Vacation in Paradise

As most of you know, I primarily travel for author-related things, like conferences, or to see family (usually combined with some kind of work thing). Last week, I took an actual vacation, to visit my friend Terry, who currently lives in Stuart, Florida. Stuart is about 40 minutes north of West Palm Beach, right on the St. Lucie river (an estuary). The ocean is 20 minutes from Terry's house.

I went there last September for the first time and we had an absolutely fabulous time together. This visit didn't go quite as smoothly...I came down with a horrible cold (including a fever, which I rarely run) and the airlines messed up my flight home on Monday, so I didn't make it back until Tuesday.

But Terry and I are troopers, and we have been friends for thirty years (gulp), so we just made the best of it. And while I didn't feel great for most of the trip, we managed to have a good time anyway. Here are a few pictures to give you a glimpse of my sort-of vacation.

One of my favorite places to visit, this beach is nicknamed "Bathtub Beach"

 There was one mom and her small child there when we got there on Saturday morning early. Otherwise we had the place to ourselves, and wandered up and down the shoreline with our feet in the water until the 90 degree heat drove us away around 10:30.

Its real name.

 I took a picture of Terry taking a picture of the cool coral formations. Yes, that's coral.

The two of us. My sunhat got a little crushed in my suitcase, but I was really glad I had it.

 As always, we ate REALLY well.

Pina colada toast

 On Sunday, we went to the Fort Pierce pier, and saw these cool pelicans fishing.

 The sky at the pier is always amazing.

Then went to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants right on the St. Lucie River. I got one of my favorites, Oysters Rockefeller, which I can't get at home. Yum.

Even better than the food was the fabulous view.

This is Lily. She and her pal Murphy kept me from missing my own cats quite so much.

That's Murphy, on the couch. She is into everything!

 But probably the most memorable moments of the trip came on our two-hour sunset cruise down the St. Lucie River on Friday night. (The fever hit half an hour in, which wasn't fun, but it was still amazing.) Because it is an estuary, we even caught a brief glimpse of a few dolphins--too quick to get a picture of--which made my night.

Of course, the captain's cute young assistant (Australian accent and all), helped a bit too. I'm pretty sure this picture alone means I can take this trip as a romance book research expense.

 Terry and I were pretty happy to be sharing the adventure together. Old friends are the best.

The ship was a 3-masted sailboat, and the captain shared all sorts of cool facts with us, which made the two information geeks very happy. LOL.

We got a kick out of the fact that the boat was named "The Lily"

On the way back, we saw the sunset. This amazing sky was on the other side of the boat.

And this was the sunset itself.

 Pretty spectacular, isn't it? Out on the water, it was even better.

So even though my vacation shopping mostly looked like this:

I still had a pretty good time. It wasn't the relaxing and rejuvenating vacation I'd hoped for (and I gave poor Terry my cold before I left, which seemed like a poor return for her hospitality), it was still a great break from my regular life. And all that ocean made me very happy.

Back from Vacation and Some Announcements!

Hi all! Sorry I haven't been around, but, well, I haven't been around. First I was off to RWA in NYC, and then I was back for less than two weeks before taking of for a long-awaited family reunion vacation in Cape Cod. It was my first real vacation in 34 years, so I was really looking forward to resting and relaxing on the beach, eating lots of seafood, reading books, taking a major family picture together, and hanging out with lots of family, some of whom, like by favorite cousin Peter and his charming wife Mariana, I hadn't seen in over ten years. (Their boys, Alex 11, and Misho 9, were a hoot!)

Of course, as is the way of these things, nothing went exactly the way I'd hoped... (seriously, what on earth made me think that a vacation with my family would be relaxing?!) But it was still a great trip, mostly because of the time spend with those I love, and my dad did an amazing job of finding a house big enough for all of us, only a mile away from this:

Harwich Port Beach

 No picture with the whole family, alas, because a number of folks refused to get their pictures taken, but here is one of me with my cousin and his family. Misho is pulling a goofy face, as usual.

Alex and Misho, Mariana, Peter, and me

One selfie with me and the glamorous Mariana

 I didn't get to eat all the seafood I wanted to, sadly, but I did have lobster a few times, including this amazing lobster BLT. Yum!

And on the one rainy day, we all trouped into nearby Chatham and had fun picking up souvenirs. Lots of this are going to friends and the cat sitters, but I did pick up one thing in particular with a giveaway in mind. Can you pick out which item it is?

Hint: look to the right side...

Mermaid!

Look, it's a towel with a mermaid on it, just like in the WICKEDLY WONDERFUL books! Which reminded me that I had been promising to give away the lapis mermaid necklace I made in honor of the book. So I guess we're having another giveaway, with Wickedly Wonderful prizes!

Of course, in order to have a giveaway, we should have something to celebrate, right? So how about the COVER REVEAL for the next novella, Wickedly Ever After! Tune in Monday, for both the cover reveal and the giveaway. In the meanwhile, happy Feline Friday, and here's another ocean picture just because.

Alex and Misho, clowning around on the rocks.

The Holiday Weekend So Far: Oh Ha

For those of you who don't live in the USA, this is a holiday weekend. Today is Labor Day, meant to celebrate workers, and ironically observed by giving everyone the day off. In short, a 3-day weekend. Huzzah!

I had big non-plans for the three days. I've been feeling really fried, and I could use a vacation on a beach somewhere (hopefully complete with a cabana boy and drinks with little umbrellas in them). Since that wasn't going to happen, my plan was to just give myself the gift of three mellow, relatively work-free days. No writing, maybe a little gardening and light jewelry making, but otherwise, just relaxation. Early to bed, sleep late, fire up the grill, have a glass of wine.

Can I just say: OH HA.

First of all, anyone who knows me could probably have predicted that I wasn't going to be able to just sit around and do nothing for three days while my to-do list was staring at me. So I started on Saturday by doing my usual weekly light cleaning--clear The Surfaces That Accumulate Stuff, sweep up enough cat hair to make another cat, tidy the kitchen, things like that. Which somehow turned into a marathon 4+ hours of deep cleaning in the kitchen, which finally just got to me. [In part, I blame the fact that I've been helping someone with a really messy house pack up to move. That always makes me a little psychotic about my clutter and mess, which is comparatively minimal.]

Then at around 4 PM in the afternoon, we got hit by the mother of all thunderstorms, complete with torrential downpours and house-shaking thunder-boomers. Those who know me well know that I am not one of those people who enjoys a good thunderstorm. (Rain storms, yes, I love to listen to the rain. Powerful electrical storms...not so much.) Besides feeling vulnerable to the wrath of Mother Nature, there is something about the way that storms affect my nervous system that makes me downright twitchy. I can tell about an hour before a storm hits if we are in for a bad one. This one hung over my house for about four hours...which didn't do much for the relaxation plan, as you can imagine.

When it started, I turned off my computer as I always do. During the first hour, when the storm was the most violent, I was sitting in the living room when I heard a weird crackle-pop-sizzle sound with a clearly electrical flavor to it. I rushed into the dining room/office (which is next to the living room and only separated by a half wall of cupboard bookcases) and checked the computer, but didn't see anything or smell burning. Went back into the living room, and a minute later, heard the same thing. I still couldn't see an issue, but I unplugged the entire power strip anyway. Twitch.

Eventually, the storm passed and I turned the computer back on, wherein it became quite clear that the sound I heard had been the router being fried. It still turned on, and all the lights blinked, but none of the other devices in the house could talk to it. My Wi-Fi was now Wi-Fried. Did I mention it was practically new? Le sigh.

So a chunk of Sunday was spent breaking my "I won't have to leave the house" plan and running to Office Max to buy a new router (why do they have so many choices? WHY?) and then installing it, and re-connecting it to the laptop, the tablet, and the Roku, all of which had to be done individually, of course. On the bright side, A) I was able to do it by myself, which is good since my computer guru brother in-law is busy getting ready for the school year to start and B) everything else seemed fine--computer, modem, etc. As far as I can figure out, my poor router threw itself on the electrical grenade and saved the rest of the equipment. So RIP, little router, and thanks. (As for you, power strip/surge protector, what the heck were you doing while this was happening?)

Then, since Sunday was supposed to be the only day of the three without rain, I went out to the garden despite the 85 degree heat and 90% humidity (not to mention the swarms of hummingbird-sized mosquitoes who were clearly completely unimpressed by my herbal bug spray, which normally works quite well) to harvest my soy beans.

If you've never grown soy beans (also known as edamame when they are grown for eating fresh, as opposed to drying), they're incredibly easy. Like any other bean, you basically throw the seeds in the ground after the last frost is over and then just ignore them until they are ready to be harvested. They tend to all mature at about the same time, so I always plant two different varieties with different maturity dates. [A note: deer and woodchucks LOVE soybeans, so if you have those critters where you live, you will want to put these behind a fence.]

Naturally, since this is the garden year from hell, ALL the soybeans matured at the exact same time, leaving me with this:

That's a lot of soy beans. I still have to strip the bean pods off the stalks (a tedious job usually done on a bunch of newspapers in front of the TV), so that's on today's agenda. Luckily, they freeze well. Fresh soybeans are really easy to cook too. Simply toss them in boiling water for 5 minutes, then pop them out of the pods. The Japanese eat them as a snack--they just salt the whole pod, then pop the soybeans out of the pod into their mouths. I do that on occasion, but I also like to throw them on top of salads, into light summer pasta dishes with fresh tomatoes and basil, or mix them into potato salad for an extra crunch. They are full of protein and have a lovely nutty taste.

I did get to harvest a few other things while I was out there fending off the bugs and dealing with the ragweed (it is VERY hard to garden and blow your nose at the same time, just sayin'). Tomatoes of various sizes and colors, the last of the broccoli side-sprouts (which are the perfect size for tossing into salads and pasta), a couple of sad cucumbers (NOT a good tomato or cuke year), some beautiful eggplants, and some fresh parsley and basil. Check it out:

Pretty, eh? I did finally get my BBQ that night--organic beef ribs from the Farmer's Market, grilled eggplant, corn on the cob, and onions, along with lettuce and some of those tomatoes topped with basil. This is the best part of having a garden--eating the freshest, tastiest produce in the world.

As for the go to bed early/sleep late part of the plan...not so much. Another storm hit this morning at about 3:45, the bright almost non-stop flashes of lightning waking me up to discover that the storm had brought me a migraine too. (Thanks storm, seriously. Frying the router wasn't enough for you? Stop trying to be such an overachiever.) There have been intermittent rumbles all morning, although the sky is now clearing at last. Let's hope it eventually takes this dratted headache with it, and that it is done for the day, not just circling around to have another go later.

Okay, enough of this. I hope you are doing something fun and/or relaxing with your weekend. I'm off...those soy beans aren't going to strip themselves. Now I just need to decide if I am going to watch a romantic comedy or start watching Lost Girl on Netflix. Which is better soy bean shucking fare, do you think?

Oh, and not to be a tease...but I Know Some Stuff you don't know :-) Which I can't tell you about, but will when I can. Stay tuned...

The Hibernation Vacation

I haven't taken a real vacation in years.

I've gone to a fair amount of conventions and conferences, including Pantheacon (a big Pagan convention in San Jose), RWA National conference in NYC, and a few smaller writing conferences. These trips are a blast--I get to meet up with other folks in the business, spend time with people I never get to see otherwise (like my Llewellyn editor Elysia Gallo and my agent Elaine Spencer, and lots of writer pals), learn new things, give workshops and presentations, and eat way too much yummy food. These trips are definitely fun, and a great change of pace from my regular life, but make no mistake: they're work, not a vacation.

Hell, I usually need a vacation when I get back from one :-)

The closest thing to a vacation I've had was probably three years ago, the last time the Blue Moon Circle gang (and families) took a three-day weekend and went to the Sterling Renaissance Faire. We used to do that almost every year, but people's schedules have gotten tighter, and of course, there's that whole money thing.

The truth is, it can be hard to find the time and money to take a real vacation, as much as we might all want to go sit on the beach with a good book, a fruity drink with an umbrella in it, and a cute cabana boy. (Wait, maybe that's just me.) But that doesn't mean that our bodies and spirits don't need a break from the stresses and strains of everyday life.

So this year, I'm planning to take a Hibernation Vacation.

And yes, I just made that up. But feel free to borrow the idea and use it yourself, in whichever way works best for you.

Here's how I envision the Hibernation Vacation:

For one thing, I'll be doing it at home. Way cheaper that way, and in some ways more relaxing. No packing, no traveling, and no worries about forgetting something important...

For another, the plan is to do less, instead of more. Most vacations involve running around like crazy, trying to cram as much as possible into the time you have. The hibernation vacation is all about UN-cramming your life.

The general idea is to remove as much of the daily pressure of life as possible. For instance, I normally write every day, for at least a few hours in the evening. For the duration of my hibernation vacation, I'm going to give myself permission not to do that. If I get an idea, I can jot it down. I can play with plans for future work. But no doing the work itself until later.

I will still have to go into the shop (I'd originally planned this for February, when we're closed an extra day and things are slow, so I wouldn't even have to do that much, but The Cold from Hell made me reschedule), but I'm not going to worry too much about running a million errands on the way home. And I'll be saying no to all social activities and requests from others.

When I am home, I am going to focus on reconnecting with my spiritual practice and my physical well being. I have been saying for months (ahem, maybe a year) that I was going to get back to meditating and a regular exercise program. But there never seems to be time to fit it into my schedule. I also want to focus more energy on my magickal practice, instead of just writing about it. (Yes, I see the irony there.)

 There are also things I've been saying I was going to do, such as re-learning to play guitar and crochet [see my previous blog post about the Creativity Cauldron], which never seem to make it to the top of the "to do" list. The hibernation vacation is the perfect space in time to allow myself to recharge my creative batteries by doing things that aren't "work" creativity (like writing or jewelry making). Things I do just for me, just for fun.

A shocking idea, isn't it!

These days, we all tend to be focused on what has to be done for others, or what we need to do to ensure our everyday survival and pay the bills. It is too easy to forget to fill the well we draw from every day...and then we hit a point where the well is empty, and we can't figure out why.

A hibernation vacation is a way to give yourself the gift of time: recharge your internal battery and hit the "reboot" button on some of your daily patterns that could use shaking up. It doesn't have to be a whole week. Take a weekend, if that's all you can spare, or even just a day. My friend Robin, who is married with kids, and runs a daycare, lives for the rare times when her hubby takes the kids out for the whole day and she gets to be all by herself and not cleaning anything. She takes a long bath, reads a book, actually sits down. A mini hibernation vacation that gives her a break from the constant need to always be there for someone.

Turn off your phone, stay off the internet, only watch fun things on the TV (no news, for goddess' sake!). Read a book. Make a list of the things you want to do for yourself that you never have time for, and do them. And don't forget to focus on your spiritual practice, whatever that might be. Go out at night and look at the stars. Listen to the rain or the sound of the waves. Or turn everything off and listen to the silence.

Then you can listen to yourself, and that's what a hibernation vacation is all about.

What would you do on a hibernation vacation? Something fun, I hope!

Family, Faeries and the Fourth

Happy Fourth of July to all my fellow Americans. Heck, it is still the 4th of July no matter what country you're in, so I hope you're doing something fun today even if it isn't a holiday.

I'll confess--I'm not doing anything to celebrate. Mostly, I'm just trying to catch up on the things that got away from me [yes, garden, I'm looking at you] while I was out of town visiting with my sisters and their families Thursday thru Saturday, then gone all day at the NY Faerie Festival with Robin, 5 yo Sophie, 4 yo Nate, and our pal Ellen. Also, I'm draining my long-suffering waterbed (which has a number of patches from run-ins with Magic the Cat over the years) to make room for the new mattress that is being delivered tomorrow...from SALEM, of all places. More about that later...

To keep y'all amused while we're waiting for the bed to empty out, here are some pics from my adventures.

This is my gorgeous family: Stamo, my sister Becky, Athena (from CA) and Brianna, my sister Sarah, Addy, and Rich (from Schenectady). Good looking bunch, eh?

On Friday night, we surprised Sarah with a cake for her [important number deleted] th birthday. It was really a surprise, because her birthday (a big one...you know, like 30 or 40, only more so) isn't until September. But since we were all together now, we decided to celebrate early. We went to a fabulous restaurant that Rich does caricatures at every week, so the owner was happy to play along, and let him drop off a cake earlier in the day. FUN! And hey, she's still younger than me.

The only downside of being with my family is that I always feel blue for a few days after leaving them. We live too far apart, and don't get to see each other nearly often enough. But the day out at the Faerie Festival was a great distraction. Sophia and Nate were as adorable as always, and I love spending time with them and their mom (and pal Ellen). More Faerie Fest pics later, probably. It was very cool.

My family-by-choice is as gorgeous as my family-by-birth. How lucky am I???

All in all, a lovely four days...although I am definitely ready for a vacation to recover from my vacation. Or I could weed my garden and drain my waterbed :-)

What are you all doing for the 4th? Something fun, I hope!

Renaissance Faire Trip--Report Part Deux (Family)

Family is a wonderful thing (mostly). You have the family you are born to, and the family you choose. Here are a few pics of my extended Blue Moon Circle family, enjoying our time together, camping out and having fun. Love you guys!

Sophie and I catch up on some reading. (In case you can't make it out, I was rereading one of my favorite books, DOGS AND GODDESSES, by Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, and Lani Diane Rich--perfect summer fun reading!)

Nate caught his first fish.

Sharing laughter.

Cooking together over the fire. It doesn't get much better than this.

Tomorrow--Fabulous First Friday in Downtown Oneonta, and then a trip to Saratoga to spend a few days with my other family, the one's who've been stuck with me since I was born!

Ren Faire Report, Part One

I took a rare break this last weekend and went away for three days with some friends--specifically, pals Chris and hubby Charlie, Robin and hubby George and my goddess-children (the ever adorable) Sophia and Nate, and Ellen and Bobbie.

We took three days and went camping, hung out at the Fair Haven State Park beach, and spent the Saturday (most of us, anyway) at the Sterling Renaissance Faire.

No internet. No computer. No TV. No writing. (Gasp!) Just hanging out with friends and having a great time. Pretty close to heaven, if you ask me.

One of the highlights of the weekend was our visit to the Ren Faire. We've been before as a group, and it is always a blast. The Sterling Ren Faire (http://www.sterlingfestival.com/ ) runs each weekend for a couple of months during the summer, and is full of pagentry, wonderful items for sale, and fun shows. The weekend we went happened to be the Highland Fling theme, which was even more fun. I even made a couple of friends, as you can see!

Of course, now I have to get back to work, and reality...but it was nice to take a break from it all. Next blog, I'll share a few pics from around the campfire.

Snowtacular 2010

I was going to post about the rest of my trip to CA today, with pics of the fam and the lovely San Diego beach I was on. Instead, I'm going to give you a peak at the upstate NY Snowtacular, with a beach scene for ironic contrast!

Let me just say that it was wonderful to visit with my parents, my sister Becky and her husband Nick and my nephew Stamo (12) and Athena (14). Not to mention my grandmother, who will be turning 99 in April! And I loved the day on the ocean, where we collected shells and pretty rocks (which my sister will be shipping to me in a set-price Post Office box...sorry about the box of rocks, dudes!) and I soaked up the sun and warmth to get me through the rest of the NYS winter.

Turns out I was going to need it.

We got 6" of snow a couple of days ago, and another 2 FEET or so yesterday. They declared a "no drive" state of emergency in both Delaware Cty where I live and Otsego Cty where I work. So I closed the store and stayed home to clear off the roof and hunker down until it is over. Mostly light snow now, thankfully, and the sun is coming out in patches. But lots of wet, heavy snow threatening to take down power lines, and wind gusts of over 30 MPH making even the plowed roads rough.

Is it spring yet?