The Perfect Thanksgiving...In the Beginning!

Turkey, dressing, gravy, potatoes, everything for the meal was perfect! My son had gone to visit friends so it was just a girl's Thanksgiving affair--my mother, daughter, and me.

Weather can be fickle here, hot or cold, never know. But an ice storm is not the norm. So with the ice coming down in slanting sheets and a howling wind, we planned to settle in before a glowing fire and watch one of Jackie Chan's funny movies.

That's when the disaster began.

First, the fire was in order while my daughter started the movie. I lit a match and started one of those fire logs. Smoke trickled out of the chimney into the house and then groggy red wasps flew out of the chimney also. A few, more, and more. My daughter is terrified of them because she received over 20 stings from bees one time during a Girl Scout zoo trip, but even so, she was dancing around with a can of hornet spray ready for battle.

"No, just get the flyswatter and the

vacuum," I said, afraid the hornet spray droplets on the fire could cause an explosion or toxic fumes. Maybe not, but I didn't want to risk it.

So my mother is wacking at the hornets with the flyswatter, and I'm vacuuming the hornets up in midair, but the smoke is now pouring into the house. "Open the windows and the doors," I shouted to my daughter.

And without anything else I could do, I poured water on the fire. Had to, although I knew it would make more smoke, but it was already so thick we could barely breath.

We finally got rid of the rest of the hornets, the smoke from the fire was abating. And with all ceiling fans and a box fan going, the doors and windows open to the freezing sleet and wind, we snuggled on the couch all wrapped up in coats and blankets to watch Jackie Chan's movie.

All in Chinese.

I asked my daughter if she'd started the movie correctly.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

We laughed about the movie, and laughed about the sleet, the wind, the groggy hornets, and the disastrous fire.

At the end of the Chinese movie with subtitles, we watched some of his funny outtakes, all in English. I raised my brows at my daughter. She flipped through the movie choices and found she'd selected Chinese, not the English version. And we laughed some more.

Thanksgiving dinner was delicious, the evening's entertainment was just that! Total entertainment! My son wished he'd been with us as his was lots more boring. :)

The culprit for our smoky Thanksgiving? I'd had straight-line wind damage and had to replace the ridge on my roof, but the roofers didn't tell me I'd lost my chimney cap and that they'd placed tar paper over the opening. The heat had burned a hole in the tar paper which helped to let out a little of the smoke, but most of it stayed in the house with us.

I will say I've had only two really memorable Thanksgivings, and that one was one of them!!! Who wants boring, when you can have so much fun? When asked at work if we were having a fire for Thanksgiving this year? Uhm, no. :)

So, have you had any really memorable Thanksgivings? Good or bad?

Terry

"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."

www.terryspear.com

Jazz And Irma Cook Thanksgiving Dinner

"I have to do what?" A horrified Jazz stared at the pale-skinned turkey lying on the counter.
"You have to reach inside the cavity and take out the giblets." Irma peered over her shoulder sending a shock of cold through Jazz’s body.
When Jazz broke down and asked Irma to help her cook Thanksgiving dinner, she had no idea it would involve putting her hands inside a raw turkey and pull its guts out. Can you spell euww!
She settled for sticking her hands inside two plastic bags before sticking them inside the turkey's butt. She kept her eyes closed and mouth scrunched up as she scooped out the innards.
"This is disgusting!"
"Perhaps if you'd cooked more often and not been out there doing witchy things, you'd know what to do in cooking a proper meal."
"Spare me from self-righteous spirits," Jazz muttered, dumping the giblets and the neck in the sink. She quickly peeled off the bags and dropped them in the trash.
"And don't forget to wash your hands thoroughly since you just handled raw poultry."
Jazz paused in wiping her hands on her jeans and reached for the hand soap instead.
"How big is the turkey?" Irma asked, pursing her Tangeed lips. While she now wore clothing designed for this century instead of the last, she still enjoyed some of her 1950s make up.
Jazz stared at the pale bird. "Big."
Irma sighed. "No, how many pounds."
"I don't know. I didn't exactly put it on a scale!"
"Then look at the wrapper! You determine the time it takes to cook it according to the number of pounds. We always bought our turkeys at the Farris Turkey Ranch. Such beautiful birds too."
Jazz ignored Irma reminiscing about the good old days when she was still alive. "Yeah yeah. Okay, the bird is twenty-three pounds since Krebs wants lots of leftovers and Stasi and Blair are coming down for dinner."
"Are you stuffing it? If you are, it will take longer to cook."
"Stuffing it? I just took stuff out of it!" Witches normally didn't get headaches but Jazz was well on her way to a doozy.
"And you make up a nice stuffing to put into the turkey cavity. There's cornbread stuffing, oyster, herb. Take your choice."
"Then I choose Stove-Top which I can put in the microwave and it doesn't have to go anywhere near a turkey's nether regions."
"That's not stuffing! That's pieces of Lord knows what in a box!"
Jazz studied the red and yellow box. "The box stays stuffing, it's stuffing."
Under Irma's guidance Jazz had the turkey rubbed with butter and herbs, placed in a large electric roaster, and the timer set.
"Off the counter!" She ordered Fluff and Puff as the bunny slippers scampered up to investigate what was going on. She gave each them of a piece of licorice root for a treat and watched them retreat to a corner of the kitchen.
"Brown sugar, molasses is nice and miniature marshmallows for the top of the candied yams," Irma told her. "Are you making cranberry sauce?"
Jazz held up two cans. "Jellied and whole-berry."
"You modern girls rely too much on canned goods. I always bought my cranberries and made my own sauce with ginger and a hint of orange peel." Irma's face seemed to fill the entire screen. "Does that jar say gravy? You can make it from the drippings! You picked up butter and cream for the mashed potatoes, didn't you? And I mean real butter, not that oleo or what you call margarine now. We had to use oleo during the war and it had no taste. Also did you pick up the makings for the green bean casserole? That's a classic dish for Thanksgiving. The French-fried onion strings make it look so fancy. Please don't tell me that tube holds biscuits? I made my biscuits from scratch. Harold said they tasted light as a feather."
"Light as a feather biscuits sure didn't keep your husband in line, did it?" Jazz muttered.
"Maybe if you worried less about eliminating curses you'd have a man to cook for! Look at that! You're not even using real whipped cream for the pumpkin pie."
Jazz flicked her fingers at the screen and muted the audio. She smiled at the picture of Irma talking away. "Ah, silence."
All too soon, she realized she did need help. She flicked her fingers at the screen again.
"You are a very rude girl," Irma huffed. "You asked for my help and I was only too willing to give it, yet on a whim you shut me off. Perhaps I should return to my program. Rachael Ray is coming on soon. She knows how to cook a Thanksgiving dinner."
Jazz briefly considered zapping Irma back to the garate, but since she needed the spirit's help, she didn't dare. Irma was a ghost who could hold a grudge with the best of them and Jazz wasn't even halfway through preparing dinner. She looked at the cans, jars and bowls scattered across the counters. Nothing had ever looked so intimidating.
And all because she wanted to do something nice for Krebs this year and give him a family-type dinner.
"Fine, I'm sorry I muted you. I lost my mind." Which she had in planning this dinner.
"I forgive you." A lit cigarette appeared between Irma's white-gloved fingers. "Now, you need to melt some butter to use in basting the turkey."
Jazz's head spun with the rapid-fire instructions Irma shot at her. And every time she started a new task she was tempted to use her magick.
"No wonder Samantha Stevens kept breaking her word in not using her magick," she muttered, mentally envisioning the potato peeler under six feet of concrete.
By the time the timer for the turkey went off, Jazz was ready for a nap.
"Where's our feast?" Krebs asked, coming into the kitchen with Jazz's sister witches, Stasi and Blair on his heels. "Do you want me to carry the turkey into the dining room?"
She waved her hand at the roaster. "Knock yourself out."
Except as Krebs lifted the turkey out of the roaster it looked more pink than golden.
"What did you do to it?" Irma demanded from the TV screen.
Jazz was horrified. "I cooked it! 5 ½ hours at 225."
"You cook it at 325!" Irma shouted. "That bird is still raw."
With a flick of the wrist, Jazz shut off the TV, faced the turkey, saying "Forget the book. Forget the look. Damn turkey needs to be cooked, because I say so damn it!"
In the wink of an eye, the turkey turned a well-cooked golden brown. Just as fast the food disappeared from the kitchen, leaving it clean and neat and reappeared on the dining room table.
Jazz snatched up a dark green bottle and marched into the other room. "I'll bring the wine."
Hopefully your Thanksgiving will be filled with good food, good friends and family and maybe a glass or four of wine.

Happy Thanksgiving from Linda and Jazz

I Only Pretend to be a Princess; She was the Real Thing

I admit it. I'm a huge Diana, Princess of Wales fan. She was only 4 years older than me; I watched twelve hours of television the day she and Charles got married, getting up at 4 am and not moving off the sofa that July day in 1981, and I watched even more television the day she died in 1997.

So when I found out the Diana Exhibit was coming to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, you can bet it was on my To Do list.

They don't allow you to take pictures inside the exhibit, so all the ones here were purloined off the internet.

Interesting factoid that surprised - and angered - me. The Emmanuels, who made her dress, were paid only $1900 USD for not only her dress, but also the bridesmaids' dresses. Now, yes, I get that it's a big honor to be chosen to make the dress, but the fabric for that 25 foot train alone probably cost $1900. I dunno, with all those crown jewels, I think someone could have given the Emmanuels more than that. $19000 wouldn't have been out of line, not with what some people spend on wedding dresses these days. And, yes, I get that it was in 1981, but still. That wasn't a lot of money back then for that dress.

Anyhow, I really enjoyed the exhibit. My friends and I spent about an hour and a half inside. And, of course, there's the gift shop afterwards. Surprisingly, most of the items were about Althorp, the Spencer family home where she's buried, but I think they'd sell more if they had actual Diana items other than just the postcards with her picture on them. I bought myself (because I HAD to have something!) a pen with pink English roses on it. I'll use it at book signings when I sign my "fairy tales with a twist." I guess you could call her fairy tale that. Sadly, I wish it'd had a happier ending.

Here you go:

There comes a time.....

I'm at the INRWA retreat this weekend, so I'm posting this in advance just in case I can't get Internet there.

I'm in one of those limbo times again. Between books and between manuscripts. Makes me feel a bit lost. I don't know what to do with myself so I get on Facebook and fiddle around cleaning fish tanks and plowing fields.

It's odd what happens to a person when they begin to write and try to make a living at it. Your spare time becomes a thing of the past, and when you do have a bit of it, you've forgotten what you used to do with it besides write books, edit books, or write blogs.

I did something on Thursday that I've been meaning to do for about a year now. I cleaned the inside of the windshield on my car. That sounds completely ridiculous, I know, but it's one of those things I only think about while I'm driving. Once the car is parked, my good intentions turn off with the engine. This time, it was so scummed up (possibly from spending a little time in the body shop) I had no choice. I buffed up the side mirrors and the windows and the dash and then I pulled it into the garage and saw a spot I'd missed.

This is typical of what happens when you are editing a book. Just when you think you've found that last mistake and you can say "IT'S DONE!!!!" you find something else. Some little typo catches your eye or a discrepancy will come to you like a bolt from the blue just as you finally decide to call it quits for the night and turn off your computer.

I sent Hero in to our dear editor on Wednesday, but on Tuesday evening, I had fifteen minutes to spare right before I went to work, so I used that time to change one more thing. I was brave on Wednesday morning, however. I had a busy night in the unit, went to the unit meeting (a long one!), then I went to the grocery, drove home, and sent that sucker off without another glance.

Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Conflict in Fiction--no problem!

But in real life, it's not!!!

It started out with a carpenter ant problem, pouring into a bathroom. And fire ants around the baseboards of the bedroom. If anyone has played with fire ants, they know how miserable the little critters can be. Really bad news.

Before I could have someone come out about that, my oven was acting up and so was my dryer...then my monitor stopped work (the hard drive the week before) and my bedroom alarm clock went on the blink.

No more! I was ready to shout. But of course there's got to be more--for a fiction story at least. Not in real life. *sigh* But for me, yes in real life, too.

The bug man who came about the bugs said I had termites in addition to carpenter ants and fire ants. He showed me a fire ant mound, told me it was a termite mound, and I said to him, isn't that a fire ant mound? I'm no dummy. I step in them all of the time. Not really. I try to avoid stepping in them, but hey, weedeating in tall grass can disguise them sometimes and then I do this really bizarre dance step as I'm trying to brush them off my legs while they hold on with tentacles and teeth. And that hurts. For hours.

Anyway, that's backstory. So I know it's a fire ant mound and even so the guy explains to me what termite tunnels should look like. Then he gets his manager out and he says, yeah, I've got termites. He doesn't inspect the house inside, just gives an estimate. A high estimate. Of course I'm not taking him seriously because he hasn't found any termite evidence. Until he leaves and I think about this strange brown tower clinging to the brick by the door inside the living room. It's not tall like they say they normally are, but it is there. A termite tower. So I know I've got to get some other termite guys to come out and give me estimates and see what they have to say. Now, the first guy who doesn't know a fire ant mound from a termite tower, poisons me. I'm sick with a terrible case of respiratory problems, no voice, sore throat, non-stop coughing. I thought it was mold sifting up from a cellar, but now I'm sure it's the fumes I was breathing in from poisioning the carpenter ants and fire ants in the bedroom and bathroom.

I took off Friday, met with 3 more bug guys--one of whom told me about a product that costs more but he wanted to use, and the last guy told me no one's using that method anymore because it's ineffective....and so I signed up with one of the bigger companies who I had worked with in Oklahoma when I had termite problems.

And Mr Appliance fixed my stove (in time for Thanksgiving) and the dryer, and I've got guys coming over to trim back all the shrubs and trees touching the house that allowed many of the critters to come inside with me.

The remediator who was supposed to look into the mold problems I thought was causing all my respiratory distress, never showed up. Now the termite guy is here to kill termites and another bug guy is supposed to spray the house inside and out. I think I'll sleep in my car tonight!

And so how is your week going???

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."
www.terryspear.com

Here Kitty Kitty

Laura looked around the room that belonged in a museum then back to the man seated on a high backed chair that she swore resembled a throne. Gorgeous was an understatement where he was concerned. Midnight black hair, cobalt blue eyes and a body made for a centerfold. She reminded herself she was here on business, not to mentally seduce the man who was paying her to design a summerhouse for him.

But it didn't stop her from dreaming, did it? Judging from the smile in his eyes, he was equally interested. No so his feline companion. Since she wasn't fond of cats, she had no idea if it was Persian, Siamese or something else exotic. She only knew the bronze -furred, green-eyed creature looked at her as if Laura belonged in her litter box. Laura made a mental note to stay out of claw's reach. The cat had draped itself along the chair arm where Dante could stroke the cat's back in slow strokes that Laura imagined were trailing across her own skin. She really must get out more!

"If you don't mind I'd like to look at the area again," she said with a wary smile in the cat's direction. "Of course." Dante smiled back. She rose from her chair and made her escape. She'd barely taken three steps out of the room when she heard a woman's voice.

"Are you honestly sure you want to hire her?" the woman asked.

"She's lovely, don't you think?" Dante said.

"Only if you like them flat-chested and mousy."

Flat-chested and mousy? She was a respectable 34B, thank you very much and had just gotten highlights that cost a small fortune.

Curious, Laura crept back toward the room and peeked around the corner. A tall woman lounged, there was no way you could say she was merely sitting, on the chaise by Dante's throne, uh, chair. Her hair was the same rich bronze shade as the cat's fur. Even her form-fitting silk dress echoed the same luxurious color.

I wonder if she dyes her hair to match the cat, was Laura's catty thought as she carefully backed away and moved to the rear of the house to finish her work. When she returned to the room, Dante was alone with only the cat for company.

Laura felt her smile slip. She swore that damn cat smirked at her. "Did I hear voices?" she said. "If you have company, I can come back another time."

"No, that's all right," Dante assured her, running his long-fingered hand along the cat's back. "There is just myself and my cat."

Linda Wisdom copyright 2o09

60's, 70's & 80's TV, Oh My

I'm in the middle of a blog tour for Wild Blue Under and one of my hosts wanted to know my inspiration for the series. I gave the "The Little Mermaid" answer, but, really, that wasn't what inspired the series. It gave me the diving off point for In Over Her Head, but when I wanted to write more stories, I pulled on things I always found enjoyable: television shows from the late 60's through the 80's. What was fun was reading everyone's little, "ooh! I liked that too!" comments, and then their additions.

So, here's my list. Can you match them up with the actors? And what are some of yours?

1. Gilligan's Island
2. H.R. Puffnstuff
3. I Dream of Jeannie
4. Bewitched
5. Fantasy Island
6. Six Million Dollar Man
7. Wonder Woman
8. Shazam/Isis
9. Greatest American Hero
10. The Addams Family
11. Battlestar Galactica
12. Man From Atlantis

(I tried to add A. B. C., etc to the pictures, but Blogger doesn't want me to do that for some reason, so just write them down in order of the sh


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(And I don't QUITE remember him this way from the show...)

L.