Wednesday's Words by Morgan Ashbury

2012-02-22T09:22:00.000-08:00

Life has returned to normal in the Ashbury household. Well, as normal as we ever get, at any rate. My beloved is back at work, the cat has forgiven me for leaving her with my daughter, the evil diet-meister, and the dog is once more content in the daily presence of his deity, the daddy of the house.

This week, I have a few more days to myself before routine returns full force with my grandchildren sleeping over a few times a week, and my getting them up and ready for school in the morning.

They’re good kids, and not difficult to manage at all. They seem, for the most part, a lot more amenable than my own children ever were. For the record, I think their mother—our ‘second daughter’ who was our late son’s former fiancée—has done an excellent job in raising them.

As I reported to you at the beginning of the year, I never make New Year’s resolutions, per se. I do, however, constantly seek to “do a better job” of everything in my life. And nowhere is that a more pressing need than in the area of time management.

I have to try and learn how to make better use of my time. But the older I get, the faster time seems to go. I try, I really do, but more often than not I’m left at the end of the day wondering if I’d been abducted by aliens, who then went ahead and sucked two or three hours of precious time out of my schedule, and my conscious mind.

I think in many ways, I defy definition. In some areas and about some things I am so anal that my family is left shaking their heads in my wake. In case you ever wondered, let me set the record straight right here and now. Yes, there really is only one way to: fold towels, put away clothing, make the bed, set the table, make out a grocery list, prepare juice from frozen concentrate, and vacuum the living room carpet.

But about other things? Holy chaos, Batman, you should see my office! You’d think I had never heard of the word, ‘organization’. I have all manner of pieces of whatever under my monitor, around my keyboard, and beside and on top of my printer. My desk drawers would give pause to the most dedicated tidier, and my shoes and slippers can be found all over the darned house.

One of the areas where I am very ‘sanguine’ is in my (nearly non-existent) time management skills. It’s an effort for me to stay on track each day, to keep my mind focused on what I want to accomplish, because at times I can be so very easily distracted.

I know that I’d be better served if I got myself one of those nifty little word processor machines my good friend Lara Santiago has. That way, I could write without easy access to the Internet, and all those wonderful and fun time-sucking ways of being distracted.

Alas, I’m weak.

I know the secret for me lies in my own ability to employ some good, old fashioned self-discipline. And as each day dawns, I fully intend to do just that.
Some days, I do a pretty good job of it, too.

And then we have the other five days of the week.

Just today, as I was composing this essay, I had a bizarre thought. Do you suppose I could be looking at this situation all wrong? Could it be that this fluctuating, nose-to-the-grindstone one day and devil-may-care frittering away of minutes the next might actually, when the two are melded together, simply be my process? We all know that each writer’s process is unique unto them. Could that possibly be it?

Sigh. No, I didn’t really think so, either. I guess I’m just going to have to try harder.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
http://www.morganashbury.com

2012-02-15T07:50:00.000-08:00

When we left for our vacation on the 6th of February it almost seemed as if winter hadn’t arrived here yet. There was no snow on the ground, and the temperatures were fairly mild—almost consistently above freezing.

Nature took care of that little oversight while we were away. Though the snow wasn’t deep when we got home, it was everywhere, and the land does indeed at last look like Southern Ontario in February.

We had a wonderful time on our vacation. We met more people – both fellow tourists, and locals – than we have on any vacation in a long time. It was amazing being back in Port Lucaya after nearly 20 years. The marina and a fountain were actually the only places we recognized. What had in our memory been a quaint assemblage of a few shops, and a large outdoor tiki bar overlooking a marina has turned into a thriving marketplace, where local craftsmen and women offered everything from clothing to jewelry to wood carvings.

Mr. Ashbury and I did indeed contribute, albeit modestly, to the local economy.
We took part in two excursions, as well. We participated in something called “Bonfire on the Beach” an evening of entertainment and music, food and drink provided by one of the local tour companies. And we enjoyed a two hour program put on by Unexso, which stands for Underwater Explorer’s Society. In other words, we had a “Dolphin Encounter”.

Mr. Ashbury was the one who got into the tank with the beautiful mammal, and had the opportunity to pet him. He even had his picture taken getting kissed by the dolphin. I elected to stay out of the drink and take pictures...but of course, I didn’t stay dry, as the dolphin executed a couple of well-learned manoeuvres guaranteed to get everyone there sopping wet.

Tourism is the main industry in The Bahamas, so you can imagine that the downturn in the global economy has been devastating for these people. And yet, wherever we went, we were greeted with smiles, and kindness, and open-hearted welcome.

The pool was too chilly to swim in, as was the ocean—although Mr. Ashbury didn’t let that stop him from having a dip into the briny almost every day. Of course we didn’t let the weather disrupt our vacation. You can’t control if it’s sunny, or rainy, or suddenly unseasonably cool. You can only control your reaction to it all. It was our vacation, after all, and up to us to make of it what we would.

There were a couple of cabanas poolside, and here I would sit, several hours at a time, either reading or writing while the ocean breeze refreshed me, and the sight of pool, palm trees, and ocean rejuvenated me. Of course I wrote in this paradise, because to me, that is one of the purest pleasures in my life. How amazing it was to do so in such beautiful surroundings.

Mr. Ashbury and I both consider ourselves very blessed to enjoy vacations away from home as often as we do.

As much as I look forward to going someplace where I’m free from the everyday demands and stresses of life, I’m just as happy to come home. Having been born under the sign of Cancer, I really am a homebody, and never truly so happy as when I am in my own cave, doing my own thing—be it taking care of my family, reading a good book, or crafting a good story.

I’m pleased to announce two career milestones. My 25th book comes out on Friday! And, I have had my web site professionally re-designed. I’m so pleased with it I have a contest on the news page with a $30 prize. If you get a moment, please stop by and check it out.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2012-02-08T04:31:00.000-08:00

The sound of the surf and the wonderful sensations of the salt breeze on my face, and my laptop under my fingertips: this is vacation at its best, at least to me.

We arrived at the resort in Freeport, in The Bahamas early Monday evening, just at dusk. I can report that our “ocean view” room really affords us a totally awesome, full-on ocean view.

We’re on the fifth floor, and from our balcony we can see the grounds of the resort, including some of the pools, and the ocean—big, blue, and magnificent.

I’ve found an unoccupied cabana (alas, no Cabana boys in attendance) and I’m intending to test how long the battery on my laptop will work. I’m only a few feet from one of the pools—the one that has the pool bar in it. This pool also has a special feature that makes it look as if it bleeds into the ocean.

I haven’t dipped my toes in the pool yet. That’s because I’m watching these big burly types standing on the stairs, water only up to to their knees, just standing there, chatting together, acting as if the pool isn’t far and away too cold for their tastes.

I’ll get into it by and by. At this moment, however, having deposited me safely where I can write, my beloved has taken himself to the beach, not even 100 feet from where I sit. He loves the ocean. He’ll swim every day, no matter the weather, just because he can.

Our kids think that’s funny as hell because in years past, their dad never liked to swim and so never went into the water. His stated reason? Because the water was wet.

Yesterday morning as we were having our first coffee of the day on our balcony, I thought of my parents. In their day (let’s say the early 1960s), this kind of travel was something only the very rich were able to afford, and this resort something they might only have ever seen on the silver screen.

Sometimes, especially lately with the downturn in the economy that we’ve all experienced, it’s easy to forget that we as a society have come a long way in the last fifty years.

But we have, and in no area more dramatically, I believe, than in the realm of vacations and vacation travel.

What used to be considered a special privilege that you would only allow yourself once every two or three years, is now an annual, or even semi-annual entitlement. What used to cost thousands of dollars now costs but hundreds. And while that is still a lot of money, a Caribbean vacation is not out of reach, really, for anyone who wants one badly enough and is willing to save up for it.

In the mean time, while I’m not certain when I’ll venture into the too-cold for Morgan pool, the hot tub seats about 12 and is very, very fine.

As for Mr. Ashbury, he has returned from the ocean, and the pool, and has noted that one of the hammocks—the one fairly close to where we’re sitting, in fact—is unoccupied. He’s never actually tried one out before, though he has heard tales from others who have and swear by them. The two gentlemen who come immediately to mind in this instance are our oldest son, and Mr. Wildes, beloved husband of my dear friend, Emma Wildes.

David gave it a good try Tuesday afternoon, and has judged it a good place to spend some time. He needs but a towel under him and a book in his hand, he said and he will be content.

Apparently, we’re not that far apart on our individual interpretation of the word, ‘paradise’.

Love,
Morgan

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2012-02-01T07:36:00.000-08:00

This time next week, the Ashburys will once more be on vacation. It would seem that this year, we will definitely earn the moniker, “traveling fools”. The next few trips will be related to my career—we plan to attend the RT convention in Chicago in April, the RWA convention in Anaheim in July, and the first ever Siren-Bookstrand conference taking place in Dallas, Texas, in August. This trip, however, is just for us.

Mr. Ashbury has wanted to travel to a warm clime this time of year for the past several years, and so we are going to The Bahamas for a week.

I consider myself very lucky to do the traveling I do, even though there’s a huge part of me that would just as soon stay home. I am a homebody at heart, and never so happy as when I have my domain all to myself.

These last few weeks have seen a flurry of activity on our part, trying to decide where to go. The only criterion was that the destination had to be warm enough to swim.

Unfortunately and very sadly, one major “warm locale” that a lot of Canadians visit annually was absolutely off the table as far as we were concerned, and that place was Mexico.

One needs only to have paid attention to international news over the last few years to hear about the dozens of Canadians who’ve been victims of violence in that country—112 Canadians dead in the last 5 years according to the (Canadian) federal Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Perhaps 112 out of the million or so who have visited isn’t that high a number, statistically, but it’s high enough for us. My heart breaks for those whose loved ones have come to grief; and it’s a shame for that historically colourful country, because Mexico and her people deserve better than to be earning the kind of reputation that they have, lately. I know many Canadians still consider Mexico a fine spot to vacation and are going there, regardless of recent events.

The Ashburys aren’t willing to take that chance.

So it’s off to the Bahamas, to swim, and to sun (a little) and just basically decompress. I’ll be taking my laptop, of course. I’d go nuts if I couldn’t write, because writing isn’t so much my job as it’s my passion. Being an author isn’t what I do, it’s who I am.

Mr. Ashbury likes to walk around and explore. Being a history buff (and convinced he was a pirate in a previous life), there’s always plenty to grab his attention. With his exploring and my writing, we’re always ensured of a good combination of together time and alone time that makes our vacations the best they can be.

I’ve been assured that I’ll be able to rent a mobility scooter once I’m there, so I’m looking forward to a bit of exploration, myself. And while I don’t like to shop at home, I love looking at all the souvenirs and such these places have for sale. I’ve already gotten ‘gift requests’ from a couple of my grandchildren.

The winter in our neck of the woods so far has been rather placid. We did receive an unexpected dumping of a few inches of snow on Sunday afternoon—snow that is gone now. Although it doesn’t take much in the way of cold and wet to attack my arthritis, Mr. Ashbury hasn’t even had the opportunity to haul out his snow blower yet. Sunday he just used the shovel, and called it done.

I told him not to worry; he likely would get the opportunity to pull out that machine before spring arrives. After all, this is Canada, and winter always leaves its mark.

In the Bahamas, we’ll be staying at a hotel that is very close to a beach, with high-speed Internet available. So I’ll be able to post my essay on schedule and keep in touch with my family and friends.

Love,
Morgan

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2012-01-25T07:10:00.000-08:00

I have a good friend who tells me that I should work harder at being spontaneous. Lately I’ve been wondering if the cosmos—and my family—have been conspiring toward just that end where I’m concerned.
You may find this hard to believe, but I am not particularly a good time manager. Though my personality does lean toward the “melancholy” type—I can be very anal on occasion about some things, and about other things, always—I have a healthy streak of the “sanguine” in me.
I’m easily distracted and given to digression.
These last couple of weeks the only things I’ve been able to count on have been “spontaneous changes in schedule”.
It’s enough to make me want to pull out my hair sometimes.
I think this is one of the negative sides of working at home. I’m at home anyway, so why can’t I…fill in the blank. After all, I have a telephone right here, I can make calls. I have a car right there, I can run errands. It’s not as if I have a real job, anyway.
I have several friends who are, like me, blessed to be full time authors and who, also like me, are blessed to have families.
One of them goes to the library to write because when she stays home, writing is that which gets shoved to the bottom of the list.
Now, I don’t have any male full time author friends and I would be interested to know if it’s the same for them. Do their families and friends make demands on their time, since they don’t have a “real job”? Based on no evidence whatsoever, I’d be willing to bet not. The question I want answered: is it because you’re male, or is it because you might be better at saying “no” than we women tend to be.
I suspect it’s the latter.
Basically, I’m just a girl who can’t say no. Can I watch the children an extra day or two this week? Sure, no problem. Can I come to the city and ferry you around because you don’t have a vehicle? Why, sure, I can do that! Can I take clothes to the cleaners, run by the store, look for the Holy Grail? Hey, no problem!
It’s not as if I’m really doing anything all day, anyway. I just sit here in front of this computer and play with this thing called a keyboard. All. Day. Long.
No, I’m not very good at organizing my time and I definitely suck at saying no. Now yes, others should be more respectful of my time, and they should definitely begin to think of my being an author as my having a full time job.
But the Bottom line is this. That’s not their fault, it’s mine. If I was a better time manager, then the time I did have would indeed be put to good use. If I was better at saying no, then for sure, the time-management thing would have time to reap huge rewards.
I don’t believe in complaining loud and long about the things that I allow to happen. So clearly, I have two choices. I can either ‘woman up’, knuckle down, make a schedule, and practice saying ‘no’ in the mirror.
Or I can go and find myself a quiet library.

Love,
Morgan
#4 Bestseller, 2 weeks in a row!
Love Under Two Navy SEALs
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2012-01-18T07:35:00.000-08:00

In all likelihood, my perspective, on this topic, is skewed.

My father died when I was 8 and a half years old. That one traumatic event impacted my life as a child and continues to do so to this very day. I can tell you, quite honestly, that from the moment my father passed away, I lived in terror that my mother would die, too.

Thirteen years later, she did, and I was orphaned at the tender age of 21.

Losing my parents when I was young, therefore, has given me a bias on the subject that’s been on my mind these last few days. That subject is how we, as a society, treat our elderly.

I’ve seen a few cases first hand of people traversing a path I never had the opportunity to follow; that of adults having to deal with their elderly parents.

I’m not sure I understand why one would “handle” their parents by sticking them in a “seniors’ care facility”. Yes, I know that sometimes there really is no choice. If our loved one needs more care, especially medical care, than we’re capable of giving, for example, then I can understand the need for using this alternative. But in my mind, and in my heart—unless the senior in question truly wants to go and live in such a place—this should be a last resort.

I’ve known of a few families who have “sent mom to the home”. The parent was old, and moved slowly, but was not really sick, and not really in need of constant medical supervision. Yet plop, plop, there went the poor grannies dropped off to live in a small room, surrounded by other small rooms, to be tended to by strangers for the rest of their lives.

Is this another case of Morgan being overly naive again? Maybe it is easy for me to talk, as I’ll never have to back up my words with actions. But, don’t we owe our parents every bit of care and attention we can give them? Don’t we owe them some of ourselves?

See, I can’t decide if the trend—taking your aging parent to a facility for them to live out what’s left of their lives—is motivated by laziness, carelessness, or some immature desire for payback. I’m just a bit cynical that this action is taken to be in the very best interest of the elderly person in question.

I’ve seen firsthand the heartbreak that comes to a person whose children more or less abandon them to live among strangers.

How can anyone do that to their mother? This is the same woman who carried them in her womb for nine months; who gave birth in a fog of pain, eschewing drugs in case those drugs brought harm to the baby.

Mothers and fathers are very special, and very precious. You only ever really have one of each in your life.

There are cases when there are few alternatives. In this age of two-career households, it might be a challenge leaving an elderly person alone all day. I get that. Of course there are agencies who specialize in home visits, people who for a very reasonable fee will come by as often as you need them to, to see to it all is well with granny.

I have no doubt that it could be a challenge incorporating an elderly parent into your household. It would require patience and care and maybe a little juggling. I also bet it would be quite a bit of work, having an extra person to see to. It certainly wouldn’t meet anyone’s definition of easy.

Just as, I imagine, it was some work, and challenge, and frustrating for that parent to have taken care of you.

I’m sad that as a society, and in this area, we allow ourselves the opportunity to choose between doing what is right and doing what is expedient.

Because I am a great believer in the law of sowing and reaping, I would like to add this caution. As you deal with your elderly parents, your children are watching and taking notes.

Love,
Morgan
LUSTY TEXAS #6 – LOVE UNDER TWO NAVY SEALS
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2012-01-10T19:53:00.000-08:00

It’s amazing how quickly life returns to normal, isn’t it? Everyone’s back at work or school now, most of the television series have returned to new episodes, and politics is the word of the day on the Sunday morning talking heads.

I have to confess I don’t follow American politics as closely as I used to. Heck, I don’t follow Canadian politics, either. Maybe my inner curmudgeon is not only no longer inner but aggressively outspoken. It just seems to me that everyone can talk the talk, but no one can walk the walk.

I’d much rather read a book—or write one. Or spend time with the newest members of my family.

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but my daughter got herself a new pet a few months ago—not another cat, surprisingly, but a dog.

Well, it’s advertised as being a dog, but I call it a puppy-cat. It’s a Chihuahua, and her name is Bella.

She got the puppy when it was just 9 weeks old. Because of the breed, and because we live in Ontario, Canada, of course the dog needs to have a wardrobe.

She has sweaters, and coats. My daughter tried to get it to wear little booties, but frankly, that just wasn’t happening. In October, Bella had a Halloween costume. Yes, she went around dressed up to look like a green caterpillar.

My daughter is devoted to this animal, and the dog adores her right back. That’s probably the major difference between the two major species of domestic pets.

Dogs—even ones who come disguised as puppy cats—tend to be more affectionate toward and more dependent upon humans than cats are. I’ve always said the major difference is that dogs have masters, while cats have staff.

One good thing about my daughter having a puppy is, she won’t let it wander free the way the cats have, so I won’t soon get a new boarder here. The down side of that is, there have been a few times over the last couple of months when my husband and I have been asked to “puppy sit”.

When she asks, I always tell her to ask her father. My position is logical. I was the one who did all the child care and housekeeping while holding an outside job. Any grandchild entertaining—be it a human, feline or canine grandchild—is up to him.
He sometimes grumbles, but then I look and see he has the puppy-cat on his lap, sound asleep.

The only problem my daughter had with the new family member is that her puppy tended to demand all of her attention—very much like a little child. On her days off, she found it difficult to get anything done as Bella wanted to play all the time.

I thought the solution to this would come with time and patience and training. My daughter, however, had another idea. She decided that what the puppy really needed was a baby sister.

If Bella, by virtue of her size is a puppy-cat, then Ivy, the new Chihuahua most definitely qualifies as a puppy-rat. Don’t worry, my daughter takes very good care of them both, and Bella seems delighted to have a baby sister. Jenny laughs, of course, at the names I have given the two canines.

As you might imagine, when it comes to my daughter, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I have been given a new title in the family, too.

Apparently, I am now Grandma-puppy.

Love,
Morgan
JUST 2 MORE DAYS!!! AVAILABLE FRIDAY JANUARY 13TH
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2012-01-04T06:56:00.000-08:00

Here we all are, full of good food, good drink, and too many sweets. We love the holiday season, but we also love to return to our regular routines.
At least, I do.

I’m not at all ashamed to admit that I am a creature of habit, one who quite happily entrenches herself in the minutiae of day-to-day living.

I function best when I have a schedule, when I know what I’m supposed to be doing on any given day, at any given time.

I have a good friend who says I should be more spontaneous. My response is always, “I’ll put it on my schedule.”

My beloved returned to work yesterday after taking his traditional week off between Christmas and New Years. Here is where I hang my head in shame and admit to all and sundry that I’m really glad he’s back at work.

Because, you see, while he had the week off from doing anything, I only had the week off from driving him to work. No small thing, I loved having my sleep uninterrupted for 11 straight days. I appreciated that, I really did.

But otherwise those eleven days didn’t feel like any kind of vacation time to me. I find it very difficult to stick to a one-person-in-the-house-routine when there’s someone else there with me.

He came home from work yesterday exhausted, of course. I’d warned him he would. At our ages bad habits form in about an eighth of the time good ones do; his body had gotten used to spending the day in the comfort of his lounge chair—or stretched out on the sofa—or in bed having a nap—and it therefore complained bitterly about going back to work.

There’s something to be said about being a body in motion that stays in motion. Whereas he was whipped by yesterday’s return to routine, I was energized (well, except for the driving part).

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? I didn’t. I don’t believe in setting myself up for failure. This year, I simply took some time to think ahead to the kind of year I want to have. Just as each evening my prayer is for me to be just a bit better the next day in each area of my life from the day before, so I hope this New Year is just a bit better than the one just passed.

For me, better no longer has anything to do with finances. I’ve lived long enough that I understand good times come, and they go...but they usually come around again. My beloved says the economy is cyclical, down in years ending in an 8 and up in years ending in a 2.

No, better for me means that I do better. As a writer, it means that my words are clearer, more evocative, more creative; as a wife that I am more attuned to the moods and needs of my husband, more patient and less demanding; as a mother that I pay attention to the very fine line between helping and enabling, and am freer with kind words and hugs; as a granny, that I make sure the freezer is always full of popsicles and ice cream, and the cupboards overflow with cookies and that I listen and again am freer with kind words and hugs.

I can’t change anyone but me. So rather than focus on how I am treated by others, I instead choose to focus on how I behave, myself.

Because, you see, I have learned that it’s only my attitudes and my efforts that directly fill my ‘happiness’ tank.

Love,
Morgan

Available January 13th the next episode in the Lusty, Texas Saga
Love Under Two Navy SEALs
http://www.bookstrand.com/cara-covington

2011-12-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

Ah, the New Year! It’s a time when everything can be new again.

The countdown to 2012 has begun. Everywhere you look there are those entertaining end-of-year lists. Didn’t someone come out with a list of the 10 best and the 10 worst lists of the year?

I think if they haven’t, they really should.

It is poignant as the year draws to a close to take some time to look back on the last twelve months. A lot has happened in the world this year, some of it awe-inspiring, and some of it heartbreaking.

There’s so much news available to us now, and so many news entities competing for advertising dollars and audiences, that we can feel constantly battered by that ‘breaking news’ intro music the media outlets like to play.

Do you remember when you might go more than a couple of months without once hearing that on your television? And if you did hear it, then something really important had occurred. You might be in the kitchen, busy doing dishes or making dinner. That music would play and you’d rush into the living room, to find what had happened.
Over the last couple of decades there’s been so much media hype over incidents of every level of import that I believe we’ve become seriously desensitized to the entire concept of ‘breaking’ news.

Do you take a few moments at year’s end to contemplate the events in your own life over the past twelve months? I don’t as a rule, at least not formally. Of course, I can’t always stop my thoughts from wandering back. Sometimes my mind wants to just dance again to the music, and sometimes it needs to scan the battlefield just one more time in hopes of finding just one more memento left behind to cling to.

Despite my propensity for list making in other areas of my life, I don’t make end of year lists. Maybe I should. Perhaps it would serve me well to recall my 10 best moments, and my 10 worst. I’m not sure how honest I could be in this exercise, however. I still tend to push away that which is unpleasant while trying to focus instead on the positive.

Maybe it would be more to the point if I simply took some time to set 5 personal goals for the coming year. Sure, 10 would be more ambitious, but I personally feel that 5 is a more manageable number for me.

One thing I do need to do is set a few goals that have nothing to do with my career. Writing is my passion, of course. But there’s a very real danger that I can let it consume me. I don’t want to miss any special moments in my life, or the lives of my family, because I was too centered on finding just the right word or, hell, even just the next word.

I have long range goals, of course. I do tend to call them dreams, even though they generally are eminently achievable.

I believe that no matter how old you are, you have to have a dream, something that you’re working toward. You need to have a purpose, a reason to get up each morning.
I know the year ahead will have a few notable milestones for me. I have just this month signed my 25th contract with Siren-Bookstrand, and that book, under my other penname of Cara Covington, will be out, likely in the spring; and in July of this year, my beloved and I will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. [And they said it wouldn’t last!]

One more milestone has to do with Wednesday’s Words. I’m going to be posting my essay in only a couple of Yahoo loops come the New Year. I’m blessed and honoured to have my humble words hosted by others as well: writer, editor, TV host and speaker Cynthia MacGregor hosts my essay as “Morgan’s Column” in her EZine, “ EZine Does It” which can be found here: http://oaboa.pair.com/cynthiam/cynthia2011/index.html; and author Brenda Williamson hosts me as a guest blogger on her blog, “An Eclectic Author” at http://aneclecticauthor.blogspot.com/ .

My essay will continue to appear on the Siren-Bookstrand Blog, and of course, on my own blog, Wednesday’s Words by Morgan Ashbury. The link for that is below.

I wish you all a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. May 2012 be the best year, ever!

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-12-21T06:48:00.000-08:00

This time of year can be the brightest of times, or the darkest of times, depending mostly on the people in our lives, and how we choose to see things.

For those lucky enough to be surrounded by family and friends, Christmas and Hanukkah can be filled with love and laughter, fun and food. Yes, it’s a hassle going shopping at the mall, or trying to find the best roast or turkey at the supermarket. A good parking spot can be difficult to find, and sometimes one has to deal with others whose patience has deserted them. When we’re running low on that commodity ourselves, it doesn’t take much for us to lose it.

But generally, with all the rushing around and money spent, nerves frayed and the air around us sometimes turning blue, in the end we decide it’s all been worth it.
When we’re in the midst of the celebrations, surrounded by the warmth of loved ones, when we share fellowship, we know that these are the moments that build memories and the ones that led up to them, those noisy, bothersome hassles, are nothing in comparison, and soon forgotten.

But for those who are alone or lonely, those who are dealing with very lean finances, and those who are grieving the loss of loved ones, this time of year can be excruciatingly painful. For those whose hearts have been shattered, whose souls have been battered, it’s hard to be surrounded by the joyousness of the season, when songs and scents remind us of happier days, and those lost to us forever.

I think that life is like an empty vessel that is filled with a varying combination circumstance and attitude. Things happen beyond our control and it is left to us to deal with those occurrences, however we can, for better or for worse.

Traditions help, I think. Yes, they can be reminders of what has been lost, but they can also bring us closer, for just a moment, to those now gone, both people and times. Whatever our traditions may be, whether it is the sharing a particular meal, or the lighting a particular candle, an orange in the toe of a stocking, or a certain movie watched on television, in those moments, what was and what is are joined in the spirit of that tradition. Past and present become one, a chain unbroken reaching through the generations.

In our household we observed various small traditions, some that I enjoyed as a child, and some that my beloved cherished in his youth. These we passed on to our children, who in turn have passed them on to theirs.

There is comfort to be found in family traditions. We need these touchstones, even more as the world around us becomes increasingly hectic. As I get older, the world does seem to move faster. It’s harder to keep up. How wonderful, then, that some things don’t change.

This isn’t, of course, only a Christian truth. I think it’s a human truth. I think that no matter one’s faith, there is a need within us to have something we can look to, to hang on to, that is permanent, and in its own way, sacred.

Life may be spanned by decades, but it is lived a moment at a time. Memories are made in these special moments; memories are precious, and memories last.

I wish everyone every good thing during this Holiday Season. May you have peace and joy, love and laughter. Whether you’re celebrating Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, I hope the traditions you create and the ones you perpetuate bring you happiness and joy.

One of my family’s favorite traditions is a steamed pudding that my mother made each Christmas, and that I now make as well. You will find that below. What makes this pudding special is that the only fat it in comes from 1/3 of a cup of milk!

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Morgan’s Mom’s Carrot Pudding

2/3 cup of flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup raisins
2/3 cup currants
2/3 cup grated raw carrot
2/3 cup grated raw potato
1/3 cup of milk

Butter a one quart casserole dish. Set your steamer on to get making that wonderful steam.

Mix together all the dry ingredients. In a small bowl, place all the liquid ingredients (the grated veggies and the milk). Pour the liquid into the dry, stirring just until mixed. Pour into the buttered dish, and put in the steamer. Steam for 2 to 2 ½ hours, until the top is set.

Sauce for Pudding
¾ cup brown sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
¼ cup butter
1 cup light cream
Mix sugar, syrup, butter in a sauce pan, then heat and boil for five minutes. Add cream and bring just to a brisk boil. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly. Spoon warm over Carrot pudding.

2011-12-14T04:51:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday the Ashburys perpetuated their newest Christmas tradition, now three years old: grandmother-granddaughter cookie baking day.

My youngest granddaughter, the one I help care for on a regular basis, loves to bake. 11 is an interesting age for a girl, don’t you think? Half child, half adolescent, 11 is a time for sometimes forgetful/clumsy/emotional moments, and sometimes amazingly adult and insightful ones.

At least I have found it to be so with Emma.

One moment she’s bemoaning the fact that not getting her way is just not fair [stamp foot here]; the next, she’s using her fork as a pointer at the dinner table when she tells my beloved, “Remember, Grandpa, happy wife—happy life.”

Emma’s mother isn’t a baker, and so she comes to me and her other grandmother, for the chance to indulge her culinary creative side.

I happen to know that I don’t let her do as much as her other grandmother does—she informed of this on Saturday—but then she admitted that her other grandmother makes cakes, not cookies that have to be rolled out.

I am immune to the efforts of children to apply guilt.

I rolled out the dough – and this year I cheated and bought pre-made sugar cookie dough – and she cut them, put them on the tray, and then collected the cooled cookies for decorating.

We have fun, and I try and teach her how to do things “the old fashioned way” [read, by hand]. It’s a good time to talk about anything under the sun. Mostly, she talks and I listen. I like to think that when she’s a granny, she’ll look back on these times with a smile.

I made the icing for the cookies but she did the rest, with icing and sprinkles and a pretty good job she did, too.

We ended up with a few dozen sugar and gingerbread cookies, all of which she took home with her. I did promise that she could help me in a couple of weeks when it’s time to make my mother’s steamed Christmas pudding.

She and her brother love this traditional dessert almost as much as their father did. He was a crafty one, coming to me at the beginning of November every year, a solemn look on his face. “I’m worried that you may have forgotten how to make it,” he would say. “So I think you should practice by making one now. We’re all willing to be your test subjects. After all, you wouldn’t want to serve a flawed pudding to guests.”

After such a creative plea, of course I had to make an extra dessert ahead of Christmas. And yes, it did get a two-thumbs-up.

Keeping in mind Emma’s complaint—that I don’t let her do as much—I think I’ll get her to grate the carrots and potatoes for the pudding. She won’t mind doing the work, she never does when we’re baking. She’s just a typical 11 year old, anxious to get to the part where she gets to eat her creations.

Of course, in the case of the sugar cookies, Emma can see no reason to wait for the whole baking/decorating process. She spent a good deal of time begging for little bits of raw cookie dough to eat.

That, I’ve been informed by the child in question, she gets from her mother’s side of the family.

With the permission of the parents, I have posted a family photo here on my blog. This was taken last month when we went out to celebrate the November birthdays [they have them the same day] of my beloved and our second daughter. This, of course, is only half of my family. My son and his brood live in another city. I’ll try to nab a pic of all of us with them on Christmas Eve.

Love,
Morgan

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-12-07T06:05:00.000-08:00

For many, the Christmas rush is on. There are trees to be purchased or cut down, decorations to be unpacked or upgraded, and gifts to be bought.

Do you send Christmas cards?

I’m only going to send a few this year. I’m really trying to tow the line on excess, and it’s all because of a few blogs I’ve read recently—well those, and one of my local radio stations.

The station in question began playing Christmas music—all Christmas, all the time—about a month ago.

I was annoyed at first—not because I don’t like Christmas music, I do. Mostly I was annoyed because they keep playing the same songs, or different versions of the same songs, over and over and over again. And the songs they play generally tend to be contemporary “Christmas” songs, not what I would call real Christmas songs at all.

I’m afraid that when it comes to Christmas, I am a purist. I refuse to say “Happy Holidays”, or “Season’s Greetings”. I say, “Merry Christmas”.

To my knowledge, no one I’ve ever said that to has ever been offended by it. I don’t go out of my way to preach to others. I tend to keep my faith more or less private, unless I’m approached by someone who either wants to talk to me because they are curious about my faith; or because they think I need to be lectured as my faith is not the same as theirs.

Which brings me to the blogs. Basically, they were very well written rants (as even my blog can be from time to time). The gist of them was that Christmas has become far too commercialized in this day and age. It’s no longer the holiday it once was and is, instead, nothing more than a tribute to rampant consumerism.

I can’t really argue with the premise. It’s true that everyone has a Christmas sale, even if they aren’t in what one would normally consider a business associated with Christmas, or Christmas gift-giving. Everyone and his Uncle Harry seems to have an ad on the radio, television or, God save us, the Internet.

After just a couple of weeks, no one could blame anyone who was already sick of the holiday, and it’s only the first week of December.

I have great news! It doesn’t have to be that way.

All you have to do is turn the annoying device—whichever annoying device it is—off. What’s more, just because marketing agencies and sales people have made December 25th a celebration of shopping doesn’t mean that you have to as well.

Yes, I know, it’s hard to buck the trend, and hard to listen to your kids beg for more and more and more, and not give in to them. But you know what? Giving them everything they want isn’t necessarily doing them any favors at all.

In the end, it’s up to my husband and I what kind of Christmas we have. It’s our decision how we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

I asked my daughter recently what her favorite memories of Christmas were. And do you know what? It wasn’t any one toy she recalled, or the year she got two of a particularly wished for pricey item (one from Santa and one from her grandparents).
She says her fondest memories are of “Christmas morning breakfast” – an extravaganza of bacon, eggs, sausage, hash browns and pancakes, all served with two kinds of juice—a menu offered only once a year, and, just as rarely all of us sitting down together to eat it; and Christmas dinner, when we’d either go out to family or have family in.

Breaking bread with family and friends—and of course my mother’s steamed Carrot Pudding—that was the tradition of Christmas in the Ashbury household that my children grew up with.

Those traditions haven’t changed, and I guess that’s one definition of ‘home’.
How gratifying it is that those memories that were made are the ones that have endured.

Love,
Morgan

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-11-30T05:03:00.000-08:00

Like most people, I get spam e-mail nearly every day, and that really isn’t a problem, because, of course, ‘delete’ is an option I exercise on a regular basis.
But lately there have been some e-mails that have just made me shake my head in wonder – and not the good kind of wonder, either.

In the subject line, these e-mails read: “Secretly watch your kids, your spouse, your boyfriend or girlfriend...”

Seriously? Is this what our society has devolved into? Are we all a bunch of frightened, paranoid, voyeurs, spying on our loved ones?

Those spam mails are designed to sell a product, and it occurs to me they must work some of the time as they keep coming. I doubt even the most optimistic entrepreneur would continue to incur the expense and trouble of creating and sending them if they didn’t.

Because I’m curious, I checked out the link to a web site that was contained in one of these missives.

Now, here I’ll digress for just a moment. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a secret agent. My favorite program on TV was “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” (yes, I still remember it stands for United Network Command for Law Enforcement.) For Christmas when I turned 11 my big brother got me the Multi-Pistol 09, which had a bazooka that took caps, and a derringer that fit in the handle, to name the two features I remember off the top of my head. I googled it, by the way, and there’s actually a you-tube video on that gun!

I mention this bit of trivia that in all likelihood you couldn’t care less about because, when I went to the web site promoted by this spam mail, I felt the ghost of that old career ambition tremble with excitement.

Did you know you can get a car key chain with a built in hidden video recorder/camera? Or, shades of Dick Tracy, a waterproof DVR spy camera watch?

I had no idea that lack of trust in our modern society had spawned such an in-depth technological industry!

This web site offered video baby monitors, and I think that’s a wonderful idea. I can also understand having the odd hidden camera if you have outside contractors coming into your house to do work.

Not sure I go for the rest of the concept, which basically is (in my words) violate the trust of your loved ones by spying on them to see what they’re doing when you’re not there.

Would you do it,if you could? Would you spy on your spouse, or family members, to see what they were up to?

I understand the temptation to peek in on your kids—not just the babies but the older ones; perhaps of all the personal relationships mentioned, this is the one that’s different, simply because it does involve our children.

I can understand those parents who may search through their kids’ drawers, motivated by fear: they’re afraid their kids are using drugs or are sexually active, or may even be concerned their children are stealing.

We’ve all seen horrific cases in the past couple of decades of kids who’ve become violent, and committed crimes. When the police searched, it was to discover these kids had weapons in their rooms, and we all wondered, “Where were the parents?”

You want to trust your children, but they are children, not yet in full possession of the ability to make good decisions. Too, as the parent you’re responsible for them. If your minor child, for example, commits a crime that demands reparations be paid, you the parent can be held financially responsible for those reparations.

So I get that, in a way. Do I think that kids have a right to privacy? Yes, but not the full slate of privacy that adults enjoy.

But I don’t understand why anyone would want to spy on someone they’ve supposedly got a relationship with—a wife, a husband, or a lover.

Because trust is definitely a two way street, and when you spy on your loved one, then you’ve already broken that trust.

And in my book? You’ve broken it beyond all repair.

Love,
Morgan

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-11-23T07:29:00.000-08:00

Someone once told me that the secret to achieving real, long lasting happiness was to live life with an attitude of gratitude.

Those were very wise words, and quite possibly the best advice I’ve ever received.

The truth is that every single one of us—no matter who we are, where we’re from, and no matter what life is throwing at us at any given moment—we all have things to be grateful for.

I know it can be hard to focus on the positives in our lives. I’ve had my share of hard times and tragedy. I’ve met grief and despair, desolation and want. But everyone has hard times and tragedies, because that really is the nature of life.

Bad things happen to everybody from time to time. But those bad things don’t come to stay, they come to pass. The difference between living with contentment and wallowing in discontent really is just attitude.

Sometimes, people feel powerless. There are things that happen to us, or that occur in our world that are completely outside of our control. Be we each of us have an amazing power within our grasp. We really do have the power to make lemonade out of lemons, to get up off the ground after we’ve been kicked down, and to smile in the face of failure.

We all have that power, and to exercise that power, all we have to do is choose to do so.

My American friends are about to celebrate their Thanksgiving, and that is a holiday that, as far I know, is only celebrated here in North America. We had ours in Canada last month, and our traditions are similar to yours, and stem from the same root.

We do have a lot to be thankful for here, in our two countries. Is life perfect? Heck, no. But seriously, neither are we.

I have a great life! I get to get up every morning and spend my time doing what I love most in the world to do. I get to create characters, and stories that many of you read, and some have even written to say you love. And, I get paid for it! How wonderful is that?

Because of this life and this career I have met a ton of amazing people, and I have the most awesome bffs in the world. Ladies, you know who you are. I love you with all my heart.

I am blessed, and highly favoured.

Someone I know said to me, not that long ago, that I was lucky to have my writing. And to a certain extent, that’s true. But nobody handed my career to me. Certainly, what talent I have is a gift from God. But making the talent grow and getting published, while luck did play a role, is primarily the outcome of a decision I made.

I chose to be an author, to do the work and to work hard. I came out of the hospital after a triple by-pass, barely able to move, with no job, and fewer prospects. I didn’t have a really good recovery. It took me nearly three years to get to where I was almost 100 per cent. I’m sure that no one would have blamed me if I’d thrown up my hands and said, “ok, life, you win. I quit.”

Well, no one but me...and the Lord.

I give thanks every single day for the blessings I’ve been given. And yes, by the way, that is the secret to achieving real, long lasting happiness.

May your Thanksgiving be full and rich, and may you be blessed to share it with the ones you love.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-11-16T06:27:00.000-08:00

I have just one final essay inspired by our recent vacation.

Cruising seems to be the new family thing to do. I say this because our cruise featured something that was, for us, very unexpected: hundreds of children.

I’m sure this is good news for a lot of parents out there considering a cruise vacation. Most cruise lines have some ships that cater to kids, and Mr. Ashbury and I somehow, (through no fault or plan of our own), ended up on one of those.

This particular cruise line has teamed up with Nickelodeon to provide a kids program that I have heard is quite entertaining. Among the attractions for the younger set, were Dora the Explorer and Sponge Bob Square Pants, and Sponge Bob’s pal, Patrick! My two youngest grandchildren were more than a little bit jealous when they found out we sailed with some of their favourite characters.

I spend a lot of time with those two youngest grandkids of mine, as I take care of them when mom is working. They stay overnight some nights, and I get them up for school. We’ve been experimenting with hot breakfast cereals and so far, they like them all. When mom comes off the night shift, she arrives in time to take over, and takes them to school. When mom works days, I do the honors of taking them to school, and then we have them for dinner those nights, too.

So you can believe me when I say to you, I like children. But I like well behaved, well mannered children.

I thought I understood the way parenting had changed during the last generation. For all that our second daughter is a single mom, she manages to keep her two involved and busy in sports and extra, organized activities. Our eldest and his wife, when their children were younger, were parents whose every bit of leisure time was filled with their children’s sports and recreational activities.

Their oldest played hockey and baseball, their second son played soccer and joined a chess club, and their daughter played soccer and baseball, attended singing camp, and now is involved in cheerleading. Getting a chance to see this growing, active family was difficult, because they were always so busy! And when they vacation, while they’ve never experienced a cruise, they vacation as a family, together.

They’ve been to the Caribbean twice and Disney World once and they go camping every year.

Perhaps because they spent so much time together, I can attest to the fact that when my grandchildren were small, and as they matured, their behaviour out and about in public was well mannered and well-disciplined.

I just assumed that was the way of modern families.

During our cruise, I got to see another side of modern parenting—the side that has as its credo, “here’s some cash, kid, now go away”. This type of parent appears to believe, “I paid for this cruise so therefore my kids can do whatever the hell they like, as long as they are not bothering me.”

Now, some children were well behaved and under the supervision of their parents; but there seemed to be a lot who were running wild and loud, and who didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with pushing past people to get to wherever they wanted to be.

Please be proud of me, I resisted the urge to use my cane as a weapon. Oh, no, I wouldn’t have hurt the children. It was the parents I wanted to bash.

Perhaps I’m different from most folks. I don’t like to see parents knocking back alcohol when they have their small children with them. How vigilant can mom and dad be if they have a few beers, or a few shots, flowing through their bloodstreams?

And what would ever make an adult think it was fine that their child could shove their way through a crowd of people, push every button on the elevator, or have a screaming fit and throw food that lands on others?

There was a family in the cabin next to us, a mom and a dad with two children. Just about every single night, the kids whined, and had temper tantrums over something. Please understand me, as far as I am concerned this is not the kids’ fault. Their parents allowed them to behave this way. In fact, in the case of this family, they encouraged it by example, for when the kids were in bed, the parents seemed to do nothing but fight—out on the balcony, presumably so the kids wouldn’t hear them. Did they think that because there was a partition on either side of them that they had privacy on their balcony? Hello, big ship here, thousands of people on board—and people on either side of you, with balconies of their own.

I wish I could give advice to these parents. I know exactly what I’d say. I’d tell them that I know raising children is hard work. I know how tiring it can be to have more than one young one at a time – we had three. But you’re not doing anyone any favours when you wash your hands of your parental responsibility and give up by screaming and yelling at them, or letting the little ones run free.

What you’re actually doing is not only causing irreparable harm to your children; you’re causing harm to society, too.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-11-09T06:14:00.000-08:00

Just before we docked in Nassau, in The Bahamas we discovered that we could rent a wheelchair for the duration of the voyage.

Now, I blame myself that I didn’t think to check into having a scooter on board, renting it ahead and having it there for me when I embarked. It just never occurred to me that I could, that there would be scooters allowed on board the ship.

Of course, we saw them right away. Next time, of course, I’ll know better. The vessel itself doesn’t have any scooters for rent, but they did have some wheelchairs.
I wanted to see some of Nassau, but I remembered how very long the wharf was, and I quite frankly didn’t know how much walking I’d be capable of. I’d been doing pretty well for the first four days of our cruise, averaging more than 4000 steps a day.

But when I keep moving, which I need to do, there’s a price to be paid and that price is called pain.

So my beloved said, “Why don’t I go and see if we can get a wheelchair?” I didn’t even hesitate. I said, yes!

I thought of my mother, then, who also suffered from osteoarthritis. She didn’t use a walking aid until after she had surgery on her knees. Before the surgery, she was in pain, every single day.

I recall one time in when she lamented that she couldn’t go anywhere or do anything anymore. I think on this one particular occasion it was the Canadian National Exhibition that she felt was off limits to her, due to her difficulty in walking. I suggested getting a wheelchair there. I was only about 15 at the time. I told her I would gladly push the chair for her, and then she could go to the Ex and see whatever she wanted to see!

My mother was so offended by the idea, and so angry with me, that I never made that suggestion to her again.

As I got older, and as my own arthritis hit and then slowly and steadily progressed, I carried her attitude as my own. So I consider it a sign of my own personal progress through my path in life that I’m now willing to use devices such as scooters and wheelchairs—when the occasion calls for them.

I’ve gotten better with the scooters, and now hardly ever run anyone down!

This was my third time in Nassau, and it was a lot more crowded than I remembered it being. A part of me wanted to tour the island, but mostly, I wanted to see the glitzy shops, the high end jewelers and the touristy souvenir stores. Oh, we found one shop called Bijoux Terner (right there on Bay Street, just down from Parliament), where everything in the store was only 10 dollars.

Some people like pens and have dozens of them I love watches. I love to buy watches. I don’t necessarily wear them all the time, but I love to have a very large selection from which to choose. In my defense, I will tell you that I don’t own any expensive watches. Yet. Most of the ones I buy are quite inexpensive. So imagine my pleasure when I walked into this store and saw watches, dozens and dozens of watches, all only ten dollars each! I only bought one—a green one, because I didn’t have any green ones—but then I got a second chance as that store had some of its wares onboard the ship, and there was a sale on the second to last day!

I enjoyed my shopping excursion in Nassau, where I was able to buy gifts for every member of my family. The use of the wheelchair didn’t make me feel uncomfortable or self conscious as it would have done in times past.

In fact, I tend to use a scooter when I do my weekly grocery shopping. If I go into a store that provides scooters, why then, I make sure to make use of them.

In fact, I’m getting so much better in my attitude, I am actually thinking of getting my very own scooter.

In a year or so.

Maybe.

Love,
Morgan

2011-11-02T04:51:00.000-07:00

We’re back from our wonderful vacation, and as always, I’m glad to be home. True to my word, I wrote while I was away. I spent time working on my work in progress, and, I while I didn’t post Wednesday’s Words, I did write some, and here’s the first, written last Wednesday:

I’m writing this as our ship, The Norwegian Jewel, is docking in Nassau, in The Bahamas. The very first cruise we ever took, all the way back in 1993, was a three-day excursion from Port Canaveral to here and back. I do recall that as that first ship – the Oceanic of the Big Red Boat Line (renamed the Disney Line)—was due to dock, we had requested a wake-up call to ensure we could be on deck to watch this very exciting procedure.

There have been no wake-up calls on this cruise, so far. Of course, times really have changed and if I want to get up at a certain time, I’d just set the alarm on my cell phone.

I do know one thing, at this point, with absolute certainty: every cruise I go on from now on must be on ship where I can have a private balcony.

Our cabin is on deck 9, so we’re a ways up from the water. The balcony door is heavy, and stays open until you close it. Each night we’ve gone to sleep with that door wide open, the sound of the wind and the ocean a seductive lullaby.

I haven’t slept this well in years!

There can be no doubt that most of the people who boarded this vessel in New York City were in desperate need of a vacation. Swear to God, I’ve never seen so many unhappy or angry faces in my life.

And complaints? Holy cow, some people complain loud and long about everything and anything! The port terminal was too hot, the port terminal was too cold, there were too many people, there was too much waiting, the free coffee was too strong, the free coffee was too weak, they didn’t get a very good boarding number...

I live a very sheltered life, I know I do. But we went on vacation earlier this year to the New Jersey shore, and the people we met there were great, lots of smiles, everybody focused on having lots of fun. There’d been nary a frown to be seen.
We’re at the mid-way point of the cruise, and I can tell you for the most part, the faces seem a little bit happier now.

Soon, my beloved and I will have breakfast and then go ashore. Fortified with meds, I should be able to walk a bit of Nassau. Fortunately we have most of the day here, so there’ll be no rush. We can take our time, and do as we like. We may even take a taxi ride to see some of the island.

I’m not much for shopping, which, if you’ve read these essays over the years, you know. However, there are exceptions to this rule, vacation shopping being the biggest one. I can’t resist looking at the “souvenir” offerings whenever we travel. You can be certain I’ve already gone into a few of the shops here on board, and will likely do so again before our time at sea is done. I’m also looking forward to seeing all the glitz and glitter Nassau has to offer.

I even attended the shopping seminar the other day! Was I surprised that the talk focused on diamonds and emeralds and tanzanite? Nope. I’m sure there are people who come all the way down here to buy their jewellery as this is a tax-free, duty-free shopping destination for my American neighbours.

I’m not really in the market for precious gems. But I do like the sparkly and the shiny, and I’m certain I’ll be able to find something inexpensive that fits the bill.

My beloved has already given me a necklace he bought at our one and only shore excursion, which took place in Port Canaveral. I am now the proud owner of a buffalo horn necklace, from which dangles a prehistoric shark’s tooth. This exquisite piece was handcrafted by a gentleman, one of your noble veterans. The man sells his wares at the Lone Cabbage – where you can get air boat rides, deep fried gator tail, and in our case, a mini wild-life show—on the shores of the beautiful St. Johns River, not far out from Port Canaveral.

Yes, I know I’m spoiled. What can I say?

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-10-19T05:59:00.000-07:00

I’ve gone back to making my vacation lists, but I’m worried that after all this time, I may have lost the knack for it. You wouldn’t normally think such a thing could happen, but then, this is me we’re talking about.

I don’t usually let the teasing and chiding of family and friends get to me. It mostly doesn’t faze me, what other people think of me. But for some reason I took exception to the high hilarity with which my family discussed my vacation list-making.

They showed they were related to a creative person by some of the very original lines they came up with. For example, “if you put on your Tuesday underwear on Sunday, does that screw up your whole week?” Another was, “if you’re standing on the deck of the ship reading your list and a gust of wind blows your list away, can you still get dressed?”

So for that and other reasons—primarily, being way too busy—I stopped making lists. I should have known better, because every vacation I’ve gone on where I haven’t made a list, I’ve forgotten something.

So I began to make a list for this vacation, but now I’m in a quandary because it kind of looks as if the vacation might start before the list is complete.

We set sail on Saturday for a 7 day cruise from New York to Florida and The Bahamas. This will be our fourth cruise. The last one we took was in 2005. That one also left New York, but went to Bermuda, and lasted ten days.

It was my turn to pick a vacation destination, and I have to admit a fondness for cruises. There really isn’t anything about the experience I don’t care for except, perhaps, the outrageous amount they want to charge for Internet access. My family tells me I can afford to pay the price, and yes, I can, but I simply refuse to.

Therefore, for only the second time since I began these weekly essays five years ago next month, I will not be posting Wednesday’s Words next week. I’ve been chided that I won’t be able to go an entire week without the Internet. If I find myself in need of a fix I might spend a half hour at the Internet Cafe. For a one shot deal, I might be able to stomach the cost. But between you and me, I know I’m made of sterner stuff. We’ll have to see.

My beloved also loves cruising. He believes he was a pirate in a previous life. One difference for this cruise, from the last: every other cruise we’ve taken has actually been in hurricane season—as is this one—and in times past DH has always hoped we’d get one. A hurricane, that is. Yes, I know your eyes are widening in horror, mine too, but we all have our little quirks and idiosyncrasies, don’t we?
He sort of had his wish granted last time, as we sailed behind hurricane Ophelia on the return voyage to New York from Bermuda in 2005. (It’s kind of weird that there was a hurricane by that same name this year, don’t you think?)

Anyway, there my beloved sat, on the bow deck—literally on the deck, because the seas were too rough to stand for long—in the company of a hand full of other brain affected men—as the ship drove forward, down into the water troughs and the waves shot many feet above them...

He really enjoyed that, but he’s a few years older, now. Also, on the last voyage, he did have a bit of motion sickness (on the calmer seas, if you can imagine). So this year, he is actively hoping there will be no big storms along our path.

I’m looking forward to our Florida stop, because I get to visit and spend time with one of my best friends, fellow author, the lovely and talented Miss Lara Santiago.
I’m also anticipating quiet moments on our own small, personal balcony, as the ocean itself tends to rejuvenate me. I know some of my readers—one in particular—is going to be jealous, and I apologize. He’s a seafaring man, who’s been landlocked for the last few years. I think it’s always hard, and beyond unfair, that we sometimes reach a point that we can no longer do that which we love most to do.

And while I won’t be online next week, I will be writing—because that’s what I love most to do, and I plan to keep doing it until I can no longer draw breath.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-10-12T04:59:00.001-07:00

For the last several months, I’ve been trying to talk Mr. Ashbury into investing in a new television. Ours still worked most of the time, but it was more than 10 years old, and was beginning to have intermittent “issues”.

I honestly didn’t think it would take me as long as it did to win him over to the idea. That it did, surprised me because I knew he really wanted a new entertainment system. I thought at first he was only offering me token resistance.

As for myself, it didn’t really matter. My only concern was that our television didn’t die causing me to miss one of my three or four weekly one hour shows.

I see you shaking your heads. That’s all right, I don’t mind at all. Now you all know that not only doesn’t Morgan go to the movies or watch movies on DVD, she doesn’t watch much TV, either.

I’d much rather write, or read.

But my beloved truly enjoys his television time. He spends hours watching the various ‘Discovery’ channels, as well as the Military channel, numerous news shows, as well as several different drama series. I wanted him to have a really good device on which to enjoy his down time. After all, what’s the sense in working hard all your life if you can’t finally benefit from the fruits of your labor?

I knew something else had to be at work here. I’m embarrassed that it took me so long to understand the underlying issue at the bottom of his reluctance to get a new television. It wasn’t the money, and it wasn’t that the old TV still worked.
It was the technology.

Over the course of the last ten years, televisions evolved from being the “boob tube” that we grew up with, into being technological marvels with many and varied options and functions.

We’re both older than we used to be, and neither of us learns things—technical things—especially quickly. So the truth was, my beloved wanted to buy a new entertainment system, but was hesitant because he didn’t understand them.
Our daughter is a help in this area, and so is our son. They’re both in their thirties (where it seemed we were not that very long ago) and a little savvier when it comes to electronics—though our son admits that his kids, who are nearing their 20s, understand the new and the latest better than he does.

Timing, of course, is everything. A couple of weeks ago, a local chain store that deals specifically in electronics featured a promotion sponsored by Samsung. And so it was that my beloved and our daughter headed off to see what kind of a ‘deal’ could be made.

They were clever, going to the different suppliers in town, showing them the promo ad, and asking them if they could surpass it. A couple of the larger named retailers tried. But in the end, my little bargain hunters settled on going to the store that ran the ad—and were rewarded by an unexpected perk.

It seemed that while the chain’s head office had issued the flyer and authorized the promotion, not all stores had in stock the model of Samsung TV featured in the ad.

So my beloved ended up with an “up-graded” package—for just one hundred dollars more, he got a TV worth several hundred more than the one featured. He was happy because the one he got was actually the one on display at the store—the very one that he’d watched, and liked, and yearned for.

And so it came to pass that the Ashbury family now has a 3D LED monster (55 inch as opposed to the former 35 inch) TV in their rather modest living room. The controller for this behemoth has a keyboard on the other side of it! The package included a Blue Ray DVD player, Surround Sound, a lovely glass stand to set it all on, and 2 pairs of 3D glasses with which to watch the complimentary set of 4 Shrek movies. It also came with a Skype TV camera, which we are giving to our oldest son.

My beloved is mastering the controls faster than he thought he would, and is a very happy man.

And me, you ask? Well, I do know how to turn it on, and turn it off. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll learn to do even more.

Probably just in time for summer re-runs.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-10-05T04:17:00.000-07:00

It’s been two months since we returned from vacation to discover that we’d been claimed by another cat.

You’ll recall that we named this cat “Spooky” because that sounded better than “Creepy”—and because, quite frankly, the entire circumstances of her arrival, and her behaviour were more than a little of both.

I have been unable to discover any previous owner for this lovely black feline. I’m beginning to think my daughter is right. She believes that whoever owned the cat had been an elderly woman who had been moved into a care facility (Spooky isn’t as comfortable around men, you see). Jennifer tells me that some relatives calm “granny” by assuring her that her beloved kitty went to a good home, when in fact they simply either just abandon it on the spot, or dump it out in the country somewhere.

Spooky is not the first homeless animal the Good Lord has directed our way, and something tells me she probably won’t be the last.

In the next couple of weeks we’ll make an appointment with the vet, and have her examined, just to be certain she’s healthy. However, this was no scruffy alley cat that came our way. She wasn’t obviously suffering from hunger, neither was her fur unkempt looking.

But even without the veterinarian’s exam, there are some things I already know about this new familiar of mine.

As I may have told you, she’d been declawed (front claws only), and, we think, neutered. She was more used to women than men, and more used to adults than children. She’d cottoned to my daughter until I got home. I only had to pet her once, and she decided I was hers.

She’s not a young cat. I think she sleeps probably 16 to 18 hours a day, and she has no interest in playing. This tells me she’s more than middle aged. Our Booty kitty began to follow that pattern of behaviour when he was around nine or ten years old.
Spooky clearly is more accustomed to a quieter environment than the one offered here. Just by her mannerisms you can tell that she’s having a bit of difficulty adjusting to the comings and goings in this house. On top of that, just when she was getting used to the way things were, we re-arranged the kitchen, the office, and got a new TV—which I’ll tell you about next week.

Spooky appears to never have been given the opportunity to develop social skills as they apply to other animals. She doesn’t like that we have a dog, but seems to be adapting to the beast. On Sunday last, the dog wandered into the bathroom. Spooky followed and plopped her furry butt down right in front of the open door. Our poor dog—who out-weighs the cat at a ratio of at least 20 to 1—whined and cried until his daddy came and removed the furry predator from blocking his egress.

Our late Crashy kitty tormented the dog from time to time, and so the dog just assumes this cat will, too. Personally, I’m not telling him about her having been declawed.

There is one thing Spooky appears to hate even more than the dog, and that’s the occasional incursion of the MoJo kitty.

MoJo was the kitten my daughter got that caused her dear Crashy kitty to claim alienation of affection and move to granny’s (that’s here). MoJo has turned out to be quite the little con artist. He’s been visiting me off and on since he was old enough to find his way the two and a half city blocks from my daughter’s to here.
Now, however, he apparently has another house in the neighbourhood, and no longer goes back to my daughter’s (in his defence she did get two more kittens when he was young, and while they all got along at the time, they no longer do). He’s only here and at this other home—where, actually, he likely spends most of his time. We only see him once, maybe twice a week. He comes, eats, and goes, arriving and leaving at will, through the kitty window.

I know one more thing about Spooky that I can share with you at this time. She’s a very, very smart feline. She’s taken to sleeping in a highly conspicuous spot—on the shelf beneath the kitty window, thereby effectively blocking ingress for any itinerant cats, in general, and the MoJo, in particular.

If you go to my blog, listed below, you can see a picture of Spooky, taken while she was in one of her favorite places.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-09-28T05:11:00.000-07:00

We have a walnut tree at the front of our house, a tree that I both love and hate.
There’s not much yard between my house and the sidewalk; our porch has wrought iron railing, and it’s at a corner of the railing and to the edge of the sidewalk that this tree thrives.

The Walnut has more than doubled in size since we’ve been here. When we first moved in, the kids could step from the railing to the crotch of the tree, giving whichever one of them called it first a really cool seat when we were all on the porch together.

In those days, the tree shaded about a third of the house for part of the morning. Our house faces east, and in the south east corner of my porch, the morning sun has never shone when the tree is in full leaf.

We used to spend every nice summer evening—and more than a few thunderstorms—on that porch, under that tree, sipping coffee, reading, or just talking. My beloved and I believe it was our near-constant presence and chatter that helped the tree to grow so well.

Now, the crotch of the tree is forever out of reach, unless one wishes to execute a dare-devil manoeuvre from the roof of the house; the porch is completely in shade in the morning; and, sadly, branches are threatening to rub on our roof.

We’re going to have to have the tree trimmed, and despite whatever valiant noises Mr. Ashbury makes, I think we are going to have to call in professionals to do so.
That’s for this spring, I think, before the new leaves come out.

As I write this, I can tell you that not only does the tree shade the porch, but my office window, too. Yes, it stretches that far to the north—my office is to the north of the front door. And as I write this, there are walnut leaves, one by one, floating serenely to earth.

The odd thunk on the roof is the sound of walnuts falling to the ground…eventually.
Most of the walnuts are quickly gathered by the local squirrels. Every time I go out to get in the car, I toss any I see on the road back onto the lawn. It’s not only being kind to the furry little rodents; it’s making sure the road in front of my house isn’t dotted with those ugly brown splotches of squished walnuts.

This tree is the last one to bud in the spring, and the first one to drop its leaves in the fall. Actually, it starts losing those leaves before fall—just as soon as Mother Nature decides the walnuts have grown enough.

My Walnut began shedding its leaves about two weeks ago; and, lucky me, it will continue the process for at least another month and maybe even longer.
If I were the fastidious sort, I’d be committed to getting out and raking those leaves at least once every weekend. However, as you may have guessed, fastidious I am not.

A few years ago I tried to be a neatnik. I made myself get out there and I worked hard. I raked and bagged my walnut leaves when the tree was mostly nude. I filled nine bags, and set them to the curb to be collected. I then took the opportunity to admire my front yard, so neat and tidy.

Until the next weekend, by which time the many maple trees in the yards across and down from me had dropped their bounty of red, yellow and brown leaves.

I told myself, as I raked furiously this second time, filling another several bags, that I really didn’t mind cleaning up the mess from my neighbour’s trees; after all, I had enjoyed sitting on my porch and looking at those maples in full leaf for most of the summer.

That particular and very personal and silent mantra didn’t make the chore go any faster, or become any easier to do, of course.

But it did give me a sense of satisfaction—and I’ll take all of that I can get.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-09-21T06:44:00.000-07:00

The Saturday of the Labor Day weekend, my beloved and I traveled to a farmer’s market that we like to visit a few times a year. Sometimes, we go there to buy meat; sometimes we want to look at tools, or crafts, or baked goods.

This particular trip was for veggies. The crops available there, directly from the farmers, are fresh, plentiful, and reasonably priced. Specifically, we drove for forty-five minutes to buy cucumbers.

I’d mentioned to my DH about a week before that I wanted to make sweet pickles again this year, the ones I made last year that had been such a hit with the family. Last year, I’d purchased a six quart basket, and ended up with something like 10 - 1 pint jars of pickles. At that time, I had also attempted to make pickled beets, but we won’t talk about that.

Oh, all right, I’ll tell you. I second-guessed the recipe and added more cloves than the recipe called for. Ugh. Ick. Enough said.

My beloved thought I should expand my repertoire and make dill pickles this year, too. I’ve made them in the past, of course. I should perhaps mention at this point that I last made them more than 20 years ago. But it’s just like riding a bicycle—or so I told myself.

I was impressed with the selection and the bounty at this very large, and very diverse indoor/outdoor market. We took our “granny cart” with us, and in short order had what we needed. I bought two sizes of cucumbers, “number 1” and “number 2” which are baby dill size and the next size up. I bought a peck of each.

Do you have any idea how many cucumbers there are in a peck? A whole heck of a lot more than I thought there were, that’s for sure.

My granddaughter came over to help me. She just turned 11, and she loves to cook. She proved an able assistant, and chopped the green and red peppers and peeled the tiny pearl onions (for the sweet mix).

I knew of course that I had more cucumbers (the #2s) for my sweets than last year. But somehow, in the fond memories of how well everyone, including me, liked those pickles, I’d forgotten just how much work was involved in scrubbing and slicing those little green buggers. But finally they were scrubbed and sliced and mixed with pieces of green and red pepper and small succulent onions. I sprinkled the entire mixture with pickling salt, coved them with ice, and sighing in appreciation of a job so far well done, let them begin to sit for the prescribed three hours.

Then I turned and saw the laundry basket full of #1s waiting to become dills.
I think I’ll leave the play by play recounting right there. My beloved stepped up to the plate and helped me with the work. By the end of the day, we had 12 quart jars of dills, 24 pint jars of sweets...and a lot of cucumbers left over.

I didn’t pay a lot for the produce, really. Logically, there was no reason I couldn’t just call the rest compost. Emotionally—wasting food simply isn’t how I’m wired.

I recalled the wonderful green relish I used to make—excellent by the way, my American friends, on hotdogs and hamburgers. I thought, well, there’s not that many cucumbers left. Surely it won’t take that long scrub, slice, scoop out the seeds, and chop. [On the heels of the effort just put out you would have thought I’d learned my lesson].

It took most of a morning to do that. But once everything was in the pot, it became simply a matter of slow simmering and stirring... off and on for the next three days.
I now also have 12 pints of green relish on my shelves, keeping the dills and the sweets company.

For any who are interested, the recipe for my mom's relish is below.

Despite the exhaustion, I experienced a sense of accomplishment that money can’t buy. And I’m pretty sure that come next autumn, I’ll be repeating the exercise—but with a fewer number of cucumbers.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Morgan’s Mother’s Green Relish

This is the recipe I used to make relish this year, and this is how I did it. I didn’t have anything written down; I thought I had my mother’s recipe inked in my cook book, but sadly, I did not.

I’m a kind of ‘pantster’ when it comes to cooking. Seriously, you probably need to be one, too, as the quantities are all subjective. I can tell you that I had enough veggies chopped in pieces, before putting them into the food processor, to fill a 3 gallon pail.

One thing I should warn you about, straight off. The aroma of this relish, as it cooks, permeates the entire house. There is no escape from it. None.

Cucumbers

Green peppers

Red Peppers

Onions (I use cooking onions)

1 – 2 cloves garlic

1 cup pickling salt

Ice chips to cover

3 to 4 cups White vinegar (depending)

1 to 2 cups Cider vinegar (depending)

3 to 6 cups White sugar (depending)

Bouquet garni of 2 tbsp pickling spice, 1½ tsp whole cloves, 1½ tsp celery salt, ½ tsp turmeric.

1 Cinnamon stick (or pieces of cinnamon bark)

Canning jars (pints or the smaller jam size)

The Process

First, sterilize your jars. To do this, they must be immersed in boiling water for 5 to 10 minutes. Can you sterilize them in the oven? I don’t know if it works as well, or not, but I have heard that some people do.

How many veggies you use is up to you.

Scrub and slice the cucumbers lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds. Wash and hull the peppers, and peel the onions and garlic. Chop these to a size you can easily then put through a grinder or chop in a food processor and mix them all together in a bucket or a big pot. While they are in this pre-mushed state, sprinkle the pickling salt over top, and cover with a layer of ice. Let stand about 1 hour. Drain well. (I poured some cold water over it all after the hour and then drained it.)

Either put them all through a grinder, or chop in food processor. You want everything about the size of coarse oatmeal, or not much bigger than.

Place the ground/chopped veggies in a heavy pot. Use cheese cloth to make your bouquet garni. If you are using the cinnamon bark, as I did, put that inside the cheesecloth, too.

Add vinegar and sugar to your veggies; you can increase or decrease these depending on how much veggie mash you have, and depending on your tastes.
Add the bouquet garni.

Bring the mix to a slow, low simmer, and stir occasionally so that it doesn’t burn or stick. Now here’s the part that may not pass muster with some: I simmer it for about 4 hours on day 1.

Then I turn it off and let it rest until day 2. Then I repeat the slow, low simmer for 4 hours on day 2. You may cover the pot for a little while, but basically you’re working on reducing this relish, so that the liquids mostly turn to vapour.

**On day 3, I simmer for about 2 hours and then ladle it into jars and seal. You don’t need the water bath, really, because you’ve simmered it for so long. If your jars and relish are hot, and your snap lids in simmering water, you can fill, wipe the rim, put on the lid, then the screw band and viola your jars will seal.

My mother used to sometimes use jars that weren’t canning jars. She would sterilize them, and then she would cover the relish with a layer of paraffin. I have done that in the past. I didn’t do that this year.

I put the two ** where I did, because I cooled a spoonful of the relish then tasted it to make sure

I was happy with the flavor. Since I was, I put it in jars. You might want a bit more time. Really, as long as the basics of canning are followed: sterile jars and equipment, food that has been simmered, and lids that seal, then you should feel free to experiment.)

The relish does not need to “sit” to be ready; it’s ready now.

2011-09-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

I’m careful, when I write these essays, not to choose as a topic anything that might seem as if I’m trying to profit in any way from other people’s tragedies.

Truthfully, while the concept of my weekly essays originally was to make my name known, I no longer look at Wednesday’s Words as being primarily a promotional tool.
The column stopped being that the day I told you about my son, Anthony, and the heartbreak of losing a son who had himself lost a daughter.

If I had to categorize WW, I guess I’d stick it in a box labelled “dues”.

I am a writer of genre fiction, and while I do put a lot of effort into creating characters that are empathic and a plot that keeps the reader’s interest, while I take care to toss in some real-life issues, basically I write books to sell them.
No one pays me anything for Wednesday’s Words. This is the writing that comes from my soul, and the sharing of one’s soul ought only to be a gift.

This past Sunday, the United States marked a terrible anniversary. There have been commemorations and reminiscences by those who were there, and those whose loved ones were victims of that despicable violence. In the wake of their eloquence, my words seem, to me at least, inadequate.

I’ve been trying to recall what the world was like pre-9/11. The picture is hazy. We were naïve, I suppose. We felt safe, and secure, confident that terrorist attacks happened elsewhere, never here, never in North America. Even after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, we still clung to our belief that we were safe, here in our two countries, from such violence.

We weren’t safe, of course, and now in this “post 9/11” world we understand that while we may be relatively secure, we’re not immune from the senseless and futile acts of hatred that others commit. The truth is, we never were.

The attacks of September 11, 2001affected all of us, each in different ways. It changed us, and continues to change us in ways we could never have imagined. We’ll none of us ever forget those horrible moments, when stunned disbelief gave way to hideous reality. In those minutes and hours when we waited to find out “what’s next”—when we didn’t know if there was more destruction to come, we had a glimpse of the apocalypse.

And yet, as the sun continued to rise and to set, we heard stories of human amity and love in the aftermath of tragedy. In Gander, Newfoundland, a city opened its doors and its hearts to strangers who were stranded when airliners were ordered to land, the travel itineraries of thousands halted; volunteers from every walk of life undertook a pilgrimage from all points west, north and south to go to New York City, to lend their hearts and souls, their hand and their backs, to the massive task of rescue and recovery.

It’s human nature to look for these moments of grace, and to not only celebrate them but cling to them.

For to find grace in the midst of devastation is, I believe, to assert the immutable triumph of the human spirit.

Love,
Morgan

2011-09-07T07:31:00.000-07:00

The calendar says that autumn will arrive on Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:04 a.m. However, I believe the season already arrived on August 19th. At least, that’s the way it seems to me.

Sitting here at my desk writing this, I can now look out my window (though I promise you that I am not staring at the scenery too often). Looking at the beautiful, cloudless sky, I know that it’s a much paler shade than the deep cornflower blue of summer.

The days aren’t nearly as hot as they were just a couple of weeks ago, and the evenings have turned quite a bit cooler.

My duvet is right where it belongs, back on my bed.

We have a fall fair here in town every Labor Day weekend, and it’s the biggest fair in the county. My beloved swears that it’s always chilly on Fair weekend. He was right again this year, because as Monday dawned, a cooler air mass settled over our area. Anyone wanting to attend that outdoor event on Labor Day likely would have needed a jacket.

Regardless of the temperatures, it’s the color of the sky and the scent of something in the air that tells me that as far as Mother Nature is concerned, it’s already fall.

Autumn always takes me by surprise. Didn’t summer begin just yesterday? There are never enough hours in the day anymore. Time management is the Holy Grail that continues to elude me. I’m beginning to think that my being busy is not only what keeps me from getting a grip on that elusive concept, it’s the single biggest culprit in making time fly.

I bet you if I were to sit back, kick my feet up, and do absolutely nothing, time wouldn’t fly, it would crawl.

Unfortunately—or fortunately—I’ve never quite gotten the hang of doing nothing.

I’ve taken to wearing a step counter lately, because I need to keep my body moving as much as I need to keep my mind active. There’s a strong tendency, because I spend so much time sitting at my keyboard, to allow myself to slip into a totally sedentary lifestyle. The step counter makes a bit of a sound when I adjust my position in my chair, and then I remember to get up and move.

It’s only 9:30 in the morning, and already my pedometer reads 2770, which tells me I haven’t been “doing nothing”, at least not so far today.

No matter the time of year, no matter what day it is, there’s always plenty of work to be done. I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t have to look very far to find things to do, either.

One thing about living here in Southern Ontario is that our seasons tend to be very distinct, one from the other. In spring, it seems to take a long time for the trees to leaf. But then you look around one day and see that shimmery green aura on each of them and know the buds have sprouted, and the leaves will soon follow. In summer, there’s an intensity to the heat, and a stillness to the air when the breeze dies down that’s really quite unique from any other time of year.

Autumn brings air that is more likely to carry a nip the closer you get to November. The sky darkens more readily for storms, too, and sometimes those grey clouds turn a lighter shade of smoke-grey—the color I call ‘snow clouds’.

I always considered November to be Mother Nature’s way of taunting us, as she tells us “I’m going to get you, just you wait and see!”

Wait and see, indeed. Here we are, and it’s already September. The kids have gone back to school, vacations for the most part are done, swimming pools will soon be closed, and good grief, the stores are already sporting Halloween merchandise.

Does anyone else feel as if they’re on a merry-go-round that not only won’t stop, it keeps turning faster and faster?

Oops. I think my age is showing again.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

My first ever winners!!!

2011-08-31T18:01:00.001-07:00

I am so excited, because I just randomly chose 3 winners from among those who follow my blog.

Congratulations go to:

Karen H in NC who won the $10 gift card from Amazon.com

Pomma Emeraldwolfeyes who won the $20 gift card from Amazon.com

mom1248 who won the $30 Amazon.com gift card

Congratulations!

I will be announcing new prizes to be won in the coming days. Thanks for following my Wednesday's Words!

Love,
Morgan

2011-08-31T08:07:00.000-07:00

After years of being exiled to the far corner of my office, sitting with my back to the room like a recalcitrant child, I am pleased to announce that I finally rebelled, and ordered a complete and total re-organization of my work space. And in the process, I discovered, among other things, that no one in this family remembers things in quite the way they happened.

I do recall that I came home one day several years ago to find that my daughter had re-arranged my office for me when all I had asked her to do was “clean up my wires”.

Imagine my surprise to discover my antique oak library desk that had been situated in front of the window, shoved into a corner, and not only into a corner but angled in such a way as to make me face that conflux of two walls if I wanted to work at it.

When I came home on this particular day, my husband saw my face as I took in for the first time this new arrangement. He said, “I told her not to do it. I told her you’d be mad!”

I wasn’t mad, but I was a little disappointed. I left the office in this new arrangement for two reasons. First, a lot of the work had been involved in carrying out the move in the first place. Second, the truth was that this new set-up was necessary for Internet access, which at that time was through my phone line. My daughter hadn’t been able to move the phone line to the computer as we had thought she could, so the alternative was to move the computer to the phone line instead. At the time, I hadn’t yet been published and didn’t spend all that much time BICFOK [butt in chair fingers on keyboard].

So through the years there I’ve sat in this room everyone agrees is my office, in the far corner, facing the wall, while life goes on behind me.

There are two doorways (but only one door) in my office. One opens to the entry hall and the living room; the second opens to the kitchen. And yes, the preferred route—but not the only one—from living room to kitchen is through my office.

The rest of my office is filled with file cabinets, book cases, and of course, a second computer, one that my beloved likes to use.

You can just see us, can’t you? Silently sitting, back to back, and surfing the web in matrimonial harmony.

Two winters ago saw the addition of an electric fireplace to my office. My beloved set it up in front of the window, of course. Ah, a fireplace! That sounds cosy—until I tell you that after it got moved in, we shortly discovered that to use it meant to pop a fuse breaker. Thus it sits, in the winter, in front of the window, looking cosy.

I’ve been continually reassured that we’re going to have that glitch looked at, one of these days.

There had been only one real down side to this desk in corner arrangement. In the spring, the sun streaming through my window shone upon my computer screen so brightly that for an hour and a bit each morning, seeing the screen was out of the question.

I quickly bought a bamboo blind to solve that problem.

Eventually, of course, I got tired of the corner, so about two weeks ago I informed all and sundry that I intended to move my desk back to in front of the window. I want to at least see the sunshine and blue skies each day.

No one recalled the actual circumstances of the first move, and I heard grumblings of “make up your mind where you want to be” despite that at least six years have passed since the desk was moved to that corner.

So on the appointed day my daughter came over, and the move was accomplished.

As soon as he saw it my beloved announced he wasn’t completely happy with the new look, as we were now sitting closer together, and at right angles to each other. But then he proved he’s come a long way when he hastened to add that it was after all my office, and I was the one who needed to be happy with it.

And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks!

Love,
Morgan
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2011-08-24T06:58:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to be invited to be on a panel of published authors at my RWA chapter meeting this month. The moderator of the panel asked me to tell the aspiring authors present my best “publishing story”. I thought that perhaps you, my faithful readers, would like to hear it, too.

A long time ago, before I ever truly believed I would someday really get published, I wrote a Cinderella story that was just for me. If you’re a writer, you know how it is: you’re feeling down, and so you write. This story was about a widow who, with the help of two fairy godmothers, won a trip to a Mediterranean kingdom; she then met the king while he was staying “incognito” at a resort. They fell in love, of course, and they lived happily ever after. I wrote this story by hand, and it wasn’t more than 30 pages long.

The story had no conflict to speak of, but it was, after all, an escape, and just for me.

Flash forward to 2005; I attended CanWrite, the writing conference of the Canadian Author’s Association, in Kitchener, Ontario with my friend Kelley Armstrong. There I heard of something called “erotic romance” something that seemed to be a new genre just opening up, being published in e-books, a new medium just opening up. I’d been writing romance for years; I’d already finished 10 novels! Surely I could spice the romance up enough to make it erotic romance. So I began to write a story I called Simply Irresistible. But I had never written anything specifically to sell before. It was really tough going. Words dried up, and I wondered if I could really do this thing called “writing”, after all. Then along came NaNoWriMo. Kelley said she was going to participate just for the fun of it, and suggested that I should, too. Also, since I’m a moderator of the writing group on her web site, the two of us together could encourage the entire writing group to join in the madness that is NaNo and thus inspire them to finish their novels. I agreed, of course, even though I didn’t have a clue what I was going to write about.

And then I remembered my Cinderella story. I got excited about writing again, and I ended up producing 54K words in a fortnight.

The story still had no conflict to speak of, but it was, after all, just a writing exercise, and just for me.

Two years later it’s 2007. The book that had been written as Simply Irresistible had been released with the new title Made For Each Other, and my publisher put out a submission call for “adult fairy tales”. She wanted to publish an anthology of them. Eager to have another title published, I put my thinking cap on and came up with “Beau and the Lady Beast”. I pitched it, and my publisher loved it. She then asked, “Do you have any other ideas?”

I remembered my Cinderella story, which for NaNo I had renamed “Once Upon A Time”; I really loved that story. But it had no conflict to speak of….ah, but now I was a “published” author, and I knew I could “fix” it. So I pitched it to my publisher, who suggested making the story into a three book series. It was my first series, and, since the name “Once Upon A Time” had already been taken, I called it “Magic And Love”.

What had begun as a short story hand written one sad, lonely day ended up as a 145,000-word series.

If you have a story that you wrote long ago that you love, it doesn’t have to stay in the past. You’re a writer, a professional. You can make it work, if you want to.

These three stories of Magic and Love (The Prince and the Single Mom, The Princess and the Bodyguard, A Prince for Sophie) are very far from my best sellers. But to this day, they remain my favorites of everything I’ve written, and I even re-read them, from time to time, myself.

Love,
Morgan

2011-08-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

So I was sitting on my front porch a couple evenings ago. It was that time of day when the heat is just right, the shadows comfortable with sun dappling through trees, and the neighbourhood kids out and about enjoying their summer.

On this particular day, our youngest grandson was playing with a friend of his a couple of doors down. They had water guns and were taking turns trying to see who could shoot the farthest.

Yes, I had already been asked if they could shoot each other and I (being a party-pooper kind of granny) had said no.

As they were playing, the other boy’s younger sister chose to ride her bike back and forth along the street.

She got distracted watching the boys, lost control of her bicycle, and ended up on the pavement. Now, she wasn’t badly hurt, just a minor scrape to her knee and a major one to her ego.

Even before her father came out of the house and picked her up she was wailing that it wasn’t her fault she’d fallen; the boys had made her fall.

Having seen the entire episode unfold, I will say that the little girl, who’s 8, let her attention wander, watching the boys instead of what she was doing and where she was going on her bike. However, neither boy did anything to cause her to fall. They weren’t even “shooting” in her direction.

As I sat and pondered this mini-accident, what got me was that in fact that entire episode struck me as being a micro-encapsulation of what I think is the main thing that’s wrong with today’s society.

My question isn’t so much doesn’t anyone own their own actions anymore? It’s more, what the heck are we really teaching our children and grandchildren?

I can guarantee you, that if that had same thing had happened to one of my kids, along with the hugs and the murmurs of sympathy and Band-Aids would have been the words, “well, if you’d been paying attention to what you were doing, you wouldn’t have fallen and gotten hurt”.

It seems to me that these days, we let our children get away with saying whatever they want, which mostly is to publicly disavow any culpability in their own stupid actions.

Thus they don’t learn to think before they act, or look before they leap. They aren’t taught the simple logic of cause and effect. They’re not made aware that their actions can have consequences that go far beyond the one simple moment of inattention, or far beyond anything they could ever imagine.

Having these lessons learned when they are small, like my young neighbor, will result in scraped knees and banged elbows, and bruised egos. Maybe, they’ll result in a broken arm or leg, or a mild concussion.

But failure to learn these lessons when our children are young could have possible much more catastrophic outcomes for them when they become teens or young adults.
They could lose relationships, or jobs, or sometimes something totally irreplaceable.
Some of those consequences don’t bear thinking about.

Love,
Morgan
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2011-08-10T06:24:00.000-07:00

Those of you who follow me on Face Book know that just a few days before we were scheduled to leave on vacation, my sweet little Boots kitty fell ill, and passed away. He’d lived a good long life—more than 15 years, having come to us when he was about 5.

When Booty arrived, I already had a cat. Her name was Gray Kitty. She was old at that point, and ignored the interloper. When Gray died at the age of 18 (human years), Boots became top cat—actually, he became the only cat.

Over the years, Boots had mellowed from being a feline who barely tolerated a scratch to a needy kitty who demanded I pick him up and snuggle him like a baby—yes, on his back so I could rub belly and scratch chin—every day.

I knew he was getting old, and I had told myself many times that he wouldn’t be with me much longer. Still, our pets really are members of the family, and despite my efforts, I wasn’t prepared to lose him.

When I came back from the vet, I had my daughter take the 7 foot tall cat stand that had been in our living room these past ten years to her house – only Boots had ever used it here, and my daughter has two other cats at home she thought would like it. Also, I wanted her to have it so I wouldn’t have to look at it every day.

We left for vacation, as scheduled. While we were gone, my daughter for the most part stayed here at the house, to watch over her cat that still lives with us—Crash Ktty is also very old and not well—and our dog.

On the Thursday of the first week we were away, Jenny came to the house between clients (she works in home healthcare). It was raining, and as she climbed the steps to the porch she realized there was a strange cat sitting in one of the padded patio chairs. My daughter shrugged, because it was raining at the time, and she figured the cat was simply escaping the wet.

This unfamiliar cat was all black, like my Boots kitty, except for a tiny flash of white on her chest. I don’t want you to think this cat is an exact physical replica of Boots. First, she’s female and second, she has short hair. Boots had been a Persian cross breed. The eyes, however, are the same color exactly.

An hour later this cat was still there, and when my daughter opened the front door to let the dog out on the porch, the cat came inside as if she owned the place. She immediately walked over to my beloved’s chair, jumped up, and stared at the corner where the cat stand used to be. Then she turned, gave my daughter a dirty look and meowed.

Can anyone else hear the theme from the Twilight Zone playing in the background?

My daughter has given this cat the name “Spooky”. She tried several times to get it to leave, but of course, it didn’t. Jenny even took it a block away, thinking it would find its way home. Instead, it found its way back here. It claimed as its place the fourth step leading to the upstairs.

The minute I came in the house and met it, this cat decided I belonged to it, and moved into my office. Spooky thought she could sleep on my keyboard. I’ve given her temporary lodging on the open shelf in my file cabinet, instead.

My daughter is making inquiries of the area vets and humane society to see if anyone is missing a cat. This animal has had its front claws removed, and looks healthy, well fed and well cared-for.

Spooky has clearly been someone’s pet, and if she belongs to someone, then of course, I want them to have their familiar back.

If she doesn’t have an owner claim her, well, we’ll see.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-08-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

It’s summer and we’re on vacation again, taking two weeks off to kick back and recharge our batteries.

Our first stop last week, was, as it has been these few years, the north-eastern Pennsylvania city of Hazleton. We have friends who live there, and each year we take a few days to visit them. My beloved also likes to go on excursions, feeding the history buff within. This year on our schedule was a return to Steam Town, USA, the railroad museum in nearby Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a first time visit to the coal-mining town of Ashland.

As well as museums, my husband enjoys exploring historical sites. The first time we came to visit the area, he took the Lackawanna Mine tour. He liked going deep underground for the duration of the guided tour, which lasted over a half an hour.

During that first trip, I of course stayed on top of the grass. As I have done during every mine tour since.

The day after the return to Steam Town, we went to the small town of Ashland. There my husband and our friend toured the mine. While they explored, I stayed in the shade in the park there and read. A perfect outing for us both.

One thing both my beloved and I agree upon is that our marriage has lasted 39 years (as of this past July 14th) mainly because we allow each other to pursue different interests.

After Hazleton, we took two days in Philadelphia. We’d explored the city once before, but one thing David didn’t get to do that last time was visit the New Jersey, an Iowa Class Battleship that has been decommissioned and is moored at the waterfront of Camden, New Jersey.

While I stayed back in our comfy room on Friday David did just that. The tour he took was led by two World War 2 veterans, whose knowledge and experience awed their audience. My DH thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Most of our second week – this week – we are spending on the Jersey shore, in a place called Wildwood Crest. We’ve never been here before, but count ourselves lucky to have discovered it, and this very comfortable beachfront motor inn. We have a two room efficiency unit, which suits us to a T. We brought our Keurig with us, of course. One definition of heaven for us both is an ocean view and a freshly brewed cup of coffee.

We’ve already decided that the next time we come here, we won’t travel from Philadelphia on a Saturday. What should have been a two hour trip lasted nearly six, due to several instances of gridlock along the way. But we arrived safe and sound in the end. Within the hour we’d changed into our swim suits, and taken a dip in the pool.

After dinner that first day, around sunset, my beloved set off to have his first walk along the beach.

And showed up sometime later, dripping wet. Tee shirt, shorts, everything, soaked through because, in his words, “I wasn’t going to go in, but then I simply couldn’t resist.”

I shook my head, because that’s what he expected me to do. But what I actually thought was how cool it was for a man kicking at the gate of 60 to be able to enjoy the moment enough that he could give in to the temptation to wade into the ocean, despite not being dressed for it.

His sense of adventure and his thirst for knowledge are two of his most attractive traits.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-07-27T06:16:00.000-07:00

Have you ever flown on an airplane? If you have—and I’d have to say that a lot of people probably have—you know that even before the flight takes off, the flight attendant goes through the procedures to be followed in case of an emergency.

Whether you board the plane in the United States, or Canada, or Europe; whether you fly Delta, Air Canada or British Airways; whether your flight will last one hour or many hours, these emergency instructions are given, without fail.

And without fail, those instructions are the same. When it comes to the most important part—the life-sustaining oxygen—the flight attendants will tell you to put on your own air mask before you help someone else with theirs. The principle at work here is simple: you can’t save someone else until you save yourself, first.

That is advice that should be given to everyone with regard to life in general, but especially to the mothers among us.

Mothers tend to do for others first and always. We feed others, if you will, before we even consider feeding ourselves. Even when we feel under the weather, our kids (and often times, they are our grown kids) look to us for their favorite pasta, or their favorite dessert, and we, being mothers, do everything we can to accommodate them.

The point of today’s essay is that it’s okay, sometimes, to say no.

We get so busy and are so intent on taking care of others we forget to take care of ourselves, first. We think putting ourselves and our needs first is selfish.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

Just as, on a flight, we would need to secure our own air supply first, in life, we need to secure our own health and well being first if we truly want to be able to continue to take care of others. Ignoring our bodies’ needs for exercise, proper nutrition, sleep, and down time is not the way to ensure that we give our best to our families.

Of course, when our children are younger, we often do just that. No amount of reasoning with us is likely to get us to change our ways, either. Taking care of the kids is what we do, period.

But we moms have to recognize that there comes a point when we need to step back from the plate. When our children are no longer children, it is time for them to not only do for themselves, but hey, pay a little attention back to the ones who’ve given so much of themselves for so long.

When we reach our fifties, I believe it is good and wise and noble to begin to put ourselves first from time to time. We didn’t sacrifice for our children to earn a reward; we did it because we love them, and it is what moms do.

But the rewards are there regardless, and they need to be enjoyed. Probably one of the last lessons our children learn—and they don’t learn it until they’re well into adulthood—is that mothers are theirs forever, to love and appreciate and respect.

But mommies pass on the mantle of parenting to the next generation.

Love,
Morgan
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2011-07-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

I recall a conversation I had with my beloved several years ago. We were discussing the fact that he was becoming deaf—the result of working at an open pit mine without benefit of hearing protection for too many years. This was back before his site was purchased by the large international firm that owns it today.

At the time he was adamant, of course, that he didn’t need hearing aids. “Those things don’t work, anyway. All they do is make everything louder so that all you hear is loud static.”

Still, I had said, he should look into getting them. He said he would, as soon as hell froze over.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have an announcement to make. Hell has, apparently, frozen over.

This past Saturday my husband took delivery of his first set of hearing aids. He began the process to get them back in January, at the request of his employer. They suggested he go through the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, a provincial government agency. This agency will provide equipment such as hearing aids if the damage suffered is work related.

So at the beginning of the year he went to get his hearing tested and was told, very frankly, that he was so hearing impaired as to be considered disabled.
This came as a surprise to no one but him.

One thing I can say about my beloved: he isn’t a man to believe something just because someone tells him so.

Or even if several someones do.

Needless to say there have been loads of improvements to hearing aid technology since the “olden days” when his uncle got one (I believe in was in the 1960s and that was what my DH was basing his opinion on).

He got the call to go in last Saturday, and when he came out of the building, he was wearing a couple of very small pieces of ultra-modern technology.

Aside from being light weight, they came with a “remote control” device. He immediately pointed the device at me and said, “I can turn you off, now.”

Congratulate me, I held my tongue.

He said they were comfortable, and that was good. We went home, and he went out to sit on the porch. Our front porch, that faces this very quiet street in our fairly small town, has always been a good place to sit. Dozens of trees line the street. Trees, of course, are the homes of birds.

On our street, the trees house hundreds of birds, at times.

“Good Lord, are they always so noisy?” DH asked. I just grinned.

He took the dog for a walk, and when he returned, he said, “I didn’t realize how much I didn’t hear until I got these.”

Again, I guarded my tongue. I like to think that, at my age, the need to say, “I told you so” has faded—that I’m mature enough to just let it go.

Yes, I’d like to think that, but I’m not sure I’m really strong enough to resist the temptation forever.

Love,
Morgan
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2011-07-13T07:07:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long time since I have personally lamented the unfairness of life. There doesn’t seem to be a point to it. Life is unfair; it’s unfair for everyone; I know this, so the best thing I can do is just get on with things.

But then there are moments when I am left at a such complete loss, when the vagaries of fate are more than unfair, they’re just wrong.

Nine years ago the next door neighbor who for years had been the bane of our existence put his house up for sale. Nothing could have pleased us more, as the man—a divorced father of two—seemed to be on a personal quest to complain about as many things as he could each day.

I totally understood why this man was divorced.

One young couple came, with her parents, to see the house, and decided it was theirs on first sight. They moved in not long afterwards, as soon as they came home from their honeymoon.

These new neighbors were a delightful change from the other guy. They were a simple couple—he worked at a wood products factory, and she at a community home for the severely handicapped. They entertained a fair bit, but not the way you’d expect young people to entertain. There were no raucous parties, no drunken feasts. They instead hosted plenty of family-friendly picnics and barbeques. There were always kids there, either with their parents or on their own just having a “sleep over” with their uncle and aunt and you knew that this young couple would make excellent parents.

They had their first child slightly more than a year after they moved in; another daughter came about two years later, and then finally a little boy two years after that.

In the summers, mom and dad both took delight in playing with their children, and getting the children to pitch in on outdoor chores. In winter, you’d see them go on family walks around the block, or find them building snowmen together.

Sundays they would emerge from their home, all dressed neatly, and go to church.
Just slightly over three years ago, the young mother found a lump in her breast. It was suddenly just there, a massive growth, and when she went to have it checked, it was to discover that she had stage three breast cancer.

We were never intimately friendly with these neighbors. We’d chat when we’d see each other. This past winter, the husband and my beloved took turns clearing the snow from our respective sidewalks and from around our cars. The young couple would ask, from time to time, how my career was going. We’d chat with the children and, one day when all their tricycles were on the sidewalk, stated in mock horror that an outlaw biker gang was living next door.

They’ve been good neighbors, and from all I’ve seen, good parents and very good people.

Over the past three years we’ve watched them fight this disease called cancer, always determined, both of them, to stave off the worst. Throughout the battle, that young woman never wavered. She had her faith, not only in God, but in her own self. You knew she would do whatever it took to win this battle.

It had begun to look as if she would succeed.

And then the tide changed.

I remember talking to her husband one day, when it seemed she was in remission. “She’s always done everything right,” he said. “She’s never smoked, she’s always eaten a healthy diet, and she’s exercised regularly. I just don’t get it. Why did she have to get sick?”

That is so human of us, isn’t it? To think that if bad things happen, we must have done something to deserve them. The truth is, bad things happen to good people for no reason, and that is that.

In the wee hours of this past Sunday morning, my brave young neighbor lost her battle with this disease. She passed away at home, her three young children and her husband by her side. She was only thirty-eight years old.

Her husband told me the news himself, but I’d awakened and seen the ambulance there, and I’d known.

He said he was grateful the children got to say goodbye to their mother. He also said that she’s in a better place now. I believe that, too.

No, life not only isn’t fair, it was never meant to be fair. This I’ve always understood.

But sometimes, the degree of unfairness I witness quite simply leaves me gasping for breath and begging for mercy.

Love,
Morgan

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-07-06T06:17:00.000-07:00

In the last week, both of our two nations celebrated their “national birthdays” within days of each other, as they always do. Canada Day was July 1st, and of course your Independence Day was July 4th.

I hope this year it was a good celebration for everyone!

Both nations have much of which they can be proud. Our countries are democracies, and best trading partners. Our border is peaceful, and our friendship endures. Our people live by the rule of law, and though that law is not perfect, it serves us all well.

Often, I’ve lamented that if we as Canadians have a flaw, it’s that as a people, we tend not to show our patriotism.

This year, perhaps because we were fortunate enough to have their royal highness the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge come to Canada, I was aware of our patriotism on display, more so than in years past. I saw much more flag waving this year than I’ve seen in quite a while.

My beloved and I spent Canada Day at the home of one of his co-workers. Situated in a small rural community—not even a village, really—our host’s home is on a corner piece of property, lush with trees, and soft lawn.

This community of not more than two dozen homes, I guess you could call it a ‘pocket’ village, as it occupies a pocket formed by a short road that meets a provincial highway on both ends.

And this community, on Canada Day, had a parade!

There were no marching bands, and no drum majorettes—although there was one fire truck. This parade consisted solely of Canadians, men, women and children filled with National pride, and unashamed to show it.

About twenty or so vehicles comprised the body of this parade, trucks decorated with lots of flags and streamers in red and white. One truck, a flat bed, had lawn chairs on it, and people sitting, waving their flags, tossing candy to the crowd, wishing everyone either “Happy Canada Day!” or “Happy Birthday!”

I was impressed by the smiling faces and the enthusiasm of the people—fully three quarters of the population of this community—who in their pickup trucks, or classic cars, drove slowly the one mile parade route, encircling the community.

Some of the partiers enjoying our hosts hospitality, tagged along at the end of the parade, bedecked as they were in their special “Canada Day” t-shirts and cowboy hats.
This humble yet proud parade made me realize that you don’t need anything fancy to display your national pride. You only need to stand up and be willing to show everyone how you feel.

There was a lot of fervor in Ottawa, our nation’s capital, on Canada Day—what some have called a “love fest” between those Canadians who gathered on Parliament Hill, and the visiting Royals. Every time Prince William mentioned the name of his wife, the cheers went up. And there was great cheering when he said he brought best wishes from his grandmother, “The Queen of Canada”.

I hope those of my friends who are Americans had a similarly moving and patriotic holiday. I hope you waved your flag, cheered your veterans, and ate some apple pie.

We do have much to be proud of here in North America, and much to be grateful for, too. And I, for one, am going to try to remember to be proud and grateful on a more regular basis.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-06-29T05:58:00.000-07:00

Today, at least here in Ontario, is the last day of school for elementary students. The children, of course and for the most part are happy. The parents, who now must come up with some manner of having their children supervised over the summer, perhaps not so much so.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that we had to make arrangements for our own children over the summer months. We lived out in the country, and fortunately, there was a young lady who lived next door to us, who came over each day. There weren’t the options available to parents then that there are now for keeping them busy, nor was there an emphasis on structured activities like there is today.

There was Vacation Bible School, of course, and that was free. But it was only one week, leaving seven more to fill. Our children pretty much were expected to play outside when the weather was good, to make their own fun—it was the age before computers, and cable television with their all day cartoon network, so making their own fun was really my kids’ only option.

I don’t recall that there were many complaints of boredom from them, but that could have been because they knew I’d find them work to do if they did complain.

These days there are, of course, all sorts of “day camp” options available for the children to attend. Some are run by organizations like the YMCA, and some by the Parks and Recreation department of the local communities. Most of the programs hire teenagers to interact with the children, while being organized and supervised by adults.

Yes, the day camps are a glorified babysitting program, but they usually feature activities to keep the children’s minds and bodies occupied. Kids attending these programs go on outings to parks and zoos, to museums and observatories, and to conservation areas where they can swim. There’re arts and crafts and games. They make friends and have fun.

There are also all sorts of specialized camps. Rock climbing camps, canoeing camps, even pottery camps can be found in our area. My granddaughter’s favorite specialty camp is Horse Camp. There the children enjoy all of the above activities, with the added fun of learning how to ride and care for horses. She’s attended every year for the last five years. It’s her favorite two weeks of the year.

All of the programs offered are expensive, but then so is hiring a babysitter in this day and age. I don’t know how parents manage. Some don’t, I suppose. There are children left to their own devices during the day while their parents work. For those who can’t afford to have their children supervised, and those who can but struggle to pay for it, I imagine the idea of year-round school is an attractive concept.

My two youngest grandchildren will have a couple of weeks with mom, while she takes her vacation from work, but the rest of the time they’ll attend various camps. No sleeping in for them, either, as their day camps usually start around eight in the morning, run until four-thirty or five in the afternoon, and take place Monday to Friday.

The children still have to have a lunch packed, the same as during the school year. And some of the camps are even held at the school, utilizing the gymnasium and cafeteria space.

I kind of feel sorry for those children who attend camp at their schools. It must feel as if they never get away from the dreaded place.

In general, when I look at the lives my grandchildren lead—the homework and projects they have to do, the extra activities they’re expected to engage in, and the busyness that is their lives, I can’t help but shake my head in wonder.

Being a kid sure seems to be a lot more work than I remember it being.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-06-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

Under most circumstances, I am proud of my country and my countrymen and women. However, I am deeply ashamed of the riots that occurred in Vancouver following the hockey game last Wednesday night.

I do not for one minute believe that the rioting, the looting or the violence perpetrated against other people and their possessions were the actions of real hockey fans.

I very much doubt any of those punks actually attended the game, period.

I have no doubt that the rioting and the lawless behaviour was instigated by those who already are known to the police, who likely have criminal records. One good thing about this age of technology, there seems to be no shortage of video or still photos to assist the police in their investigation. At last count they had nearly one million images, and had laid hundreds of charges.

This mob mentality isn’t anything new, of course. There’ve been riots in the streets ever since there have been streets and people to populate them. Sadly, this is the second time such an event has occurred in Vancouver. The last time, in 1994, also followed a loss of the Stanley Cup in game seven, that time to the New York Rangers.

I like to believe that we, as human beings, have evolved beyond this kind of disgraceful behaviour. Yes, I know my naïveté is showing. Some people take their sporting events very seriously, often coming to blows. It’s happened over in Europe following close soccer matches, and in other places in North America, as well. Some folks just like to cause chaos, and actually there is apparently a class of people who call themselves anarchists whose sole purpose seems to be to simply wreak havoc.

The police chief of Vancouver stated that some of these people had come from out of town specifically to cause trouble last Wednesday night. I do not understand this group. Anarchists? Where’s the logic in that?

The price tag from last Wednesday’s rampage hasn’t been totalled yet, but the riot in 1994 caused over a million dollars worth of damage. People were hurt, then as now, so who knows what the real human toll could be? Aside from people being injured and property destroyed, how do you evaluate the cost to the province and the city of the tarnishing their reputations?

How long, I wonder, will the people of the world tolerate this kind of brazen destruction before things change in a very fundamental way? Perhaps cities hosting major sporting events, such as the Stanley Cup, or even the Super Bowl or the World Series, will begin to enact stringent measures with regard to these venues in order to protect lives and property.

What could city councils decide to do? They could enact strict curfews in the city centers; demand that all ticket holders board busses in outlying areas to be transported in, and then bussed out again—with marshals on each bus, of course. They could demand that police in riot gear, carrying tear gas and assault rifles patrol the streets, guarding the businesses and property of tax payers.

It all sounds rather draconian, doesn’t it?

I wonder that such tactics haven’t been used already. As a society, we seem quick to make rules and regulations in the face of stupid behaviour—hence the warning of “hot” being printed on paper take-out coffee cups, and the admonition not to iron clothes while wearing them printed on the boxes that contain those small appliances.

Maybe in the end there will be no more live events, period. Perhaps they will all be available only on video feed, and only in private residences.

In essence, eventually society will move to protect itself from immaturity and selfishness—because sadly, there seems to be no cure for these two traits.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

2011-06-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to remember what it was like to not be a published author. Maybe it’s different for those authors who went the traditional route, got an agent and then a New York contract.

If that had been my reality in August of 2006—if, instead of getting an e-mail from Siren-Bookstrand, and embarking upon the journey of e-publishing, I got one from an agent instead—then I suppose it might be easier to remember the before times, because I doubt I would be standing at 22 novels published a mere 4 and a half years later.

You’d be right if you guessed I must spend most of my time writing. But when I try to recall how I imagined this would be, I don’t think I ever gave much thought to the actual process of the writing itself.

I envisioned the altered state of being a published author; I envisioned not having to hold a j-o-b; but I don’t think I thought overmuch about the actual work I would be doing, crafting stories.

I say crafting, because as much as this is an art, it is also a craft. The word ‘art’ implies that there is something transcendental about the whole thing, something maybe a little mystical, a little esoteric, a Divine gift, if you will. To a certain extent, for all of us who are writers, this is true.

Now the word ‘craft’, on the other hand, implies a deliberate honing of a skill; a practice-makes-perfect approach, a constant search for new, better, different ways to tell the stories. This is the most true aspect about being an author for the vast majority of us.

In each of us the ratio of God-given talent to acquired skill is different. In myself, as much as I wish it were otherwise, I’d say the ratio is 40-60. My father was a writer; if he hadn’t set it aside when he left school and went to work to first support his mother, and then later, his wife, who knows where his talent and work ethic would have taken him.

Of course it really is pointless to wonder. Life evolved as it did. This is my reality. I know that I have talent; and I know that I am a good writer. I am not, sadly, a great writer.

Someday, I might grow into being one, if I work hard enough at it.

Being a great writer to me has nothing to do with the genre you write. You don’t have to be an author of literary works in order to achieve greatness.

How would I define a great writer? One who is able to give you, within his or her words, an image so clean, so pure, that you not only see it, but you make it your own. As you read their words the writer disappears for you and you say to yourself, “yes, I am there. I can see it and hear it and taste it and touch it and smell it. It is real to me.”

I don’t fool myself by thinking of myself as particularly successful, and certainly not—as a friend of mine keeps telling me that I am—famous. At most, I have achieved a modicum of success and a measure of notoriety.

The latter, I would wager, as much as a result of these weekly essays as the 22 novels I have had published.

That is not to say that I am not pleased with who I am and where I am in my life. I am, and almost giddily so.

I get to do what I love to do most in all the world, all the time. I earn a living doing this that I love, and the most amazing thing of all is that people actually read my books. Lots and lots of people read my books, and isn’t that a miracle?

You have to have a dream in life, a reason to get up every day, to continue to put one foot in front of the other as you travel your particular path in this life.

Even at my age, even at where I am, right now, I have a dream. And each day I do my best to take as many steps as I can toward seeing that dream come to fruition.

I have the best life!

Love,
Morgan

Wednesday's Words for June 8, 2011

2011-06-08T06:38:00.000-07:00

Not very often, but every once in a while, I miss the halcyon days of my youth. We lived in a rural community—or as we called it in those days, “out in the sticks”.

Country living for us wasn’t graceful or privileged. This was back in the day when the wealthy still congregated to the cities, and the poor lived out on the land.

My father had died when I was 8 years old—he was barely 46. My mother, a nurse, worked at one of the hospitals in the city, about thirty minutes from home. Up until I hit grade six, I’d never been on a school bus, and didn’t even know they made male teachers.

In the spring – May and June – our air was filled with the smell of lilacs, lily of the valley, tulips and the fresh scrubbed aroma of rain. We had a term for that after-showers scented breeze . We called it, “fresh air”.

I miss the scent of fresh air nearly as much as I miss my parents. When I was 21, my mother passed away at the far-too young age of 56 – just three months shy of her 57th birthday.

I’ve been thinking these things lately because, as of today, I have lived to be 39 days older than my mother. I’d already passed the first milestone—living to be older than my father—nearly a decade ago.

This latest milestone is one I was never certain that I would reach. I’d had a heart attack when I was 48, followed a few months later by emergency triple by-pass surgery. That surgery proved hard on me and I had a very long and difficult recovery.

As I was recovering, I honestly didn’t believe I’d live more than a couple of years more.

Of course, the jury is still out on that one, isn’t it? None of us knows how long we’re to have here on this earth. The uncertainty of life is something we don’t really become aware of until we’re older, or until we have our own mortality held up in front of our faces.

Time moves faster now than it ever did. The days speed past, and sometimes I wonder how I can let even a moment slip by. Some days, there’s such a sense of urgency inside me. The clock is ticking. Will I get everything done that I want to do? Will I be able to look back, satisfied that my time wasn’t wasted?

I try not to worry over much about it. Sometimes, if you focus too hard on the tiniest details, you miss the big picture. I try to spend my time as wisely as I can, and I try never to pass up an opportunity to lend a hand to someone else. I try to take care of the things—and people—I’ve been entrusted with, and try very hard not to take my foul moods (I do have them) out on others.

And yes, maybe I do waste time, just a little, or so it might seem on the surface. If I’m exhausted, I nap. I may take my morning coffee outside, sit on my front porch, and just watch the sunlight dapple through the trees and the squirrels and birds hard at work.

Sometimes I play silly games on my computer, just for the hell of it.

Maybe the secret to living the best life you can live is to find a good balance between meeting your responsibilities to others, and meeting your responsibilities to yourself.

And always, always being your own best friend.

Love,
Morgan
LOVE UNDER TWO FLYBOYS – LUSTY, TEXAS 4
NOW AVAILABLE
http://www.bookstrand.com/love-under-two-flyboys

Wednesday's Words for June 1, 2011

2011-06-01T05:52:00.000-07:00

On average, I would say that most of the people who read my essays are writers. Not all, certainly, but most.

As writers, we have certain things in common, not the least of which is a different way of looking at everything—at the world, and sometimes even at our very own loved ones.

I’ve long maintained that writers really are a breed apart, and this is not necessarily a compliment. We tend to be more sensitive to emotions and to the nuances of life than the average person. Depending upon the genre we write, sometimes we see plots where there are none, and we may easily get caught up, often at the most inconvenient times, in our own personal game of “what if”. All of the above can tend to make us a little awkward, socially, but really, in the long run, it’s all part of the species, ‘writer’.

If you’re a writer then you know that no one, except your writer friends, understands that part of you. I think, though, the same can be said of all artists.

I had a friend years ago, a gifted painter. When I asked her, she confirmed that sometimes she didn’t understand why everyone couldn’t do what she did, it seemed that natural to her.

While crafting a story is something that does for the most part come naturally to me, it’s also an endeavour that takes a lot of work. There are times when the words simply don’t cooperate, or when the plot I’ve come up with doesn’t quite fit the characters I’ve created. There are times when I stare at a blank computer screen for hours on end, while wondering what flaw exists in me that I choose to torture myself in this way.

Because writing is a solitary endeavour, and because we writers are of the temperament that makes us lean toward being slightly neurotic, it is good, righteous, and even healthy and necessary to ensure that we spend time with other writers every once in a while.

For us, writers’ retreats are golden.

I, along with my three best friends, writers all, had a wonderful writers’ retreat the first week of May this year (I’m not excluding the alligator from the list of attendees; I just don’t know him well enough yet to call him a friend). How brilliant of us to have chosen to rent a house, as opposed to going to a hotel somewhere. We were able to purchase groceries, stake out our own private sleeping areas, stake out our own preferred writing areas, and commence the ebb and flow of fellowship and solitude—the two elements that constitute the perfect retreat for a writer.

During our times of communion, any who wished a brainstorming session was free to ask for one (and thank you ladies, for the book titles). We have one television show which we all four watch—Castle, of course—and that was a treat, to be able to enjoy it together.

The uninitiated would wonder how we could expect to get any writing done, as we had so much fun; yet we all four found ourselves able to write quite prolifically. Let’s be honest here, with four muses in attendance (none of us even considered for one moment leaving ours at home) the air was rife with literary creativity. It was magic!

This was a working vacation for each of us, so there was working, and there was vacation. We shopped, we ate out, we ate in—Ms. Raina created some wonderful salads that we nibbled all week, and Ms. Emma grilled salmon, and steak, and roasted a prime rib that were beyond heavenly. Ms. Lara created a breakfast buffet that was absolutely scrumptious and Morgan, being Morgan and sometimes a bit different, made a butternut squash and red pepper soup.

We discovered a restaurant that had dozens of varieties of egg rolls, and no it was not a Chinese food restaurant, we purchased souvenirs and, of course, we adopted a reptilian mascot, our own champion of the lists, our knight in reptilian armor.

And I am pleased to report that we each returned home rested, energized, and with our creative energies restored to healthy, and happy, balance.

It was, quite simply, one of the best weeks of my life.

Love,
Morgan
COMING FRIDAY JUNE 3, 2011 – PREORDER NOW
LOVE UNDER TWO FLYBOYS – L. T. #4

Wednesday's Words for May 25, 2011

2011-05-25T04:27:00.000-07:00

My heart goes out to the people of Joplin, Missouri, and to all the people who, over this very tumultuous spring, have endured hardship, displacement, and the loss of homes and loved ones.

How do we make sense of the senseless?

In my life when things have gone wrong, when there've been losses, or tragedies, after the shock has worn off, I try to step back and find some sort of value in the loss. It's not easy, but it does help me to cope.

I put myself into the frame of mind that all things are transitory, and that taking something negative and doing something positive with it is the ultimate victory.

This year, there have been so many instances of floods, fires, tornadoes and
earthquakes—so many occasions where nature has proven to us, time and again, that she's a powerful bitch not to be messed with. When you sit back and think of the number and magnitude of the natural disasters hitting humanity just this year so far, it's devastating.

No wonder so many people so easily believed the End of Days was near.

That sense isn't unique to here and now. There have been other times in our history when people likely felt the future looked just as bleak. Consider what it must have been like to be alive in 1918. The Great War was finally ending, the bloodiest and most devastating war in the history of man to that point. And then, young, healthy adults became ill, and died, of the Spanish flu. Some would go to bed healthy, and never wake up. By the time this great pandemic was over in 1920, between 40 and 50 million people had died.

I'm sure there were many then who believed they were reaching the End of Days, too.
We, who bear witness to the destruction that our friends and neighbors are forced to endure can help. We can donate money, clothing, and food. We can ensure that our local, state, and federal governments and agencies do not drag their heels in setting things to rights.

We can take time to appreciate all that we have, and at the same time recognize how capricious fate can be. I'm certain that most of those families whose homes were destroyed Sunday evening spent the hours before following their usual routines, making plans for the week to come, and never once considered that in such a brief period of time, everything they had would be gone forever.

Total loss of the things we collect, the things that help us define our lives is bad enough, and hard enough to bear; but it's really nothing when compared to the loss of people.

Sometimes you just can't fully recover from the sudden, senseless death of a loved one, of a parent, or spouse, of a sibling or a child.

If you have friends and family who've suffered the brunt of Mother Nature's fury this year, do not lose patience with them if they seem unresponsive to your efforts to assist and cheer them. Truly, there are no words to comfort those whose entire existence has been uprooted, whose family or friends have been torn so brutally from their lives.

Healing and recovery will take time, donations, and a constancy of care and love.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday's Words for May 18, 2011

2011-05-18T05:29:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have been faithful readers of mine since the beginning, you know that every once in a while I write an essay that gets me in a lot of hot water.

Today’s edition of Wednesday’s Words may be just such an occasion. I suppose I ought to preface this entire thing by saying, therefore, that the following is my own opinion which I am simply sharing with you for the purposes of discussion.

Apparently, there are a lot of people who believe that the day of Rapture has been revealed, and that day is May 21, 2011. If those who profess it are right, the world is going to face Judgement in just 3 days. Are you worried about this, or frightened by it?

I am not one to mock the faith of others. I truly believe that people ought to follow their hearts; God did, after all, give us free will. That means we are free to believe what we wish to believe, and do what we wish to do.

I don’t make it a habit to proselytize. Those of you who do read my essays on a regular basis doubtless know I am a Christian. I tend to live my faith quietly, saying my prayers in a closet, if you will, mainly because I read that in a Book.

This wonderful medium we use to communicate and learn and share can be used for great good, but it can also be used by anyone wishing to say anything at all. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. People ought to be able to express any opinion they choose to express, as long as they’re not breaking any laws. I have a personal line in the sand that tells me I will not slander anyone, nor threaten them, and that is a standard I believe is prudent.

Most of you who are reading this today are citizens of the United States of America, and you have your wonderful Constitutional right to free speech. I’m Canadian, and we don’t have exactly the same rights under law—but I still believe all should feel free to say what they will.

In the course of my life, I’ve witnessed—thanks to the ever growing, all-encompassing forms of mass communications—many who believe themselves to be modern-day prophets. Again, I’m not one to mock anyone’s faith. I try very hard not to judge others (I read that in a Book, too), for I firmly believe that in the end, it’s all between the individual and God.

One of things I’ve prayed for most often in my life is the blessing of discernment. Yes, I feel something in my heart, but how do I know it is real? I hear someone who has an opinion with regard to the Lord, or matters of faith, and the speaker is charismatic, and what he’s saying sounds good, but again, how do I know it is real?

The gift of discernment would seem to be one not given in abundance, but then I would submit the reason for that is it isn’t asked for in abundance. I believe if you ask for something faithfully you get it (yep, read that, too, in the same Book).

Life is hard enough and scary enough without those who have chosen to be our leaders, those who should be of sober mind and faithful conscience instilling more fear in the hearts of the people who look to them for guidance.

The answer I received when I prayed for discernment with regard to matters spiritual was so simple, I should have realized it on my own. I just ask myself, “is it Scriptural”?

You see, I believe the Lord doesn’t make things complicated for us. He knows our limitations. We don’t have to jump through hoops and send x number of e-mails to prove ourselves to Him. We don’t have to engage in complicated calculations, translating from ancient texts to try and extrapolate dates and times, and seasons, to find the truth, or to be faithful.

All we have to do is answer that one question: is it Scriptural? And with regard to the belief that the world will end on May 21st, according to Matthew 25:13, the answer is no.

Love,
Morgan
COMING SOON: LUSTY TEXAS 4
LOVE UNDER TWO FLYBOYS BY CARA COVINGTON
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Wednesday's Words for May 11, 2011

2011-05-11T05:10:00.000-07:00

I, and three of my best writing friends spent last week at our very own private writers’ retreat. We decided after the short one we had last September that we’d do it again, and for a week this time. No hotel for us. Instead, we rented a house for our week together.

We arrived on Kiawah Island early Sunday afternoon, after spending Saturday night in downtown Charleston. Having checked in with the rental agency, we received our island “pass”, a slip of paper that would grant us access to the island, and was to be displayed on the dash of our car; but the house wasn’t ready for us, so we decided to go for lunch—after we drove by the house, first.

Kiawah Island is a residential, gated community with private homes, a lot of golf courses, and, as we discovered while driving toward our rental house, alligators.

At least that’s what the sign said. We did wonder if we would have the opportunity to see one during the week. Personally, I thought it was doubtful. After all, we were planning on spending almost all of our time at the house, writing. We weren’t planning on any sight-seeing excursions at all.

We had no formal structure for our week; half vacation, half retreat, we’d do what we wanted, when we wanted. We’d brainstorm, we’d chat—yes, mostly about writing, or books we’d read—and we’d relax.

Ah, but there was that sign, “Danger, alligators”, and you just had to wonder.

One of our group was from Florida and so the possibility of an alligator sighting wasn’t a particularly exciting prospect for her. But with two of us from Canada, and our fourth from Indiana, just the chance of such an encounter reeked of the exotic.

We saw one our first morning there.

Alerted by one of my friends, I stood on the deck, camera at the ready. It took me a moment to see it, as it moved with stealth, barely creating a wake, through the water of the lagoon that abutted “our” property. It swam slowly by, and as we held ourselves very still, we doubted he—or she—saw us.

As it turns out, we were wrong.

After that first day, the alligator—dubbed “Dave”—was a regular visitor, and one day, he was followed by another, whom we called “Roy”.

Did I say visitor? Yes, I did. You see, Dave developed a unique habit. In the afternoon when the sun was shining down with ultimate warmth, Dave the alligator climbed out of the lagoon and stretched out on the lawn, just a few feet from out deck. Fortunately, the deck was about six feet off the ground, and the only way up to us, the stairs, featured a locked gate at the top.

The reactions of family and friends to the presence of our alligator have been fascinating, and not at all what I expected. Ranging from “are you crazy?” (our second daughter) to the sad shaking of a head (my oldest son), to the outraged “damned if I would pay that much only to have alligators on my lawn!” (my beloved’s co-workers) it surprised me that others didn’t appreciate the extraordinary circumstance we experienced.

Were any of the four of us worried or nervous?

Not in the slightest. We all thought it was kind of quaint. Our own personal mascot—or, if you like, since we are all writers of romance—knight in reptilian armor—dozing peacefully yet, we were certain, aware and on guard, protecting the princesses in the palace.

Love,
Morgan

Wednesday's Words for April 27, 2011

2011-04-27T06:28:00.000-07:00

My first novel was published in March of 2007 with Siren Publishing. Titled Made For Each Other, this story was the first one I had ever written specifically to sell—the first time I had targeted a market, instead of just letting my imagination fly, unfettered. I’d heard about “erotic romance”, you see, and since I was writing romance anyway—mostly for myself, and my beloved to read since the rejections were piling up—I knew I could heat the love scenes up to fit the genre.

I mean, let’s face it, at the time I was over 50, had given birth to three children, and been married to the same man for more than 35 years. Heating up the love scenes really was not a problem at all.

Today I have 21 novels published, number 22 is in the hands of my publisher, and numbers 23 and 24 are works in progress right here on my hard drive.

That’s a lot of books in a relatively short period of time, but I don’t want you to think that writing is, or should be, easy. It’s not. I tell you, without a word of a lie, that some days the process is very hard and damn near close to painful.

And that’s my fault, entirely.

You see, the problem is, I care about the quality of the story I write. I care that my characters have depth, that the work has soul. I care that there’s a story to be told, complete with a plot. I care that the words flow, a kind of verbal symphony, if you will. I care that there’s a cadence, and a style that lures the reader in and makes her—or him—want to read more.

Because I care so very deeply about the craft of writing, I get understandably upset when others who claim to be authors, do not. I’ve gone on, probably ad nauseam over the years in these essays, lamenting about the quality of writing being offered by those who call themselves authors in this e-pub world of mine, about the spelling and the grammar, and the literacy that sometimes seems to be completely lacking.

But there’s something even worse than bad spelling and sloppy grammar that has my professional senses incensed, another sin, if you will, which leaves me feeling personally insulted: plagiarism.

It’s an ugly word for an ugly crime—and that’s what plagiarism is, as far as I’m concerned, a crime. It damages the victim of the theft, and the perpetrator and—in my opinion—every other person who identifies themselves as a professional author.

I do not consider those who steal the written word from others and pass it off as their own to even be writers at all. They’re hacks. They’re worse than the worst tweed-coated, hair grease-wearing dishonest used car salesman whose lot is filled with cars all previously owned by little old ladies from Pasadena. They are worse than the worst snake oil salesman who sells a false miracle cure to an achy old man, swindling him out of his life savings.

When someone steals the work of another, and passes it off as their own, it hurts every one of us who invests everything that we are into this craft of ours. For you see, writing is more than saying “ta-da” when the book is done. It’s the planning, the research, the process of taking your characters from the first moment of their journey to the end, and all the growth and revelations and emotions in between.

Writing is far more than the finished product. It is an exploration, of the work, the characters, and the writer herself. Those who would plagiarize, plain and simply destroy the entire process.

This writer is about to do something she has not done since that first edition of Wednesday’s Words appeared in November of 2006.

I am taking a week off from my essay. Next week at this time I will be gloriously immersed in my one week writers’ retreat with my three best friends—Emma Wildes, Lara Santiago, and Raina James. We will be brainstorming and bonding, sharing and caring and writing, and, while I cannot absolutely swear to it, there may be wine involved.

This week long “me time” has been a very long time in coming, and I can hardly wait! Wednesday’s Words will return on May 11th.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday's Words for April 20, 2011

2011-04-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

The first quarter of 2011 is already in the books! I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed this year.

We here in Canada are immersed—well, as immersed as we ever get—in a federal political campaign, with Election Day less than two weeks off. We have to listen to the rhetoric and the whining and the mudslinging for just a few more days, so really, that’s not a big deal.

Mother Nature is showing her true nature by pelting us with unseasonably cold weather, blizzards, freezing rain, and whatever else she holds in her mixed bag—but not tornadoes, so really, that’s not a big deal either. Sure, we’re inconvenienced, and we’re disgruntled, but for the most part we’re safe, and we’ll get over it.

People everywhere continue to struggle to make ends meet, and here, I feel less optimistic. Do you know what depresses me the most about the gasoline prices? It isn’t that they’re high, although they are and it’s a pain in the butt having to pay so much. Where I am it’s about 1.34 per litre, which is the equivalent of about $5.20 U. S. a gallon. What depresses me is the fact that the people in charge of the big oil companies think we’re all too stupid to realize they’re just being greedy. They say these prices reflect the volatile nature of the price of oil, and blah, blah, blah, and then in the next breath they let it slip that, hey, what do you know, they had record-breaking profits!

I really dislike being played for stupid. Almost as much as I dislike the feeling that there’s really nothing we can do about those high prices.

In my opinion, this is the worst possible time for expenses to spike. Grocery prices are beginning to go up too, a direct result of the hike in the cost of gas. People are trying to recover from the horrendous economic implosion of just a couple of years ago. Some people have managed to get jobs, but in many cases they are jobs that pay far less than the ones they had previously.

How are people supposed to manage to pay for everything now?

To me it seems the reality is that the people who run our governments and the people who run our conglomerates simply don’t seem to care about ordinary folk.

More and more I feel as if our society is evolving into a two-horned beast. One horn is made up of the wealthiest, the uber-rich who live a lifestyle you and I simply can’t even imagine. The other horn is made up of most of the rest of us, because the affluent middle class is sinking slowly out of sight. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening, and this isn’t good, because one thing you can count on is that the poor, kept poor long enough, will become the oppressed.

History teaches us that every time human beings are oppressed they do eventually revolt. It amazes me that the oppressors haven’t figured that one out yet. Rather short sighted of them, don’t you think?

Or maybe they have figured it out, and think they can cheat history. Maybe they think they can keep us frightened and powerless, hopeless and penniless, clinging to the fading image of how things used to be. Maybe, they think we can be convinced that if we just give up some of our freedoms, and our expectations, that we will all be happier, and better off, in the long run.

I want to say that I have faith in my fellow man not to buy what they’re selling. But the ones doing the selling are so darned talented in the smoke and mirrors department, that I’m genuinely concerned.

It’s just a good thing that I believe in miracles. I think we need one, and badly.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
http://wednesdayswordsbymorgan.blogspot.com/

Wednesday's Words for April 13, 2011

2011-04-13T07:26:00.000-07:00

Last week, the high school in our community suffered the loss of one of its young students. The fifteen-year-old boy succumbed to the injuries he suffered, having been struck by a commuter train as he walked along the train tracks the week before. The rail line is off limits, of course. Police routinely charge teens with trespassing when they catch them there.

This sad and senseless incident immediately brought to mind a similar tragedy that occurred when my late son was sixteen. One of his best friends fell to his death onto solid ice, from those very same tracks, but further down the line, where the rails span the river.

The day following that horrible accident more than a decade ago, my home was filled with teenagers, all grieving, and all whose parents didn’t seem to grasp the significance of this event in their children’s lives. “I told my folks and they said that was too bad and then they went back to watching TV.” Nearly every kid in our house that day and evening said a version of that same thing. So my beloved and I hugged, we listened, we mopped tears and we fed them dinner.

It was the one time in my late son’s life when I knew we were doing it right.

My grandson and his girlfriend, both of whom knew this young man who’d just died, stopped by to tell me of his passing, as it had just been announced to the student body.

While here, the girl called her mother to tell her the sad news, but more, to look for the solace she needed. Her mother’s response was less than ideal. Instead of listening, or offering sympathy, the woman told her daughter she was ‘stupid’ for being upset, that she should worry about her own life instead. Several feet away, I heard every shouted word clearly.

Teenagers are emotional creatures. They tend to look at the world through a largely narcissistic lens, and I would be the first one, under most circumstances, to not take too seriously any grievance or issue they might take up as a cause célèbre.

The death of a peer is different. It’s a major watershed event in the life of a teen.

Up until they lose a friend their own age, teens secretly and deep-down believe they’re immortal. Oh, they know they’re not, but death happens to older folks. Losing a friend their own age is profoundly significant for them. I wonder that some parents don’t seem to understand that.

I’m sure there have to be many who do; but what’s with the rest of them?

I suppose this is just the way it is. We all know people who are exceptional parents and we all know people who never should have been allowed to reproduce.

Does that sound harsh? It’s always been a wonder to me, that for the most important task any of us can ever assume in life, there are no pre-requisites. You don’t have to pass any exams, achieve any degrees, complete any sort of community service requirement in order to have children.

As parents, we all make mistakes. That’s inevitable. Add into the mix that the fact that our children are complete persons, which means, of course, that they have wills of their own. Navigating the waters of parenthood without major incidents of failure could almost, at least in my opinion, be considered a sort of miracle.

My heart goes out to this young man’s family. By all accounts, he was a respectful kid, gifted artistically. His elementary teachers remembered him as friendly and creative, and as a boy who very rarely got into trouble. He was a good kid.

But even good kids sometimes make a bad decision. And sometimes the result of that one bad decision is every parent’s worst nightmare. Love, Morgan www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday's Words for April 6, 2011

2011-04-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

Recently there was a furor in the blogosphere with regard to a review offered on a book written by an “indie” author.

For those of you who are unaware, an “indie” author is a writer who, without benefit of publisher, has made their book available to be read, which the reader may purchase for that purpose. This is easily done these days using Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook.

I won’t mention the name of the reviewer or the author, because those facts are not really important. The review did have some positive comments to make with regard to the novel as story-telling. However, the reviewer rated it poorly because the book contained copious spelling and grammatical errors.

Shades of High School mid-terms. Every time I took a test when I was in High School, some classmate would invariably ask, “Does spelling count?”

It would seem that some of us who are authors are still asking that question. Therefore, in this essay, here and now, let me answer that age old query, for once and for all. Yes, spelling counts. It matters all the time, every time.

Why does it matter? First, spelling errors in a story tend to pull the reader out of the story. The effect is not so different from having a glass of ice cold water tossed in your face, without warning. The author’s goal should be to hook the reader and keep their attention riveted on his/her book until the last page has been turned. Spelling and grammar errors work directly opposite to this goal.

Second, flawless spelling and grammar speak to the care taken by the author to present the reader with as excellent an experience as that author is capable of creating. When a piece contains numerous errors, it’s as if the author has posted this caveat at the beginning of the work: “I don’t respect myself or you enough to go to the trouble to make it excellent.”

Third, poor spelling and poor grammar equal poor education. Don’t get me wrong. Some of the most intelligent, and wise people amongst us didn’t have the opportunity to achieve more than a Secondary School diploma. But you can bet your ashes they’ve taught themselves, and elevated their reading level to the equivalent of college graduate or beyond. Yes, they took great pains to be the best they could be.

We, who are authors, are authors all the time. I believe that if we consider ourselves to be professional authors, then, by golly, we need to be professional in every face we show the world outside of our own bathrooms.

This means, that when we submit anything that people are going to read, we take care that it is clear, concise, and as clean in grammar and spelling as we can make it.

It means that when we receive a review for our work, we send a personal note or e-mail to the reviewer, saying, “thank you for taking the time.” If it is a good review, why then, we will publicize it and perhaps be a tad more profuse in our thanks. If it is a bad review, we will simply forget it. Seriously. The best thing you can do is to act as if it never happened.

Finally, it means we don’t rant and rave and bitch about life, the landlord, our editor, the horrible dinner we were served in the restaurant last night, the unsatisfying sex with our spouse afterwards, or the price of tea in China. It means we don’t pepper those raves with reams of profanity. Contrary to the belief of some, scattering F-shots through one’s prose doesn’t make one appear anything but vocabulary-challenged.

In short, if we consider ourselves to be professional authors, then it behooves us to behave professionally, all of the time. Love, Morgan http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday's Words for March 30, 2011

2011-03-30T04:22:00.000-07:00

If any country or people deserves the title of “those with the most convenient memory”, I think it should be Canada and Canadians.

Canada gets more snow on average than any other country on earth. We quite often get snow in March, April and occasionally, even in May.

For as long as I can recall, we never, ever planted our gardens before the Victoria Day (May 24th) weekend, because to do so before that date was to risk frost or snow damage.

Yet every year we forget all this, and find ourselves griping when—as happened last Wednesday—Mother Nature gives us a new dumping of snow smack dab in the middle of March. We got more than six inches here that day, and that was before 6 a.m.!

We need to be reminded of a few salient facts about winter (and why I personally consider winter to run October to March inclusive), especially winter in the northern half of the continent. And right about now, we need to recall that we in this country generally get one third of our total snowfall for the year in March.

Acknowledging these facts doesn’t, of course, make the reality of that white stuff on the ground outside my window any easier to take. Nor does it warm body and soul when the thermometer insists on staying below the freezing mark.

I had such great plans for spring. The temperatures had been warming, the snow had all melted, and I began, once again, to yearn for the sight of flowers in my yard.

Of course, I’d have to plant them, first. The bulbs my daughter and grandkids put in more than a year ago failed to come up last spring. The lily of the valley bulbs I bought this past October to go into the ground the beginning of November, some unknown person accidentally put on top of the toaster over before turning the toaster oven on.

I’d left them in the kitchen, you see, near the back door, hoping that someone would take the hint and plant the darn things.

Unfortunately I am at the mercy of others for this task, as my yard is too uneven, and too sloped for me to negotiate without the danger of falling.

Not all that many years ago, when I could get out and garden, I used to have at least one dream in the middle of every winter that I was doing just that. There’s something so intrinsically life-affirming about getting your hands into the soil, planting seeds or plants, and weeding a garden. Is there any greater luxury than going out to your garden, picking a fat, red juicy tomato, and making yourself a toasted tomato sandwich?

And what joy we would experience, when our veggies were ready to be picked, having a dinner of nothing but the fruits of our labor!

I know spring is coming, even if Environment Canada warns us this year that it will be later and cooler than normal. This yearning for the warmer, growing season, I believe, is just a part of nature’s cycle. We can’t help ourselves from craving it. We humans are part of the animal world, really, a part of nature, and it’s how we were made.

At least that’s what I tell myself when my desire for an end to winter gets a little frantic around the edges. Love, Morgan http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury http://wednesdayswordsbymorgan.blogspot.com/

Wednesday's Words for March 23, 2011

2011-03-23T05:52:00.000-07:00

It will come as no surprise to any of you that there are many things in life I simply don’t understand.

In the last few weeks, the news media has been full of stories about over-paid celebrities acting like spoiled children, about rock stars dying from drug overdoses and irresponsible and unprofessional behaviour by some adults we consider to be entertainers.

I don’t understand why some people work so diligently to get themselves to a place of success and then turn around and do their damnedest to throw it all into the dumpster.
The part of this that’s scary is that this sort of self-sabotaging behaviour is not just a by-product of celebrity.

I grew up without a father, and my mother was a nurse. Nurses in those days didn’t make a lot of money. I knew at an early age, that if I wanted to go to university, I would have to work to put myself through school, or get a scholarship.

When I was about fourteen, a new house was built two doors down from us in our rural community by a man who ran a very successful business. This family was, to put it mildly, very well off.

The children were a fair bit younger than I but it was a small neighbourhood. I spent some time over at their house, and actually sometimes got to babysit when the parents went out.

These kids had stuff I could only dream of having, but they didn’t particularly seem to treasure their possessions. That didn’t bother me all that much, I just remember thinking it was very strange.

What did bother me was that their parents were willing to foot the bill for university, big time—tuition, rental of an apartment, a car to drive, money to spend...but not one of those kids took them up on the offer. Not one of the four of them could be bothered to go to university.
I’ve seen this sort of thing time and again, some people being offered opportunities and benefits that others would cherish, and either these people don’t want the opportunity, or they don’t respect it, or they do their best to mess it all up.

In just the last month, we’ve seen unbelievable behaviour from an actor whose name I will not mention, another musician was found dead of a suspected drug overdose, and yet another revealed that missed concert dates in the past was a result of his drug abuse. A female singer/actress is currently before the courts, certainly facing jail time, for numerous offenses including breach of probation and theft.

Just this week another musician trashed the back stage area of a nationally televised morning show because the interviewer asked him questions about that pesky assault he committed against a former girlfriend while she still was his girlfriend, instead of stroking his ego by talking about his new album.

You see, I just don’t get it. I’m an author, and my books sell pretty well, but I’m not rich, I’m not a celebrity or anything. Do I want to be? I wouldn’t turn it down. No, I wouldn’t turn it down for one second.

And I sure wouldn’t do my best to screw it up, either.

So what’s the problem with these people? Too much money, not enough sense? Not enough intelligence so that they actually believe their own press? They pay their entourages to treat them like they’re above us all, and then they believe that they are?

I’m not sure what the cause of this problem really is, anymore than I know how to cure it. But one thing I do know is this: the spotlight shining on their misbehaviour, the attention paid to them in the media and on social networks, and our avid gobbling up of this kind of gossip in the tabloids can only exacerbate the situation.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
http://wednesdayswordsbymorgan.blogspot.com/

Wednesday's Words for March 16, 2011

2011-03-16T06:16:00.000-07:00

How do we even mentally process the destruction that took place in Japan last week? How can we possibly understand it?

Few words came to mind as I watched image after image flash past. A wall of water moving inexorably over fields, carrying with it debris so concentrated and intense that there’s almost no way to work your way through it. Towns reduced to piles of rubble so all-encompassing, you wonder how anyone could have survived.

Rescuers stymied because they cannot reach those who are in need, and blanketing all, an eerie stillness. It’s the stillness of death, and although officials are being cautious in numbers, we know the final count of the dead and the missing will be more horrendous than we can really imagine.

Then came yet another layer of fear and peril as officials and experts tried to deal with the failure of nuclear power plants, this danger with the potential of widespread fall-out that could, theoretically, affect the entire world. For this nation, particularly, that prospect must truly be hell on earth.

We pray, we send aid, we watch—and maybe we begin to perceive, in a uniquely personal way, the frailty of our species, and the world we’ve built for ourselves.

We live our lives every day, going through the motions and minutia as if this world we’ve fashioned will always be here. And although we understand there are such things as catastrophic natural disasters, we never really think these things could ever actually happen to us.

But it’s more than that, isn’t it? We never really think it can happen in a modern, civilized, well-governed, well-organized country. Let’s be honest with ourselves. We’ve seen devastation in places where the infrastructure is weak or non-existent, where we know the government such as it is, is corrupt, and there’s always been that tiny voice that said, “well, if they just had proper safeguards in place, or if they just had a democratic, well organized government in place to take care of their people... Or, if they were the sort of government that cared about their people...” And now we see the truth, because Japan did meet all of the above criteria, and Mother Nature, bitch that she can be, wreaked havoc anyway.

How do you deal with that level of destruction? How can anyone deal with it?

The same thing could easily happen to us. Those images we’ve been seeing on the television, or on the computer, could easily be images of our towns, our cities, and our countries. There are geologic fault lines on both coasts of North America, and right down the freaking middle of the continent, too, and that’s not even including the huge caldera in Yellowstone Park. So yes, those images we’ve been seeing could very well be images of ourselves.

I searched and found the following, at this site: http://www.9and10news.com/category/story/?id=284572&cID=1

The American Red Cross is accepting monetary donations online, by mail and even by phone."

The local Red Crosses across the nation start trying to generate interest in people helping on a larger scale and making donations so we can provide the funding that’s needed," said Kevin Bavers, Executive Director for the Northwest Michigan Red Cross.

People can donate online at www.redcross.org or they can write a check to their local Red Cross chapter.To make things even easier, people can text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to relief efforts; the charge is automatically added to your phone bill.

If you can do so, please donate. Next time, it may very well be us who are in need of such help. And really, after all is said and done, aren’t we all just one planet, and one people?

Love,
Morgan

Wednesday's Words for March 9, 2011

2011-03-09T07:57:00.001-08:00

It’s March, and with this last month of winter comes not only the hint of spring, but the promise of the convention season, fast approaching.

Usually at this time every year, I’m eagerly counting down the days until it’s time to attend RT, making my lists, and finalizing my travel plans.

If you’ve read my essays over the years, you know how much I enjoy this particular convention. How could I not? It was at RT in Daytona Beach in 2006 that I met and pitched to the publisher of Siren, now Siren-Bookstrand Publishing.

Others characterize the RT Convention as party time, and while I don’t completely disagree with that assessment, for me it has always been the time when I get to meet my readers. Each year, I’ve come away from that wonderful convention renewed and re-energized. I’ve made so many friends at RT, and some of them I know will last a lifetime.

So many of you who have attended RT, whether the convention was in Houston or Pittsburgh, Orlando or Columbus, have taken the time to stop by and say hello to me. I have been privileged to be asked to sign books and bags and even t-shirts! Some of you have even asked to have your pictures taken with me.

All of that has simply thrilled me. Just imagine, here I sit alone in my little house in a small town in Southern Ontario, Canada. Each day I “go to work”, in my pyjamas, sitting at my keyboard, letting my imagination take me where it will, and then you, yes you, seek me out and say, “I love reading your books”!

Wow.

Bottom line, no matter what anyone who writes may say, and regardless of what other motivations make us do this crazy thing, we write books so that others will read them.

Your reading my work validates me, and gives me a satisfaction nothing else ever has, or ever will.

So it is with great disappointment that I must tell you that I have to miss this year’s Romantic Times Booklovers’ Convention.

I’d been very excited when I learned it was to be held in Los Angeles; we’ve only been to California once, and going to LA was a dream for the both of us.

Some of my favorite authors whom I have never met will be there, and I had been anticipating lining up to meet them. As well, some good friends were going to be there, people I only see once a year. On top of that, this year, a member of my writing group – D. B. Reynolds – has been nominated for a Reviewer’s Choice award.

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to give this gathering a miss this year. The main reason is timing. It’s being held a bit earlier than usual, which I didn’t think, last year, was going to be a problem.

I forgot to take into consideration the vagaries of middle age.

My beloved and I are both facing some minor health challenges that come with the territory of getting older. Rest assured, it’s nothing serious, but these challenges must be met, which involves the inevitable tests and appointments with doctors. Not activities we want to choose over the excitement of attending the convention, but ones we must see to, nonetheless.

It’s going to be very strange for me, not partaking of the hustle and bustle and fun. But since I’m in this career for keeps, I can always look forward to next year.

I don’t even have to know where it will be held. God Lord willing, and the river don’t rise, I’ll be there!

Love,
Morgan

Wednesday's Words for March 2, 2011

2011-03-02T04:30:00.000-08:00

Just because things were a certain way back in the day, doesn’t necessarily make them outdated today.

“Don’t believe everything you read,” was a maxim I grew up with. I was schooled to not automatically accept something just because it was in print. I was encouraged to think for myself. To examine and explore, to determine the relevance of any bit of news or information I came across.

I seriously doubt “they” are teaching that in the schools any more. I especially wonder if they are teaching children how to think, period.

As my education progressed, I was taught that often, the written word—that is, the written word in the world of non-fiction, and historical recording—often times was a tool to be used. Propaganda, if you will. “What is the author’s frame of reference?” That question needed to be answered before it could be determined how close to being true a document was.

They don’t call it frame of reference or bias, anymore, or propaganda, or even lies. They call it spin. And somehow this word, ‘spin’ has transformed the same product into something shiny and hip and acceptable. Somehow, it has come to pass that if you repeat it loud enough and long enough then it becomes the truth.

Am I the only one who read 1984?

Why don’t we return to some of our previous codes of conduct?

Do you know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see an interview conducted with a celebrity hopped up on something, where said celebrity makes outrageous statements, and the interviewer says, “okay, let’s stop this. You’re obviously sick, everyone is laughing at you. Get yourself to a psychiatrist, dude. We’re done here.”

I’d like to see an interview with a despot who proclaims that all is well is his country, that his citizens are not being slaughtered as they protest, that they’re not even protesting because they all love him, and have the interviewer say, “you’re a criminal in the eyes of the world, and a liar, whom no one believes, and we’re not even going to give you air time.”

Yes, I’m naïve. I know I am. I expect people to do what’s right, and not what’s most beneficial to themselves. I expect honesty, and that, sadly, seems to be a dying character trait.

People lie and cheat in small ways every day and think nothing of it. Do they do this because all around them, and in the news media, and on line, and in government, and even in our religions, everyone seems to be doing it and not only getting away with it, but flourishing because of it?

Yes.

When we paint lies with a patina of respectability, when we use those lies to sell our tenets, to advance our interests, we are telling the world it’s ok to play fast and loose with the truth. What is true anymore, anyway?

Here following, in my opinion, is the real damage and the real danger of this.

Manipulators knowingly tell lies to advance their cause, without fully understanding that those lies are taken by many people as being absolute truth; down the road, it may be necessary for those same manipulators to change course, and avow the exact opposite, to send a message that must be heeded by those same people to avert disaster, only no one is going to believe them, because those people have already been told “the truth”.

We’ve forgotten the teachings of the past, and the phrase, ‘moral responsibility’ these days is nothing more than a sound bite.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday's Words for February 23, 2011

2011-02-23T07:21:00.000-08:00

There are all different kinds of talents that people possess, and some of them leave me in awe. The one I’m thinking of at the moment is the talent to keep a spotlessly tidy house.

Yes, that most certainly is a talent and, sadly, not mine. Not even a whisper of it do I possess.

I’ve been to peoples’ houses where everything is so pristine you could eat off the floor. Not a speck of dust is visible, no cobweb can be found. Not a crumb mars the perfection of the perfectly clean, shiny surfaces and not a paper, or a pen, or a candy wrapper can be found out of place on any table, chair or ottoman.

How do they do it? I spend time cleaning and tidying. I do! I vacuum and I dust, I sweep and I put things away. I wash the dishes (by hand because, pity me, I have no dishwasher and never have had one). I wipe the counters and the stove, the fridge, and the freezer. Once a week I also do that with bleach in the water!

And my house looks…okay, but pretty far from immaculate.

My brother, on the other hand, is a very fastidious fellow. His house is always very near perfect. It’s just a natural state of being for him and it always has been. Very intimidating when he’s coming to dinner, let me tell you.

He’s ten years my senior. I recall a lecture he gave me when I was around 8 or 9, on “the seven places where clothes are allowed to be”. They were: hanger, dresser drawer, body, laundry hamper, washer, clothes line, and ironing basket.

Yes, that lecture took place a long time ago, in the last century. I don’t know if many people have ironing baskets any more. I know I don’t have one.

I have tried to be more conscientious about my housekeeping. Theoretically it should be easier now than it was when I was raising my kids because in those days it was four against one (I was the one). Now it’s only one against one most of the time. Of course, I’m older now, and not nearly as mobile as I used to be. Neither does my stamina take me as far as once it did.

Do you know what I think? I think there are evil little invisible elves that creep in when I’m not looking. They dirty dishes, and leave stuff lying about. They create dust elephants, cobwebs, and general disorder in the blink of an eye. They also spread their invisibility. I think I am done cleaning, so I sit down, and then I see what I’ve missed.

And when my grandchildren are here, why then, those darn elves work twice as hard!

I tried to think when was I last really successful at getting my house to a level of cleanliness that not only felt good but lasted for a few days. And I remembered it was the year that RT was in Pittsburgh.

My beloved and our daughter left for the Caribbean, and when I came home from taking them to the airport, I cleaned my house.

I was alone for a few days, and didn’t need to repeat the process as it was quite easily maintained. I cooked, I ate, I did all the things that normally take place here. And the house stayed spic and span.

My good friend came from far away, and she stayed over two nights. And still, the general orderliness of tidy took but a few moments to accomplish. Then we left for the convention.

Of course, when I got home, my husband had returned and, come to think of it, the first thing I did after I unpacked was clean the house which somehow had returned to its usual state of chaos.

I haven’t been fortunate enough to visit again that place of Nirvana where all around me stays neat and tidy. But then, I’ve not spent any days alone here, either.

Hmm. I wonder if this is a clue?

Love,
Morgan

Wednesday's Words for February 16, 2011

2011-02-16T04:32:00.000-08:00

I hate, absolutely hate, talking to machines.

Our society seems to be inundated with voice activated computers that are slowly, but surely taking over the planet. They are! Sometimes, you make a phone call to a business or a service provider and speaking to a real, live human being isn’t even one of the options.

I’m old fashioned. I not only want to talk to a human, I want to talk to one in my own country.
I understand the need for businesses to “trim costs”. Personally, I’d rather see the managers and CEOs take a hit, vis-a-vis a pay reduction than have them replace their telephone receptionists with a computer. But what do I know?

Case in point. I upgraded my cell phone again. The pretty white and pink one I had with a full, slide out qwerty key board was good, but the battery was dying, and then I dropped it, and it wouldn’t turn off, or “hang up” a call. Since I had to get a new cell phone anyway, I got a BlackBerry.

Yes, hell has indeed frozen over.

So I got this new piece of technology, and it took me a while to figure it out. For one thing, the diagram of all the keys and functions omits pointing out that the square shiny one in the middle above the keyboard is the “mouse”. I know that fact was likely obvious to many of you, but it wasn’t to me.

I inserted the battery, and the SIM card, and turned it on. A message appeared that was longer than the screen allowed and so it was necessary for me to scroll down. But there were no arrows down, up, side to side. The message was telling me it was unlawful for me to reverse-engineer the BlackBerry!

Reverse engineer it? Hell, I couldn’t even operate it!

I found the mouse by accident. Whew. One obstacle down.

Then the screen went white, with pretty little lines of colour, first vertical, then horizontal. Yes, my first BlackBerry turned out to be a lemon, which meant that I needed to call my wireless service provider (from whom I had gotten the phone) and get help from Technical Support.
I know what you all just thought: good luck with that one.

Let me just say, that tech support was not an option on this particular night. I called the number quoted in the literature that accompanied the device. The phone was answered by an automated voice telling me, in French, that if I wanted to continue in French, I should press number five. (This, by the way, is standard in Canada). Then in English, I’m advised that I have the following options for my Cable TV and Internet service...

Hello? Calling about wireless, here. Called the number that came with the wireless device! So I got smart and I hit “0” about five times in a row. The machine informed me, that it would direct my call to a real person. Success!

And then an automated voice comes on the line and tells me that the Credit department is currently closed, and further advises me of its hours of operation, and to call back then.

These glitches with automated answering services happen all the time, and the result is that by the time the customer (that would be me) finally gets hold of a real human being, said customer is not in a very good mood. This brings me to the part I don’t get.

What savvy business owner/manager/operator wants to deliberately tee off its customers? I mean, in this age of global competition wouldn’t it make more sense to keep your customers happy?

To make a long story short, after several hours using my computer to “update” the BlackBerry I ended up having to get them to send me a new one, which thankfully works fine. So far.
I have tweeted, and I have “face booked” and I have sent a text on this amazing new piece of technology.

And maybe, someday soon, I’ll even make a phone call on it—but to a person, and not to a machine.

Love,
Morgan

Wednesday's Words for February 9, 2011

2011-02-09T06:29:00.000-08:00

It seems that just a few short weeks ago I was feeling smug as all get-out, because here in my little corner of Southern Ontario, there was almost no snow on the ground. All around us, the countryside, and her people had been inundated, with more than two foot of snow having fallen in some areas. But here, where we live, and through to twenty-five miles to the east, where my beloved works, there’d been next to no snow on the ground.

Yes, I should have recalled that old saw that pride goeth before a fall.

The good news is that the inexpensive, electric snow blower that Mr. Ashbury bought in November works very well. He’s found that if he goes out when there’re just a couple of inches of snow on the ground(and thereafter repeating the performance every couple of inches) he’s able to keep up with the accumulation.

The bad news is, we’re running out of places to pile the darn stuff.

This past Saturday the on line weather service we use reported the day would have partly cloudy periods with some snow flurries. Sounded like a good day to just stay inside, keep warm and follow our favorite pursuits. For me, that’s writing. For my beloved, it’s relaxing in his recliner and reading.

Somewhere around one in the afternoon, Mr. Ashbury said, “What the heck is going on out there? That doesn’t look like snow flurries to me. That looks like a major dumping in progress.”
Eight inches of white stuff later, my poor husband was outside for the third time in one day, pushing the electric blue monster down the sidewalk, around our car, and our next-door neighbour’s car, too.

Usually our town is very good about having the plows come along early on; this past weekend however, they were slower than usual.

Mr. Asbury swears the snow plow driver grinned with malicious intent when he pushed the snow up around our car as he passed, just minutes after he’d finished clearing it. I’m inclined to believe him.

We’ve been working in tandem with our neighbor this year—not something that we discussed before hand, it just sort of happened. The first couple of snow falls we got weren’t much, really. But when the young father of three who lives next door went outside to clear his sidewalk, he shovelled to the point where my new walkway joins the sidewalk, and then he did the walkway, too.

He did that the next time we got a small dusting, and I told him how much I appreciated it. Even a bit of the white stuff under my cane can send me flying.

I’ve discovered the hard way over the last couple of years that falling down is to be avoided at all costs.

So of course, the first time my husband brought the blue machine up out of the basement and took it outside, he did all of the sidewalk for our two houses, as well as the areas around our cars that of necessity have to park on the street.

And while this cooperation has been wonderful, and probably the brightest spot of the winter, we’re all a little bit weary of the need for it at this point.

Now we’ve been plunged into the deep freeze again, which means any snow ridges on walking or driving surfaces have now become ice ridges, and my coffee cup is again doubling as a hand and finger warmer.

It is a challenge to remember that spring really is just around the corner.

Love,
Morgan
Morgan Ashbury is writing as Cara Covington!

Wednesday's Words for February 2, 2011

2011-02-02T05:20:00.000-08:00

Ah, joy of joys, Ground Hog Day has arrived at last.

In the Ashbury household, this is a very special occasion indeed. This is the day when we dare to hope that maybe – just maybe – winter will soon give way to spring.

I understand that many people actually like winter. I also understand that still others depend upon it for some, if not all of their livelihood. There are those who sell snow related equipment, and those who have purchased plow blades for the front of their trucks. The farmers, too, need a lot of snow to put moisture deep into the ground for their planting season. I have no desire to circumvent anyone’s needs or their pleasures.

I just wonder if there isn’t some way to make these snow-and-ice enthusiasts happy without punishing the rest of us.

Of course, there isn’t, and thus we look forward to Ground Hog Day, as if the prognosticating rodents among us can truly offer us hope in our time of cold.

This has always been a particularly poignant day for Mr. Ashbury, who until this year spent almost all his time working out of doors. Now, as a senior employee, he’s moved from maintenance to driving an enormous “haul” truck at the quarry where he works. He’s no longer out in the elements so much, but there are still days he has to lend a hand, and in winter that can be a very cold hand.

I may have mentioned that in my opinion, winter in Southern Ontario, Canada isn’t a three month season; rather it extends from October to March, inclusive. Yes, six months of winter. The other six months here, by the way, are known as Construction season.

The positive side of looking at winter as if it lasts six months is the sure and certain knowledge that the dread season is, as of now, mostly over. Four months down, two to go.

At this moment, I am hunkered down in my house waiting for the snow storm to wane. It’s the first real one we’ve had this year, so I am not going to complain about it. In fact, I think I’m going to enjoy the temporary sense of being “snowed in”.

I had told my beloved last night that if we awoke to a blizzard, he was taking a snow day. No way was I going to drive in a blizzard, though I have done so in the past.

The older I get, the fewer things there are that seem worth my risking my safety for.

The school busses are all cancelled today, which means the schools are closed, so the little ones get a snow day. You should have heard the cheering. We had them here overnight as their mother worked a late shift at the hospital. But she arrived first thing to take them home, and so everyone is happy.

Certainly Mr. Ashbury is happy as he gets to play with the new snow blower we purchased in November. At least he will, he assures me, when he gets up again. He doesn’t often get a snow day either, and promptly went back to bed.

My beloved has only used the new snow blower twice, and neither time was there really much snow to test the machine—or him. Last night we received more than ten inches of the white stuff, with at least another ten to come today.

This is his first snow blower. It took many years for me to convince him that he needed one. Now he’s got his eye on an even bigger model, self-propelled, that will shoot that stream of snow clear into the next county.

I’m hoping the novelty of the toy won’t wear off any time soon.

In the mean time, our Ground Hog day celebrity here in Ontario, Wiarton Willy, is scheduled to emerge from his burrow sometime this morning. Now, the folklore is if the groundhog sees his shadow, he will be frightened and run back to his hole, heralding six more weeks of winter; and if he doesn’t, why then, it’s an early spring for us.

Considering the entire province is covered overcast skies dumping this storm upon us with no sunshine until tomorrow, this has to mean, hooray, an early spring for us.

I’ve checked, but no one seems to know whether the rodent will be afraid of a blizzard, or not. Personally, I think the little critter has it all backwards.

Love,
Morgan

Wednesday's Words for January 26, 2011

2011-01-26T07:22:00.000-08:00

Over the past weekend, we had some of the coldest days of the year so far here in my neck of the woods. And of course, you had to know that this would be the weekend our furnace decided to act up.

I got the blame for it, too. I have this habit of turning the thermostat down at night before we go to bed. We have this amazing duvet which keeps us so warm, I swear some nights I kick the thing off. So why would I maintain the heat at a higher temperature if I’m going to spend the night under those marvellously warm feathers?

Unfortunately, the next morning – Saturday – when I awoke and turned the thermostat up from 50 degrees to 75, the furnace ignored me.

My beloved, who had the day off, noticed the failure of the furnace to heat the house. How did I know he had noticed? He pulled a blanket over himself to keep warm as he stretched out in his recliner and read.

Our initial thought was that the thermostat itself had died. We did have a new one, given to us when this furnace was installed 7 years ago, and which we had set aside.
On Sunday, my husband set about installing the new thermostat, an operation that didn’t take very long at all.

Alas, the problem was not solved, as the furnace still didn’t respond to our request for more heat.

I was all for calling the company that services our furnace right then and there. I knew the house call wouldn’t cost anything as I pay a fee each month hedging against just this eventuality.

My beloved insisted that since it wasn’t that cold (after all, we couldn’t see our breath in the air), that I wait until he set the basement to rights. I didn’t know, of course, that the basement was untidy. I’ve not been down there in quite some time. But Mr. Ashbury was adamant. It wouldn’t do to have a service man see our unkempt basement. Period.

Friends, that kind of thinking right there is why I am doomed to never, ever have even a one day a week housekeeper. Our home is in need of some cosmetic work, left over from more than five years ago when my husband and our late son were working on the renovations. The upstairs isn’t completely finished; the living room ceiling should be replaced, as should my kitchen floor. Hire a housekeeper? Oh, no, my house isn’t fancy enough for that.

My beloved finally set the basement to rights Monday night. By this time, I believed that, although it still wasn’t cold enough to see my breath in the air, my nose would be forever frozen. I was getting used to wearing several layers of clothes indoors and to holding my cup of hot coffee as opposed to drinking it, in order to warm my hands in between bouts of typing. Ah yes, I have been colder. But a part of me figured that by the time I had reached this age, those days would be behind me.

The furnace man came out—for the first time—at 8:30 Tuesday morning. I explained what the furnace was doing. He looked at the thermostat (likely to make sure we had indeed turned it up), then went down into the tidy basement to the furnace. Twenty minutes later he was emerged, explaining that an obscure air intake screen (inside a piece of black pipe) had been clogged. He affirmed the furnace was working normally, and left. I turned the thermostat up to 75.

An hour later when the house still had not warmed, I called the furnace people again. The second man came out at twelve-thirty, and promptly found the real culprit: a full condensation chamber. This time, when he left, the furnace really was fixed.

I celebrated the repair of the furnace by promptly going for a nap—a perfectly natural reaction to the end of being cold.

If I get to come back for another crack at this life thing, I think I’ll opt for something warm and furry that hibernates in the winter.

And I’m going to vote that Mr. Ashbury comes back as a woman married to a man just like him.

Love,
Morgan

Wednesday's Words for January 19, 2010

2011-01-19T06:13:00.000-08:00

Early this past Monday morning, all across this great Canadian province of Ontario, people from all walks of life—crossing all socio-economic, political, gender, and racial boundaries—breathed a huge sigh of relief and gratitude as the beer vat convoy finally reached its destination, safe and sound and ready to be put into service.

There are few things so deeply Canadian, guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes or to rouse the national spirit as our love of beer.

The Molson Coors brewery near Pearson Airport, Toronto had purchased six giant beer vats. These came to Canada from that other great beer-loving nation—Germany—by boat, arriving in Hamilton Harbor and off-loaded on January 7 2011.

Once ashore, and utilizing complex logistics that would make any army general proud, the six enormous vats began their journey to their final destination.

How big are these vats, you ask? Each one will hold approximately 1.4 million bottles of beer.

Yes, that’s right. 1.4 million bottles of beer.

To drive from the harbour in Hamilton to the brewery outside of Toronto using what we call the 400-series highways, would for you or me be a journey of about 66 kilometres, or 41 miles. However, these vats were so large, they had to be delivered via a different route, as they were too big to go under any highway overpasses. This is why the vats arrived at Hamilton harbour instead of the much closer Toronto harbour in the first place.

The trucking company, which planned (a six month long endeavour) and executed what is being called the most complicated moving job in Ontario’s history, used forty vehicles to make the move—twenty of which were off duty police vehicles, at the expense of the brewery, of course. The convoy also included a mechanic, a welder, and a food truck.

The first major hurdle the convoy had to overcome was the uphill slog to the top of the Niagara Escarpment, along a section of Highway 6 called the Clappison Cut. Each flatbed needed two diesel trucks to accomplish that feat.

In the course of the actual distance traveled—108 kilometres (67 miles)—there were 1600 overhead wires that needed to be moved, involving 8 different hydro-electric companies. The wires were either raised ahead of time, or cut and then repaired after the convoy passed. Yes, this meant that people all along the route were without electricity for anywhere from a half hour to two hours. But honestly, I have not heard of one single solitary complaint about the inconvenience.

After all, this is Canada, and the cause was beer.

Also along the route, some 250 traffic lights needed to be dismantled and then reassembled as the one kilometre long convoy passed through those controlled intersections.
The convoy moved only at night, and only on secondary roads. The journey was to have taken five days. But cold temperatures and an unexpected snow storm stretched that time line considerably.

Each day as I drove my beloved to work and we listened to the local news on the car radio, we received an update on the convoy. The fact that it was the first item on the news every day just underscored for me how serious we Canadians can be about our beer. As for those of us who are of German-Canadian descent...well, serious is such a paltry word, isn’t it?

But finally, in the wee hours of Monday morning, those enormous vats—that visually resemble jumbo jet engines—arrived at the brewery amid cheers and applause and the honking of horns.

And you thought the use of the word “eh” was our most noteworthy affectation!

Love,
Morgan

Wednesday's Words for January 12, 2010

2011-01-12T04:51:00.000-08:00

There is a difference between responsibility and blame. I’m not really sure how it’s happened, but it seems to me that we, who live here in North America, have confused the two to such an extent, I really am worried that we’ll never completely separate them again.

I’m afraid we’ll never get it right.

My beloved has just recently completed his annual ‘safety training’ at work. Each year, in the first week or so of January, his employer presents a program designed to keep everyone aware of the latest safety procedures, to review old information, and to ensure that everyone realizes that the company takes the safety of its workers seriously.

All good.

My husband told me that according to one of the government agencies, “there is no such thing as an accident”. Period. If someone gets hurt at work, then someone, somewhere, somehow is to blame.

In these enlightened times in this province, if a worker is injured on the job, then not only can the company that employs him be charged, and subsequently fined, its principals jailed; so, too, can the worker’s supervisors and even the worker himself.

I can see problems with this stance. Personally, you wouldn’t be able to pay me enough money, under those conditions, to take a supervisory job. And I would guess that, most probably, the best and the brightest employees wouldn’t, either. Fines levied in workplace injury suits can be devastating for an individual to pay, because the employer is prevented, by law, from paying the fines on a supervisor’s behalf.

I really miss common sense. You know, that old thing we used to rely on? That thing that told us to do our best, try our best, and when mistakes happened, as mistakes were wont to do, to learn from them, and do better next time.

Under the above concept, you can change that thinking to read when mistakes happen, lose everything you own and go into bankruptcy and/or jail.

Nope, I don’t ever want to be a supervisor.

We are, as a society, very quick to blame anyone and everyone when tragedy strikes. When that tragedy is as a result of violence perpetrated by one individual upon another—or upon several others, we—represented by our news media and others who would step forward with fingers pointing—are quick to lay the blame for these crimes at countless pairs of feet.

Responsibility and blame. How to know the difference?

My heart goes out to the families and friends of the people murdered in Tucson last weekend. I especially feel great grief for the family of Christina Taylor Green. The murder of the young and innocent seems to me to be the most heinous of crimes. I also pray for the recovery of the injured.

Who do we blame for this tragedy? The man whose finger was on the trigger.

Do we look further? Certainly not in any criminal sense, in my opinion—unless he had a verifiable accomplice. I’ve been hearing “talking heads” from both ends of the political spectrum either casting blame or denying responsibility, at (metaphorically speaking) the tops of their lungs. I’ve a news flash for them. This isn’t about them, or their constant demonizing of each other, or their political agendas.

This is about a man who coldly and, apparently premeditatedly, committed mass murder. It’s about the lives taken, and the people injured.

I would, however, like to share one very personal opinion, if I may. It has always been my belief that when you step forward and would assume a role of leadership—be it in education, religion, law enforcement, business, or politics—that you are obliged to hold yourself to a higher standard; to remember that the examples you set, whether you want them to or not, inspire others—for good, and yes, sometimes, for evil.

This is a lesson we should have learned in 1170 when Henry II expressed his frustration by uttering, “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?" Words misinterpreted by the king’s devout followers as an order to assassinate the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket.

I don’t hold out much hope we’re going to learn this lesson anytime soon.

Love,
Morgan

January 5, 2011

2011-01-05T08:45:00.000-08:00

The tree is down, the turkey leftovers consumed, gifts have been put away, and life, for the most part, has returned to normal.

My beloved has gone back to work, and so have I. Actually, my ‘vacation’ these past two weeks was primarily a vacation from driving. Everything else I do carried on as usual. Since my chauffeur duties see me drive a hundred miles each day, and consume in total about two and a half hours doing so, that was break enough.

I did continue working over the last two weeks, and yes, my beloved was very well behaved, keeping himself occupied and, as he put it, ‘out of my hair’. He did have a rather large TBR pile, which has been whittled down to the point that we have to make a book store run in the very near future.

One of the things I liked best about this “vacation” time was the lack of a schedule. I hate living by the clock. Unfortunately reality in this day and age is that we all very much do live by the clock.

I quite enjoyed staying up late, sleeping in, going for late afternoon naps, and foraging for food rather than making structured, timed and to a certain extent complicated meals.
And, as much as I love my grandchildren, I also enjoyed the break from babysitting, too.
Now that life is supposedly back to normal, I do miss my afternoon naps. That will take a couple more days to get used to. But at least I get to work from the comfort of my own home in pyjamas, and I don’t have to brave the elements unless I want to.

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? I didn’t. I’ve heard that by this point in the New Year, about 65% of the people who did make them have already failed. Personally, I think that has more to do with calling the changes you want to make in your life ‘New Year’s Resolutions’. Your subconscious self perks up, says ‘we’ll just see about that’, and before you know it, you’ve become a train wreck of derailed resolutions.

Something similar happens if you tell yourself you’re going on a diet.
It’s much better to just decide that you’re going to make a small change in your life, and then do it.

Small changes are, I believe, the way to go. There’s a reason, by the way, that you see so many ads for specials for gym memberships this time of year. It’s because the desire for change is out there. The gym owners know it, and only care about making that annual membership fee from you.

I can just see it. Suppose you made a resolution to get more exercise. You sign up. You go. You meet Igor, your six-foot-five totally ripped personal trainer. He walks around you, conducting an inspection during which he makes a lot of grunting, not-happy-about-what-he’s seeing noises.
Then he introduces you to the first of ten new-to-you exercise machines. One hour later, having visited all ten torture devices, you limp for home, rethinking this whole ‘let’s get in shape’ ridiculous idea you had.

I believe it would be better do to something for just ten or fifteen minutes a day. One thing, for ten or fifteen minutes. Every day. Something. Anything. Enough that you’re moving. Not enough to discourage you from repeating the experience.

The same with changing your eating habits. Look at what you’re taking in, and cut out about 100 calories a day. Then, in a couple of weeks, see what else you can eliminate, reduce, or change.
The hardest part of doing anything different, really, is getting used to doing it. Just one small change at a time is, in my opinion, the best way to go.

We can all do that. And when we do, we’ll feel like winners, and not failures.

Love,
Morgan

Change can be gradual, too!

2010-12-30T16:45:00.001-08:00

For those of you who are faithful followers of my weekly essay, welcome to the place, the creation of which is long overdue: Wednesday's Words, the Blog.

Over the course of the next couple of months, I'm going to cease posting in so many different loops, and concentrate on just a couple. In the meantime, Wednesday's Words will begin to appear here, every week.

Nothing would make me happier than to have you take a moment and share your thoughts, ideas, gripes, whatever. Have an idea for an essay that I haven't tackled yet? Let's hear it!

In the meantime, thanks for reading. It's why we writers, write!

Love,
Morgan

December 29, 2010

2010-12-30T16:42:00.000-08:00

Did you have a good Christmas?

I often wonder, is there much in life that every year receives such a big build up as Christmas does, only to be done in a single day?

It is over in one day in these modern times. When I was younger, we used to stretch out Christmas. We’d go to church on Christmas Eve for the midnight Eucharist. Then of course, the big day, with gifts and our enormous family breakfast—because our means were spare, it was the only morning all year we sat down to a full breakfast of bacon, eggs, home fried potatoes, and, oh joy, orange juice and grape juice!

We’d have the traditional turkey dinner of course, and my mother’s Christmas Pudding—a steamed carrot pudding that has no added fat, and that I still make each year, to this day.

Then the next day—Boxing Day—would begin the “Christmas Visits” – they usually took place over the next two or three days, actually—visiting friends and relatives. For any who had small children, my parents would always bring along some gift or treat for the kids.

Christmas, back then, was very nearly a season.

Do we blame the retailers in our world, or ourselves? Here in Canada, we begin to hear radio and television ads for “Boxing Day” sales, before we even have Christmas! It’s hard not to let the loud and constant cacophony from the world of consumerism influence us.

I often lament the passage of what, in retrospect, appear to have been simpler times. But I wonder if they really were simpler? Or does my subconscious soften the memories so that they just seem that way?

I do look forward to the “review of the year” that seems to be a popular feature of many news shows. I like to take a moment and remember the milestones, the passages, and the achievements of the year. Sometimes, I learn of things that escaped me when they happened originally. And sometimes, I think, was that only this past year?

Times change. People change. Nothing stays in a comfortable place, not for long, at any rate. I think it’s a facet of the human condition that the older we get, the more we want things to slow down and stay somewhat the same. We want to seek comfort in the familiar. It’s why we have our favorite mugs, our favorite chairs, and even our favorite restaurants!

It is, at the core of it, why we have traditions in the first place.

I really believe this need is universal. It’s one of the reasons older folk are always characterized as beginning a lot of sentences with, “Back in my day...” There’s a sense for some of us, as we age, that how things were back in “our day” was the “right” way, the “best” way, and of course, for those of us whose inner curmudgeon isn’t inner any more, the “only” way.

Sometimes I hear younger people admonishing the older to “keep up with the times”. To those younger folk I would say, you can hope, but most often, it’s just not going to happen.

I spent time with my older brother on Sunday. He hosts a “Boxing Day Brunch”, and for the last few years he’s invited us to attend. He and his wife of more than 45 years do the cooking together, making the usual fare. Always delicious, of course!

I found it interesting to sit and listen to him afterwards as he was telling my beloved that the fliers come in the newspaper for the local electronics store, and he marvels at all the pieces of technology for sale that he has no idea, whatsoever, how to operate. He said he didn’t even know what a lot of them were—and really didn’t care to learn.

I can recall this same brother, not so many years ago, describing to me his latest blow-your-eardrums sound system with woofers and tweeters and other things I didn’t even understand then.

Now I’m e-published, on line all the time, hip deep in IMs and e-mails, and he doesn’t even use the computer he has. Times do change.

I wish you all a blessed New Year. May 2011 be very good for you all!

Love,
Morgan

December 22, 2010

2010-12-30T16:40:00.000-08:00

Don’t you love this time of year? It’s the time of year when tradition saddles on in to take over our lives, mostly for the good.

Except in the case of the Ashbury household.

It would appear that we have a more recent tradition (since it’s happened now about four years in a row) that I would just as soon do without, thank you very much.

‘Tis the season of the car needing something expensive repaired.

Now in case you all think that perhaps I jinx myself by speaking about m-o-n-e-y within the confines of the automobile, let me assure you all most emphatically that I do not. Ever. That is a lesson I learned many years ago.

For those too young or green to understand this (until now) “unwritten rule” of car ownership, let me write it out for you: if you mention raises, Christmas bonuses, small lottery wins, gifts, inheritances, or any amount of money you may think you will have over and above your usual, the car will take advantage of you and break down so that you must spend that windfall on it.

Being the overly cautious types that we are, Mr. Ashbury and I never discuss money of any amount from any source in the car. We also never discuss if or when we might purchase another car, in the car.

Now, on to the Ashbury Christmas tradition of the expensive car repair. The first time this happened, we needed the signal switch replaced, as the mechanism also controlled not just the signal but the high and low beam of the headlights. That repair, about ten days before Christmas, cost us over a thousand dollars.

The second time it happened, it was the replacement of two headlights, within two weeks of each other. One was my fault, and one thanks to the courtesy of an unknown motorist in the parking lot of our local grocery store. Although together these replacements didn’t quite reach the thousand dollar mark, it still meant an outlay of cash at a time of year when all discretionary funds had already been allocated.

Last year, I bought the vehicle four brand new winter tires, hoping to head off disaster, in November. Alas, that ploy didn’t work. Tie rod end, front driver’s side, eight hundred dollars.

This year, I had thought we’d gotten off easy. It was twelve days before Christmas, and when my beloved went out to start the car, he discovered the heater fan wasn’t working.

Although not a problem in good weather, in winter, the car can’t be driven without the heater fan working, for the windows ice up on the inside.

Looking back on it now, my mistake was thinking, great, ‘only four hundred and fifty dollars’! A mistake, most certainly, as on Monday the car really didn’t want to start and my husband said, “the battery is nearly gone”.

Now, I’ve been taking my car to the shop for all its repairs since several years ago when my beloved said he didn’t want to be bothered fixing cars anymore. However, on Sunday he did fix our daughter’s car. So I looked at him and said, “I’ll buy it, you install it.”
Which he did, successfully.

I know I really shouldn’t complain. We’ve had this car since 2006 and have put half a million kilometres on it. And I’m not really complaining, I’d just like the car’s timing to be better. No pun intended.

I wish you all a happy, healthy Christmas, filled with warmth and laughter and love and yummy things to eat. And no car repairs.

God bless you all!

Love,
Morgan

December 15, 2010

2010-12-30T16:39:00.000-08:00

Many moons ago, my beloved and I were unrepentant coffee drinkers.

Perhaps “drinkers” is the wrong noun. I’m a writer, I should be able to come up with the noun that fits. Let’s see, we could try, imbibers, consumers, no, no, I have it: guzzlers!

Yes, we were both guzzlers, and when I think about the amount of coffee we ingested each day it makes me shudder now. It was enough that a large container of coffee (975 grams or 2.15 pounds) would last us a week and a bit. Scary, huh?

Those days are long gone, for both of us. I, of course, have to watch my caffeine intake as I do have a heart condition. My beloved says he doesn’t drink what he used to because he no longer smokes, and that could likely be true. Coffee and a cigarette used to go together like a hand in a glove, at least for me it did. Yes, I too am a former smoker. When I quit (eight years ago on December 2nd) I smoked two packs a day. My beloved did as well, and he had been a smoker for 40 years. He quit the same time I did.

So, here we are, non-smokers, reformed coffee guzzlers. We do, however, still drink the beverage. We each of us average two cups a day. Generally, if I want more, I drink decaffeinated.

During my visit to Indiana this past September, I had coffee differently than I’d ever had it before. My hostess had a one-cup coffee machine, with all sorts of little plastic “coffee cups” you could choose from to insert into the machine. Heck, there were even some teas available too. I was doubtful at first. Just ask my closest friends, I am a purist when it comes to my coffee. No flavor shots; no flavoured blends or creamers. Despite the best efforts of some very beautiful and talented fellow authors, Morgan refuses to go over to the dark side. But I also needed my morning coffee, so I tried it.

Oh. My. Goodness!

When I came home, I discovered this very same machine was on sale at a location near me. Yes, I went right out and bought it.

My beloved, bless him, only raised one eyebrow. He said nothing, and when invited to, finally chose one of the sample coffees that had come with the machine. He picked a “bold” blend of coffee.

He said, “Oh. My. Goodness!”

Yep. Instant new addiction. Though we still limit ourselves to our two cups a day, each cup is fresh, and wonderful. It didn’t matter that I had to order my coffee from Quebec. It didn’t matter that the coffee is more expensive than buying a regular “975” gram container (although I did get an adapter for the machine so I can use my own coffee in it, I haven’t done so yet). All that mattered is that this coffee was good; and if you’re only going to have a couple of cups of it a day, you might as well have what’s very, very good.

And this trend, in this area, is taking off. Forget about the claim that our consumption of bottled water is going to bury the planet in non-biodegradable plastic bottles. It’ll be the empty little coffee cups that will drown us.

In the mean time, a friend of mine has one of these machines too. And when I visited last week, he told me of a retail store just a few minutes from his house, where I could get an amazing selection of these coffees and teas.

My beloved and I went there last Thursday evening. Yes, the exact same coffee I was ordering on line is right there, not close, but certainly close enough—and with a larger selection, too.
I believe that in time, I will earn my very own designated parking spot in front of that store.

Love,
Morgan

December 8, 2010

2010-12-30T16:37:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed that despite the fact that Christmas has always been on December 25th, it sneaks up on us every year?

At least it always seems to sneak up on me. Here we are, just 16 more days to go and once again, I am nowhere near ready.

I think one of my major problems is denial. I always think I have more time than I actually do.
Logically, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to begin my preparations weeks or even months earlier. But once the holiday is off my radar, there’s a part of me that denies it even exists, until just a few weeks before it comes again.

At least the gift shopping part has ceased to be a hassle. We get gift cards for everyone, and yes, that is the lazy way out, but it really does let people get the one thing that they didn’t find under the tree. It’s especially handy for teenagers, who are always changing their minds as to what they want.

The next item on the list, after gifts, is the tree. Do you remember last year’s “Christmas Yucca”? If you recall, we had absolutely no room to put our tree up last Christmas because the Yucca was too big to move successfully to the office (as we had done in the past, putting the Christmas tree up in its place). So last year we threw some garland on the Yucca and called it done.

This year, of course, we had a bit more room in the living room, since we’d replaced the loveseat with three bookcases. Unfortunately, this past May, when we rented a dumpster and the girls cleaned out the upstairs in preparation for turning it into a temporary living space (again), my daughter thought that the tree in the box was her old tree and so she tossed it into the bin. What she actually threw out was our new tree that we had enjoyed only once.

My beloved says it was likely just as well, as that tree would not have really fit in the one space we have available for it—in front of the ‘corner’ made by the bookcases. So we bought another one—this also an artificial one since our daughter has recently developed an allergy to the real thing.

This “new tree” is only five feet tall, and only thirty-six inches around at the bottom. I stand five foot one. Yup, it’s little. But it fits and the grandchildren who are 10 and 8 were able to decorate it all by themselves and could even place the star on top without the aid of a ladder.
They were both very proud of the excellent job they did, and so were we.

There’s only really one item left on my list of preparations, and that’s the baking. I used to do a lot of it, back in the day. I haven’t baked a great deal lately because I hate tossing food away. My beloved still has his sweet tooth but it’s not as hungry as once it was. The days of his filching an entire cherry cheesecake out of the fridge for a midnight snack are behind us (thank goodness). But as I did this summer, when for the first time in years I made pickles, this year I want to bake.

Last Christmas, my two younger grandchildren and I had an evening, where we made sugar cookies—primarily, I must confess, so that we could spend the time together and so they could have the fun of decorating them.

This year, I think it will just be my granddaughter and I in the kitchen. I want to make some of my traditional have-on-hands for the holidays: thumbprint cookies and shortbread. But we’ll try a couple of new recipes, too. I know we’ll have fun not just in the making but in keeping the grandfather of the house from snatching finger dips of batter as he so loves to do.
In other words, we’ll have fun making memories.

Love,
Morgan

December 1, 2010

2010-12-30T16:32:00.000-08:00

Back in the day, when I used to watch movies, some of my favorites were the musicals. If you’re my age, you know the ones I mean. I’m not referring to the movies we get these days with lovely songs and dances by a few people on a small set. I’m talking the major extravaganzas. Think Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, Hello Dolly, Oliver and, because we’re getting close to Christmas, Scrooge!

I can recall a time or two when, watching the major dance scenes (Put On Your Sunday Clothes from Hello Dolly or Thank You Very Much from Scrooge), someone would invariably say, and quite derisively, too, “as if people would just break into song and dance in a public place like that”.

Can you figure out where this is going? Flash forward to 2010 and the flash mob craze. Is it a craze? For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, a flash mob is when a group of people in a very public venue either begin to dance, or to sing, seemingly “spontaneously”, but of course, I doubt spontaneity has anything to do with it.

I saw my first ever flash mob dance about a year ago, I guess, when the Black Eyed Peas sang “I’ve Got A Feeling” for the Oprah show in downtown Philadelphia. If you saw that on TV or later on you tube, you recall how excited Oprah became as it was happening.

I wonder why it is people do these things now? The fear of “being centered out”, which I recall so well from my younger days, seems to have been replaced by a hunger to be centered out. After all, if You Tube can make a mega star of Justin Bieber, it can happen to anyone!
So is it the search for fame and fortune that finds people sucking up their nervousness and just putting it out there for everyone to see?

Or is it maybe, with the advent of You Tube, and even American Idol, people no longer fear being the center of attention. I don’t watch the Idol show, but I’ve heard there have been some pretty horrendous acts on there. Many of us might find ourselves saying, “hell, I can do a better job of it than that!”

This flash mob phenomenon isn’t just a North American craze, either. I have one in my “you tube favourites”, a video filmed in the central train station in Antwerp Belgium of a group of 200 dancing to Julie Andrews singing “Do Re Mi” from the Sound of Music soundtrack.

What I like most about these videos, aside from getting a real kick out of seeing all these different people united for a common, entertaining purpose, is the looks on the faces of the people who are there, watching it unfold.

Those expressions go from disbelief to pure joy in a matter of moments. For those few minutes while their fellow travelers or diners or shoppers perform, their cares are forgotten as they either listen raptly or bounce to the music, or, in some cases, join right in.
What an extraordinary gift these performers are giving! You might tune in to You tube and see these “impromptu” performances and enjoy them for a few minutes, and even play them again, but can you imagine what it would be like to actually be there while it’s happening?

If you want to see the video filmed at the train station in Belgium, it’s here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k&feature=recentf

For a Christmas treat, and if you’re a fan of the Hallelujah Chorus, may I suggest this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE
If some day in the future you’re out somewhere and a song or dance breaks out around you, think of me, please, and join in. Moments like that don’t come around every day.

Love,

Morgan