Jenyfer Matthews

Congratulations Lisa - you’ve won a copy of my book ONE CRAZY SUMMER! Drop me an email and let me know what format you prefer and I’ll get it right out to you.

I made it home without any major mishaps - in fact, it might have been my most uneventful trip yet! In the end I had five LARGE bags, but each only averaged about 40lbs so I was well within my limit. It was an incredibly LONG day since I had to wake up at 4am to catch a 6am flight out of Minnesota to make my way back to JFK. My youngest fell asleep on our direct flight back to Cairo before we ever took off and slept all the way back (hallelujah!) but I don’t sleep well sitting up so I pretty much just sat there and read. I finally read the first “In Death” book by JD Robb. Definitely going to get more of that series.

We arrived back 11am and just…stayed up. The kids were thrilled to catch up with all of their friends and pretty much disappeared for the rest of the day. I wasn’t so ambitious myself, but I did stay up. I finally herded everyone to bed by 9pm and crashed myself at 9:30pm after being up for nearly 24 hours straight.

Today, my task is to put away all of the treasure I hauled home for me. It’s going to take awhile …

My family always knows that summer is coming when the boxes and packages of items I’ve purchased online start to pile up, waiting for me to retrieve them. Shelley Munro had a Thursday Thirteen post this past weekend about shopping. And it got me to thinking that I need to start on my summertime shopping list for when I’m back in the US.

I do my best to make do with what is available locally where ever it is that I am living. And depending on where I’m living that can work better and worse. It was easier in Dubai than it is in Egypt by far! Making do with local products was what prompted me to learn to bake cakes from scratch when mixes were outrageously expensive or just not available and had me trying food I might not otherwise ever have eaten. But there are certain products that I just need on hand and when a large can of Bush’s baked beans costs $10 and a bottle of McCormick’s Pure Vanilla extract and a canister of Hershey’s cocoa go for $20 each (when you can find them at all!), you can see why I max out my luggage allowance on the way home.

I have a friend who says she goes to the Omaha Steak store and packs coolers with frozen meat to bring back with her. Another friend admits to bringing back bags full of bacon. I’m not quite that ambitious and try to restrict my groceries to specialty / long-lived / dry goods, but I do have a growing shopping list.

My shopping list, in no particular order, so far:

Quilting supplies - good cotton fabric is hard to find and that goes for thread as well. Ironically, Egypt exports most of its cotton to other countries for processing. I bought a piece of white cotton on my last trip to Dubai that was marked “Egyptian Cotton, Made in Japan”. There is no batting available locally at all. I usually have one very large, very light bag packed full of batting! I weight the bottom of the bag down with the next item on my list…

Kids shoes - because the shoes in Egypt are either 1) crap or 2) $$$ . My children are both very sporty and it’s getting to the point where one pair of cross trainers isn’t good enough. They need to specialize! I’ll have to look for all purpose sport shoes for school, soccer cleats, and a smoother bottom shoe for playing tennis on a clay court. (I am hoping for athletic scholarships but I may have spent as much on their shoes and equipment as I would have on tuition at the end of the day!)

Mom’s shoes - because a girl can never have too many pretty shoes

Baking powder - it’s available locally but is sold in teaspoon sized packets!

Baking soda - again, available locally in tiny cans for about $1.50 each. I can buy a detergent sized box in the US for not much more!

Vanilla extract- see above

Ground flaxseed - a wonderful way to pack a few extra vitamins into banana bread, pancakes, etc. Not so easy to find hippy freak food in Cairo.

Cookie sheets and baking trays - $20 is more than I want to pay for a cake pan so I’m holding out for a trip to Walmart!

Food coloring, cake decorating supplies - generally hard to find!

(There seems to be a definite baking theme emerging here!)

Wild rice - so yummy and since I’ll be in Minnesota anyway…

Canned pumpkin - $5/can in Cairo and only available around the holidays

Spices - certain spices are hard to find or aren’t exactly what you expect. “Chili powder” here is actually pure red pepper!

Duct tape - you know, I never really used it when I was living in the US, but it was sort of comforting to know I could get it if I wanted it. I imagine I could practically trade it on the black market here, land where things are repaired and repaired and repaired again.

Christmas presents - if I can leave the children with my mother for an hour or so, I’ll buy a few things for their Christmas stockings that I would NEVER find in Egypt.

That’s what I’ve come up with so far but I’m sure there will be more in my bags at the end of my stay. There are no doubt many wonderful little gadgets in the baking / cooking aisles at Walmart that I’ve not dreamed of. The quantity and variety of items available in the US can be a little overwhelming when you’ve been away from it for a time!

I’m looking forward to being overwhelmed

I went swimming yesterday and on my way out of the door I grabbed a notebook and a pen. My mind will often start to compose paragraphs while I’m walking but by the time I get home again they have either vanished into the ether or I’ve lost my mood.

I arrived at the pool a few minutes early so I got out my notebook and started to jot down the first part of the synopsis for my current WIP. And once I started, I kept going. I wrote about half of it, went for my swim, then came out and wrote the rest. It’s rough, but I’m thrilled. I typed it up when I got home and it’s nearly three pages single spaced. With some polishing I think it might just work.

I’m in the process of planning my summer vacation. Only my vacation isn’t really an escape into a world of relaxation and pleasure. There is a lot of planning and aggravation that comes before I get to the good part - seeing family and friends. I’ve got my ticket purchased and now I have to book a couple of nights in a hotel near JFK on either end of my stay.

It’s not going well.

I don’t need anything fancy. Just a safe, clean place to take the children for a night, preferably some place with a restaurant on site or next door. Every time I think I’ve found something I see some review horror story. Does anyone have any recommendations for me? I’m all ears!

Don’t forget to drop by over the weekend. Historical romance author and writing instructor Barbara Miller is going to be here talking about the art of mastering POV (point of view).

I may have started out traveling light but I didn’t come home that way. All the summer sales were just too tempting and my children were showered with gifts everywhere they went. The children and I were entitled to two bags of 50 lbs each for a grand total of six bags and 300 lbs – not including carry-ons. I checked five bags that weighed a total of 180 lbs. I was quite proud of my packing since the largest of my bags was 50 lbs on the dot and any overage would have cost me US$50 excess baggage fee for every bag over the limit – or caused me a mad scramble of rearranging contents in the airport.

(I have since learned that my husband’s employer would have reimbursed us for excess baggage charges - within reason - but I’d have had to have more than two hands or at least another adult traveling with me to handle any more!!!)

I did have to empty the contents of one of my carry-on bags at the security desk however. It’s funny what will spark their interest. The security inspector requested that I not reach for the bag once he started to remove items. I asked him what he was looking for and he said “cups”. I was momentarily stumped – and distracted as I tried to put my shoes back on and the shoes of the children while simultaneously tucking my laptop and video camera back in their respective places. Cups? I had empty water bottles in their bags. Nope, he was looking for cups.

Suddenly the penny dropped - he was looking for a couple of ceramic mugs I had tucked at the very bottom of my daughter’s carry-on bag. Apparently it wasn’t the mugs themselves that attracted interest but the items I had packed inside the mugs – two stone topped cork wine stoppers. I suppose they looked pointy in the x-ray and he thought they were possibly knives. I guess it was a good call to pack the deer antlers sheds my father found in the woods and gave the children in our checked baggage!

All that was after we’d nearly scared him to death. If you really want to get a security inspector’s attention pack a rubbery life like lizard in the top of your carry on. The big man shrieked like a girl when his hand came in contact with it.

I have to admit I didn’t get into Amsterdam on my way back through - in spite of a 10 hour gap. I was just too tired and brain dead after the previous 12 hours getting there. I regret it now, the time would have passed much faster than it did if I had been able to do it. Instead, I found a quiet corner and passed in and out of consciousness laying face down on a table while my children ran up and down and shrieked. I’m sure that people were shooting me dirty looks but that’s the advantage of laying face down - you can’t see them.

I’m currently suffering from some pretty bad jet lag. I feel okay during the day, I fall asleep at a reasonable time in the evening, but then I wake up at 2am and lay awake for 3 or 4 hours. Just how long I can function normally during the day when I’m up most of the night as well is a mystery. The kids start school tomorrow - maybe I can nap while they are away.

Next time: pictures from my trip.

A bus trip.

Since I don’t have much to tell you about how productive I was in my writing while I was on vacation (I wasn’t) I think I’ll tell you about how I spent my summer vacation instead. I felt so cut off from everyone for so long I may babble a bit so bear with me. And I’m going to start with the last part first because it is freshest in my mind.

I left the north woods yesterday to begin my whole journey in reverse. I checked my email before we left the house just to see if there was anything I needed to know about changes to my itinerary. Nope. Nothing. So we started out on our three hour drive to the airport.

It was gray and drizzly - the first time in the twenty days I was in the area that it rained at all - but nothing alarming. It wasn’t until we were halfway there and my uncle managed to get a message to us on the vehicle’s “On Star” satellite phone system that I had any inkling of the trouble ahead of me: my flight had been cancelled. You know how it is to try and call anyone at an airline these days - we decided just to continue on to the airport and see what was what once we got there.

It wasn’t even raining at the airport, just a bit of fog, but all flights had been cancelled. Instead of the 45 minute hop I had been expecting, they put us on a bus for two hours to get us to Minneapolis where we could make our connections. Not exactly what I had paid for or longed to do after having been in a car for three hours already, but progress is progress.

We arrived in Minneapolis with enough time to get checked-in, through the LONG security line (where my new laptop was swabbed and inspected) and get a little take-out for me and the kids before we boarded our next plane. Then we sat in the plane on the tarmac for an hour while President Bush’s plane landed and he cleared the airport. He was there to inspect the recently collapsed bridge. I understand all about the need for security but the hour delay in our takeoff gave me all of 10 minutes to make my connection in Memphis.

If you were in the Memphis airport yesterday evening, I was the blonde running through the B concourse from one end to the other pursued by two small children. Amazingly enough, not only did we make the plane but so did our luggage! Is that lucky or what?

It wasn’t until this morning that I got the emails from the airline and my FIL telling me that my whole itinerary had been cancelled and rescheduled for today. No one mentioned it at the airport. Guess it just goes to show that their schedules are just a bit more fluid than they might let you think.

I arrived exhausted and wired at the same time.

I have a day of downtime before I start on part two of my journey back to Cairo. Another three legs. Can’t wait to see what happens next.

You don’t really realize how dependent you are on technology until you spend part of your vacation in a house in the woods with only the most primitive dial-up connection to the rest of the world. I’m having withdrawal symptoms.

So, I won’t be around much for the next couple of weeks while I commune with nature, but thankfully I’ll be back in time for the release of ONE CRAZY SUMMER in Sept. There’s still time to enter my contest to win your own copy. Just visit my webpage at http://www.jenyfermatthews.com for more details.

Have a great August!!

I’m happy to report that my flights home went well - no delays to speak of and no lost luggage. Our longest flight (9 hours) had the regular crew of flight attendants plus a bunch in training so we had much better service than I’m used to which helped as well. Still, nearly 27 hours of traveling with no sleep is not much fun, no matter how perky and attentive the service. They really can’t give you enough roasted almonds and wine to make it truly pleasant.

I said I planned to pop in to Amsterdam for a look around during my layover and I’m proud to say I did it. Proud? Why? I’m not quite as adventurous as I might seem on the surface, for all of my traveling. And I have a fear of public transportation.

Does that sound strange? I’m an American and used to getting around independently in my own car. I used to take the train to work in Cleveland years ago but I bought a monthly pass I flashed as I went and there were only three lines, color coded. A no brainer. Even the train in Cairo is pretty simple.

In Europe public transportation is much more developed. You can get just about anywhere on a bus or a train. So think about it: more stops and destinations mean many many more routes to navigate. They try to make it efficient by selling the tickets from vending machines but when you aren’t familiar with the system it just makes for one more challenge. Trying to figure out how to purchase a ticket to the destination you want from a vending machine with foreign money when the instructions are in Dutch and so are all the signs is no cake walk. But my main worry stems from how more more quickly and efficiently you can get lost if you are on a train / bus than if you are on foot.

But I didn’t let myself off the hook. (I told you I was dedicated to my research) I was pretty disgusted with myself for even thinking of chickening out. One of my new resolutions is not to be such a ninny about stuff like this and to do more things to seize opportunities to enjoy life as it comes. The kids and I were awake, we had loads of time and it wasn’t raining so I had no real reason to NOT go. It was either go into town or follow the kids as they played on the moving walkways in the airport. For five hours.

So I went.

I stowed my luggage in a locker in the airport, found a ticket office with a person to talk to, and ventured out into the larger world of Amsterdam on the train. The kids and I didn’t go so far - they were cold in the 70F cloudy damp weather after coming from Cairo! - but we had time to walk around a bit and had breakfast before we headed back to the airport. The signs in the airport were mostly in Dutch and English. Not so in the city. However even I can follow little pictures of an airplane. And all the people getting on the train with luggage was another clue.

I really enjoyed my short glimpse of Amsterdam and may do it again on the way back through in August (weather permitting - it did rain after we returned to the airport) But next time maybe I’ll bring jackets for the kids and a map.

I went to the doctor a few days ago and was cleared for take off. My pox have been healing top down so my face looks pretty decent now, but I won’t want to wear a bathing suit for at least another week. I had no problem resisting scratching but picking at the scabs is another story. I want them gone. NOW.

You’d think that packing up for a six week vacation with two kids would be difficult. Not so much. Passports - check. Tickets - check. American money - check. Over the years I’ve learned my lesson - go with empty, nested suitcases and fill them with the gifts the kids receive and all the shopping I will do. (Check)

But being on vacation does not mean I won’t do some writing work. In fact, I intend to do some research for my newest project (as yet to be named). My character Aurora is going to do a lot of traveling, first stop: Amsterdam. It just so happens that I have a SEVEN HOUR gap in Amsterdam, going and coming back again. What better way to do research than to hop on the subway into the city after a nearly sleepless night with two tired children and drag them around with me while I absorb the atmosphere of the neighborhood?

And you thought I wasn’t dedicated to my craft.

Anyone who knows me realizes that I love verbal irony and employ sarcasm more than is probably really necessary in civilized conversation. I love ironic situations - not so long ago I posted a picture of a tiny litter can that was recently installed on a corner in my neighborhood where piles of trash are dumped every day in my Squash Blossom blog. The litter can is often empty while trash is heaped high on the ground beneath it.

I also appreciate irony in literature or movies. I love when a couple discovers the depth of their love by the sacrifices they each make for the other, such as in The Gift of the Maji or Romeo and Juliet. And it was ironic when after spending all that time and energy battling the fish in The Old Man and the Sea, when the Santiago finally subdued the fish and brought it to shore it had been consumed en route by sharks.

Turns out I don’t appreciate irony so much in real life however.

It’s a fine example of cosmic irony that I have managed to avoid contracting chicken pox for my entire life and come down with it this week, days before I am due to leave on my summer holiday — when I was planning on finally getting a vaccination. Sitting here itchy, alone and frustrated I fail to find any real amusement or satisfaction in the situation, ironic or not.

Just goes to show what procrastinating gets you.

I am grounded by my doctor and the airline for at least a week and have been told that I cannot circulate in the world (think Typhoid Mary) or eat chocolate or strawberries because they will inflame the itchiness. This goes beyond just simply irony and verges on cruel.

But I suppose I’m not the only one who’s ever discovered that irony isn’t always amusing.

Time is passing. Tomorrow is the last day of school for my daughter, Wednesday for my son. After that there is only a week left until my six week vacation. Three weeks with my mother, three weeks with my father. I’m the adult child of divorced parents with children of my own and they are still sharing custody. It’s not so bad though - at least I get a change of scene. From the hot steamy South to the woods of the Boundary Waters and all the airports in between. Talk about one crazy summer.

I haven’t done much writing in the last week (blogging aside) I’ve been trying to finish up a few sewing projects before I go away. But Aurora has been chatting away inside my head, eager to get started. I’ve shown what I have so far to some trusted friends and I think Aurora is going to get her way and tell her story herself. I’m a bit of a control freak so I’m not sure how the first person thing is going to work out, but we’ll give it a go and see how we work together.

I hope you’re all checking into the contest for ONE CRAZY SUMMER. I went shopping yesterday to gather up some gifts to take home as well as the contest prize. There might even be some bonus items in the mix. I’m not giving any hints though. You’ll just have to take your chances on the contest.