The Lipstick Chronicles

The Margarita Mixer?

The Margarita Mixer? Or the Dyson?

by Nancy Martin      

Laurie, my hairdresser, was faced with a Hard Choice.  Her co-worker is getting married, and Laurie was asked to kick in to buy the co-worker a vacuum cleaner for a wedding present.

Laurie wanted to give a frozen margarita machine instead.  The vacuum cleaner, she felt, came with a bad message about marriage.  And about her friendship with her co-worker, too.

“Which would you give?” she asked me while giving me a trim.

Around the same time, friends of ours were throwing a graduation party for their son Brian. Brian is going off to study screenwriting.  (Why is nobody going off to study mechanical engineering anymore? I think it’s because we’ve made screenwriting look like such an exciting career, when actually most of us around the TLC water cooler understand that writing is…..well, anything but glamorous.) 

But I digress.

My husband thought we should give Brian cash for graduation.  Boys need money in college—that was his argument.

Me, I figure cash gets blown on beer the first week of school, and then it’s gone.

And vacuum cleaners wear out, burn up, or it becomes a gadget you and the spouse (whose blue eyes you gazed lovingly into while standing on the altar) end up arguing about who should be the one to use the damn thing, or you use it to sweep up the wet birthday cake somebody's misbehaving kid ground into the carpet on your sunporch and it immediately rusts inside, thereafter spreading rusty crud all over your floors and deep into the fiber of your living room carpet, but I digress again.

Are you a practical gift-giver? 

Or would you give the margarita mixer to your friend? Which I think is a decision that also involves wanting to be remembering for giving a memorable gift.

I can’t explain why, because I’m not usually an organized kind of pack rat, but I saved the box of index cards from my wedding.  (Which took place this week in 1977—ye gods!) On the cards, I carefully wrote the names and addresses of all our wedding guests (why was my handwriting so pretty back then and so completely illegible now?) and what each guest gave us as a gift.  Lots of silverware from my mother’s friends.  Place settings of china from my father’s business acquaintances.  Eight pairs of pewter candlesticks.  (It was A Thing back then. I will admit to re-gifting a few of them—mostly to other newlyweds who were my husband’s friends, not mine.  Shame on me.)  Waterford crystal from two of my aunts. Cash from another aunt and uncle, but I made sure we spent it on something specific, so I have a pair of paintings that I tend to believe came from them, even though my husband and I picked them out on our honeymoon.

I have a lot of those gifts still.  Even the address book given by a former employer, although the pages are a terrible mess of crossed out addresses and new, married names of friends.  A disconcerting number of friends are still in my address book, but no longer walk this earth. The inscription from the former employer is in the front of the address book, too---"best wishes" instead of a remark about my work habits, which I guess was a nice gesture.

Anyway. It’s wedding season!  What are you giving as gifts this year?

I gave Brian a screenwriting book that I refer to now and then.  And a copy of this book, which I think is amusing and therefore thoughtful for a young man going off to fend for himself until he finds a nice girl and starts planning a wedding. I think my husband stuck a $20 bill into the card, though.

Girlz, Girlz, Girlz

Girlz, Girlz, Girlz

by Nancy Martin     

Before heading to New Orleans for the American Library Association's huuuuuge national convention, I had to go shopping for some clothes to wear in the hot pea soup that is Louisiana.  At the mall (argh!) I eventually wandered into a deserted store with a bored clerk who wasn't very helpful.

Not at first.

Then she let it slip that she "had a game" that evening.

I perked up.  What kind of game? And the conversational floodgate burst open!

Turns out, this lovely young lady with long, dark ringlets of hair and beautifully made-up eyes and a stylish outfit with super cute shoes . . . IS A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER. 

                                 

No kidding.  She plays tackle and guard plus she's also on the special teams. She also holds down two parttime jobs and goes to college fulltime, where she is studying accounting. She works out every day and attends team practices and travels all over the nation to play games in other cities that have professional women's football. No surprise, she gave up her cable TV because she never has time to watch television.  She has a bright smile and an even brighter gleam in her eyes.  Let me tell you, this girl is GOING PLACES.

Did you play sports as a kid? When I was a teenager, there was a lot of talk about learning to play "lifetime sports"--that is, physical activities you could play long into your life like golf and tennis, not field hockey that required actual equipment and coaches and travel buses.  My theory was that women were encouraged to play stuff like tennis because all the college funding was going to finance the men's football and basketball programs, and there wasn't any dough left over for women's sports.  Fortunately, Title IX came along, and now schools are forced to have sports programming for women.  I don't think most schools would do so, unless they were coerced, but maybe I'm just cynical. It took me three weeks of lobbying to get myself on the men's swimming team in college, and even then, the coach was Not Happy.

Sports not only make us more physically fit.  They help us learn to get along with others in a socially acceptable way.  You learn to be a leader.  And if you want to get better, you learn self-discipline. Sports teach us those 3 Ps--practice, patience and persistence, which are lifetime skills if ever I heard them. (Even though I'm still not big on patience.  So sue me.)  And team sports help kids learn to manage their own egos, because unless you're LeBron James or Tiger Woods, there's always going to be somebody who can whip your butt.  (Wait--forget I mentioned Tiger Woods.  His ego's getting a real beating these days.)  

Team sports also give kids a chance to experience adults--coaches--in a way that's different from the experience they get from parents or even teachers.  Coaches are mentors in ways that every kid should experience. Hell, even adults need mentors. But maybe if you had a great mentor as a kid, you're willing to be a mentor yourself now

In my view? Here's the main thing: Sports give kids a chance to be good at something.  I mean really good.  Being talented--and understanding that you're talented--gives a person the kind of confidence it takes to seek out challenges and be successful in life.  And maybe your sport isn't football or swimming.  My aunt Nancy--who is the least coordinated, most physically unfit adult I ever knew--became a college champion in ping pong! And she went on to become a world-renowned psychoanalyst.  She figured out a way to be successful in a unique way.

Maybe your sport isn't even a sport. Maybe it's knitting.  Or playing the trombone. Or writing. Or something nobody else even recognizes as an accomplishment, but you know in your heart that you have it.  It gives you a foundation. My daughter Sarah played all kinds of sports and was pretty good.  She acted in plays, and she was pretty good.  But she was really, really adept at fixing things. I came home from the grocery store one day to find her on the living room floor with a gigantic theater light spread out around her--she was taking it apart and putting it back together so it would work again. For her graduation gift, my aunt bought her a power drill. She is now a postive, can-do kind of person who doesn't flinch when asked to try doing something she's never done before. She was an accomplished kind of kid who felt she could do things other kids were hesitant to try. If you find yourself stuck in a lifeboat and need company? Choose Sarah.  She'll get you home.

Anyway, I chatted with that professional football player, and decided she's going far in life.  I could see it in her face. I've been thinking a lot about her since.  What kind of courage does it take to become a professional football player? What kind of skills--mental and physical? She's another one I'd like to have in my lifeboat, please.

                                  

Tell me about your formative experiences. Were you a sports kid? Or did you learn to be accomplished at something else? Tell all!

Arnold Must Die

Arnold Must Die

by Nancy Martin     

A few years back, a writer acquaintance of mine was revealed to have plaguarized her books.  Actually, her secretary--whom the writer had hired to write the books so that she could go around promoting all the time--took large chunks of novels written by very famous authors with huuuuge fan followings and inserted passages into her boss's outlines.  It was the fans who pointed out the plaguarism, and my acquaintance was humiliiated.  So humiliated, in fact, that she did the only thing she really good could in this situation.

She died.

Lately, we here at the offices of TLC have not bothered to blog about one of the big stories in the news these days--Arnold and his impregnation of a household staffer and subsequent support of the resulting child without his wife getting wind of it.  (When I last checked, Maria had hired a PI to investigate further, and there are rumors of at least one more illegitimate child floating around, but because many of us are mothers with kids to protect we won't go there today.)  Normally when an event like this explodes across the media, and the Tarts are all over it.  But the reason we haven't blogged about this subject is because--well, the only conclusion we can really draw is this: 

He's an asshole.  Case closed.

That's a short subject, so what's the point in blogging about it? (If you think you can defend Arnold's behavior, pleasepleaseplease do so in our comments section.  I would love to see our backbloggers take you down.)

But what's been noodling around in my head lately is the possibility that Arnold is going to re-invent himself after this asshole-ish behavior. After treating his wife so cheaply. After behaving like a Neanderthal in his own home.  There's a good chance he's going to come out of this mess smelling like a--well, okay, maybe not smelling wonderful, but certainly with his income stream preserved.  There were a few weeks when even Bill Clinton's most diehard supporters surely figured that cigar + stained blue dress + end of career.  But no, Bill has bounced back.  Flourished, even. While leading the charge to  impeach the provocative  president, Newt Gingrinch was cheating on his wife with a woman on his staff.  And now Newt's running for president himself. Eliot Spitzer has his own TV show.  And, gee, a certain person accused of misbehavior might still be on the Supreme Court. You can flesh out my list pretty easily, because there are so many examples of powerful men who feel they can do whatever they want just because.

My friend the humiliated romance writer did not feel she could do much of anything after her character was called into question, but that's a certain kind of woman for you, right? There are certainly babes running around making idiots of themselves with no guilt whatsoever.

Will Arnold go back to playing robots in the movies? (Insert soulless joke here.) Or maybe run the International Monetary Fund?  I hear there's an opening.

I'm finishing my book today---yes, TODAY is my deadline--but I'll check back.  Meanwhile, here's a quote:

"Why a man, because he has millions, should assume that they confer omniscience in all branches of knowledge is something which may be left to the psychologist to answer, but most people thrown much in contact with millionaires will agree that an attitude of infallibity is typical of a fair majority."

Emily Post, From Etiquette, 1945, Funk & Wagnalls Company.

And, okay, just for fun because it's Wednesday and neither one of these character is married, so just enjoy. A girl on deadline needs her Clooney fix:

 

Festivity

Festivity

by Nancy Martin

Some weeks, there's more to blog about than we have space to fill here at TLC.  Bid Laden's death, the royal wedding night, my favorite sports event--the Kentucky Derby, and the president's speech at the DC  Correspondent's Dinner.  (When Mr. Obama  made the joke about Trump's firing of Gary Busey being the kind of decision that might keep him--the president--awake at night . . . he knew at that very moment our military team was in place to take bin Laden. Puts a different spin on the joke now, right?)  But this week, I must celebrate the Festival of Mystery--an annual event here in Pittsburgh that draws writers and readers from all over the country.  Writers sell scads of books.  Readers go home laden with bags and bags of good reading.  Here are some highlights:

At the pre-festival librarian's tea, the irrepressible Brad Parks dipping the lovely and talented Rosemary Harris.  (Note favorite authors in the background!)

 

Authors enjoying tea are L-R  Julie Hyzy (whose series about a White House chef is big fun) and Avery Aames (winner of the best first novel Agatha!) and Hannah Dennison (who knows a thing or two about tea) and Heather Webber, nominated for best novel Agatha. All deelightful ladies, and the problem with an event like this is that you never get enough time to talk to any individual long enough for a satisfying conversation:

 

My close buddies and Pittsburgh authors (and contributers to Pittsburgh Noir short story anthology--Kathryn Killer Haines, Kathleen George and Heather Terrell) gathering their courage to face the onslaught of eager readers:

 

Mystery Lovers staff and volunteers ready to ring up sales (and you can get a glimpse of the stacks of books on tables in the foreground:

 

The first 100 customers through the doors receive a free bag of books! Then everybody shops for a while before everyone sits down to hear Mystery Lovers Bookshop owner Richard Goldman inteview the authors:

 

Look! Look!  The TLC gang! L-R that's me, LauraInPA (who drove 6 hours!), Mary Alice, Elaine, KarenOH (also drove 6 hours!), the suspiciously tall Kathy Sweeney, Karen (aka Peach) and hiding back in there is Julie (Peach Blossom) and Annette Dashofy (who has a short story in the Guppy anthology FISH TALES, which was released this week--Yay!):

 

After the festival, Mary Alice Gorman and Richard Goldman invite the authors back to the store for pizza: 

 


Then the authors line up to sign the store's bathroom wall. P l (Paul) Gaus,
Alice Loweecey and Lois Winston:

 

After the pizza party, I had to sneak away for dessert with some shady characters across the street.  Among the TLC regulars who made the trip to the festival?  That's Karen with the huuuge piece of coconut cake in front of her, then Peach/Karen, Laura, and Peach Blossom/Julie:

 

And just in case he's feeling left out, here's Josh at my signing two weeks earlier at the wonderful Borders store in Springfield, PA. (Shout out to Jenn and Maureen for a great night!)

 

Book people are so delightful.  Writers enjoy meeting everyone, and the festival Mystery Lovers Bookshop throws every year is a real hoopdedoo.  If you haven't made the trip, you should come next year.  We have a blast.

KarenInOH thinks we need to put together a TLC cruise.  Or our own convention.  Imagine the discussion panels. The cocktail parties. The dress-like-Me, Margie contest.  Our version of the vampire ball! Heather will run the karoke bar. Harley Jane and Nancie the Gun Tart will escort the group to the gun range. Etc, etc.  Suggestions welcome.  We need to start planning the extravaganza.

Plus---who are you picking for the Derby?

Where in the World are the Tarts?

Brunonia Barry
I've been on the paperback book tour for The Map of True Places. Or rather, I should call it the culinary tour of Connecticut and Vermont. Great stores, great people, and great food and wine at about nine PM every night. I tried, Weight Watchers, I really tried! But it's just not hospitable to refuse these local favorites. Local Vermont Cheeses and maple cured sausages? Okay, so maybe that was breakfast, but you get the idea. I'm back home for a few days, hitting the treadmill and the bike and eating my five point Think Thin bars. More tour to come, but I'm determined. Thank God I'm not going south this time. On my last tour, I went to Charleston and New Orleans. Weight Watchers didn't stand a chance.

 

Elaine Viets    
I'm spending this weekend in my hometown, St. Louis, at the Missouri Writers' Guild Conference, where I'll get to see Nancy Pickard, another featured speaker. I hope I didn't disgrace myself giving the keynote speech at the banquet last night. I promised the conference organizers my talk would be mercifully short. Sunday morning, I teach a three-hour master's class on creating characters. Then I fly home to Fort Lauderdale on Southwest Airlines. That's the airline that had a plane with a huge hole in the fuselage. Don assures me the flight will be perfectly safe. I told him if I die in a plane crash, I will haunt him for the rest of his days. At night, he will hear me whispering "I told you so."

 

Barbara O’Neal
I am cooking for zillions, cleaning my house because it hasn't really been cleaned since I went underground to finish the current book two months ago.  (It is not finished, BTW.) There is a wedding this week.  My son and his smart, tough, beautiful fiance, whose mother referred to her as "ours."  Doesn't get any better than this, I promise you.   Next week, I'll get back to finishing the book.  Now, if you will excuse me, I have some bacon jam that needs to go in the crockpot.....

 

Sarah Strohmeyer
I am on deadline for my YA book Smart Girls Get Everything!

[Yet she had time to look up the recipe for Barbara’s Bacon Jam to post on Facebook.][Sarah's link broke, but this is another recipe.]

 

Margaret Maron
I'm hunkered down with the windows closed, praying for rain, waiting out pine pollen season. Another week should do it. These pine trees are way oversexed. No wonder they're the first trees to grow in a barren field.
Tomorrow, I'm off to a week-long retreat with some of my writer friends, so I'm packing the car with computer, notebooks, bedlinens, a 12-pack of Pepsis,a bottle of bourbon and a frozen casserole for the night when it's my turn to cook supper. (No Cheetos though. Gave them up for Lent.) I hope to come home with 5000 more words on my 2012 book and a good sense of where the book's going.

 

[When I asked the Tarts to write these, I sent a reply to Margaret that I had problems with alder tree pollen and had in Washington State, Vermont and California. To which Diane chimed in…]

 

Diane Chamberlain
No no, Holly, you don't understand what Margaret is talking about. The pine pollen isn't the make-you-sneeze type. it's the takes-over-the-entire-world type. I made the mistake of opening my office window yesterday and by evening a layer of yellow dust was on every sheet of paper and piece of equipment and ME in my office. I’d covered all the porch furniture with green sheets that are now completely yellow. I've lived lots of places but never experienced anything like this till moving to NC. So this time of year, when you long to open the windows, you must fight the urge and keep them closed.

So that's what I'm up to, along with being chained to my desk, 2 weeks from deadline with the book from hell (oh wait...they all are) that still has no title. It's this deadline that's preventing me from going away with Margaret and the gang for a week of writing and balderdash. :(

 

Harley Jane Kozak
I'm rehearsing this week for the Romantic Times Convention -- I'm the M.C./Joan Rivers-type person for the Mr. Romance Contest (male cover models), as well as singing, dancing and performing Shakespeare at the Vampire Ball, in a show entitled "Zombie Dancers from Planet 9."

 

Kathy Reschini Sweeney
Today, I am in shock.  My baby boy is 16.  He was a bit of a surprise - one that has turned out to be the greatest delight of my life.  But don't tell him I said that.  He already gets away with too much. How did all these years go by?  I need cake.  Stat.

 

Joshilyn Jackson
Today my husband and I are engaged in an EPIC SCRABBLE BATTLE. The loser must give Mentally Ill Grudge-Holding Cat his Kitty-Prozac all month. Mentally-Ill Grudge-Holding Cat needs his meds, but he hates to be touched only slightly less than he hates to be pilled. The person who loses this battle gains Mentally Ill Grudge-Holding Cat’s considerable, baleful, and long-memoried  ire. OH, this cat. You shouldn’t make him angry. You wouldn’t LIKE him when he is angry. And since I work from home, I am available to be ired at all hours of the day. So.  I am not going to lose. I have a pocket full of blank tiles and a fistful of illegal tranqs. I LOVE my husband, but if first skill and then luck and finally cheating all fail me, I will have no choice but to roofie my beloved and swear up and down I was victorious.
PS Margaret! I read this and immediately thought
Margaret are you grieving over all your pines unleaving?
 But pines don’t have leaves. And un-needling does not rhyme.
Margaret are you feeding, needing, bleeding, pleading, BAH!
 I actually get a grant from the state of Georgia to NOT write poetry.

Yes yes it is a SPECIAL pollen bowl kind. We have it. For a month the purple car is yellow and the orange car is yellow and my cream trimmed rosey-bricked house is yellow and the green grass is yellow and THE VERY FREAKING AIR IS GOT’DAMNABLY YELLOW.

 

Nancy Martin
I'm hitting the campaign trail to sell Sticky Fingers.  (In the Philadelphia area?  Come to the Borders store in Springfield on Friday, April 15th at 6pm or at the Philadelphia Book Fest on Saturday from 11am to 1pm.)  I'm also finishing up the 8th Blackbird book--which should be published early in 2012.  And . . . my iPad arrived!  Now I have to learn how to use it.  Any suggestions for good apps?

 

Nancy Pickard
I’m busy distracting myself from my book that keeps saying it doesn’t care if I need to make a living, it still has percolating to do.  Have I ever mentioned that I think commerce and art are TERRIBLE bedfellows?  Of course, that’s not what my favorite Kansas playwright thought about it.  William Inge, who wrote Picnic, Splendor in the Grass, Bus Stop, Come Back Little Sheba, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs,  (wow, right?) said that forcing art through the commerce sieve and vice versa was hunky-dory.  His actual quote is:  “Literature flourishes best when it is half trade and half an art.” I agree, but only when my book actually gets finished and then published and I get paid.  Until those moments, the bedfellows continue to kick each other and bellow and be total nightmares. And let’s not overlook the fact that Bill Inge killed himself.  Damn, I just made myself feel like sitting in this coffee shop and crying. He was so brilliant, and he suffered so from depression and from hiding his sexuality from the pigs and bigots of his day.  Well, you’d never know it from what I just wrote here, but I’m actually feeling happy and springy, in spite of sieves and stubborn books and tragic playwrights.  Here, everybody, have a double latte and a chocolate truffle.

Hank Phillippi Ryan

The ducks are back! But you know that..Flo and Eddy have been baffled by the ice on their backyard pond, but other than that, it's a sure sign it's spring. My tulips and crocuses are pushing their way out of the still-frozen earth, and I saw a whole flock of robins in our neighbor's yard. (It was almost scary, you know? Cue Tippi Hendren.)  Right now I am somewhere in the air between Boston and Indianapolis,  gave a speech in Indy to a wonderful group who wanted to know all about e-publishing.  (Gee, I wish I knew. Don't we all?)  Yes, there's a new book (cross fingers please, everyone) which I am editing now. (It's easier to cut than add, right?)  Looking forward to the MWA symposium in two weeks, then the gala Malice Domestic convention where DRIVE TIME is up for an Agatha for Best Mystery of 2010. (Yes, our NancyP is up for one, too, sigh, but she's sold more books than I have, I bet, so don't I need the teapot?)  Is it time to send my winter clothes to the dry cleaners? Ah, I'll think about that later. 

The Club

The Club

by Nancy Martin     

This week, I was a guest at a lovely and venerable women's club in my city.  This club has been around for more than a hundred years and has its own gracious building--a stone wedding cake of an edifice surrounded by a fence of wrought iron curlicues and deep flowerbeds tended by someone other than the members.   The building has a real ballroom on the second floor and a pretty, hushed dining room on the top floor. Their mission statement mentions "intellectual pursuits" and the promotion of "science and literature and art," which is a noble calling, right?

The dining room features tall windows with swagged draperies, Chippendale-style chairs upholstered in mint-green fabric, and round tables set for eight, which is the perfect number of people at a luncheon. The waitstaff knows the names of all the members and what beverage they prefer to drink.  The napkins were folded into fans. (No napkin rings, Josh.)The lunch menu included chicken salad, tuna salad or beef stroganoff.

The ladies of the club are all well-spoken, intelligent women of a certain age who are free to attend morning lectures before enjoying a nice luncheon together.  It was clear to me that they've all known each other for many years. At the table, they were all chatting about the dinner dance a few nights earlier. On the wall, a bronze plaque listing former club presidents featured the names of wives of captains of industry--not their own names but rather "Mrs William Taylor So-and-So."  These days, a great many of the members seem to be widows or part time realtors or both, but they are all well-read, well-informed, and practised at making a newcomer feel welcome. Most wore suits. Many wore lapel pins.  Not a single string of pearls in the room.

You might have already guessed that I wasn't there as a potential member (the membership fee is more than my car is probably worth right now)  but rather as a crass writer selling my books. The actual plugging had to be delicately done, of course.  Nobody in this group responds well to a hard sell.  We talked about books and documentaries and favorite Shakespearean plays, no kidding. (What's yours?)

For a while, my aunt belonged to a similarly elegant club down the same street. She joined the other club because the amenities included a swimming pool and athletic facilities, but as far as I know the only perk she actually used was the masseur.

My visit got me thinking about women's social clubs. My grandmother belonged to a "sewing circle" at her small town church, but I don't remember a stitch of sewing undertaken. She also belonged to the Eastern Star, but her daughters made terrible fun of her for that. Since we didn't have fancy social clubs in my small town, my mother belonged to a bridge club when I was a girl, and once a year she dragged out the card tables and the Bridge Mix and the ashtrays to entertain the ladies in our home.  (The whole house stunk of cigarettes the next day.)  She also briefly joined The Circle at our church, but I'm not sure what the purpose of The Circle was. Mostly I remember they put on musicals in the spring, which I loved.  Seeing my mother sing and dance (not just singing hymns in the choir, but tap dancing!) was a real treat. 

My husband belongs to the Rotary, which considers itself a service clubm not a social organization. My father went to Republican Party meetings, but I think those folks would be horrified to call themselves "social."

"Men's clubs" with buildings of their own, of course, are much more prevalent than similiarly real estate-rich women's clubs. My husband probably goes to such a club once or twice a week for business meetings.  In those clubs, he drinks manhattans.  (In other restaurants, he usually has whatever's on draft.) Men's clubs still feature hunter green carpets and pictures of horses or trains or idyllic landscapes, usually with heroically muscular Native American depicted in the foreground.  The men are very polite to visiting ladies.  Nowadays, most men's clubs are required to allow female members.

Tangent: Men's clubs are light years' different from "gentlemen's clubs," let me tell you.  Not that I've ever set foot in a gentlemen's club.  (Have you?)  For one thing, men's clubs do not have neon signs. They do tend to have valet parking.

Anyway, I think the time of women's social clubs is coming to a close, and that's a sad thing.  Nowadays, most women can't spend a morning at a lecture or devote two hours to a luncheon with friends.  That lifestyle seems as distant as that of a Jane Austen novel. Most of us eat at our desks and communicate via email or Faecbook.  By Facebook, we keep in touch with more people, I think, but we don't see their faces anymore. Many profile pictures seem to include pets.

Of course, I grew up in a small town where the only true social clubs were the Moose and the Elks and the Vets.  My parents didn't belong to any of those clubs.  In the summertime, they did join the local country club because they played golf.  (My mother was club champion a couple of times. There's a plaque with her name on it over the mantel.) But the country club in my town had a major drawback as far as potential members were concerned, because it was located in a "dry" township.--In other words, they couldn't serve liquor, and even now it seems most people join a social club so they can have drinks with friends.  It was not a fancy country club.  The emphasis was on "country."  There still isn't air conditioning in the club house. Knotty pine paneling and hot dogs.  No pool, so dinner dances. But it's a place where my mother and her pals can still hit golf balls and have a sandwich afterwards, so it's a club where she can be social.

I'm sort of sad that social clubs appear to be on the wane.  Do you belong to any?  Did your parents?

Today, though, I'm meeting some good friends for lunch, and I plan to stay late.  Although we don't meet at the same place every time we get together, we are close friends, and I want to maintain that social network. Talk amongst yourselves.  I'll be back this afternoon.

Sticky Fingers is selling   well, by the way.    Thank you for all your support!  Spread the word?

Getting the Giggles

Getting the Giggles

by Nancy Martin    

My dear Aunt Nancy fell into quicksand and nearly died . . . laughing.

She recently told me her story because I've been thinking about the concept of stickiness---my new book, STICKY FINGERS, was released yesterday!  Buy it here!  Or anywhere!--and I've been figuring various ways to use "sticky" to sell the book to anyone who'll stand still long enough to listen to my pitch.

Anyway, what happened is this:  Aunt Nancy--who was a young, single traveller of the world with her many girlfriends--(they drove up to the front door of the Vatican in her VW bug, left it there and went inside to look around) found herself in Mexico with no, uh, necessary facilities, so she stopped the car (yes, another VW bug) and wandered off to find a private spot to take care of bizness.  In a sylvan glade, she stepped onto a nice, smooth-looking patch of ground which immediately swallowed her whole leg. Naturally, she lost her balance and fell headlong into quicksand.  It was definitely sticky--very liquid and goopy, and she couldn't get out.  She flailed around and finally got the giggles.

Now, this story would be a lot funnier if you could see Aunt Nancy, so let me do my best to describe her:  She is a Very Buoyant Person.  Does that give you the mental picture of a large, apple-cheeked, curly-haired lady who used Nice n Easy Lucille Ball Red #3, bobbing like a cork in a picturesque pool of green slime? That was her--large and laughing while her girlfriends howled with hilarity at her predicament.

Now, we all have stories about inappropriate laughter.  (Mine:  At the moment the funeral director ushered my family into the presence of my grandmother's coffin, his stomach let out the loudest, gurgling growl I have ever heard, and my sister and I went into hysterical laughter. I thought my father was going to strangle us.)  I want to hear your stories today. So, tell, tell.

In the quicksand, Aunt Nancy laughed and laughed until she was totally exhausted, whereupon she floated on top of the quicksand.  Her friends managed to grab her foot and drag her out, and she was fine.  Saved by laughter. The mental picture of Nancy and her three equally large friends climbing back into the VW---well, I can't help thinking the green slime was a good lubricant.

Here's a video of some newscasters who lost their self-control.  Watch it without laughing. Go on, I challenge you.

I'm hoping STICKY FINGERS provides a few laughs for readers.  (If you've read it and enjoyed it, how about going out into the world and plugging it for me? Tweets, online reviews, mentions on Facebook--I'd appreciate any of that and would do the same for you.) As the TLC regulars know, the first week of sales in really important, so your support would be lovingly accepted.

Meanwhile, tell me about the time you got the uncontrollabe giggles.  Can't wait to hear.

STICKY FINGERS is the 2nd book in Nancy Martin's chick-a-boom-boom Roxy Abruzzo series.  When Roxy is asked to kidnap her high school nemesis, all hell breaks loose in Pittsburgh.  Starred review in Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus.

 

Financing Available

 Financing Available

By Nancy Martin       

Living in a charming, 90-year-old house is a lot less charming than it looks in the movies.

For one thing, the words Financing Available become the most terrifying phrase that can be printed on the side of a contractor’s truck.

The day before we moved into the house, we directed a couple of pot-smoking electricians to rip off the ceiling tiles in my basement office to fix some wiring. (“Fix” is now a general term I have learned to get more details about before I write any checks.)  Job "done," they replaced the old ceiling tiles in such a way that—well, it confirmed our belief about the pot-smoking.  My husband and I told ourselves we’d replace the ruined ceiling soon.  Very soon.  But ten years’ worth of more pressing problems cropped up. Leaking toilets cannot be ignored, nor can two daughters who want fullbown weddings with actual guests and food, not intimate beach elopements where you can just throw some shrimp on the barbie and make everybody happy.

After years of working in my dingy, stalactite-riddled office, though, I finally took a stand.  I had saved up a little bit of money to have the office ceiling torn out and replaced.  (Yes, we were pretty sure asbestos was involved, but that’s another story.)

“We’re going away for ten days,” I said to my husband when our granddaughter was due to be born.  “It’s the perfect window of time to have my office ceiling fixed.”

A trustworthy contractor agreed to do the job.  I’ll call him Tom because . . . that’s his name.  Do you have a beloved contractor?  If you live in an old house, I bet you do.

My husband and I went to Texas.  The new baby is adorable. My 2 year-old grandson is brilliant. After 10 days, we came home.  Despite setbacks, complications and a blizzard (12 inches of snow) Tom managed to get the ceiling finished—and it looks great.  New lighting in the new ceiling has transformed the room, which is now the perfect place to write compelling novels and waste time on Facebook.  Over the weekend, my husband and I did some painting to further spruce up “the space.”  (Why do I find annoying the chirpy HGTV host habit of referring to rooms as “the space?”  But I do.) What a transformation! I am delighted with the results. Here's the view from my desk:

 

Here's a view of my desk, which will not be this clean again for at least another decade:
 

And here's a view of the daunting number of bookshelves that must still be cleaned, sanded, primed, painted and re-loaded with books before we can consider the room completely done:

 

Our handiwork finished, my husband and I admired the room.

Then a mere hour elapsed before a seemingly minor catastrophe struck in the form of a basement laundry sink that refused to drain.  In a 90 year-old house, however, no catastrophe is “minor.” Within another hour, the kitchen sink overflowed above the laundry—we mopped up before any damage was done to the new hardwood kitchen floor---and there was something definitely funky going on in the dishwasher.

Oh, dear.

Tom returned and started muttering in the adjacent laundry room.  “That’s not good,” I heard him  say to himself between loud bangs, Herculean grunts, and exasperated sighs.  “I gotta go get my snake.”

A snake, in case you are a smart person who lives in a pristine house fewer than ten years old---or better yet, you rent the place where you live and enjoy the services of a competent building super—a snake is a coil of steel wire that a plumber can unleash to ream out your clogged pipes. In our case, we had corroded cast iron pipes jammed with 90 years of rusty household crud that smelled like dead possums.

Tom returned from his truck with the snake machine.  He banged around the laundry room a while longer and finally shouted, “Hey, Nance!  You gotta come see this!” (Nobody calls me “Nance,” except contractors or—oddly enough--other women named Nancy. My family sometimes calls me Nan.  My grandson calls me Nana. My husband calls me “Bunny,” but that’s another story.)

When called, I ventured warily into the laundry room where Tom emerged from under the sink like an evil Rumplestiltskin with a wrench in one hand and a reeking bucket in the other. His arms were coated with black slime.

“I have a weak stomach,” I warned him.

But Tom was triumphant.  “I found the problem!”

He showed me a bucket full of . . . well, since you may be reading this as you enjoy a cup of coffee and a nice bagel with Nutella, I won’t describe the vile mess Tom displayed for my admiration.  While I averted my eyes, he explained the pipes were jammed tight with this horrible sludge.  I was prepared to pay any price to rid my house of such disgustingness, but I wisely did not blurt out that thought. I was too busy fighting down my bagel with Nutella.

Hastily, I retreated to my desk, and Tom proceeded to bang, groan, choke, and otherwise vocally convey how hard he worked to clean out my pipes.

Here’s the thing about old pipes:  Because they’re out of sight, you kinda forget about them and assume everything’s running fine.  Maybe a drain runs a little slowly, but you ignore that because the real problem is invisible.  But eventually, all the corruption stops water from flowing at all, and then the catastrophic damage starts.  Similarly? Over the weekend, the son of the dictator of impoverished Equatorial Guinea ordered himself a $380 million dollar yacht.  And there’s a terrific article in The New Yorker about the bank of Kabul that every American taxpayer ought to read.

 Corruption is something we don’t pay attention to until the hardwood floors are warping and dictators are raping their own people while buying yachts. Or Americans are paying for both sides to fight a war in which young people die.

 As I was typing up this blog, my phone rang.  From Texas, my daughter—the mother of my grandson and wonderful new baby granddaughter (see photos above)--wailed:  “We have plumbing problems in our new house! The pipes to the street must be replaced!  The estimate is $15,000!”

What bugs me most about her plumbing problem is that the previous owner left the rotten pipes for the next generation to resolve.  She says financing is available, but eventually somebody’s going to pay big to fix those pipes.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

by Nancy Martin                

Ever since leaving our wonderful small town for the big city, my husband has lamented the loss of our favorite neighborhood restaurant.

I bet you have one.  It’s a small place, not far from where you live.  It’s not fancy on the inside, and the plain, wholesome food probably isn’t cooked by an effete chef with a white coat.  You’re served by a friendly waitress who recognizes your face. (Okay, maybe she’s not so friendly.  But she’s familiar, right?) The wine list may be non-existent, and the menu doesn’t include French words.

But people recognize you in a neighborhood restaurant.  Your friends and neighbors sit at nearby tables.  You might even pat a few baby cheeks as you find a place to sit.  People inquire after each other’s health. They remember the last time they saw you. Ask if you got your sidewalk shoveled after that last snowstorm. If you closed your eyes, you could probably name most of the items listed on the menu of such a restaurant.

 Is your favorite neighborhood restaurant a diner? A white table cloth place? A spaghetti joint?  Where do you go out for dinner if you’re feeling flush, too lazy to cook, but not in the mood for a pizza?

A good neighborhood restaurant, in my view, has reasonable prices.  And portions that are not too big, not too small.  (Do you take leftovers home?  Or, like me, do you usually forget and leave the container on the table?)  You shouldn’t have to wait more than ten minutes for a table. The menu should include a few sandwiches, some salads as well as big dinner entrees for when you’re starving. But mostly, a neighborhood place must have a convivial, friendly sort of air that makes you feel welcomed into a community of like-minded folk.

I wonder if the days of the mom-and-pop restaurant are waning?  Are we entering an era when we’d rather eat the Styrofoam salad at Denny’s than the turkey meatloaf  and green bean special at the place down the street? I’m flabbergasted when I see the jammed parking lot at The Olive Garden, when I live in a city with dozens of authentic Italian restaurants that make their own delicious red sauce every day.

For weeks, people in my neighborhood have been trying to peek through the brown paper taped to the windows of a soon-to-be-opened family-owned restaurant just three blocks from our house. We heard through the grapevine they were having a “soft opening” for the neighborhood last weekend, so we hustled down the street on Saturday night. We were not the only neighbors who listen to the grapevine.  The place was packed.  A group of twenty-somethings gathered along the bar, toasting the beaming owner with pints of Belgian beer. Several families with small children munching on three-cheese grilled sandwiches sat in the booths at the back. A handful of middle-aged couples—ladies wearing jewelry, husbands in nearly identical zip fleeces--shared tables by the tall windows.  Everybody was smiling.  When the slender young waitresses rushed fragrant trays of food from the kitchen, the crowd craned to see what the fare looked like. Murmurs of appreciation were heard when the deep dishes of steamed mussels went past.  We table-hopped a bit to chat with friends and neighbors.  On a cold, snowy night, the restaurant was a warm oasis of friendship.

I wonder if we’re in an era of preferring to be anonymous, though? Would people rather eat at Denny’s because nobody knows us?  Would we prefer interact with “friends” on Facebook than have to make polite conversation at a local diner? Do we like using our computers to engage in dialogue because we can be as snide and smart-assity as we like?

I didn’t hear anyone shouting at the restaurant, by the way. Or name-calling.  Or making cutting, insulting remarks. In public, one must still be civil.  These days, I am thinking each of us needs to spend one hour in a public place with real people for each hour we compose snide blogs written for human beings we never have to look in the eye.

“Vitriolic words are a form of violence,”* is a quote I read a couple of weeks ago when TIME magazine asked, “Are we becoming an uncivil society?” At the restaurant on Saturday night, I thought the answer was no. Nobody was saying things like, “Don’t retreat.  Reload.”  (Would we be more likely to know which of our neighbors are collecting guns and ammo if we were more tightly knit into our communities?  Or are we taking our lives in our hands by venturing into public places to hear political discourse rather than getting the vitriol from the media?)

I’d like to spend more time in neighborhood restaurants.  It’s good for the soul.  Good for everyone.  Good for cooling down the hot political rhetoric that has gotten out of hand. But, of course, I’m also in favor of doing less cooking, so maybe that’s my real motive.

*Deepak Chopra said that.  Good, right?

PS.  I'm in Texas!  Visiting my new granddaughter! Planning on checking out some local restaurants, too.

HBC and Chinese Motherhood

HBC and Chinese Motherhood

by Nancy Martin

I seriously considered not blogging today, but instead sending everybody to this link  where a woman explains what it is to be a Chinese Mother.  (Your first clue: The article is titled  Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.) Most days around the offices of TLC, the comments are way more entertaining than the blogging---on the days I preside over the water cooler, that is--and I figured the TLC backbloggers could take the Chinese Mother apart limb by skinny limb.  Her theory is that your kid should get A's all the time, never act in a school play and practice the violin or piano (no other instrument will do) until perfection is reached.  She is not above screaming foul names at her kids to keep them thin and at the top of their classes. Her daughters have thrived, at least so far. 

 

If you're feeling feisty today, please do expound on this woman's beliefs and practices because we'd all enjoy it immensely.

But---after an extremely long and cardiac-challenging weekend of football (GO, STEELERS!)---my husband finally relinquished the big screen HD TV, and I watched part of the Golden Globe red carpet proceedings while multi-tasking on a somewhat sleepy evening of Facebook. But when the wondrous Helena Bonham Carter stepped out of her limo, the boards lit up.

Everybody has an opinion about HBC.

 

No, she is not The Black Swan, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn she's hiding a dagger in her garter beneath that swath of black lace.  Her choice of shoes is deliberate.  I don't know who did her hair either, but I could hazard a guess the process might have included a blender and/or a blowtorch.

Me, I'm thinking if the world starts to employ Chinese mothering techniques, we'll never see the like of HBC again.

Or Tilda Swinton. 

 

Or even Annette Benning, who still has the chutzpah to attend the Golden Globes over the age of 40. None of these women will do to themselves whatever it took to get this girl to look as beautiful as a Barbie doll:

 

But they can all act rings around just about anyone in that Golden Globe ballroom, and when asked to speak about their craft, they can be brilliantly insightful.  (Of course, Mr Lipton of The Actor's Studio is very busy interviewing Conan O'Brien these days, so we may never hear from any of the three of them in depth.) Of the three--HBC, La Swinton and Annette--honestly, which would you most rather have dinner with?  Can you imagine an evening with all three? And who could drink who under the table? Who would smash the glasses to bits with her shoe? 

It's hard enough raising daughters, but how could a woman grow up (in this era of Botox for 16 year-olds) to be anything resembling psychologically healthy if there were no HBC for "western mothers" to point to? Really, don't we need role models of their ilk? Because it's just too disheartening to think of the world with nothing but "perfect" women in it.

In other news about quirky females who don't feel the need to follow rules:

Today is the pub day for FOXY ROXY:

 

Please forgive me this plug.  It's actually a consumer alert:

If you read OUR LADY OF IMMACULATE DECEPTION last year, be warned that FOXY ROXY is the same book with a new cover, new title.  A fresh face, in other words. But you don't need to rush out to buy it if you already read the book, dear friends.  You could, however, re-tweet or post the cover on your Facebook page or otherwise help me re-boot this series.

Roxy was not raised by a Chinese mother. She is not beloved by the coziest of cozy readers either.  But if you like your characters quirky and flawed, but determined to do what they feel is right, then Roxy may be your kind of reading.

Now, what did we all think of the Golden Globes dresses?  Dish!