Jenyfer Matthews

I really dislike Christmas shopping. The time it takes, the pressure, the crowds, the expense, coming up with the ideas. And it’s even trickier in Egypt because even if I come up with some decent ideas, more often than not it’s for items I cannot obtain (easily) here. For all the reasons stated above, I’m happy to say that most of my shopping is already done.

(Don’t hate me – I have a fairly small family!)

Because we are spending Christmas in the US, the availability of items wasn’t such an issue this year. But since I’ll be staying in the north woods of Minnesota and wanted more at my disposal than the local gift shops and the Ben Franklin, I did most of my shopping online (no crowds! free shipping! yeah!) All of my items will be delivered and waiting for me to wrap them when I arrive. The only obstacle left was coming up with the ideas.

My children are full of suggestions of course. My daughter alone gave me a list a mile long that included a new laptop (we may end up getting one, but not for her!!) My problem is picking out the things that I think are actually worth buying. And in my opinion, that doesn’t leave much.

I don’t tend to go overboard at Christmas with the children. Seems to me that the more gifts appear, the worse their attitude gets! Santa fills their stockings and leaves one “wow” present, mommy and daddy give perhaps six more, and the rest are from relatives. All in all they end up with 12-15 presents each which is plenty. Since I’m fairly strict about limiting presents to birthdays and Christmas with few if any gratuitous purchases in between, what might seem like a paltry Christmas to some is an extravaganza to my two.

Much of my daughter’s list included requests for toys and this is where my main conflict (and Grinchiness) appears. I really dislike toy shopping. So few toys are interesting or well made. Most look as if they would hold their interest for all of ten minutes, tops. And having just been through two birthday parties in the last six months at which they received massive numbers of toys from friends, I can pretty much state that it’s true. The toys have not been the items that have had the most staying power. Which is why I find it hard to bring myself to buy them.

Still, it is Christmas and they will expect some “fun” presents. So I tried to buy toys, I really did. I looked at games, at Ben 10 merchandise, at the “hot must-have toy” list at Amazon. My reaction to most of what I saw was “meh” at best. I might have bought a few things anyway, if they hadn’t also cost so much. I’m not going to pay $20 for something I *know* won’t hold their interest long term. So I ended up navigating away from the toy section to the sports section and found what I think will be the hit present of the season – something they will use time and time again but would never have thought to request : pop-up mesh travel soccer goals. Both children are soccer crazy and are always outside using trees or lawn chairs as goal posts. How cool are they going to think these goal nets are? I even found groovy new balls for each of them. That’s Santa sorted. He’s a great guy.

Mommy bought them good stuff too. I got my daughter a new Razor scooter, a board game about the US states (perfect for the ignorant expat kid!), a pile of new Junie B. Jones books plus many others, and a couple of new Gameboy games. Little Man is getting the board game Operation!, a pile of new books, the first two seasons of the original Scooby Doo on DVD, and two new Gameboy games. I am happy with the selection and I think they will be too. (And everything there will be easy to pack and bring home again – bonus points!!!)

I’m sure I can confidently leave the toy buying in the hands of the grandparents. I already know there is at least one remote control car in the mix…

It has been an insanely busy autumn here. There have been so many school holidays and everyone is trying to cram in all the usual events with one less month to do it because school is out all of December. We attended three birthday parties this weekend!! I can’t believe there’s only a month left until school lets out and the children and I fly back to the US for Christmas.

I have managed to get a few things done though, including finish up a quilt top I made for my son last June from a pattern in the book Stack a New Deck. I call it Lost in Space because the rings and the colors remind me of planets.

I’m just a beginner at machine quilting – I much prefer snugging up beneath the quilt at night and stitching by hand! – but decided to have a go on the machine for this one, just to get it done. It doesn’t look awful.

I’m happy to say that my son loves it.

I’m moving on to some Christmas projects now. I hope I finish in time!!

Carolynn Carey has had a lifelong love affair with the written word. She started (and quickly abandoned) her first novel in elementary school. In high school she was editor of the school paper and worked after school for the newspaper published weekly in the rural county in Middle Tennessee where she grew up. Later, in college, she majored in journalism and again worked on the school newspaper. Her career didn’t deviate much from her earliest love: She was an academic editor for many years.

Fiction writing had always been a dream for Carolynn, one that stayed a bit out of reach until she decided to become serious about learning the craft. Joining the Romance Writers of America (RWA®) and then the Smoky Mountain Romance Writers chapter of RWA® provided the encouragement and assistance she needed. In the last few years, she has finaled three times in RWA’s prestigious Golden Heart contest for unpublished writers, and in 2004 she won her own chapter’s Laurie award in the short contemporary unpublished category. Later that year, her winning manuscript sold to Avalon Books and was published as A Summer Sentence in 2005. A sequel, Falling for Dallas, followed in 2006. Since that time, she’s had a traditional Regency, Compromising Situations, published by Cerridwen Press, and her women’s fiction entitled Lily for a Day is available now from Cerridwen Press.

Carolynn lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with her husband, who has been of incredible encouragement over the years by always believing in her. They have one daughter, also a lover of the written word, who teaches English in North Carolina.

*****

I’m delighted to be a guest on Jenyfer’s blog today, just one day following Cerridwen Press’s release of my women’s fiction titled Lily for a Day. The title (as well as the cover design) relates to the book’s setting: a daylily farm in Tennessee.

You say you’ve never heard of a daylily farm? Well, one is located about five miles from my house. The owners boast of growing hundreds of varieties of daylilies, and if you were to pay a visit to the farm in the summer during the days that are open to the public, you would see rows and rows of daylilies in bloom in more sizes and colors than you could imagine. And you would understand why I wanted to set a novel on a daylily farm.

Actually, the fictional Darnell Daylily Farm in Lily for a Day is central to the book’s plot, ranging from the office building (that causes the accident which leads to the independent protagonist, Marti, breaking her ankle and becoming more dependent on her adult daughters) to the shed (where the beautiful Glenna works after her ignominious flight from Hollywood).

I hope you’ll want to visit Darnell Daylily Farm and learn for yourself whether Marti gets a second change to bond with her daughters. And while you’re there, you will probably learn a thing or two you didn’t know about daylilies.

Lily for a Day

by

Carolynn Carey

Marti Darnell is convinced she was an inadequate mother to her two daughters, but both have married and moved on with their lives, and Marti is content with her non-eventful existence. She and her husband Harold own and operate Darnell Daylily Farm in Tennessee where their daughters were raised, and Marti still has her friends, including Steve, their employee and neighbor.

Then Harold falls off the roof of their small office building and lands on Marti, breaking her ankle and his own wrist. That same day, Glenna, the oldest daughter and Steve’s former fiancée, calls to say she’s leaving her Hollywood producer husband and moving back home. Marti and Harold’s injuries necessitate more contact with their other daughter, the perpetually disapproving Candie, and her busy physician husband Matt. Add to this mix the charming home health care nurse, who falls for Steve, and then Jake, Glenna’s estranged husband, who comes to Tennessee to try to win his wife back.

A gorgeous movie star follows Jake and then makes a play for Candie’s husband. When Candie leaves Matt and moves back to the daylily farm, Marti realizes they have come full circle. Can she be a wiser mother to her girls this second time around? And will her grown daughters pay any more attention to her advice now that they’ve experienced their own failures?

Chapter Seven

Even a small thorn causes festering.

—Irish proverb

Glenna was on a rare rampage. As soon as the reverberations from the slammed back door died away, I heard the sound of cabinet doors being closed so hard that the glassware behind them rattled. I grabbed my crutches. I didn’t look forward to confronting Glenna, but at the same time, I wasn’t going to sit by and let her destroy my kitchen.

By the time I’d propelled myself halfway through the dining room, the popping of a cork told me that Glenna had found what she’d been looking for. Wine in the middle of the afternoon? What a wonderful idea.

“Pour a glass for me too,” I called to her. “And pull out a kitchen chair for me. I’m coming to join you.”

If Glenna was happy to have my company, she did a good job of hiding it. When I stepped into the kitchen, she stood, wine bottle clutched in her hand, and glared at me. “Did you know that Dad was going to invite my low-down, good-for-nothing, ratfink of a husband to live in the office building within spitting distance of the house?”

I quickly shook my head. “I had no idea, sweetheart. You have my word.”

She held my gaze for at least a half a minute. If I’d been lying to her, I’m sure I would have blinked. As it was, I had to hold my breath and call upon eyelid muscles I’d never known existed in order to keep my eyes innocently open.

Finally she dropped her gaze, sighed, and shook her head. “I can’t believe Dad did this to me. Do you really want a glass of wine?”

“Absolutely. Did you get me a glass?”

“No, but I will.” When Glenna turned back around to fetch my wineglass, I hurriedly blinked a few times to get a little moisture back onto my dry eyeballs. Then I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “You don’t mind if I sit with you, do you?”

She sighed again. “No.”

“Good. Once I heard that cork pop, I started craving a glass of wine. Could you step it up a bit?”

Glenna smiled. She also stepped it up a bit. She set my glass on the table, poured it three fourths full of the merlot she’d opened, and then helped herself to a generous measure before dropping into a chair on the far side of the table.

“Cheers. Although I’ll be damned if I know of anything to be cheerful about.” She lifted her glass, then downed half of its contents in three long swallows. “I don’t recall you being a daytime drinker, Mom.”

“Some days call for a glass of wine in the afternoon.” I took a sip of mine. Merlot wasn’t my favorite but it would do. “Can you believe that I didn’t recognize your husband when he came to the front door this afternoon?”

Her eyes widened. “Did he have to tell you who he was?”

“Yep.”

She giggled. “I’ll bet that deflated his ego quite a bit. He likes to think of himself as a household face in this country, and then his own mother-in-law doesn’t even recognize him.”

“He appeared a little shocked, I’ll have to admit.” I took another sip of wine. “He claims he wants you back, you know.”

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Never drop your laptop – they don’t bounce. In fact, if you’re very unlucky (like me) the whole screen shatters – a repair which could cost almost half as much as the computer cost new. I’m not a happy camper right now – and neither is my husband since his whole iPod library was on the laptop. Just waiting around for our computer tech to come take a peek to see if at least the hard drive is still functional. I can’t tell – can’t see anything!!

Right about now I really wish there was a Santa Claus I could send a letter to because that might be the only way I’ll get a Christmas present this year…

I don’t know about you, but I could use a little more brain power. I do many of the things on this list already, but thought I’d pass it along in case anyone out there needed a few helpful hints.

I’m going to need a supercharged memory to keep up with the children’s social schedule – it’s only the first week of the month and we’ve already got three birthday parties coming up this weekend!

Don’t forget to drop by this weekend when Carolynn Carey will be here with her new women’s fiction release Lily For a Day.

One odd thing about Egypt that I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned before is that doctors practicing here often have evening hours as a matter of course. So far as I can tell, they will work a rotating and floating schedule – a few days a week at this clinic, a few days at that one, a few hours here, a few hours there. You get the idea. They may be across town on a Monday afternoon and in your neck of the woods on Tuesday evening.

Going out for doctor appointments in the evening isn’t my idea of a good time, but on the up-side you can normally get a appointment the same day you call the office. And evening hours do work out well for children who are in school during the day – provided it’s the early evening. I was once offered an appointment for an MRI at 11pm! I waited a whole day so I could go in at noon instead!

I took my son to the doctor the other evening and since I forgot to bring my own book, I looked through their selection of magazines instead. There are plenty of magazines produced locally, but few are in English so I can’t read any of them. But this time I found one that was just fascinating.

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Written by Egyptians for Egyptians (in English? Why?), the editor’s note on the inside cover says:

The first time the magazine was launched last March 07, the words “Just Divorced” and “magazine” uttered together made some people immediately envision Divorce in their future. The rationale behind it though, was that each and every family witnesses the subject of divorce in one way or another and has many unanswered questions, but no publication has ever put it all in one place. Fortunately, this has changed and people now see it as it really is – a useful and interesting resource for anyone trying to improve their life to start a new slate so they don’t end up divorced.
{…}
Of course, we understand that divorce is a loaded word – one that holds a negative connotation for some. But it doesn’t have to be negative. We see divorce not as a failure but as an essential learning experience – experiences if not always building blocks to future success, then at least a necessary part of life. It is not a problem as many like to believe but a solution to a problem!

Okay, I can see where they are going with this idea and it’s not a bad one – though I’m still not sure about that title. And I’m sure that many many people have viewed getting a divorce as “a solution to a problem”! Maybe it’s just me, but just from scanning their table of contents, is their reporting style a tiny bit skewed? Women – you better look your best or you’ll end up a poor cruel single mother. Guys don’t worry – you can be a great single dad!

I’m almost looking forward to the follow up visit to see what other reading material the waiting area has to offer! And by the way – follow up visits with doctors are very often free or at least discounted. Now that’s a system I’d like to export…

BTW, little man has a plantar’s wart on his big toe. Now maybe he’ll listen to me when I tell him not to run around barefoot!

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I see this chair every week when I go to my yoga class – look closely and you’ll see it’s chained to the landing on the stairwell. Why?? By the looks of it, it wasn’t terribly valuable even in its prime and now even the duct-tape re-upholstery job has seen better days. I will give it credit for being sturdy – I sat in it briefly while waiting for the instructor to arrive and open the studio – but really, is that thick chain really necessary?

Or perhaps the owner is afraid the chair will escape…

Halloween was a a weekend-long event in my part of the world, kicking off with a Halloween party at the children’s school on Thursday night. Why Thursday? Because Thursday is our “Friday”, the last day of the work/school week, and also because the big American school in our neighborhood did their Halloween extravaganza on Friday night.

The costumes came out really well, if I say so myself. The ninja hood is made from a plain white tshirt with the sleeves stitched behind the head! I got tons of compliments on my pirate costume too. Do you think it was the eye patch or the fact that I actually had on some mascara for a change?!

Halloween itself was pretty quiet – at least in our part of the neighborhood. Apparently there was some trouble around the American school after their Halloween fair. My son’s soccer coach, who lives quite close by the school, told me that there were hundreds of teenagers milling around on her street throwing eggs and tomatoes at cars, buildings, and people – including the policemen that were there! – and that they knocked down a power pole as well! Someone else told me that last year the “revelry” included overturning a car. The Halloween fair at the American school is a closed event – students and family only – and from reports I’ve heard, the troublemakers were mostly Egyptian adolescents who knew that the fair was going on and just came to hang around. One Scottish acquaintance I have said that it happens every year and she thought that the bad behavior / “tricks” was just an “American thing”. I hastily denied that! Sure, there is some mischief that gets done on Halloween, but I’ve never seen or been part of a mob scene like that in America! And I’m sure if anything like that developed, the police would do more than just shield themselves from the egg-throwing.

Saturday afternoon, all the people in my building got together and had a party in our shared garden followed by trick-or-treating after dark. This time my daughter was the ninja warrior – a blue belt, the most dreaded of all! (she claimed the black belt was too small) My son couldn’t be bothered to go and change out of his soccer uniform from his game in the morning so he claimed he was dressed up as a soccer player – which in fact he was!

All in all, I’m happy that October is finished. I’m hoping that November might be a tad less hectic. But if you haven’t had enough of Halloween and have a few hours to kill, check out this Halloween bowling game. Don’t blame me if you don’t get anything else done today…