A Dishwasher, A vacuum And A TV walked Into A Room….

I think I’ve mentioned several times that I basically live under a rock, unaware of how quickly the world is changing around me on most days. Despite a career in marketing and advertising and despite a year and a half going through a social media frenzy with my book “The Gathering Room- A Tale of Nelly Butler” and all that has followed because of that…I really do feel old and out of touch on most days.

Take for an example my week this week. I found myself in need of having to purchase a few bigger ticket items. You know those kind of household gadgets, gizmos and appliances that we don’t buy often, or at least I normally don’t. They are the kinds of things you buy on an “as needed” basis. Well, this week it appeared I needed several of them all at once.  

First up was a new dishwasher. I remember my grandmother had a friend who had died in the early 2000’s at the age of 101. When they sold her house, all of her appliances from the 1940’s were still running and in excellent condition sixty years later! They were pink too! Wouldn’t it be awesome to have all pink appliances now? I would love that! But alas, not only are today’s appliances not pink, they also don’t last for sixty years either, so enter a new dishwasher into my life.

Thankfully a very capable appliance man came and installed the dishwasher for me, but as he prepared to leave he handed me the booklet and I noticed a giant QR code on the front cover. “Just scan the QR code and you can set up the dishwasher yourself.” He said to me. Set up the dishwasher? Didn’t he just do that by hooking up all of the hoses?

I quickly thumbed through the booklet and realized that although I had bought this model because I was thoroughly impressed with the added jets under the utensil basket and the really cool third shelf, this model also came with “Wifi and Smart Assist.” Why do I need Wifi on my dishwasher? And what is Smart Assist? Isn’t it smart enough already that it washes the dishes while I’m sleeping? Let’s just say I did not scan the QR code. A dishwasher should just wash the dishes not access the internet.

The dishwasher that connects to the internet was followed the next day by a new smart TV. Now, I do understand that TVs must connect to the internet, and my grandson, who is 14 I should add, assured me that the TV I bought was very easy. “You just basically plug it in Gigi and it will connect to the internet all by itself!” Now that sounded like something I could do. I will admit I struggled a bit with the Styrofoam and getting it out of the box, but finally it was plugged in and came to life.

On the screen was a giant QR Code with the instructions to scan the code to finish setting up  the TV. All of a sudden this didn’t seem like the TV was going to be doing this by itself. I was being forced to scan the QR code or have this large piece of electronic equipment sitting idle in my living room. With my phone I scanned the QR code and twenty minutes later, after entering a credit card number, my Apple ID and password, selling my first born son and agreeing to Terms & Conditions that no one ever reads, the TV was connected to the internet. I also had the added benefit of feeling tremendously exposed. Like all of my devices were now connected but I somehow got the sense that they had all known each other for a long time and were just adding the TV to their little friend group and I was the outsider! At that moment I really longed for that 12 inch black and white TV from my childhood. The one with the yellowing plastic shell that had rabbit ears antenna on it. The one we wrapped aluminum foil around in hopes of getting a better picture. The one with the horizontal hold button on the back that my sister and I took turns holding so that the picture wouldn’t jump all over the screen. I never felt like that TV was watching me or talking to the phone that hung on the wall in the kitchen. I wondered if my dishwasher felt left out.

The final straw for me came this morning when I opened the box of my new vacuum. Pasted inside the box was a large sticker with, you guessed it, a QR code! At this point I should probably tell you that I have a thing for vacuums. In my early adulthood, when money was tight, I was known to take vacuums apart and replace parts from other ailing vacuums. I had quite the closet full of vacuums and vacuum parts! Good old fashion New England ingenuity kept my house clean for many years.

So as I stood there staring at the vacuum in the box I was certain that I did not need a manual let alone another blasted QR code to explain to me how to put this thing together. What shocked me the most about this QR code though was that it was for downloading an app to your phone! Now I’m not opposed to apps, I have many of them on my phone, but my vacuum does not need to be connected to my phone. There is nothing that an app for a vacuum could add to my life at this moment. There is an app for a vacuum? I had reached my limit on modern technology!

As I walked through the kitchen I passed by the dishwasher and wondered if I should introduce it to the new vacuum. Smart or not, I decided I wasn’t going to do that! I then placed the new vacuum on it’s charging dock in the hall closet and closed the door. As I turned to walk away I spotted the TV in the living room watching me. Silently recording that not only had I not properly introduced the vacuum to all the other gadgets in the house but I had also denied wifi access to this new comer, same as the poor dishwasher.

I suspect I’m now on “a list” somewhere.

Support A Self Published Author Today…And No, I don’t Mean Me!

I don’t usually post a photo of my own book The Gathering Room on my blog. But today seemed appropriate, and it’s not for shameless self promotion. I have a thing or two I’d like to say about writing and publishing a book. Let’s just say I’m a little hot under the collar about this one! Thankfully I have my own website and I’m going to use it!

As I’m sure all of you are aware I am a self published author. In April of 2022, when I started my journey of getting what I affectionately called “my little story” published, I had never even heard of self publishing. It should be noted that I more or less do live under a rock, so I was still thinking the only way to get a book published was to query to an agent, get rejected and then hopefully find someone to publish your book. But the world is a different place in the 21st century, as I was soon to realize. The world of self publishing has opened up avenues of opportunity and experiences for millions of would be writers out there. People just like me who grew up as book lovers, always dreamed of writing a book of their own and now they can!

This self publishing world is filled with different ways of bringing your dream to life. You can literally go it alone and do everything yourself or you can elect to use a hybrid service, like I did with Maine Authors Publishing. If you choose to go it alone and do everything yourself you can truly publish whatever you want. There is no one standing over you telling you your content won’t be appealing to the masses. Or this needs correction or that should be done differently. You alone are in charge of everything from the writing to the editing to the layout. Write it, print it, get it in electronic form, get it out there into the digital world and hope someone reads it.

In my case, using a hybrid service, my manuscript was vetted, similar to traditional publishing where someone checks it first. It passed the “this will sell” test. Then there was editing, revisions, meetings with a graphic designer on the cover, the layout and then it went off to be printed and magically appeared on Amazon (thank you Nikki because I can honestly say I could not have figured that out myself!). Either way the process is exhausting, stressful, and most of all expensive. When you are a self published author you are carrying the financial responsibility of the whole project yourself. This is often why you will hear people comment on how self published books are of an inferior quality. Both in product design and also in content. Self published authors all have real jobs, where the bulk of their take home pay is going toward living expenses! Whatever they can scrape up to make their dream of publishing a book a reality is a sacrifice. Sometimes they have to cut corners. Use a lesser quality paper or choose to edit their book themselves, rather then hire a professional, to save money. Yes sometimes those choices make a less then perfect book, but it’s their dream they are living and they are beholden to no one except achievement of their own goals. I’ve met self published authors who took out second mortgages on their homes, used their retirement savings, or took a second job to cover the costs. Being a self published author is not for the faint of heart. You have to be one strong willed son of a gun to be able to do this!

This brings me to why I’m actually writing this blog this week. One of the very first things I experienced as a self published author was walking into a library to donate a book, yes donate a book for free, only to have the librarian roll her eyes at me, take my book, set it aside and not give me so much as a thank you! I was crushed! This experience was followed by requests from several people online that I get my book into a specific local independent bookstore. I approached the book store twice, on two different occasions, only to be rebuffed. This I was to find out, was going to be my new normal in lots of book stores. And even after a year of the book being out there, with a phenomenal sales record and winner of several prestigious national indie book awards, I still had another librarian reject my offer of speaking about the book in her library and she coldly told me “there are so many of you self published authors and so many of those awards that it means nothing.” Let me just tell you I quickly learned who my “tribe” was and who wasn’t, and the ones that fall into the “not my tribe” category might surprise you. But for all the bookstores, gift shops and libraries that do stock my book you have my utmost gratitude!!!

Now I’m not telling you this for you to feel sorry for me. Please don’t, I am having a tremendous experience and I’ve sold thousands and thousands of copies of my book, here in Maine, across the country and around the world. I am not your typical self published author nor is my success typical. I’m telling you this because it is reflective of what other self published authors face every day and they don’t have the success rate that I have to fall back on for courage. I follow many self published authors online and if they sell one book in a month they are thrilled. And I see post after post of the struggles they have trying to gain respect for their work. This was never more evident to me then in a conversation I had with someone just a few days ago, and why I decided to write my blog about this.

In this conversation I was asked if I knew another local self published author. I in fact did know them, which was unusual because as noted above anyone with determination can publish a book now so there are thousands of us just here in Maine! But I did know this author and when I confirmed that I did, I was asked if I had read their book. I had read it and said so. The person I was speaking with then asked me if I had liked it, but before I could answer they launched into their own declaration that the book was awful and then proceeded to tell me of having this exact same conversations with others, who they named specifically as if I would be impressed by this, who also thought this book was awful. I was stunned because this person speaking to me, of all people, should know that not every book is for every reader. That we all have different tastes and that is why having a variety of books is wonderful! Writing is art and art is subjective. And the “others” that this person spoke of, I had already figured out were not part of my tribe, so their opinion of my fellow author’s book fell on deaf ears!

But what bothered me the most from this conversation came from my perspective as a self published author. I know what this fellow author went through to make their dream a reality. I know the struggles and I know the joy of what it feels like to hold that finished book in your hand. See your name on the cover, that feeling that you are now a real author. At that moment it doesn’t matter if the book is good or bad, you achieved your goal. This person I was speaking with has never published a book, and I doubt very much would have the strength to do it. They appeared to be content sitting on the sideline of Life throwing out criticisms to the people who were actually Living! It just irked me to hear them bash someone who had set a goal, worked hard to attain it, taken a financial risk and were now living their dream.

Books by self published authors are just as valuable as traditionally published books. They are full of hopes, dreams and passion, just as traditionally published authors instill into their books. Self published books are pure, unfiltered, sometimes raw but does that make them bad? I’ve read some traditionally published books I thought were pretty awful by my personal standards. Is the quality of self published books inferior? I am reading a traditionally published book right now that I have found lots of grammatical errors in! To the point that I ask myself, did anyone edit this? Are there to many self published books and self published authors flooding the market? Walk into a big box bookstore, who generally don’t carry self published books, how many books do you see in that store? Thousands of traditionally published books that’s what you see. It’s a vast market, there is room for everyone.

The only difference between a traditionally published book and a self published book is the perception of what is valuable. That perception needs to change. For the sake of all self published authors, but specifically my friend who was so brutally raked over the coals. So I’m asking you, can you try and locate a self published author in your area?

And I don’t mean me, I’m good! Really!

Find another self published author to support. If you can’t find one ask me, I know several! But find them and buy their book, post a review online, follow them on social media, let them know you are inspired by what they have accomplished! Find the tribe, join it with me! There is no reason for this much negativity toward one another, it’s tough out there and we all need to be a little more kind.

Bacon!!! It’s Either All Or Nothing For Me!

Photo Credit Pinterest

I’ve been housesitting in a condo for a friend for the past couple of weeks. You know there is a huge difference between going about your life in a building you occupy all by yourself. And then trying to maintain your usual habits in a building full of other people. I learned that the hard way.

My first weekend here I decided I was going to treat myself to bacon for breakfast. My husband eats bacon just about every day, so it’s not like I am unfamiliar with bacon. I just don’t share his devotion to the meat and therefore it is more of a treat for me then anything else. When we first met he was cooking his bacon in the microwave on a paper plate covered with a paper towel. Despite his efforts I still found the microwave oven needed constant attention from all of the grease. That’s when I bought him one of those “As Seen On TV” nifty little Microwave Bacon Cookers! He loves it!

Growing up my mother cooked us bacon, usually on Saturday mornings, or Sundays if our Saturdays were to busy. Mom cooked the bacon in her cast iron skillet. I remember she poured off the grease into an old coffee can that she kept under the kitchen sink. I asked her once why she was saving it and she said “In case we need it.” Seriously have no memory of us ever “needing it” and I don’t think she ever used it!

I cooked bacon for my kids when they were growing up. Bacon for a family of seven is a lot of bacon! I cooked my bacon in whatever frying pan happened to be laying around and was clean. With a house full of five children your priorities take on a different tone, survival being the most prominent, so it really didn’t matter to me what I cooked bacon in, as long as it was cooked.. Because of who I am, I cooked my bacon on HIGH, frying it up quick, fast and extra crispy, because of the million other things I had to do. I usually burned my bacon along the way, causing the kids to cough and having to throw open the windows while the smoke alarms were blaring. No one really complained, they got fed, we all lived.

Thus this brings us back to my first weekend here in the condo. Honestly my personality hasn’t changed much over the years, so I’m still prone to doing things fast, always rushing ahead of myself. So into the pan went a couple slices of bacon, knob on the stove turned to HIGH and I moved on to popping an English muffin into the toaster and making a cup of coffee. That’s when I realized the kitchen was filling with smoke from my bacon. Seemed normal, until I realized I wasn’t in my own home! What happens if you set off smoke alarms in a building full of other people? I frantically began looking up trying to locate the smoke detectors, not really sure if I was planning on popping the batteries out of them like we did in the “old days”. What I found was they were obviously hardwired smoke detectors and there was also a sprinkler system! My propensity to burn my way through bacon could have disastrous effects, in someone else’s home, if I didn’t learn to slow down, like right now!

I quickly switched off the stove, shoved all the bacon down the garbage disposal, ran the water on full throttle and flipped the switch to the disposal. I had killed the source of the smoke, but there was still a cloud hovering in the kitchen, and beginning to float out into the open concept layout of the condo. My first thought was to open the windows, but there are only two windows in this condo and they are in the bedroom. There’s an exterior door off the living room and an interior door off the kitchen that accesses the common areas of the building. Yup you guessed it, I flew open both of those doors. Standing there in my big fluffy robe with the giant pink roses on it, fanning the door to the interior hallway back and forth while the door to the exterior was letting in the cold air of a nice February morning in Maine! Pretty sure I looked ridiculous, but at that moment I didn’t care. I had saved the entire building, I was good with that.

So this past Sunday, as I stood staring into the fridge, knowing I had to eat up as much of this food as possible before I left in a week, I was faced with the remaining bacon. I decided I could do this, I could cook bacon without smoking everyone out. So I laid the remaining slices in the frying pan and turned the knob to MEDIUM. At first it began to sizzle pleasantly and I was pretty proud of myself for mastering the art of slowing down. Look at me being all zen-like with bacon! I cooked two eggs in another pan and toasted my English Muffin to perfection. The smell of coffee filled the kitchen and as I took a sip out of my cup, I glanced down at my still partially uncooked bacon in the pan. It was sizzling yes, one might even suggest that it was getting crispy on the edges, but my eggs were cooling on my plate, the English Muffin, losing that fresh out of the toaster feeling and yet the bacon did not seem to care.

A few minutes later, as I sat at the kitchen table eating my eggs and English Muffin, sans any bacon, the whirl of the garbage disposal just now fading away. I realized it was a worthy sacrifice. Bacon I believe is over rated. Apparently I don’t have time in my life for bacon. It’s either all or nothing with me, and in this case, it was nothing.

You Have Far more Strengths Than Weakness

Long before I wrote the award winning book The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler, I was a genealogist, a family history researcher. I hate to say this out loud, because it makes me feel very old, but I have been researching families, my own and others, for 40 years now. Forty years of stories, of uncovering the past, of digging into history to find forgotten or purposely buried bits of someone’s legacy. If you haven’t already surmised during your time here on earth, let me be the first to tell you, there is no such thing as a “normal” family. I’m not even sure why, at this stage in human development, we still strive to attain whatever we think “normal” is. If history is any indicator, it’s an elusive goal.

This was never more evident to me then this week when I was working on a family history project for someone. The bits and pieces I began collecting were, to say the least, traumatic, absolutely horrifying in the emotional turmoil that I could sense must lay behind the cold hard facts listed in the documentation. As I’ve said often in describing my efforts at fictionalizing historical events, I am ever mindful that I’m dealing with real people. Such was the case this week as I sifted through the remnants of what could only be described as tragic. There were real people behind these names. Real people with real emotions, real struggles, real hurt and real lasting pain.

In speaking later with the person for whom I was researching the term “generational trauma” came up in our conversation. I first became aware of this term a few years ago from my daughter who works in the mental health field. I found her description of it interesting and began to ponder my own immediate generations and how their lives had all unfolded. Fascinating. But as a family history researcher my thoughts went further back, beyond my parents, my grandparents and even my great grandparents. Before I knew it I was well into the 1400’s and I had found one traumatic event after another in each generation. I remember saying to my daughter, “We really are a family of overachievers. We’ve been messed up for over 600 hundred years!”

From substance abuse to suicides to unfaithful partners that tore marriages apart. To parents that died young leaving children adrift to family estrangements that lasted 50 years. In one case the parents dying without ever knowing that their son was in fact alive, well and living only a couple hours from them. There were out of wedlock pregnancies, marriages that were denied between young lovers based solely on religious differences. Newborn babies given away to extended family members, the mothers shipped off to far away places expected to start fresh. Sexual preferences that were suppressed in a time less open then ours is now. There were men marrying women who were already pregnant with another man’s child, yet raising that child as their own. There were men returning as war veterans with the associated PTSD we know of today, that brought emotional instability and violence into their homes. There was poverty, food insecurity, and hardships beyond anything we can fathom today in a time without government services. And all of this was just in the past 100 years!

Looking back even further into my family tree I found loss and trauma from the Civil War, on both sides of the conflict. A murder in a moonshine deal gone bad, and its associated prison escape and ultimate death of the accused in a gun battle with law enforcement. I found a woman literally snatched from her home and carried off on horseback in a hail of gunfire in what can only be accurately described as a shot gun wedding! I found a ship’s captain who’s own wife died while he was away at sea. The crushing sadness and emotional trauma causing him to take his own life by walking off the deck of his own ship, sinking into the depths of the sea, on his next voyage, all of his children now orphans. A woman who gave birth to twin sons with one of them, Daniel, dying shortly after birth. Not uncommon in her time period, but she continued to name 3 subsequent sons Daniel, all of them dying within a year of birth, before she finally gave up using the name. Who was Daniel and how much did she love him? Another young woman married at 14 years of age, giving birth to her first child at age 15, again not uncommon in her time period. What makes her story stand out is over the next 20 years she gave birth to fifteen children and then died of a heart attack at age 35. Fifteen children with no mother. Imagine the emotional instability in that household.

And on and on the stories went, through men killing other men with their bare hands during the Revolutionary War, to early settlement of New England and the loss of life from unexpected brutal attacks. To immigration in a new world and one ancestor in particular who appeared so often in the court records of the Plymouth Colony, for terrorizing his own family and others, that it was obvious he suffered from mental health issues. (side note, he had such an unusual name that I used it in my next book!) From there we go back to medieval England and the difficulties and barbarism that we know had to have existed in every day life. Although the paper trail became more and more sparse the further back I went, it was evident to me that “normal” had been replaced with “traumatic” in every generation of my family.

This deep dive into the concept of generational trauma within my own family showed me that clearly LIFE in general is traumatic for everyone, in every generation. As the saying I so often see on social media states, “Be kind to everyone you meet because you have no idea what they are going through.” This proves to be so true when you look at the lives of your ancestors, the generations that came before you, beyond your immediate relatives that you are familiar with. Everyone, in every generation suffers through something. Our time is not unique.

And as is so often with me, while I pondered these thoughts this week I stumbled across another quote. “As you focus on clearing your generational trauma, do not forget to claim your generational strengths. Your ancestors gave you more then just wounds.”

I loved that! That’s why I’ve put it in bold print! It’s so true, because among all of that trauma in my family tree were people who survived. Who did hard things and overcame them. Who settled a brave new world, Founders of many of the towns in Maine that some of you call home. They battled though loss, difficulties, abuse, trauma, all of it to create lives for themselves, that although difficult, were productive lives just the same. In my family tree I have leaders of national organizations and leaders in industry, renowned religious leaders, medical professionals and ordinary folk who shaped the future of the communities they lived in. There are musicians, artists and now even an award winning author.

As I sat and thought about this, ancestral strength, the flip side to generational trauma, I realized it was all down to how you perceive the life you are living. As I’ve said so many times, I believe we create our own realities. You can either focus on the negative or you can focus on the positive. The choice is yours. Trauma is real, many people now and in the past will and have endured it. The take away here is, none of us are alone, everyone traverses a similar road. Kindness, positivity and understanding will serve us all well.

Keep Your Peace, You’re Going To Outlive Him Anyway.

That’s my grandmother in the photo. She was 102 years old when that photo was taken. The one thing I remember most about my grandmother was she was full of great advice. Advice that she had learned, not from the internet, not from an Instagram reel, not even from an advice column in the newspaper. No my grandmother doled out advice she had learned from years and years of experience. Turns out she was pretty spot on!

Nanny (that’s what we called her) would be the first one to tell you she had an amazing life! So often I heard her say that, “I’ve been very lucky, I’ve had a good life.” That’s the first piece of advice from Nanny that I want to share with you, gratitude, because if you looked at Nanny’s life on paper, the bits and pieces of her actual life, it wouldn’t look like she had been very lucky. But lucky she believed she was! Thankful she always was! And she was always positive in the face of some of life’s most difficult challenges! Which probably is the reason she lived to be 102 years, 7 months and 1 day when she finally passed in 2012. When she passed she was the oldest resident of Houlton Maine and the last surviving class member of Houlton Hight School Class of 1928.

Nanny was born in 1910 in far northern Maine. She was the oldest of what would be a family of 8 children, but not all of them lived to adulthood. Her parents never owned their own home. Never owned a car, she being the very first in her family to learn how to drive! She remembered when electricity was installed in their house, one single light bulb that hung from a cord dangling from the middle of the living room ceiling. She remembered taking baths in the big galvanized tub her mother filled with hot water in the kitchen. She remembered her mother feeding the “hobos” (homeless) from the back door, giving them a little of whatever she had but always a slice from the bar of soap. She remembered her father’s handlebar mustache that he waxed and twisted the ends tight and turned them upwards. She came from a far different world then we live in now. But yet her gratitude and her determination to stay positive are timeless.

Nanny’s first disappointment in life, or at least the one I’m most aware of, happened when she was just 12 years old. She was already the older sister to two little brothers and a little sister when her mother gave birth, at home, to a baby girl that died shortly after birth. As Nanny told me about it, “I watched my father lay that little white coffin in the hole he had dug under the pine tree on the front lawn of our house.” In 1922 twelve year old girls were a lot more responsible and mature and adult like then we would expect a girl of the same age to be today. I’m sure Nanny was already helping with the care of her younger siblings, household chores and more acutely aware of what was happening emotionally in the household. I’m sure the house was filled with her many aunts, her mother having a plethora of sisters, but it still must have been a traumatic experience for a 12 year old.

The following year, really only 11 months later, Nanny, still only 12 years old watched her mother give birth to another baby girl at home. This one too only lived a few hours and then Nanny watched her father bury another white coffin under the pine tree on the front lawn. You have to imagine that the death of two babies within a year would have somehow touched Nanny’s young life, left it’s mark in someway. But as she always said, “I’ve been very lucky, I’ve had a good life.”

In 1930, at the age of 20 Nanny married a very dashingly handsome young man. This man, my grandfather, was from a family of all boys, five of them! And as Nanny used to tell me when she would look at my four teenage sons “Your boys get their looks from your grandfather and his brothers. They were all very handsome men!” My grandfather was handsome, I’ve seen the photos from the 1930’s! He was always dressed to the nines, he sported a fancy dress coat, hat and the finest shoes wherever he went. Even though he died when I was only 10 years old, I always remember my grandfather being impeccably dressed. His shoes shined and his hair slicked back. Along with his very debonair appearance came his charismatic personality! My grandfather could talk to anyone! People were drawn to him! He just radiated an energy that made people want to listen to him! He was a traveling furniture salesman during the Depression. Imagine going door to door with doll house size samples of furniture and convincing people to buy furniture when the economy was at it’s worst! But he did and he was very good at it, eventually providing for his family in a very upper middle class way, where he bought a house in one of the best neighborhoods.

Sadly though my grandfather had his demons. He drank alcohol, a lot. Nanny used to tell us stories of how he got very drunk one day and painted himself into the corner of the porch and had to sleep out there all night. Or the time he took apart their car, with all of the parts, nuts and bolts strewn all over the lawn, to drunk to put it all back together until the next morning. Which he somehow did! The other side to my grandfather I only heard about in innuendo, or vague comments from the adults in my young life. Let’s just say I don’t believe my grandfather was always faithful to my grandmother. I also don’t think he was a kind or gentle man. Oh he was to me! I have nothing but loving memories of my grandfather, but I suspect he ruled that house with an iron fist, just a hunch. When I was in my 30’s, and struggling as I went through a divorce, I asked Nanny why she had never divorced my grandfather. She said it was because in her day women didn’t have the same opportunities that women had now. But then she said “I’ve been very lucky, I’ve had a good life.”

Nanny raised three children of her own. I’d like to think as children they were good kids, at least I hope they were! Because as adults they were far from angelic. From their own struggles with alcohol and drugs, to multiple failed marriages, to criminal rap sheets that were printed in the newspapers back then for the whole world to see, and then ultimately losing a son to suicide. It couldn’t have been easy. She faced the loss of some of her own biological grandchildren, through divorce, that she never saw again. And had to accept the addition of step grandchildren that floated in and then out again once those marriages failed. But through it all she would say “I’ve been very lucky, I’ve had a good life.”

For 102 years she kept telling herself that despite everything that was happening around her. Nanny never once gave in to what some would consider a crushing round of blows! I never saw my grandmother sad. Even when she should have been, she would always find the positive side of the situation and made sure to mention it to me. When my grandfather passed away after they had been married for 45 years, she moved on to the next phase of her life. She spent winters in Florida with her girlfriends. Was always there for her great grandchildren, and then the great great grandchildren. She attended sporting events and knitted mittens. But most memorable of all to everyone, was the treat that it was to sit at her kitchen table and have her serve you graham crackers and a glass of milk. Everyone still talks about that.

As a young wife, when I would have spats with my. husband, she’d tell me “Keep your peace, you’re going to out live him anyway.” I always laughed at that. Statistically she was correct I suppose! But “Keep your peace.” that was always her greatest advice, “Keep your peace.” What she was really saying was at all costs keep yourself calm. Manage your stress. No matter what is going on around you, keep your inner self calm and you’ll get through just about anything. It most certainly must have worked for her, because we know now that stress can be a contributing factor in an early death. When you think about what she dealt with for the majority of her life, and yet she lived to be 102, perfectly healthy, never even needing so much as an aspirin, she clearly had mastered the art of keeping her peace! But you know, she was very lucky, she had lived a good life!

As I was preparing to write this blog this week I asked my sister if she had any photos of Nanny that I could use, as everything of mine is currently sitting in a storage unit! She sent me the photo I used at the start of this blog but she also sent me this one. Nanny is in the black and white dress, that’s her friend Natalie beside her (and probably Natalie’s husband Don taking the photo) and that’s my grandfather. These were the days before just graham crackers and milk were served. This was when Nanny served coffee and cookies on the fine china! That’s her Friendly Village dishware set! This is when half and half for your coffee was poured into a creamer and not just the carton thrown on the table, even if it was just your best friends and your husband sitting around with you. But what struck me most about this picture was that I can generally tell the year it was taken. Which means that myself and my sister are now older then our grandparents were when this picture was taken. I made sure to point that out to my sister. She texted me back “No way!!!” Yes way! We are now older then Nanny and Grampy were sitting around this table!

We can all be this lucky and live a good life. I say it all the time, “We create our own realities”…..pretty sure I learned that from my grandmother!

And The Prequel Is Finished!

Fair Snape Fell, Bleasdale, Lancashire, England

If you haven’t heard from the posts that went out on social media this week, let me be the first to tell you…. I finished writing the prequel this past Monday night! Two days ahead of my self imposed deadline! Well actually a whole month ahead of my original deadline, but more on that later. The manuscript sits at 117,132 words, but with edits and revisions that will change. For reference The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler in its full published form, is around 121,000. So from my standpoint I’m just about spot on! The prequel will be close in size and scope to the book that inspired it!

I can’t tell you the sense of accomplishment that I felt Monday night when I finally typed the words “The End”. Getting to those two simple words had taken me just shy of 18 months and a journey filled with a whole bunch of weirdness, unimaginable experiences and a trip through the history of Lancashire England that I never imagined I would enjoy in my life! I can’t wait to see where this book goes from here. If you’ve heard me speak in public you will know that I often say that The Gathering Room is on a journey all of it’s own making. That the book decides where we go and who finds it, that I am merely the person who drives it around, just a spectator in this odyssey. The prequel gives me that same vibe, of something boiling just below the surface. A story that is going to ignite a wave of energy that will take it to places I never even dreamed of. To be honest it excites and scares me at the same time!

Over the past year and a half I have been asked many questions about the prequel, some I’ve answered some I’ve deferred. Below I hope I have answered everything you might want to know, including a title! For those of you who have been supporting me on this journey since the beginning some of this you may know, some will be a surprise! For those of you who have just joined me, this will bring you up to speed. I hope it gives all of you a little more appreciation of the book when you finally hold it in your hand!

So what is the prequel about? The prequel is the origin story of Lydia Blaisdell’s family. If you have read The Gathering Room then you know that Lydia Blaisdell is a real person who found herself caught up in a moment in history that some people consider to be the first documented ghost sighting in America. What fascinated me about the history of the Blaisdell family as a whole was their origins in an area of England that was considered charged with supernatural activity and ancient beliefs. The genealogical history of the Blaisdell family was incredibly fascinating when I began to delve into it. The family originates from an area in England with an ancient ritual circle, similar to Stonehenge, and has an arrival in New England story that just begged to be written. As was the case with The Gathering Room, I am ever mindful that these were real people, making their mark on real history. Yet I write fiction, I always want to make that clear. I write fiction based on historical happenings, but it is still fiction. The prequel is not an actual history of the Blaisdell family and it should never ever be consider as such. If you want to know that there are numerous Blaisdell genealogical websites to look into.

The historical case for Lydia Blaisdell to be involved in something supernatural was incredibly concrete so I fictionalized her character according to the historical record. With the rest of Blaisdells, the historical trail was a bit more subtle in regards to the supernatural. Trust me when I say the research I did was like finding little gems hiding in plain sight, but there was never that concrete, direct link to any of them like there was for Lydia. They. just always seemed to floating around in close proximity to strange happenings! So in respect to those real Blaisdells who walked through history, and all of the Blaisdell descendants today, I introduced more fictional characters into the prequel so that they carry the supernatural parts of the story, leaving the real life characters more as observers of the strange happenings around them. Similar to the way it appears in the historical records themselves. In the end you cannot deny that Lydia Blaisdell herself may have come from a supernaturally gifted family lineage, and that is the theme that carries through the prequel.

What made you decide to write about the Blaisdells? I’ve often said that I felt I was chosen to write The Gathering Room, and 100% I will say the same thing about the prequel. When The Gathering Room was published and the feedback started rolling in that apparently I was good at this writing thing, I began to think about other things I wanted to write. Continuing the story of any of the characters in The Gathering Room was never my intent. I actually have another historical fiction story based in England in the 1620’s rolling around in my head that I really want to write!! But the Blaisdells, or some other entity, had other plans. The people I met, the information that literally just dropped out of no where and landed in my lap, the signs from the universe as some would say, were all just to much to ignore. Again I have felt like an outsider watching someone else’s life unfold. I’m just here for the ride! So I followed the signs, followed the promptings and write a story about the Blaisdells is exactly what I did!

What is the title of the prequel? I have had a title for the prequel since April of 2023, about six months after I had started writing the story. I have never mentioned it, mainly because I know so much can change while a book moves it’s way through the publishing process, and that includes the changing of a title. But as I drew close to finishing up the prequel Monday night I realized I wanted to share with you all what MY title was. Whether that ends up being the final title really doesn’t matter, I just think you should know this really cool story! My title for this story is Henceforth and Unstoppable and how that came to be is one of the most unique experiences of my life.

It began at Skipton Castle in England, as I stood in the middle of a set of stairs. I had stopped to remove my backpack and place inside some self guided tour sheets that we realized we were not going to use. As I stood there stuffing these pages into my backpack a voice spoke to me just behind my right shoulder. Loud and clear I heard “I need that.” Thinking that because I had stopped in the middle of the stairs, I was blocking the passage of another tourist, I turned around, only to realize I stood completely alone on these stairs. The voice I had heard had no earthly explanation. Upon returning home the following week, I was unpacking and found these same self guided tour sheets among a bunch of guidebooks and things. I gathered everything up and was about to take it to my office when, loud and clear, I heard the voice over my right shoulder say “I need that.” Having learned over the past year not to brush these things off! I began to look over the self guided tour sheets from Skipton Castle and I found a phrase in Latin that jumped out at me. After a quick internet search I learned that it translated to the word Henceforth. This hit me like a brick, it was so obvious that this word needed to be in the title of the next book. Henceforth means from this point forward, or an act that will persist indefinitely. The origin story of the Blaisdell family, and if they truly are keepers of ancient knowledge, was certainly one that had a starting point, that ancient circle in Lancashire. And this knowledge or gift had persisted for generations, all the way to Lydia Blaisdell. And if any of the modern day Blaisdells that I had met were any indication, those gifts lived on today. It was an incredible revelation!

Within a few days of this experience I was driving along in my car listening to a streaming music service when a song came on that sent all of my weirdness indicators into high alert. The name of the song was Unstoppable and again I was “told”, “shown”, “made to understand”….whatever you want to call it, that this word also needed to be in the title of the next book. Despite the destruction of the ancient circle in England, despite time, despite cultural disdain, despite modern reasoning, religious theory or scientific explanation, the fact remains that there is a part of our world that is and always will be unexplainable. The story I was writing about the Blaisdells encapsulated that thought completely. If they are anciently predisposed to the supernatural, then it is unstoppable and will continue on, just as it has for generations. Henceforth and Unstoppable

Will Lydia Blaisdell, or any of the characters from The Gathering Room be in the prequel? I was chatting with a friend one day about the prequel and he was totally surprised that I was not going to end the prequel in 1795, where the story of The Gathering Room starts. I had to laugh because the prequel starts in 1433 and the thought of writing over 300 years of history made me want to vomit! The prequel will not bring the story right up to where The Gathering Room starts. The prequel is written in a way that it will stand alone as a fascinating story or it can be read before or after The Gathering Room. The two books can be enjoyed indivdually but are clearly connected. In the prequel you will be introduced to all new characters. Some of them were real people like William of the Forest, a Blaisdell ancestor who took his name from his proximity to the Bowland Forest in England. Some are fiction but based off real people, like Lord Jeremy Thurston who I created as the Under Sheriff of Lancashire. I based him completely from an actual “Lord” that I met while in England. Upon learning that I had met this man, my AirBnB hostess accurately described him as “dreamy” and I knew immediately I would have to write him in! And others are completely fictional, like Alicen, the lead female character who carries the majority of the supernatural parts of this story.

The connecting piece will be the Epilogue where Abner Blaisdell makes an appearance to tie the two stories together. Again it will not matter which book you read first, Abner is there as the bridge between the two. Here is an excerpt from the Epilogue

Abner Blaisdell stood staring down at the stone that marked the grave in front of him. Nearly twenty years on and the pain of losing her that day still burned like fire in his chest. Just thinking back on holding her body in his arms, watching the smoke rise from the cabin as it burned, knowing that he had tried so hard to save her, yet he had failed. He truly had done everything in his power to protect her from this. Closing his eyes to try and block out the memory of that day, he felt a tear run down his cheek. Of course he had known this was a possibility. He had known all along if he were honest with himself. He had grown up hearing the stories of an ancient circle, of orbs, of spirits from other realms, but he had chosen to turn away from them. He had tried to protect the ones he loved by never mentioning the stories, tried to protect her, but in the end he had been unable to stop it.

When will the prequel be available for sale? This is the great question of the universe and I am going to have to ask all of you for your patience on this one! First what I finished writing Monday night is just the first draft, I know from experience that what follows will be edits, revisions, and even more edits. Lots of edits!!! All of that takes time. From there we move on to actually getting the book published. With The Gathering Room I self published because I honestly thought I was just printing a book for my family and friends to enjoy, and then I met all of you!! For which I am so grateful! But the success of The Gathering Room has opened so many doors of new possibilities for me. There is so much more to think about this time around. Pros and cons to everything that lies before me! Originally I was hoping to have a book to you by Fall of 2024, but with some recent developments I can’t say for sure if that will be so. There have also been a bunch of changes in my personal life, yes I do have one of those! That’s the reason why I was pushing myself with a deadline to get the prequel finished. So much happening with a new career move, among a few other things, that I really needed to get the prequel finished to clear up space in my brain! 2024 will be a year of many exciting changes professionally and personally!

What I can tell you is this, the prequel (Henceforth and Unstoppable) will be published! You will hold this book in your hand! It’s to amazing of a story to just let sit in the closet. And I’m pretty sure the universe wouldn’t allow me to do that anyway! Not if past performance is indicative of future success! I’ll keep you updated!

Ancient Whispers from a Hag Stone

One of my favorite parts about writing historical fiction is the research that is involved. I’m a sucker for research. A lover of spending my days falling down one rabbit hole after another. Wandering off into obscure topics and learning all I can about things that I would have never known otherwise. Now that I think about it, that’s really how my first book The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler actually came about! I read Marcus LiBrizzi’s book A Documentary History of the Nelly Butler Hauntings and then went off on my own researching adventure that ultimately led to me writing a fictional portrayal of the history and my whole life changing in a dramatic way! Research is awesome!

As I write my next book, which will be a prequel to The Gathering Room, I have done an extensive amount of research on England, specifically the area of Lancashire and it’s connection to the supernatural. I’m fascinated by the ancient stone and timber circles in Lancashire specifically but all of this wandering around the internet has led me to other folklore and down several glorious rabbit holes. One of which turned out to be Hag Stones.

If you are not familiar with Hag Stones let me clue you in on some of the things the internet taught me. Hag Stones or sometimes called Witch Stones, or Holy Stones, are reportedly (and I say that for a reason) stones that have a natural occurring hole through the middle of them. Wikipedia, never known to wander off into the realm of crystals, hocus pocus or fringe theories refers to them as Adder Stones. In any event, no matter what words you use, they are all the same thing, a stone with a natural occurring hole in it. I first came across them in my medieval England research but then became aware that they are actually found in folklore around the globe. From England, to Germany to Russia and even in Native American traditions.

So how does a hole occur naturally in these stones? Well you need water. Erosion is the number one reason for the holes that appear in these stones, which are usually sandstone, limestone, flint or some other sedimentary stone that was laid down millions of years ago. The holes are caused by water interacting with a smaller pebble and rubbing it until it creates a hole in the stone the pebble is sitting on. Or the hole can be created by just water erosion itself. In addition some Hag Stones are created by a clam!! The Piddock Clam, otherwise known as the boring clam, will borrow into the stone and create a bowl like depression that eventually wears all the way through the stone creating a hole. Because of this the best place to go looking for a Hag Stone is in coastal areas, beaches or rivers and streams where there is fast moving water. Remember that point, it’s important later.

As noted these stones pop up in folklore around the world with similar beliefs attached to them. The more mundane belief, and why they were called sometimes called Adder Stones, was the belief that these stones cured you of a snake bite, Adder being a venomous snake in Europe. But there are far more magical and supernatural properities attached to these stones beyond a mere cure for snake bites! First and foremost is the belief that if you find one of these stones you are very lucky indeed. The reason being is that you, yourself, didn’t actually find this stone, it found you! Legend states that these stones will turn up and be found by the people that will use them.

Hag Stones, Witch Stones or Holy Stones are supposedly also very rare, remember that point too, it’s important later. Only to be found by those who are capable of understanding their magical abilities. What are these magical abilities? Well first off is the hole itself. Reportedly if you are one of the said special individuals who have found a Hag Stone if you look through the hole you can see into the world of fairies! Now that sounds like fun! Look through the hole and glimpse a world of Tinker Bell and her friends flitting from one flower to another leaving trails of glitter all over the landscape! Conversely they also provide the holder with protection from evil entities. Apparently if you are conversing with someone you can look through the hole and tell if the person is a witch! Now that would be a cool tool to have because we’ve all met that person at a party or social gathering that we just don’t vibe with, the one that you just get an odd feeling about. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to whip a Hag Stone out of your purse, hold it up, look through the hole and then know for certain what the deal was?

Obviously I’m joking and making light of the history behind these stones, but the reality is for thousands of years people have believed in them. Believed that they protected you from evil spirits, could cure you of diseases and could give you great wisdom and insight. They were worn on leather strings around the neck, nailed above the door of homes, or placed on windowsills all in an effort to protect and enlighten in a time when people believed more in the unseen world than we do now.

If you are not aware there is a huge market out there for the unexplained, the supernatural, the magical. Sadly Hag Stones are now a marketable commodity that can easily be found on eBay, Etsy and Amazon. Clearly they are not as rare as all the websites touting their magical abilities would lead you to believe. For as little as $2 to as much as $30 you can purchase your own Hag Stone to protect you from whatever is lurking around in 2024. Surprisingly you don’t even need water to make a Hag Stone, a nice drill from Home Depot should do the trick! There are even group pages on social media where people post pictures of the Hag Stones they supposedly found naturally. Photos taken at the beach or along rivers, which would lend you to believe these are in fact true Hag Stones, yet the photos show multiple stones found, sometimes even dozens in one picture. To me that doesn’t seem like they are very rare, even if they were found in their natural state.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to stay with my son who lives in the Midwest. He has a beautiful home in a rural location located near areas dense with fossils. His own backyard being one of them! Because as you may or may not know, 300 million years ago the Midwest was actually a giant sea. My son’s back yard is quite steep in an upward direction as his home was built into a hill. Rare indeed for the flat Midwest. Because of this all the grandkids play in the front yard and just the chickens and the goats inhabit the small flat area in the back before the land rises steeply up the hill. It’s in this steep section of his backyard where a small portion of the hill has begun to erode away. As dirt and rocks fall out of this exposed area, my son has found some of the most amazing fossils!! Typical of what you would find in the Midwest they are fossils of tiny marine animals, aquatic plants and even whole clam shells echoing back to a time when the center of the United States was covered in water.

As I sat in his living room watching him pile rock after rock of fossils onto his coffee table, I marveled at each one, until the moment he laid a Hag Stone down in front of me! It’s the one pictured above. I recognized it immediately from my research and I asked him where he had gotten it. He told me it came out of the hill out back. I made sure again and again that it had truly come from outback and he couldn’t understand my fascination with it. I then explained to him my research on Hag Stones, their magical abilities and if he did in fact find this one among the other fossils then this Hag Stone was naturally occurring and very rare indeed!! Not only had he found it far from any modern source of water but it was likely 300 million years old!

My son, as with most of my children, does not find the world of the supernatural as fascinating as I do, so he quickly pushed the Hag Stone toward me and told me to take it home. “First off Mom I don’t want anything called a Hag Stone in my house. Secondly it clearly means more to you then it would to me!” Gotta love an honest kid!

I now have my very own naturally occurring, not purchased from a website, honest to goodness, rare, ancient Hag Stone!!! In this time of my life, when the weirdest of weirdest things have happened to me on a regular basis, I have to believe that this Hag Stone did indeed find me, just as the legends say. As my life continues to pass through this time of miraculous happenings, signs to obvious for me to ignore, synchronisities that shock me in their preciseness, and the undeniable proof that we don’t understand everything that surrounds us, I’m going to add coming into possession of this Hag Stone to that list. No matter your belief structure, traditional or non traditional. Whatever words you use to describe what you believe. Just keep your eyes open, the unseen world is all around you if you are just willing to seeing it!

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go peer into the world of the fairies. I’ll let you know if I see any glitter!

It’s Not Always Finders Keepers

Back in October I wrote a blog about a bag of sheet music that my son had found in a house he had purchased. (See This Sheet Music Had One Heck Of A Song To Sing 10/6/23) There was a very interesting newspaper clipping in that bag, that I wrote about, but the most important point was that I was able to find the descendants of the woman who had originally owned the sheet music and return these personal items to them.

Finding and returning that sheet music wasn’t my first experience with a situation like that. My very first experience happened almost twenty years ago. I attended an antique auction with a friend and one of the items that went up for bid was a cigar box full of letters written during World War II. Now that era is not really of great interest to me. I’m often asked which time period in history do I find the most fascinating and hands down it would be anything pre 1870. So World War II not really of interest to me. But what did interest me was the possibility that the letter writers were still alive. So I bid on the box until I won and then promptly set out to read all of the letters to try and learn as much as I could about their original owners.

The letters were exchanged between a man named Basil, who had been sent from Maine to an Air Force Officers Training School in California and his new bride, who’s name I have sadly forgotten now, she remained in Maine living with his sister. The letters were full of all of the aches and pains you would expect from a young couple who have been separated in the early days of their love. As well as interesting notes on his schooling and the comings and goings of family members in Maine. None of the contents of the letters were really of any interest to me except the names of as many of the parties involved that I could gather. Armed with this information, and thank goodness the internet, I was quickly able to locate Basil and his wife, both still alive and living in Florida. I remember the day I called and spoke with them, telling them that I had purchased the letters and wanted to return the box to them. Basil’s wife was so surprised! She had remember saving them in that cigar box but over the years lost any memory of what had happened to them. Now, nearly sixty years on, it was such a surprise for them to learn that the letters had survived. I mailed them off to them and heard back later how thankful they were to have them. I heard from Basil’s wife only one more time after that, about a year later, when she sent me a letter thanking me again for the letters. Basil had just passed away and she was so thankful for the opportunity I had given them to relive the early days of their love in his final year.

Another time I had the opportunity to return items to a family was something that I had found in an antique shop. It was a very large and ornate marriage certificate framed in a large filigree, gilded frame. Fancy doesn’t even begin to describe this work of art! Personally I thought it was a bit much for a marriage certificate but it harkened back to a time when milestones in people’s lives actually meant something. Like that all important high school diploma that used to be hung on the wall proudly, so it was with this marriage certificate. It was dated 1880 and the bride and groom were listed, as was the town, which really was only one town over from where I was living at the time. So of course I had to buy it and try to find the family who would appreciate it. for more then just the frame Again I headed to the internet and quickly found a descendant and contacted them. Because we lived so close, literally within a 10 minute drive, the woman and her husband came to my house to pick up the item. They were thrilled with it! I learned that since I had contacted them, they had reached out and spoken with older family members who remembered the marriage certificate hanging on the wall of “Gram’s Farmhouse.” That was until there had been a fire. After the fire no one knew what happened to the ornately preserved document and even less idea how it ended up in an antique shop so many years later. It didn’t matter though, they were just so happy to have it back in the family.

My most recent experience with returning an item or items to a family happened just this past summer, and honestly it was the first time I felt awkward doing so. We were renovating a third floor apartment in a building we had recently purchased. The space had originally been an attic in a big old Victorian era home, but somewhere in the 1940’s the space had been turned into an apartment with the weirdest layout and ceilings that followed the chopped up roofline that you would expect in a victorian style home. Dormers, turrets and the like making slanted ceilings and half walls the norm in this very cramped space. So the decision was made to tear out a closet to make more usable room in the kitchen. As the crew began demolition they found, tucked way in the back of this closet, almost pushed into an unused crawl space, a stack of old papers. Knowing me like they do, someone was dispatched to my house immediately bearing this hidden treasure.

In looking through it all I realized it was just a pile of homework papers that some child had brought home from school, along with a few copies of a Catholic youth magazine. At first I almost threw them away but then I noticed the child had written their name on the homework and even his age. So armed with a full name, an age and a date on the magazines I went to the internet again! It didn’t take me long to realize that this young man, who’s homework I held from when he was only 13 years old, was now deceased but both of his daughters were active on genealogy websites and I reached out to both of them. One lived in Michigan and the other was in Ohio. The daughter in Michigan got back to me almost immediately and we exchanged a few messages regarding her father’s life. Apparently he had lived in that tiny apartment with his mother after his father had left them. His teenage years and young adulthood had not been easy years for him but he had a good life overall. Because of his rough start he had never spoken much to his own children about his childhood. I mentioned to the Michigan daughter that I had also reached out to her sister and she informed me that her sister was away on a cruise at the moment so that’s probably why I hadn’t gotten a response. Off I shipped the homework to the daughter in Michigan and a week later got a nice message back that she absolutely was thrilled to have received even this tiny bit of his father’s childhood and was so thankful that I had reached out. I was satisfied that I had returned another piece of someone’s family history to them.

That was until about a month later, when the sister in Ohio finally read her messages on the genealogy website and reached out to me asking to have the items sent to her. I replied that I had sent them to her sister in Michigan. The response I got was a first for me. Apparently these two sisters did not get along, they were not even speaking to each other! The Ohio sister was very upset that I had sent the items to the Michigan sister. I replied that I was terribly sorry, that I had no idea that there was this ongoing family problem and I simply had mailed the items to the first family member who had gotten back to me. I wished her well and then metaphorically backed quietly out of the room! That was terribly awkward!

Months went by, and I honestly had completely forgotten about this situation when I received a message from the Ohio sister just last week. She wanted to tell me how very thankful both she and her sister in Michigan were that I had sent their father’s homework and not just thrown it away. You see, this much sought after bit of their father’s childhood had forced them to communicate. The Ohio sister had had to reach out and talk with her Michigan sister. In doing so they were able to move on from the homework and discuss the reasons why they were estranged and then ultimately come to realize that their father wanted them to reconcile. So this sister made sure that I knew that. They truly believed that I had found that homework and sent it to them under the direction of their father so that they would mend their fences. She wanted me to know they had spent the holidays together for the first time in years. She thanked me profusely for my part in not only bringing them back together, but in delivering a message to them from their father.

Seriously how much cooler could my life get? Ever thankful for this journey I am on!

You Eat That For Breakfast?

This is not a product endorsement. I’m just oversharing with you all for a moment.

I don’t know if it’s the post holiday blahs, the Maine winter blahs or just simply that my life has suddenly turned absolutely boring, but the past couple of weeks I’ve wondered what in the world am I going to write about this week that will sound interesting to people? Seriously, I thought last week’s blog about smells was going to make everyone yawn and unsubscribe! But it turned out to be quite popular. I couldn’t believe the number of emails and social media comments it generated. I guess it just proves that smells and their associated memories are something that are universally felt.

This week I thought I should probably share with you an update on my progress with the Prequel. It’s moving along a bit faster now that I’m not doing a bunch of promotional events for my first book, The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler. Switching gears in my brain from marketing the first book to focusing on writing the next book took a couple of days of adjustment. It comes in fits and starts as they say. Winter certainly doesn’t help! Everything slows down, even your brain!

I will tell you that yesterday, after nearly 4 hours of staring at the wall and producing nothing, the flood gates finally burst and I wrote non stop until almost 9:00 last night. I was determined not to go to bed until every last bit of what was in my head was on my tablet. You all will be happy to know that Edmund was interrogated and caught in the web of his own lies! It’s a pivotal moment in the story. Of course if makes absolutely no sense to any of you at the moment, so you will just have to trust me. It’s good!! The manuscript currently sits at around 79,000 words. To give you a reference point, The Gathering Room is 121,000 words in it’s published form. So I am getting closer!!!

So this brings me to another week and facing yet again the lack of an interesting topic. This morning, as I drifted about aimlessly looking for a blog topic, I decided to ask the internet, “Blog ideas for historical fiction writers.” I found a list of 100 blog topics. Things like “Explain why your book is different than any other book in the genre.” Ummmm, well that seems a little obvious. The Gathering Room is based on the first documented ghost sighting in America. No one else out there has fictionalized the story the way that I did. No one else has a ring!! Oh and it’s written by me! So there are a couple of difference right there!

Another topic idea was “Feature one of your Readers on your blog.” I actually liked that and I began to think about all of you! Of course I won’t embarrass any of you and call you out by name. But I would like to give a shout out to the woman who messaged me, said she was about three quarters of the way through the book, loved it and wanted to finish reading it while physically in Sullivan or Franklin. That was pretty amazing! Or the woman who has shown up at several events I appeared at just to say hello and chat with me for a moment. Sometimes I think she has logged as much mileage as I have across this state! Only she can’t use it as a write off as I can. Bless her! The woman who I met who wasn’t interested in the book so much as she was my “accidental author” story. She admitted that historical fiction was not her genre, but she was absolutely inspired by my journey and how ordinary people can still do amazing things! Hope is not dead!

But the one Reader who truly pushed me forward, and probably without even realizing it, is someone who reached out to me just last week. I was in a funk, as noted above, post holiday, Maine winter, etc etc. I had been talking with my son about this whole author experience. What happened with the book, where it’s going, what the next one will do, other things we had on our plate for 2024 etc and I told him how I was stuck right now. Really hadn’t pushed the ball forward, as he likes to say, in regards to the storyline much over the past couple of weeks. The beautiful part of writing The Gathering Room was that I was writing it for my own entertainment. No deadline. I wrote at my leisure over the course of six years. There’s a bit more pressure with the Prequel and I was feeling it. I told my son that maybe I should just mark “award winning author” off the bucket list and move on to do something else. Of course he vehemently disagreed, but still I was having one of those moments we all face in life.

And then this Reader contacted me on social media. She probably has no idea how important her words were to me that night. Here is what she wrote, just exactly as she wrote it:

“It has taken me a while to finish your book (I was savoring every page & word)…BUT WOW IT WAS SO AMAZING. That last page left me in total AWE! I was like WOW WHAT JUST HAPPENED! Just amazing beyond words!! You are an amazing author who deserves the awards you have received! I am so looking forward to your prequel!! Take care & keep writing its obviously your calling.”

She sent it at 8:40 at night. I was preparing for bed and I sat on the edge of my bed and read that over and over. I cried. I then took a screenshot and sent it to my son with these words. “When you get this just before bed and you realize that maybe you should write tomorrow!.” He texted me back “You sure will!” Not that I ever really thought I would stop, but you know how we all get in funks once in a while. That was mine, and this Reader was tremendously helpful. So the prequel moves on toward the finish line! Thank you!

So that leaves us with the photo at the top of the blog this week. Among the blog ideas for historical fiction writers I found “Write about your morning routine.”. I laughed over this one because in this oversharing world we live in it just seemed so classic. Like of course I’m going to tell you I wake up every morning at 5 AM, put on my big fluffy robe covered in huge pink roses and make my way to the kitchen. There I make a cup of coffee usually in my Queen Elizabeth II cup, but sometimes in my King Charles III cup. I pour exactly two tablespoons of roasted and salted pepitas seeds in a bowl and grab an extra sharp cheese stick from the fridge.

Everything after that? Well it’s super secret author kind of stuff. I can’t tell you.

I Love The Way That Smells!

Yesterday, as I sat in the waiting area at the hair salon, I over head the three young ladies behind the desk talking. One of them was just returning to her seat from a trip to the printer. In her hand she held a stack of newly printed sheets of paper. She held them up to her face, inhaled strongly and then said “I just love the smell of freshly printed paper!”

I smiled. It made me remember those days, long, long ago and the mimeograph machines! How the teacher would come into the classroom, fresh from that secret hiding place in the school where they kept the machine. In her hands would be a stack of papers with the distinctive blue ink shining brightly, all of the pages slightly damp, the corners curling up just a little. As the teacher walked down the rows between our desks she would hand out each new paper to a student and inevitably every single one of us would raise that still warm sheet of paper to our nose and inhale whatever chemicals were used in making that blue ink! Oh the good old days!

I still love the smell of paper too, particularly old books. Nothing sets the butterflies of excitement fluttering around inside of me any faster then walking into a library, used book store or an antique shop and inhaling that distinctive smell of musty old books! It’s like I’ve entered paradise.

I came home from the salon and decided to ask the internet what were some other smells that people enjoyed that might be considered odd. I mean we all love the smell of laundry hung on the line, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, freshly mowed grass, the air after it rains. But the smell of chemically treated or musty paper was slightly different, what else was out there that people liked the smell of? As you can imagine the internet did not disappoint. Some of the smells I found out there I also like, others I could not, in any way shape or form see how someone would like them. I’ll give you an example and then we shall never mention these again. Armpits, Bare Feet, Blood, Bodily Gases (burps and otherwise), Ear Wax and the most puzzling of all, Belly Button Lint. I’m not even going to ask who actually figured out Belly Button Lint had a smell. I’m just going to put these all in the “gross” category and move on.

Then there were others that I personally don’t find enjoyable, but they weren’t down right gross. Skunks for example. Or Wet Dogs and Old Coins. I’m sorry, the idea of smelling old coins just makes me think of the thousands of dirty hands that have probably touched them. There were some questionable food smells like Steamed Broccoli or Canned Tuna. I get it, those have a smell, but for me personally, they wouldn’t be considered enjoyable. My personal favorite in the not gross category but still questionable was the smell of Home Depot. Seriously I’m heading to Home Depot after I write this just to see if the place really does have a smell of it’s own!

There were a lot of chemical smells in the line up and it really made me realize, from a history of humankind way of looking at things, how so much of our world is full of chemicals now that we find their smells enjoyable, almost comforting! Clean Fresh Air was not on any list that I found, but people do like the smell of Bus Exhaust, Gasoline, Chorline Bleach, Rubbing Alcohol, Ammonia, and Sharpie Markers. Unbelievable! In this category I did find one smell, Plastic Inflatable Pool Toys, that I could kind of understand where the enjoyment factor comes from. Clearly holding an uninflatedted beach ball close to your face as you try to blow it up is going to invoke some childhood memory of summer days at the pool or lake. So that one I can understand.

There were also some chemical type smells on the lists that I actually enjoy myself, for the same childhood memory factor. Dishsoap, specifically for me it would be Palmolive Dishsoap, which I do not buy as I like another brand better, but I have been known to pop the top of the bottle in a store and take a good deep sniff! My mother used Palmolive Dish Soap and every time I smell it all I can see is that old porcelain sink in our kitchen, with the window facing the back yard and a happy childhood. Instant time travel right there!

Another chemical type smell on the list that I fondly remembered when I read it, but I actually haven’t smelled in years, is the smell of a fired Cap Gun. Remember that smell? That was a great smell! We never really had cap guns as children, instead we’d buy just the strips of caps and sit on the sidewalk with a rock and bang away at each little black spot on the red strip of paper. When the rock finally caused the chemicals inside to spark and “fire” that little whif of smoke that curled up toward us smelled so good! It was the same with Pencil Dust, another fond chlidhood memory. Remember when it was your turn to empty the pencil sharpener in school and you stood over the trash can to dump it and let all of those lead and wood particles float up into the air and straight into your nose. Good memories!

Some on the list did bring back really strong memories. Pipe Tobacco being one. I grew up in the 60’s & 70’s literally everyone around me in my young life smoked cigarettes. The gray smoke hanging in a room or the collection of novelty ash trays are never far from my mind’s memories. But it was pipe tobacco that elicits the strongest reaction in me, as my grandfather smoked a pipe. He was amazing, he wore a hat every time he left the house. He was a very stylish man who had grown into his adulthood, and therefore his style, in the 1930’s and 1940’s. He was something special as he allowed me to crawl up into his lap in his recliner, while he smoked a pipe and I dipped into the candy dish he always had nearby. Sadly it was the smoking that took him early. He had a massive heart attack and died at age 65, which honestly now doesn’t seem that old!

But of all the smells, gross, weird or otherwise that I read about yesterday afternoon it was pheromones that grabbed my attention. You know that scent that each one of us has. It’s primal of course and obviously there for a reason. But in humans it is less understood than it is in animals. In the animal kingdom it helps mothers find their babies, aids in identifying friend or foe, and most importantly it aids in the procreation of the species as a basic attraction mechinism. But humans aren’t necessarily attracted to another person based on pheromones, or someone’s smell. In our modern world we are more likely to check and make sure someone visually meets our requirements, are they physically attractive? Or intellectually? Can they carry on an intelligent conversation is far more important in today’s word then if someone’s smell matches your own chemical makeup. Modern humans don’t cling to other humans based on smells, or do they?

I think back to all of those giggling teenage girls that ran around in high school wearing their boyfriends sweatshirts! Even the women’s clothing fashion design “a boyfriend shirt” indicates that women love wearing clothing that belongs to another human. Preferably another human they have felt attracted to. Something that carries the other human’s scent. So whereas the scientists may say pheromones aren’t completely understood in humans, in practice I would say they are alive and well in some form!

As I sat and thought about this it reminded me of my grandmother. She died in 2012 and many of her belongings were boxed up in plastic totes and stored in my attic. One day, after she had been gone many years, I needed to find an old photo that I knew was in one of those plastic totes. So I walked upstairs, found the shelf, found the tote I was looking for and popped the lid off. Immediately the smell of my grandmother filled the air around me. I was shocked that the items in this tote, a mix of her old pocketbooks, cloth hankies, photo albums and hand written letters would smell so strongly of her! I quickly shut the lid so as not to lose my grandmother’s smell. I opened the lid only slightly a second time, quickly grabbed the photo album I was looking for and snapped the lid shut. For weeks afterwards I would go up to the attic and open the lid just enough to stick my nose in and smell my grandmother. It was such a comforting thing! It was like she was right there in the room with me.

And you know, given how my life has unfolded in the past year or so….who’s to say she wasn’t there with me, right? Anything is possible!

“Don’t Worry About The Buffalo Chicken Dip!”

So if you caught my post on Facebook last Friday you know I didn’t publish a blog last week because, well it was Christmas week and I had a terrible case of laryngitis. Not that I actually need to speak to write this blog, I don’t, but between the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and not being able to talk, I just said, to heck with it! My apologies to those that were looking forward to the weekly installment of my crazy life.

So now Christmas is officially over. I hope you had a joyous day whether it was with family around the sparkling Christmas tree or you found yourself enjoying a day that didn’t quite fit the norm. If you found yourself in the latter category, the not so normal Christmas, I want you to know I was right there with you!

My Christmas morning started out pretty typical. Well typical for people in that age group where all of the children are grown and gone. They’ve moved away, and so the grandchildren, or in my case, all of the grandchildren except for one, live far away. Christmas morning has morphed from getting woken up at dawn to the squeals and delight of small children seeing that Santa has arrived, to laying around in bed until 8:00 and then leisurely getting up to make a cup of coffee. That is not necessarily a bad thing! I had plans to spend the day with family, but it would be later in the afternoon. Three o’clock to be precise is the time I was expected at my son’s house, with my buffalo chicken dip. If you miss that reference, scroll back a few blog entries to November and read my blog on holiday parties!

So after making my coffee I made myself a nice hearty breakfast of two poached eggs and two pieces of toast on homemade bread that my daughter-in-law had given me a few days prior. It was delicious! After breakfast I sat on the couch and read a book for a while, then got up and laid out my Christmas outfit, a cute little red and green top that has Christmas trees on it. I was feeling festive and would arrive at my son’s house for Christmas dinner in the full Christmas spirit!

Around 11:00 I decided to start making the coveted buffalo chicken dip. I turned on some Christmas music, I was feeling more and more in the spirit. Around noon I got the dip loaded into the crock pot, set on high and then decided it was such a nice day, that I would go for a walk. I mean there aren’t to many Christmases in Maine where the ground is bare and it’s almost 50 degrees, it was to nice to stay inside! So I set out for a nice hour long walk. It was a great day for a walk. Very few cars, not many people roaming around. Although I did see a few couples and people with their dogs out doing the same thing I was doing. Burning as many calories as possible before loading up on more at someone’s house later.

As I completed my hour long loop and was headed back to the house I realized I was feeling hungry. Not wanting to eat to much before the big Christmas dinner, I thought about the little bit of homemade bread that was left over from my breakfast. Just enough, if I cut it carefully, that I could get two small slices and make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Just enough to tied me over until the Christmas ham but not enough to be full. I picked up my pace a bit more in anticipation of the last of that delicious homemade bread.

Back in my kitchen, my sneakers off and in the boot tray by the back door, I reached for the bread knife and the little bit of bread. I’m not really sure exactly what happened next, all I know is I didn’t cut that bread well at all. Instead I did a great job of cutting two of my fingers very deeply and blood began spurting all over my kitchen! I flipped the faucet on quickly and stuck my hand under the water. Oh dear, what I saw was not pleasant at all. I reached across the counter and pulled a huge wad of paper towels off the roll. I wrapped both fingers of my left hand really tight and then squeezed them together with my right hand and raised my arms above my head. Because, you know, I had to stop the bleeding and find a bandaid. Maybe a couple of really big bandaids.

Right at that moment my cellphone pinged. I glanced down at it lying on the counter. It was my son. “Hey Mom, how’s your Christmas going? Can’t wait to see you!” I laughed. Well my Christmas had been going really well, until just this minute! So I let go of my left hand long enough to text back. “Just cut my hand.” Which got an immediately reply. “MOM!!!” Then I kid you not I got another text message from a friend. “Merry Christmas! How’s your day?” The thought occurred to me that I couldn’t write a story better then this one!

Letting go of my fingers again, I pulled back on the wad of paper towels and peeked inside. Blood was pouring everywhere, this wasn’t stopping. And as much as I love bandaids, I knew this was to big of a job for them. So I changed out the wad of paper towels for a new wad and texted my son. “Headed to the ER, I’m ok.” He texted back, “Don’t worry about the buffalo chicken dip!” Uhhhh ok, because honestly I wasn’t even thinking about it! But you can all see now how loved this buffalo chicken dip is! So I reached for the crockpot and turned it down to low. I then shot him a text. “It’s on low, it will be fine.” The response, “Ok GOOD!” Honestly I could not write a better story then this!

As I walked toward the door, my right hand squeezing my left hand tightly I stared down at my sneakers. Still tied tightly from my walk, because I’m one of those people who just steps on the back of my shoe to take them off. Leaving them still tied until I need to wear them again, when I will sit down and untie them so I can get my feet in. My grandmother always hated it that I did that.

Well now standing there, both of my hands in use on a far more serious matter, I stared at my tied sneakers and realized I probably should have listened to my grandmother. I kicked them toward the couch and then sat down, quickly releasing my right hand I pulled on the laces of each shoe until I managed to get them loose enough that I was able to slip my feet in. But blood was soaking through my paper towel wad yet again, so I changed it out with a fresh wad, squeezed even tighter, looped my arm through my purse and headed for the car!

The drive to the ER wasn’t all that bad, except for the constant warning voice of the lady who lives in my car “Drivers seat belt not detected!” No kidding! I drove with both of my hands on the steering wheel. The badly bleeding left hand being squeezed by my right hand. Not sure how much actual steering was going on but I made it to the ER safely and even found a parking spot close by! I mean it was Christmas, how many other people were spending their day here? Three to be exact, along with a collection of very festively dressed medical staff. What a fun alternative to the “normal” Christmas I thought!

I walked in and explained my situation. Bread knife, honestly. Thankfully one of the nurses noticed my untied shoes and offered to tie them for me. I thought that was very nice! Such a giving gesture on this day of giving. I then sat in the waiting room, still clutching my blood soaked paper towels, and chatted with a young mother who’s baby daughter had stopped breathing but seemed perfectly fine now. Which I thought must be a Christmas miracle for them all. Behind me was a couple quietly discussing laxatives and a young man who looked a bit under the weather. What an interesting group of people I was spending my Christmas Day with! Again the thought occurred to me, I couldn’t write this day any better from an entertainment stand point! I mean how boring Christmas must be for all those folks sitting around their Christmas trees at home just opening gifts! I had passed through a metal detector in an emergency room and was now chatting with total strangers! My day was amazingly interesting at this point.

Finally my name was called and I was taken out back. Again I got to spend some quality time with wonderful medical professionals, both of which had given up their family time to be available for people like me who had decided to try something a little different for Christmas this year. After removing my wad of paper towel there was much discussion on how deep the cuts were and it was possible they needed to do an X ray. I didn’t think so and that’s when I pointed out that I had to have the buffalo chicken dip at my son’s by 3:00. It was now after 2:00, we were wasting time, there would be no X rays.

I will say this, my Christmas adventure at the ER was not without a spiritual component. It was obvious my hand was going to have to be numbed up in order for my fingers to be stitched back together. The doctor was very honest when he told me that he was going to have to inject me twice. Once on the inside of my hand, right at the base of my middle finger and a second one on the back of my hand. But I wouldn’t feel the one of the back of my hand, the first one would be the worst. Gotcha, let’s do this! I looked away and he inserted the needle and he wasn’t kidding. I made sure I mentioned who’s birthday it was on this Christmas Day at least a couple of times before he finished! He apologizing for the pain he was causing, me apologizing for swearing on Christmas!

Soon I was numbed up, stitched up, bandaged up and shot up! I had to have a tetanus shot because I had no idea when my last one was. And before I knew it my Christmas time at the hospital was over and I headed for my car. But not before I stopped at the nursing station and thanked them all again for being so helpful and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. There is just something really nice about saying Merry Christmas to total strangers.

It was 3:15 when I got to my car and texted my son that I would be out shortly. He offered to come pick me up, possibly wanting to make sure the buffalo chicken dip made it safely, but I insisted that I would be fine. I mean really now that I could use my hands independently of each other, I felt like I was on top of the world! Although one of them was numb and I had no idea what it was doing! I was still in a better position then I had been a couple of hours ago. I hurried home and then realized I wasn’t going to be taking a shower or changing into my nice Christmas outfit. Nope Christmas this year meant leggings and a miss matched T-shirt. Oh who cares, this was still the most interesting Christmas I could remember!

And honestly I couldn’t have written this day any better! They say truth is stranger then fiction and my Christmas this year proved that to be true! But it also proved another point. They say 80% of your experience in life is based on your attitude. I could have woken up Christmas morning and been sad that my children all live far away, sad that my nest is empty. That Santa doesn’t stop by anymore. I could have sat in front of the TV or on social media and compared my not so typical Christmas to the lives of others and been sad. I could have bemoaned my fate with the bread knife, avoided talking to the others in the waiting room of the ER, piled on the sadness of how much my Christmas sucked and then taken that to my son’s house and ruined his Christmas too.

But I didn’t, because that’s not how I roll. There is joy in every moment of our lives, you just have to look for it. And there’s humor too! Which I later found out as I tried opening gifts with a numbed up hand! Now that was funny!!!

And don’t worry….I can type just fine even with two bandaged fingers! Work on the prequel continues!

Kenneth’s Elf

I don’t usually start my blog by asking you to take a good look at whatever image I have chosen for this week. But today I am asking you to do that. This elf, which most in my family consider to be the most creepy thing they have ever seen, is what I refer to as “Kenneth’s Elf.” Long before the now iconic Elf on a Shelf was making Christmas merry for millions of children, Kenneth’s Elf has been a part of my Christmas for close to 50 years. And subsequently a part of my owns children’s Christmases as well.

This point was brought home to me last night when my now 30 year old son and his wife came over to my house for dinner. He walked into the kitchen and spotted Kenneth’s Elf dangling from the knob of the kitchen cabinet. First words out of his mouth were “Mom, do you really have to hang that thing up every year? It’s the creepiest elf I have ever seen.” I laughed, because honestly this is the same conversation I have had with all of my children and even shocked friends, every Christmas. No one else seems to love Kennth’s Elf as much as I do. So as we sat around the dinner table last night I re told the story of Kenneth’s Elf to my son, who I know has heard it before but has obviously forgotten, yet again. I told the story to his wife, who had never heard of it and as I did so I thought, you know more people need to know about Kenneth’s Elf, good thing I write a blog!!! So this week I’m sharing this story with all of you.

My first memory of actually seeing Kenneth’s Elf in my own home for Christmas was sometime around 1974 or so. You see my grandmother’s next door neighbor, Mildred McEwen, had given these two Christmas elves to my mother, one for me and one for my sister. Mom hung them from the knobs of the built in china cabinet in our kitchen. Like my own children, I thought the elves were the creepiest things I had ever seen and I could not believe my mother hung them up. But if you know my Mom, you know she’s a very respectful person. Mildred was a family friend, she had helped my mother while going through a divorce. She was my grandmother’s friend and neighbor. Mildred was a childless widow with no immediate family that any of us knew about. Despite what we thought of these elves, it was only showing gratitude and respect to hang them up, even if it were only for that year. So up on the china cabinet knobs the two elves went. Their gangling arms and legs, which looked to be made out of some form of those old pipe cleaners, pointing out in all directions. Their hands and feet were just wooden beads pushed onto the end of their arms and legs. Their coats and hats made of paper and their little faces made from some form of very early plastic. There was nothing festive or merry about these Christmas elves!

To me, Mildred was an ancient old lady who lived all alone in a huge rambling victorian house next to my grandparents. The home was full of antiques, heavy damask curtains, dark wood, paintings of angels, lots of cherubs, and a beautiful portrait of a woman and a little boy that sat in the middle of the fireplace mantle in her living room. Mildred’s husband, Harry had passed away in 1968, when I was just a toddler. There’s an old family story surrounding a rocking chair that was positioned in Harry & Mildred’s kitchen. Apparently Harry was very fond of me and used to rock me in that rocking chair as Mildred cooked or worked in the kitchen. A kitchen I might add that had pink appliances and a pink counter top, all from an renovation they had done in the 1940’s. I still remember that kitchen! Shortly after Harry passed away, as the story goes, I was at Mildred’s house for a visit and little toddler me crawled up into the rocking chair all by myself. As I started rocking the chair back and forth, at least according to tradition, I uttered the words “Harry gone bye bye.” Everyone was apparently stunned by my revelation because how would a two year old understand that Harry had passed? I say now that it was clearly obvious that I’ve had a connection to the dead for a very long time….wouldn’t you say? On a side note, when Mildred passed away in 1998, at the age of 100, I received that rocking chair and to this day I keep it in my kitchen.

Mildred’s gift of these Christmas elves had a very special meaning to her, and it was right of my mother to treat the gift respectfully even if we all thought the elves were hideous. The elves meant a lot to Mildred, and giving them away must have been a sacrifice for her. That point as we age when we realize we can’t keep holding on to every material thing we’ve clung to, and therefore hope to pass these things on to someone else who would enjoy them.

Mildred was the youngest of five children (according to her birth certificate) born in the late 1800’s to a lumberman and his wife way up in the north woods of Maine. Working in the remote lumbering camps in the 1880’s and 1890’s was hard work and would have been even harder for a wife and mother who had to manage a household basically single handedly while her husband was away all winter. Into this kind of environment Mildred was born in 1897 in an area of Maine so remote that it did not even have a town. Mildred was born in T4 R8, officially that’s called Township 4, Range 8, in Penobscot County. Her mother died in childbirth, leaving her hardworking lumberman husband with motherless children. How many of those five children I’m not exactly sure. Seeing as I do family research I tried to find more about Mildred’s siblings but because of the remoteness of the area and the time period I was only able to locate information regarding two of the others. Mildred’s parents had been married in 1882 and a son was born in 1885 named Fred. Another child, Izelle had been born in 1890 but died in 1894 of diphtheria.

After the death of Mildred’s mother it appears that Mildred was sent to live with a family in the town of Patten. She’s listed as a “boarder” age 3 on the 1900 census living with a family with the last name Muncy. Her father, Frank and her twelve year old brother Fred are living a whole day’s travel away, further south, in Twin Lakes, near Millinocket where they are both working in a mill. If there were other surviving children I was not able to find them. By the time Mildred is 12 years old she has been reunited with her father and is living with him and his second wife.

Sadly, this wouldn’t be the only difficult time in Mildred’s life. I’m sure she married Harry McEwen with all the high hopes and love that young couples have. Harry was a salesman for a grain company and they clearly did well financially as was evident by the massive home they resided in on Bangor’s 5th Street and all the photos I’ve seen of their travels as a retired couple. But in between there Mildred and Harry suffered greatly. For some reason they struggled to have children. I don’t believe I ever heard of an exact number but I do remember learning that Mildred had several miscarriages and even lost a couple of babies to stillbirth or death immediately following birth. It wasn’t until 1926 that Mildred and Harry finally had a child that survived, Kenneth.

It was Kenneth who sat with her in the picture on the fireplace mantle in Mildred’s home. She so much younger looking then I ever remember her being. That 1920’s look about her with her short cropped hair and dark rimmed glasses. Kenneth was an adorable child, big saucer like brown eyes and a head of curly hair that truly made him look like all the other cherubs that filled Mildred’s living room walls, their little wings carrying them up towards heaven. Because you see even though Kenneth survived his infancy, he died from scarlet fever at the age of seven in 1934 and passed on to heaven himself. So it was, forty years later, that Mildred gifted two Christmas elves from Kenneth’s childhood to my mother. It must have been a monumental sacrifice for Mildred, a woman who had lost so much in her life, now in her own final years realizing that she must part with the things she had clung to.

From my childhood one of the elves came with me into my own adulthood, and as I pointed out I have hung it, Kenneth’s Elf, from some knob or another every Christmas. It certainly isn’t because I think it’s an attractive Christmas decoration. It’s more because it just feels right to hang it up. Every year, as I hang it up, I say “Merry Christmas Kenneth.” I don’t know why, it’s just a tradition. My sister has the other elf and she too has always hung hers up, much to the chagrin of her own children. Neither one of us really understanding why we are so attached to these creepy, truly ugly elves, that belonged to a child we never met, but yet we kept doing it anyway.

About ten years ago I went with a friend to a group reading held by a medium. Totally skeptical, not going to lie! But I figured I’d mark it off the old bucket list. I found the man truly fascinating and came home to tell my sister about my experience. She wanted to meet this man as well and so I scheduled a time for her to have a private reading with the man at his home. I drove her out there and sat in a chair along the wall as this man spoke to my sister about things that were important to her. I was just the spectator here. As we prepared to leave though he said he had one more message but it was for the two of us. He then described a small boy who had been very sad, but he wanted us to know that he was thankful to us that he had never been forgotten. I remember walking silently to the car with my sister, getting into the driver’s seat and both of us shutting the doors in unison. Then we looked at each other, across the center console and shouted “KENNETH!” at the same time.

I don’t know what my connection is to Kenneth, a young boy I never met, and honestly someone I only think about once a year when I hang up this ugly elf. But I will continue to hang that elf every year so long as I live, and I will continue to tell his story to my grandchildren and my own children who have forgotten it. And now I have shared Kenneth’s story with all of you.

Merry Christmas Kenneth, you have never been forgotten.

“Oh Dad! Can I Please Buy This Book?”

You’ve heard me say it numerous times, my book, “The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler”, seeks out and finds the people who are supposed to know this story. You’ve also heard me say, just recently in another blog post, that every event I attend I know there is one person I am supposed to meet that day and I know they will be shown to me. Recently I attended an event that provided me with glaring examples of both of these scenarios.

Just this past weekend I was doing a book signing at a sporting goods store. I know, selling books at a sporting goods store seems odd right? I thought so too when I was invited to their Christmas event last year, but oddly I sold quite a few books there. So this year when they reached out to me and asked if I would like to be at their store again I went gladly. This year however, there was an impending storm, and whereas I had signed books at their main store last year, this year the event had been moved to their downtown location. I’m all to familiar with how difficult parking can be in the downtown. So to be truthfully honest, given the weather and the location I didn’t expect to sell many books. However, as noted, I stopped worrying long ago about how many books I sell. There are other reasons for me and the book to be out among the public. And this was made abundantly clear to me almost immediately.

I was scheduled to start my sighing at 10:00 and I literally think it was 10:05 when a father walked in with his two young daughters. Clearly they were on a Christmas shopping mission and the person they were looking to buy a gift for was obviously an outdoor enthusiast. They looked around the store for a bit before the older of the two girls spotted me sitting quietly in the corner. I watched as her eyes lit up and I knew immediately that she was a child that loved books! If you are a book lover you know what I mean. I watched as she tugged on her father’s sleeve to get his attention. Once she had it she whispered something and then pointed at me. Together they casually walked over to my table. I spoke right up, because, well if you know me, that’s never a problem for me! And I asked the young girl if she liked to read. In response she nodded her head up and down vigoursly and then shyly said to me “Is this book about a ghost?” I told her it was, in a way, and then explained the history behind the ghost of Nelly Butler and how the book told the story of the people involved. She asked “Are you the author?” I nodded and then handed her a book so she could see my photo on the back. “Yes I am, and look they even put my picture on the back!” she took the book from me, and as with most children I meet, got really excited to think she was talking to a “real” author!

And then without any warning, this incredibly shy child started reading the summary on the back of my book….OUT LOUD!! She read slow, as you would expect from a child trying to sound out words completely foreign to her every day vocabulary. She stumbled over the word “financially” in describing George’s situation when he and Nelly returned to Franklin. And she wasn’t quite sure how to pronounce Lydia’s last name of “Blaisdell” and had to look at her father for reassurance. But she read the entire paragraph out loud, right there in the store. And do you want to know what I was doing? I was bawling like a baby! Yup, me the multi award winning author of a best selling book was ugly crying all over myself in front of total strangers in a sporting goods store! I just could not hold myself together as I listened to this child, who obviously loved reading so much, take the deep dive into a book that was clearly way above her skill level. But despite that she was reading out loud the thoughts of my imagination. In her stuttering and awkward way she was bringing my story to life right in front of me. This just touched me so deeply because I was that child once. That child that just loved books so much that I read anything I could get my hands on, even if I didn’t really understand everything I was reading. This young girl was my kindred spirit.

When she finished reading the summary, she turned her face up to her father and begged him, “Oh dad, can I please buy this book?” Dad, clearly understanding her enthusiasm, cautioned her a bit though, “Maybe in a year or two, when you are 11 or 12. I think some of those words might be to hard for you to read.” I also understood that dad was probably more concerned with the content of the story, then with if she could actually sound the words out. So I told him I had written this book “clean”. I had written it for my own entertainment, knowing full well that my own children and grandchildren would read it and I didn’t write anything in it that I would be embarrassed about if my own family read it. I also told him that I felt the book was appropriate for ages middle school and up, and that I had actually met a young man a few months ago who was 9 years old who had loved it. This information gave the young girl hope and she looked again at her father begging for him to purchase her a copy. And as the dad of a book lover, he couldn’t say no! So I signed a copy for her, which thrilled her even more, and handed it to her. She clung to that book, literally, hugging it to her chest like she couldn’t let go. I shook her hand and thanked her for loving my book so much. I then explained to her father that I truly believed that at every event I attend I am supposed to me one person, and his daughter was my one person that day.

They walked back into the depths of the store, continuing their quest to fulfill their Christmas shopping list. I continued to wipe tears from eyes. I watched the young girl and every chance she got to make eye contact with me she would sheepishly smile and lift her hand in a little wave, still hugging my book to her chest. Eventually they left the store, I got up and went to the bathroom to check the condition of my face after all of that crying and then resumed my spot in my chair. Ten minutes into my two hour book signing slot and I was content, didn’t matter to me if I sold another book, I had met my one person! About an hour later they returned to the store, the girl ran right up to my table, my book still clutched in her hands, “I want to buy another book!” she told me excitedly “For my mom!” I looked up at the dad and his face registered that frustration of a man who has spent an hour shopping downtown and the girls had clearly not found anything they wanted to purchase for their mom, except, well, my book. So I signed another one for the mom and shook the young girls hand again. That’s when her younger sister spoke up for the first time. “I’m 9 years old. I’m going to read your book someday too.” I told her I hoped she enjoyed it! As the next hour dragged on and fewer and fewer people entered the store, I realized I wasn’t going to sell even half of the books I had sold at this event last year. But I didn’t mind, I had met this young girl, I had met my one person.

Then at 11:45, just fifteen minutes before I was supposed to pack up and leave, a very nice young couple entered the store. They walked around, browsing at the goods for sale and then the woman spotted me in the corner. She came right over and we started chatting as she picked up the book and started to read the summary as I prattled away on the book winning this award and that award, blah blah. Suddenly she looked up and with a very surprised and shocked look on her face she said “Lydia Blaisdell?” she then spoke a little louder and got the attention of the man that had come in with her. “Come here!” she urged him. He came over and she handed him the book. “Here! Read this!” she exclaimed and then she looked at me and said “No wait let her tell you about it!” so I proceeded with my little elevator speech about the book and when I was finished he turned his eyes back to the summary of the book and I knew when he read the part that said Lydia’s name because I saw his eyes get really big. He then looked at me and said “Where did this story happen?” I told him in Franklin and Sullivan and showed him the map I always have me. The couple exchanged one of those knowing looks that couples have and then she said to me. “He just found out YESTERDAY, that his grandmother was a Blaisdell. They were from Pemaquid.”

Well, ladies and gentleman let me tell you something! I was not at all surprised by this conversation! You know why? Because the book seeks out and finds the people who are supposed to know this story. I’ve seen it happen to many times to not believe it for myself. But the really cool caveat to this gentleman finding the book is that the next book, The Prequel, is about the story of the Blaisdells and how they ended up in Pemaquid!!! That was the first time I had seen that happen!!! Looks like my journey is continuing!

This lovely couple did buy a book and it was the last one, of just a few, I sold that day. Honestly I didn’t care. I had been shown the reasons why I do this. I had met my one person and the book had proven to me yet again that it will guide it’s own future, I just need to tag along!

Thanks so much for being on this journey with me! I hope you find it as fun and fascinating as I do!

You’re Just An Ordinary Human Being

As it is with most of us, if you are an avid reader, you collect books with the intention of reading them, someday and then, well, actually you never do. Unbeknownst to me until just a year or so ago, all of those un read books lining my bookshelves or stacked in neat piles on the floor are considered my TBR books. TBR meaning To Be Read. I did not know this was a thing. As noted in other blog posts, although I’m an avid reader and read daily, I somehow got left out of the loop of the literary minded or connected. A TBR list was nothing I was ever familiar with. All I knew was that I had a book problem and I would probably never live long enough to read all of the books I dragged home.

And I’m not kidding when I say I have a book problem. I will bring home books by the dozens! I bring books home by the bags full! Goodwill is one of my favorite places for picking up used books. It was actually in a Goodwill that I first realized I had a problem. I spotted a book that looked so intriguing that I immediately purchased it. I went home and was just about to place it lovingly on the shelf, aside all of the other books I still had not read yet, when I realized I already owned that book! Apparently there was a reason why I liked the look of that book so much! I already had it! Had not read it yet and now I owned two copies! Lucky me!

My book problem was reinforced to me again this week as I sat staring at all of the books I own. I’ve been going through a purging phase. You know that feeling that hits you every once in a while when you have to clean out closets. Toss items that have been stashed away under cupboards. Look seriously at the amount of “stuff” we accumulate and take stock on whether you really need it all or not. That has been my life for the past couple of weeks. After purging myself of everything I could within the closets and cupboards of the house, I was now faced with my books. There really were to many of them and if I was going to be thorough in this cleansing moment there were books that were going to have to go! The time had come to make the difficult decisions.

Immediately I was faced with finding two copies of yet another book on two different book shelves! I had a hard cover version, as well as a paperback. For those keeping score that is now TWICE that I’ve purchased multiple copies of the same book! This purging decision seemed easier as it was a no brainer to keep the hardcover and put the paperback in the box to be donated. Not really a sacrifice and I didn’t feel like I had harmed any books in the making of this decision.

Others were easy too. Like all of the gardening books that I’ve carried around with me for 30+ years. I’m a pretty experienced gardener now and if there is something I’m questioning I can look that up on the internet, right? So those all went. As did the home remedies books for both people and dogs, again we live in a world with access to knowledge in the palm of our hands.

There were books I bought with great intentions of actually using them, that in reality I never did. So those went quickly. Books like “Daily Rituals - How Artists Work”. I think I was looking for guidance on becoming a creative writer. Nope didn’t use that one. Another… “A Mindful Year - 365 Thoughtful Writing Prompts”, also never used. Apparently I don’t need promptings to write! And then my personal favorite “Badass Body Goals - The Booty Shaping & Resistance Training Journal.” Ya….never used that one. Just gonna let that go with no further explanation!

And then there was the book pictured above, “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows” by John Koenig. I actually remember buying this one. I bought two, but on purpose! Gave one to my daughter-in-law who is also a book lover and I knew it was just weird enough that she would enjoy it as much as I did! That’s why I love her, she’s weird in a book kind of way just like me.

So the premise of this book, this dictionary of obscure sorrows, is that we are all struggling with the fundamental strangeness of being human. All the ups and downs, the sorrows, the joys, all of it. That part of getting up every morning and just living, it’s hard work being a human! This book was full of new words, made up, created just recently, not found in any other dictionary kind of words, that describe the feelings and struggles we all face just being human.

Have you ever been to Walmart late at night and had the whole store to yourself? The building that is usually bustling with people and energy is now strangely quiet as you push your cart with the squeaky wheel toward the frozen foods all alone. It’s kind of eerie and according to this dictionary of new words, the word to describe that is kenopsia. Don’t ask me why, I don’t profess to understand these things, I only bought the book.

Others that caught my attention were bye-over: that weird moment when you’ve had a very emotional farewell with someone only to realize you actually have a few extra minutes left together. Awkward. Or keir which describes the let down you feel when you try to recreate a beloved memory from your childhood only to have it fall flat and feel just weird. I liked tirosy just simply because I’m feeling old lately. Tirosy describes that touch of envy and admiration you feel for younger people who are so full of energy and the promises of their potential.

As I stood there holding this book in my hand, staring at the donate box, contemplating whether this book needed to go or stay, I found comfort in knowing that even though these words were all made up, what the book truly represented was that we all experience the same things. We are all humans, all struggling, all experiencing pretty much the same things on any given day. I think we need to remember that more. So I kept the book. It’s still on my shelf. To be picked up on another day when I’m feeling bookishly weird but yet still human. When I want to remember I’m not alone in this journey of being an ordinary human being.

No One Is Sent To Anyone By Accident

This past weekend I had a wonderful opportunity to chat with a woman about her dreams of writing and getting published. I absolutely love having these conversations with people. Every time I attend an event I always tell myself there is going to be at least one person there that I was supposed to meet that day. Inevitably it always turns out to be true. Whether that is someone who finds inspiration for their own dreams once they learn how quickly my life has changed in the past year. Or the person who wants to tell me their ghost story because they know I will understand. Or that deep thinker who leaves me with something to ponder. Whoever it is, and for whatever reason, these are the moments I cherish.

Earlier this fall I attended a craft fair where I only sold three books, and those were to other vendors! By far it had to have been the most sparsely attended craft fair I have ever been to. In fairness to the organizers it was a beautiful day, close to 80 degrees, and I’m sure most everyone was thinking of getting in one last day of summer, not attending a craft fair. But into this craft fair walked the one person I was supposed to meet that day, ironically she didn’t even buy a book. The reason she didn’t buy a book is because she already had one. She had seen on social media that I was going to be at this craft fair and she drove there to meet me. With her she brought her book that she had purchased on Amazon. She approached my table and asked me if I would sign her book. As I reached for her book I realized along the edge of the pages were stuck all of these colorful sticky note tabs. When I asked her about them she told me those were all the places in the book where she thought it was written really well, or where there were quotes she wanted to remember. She and I then had a great conversation about the book and writing in general as she was also a writer. She was my one person that day. Didn’t matter to me that I only sold three books, I was able to connect with her.

I’m a firm believer in that we cross paths with people who we are meant to cross paths with. So every opportunity I have to meet people I view it as a moment that was meant to happen, either for me or for them. Such was the case with the woman I met this past weekend, the one I started writing this blog about. She was such a fascinating woman! She spoke to me about things she had written but had never finished. And during this conversation she mentioned that the circle of people she surrounded herself with may not have been as helpful to her in pursuing her dreams. It was then that I remembered something I had heard recently, a tidbit of knowledge.

I am on several different social media platforms, Instagram being one of them. One of the accounts that I follow for my own personal enjoyment is a motivational account, the kind that post reels and videos on staying inspired. Last week one such reel popped up in my feed and it really spoke to me. It was a very powerful message and it resonated with me because of experiences I myself have passed through years ago but even things that have happened recently on my journey with the book. Here’s the link so that you can view it yourself, but I’ll also transcribe it below if you aren’t comfortable with links.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cx1XIxtAHTZ/

This was a moving video and audio from a man named Keion Henderson. If you can watch the video it is phenomenal, this is what he said:

“If you stay in environments where people don’t recognize the value of you, you will shrink your gift to the size of what they can stand. And that’s what causes anxiety and depression and stress. Because you have had to shrink. I refuse to be small just because you think small. I’m not shrinking my vision because you can’t catch up. You better roll with me or you’re going to get rolled over!”

I loved that! Because for many years of my life I too surrounded myself with a circle that wasn’t probably the best fit for me. I too have met people on my journey who’s vision just couldn’t quite keep up with mine. People, who because of their own insecurities, either didn’t believe that great things could happen or felt stronger if they could discourage others. Sometimes in life it is so hard to filter out all of the information we are fed and find the best path for ourselves. This video speaks to the power that lies in finding your own path, taking control of your environment, which in turn changes your destiny. Powerful thoughts.

It was this thought that I felt inspired too share it with the woman who told me of her dreams, so I did, paraphrased of course. When I told her this she lit right up. She looked at me and she said “You’re right! That’s exactly what I have done!” We chatted a bit more and then she thanked me. She told me she was going to go home and dig out all of her old writings and look into doing something with them. I told her I would help her in anyway that I could and she said “You already have.” She was my one person that day. It never truly matters to me how many books I sell, it’s the opportunity to meet people, to have that connection with them that my son calls my “noble cause”.

This understanding, that each person we meet is part of our destiny, whether briefly or for longer, is a theme you will find running through the Prequel of The Gathering Room that I am writing now. It is a concept that I believe in strongly and as they say, “Writers write what they know.” so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I have interjected it into the storyline.

In the Prequel Alicen, along with Ralph, have many people that cross their paths for a variety of purposes. Gavan the large and delightful sheep herded. Lord Jeremy Thurston, of the landed gentry class. Hugh Penley, cousin to the King’s mistress. Each one crossing paths with our main characters and touching their lives for a purpose. Just as it is in our own lives. I’m having a great time creating this world for you and I can’t wait to share it!!!

Most Epic Thanksgiving Fail Ever!

(Photo credits: Pintrest)

With Thanksgiving coming up on us next week I thought I would take some time to look back on some truly memorable Thanksgivings. Some of them are classic, like the image above that we all grew up being taught was the standard. Others fell far short of this standard and one in particular is memorable just for the utter disaster it turned out to be.

But let’s start with the standard, you know that Thanksgiving kind of day when you arrive at your grandparent’s house to find the table spread with an elegant tablecloth, set with the finest china and my grandmother, my father’s mother, impeccably dressed in a beautifully starched dress, wearing heels, a string of pearls and not a hair out of place. These were the Thanksgivings of my early childhood.

My grandparents’ house was large, elegant and we ate in the formal dining room. You know the one with the china cabinet lining the wall, filled with the dishes that were only used for special occasions. There was a chandelier and taper candles already burning in their fancy candle sticks on the table. Believe it or not these kind of Thanksgivings do, or at least in my experience, did exist! My grandmother was the most excellent hostess and if you ate a meal at her house, Thanksgiving or otherwise, you could expect perfection and nothing less. These were very formal affairs with everyone in my father’s family dressed appropriately for the occasion. My grandfather in his dress shirt and tie, myself and my sister wearing our best dresses or maybe even a new dress just for the occasion. There was nothing relaxed or casual about Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparent’s home. Best behavior was expected, there was no television blaring in the background, instead family members had conversations with each other across the festive table my grandmother had prepared for us all. Because I was young, it’s probable that I have idealized all of this a bit. I’m sure if I had peeked into the kitchen I may have seen pots and pans stacked high and I’m sure my grandmother was frazzled, but she never let on that she was. This was her yearly performance for the family and she executed it perfectly. These earliest memories of Thanksgiving were the foundation for all the others that followed.

After my parents divorced we switched to having Thanksgiving dinner with my mother’s family. These are some of the best memories I have of childhood Thanksgivings. We would arrive at mother’s aunt and uncle’s house, dressed in comfortable clothing, greeted by loud and rambunctious cousins and dogs. There were always dogs, something that my father’s family never had. So into this sea of humans and canines we would wade. You see, Auntie & Uncle Lou, as they were called, lived in a very small house in a modest section of town. We didn’t enter through the front door, no this was Maine, we all entered through the back door. That back door brought you directly into the “den” or what we would call a family room now. The TV was always on, the dogs would bark and jump on you, all of the cousins, forced to stay in this room until it was time to eat, filled the space and I remember stepping around people and dogs just to get into the room. Coats would be taken off and handed to someone who would take them upstairs and dump them on a bed, as there was literally not even a closet to put them in! From the den you entered the small kitchen which was full of women. Auntie was running the show and she was hot, sweaty, large and in charge. In this tiny space, and it was tiny, the total counter space couldn’t have been more than six feet, she prepared a meal with the help of her sister, other aunts and older cousins. This band of women created a meal as a group, not like my grandmother who appeared to do it all herself while still keeping her dress clean. This was a loud affair with lids flying, dirty spoons tossed into the sink, side dishes lifted up in the air and passed over head and pies. What seemed like hundred of pies, but more realistically were probably a couple of dozen, seemed to be perched everywhere in that kitchen.

Because the house was so small the children were forced to stay out of the way and because of this we were planted in front of the TV in the den to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade until we were called to eat. Out here in the den with the dogs and the wood stove throwing off more heat then was really needed in a house full of people, we would poke and tease each other out of boredom and anticipation. One boy cousin particularly I remember as being most troublesome, but as we did back then, we learned patience even in the face of adversity! When we were finally called to come eat it was not to a beautifully set dining table, no instead there was one table in the dining room “space”, really just an area that you walked through on your way to the living room, that seated four, possibly six at the most. In the living room there were folding tables set up and then a small card table at the end. The official dining table was reserved for Auntie & Uncle Lou and my great grandparents. The rest of the adults sat at the folding tables or even went back to the kitchen table, where they moved pies and dirty dishes out of the way to find space to eat. The children were sent to the small card table where we continued the mischief we had started in front of the TV. All of these memories are of noise, chaos, and the bustling energy that comes from a family, including young children, all gathering into a space far to small for that many people but enjoying it all the same! It was a great way to grow up.

As I moved on into adulthood and got married it was time for me to begin to develop my own traditions of what this holiday would look like. Thanksgiving 1984 found me living in Phoenix Arizona and a brand new wife. I had never cooked a meal in my life let alone a Thanksgiving meal thousands of miles away from my family. Enter Sharon Storrer, an attorney at the law firm I was working at. One day in mid November, she walked over to my desk and handed me this Betty Crocker Cookbook and a box of oven bags. Her instructions to me were, “Follow the directions on the box of oven bags to cook your turkey. Everything else you need to make you will find in this cookbook. Good luck.” She wasn’t wrong. To this day, thirty nine Thanksgivings later, I still cook my turkeys in these oven bags!! And I had to screenshot a photo of the cookbook from the internet because that original Betty Crocker Cookbook is so dirty, so well loved, with pages falling out of it, that I couldn’t possibly show it to you all. A few years ago a found Sharon on Facebook and reached out to her. I thanked her so much for being kind and helping a very, very young me!! I will never forget her kindness for that!

Over those years, as children were added to the family, my own Thanksgiving meals didn’t resemble the ones I had grown up with at all. Due to the fact that Christmas was a hectic day trying to visit all of the many sets of grandparents that made up our children’s lives, we had decided early on that Thanksgiving would be just our own little family. The one holiday where we stayed home. So as I spent Thanksgiving day cooking a meal for our family of seven, it wasn’t much different then any other meal I cooked, except there was the smell of turkey filling the house. The children watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, or did whatever they normally did on any given Saturday. We ate our meal, all seven of us around the same table we ate at every day. I would clean up and then when we were living near family we might go off and have pie with a grandparent here or there. During those years when we lived away from family I remember it became a tradition to go to the movies after we ate. There was no fancy dressing up, no formal dining room, no house full of cousins or chaos. Thanksgiving was mostly just another day with a really big meal in the middle.

Of all of the Thanksgivings I spent with my children the most memorable two were the ones we spent in Disney World. That first year we thought it best financially to take the kids to the Golden Corral for Thanksgiving. Buffets are always a great way to feed five children when four of them are teenage boys! I will never forget as I set my plate down on the table, mounded over with turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and all of the other Thanksgiving foods I glanced around at what my children had found on the buffet for their meal. Every single one of them were eating pepperoni pizza!!! I remember looking a them and saying “for crying out loud do you think you could get a little turkey on your next trip up there?!” The following year, not wanting a repeat of the pizza Thanksgiving, we splurged and made reservations at the restaurant inside of the Contemporary Hotel at Disney. You know the one that the monorail passes through. There we were, a family enjoying a real Thanksgiving meal with all the correct foods! As the monorail train rumbled below us I cut into my turkey only to realize it wasn’t real turkey at all!!! It was some kind of canned, pressed, processed, moulded turkey flavored meat substance smothered in gravy!! Clearly nothing beats homemade so we stayed home for Thanksgivings after that!

But the most memorable Thanksgiving of all time happened in the late 1970’s and thankfully I can say I was only a participant and not responsible for this epic fail. As seen in the advertisement above, microwave ovens were brand new on the scene and anyone who was anyone was snatching up this cutting edge technology. My own aunt was no different. She and my uncle had purchased one of these new ovens and they were going to host Thanksgiving for the family that year. The all new microwave oven was going to cut down on the cooking time and make meal prep so much more easier! The future was here and like all young people, of any generation, my aunt and uncle were going to embrace modernism and carry us all into the future!

So all of the chaos that made up my childhood Thanksgivings moved from my mother’s aunt & uncle’s small, cramped house and over to the more spacious and modern home of my mother’s sister. As we arrived we were not met with the smell of roasting turkey as one would expect on Thanksgiving day. Instead we all filed carefully past the new microwave oven that was in the middle of the kitchen table, the light on inside where we could see the large turkey slowly spinning on the carousel plate. As my great grandmother leaned down and looked at it I remember her making a comment that the turkey didn’t look like it was browning up very well. I think we all thought it would, eventually, I mean this oven was cooking the turkey right?. Or at the least my aunt expected that it would turn brown!. Sadly it did not and when it came time for my uncle to slice up that turkey for all of us to consume, the sight of the still pasty white bird left us all queasy. I remember that Thanksgiving being the year of the side dish!

It’s Party Time!

I’m not joking when I tell people “I’m booked solid between now and Christmas”, and I started saying that back the first of October!! Life is literally running full steam ahead at the moment. Last night I received a text message from a friend. She said she was planning the annual Christmas party and knew I was super busy. Before she picked a date for her party she wanted to run a few dates by me. I thought that was really sweet of her! Thankfully of the three dates she sent me I actually had one of them open!! I quickly scribbled her name and the time for the party in my calendar before someone else stole that time from me!

I then looked back over my calendar and realized I had Holiday Gatherings scheduled for December 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th! Five parties in a row!! Five days of party food and party drink! Oh boy! It was one of those moments when you begin to have an internal conversation with yourself. You know how those conversations go.

“I will only eat from the vegetable tray!” or “One cookie! That’s it! I will allow myself one cookie, ok a frosted cookie.” or “I’m only drinking water!”. All of which goes right out the window the minute you stand in front of the crockpot of meatballs, the tray of mini sliders or the bowl full of those Oreo cake balls dipped in chocolate. Then you tell yourself it’s the holidays, it’s once a year, you’re with friends, life is short, enjoy this moment! Which is all well and fine and good if you are only going to one party! But if you’ve got five parties in five days you need a new plan!

I’m not sure when food became so intimately ingrained in our socialization habits. Maybe it stems from our hunter ancestors bringing in a kill for the whole group to feast upon. I imagine life back then was a lot of group food prep, cooking and consuming. I also imagine that they didn’t eat in large quantities like that daily. It was probably less frequent, daily meals were probably boring and much less labor intensive. A few nuts, some dried fish and maybe a squash roasted in the fire. But the hunt, the bringing in of a large kill would have left everyone taking in the much needed calories that would sustain them until the next opportunity they had to eat like that.

Our yearly holiday pilgrimages to a friend or loved ones home, crockpots tucked snuggly into their insulated carriers, bearing even more gifts hidden in brightly color bags with bows and ribbons, being greeted at the door with a warm hug and cheers from those already waiting inside, isn’t much different thousands of years later, except that we have electricity! We still gather to feast, share our food with others and consume vast amounts of calories, that unlike our ancestors, we don’t really need and won’t burn off until at least mid June!

This time of year, as I begin to receive the invites to these wonderful events, they are always followed with the request “You are going to bring your buffalo chicken dip right?” In fact my nephew has a standing order that I cannot even show up at his house unless I have my buffalo chicken dip. Not sure at one point in time I became known for my buffalo chicken dip but apparently I am. There isn’t an event that I get invited to, spring, summer, fall or the holidays, that I’m not asked about it. Most recently I was invited to a Halloween party and I was surprised when the text message started with “Can you bring your buffalo chicken dip?” followed by the date and time of the party. Sometimes I feel like I’m just that woman who gets invited to parties because she will bring her really cool friend as her plus one! Invite Michelle, she’ll bring that buffalo chicken dip!

So what is it about my buffalo chicken dip that makes it so requested? Honestly I don’t know! I have been to other parties and seen buffalo chicken dip on the table, warm and yummy looking there in the crockpot but it’s bright orange. Clearly someone has emptied an entire bottle of Franks Red Hot sauce into that dish! My buffalo chicken dip is not orange, in fact my dip is actually more festive looking with red peppers and green jalapenos.

I need to stop calling it “my” buffalo chicken dip. Even though it seems like it has become mine, I actually got the recipe from someone else thirteen years ago. I was hosting my own Christmas party in 2010 and a friend showed up with two dips that had to be heated up in the oven. One was a crab dip and the other, this buffalo chicken dip. With the first scoop of a tortilla chip into that warm delicious blend of flavors I knew I had to make this dip for myself. I asked her for the recipe and she very happily wrote it down for me. Clearly not understanding that it would become my destiny, my signature dish, I would become known for this buffalo chicken dip.

I make it so often now that I don’t even look at that recipe card anymore. I did change a few things. Her original receipe called for a jar of chopped jalapeños, I prefer to use fresh ones, specifically from my own garden, that I have chopped up and frozen. We are still working through frozen jalapeños from that huge covid garden we planted in 2020! I also remove the seeds. Learned that the hard way one year. Not sure what year it was but we actually left a party with a little bit of dip left in the crockpot. A very rare occurrence for sure! When we got home Craig scooped it out and put it in a container in the fridge. The next day I tried to reheat some for lunch. All those jalapeño seeds sitting there all night had made it so hot that we could not even eat it. After that I decided that on the outside chance we ever came home with any again, I wanted to be able to eat it the next day. So we now have a no seeds rule! I also don’t exactly follow the measurements my friend wrote down that night thirteen Christmases ago. It is more like I just do what feels right. A dash of this and a sprinkle of that, I taste it and then add more until it’s just the way I like it.

All I know is even if I triple the batch, no matter where I take it, it is always the first empty crockpot! Rarely do we have any leftovers anymore. Often times I can’t even make it through the door before someone has taken the crockpot right out of my hands and I never see it again until it’s to late. By the time I make it to the food table the crockpot is scraped clean, a lonely spoon resting on the bottom, an empty bag of chips sitting nearby.

Before I even started this blog today I thought long and hard about if I was willing to share my buffalo chicken dip recipe with the world. Chances are quite a few people out there already make this dip and it’s probably the signature dish for millions of people attending holiday parties, not just me. It was never mine to begin with, so I can’t claim it and feel that it is time to release it out there for others to enjoy. I hope if you are attending any parties this holiday season that you will consider taking this dip with you. Tell them you got the recipe from the lady who wrote that book!

BUFFALO CHICKEN DIP

4 chicken breasts cooked in 2 Tablespoons of olive oil with 1 teaspoon of salt and a pinch of cumin, oregano, and cilantro. (this is the first change I made, I cut my chicken into tiny, and I mean tiny, bite size pieces before I cook it. The size of the chicken pieces should fit easily into a Scoops tortilla chip. And honestly I just dump the spices in. I use way more then a pinch of anything! It’s the cumin that makes it delicious in my opinion!) In a bowl combine 2 packages 8 ounces of cream cheese with 1/2 cup of mayonnaise and 1/2 cup milk. Blend this together real well. When blended add 1/2 of a chopped red pepper and 1/2 a jar of chopped jalapeños (again this is where I use real jalapeños, I use about 6 and remove the seeds.) Mix real well and add Tabasco sauce. (this is where I dump in a few drops of Tabasco sauce, mix it and taste and repeat until it is just right. I like it to be subtly hot. A bit of a kick but not overpowering) Add the cooked chicken pieces to the cream cheese mixture and mix well. Pour into an oven safe dish and back at 350 degrees until the mixture bubbles (this is where I put it in a crockpot on high until it bubbles, mixing the edges in often. Once it’s hot I turn it back to low). Serve with Tostitos Scoops tortilla chips.

Who Taught You That?

For those that don’t know I have recently begun work with my son on a really fun business project. Honestly love my adult children, they are creative visionaries with powerful energy!! This particular son of mine thought it would be really fun for the two of us to work on this project together and he wasn’t wrong. I’m having a blast!

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit in on a Zoom meeting with my son and other professionals as we went over development of our ideas and a strategy to bring them to life. Zoom meetings are usually not my favorite way of doing business. In fact I once gave a previous boss a wall plaque for his office that said Me: “This show is boring” Boss: “Again, this is a Zoom Conference.” It was well known between the two of us that I was not a fan of this new technology.

As I sat in on yesterday’s Zoom conference, with my computer adjusted to just the right height so that it showed my best angle, my mute button on so that the others would not have to listen to Susan and Douglas scare away the mailman yet again, I looked at my son sitting in his home office, hours away from me. Now I have been in his home office a time or two so I knew what it looked like, and as he sat there I thought how proud I was of him and all that he’s accomplished so far in his life. He is, after all, only thirty. Gosh when I was thirty I was still winging my way through life. He, on the other hand, has a clear and dedicated path he’s working towards. He’s my goal oriented child and he has many goals he’s pursuing at once right now.

Anyway as our meeting yesterday began to wrap up my son needed to schedule a follow up with one of the other people also on the call. I listened as the two of them discussed dates and times that worked for both of them. In the blink of an eye I saw my son glancing up to something on the wall above his head. He confirmed the date and time with the other person and scribbled something down on the notepad in front of him. Like I said I have been in my son’s office so I knew immediately what it was he had glanced up at. You see my son has a giant dry erase whiteboard calendar on the wall of his office. I’ve seen it, but until yesterday when I actually saw him using it, the implications of this practice hadn’t dawned on me. I taught him that!!

Back when all five of my kids were home I managed an incredibly hectic schedule. Five children, spread out over nine years, meant different schools, different activities, different interests. Each day a different child had a different household chore to be responsible for as well. In addition, even though I wasn’t working full time, I maintained involvement in several community organizations myself. Trust me all of this would not have fit on your typical wall calendar. To solve my scheduling nightmare I went to Staples and bought the biggest whiteboard dry erase calendar I could find. Visualizing it now, and where it hung in the hallway, I want to say it was a good four feet wide. It was massive! I also picked up a handful of different colored markers. Each member of our family was assigned a color and it was with this that I kept track of everywhere we had to be, what needed to be done by each child and any other important information. This giant calendar in the hallway became our hub of knowledge. Each child knew there color and with a quick look know exactly what they were scheduled for each day. Worked great!

As I watched my son glance up to his own dry erase calendar I realized that my organizational skill had been transferred. lt made me pause and wonder if he was using different colored markers for all of the projects he has going on right now. I chuckled and then, because I’m the Mom, I called him out on right there on the Zoom call. “Did you seriously just look up at your whiteboard calendar?” I asked him. He smiled and confirmed that he had. Again, because I’m his Mom and I’ve earned this right, I then had to tell the story of how he had grown up with a giant dry erase whiteboard calendar to everyone on the Zoom call. Because, you know, that’s what your Mom does right? He was a good sport about it and wasn’t to embarrassed. He’s a good son.

Later in the day I was still thinking about this, how knowledge that we have as parents gets passed down to our children, sometimes without us even realizing it. We hope that they absorb the standards, morals and manners we try to teach them during those brief few years we have with them when they are teachable! But sometimes things we never even imagine gets passed along. It made me think of my own mother and had she passed along something to me, completely unintentionally, that I know took as solid fact. Enter the humble cucumber!

When I was growing up summer meant one thing, cucumber sandwiches. Two pieces of white bread, because that’s all we bought back then, both pieces of bread slathered with mayonnaise and then one piece covered in slices of fresh cucumber sprinkled with salt and pepper and then topped with the other piece of bread. Nothing said summer like a cucumber sandwich! As I grew older my mother taught me how to make these summer treats all by myself. The very first step was that you must cut off both ends of the cucumber. Second step was that you had to then take the cut off pieces and rub them all over the freshly cut ends before you tossed the end tips into the trash. Why was this such an important step? Because if you didn’t cut off the ends and rub them like that the cucumber would be bitter and no one wanted a bitter cucumber sandwich. After you had done this very important step of making sure your ends were well rubbed, then you could go ahead and peel the cucumber, slice it and make your sandwich. I have completed this ritual religiously ever since my mother taught me in the 1970’s.

As a young wife and mother I remember eating a salad my new mother-in-law had made. I bit into a slice of cucumber and it was so bitter! I remember thinking that because she was from Arizona she clearly had never been taught the correct way of getting the bitter taste out of a cucumber! I mean this was the woman who put avocado in her salads for crying out loud! Over the years I myself have eaten a cucumber, prepared by my own hand, that was bitter even though I know I rubbed those ends well! When this happened I would think to myself, maybe I didn’t rub them right.

It was only a few years ago that I was reading an article that spoke to the bitterness in cucumbers. It’s actually caused by a natural compound called cucurbitacin. Poor growing conditions such as lack of water, to much water, not enough sunlight, etc can cause the levels of this compound to rise and increase the bitterness of the cucumber. Probably didn’t matter how much I rubbed the end of the cucumbers then. But I still do, just on the outside chance I can avoid a bitter cucumber sandwich! I mean, after all, my mother taught me that!

They Really Were A lot Like Us!

I have loved history for as long as I can remember. But my life long obsession with researching history, digging deeper and getting lost in the past, really began when I was eighteen years old. At eighteen I had not experienced much of the world. I had only left the state of Maine three times. Trips to Disney World in Florida, Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire and a road trip to Ohio to visit my aunt and uncle. I was young, naive and not knowledgable at all about humankind. I was a child of 1960’s. The sexual revolution of that decade having changed the landscape of our culture, or so I thought at the time. In the 1970’s my parents divorced, and by the 1980’s I was bombarded with messages about the destruction of the “nuclear family” in American culture. So by the time I set out on my journey into studying the past I was pretty well convinced that my lifetime was being lived in an era of depravity. That past generations had lived exemplary lives of honesty, wholesomeness and good old fashioned values. Of course I was aware of the atrocities of war, the barbaric things man did to. man, but in my young mind, every day people were better than that. They were better then the generation I was living in. It didn’t take me long to realize my misjudgment!

I think this early foundation of perceiving the past with rose colored glasses is why I am always amazed when I stumble upon pieces of history that don’t fit that narrative. A narrative that still hides in a deep corner of my now more mature brain. As was the case with my blogpost a few weeks ago “This Sheet Music Had One Heck Of A Song To Sing” I’m intrigued when I find our modern day problems staring at me from hundred of years ago. This week I came across a couple of gems just like this. Tidbits from history that prove our problems are not new. Our struggles no different then those others have battled for hundreds of years. Some will probably bring a smile to your face. Others might make you wonder. Either way, I hope you enjoy them!

Published in the Argus & Spectator newspaper, New Hampshire, Dec 12, 1840

On the 11th a lovely couple bolted into the post office in Machias Maine and requested of Honorable J.C. Talbot to be married. No sooner said then done and in the presence of several witnesses upon the production of the necessary certificates were joined “for better or for worse” Mr. John Driscoll, aged 21 years and Mrs. Elizabeth Dimond, aged 65 years.”

Michelle’s thoughts - Uh, well, ya…there you go! If I had the time I would love to research these two further, maybe look for Mrs. Dimond’s will! But maybe I’m being to cynical.

Published in the Sedgwick Maine Vital Records

Sedgwick, January 23, 1811 - this is to certify that I Samuel Black do promise to take the child, that Pattey Doore swore upon David Black, when the child is nine months old and I do promise that the said child shall be well brought up and good care taken of it and if I fail and do not take the child when it is nine months old I do promise to pay the said Pattey Doors seventy five cents per week for every week that she keeps the child after it is nine months old and if I do not take the child at all I promise to pay her the sum of one hundred dollars as witness my hand.

Michelle’s thoughts - a little further digging on this one proved that Samuel Black was assuming custody and care of his grandchild, a child fathered by his son David. If you think unwed mothers, child support, custody battles and grandparents raising their grandchildren are new, they aren’t.

Originally published in The Maine Genealogist 39(2017):113

Sylvester & Elizabeth Stover of York, Maine, had a turbulent marriage. On 3 July 1660, the couple was in court when Elizabeth was charged with abusing her husband “by many reviling & reproachful speeches, as calling of him a roge & rascal.” It appears that Elizabeth had been egged on by her mother, Mrs Margaret Norton, who had moved in with the couple in her widowhood. The Court took a dim view, and laid the blame squarely on the mother and daughter: “Goody Stover for her unruly & indecent carriages towards her husband is bound in a bond of ten pounds to be of good behavior towards all persons especially towards her husband or she shall either pay the forfeiture of the said bond or otherwise she shall receive fifteen lashes on the bare skin. And further if the said Stover shall make any just cause of complaint appearing against Mrs Norton his mother in law, occasioning further differences between him and his wife, that then upon due notice given to said Court, by whom the said Mrs. Norton is then to be removed from the Stovers house or sent to prison if other means cannot prevent her therein.”

Michelle’s thoughts - Horrible Mother-in-laws are not new!! Clearly a case of nuts don’t fall far from the tree. My condolences to Mr. Stover.

Published in the 1880 US Federal Census, St. Louis, Missouri, pg 262A, household #165

Hubbard Manns, age 35 years, country of origin, Prussia. Living with is wife Catherine, also 35 and six children. Hubbard is listed as a “laborer” in the occupation column. Next to Catherine’s name is written “dirty as hell”.

Michelle’s thoughts - Ummmm…. well. Personal hygiene? Or a commentary on her skillset as a housewife?

From the Province and Court Records of Maine Vol. II, York County Court Records

Oct 27, 1668 - Whereas complaint was made to this Court that John Barnet hath offered several abuses to his wife by kicking her, etc, and acknowledging his fault & promising amendment, this Court thinketh meet to pass by & remit his fault for the time past, the fees of the Court being 5s.

July 4, 1671 - We present Mrs Sarah Morgan for striking of her husband. The delinquent to stand with a gag in her mouth half an hour at Kittery at the public town meeting and the cause of offense writ upon her forehead or pay 50s to the County.

Michelle’s thoughts - It would be convenient to call this one out immediately as a double standard, and it truly could be given the time period. But it’s a moment in time, and as noted a few weeks ago our lives are not made up of just one moment. What could be missing here is that John Barnet was an honorable man who was under an extreme amount of stress, as we all experience in our lives, and lost his cool in the heat of a moment. One moment. Mrs. Morgan could have had a revolving door with the Court in regards to her attitude toward her husband and therefore this moment was in response to the Courts weariness of having to deal with her again and again. It’s also fair to say that her husband could have been a horrible man and she was reacting to the toxic environment she lived in. Wherever the truth lies, these tidbits show that, sadly, domestic violence is not a new problem.

From Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies 1661-1668; A 1665 description of the settlement on the Kennebec River.

Upon the north-east side of Kennebec River, upon Sheepscot River, and upon Pemaquid, eight or ten miles asunder, are three small plantations belonging to his Royal Highness, the biggest of which has not above 30 houses, and very mean ones too, spread over at least eight miles. The people, for the most part fishermen, never had any government, and most of them have fled from other places to escape justice. Some are of the opinion that as many men may share in a woman as they do in a boat, and some have done so….

Michelle’s thoughts - Well…ummm! Sex is not new and history is certainly interesting!

I Tried The RV Life…

So if you follow me at all on social media you know that in September I spent two weeks, in an RV, at a campground here in Maine. I was going to embrace the RV Life! Something that my husband and I had talked about maybe doing when we retire. My experience was interesting to say the least and I’d like to tell you all about it! I was an RV rookie and the following account clearly shows that!

As you can see from the photo above we started out with such high hopes. Douglas and Susan were all smiles as I began to unload the car. This was going to be fun! At home we have a fenced in backyard where they are free to run and roam. But here at the campground there is a leash rule, so that meant I got to buy them brand new harnesses and fancy leashes! They looked so cute in their new outfits! RV Dog Mom! I’ve got this!

My first indication that this experience was not going to go as well as I had imagined was as I unloaded the car. The “kids” (as I call Douglas & Susan) are accustomed to being within six inches of my feet at all times. There isn’t a place I go that they are not right there with me. So being expected to stand, or sit, while tied to a picnic table by a six foot leash, no matter how pretty and new, while I moved about freely without them, started the first round of protesting! Did I mention that this campground has a no barking rule? So out came the anti barking collars and immediately the thrill of camping, at least for the kids, began to fade.

As I continued to unload the car, my Mom arrived to be helpful. This was great because Mom has never stayed in an RV either, so now I at least had company in my inexperience. There was an awning on the side of the RV and I decided I really wanted to roll that out to cover the picnic table and lovely outdoor rug that sat next to the RV. My plan was to place my folding chairs there and create that outdoor seating area I’d seen in all of the RV ad campaigns. Luckily in this RV the awning is an automatic system and I easily found the button inside that said “Awning”. Seemed easy enough. I asked Mom if I should push the button, and with all the enthusiasm of someone who has no skin in the game, Mom encouraged me to go press the button.

As I stood with the door open, so I could watch the awning unfurl, I held the button down. Mom stood outside to supervise the automatic system, you know incase it needed any help, seeing as it’s automatic. Soon we heard the quiet whirl of the motor and the awning began to extend outward on its mechanical arms. Well look at me go! I can do this! The sound of the gentle motor was quickly replaced by an awful grinding noise that startled me so much I let go of the button, stopping the awning mid way in it’s journey. I asked Mom what the heck that was and that’s when she pointed to the door I held open. I had managed to snag the awning on the door. In my defense I’d like to note there were no operating instructions stating that the door must be closed before extending the awning. Mom decided that this was a great time to leave, she had laundry to do at home and before I knew it she had jumped into her car and was zipping out of the campground! Quitter! Alone now, with only Douglas and Susan for support, I retracted the awning enough to release the door, closed it and then pressed the button the other way to successfully extend the awning to cover the seating area. See I could do this!

As an experienced RVer now, with all of twenty minutes under my belt, I felt I was doing pretty good and slammed the door of the RV shut with satisfaction. I stood back to admire my little RV world. Picnic table, outdoor rug, folding chairs, fire pit. Just like in all the photos I’d seen on social media. This was going to be tranquil! I got this!

It was then that I realized I had locked myself out of the RV! As I stood there staring at the chrome latch of the door, willing it to just open on its own, I realized, thank goodness, that my cellphone was in my back pocket. I could at least call for help. I turned to check on the kids, still tied to the picnic table, bulging anti bark collars on their little necks, their smiles long gone and the first thought that this might be a really long two weeks began to enter my mind!

The RV actually belongs to my son and he was on his way to bring me dinner to celebrate my first night as an RVer. Thankfully he had the second key with him so my rescue happened quickly. He showed me how to properly lock and unlock the door and I can tell you from that day forward I never left that RV without triple checking that I had the key in pocket!

My son had brought take out for dinner and it really was just a matter of sitting at the picnic table to eat. But the kids were tied to the picnic table and this didn’t seem like a good idea. I had brought some lightweight rope (they are small dogs) so while my son built a fire in the fire pit and his wife got the table ready for our dinner, I cut some lengths of rope off and tied one them to the RV. I then untied their pretty new leashes from the picnic table and retied them to the lengths of rope. I thought they would be happy with more freedom. And they were as they scurried around the sitting area, getting tangled up in each other, tangled in the folding chairs and tangled around the legs of the picnic table until each one of them had about four inches of movable space left on their leash. Are you freaking kidding me?

My son was really excited that I was staying in his RV, staying at the campground, doing this whole RV experience thing, so I kept a smile on my face well into the night, as the fire crackled and the kids fought over my limited lap space in a folding chair as opposed to our recliner at home. It was going to be alright I told myself.. Truly. Lots of people do this! And they do it with dogs! I could do this too!

Bright and early at four o’clock the next morning Susan decided she needed to go out to pee. At home this is not a problem. We go downstairs, I open the door, she runs into the fenced in yard, does her business, comes back in and we go back to bed. But now I was living practically outdoors in a community of strangers and there was a leash rule. So in the chill of a late September morning in Maine, I dressed, then got the harnesses on the dogs, then attached the leashes, then found my shoes, my cellphone, the poop bags and the very important key to the door! I was ready!

Did I mention that the kids are always within six inches of my feet? Have you ever been in an RV and noticed that in order to get out you have to step down into a little well, not more then a foot wide, in order to open the door to get out. Well if you haven’t, let me tell you this is not an enjoyable experience at four o’clock in the morning with two little dogs. The fight was on between Douglas and Susan to see who could fit into this little sunken space next to my feet first! There I stood in that tiny area with two dogs wrapping their leashes around my legs faster then I could tell them to stop. I couldn’t open the door for fear I would trip and fall out! Not to mention they were barking and I wasn’t about to let them out into the campground barking at four in the morning! This was fun? People actually pay money to do this?

I managed to take control of the situation, got everyone seated at the top of the stairs with a firm warning to STAY until I tell you to move and then I opened the door and safely walked down the stairs and they followed me out. This RV thing required to much planning! To much thinking. It was clear that I just couldn’t go about life the way that I was accustomed to doing so at home. Everything, it appeared needed to be rethought!

This proved to be even more true at breakfast. As you can see from the photo above, in the RV I’ve been blessed with about 12 inches of counter space, right next to the sink. I had done the dishes the night before, another adjustment as I have a dishwasher at home, not to mention TWO sinks. But I managed! I did it and I would get used to roughing it!. I was determined! But now it was time for breakfast and the dish rack was taking up half of the valuable counter space. It’s was six thirty, I’d been up since four, I just pushed the rack back and figured I would make my breakfast on six inches of counter space. I’m an RVer! I’m going to learn how to do this! And this was ok until I realized that the only outlet in the “kitchen area” was located in the underside of the kitchen cabinet, directly above my now reduced twelve inches of counter space. How in the world was I going to plug in the toaster?

For what transpired next I blame it solely on the fact that I was drinking instant coffee from a cup of water heated in the microwave. Another one of those, “I can do this and rough it” things. There really is no other explanation for my lack of brain function. I began to search the RV for other outlets. I want you to. know I found plenty of USB ports, but only one other outlet. This proved to me I wasn’t cut out for the Instagram generation idea of “van life”. I wanted an outlet!! A good old fashion outlet so I could plug in my toaster! I found only one.

Honestly I took this picture, wanting to document the absolute absurdity that my experience had turned into. After taking the picture I stared at my toaster. This was not a safe decision. There was no way I was going to make toast with my toaster sitting on the dog blanket that was spread across the plastic couch in the “living room” area. I had to come up with another plan.

At that moment my son texted to see how I was doing. Texting from the comfort and warmth of his bed at home I should add. I texted back that I was doing GREAT! Except that it was a bit cold this morning. He mentioned there was a space heater in one of the cabinets. Oh wonderful! I quickly found that and got it plugged in to this outlet! And soon the kids and I were feeling warmth. That allowed me to tackle the toaster problem with a little more brain power, which I wasn’t getting from the instant coffee.

And that’s really all that was needed, a brain. You see in an RV you have to think! At home you just flow, but everything in a confined tiny space like an RV requires more thought. So I quickly set about putting away the dishes from the night before, thus freeing up more counter space! In doing so I was able to move the toaster to the kitchen counter where it belonged and I snapped this photo to prove that I could do this! With all the pride in myself that I could muster I put an English muffin in that toaster and pressed down on the button. With the space heater running at my feet and now my toaster turning my English muffin a crispy brown I was thinking I might actually get the hang of this! That was until using those two electronic appliances at the same time tripped the breaker and I lost all electricity in the front of the RV!

I am absolutely not kidding you! As I stood there, in the now semi darkness, the only light coming from the early morning dawn through the pine trees, I really couldn’t understand why people pay money to do this. Honestly, how is it possible that there is a whole sub culture of people that do this and appear to love it! I was roughly 16 hours into this adventure and I wanted to go home.

I managed to cook myself some eggs on the gas stove. I ended up telling my son later, like much later in the day, that I had tripped a breaker and couldn’t find the electrical panel, so he had to come down and show me. It’s under the fridge if anyone wants to know. After breakfast I washed all of the dishes and then went to take a shower. Only to realize I had used all of the hot water washing the dishes. So a cold shower it was! I was having a blast on my first day of RV Life!

I will say this much, it did get better, slightly, as each day went on. I learned to adjust, to rethink and plan accordingly. I turned on the space heater to warm the RV and then shut it off when I turned on the toaster. I learned to shower before I washed the dishes. And to wash the dishes and then dry them by hand and immediately put them away. Just to make it feel like I had more room. I learned that tying the kids outside was an absolute no go and instead found a leash that I could attach both of them to and then attach it to my belt, so we could all be together. They learned to wait at the top of the stairs and not try to trip me at the door. I learned that sitting lengthwise on the couch, rather than trying to sit in a folding chair outside, gave them the lap space they required. That outside seating area was over rated anyway.

By the time my husband showed up, halfway through our stay, I was just about getting the hang of it. On his first night with us I watched him fall over into the wall while trying to get undressed in the four inches of space between the end of the bed and the wall. He looked at me and said “Not much room in here is there?” I smiled. He made his way to the bathroom, stubbing his toe on the end of the bed and falling into the shower door with a bang. I laughed. After he managed to get into the bathroom and shut the door I heard the lid go up on the toilet and then everything I owned, on the three inches of counter space in the bathroom, fell on the floor. “You alright?” I hollered. He hollered back “There really isn’t much room in here is there?”

Nope, but I got this!