Not this car. But I now own my Honda Odyssey! Woot! I made the last payment last week!

I’m a little giddy. The payment was an albatross for years. The fam needed something big enough to carry SEVEN people at the same time, thus the hugely expensive van.

I’ve only kept three vehicles over my lifetime past their payoff. The choices of whether to hold onto them were never mine. Either my ex or the situation required a change. So, I’ve only felt this relief and sense of accomplishment three times in my life—my Ford Pinto in 1982, my Toyota Scion in 2007, and now the Odyssey. Of course, I’ve owned a number of used cars over the years. My fave was a 12-year-old powder blue Mercedes, much like the one in this picture, that I bought during my second tour in Germany. I paid cash for it and drove the hell out of it. I hated having to sell it when I left. 🙁

So, how about you? Have you owned cars past their payoff? Have a fave car you’ve owned? Tell me about it!

Contests Still Open!

1. Scavenger Hunt (Contest) — This one ends tomorrow! Win a $10 Amazon gift card!
2. Open Contests, Real Life, and a Flashback Contest! (CONTESTS) — Win a free book! 2 Winners!
3. Dena Garson: Let’s Make Easy Christmas Ornaments! (Contest) — Win a pair of handmade earrings!

Update

This is a weird holiday season. Mom went into the hospital last Friday and is still there. Doctors have to perform a surgery, but they’ve been trying to get her heart to behave before they do, so here we are, crossing our fingers it will happen today.

In the meantime, company is beginning to roll in. One brother arrived today. He’s going to do most of the cooking, so he’s already pitching in grocery shopping, etc. Another brother comes in late tonight. A cousin tomorrow. We hope all goes well and mom will be home for Thanksgiving, but if not, we may be delivering her meal to the hospital (PG, everything go well).

As for me. I’m not a cook. I managed to cook a chicken in the crock pot to use in the dressing, but that’s as far as anyone trusts me to muddle in the kitchen. I’m still recovering from a nearly month-long illness, but at least I have my voice back. I am late on delivering edits to a client-friend, and feel awful about it, but it’s been insane around here. I’m doing what I can in short bouts to get through them.

And of course, there is no time for new words. sigh

All the kids are out of school, so they are constantly underfoot. Lots of noise. Not that that is a bad thing, mind you, but it does add to the surreal vibe of this week.

Anyway, here’s hoping your week is more joyous than mine, so far. Let me know if you’ve got holiday plans!

Psst! My apologies to Ane! I’m posting this a day late. My mother went into the hospital on Friday, so we’re a bit upside down at Devlin house! Enjoy the post!

*~*~*

I am fully aware The Holiday is not quite here, but this year will be the first time I’ve had the opportunity to cook Thanksgiving dinner for my family in about five years. When I retired, my husband and I opted to travel the country, living fulltime in our RV, clearing our bucket list and volunteering in State parks. That five-year trip was an exceptional adventure. Now, as I get ready to move back into a “Brick and Stick” house and wait for the delivery of my personal belongings from storage, I’m recalling the incredible number of disasters—both imagined and real that happened over the fifty odd years when I was in charge of the kitchen, menu, turkey, etc.

So, what I’d like to do is share a few ground rules guidelines that might help you get through the holiday with less stress and, hopefully, a little more peace on earth.

Again, and this bears repeating: What can go wrong usually will.

Typically, it takes about five days to thaw a 24 lb. turkey. I found out the hard way, that this feat can be accomplished in about two to three hours. It requires a large, clean cooler. Place the cooler in a bathtub. Fill it with lukewarm water, immerse the frozen turkey and spin until the water cools. Dump the cold water and begin the process again. Repeat until the turkey thaws.

You’re wondering how I know this. One year, when newly a nurse and far from my hometown, several of the single nurses decided to have a “friends” holiday. Since our employer provided each of us a turkey, as a group, we donated the excess birds to a local church for their holiday food drive. We also opted to split the Thanksgiving “on call” hours into eight-hour shifts. At eight AM on Thanksgiving Day, the nurse relieving me from call handed me a frozen turkey. That’s right. 24 lbs. to be cooked by 4 PM.

My friends and I survived with a few adjustments and had a terrific holiday. But I learned a few things that day which have served me well over the years. These are not really rules for holidays but think of them as guidelines. Please use what you can and ignore the rest.

When you have a galley kitchen in a tiny apartment, people don’t usually invade your space. Unless they really want to help you cook. Make a plan and stick to it. Check back with the people who agree to help with the cooking to make sure you stay on the same page.

This Frozen Turkey event exacerbated the control freak in me. I never approached a large gathering or a family holiday in the same frivolous way as I did on that single girlfriends Thanksgiving.

Rules Guidelines for Holiday Survival

1. Don’t panic.
2. Plan ahead.
3. Clean out the fridge before the big day. This will assure the storage containers are clean and available.
4. Make a list of things you can cook ahead that will not suffer in reheating. Desserts, rolls, snacks, are an excellent choice.
5. Assign side dishes, dessert, etc. to relatives who want to help. This only works with reliable people who will stick to your plan.
6. Remember your company will probably show up early, to assure them a good parking spot.
7. Be prepared for people who want to help in the kitchen on the day. Leave chores you can trust them with and set up for them. I usually set the table but don’t add napkins, silver, serving spoons to the table. I assemble these things on a tray. Assign the chore, relieve the stress on the kitchen and appreciate the help.
8. When you assign side dishes to relatives, be specific about what you can cook. You cannot cook your turkey when friends and relatives show up expecting you to manage the cooking or reheating for 120 side dishes at different temps while you are cooking turkey. Remember, 1 oven, 1 microwave, 1 toaster oven, is usually all that’s available. In a pinch, you can empty the dishwasher, turn on the drying cycle and load the reheated food into the top rack while you manage shifting other sides around for reheating. Rolls do okay but keep an eye out for food drying out. Short term use.
9. Make sure you have extra foil and plastic wrap on hand as well as containers you don’t need to have returned. I buy a pack of easily forgotten containers at the Dollar Store, along with a multipack of shower caps. The shower caps are great for covering pies, cookies, and individual plates. I think you get twenty for $1.
10. Remember, the oven is only so big. In an apartment you might not be able to fit a giant bird in there. Two birds are better than one. Double the dark meat. Two wishbones, need I say more? You can cook the smaller birds back to back. When you carve and serve the first, slip the other precooked turkey into the oven while your guests are enjoying the first bird.
11. If you’re also having a houseful of company, make sure you plan for a good breakfast. I usually do an egg, sausage, and bread casserole assembled the night before, cooked first thing in the morning and served with fruit, coffee, and sweet breads. This breakfast is hearty enough to keep the family satisfied till dinner is ready midafternoon. It holds up well for stragglers, too.

And I’m including a real southern recipe for Corn Pudding just in case you can’t take one more year of looking at the green bean casserole.

Corn Pudding Recipe

¼ cup of all-purpose flour
1 Tbs. sugar
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper
3 cups fresh or frozen corn, drained, and divided
3 large eggs
2 cups whole milk
¼ cup unsalted butter melted
1 ½ Tbs. scallions chopped, optional

Grease and flour an 8×8 baking dish or casserole dish of the same size. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Stir together flour, sugar, salt, and pepper, set aside. Pulse one cup of corn in a food processor until smooth. Set aside. Whisk eggs in a large bowl, then stir in flour and milk until combined. Whisk in melted butter and corn puree, add scallions and the rest of the corn. Stir to combine well. Transfer to the prepared baking dish and bake in preheated oven until puffed and lightly browned. Takes about 40 minutes. Sprinkle the top with chopped scallions if desired. Enjoy. FYI, this dish is delicious served hot or just warm.

Happy Thanksgiving!

About the Author

Ane Ryan Walker is an author and adventurer who believes in Angels, Demons, Witches and Magic. She recently settled in Alabama, after traveling the country with her husband and living fulltime in her RV. Ane is a member of Romance Writers of America©, Greater Houston RWA, and Women’s Fiction Chapter of RWA.

Born and raised in the great northeast, she writes a fictional series Survivors of Salem, about the witches who survived the Salem Witch Trials. She is also currently working on books about fulltime RVing.

In addition to Return to Angels Cove, look for the second book in the Survivors of Salem, The Covenant.

UPDATE: The winner is…Debra Shutters!
*~*~*

Here I am on a Saturday, and it’s crunch time. I have a story to finish in less than a week and two books to edit for another author—also by the end of next week. I feel like a weight is pressing on my shoulders, and my head’s feeling muzzy today, so I’m wondering if I’m about to come down with whatever bug my dd’s family has been fighting. Not good feelings. But I have to push forward. I have DEADLINES!

I also feel the pressure for the upcoming holidays. I have lots planned to do for people, and I’m only getting started. I want to make a ton of things, and you should see the big yarn and cotton loops stash I’ve accumulated, as well as the pile of beads and pretty string sitting on my craft table.

I’m taking a deep breath. One day at a time. One project at a time. Or incremental steps in each, every day from here on out.

So, that’s what I’m facing. For a chance to win a book of your choice from my backlist, tell me what’s weighing you down and giving you stress!

Cute pic, right? The Devlin house has been beleaguered with health issues for a while. First, my mom had issues (falls, lucidity issues, etc.), but she’s on the mend. She had sooooo many appointments and hospital visits, we were growing worried. Now, it’s my dd’s house. My dd and two of her daughters have had problems with croupy, lingering coughs. Today, my daughter is so sore from coughing, I’m helping her at her house.

It’s a good thing I’m generally as healthy as a horse. But my productivity over the past month has taken quite a hit. I’m trying to get back on track. I have a novella I HAVE to finish by the end of the month. Guess how many pages I have written? ZERO. I’ll try to change that today. I also have edits to do for a client/author. So, my dance card is full.

Not a fun post today, but I wanted to share, because y’all think romance authors laze around, being fed bonbons all day, right? LOL. Well, I’m sure you don’t think that, but I do like you knowing we’re just like everyone else. 🙂

~Delilah

Before I started writing, many years ago, I didn’t consider myself a particularly crafty or artistic person. I crocheted a little, never deviating from a pattern. I did some needlepoint and embroidery—again, always following the instructions to a T.

Then I started writing, and all my hobbies fell away. I was a writer. I was creative. The more I wrote, I swear, the more my left brain talents began to atrophy. Math? I was a straight-mathlete throughout college, and now? Dear Jesus, don’t show me a tenth-grader’s homework. Can’t help there.

Still, I thought writing was my ONLY talent. Until, I accompanied my mom to her art group meetings, and decided I’d try something crafty. Suddenly, I’m painting (not well, but not putridly either); I’m making jewelry; I’m collaging, doodling… If it involves color, I’m there.

Now that writing is work (hey, it’s what pays the bills, so yes, it’s work), I have to do something else to wind down. Sometimes, art and jewelrymaking takes too much brainpower, so I needed another hobby. An outlet that didn’t require me to prep a thing, didn’t require me to count stitches. I found POTHOLDERS.

I know, it’s damn weird. But finishing up one of these suckers while I watch some mindless boob tube show to let my brain relax is sooooo soothing. And I found it by accident. I bought a grab bag of arts and crafts supplies at the local thrift shop, and inside the bag was a small plastic kid’s loom. I remembered having one when I was little, and feeling nostalgic, I went online, found some nice cotton loops, and made my first potholder. Then I discovered they have metal, “grownup” potholder looms that are twice as large, and I had to have one. See the potholder below? It’s the second I’ve made on the new loom. Pretty isn’t it? For this one, I didn’t follow a pattern. I just put colors next to each other that I liked and repeated the pattern once I got to the middle. That’s all the thinking it took.

So, tomorrow AM, I’ll be back at it hard, editing for a friend. I hope to wrap her story up tomorrow, because I have another last minute edit job arriving. I’m hoping that, by Tuesday, I’ll be writing my own dang pages, but in the evenings when I’m ready to let my mind rest, I’ll be sorting through my stash of cotton loops, making myself happy with color combinations that please my loopy brain.

So, I shared my weird hobby. Do you have something you love to do that fills that “resting brain” prescription?

On 9/11, I worked in a large insurance company in San Antonio, Texas. I passed by a break room and saw a large group of people standing beneath the televisions mounted on the wall, watching coverage of some disaster in New York. I was on my way to a meeting, but I paused. Everyone was quiet, whispering. I heard someone say, “I think a small plane crashed into one of the trade center buildings.” As I stood there realizing a tall skyscraper was on fire, another plane entered our view, and we all watched horrified as it crashed into the second tower.

Meeting forgotten, I stood, listening as news people tried to make sense of what we’d all witnessed. When the towers leaned and began to tumble down, I knew what had happened was intentional. That something profoundly ugly and cruel had just occurred.

Over the following days, like so many others, I couldn’t look away from the coverage—the people running away, gray and covered in dust, of people leaping from windows, of the stories of the first responders who’d been inside those buildings, trying to move people to safety, of the person who’d stayed with a wheelchair-bound friend in a stairwell… So many horrible/wonderful stories.

At the time, I was still in the National Guard. During my unit’s first weekend together after the attack, we reviewed what it meant. What we had to prepare for. Another war was coming.

Today, eighteen years later, I remember all of that like it was yesterday. It’s one of those days that remains forever emblazoned on my mind—like the days JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, and John Lennon were assassinated—like the day I watched the moon landing, although my feelings while watching that miracle of technology and perseverance left me feeling light and hopeful for the future rather than somber and angry. They are all seminal moments, ones you remember what you were doing, and who you were with when you first heard…

I think of the first responders who arrived to search for survivors. Of the dogs with their booties, who suffered from finding so much death that men lay down in the rubble to give those dogs a joyful “win”. So many heroes who suffer to this day.

I remember. Do you want to share your memories?