This will be my last blog post until next year...

Now you know why no one ever finds gold at the end of the rainbow...and lives...

Have a marvelous New Year, and I wish everyone happiness and health.  I will be too busy working on my wips to continue to fruitlessly post to this blog, since only about three of my friends drop by the read it...so if I don't post much for awhile, it isn't necessarily because I am dead.  But it might be, so if I don't post for a whole year, you will know I am dead.

Hugs...

Fran 

Happy Apocalypse...and winter solstice...

I was thinking that maybe I would stay in bed today...

But I figured if the world was going to end, I might as well try to get my house cleaned up a bit...you know...just in case I had visitors drop by.  Then I realized that Christmas was only a little over three days away, and I wrapped more of the little gifts I had for kids and friends.

Here it is...13 minutes past time for the apocalypse...and I am still alive, as is much of the rest of humanity. I am relieved that I get to enjoy another Christmas, and see my friends for another few years.  And I pray that the word "apocalypse" holds true to its meaning...

The word in Greek means that we are entering a time of greater knowledge that was hidden from us by those who wished to dominate humanity through falsehood and deceit.  It is a lifting of the veil that hides enlightenment...and we will now see things clearly in the light of truth.  The gospels of John stated that the apocalypse would  mean the ultimate victory of Good over Evil...the end of the present age and the entry into an enlightened age where we would see the wonders of God and understand that we have a higher purpose.

I certainly hope so...because I was getting pretty tired of having to deal with lies and hate and ugliness.  So I will make this Christmas and the new year coming something special...opening my heart and mind and doing all I can to help others do so, as well.

I look forward to a longer bit of daylight tomorrow...and a clearer sky with more stars....

Happy Solstice...

Hugs and much lo ve...

Fran Lee

Okay...time to get back to work...

I have a dozen wips but not a single one ready to go!

Time to start sitting down and getting to work.  The virus that caught up to me is almost gone...I feel human again...and now I need to feel good about writing once more.  Trouble is, I have SO many wips in the works, I can't decide which one to work on.  Sigh.

I am playing Christmas carols on my car stereo...but no Christmas tree up yet.  What a mess.  Trying to figure out what to do for special people this year. And SO not ready for the holiday.  Usually I'm rarin' to go, but this one is a bit of a slow start.

Think I'll pull out all of my Harry Potter Movies and watch them again.

Think I'll heat up some apple cider and drop a cinnamon stick in.

 Or maybe I'll just go back to bed...which where I have spent that first week of December after catching a virus from my grandson...yawn...

The only thing that makes me get well is sleep.

Will get back to you when I figure out which wip to start on...hugs!

Fran  

Happy Thanksgiving!

I feel lazy today, but I have things to do and places to be...

So it's time for me to get off this computer and fix the frog-eye salad and the ham. But before I do, I want to ask you what YOUR favorite Thanksgiving dishes are. Do you love the old faithful turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce? Or do you go for Ham and mashed? I have switched back and forth several times, to voluble complaints from those who wanted one or the other. So now I fix both ham and turkey, and let them choose their meal.

Because my house is too small to hold so many people, we have dinner at my son's home. I left the 10-pound turkey breast with my son last night, along with the taters and the big crescent rolls and the Martinelli's Sparkling Cider (I don't buy wine anymore because it makes the gathering shaky at best) and I will heat the spiral sliced ham and make the dressing, the frog-eye salad, and the candied yams. They love my recipe for the salad, dressing and yams.

I watched my mom slave over those damn yams year after year, and I detested them. Cooking great big huge yams from scratch was a total pain. You could never get the stringy things out of them. And using brown sugar is great, but brown sugar and marshmallows don't give the deepest flavor. Yep, they are sweet, but something was always "missing".

So I decided to experiment. Why spend three hours boiling, baking, or steaming those yams when there are some wonderful canned sweet potatoes available in the store?  I buy a couple of large cans, drain them, and arrange them in the bottom of a glass casserole dish. Then I dot butter over the surface and add light brown sugar to cover the yams. I sprinkle walnut halves over that, then cover the whole thing with tiny marshmallows. Then I drizzle heavy cream over the top (not a lot, because it makes the yams too wet).

Pop into the microwave (or oven if you have time) until the goo on top is melty and bubbly. Then allow to cool on the table before spooning out. The yams will be resting in a nice golden caramel cream sauce and the nuts add warmth and crunch. As the sauce cools it thickens up.

And my dressing is never made in the bird anymore. I use the turkey drippings and chicken base and I use cornbread mixed with the traditional crouton type stuffing pieces. I saute finely chopped onions with finely chopped fresh celery, using one full cube of real butter. I add the poultry stock and stir, then add a cup of slivered almonds. I add sage and seasonings to taste, then I pour the stock mixture over the bread crumbs. I mix by hand until it is well soaked, and then I spoon the dressing into a baking bag, and pop it into the oven for about two hours (or the microwave for about 18 minutes).

Another thing I sometimes add to the dressing before baking is sliced mushroom caps. I buy the small ones. The kids don't like those as much as the nuts, so I often split a batch.

Hope your Thanksgiving is good.  Let me know what your favorite recipes are.

Hugs!

Fran

What are your holiday traditions?

When I think of the winter holidays, I think of the origins of the Holy Days...

I think of Angels and creches and friends and family. Well...the angel above is not quite the angel that I usually think of for the holidays, but let's just say I am thankful that I still have a healthy libido.

I love the holidays of the year, including birthdays, because birthdays, after all, are the most personal of holidays. 

I love the end of year holidays the most because they reflect on the beauty of life and the return of light to a darkening world. While the end of the year signals the shortest amount of daylight and the longest nights, it encourages us to reflect on the warmth of a crackling fire...the beauty of a snowy night with the moon brightening the landscape...the sound of carols and the beauty of stars glittering in clean, cold, windswept skies.

Halloween is the first of the year-end holidays. The time of the year when heaven (and hell) are closest to our plane of existence. Traditionally the night of the dead, when spirits seeking solace (or mayhem) return to earth to attempt to contact those who live on in abandon, unaware of the closeness of the other worlds. Modern humans follow ancient traditions without the foggiest notion of what they are commemorating. 

Humans have long associated darkness with evil. Samhain was the traditional beginning of the "dark" months of the year. Samhain is a Druidic/Celtic observance that has far more meaning than our modern Halloween. However, All Hallow's Eve (the Christian All Souls Day) blended seamlessly into the Christian All-Saint's Day, when the faithful departed who had reached Heaven were asked to pray for the souls of those who didn't quite make it to Heaven, and those who remain locked to the earth until the end of life.

Today I am talking about Halloween. 

When I was a child, we trick or treated everywhere without adult supervision. People broke full candy bars into pieces and we gobbled them as we walked. We got so sick on candy we threw up by the time we got home. Mom threw away most of the rest, except for the pieces she ate herself. We got popcorn balls, candied apples, and coconut marshmallows. Nobody worried about any of the stuff being tampered with.

When my kids were little, I helped them get ready for trick or treating by helping them with garish, scary disguises and ghoulish makeup. I dutifully ordered them not to eat any candy that was not securely wrapped. No popcorn balls or candied apples. I also warned them not to eat any of the fruit until I had inspected it. I sent one of the adults in the family around with the kids to make sure they were safe in their travels. And when they got home, we divvied up the candy to make certain it was safe to consume. A lot of it got trashed.

As the candy-giver at home, I always bought candy that could not easily be adulterated with cyanide or needles. I gave out wrapped Tootsie Pops, taffy in wrappers, Bottle Caps, Twizzlers in cellophane, etc.  And I told the children who came trick or treating stories about the old fashioned Halloween celebrations where people didn't go treat or treating, but had big parties where everyone was safe and drank cider and bobbed for apples. I told them that the costumes they love to wear were derived from older traditions. And every year, fewer kids would come to my door. 

I guess the story got around that they would have to learn something before they got that little piece of candy. LOL!

How do you celebrate Halloween?

Thanksgiving is coming up next.  Be prepared.

Fran

http://www.franleeromance.com

The year end holidays are rushing upon us...are YOU ready?

Many people feel pressured into jumping into the holidays headfirst...

Christmas ads and store promos start the minute Halloween is over, and they continue until New Year's Day. Some of us tend to feel sorta like this poor little treed cat...stuck in the Christmas rush and unable to get back out. But I tend to ignore the invitations to shop 'til I drop, and get into the spirit of the season.

The WalMart I shop at had its Tree and Ornament department up and running in mid-October.  I went in yesterday and found a sparse Thanksgiving aisle next to the 80% off Halloween aisle. Since I don't "do" Halloween (having no small kids to buy for) I picked up a couple of nice things from the Thanksgiving display, and continued my shopping.

Once my kids were old enough to understand that Christmas was a commemoration of Jesus' birth instead of Santa's run around the world, I became quite eclectic in my holiday traditions. I have friends who celebrate year-end holidays in different ways, and I simply adjusted my holiday decor to include the wonderful myriad of traditions I saw when I visited their homes.

Even Thanksgiving changed for me, since I tossed out many of the traditional concepts of Thanksgiving and exchanged them for more realistic stuff. I grew up around Native Americans, and listened to their stories and legends. My 4th grade teacher was a beautiful lady whose lineage included Onandaga and Seneca. She read us wonderful stories about Native American mythology and real NA people like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and Chief Joseph.

She also talked about the "first Thanksgiving", and how the "story" has evolved over the centuries. A day of thanksgiving was common in the colonies, and often was to give thanks for a good harvest or for winning battles. The particular thanksgiving that is interlaced into our legends and stories appears to be the specific one in Plymouth Colony in 1621. It stood out from the others because it was a "shared" feast.

The Plymouth colonists had just enjoyed their first successful harvest in the new world. They had harvested the crops they had planted. As they prepared a feast to give thanks for their good crops, they received an unexpected visit from the the great Sachem Massasoit. Massasoit had walked for two days with his wife and 90 of his warriors to visit the colonists and the tribe provided wild turkey, squash and bushels of corn. The Wampanoag hunted so that the colonists had enough wild game for their feast, so the colonists decided to invite them to share the feast.

My grandkids were told the story a bit differently. Namely, the starving Indians needed help so the magnanimous colonists gave them food.

No matter how it came about, it would not have been such a great harvest had the colonists not learned how to fertilize their crops and plant different vegetables from the thankfully friendly tribes they found in their new homes.

When I was a kid, we always had a huge turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, celery sticks filled with soft cheese or peanut butter, all kinds of veggies, fruit salads, green salads, and then pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream. And everyone ate waaay too much. The turkey coma kicked in, and everyone just sat around gabbing for a couple of hours, then went back to the table and ate some more. 

The food was ready at about 2:00 in the afternoon, and sat out on the table for the rest of the day. I know that I got pretty sick after the third time to the table...because no one seemed to understand that leaving warm food out for that length of time often gave kids or old folks food poisoning.

So, after I grew up and had my own thanksgiving dinners, I changed the status quo...dinner was set on the table at the normal dinner time, we ate, and then I would immediately start to pack the warm food into baggies or Tupperware or old cottage cheese containers and put it away in the fridge. If anyone wanted more, they had to get it out and eat it cold, or heat it up again.  There has not been a single case of food poisoning in my house since I started doing that.

Also, I changed the whole ball game when I decided to make homemade Tex-mex enchiladas for Thanksgiving one year. It was great! We ate everything...no leftovers. 

So what are your Thanksgiving traditions? Your favorite Thanksgiving dishes? Tell me what your favorite menu is for Thanksgiving...and what holiday traditions are all yours?

Hugs!

Fran

I genuinely believe I have given up flying forever...

I will take "alternate" transportation from now on...

This Romanticon was the first time I have ever flown Frontier Airlines...and the first time in over 20 airplane trips that I have had nearly more trouble than the plane trip was worth. My trip had been planned since July. Reservations made. Hotel all set up. Electronic tickets...the works. In all the times I have flown before, the planes have been on time...the connecting flights have been on time...and the whole ball of wax.

I should have realized that things would go haywire when we were informed that the plane that I expected to fly out to Denver on was nearly an hour late. Because they had to switch planes in Seattle. Because of mechanical problems.  But it would be just fine, they said, "because the connecting flight I was to catch in Denver would be an hour and a half late." Because they had to switch out planes. Because of mechanical problems.

That made me feel safe and secure as all git out. 

Well, That put me two and a half hours behind schedule to catch the last hotel shuttle from the airport to the McKinley Grand Hotel, which was a free service. The result? I had to find a cab at 1:45 a.m. and pay $70.00 to get myself to the hotel. Instead of getting a good eight hours of sleep before having to get up and start motivating, I got exactly three.

Dragging my fanny out of bed and crawling downstairs to breakfast was a real joy. Ahhhh...the free breakfast buffet. I was hungry enough to eat a cardboard horse that morning, so it tasted fantastic.  Of course, nobody told me that I could order anything off the hotel breakfast menu that I wanted (for free) so I settled for the reconstituted scrambled eggs and hashbrowns, some cut up cantaloupe and tons of crisp bacon or sausage every morning. When I could have had eggs benedict...or waffles...or....sigh.

LOL! I guess I should have asked, right? No big deal, because it was free food and I was on a budget (especially after that $70 taxi ride). Besides...I'm used to my own cooking, and can't say that I'm a gourmet chef.

The hotel was great...the convention was fabulous. A wonderful time was had by all. I hated to leave. Then I took the free hotel shuttle back to the airport...only to find that my plane was late.  Because they had to switch out the planes. Because of mechanical problems.

Sigh.

Because my connecting flight in Denver would be taking off about an hour BEFORE my delayed flight would land, they scrambled to find me another flight from Denver to Utah. They got me on a United Airlines flight that was to leave Denver at 10:05 p.m....making it necessary to call my son to pick me up four hours later than I had asked at first. So I looked at the scrolling flight boards in Denver to find my flight out, and it said that flight 6314 would leave from gate 33A at exactly 10:05 p.m.

YAY!  I had time to get a bite to eat and I found a McDonald's about one football field away from gate 33A and had a leisurely meal. After gobbling my meal and dragging my 70 pounds of carry-on luggage back to gate 33A, figuring that I would relax until the flight boarded at 9:39 p.m., I opened a book and read for a couple of hours.  After a while I began to notice that there was no one joining me for the next flight from gate 33A, and the scrolling sign over the podium said "Montreal 11:15 p.m."

Ummmm...

So I got up and walked over (dragging my friggin' two-ton luggage filled with books and junk from the convention) and found a gate attendant and asked if I was in the right place for flight 6314 to SLC. She hit a few dozen keys and replied laconically, "You are at the wrong gate. Flight 6314 has been changed...uh-huh...because we had to switch out the plane." Because of mechanical problems. Uh-huh. So where was I suppose to be to catch flight 6314 now? Ummm...where the hell is gate 90B? Ummm...whatdya mean, it's about five miles that-a-way?

 Thank God there were four people movers that covered 40 of the gates in between...but that left this tired, frustrated, old lady humping her five-ton luggage through two full concourses, over the river and through the woods, down to another level, then back up and back down again. I finally sank into a chair at gate 85A because I was about to fall on my face. (The altitude change from 1100 feet to 5600 feet didn't help my blood pressure).

After huffing and puffing until my heart rate lowered to a safe 120 bpm, and getting my second wind, I crawled out of that lovely chair and managed to drag the ten-ton luggage to gate 90A, where I collapsed and waited anxiously for them to announce that my gate had been changed back to 33B!

Then came the ominous announcement that they were asking for "volunteers" to take a flight the following morning because the smaller plane was seriously oversold...no friggin' way! I am here...you WILL take me home TONIGHT!!!

I was fully ready to fight my way into the damn plane if need be, and didn't mind one damn bit having to check my carry on bag at the gate because the overhead area was "too small" for roll alongs. I was finally on the plane...the oversold one...when a commotion broke out at the front. There was a slightly over-Xantaxed passenger who was talking too loudly about the last time she flew and how she had started screaming "OH GOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!"

The flight attendants asked her take a later flight that wasn't so crowded, and her two adult kids (who shared my three-seat row) decided they would not fly out without Mom.  So I was able to stretch out over three seats and watch a free in-flight movie because...uh huh...the flight was so late.

So next year I believe I will drive...or take a train...or maybe catch a ride on Shadowfax. Any of those options seems to be better than flying the friendly skies.  

Tell me...have you ever had this type of travel nightmares?  Please share.

Hugs!

Fran

http://www.franleeromance.com