Jenyfer Matthews

I had planned to post some great squirrel shots for the weekend (no, that’s not a euphemism for anything – just pictures of a really cute squirrel!) but I’m having some trouble with getting my laptop connected to wireless internet. I’m not sure exactly what I did wrong, but I have the feeling that it’s a catch-22 situation: I’ll have to be able to connect to the internet in order to repair the fact that I can’t connect to the internet.

Ugh.

In addition, my watch battery died this morning – on the only watch I brought with me. Technology is not my friend today.

Pictures next week…if I can find a flash drive that is…

Unfortunately for me, paying to fly business class wasn’t really an option. So imagine my disgust when, as I am at the check-in desk in Cairo, one of the airline representatives comes to inform me that the flight is overbooked and due to my frequent flier status I’m eligible to be upgraded. Even as my heart swelled with hope she continued and tells me that it’s airline policy not to upgrade children under 12. Um, okay. So why tell me at all?? I could have lived happily without ever having been teased in that way. In the end, I got the seats I paid for, but see that cat up there? That was me, squashed in my economy class seats between two sleeping children.

(But it could have been worse – they could have stayed awake like me!)

After enduring a twelve hour flight shoehorned into a square foot of space, sandwiched between the kids, imagine my delight to find out that the next partner airline I was flying had NO problem upgrading children. We flew first class from NY to Minneapolis. It’s a different world up there. We not only had bigger seats and more leg room, but I had a real lunch with free beverages and actual glassware! I didn’t sleep on that flight just so I could better savor the experience

All in all, I can’t complain. I gave myself enough time to clear security and get from place to place and none of my planes were delayed and my luggage arrived in tact. These days, you can’t really ask for much more than that.

I’m feeling pretty smug. As bare as our kitchen was yesterday afternoon, I managed to make pita bread (cheese) pizza and cucumber and tomato salad for dinner. Dessert consisted of smoothies made with yogurt, frozen strawberries, frozen banana chunks, and five fresh mangoes that fell from the tree next door and were gathered by the children. Much better than take-out (at least in my mind). In addition to my preference for healthy eating, I also hate to waste food.

Right about now I should be on the plane, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Or possible even over the midwest US. With luck I’ll be sleeping as you read this. I’m an optimist – I packed an eye mask and a neck pillow. If that fails, I have half a dozen fresh books on my ebook reader. It always pays to be prepared…especially on a trip as long as this one…

Because we are leaving on our summer vacation later tonight, I haven’t wanted to do much grocery shopping and have been trying instead to just eat up what we have left in our fridge and cupboards. Our meals this weekend haven’t been too too strange: macaroni and cheese for the kids, western omelets (with fresh salsa) for me and hubby, bean burritos (with more salsa) for everyone. We ordered pizza on the Fourth of July to eat at a backyard gathering with our neighbors. Sunday was getting trickier though – leftover pizza for lunch, pasta and tomato sauce for the children for dinner. I had an omelet and hubby had a fried egg sandwich.

Today will be even more interesting – or boring – depending on how you look at it. For fresh items, I’m down to one potato, a couple of onions, a lemon, two cucumbers, a bunch of grapes, a few plums, two pots of yogurt, and four eggs. There is plenty of bread in the freezer and a jar of peanut butter in the cupboard. Fried potatoes and scrambled eggs for breakfast sounds like a possibility. After that it will probably be take-out because I’m saving the peanut butter sandwiches for the plane!

The only thing left to do is actually pack up and then hope the rest goes smoothly; forget comfort, I’ll settle for a minimum of delays and no lost luggage. They’ve changed my flight times so instead of having a stop-over in NY with a (blessed) night of sleep in a hotel, instead we get to go all the way through in one really long day. Goodie. There isn’t a neck pillow made that can make a journey like that comfortable…

ECHOES OF PASSION releases today! It’s part of the sci-fi Hunters for Hire series available from Ellora’s Cave and Cerridwen Press! Here’s a bit about it:

Neotia Prime… The home world of the Neoti and the Vozuans was destroyed by a doomsday device twenty years ago, but the troubles and unrest that led to the event still plague those who resettled on the twin planet.

When Daegon Bosaru arrives on the unnamed world, determined to uncover who is out to smear his dying father’s good name, he discovers that the tragedies of that civil war still haunt those who remain. Not only that, the mysterious, beautiful woman he’s been seeing in his dreams over the past twenty years may have information he needs. But when he finally meets Imreen Dal in the flesh, she seems not to know him—and furthermore, she runs from him every time she encounters him. Why?

Rumors persist that the crazed dictator who set off the doomsday device may still be alive…with fresh plans for conquest. Bosaru needs to find out how his father, the mysterious Imreen and the madman are related…and stop another world from being destroyed.

Read more about the story behind the story plus an excerpt on a previous feature on Jenyfer’s blog.

Buy this book!

Eilis Flynn has spent a large chunk of her life working on Wall Street or in a Wall Street-related firm, so why should she write fiction that’s any more based in reality? She spends her days aware that there is a reality beyond what we can see and tells stories about it for Cerridwen Press. Published in other genres, she lives in Seattle with her husband and spoiled rotten cats. Visit her website to learn more about Eilis and her writing.

Yesterday was the last day of school and both children arrived home weeping. I was a good student and liked my teachers well enough, but crying because school was finished for the year was never my reaction to the last day of school!

The kids seem happier today – and have kept themselves busy. The pop-up soccer goals that Santa brought haven’t seen much action in their intended capacity but they are being used today – as tents. The kids have put them side by side, covered them with a fleece blanket and dragged their pillows inside along with their flashlights. Their intention is to sleep in “the tent” tonight. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Their room is currently a disaster, but hey, it’s better than watching TV all day and I have only heard the words “I’m bored” once today so far…