Leaping over Lent!

February 2016 is a leap year.

Children's Book/Work-in-Progress

Instead of leaping over the file of unpublished manuscripts cluttering my office space I decided that since I now have an in-house illustrator I would attempt to publish one of them.

All creative writers have their muse and mine happens to be milk chocolate candy accompanied by a cup of coffee.  

Consequently what I would really like to leap over is Lent. This year in support of my vegetarian daughter I gave up meat along with chocolate candy for Lent.

My Lenten sacrifice has nothing to do with religion. If it did I wouldn’t be posting it on this blog.  My own personal belief is that posting your pay it forward good deeds and self-sacrifices all over social media does not impress Heaven.  It only annoys us heathens.

I’m giving up meat and chocolate candy to impress myself and annoy other people by proving that I can!  It could also mean dropping a few pounds due to healthier eating habits-unless you’re me. Read on….

Since I would be spending some of Lent at my parent’s home in Florida, I knew better than to classify fish or seafood as a meat. Giving up meat was sin enough as far as they were concerned. I grew up on a Protestant farm and the cows that still reside there are not being groomed for the petting zoo. Their future is in fast food, if you know what I mean.

Solomon's Happy Hill Farm Cattle

Watching the cows graze did nothing to diminish my resolve to go without meat. Also it helped that the Florida Panhandle where I’m from has some of the best southern fried seafood you’ll ever eat. This trip I went to David's Catfish House! 

Doing without meat is not so bad when you have fried seafood as an option.  It has been rather unfortunate for my husband (who did not give up meat) and has been cheated out of his ritual BBQ pork meals that his wife no longer feels obliged serve.  

It’s not the meat, but the chocolate covered Valentine’s and now Easter candies on every store shelf I shop that’s really teaching me the meaning of Lenten sacrifice.  

I was afraid it would be after Easter and a dozen or so of those Cadbury bunny eggs before my creative abilities would flow ever again. Luckily I found a bakery the next town over from my hometown here in Tennessee!  

It’ll take a few more trips to decide, but I think the cream horns may be even more productive and muse worthy than a Hershey bar.   I’ll let you know….

Simply Sweet Bakery

Surviving Breast Cancer: Long Live the Sitcom Queen!

“Your odds are good, but I wouldn’t go to Vegas if I were you,” said the oncologist with the best bedside manner NEVER… At least according to some patients – but he and I shared the same perverse sense of humor!

Twenty-two years later… I’m thinking I should have gone to Vegas!

January is my Breast Cancer Anniversary.

Before the movie popularized the term “bucket list,” I had one! Luckily, I had checked the really death-defying ones – sky diving, for example – off early.  Back when I was young, invincible, and coordinated –and before a husband, children, and a reason to live!

This year I decided to celebrate life in 2016 by stepping out of my comfort zone and doing something fun once a week – or at the very least once a month. The only thing that’s kept me off the couch and out the door so far is my daughter Tabitha.

One week we hiked and last week we went ice skating for the first time in years. 

It is becoming clear to me that the longer I live the more death defying things I used to consider fun have become.  Even hiking my neighborhood is beginning to make me feel like a wuss. Not just the actual hike – which is the equivalent of walking up the black diamond of a ski slope – but the wild animals my neighbors keep reporting they’ve seen! Anyone else seen, The Revenant?

  
In 1994, I remember bartering with God and suggesting he let me live long enough to see Tabitha get married.

She’ll turn 26 in April. Perhaps this sheds a little light on why her mom, unlike my own mother (who never missed an opportunity) has never ever demanded she catch the bridal bouquet.  

Yesterday we had our first snow, and the roads off our mountain were impassable. Snow days make it easy for me to stay home and write; unless I’ve found a lump in my breast and I’m scheduled for a biopsy.

 In January 1994, that is exactly what happened.  The snow could not melt soon enough that year.

I recall lying on the examination table of the doctor’s office where I had gone for my biopsy. Thank goodness he had removed the needle, before I heard Tabitha howling in agony!

My husband had dropped me off and taken our children to get some breakfast. Tabitha had insisted on a chocolate (no shock here as she’s my daughter) milkshake. It was still freezing cold outside and her fingers had stuck to the milkshake cup.  

Nope, she was not wearing gloves, and more than likely she had argued about wearing a coat too.  Her argument being that the inside of it was too cold.  

I’m sure every woman between Mickie D’s and the Doctor’s office swooned at how adorable it was that my husband let her get away with this sort of thing.  However, I can tell you, I would have and did receive the stink-eye every single time I allowed either kid to win one of these arguments.  

Present-day, Tabitha has been assisting me with the manuscript of a children’s book I wrote for her years ago. I had all but forgotten about it, but it was one of her favorites.  It is a feminist fairytale about a hard-headed princess and her adoring father. 

How did I ever come up with that idea? 

There was no Queen in the story.  One can assume she died from breast cancer.

Lucky for me, my life was not a fairytale, but more like a sitcom.  Long live the Queen!

Happy Nu(clear) Year!

Chubby the white lab rat has been dismantled and Tickles Tabitha's Christmas costume packed away. It felt a little sad to wave goodbye to the tail end of Chubby, and the year 2015.

A lot can happen in a year.

This is a photo I posted last year, I was sitting on this same sofa, looking out these windows, realizing how lucky I was to have such a beautiful view. I was home alone, in a new house, in my new home state... simultaneously pensive and restless.

Some of the new neighbors I had met had been talking about their young (in some cases not so young) adult children who had moved back home for one reason or another. Even though they definitely were not bragging about it I felt the slightest twinge of envy.  

My children had been on their own and loving it for a couple of years by then. I would have predicted Hell to freeze over before predicting that either one of them would move back in with me.  

Yes, having to do this might be one of the reasons living here got called Purgatory. 

Hell didn't happen- but Purgatory sure did! First my son Jordan, and then my daughter Tabitha asked to move in with us here in Tennessee, or as Tabitha labeled it to Purgatory, while they navigate the next course of their own lives.  

Life is like that- just when you think you’re headed one direction someone hits the brakes and you’re taking a detour.

I’m happy that now Frahmhaus will also have been home to my children as well and not just their parent’s house.

  

My children are not the freeloading Millennials you see stupefied on an episode of Dr. Phil. They’re smart, independent, and definitely more worried that living in their parent’s basement will go from temporary to forever than I am. 

Tabitha and Jordan

Now I have someone handy to do those embarrassing side gigs for Nutcracker Publishing, and to give me all sorts of ideas and material to vent write about. 

I can't wait to share one of the many humorous and heart-warming stories my son likes to provide, to any future grandchildren he has.

FYI: The possibility of my demise before grandchildren is why I have a bookcase full of journals!

Wishing all of you a Happy Nu(clear) Year!  Clear of stress and without mental meltdowns!

Here is to 2016 and all its possibilities! 

Always on the Nice List: Nuclear Power!

Looking Dumb Wearing An Ugly Christmas Sweater? Look Smart Reading Nuclear Power!

Up on the Roof Top: Promoting Nuclear Literacy!

Oak Ridge, TN Christmas Parade 

Part two: The Perils of a Small Independent Children’s Book Publisher and Author.

Despite the power failure that blew out the lights during our first public appearance in East Tennessee, the Nutcracker Publishing Company’s children’s book characters still radiated! The city of Kingston, Tennessee’s City Council awarded Nutcracker Publishing Grand Prize, or what they called the Mayor’s Award, for our parade entry.  

We invested the prize money we received from our award in a larger, more powerful inverter and prepared to shine our literary brilliance on the Secret City of Oak Ridge, Tennessee--  A pro-nuclear city if ever there was one!  

Needless to say, our white lab rat from Nuclear Power: How a Nuclear Power PlantReally Works! could hardly wait to light up his larger-than-life hard hat and promote nuclear literacy for its citizens.

We arrived early and got to work transforming my son’s green jeep into Chubby the white lab rat.  This time, my husband Randy was our driver. He’s also our in-house electrician, and he was going to make sure the lights did not dim on this parade!

So, of course, after wrapping the jeep in Christmas lights, we plugged in our super-sized inverter and it DOES NOT work!  I should be writing TV sitcoms instead of children’s books, because this is the sort of thing that always happens to us.

Randy rushed to the store where we had purchased our inverter and where I’m sure the guys empathized with his need to appease his crazy wife and bring back an inverter that actually WORKED! This would be the fourth time he got me an inverter and he wouldn’t leave the store until they tested it out and he was sure it would light up a tractor-trailer-- not to mention a jeep.

By the time he got back to the parade venue, my daughter Tabitha and I had Chubby dressed, Tickles Tabitha ready to wave, bookmarks and enough parade candy to sicken Santa ready to distribute. We watched as Randy connected the inverter and turned on the lights… which glowed magnificently!   

Tickles Tabitha climbed onto the rooftop of our jeep (a.k.a. Chubby the nuclear lab rat) and just as I had hoped parade bystanders in the Secret City of Oak Ridge were blinded by nuclear literacy radiance-- 

                                                    and Christmas lights! ...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         That's the end of  this tail!

Obligatory Selfie

Give them Something Interesting to Debate: Nuclear Power!

Got my table Christmased and Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump taped to the back of my dining chairs. Usually it's moments like this when I get an unexpected guest at the door like the new neighbors, the UPS guy, or most recently the electrician who wired our house.

They never ask, or say anything, but I can tell they think something is seriously wrong with me.  

Power Outage at Nukie Nuclear Power Plant!

Just prior to their first public appearance in East Tennessee, Nukie Nuclear Power Plant employees experienced a sudden power outage.

The power outage had nothing to do with nuclear power… but I couldn’t resist that headline! It’s just the type of sensationalized news I’ve grown accustomed to seeing when it comes to nuclear power plants.

The only thing our power outage had to do with nuclear power is that it prevented us from lighting up the giant hard hat our lab rat-inspired parade float (jeep) was wearing. It did not prevent us from shining a light on nuclear literacy or wowing the children lining the streets of Kingston, Tennessee.

Riding atop our Chubby jeep was Tickles Tabitha the character from my children's book about cancer. My daughter Tabitha portrayed her children’s book self; I sat in back and tossed out candy. My son Jordan was our driver.

I don’t remember when I got the bright idea to turn my son’s green jeep into a white lab rat, but I spent Thanksgiving doing it.  

Everything was good to go or so we thought until we cranked up the jeep and turned on the power supply that- according to our in-house experts- was plenty powerful enough to light up our lights. Instead they blinked and went out.  

As they say, the show must go on… so we took off all our Christmas lights 
and fell in line behind the Senior Citizen transit bus!

Despite not having any Christmas lights, the kids loved Tickles Tabitha and Chubby. As it turned out, the adults did too. The Monday morning after the parade weekend, I received a notification from Kingston Tennessee’s Park and Recreation Department that our parade entry won grand prize!

Chubby Rat along with Tickles Tabitha received the prestigious Mayor’s Award.  While I’m not going to brag about how much, it was a CASH reward which we invested promptly in a larger more powerful inverter for the jeep. 

The Kingston Tennessee City Council sponsored the parade float competition and floats were judged on the following criteria:

           1.  Was a theme covered?

                 2.  Are there any special effects to enhance it?

                 3.  Does it incorporate a unique or creative idea?

                 4.  How is the public appeal? Does the crowd seem to relate to it?

The following award-winners were announced:

Mayor’s Award          Nutcracker Publishing Company

Council’s Award        Starnes Wood Stove and Patio Store

Band Award              Roane County High School

Youth Award             Tri County Roll Arena

Honorable Mention   Dr. James Walmsley, DDS

Church Award           Impact Church

Nutcracker Publishing's next parade is December 12, in the Secret City, known as Oak Ridge, Tennessee. With any luck there will be no power outage, and parade bystanders will be blinded by nuclear literacy radiance and #Christmas lights! 

How Does a Reindeer Glow his Nose? NUCLEAR POWER!

Nuclear Power…where does it come from; where does is go?  At Nutcracker Publishing Company we think everyone needs to know!  This holiday season Crack Open a Book about Nuclear Power! 

Don't want coal in your stocking? Stuff it with Nuclear Power!

Tis the Season for a little commercial-ism! 

One of my favorite Christmas memories is when my children helped put together this video for Nuclear Power: How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works! 

As always, my daughter Tabitha directed, and my son Jordan starred  in our video production. Here's a few behind the scenes phtos I found:

Jordan playing Santa

Tabitha giving him tips on  exhibiting a jollier belly.

Chubby our lab rat 

Don't want to get caught with coal in your stocking!  Ho Ho Ho....or as Santa says, "Go Go Go" to Nuctcracker Publishing.  

Happy Hanukkah from Nutcracker Publishing!

The trouble with relocating every few years is there is always something or someone you love that you can't bring along.  I'm missing my BFF Wendy, who is Jewish....not to mention the latkes and chocolate she's probably devouring right about now! 

She taught me about Hanukkah and I shared St. Nick's Day with her.  A tradition I'd never heard of until I married my Catholic husband-- which perhaps explains why my children celebrated St. Nicks day on December 10th!  

Wishing Wendy and all my Jewish family, friends, and colleagues a Happy Hanukkah!   

Happy St. Nicks Day from Nutcracker Publishing!

National Cookie Day: How does Mrs. Claus cook her cookies?

Mrs. Claus always cooks her cookies using Nuclear Power!

Ho Ho Ho!