Food Story

I had it on my calendar for a month, the aquatic center open house.  Besides swimming, there would be chili or chicken booyah, fresh vegetables, and yummy desserts, judging from last year's open house.

But Chris called to say that Evan already had a swimming lesson in the morning, so how about I come in to Appleton and meet them for lunch.  It is Tisha's birthday on Monday and it is part of our family tradition that I take the family out to eat.  Sure, I said, I could always go to the open house later. 

We ate at Happy Joe's.  We ordered our pizza but when the waitress brought the order, it was wrong with the vegetarian and meat halves combined as one.  We were given another pizza, but we got to keep the wrong order, too, which Chris said I should bring home,  It's in my freezer now, separated into six portions. 

Later, Tisha gave me some more food from their freezer, things they bought and never used.  There's turkey, taquitos, skillet meals, and even some Snickers bars.  Snickers are one of the food groups in my estimation. 

Since Gary's been in Illinois, I have been using up some of the food we bought to eat together.  There are stir fries, pizzas, packaged dinners.  We have two turkeys, one of them sixteen pounds.  I have around two dozen individual containers of soup.  There are bags of vegetables from my garden and the farmers market.  All of this is in the a big freezer in the basement. 

With everything in the refrigerator, cupboards and freezer, there is plenty to eat. I am spending about $10 a week on food, mostly on fresh fruit.  

I came home too late for swimming, filled with pizza, and sleepy.  Instead of going to the open house, I went down for a nap. 

I skipped supper.  

Rainy Day Christmas Take Down

Here we are in January and instead of snow, we have rain, given to us by warming temperatures.  This is not good news for the farmers.  The orchards of Door County suffered from the unusual weather last year. The cherry and apple crops were terrible. We couldn't even take my grandson apple picking which was our yearly tradition.

But there was nothing I could do about the rain today except adapt. I stayed inside and worked on getting my book into shape. I have the cover done but still have four problems with the interior of the book.  I'll work it out sooner or later.

When the rain let up, I went to the cemetery to see about retrieving the wreath and candle I placed there at Christmas. Usually at this time of year they would be frozen solidly in the ground or even covered in snow. Not today.  They pulled right out.

When I got home I wondered about the fake poinsettias in the planters out front.  In most years, they would be frozen in place until late March but today I could pull half of them out. With warm weather forecast again for tomorrow, I'll finish that job.  The six little Christmas trees will come out, too.

Inside the house, I worked on packing up all the Christmas decorations for another year. The problem is the  big tree.  I dismantled it, placing the boughs into two big bags.  The bags are too heavy for me to move. They are in the corner of the dining room where they will have to stay until Gary returns here from Illinois, probably in mid-February.  We old codgers will drag them up together.

He called this afternoon to tell me his Aunt Shirley is not doing well.  She is suffering from seizures, and no one seems to know what is causing them. He visits her every day in the nursing home, but she is disoriented with memory lapses.  I will see him in another ten days on my way down to Mississippi.

Meanwhile there is rain, both here and in Illinois.  We could use some sun.

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Bettyann Moore posted her latest short story.  As Wade points out, people with insomnia should read it and be happy it isn't something worse.  Read it at Black Coffee Fiction  http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

Flu Season

Gary just talked to me on the phone from Illinois to tell me he is planning on getting a flu shot tomorrow at a discount store. He hasn't had one in years but he is getting worried about the current flu epidemic in the United States. If he should get sick, there would be no one in that farmhouse to care for him, plus he wouldn't be able to visit his aunt every day.  She really depends on him coming to the nursing home each day.

We senior citizens are eligible each year for free flu shots through Medicare.  It is one of the benefits I've been grateful for. I always make sure I get my inoculation 

In the State of Wisconsin, our short sighted governor got legislation passed to limit paid sick days.  No work, no pay, which he said would help create jobs, though no one could figure that one out.  Now, however, it may be working.  People who can't afford to lose pay go to work sick and infect others who also stay on the job.  If the ill person deals with the public, such as in restaurant work, the flu is passed on and on and on. So far, 1300 people in the state have been hospitalized and it is expected to get much worse.

So maybe with all those people ill, new jobs will be created, even if they are temporary.

With the advent of Obamacare, those flu shots will soon be available for every citizen which will be  a blessing, especially for the poor.

Me, I stay healthy. I eat properly, take my vitamins and get plenty of exercise. The shot helps, of course, but as a writer, I work out of my house and don't see all that many people in the course of a day. I expect to get through the winter just fine.

Another Day

Wade and I have been friends since we met in a Fox Valley Technical College writing course a few years ago.  We admired each other's writing.  We set up a critique group.  Others drifted away, others drifted in to the group, but we stayed.  In time, we set up our weekly short story blog, Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot over a year ago and this past fall published our best stories on Amazon.com as an e-book and later put it into print form.

Today Wade and I met with Nikki at the Copper Rock coffee shop. We hadn't seen each other since mid-December.

We'll meet again next week but then I head down to Mississippi and Wade moves with his family to Arkansas.  We will try to keep our blog going and I'm sure we'll have Skype meetings, but I will miss him.

At today's meeting, Wade explained how to put my romance novel into print. He did all the work on our collection.  He told me it's a lot easier than the e-book and thought I could it done in three days. If I can do that, I should be able to get it to amazon.com and get a proof back before I head south and order copies of the romance to be ready for a signing mid-February.

I am hoping that I will get to see Wade at the end of February when he comes back to Appleton.  We are going to be teaching a workshop for Fox Valley Technical College on creating a short story blog.

It's a full circle.  We met at Fox Valley Tech and we'll end up at Fox Valley Tech.

But I hope it doesn't end there.  

What a Day!

Every once in a while there's a day where it all comes together.

The first thing this morning, bookings for two different tours I've been working on came flooding in. By the end of the day, I had enough work to pay for each of the trips.  Anything more will make them profitable.  So I know I will be in Mississippi at the end of this month and in Ontario in July.  That means I will be in warmer climes and away from the winter snow for two weeks.  I know that I will be in cool Canada during July's heat.

With each phone call, my grins got wider.

Next great thing was that the final stage of correcting the e-romance at Amazon.com went smoothly.  I had already corrected the royalties and payments, given myself a correct attribution, and changed the cover.  It had taken me a week to post that book the first time in 2011 and I had made mistakes, mostly typographical errors, but there was one glaring error in the flow of the story.  I corrected my manuscript.  I fully expected it would take me hours to correct the e-book but everything flowed into cyberspace.

By 11:00 a.m. I hit the key that posted all the corrections.  By 5:00 p.m. I was notified that the book was now corrected.  It can be found at Amazon.com by clicking here.
ttp://www.amazon.com/Yesterdays-Secrets-Tomorrows-Promises-ebook/dp/B004ISLS0G/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357696827&sr=1-1&keywords=yesterdays+secrets+tomorrows+promises

Next comes the paperback edition. I'll start on that tomorrow by quizzing Wade about how he edited and published our book, Black Coffee Fiction.  When I return from Mississippi, I'll begin to put together a collection of love stories gleaned from our two years of Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

Later on, I found out about a workshop I can do in March.  More income.

It was a sunny winter day, with the temperature slightly above freezing.  Between booking performances and touring and correcting my e-book, I took long walks around town.  In the end, I had walked four miles.

On days like this, who needs St. John's wort?

Cats

When Gary's aunt went into the nursing home, he took charge of the farm in Illinois, but that also meant taking care of her two cats, Mommy and Lily, who had been living in a chicken coop.  Shirley never let them out and would never allow them to come into the house, but I know my Gary.

First he made the two cats more comfortable in that coop.  He put in bedding, a nice cat box and started spoiling them with canned cat food. He let them out during the day so they could explore the farm.

Mommy fell for his charms right away, following him around purring with the strangest chortling purr I'd ever heard. Soon she worked her way into the farmhouse.  She looked around as if she'd been there before and maybe she was, back when Gary's uncle George was there, thirteen years before. He died soon after the two came to the farm. Gary took to calling Mommy "Mama Pajama".

Lily was not as friendly as Mama Pajama.  She didn't exactly hiss at Gary, she never got that close.  She still is skittish but she follows her mother's lead.  

Gary let the cats out of the coop during the day, but at night they went back into the coop.  Gary gave them bottles filled with hot water in their beds as the nights turned colder but he worried about them.  He began to work on the enclosed porch on the south side of the house.

When Gary finally coaxed Mama Pajama into the enclosed porch, Lily agreed to it.  No longer do they stay in the cold chicken coop. They have good food, clean kitty litter and at night their own electric heater.  During the day, they come into the house and wander around. Mama Pajama sits on his lap.  Lily still stays out of his reach but my money is on Gary.  He'll win her over.  

Twelfth Night

It's Twelfth Night. I don't know that it was ever part of my religious training.  It certainly was never mentioned during the three years of Lutheran catechism classes I had to attend.  It was, however, part of our family tradition.

My mother insisted that our Christmas decorations stayed up until Twelfth Night.  This wasn't easy in those days of live trees, but we had the advantage that we had a tree farm.  The tree was chopped down and fresh three or four days before Christmas.  Every day, we children were told to crawl under that prickly tree to put water in the tree stand.  Even with all the care, by January 6 there were few needles left on that tree.

My mother's insistence on Twelfth Night might have had something to do with her birth date, January 7.
Taking everything down was a way to clear the house for her birthday celebrations.

I don't do exactly what I should do on Twelfth Night, make sure that no decorations are left up by nightfall. Instead, this will be the last night I put all the interior and exterior lights on for the last time until next December. Tomorrow, the decorations start to come down, but it will take me almost a week since Gary is in Illinois and I am working on this by myself. Each day during the next week, I'll remove decorations from one room.

The temperatures are climbing here in Wisconsin.  By Saturday, we'll see 40 degrees F. and that means melting.  Since before Christmas, the Lutheran cemetery has been snowed in, along with the wreath on my parents' grave.  Now I'll be able to retrieve it along with the candle Tisha placed there on Christmas Eve.

By Sunday, everything will be put away for another year. There is always a little sadness in my soul as the holidays come to the end, so I turn my thoughts to spring.