Thirty years in one place

This weekend marks the anniversary of our homecoming. We'd spent seven years away from the nest area in North Texas, three of them in Georgia. It had been a good experience, allowing us to set up our married life and subsequent children at a distance from the families. My husband's professional training being over, we loaded up our two vehicles, two babies, two dogs and, with the aid of a sister-in-law who drove faster the closer we got to home, we headed out.

I'm not sure if we arrived home July 3 or 4. There was a huge banner above our door welcoming us back. The SIL's boyfriend had put it there, and I doubt he was welcoming us. It had been an arduous drive since the speed limit was down, gas prices were up, and gas itself was rationed.

Did I think, as we gratefully pulled two vehicles into the drive of our new home, that I would still be in it 30 years later? I wasn't 30 years old myself; I had no concept of the time involved. Thirty years was, well, a very long time. Who knew what it would bring? We'd already had lots of changes in our lives, most of them wrapped around two little boys and the hope that a successful career was on the verge of beginning.

In 30 years, I've watched my sons grow up. They're Eagle Scouts like their dad, college graduates, doing well in their own careers and marriages. I've two grandchildren. My spouse has seen his career grow and change with the times. All good, as the elder son would say. I dared myself to write a romance novel, then more. To be published, and I am. I've volunteered with Scouting, the church, the regional hospital, the public library.

Over the years, we never entertained the idea of moving from the house we started with. We have redecorated, remodeled, repurposed all of it. Besides the bathrooms and kitchen, only two rooms retain their original duties. In 2001-02, we gutted the place and lived to tell, marriage in tact!

Then we told ourselves it would look extremely shabby in another 20 years and we'd have to do it all over again. Let's see, 20 years from 2002... I'll be... ready.

Vision or visionary?

This very interesting article details what I got into my head would be a business model for print-on-demand. I'm sure I read about it somewhere, that "someday" there would be a kiosk in every store and the buyer could just 'dial up' the book he wanted, go have a cup of coffee, come back and collect the book.

Then that vision morphed into doing the same with electronic books on something like an SD card or via a cable to your reading device. Then the internet got much faster than my dial-up (thank goodness!) and that vision had every good reason to go away. Plus, enter readers better than my Rocket 1100.

But I find the article out of Vermont very interesting. Need a copy of something and 1) you don't have a bookstore in your town other than Walmart, 2) the library can oblige you only by interlibrary loan which is a wonderful service, but it'll be two weeks, or 3) Amazon is currently sold out? Just download and print on the neighborhood machine.

The machine is frightfully expensive, but then the industry is watching this small store in Vermont to see how it all goes. At the moment, very well.

Two wet little kittens

And one very smart one.

The three little kittens have been hiding under my husband's pick-up. I've watched them climb into the wheel wells and onto the under chassis. This was obviously not going to do when he drove to work this morning.

Crossing the back yard to get to the truck, we spotted two of the kittens. Adventurous gray was only mildly alarmed by our appearance on the patio. Her sister calico was incensed and bounded under the pick-up and into its undercarriage. Well, now. A problem for sure.

My husband unlocked the truck. No movement. Started the engine. I cringed, but no movement. Started slowly backing up. Now I was nervous, but no cats and no cat parts.

What were we going to do? We knew at least one of them was under there. Their mother in the meantime had hied off into the bushes with Mark, neighborhood daddy to all. (Mark is on my most-wanted list.)

Husband suggested squirting water under the truck and while he watched (he was dressed for work after all), I proceeded to lambast the tires and metal with the water hose. It didn't take long for the one with the yellow stripe nose to scramble to dry ground. That was reassuring, but the calico was still under there. A few more bursts of water and she too appeared, disappearing with her sister in the direction of their mother (doubt they were welcome).

Gray watched on from her tucked-paws position on the patio. Wary of me, but dry. This will be a cat to be reckoned with just as soon as I can catch her.

"Three little kittens..."

"... have lost their mittens and they began to cry."

I have a collection of Three Little Kitten books, mainly from the 1920s and 30s. I even took pages from a children's book, circa 1955, and framed the art and poem for my kitchen wall in three copper frames.

Now, it would appear, I actually have three little kittens.

But let's start near the beginning. The first weekend of May I go into the store house behind us and find--what a surprise!--three tiny-tiny kittens. Their eyes are just opened. I can tell there's a calico one, a darker one, and I think another dark one, but they're all in a jumble. Three days later, when we return from a trip, I check on them again. Their mom has moved them to another corner of the room. Maybe one of them isn't so dark, but I'm backing away. The last thing I want to have happen is for her to desert them and I have three little kittens to nurture.

The next day, the kittens are gone! So she's moved them. This is a mother cat, name of Sister, we thought was gone, as in dead, because we hadn't seen her for a year. So, like a bad penny, she shows up with family in tow.

Except she rarely comes over to eat at my smorgasbord of appetizing kitty treats and there are no kittens with her when she does. Ever. Did something get them? When our local Lothario, Mark, starts paying her oodles of attention, I think, maybe so, and she will shortly be in the kitten-way again.

Fast forward to mid-week last week. I pull into the back driveway and am greeted by the sight of two little kitten backsides running for all they're worth around the side of the store house. Has Sister successfully raised them under there?

Then this morning, on my patio, are two of them. They take off at lightning speed, but not before I can count whiskers with the third one outside the gate. Later, when she thinks I'm long gone, Sister brings them all over to eat. There's the calico, the dark one with a yellow stripe down her nose, and the grey one, Ms. Adventuresome, because she takes off without her mom to explore. They're about three months old.

Now I have to either win their trust and get them to the vet or trap them. A Three Little Kitten lover's work is never done.

I'd rather be...

Saw this on a bumper-sticker-plastered Tahoe in Allen TX yesterday and it was the one (among political, school affiliations, strange symbols) most memorable:

"I'd rather be reading a romance (novel) by Nora Roberts"

Can't remember (just how memorable was it?) if the word novel was in there or not, I was so busy squinting to see what the small-print words were above the name of The Nora.

You go, Tahoe. You went straight and I turned, but if you had wanted to cut in line in front of me, I'd have let you.

Plum-perplexed!

Our plum crop having given out--and been given out--I juiced the ones I kept until I had enough for two batches of jelly. Saturday afternoon I set about the task and found an old movie on Turner Classic to watch while I did so.

I had on hand from last year a box of Ball pectin. The date was still good so I bought a box of Sure-Jell for the other batch. I really like to use the less-sugar versions of these products, but I could find neither. Could find neither last year either. (Try saying that out loud a few times.) I could find the no-sugar, but yech!

I laid out all my utensils first: big pot for the juice, bowl to pre-measure the sugar into, whisk, funnel, measuring cup, spatula, old kitchen towels on two counters--one for the jars to be filled on and the other for them to rest upon--the approximate number of half-pint jars, which went promptly into the dishwasher to be clean and hot, and the pot for bringing all the bands and lids to simmer.

Then I looked at the recipes. Well, wasn't this interesting. While both products called for 5 1/2 cups of juice, Sure-Jell used 1 cup less sugar! Both jelly methods were the same and no lemon juice was needed.

Skeptic that I am, I then proceeded to divide the jars so that one product went into one kind and the other into another. I surveyed the other recipes. They lined up exactly only on currants. Sometimes, juice and sugar varied, other times, only one.

Both jellies were bright pink, but the Ball, which used the most sugar, was setting to a jell before I had it all poured in. That will be what's donated to the Library fall bazaar. The Sure-Jell has taken a bit longer, but appears to be setting. Gifts for understanding friends and family.

"Let us all hope..."

"... that we are preceded in this world by a love story."

Those are the opening words which appear on screen of the 2005 movie Sweet Land. I rented it to exercise to and fell immediately under the spell. So much so that when the first 30 minutes had gone by, I removed it from the DVD and told the spouse I wanted to rewatch the first of it with him and then finish it. I think he'll really like it.

But where did this wonderful quote come from? The best I can find is this link to a flickr page, which is a shot from the movie. A poster?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if it were true, that all of us had the love story of our parents in our backgrounds? Reality tells us this is not the case, that too many of us are not the product of love stories and even if we think we are, many of those stories didn't last a lifetime, some not even through our childhoods.

But as a romance author, I plan to keep that quote in mind and remember that when I'm writing a novel, the people falling in love should be the preceding, the opening act if you will, of someone else's life.