Mayhem in the Midlands and Panel Assignments

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Hubby and I have attended Mayhem in the Midlands every year but one–the very first and I hadn’t heard about it. Since we’ve been going, we’ve fallen in love with Omaha. The restaurants are wonderful, and our favorite is the Persian Restaurant. The owner always recognizes us and greets us with “California” and a big hug and a kiss for me. There are so many great restaurants we try to make our rounds.

Another plus is the people we’ve met who are regulars like us. Many of them are authors, but we’ve also got fans we’re anxious to see again. Actually attending Mayhem is a bit like going to a family reunion.

Before the panel assignments, I got an email from one of the committee asking if my hubby would be willing to be on the Spouse Panel which is more or less the spouses telling what its like to be married to an author. Hubby was on one once before with Wm. Kent Krueger’s wife and Jan Burke’s husband. It was hilarious.

On Friday at 9 a.m. (some people hate this time slot but I like it because my brain works better in the morning) I’ll be on a panel called “Not Just a Royalty Check: What you need to know about being published.” Should be interesting. Everyone on the panel is with a small, independent publisher.

Having said I like morning panels best, I also have one at 3 on Friday. (Not too bad, I’ll have had time to go to lunch somewhere wonderful). This one is called “Off the Beaten Path: Exotic locales and cultures.” I do write about Native Americans which could fit the culture part, but neither the mountains of the Southern Sierra nor a small beach town fit exotic locales. But I won’t have any trouble figuring out something to say. Usually what someone else says triggers an idea.

And last but not least, on Saturday at 10:30 (another good time) I’ll be moderating a panel on “Causes and Casualties: Issue-driven fiction.” One of the panelists is Radine Trees Nehring, one of the authors I’m looking forward to spending time with, and I’ve read her books. She writes about places in Arkansas. I haven’t read the other two panelists so I’ve ordered their books in order to ask some intelligent questions.

Another thing hubby and I like about Omaha is the most wonderful zoo. We are arriving on Wednesday night so if the weather cooperates we’ll go to the zoo Thursday morning before things get started that evening.

Years ago, before I’d ever been to Omaha, at a Bouchercon, I met Kate Birkel of the Mystery Bookstore in Omaha. She told me if I ever came to Omaha she’d give me the best booksigning I’d ever had. Foolishly I told her I’d never be going to Omaha. Ha ha, little did I know.

The very first Epicon was held in Omaha, after I signed up I contacted Kate and asked if she could arrange a signing for me on a free evening we were at the conference, she did, and believe me, it was definitely the best book signing I’d ever had, before or since. And that’s when we first fell in love with Omaha.

Marilyn
a.k.a. F. M. Meredith

As Bees in Honey Drown

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On Saturday, the family traveled in a driving rainstorm to Philadelphia to see As Bees in Honey Drown. Our daughter was the director. Proud Mama that I am, give me a moment to kvell. The play was marvelous; the casting sublime; the costumes, set design, music, in fact, all the artistic decisions were creative, brilliant, and so clever that Steven Spielberg might want to put my daughter on speed dial. In other words, the afternoon was a clear the bases hit.

Beyond all questions of maternal pride, the play was also thought-provoking. It asked: what would you do for fame and fortune? How much of yourself would you sell in exchange for at least fifteen minutes, if not more, of fame? The protagonist is a newly-published author. Hmmm, that sounds familiar. His book has gotten good reviews – but the financial payoff has been minimal. Hmmmm, also sounds familiar. (Brief BSP interruption – have you seen the review of Murder Takes the Cake in the Midwest Book Review????!!!!)

Okay, back to the discussion.

We first meet Evan Wyler (a pen name – hmmm), at a photo shoot where he is directed to take off his shirt – so he’ll appear “hot.” Hmmm, okay, not so familiar. I think it’s safe to say that neither half of Evelyn David has been asked to look “hot” for a promo shot…but you get the idea. Evan wants to wear a v-neck sweater leaning on a pile of books by Proust; the photographer knows that sex sells.

The plot, alternately serious and hilarious, follows Evan’s adventures and misadventures as big bucks are dangled in front of him at the cost of his sense of self and personal ethics. He whines that despite spending nine years writing his well-received novel, he still scrambles to pay the rent each month. Offered the opportunity to write a movie of Alexa Vere de Vere’s life for $1,000 a week, he’s eager to sign on despite the fact that he knows immediately that at least part of the tale she is spinning is an outrageous lie. Hollywood beckons.

So would I sell out for fame and fortune? Um, yes, faster than a New York minute.

No, no – I didn’t mean that. Sure the money was momentarily blinding; the photo spread I envisioned in People Magazine was tempting (tops on, of course). But I’d like to think I recognize what’s important in life and the inevitable cost when you trade ethics for dollars or power or even that photo shoot in People.

There’s always a fine line between promotion and selling-out. For that matter, there’s a fine line between promotion and boring people to death as you try to publicize your book. But as both halves of Evelyn David gear up for marketing Murder Takes the Cake, we’ll keep As Bees in Honey Drown in mind (and our tops on!).

Evelyn David

A Kiss is Still a Kiss

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by Ellen Byerrum

First, I’d like to thank the Stiletto Gang for having me over today. It is a real pleasure to say hello and talk about what’s been going on in my neck of the woods. Happily, those woods are looking pretty good these days.

The prettiest and most romantic time for Washington, D.C., is spring when she puts on frills—first come the blossoming Bradford pears, the magnolias and cherry trees, the daffodils and tulips. They are followed by dogwoods and azaleas and roses. The extravaganza of color complements the white marble of memorials and shows off the softer side of the Nation’s Capital.

Two weeks ago, as the cherry blossoms were just beginning to bloom, a film crew was in Washington, shooting exteriors for Lifetime Television movies based on two of my books, Killer Hair and Hostile Makeover. The principal filming took place in Vancouver, Canada.

Of course I took time off my regular job and was able to observe a day of shooting on the city’s streets. It was a rare opportunity to see how the characters that I created will be translated to film. The memories that linger include the bitter cold but bright blue day and the actors playing out scenes that seemed to consist of a lot of kissing.

The comely couple playing Vic Donovan and Lacey Smithsonian—Victor Webster and Maggie Lawson—ended several scenes with a kiss. They kissed at the Tidal Basin in front of the Jefferson Memorial while tourists and a busload of middle school students looked on and applauded after the scene. They kissed in McPherson Square while businesspeople crossed the park and discreetly looked back at the scene. And they kissed in Lafayette Park in front of the White House, where Washington wonks wandered by while chatting on their cell phones.

That’s a whole lot of kissing going on for Washington, D.C.! I’m not quite sure the District can take that much public display of affection, but I found myself wishing my husband was around for some personal osculation resuscitation. Oh well, sometimes you have to save it up for later.

There are all kinds of kisses, the social kiss, the romantic kiss, the kiss of life, the kiss off, and we are reminded this time of year, the Judas kiss.

The language of kissing depends on a lot of things—where you kiss and where you don’t, whom you kiss and whom you don’t. Kissing is an activity defined by the participants. As the song says, “A kiss is still a kiss.” But is it?

When I am among theatre people and playwrights, it’s all hug, hug, kiss, kiss, and oh-so-very “Oh my dear, you look marvelous! How have you been? I just can’t wait to hear everything, every little detail, but I must run!” There are cheek kisses and air kisses. It’s all very friendly. It feels good, but you don’t take it seriously, because like the theatre, it may be just a performance.

When I’m among fellow mystery writers, a brief hug is acceptable, as is a brief kiss on the cheek, but we’re not terribly mushy. We laugh at danger, we don’t kiss it.

But for reporters in the Nation’s Capital, in their capacity as representatives of the Fourth Estate, there is no kissing. There may be no crying in baseball, but there is definitely no kissing in the newsroom. Sarcasm, cynicism, and smarty-pants one-upmanship is all okay. But sentiment? Now that’s dangerous.

You can count on kissing, however, in the upcoming Crime of Fashion movies. Killer Hair is slated to be aired Sunday, June 21. Hostile Makeover will air the following week, Sunday, June 28. If you want to read more about the filming from someone else’s perspective, check out this blog by photographer Kathy Freundel:

http://kathyfreundel.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/killerhair/

May all your kisses be memorable!

Ellen Byerrum is the author of the Crime of Fashion Mysteries featuring fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian who solves crimes with fashion clues. The latest book in the series is Armed and Glamorous.

Don’t Knock on the Glass!

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“Don’t Knock on the Glass!” That was the sign taped to the emergency room office window. I stared at it for about six hours on Friday. No one knocked on the glass during the whole time I was there. I guess the sign worked.

I saw a lot as I waited for news about my father’s condition. He’d had some chest pains earlier in the day and we brought him directly from a doctor’s office to the emergency room. He was taken behind the electronic doors into the locked ER exam rooms and hooked up to a heart monitor – while I parked the car in the nearest open parking space – about a half mile away on the other side of the hospital.

My mother stayed in the locked unit with my father and I stayed in the waiting room. There was a second sign, this one taped to the wall by the locked doors, warning, “One visitor per adult patient, two visitors per child patient. You must have a pass to enter exam area.” This sign didn’t work so well.

During my time in the waiting room, that visitor rule was regularly violated. Once I counted eight visitors for one guy. His wife, three kids in the middle school age range, plus her sister who had a couple of babies hanging on her, plus a mother-in-law, all went into to the unit without a pass. They just waited for someone to exit the unit and then while the doors were still open, went in. The kids came in and out with regularity as they made trips to the vending machines down the hallway and then back into the locked unit. No one ever challenged them.

You can learn a lot just by watching. I sat in a seat where I could see into the unit when the doors opened. Sometimes my mom would appear and give me the thumbs up signal and I would nod at her before the doors would close. One time an anxious forty-something man stood in the doorway with his weeping daughter hovering just to the side. By standing in the doorway, he kept the doors from closing. He stood there, trying to catch a glimpse of his son. Minutes before he’d been talking to the nurses behind the glass about his twenty-four-year-old son who had just been brought in by ambulance.

I know the son was twenty-four because the father’s voice carried as he said, “He’d been with his son twenty-four years ago when he was born in this hospital and if he was dying, he wanted to be with him now.” Without expression, the nurse behind the glass said the son wasn’t in the computer system yet and the man would just have to wait. It would be about twenty minutes. Another nurse in the unit – I could see her through the open door – told the father that the young man was behind curtain twelve. The nurse behind the glass ignored her and repeated to the father that his son wasn’t in the system yet and she didn’t know where he was. The anxious man turned angry and tried to get the two nurses to talk to each other. No go. All this while the kids with their vending machine loot were going back and forth around the man, through the open doors.

After about five minutes of this, two uniformed city cops appeared (called by the nurse behind the glass). They approached the man, demanding answers. “What’s your problem, buddy? Why are you creating a disturbance?”

The father never raised his voice, but he never backed down either. He told them he only wanted to be with his dying son. That he’d done nothing wrong; nothing to warrant the staff calling the police.

I heard one cop say, “They wouldn’t have called us, if you’d done nothing.”

I wanted to raise my hand and offer supporting testimony, but wisely refrained from getting involved.

Finally, a third nurse came out of the unit and joined the cops and the distraught family. She seemed very annoyed with the demanding father and abruptly dismissed his concerns about his son. She told him and the cops, “He not dying. He’s sitting up and alert.” She then walked away.

Why in the world that information about the son’s condition couldn’t have been shared with the family ten minutes earlier is beyond my powers of imagination. For some reason, the nursing staff didn’t want this patient’s family with him – maybe it was a drug overdose or some other reason they needed time alone with the patient. But instead of telling the family the truth, they blatantly lied and said they didn’t know where the patient was. All that angst was so unnecessary.

A family came in with a very frail appearing, elderly woman. She was in a wheelchair, being pushed by her sixty-something Stetson-wearing son and his wife. The elderly woman’s husband was beside her, very unsteady on his feet. The son and his mother were admitted beyond the electronic doors, while the rest of the family waited outside. Later the son came out, asked the wife to take his father down to the coffee shop, telling them he’d join them in a few minutes while the mother was receiving some tests. About twenty minutes later the son reappeared and headed down the hallway to the coffee shop.

Maybe ten minutes after that the elderly woman was wheeled out by a nurse and parked in front of a television. I guess they needed the space in the locked unit, and decided to leave her to wait for her tests in the waiting room. But her family wasn’t there anymore. The woman got up from her wheelchair and shuffled two steps forward. I just knew she was going to fall. Before I could intervene, a middle-aged woman and her preteen son, who appeared to be leaving the hospital, stopped in front of the woman. I think the elderly woman had asked them where the ladies room was. I heard the middle-aged woman say it was quite a distance, down the hallway and around the corner. The old woman looked desperate. Before either woman could say anything else, the young boy, without any prompting, offered to wheel the elderly woman’s chair to the restroom door. The elderly woman gratefully accepted his help. His mother smiled and went with them. The kid couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, but he got my hero of the day award!

You can see a lot when you sit in a emergency room for hours and watch the people. One woman was wheeled into the emergency room by paramedics. She was curled up in a wheelchair, sitting on her feet, doubled over in pain. She was probably in her early 40s. She was yelling about her chest hurting. The paramedics parked her outside the glassed-in office and left. The nurse behind the glass was not impressed. After about ten minutes of the woman wailing about her chest hurting – instead of answering the nurse’s admittance questions – the woman was moved into the locked exam room area. Ten minutes later, she was wheeled out and left in the waiting room. She continued to vocalize her distress, sometimes screaming, sometime moaning, but always doubled-over in her chair. This went on and on. Everyone in the waiting room was watching the woman; pregnant women with scared toddlers, elderly people fearful of what was to come, and family members wondering how “their” loved one was being treated.

I’m guessing the screaming woman was a frequent flyer and maybe she was in some stage of withdrawal. Or maybe she was in need of mental health treatment. Either way, I was shocked that the staff would leave her in the waiting room. Numerous doctors, nurses, and aides walked by the woman but never slowed. I wondered what would happen if I called 911 on my cell phone and reported there was a woman in distress. Probably nothing since the paramedics were the ones to transport her to the hospital in the first place.

The kids made another trip for soda pop and candy.

I’d had enough. I went and stood in front of the nurses’ station and stared at the employees behind the glass.

I didn’t knock.

I waited until they acknowledged my existence. Took at least five minutes.

When they asked me what I needed, I told them I’d like an update on my father’s condition – that he’d been there a couple of hours and I was sure he was in their system.

The nurse-in-charge smiled and handed me a pass.

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com

P.S. The standard of care in the emergency room was matched by the rest of the hospital. Four long days later my father checked himself out of the hospital. He’d been observed, monitored, and stress tested. His blood was tested. He saw his assigned hospital staff doctor twice in the four days. Once when he was first checked into his hospital room and once more on day two for about five minutes. The last day, after waiting for more than eight hours for his doctor to appear and discuss his test results, he’d had enough too. He went home.

Easter Time and the Eating is Good

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As I read Marian’s blog on Monday, I got to thinking about the upcoming Easter festivities that will take place here this coming Sunday. We do the eggs, too, but rather than eat them and enjoy them with the meal, we’ll color them, hide them, stick them in the refrigerator after they’re found, and eventually, make egg salad in a week or so when it becomes apparent that nobody who unearthed an egg would ever eat it unless I doctored it up with mayonnaise, salt and pepper.

And while I’m sure there are some wonderful culinary traditions for Easter that exist in many families, we don’t have one that I recall. Which is why I’ll be crashing Marian’s Passover dinner. (Just kidding. You can’t write about food like that and not expect me to covet an invitation.) Our family thought we had the tradition of roasted spring lamb but apparently it was a culinary tradition that left some family members cold. Sure, Mom would roast a leg of lamb when we were children, but it has come to light that many of the family members do not like leg of lamb with the exception of me and Mom, and most would prefer something else. This became apparent ten years ago on Easter Sunday when I gave birth to Patrick, child number two. Although I expected to be with the family around the table for the celebration, I was in labor. Mom had bought the biggest leg of lamb she could find—just for me (!) as I’m constantly reminded—and then I didn’t attend, having a baby taking precedent over my dining on lamb with mint jelly. (Which, I assure you, was so much better than the post-labor ziti and ginger ale I was served by a very surly orderly who wondered why I was so hungry at seven in the morning.) So, I find myself with the task of having to make up for the Easter where “we had to eat lamb and you weren’t even there.” Remember, we’re Irish Catholics. We hold grudges.

This year, Dad wants filet mignon. Mom wants lamb. Husband will eat whatever I serve. We have an assortment of children between the ages of two and fifteen who have their own mealtime idiosyncrasies with at least one vegetarian and one chocoholic in the mix and another who joneses for Diet Coke like it’s nobody’s business and would eschew food in favor of carbonated beverages. Henceforth, I’ve decided to go with what we affectionately call the “combination plate” here at Chez Barbieri: filet mignon, lamb chops, mashed potatoes, a variety of vegetables, a meatless ziti, and a lasagna. Oh, and bread! Because if there is nothing that pleases this crowd more, it’s bread, more bread, and lots of butter.

See, here’s the thing: we’ve all supposed to have been doing some sort of fasting and abstinence for the last forty days of Lent, the holy season that precedes Easter. Sunday’s upcoming Bacchanalian festival of eating, otherwise known as a very holy day in the Christian faith, is intended to make up for how hungry you ostensibly are or should be. This tradition dates back to ancient times and is supposed to usher in our season of planting and harvest (did I get that right?). But let’s face it—how many of us are ever truly hungry? We may get a hunger pang that indicates “oh, it’s lunch time” but for many of us, true hunger is not something we experience on a regular basis. That’s something I’ll think about as I serve more food than my ten guests could ever eat and give thanks for the bounty that our country affords us.

As far as I’m concerned, everyone should just be happy with the spread, and I promise you, they will be. If they know what’s good for them.

Maggie Barbieri

Cop, Gangster and Me

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Actually, the cop is retired police officer Denny Griffin who is better known these days as the author of Cullotta, the Story of a Chicago Criminal and Las Vegas Gangster. I met Denny right after 9/11 when hubby and I flew back to Orlando for what was then called the Police Writers Club Conference. (Now Public Safety Writers Association.) Everyone was surprised we were brave enough to fly, but we knew it was safer then than at any other time. Denny’s wife had come with him. The conference was small enough that all of us went out to dinner together. We sat with the Griffins and became great friends. Denny’s wife, Faith, has since become one of the biggest fans of my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series.

The gangster is Henry Hill of Good Fellas fame (the movie with Ray Liotta was about him). I sat next to and visited with him over lunch. (He’s the one with the beard.)

The occasion was the San Joaquin Sisters in Crime meeting. Because I know Denny, I was asked to introduce him and somehow I ended up next to Henry. He is reformed, obviously, and regrets many of the things he’s done. Actually, he’s quite a charming fellow. He has quite a story to tell, from growing up in New York, wanting to be like the gangsters he saw around him, seeing some of his friends and fellow gang members being wiped out and knowing he was going to be next, becoming an informant, going into the witness protecting program, all the moving and name changes and how hard it was on his family, his marriage failure, and lots of tidbits about organized crime that still exists today.

This is not the kind of stuff I will ever write about, but it was one Sisters in Crime meeting that I drug my husband to that he really enjoyed.

Marilyn a.k.a. F. M. Meredith who is not in the witness protection program nor ever will be.

Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?

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It’s that time of year again.

My house smells like chicken soup.

Wednesday night is the beginning of Passover. We’ll hold a seder, the feast that commemorates the Jews exodus from Egypt. I’ve been cooking and cleaning for weeks, and as I do, sweet memories of seders long ago come flooding back. I smile when I think of those who are no longer with us in the flesh, but whose love, warmth, and wisdom enriched seders of the past.

There’s very little variation in the menu from year to year. Homemade matzoh ball soup is a given. Gefilte fish, homemade in a local deli, is also always served. But since marriage is a blending of traditions, we serve hard-boiled eggs and potatoes as the second course. Why hard boiled eggs? According to some experts, the eggs symbolize the Jewish people. The more you cooked the eggs, the harder they become. So too the Jewish people – the harder their lives, the stronger and tougher they become. Another explanation is that eggs symbolize the circle of life, the salt water the tears of oppression, as well as the joy in freedom. My family’s tradition was just to serve hard boiled eggs. Hubby’s family served eggs and potatoes. I’ve searched to find an explanation for the potatoes, and I’m just guessing when I posit that it’s part of his Russian heritage. Anyone else know the reason?

We sing songs with traditional melodies, passed down from generation to generation. But we also sing songs that my kids learned in nursery and Hebrew school. While we say many of the prayers in Hebrew – we do most of the service in English so that all our guests can participate. We go around the table, with everyone reading aloud a portion of the Haggadah, the prayerbook for the holiday, which tells the compelling story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt, from slaves to free men.

And then there are the family tales that are also annually recounted Here’s one of my favorites which happened when my husband was a child. Let me set the scene.

Picture a table of 20 family and friends. They’ve eaten a wonderful meal and now are finishing up the final prayers of the seder. They’re reached the song about Elijah the Prophet. According to tradition, Elijah visits every Jewish home during the Seder as a “foreshadowing of his future arrival at the end of the days, when he will come to announce the coming of the Jewish Messiah.” The custom is to stand and open the front door while singing this prayer.

The family stands and my husband’s Uncle Bobby opens the front door…and there stands a complete stranger.

Everyone’s heart skips a beat. Was it possible? Was this the Messiah arriving at Baltimore National Pike?

Nope, nothing quite so dramatic. From the doorway, Uncle Bobby quickly realizes that the stranger is drunk and looking for directions to the local watering hole.

But my kids still hold their collective breaths as we open the door in own home – will someone be on the other side?

Best wishes for a Happy Passover,

Evelyn David

Are We Done Yet?

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by Susan McBride

Before I met Ed and we bought a house together, I didn’t have cable. I never watched TV much so I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. Once we put our names on a mortgage and combined our worldly goods (okay, mostly my worldly goods and a few of his that went into his basement Man Cave), I realized the addiction that is HGTV. I think the first weekend after Charter turned on our cable, I watched 12 hours of a “Design Star” marathon. Needless to say, I was totally hooked. When I went through my breast cancer stuff and was forced to take mandatory bed rest, I probably watched every HGTV show ever produced.

And it’s like the “Harry Potter” movies for me: I can watch the same shows over and over and over. Scary, isn’t it? I love to see ugly rooms transformed in under $2,000 (“Designed to Sell”) or even under $500 (“Design Cents,” although sometimes I think the folks who had the cheap re-do should ask for the money back). Never a fan of clutter, I adore when Tabitha on “Get It Sold” instructs hapless housesellers to pack up their crap. “Look, you can see the gorgeous hardwood floors!” she’ll gleefully exclaim after boxes of plastic kids’ toys and endless wedding photographs are sent to storage.

The bad thing is that all these shows keep inspiring me to whip our house a little closer to perfection. It’s almost there, really. I’m just figuring out what to do about the large bedroom window now that we’ve gotten rid of a huge old armoire (and an equally huge old TV), moving a few things around so our room seems twice as big. Do I go for the $692 custom lined drapes with walnut rod and rings? Or do I go thrifty and order the $79 per panel silk dupioni drapes from Pottery Barn? (Honestly, I’m having trouble deciding! I keep telling myself the $692 would be helping the economy, right?)

Then there are the shrubs in front of the house that were overgrown when we moved in (I swear, the doctor who owned our house before us didn’t trim a shrub or prune a tree in three years). I had Dave from Ray’s come out last week and give us an estimate to cut the bushes off at their ankles and dig out the roots. Once they’re out of here, we can repair the window frames and screens that have been smothered by evergreen boughs before the grinder comes and runs over my tulips and daffodils.

Oh, yeah, and I still want to remove the oven hood and spray it white with appliance paint (it’s the only thing in the kitchen that’s original and it doesn’t match anything), and I’d like to get all the windows washed, inside and out.

All the while, my husband keeps saying, “Are we done yet?” Which is kind of funny considering the list on the side of the fridge which is full of “future projects.” Do men really think a house is like a steak? Is it ever really done?

Perhaps I can blame my drive to decorate, landscape, and fix what needs fixing on HGTV (or, as likely, the joy of having anything to distract me from a fast-approaching deadline). Whatever the cause, I’ll promise this: when Clive and Tabitha and Lisa LaPorta finally beautify the last cluttered, paint-peeled, ill-landscaped house in America, I will take down the “to-do” list from the fridge. And we will be done. For real. Maybe.

P.S. I’m in Houston today at the Texas Library Association convention as you read this. I’m also signing stock at the Blue Willow Bookshop, shooting a segment for “Wild About Houston,” and signing at Murder by the Book tonight at 6. So any further home improvements will have to wait ’til I get back.

Unwelcome Interruptions

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Spring. It’s here.

I think.

It wasn’t here on the weekend – 6 inches of snow – but the temps in the high 60s during the day on Monday took care of any lingering chill.

As I write this blog – while watching Dancing with the Stars – the weather guys break into the show. Darn, I won’t get to see Shawn Johnson or that Sex in the City actor dance. Note: I’m pulling for Rodeo Rider Ty to win. I’m guessing Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend or the Microsoft guy will be the next voted off the dancing island.

Back to the weather. In Oklahoma nothing is certain as far as weather is concerned. Snow, rain, high winds, tornados – all in the last four days. The weather guys are on the tv screen. They don’t dance. Okay, maybe some dancing around the subject. They are talking amongst themselves since their storm spotters don’t have any good footage to send them. The consensus seems to be that even though the National Weather Service has issued the “Tornado Warning” (as opposed to a mere “Tornado Watch”) the local guys don’t really expect any tornados. But, with the “Tornado Warning” out, it’s current policy for all the network channels in Oklahoma to cut from the normal programming to the high tech weather forecast centers. We’re treated to the Doppler radar map and storm tracking projections. I might get rain in about two hours. Sigh.

Wait! Now they say the warning is going to expire! Yes! Yes! Now I can at least see Medium! Or most of it. Seems it’s already started. As the weather guys fade from sight, Alison is having her opening dream sequence. The dream thing is my least favorite thing about the show – I know it’s just a plot device for showing her psychic visions, but I don’t care for it. Makes me tired for her. She never gets a good night’s sleep, between her dreams and her kids. Hey, is there a show on television with better child actors than Medium? If there is, I haven’t seen it.

My co-author and I have several “works in progress” featuring psychics. One of them actually has no dogs or cats. Bet you thought we couldn’t write anything without four-legged furballs in it! Good psychic mysteries are harder to write than you might think. Your psychic hero or heroine can’t get so much information from his or her sixth sense that the mystery is solved before it even gets started. The psychic clues have to be vague enough to leave room for the reader to get involved in the detecting, otherwise it’s not really a mystery. I love Charlaine Harris’s “The Grave Secrets” series. That psychic finds dead bodies. That’s pretty much her whole bag of tricks so far. As with any good series, the characters grow and change. I can’t wait to read her next one.

Medium is about half finished. The weather guys claim they are only interrupting commercials. Right! They are slow to get back to normal programming from each commercial and I’m missing the first few seconds of the show. Sigh. Reminds me of when I was living with my parents. My dad is the consummate channel surfer. He hates commercials with a passion. If you watch television with him, be prepared to miss part of your show after every channel break ends. He usually overestimates the length of the commercials and is slow to surf back to his starting place.

I’ve lost the thread of this episode. Maybe this blog too. The interruptions add up and it’s easy to lose track.

Which reminds me of plots and subplots, present and past, dreams and reality – too much switching back and forth can lose your readers. I hate time shifts in books and film. But that’s a subject for another day.

It’s raining outside. Medium is over.

Wonder who scored the lowest on Dancing with the Stars?

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com

On Marriage

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Congratulations to Marilyn’s granddaughter, Jessi, on her impending wedding. With grandma Marilyn and her cute sailor husband of many years as role models, Jessi is well on her way to happiness with Juan. I can just tell.

Marilyn’s blog got me thinking about my own nuptials. Jim and I just celebrated our twentieth anniversary on the 18th of March. Why March in the Northeast when you have the beautiful fall foliage, the spectacular weather of June, or any other month that would do better than a dreary, cold, spate of days, you ask? Jim had just started his new teaching job and the school calendar dictated two weeks off at the end of every March. We decided to get married on the day after St. Patrick’s Day and with the little money we had, jet off to lovely Cancun for a week of R&R after the big day.

We had so little money to travel that my father, who had stayed up all night after the wedding so that he wouldn’t oversleep, picked us up at the new Hilton in our adjacent town and drove us to the airport. Nothing says romance like having your father drop you off for your honeymoon! We got to Mexico in good time, went through customs, and checked into our hotel room where we promptly fell asleep for what seemed like two days. We were very young when we got married by today’s standards (early- to-mid 20s) and didn’t know a whole heck of a lot about traveling. Or take into account that the last two weeks of March in Cancun would be filled with Spring Break revelers and not too many honeymooners. And extended American families with more than the requisite 2.3 children. But we made the best of it. Our room was nice, and everything was super cheap, a boon for a newly-minted teacher and his editorial assistant wife. Service was interesting, though—every morning between five a.m. and six a.m., a porter would come to our room, let him or herself in, and give us clean towels, despite the fact that we were sound asleep. We never did figure that one out and were never able to make them stop.

When I awoke after our extended nap, I realized that I didn’t pack a bathing suit, so our first moments of being awake on our actual honeymoon were spent shopping in downtown Cancun looking for a bathing suit that was a) not a bikini, b) not a string bikini, and c) not something my mother would deem “flattering” (the kiss of death). I settled on an $80.00 pink and black Speedo which was functional, but least of all, “flattering.” I held onto that bathing suit for a long time, despite the fact that the elastic in the leg holes went back in the early 1990s and I couldn’t wear it in public.

The week was wonderful. The weather was gorgeous, the water calm, tranquil, and warm. We even had the added bonus of running into some Spring Break participants who had graduated from our college and who were in awe of the fact that we, too, had chosen Cancun as our destination. We started to run out of money toward the end of the week and decided to chance the local fare, away from the hotel. That proved to be our fatal mistake.

The local food was delicious. We were careful about what we ordered. We assiduously avoided the water. We did everything we thought would keep us safe, eating in a country that we had heard might make you the recipient of Montezuma’s Revenge. We were doing great, enjoying local delicacies and culinary delights and had made it through the week, our budget intact. We headed off to the airport, a little sunburned, but relaxed after a week-long jaunt to tropical climes and got on the plane with all of the rest of the Spring Breakers, so happy that we were now able to start spending our life together.

We were somewhere between North Carolina and South Carolina—my best guess—when it appeared that I was bringing home either an intestinal parasite, salmonella, or some other exotic case of food poisoning. We managed to make it to our apartment just as my fever hit one hundred and four degrees and all hell broke loose. I’ll spare you the gory details.

Long story short? In the space of twenty-four hours, we had lived most of our vows, specifically the “in sickness and in health” part. I was sick for two weeks, but managed to avoid hospitalization. I stayed in pajamas the entire time, too weak to put on anything with buttons or a zipper. Jim went back to school, checking on me sporadically throughout the day, and coming home not to a home-cooked meal, but a can of Lysol, a sponge, and a bucket full of bleach to begin his nightly rounds of disinfecting.

OK, so maybe we shouldn’t have Jessi and Juan read this post lest they turn tail and run for the hills. But something tells me that they are a bit more savvy about the world than me and my husband were at the time. All I can say is that after that auspicious start, our marriage has been smooth sailing, which is what happens when you marry your best friend, your soul mate, and the love of your life. Not even a little parasite will get in the way.

Maggie Barbieri