Hibernating Through the Holidays

I've always claimed I couldn't understand the concept of a "staycation." Whenever my late husband would suggest I just kick back and watch reruns of "Gunsmoke" all day with him, I'd laugh and scurry off to clean out a kitchen drawer or to open the laptop to check call outs for submissions or I'd bound upstairs to change the bedding.

Vegging out at home has never been a possibility with me. There's a residual inner voice--is that you, Grandma?...scolding away. But last month I caught a cold...and it seemed as if it were going to stay with me for the rest of my life. After three weeks the sniffling finally ceased. I'd never had a cold last so long. Then I realized that my resistance probably was next to nil. I'd rushed through this year, editing, writing, paying homage to Charles Dickens in his bicentennial year, promoting this, that and the other with community service, and feeling guilty because I'd let the gardens go to weed.

Then I came across this passage by John Steinbeck, in The Log from the Sea of Cortez: 

“It was a good thing, we told ourselves; the eyes grow weary with looking at new things; sleeping late, we said, has its genuine therapeutic value; we would be better for it, would be able to work more effectively. We have little doubt that all this was true, but we wish we could build as good a rationalization every time we are lazy. For in some beastly way this fine laziness has got itself a bad name. It is easy to see how it might have come into disrepute, if the result of laziness were hunger. But it rarely is. Hunger makes laziness impossible. It has even become sinful to be lazy. We wonder why. One could argue, particularly if one had a gift for laziness, that it is relaxation pregnant of activity, a sense of rest from which directed effort may arise, whereas most busy-ness is merely a kind of nervous tic.
...
How can such a process have become a shame and a sin? Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness.”

I decided Steinbeck was right on the money. I didn't need to commit a murder nor lead a mob. I needed to rest, to commune with myself. I needed time alone...not to write, but to replenish my empty coffers. Here it was nearly Thanksgiving, and I'd run out of energy, out of enthusiasm, and out of eggs. I could remedy the latter with a quick trip to the supermarket, and while there, I could stock up on necessities and just hunker down. I didn't need to fly to relatives this Thanksgiving. Instead, I could send warmest wishes, and spend my holiday week...yes, a full seven-day week!...reading, watching videos, going to movies, playing with the dogs, napping, eating and reading some more.

So for this entire past week I didn't open the laptop, where I do the writing and editing and work for the organizations I volunteer with. I checked email and Facebook and my daily news feeds on the computer in the living room, even taking time to play a few rounds of Spider. If it were noon and I felt drowsy, I napped on the sofa. If it were midnight and I awoke, I'd read until 3:30 without worrying about getting up and to work at the laptop by 8 a.m.

What a wonderful way to refuel. What a treat...and it cost me nothing, really, compared with what a trip someplace would have cost. Yes, I did miss visits with my granddaughter in Arizona or my family and friends in California. But we'll meet again. They all know I love them.

In the meantime I've learned to assign some value to indolence. And here's the payoff: my old energy and enthusiasm have returned...plus there's still over a dozen eggs left in the bottom of the fridge. And plenty of time to make a mid-morning omelet before I open that laptop in a few minutes and get back to work.

This Thanksgiving I've been grateful for so much...including the everlasting wisdom of John Steinbeck!

Hot and Heavy at Thanksgiving

Though more than a week remains before Thanksgiving, I'm already planning how I'll celebrate that day. This year I'm staying home. No sense in roasting an entire turkey for just me...but a turkey breast might fill the bill. I plan sweet potatoes, creamed onions, stuffed celery and olives, and certainly pumpkin pie. And I don't plan to count calories, not even when I sneak downstairs to make that midnight turkey sandwich, layered thickly with cranberry sauce.

In my preteen days, Thanksgiving provided a chance for me to bond with Mama and Grandma. Several years ago I wrote about how I helped prepare the feast in a story, "Spellbound by Swanky Swigs," which was published in Thanksgiving Tales: True Stories of the Holiday in America. When I wrote that story I remembered how much I always looked forward to this particular holiday.

http://www.amazon.com/Thanksgiving-Tales-Stories-Holiday-America/dp/0982729006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350923171&sr=8-1&keywords=thanksgiving+tales

Unfortunately, by the time I hit high school, I no longer enjoyed Thanksgiving. Of course, I wanted to see my aunts, uncles and cousins...it wasn't that. I just didn't want to see the food. I'd sit at the table, watching my rotund uncles shovel down mashed potatoes, and worry that if I tasted as much as a morsel of Grandma's apple/raisin stuffing, I'd add two inches to my hips. By that time I'd been sold the idea that a good girl, a pretty girl, a decent girl was...a thin girl. Less is more was the mantra of the '50s. Though I didn't know anybody who ran to the restroom to throw up after every meal, that revolting activity was just around the corner. My friends and I thumbed little calorie counters available at every drugstore checkout station. We were already engrossed in obsessing over every mouthful of food that we no longer quite enjoyed.

In  Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion, released last month by Seal Press, Virgie Tovar has assembled the stories of 31 women who have spent their lives dealing with the weighty issue of weight, and have finally adopted a different philosophy...love what you've got, and quit waiting for life to begin once you've become thin. I'm one of these women. My story, "Elephants Never Forget," harks back to the time that I became aware that I didn't measure up...or, rather, measured up far too much. Here's an excerpt:

This incident marked a turning point in my life. Sixty years later, I still remember that at dinner that night I'd turned down seconds on mashed potatoes and I'd even skiped the cake Mama served for dessert. Obviously, I'd have to cut back on eating. Food made me fat, and made me lazy and unlovable in my mother's eyes.

I'm proud that my story is included. The cover copy announces: "Writers, activists, performers, and poets write about everything from fat burlesque and queer dating to plus-size modeling and building the ultimate fat wardrobe. Long overdue, Hot & Heavy is a fierce, sassy and joyous send up to living large--and loving it."

To celebrate the publication of this book, that celebrates hate loss, not weight loss, I intend to take back Thanksgiving. I'm going into this holiday season carefree and calorie-counting-free.


http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Heavy-Fierce-Girls-Fashion/dp/1580054382/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350923312&sr=1-2&keywords=hot+and+heavy

On Borrowed Time

The evening of November 1, 1987, El Dia de Muertos, the Day of the Dead in Mexico and much of Central America, I had just taken my vows as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Belize City, Belize. I'd left Long Beach, California, just six weeks earlier, full of hope that I'd find a new direction in my life. As it turns out, I did.

After the swearing-in ceremony that moonlit night, a male friend volunteered to walk me home to my host family, and we were winding our way up Baymen Avenue in the Caribbean Shores section of town, not far from the place I was staying in King's Park.

Two young men appeared out of nowhere, one wielding a fence post he'd uprooted from somewhere nearby. While one thumped his makeshift weapon against my friend's forehead, the other grabbed my shoulder bag and yanked. The strap twisted around my forearm, and I fell to the ground. He dragged me a few feet along the gravel, growling at me to let loose of the purse. I wasn't holding on. It just wouldn't unwind from my arm. He batted at me several times, the purse finally unwound, and the two of them ran off.

I crawled back to my friend and leaned over him. I saw he was unconscious, but could see his chest rising and falling, so knew he was still alive. His white shirt was spattered with blood, and it took a moment for me to realize that it was spurting on him from my upper left arm.

That's when I realized that I'd been stabbed, and an artery had been severed. I started to run toward the Peace Corps training director's house...we'd passed it a few minutes earlier...shouting for help. People streamed out of their houses. One phoned the police. Another helped me fashion a tourniquet from my slip. Soon we were on our way to the Belize City Hospital, and eventually airlifted to Miami Beach, where we both had surgery.

We recovered, and eventually returned to Belize to carry out our Peace Corps assignments. I was 50 at the time, and my friend a few years older. Nobody had expected us to come back...but we did.

Now, on the 25th anniversary of that harrowing night, I'm thankful for the opportunities those additional years provided for me. I had the chance to travel to the far reaches of the world, to live and work in other countries, to gain a wider perspective during my decade overseas at how fortunate I am to have been born in the United States and to own an American passport.

I had the chance to live in other states upon my return home...Arkansas, Maryland, Washington. I married again, and gained stepchildren and grandchildren and even a great-grandchild. And four-footed friends, dogs and cats. I've also been able to write about my life...my stories have been or will be published in around 75 books.

Each November 1 I eat a pumpkin treat to commemorate that I'm very much alive on the Day of the Dead. When I lived in Antigua, Guatemala, my friend and I would join the throngs at the local cemetery and leave pumpkin cookies on the graves.

I won't be getting to a cemetery today, but I will stop by my local Safeway and pick up a pumpkin pie. They're on sale right now. Maybe I'll buy two and freeze one for Thanksgiving...I've got a lot of celebrating to do and a lot of thanks to give.

October Surprise...at Colville Safeway!

One of the joys of my annual pilgrimages to my Southern California birthplace involves wandering around some of the few remaining brick-and-mortar bookstores with old friends. I'm not-so-secretly pleased when I can tug a book off a shelf and flip to one of my stories.

"Look," I'll say, feigning modesty. "This book has one of my stories!"

 My friends fake astonishment. "How impressive!"

There's not a lot of financial gain in writing true stories about one's life for these books. So why not accept the emotional payoff one gets from preening when one has the chance? Even if one has to stage the scene.

Where I live now, in Stevens County, 70 miles from Spokane, I've never had the opportunity to spy a book with one of my stories in any store. Wal-Mart did carry Chicken Soup for the Soul's Messages from Heaven several months ago...a friend spotted it. By the time I dropped by the store a day later, there were no copies left. I'm hoping a few local readers got to learn how my husband planned to stage a comeback from the afterlife in my story, "The Unforgotten."

But last night, on the way to a jewelry party at a friend's house, I dropped by Safeway to pick up some lettuce and some dog chews. I wandered down the book and magazine aisle and idly cast a glance at the shelves. Lo and behold...Safeway had stocked not one, but TWO, of the new Chicken Soup for the Soul books on health, edited by doctors from Harvard Medical School: Say Goodbye to Back Pain, with my story "Twist and Shout," and Say Hello to a Better Body, with my story "Running Like Sixty."

I scurried over to the checker and asked if I could borrow her assistant who was bagging groceries. The pretty young woman who snapped this photo looked suitably impressed. I basked in my momentary glory, relieved that I was wearing my dressy Marks and Spencer black coat rather my scruffy snow-scene fleece.

Someday I'll get my 15 minutes of fame. Last night I got 15 seconds, but it was sufficient. I'm back at the keyboard today, ego deflated to its normal size, working on editing stories for the upcoming Publishing Syndicate's Not Your Mother's Book...On Travel. This one, due out in late January, will have my name on the cover! One can hardly wait. One plans to splurge with shameless self-promotion.

Seasonal Vertigo

Yesterday Natty woofed  me awake at 4:30, desperate to go outdoors. My diabetic mutt might be having trouble with his blood sugar again. I notice he's drinking more water and wanting to urinate more frequently. His system might be as out-of-whack as the seasons. But I can take Natty in for a checkup. I can't do anything to halt the wackiness of the weather.

I'm savvy enough about the environment not to confuse weather with global warming or climate change. But I know that it's not normal, even in this far corner of Northeast Washington, to see snow a full week before Halloween. Yet I'm expecting some tonight. Yesterday, driving home from a variety show at the Kettle Falls Woodland Theater, my friend and I noticed sleet among the raindrops peppering my windshield. And when Natty bounded outdoors yesterday morning, I checked the thermometer. It read 23 degrees! That's normal for Thanksgiving. But a week and a half before Halloween?

Last night my nightgown simply would not suffice to keep me snug. Instead I donned makeshift pajamas: an old shaker-knit pullover and a pair of loose cord slacks. My October Avista bill is going to look more like the ones I usually get in January and February. My thermostat is set for 62, and my arthritis tells me I can't turn it down much lower. And it's barely a month into autumn, let alone winter.

Tending Your Inner Garden recently sent me my contributor's copies of its latest volume, Spring: Inspiration for the Season of Hope and New Beginnings.  I'd read a few of the entries, the poems and stories celebrating renewal. But I've put it aside, and begun to revisit Winter: Women's Stories, Poems and Inspiration for the Season of Rest and Renewal.

Winter contains my story, "Tombstone Territory," and Spring, "Maybe Tuesday Will Be My Good News Day."  I'm hoping my contributions may be selected for the Summer and Autumn volumes to be released next year.

In the meantime, I'm trying to reconcile myself to the idea that the World Series may very well drift into November. The National League has yet to determine a contender...one game left to go! I guess it's time for me to forget the notion of one holiday at a time or one seasonal event in perfect order. Maybe it's time to start planning an Easter outfit or a summer holiday. Seems as if seasonal sequence is a thing of the past, a relic of my youth.

Or maybe I should just give up and move to Reno. My late husband, Ken Wilson, claimed it could snow there every  month of the year except August!


http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Tending%20Your%20Inner%20Garden:%20Winter

http://tendingyourinnergarden.com/uncategorized/savor-the-spring-in-your-life/

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

When I learned that Publishing Syndicate planned a book for its new anthology series, Not Your Mother's Book, called On Being a Stupid Kid, I struggled to hit on something that I could contribute. I'd been a sensible kid in many respects...didn't play hookey until high school, and then, only once. Didn't smoke until high school. Didn't stay out past curfew until high school. My really dumb and rebellious misdemeanors I'd committed in my late teens, as I edged from adolescence into young adulthood...too old and too big to be considered a kid.

And I'd already published several stories about my earlier years...being adopted, seeing my birth mom for the last time, saving the family home from burning down...so what was there left to write about? The stories had to be true...no fudging on that. I thought of a lot of stupid acts I'd witnessed, but I couldn't claim them as my own when they really were committed by my sister, my brother or my cousins.

Then I remembered junior high! Oh, yes. I'd innocently accompanied a master shoplifter on a tour of department stores, and had been fingered, if only momentarily, as a perpetrator. I'd lined up at a party with a passel of other eighth-grade girls for a chance to kiss Billy Jeffers. We'd wearied of Spin the Bottle, so just asked Billy to sit on a stool in the closet and let us take turns. None of us wanted to kiss any of the other boys.

I'd thought about my babysitting adventures, and how I'd read my employer's racy books...Forever Amber was the first bodice-ripping historical romance I'd ever zipped through...and the last. Not quite enough material there for an entire story.

Then, instead of honing in on incidents, I started to recall certain friendships, and how much making friends meant to me. I remember some of the other kids who were struggling along with me to make sense of our newly pubescent selves. And the story ideas started to flow.

Two of my stories, "Why Did Cynthia Slap Me?" and "Fevers" have been accepted for this book. I've changed some names to protect the guilty, as well as the innocent. Both stories involve teachers, as well as my fellow students. I can't really put faces on these two particular teachers. I only remember that both had certain classroom rules. And both my stories involve how I violated those rules.

These days I claim to be a law-abiding citizen. Well, I did file my automobile registration three days late this past month. But aside from that infraction, I can't recall any recent outlaw behavior. But in junior high? I erred at least twice, and that's not counting chewing gum and throwing spitballs. Blush.

Fortunately, I've read all the other stories in this book, as I proofread it for Publishing Syndicate. It's comforting to learn I wasn't the only youthful law-flouter. Grab this book when it comes out on November 6, and you'll see just what a bunch of desperadoes so many of us were, back when we were stupid kids!

The book will be available for pre-order soon on Amazon. You're not going to want to miss this one!

Let's Fall in Love

Though it's not yet up on Amazon or its own website, OakTara has listed the contributors and posted the cover of one of its two new collections of real-life love stories. OakTara claims the stories in Falling in Love With You are "The best real-life falling-in-love stories, guaranteed to make you smile and say, “Ahh…”

I'm delighted that my tale, "Good Bettor, Best," is included in this collection, even though my late husband, Ken Wilson, would grin at a cover photo of a couple leaping into the air. Ken claimed not to leap, with the exception of to an occasional conclusion. He prided himself, however, on his stylish saunter! Here's the list of contributors to Falling in Love With You: http://oaktara.com/anthologies

Not only do I love autumn for its crisp cool air and the long-awaited ripening of the apples on my trees, I also appreciate the book publishers who issue new tomes in this season, all ready for holiday sales. So I'm thrilled that I've got several stories coming out within this autumn in a dozen new anthologies:

Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Positive, with "Eighty-Five Percent."
Not Your Mother's Book: On Being a Woman, with "Up Front" and "Egged On."
Whispering Angel's The Littlest Blessing, with "Light of My Life."
Seal Press, Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion, with "Elephants Never Forget."
Silver Boomer, On Our Own: Widowhood for Smarties, with "All of His Heroes."
Silver Boomer, A Quilt of Holidays, with "Easter Bloomers."
Jonna Ivin, Loving for Crumbs, with "Needs."
Tending Your Inner Garden, Summer, with "Maybe Tuesday Will Be My Good News Day." Hidden Thoughts Press, It's Weighing on Your Mind, with "Wheels and Deals."
God Makes Lemonade II, with Santo Domingo Sunrise
Dream of Things, Travel, with "Once in a Lifetime."
Hidden Brook Press, Chocolate Fixes Anything: A Loving Tribute to Mothers and Grandmothers, with "Special Yarn Blossoms.

 For Ken, a man who figured the odds and kept count...right now there's 58 anthologies between the "A" and "Z" bookends where I keep my contributor's copies. With this additional dozen, by the end of the 2012 there should be at least 70!  What's the odds on that, I'd have asked Ken. I can picture him shaking his head in amazement from The Great Beyond, and giving me his standard response..."At least one in three."

Baby...you're still remembered. Odds are that people everywhere will continue reading about you:  "Eighty-Five Percent," "All of His Heroes," "Wheels and Deals," as well as "Good Bettor, Best!" are all about you.