The Lipstick Chronicles

Chased Around the Desk   

by Nancy

A few months back, famed former basketball player Isiah Thomas, coach of the New York Knicks, found himself in a pickle. A female executive, Anucha Browne Sanders, claimed Mr. Thomas sexually harassed her in the office at Madison Square Garden. She took him to court and--although he maintained his innocence to the bitter end--the jury believed her side of the story and found in her favor. She was awarded $11.6 million. (Yes, that's eleven million dollars.)  But the folks at the Garden settled with her for $11.5, which somehow allowed Mr. Thomas to continue to proclaim he did nothing wrong, but really, may I sell you a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge?

NBC Sports said that Ms. Browne Sanders's testimony " . . . exposed the club's tawdry side, from its dynfunctional clubhouse to its star player's sexual exploits with an intern."

What's new and startling about this story?

Nothing.  It's one of the oldest stories around--men chasing women around the desk and after she cries foul he wonders what all the fuss was about.

Mr. Thomas still doesn't get it, obviously. Maybe that's the story here.  That there's still a man in America who hasn't learned it's politically incorrect to bully someone into doing things she might otherwise not want to do.  Okay, wait, maybe certain Mormons in Texas still haven't figured this out either. And a few coaches of girls' basketball. Oh, and the occasional--well, now that I think of it, the list could get longer than I first thought.

When I was a teenager and working as a waitress in a hotel located along an interstate, I learned how to take an order and deliver the rare or well-done prime rib to the right customers. And I also had to figure out how to dodge the boss who had developed a very successful catch and release technique. He'd wait until a waitress had a tray of glassware, then grab her around the waist and pull her into the break room. Since I was taller and more athletic than he was, I had an advantage that other, smaller, more timid girls (who also didn't have prominent attorneys for fathers) lacked, and eventually he quit trying to feel me up. It was all done with a lot of laughing and teasing, but---well, it was serious groping nonetheless.

I didn't tell my parents. They'd have been shocked and would have done something on my behalf, but it felt like something I needed to handle myself. Sure, by keeping quiet, I enabled him to continue. But also . . . maybe it was a little bit flattering for a teenage girl to imagine an older man found her attractive?

As a culture, we're still doing that--making teenage girls think their sexiness is their best asset. Look at magazines, television, pop music ("Hit me, baby, one more time"???) and perhaps especially at the local shopping mall.

I remember a friend---a sensible, intelligent woman--confiding in me about the time her former boss followed her out to her car late at night and pinned her head against the headrest to kiss her. When she told me the story, she tried to sound horrified (she was the happily married mother of three) but her eyes were glowing. Over the years, the writer in me has thought a lot about her expression.

It takes a certain self-assurance to say no, doesn't it? And many fourteen-year-olds don't have that trait in their makeup yet. (I watched some of the Texas Mormon mothers on television this week.  Their baby voices and passive grief made me think they still don't have the wherewithal to stand up for themselves.) You can drill into a kid's head what exactly "bad touching" is, but it's quite another thing for a kid to work up the courage to stop it when it's happening.

I'd be interested to hear how many of our regulars put up with sexual harassment (perhaps even before it had a name?) either at school or the workplace or even at home.  Was it long ago? Or not?

Oh, by the way, Isiah Thomas was fired from his coaching job for the Knicks.  Not for harassing an employee.  But because his team was losing.

Bad Mommy!

by Nancy

In my own defense, my children turned out great.  But during their formative years, I had moments that weren't exactly Mother of the Year material.

                              

Like the two days I made my 18-month old daughter walk on her broken leg.  Mind you, the x-ray didn't show anything at all--nothing!--so I assumed she was just whining.  Eventually she communicated that I was an idiot, so I took her back for more x-rays, and sure enough, the leg was broken.

I also Had a temper tantrum and quit packing their school lunches when Cassie was in 4th grade and Sarah in 2nd. (Hey, if they're old enough to see the top of the kitchen counter, they can drop a few items into a paper bag, right?)  I threw another hissyfit and stopped doing their laundry before they hit junior high.

My attitude is that kids ought to recognize that Mom is a person, too, not the automatic, always-cheerful deliverer of food, fashionable clothes and boundless emotional support, especially during the tiresome teenage years. The purpose of a mother is not to bring any creature comfort the kids can't reach from their prone positions in front of the television. (Yell for some Doritos at my house, and you'd be likely to receive them crushed and poured over your head.)  A kid who recognizes that she can't boss around her own mother is a kid who grows up into a thoughtful, giving adult.

Giving your kids everything can be . . . bad.

                                    

And a mother who's a door mat is only teaching her kids a lesson that's not going to turn out well.

But then, I'm in the minority.  I know women who have devoted their lives to serving their children, and I admire them for their devotion.  No, really, I do.  They are better human beings than I am.

But I also admire my own mother who taught us independence and resilience and how to catch a fly ball, wipe the tennis court with your opponent, be a gracious loser when necessary and how to iron our damn own shirts.

                              

Some dim-witted organization gave Lindsay Lohan's mother a Mother of the Year award this year.  I'm not bothering to Google it for you, because no intelligent human being who reads People magazine would acknowledge Mrs. Lohan is a good mother. (I did read one Yahoo search item that started, "...she skipped her court date to visit Lindsay in rehab..."  'Nuff said, right?)

But I'm thinking Mrs. Lohan has time to clean up her act.  After all, we've all made mistakes as mothers.  Most of those mistakes turn out to be okay for our kids in the long run. I mean, my daughter had never let me forget the broken leg episode, and I think that's healthy.--Children should recognize that nobody's without fault. (But, really, isn't it a little strange that she's kept the cast all these years??  It's still on a shelf in the bedroom!)

For your entertainment on the day before Mother's Day, here's The Bad Mother's Club.

How about you?  Made any embarrassing motherly blunders? Do you feel a little pesticide on the apple you give your kid every day simply strengthens his immune system? (If you make your own baby food, I'll tell you right now that we're going to blackball you from the TLC Bad Mommy Club.) If your bag of tricks, do you have a heart-warming tale of blessed motherhood gone terribly wrong?

Today's your day to dish. To cleanse your soul.  We won't tell your mother, honest.

First Apartment

by Nancy

My first apartment was in a Victorian mansion on a street nicknamed Millionaire's Row that hadn't seen a millionaire in fifty years. All the crumbling big houses had been carved up into apartments for students at the nearby community college or local drug dealers who wanted to live conveniently close to their customers. The landlord thought I'd love the campy 3rd floor hideaway which had beads hanging in all the doorways instead of doors and a bedroom with a round, Poconos-style honeymoon bed and a open porch in the turret--very cute, if a little dingy because none of the windows had been washed since Eisenhower.

But the apartment also sported bloodstains on one wall. The landlord hadn't gotten around to washing up after an undercover cop shot and killed a stoned dealer in the apartment, and the splatter remained. The landlord was surprised when I declined to rent the place.

On the other hand, the 2nd floor apartment had big rooms and lots of light and some very elaborate, if wobbly furniture and no blood. It was located only a short drive from the junior high where I'd been employed to teach. I rented it on the spot because, frankly, I'd come by myself and didn't know where else to look.

The place was kinda grungy Mary Tyler Moore, except with marijuana.

                                       

The main thing was that it was cheap. Fresh out of college and on my own financially, I needed a bargain. (In those days--the recession of the mid-seventies--graduates moved to where the jobs were.  We couldn't be picky about location.)

For months, I wondered why the neighborhood drug dealers avoided me, because they were certainly persistent with everyone else. Finally, a long-haired neighbor (who took me under his wing when I agreed to share my cable TV service with him--ahem) told me that all the neighbors were keeping their distance because my boyfriend--who came to visit every other weekend--drove a stripped-down, dark blue Chevy with a federal parking lot sticker. He also wore a raincoat with epaulettes, so they thought he was a cop. Actually, he was a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve, and he was pleased to be feared by somebody other than branch managers who didn't keep good tabs on their tellers.

I can still remember that apartment's faded cabbage rose wallpaper and the two-burner electric stove and the tiny refrigerator that I never bothered to defrost. The independence of having my own place was thrilling. My mother made sure I had a screwdriver, a hammer, two Revere saucepans (which I still use---the need for cheap has stayed with me) and some cleaning supplies, an ironing board and a flash light. I inherited somebody's vacuum cleaner that did more vomiting than sucking, but I felt I was all set for life on my own. I wasn't prepared for the nearly constant heavy-breathers who called on my telephone, but--several hundred miles from my parents and their style of countrified gracious living---I toughened up. 

By contrast, my husband's first apartment was in a high rise building in Cleveland (home of the Federal Reserve) facing the formidable great lake. Every winter, his windows froze up with ice, and the parking lot often drifted shut with stunning amounts of lake-effect snow. His neighbors were mostly elderly ladies who received their lunch via Meals on Wheels. He was the youngest person who lived in the building, and he was frequently asked to carry heavy packages for his neighbors.  His mother gave him a blaze orange vinyl recliner and a dinette set (remember those?) with aluminium tube legs--ugly as all getout, but functional.

                           

I remembered that orange recliner and dinette set when it came time for my daughter to move into her first apartment. I decided her move was not an opportunity for me to get rid of ugly furniture or old vacuum cleaners. We helped her into an efficiency that was probably smaller than the smallest bedroom in your house. I couldn't believe anyone could live in that tiny cage--only one window, and it had security bars!  We managed to fit all her needed furniture into one minivan, if that helps give you a mental picture of its size.

                        

If there were drug dealers in her building, I would have moved heaven and earth to get her out of there, but--like me--she might have chosen not to inform her kind-hearted parents of situations she felt she better learn to handle on her own.

On the other hand, when my sister moved into a first apartment, she telephoned my mother (three hundred miles away) for help getting a squirrel out of the living room.

Living in an apartment in New York appeals to me now, but only if I could afford one of those $17 million penthouses with a view of Central Park and a rooftop garden like the one in the movie Green Card.

Now, of course, my husband and I live in a house that requires endless maintenance that no landlord can be called at any hour to take care of, but then, through various emergencies large and small we've learned to manage.

Do you remember your first apartment?  And the adventure of starting your own, independent life? Did you grow up? Learn to cope?

Good grief, I just Googled my old neighborhood and found a photo of the house!  It's become an official historic neighborhood. I love when buildings are preserved, but I wonder if the tV cable is still spliced.

Here Comes the Bride

by Nancy

Submitted for your approval:  A wedding isn't memorable unless somebody misbehaves.

At least, that's my theory now that it's been thirty years since my own wedding, and I've attended so many nuptials that they all blur together in my mind until I sort out at which one did the best man have to duck out of line at the altar, dart out the side door and could then be heard upchucking into the bushes because of bachelor party excesses?

And which one was the wedding where one inebriated reception guest (female, who made an unfortunate choice in outfits that morning) climbed onto a table to sing I Will Survive along with the band?

Well, here's a wedding that--er--takes the cake:  Please click on this link, because the photo of the bride emerging from jail in her wedding gown is priceless. I'm only sorry the online version of the newspaper didn't include the photo of the groom with his black eye swollen shut.

Ain't liquor a terrific addition to any wedding reception?

If I attended your wedding, let me say right away that it was lovely. I cried a delicate tear during the vows and enjoyed the reception fare and even sneaked an extra piece of cake because it was so delicious. And the music was divine. There was never a more beautiful bride or a more handsome groom. The flowers were exquisite. I had such a nice time.

But the other 127 weddings I've attended over the years were . . . forgettable.

Really, now, don't you remember the tacky ones best? The silly mistakes? The offensive behavior of a boorish groomsman? The incredibly self meltdown of the MOB?

There are certain people who attend every wedding:

There's the overtly sexy woman who looks much more sophisticated than anyone else on the guest list.  Maybe she's newly divorced or somebody's ex-girlfriend, or the sexy cousin, but you know who I mean. Her dress often has a slit up the side. And she smokes.

There's also the groomsman who gets drunk and a.) trashes the mens room or b.) wrecks his car or c.) supervises the shaving cream spraying of the bridal bed.

There's the little girl in the adorable pink/yellow/lavender satin dress that is quickly smeared with jello or Kool Aid or cake frosting, and she ends up bawling by the end of the evening. She was briefly considered for the role of flower girl, but "you know how she gets sometimes."

The father of the bride who won't leave the bar.

The bridesmaid who really wasn't on the A-list, but somebody ele dropped out of the wedding party and she's the fill-in, and she knows it. She did not bother to diet to squeeze into the $565 satin dress with ruching the bride insisted she buy and will never wear again.

The uncle who wants to dance with all the bridesmaids.

I'm sure you know more of the guest list regulars.  Since we're approcahing wedding season, let's see how many we can identify before you even zip your dress.

We all want our weddings to be perfect.  It's only natural.  But perfect can be boring.  After a couple of decades, isn't it more fun to re-play the mistakes?  The drunks? The hissyfits? How many times can that awful Karen Carpenter song be played and the audience be expected to take it seriously?

C'mon.  Share your most memorable wedding moment. I bet it wasn't hearts and flowers.

Book Conventions and Hand Sanitizer

by Nancy

Many years ago, I let myself get coerced into seeing the movie Porky's with my husband's co-workers. I was the only person who knew in advance it was a sophomoric, raunchy, semi-pornographic (for its day) flick, but in a classic case of peer pressure, I let everyone else sweep me--taunted as the fuddyduddy--into a movie I didn't want to see. And for about ten minutes, the rest of the group roared with laughter.  But eventually the co-workers fell into squirming silence as the action onscreen got more and more . . . well, stupid and icky. When the movie was over, nobody could look anyone else in the eye.  Instead, the co-workers all mumbled good-night and split as fast as possible, trying not to think about what they'd have to say to each other Monday morning around the water cooler.

That's kind of how I feel about the Romantic Times convention. Sure, everybody looks like they're having a good time, nobody's getting hurt, and technically people are celebrating books (one friend spent $200 to ship home the books she acquired) but me, I just feel uncomfortably out of place amid all the erotica and the--sorry, I gotta say it--crudeness.

Which is my problem, not anyone else's. Hey, if you love man-on-man-on-woman sex with some shapeshifters and chocolate sauce thrown in, I give you my blessing.

It's just not for me.  Mind you, I'm not a romance snob.  I love romance novels.  I've written enough to put my kids through college. And the first book sitting here on my "keeper" shelf is Anne Stuart's Catspaw. And I'm thinking that's the kind of book that's the mark of a true connoisseur.

But, as another friend says, "There's just not enough hand sanitizer to get me to go to RT."

But this particular convention has lots of other stuff going on--if you can look past the well-lotioned male models--and some of it is worth the attention of people in the book business.

First thing I noticed?  Youth.  At mystery conventions, there's a lot of gray hair and fixed incomes.  The romance genre, however, seems to have ongoing appeal.   At RT there were more twenty-somethings than sixty-somethings.  This has to be a good thing, but draw your own conclusion.

Next:  I noticed how many people were clearly good friends, but meeting for the first time in person. Okay, this is old news--that the internet is fostering communities of readers---but it's never more apparent than at the RT convention. (Here's the Publisher's Weekly blog report with plenty of video. She makes the same observation.)

Another thing that jumped out at me right away was how many readers were buying e-books. You could walk up to an author or bookseller and hand over your jumpdrive, and a minute later you'd have a novel for your Sony reader. Like magic. No printing, no hauling boxes, no gasoline tax--just a fast exchange and a satisfied--er, happy customer. Does this kind of movement start with an underground genre like erotica before it goes mainstream? Maybe so.

My daughter has a Sony reader and says she can download books from the internet onto her computer first, which she likes because she can keep a "library" on her computer as well as on the Sony reader in case one of them crashes. The only bad thing, she reports, is that she has to pretty much know what she's buying before she goes looking for it.  There's no physical bookstore to browse, and the download sites are kinda clunky.  (What she needs is a good old-fashioned informed, hand-selling bookstore clerk!) Maybe this is where those video book trailers are going to come in handy. (Does anyone here go looking for book trailers?  Can you point us to some good ones?)  Do book trailers prompt you to buy books? Just wondering.

This e-book thing is the wave of the future, folks. We can talk about how much we love the feel of a book in our hands, the crisp paper, the smell of musty pages.  But our kids don't think that way.  (Heck, they're text messaging each other now instead of telephoning!  Of course they're ready to read books on a small screen!) E-books are coming--like a tsunami. We can either figure out how we're going to surf that big wave or get washed away.

How easy would it be for a bookseller to have a computer in the store for downloads? Pretty easy, I think. (Kudos, by the way, to Joseph-Beth Booksellers, a terrific indie chain--if there is such a thing--for their excellent management of the RT bookfair!) It just takes a tech-savvy person to get cracking on such a project, and my bet is that it would be up and running in a week. One way for the indies to out-fox the slow-moving chain stores, maybe?

Oh, wait.  Here's a company that does the digitizing, and they're throwing a one-day event in NYC to show how it's done. And here's agent Andrew Zack's blog on the subject of e-books.

The other big talk among the non-erotica people at RT was the value of the book club. Even small book clubs are golden. They're access. If a writer visits a book club, the whole club buys the book, discusses the book, probably talks about the book with other non-club readers. It's the new-old-fashioned way of building readership by word of mouth. The big question is how to reach book clubs from the corporate standpoint. Should authors do it?  (Add one more item to my resume--the masters degree in marketing!)  Should publishers have somebody on the payroll who goes trolling daily for book clubs?  Are there freelance publicists out there creating exclusive lists of book club contacts?  The answer is: All of the above.  And make it quick, please!

Here's what else I learned from table chitchat with authors, booksellers, librarians and readers:

Hardly anybody has the dough to buy hardcovers.  (Have your hardcover-buying habits changed lately?)  If the only reason to print popular fiction hardcovers is to get reviews . . . well, somebody needs to think of another way to reach reviewers.

It's unanimous: Author tours are just too damn expensive for too little return.  Publishers don't want to pay for tours, and authors are already spending their advances on scattershot PR strategies, and besides, hardly anybody comes to the store to meet the author anymore.  Yes, we're all buying the goodwill of booksellers when we show up at their stores, but hey---maybe we ought to be sending muffins instead. Or placing an order for $100 worth of books. As a reader, have you attended a booksigning lately? For a bigtime author? A midlist author?  Or a celebrity who's not really an author at all, but selling books anyway?

Book festivals are where it's at. Plenty of people are saying so. Multi-author events with wide-spread advertising that brings hundreds, if not thousands, of readers--those seem to be efficient expenditures of resources. Here's a good one I've attended in the past. (Next Monday!  Come one, come all to the Mystery Lovers Bookshop Festival of Mystery!) And another. And another one I've heard good things about. But at the colossal bookfairs, do midlist and genre authors get lost among the easier-to-market celebrities selling whatever the hell they're supposedly "writing?"

Radio is back.  Here's Cathy Maxwell, a smart, witty, incredibly entertaining romance writer who doubles as a host of a radio show that discusses books. Now, here's a way to reach a lot of readers, folks. Are there other book-related radio shows out there?  I've done a lot of radio interviews, but most of them were duds. (Remind me to tell you the story of the radio "talk show host" who before interviewing me, delivered the pork belly futures every morning at 5am to the guys who are firing up their tractors in Iowa.  Are those farmers my core readership?  No.  So why am I spending my energy talking to them on the radio?)  There's got to be somebody working on a list of prime book-loving radio shows. Call me.

Everybody's trying to find ways to make bookselling more interactive, more dynamic. More telegenic. (The local TV stations were at a loss about how to video the RT convention. They kept burying the RT story at the end of the morning "news" show because it's hard to make a TV segment about reading. Better to show cover models and readers in fairy wings because they make good pictures. But . . .that's not really the story we publishing folk want on television, is it?  It doesn't sell books, only makes everybody look ridiculous.) Here are a couple of enterprising authors who've taken on the video challenge and are doing it very well. (Go ahead.  Click over there to read about Liz Maverick and Marianne Mancusi.  Watch their videos.  Very smart and hip, right?) They were swamped by young readers at the RT bookfair. If their publisher would just keep their books in print, they'd be selling like hotcakes. If author touring is dead, I'm thinking publishing publicists ought to be making book trailers and video stuff intended for the internet.

What else did I observe? That many self-pubbed and "small press" writers are viewing their choice as a "stepping stone" to publication by a traditional publisher. Oh, dear.  If a deal with a traditional publisher is their ultimate goal, here's my view:  Quit promoting yourself.  Stay home and learn to punctuate.  At the very least, get the grammatical errors out of your titles. Better yet, take a class so you can at least recognize the howlers you've created.

Here's a new word I learned at RT:  Mash-up. No, I'm not talking about vampires having sex with bulldozers.  (Hey, great concept!  Bet nobody's used that one yet!) A "mash-up" is a book that combines two or more genres. Maybe YA fantasy and time travel hybrid.  Or, in my case, romance and mystery and women's fiction. It's not called a "sub-genre" anymore, you old fogeys. Young, hip readers want to hear it called a mash-up. Kewl, huh? Trouble is, I'm still not seeing publishers who've figured out how to successfully market a mash-up to two different audiences.  (Exception:  Anything Charlaine Harris.) Mystery readers don't cross the aisle to look at romance novels.  And romance readers have plenty to read in their own aisle already. So how do we market romantic mysteries to both audiences? When you figure it out, let me know, because I think it's a job better left to professionals, not me.

Here's another question I'd like an answer for: Why are there so few publishers at this convention?  This is Ground Zero, the place where readers and authors and publishers and booksellers and librarians collide. I'm telling you, it's a cluster fuck for book people. But we didn't encounter many New Yorkers there, putting their ears to the ground. In an age when a lot of publishers seem to be throwing anything against the wall to see what sticks--well, RT seems like a no-brainer to me.  Am I wrong? Would they come if the ick factor was reduced a little? Maybe so. But would the readers back off? It's a conundrum.

Would I go back to an RT convention?  Maybe not. It's hard to attract attention for mysteries when the focus of the event is so clearly erotica. But RT has good karma for the Tarts. It's where we came up with the idea for TLC! (And pretty soon you'll hear some Extremely Big News here. But we're sworn to secrecy a little longer.) And it's a great place to meet your friends for a hilarious couple of days. Plus it's an excellent venue for taking the temperature of the book biz.  Good things happen at Romantic Times, so maybe we'll give it another shot.

But I'm packing hand sanitizer.

The Trampoline in the Bedroom

by Nancy

Last weekend, my husband surrendered to me, utterly and completely.

                           

It has taken him seven years to agree that our mattress was broken.

My husband is not a man who spends a nickel without careful consideration, and he didn't want to admit that the mattress we bought years ago--a king, pillowtop, i.e. expensive--wasn't in perfect condition.

"It has a trough," I told him as I pointed out the gigantic sag.

"It does not!"

"Okay, then, you sleep on this side."

He agreed to do so. And he held out for seven years before finally agreeing there was a trough in the mattress.

We had bought that mattress when we moved to The End of the Earth (also known un-fondly in my family as Hooterville.) Because he wanted to make me happy about the move (which I had voted against but was out-maneuvered) he let me buy a lot of new furniture to fill up a very large and beautiful house we'd bought on a mountaintop. (Not only was this move upsetting, but also my daughters went off to college and my dad passed away--all within the same 3-month period.  It wasn't a good year. Buying a big house and new furniture, my husband thought, might help.  It didn't.  It only put us in debt.) My daughter Sarah and I went to North Carolina for a madcap, grief-fueled weekend and blew a fortune at the furniture outlets.

A month later, the stuff was delivered by a couple of coked-up hillbillies who broke the mattress (which didn't fit through the doorway, so they bent it the wrong way and shoved) and the frame of a small sofa, too. (We don't sit on it much.--Mostly, it holds the laundry that hasn't been folded yet.)

The particular community at The End of the Earth was the first place, by the way, where the abuse of Oxycontin got a foothold.  Half the town was selling their grandmother's pain prescription out their back doors.

One day, a pharmacist called me to ask about my Oxycontin prescription.

"I don't have one," I told him. "I have no reason to take the stuff."

"Our records show you have a prescription for Oxycontin here and at six other pharmacies in the county."

"Uh. . . "

Turns out, a foot doctor (I have a Morton's Neuroma and will welcome any advice about surgery, please) was making a few extra bucks by scribbling my name on her pad and giving it to lots of other customers. One night she set fire to her office and disappeared, so I don't know what happened to her, but I can guess because I write crime fiction.

Anyway, the Oxycontin issue was only one reason to bug out of The End of the Earth and move here to Pittsburgh. When we moved here, we had to jettison a lot of the new furniture because this house is much smaller.  It was a spiritual cleansing, too, I think. I mean, who needs three living rooms, really?  And is decorating a sport, do you think?  Because it's an expensive one, and kinda stupid because once you finish a room you just want to start all over again. It's like over-eating, except a potentially hellish impact on your credit rating.

But we kept the bed when we moved here, and my husband insisted it was fine, not sagging, and he slept in the trough.

Last weekend, though, he finally broke down and said we'd use our tax refund for a new mattress. Yippee!  Amazing how the old furniture-shopping endorphins can kick in!  Like let's-forget-Weight-Watchers-for today-and-splurge-on-hot-fudge-sundaes!

We drove over to the store, shook hands with Roger and found a mattress with a pillowtop and a pillowbottom, so essentially it's a double-life mattress, right? And since we're getting older and the A-word has entered our vocabulary (that's Arthritis for those of you under 50) we bought the extra comfy pillowtop.

It was delivered (undamaged) and I put a fresh set of sheets on it. (Is there a greater pleasure than nice, fresh sheets?)  Then we stood back to look.

It's huge.

I mean, it's GIGANTIC. It's like having one of those enormous backyard trampolines in the bedroom.  Good thing we're both tall, because otherwise we'd definitely need a ladder to get up onto this monster. How do normal people climb up onto a bed like this?  Get a running start? Pole-vault? Levitate?

But it's very, very comfy. We love it. In fact, every night we go to bed early just to sink down into the gooshy softness and read our books together. And that's all I'm saying because my children read this blog.

I like to try out different kinds of beds in hotels, don't you?  If you happen to be testing beds at the Pittsburgh Hilton this week for the Romantic Times convention, you're invited to a special TLC gathering on Friday--tomorrow--at a totally different hotel (we'd explain here, but it would take too long and besides, we're still doing what we can to keep our sometime receptionist/office manager/floor show, Her, Margie, out of jail.) 

Please join us at the Omni-William Penn at 6:30pm.  Just don't tell Margie, okay?  Otherwise, it will become a totally different kind of party. 

Running the Torch   

by Nancy

In 1996, my husband was asked to carry the Olympic torch. Since we received the news minutes after Jeff returned from running with the dog, and the leashed dog had gone one way around a fence post and he went the other---inflicting a bruise that ran from his shoulder to the tippy tips of his fingers--I had a moment of wifely concern.  But, no worries.  Running the Olympic flame was truly a no-injuries thrill of a lifetime.

1996 was the year Coca-Cola sponsored the international relay run of the flame from Olympia, Greece, site of the original Olympic Games, to the place where the Olympics were held that year, in Atlanta, USA.  Just last November, Jeff and I visited Olympia, Greece, and our visit was a part of our mutual, lifelong appreciation of the Olympic tradition.

Because of Jeff's connection to the Olympic torch, we watched this week's events with interest and dismay.

My husband was selected to carry the torch because he was a "community hero."  Having been a volunteer for the United Way for many years, he finally served as president of the state-wide organization, and several fellow volunteers nominated him for the honor.  He was delighted and humbled.

Jeff and I grew up in the era when the Olympic Games were a big deal. Then, the athletes were truly amateurs, and drugs were never heard of. (Okay, maybe we always murmured about those eastern bloc wrestlers and those German women swimmers.  Perhaps we were naive, but the drugs weren't the super performance-enhancing  kind you can apparently get today in any locker room.) Peggy Fleming, Mark Spitz, Olga Korbut--Wow! Athletes were like rock stars--with a patriotic component. Perhaps because we were influenced the Olympics as kids, both Jeff and I trained as swimmers. There's something noble, I think, about working alone, toward a goal of physical excellence.  In fact, my husband and I met on our college swim team, and following amateur sports was part of our life together. The night our daughter was born, we watched the underdog American hockey team beat the Russians--a thrill.

The night before he was to carry the torch, we traveled about a hundred miles from our home to the place where the torch was passing through Pennsylvania.  We stayed in a hotel and got up early to deliver him to his rendezvous point. My husband dressed in the t-shirt provided by Coca-Cola (it's still hanging in his closet) and his running shorts and shoes. We dropped him off, and he met five other torch runners, including a former Olympic champion (in Greco-Roman wrestling) and some community heroes such as the elderly lady who had run a soup kitchen for fifty years. She was decked out in running gear that matched her cane. When her time came, maybe she didn't run, but she walked very proud step of her part of the relay.

On the drive to the point where his portion of the relay began, Jeff was given his torch. It was (and is) nearly three feet tall with a small propane tank inside to fuel the flame. Turns out, the individual runners don't carry the same torch.  Instead,they pass the flame from torch to torch.  Which was great, because Jeff was allowed to keep his torch. (After solemnly promising to empty out all the propane immediately upon completing his run.) It wasn't so great when it came time for him to receive the actual flame--from a young man with Down's syndrome, who nearly set Jeff's hair on fire during the exchange. But even though the passing of the flame wasn't completely smooth, Jeff set off euphorically on his run (just a quarter of a mile) in the company of a local high school track star who was Jeff's "minder"--the person who was supposed to catch the torch if he dropped it.  He didn't, of course, but he did ask her if she was going to carry the torch herself, and when she shook her head, he gave her his torch to carry for part of his run. (Yeah, he's a nice guy, huh?)

By the way, the flame that's in the torch isn't the only flame. The original flame is lit by using a magnifying glass at Olympia.  It's kept in a kind of lantern during transportation.  The lantern is kept burning in a bus while the torch bearers run a flame that's been lit by the flame in the lantern. So there's never any real danger the flame will be extinguished. There's a backup.

Anyway, the rest of us stood along Jeff's route for several hours, waiting for the torch to pass by. We had invited lots of friends to come along, so we had quite a party of excited people standing along a stretch of otherwise deserted rural highway. When Jeff and his entourage (he was preceded by a police car, then a pair of outriders on snazzy BMW motorcycles, plus an official camera truck and a couple of local news vans) came over the hilltop, we cheered and snapped pictures like mad. I bawled like a dope because I knew what kind of peak life experience the torch run was for my husband. It was a momentous day.

This week, as we watched the news coverage of the protests along the torch route in London, France and San Francisco, we shook our heads. It's unfortunate that the tradition of the Olympic flame is being disrupted by protests.

It's unfortunate, but not wrong.  You'll agree that a little disruption of the torch run is better than a war, right? The Olympic Games were created in the spirit of keeping the peace. Originally, only civilizations that had found ways to negotiate between themselves were allowed to compete. The theory being that it was better to compete on the field of sport than the field of battle.

"The Olympic Games are about sports," said one Chinese official in Paris this week. "It's not fair to turn them into politics."

Au contraire, mon amie. The Olympics have always been about politics. About peace-making politics, that is.

Tibet is a faraway place, and some of us would never hear about the human rights issues in that country if not for the ruckus activists are staging around the Olympic flame. Here's some further info. And some that's a little more hot-headed that explains what China's policy toward Tibet is. And a good explanation of what Tibet wants from FreeTibet.org. And here's a good basic article about the Dali Lama.

Years ago, I wrote an action-adventure novel--long out of print--set in Tibet, and here's a book I found inspiring as I did my research:  The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiesson. It's a very romantic, outdoors-y view of Tibet and the Tibetan people. Which is an appalling review of this awe-inspired memoir of tracking an elusive cat--a metaphor for his life experience. 

How about you? Have you had a peak life experience?

Miss Marple in America

by Nancy               

My mother called, breathless.  "Did you hear what happened in Brookville?"

Brookville is the small, small, very small town where I grew up, on the edge of the Allegheny National Forest in the northern tier of Pennsylvania.  (Translation:  all the wilderness north of Interstate 80.)  It's also near the town of Punxsutawney, home of the groundhog, but Brookvillians are groundhog snobs, so don't bring up the rodent, or you'll get the cold shoulder. Nestled in a valley created by the confluence of two trout streams, the community is surrounded by farms. Main Street boasts a Dollar General and a Goodwill store, plus some antiques shops, the funeral home, the county courthouse and the Presbyterian Church where I got married.  You get the picture. There is no Wal-Mart, but the town has two grocery stores, so it might be the edge of civilization, but it's not, like, the wilds of Alaska where you beat a seal to death before you eat it raw. Instead, on a Friday night, you might go to the fish fry at Immaculate Conception before heading over to the high school to watch the football game or the basketball game or the high school musical, depending on the season.

Nothing much has happened in Brookville since the flood of 1972 (after Hurricane Agnes) but my mother goes to have coffee at the local McDonalds with her friends every Tuesday and Friday anyway to get the scoop from "the girls."

Mind you, any similarities between Brookville and Miss Marple's home of St. Mary Meade are purely coincidental.

On the phone with me--we talk every other evening at 5pm--Miss Marp---er, my mother said, "Remember the red brick house across the street?"

Although she now lives in a patio home in a "planned community" on the same ground as a nursing home, I knew she meant the house across the street from the home where I grew up, the house my late father designed, the house she lived in and kept immaculate inside and out for fifty years.  It's on a knoll out in the country, with long views, rather solitary. But another family moved to town about twenty or thirty years ago and bought the piece of property across the road from my parents' home.  As they built their house, my father kept watch.  Many a time, he shook his head over the fact that the chimney was too short.

"That house is going to end badly," he said.

Okay, I'm not sure he actually spoke those words (do we need to remind you every week that we're fiction writers??) but he could have, except I think he meant the roof was going to catch fire someday.

The husband and wife moved into their new house with two kids, who were mostly grown up, I think, and they lived their for twenty years or more.  The son developed what my mother's friends politely call, "a drinking problem," and he never really left home. To my mother, he seemed quiet enough and could make polite conversation when she encountered him while walking in the nearby woods for exercise, alone.

Well, last week, "the girls" heard that the son had some kind of argument with his parents.  He took out his mother's gun and shot them both dead. Then he took her car, left them, and moved into a motel for a week or so before finally deciding he'd better go to Canada.  (Do you think Canadians are really Americans on the lam?  That might explain a few things.  Have I told you about my brother's Canadian pals who rode their snowmobiles around on an iced-over lake until--nevermind, that's another blog.)  Anyway, upon further investigation, my mother learned that he was stopped at the border at Niagara Falls, where the Canadians asked what he was doing driving his mother's car, and without a single blow from a rubber hose, he confessed he'd killed both his parents and--by the way--handed over the gun.  He was arrested, and the Canadians called the Brookville police to suggest they might want to have a look at the red brick house.

In the produce department at the grocery store, my mother further learned that all the windows of the red brick house with the short chimney have been open for days, which is enough forensic detail for me, because I can't even watch CSI on television, let alone listen to gory details while selecting a melon.

Mother reports that the general opinion around town is, "Well, they weren't really from Brookville."

As if being born and raised in a town--not living there for twenty years--is protection from evil.

(My first thought when I heard all this, by the way, was what the hell a woman with a troubled adult son is doing keeping a handgun in the house, because you hardly ever hear of somebody successfully using a gun to protect themselves, but rather their own gun is used against them, but you've heard me rant about handgun control in the past, and I know you southerners are especially fond of your weaponry, but I Still Do Not Get It, and neither does my mother, although she kept a baseball bat beneath her bed for years and maybe still does.  I'll ask this evening.)

The same day my mother reported her investigation to me, I received an email from a distraught friend who reported a home invasion in which her friend--finally in remission after a long siege of chemotherapy--has been senselessly murdered by a stranger who broke into her house.

"Senseless murder" is a stupid phrase, isn't it?

I'm not sure what my point is with this story, except that I thought my mother would be safe in her small town, protected by her friends and neighbors who are too refined to get all liquored up and raunchy about a groundhog, but that isn't the case anymore, is it? I hate that I'm living so far from her right now. Should my husband and I leave our lives here and move back home?  At the very least, I want to hire a thug (and I know a few from my high school) to hang around on her porch at the assisted living community maybe with her baseball bat so he'd look threatening, but probably some drunk looking for money to buy a pint would come along and take it away and beat him with it.

Is alcohol the root of the evil I'm talking about here?  If you think so, can you explain this?  A group of 3rd graders who plotted the murder of their teacher? Where do children get such ideas, I ask you?

I think drugs and alcohol are everywhere. Are they going to bring down our whole country? That's what I think sometimes. Or maybe violent television and movies are to blame?  Should I join forces with Tipper Gore and try to limit access to icky music before it destroys America? On the other hand, ours is a country where people can make a whole, happy festival around a groundhog predicting the arrival of spring.  Weird, huh?

In any case, my mother is hot on the trail of more information about this case, so I'm staying tuned.

Spring Clean Up

by Nancy Martin

You already know this is not my first rodeo. So it shouldn't shock you that I broke down in a moment of weakness and bought the book HOW NOT TO LOOK OLD while I was on tour last week. If you have refrained from buying this book, I admire your self esteem. But I bet you're dying to know what's between the covers, right?

Take this warning from one who's in the know: Crow's feet hook their claws into you long before age 40. And if you have a baby or two, other things besides your eyelids start to sag--things you assumed would be perky for at least another 25 years.  And I'm not even going to discuss chin hair, varicose veins or fallen arches, but really--they're probably in your future. It's not to early for you to buy this book.

Have I drunk the Kool Aid as written by Charla Krupp?  Yes.  Gallons of it.

Here's some of the skinny, according to Ms Krupp's book, if you want to make the world think you're a long way from Social Security:

Cut yourself some bangs. This suggestion caught me off guard, since bangs tend to make me look like a turtle. But I've been studying bangs for a week now, and I think she's right.--Bangs lift a face that might otherwise need a forklift.

Next up:  Throw away all your dark lipsticks. This advice comes with photo examples of no less a fashion icon than Sharon Stone.  OKay, okay, she's a nutball, but she looks great and she gives major money and effort to AIDS research and curing malaria. Plus it's spring, and what could be more springlike than shopping for pink lipsticks? I forget the rationale explained in the book, but I bought some, and the author is right.--Pink is better. My new shade is the same color as Britney's bubblegum.  That's got to lift the level of serotonin in a girl's brain after a long winter.

This one's old news, but here goes: Start whitening your teeth.  The book shows so many photos of celebrities with Chiclet smiles that I have to think the real advice is to start saving for veneers, but for lesser beings who are still paying our kids' college loans, break out the baking soda. Yellow teeth make us look like villains in old episodes of Gunsmoke.  (Steady, William.) But white teeth make us look as if we just need a pair of black leggings and we're all set to go clubbing with Lindsay Lohan. Which is a good thing, right?

For the under-40 set, this suggestion comes around like the cycles of the moon:  Once again, it's time to reduce eye makeup to the bare minimum. The book shows you how to apply a thin layer of liner that is now de rigeur unless you're Phylis Diller.  For those of us over 50, no more "smokey eyes" or thick swaths that look like they've been applied by a Bollywood makeup artist. (Guilty!) But somebody tell me what a girl's supposed to do if I can't see to draw a microscopic line around my lashes?  My bifocals don't help because I can't manipulate the pencil around the glasses. But I'm working on it. The alternative is to get the line tattooed on my eyelids, but I'm already nearly blind and besides, what happens if the fashion changes and I'm stuck with last decade's style? Meanwhile, I get my lashes dyed at the salon, which is illegal in most states, but I'm not going to turn anybody over to the local Barney Fife. I do tip really well--which could be considered a contribution to the bail fund, I suppose.

The book also provides a long, helpful list of clothes I need to throw away, but since the list includes many of my wardrobe staples, I'm resisting.  But also on the list are full-length fur coats, cargo pants and acid-wash jeans, which just added J-Lo to my fashion purgatory, so I'm in good company.  (Hey, I like salsa music! And really, those babies are adorable. Admit it.)

And those of us who have been known to wear our hair long and parted in the middle? We're definitely looking older than we need to. Me, I've spent the last couple of years flashing back to the days when I wished my VW bug could make the trip all the way to Woodstock (see photo above) but I gather that hippie hair is gone, baby, gone.

So I spent the weekend cutting out pictures of middle-aged celebrities with age-appropriate, yet flattering haircuts. And I took them to the salon.

Here's my new, younger 'do:

Well, all right, that's really Jenna Elfman, but our digital camera isn't working at the moment.  This is the picture I took to the salon, and Laura did a great job giving me the same haircut.   

Okay, a new haircut and pink lipstick won't change the world, won't elect a good president, won't end a war, but dammit, it makes me feel better about me at a time that's really hard for a writer----the weeks when my agent is showing my new book proposal around New York.  I need all the self-esteem points I can gather.  No, I'm not wishing I looked like Britney or Lindsay, and I have no desire to go back to that time of my life. (Hey, I really do think 50 is the new 30!)  But it's spring, and I feel plenty perky.  I'd like to look as good as I feel.

I hear you, TLC readers. You're asking, "Nancy, is that HOW NOT TO LOOK OLD book worth the cover price?"  Uh . . . yes.  I love this book.  I also bought the new book by my favorite TV personality, Tim Gunn. But his book is a real disappointment. (Sorry, Tim.  But a book about fashion with no pictures??) Check out Charla Krupp's book at your favorite bookstore.  I bet you buy it.  (Well, maybe not you, Josh.  And please don't pick it up for your wife.  It would not make a good gift.)

And although we discourage publishing house publicists from sending the Tarts books that we might mention here, I will gladly accept more like this one.  And please hurry.  I'm not getting any younger.

It all started with a back ache . . .

by Nancy                        

A few weeks ago, I realized that the back ache that I first noticed on an airplane in November was still hanging around in March. The pain wasn't excruciating, but it wasn't going away either. And since my mother has endured some of the most appallingly barbaric back surgeries imaginable--I mean, a machete might have been kinder--I figured I should do something now before I end up looking like a witch in a Disney movie. (Which my mother does not, by the way, because she's done an hour of yoga every morning for twenty years. She'll be eighty next year.)

                                    

In the interest of dodging the bad back bullet, I brought up the subject with my regular doctor. And if you're over fifty, you know what happened next.

Tests. My doctor sent me to six different places to take tests, have x-rays, get prodded and hmm-ed over.  I walked on a hosptial treadmill, lifted weights with my ankles, and wore hospital gowns in very public spaces. Results? Well, my cholorestrol is fine, my bone density is above average and I'm not pregnant.

My back, on the other hand, needed work.

At last, I washed up at the office of a physical therapist who only lacks the German accent and a dental drill to make her the perfect villain in a thriller.  The fraulein can't cure what ails me  (disk disease--erk!) but she can "make me more comfortable" through exercise.

I'm pretty sure if the writing gig doesn't work out that I could become a doctor.  No kidding. Here's what every single ailment comes down to:  No matter what your health problem is, ladies and gentlemen, you'll always be told to get more exercise.

At our first meeting, the therapist tried to cheer me up. She said, "When you're young, you must exercise to stay in shape. After a certain--well, later in life, you must stay in shape to exercise."

I wanted to punch her.  Except I have tendonitis in my right wrist.

Now I dutifully go to therapy twice a week with the AARP set. (And 80% of them are women.  Men do not have time for physical therapy, I guess, unless it's golf season, in which case I'm told the number of male patients hoping to get back on the golf course jumps exponentially. My husband has been putting off his shoulder physical therapy since before Christmas and only lately has realized golf season is nearly upon us.) 

At the beginning of every session I first spend ten minutes flat out on a heating pad. Which feels good, but I find myself ticking off how many dollars a minute that heating pad-enduced hot flash costs when I could instead turn on the hot seat in my car on the drive over.

But after I fume for those ten minutes, the really bad stuff starts. The therapist fits me with the electrodes. Yes, I said ELECTRODES--these long plastic sticky things that run from my knees to my hipbones.  When she flips on the Frankenstein machine, my legs twitch and feel as if a nest of ants has been turned loose on my lower body.

(No, Margie, we will not discuss what it might feel like if the electrodes were elsewhere.  But it has crossed my mind. Does anybody else remember Jane Fonda in Barbarella?)

Next comes the deep massage. And when I say "deep," I mean give-me-something-to-bite-on-Scarlett or Ashley's-going-to-hear-me-all-the-way-in-Gettysburg.

One criteria for a good physical therapist must be strong thumbs. How does she keep those thumbs so strong? Man, I'm yelping like a kicked puppy by the time she's finished. (And I delivered an 11-pound baby WITHOUT ANESTHESIA.) The deep tissue massage is much, much more painful than the back ache.

After the massage comes exercise, which I must do in the small gym with all the AARP people laughing and jumping around like they're in 3rd grade phys ed class.--They're having a ball.  I expect a game of Red Rover to break out any minute.  (Remember Red Rover?  I hear it's outlawed now because kids might break their fingernails or something.)  They make plans to go out for lunch and go shopping after therapy.  Me, I'm practically weeping with the excruciating need for a nap.

Finally the therapist sends me limping home with a sheet of paper with diagrams for more exercises pictured with a man who's smiling so happily that I want to kick him, except I've sprained my calf muscle or something.

Anyway, physical therapy makes me ache all over, but I'm told that's a short term thing. And truthfully? It's helping.  A lot. 

But the ultimate irony? There's a bakery across the street from the gym.  It takes every ounce of self control not to hobble over there and scarf up a dozen scones. But the only other advice a doctor will give you after the exercise thing is to watch your diet, and I'm pretty sure scones aren't on it. So I resist.

Fortunately--maybe---I get a week off from physical therapy.  I'm on the road again to plug MURDER MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH.  I'll be back in the gym for more torture next week.  Say a prayer for me, will you?

Meanwhile, get more exercise.