In which I wish you the happiest of holidays

Ah, dear readers, I confess. I am a wee bit fatigued. I could not figure out why until I did the math and realized that in the last fourteen months I have written--not counting blogs, letters, e-mails, extra content for electronic editions, bios, or interviews--roughly 1500 pages! It has been tremendous fun and I am a very lucky girl to get to do what I do, make no mistake. But je suis needing a rest, my poppets, and as 2010 is shaping up to be VERY busy, I am taking a few days off to spend time with my family and just BE. Ordinarily, I write blog entries ahead of time to load into the queue so there is always content, but this time I have decided to take a proper break. I suspect I will miss you inordinately, and I will still tweet and update facebook periodically. I plan to rejoin you in the New Year, and I hope you have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Solstice, a Joyful Kwanzaa, and for my Jewish friends, I hope your Hanukkah was a lovely and peaceful time. Whatever is good and lovely, I wish it for you all in 2010.

A reminder, should you happen to receive a gift card to a bookstore, the trade edition of Silent in the Grave, the first book in the Lady Julia Grey series, is out January 1. Or you can use those gift cards to pre-order The Dead Travel Fast, which will ship right around February 23!

I also have a holiday treat for you all--the book trailer for The Dead Travel Fast! Just a taste of the Gothic thrills afoot in the new book, and I hope you enjoy. I actually have two cameos in the video--see if you can spot me!

Also, the website will be updated with appearances and contest information, so be sure to check the main pages for details on where I will be signing books and the goodies up for grabs.

Thank you for making 2009 such a memorable year!

In which you might be a slacker too

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, but it takes him a workshop full of elves and a full complement of flying reindeer as well as some bizarre warping of the space-time continuum to get 'er done. The rest of us mortals might need a little help, particularly in sending out holiday greetings. I offer you the Merry Newsinator, a Mad-Libby-version of the holiday newsletter. Answer a few quick details and let the newsinator do the rest. You can send it out directly via email, twitter, or facebook. It's almost as good as having an elf tucked in your pocket.

In which it is that time again, dear readers

'Tis the season to contemplate the glory of bad nativities. This has become an annual tradition in our house, like watching "A Christmas Story" or eating roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Christmas Day. My personal vote for bad nativity is anything with fiber optics or faux marshmallows.

The rest of this post is from a blog entry posted on the original Blog A Go-Go on December 26, 2007. I am reposting it here because it is one of the loveliest travel memories I have, and because I like to think that at this wonderful holiday time of year, angels or fairies or elves might really walk among us.



In which I am blessed...
Not figuratively, although I am aware of the fact that I lead a charmed life. No, I was ACTUALLY blessed on my way home from Houston on Saturday. I had a layover in the Charlotte airport--an airport I actually love. It's small enough to traverse in less than fifteen minutes, even in heels, and they have Cinnabon. I don't eat them, but I could LIVE off of the smell.

Anyway, I went to make a purchase at an airport shop and the clerk who helped me was like something out of a fairy tale. She was tiny--I am less than five foot five and I could see the top of her head. She had white hair neatly spun into a tiny bun, like candy floss, and her eyes were the most beautiful, startling shade of blue. She looked up at me and smiled, her entire face crinkling into laugh lines. "Yes, my darling, can I help you?" Her accent was thick and completely unplaceable, although I think Eastern European would not have been too far afield. Altogether she looked like Mrs. Claus.

I gave her the merchandise and she paused, looking at my face intently. "You are special," she said suddenly. I blinked at her in surprise, but I smiled back. "Thank you." She shook her head. "No, my dear. You are special. I know. Tell me, what do you do?" "I am a writer," I told her. "And what have you written?" (This next part is one of the coolest things I have ever been able to do, seriously.) I pointed to the books stacked on a display to the side. "That book there, Silent in the Grave. I wrote that." She nodded. "And have you written anything else?" "Yes, I have written two more books in the series."

She stared at me a long moment, then rang up my purchase and took my money, counting back my change. When she handed it to me, she stared at me again, looking right through me. "Yes, you are very special. Very special." And she lifted her hand like a priest giving a benediction and said, "God bless you, my darling. And merry Christmas." I wished her a merry Christmas in return and I left then, feeling pleased and slightly bemused, like I had just had an encounter with someone not entirely of this world. I thought for just a moment that if I turned around I might be able to peer behind the counter and see if she had shoes with pointy elfin toes or perhaps she might have disappeared in a poof of fairy dust. But I didn't look back, and because of that, it was a perfect moment.

In which we talk bacon

I'm not a vegetarian, but neither do I eat meat daily and when I do eat meat, I like it to be GOOD. If I had to narrow it down, pork would be my meat of choice, and bacon is its king. Seriously, there are few culinary joys akin to crunching in to a crispy, salty piece of bacon. And it must be crunching. Underdone bacon is an abomination. After years of being presented with plates of limp, greasy ribbons of meat, I have finally learned to request that it be "almost but not quite BURNT" and that has been highly successful. (Bacon should be cooked that thoroughly to render off as much fat as possible. What's left is the perfect essence of bacon.)

Bacon can sometimes be improved upon, although I feel the burn of sacrilege in writing that. Jill Conner Browne is responsible for my love of an outrageous concoction called Pig Candy--brown-sugar covered bacon cooked until caramelized. This must be eaten warm with an ICE cold Dr. Pepper and then all is right with the world. (With apologies to Robert Browning, although if he'd ever eaten pig candy, he'd understand. But then he was English and one of the few points of contention between the British people and myself is what constitutes bacon...)

I manage to keep my adoration of bacon largely in check, but thanks to my friend Jerusha, I feel my control slipping away. Yesterday she shared the link to the ultimate gift for the bacon-lover: the Bacon-of-the-Month Club. Oh, yes.

In which I ponder Austen heroes

Yesterday was the anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, and when I tweeted about it, inevitably Darcy's name came up. And of course that got me thinking about Austen heroes besides Darcy. We do love Fitzwilliam devotedly, don't we? We talk about him almost to the complete exclusion of all other Austen gentlemen. Sad, really. (Although we really have to blame Jane Austen for creating such a delectable character.) But she fashioned some other rather intriguing men as well. Willoughby and Wickham do have some bad boy glamour, but they are ultimately disappointing, revealing themselves to be feckless and unreliable. (Sad really, that Willoughby is more memorable than either of the actual heroes of Sense and Sensibility, no?) And the less said about Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey, the better. Don't mistake me, there is no such thing as BAD Jane Austen. But for the purposes of commanding and virile heroes, these fall a little shy of the mark.

No, I think if we put Darcy aside, we have to turn to Knightley and Wentworth for inspiration. Knightley has an admirably firm hand with Emma--a tremendously attractive quality in smallish doses. And Wentworth, well, any man who can write that letter--you know the one--is deserving of our swoons. So, I wonder, readers, which Austen hero curls your bonnet ribbons? Besides, Darcy, of course...

In which I'm curious about organization

I love the idea of being organized--truly. In some ways, I'm pretty good at it. (The key is making sure you understand how YOU think and organize accordingly. It does no good to put everything away in boxes and file folders if you are a terribly visual person because you'll never find it again. And anyone who says there is a single correct way to organize is daft.) I confess, I don't use my iphone the way God and Steve Jobs intended. I use the note function to keep myself VERY organized--lists for bookstore trips, library excursions, gifts to buy. My agent is still staggered that when we visited a yarn store together in NYC, I whipped out my iphone to open a note where I had jotted what sort of yarn I wanted for a particular knitting project. This is why people always think I'm more organized than I really am. I'm also entirely hopeless at things like filofaxes--although I LOVE them--and planner pads. I greatly appreciate the IDEA of these things, but the truth is, I like to write out my thoughts by hand and I need space to do it.

Most of my organizational systems are adequate but tweakable and I do experiment from time to time to see if I can improve them. The area I'm fiddling with now is the daily to-do list. I find I accomplish more if I have one, and when I'm feeling particularly hard against it, I will write down mundane things like "start dishwasher" just so I can cross it off and feel virtuous. But keeping a to-do list on a random piece of paper is unthinkable to me, so I have an enormous spiral notebook--enormous because my handwriting is large. On the front page I have a running to-do list of projects that I want to tackle over the next few months. On days when I need a specific list, I date a page and jot down everything I want to do, crossing things off as they get accomplished.

But recently I've refined the technique a little, and starting using the back sides of the pages for my journal. There are loads of reasons why. First, I hate keeping track of multiple notebooks. I already have them in every room of the house, and adding a dedicated journal to the mix is unnecessary. Second, half of my to-do notebook would be going to waste otherwise. Third, my journal entries are usually a sort of mental housekeeping where I unpack the crowded places, air them out, and put things neatly away again. I don't need a special place to do that. Besides, tying it to what I was doing at the time seems to help me sort out what I was trying to work through at any given time.

And I'm wondering, how do YOU stay organized? And do you keep a journal?

In which it is my anniversary

Nineteen years ago today I married the Best Guy in the Universe. (I'm not trademarking that, so if you think you have the Best Guy in the Universe, feel free to call him so. Personally, I think it would be fabulous if everybody thought they had the Best Guy in the Universe.) We were young, stupidly, impossibly young, and I was scared to death. But I knew, as I had really never known anything before, that he was mine. It was as though I recognized him, as if we'd spent some time together in a great cosmic waiting room, just hanging out until we were born. I have always said it wasn't just that I loved him. I would have never married at 22 just for love. It was because he was inevitable. That's the word I always choose when I talk about him. I knew that we were going to end up together and for a very long time.

And nineteen years IS a long time these days. Nineteen is when you ease up just a little because IT has gotten easier. This person you married when you were still a kid is not a stranger anymore. He's grown up and so have you, and the miracle is that somehow you grew in the same direction, wanting the same things. You cheer each other on, and pull up each other's bootstraps, and when the world has decided to show its gray and cheerless side, you have each other to hold onto and say, "This too shall pass. Remember the time..." And when the world is good to you, REALLY good, you have each other to hold onto then as well. And everything wonderful that's happened is a million times better because the person holding your hand is the same person who held it when you were feeling like this particular day would never come for you.

So what I'm trying to say is, happy anniversary, Best Guy in the Universe. Thanks for being inevitable. I love you too.

In which I am flinging links

I'm in the very last stages of revisions, and it's a demanding process--entirely by my own choosing, you understand. I divide the manuscript into 100-page sections and each day I read one section, note the changes I want to make, flag the pages, and input the changes. (I average 85 pages flagged out of 100 because this is when I'm making lots of subtle changes--for example, I might find that I've used a word twice within too short a passage and need to rephrase.) It is the finicky stuff which means I have to be extremely focused and detail-oriented, challenging for me because I tend to skim when I read. BUT, the little pop-up timer on the belly of this book is just about to blow and I am beyond excited to send it off at the end of this week. Unfortunately, it means that bloggery will be a bit hasty.

Today I am simply going to fling some links at you I think you might like. Enjoy!

Whistling Puppy

Dramatic Chipmunk (that is really a prairie dog...)


Joe Boxer Dancing Guy

Christmas Cranberries

In which I am pondering

As I told you yesterday, I had a power glitch on Friday and lost some work. (Thank heaven it was revision work and not something completely fresh or I would still be howling.) Anyway, as you know, I've been doing some thinking about personal growth issues, being positive, rejecting stress, yada yada. And then I had my minor catastrophe, which I was not at all surprised by. (It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least by me, that as soon as I undertake to refine myself a wee bit, something comes along to say, "Hey, giving serenity a try? Let's see how it's working for you.")

And it was a struggle to get past it. First off, when I lose work, I get completely enraged in ways that only Bruce Banner would understand. The fact that I could have done one or two things to mitigate the losses beforehand and DIDN'T only made me more inclined to throw breakables. I didn't, but oh, how I longed to.

The second most challenging part is that when people know you're working on self-improvement (a phrase I loathe, but it's late and the original turn of phrase eludes me), is that everyone expects you to snap right out of it. Honestly, I felt a lot more like snapping heads off, but I did figure out a plan of action. Here's what I needed:

1. A sympathetic ear. Sometimes you just need to have someone pat your head and say, "Yes, that was the most catastrophic thing EVER to happen to anyone". And then you can rise above it and be noble and say, "Well, not really, but thank you for understanding".

2. A breather. As it happened, I didn't have much time to work on fixing the losses before I had to leave the house for a doctor's appointment. I came thiiiiiiis close to canceling, but unless I am carrying the ebola virus, I just can't bring myself to cancel a doctor's appointment on short notice. So I went, and getting away from the problem for a little while actually helped.

3. Assessment of the situation with a clear head. Once I was able to see through the red mist of rage, I figured out that the schedule I had for finishing the revisions was unrealistic, particularly after I lost half a day. So, I reworked the schedule by eliminating something I did not actually need to do. Et voila, something completely workable and humane.

4. Playtime. I know. It seems counter-intuitive, but before I settled back in to work, I took a few minutes off. I grabbed a novel, brewed a cup of Irish tea the size of my own head, and settled into the couch for a quarter of an hour of guilt-free reading. I put on my most comfortable and ludicrous pajamas to make me smile, and then went back to my study to get to work.

5. A support system. My parents, who really ought to be given medals of some sort, swung into action, and told me not to worry about picking the girlchild up from school or fixing dinner. They fed me and freed me up to finish the recovery of the work I'd lost.

So, was it a perfect day? Not by a long shot. But it ended up being a productive one, in unexpected ways.

In which I have no blog for you

I am sorry, dear readers. I intended to have a blog for you today, but I always write Saturday blogs on Friday, and it's Friday afternoon right now and I've spent the better part of today clearing up a minor catastrophe that I am still sorting out. The power failed briefly this morning, causing me to lose about 90 minutes' work. Yes, it ought to have been autosaved, but the autosave actually ATE two copies, and I have been trying to replicate the work from scratch. (Do I have a hard copy, I hear you asking? Why, no, no I don't. Do I have a battery-powered backup, you ask? Why, no, I don't have one of those either. Gah.) So, while I soldier on with my beloved book, I do hope you will forgive this otherwise blogless interlude. Back to work!

In which you have to have a sense of humor

No, really. And if you don't have one, go out and find one because it will be well worth your time. Yesterday, I tweeted that I had dreamed about snow and a white rabbit and that in my dream I was thinking I would keep the rabbit for a pet instead of making hassenpfeffer. A fellow author and follower of mine retweeted that and got her hand smacked by an officious rabbit-owner for daring to joke about eating rabbits because how would we like it if she joked about eating our dogs? You know what? Go ahead. Joke about eating my dog. Heaven knows I do often enough. I regularly tell Deacon he would make a fine stew, and I think I may have threatened to bourguignon him when he gnawed my book on British colonial style. Please note that even my 8-month old puppy knew not to take that statement seriously. It did absolutely nothing to deter him from eating a pen the following week. This means that MY DOG has a better sense of humor than some people. And that's sad, because I am firmly convinced the best way to get through life is to laugh as much as you can.

In which I have deep friends

A few days ago on my thread about rejecting stress, my friend Kristy left a very astute comment: "I cannot be everything to everyone." I wanted to make sure everybody saw that because it is a truth that will set you free. You can even say it out loud to make sure it really registers. I CANNOT BE EVERYTHING TO EVERYONE. What a load off our minds, no? If we can't be everything to everyone, that means we don't even have to try. It's unattainable, like trying to scale Everest in a bikini. Not going to happen. In fact, it's downright silly to even contemplate.

But we do want meaningful lives, don't we? Of course we do. And that's why setting priorities is essential. Note, the phrase is "setting" priorities. Setting implies deliberation, thoughtfulness, precision. You can't let priorities happen to you, which is exactly what occurs when you don't examine your life and simply allow things to happen to you. Live is an action verb for a reason. It requires both attention and intention to get it right, to craft the sort of existence you want for yourself.

I know we tend to think in terms of spring cleaning, but I always find the end of the year is the best time to toss out the old to make way for the new, both in terms of possessions and thought patterns. Habits can be weeded out, not with silly New Year's resolutions, but with deliberate practice and quiet conviction. Take inventory of what you have in your life and compare it to the life you want. How far off are you? This can be a tremendous wake-up call to appreciate the life you have or to get going on creating the life you want. You may be much further away from your goals than you think or you may be just about to put a toe on the finish line to goals you've always wanted to achieve. Either way, clear thinking, resolve, and determination will get you there. It's like using a GPS, you have to first know where you want to end up before anyone can tell you how to get there.

So where do you want to be? And since you--as Kristy wisely pointed out--cannot be everything to everyone, who does that free you up to be?

In which I have books!

Look what arrived yesterday morning! Boxes of beautiful, BEAUTIFUL trade editions of Silent in the Grave! Trade is my absolute favorite format, so I'm very pleased that the first book is finally out in this edition in the US. It's available for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders for shipping on January 1, so keep those links for spending your holiday gift cards if you always wanted a copy of SITG in trade! Or, if you'd prefer, give some holiday love to your local independent bookseller. You can find one via IndieBound.

In which I like things too

It seems only fair since I whinged on yesterday about things I don't like that I give fair play to things I do. And since I am in a holiday state of mind, here are my holiday favorites, this year at least:

Books:
*Nigella Christmas by Nigella Lawson. Honestly, an entire enormous gorgeous yummy book devoted to all things Christmas by my favorite cookbook author. What's not to love? I ordered the UK edition last year so I can't actually cook anything out of it without conversion tables, but it is available in a US edition this year.

*I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas by Anna Getty, a fun and thoughtful guide to a more eco-friendly holiday. There are some superb suggestions along with recipes, tips, crafts, etc. In my experience the very best eco-gurus are people who make you want to aspire to their ways instead of bludgeoning you with guilt. Anna does a superb job of this in her very own chic and inimitable style.

*White Christmas by Tricia Foley. Gorgeous Christmas decor book with a simple and natural palette if you are so over the sparkly, the glitzy, the green and red.

*Martha Stewart's Christmas. From potpourri to fruitcakes, Martha throws down Connecticut-style. This was the second Martha Stewart book I bought, AGES ago, but I still remember the astonishment upon finding out that some people actually make their own marshmallows. Not ME-people, but some people.

Christmas Songs:
*"Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy" by Buck Owens. It's country, it's twangy, it was fun LONG before Grandma had her little accident with a reindeer. As a bonus, it makes you want to dance, so you can work off some of the 'nog weight.

*"All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Olivia Olson from the "Love Actually" soundtrack. My favorite version because it has no agenda; it's fun and youthful and that's all it needs to be. Too many people overwork this song and Olivia delivers it straight up with a smile. Plus, it's my favorite scene in the movie.

*"In the Bleak Midwinter" by Loreena McKennitt. Haunting, melancholy, perfect.

Movies/TV:
*"Tuna Christmas". A unique production chronicling Christmas in small-town Texas. Watch it and understand my people.

*Claymation Christmas". Because Christmas just isn't Christmas without camels singing harmony.

*SNL Christmas Special". The only thing missing from this is Horatio Sanz' holiday song, "Christmas Time is Here", which I cannot find anywhere. But the SNL special has everything to appeal to your inner twelve-year old boy.

*The Muppet Christmas Carol". Michael Caine AND the muppets. Perfection.

"Christmas in Connecticut". Barbara Stanwyck as the original Martha Stewart character. I cannot watch it without wishing I knew how to flip pancakes.

*Love Actually". It has just enough edge to save it from being sweet and just enough sentiment to save it from being cynical. It's love and life with all the messy bits thrown in.

*A Christmas Story". Because if you aren't careful, you'll shoot your eye out.

In which I ponder things I don't like that everyone else does

Have you experienced the peculiar sort of "outside looking in" feeling of not liking something that everyone else adores? Me too. Yesterday, I read a tweet where someone mentioned sushi and I gagged. (Seriously, it's like chewing on a balloon but without the fun helium voice. WHY?) And that got me thinking about things I seem to have missed out on catching the bandwagon for...

1. Kids. Yeah, I adore my own child, but everyone is always shocked when I say I don't really like other people's children, and then at least 40% confess to not liking them either. I think it's the last great taboo to say you're not a huge fan of children, but honestly, so few people bother teaching their kids manners these days that it's just like being around a 60-pound puppy that demands your attention and gets into your stuff and I have one of those. (If you are one of the four people I know whose kids are actually well-mannered and polite and don't walk around with stuff crusted on their eyes or hanging out of their noses, then you can relax because your children are the exception to the rule.)

2. "The Little Drummer Boy." The Christmas song most likely to induce head trauma because it makes me want to slam my forehead to the wall every time I hear it. Give me those stupid chipmunks and their hula hoop ANY day.

3. Huge neighborhood Christmas light displays. Oh, I have got my Grinch on now, haven't I? But really, I have never understood where the "good will towards men" is supposed to be found in blasting a gajillion and twelve watts of lighting into your neighbors' windows and snarling up traffic for six weeks. It's eco-horrible and fairly pointless. Anything more than a few strands ought to be left to the professionals who are probably using more energy-efficient lighting and offering it up to thousands of folks at one time.

4. Any online game, especially one that requires you to adopt a new identity, an avatar, and a weapons array. Put the controller down and MEET PEOPLE.

5. Showers. Baby, bridal, whatever. I loathe them with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns, and I have adopted a strict no-shower policy for the past ten years. I might consider an exception if there were no themed decorations, no enforced party games, and an open bar. But I'm not making any promises. And you can blame the overly-enthusiastic hostess of a baby shower who pinned a tiny cloth diaper on my lapel and said, "If this is full of poo, then you're the big winner!"

If I've insulted one of your favorite things, I do most heartily apologize. Of course, these are merely my own personal quirks, and for all I know, my target reader demographic is light-loving, shower-throwing, sushi-eating gamers with kids. Oh, well.

In which the evil lurks within the heart of a goldendoodle AGAIN

Exhibit A: the suspect, who will be pleading Not Guilty.

Exhibit B: the carnage.

BAD DOG.

In which I no longer believe in "stress"

Disclaimer: in this post I'm not talking about folks dealing with serious troubles, depression, grief, etc. I am referring to the garden-variety issues we encounter on a daily basis and how we seem to have "whine, moan, and complain" as a default setting these days.

I am not involved with stress anymore. Nope, I'm done. I'm breaking up with stress and no, we can't be friends. Over the past several years--and in particular the last few months--I've done quite a bit of reading about metaphysical things, specifically how worrying and talking about something can create it. (In the South, we call this "talking something up". People swear my friend Pippa has actually killed folks simply by discussing their deaths, but that may be stretching it a bit far.)

Anyway, I started pondering the other day how everybody always says they're doing fine and nobody ever means it. If you scratch the surface, the troubles pour out and it always ends with, "I'm just so stressed." And it finally occurred to me, no, we're not stressed. WE'RE LIVING. The car trouble, the doctors' appointments, the bouts of ill health, the annoying boss, the deadlines and demands are not stressors, they are things that happen. It's how we view them that makes them so.

Example: my husband's schedule occasionally gets crazy. His usual forty-hour work week becomes The Thing That Would Not Die and he starts putting in fourteen-hour days. Now, this is completely normal for his job and it doesn't last forever, but it does come around regular as clockwork. He is always courteous about reminding me that one of those times is about to hit, but with the last one I finally realized those work avalanches are engulfing because I expect them to be. And so does he. He looked at me a few weeks ago and said, "It's fixing to get crazy at work" because we're from Texas and we use "fixing" as a helping verb a LOT. And I said, "No, it's not getting crazy at work because this IS your work." I don't think it is coincidence that this period of long days was easier than previous ones. I expected it to be easier and it was.

So I have started applying that principle to other things and stress is the most far-reaching. We wear stress like a badge of honor these days, as if being stressed means we're busy and productive and virtuous. Sometimes, you know, it just means we're too stupid to say no to things we don't really want to do. And sometimes it means we're too shortsighted to see that this is just the view from here. To-ing and fro-ing is part of the human experience, at least in the 21st century. Ours is the generation that cannot survive without our smartphones and our packed schedules, but I think it's time for a revolution, a slacker revolution.

I'm proposing this, that we slow down, that we stop going and doing and focus on being. That we downsize our lives and focus on what really matters instead of the sound and the fury. That we stop saying we're stressed and start accepting that we're just living. Don't get me wrong, my grandmother's generation didn't talk about stress, but I don't think they were much better off. I knew a fair number of women her age who suffered in silence and went off to smother their feelings and pop "nerve pills" rather than express an opinion or make a demand. I think there has to be a middle road, one where we don't make ourselves crazy nor do we let anybody else have the privilege. So I at least will be watching what I say because what I say I create and I'd rather create some contentment. In fact, I think that will be my new word of choice because all the things that could stress me--taking care of house, family, work, dog--are all things I have CHOSEN to have in my life, things that bring me great happiness. From now on, I'm not stressed. I am content.

In which we get ghoulish

My friend--and Official Stalker--Nicole sent me a link yesterday to the best wrapping paper ever. Not very Christmassy, to be sure, but I would swoon to have my presents tucked away in the "Nevermore" raven paper. Delish!

On a terribly unrelated note, yesterday brought a gloomy, rainy morning that demanded a quilt, a mug of Irish breakfast tea, and a book about art theft. I hunkered down with a copy of Stolen: The Gallery of Missing Masterpieces by Jonathan Webb, a great read and a good gift choice for the art lover on your holiday list.

In which we talk about good causes

Everybody's thoughts turn to giving at this time of year, so I thought I'd share my favorite causes.

Always and forever, the Heifer Project holds a special place in my heart. When we first began our charitable donations, many organizations seemed less than eager to accept the tiny amounts of money we were able to give, but Heifer was different. They thanked us as graciously for our $10 donations as if we'd given them thousands, and always made us feel as if every dollar we sent made a difference. If you haven't checked out Heifer, please drop by their website and read some of the stories. In a nutshell, they establish programs to give livestock to needy families and teach them how to prosper from that single gift of an animal. You can purchase a share of an animal if that's as far as your budget will stretch, or you can donate an entire ark. Lovers of bees and knitters will also appreciate the gifts of hives and fiber animals.

Lately, our local news has been full of stories about the empty shelves at local food banks. I'm sure our town is no different from yours. An extra canned good or package of pasta every time you step into the store is a pretty painless way to contribute. Use 2-for-1 specials or coupons to make it even easier; just stockpile the extra until you have a bag to drop off at your area food bank or shelter. Many organizations also take donations of coats, jackets, work pants, blankets, etc. that they are able to distribute with food, so be sure to check. Also, don't forget the pets. Record numbers of folks have found it difficult to feed their pets this year, so grab a bag of dog food or even a few cans of cat food while you're shopping and check ahead of time to make sure your shelter accepts donations of pet food. We are lucky enough to have one such organization here in my town where warm clothing, food, and pet supplies can be found in one spot. Other organizations prefer cash, so if you are strapped for time but have a little extra money, you can still make a difference.

Speaking of which, your local animal shelter is probably more than happy to receive donations of food and bedding--call ahead to find out what they need.

Another of our favorite causes is the Barnes and Noble gift tree. Shoppers take a gift tag with the age and gender of a child who would appreciate a book for Christmas, make their selections to purchase, and the B&N staff takes care of the rest. There are few more wonderful gifts to an imaginative child than a book of their very own, and for an impoverished child, a book that belongs to them might be an unimaginable luxury.

What are your favorite causes, dear readers?

In which I make my darkest confession yet

Sometimes in life we do things we aren't proud of. This weekend was one of those times. There was a marathon of "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" and I admit--I succumbed. It isn't my fault! First, there was the turkey, and I suspect tryptophan has some sort of mind-altering properties. Second, there were the episode titles--"Holiday Food Poisoning" and "Is That a Baby in Your Pants" just to name a few. (If you aren't familiar, the show chronicles the stories of women who gave birth without ever realizing they were pregnant. Pretty self-explantory now that I think about it, but I don't feel like deleting this bit.)

A further inducement to watch--and believe me, I am painfully aware of how bad a pun that is--would be the fact that amongst the adults living in my house, we know FOUR women to whom this phenomenon has happened. A few of those were teenagers we think either pretended not to know or permitted denial to have her way with them. But the fourth is someone to whom I happen to be distantly related although neither one of us will publicly admit to it. One evening, after what she thought was a bad bowl of chili, she went to the emergency room over an epic case of indigestion. Instead, she delivered a full-term baby girl whom she proceeded to name after a character on "Falcon Crest". (Or "Knot's Landing"--I never could keep them straight.)

Now, to be fair, I quite understand that it is possible to be pregnant and have no morning sickness--I did. I understand that it is further possible to be pregnant and have no cravings, no significant weight gain, and continue to experience certain monthly symptoms that would indicate a pregnancy is not in the offing--again, I have known women to have experienced each of these. But, and here is where they lose me, I have been pregnant, and a moving fetus doesn't so much feel like a gas bubble as it does a WHOLE OTHER PERSON DOING A CHINESE GYMNASTICS ROUTINE IN YOUR WOMB. My own child used my ribs like her own personal set of monkey bars for the better part of four months. She stretched and you could actually make out the shape of her foot against my skin. (Please know that these are facts I use against her from time to time when I feel it necessary to play the "I carried you for twenty-five months and THAT'S WHY" card.) If you've never been pregnant, you'll have to take my word for it, but carrying around a whole other person feels like exactly that, NOT a bad bowl of chili.

So, that's my confession. What misdeeds have YOU been up to lately?