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I’m dreaming of a White Christmas
For a magical evening, our holiday decorations were enhanced by a blanket of snow. It may be gone by Christmas Day, but the sight of snow on our wreaths swept me back to my childhood when it always seemd to be white on the night Santa arrived.
Happy Holidays to all my readers! May your days be merry and bright!
Holiday Gift #4: For your divorced friends
I found this in a catalogue of Victoriana but it seems totally modern and potentially quite useful to me:
Lover’s Quarrel Frame
Photography was once reserved only for the affluent. Given the exorbitant costs of portrait photography in the late 1800s, it was unthinkable to discard a valuable photograph due to a broken relationship. Rather, the undesirable subject would simply be folded back or scissored off. The slender frame which found the height of its popularity after 1910, later came to be known as a ‘Dear John Frame’, thus accommodating the lonely heart beautifully. $16.95
While it pains my romance writer’s heart to say so, I can think of several friends who might find it very appealing.
Top Ten Reasons to Believe
1o. He sees you when you’re sleeping.
9. He hates fruitcake too.
8. Never gives you socks or underwear.
7. You don’t need to write a thank you note. (My children would put this in the Number 1 position!)
6. “Better not pout” just makes sense.
5. He doesn’t mind if you play with the boxes.
4. He is the single largest employer of elves.
3. He has an unlimited line of credit.
2. Reindeer don’t make a mess on your roof.
1. Three little words…LUMP OF COAL!
Bizarre Holiday Gift #3
A Mustache for Every Day.
“Dapper self-adhesive ‘stache! Set of 7 includes The Hero, The Sheriff, The Hollywood, and more. $7.98”
They actually tell you what day to wear them on, just in case you weren’t sure. I may order two, one to give and one to keep for myself.
Brodie finds a friend
Okay, so his friend looks like the Hound of the Baskervilles but he’s really just a two-year-old German Shepherd named Trace who belongs to my friend Lynn.
The first time the two of them met, they ran around my backyard in circles and figure 8s for twenty minutes straight. Then Brodie collapsed in a panting heap. Trace has more stamina and kept pestering Brodie to start running again. Finally, Brodie crawled under my lawn chair for protection from his annoying new acquaintance. It was a banner day! Brodie was too tired to get into trouble!
Of course, I’ve invited Trace to come back twice a day for the next six months.
Beyond Bizarre Holiday Gift No. 2
There’s a really bad pun in the title of this post. Sorry!
This gift idea truly baffles me. It’s a 2009 Dog Doo Calendar which “features 12 beautiful full-color photos of majestic mountains, field of flowers, rushing rivers and glorious oceanside settings along with dog droppings so realistic you can almost smell them. It’s the perfect gift when you want to show that you give a cr*p.” For a mere $12.99.
Notice how proud they are of the realism of the dog droppings.
You can add a companion gift from the previous page, the photo of which I refuse to put on my blog because it’s truly gross: Doggy Doo Ornaments. “This tidy faux doggy doo ornament ($6.98) is glittering with a sprinkling of ‘snow’ and tied up nicely with a holiday ribbon. Great for the pet lover who has everything.”
Call me crazy, but it seems to me that a donation to the local animal shelter would be a better gift for the pet lover who has everything.
Brodie update
Here’s Brodie in our backyard, happily chewing on his favorite stick. He looks pretty settled in, doesn’t he?
Well, let’s see. He separated my favorite tree from its roots about six inches above the soil and then ran around the yard with its corpse in his mouth, taunting me. He bit a chunk of plaster out of the wall beside our powder room because I had the nerve to close the door when he wanted to follow me in there. He mangled my husband’s reading glasses. He stripped the cover off the out-of-print script for Sunday in the Park with George that my sister-in-law had loaned me with the admonition to treat it like gold.
If Marley and Me hadn’t already been written, I could easily do so.
Do I love Brodie anyway? You betcha! He’s the best dog in the world!
Writing’s greatest moments
My two favorite moments in writing a novel are the beginning and the end. Why do I mention this? Because I just typed the two most beautiful words in the English language: The End. Wahoo!
After reading Judith McNaught’s marvelous epilogue in my favorite of her novels, Almost Heaven, I vowed to always treat my readers to one last chapter with the characters they (and I) have grown to know and love. I just finished the epilogue to my current manuscript Throw Your Heart Over, a romantic mystery about a lost horse, and I was crying as I typed. I think that’s a good sign for the emotional intensity of the book.
I went downstairs and announced to my husband that the book was finally finished. He suggested champagne (mostly because he’s had to put up with my crankiness as I struggled to reach the end so he needs a good stiff drink). Who am I to disagree?
It’s obvious why The End is so satisfying. You’ve climbed the mountain, scaled the wall, found the pot of gold, finished the darned book! That’s how you come to think of it after about page 250, as the darned book.
At the beginning though, you have all the beautiful possibilities ahead of you. Your characters are new and fresh in your mind; you have lots of things to discover about them. The plot is a road with many branchings still to be explored. Surprises await you around every turn, and at the moment, you’re excited about that thought. It’s rather like the first flush of love.
Between that hopeful beginning and that emotional ending, there’s a lot of hard work and difficult choices. There’s a sagging middle to shore up, and unexpected plot holes to fill in. There are suddenly recalcitrant characters to wrestle into the right frame of mind.
But I’m done with all that now, and looking ahead to the bright shining beginning of the next book.
That’s me tap-dancing on the ceiling.
Bizarre Holiday Gift #1
Yodelling Pickle
In my on-going quest to find the perfect gift for my sixteen-year-old son-who-has-everything, I found this mind-boggling offering and had to share it with you. The catalogue copy says:
“Press a button and this goofy gherkin belts out a mighty “Yodel-Ay-Eee-Ooo!” It may be the kookiest gag gift we’ve ever seen–and we’re “pickled pink!”
It MAY be the kookiest gift?!?! MAY BE!?!?
If you plunk down $14.98 (plus shipping/handling) for a Yodelling Pickle, you MAY BE the kookiest gift giver ever!
California Dreamin’: Part Deux
Since my Dearest Husband and I were only 90 miles from Hearst Castle, we decided to drive down scenic Route 1 to take a look at William Randolph Hurst’s grand hilltop home. The problem was that Route 1 was shrouded in fog. It was very atmospheric but the views were pretty limited.
Until we got right near San Simeon. My husband was laughing about one of those “Adopt-A-Highway” signs which was sponsored by the Friends of the Elephant Seals. Who knew Elephant Seals had friends and why were they hanging around San Simeon? Suddenly, I looked right and said, “I think that’s an elephant seal.” Being familiar with my affection for all forms of wildlife, D.H. pulled over instantly and let me out of the car. Here’s what met my amazed eyes: elephant seal bodies as far as the eye could see.
They’re not dead, thank goodness, just sleeping. Occasionally, one would scratch with a flipper or scoop sand over their back. I love surprises like that.
Not much farther down Route 1 another surprise awaited us. Yes, those are zebras.
Turns out old William Randolph had the world’s largest private zoo at one time. When he dismantled it, some of the inmates liked it at San Simeon so much that they just stayed with the cattle. These zebras are their descendents.
Who’d a thunk?
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