Musings, Mother's Day, and the Morning After the Party...

By Nancy Northcott and Jeanne Adams

(A Blog Post in which we let our thoughts range far and wide in honor of the after-effects from yesterday's party, which have led to what one might call lack of focus. *g*)

So, Nancy, the party in the Lair yesterday was of legendary proportions. Tough act to follow.

Yes. I'm propping my eyelids open today. But it was fun.

I know. Me too. Ye Olde Mother's Day Breakfast in bed helped with the wake-up call after all that partying (thanks dears!) but...oooh...the morning after!

BTW, that picture on the right there? That's the only Lair trash can that isn't filled to overflowing today. I think it got used for something else *wiggles eyebrows, looks innocent*, then replaced on the grounds, otherwise it would be full too. Y'know, it's those kind of celebrations that leave you in need of a break with a great book, a cup of tea - or whatever your sovereign hangover remedy is - and some quiet.

Breakfast in bed. *sigh* I love breakfast in bed, or even breakfast out if it can be more like brunch, but quiet isn't on our agenda today. My guys are taking me to Iron Man 2, which doesn't appear to be your basic quiet movie. Then I have papers to grade, with exams coming up this week. But I have plenty of reading and videos to catch up on once I turn in my grades. I plan to veg for a couple of days before kicking back into high gear on my ms. What're you doing today?

*Wince* Jeez Nancy. You are a stronger woman than I am, I tell ya'. Your "veg plan" is on target though. I did that after I turned in my latest book - which I had unaffectionately dubbed the "book that would not end" - I loved the freedom to just READ! Of course, I'm now enjoying an exploration of research books for the next manuscript I'm writing. I always want books, both to read for fun and to read for info, don't you? As for today, I'm going to work in the yard! In amongst that, I'm going to pop in here and talk about books and stuff, which is just a lovely way to spend the day!

No matter how many books I have, I can always find more I want. The dh is going to London without me and the boy--couldn't make the family trip thing work--and I'm giving him a list of books and other things to bring back. The research geek in me loves the Osprey publishing company's fabulous military history lines, so the dh will have a list of those titles to obtain if he can. Foyle's bookstore on Charing Cross Road (or should I say "in" Charing Cross Road, for Vrai Anna?) used to have an entire wall of Osprey, so I have hopes.

Oh, I am so jealous! Okay, I'm jealous on several counts, that you might have gone to England, and that despite not going, you'll still get books. And Osprey books at that! (We Boom Girls love our Janes and Osprey books!) What other things is he looking for, for you?

Janes does books? Really? Like what? There's a new book about Georgette Heyer's Regency world that looks interesting. There's also a new book out--I forget the title, of course, will need to find that before he leaves--about leisure and recreation in London. Looks great but a bit on the pricey side. And I have a weakness for Lilliput Lane cottages, which used to be easier to find over here than they now are. So I want him to bring me one, the kind with a thatched roof and an old feel to it.

Ooh, I'll bet that's fun. *looking up Lilliput Lane Cottages* (see picture for an example - pretty cool!) As to books, I'm looking at a fabulous book on swords, but it too is pricey. Wish we'd though of posting this BEFORE Mother's Day! Hahaha! Then there's the one on dragons, the other one on caves and rock formations in New England and another absolutely gorgeous book on Byzantine art. Food for the soul, I tell you! And yes, Janes does books - military history, planes, tanks, etc.

Do you use maps? I've gotten into using maps for plotting stories. Historical maps are harder to find, but they're out there. Meanwhile, Ordnance Survey or USGS maps can help my brain slot into a contemporary setting.

I do use maps and I adore them. There's an ADC Map store in downtown DC that I just love to go into. They have old maps, new maps, maps of bizarre locations - Mayan temple structures, anyone? - and even maps of walking paths in England. There's also a fabulous old bookstore around this area that has out of print books, including gazetteers for a lot of the US and the UK.

You have these fabulous stores near you, and you didn't take me there when we were in DC last year? Bummer! We'll have to rectify that sometime.

Absolutely! You must come visit and we'll say to heck with the monuments, let's go book shopping! Grins. You know, so many books and bookstores, so little time! Maybe this summer?

I'd love that! One of the best simpatico moments the dh and I had early on was when we were having champagne brunch at the top of the San Francisco Hilton on the first morning after our wedding, looked down to the street, and saw a bookstore! Yes! Went directly there after.

At the end of the month, we celebrate the boy's last day of school for this year. We'll go to his favorite restaurant, and then I guess it'll be his turn to veg out for a few days. It's hard for me to accept that he's almost through high school and looking at colleges. It doesn't seem so long ago that the doctor laid him in his daddy's arms for the first time, and this tiny hand stretched up toward the dh's face--with fingers just like his father's. Now his voice is in the bass range, he plays a guitar, and we're doing the driving thing. And I get to be the honoree on Mothers Day (with boom, of course, in the form of Iron Man).

Isn't that funny, the voice change thing? And no surprise he's a book lover too. My boys are fortunately turning out to be book lovers as well. Now, we're still in the Star Wars Readers stage, combined with books on baseball and lizards. It's hard enough to believe mine are 5 and 10, so don't scare me with the high school/college thing, okay? It flies fast enough as it is.

Believe me, looking back from the far end, it flies faster than you know. Do your guys have the Dorling Kindersley Star Wars books? The boy had a bunch of them, big pictures, schematics, lots of detail. D-K has such great basic references on a variety of subjects.
We love, love, love the DK books. They are outstanding. Just enough facts without being overwhelming. Lots of photos for us visual stimulus readers. Wonderful stuff. Did you have a favorite parenting book? We did, it was called On Becoming Babywise, by Ezzo. I give it to every new mother I know, and some I don't! Ha! My other favorite is for the age I have now, and it's called The Way they Learn by Cynthia Tobias. Fabulous book on helping your kids learn.
The parenting book we used was a medical guide for infants and young children, which also had developmental milestones in it. We didn't have a general advice one except I think we had What to Expect the First Year, or something like that. Very helpful. But y'know, Mothers Day is about US.

So true, oh wise one. Grins.

The kids, well, they're just the vehicles that got us here on Mother's day, so to speak, so let's talk our reading for a few minutes. I love discovering new authors, and I recently finished Kathleen Nance's Dragon Unmasked, a paranormal with mages. I liked it a lot, and there's an earlier one. Got to go find that.

Cool! I just found a new one that I'd thought would never come out. It's Elizabeth Moon's continuation of her trilogy, The Deed of Paksenarrion. It's called Oath of Fealty and so far, it's fab-u-lous!

So what about you, gentle readers, are you also feeling the effects of the major PAR-TAY!?

Got a sovereign hangover remedy?

If your brain is compos mentis enough, riddle us this....What do you like in research material? Where do you go for those books? the library, the archives, the map store?

And if you got breakfast in bed - or are going to, like me - what did you have?

What's hot on your to-read-right-NOW list?

Have you seen Iron Man 2 and what did you think?

For those of you with kids, Happy Mothers Day! For those with Fur Children, let us say, for them (and I quote) BARK! BARK! MEOW! PURRRRRR! Which translated is, thank you and happy fur-mother's day. Grins.

For those of you without either, how about that sovereign hangover rememdy?

Your Baby Makes Me Cry

by Susan Sey

A baby was baptized this Sunday at church & I wept like a proud grandma.

I am, however, not this child's grandma. I am not her mom, her auntie, or even her cousin. Her mother is a Facebook friend. An acquaintance, really. I've only seen the kid once or twice--just enough to know that she got a double scoop of cute and that she's wicked fast on her tiny little feet.

But that's not why I cried.

I cried because I'm a sucker for ceremony.

I cried because I think it's gorgeous and touching and extravagantly optimistic to make a deep and private emotion into a public promise.

I cried because watching a community of people embrace a new member touches me.

Hearing that community pledge with one strong voice to guide, shelter and love a child all but wrecks me.

And the welcoming hymn? That powerful, unified voice raised in song?

Forget it. By then I'm a bawling mess. ("I Was There To Hear Your Borning Cry" puts me over the edge faster than "Child of Promise" but they both slay me.)

And it's not just baptisms. It's weddings, too. Funerals. I'm a non-denominational crier. I cry at graduations. Dance recitals. Band concerts. Anything where a community welcomes, celebrates, recognizes or loses one of its members.

It's thrilling, isn't it? When people crack open that window into their truest hearts? When they try their hardest, perform their hearts out, bring their beloved child into the larger community or simply muster up the courage to declare their love?

I think that's why I love romance novels. For me, the payoff is that moment of pure vulnerability that comes with saying "I love you" to somebody who might not say it back. It's bearing witness when somebody pledges their heart. It's foolish, bold and gorgeous, that kind of risk. And it brings tears to my eyes every single time.

So what about you? What is it about romance that trips your trigger? Do you like a good cry, or are you more a witty repartee kinda gal? Is it the sexual tension, or the alpha male with a tender streak? Why do you love this genre?

Laeti Congregamur

by Nancy

No, that's not gibberish in the title. It's how the first line of the hymn "We Gather Together," my Thanksgiving favorite, translates into Latin. My high school Latin teacher provided translations of that hymn along with "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Ruldolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." I no longer remember the rest of it, but there's a full Latin translation of the lyrics here.

This is all a lead-in, of course, to the fact that it's Thanksgiving Day in the United States, a time when many Americans "gather together" with family and friends to commemorate the things and people for which we're grateful. Our blog community gathers daily, and I hope some of you will pop in today to join me and the gladiators and the cabana boys and maybe take the rooster home for a visit. Sometimes we're thoughtful, sometimes we have fun, and sometimes we mix our moods. No matter what feeling rules a particular day, I'm grateful for the Lair and its denizens, actual and virtual (because, really, there's power in imagination), and for all our buddies.

Just FYI, Sven and Demetrius are currently squabbling over who gets to carve the turkey, with Demetrius maintaining that his sword will do much better than that "dinky little knife" Sven is holding (it's a carving knife, actually, "dinky" only in relation to a sword). I'm just keeping my head down, trying to be invisible. They're the last two I want to referee between, and asking the rooster to help would be like throwing thermite on a fire.

When I was growing up, my mom worked at the college I later attended. Her secretarial position in the registrar's office let her get to know a lot of students. Those who lived too far away to go home for Thanksgiving often wound up at our dining room table. While I didn't always appreciate that at the time, I'm now thankful for the way those guests broadened my perspective on holidays and taught me to look beyond my immediate circle on such occasions.

Some of the students Mom befriended became friends of our family, too. I recently saw a couple of them at a gathering of the women in my college class. We go to the beach for a weekend every year, whoever can turn up. Even though there were comparatively few women in our class, I didn't know most of them well. I transferred in as a sophomore and so missed the orientation that would've brought me into contact with them.

I'm pleased to have made, after all these years, friends among the women I missed getting to know the first time around. So I'm grateful to Sue M. and Ann "Wicked" for pushing me to go the first time and for all the women who've participated during the years for weekends of camaraderie and memory. And to Van for posing with me and the Silver Surfer in the photo at the bottom of the blog (with only minimal wine involved).

My high school friends have started a community on Facebook to connect those of us who used to live near each other but have since scattered. I appreciate the ability to keep in touch with old friends and our collective past even though the level of activity on Facebook sometimes makes my mind go "tilt."

Reading comic books ignited my imagination. If a couple of guys from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, hadn't invented Superman, the superhero from whom all others flowed, I wouldn't have had that stimulus. So I give thanks for the creators of the many imaginary worlds I love and for the friends I've made through fandom and writing.

I'm grateful for the education that made me an insatiable history geek and for scholars and hobbyists who feed that interest. And for the dh's willingness to carry home suitcases full of books. As we had brunch on our honeymoon in San Francisco, on the first full day of our married life, we looked down from the glass-sided restaurant atop a hotel and were jointly thrilled to discover a bookstore a few blocks over. We went there immediately afterward and added to the total weight of our luggage. We spent our first New Year's together with him building and staining bookshelves in our living room because our joint book collection kept growing.

A few years later, as we walked through Gatwick Airport to catch our flight home, he had to stop every few feet and renew his grip on the suitcase. The woman behind him said, in a friendly voice, "What are you carrying--bricks?" He said, "No. Books." And sort of forced a smile. If he wishes the customs agent hadn't shared the news that books were duty free (at least then--except for dealers, I think--but that may have changed), he sweetly keeps that to himself.

And of course I'm grateful to have the dh and the boy (who once replied to a question about what he wanted to do when he grew up by thinking a moment and then saying, "I'd like to be someone who doesn't get arrested," a goal his father and I heartily support and for which we are thankful). The boy is taller than I am now and never loses an opportunity to remind me.

Our lives are enriched by our friends and extended families, who're also celebrating at their homes today. And, foolish as this may sound to some of you, by our yellow lab, the latest in the string of dogs who discovered they could be bosses of us.

We're having dinner with friends, who are contributing fabulous brownies for dessert. Since I'm utterly incapable of creating such a thing "from scratch," I'm grateful for people who can and for the warmth this family's presence will add to our table.

What are you doing today? Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving memory? A holiday that seemed bound for disaster but turned out well after all, or vice-versa? Have you made a friend later in life that you missed out on the first time around?

Do you love the Silver Surfer? Do you remember the name of his girlfriend, whom he never stopped missing? Do you have a friend who'd be willing to join you and the Surfer in a photo?


I have SFF samplers from DragonCon for two commenters today. To kick off the holiday season, I'm also including below the recipe for the dh's holiday favorite. Every year, his late mother made her Aunt Lillian's [Cringe-Proof] Fruitcake (as adapted, so it doesn't feed a battalion, by the dh's sister and brother-in-law).

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Aunt Lillian's Fruit Cake (Cringe-Proof, according to Nancy's dh)
This makes a spice cake with candied fruit and nuts in it.

Be sure to check ingredient list and adapt for any allergies. We use one large loaf pan and two small ones, filling them a couple of inches each, per batch. This cake does not rise.

Warning: Requires very large bowl to mix

Overnight, soak the following in inexpensive brandy:
1/2 cup chopped dates
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1 and 1/2 cups candied fruit (often sold as fruit cake mixture)
1/4 cup dried cranberries or dried cherries
1 tsp. grated orange peel

Mix the following and cream well:
1/2 cup shortening (butter)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar

Add:
2 beaten eggs
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 and 1/3 cups flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder

Mix well, then drain the brandy-soaked fruit and add it;

Mix well, then put into greased and paper-lined pans (use either parchment paper or brown paper);
Bake for about 3 hours at 275 degrees (Fahrenheit);
Test doneness with a toothpick--cake should not be doughy;
When cool, remove from pan and wrap in brandy-soaked dish towel (optional). Wrap in plastic and refrigerate until serving, sprinkling brandy on the cake every few days if desired.