The weather in Houston can and usually does change drastically from day-to-day. Today, it was a balmy 65 degrees F. Tomorrow it is supposed to be freezing. This is nothing new for H-town.
We I was a child one thing stands out about the Christmas it was 80 degrees F. It stands out because I remember wanting to stay outside because it was so hot inside. My father insisted on lighting a fire in the fireplace, and keeping it blazing. It was Christmas, he said. He wanted the fire roaring.
Although I was a very small child I remember being so frightened about Hurricane Carla. My mother had just had my baby brother and my father was at work. She made my brother Jon and I come in from playing although the weather outside was great. We didn’t want to come in. But the tone of her voice was enough to bring us running. It wasn’t long before the wind began. What a wind! Over 145 MPH it pushed out trees nearly to the ground. We snuck peeks through the window though my mother had us laying on the flood in the bedroom.
I’ve always wondered about that but now when I think about it, I recall that my mother was from Iowa. They have tornadoes up there! She must have been terrified. There was no place to hide from the hurricane. We don’t have storm cellars in Houston. We had a central bathroom, I suppose we could have clung to the toilet but there were three of us and a tiny baby.
The next day when the storm had passed, we exited the house and it was sunny again. While the grown-ups saw to picking up the pieces (my grandparents home was knocked off its foundation) we went back to our games.
The weather in Houston is interesting. Never boring. Perhaps we should mirror the British and begin with weather conversation as a general rule. After all, who wants to be boring?
I was challenged to share what it was in my early life that made the hours fly by and shaped what my future passion would be.
This is my offering:
I was seven years old when my father built the tree-house. It was more of an eight-foot square platform held up by two Chinese Tallow trees. Chinese Tallow trees do not live long. Their branches bend and twist rather than break when they are young trees. The older ones are brittle to a fault.
Originally imported to Texas as an experiment to see if the tallow could be extracted and help the candle industry, the tallow trees were a failure. The electric light bulb gained popularity over candles, and the tallow in those Tallow trees was impossible to extract commercially. The tallow project was abandoned but the trees multiplied and spread. Now the trees are so prolific in the wild that native trees struggle to prosper. Despite gorgeous fall foliage, the Chinese Tallow is considered a pest tree.
My first remembrance of a wasp encounter happened in that tree-house, or, I should say, under it. The main entrance and exit was by way of a ladder that went straight up from the ground and through a square hole cut in the bottom. There was a board door that could be dropped over the hole to protect from invading pirates, gorillas, or just brothers in general. Sometimes brother Jon would beat me to it and lock me out. The only other way to enter was to climb through the trees and scramble over the “side” to the platform.
Wasps are quiet at their nest. They set sentries as lookouts who will warn the hive of danger. They are the first line of defense. They have levels of “buzz”. The louder the buzz, the more danger you are in of getting stung. I learned this because when I grabbed the branch next to the hive to haul myself over the side of the tree-house, the wasps exploded with buzz and began stinging me. I slip-fell out of the tree losing most of the wasps that were after me on the way down. I don’t even think that the stings registered until later because of the rush of adrenalin from the fall.
Thus I learned to watch out for wasps in trees.
Years of days went by – or perhaps it was days of years, who knows how childhood passes – Jon and I wore that tree-house to splinters. That palace in the trees kept all our secrets and stories.
Perhaps we loved the tree-house life for its order, because our home life was not so orderly, or because there, we could escape whatever plans were laid for us by parents who thought we needed plans.
I will tell you this, even when Jon was allowed friends in a neighborhood full to brimming with boys, I was never lonely. I found my friends in books. I took books up in the tree-house. Every day after school, I took a book into the tree-house and spent hours up in the air, reading.
Nancy Drew cleverly unmasked the bad guy in my tree-house. Mowgli learned the language of the snake tribe in my tree-house. A tiny naked baby (Tarzan) was discovered in a tree-house by none other than GORILLAS! The scent of cinnamon and curry wafted all the way from India (Kim), I visited China in the 1600’s (The Black Rose), I heard horses stampeding across the vast prairies (Fury, The Black Stallion), and came face to face with a murderous black mamba snake (Bring ’em Back Alive) in my tree-house.
I relished the danger and intrigue inside my books, but … but I could not escape my chores. I had to descend to ground level to eat, you see. There was a pull, like a great suctioning from that “inside” world of whatever I was reading, to enter the shrill world of the now. To this day when I read a good book I feel that pull of good story. Don’t you?
All those years of reading in trees taught me about story. Despite my “labels” as day-dreamer in school or scatter-brained at home, this head-in-the-clouds-girl spent many much-too-short hours in the trees learning the pattern of good story. As a result, I’m an author.
Now I can share good stories with you, my gentle reader.
Today I went on a search for a programmable crock pot. I have several slow-cooker recipe books. What I wanted to find was a crock pot that I could load with oatmeal the night before and “program” for a hot breakfast.
Really, he could care less about Crock-pots.
I’ve seen a lot of different “programmable” crock-pot/slow-cookers”. They have the word “programmable” on the box. These range in price between $175.00(Ninja) to $39.00(CrockPot). So, armed with my Kohl’s gift certificate I set out at about 10 AM this morning.
Houston’s weather is a weird thing to factor into any planning in January. Some days it might be 40 degrees, other days it might be 75 degrees (and people will still light a fire in the fireplace for the ambiance). Yesterday it was 18 degrees and today it was about 50 degrees with light rain. The weather is like a roller coaster here. You only have to board the ride to get by.
So I wrapped up in a jacket and went to Kohl’s. I exited the Beechnut ramp and turned into the Meyerland shopping center. Wasn’t that where Kohl’s was? I circled, and circled, past the Target, past the Palais Royale, past the Cafe Express. No Kohl’s. I was about to message my daughter to see if she could tell me where it was and remembered Kohl’s was one exit up. So I rode the feeder to the appropriate turn-off and went in. After searching the store, the item I had seen last year was no longer offered. Instead they had no programmable slow-cookers under $60 (CrockPot and Hamilton Beach and Ninja).
I spent my $25 gift certificate on two blue rugs.
I went back to the Meyerland Shopping Center and parked at the Target. Dashing through the rain I made it in. And…they had the perfect programmable Crock Pot for $49, which is a very nice price. I levered the big box into the cart and checked out. The check-out price was $60.
Nope, that’s not what the ticket on the shelf said.
I pushed my basket of crock pot back to the aisle and engaged a busy-looking clerk to help me identify the problem. She said that while the crock pot above the aforementioned sales price was the one I bought, the one below it on the shelf was the actual item for sale. Okay. I took both items to the customer service desk and asked for an exchange. They gladly exchanged the item and gave me the money back with no problem.
I went to the grocery store and bought the items I was cooking for supper in the new slow-cooker. I went home and unpacked the new slow-cooker. I began reading the directions. The box said “programmable” but the inside directions said, there were three preset temperature settings only – Low, Medium, and High.
I repacked the thing with all the weird packing bits that fit together like a puzzle and require genius level reasoning to reassemble. I went to all this trouble for a “programmable” slow-cooker, so Mama don’t settle for no pre-sets YO!
Besides, it was only 3 PM and so I still had time for a slow-cooked meal. Tonight’s meal was to be comfort food. Okay, something hot will do.
Besides, I have an excellent book on tape in my car that explains all this running around Houston looking for a crock pot business. Peter Straub, Lost Girl, Lost Boy…scary good book.
Went back to a Target closer to home and explained that I had just bought this slow cooker at another Target thinking it was programmable because it said it was programmable. They gave me my money back. I thought, well, I might as well look here. Different Targets stock different things. So I went looking and sure enough I found a slow cooker. A Crock Pot brand 6 Quart, that said “programmable” on the box. I looked it over. It looked good. I bought it. It was $39.00. I saved $10 or $20 over the last few choices I had picked.
I took it home, unpacked it and set it up.
It was exactly like the last one, without the “warm food temp” gage on the dial, which I suppose is what cost the $10 extra.
I guess “Programmable” means I can turn it to one of the three “preset” settings of “Low, Medium, or High” and then when that setting is completed, it automatically switches to “Warm”.
Comforting to know that with all that trouble taken I ended up with the same type of Crock Pot that I had back in the 80’s. It cooked well enough back then, so I will settle down and do with it what I will. I figure if I want oatmeal in the morning I’ll have to set it at a low temp for eight hours (who sleeps longer than that?) and that should be that, or, dare-I-say-it, I’ll be forced to cook my oatmeal the old-fashioned way
Tonight’s Chicken Marsala came out excellent. Hope your supper tonight was just as warm and lovely.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.
The time has come, the time is now… to announce the novel. TA DA!
I began this novel in 2004. Originally, the opening scenes included a fight between two men witnessed by a child and a mine collapse. These two events are not in the present novel. Sometimes an author must delete the best scenes in order for the story to move forward in a timely manner.
Don’t worry, the novel is full of things that will keep the reader turning pages.
The story is much like a Wizard of Oz story with a little boy as protagonist. He is sent on a quest (as Dorothy had to retrieve the witch’s broom), one that he does not want to go on. He does. All the plot elements are there. There are no flying monkeys. I don’t want you to be disappointed so there are giant insects. “For good or evil who is to say?”
Here is what the back cover says to explain in less than 200 words what the book is about:
West Virginia, 1895.
A deadly dry spell has left the earth parched and souls desperate. Crops are failing. Cities are starving. A missing newspaper man doesn’t account for much in times so terrible, except to the twelve-year-old son he left behind. When Elliot Sweeney discovers the search for his father has been called off, he boards a train alone to find him.
His quest leads Elliot into the depths of an abandoned mine, with a peculiar pocket watch, a blind burro, and a gutsy girl at his side. He discovers a world he never dreamed of, even in his worst nightmares, and lands smack in the middle of a war between two kingdoms. Monstrous insects, smiling villains, and dark riddles are everywhere. Deciding who to trust may prove to be his greatest challenge, while the fate of the world above hangs on Elliot’s choice.
Here is the link to Amazon where you can buy a book for yourself or a loved one for the New Year. May it be a happy one full of good reading!
An illustration by W. W. Denslow from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, also known as The Wizard of Oz, a 1900 children’s novel by L. Frank Baum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It isn’t easy to lose a parent. It isn’t easy to lose anyone. I lost my niece when she was 23. I was torn asunder. I can only imagine what her parents went through. What a horrible, horrible thing. I still break apart thinking of her. That’s why I dedicated the book, I was working on when she died, to her.
Today, I realized I am no longer a daughter. I am still a sister, a mother, a wife, but “daughter” was knocked off the list when my mother died last Sunday. I still find it hard to believe. Not because I thought she was invincible, but because every time she slipped into a more fragile state she would somehow spring back. In the back of my mind, I thought she would spring back this time, too. She didn’t.
She really is dead.
She had stopped eating a month ago. I tried to get her to eat. I poured soup into her mouth. It dribbled out. She gave me “the look” as if to say, “Are you nuts?”. The hospice nurse assured me this was the body’s way of shutting down. When mom stopped drinking I wanted to put an IV in her to hydrate her but the nurse said that if the body shuts down, the kidneys stop working. If the kidneys stop working, the water has no place to go, except the most delicate organs, i.e. the lungs. Then, the patient drowns. That is a horrible way to go. So, no IV.
There is nothing more difficult than watching your loved one fade away, while you are helpless to stop it, to make things better. In other parts of my life I’ve been able to control the outcome. No one can control the outcome of another life.
I wanted the nursing home to call me when she was getting near. We had spent some time with her that day and she was breathing heavily. I should have known. I. should. have. known. But I went out to eat with my husband and before the food arrived, the nursing home called to tell me she had died. There couldn’t be a harder thing to hear. I had wanted to BE there.
Listen. My mother didn’t care. If she were alive and we were discussing this she would tell me she would not have cared if I was sitting there when she passed away because she was happy to leave. She wanted to leave. She was looking forward to being with Jesus. And Dad.
You may think this is happy “platitude” time, but it isn’t. I was watching her on the monitor. She was virtually paralyzed from a stroke that week, but she moved and opened her eyes. She was looking at the ceiling and moving her lips. Her hand moved, reached out. I don’t know if she saw my father, or her parents, or Jesus, but whoever it was, it was a powerful enough vision to give her the strength to move immovable limbs.
You can rest assured in your hatred of all things Christian or “godly” but give me faith in Christ any day, my friend. There is nothing to lean on except Jesus when you get to the point where you are facing eternity and have time to think about it. My only concern for you is if you must face eternity with no time to decide what to do, as in the event of a car accident. I mean – Boom! Hello!
A wild idea came to me while we were in the long process of fixing the rot under the house, replacing vital parts, and painting. It began because none of us could decide on a favorite door color.
So why not paint all the doors a different color?
Why not?
First, I will treat you to the redoing of a 100 year-old door: First, strip the many, many layers of paint.
Next, figure out the color. In this case I took some flowers from the garden to Home Depot and color matched them.
Then, finding the outline of old hinges under the paint layers, I set out to duplicate the hinges with “play-doh”.
It wasn’t easy to find something that would withstand freezing and humid hot weather and still stick to the door. I was able to use this and then paint it with weather-proof paint and glue it with weather-proof glue. I think it was successful.
You can almost see the “hinges” on the left edge of the door.
The inside back door is white.Upstairs front balcony door a dusty blue.The front door is pale green.The door to the garage apartment is yellow.The back upstairs balcony door is Cayenne.One of the back doors is blue-green. This is actually my favorite color. It is also the only door that can not be seen from the street.
This is a “thought bubble”. It is an illustration depicting thought. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’ve been at home all day. I’m not proud of this. It is Sunday. I like to go to church on Sunday. I woke up with a sore throat and a cough. The grandgirl has a serious cold and I kept her on Thursday night and Friday night to give her mom a break. So I have a cold, too.
I also have a deadline. I have been working at getting my manuscripts out to publishers and agents for some time. I was at a SCBWI conference (It means, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and won a silent auction. The item was a gift certificate to have a professional company format my manuscript for self-publishing. The deadline is December 31 of this year. So I thought – why not?
I hired an editor and a book cover designer and there the story does not end. I have had to make a lot decisions about the design of the cover. I am still working on the back cover copy, and I haven’t finished the edits. So today I thought would be a perfect day to work on edits – I have about 100 pages left to go over – but such was not to be today anyway. I have done everything but what I intended to do. I’ve answered emails, read other people’s Facebook pages, watched what other people have recommended on u-tube. As if spending hours on Facebook wasn’t enough, I organized all my drawers in the kitchen. I have two drawers that contain stuff from my house renovations projects. That means tape, stickers, paint swatches, pliers, and half a ton of screws and nails. So I thought I would organize every single item into its own little compartment. The project took at least two hours. It’s done. I have the most organized drawers in the universe.
So I’m upstairs thinking that I’ll spend a few minutes on Facebook. Ha. An hour later I’m into getting new friends on my author page, which is rebeccanolen author (Facebook) just in case you want to friend me. It’s a public page. A public page means that anyone can get on there. It’s a little scary.
Meanwhile, every time I feel a need to stretch my legs I get up and go downstairs. The TV is on so I turn it off. I can not tell you how many times I have been downstairs and found the TV blaring and no one is watching it. I have turned it off at least four times. No, it isn’t the house ghost. It is my husband. He is working in the yard, but … he is also watching TV.
Is it just me or is this what a lot of folks deal with? I don’t know. It isn’t as if I can hear the TV from upstairs. One of the benefits of having a hundred year old house is that the walls are too thick for noise to penetrate from room to room, something that those in newer establishments can hardly comprehend, having lived in new homes before.
I find it hilarious that the TV is left on no matter what. It isn’t just today. The TV is on all the time. I’ve been married 30 years. That’s a lot of electrical usage. I turn the TV off a lot.
Today I pressed a button that will change my world.
We all press buttons daily. The microwave has buttons, the computer has buttons, the cellphone has buttons, the TV remote has buttons, the newer car locks have buttons and the older ones have remotes with buttons. Some things we have all learned? The red button is to be avoided until there is an emergency. Don’t lose the button thingey because it’s a pain to replace.
We’ve been surrounded by buttons for centuries, but only in this past century do the buttons actually do something. So what does my latest button push have to do with anything?
The button I pushed this morning uploaded my manuscript to Create Space.
I’ve been working on this story for probably ten years. (If you’ve been keeping up with my blog you know I’ve been rather busy the last three years and so haven’t had much time to spawn new books. I haven’t stopped editing what I have.) I’ve grown tired of the roulette/lotto game of traditional publishing. I hired a professional editor and a professional book cover designer.
After I get Advanced Readers Copies proofed, then the book will be available to YOU!
Here is what THE DRY is about:
West Virginia, 1895.
A deadly dry spell has left the earth parched and souls desperate. Crops are failing. Cities are starving. A missing newspaper man doesn’t account for much in times so terrible, except to the twelve-year-old son he left behind. When Elliot Sweeney discovers the search for his father has been called off, he boards a train alone to find him.
His quest leads Elliot into the depths of an abandoned mine, with a peculiar pocket watch, a blind burro, and a gutsy girl at his side. He discovers a world he never dreamed of, even in his worst nightmares, and lands smack in the middle of a war between two kingdoms. Monstrous insects, smiling villains, and dark riddles are everywhere. Deciding who to trust may prove to be his greatest challenge, while the fate of the world above hangs on Elliot’s choice.
This is a story like Wizard of Oz only underground with a boy protagonist.
Rebecca Nolen 