Jenyfer Matthews

I’ve always liked old things. If I have a choice between a set of new dishes or a mismatched set of old stoneware, the old stoneware is very likely going to win. (Remember that groovy mug I bought last summer? It gets used regularly) I prefer old jewelry styles too – I’ve adopted several of my mother’s cast-off chains circa-1970s and adore a chain belt that I got from my grandmother (circa 1950s? 1960s?)

A few months ago, an acquaintance here in Egypt was clearing out in preparation for moving. One of the things he was getting rid of was a hand embroidered linen tablecloth his mother made. The last thing I need with two small children in the house is a white linen tablecloth, but I couldn’t let him give it to just anyone. Aside from the fact that as a crafter myself I couldn’t bear for that much hand work to go unappreciated, there’s something about old things that just speak to me.

My love of old things might explain in part why I love trolling thrift stores so much. I was pretty thrilled this summer when I found an “antique” crank cookie gun at a local thrift store in addition to a set of tiny cut glass salt and pepper shakers. I seem to have a thing for salt and pepper shakers – only after I bought these did I recall I have another set packed away in storage, having bought them years before at another thrift store in Ohio. I never thought that I’d be the sort of person to collect salt shakers, but using them gives me pleasure. They are so much more satisfying than the ordinary ceramic ones that came with our plain white dishes.

Part of that satisfaction may be that each of these items has a story to tell – who had them before they came into my hands? Were they every day objects or were they kept in a cupboard, only brought out for special occasions? How did they end up in the thrift store where I found them? The echoes of these stories stimulate my imagination.

That’s a pretty good deal for a couple of dollars.

Summer is over for me and it’s back to reality now – which means no more bacon with breakfast every morning and no more desserts every night. No more good beer or wine either. I’ll have my work cut out for me when I go home to lose the weight I put on in the process of having such a good time this summer. It’s always amazing to me how much easier it is to gain weight than it is to lose it, especially as I get older.

I admit that part of me wants to lose the weight for the sake of vanity. I have to accept that I’m at an age now that I look better dressed than undressed, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Beyond how I look is how healthy I am.

There are unhealthy lifestyles that can take their toll on the way you live and age: excessive eating / weight gain, drinking to excess, smoking, working too much to give a few examples of things that people do have some control over. Then there are hereditary illnesses like heart disease, hypertension, strokes, and diabetes that tend to run in families – not always possible to totally avoid but a sensible approach can probably avert certain disaster.

Living the expat life, most of the expats I meet are in their 30s and 40s with young children. They’ve gone abroad to make more money and live a better lifestyle than they could in their home country. The women I socialize with tend to be very fit and health conscious – many working out at the gym several times a week. In my day to day live in Egypt, I don’t interact with that many older people. It’s been very different this summer. There seem to be senior citizens everywhere I look, in varying degrees of health. Some are out power walking or bicycling while others are stooped nearly in half making their way slowly and painfully around the grocery store.

Watching them has made me realize that one day I’ll be old too – sooner than I’d like. There are always health crisis that you can’t predict like crippling arthritis or cancer, but barring those calamities, I want to be the old lady walking briskly down the street with my head high and shoulders back. I don’t expect to live forever, but I want to live well. I want to be strong enough to lift my own grocery bags and agile enough to reach the top shelf. I want to live long enough to see my children grow up and be healthy enough to see and play with their children.

I want to have the energy to spoil them rotten when they come and see me for summer vacation!

TV has changed a lot since I last lived in the US and was watching regularly.

A decade ago my husband and I had “basic” cable which meant we could have decent reception on PBS and the free network channels plus a few extras for less than $20/month. I was an NBC fan and most of what I remember watching was either sit-coms or dramatic series.

When I come back to visit these days, there’s nothing basic about TV anymore. I hardly ever see a network channel for one thing. Most of the people I visit watch one of the many specialized channels available out there – HGTV being a good example. And most of the shows that I see on or advertised are reality shows of one sort or another – pseudo-informative medical shows, interior design or makeover shows, or the fascinatingly grotesque contrived creations like “Wife Swap”. I can remember a time when people watched TV shows to escape reality, not to immerse themselves in someone else’s reality.

But it’s the commercials that really bother me. I remember when the worst thing about commercials was the absurdity of the products that marketers were trying to convince everyone that they simply couldn’t live without. I almost long for those commercials now. But I’d much rather explain to my child why the toy or food in the commercial probably isn’t as fun as it’s made out to be than sit through another pharmaceutical ad with my daughter. I cannot imagine why there should be any controversy about teaching sex education in schools when any child who watches TV is getting a pretty comprehensive if warped idea of the whole process. I notice that alcohol and tobacco ads are out. So who and why did anyone decide that it was a good idea to start advertising prescription medications? I don’t know if my kids have noticed it yet, but if they are in the room when one of those commercials comes on, it usually triggers a tickle attack to distract them. The only thing I’m grateful for is that we don’t watch prime time. My friend tells me that most of those ads are for male enhancement aids or Viagra. Fortunately Nick at Night doesn’t advertise such things.

Yet.

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.

I finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma last weekend, but I wanted to take a little time to think about it before I wrote, to formulate something thoughtful to say other than “You must read this book!” – because this book does nothing if not make you think.

Where In Defense of Food examined the cult of nutritionism and shed light into the mystery of processed food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma examines food chains – exactly where does the food we eat come from. The food chains Pollan looks at are industrial, organic / alternative, and hunting / gathering.

I probably would have been a flower child had I been alive in the 60’s – I’m pretty skeptical by nature, particularly of politicians and big business. It really wasn’t such a huge surprise to me to read about what exactly goes on in the industrial farming world or the motivations behind it, and yet it was horrifying just the same. The toll that mono-agriculture takes on the environment, on the livelihood of the farmers, and ultimately on the public’s health is nothing short of stupefying – because all I can ask myself is why on earth do we go along with it? The answer goes back to money, big surprise. It all starts with growing corn and myriad of things that the food industry can do with that one cheap crop – run through a mass spectrometer, Pollan found that a much larger percentage of a McDonald’s meal is actually made up of corn than you would think, including 100% of the soda. If you are now wondering what’s so bad about eating corn, not only does it take a tremendous toll on the land to endlessly grow the same crop, but remember that many of the Western diseases like heart disease and diabetes can be linked back to the modern industrial diet – of processed corn.

The next food chains he looked at were organic and alternative. If you think that because you eat organic vegetables you’re exonerated from supporting the industrial food complex, think again. While organic farming does indeed spare the environment from a load of toxic pesticides (always a good thing) the fact is that most organic farming is done on an industrial scale in California. Pollan points out that from the moment a head of organic lettuce is picked it must be kept chilled to a precise temperature until it leaves the grocery store. So, when you factor in all the energy consumed in chilling and then transporting that lettuce from California across the country (or in some cases, the globe) to its final destination, that same lettuce isn’t really so “green” anymore. And it’s not really so much better a system for the animals involved in it either. Kind of makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, there are a few small alternative farms such as Polyface Farm in Virginia, run by Joel Salatin. He follows a really wild and crazy farming practice where he lets animals and plants co-exist in mutually beneficial patterns. He doesn’t call himself an organic farmer because based on government guidelines, he isn’t. He isn’t for instance using approved and tested feeds such as using “Feed #2” on their chickens. Instead he calls himself a “grass farmer”. He has a well orchestrated system of rotating his cattle and his chickens through his pastures, letting the grass, the cows, and the chickens all follow their natural predilections. Sounds like a great system, right? But because the chickens are out in a pasture eating “unidentified” grass and grubs, etc they cannot legally be called organic. Fortunately, Joel Salatin doesn’t care, nor do most of his customers. The fact that his cows and chickens have a much better quality of life – not to mention diet – is more compelling for them than a government stamp.

I think the food chain discussion that I found most interesting though was the hunting / gathering one. I love gathering “free” food – I can remember one summer in North Carolina when I found a blackberry patch of mammoth proportions. I was out every morning, in spite of the heat and bugs and thorns, gathering as many berries as I could get. I even dreamed about berries. That was the year I taught myself to make jam. Last summer I spent a lot of time eating beach peas, fresh from the pod. There’s nothing I love quite so well as gathering. Pollan’s description of mushroom hunting has almost got me wanting to go out try it myself, but I’m still a little scared of making a mistake at that activity and frankly I don’t think many mushrooms grow in the desert!

But it was the discussion of hunting that was most interesting. I long ago decided that though I didn’t think I could bring myself to go out and personally kill an animal, it didn’t make any sense to reject eating game just because someone else had done so. If I was going to eat a cow, why not a deer? After reading this section of the book, I’m actually more positive about hunting now. Not that it’s something I think everyone should do instead of grocery shopping (not sustainable) but because at least a deer has had its time in the forest, following its natural instincts to eat what it’s supposed to eat, and lived a quality deer life – as opposed to a cow that has been fattened in a feedlot eating a diet of corn, animal by-products, and antibiotics (a diet cooked up by scientists to build bulk faster) all consumed while standing in a pond of feces from the hundreds of cows quartered with it. Where’s the quality of life in that scenario?

One of the things I like the best about living in Egypt is that the whole country is like a big farmer’s market. On the whole, the farmers don’t use much if any pesticides because they can’t afford them. Most of the food available is grown within a couple hours drive of Cairo and is transported in small pickup trucks – and in many cases by donkey cart. I buy locally when I can because not only is it fantastic stuff, but it is cheaper than imported produce and also supports the local economy. Long before reading this book, living in Egypt brought to my attention the beauty of eating what’s in season here and now.

Pollan ends his book in the most reasonable of ways – only with the idea that we look and really see where it is our food is coming from, whether it be from the forest or McDonald’s. Does reading this book mean that I’m going to change the way I eat? How could it not? One day I truly hope to have my own vegetable garden. And while I’m not quite prepared to swear off eating a burger once in a while, I am glad that I’m not a daily or even weekly participant in a cycle that demands 400 cows AN HOUR are slaughtered on an assembly line to feed it. And if I ever find myself living within driving distance of an alternative farm such as Polyface, I’ll certainly do my best to support their endeavors.

Dedication to my Daughter

Separation is the last thing I want to think or blog about. Yet it’s been on my mind non-stop since last week, when my daughter kissed me, said, “I love you, Mom,” and announced they are moving away to Virginia. What breaks my heart is that I am going to be separated from my adorable 3 and 5 year-old granddaughters.

Of course my daughter and her husband have the right to move anywhere they want or anyplace that’s convenient to them. He’s been without work since last November and has finally landed a good job.

I wish them well and pray that they will be happy in VA. But how am I going to cope with my little ones moving a thousand miles away?

I know I can rely on my husband, my writing and my wonderful friends. And I will be extremely busy with the promotion of my third book.

BABIES IN THE BARGAIN is a sweet and spicy medical romance that garnered several wins in contests: Launching A Star, The Beacon, Great Expectations; Golden Gateway; Gotcha; Enchanted Words; The Suzannah; Winter Rose; Linda Howard Award of Excellence. The story is based on my daughter’s professional experience. Needless to say, the book is dedicated to her as she read and corrected the medical cases.

My heroine is a pediatrician and a neonatologist finishing her residency and training in a children’s hospital in Washington. Same as my daughter did. And my heroine Holly “coincidentally” shares some of the medical cases and emotional career turmoil that my daughter faced during her tough training. But the coincidental similarities stop here.

My heroine is attracted to a tall, dark and handsome hero (hmm son-in-law is also T, D, and H, pure coincidence again). But my hero is a Puerto Rican doctor and the story is pure fiction.

The story behind BABIES IN THE BARGAIN started on a Christmas Day, a few years ago, when my daughter was still a first year neonatology fellow. She was on-call on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day—as she’d been for the previous three years.

To share the holiday season, we called her and said we were coming to have lunch with her at the cafeteria. My husband and son helped me carry the elaborate home-cooked meal and the wrapped presents. We shared a happy lunch with the guest of honor wearing green scrubs.

Later, she invited us to visit the NICU. We slipped yellow gowns over our clothes and scrubbed before entering the room where five preemies fought for their lives. I approached one of the isolettes and noticed that the preemie wore a dress with Christmas prints. My daughter explained that a nurse sewed the tiny outfits for the babies in residence over the holiday. I realized that the dedication of the NICU personnel, including my daughter, went beyond the performance of a well-done job. They gave a hundred and one percent to the babies they helped save and did it happily. On that Christmas Day, I decided to write a story featuring the wonderful doctors and nurses who treated our loved ones.

BABIES IN THE BARGAIN

With only one year left to complete her medical training in Neonatology, Dr. Holly Collier vows not to let anyone mess up her sacrosanct schedule. Especially not the drop-dead gorgeous Dr. Marc Suarez who broke her heart seven years ago.

When a tragic accident transforms the carefree playboy into a dedicated but novice father to his nephew, Holly gives in to her maternal instincts and turns her structured life upside down for the orphaned preemie. But can she learn to trust Marc again and believe in true love?

Here is a trailer about BABIES IN THE BARGAIN.

The babies are my own grandchildren.

When you watch the trailer, pay attention to the music: Enjoy The Boy.

I personally met the European singer when my next-door neighbor invited my husband and I to meet some friends and have dinner with them. The singer and her husband who is her agent were present. Unfortunately, the lovely young woman fell sick and suffered from bronchitis. We took her to our doctor and bought her medicines. When she recovered, she offered me her album and wrote on the CD, “You saved my life.”

I wish you a happy time as you read the story of Holly Collier, a beautiful and dedicated neonatologist who spends many hours in the hospital NICU, and falls in love with Marc Suarez, the dashing Puerto Rican doctor who shares her journey.

To celebrate the release of BABIES IN THE BARGAIN on July 03, 2009 at the Wild Rose Press, I am running several contests during the month of June on my own blog: www.monarisk.blospot.com

Jenyfer, thank you for inviting me to your beautiful blog.

I’ll be taking the weekend off this week – I have a moose to quilt. But do stop by – author Mona Risk will be here with a preview of her upcoming release BABIES IN THE BARGAIN with The Wild Rose Press, coming July 3rd.

I spent much of my weekend on the floor putting together a zigsaw puzzle of a moose applique wall hanging. Summer Serenity my foot – and my aching back! This pattern was made up by a sadist who is even now laughing her butt off as countless quilters weep in frustration over the gazillion of little jagged pieces she decided to require. True enough, there is a huge map to help with placement – but you can’t see the map once the larger background pieces are down. It truly is a labor of love and a test of patience. But if you (and you know who you are) decide you want a wolf or a bear wall hanging, you’re on your own! [Smooch!]

I stopped in the jewelry store on Friday night after having dinner with some friends. The ring was ready. At first glance it came out much better than I expected. It looked much the same and the quality of the workmanship was pretty good. Except that the stones were wrong. I asked for garnets and they had put in what looked like pink glass. When I questioned it, the shop owner said he’d fix it. But it of course it made me wonder why on earth they hadn’t done it correctly in the first place. Did they think I wouldn’t notice?

One of the major irritations of living in Egypt is always having to be suspicious of every transaction. Egypt is the land of fraud. Someone is always trying to pull a fast one on you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to call my credit card company to okay a transaction because it originated in Egypt. If you live here, it really is worth trying to build a bit of a personal relationship with a shop keeper so that they realize that the potential for repeat business is worth much more than a one time scam. If you are just visiting, view every transaction with suspicion and you can still expect to be ripped off.

The shop owner blamed the factory. He also claimed that we hurt his feelings with our “accusations”. I was left with a bad feeling myself. Was he trying to fool me, or had he too been duped? Thing is though, at the end of the day it is still his responsibility to look at the item before he passes it on to the customer. Because had I not spoken up, I know he would have happily taken my money for garnets and given me pink glass.

I left the ring with him to fix and he told me that when it came back, I could take it to any other jeweler I like to have it checked out. He managed to have it done overnight! When I went back to see it, the ring looked great. But I wasn’t willing to take it at face value (fool me once…) He let me take it with me and I immediately took it to a more upscale jeweler down the street.

The second jeweler couldn’t say whether the stones were real one way or another based just on looking at it. He didn’t have the equipment – or even a jeweler’s loop. So now I get to live with the ring a day or two and see if it turns my finger green. And in the absence of such an obvious sign of trouble, then I get to decide if I want to take that leap of faith and just believe.

(Also, I want my warm and fuzzy feelings about this ring back!)

Last night I had a dream that a giant raven had stolen my cell phone and though I could hear the phone ringing from time to time, I was unable to locate the raven and retrieve my phone. I kind of think that the raven represents the shop keeper and that the phone is my feeling of not getting my message across…

I went this morning to collect some odds and ends from some good friends who are retiring and leaving Egypt for good. We met on a weekend trip we took as part of a tour when we first arrived but our friendship really took root on a different weekend trip the following year. A twelve hour bus trip will either help you create lasting bonds or bring homicidal urges to the surface!

I really really hate saying goodbye to people. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that this morning. But their impending departure made me start thinking about the nature of friendship.

I have one friend from when I was 12 years old, and one more from when I was 14. I have friends who I rarely hear from, but when we are together again we pick up right where we left off and it’s as if we were never apart. I have friends with whom I touch base often but haven’t seen in more than a decade. I even have a few dear online friends I’ve never met in person!

Making friends as an adult isn’t always an easy process. Life becomes busy – you don’t always have the luxury of making friends with those who share your interests so much as those with whom you share an office. Since I have had children, I’ve made friends with the mothers of children my own children are friends with. If I’m lucky, they are people that I will remain friends with even if the kids fall out!

Living abroad puts a new wrinkle on making friends. Often you bond quickly with people because you are both out of your own familiar environment. And I think there is also an unconscious idea that if you like someone you better just get down to business because one or the other of you will leave soon! I’ve made some wonderful friends with people who I might never have met otherwise – some of whom are from my home state! While I love making friends of people from far flung places, it does also increase the chances that once we both leave wherever we are when we meet, that’ll be goodbye forever.

I suppose what it all boils down to is that friendship is precious. I would love to think that I will always have all the friends I hold dear in my life forever, but I know that life is not that way. So instead, I will do my best to appreciate and nurture the ones that I do have and hope that one day our paths will cross again.

If it weren’t for the fact that I was burning bright with a fever last night, no doubt my family would think I was shamming illness just so that I could loll in bed surrounded by books. The books are the only good thing about being bedridden.

I’ve read a number of wonderful books in the last few weeks. The first was TELL ME SOMETHING by Adele Parks, which my husband picked up for me while on a conference in England (along with a huge bar of chocolate and a couple bottles of port) I read TELL ME SOMETHING en route to see my friends in Qatar. I’m glad it was a long book because I had a four hour delay in the airport before we even began our 3 hour flight. I finished it just as we began our descent. I enjoyed the book so much I was almost grateful for the delay so that I could finish it in one sitting. Adele Parks has a marvelous way of painting human emotion and all the messy complications of life – and still comes up with a happy ending.

Bookstores in Cairo leave a lot to be desired. Sometimes I can find things at the local used bookstore, but the new stores? Hit or (mostly) miss. Imagine my surprise when I found that the bookstores in Qatar were actually pretty good! One of the first books I picked up was THIS CHARMING MAN by Marian Keyes. I’m not sure what it is about books set in Ireland but that’s one of many things I love about Marian Keyes’ books. Her depictions of big, noisy, interfering Irish families are wonderfully entertaining, but most of all I love the emotion she puts in the writing. She doesn’t just tell me that something is happy or sad – she makes me laugh and cry. And her books are satisfyingly long. Both Marian Keyes and Adele Parks simultaneously make me wonder why I bother to write at all and also make me want to dissect their books to see what makes them tick.

I’ve also read a number of books by Lisa Kleypas lately – historicals, which was all that was available by her on Ebookwise.com. I read MIDNIGHT ANGEL, ONLY WITH YOUR LOVE, BECAUSE YOU’RE MINE, and PRINCE OF DREAMS. I like Lisa Kleypas, her characters are well drawn and her stories sufficiently complicated that you just get pulled right along, although sometimes it seemed to me that her conclusions are a tad anticlimactic. Still, that didn’t put me off when I found two of her contemporary novels in a bookstore in Qatar – SUGAR DADDY and BLUE-EYED DEVIL. They are both written in first person, which I personally love. I got sucked into these stories so thoroughly that they didn’t last nearly as long as I would have liked. And little did I know that they were related stories – and I read them in reverse order! I think I preferred them that way actually. I’m looking very much forward to getting my hands on SMOOTH TALKING STRANGER. Almost makes me wish I had a Kindle.

I’ve recently discovered the J.D. Robb series with Eve and Roarke. Well, I’ve known they were there for a long time actually. When they first came out I was a bit put off by the futuristic aspect of them. Then I was put off by all the hype about how wonderful they are. I’m perverse that way. I finally gave in though and bought NAKED IN DEATH for my ebook reader. Now I’ve got three more on my reader and two paperbacks on my nightstand. They are wonderful. And the advantage to having waited more than a decade to pick them up is I have a lot of them to read before I get ahead of Nora as she writes them!

My friend loaned me a couple of books while I was visiting. The first was JULIE & JULIA: MY YEAR OF COOKING DANGEROUSLY by Julie Powell, essentially an autobiographical account of one woman’s goal to reclaim her life by cooking her way through all of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child in one year. It was both funny and kind of gross (all the butter, and the maggots) but all in all entertaining. I have to admire her to sticking to it though – and the experience certainly did change the direction of her life.

While I was feverish and nearly delusional, I finished reading THE WIFE: A NOVEL by Meg Wolitzer. The premise was one that sounded appealing, it was written in first person which is a plus to me, and there were observations and details included in the story that I found particularly amusing. Overall though the story fell a little flat for me. It may be unfair of me to critique a book I read while my body was fighting off a vicious virus, but the whole tone of the thing just seemed to be trying a little too hard to be literary to me, not to mention the fact that it ended rather predictably. The fact that the title says “a novel by” was an immediate tip-off. A good friend of mine loves her books so I wouldn’t be opposed to giving another book by her a try when I’m healthier.

Yet to be read: THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL by Elif Shafak, another loaner from my friend in Qatar, a book which caused quite a stir after it was published due to how the author depicted the massacre of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire. I’m guessing that this is a book that will require more attention and thus won’t be one I read as I drift off to sleep at night. It will however make me look rather high-brow when I pull it out of my purse to read on my lunch hour at work!

Also to be read DOES MY HEAD LOOK BIG IN THIS by Randa Abdel-Fattah. I admit it – I bought this book because the cover and title amused me. It’s about an Australian-Palestinian Muslim girl living in a suburb of Melbourne who decides to wear the hijab, the Muslim head scarf, full-time and all of the ramifications of that in a non-Muslim majority society. The reviews on the book as well as on Amazon say its funny. I’ll let you know

So, that’s what’s on my nightstand. What’s on yours? I’ll be needing some recommendations soon!

ETA: Also recently read THE LAST HELLION by Loretta Chase. Loved it – and love the fact that though her male characters are typical alpha males, her heroines give as good as they get. Great dialogue. And I’m happy to see there are several more titles by her that I haven’t yet read – which is the beauty of discovering an author who has been writing for a while!