Back home and baking--Kandy Shepherd

Jet lag has struck. It’s five in the morning and I’m wide, wide, awake while the rest of the household slumbers. I can’t even convince a cat to keep me company.

So what am I doing? I’m baking.

After two exciting weeks away with writing friends visiting New York City for the Romance Writers of America convention and then up to Boston for Independence Day, my head is buzzing with plot points for new novels; with characters jostling for their chance to be born as people on paper. But I’m baking. I’ve relished the chance to eat out for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. Matzo ball soup and cheesecake in New York. Clam chowder and lobster in Boston. Steak in Dallas, Texas, on an unscheduled stop-over. Room service burgers with sweet potato fries. Ah, the delight of no food to prepare, no dishes to wash.

So here I am in the kitchen making three types of muffins. Black & White Choc Chip. Peach and Walnut. Rhubarb Crumble. (See above for the rhubarb ones.) My teenage daughter and her friends are asleep upstairs, and I’m anticipating their delight when they follow their noses downstairs to the kitchen. Because toward the end of the trip my thoughts kept turning to my family, my animals, my garden—and the pleasure I get from cooking. I missed it. Okay, talk to me again in a few weeks when I’m back in the daily grind of meals-on-the-table and you might hear a different stress-screamed story. But right now I’m happy with that apron tied around my waist, using a recipe from my head and a wooden spoon to stir my gladness at being home into the muffin mix. And thinking about my characters who cook.

PS. Why did I bother with putting fruit in the muffins? The rhubarb I picked from the garden (pic above) and stewed with vanilla bean and cinnamon quill? Of course the kids only wanted the chocolate ones! When will I learn? But yes, my daughter was pleased to wake, smell something wonderful wafting upstairs from the kitchen and be glad her mother was home. (And my husband

was only too happy to polish off the peach and the rhubarb muffins.)

Is there something or someone you’re glad to get back to when your vacation is over? Please leave a comment for a chance to win a signed trade paperback copy of either of my novels HOME IS WHERE THE BARK IS or LOVE IS A FOUR-LEGGED WORD (there’s lots of muffin baking going on in that book!) and include your email address and which book you would prefer if you want to be in the draw.

http://www.kandyshepherd.com

Never to forget-Kandy Shepherd

“What did we forget this time?” my husband asked me once we were on the road and too late to turn back home. Last weekend, we headed down the coast for a “mini break” to catch up with some old friends. For more than 13 years we’d spent a week of summer vacation with this couple and their daughter. Both girls are the same age, both only children so it was ideal.

Year after year we met up, hiring a holiday house as close to the beach as possible. We would often speculate on how long it would last before the teenagers would think the beach house break was way too uncool. But it was my friend’s battle with two types of cancer that halted our trips away. Now, after a break of three years, we were meeting once more for a long weekend at the beach (it’s early autumn Down Under). Just the adults this time, with one daughter overseas on a gap year and the other immersed in study.

But what did I forget to pack? The houses we stay at require you to bring bed linen, towels and essentials to augment kitchens stocked with just the essentials. It seemed that for each of those 13 years, I had forgotten something important. One year the towels. Another my underwear (yes, not one pair!) One summer I brought jeans and shorts but not a single T-shirt. Sunglasses. Swimsuit. Sunhat. All things I had to hastily purchase from supermarkets or souvenir stores using hard-saved vacation dollars I would rather have spent on something else.

My most memorable omission was shoes for my then three-year-old daughter. To avoid the traffic we left home at dawn, tucking a drowsy little girl still in her pajamas into her car seat. Her pajamas and no shoes. How could I have been so dumb? The only tiny sized shoes available where we were staying that she would consider wearing was a pair of fussy, patent leather mary-janes. They looked ludicrous with beach clothes and blistered her feet but that was it for a week. Thank heaven bare feet were fine on the sand.

So what did I forget last weekend? Toothpaste, yes, but our friends were happy to share their tube. Not so comfortable was the single fitted sheet I brought for a queen-sized bed.

But the weather was perfect, the surf superb, and everything I loved about the place still wonderfully the same; the memories of our daughters growing up so vivid. Most joyous of all was the chance to share the company of a dear friend when we had all feared that might never happen again. (The pictures above are of the view from the vacation house we rented at beautiful Bawley Point, New South Wales, Australia and of some lorrikeet visitors.)

One thing I share with my friend is a love of reading—and one of the things we talked about was the books we have read recently. What I did not forget to pack was a selection of good books!

Have you ever forgotten to pack something important for a trip away? Please leave a comment for a chance to win a signed copy of my contemporary romanceHOME IS WHERE THE BARK IS and include your email address if you want to be in the draw.

Lazy January - Annie West

I love January. I always have. Here in Australia it's summer holiday time. Children are out of school for a couple of months, Christmas is over and, if you're lucky you'll have a little time away from work to recuperate or take a seaside holiday with the family.

Most Januarys I'm busy, since writing doesn't stop just because everyone else is on summer vacation. However, it FEELS different. It feels like holiday time.

A sleep in is understandable in summer, even if most of the time you don't get a chance. It's hot, which means you need to conserve energy by sitting, or even better, lying in the cool shade and reading or getting beaten at a board game by the family. Any outside work is done early in the morning or after the sun goes down (evenings are terrific) and long cool drinks with lots of ice are the order of the day.

The fridge is still full of leftovers, there are mountains of summer fruit to be eaten, like cherries, raspberries and mangos. BBQs and salads are fine for dinner, as are leftovers, which means much less hassle wondering what to cook for everyone. We always seem to manage a picnic in there somewhere. Eating outdoors, preferably with a feast of lovely fresh food and treats left over from the Christmas/New Year round of celebrations is one of my favourite treats.

Of course, while we're lounging, others are busy. In Australia it's tennis season, which means multiple tournaments on tv where you can watch the world's best in top form. If you've got the energy you can go to some of the matches. I'm thinking of Sydney this year for a day watching others swelter and stun me with their talent. Maybe next year I'll make it to Melbourne for the Australian Open (a real treat). There's cricket too. Even if I'm not watching it, I love the sound of it in the background, whether you're outdoors or working at home while others watch it on TV in another room. The gentle pock of the ball, the roar of the crowd and the relaxed pace epitomise summer. What is it about knowing others are working hard in the heat when you're cool and relaxed, that makes you feel good?

Despite my focus on the joys of relaxing in summer (especially with a book, a cool glass and preferably lots of water to loll in) January is the month I feel energised to get things done. Sort out the photos I've been putting off for ages. Find out just what is in the bottom of the cupboard in the spare room. You know, the jobs you never quite find time for in the general day to day rush? It's also the time I like (if I can) to treat myself to spreading a massive jigsaw across the dining room table in the hope others will help me with the hard bits. I love the sloth of summer but I want to achieve something too.

How about you, how do you like to spend your January? Are you caught up in the New Year sales? Following New Year's resolutions? Lying low after a big celebration or diving back into life as normal?

This month Annie's looking forward to the release of her Harlequin Presents Extra: PROTECTED BY THE PRINCE in early February. It's a sexy Cinderella story. A recent Romantic Times review said 'this modern-day fairy tale delights from start to finish'.
You can read an excerpt and behind the scenes information about writing it, or enter a contest to win a signed copy on her website. You can order a copy from Amazon or The Book Depository (free postage anywhere in the world).

Welcome to Cape Fear...

Ahh, summer weekends: those bastions of escapism we all so crave. And all too often live to regret…

The idea was a peaceful weekend at a relative's lake house. We brought a friend and her kids along who needed to get away and chill even more than we did. But with the holiday weekend now past, I desperately need to recover from my non-restful getaway.

In the interest of disclosure, I should admit that I'm not a lake person. The idea of stagnant water teeming with things like poisonous snakes and trash and the fuel discards from tens of thousands of boats and jet skis (oh, and an entire valley of rotten trees and lord knows what else that might lurk beneath one's floating body, as this is a lake created from flooding a large tract of land) doesn't make me too thrilled. The mushy gushy unidentified bottom, the clay-rusted water that stains your swimsuit, the decomposing leaves on the top, and other stench and detritus along the lake's shorelines just do not appeal to me. Give me the wash of crystal blue ocean waves, the soothing sound of seagulls, the brilliant twinkle of sun reflecting off sugared sand beaches any day.


My sister-in-law used to refer to the lake house as Cape Fear. As in, "Oh, no! You're going to Cape Fear again?" She knew how not-keen I was for the aforementioned reasons. Throw in my small children who needed to be watched like hawks in order to avoid drowning, being flung from a pounding motor boat, poisonous snakes and spiders, ground wasps, ticks, sunburn, and about a hundred other safety hazards, and being lake-bound meant being stress-bound for me. The absence of air conditioning in sweltering heat along with other missing accoutrements of modernity like a dishwasher didn't add much to the charm. To top it off, the nearest town—a limited escape hatch--is a bit, well, cheesy. The kind of place where they have a "Junque Shoppe" and another that sells "Biskits." As the fourth grade spelling bee champ, I am rarely amused by deliberately freakish misspellings of common words, even if to be cutesy.

But as my brood has gotten older, the trip has become a bit easier. Enough so that while I still contend it's pretty much camping with a roof (and I do loathe camping)--what with the massive amounts of foodstuffs, linens and other items you have to lug along for even a few days--it's not quite as hazard-filled. And since I've not been away anywhere just to relax in easily a year, our getaway sounded almost fun. Almost.

We arrived later than planned after a harried Saturday morning of packing, topped off with last-minute inclusion of every blanket and spare pillow we owned (which I would have to wash upon our return). My bug-averse daughter discovered the room in which she'd be sleeping was infested with hundreds of jumbo ants, whose eradication took top priority.

Meanwhile, I'd unleashed the dogs to run free, to hear only moments later the piercing yelps of pain from our Labrador echo hauntingly across the water: a neighbor's dog had raced onto the property and promptly latched onto her hind quarter with a very powerful and unrelenting jaw, leaving her bleeding and endangering my daughter who tried to break up the melee. Bizarrely, the owner of the dog (which had a rap sheet of previous bites) chose to scream at us rather than apologize profusely, as protocol would dictate.

After spending the first hour trying to track down a veterinarian that actually worked on a holiday weekend (with limited cell phone service, natch), I then had to divert to the lovely vet's to have our dog treated.

Meanwhile, a neighbor across the cove had decided to destroy the serenity with a gas-powered leaf blower, then to set fire to five towering mounds of wet leaves and branches that smoldered for several hours, filling the cove with blinding smoke and leaving everyone choking in its wake. This despite my husband's entreaties to cease the burning, what with all of the fumes wafting our direction.

The lake was overrun with other fun-seekers, churning up the normally calm waters to hurricane proportions. Not one inclined toward seasickness, I felt green in the gills as the boat towed our tubing kids in treacherous currents. Sure I could've stayed on shore, but felt the need to actually witness what I figured were the inevitable tubing-related head injuries that would result from the foray into fierce waters. Call me crazy, but I hate the idea of naively waiting back at the house, only to have someone come racing in to tell me we need to find emergency medical help.

By days end an aged and rotting chair in which I was lounging collapsed, and I sweated to near-fainting proportions while cooking dinner for 13 in the stifling air of the a/c-free kitchen, my R&R a mere specter of its former potential. Oh, and my father-in-law put a dent in my car.

Back home now, I'm tackling the nearly twenty loads of lake-related laundry, remnants of my relaxing escape from life's drudgeries. I might be done washing by my next vacation. That would be the one sailing in the Keys, right where several million gallons of oil and toxic solvents are wending their way. So much for that relaxing vaca, eh?

Summer Plans - Donna Alward

The end of June marks two events.  One, my current book will be off my desk and on my editor's (and yes, it will, even if it kills me), and two, the kids will be out for summer holidays.

I'm looking forward to this summer.  I'll still be working, but I'm planning on doing some major relaxation.  I love day trips.  It's vacation without the long travel time or living out of a suitcase.  :-)  So this year I have a "wish list" of things I would like to do before September and school and new deadlines arrive again.

First of all - camping.  We moved here 2 years ago and haven't camped since.  Year one we had just moved in and we'd spent a week driving across the country and three more weeks sleeping in our trailer while we waited for furniture.  Camping wasn't high on the list of priorities.  Then last summer we had company for a few weeks and then more again for nearly a month in the fall, so we didn't make it out then either.  But this summer I'm determined, and the first place on my list is Cape Breton Island.  I haven't been around the Cabot Trail since I was 14, so I'm really excited to do it again and take the kids.

Prescott House.  We ran out of time last year when we were in the Annapolis Valley.  The girls and I love visiting historic houses/museums, but it's not my husband's cup of tea so this is one of those trips we'll probably do when he's elsewhere. Maybe on the way back we'll stop at Fort Edward - another spot we missed last year when we were in Windsor visiting Haliburton House.  When we take these trips we generally pack a picnic too.  Picnics and museums...a perfect way to spend the day.

Pier 21.  I have yet to visit Pier 21 here at the harbour.  I've done the Harbour Hopper tour and gone to the Museum of the Atlantic and the Citadel, but not Pier 21.  There's a lot of history here - this was the point of entry for immigrants between 1928 and 1971.  With the exception of two small groups, all 494,874 Europe-bound service personnel embarked from Pier 21 during the Second World War.

Hopewell Rocks - these formations are on the New Brunswick side of the Bay of Fundy.  We might be able to sneak in a trip while visiting the inlaws during the summer.  It's a bit of a drive but very worth it.  I made this trip when I was 18 with my mom - when we took a "day trip" and ended up spending three days away on a whim.

And one other place I'd like to go but that might require a camping trip is the Parrsboro area and the Fundy Geological Museum.  I haven't been to Parrsboro since I was...maybe 14?  The kids love that sort of thing and it's sufficiently scientific for the husband.  Plus there are blueberries.  Lots and lots of blueberries.  And gorgeous views.

I probably won't be able to fit in all those places, but I know we'll get to at least some.  What are your plans for the summer?

ALL WASHED UP

Wet towels have become the bane of my existence. I’m practically drowning in wet towels. I find them everywhere. Damp towels on the bathroom floor, saturated swimming pool towels on the hardwood floors. Dripping hair towels soaking into the carpets.

With my three kids home all summer, the soggy towel factor has increased exponentially. It’s almost out of control. By my calculations I am faced with at the very least nine wet towels a day, and that’s if the kids only go to the pool once. If they go to swim team practice in the morning, that’s three more soaking wet towels. Don’t even get me started on swim meet days: two to three more sodden towels per kid (that is if they don’t lose them at the meet), bringing me to a grand total of six thousand four hundred and twenty four soggy towels per week, give or take a few.

I try to encourage the kids to hang up the towels, give them a chance to air dry. But they’re just so darned wet. The towels, not the kids. So even assuming the kids did hang their towels regularly, which they’re not, the damp towel dilemma has taken over my life.

I’m washing, and drying, drying and washing. But I don’t seem to make any headway.

And supposing I do get all my wet towels washed, there’s the other problem of the towels in the closet. Every day, I wash those towels. Fold them neatly. Place them in an orderly manner on the shelves of the linen closet. And every day I find the clean towel pile overturned. In an effort to get to their favorite towels, the kids pull from the bottom of the pile, allowing the stack to tumble. Dead soldier towels, strewn about the floor. At least they’re not wet.

My husband came up with a solution to our towel problem. Unfortunately he announced it at 11 o’clock at night to an audience of overly tired kids.

The idea was this: pit each kid against the other. Whoever finds a wet towel on the floor can confront the towel offender, and force a payment of 25 cents. My teen-aged son, who never met a get-rich-quick scheme he didn’t like, started to gleefully calculate how much money he could make annually off of his sisters by merely busting them violating the towel rule.

My older daughter, our number one towel offender--but aside from that all-around wonderful helper--burst into tears, feeling persecuted. We couldn’t calm her down for thirty minutes.

My other daughter, another towel violator, stomped off to her room, slamming the door shut.

Today, my son, the mercenary, happened into his sister’s room in search of our kitten, when what did he come upon, but a wet towel. Now mind you, at least it wasn’t heaped on the carpet. It was draped across a chair. But nevertheless, it was not in its designated spot on the towel rack. Excitedly he thrust the towel in his sister’s face. She shrieked at him, accusing him of sneaking into her room, her private space. He leered at her, that ire-inducing smirk that every brother in the world knows will elicit hatred, venom, retribution from a sister. Usually in the form of a slap, smack, pinch, punch or kick.

There’s a lot more noise in my house today. Whereas yesterday, I spent the day in relative peace, stooping to pick up the myriad of wet towels laying about, today, I had to don my striped shirt, secure my whistle over my neck, and adopt the role of referee. It hasn’t allowed me much time for washing towels.

I think my life was easier when all I had to worry about was picking up wet towels off of every horizontal surface in my house. Excuse me while I go run interference with my kids, I think it’s getting violent.

CALGON! TAKE ME AWAY (or May is a Four-Letter Word) by Jenny Gardiner

Ah, the month of May…The flowers in bloom, the birds whistling a happy tune. Parents across America ready to throttle the next teacher, coach, or offspring activity-related person who dares to lump one more have-to in their lap.

The month of May…what my friend refers to as the Storm before the Calm. What I view as the annual rite of hazing inflicted upon every mom (and most dads, to a certain extent) every springtime as the school year draws to an imminent close.

The drill goes as follows: class play, class music program, soccer practice, soccer games, soccer try-outs, baseball, baseball and more baseball, lacrosse games, lacrosse playoffs, state cup championships, piano recitals, ballet recitals, field trips (why weren’t these scheduled for the dull month of January?!), pre-school graduation, kindergarten graduation, lower-school graduation, middle school graduation, college graduation, teacher appreciation luncheons, class parties. Class parties? I’m thinking class warfare at this point.

I get nightly calls: can you come in for the teacher appreciation luncheon? Can you drive for the field trip to Pakistan? Can you pledge your extra kidney to be auctioned off at the school fund drive?

Can you stop calling me before I have the national do-not-call list enforcer come after you for harassment?

Truthfully, I’m happy to be of help. To a certain extent. But when I start to wake in the middle of the night, fearful that I have sloughed off my duties to prepare Pad Thai for 300 for International Day, I get to worrying. And when I realize that I am clenching my teeth so hard that I think lockjaw has set in, I’m a little more concerned.

And when the call comes in for me to do just one more teeny little thing to help out so and so, and I—without thinking, without feeling, snap the first snarky come-back that pops into my head to the poor unsuspecting room-mother calling me in a desperate spot, I know two things. One, that it’s time for me to hang up my mommy cleats for a few hours and re-gain my grip on reality, and two, summer vacation must be just around the corner. At which time I might just be longing for the days when the kids were in school and the demands on a mother’s time were at their peak.

*a note from the author: I must tell you that Claire Doolittle, the lovable heroine in SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER, penned this piece. Jenny Gardiner had absolutely NOTHING to do with it. Jenny is, without question, perfectly contented to have a life that is out of control and she never loses her temper with room moms and she has in fact already donated a couple of organs to the spring fund drive. She has had no weeping fits, no stress-related breakdowns, and hasn't even noticed that it's Parental Hazing Month.