. Hallelujah.

Travel Tuesday: Oxford

Oxford, England

Travel Tuesday: Plymouth

Plymouth, MA

The Jungle

At the fervent request of the youngest gingerbread boy, you make your semi-annual foray into the jungle that poses as your garden, bearing no fewer than three different types of clippers. Clover, black-eyed Susans, and lily-of-the valley compete for real estate under forsythia, snowball bush, lilac, and some kind of thorny thing. But over, around, above, through, and under is The Beast. Once upon a time, some past homeowner thought it was a good idea to plant The Beast, a leafy green thing that sends out runners and tendrils and grows at an astronomical pace. Turn your back, and the thing will have a death grip around your neck. You do battle with it twice a year, cutting, hacking, ripping until it appears submissive. It never is. Before you know it, The Beast is back in full force, threatening your patio, your bench, the grill, the ENTIRE BACKYARD. So you pull out your clippers and do battle. It's starting to get the better of you. You bring the cuttings down to the

Feeding Your Soul

You spend the school year feeding your tribe. It seems like all you do is pack lunches and make dinners. But that’s not entirely true—you also spend a great deal of time in the car and quizzing math facts and helping create a whale-on-stilts costume. You attend concerts and track meets and recitals and musicals and field trips. And you write. You revise. You revise some more. You revise until you're sick of revising. By the end of the year, you are drained. Bone-dry drained. Nothing left drained. Drain-o drained. You need to feed your soul. So you go to Istanbul. You see the Hagia Sophia. You see the Blue Mosque. You visit a Turkish bath. You eat something called "The Imam Fainted." You climb a mountain and visit a monastery. You bike around an island. You go to Greece. You see the Parthenon. You visit the Delphic Oracle. You climb to more monasteries. You swim in the Aegean sea. You loved Istanbul and you loved Greece, but you come home and still feel dr

Travel Tuesday: Fish Market

Noryangjin Fish Market, Seoul, South Korea

Travel Tuesday: Istanbul

Basilica Cistern, Istanbul not Constantinople

Camp

First you pack the granola bars. Then the marshmallows, graham crackers, chocolate, snacks, and mini boxes of cereal just like any self-respecting mother would do. (Right?) You grab boxes of crackers and pasta and cans of tuna and kippers. You take peanut butter and plan on packing the fruit and vegetables tomorrow. Though you've hardly been home this summer, you are looking forward to leaving once more. There's a cabin in the woods where you will unplug and unwind. A cabin in the woods without wifi, cell phone access, telephone, tv. There is, however, electricity and hot water and a fire pit. There's a tree house and a canoe. There's an old, old refrigerator and a half-stove, together with a conglomeration of cutlery and kitchen goods. There's Othello and Battleship and cards. You're packing your knitting and some Rafael Sabatini novels. Nothing like a little swashbuckling by firelight. This is summer.

Travel Tuesday: Delphi

Consulting the Oracle at Delphi.

Blood-letting

You go to bed on Saturday with a painful lump in your right armpit. It's not romantic, but there it is. A lump. A red lump. And it hurts. By Sunday night, you have a matching pain in your left armpit. By Monday morning, it hurts to move your arms, a difficult thing if you want to, say, shower, or eat, or get dressed, or even, for that matter, roll over in bed, something that you're champion at. You ignore these things until you can ignore them no more. You know they're just lymph nodes doing their cleaning thing, but you've got things to do and places to go, and you don't have time for infections right now. It's time to visit the doctor. As chance has it, your doctor is on holiday this week, but the Other Doctor has an opening, this very morning. Bully for you. The morning's visit includes a very slow computer, one urine sample, and two vials of blood. Of the three things, only the blood is elusive. The nurse stabs your arm ever-so-gently. She

Travel Tuesday: Istanbul

A great wall of china (near the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul, Turkey)

Gentleman Farmer

You go out to the porch, slip on your sneakers, and walk down to the chicken coop. It's time to visit the girls. You walk down the steps, past the blackberry brambles, through the woods and enter the pen. Already you hear their peepings. Though you can stoop down to look through the small door leading to the ramp, you open the large door so as to see all of the bundles of black and white and tan feathers peeping away. You squat down to see them better, to be less threatening, and watch as they hop down from the roost, visit the feeding trough, investigate the nesting boxes. They peck, peck, peck even if they are pecking at nothing at all. Hard to think that six weeks ago, there were no chickens, no coop. Now the coop stands, complete with stained glass window (salvaged at the transfer station), three doors, ramp, and sturdy wire surrounding the pen. It's been less than a week since you picked up the girls, all eight of them. Four buff Orpingtons, two Wyandottes, and two bar

Travel Tuesday: Cannon Mountain

Cannon Mountain, NH. The terrain of giants.

Travel Tuesday: Washington, DC

Jefferson Memorial Washington, DC

Travel Tuesday: Seoul

Seoul, South Korea. Watch over me.

Magic beans

A bean is just a bean. Except when it's a magic bean. Except when it's a plate of magic beans eaten at a monastery at the top of a mountain on an island in the Sea of Marmara. You have just eaten such a plate of beans with shallots and parsley and tomatoes and olive oil, along with a plate of aubergines with yogurt, and dolmas. And then you hiked down a cobblestone street away from the monastery until you reached the place when the phaetons were, and took a carriage ride back to your hotel, a place that has incense in the rooms and yoga on the patio. And it's only day four of vacation. Maybe tomorrow you'll come across a magic fish.

Travel Tuesday: Seoul

Seoul, South Korea Locking up the love.

Travel Tuesday: Bermuda

Trees in Bermuda. If only life were so tidy.

A Birthday

It's hard to remember being nine. Often it's hard to imagine being a boy. But if you try hard, you can put yourself into the mind of the youngest gingerbread boy and create an explosive birthday party. Literally. You source 6% hydrogen peroxide, buy alka-seltzer, visit the fireworks store. You purchase nearly a case of 2-liter bottles of diet cola, and enough mentos to make the cashier at the grocery store raise his eyebrows. You research bag bombs -- sandwich bags with vinegar and little packets of baking soda. You clean out small paint canisters for rockets of water and alka-seltzer. You make tee-shirts with iron-on decals saying "Ka-boom!" for each of the guests. And you make a fudge tunnel cake, in the hopes that it will ooze from the center when you cut it. It doesn't, but that's ok, because it's accompanied by Party Cake ice cream, gross to you, but nirvana to nine-year olds. The day comes, sunny and 78 degrees, a far cry from the year you di

Travel Tuesday: Oxford

River Cherwell, Oxford, England Where would these punts take you?

A Dream

Last week, you dreamt. It was a vivid dream. You were in your mother's house, and it felt the way it used to feel when you lived there--like home--the bits and pieces, the pictures on the wall, the furniture. All of it was like a mix between Mary Engelbreit and a Meg Ryan film set design. It was home, and you were comfortable there. The problem was that it was June. It was June, and the Christmas tree was still up. Friends were coming over, and you saw your surroundings anew, with fresh eyes, with the eyes of someone who might find it strange that the Christmas tree was still up six months past its expiration date, no matter how charming the ornaments, no matter how graceful the shape of the tree. You are embarrassed. You are embarrassed that your mother had not dismantled the tree. You are embarrassed that you  have not dismantled the tree. How could you have let the time pass--six whole months? How could you have not noticed that it didn't belong there anymore? How

The River

It is 93 degrees. It should not be 93 degrees. It should be 73 degrees, but no one commands Mother Nature, and it's been over 90 degrees for the past few days. The house is hot, the gingerbread boys are hot, you are hot, and the freezer full of Klondike bars is depleted. After chores, the Gingerbread Man packs up watermelon, chips, apples, water, towels, and buckets, and the four of you walk to the river. The trail through the trees is cool and green, and already, you feel the heat of the day abating. You come to the clearing and pass by the pond, inhabited by turtles and frogs and cattails, the place you go ice-skating in winter when it freezes over. Right now it's murky brown; it's hard to believe it's the same place of white winter magic. The heat oppresses you, and you hurry back into the trees. A short boardwalk leads you onward, and after a quarter of a mile, the trail turns parallel with the river. You follow it along passing a sandy area with a big tree

The Clothesline

Once upon a time, back when there were only three of you, you packed up all your stuff, loaded it in a truck, and drove (westward ho!), landing yourselves in Michigan. It was time for a Life Adventure. The Gingerbread Man had finished an MBA, and together, you decided more graduate school was in your future. So you sold your house, ending up five-seven-nine hours away from your respective families. Faced with your situation, most women would get a job with a paycheck, but you are not most women. You had a job, a full-time job and then some: the gingerbread boy. He just didn't come with a paycheck. You know some would be quick to criticize that choice, calling you selfish or stupid or a drain on society. But you weren't. Instead of making money, you made do. You knew the difference between want and need . You owned your car. You owned a house. There was no cell phone, no cable. You had dial-up internet, but no consumer debt. You had a Kitchen Aid. You knew how to make bread

Because That's What We Do, Isn't It?

It is raining and I am tired. The youngest gingerbread boy was up last night at 12:42 am, then 1:30 am, then 2:15 am. And he wants me. Not that Daddy is an option right now considering he has shingles and is down for the count himself. It's me he wants to hold his head, to get a wet washcloth, to sit by his bedside, to read to him, to carry him to the bathroom. To be. And the whole time he says, "I love you so  much, Mommy." And he says, "I don't want to miss school. I haven't missed school all year because I was sick, and they give out prizes at the end of the year." And he says, "You used to call me sickie-poo when I was little and got sick." And he says, "I wish I didn't feel so awful." And he says, "Will you pray with me, Mommy?" So I pray with him and I call him sickie-poo and pumpkin. And I sit by his bedside. And I rub his back. And I hold his head over a bowl. And I bring him a wet washcloth. An

Motherhood

Once upon a time, you read Cheaper by the Dozen  and you thought you'd like to have a dozen kids. How different that would be from your childhood, much of which was spent alone. Everyone would always have a playmate. It would be insta-party, all the time. Then you had one child. And a second. But you didn't make it to a third, or a fourth, let alone a twelfth. Two are party enough. It's hard to remember the Before, the sans children, the time when you could sit on a sofa and read a book if you wanted to. Or you could go out if you wanted to. You could have whatever you wanted for supper, and not have to accommodate a picky palate. There were few tears, and no fights, and the quiet was immense. But so was the emptiness. Motherhood is such a complicated thing. It should be as easy as delivery: take a deep breath and push. But delivery is painful--not easy--and the pain doesn't stop once a child is born. The pain continues, though it moves upward from belly

Earthbound

Walking preserves your sanity. So you tie up your sneakers, pop in your ear buds, and around the loop you go. Well, you think, there are better things that preserve your sanity, but walking is the cheapest. And the most accessible. You set a good pace--enough to get your heart rate up--one foot pounding the pavement after the other. It's rained, and that means one thing during spring in New England: slugs. You watch where you step. You stand up straight, shoulders back, moving from the hips rather than from the shoulders. Before long the music gets to you. The fact is, you're a dancer. You've always been a dancer. From the time you were little, doing "Red Dances" and "Blue Dances" in the living room, to the time you performed with dance companies much later. You're a dancer. Dancing is what preserves your sanity. But there's no stage and your body is injured and doesn't always do the things you want it to do. So you walk.

Small Things

You are forced to arise this morning when the youngest gingerbread boy knocks on your door. "Mmph," you say. He takes that to mean come in, because a few seconds later, the door knob squeaks, and the door opens. If allowed to wake up on his own, the youngest gingerbread boy is painfully cheerful in the morning. "Good morning, Mommy!" He walks around to the other side of the bed, moves the pillow, and climbs in. "I came to see you." You crack an eye open. It's hard to be anything but happy in the face of such filial devotion. "Is it Mother's Day tomorrow?" he asks. "No, not yet." He snuggles up to you. He's been asking you when Mother's Day is for weeks now. There is a large wrapped package hiding in the other gingerbread boy's room, and the waiting is almost more than he can bear. The siren call of morning cartoons sounds, and he leaves you for some PBS. That's ok. You got a morning snuggle, a hug

Don't Forget

You go to bed certain that you are going to die. (Of course you're going to die. Everyone is going to die.) You know this, but it feels very close for some odd reason. Is this a premonition? Should you be scared? You think about death. You think hard about death, and come to the conclusion that you're not afraid to die, but you still have a lot of work left to do, and you pray that God won't take you until you've cleared the decks at least a little bit. The night passes, and you don't die. You wake up, very much alive, but unable to remember your phone number. You roll over, hear your bones settle into a new position, and concentrate on your phone number. It distresses you, this forgetting, and you think about growing old. You think about losing your mind. You wonder if the days will pass by unnoticed, day after day, until you are no longer young, but, in fact, very very old. You wonder if the day will come that you turn the stove on to make tea, then wa

Scrubbing

Sometimes you just have to scrub. Pull out the rubber gloves, the cleanser, and scrub your heart out. It feels good, this scrubbing. Too much time has passed since the last scrubbing because you've been occupied with parties, wrapping, packing, traveling, more traveling, snow, not to mention whale costumes with laser eyes. The scrubbing got set aside for sanity's sake. But the whale costume is done, the parties are over (at least until Groundhog Day), the wrapping has been disposed of, the packing has been unpacked, the laundry done and folded, and the wanderlust has been satisfied for quite some time. Stuff has been put away, and now it's time for scrubbing. Some muscle and some cleanser and everything shines once more. Some sweeping, some mopping, some vacuuming. Home.