Maize was beautiful as snakes go with a lovely pattern in shades of deep rose, coral, and salmon. She was small at first and adorable as creatures are in infancy. She belonged to my daughter, who became a vegetarian and a reptile enthusiast in her freshman year of college. Maize traveled to and from school in a plastic box carrier.

Then came the semester my daughter matriculated in Ecuador, and Maize came to live with me. While my daughter sent home photos of her playing with boa constrictors in the rain forest, I was buying pinkies at the local pet store. Pinkies are Maize’s preferred meal. They are one-day-old, hairless, dead mice babies kept in a brown bag in my freezer. They look like pink embryos next to the ice cream and frozen peas.

One thing I knew from the moment I became a parent: I would go to great lengths for my children. Just like in my novel Book of Mercy, where parents censor books, for the sake of the children. They get into fights with their spouses, for the sake of the children. They throw pies, for the sake of the children. They reveal deep, dark secrets, for the sake of the children.

On the back cover of Mercy, it says, “There are more things worth fighting for than you can ever imagine.” One of the things we fight, for the sake of our children, is ourselves. You see, I (for no good reason) fear snakes. When I meet a snake on the hiking trail, it is like a scene from a cartoon—we both leap up and run (or wiggle) in the opposite direction. But there I was, during that long semester, dropping frozen mice snacks into Maize’s cage and, because my daughter insisted, taking Maize out for the occasional exercise.

I never fell in love with the experience of slowly lifting Maize from its cage and letting it wind its way around my body. Still, I turned my body into a snake’s playground because I certainly wasn’t going to let it loose in the house. Do you know how fast those suckers can get away from you? And then, I’d live in true terror of waking up one morning with Maize curled in my hair.

I took on a snake for a housemate, for my kid. That’s what parents do.

Memories of Maize came back this week for two reasons: I spotted a snake on a Facebook page that looked just like Maize; it was wearing a pink sweater. The same day, I saw a comic of a snake reading a book titled “Anyone Can Knit.” Ahh, if only that were true. One of my dreams has always been to sit in my cozy, snake-free house and knit something more intricate than a potholder, like maybe a Bill Cosby/Cliff Huxtable sweater.

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If you would like to read how parents stay sane while their child studies abroad, click here.

Have you lived with a pet you didn’t want? Leave a comment.

By popular vote, the cat is in and the iron, which has been circling Monopoly boards around the globe for 76 years, is out. If I were a sociologist, I might draw some conclusions about the decline of homemaking, domesticity, and the value of a pressed shirt. If I were a social media expert, I might say this was a no-brainer from the start; have you seen how many cat videos there are on the Internet?

The cat beat out a toy robot, a guitar, a helicopter, and a diamond ring. I get the robot; that was old before they even cast the metal for the prototype. The helicopter and guitar have limited appeal; I haven’t watched one helicopter video on YouTube, and I don’t play much Guitar Hero. The diamond ring might have had possibilities. Who doesn’t like a little bling?

How will this change the face of the friendly family game night? It’s going to get ugly. First, everyone is going to want to be the cat. Now, children, be nice and let grandmother have the pretty kitty. Once the playing begins, don’t be surprised if Grams turns vicious. She can’t help it with a sly feline avatar. The cat is going to slap down the Scottie dog, refuse to get in the race car, poop in the shoe, ignore the wheelbarrow, sit on and flatten the top hat, chase the thimble, and run the battleship. Sigh.

I know all this because I have lived with several cats. I have a guest cat staying with me right now, and she hasn’t come out of her room for a week.

Cats treat us like crap and now we want to give them real estate? What was Hasbro, the manufacturer of Monopoly, thinking?

Normally, I find the updating of traditional games disturbing, but I have to admit dumping the iron is no great loss. In fact, I never played a game of Monopoly where someone chose the iron voluntarily—even in the iron’s heyday. This is one of those things that will pass through our lives and go straight to the museum. Tossing the iron also will save time in future Monopoly marathons because now you won’t have to explain to your child what that weird-looking thing is. “People once had to actually iron their clothes with hot hunks of metal instead of driving them to the dry cleaners?”

However, if the purpose of updating is to reflect a changing time, a new era, Hasbro should have chosen a smartphone. With one app or another, you can do practically anything with these gadgets except give birth (although developers are probably designing an app to monitor labor, pregnancy, and every other health event).

There would be only one drawback: a phone will never be as cute as a cat.

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What was your favorite Monopoly playing piece and why? Please leave a comment.
Check out these fun Monopoly facts.
If you enjoyed this post, please check out Book of Mercy. It has a killer cat, lots of deer, and banned books. Warning: No one plays Monopoly in this novel.

Anyone can hit the wall, creatively speaking. There is writer’s block and artist’s block, times when the ideas refuse to flow, when the mind freezes because it is so jacked up on confusion or doubt or fear. There are organizations to help such as A.R.T.S. Anonymous, which helps artists recover their creativity through the Twelve Steps. “In A.R.T.S., bottom line sobriety begins with a humble daily action to pick up one’s creativity, ‘one day at a time’. Members are asked to do no less than five minutes of art every day. If one picks up even for five minutes, there will be days when five minutes turns into hours,” according to A.R.T.S. Anonymous.

Of course, we would never suffer the angst of being blocked if we never dreamed in the first place. It all starts with a dream. To finish that painting. To write that book. To live a life of dignity and peace. The It Gets Better Project was created to show gay and lesbian adolescents who are being bullied in their schools and communities that happiness and positivity is in their reach—if they can just get through their teen years.

Anna Oneglia’s strong art was perfect for Maud’s House. She brings color and energy to everything she does, much in the way as I dreamed a young Maud would do. The California painter works in oils and mixed media and is also a printmaker producing block prints and lithographs. “The figure is central to my work, a grappling with how humans shape and are shaped by the world,” says Anna.

“In looking for art to make a difference,” Anna’s paintings have been published as posters for many causes, including Business Aid for AIDS, Bike to Work Week, The National Nurse Midwives Association, Celebration of the Muse, and the San Jose Women’s Commission.

I thank Anna for her wonderful vision, for showing that dreams are never truly lost; they are just waiting to be found again.

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Do you have an experience of being blocked? How did you overcome it? Please leave a comment. Also to read how Maud got her art back, I invite you to read Maud’s House.

In Kingsolver’s book, the dirt-poor Dellarobia is watching her toddler use a play telephone from a secondhand store. It is the kind I remember spending hours with as a child: bulky body, cord, receiver, dial that made a marvelously loud clicking sound. Dellarobia notices that her daughter, Cordelia, is using the phone like a hammer, driving nails like she’d seen her father do, and realizes that this phone isn’t a phone to Cordelia. It doesn’t “resemble any telephone that existed in Cordelia’s lifetime. Phones lived in people’s pockets, they slid open, they certainly had no dials.”

This revelation made me sad for the kids of the future who would never know the pleasure of dragging a phone by its cord and pretending it’s a dog or ringing up some imaginary friend by spinning a dial over and over until it drove your mother nuts. What can you do with a cell phone? Maybe use it as a hammer.

Now, I am not a hermit in a cave raving about the evils of technology. I love the Internet and my computer, when it’s behaving. I am not an old fogy (at least, I don’t think I am; hey, I tweet). But things are disappearing.

Like penmanship. Have you seen the stretched-out Slinky signature of Jacob Lew, the nominee for secretary of the Treasury? Imagine having that on your currency? Since we are writing nearly everything on our computers and not on legal pads or lavender-scented stationery, penmanship in general has deteriorated. Many states don’t even require instruction in cursive writing. What’s with that? This is going to be a terribly ugly world if people are printing their names everywhere—on legal documents and checks. Oh, wait, no one writes checks anymore either, and now you can use an autopen to sign your will and testament.

So the handwriting is on the wall. Teaching keyboarding is more important that learning cursive, according to school administrators. After all, there are all those cursive knock-offs on your computer, fonts like the sinfully simple CatholicSchoolGirls, the shot-of-calligraphy Espresso, and the lovely Vladimir Script.

But here’s the thing, and I just discovered this because I was bewailing the decay of my own chicken scrawl, signing your name in a flourish of loops and swashes takes time and thought. A society in a rush can’t afford to pay homage to the elegance of a well-formed “Q”.

Handwriting is not about communication; it is about patience. So I have begun to practice paying attention to my handwriting on the notes surrounding my computer. Every time I have to jot something down using that ancient instrument, the pen, I take a moment to slow everything down, from hand to mind. Zen writing. I realize this is a small victory. But just the other day at a meeting, someone looked at my name tag and said, “You have lovely handwriting.”

My next step: trolling the antique stores and hand-me-down shops for one of those old Fisher-Price Chatter Phones.

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What will you miss when it’s gone? Leave me a comment. If you liked this post, I invite you to check out my novel about lost and found creativity, Maud’s House. The folks in this book find themselves missing a lot of things including their art.

Awesome Indies is the brainchild of Tahlia Newland, who has drawn together a team of reviewers dedicated to promoting quality in independent publishing. I love these folks because they are demanding that indie books be top-notch in plot and prose.

To be awarded the Awesome Indies Seal of Approval, books must be approved by three qualified reviewers, at least one of which is a regular contributor to the Awesome Indies site, or one of the site’s back-up readers. A  qualified reviewer is defined as: an Awesome Indies recommended reviewer, or someone with a degree in creative writing or English literature, or an author or editor who is or has been employed in that capacity by a well-known traditional publishing house.

If you are looking for some good stuff to read, check out this site.

Newland reviewed Book of Mercy and said:

Thanks, Awesome Indies, for recognizing Book of Mercy. I am truly honored. This is so much better than a skillet.

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If you like to read about strong women working for their communities, I invite you to explore Antigone Brown, the dyslexic mother-to-be fighting censorship in Book of Mercy, or Maud Calhoun, the artist who loses her muse in Maud’s House.

It is not that we don’t adore you with every atom of our being. It is just that time shrinks to the size of a pea in December. There is never enough of it as we rush from parties to stores, from baking cookies to decorating trees.

My December child has solved this problem by declaring the entire month as cause for celebration of her birth. She calls it Suzmakah. The rules of Suzmakah are simple:

1. Work “Happy Suzmakah” into as many sentences as you can during the season.
2. Give out many, many hugs during Suzmakah. You get extra points.
3. Be generous. Additional presents will not be turned down. Never think one gift will do double duty as both Christmas present and birthday gift. That just isn’t fair.
4. Join all calls for Suzmakah celebration at the local pub (and there tend to be quite a few). Drinks are on you.
5. Finally, if you hire a plane to write your birthday wishes in the sky, please spell Suzmakah right.

To my own December child: I will never forget taking you home from the hospital in a giant red Christmas stocking. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face with a snow shovel. And here’s another silver lining—you have the biggest stocking hung by the chimney with care.

Happy Suzmakah, baby.

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If you have a December baby or just want to start your own holiday, give me a shout. Leave a comment please.

For a short story in the tradition of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, check out “Christmas Unplugged.” And have a happy and well-lit holiday.

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This post is part of the Meet the Family Blog Hop. We all have festive traditions, memories, stories, recipes, hopes, and wishes that we share within our families. This hop is all about celebrating family and festivities, both in real life and in fiction! The host of this blog hop is Terri Giuliano Long.

Several writers are blogging about their holiday memories and experiences. Get in the holiday spirit! We will be blogging from December 10-13. Stop by our sites. You’ll find the entire list here. Please take a moment to read a few posts and comment. We love hearing from you. Have a fabulous holiday.

Light is a gift. Fire was a game changer for the cave family. Chevy Chase became the ultimate bad light bulb hunter and a maestro of light in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation all because he wanted to give his family the brightest house on the block. And don’t forget, a child bringing light to the world is the whole reason for Christmas.

Gifts of light can stake a place in our hearts and in our memories stronger than any physical gift under the tree. I will never forget the year we purchased a Black Hills spruce for our backyard. I know how much Rubbertoes (my guy) hates stringing lights so I didn’t dare suggest dressing it up for the holidays. Yet, that Christmas I looked out the window and found someone (my own sweet Rubbertoes) had festooned the little fellow in blankets of white Christmas lights. Splendiforous coniferous.

In our old neighborhood in North Carolina, we used to set out luminaries every Christmas Eve. Volunteers from the neighborhood garden club would drop off white paper bags and tealight candles and dump a pile of sand at the local park. On Christmas Even afternoon, we would take the kids with their sand shovels down the street to the park to get buckets of sand. We then shoveled the sand into the bags placed along the curb of our yard and centered a candle in the sand. (The sand kept the lit candle in place and kept the bags from blowing away on windy nights.) Then when it got dark, we lit the luminaries and strolled through our neighborhood following luminary trails until we were tired.

Since moving to Minnesota, we have a new Christmas Eve tradition: the Christmas light display drive-by. With the Christmas tunes vibrating through the car, we travel the dark streets looking for the best, blow-our-minds light shows. And we vote: on the elegant presentation of all-white lights and strategically placed pine boughs and red bows, on the tacky-from-one-end-of-the-yard-to-the-other balloon Santas, on the amazing effort that combines light and altruism by putting together one heck of a show synchronized with holiday music on a specified channel of the radio and encouraging all visitors to leave a can of food for the food shelf.

Many towns give light through holiday parades, but few can compare to Holidazzle, which is a festival of lights in the Twin Cities. Volunteers transformed into Christmas trees, snowflakes, elfs, and all things Christmas related skip down Minneapolis’ Nicollet Mall alongside light-laden floats. And they do this nearly every night during the month of December, in rain and in snow, in freezing temperatures that turn your nose Rudolph red and your feet into blocks of ice as chilly as the winter lakes in Minnesota. Bundle up the kids (think lots of layers), grab a Thermos of hot chocolate, and go.

Sometimes the gift of light comes at you from nowhere. Have you ever been driving ten hours to get home for Christmas and cast a weary glance into the night and seen on a far hill a single tree lit up like Rockefeller Center? Gives you that warm feeling, doesn’t it? Think about it. Someone decorated that tree, stretched miles of extension cords, just for you.

So may your holiday be filled with light—whether you are walking the sparkly streets of New York or skiing through the quiet woods.

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What gift of light do you remember? Ruminate on your illuminations. Leave a comment and share it with us.

For a short story in the tradition of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, check out “Christmas Unplugged.” And have a happy and well-lit holiday.

___________________________

This post is part of the Meet the Family Blog Hop. We all have festive traditions, memories, stories, recipes, hopes, and wishes that we share within our families. This hop is all about celebrating family and festivities, both in real life and in fiction! The host of this blog hop is Terri Giuliano Long.

Several writers are blogging about their holiday memories and experiences. Get in the holiday spirit! We will be blogging from December 10-13. Stop by our sites. You’ll find the entire list here. Please take a moment to read a few posts and comment. We love hearing from you. Have a fabulous holiday.

Not that the shopping was that good in the small Missouri town where I grew up. In fact, if an alien spaceship took me up into the skies, transporting my molecules (in a friendly manner) from here in Minnesota to there, I probably would find myself on foreign ground. I understand most of the people in my hometown don’t shop there anymore; they do not search the quiet stores downtown in the twilight. They drive to Walmart out by the interstate or trek thirty miles down the road to one of the bigger burgs on the Mississippi River, a place powdered with shopping malls and discount houses. From the portals of a spaceship, I bet it looks just like every other town in America.

When I was young and without wheels, a driver’s license, or a credit card, I knew how to shop. I would choose a December afternoon, inform my mother I was walking downtown after school, and stuff in my pocket $1.69 for each member of my family. The amount never left my head as I circled the courthouse square, studying the windows of the hardware store, the jeweler, the dime store, the drug store, and the department store. Would my mother like that beautiful little bejeweled box? Does my father need a new screwdriver? And of lesser concern: what would bring my little sisters happiness?

Those afternoons of Yuletide bliss were moments of glorious freedom and joy, the kind that wells up in your heart and sends it tripping with happiness. Although I am sure the town square was busier than usual due to the season, I do not recall crowds, being shoved or pushed. I do not remember lines at the cash register or drivers snarling over parking spaces.

I had time to mull, to ponder, to weigh each of my purchases. I wasn’t obsessed with “the getting,” more than “the thing that was got.” Every gift was given quite serious, but not necessarily lengthy, thought. And I knew it was right when it bypassed my head and rammed straight into my heart. I knew, then, it would be just the right gift to be found under the tree on Christmas morning. For perfect presents have that quality of rightness, that specialness; they seem to conjure up Christmas morning feelings long after the day is done and the tree has been taken down.

Perhaps that is why it has been so long since I have enjoyed Christmas shopping. I have missed that feeling of rightness. My shopping list seems filled with brand names learned on Saturday morning television or Pinterest boards. I no longer shop on pure impulse, fueled by happiness and expectation. I have lost that lightness of step; now I am weighed down with the wants and desires of others (not that I have such a needy bunch but I do want to give them something they will like). Christmas shopping has become not something I want to do, but something I must get done.

When I was young and without worries, schedules, and parking problems, I knew how to shop. I would wander in and out of the  stores while the day darkened and the evening began to glisten with Christmas decorations and automobile lights. Some Christmases I would step out of a store just as it began to snow on shoppers and people going home. I would meet my mother at the corner of the dime store; she would pull up in the car and I would bundle in with bags and packages. And I always was amazed that she was never curious about the packages, never wanted to know which one of them was for her.

I used to think, riding home, that she didn’t want to spoil the surprise, and that may have been some of it. But, I think now, it was more likely that she had her mind on other things—shopping lists and parking spaces and schedules.

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How is your shopping experience going this year? Leave a comment and share it with us.

For a short story in the tradition of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, check out “Christmas Unplugged.” And have a happy and well-lit holiday.

___________________________

This post is part of the Meet the Family Blog Hop. We all have festive traditions, memories, stories, recipes, hopes, and wishes that we share within our families. This hop is all about celebrating family and festivities, both in real life and in fiction! The host of this blog hop is Terri Giuliano Long.

Several writers are blogging about their holiday memories and experiences. Get in the holiday spirit! We will be blogging from December 10-13. Stop by our sites. You’ll find the entire list here. Please take a moment to read a few posts and comment. We love hearing from you. Have a fabulous holiday.

Of course, any sugar-laden event can go awry. That’s why I offer these helpful tips to keep your holidays merry:

1. Provide regular food to offset the sugar high. Since my Christmas cookie decorators work hard and justifiably deserve nourishment, I tend to look the other way as they snarf down the product. To help them adjust their sugar levels, I always have real food to munch on throughout the evening. My two standards are cheese fondue, which makes me feel tres continental, and barbeque sandwiches from Scott Ja-Mama’s, a famed hole-in-the-wall joint for pulled pork in South Minneapolis.

2. Invite everyone to participate, but don’t expect everyone to do so. I have discovered that guys often have trouble getting in touch with their inner cookie-decorating child. You may have to lasso your husbands and boyfriends with your Wonder Woman lariat and drag them to the decorating table. Their style can best be described as minimalist. One gentleman, who is greatly interested in politics, decorated his snowflake simply with “Obama 2008.” I saved that cookie, wrapped it up, and sent it to him on President Obama’s inauguration day.

3. Make extra red frosting. This goes back to the likelihood of mishaps in the kitchen. You may be shocked to know that not all of your cookies will come out of the oven in pristine condition. Reindeer legs can be snapped off; snowflakes can lose arms; whole cookie families can suffer decapitation. It can be a precarious journey from baking sheet to kitchen counter. Yet, you never want to waste a cookie. So what do you do? You swipe red frosting on the injured area and tell the sad story of how Rudolph met up with a chainsaw or wood chipper (for Fargo fans), or how the cookie family was in a terrible auto accident.

4. Buy oodles of decorating embellishments. Silver balls, miniature snowflakes, cinnamon buttons, sprinkles, you will need them all as a well-supplied patron of the arts.

5. Decorate with themes. How about: best Gingerbread Elvis, best bikini-clad reindeer (we do live in Minnesota with dreams of a February Caribbean vacation), or best Jackson Pollock star?

6. Stay cool. Inevitably, someone will decorate an anatomically correct cookie person. You can react, or you can ignore it and hit the punch bowl. If there are young children decorating with you, make the offender eat the cookie immediately after getting his or her jollies.

7. Lay on the llamas. It is my position that cookie decorating should be more about fun with frosting and friends than the pursuit of the perfectly frosted cookie. That’s why I do not just bake Christmas-themed cookies. I collect other cookie cutters, and one of my most popular is the llama. Everyone loves decorating the llamas.

So, for a great Christmas cookie party, don’t forget the llamas, keep the sugar flowing, and have plenty of milk (and wine) on hand.

Happy holidays and may all your cookies avoid the wood chipper.

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What do you like to bake for the holidays and why? Leave a comment and share it with us.

For a short story in the tradition of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, check out “Christmas Unplugged.” And have a happy and well-lit holiday.

___________________________

This post is part of the Meet the Family Blog Hop. We all have festive traditions, memories, stories, recipes, hopes, and wishes that we share within our families. This hop is all about celebrating family and festivities, both in real life and in fiction! The host of this blog hop is Terri Giuliano Long.

Several writers are blogging about their holiday memories and experiences. Get in the holiday spirit! We will be blogging from December 10-13. Stop by our sites. You’ll find the entire list here. Please take a moment to read a few posts and comment. We love hearing from you. Have a fabulous holiday.

Gilbert describes how poet Ruth Stone feels a poem rushing toward her over the landscape and how she races to the house to get a pen and paper to write down the poem before it passes her by. Stone doesn’t believe that she is a genius. She believes that she collects her poems from a genius.

Have you ever had those moments when an idea came into your head, a gift from the universe, from God, from your genius? Did you stop and take note or just carry on and say, “I’ll think about this later.” Don’t do it. Because if we are not geniuses (contrary to what our entitled society would like to have us believe), then we need help and we can’t afford to pass it by.

In some cultures, these moments of brilliance are called being “a glimpse of God,” Gilbert says. If you are in sports, it means you’re in the zone. If you are an artist, it could feel like you are transcendent, lit by divinity.

When I was writing Maud’s House, a novel about lost and found creativity, I was trying to express this idea of having a genius. There is a character in the book, a sheriff who builds birdhouses that resemble famous houses. Sheriff Odie Dorfmann also loves to play baseball. He describes a moment of genius on the baseball field to his friend George:

Odie told George what it would feel like to hit that ball. “I will know it’s the one the moment I connect. Its greatness will reverberate down my arm. I’ll feel it in my muscles; it’s impossible not to feel something that smooth. I’ll stand for a moment and watch it, contemplate the ball I sent to the stars, then I’ll skip once, twice, and head for first. I’ll take it easy, a token run for the crowds, but still the bases will disappear under my feet like the steps of an escalator. And when the reporters grab me and ask how it felt, I’ll just say, ‘It was heaven, boys, heaven.”’

Odie divulged to few people the rest of the dream. There was a feeling, he said, that always came over him at the end, just as the ball was almost out of sight, a feeling that it didn’t matter who had hit that ball, that it was headed for the universe at that particular moment in time and he just happened to be the guy who gave it a lift.

“Sometimes when I build birdhouses,” Odie told George that night in a whispery voice, “I get the same feeling, that I’m an instrument, a channel. It’s not a helpless feeling, not an out-of-control feeling because I seem to be not only the tool but the person using the tool.” Silence. “Weird, huh?”

If we show up and are open to the possibilities, who knows where genius will come from? Maybe you’ll get smacked by a genius while reading a blog, driving your car, or rambling through the jungles of Pinterest. My daughter is always looking for brilliant ways to organize her life. Recently, she asked me to help her create wardrobe organizers out of CD labels, one of her many Pinterest projects. CD-looking things bringing order to your fashion life. To the harried mother trying to get five kids dressed for school or the career woman who hates making decisions in the morning, this is a moment of genius.

Whether you believe you are a genius or, like me, prefer to have a genius, I have one wish for you today: May you be a glimpse of God.

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If you would like to read more about Odie Dorfmann, the baseball-playing, birdhouse-building lawman, as well as a whole town of people waiting for their geniuses, I invite you to check out Maud’s House.

I also invite you to watch the Elizabeth Gilbert video: