Bright & Dark

Thanksgiving: a holiday designed around the conspicuous consumption of turkey, dressing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. Or, a holiday designed around gratitude.

Oh, I know — those aren’t the only choices. But they’re the ones I’ve adopted. That said, here’s my short list of things to be thankful for this holiday season, in no particular order.

Family and friends. There are so many wonderful people in my life who I feel blessed to know. There’s nothing as precious as time spent with someone you love. In person is best. Phone or virtual is good, too. I have so many friends hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Writing time. Four glorious days off for Thanksgiving weekend. 6,500 glorious words. Over the 300 page mark on the book and into the last 100 page light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel sprint. The coolest thing by far is figuring everything out at the same time my characters do.

Dance. Four glorious days off also means three mornings spent at the Nia studio — one with a mix of music honoring one of the founders of Nia, Carlos Rosas, and two instances of Sting’s Brand New Day, which choreography and music makes my whole self sing. Through thick and thin, during times when I felt comfortable and sometimes worried in my own skin, Nia has nourished me, body and soul.

Food, Glorious Food! ‘Tis the season to be baking, fa la la la, la la la la. Fig cookies, banana bread with chocolate chips and crystallized ginger, and sometime this coming week: gingerbread. I love the feel of dough in my hands, the warm, spicy, sweet smells wafting from the oven to fill the whole house, the dance of flavors on the tongue. Many thanks to Gluten Free Girl for a website of glorious gluten free recipes, ripe for the making.

Story. For great books and movies and stories spoken from the mouths of friends. This weekend, I’ve been New Moon-ed, which I liked just fine, and the company was awesome, too. Really love spending time in the Bella-and-Edward ‘verse. I’ve also been reminded of my great love of all things Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Monk, NCIS, and of course Sons of Anarchy. On deck: the honkin’ huge novel on my coffee table, just itching to be opened and read. Could this book be by Stephen King? Why, yes, Virginia. It is.

Song. I had the good luck (and the determination) to see U2 this year after many years of having missed them when they came to town. Definitely worth the wait. A giant shot in the arm full of love and hope and general shiny goodness. Tomorrow night, I have the privilege of going with a very good friend on a birthday adventure to include Jackson Browne. Doctor, my eyes will be full of Jackson Browne-ness and my ears will be full of lovely tunes.

Sunset Walks. Sunset walks on the block with the Doggie Ranger. Evening breeze rustling the leaves of the oaks, ashes, sycamores, holly, palms, golden raintrees, sweetgums, and magnolias. Crows gliding through the air, calling out to the world. And the way everything must smell really interesting, what with all the times we simply MUST STOP to smell the (fill in the blank).

Love. Needs no description.

Also:
Tea
Hot Chocolate
Christmas fairy lights
Flickering candlelight
Cider
A fuzzy scarf
and
Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody

Mama!

I offer you this bit of warmth on a cold, rainy day.

Sliante!

There’s been radio silence around here for the last couple of weeks — busy, busy with life. A round of updatery is in order.

Mmmm, mmmm, good.

A couple of days after the U2 concert, we had the annual Bosses Day bake-a-thon. My rowmate at work and I treated our attorneys and legal assistants to a smorgasbord of breakfast tacos with homemade salsa, peanut butter cookies, banana bread with chocolate chips and crystallized ginger, and more.

I had fun baking the bread even with my entire lack of sleep. For the curious, the recipe is here. The ginger really gives the bread some wow factor.

There has also been a spur-of-the-moment trip to the store for pumpkin makings, because the season downright demands it. So Sunday night I baked pumpkin custard (aka, pie filling sans crust — didn’t want to deal with the gluten-free crust on a Sunday night). Between that and the cold front that has swept in, it feels like fall around here.

Write On!

Slow and steady wins the race. Or at least it will.

This book looks to be the longest I’ve had the pleasure of writing, which is not to say that it’s ungodly long, just that my novels usually top out at about 350 pages and this one looks like it will go around 450. It’s a bigger book — big world, big worldbuilding, high concept, dual-moving-into-triple POV. It’s still a blast to write and I’m still writing it one 800-1,500 word scene at a time, focusing on the emotion. I can’t wait to see how it comes out.

Meanwhile, it’s fascinating to me that any intention on my part to power through large sections of this book just ain’t working. I can’t pull several hours on a Saturday or Sunday at this point. I don’t know whether it’s me rebelling because I want to be sure to have a life or whether it’s the book rebelling because the story definitely wants to told at its own pace. Either way, as long as there’s steady progress, that’s all right.

Hey — are you gonna read that?

Just finished up my friend Christy Evans’s debut cozy mystery, Sink Trap. So much fun! I can’t wait to read the next one when it’s released. I need to see what Georgiana Neverall has up her plumber apprentice’s sleeve.

Since life’s too short not to have a good story to dive into, I’ve started Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Very interesting so far. It hasn’t moved as quickly as I would normally like, but something about it holds me and it’s getting a might more interesting. Looking forward to seeing what’s in store.

How many miles can a writer run?

Still not many as it turns out. I’m getting some treadmill and/or Nia time in every day and not only do I look better, I feel like a million bucks. A well-oiled machine, even. That’s pretty cool.

The Weight Watchering is going very well, too. Down 11 pounds so far since I’ve started. This is a huge milestone for me on account of how I’ve tried and tried to make this happen and haven’t hit on the right formula — physical, mental, etc. — until now. So, down 11. Only 20 more pounds or so to go with an interim goal of 11 more because a girl’s got to have manageable goals, doesn’t she?

***
There’s more, but that’s enough for now. I’ve got lots to do around here, a bunch of writing, a phone call with a friend later, and after that I’ll settle in for my weekly episode of Sons of Anarchy. Who’d'a thunk I’d fall so hard for that one?

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Or, in the tradition of my ancestors, happy new year.

I’ve not practiced Judaism in many, many years, so it was a strange thing to experience a sudden desire to invite my family over for dinner on Rosh Hashanah. I don’t think we’ve had one of those in a decade or so.

Time’s not the only difference, either. All but one of us are gluten-intolerant. That meant some changes to traditional family recipes — most importantly, the kugel.

My family’s kugel recipe is the plain salt and pepper kind, savory rather than sweet. It calls for a large package of egg noodles, said egg noodles apparently unfindable in the short space of a week. I mean, I found some online made from corn, but the idea of corn kugel just didn’t do it for me. And I’ve heard that a body can find GF egg noodles around Passover, but Passover was a wee bit ago. So, the settling for Tinkyada fettucine. It worked out really well.

I always forget how much work cooking a holiday meal actually is. I started in the kitchen at around 2:00 and dinner didn’t materialize on people’s plates until 7:30. Roasted chicken (thanks to Top Chef’s Elia for her “proud chicken” recipe), the GF noodle kugel, and an apple cake that would’ve been better off for having used either smaller or fewer apples, but that tasted right good with Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream. (On the other hand, it’s pretty hard to screw up Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla.)

After all the hard work, it was a fun evening. The rest of the weekend? Bittersweet.

I drove to Austin on Saturday with the primary purpose of seeing my friend who has been ill for some months with cancer. Because of a communication snafu, the seeing didn’t happen. There were hugs and lovely conversations and walks in the sunshine with other friends, and many prayers were said. Prayers continue to be welcome.

May the Gods bless and keep my friend, and bless and keep her family and loved ones. She is the kind of person who has brought enormous joy and love and delight to everyone in her life. She is a blessing.

Dear blessing, I send you love and apples and honey, sweetness and warm, gentle hugs.

Udi’s gluten-free baked goods are now on display at the local Whole Foods.  They’re not frozen (!) and the bread bounces back (!) when you poke it through the plastic wrapper.  Moist and tasty, it does *not* need to be toasted.  Seriously.

I haven’t seen this kind of thing since last October in Ireland, where it was no big deal to pop into the Tesco and find shelf-stable soft and moist GF bread.  I can still taste the hot cross buns, matter of fact.  Now I can have that sort of thing here.

Hooray!

Today is day 5 of the early a.m. workout regimen — an hour of Nia on Monday and every other morning except Thursday (on account of a late-running Wednesday night meeting), 30 minutes of heavy cardio. I’m hoping to incorporate some lifting into the mix and some formal stretching (yoga) in the next couple of weeks.

I’m doing this because, although I’ve lost quite a bit of weight over the last few years, there’s still some more to go, and because of the way my body works there’s very little chance of dropping more weight without a lot of exercise. (All hail the metabolism!) Plus, there’s the thorny issue of when that’s going to happen.

By the time I get home at night after running errands, walking the Doggie Ranger, fix dinner, and take care of whatever chores need taking care of, there’s not a lot of time left. Mostly what I want to do is read a book or watch a DVD, or sometimes noodle around on the harp. Anyway, the key word in that equation is RELAX. So working out gets the short shrift every time. This way, I make sure I get it in. And it makes a heckuva lot of difference in my day, what with all the sitting I do while legal secretary-ing.

I’m gradually getting more used to this crack-of-dawn schedule and I’m liking it, even it it means I’m in bed no later than 10:30 and the alarm goes off a 5 AM every day and that I can’t just putz around the house with a mug of tea or stare at Angel re-runs on TNT. There’s not only the cardio to do; there’s also a sit because meditation is my daily grounding, not to mention some pages to write.

Some days its faster writing and others slower, but I usually can manage 500-1000 words in the hour I’ve got for that. I left our small for his age 13-year-old hero this morning in a muttered war of words with his much larger (if not older) traveling campanion. (Whale. Shrimp. Am not. Are, too.)

Anyhow, page 142 of the novel and counting. Happily this weekend I don’t have a ton going on, so there can be extra writing time.

The Barnes & Noble big box (thanks to the $100 of gift card money I found in my bookcase) is here. It includes my very own copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (I, like everyone else of late, blame Julie & Julia). Also the first in the Sookie Stackhouse series (because I’m behind the rest of the world), Just Listen, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Fragile Eternity, and The Demon’s Lexicon. These are in line behind God is a Verb and Coyote Blue. Plenty reading, me. Oh, and cooking, too!