FAMOUS PET PEEVES OF THOSE DESIGNATED AS THE HOUSEHOLD MAID

As a wife and mother, I’ve often talked with other married women about their pet peeves family members seem oblivious to--and which drive us "straight to the moon."

 1. Unmade beds. Everyone should make his/her bed. Please don’t placate me with the excuse you didn’t have time. It takes two or three minutes. There is a saying, “Unmade bed, unmade head.” Start you day our right and end your day slipping between sheets and blankets that don’t look as if a herd of disgruntled buffalo organized a stampede through the room. 

 2. The kitchen sink is not the dishwasher. There is no little elf or industrious dwarf who miraculously schleps the dishes from the sink or countertop and stacks them in the dishwasher. But I will tell you that there is a “Grumpy” female dwarf if it’s not done. Oh, by the way, while we’re talking about dishes, please rinse your dishes and glasses when you’re finished eating or drinking. It helps when soften the grumpiness, just a tad.

 3.  Learn to iron. At least, learn to iron your good “stepping-out” shirts, pants, and dresses. No, no, no, everything is not “wrinkle-free.” Let’s heat up the iron and chase away the wrinkles on that cotton shirt, especially if you’re going on your first date, to an interview, or to church. It would be wise to make a good impression at all three of these places. You need to look in control and organized—like you care and certainly not like you slept in your clothes.

 4. Take out the trash. Please don’t try to squash the last pizza box onto the top of the already overflowing waste paper can! This is the one time when all men’s spatial perception flies out the window and heads for Mars. I’ve watched men crush pop cans in their bare hands to try to make the “little sucker” fit the last two-inch space in the trash can and spare them the task of taking the entire heap outside to the proper receptacle.

 5.  Pick up your shoes and stash them out of the way. Anyone, who has ever stumbled over a size 13 shoe coming in the entrance way or better yet, waltzed into the bedroom in the dark and stumbled over a shoe worn by Big Foot, knows what I’m saying here. If others wanted to jump hurdles, they’d enter a television survival show.

 [P.S. Changing the toilet paper roll won't make you brain dead.]

 Now it’s your turn, ladies and gents, to add your favorite pet peeve.

 

NEW - NEW - NEW     

COURTING BETSY - Book 3 of the Ashmore Brothers Series

  

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GIVING UP HOARDING...OR NOT

 It’s time to leap into February. This year February is a fickle month. Usually Central Pennsylvania doesn’t have spring thaws until March when the sloppy snow melts down into a heap of gray grit and gravel along the roadsides. But as I write this, we have had rising temperatures. The white blankets of snow covering our yards are vanishing and dormant grass is now poking through.

I’ve dedicated this year to trying to get some type of order in my life and my writing. I’ve promised myself I’m going to clean and rearrange my office. I have high hopes of tackling a stack of old fat folders with everything in them from clippings that intrigued me to the abandoned beginnings of a short story or novel. I am a person who when I find a fascinating article or book, I then make the conscious, often delirious, decision to keep it. My shelves are stacked with these do not throw away items.                                                                                                                  

I know I’m not alone. Many writers have this same hoarding disorder. We believe we will need these scraps of paper, books, or articles in the future. Sometimes we feel emotionally connected to them, but many times we think we might use them for triggering an idea and creating a piece of writing. Saving the papers or books makes us feel safe and comforted—even though they now lay dormant and forgotten for a century. Our shelves are like grandmother’s china cabinet. Much of the unmatched glassware, dishes, and other items were never used, but never disposed of—just in case they might someday come in handy.

Why does this happen?  Why do we hoard?

It’s a phenomenon called the endowment effect. And many people have it for different reasons and with different items than those in grandmother’s bulging china cabinet. It’s a mind boggling idea that once we have an item and own it, it’s more difficult to let it go. We value those things we’ve acquired more highly than if we didn’t own them. Our minds tell us to save them.

My mind is now telling me to let go and put some order and space in my life and my office. (And don’t let me get started on the scary, jammed closets with clothes and whatnot which also need attention.)

Here’s hoping I leap on the bandwagon and get started. But after all, there’s an extra day this month, isn’t there? So I still have time if I don’t get into full swing just yet, right?

NEW - NEW - NEW     

COURTING BETSY - Book 3 of the Ashmore Brothers Series

  

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LAUGHING IN THE NEW YEAR

 Happy New Year to all!

According to a calendar of events for yearly celebrations, January 24th is Global Belly Laughing Day. This special holiday was created in 2005 by Elaine Helle, a certified Laughter Yoga Teacher, from Lake Oswego, Oregon. It was first celebrated on January 24, 2006.                                                                     

There are four goals according to the author of this special day:

• To celebrate and remember past laughter.
• To do it in public with others and connect via laughing.
• To remember the importance of laughs and smiles.
• To gain the health benefits of smiling and laughing. Laughter is the best medicine.

I will also add: When we laugh, we ease stress and anxiety, boost the immune system, improve mood, support heart health, burn calories, and even relieve pain.

When I taught career development to adult students, single parents, and displaced homemakers in a program called New Choices, young people often asked me what was the secret to my long marriage. I used to laugh and tell them: “Never say what you’re thinking when you’re angry.” Then, I’d add that both my husband and I are very polite to each other, appreciate each other—and often laugh a lot, even over the smallest things like a shared joke, cartoon, turn of a phrase, even a stupid thing one of us has done or a crazy antic of a grandchild.

HY  Hintermeister 1897-1972

As a writer, I try to write humorous or witty dialogue for my characters in my novels as well because I admire crafty dialogue that makes the reader smile. I enjoy reading RomCom novels as well.

I often think if we could get people in our nation and in the world to enjoy a good belly laugh together, there might be more hope for better understanding among everyone globally.                          

To celebrate this special day, I leave you with two jokes about writers:

1—What do you get when you cross a writer with a deadline?                                                  A really clean house.

2—Why do writers feel chilly? They’re surrounded by drafts. 

NEW - NEW - NEW     

COURTING BETSY -Book 3 of the Ashmore Brothers Series

  

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THE HUMBLE PINES

Winter is the time to snuggle down and watch snowflakes fly. Unfortunately, tasks we’ve set aside indoors—lured outside by the long warm days of summer—now call us asking for completion.

As a writer, I have folders of unfinished stories and works shoved into folders, hidden from my eyes and conscience. Many pieces need a new direction, some may need corrections and rewrites, a few may need a trip to the trash can.                                                       

In my search through these fat folders marked, save, I found a poem I wrote for Christmas over a century ago. What I wanted to do with it, or even why I wrote it, is buried somewhere at the bottom of an informational dump in my brain. It’s a Christmas poem and seems
appropriate for December.

                           The Humble Pines

 

'Twas daybreak in the forest,

the winds blew crisp and cold. 

And snow lay in a white-washed 'guise

on oak trees, staunch and old.

The sky was slate. The drifts, knee-deep,

as snowflakes fluttered down.

While high above, the hemlock sighed

a faint melodious sound.

Across the vale a shaft of light
broke through the frigid morn,
And scattered rays of hope and love...
Today, the Child was born.

Then firethorn threw shimmering beads 

amid the sun-kissed laurel.

Bright holly bushes shook their limbs

with shades of red and coral.

And in these woods where nature reigned,

where peace and ice abound,

The stately pines all bent their heads

and bowed their branches down.

In these trying times let’s all send out a humble wish:

 “Let there be peace on earth…and let it begin with us.”

 

 

For some heartwarming reading during the holiday season, 

please check out my "Musical Christmas Series" 

 

THE MERRY MONTH OF DECEMBER

The holiday season has officially arrived.

It’s the merry month of December in the Northern United States with flying reindeer, chimneys large enough to fit fat men down, and coming soon— adorable fluffy white snow swirling around in the minus degree temperatures.

There is nothing quite as exhilarating as elbowing your way through crowds of people at the mall, all vying for those gigantic flat screen televisions now on sale. Or maybe it’s that newest air fryer, sure to hog all the space on your already crowded kitchen counter. Make sure you buy your grandchild that super-duper rocket launcher that hurls projectiles from one room to the next with little care for any fragile bone china on display.

Leaving all jokes aside, I do enjoy the season with its hustle and bustle. Christmas brings with it some of the best holiday foods and drinks, all the assortments of baked goods and special sweets, and the old comforting sing-along, holiday music for our ears. I have portable, blue tooth speakers in three different rooms so I can have holiday music as I move from room to room.

Already, I’ve put a real wreath on the back door inside a closed entrance, so we can smell the pine when we enter or leave. A small fiber optic tree now sits on our fireplace hearth lighting up the family room in a colorful and twinkling display. As always, my favorite stuffed snowmen are guarding the family room and will do so until February arrives.

This year, with the sons and families, in Alaska and South Carolina, my husband and I will be celebrating Christmas together without company. I’m trying to sell Scott on having a Christmas Eve dinner complete with crab legs, shrimp, coleslaw, and maybe some corn bread. I always bake pies and cookies during the entire month, so dessert is optional.  

How are you progressing with your holiday activities, chores, and plans for this upcoming year? Drop me a note in the comment section below.

But before I go, I want you to know—

                         It's Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air!

                                   Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

 

 

                                       Featuring my "Musical Christmas Series" in eBooks: 

 

              JUNE~The Pianist       ADELENE~The Violinist      LUCY~The Clarinetist 

 

IS PATIENCE A VIRTUE?

Do you sometimes get impatient? I do. Just ask my husband. He’ll probably reveal that I’m very good at it. I’ve learned that people who prefer to be busy most of their waking moments seem to have the most problem with being patient. And, I’m a person who likes to be busy.

In modern terms of today, patience is described as the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset. And, virtue is described at behavior showing high moral standards. The other day I pondered how the definition of patience today has changed so drastically from its definition of fifteen centuries ago.   

The phrase, patience is a virtue, is a proverbial phrase, transmitted by oral tradition, dating back to the fifth century A.D. from an epic poem called  Psychomachig which was written by late antique Latin poet, Prudentius. His seven heavenly virtues are in response to the seven deadly sins, updated also in fifth century A.D. by Pope Gregory I. Obviously, these two opposite groups, virtues and sins, represent the battle between good and evil.

What are the seven virtues? They are chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness , patience, and humility. The deadly sins are: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, and pride. (Each virtue is considered the opposite of each sin and is listed in the same numerical order.) Thus, patience is used to combat wrath.

But in today’s world, I believe patience now has many different variations and degrees as opposed to its earlier meaning. We are currently living in a world quite unlike the 15^th century where people lived in rural villages, life expectancy was 35 years old, and communications was word of mouth.

According to the medical community, patience is a skill that can be learned and practiced. It’s a result of choosing to emphasize thinking over feeling. The ability of technology to deliver immediate responses has caused us, as humans, to become more impatience. After all, we no longer write letters. Even phone calls take time. We now prefer to message others on our cellphones for a “quick” response.

So how does one solve being impatient? It entails learning to re-evaluate why you are impatient at a specific moment. Slowing down, re-evaluating the situation, focusing on priorities, accepting the inevitable—even resting are some of many ways to help people cope with irritating and annoyed feelings we call impatience.

As our frosty season approaches in Pennsylvania, I’m very content to virtuously and patiently wait as November transitions into winter. You see, I’m not a big fan of Old Man Winter.

Come March, however, I suspect I’ll throw virtue out the window. I’ll be  on the lookout daily for Flora, the Greek Goddess of spring buds and green shoots. Will I be impatiently waiting? Only time will tell. 

NEW - NEW - NEW     

COURTING BETSY -Book 3 of the Ashmore Brothers Series

  

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BRING IT ON, OCTOBER!

There’s something magical about October besides pumpkins, spiced lattes, and stands of maples dressed in a kaleidoscope of color. In Pennsylvania, it’s the month of our first frost and a reminder wintertime is sneaking up.

Many people think northern folks hibernate under the first snowflakes of winter, when the wind rattles the windows, when temperatures plummet. For me, it’s actually a cozy spell and a time for reflection. All indoor, unfinished activities, like cleaning closets, cupboards, or basements—even writing—take front stage.    

There's a saying if you put all your eggs in one basket, be sure to keep your eye on the basket. I prefer to put all my chores on one list and then silently hope it disappears. To date, no one has ever stolen my list!

But seriously, autumn morphing into winter is a perfect time to reassess my writing goals. My main objective this year was to get the third novel of my “Ashmore Brothers” series finished and published. Courting Betsy came out September 1^st.  I would now like to spend more time creating another collection of short stories. And that’s the fun part. That’s when daydreaming comes into play.

Daydreaming is referred to as mind wandering. It’s the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks. A person’s attention drifts to more internal directions. There are four types of daydreaming: visualization, fantasy, escapism, and rumination. Planning is a popular method of daydreaming as well. As writers, we love to let our minds drift and enter our make-believe worlds. It’s a time to craft new characters and settings, conjure up a story line and plot, do research, and scribble down ideas and notes.

So, bring it on, October. Bring it on!  Blustery winds. Geese in flight. Acorns and tumbling leaves. Vegetable soup simmering on the back of the stove. Hot chocolate and cider. Wood smoke scenting the air. All this and more.

We’re ready for you!

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