SAUERKRAT FOR BREAKFAST? An Unusual New Year's Day Tradition

Oh, the trials and tribulations of being raised under the heavy mantle of family traditions. My mother, of German heritage, insisted that the first thing to pass our lips in the new year was a bite of sauerkraut. Easy for her, as she partied while the clock struck midnight and washed down her nibble of GOOD LUCK with (many) sips of the bubbly. Those of us early-to-bedders (at the insistence of a mean babysitter!) had the misfortune of being served sauerkraut for breakfast. Trust me when I say it does not pair well with Cap’n Crunch. Hence, my lifelong avoidance of sauerkraut (unless it tops a thick Ruben sandwich, and then only sparingly!)

'TIS THE SEASON, a Holiday Poem by Jayne

 <<I wrote this many years ago when my husband was deployed over the holidays. I read it every year to remind myself that military folks remain on station while we here stateside celebrate the season.>>

'TIS THE SEASON...

...of warm sugar cookies and jingle bells ringing;

of sleighs full of toys and carolers singing;

of Santas and Scrooges and tinsel and lights;

of long snowy walks with a loved one at night.

LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY VACAY

     My parents always ascribed to the motto that Vacations Must be Educational. I have eschewed that concept all of my adult life. I prefer my vacations to be relaxing and fun (aside from those that doubled as official Permanant Change of Station moves in conjunction with my husband's military career. Got to "See the USA" on Uncle Sam's dime!) 

     Imagine my surprise when my recent island escape turned enlightening!

     Over the recent holiday we tripped to Dauphine Island, AL to meet our grandson for the first time. Trust me when I say there is no better way to spend Thanksgiving. We were gone ten days, and during that time I added a lot of knowledge to my stack of life lessons. 

• I learned…that changing dirty diapers is like riding a bike! (This grandma’s still got skills!) Same for getting on the ground to play. Getting up…well…that’s a different story.

WRITING INCOGNITO

Jayne Ormerod is not my real name, but there a real person behind the nom de plume (translation: pen name.) Many (okay, most) people ask me, “Why do you write under a pseudonym?"

My first answer is always to assure them I am not running from the law. Or even the taxman. No the decision was much more personal: to be me, or not to be me? That was the question. Obviously, I chose not to be me. 

Here is the reason why... 

Picture this: A family dinner with my active-duty-military husband and twelve-year-old son, sitting on the back deck enjoying the gentle summer breeze. I’d prepared a meal of spicy shrimp scampi and Italian bread smothered with melted cheese, green onions and poppy seeds. After a glass (or three) of a spunky Pinot Grigio, I worked up enough courage to confess my lifelong secret.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN!

 Jayne's packing up all her books hitting the road Williamsburg, here she comes! 

WHAT I DID ON SUMMER VACATION--in 1972

This graphic popped up on my Facebook feed the other day, and I realized that times have not changed. It's a right of passage every September for students to write an essay on what they did on summer vacation. So here's mine. Granted, the vacation was in 1972, but through the prism of time I have come to appreciate what my parents did--and did not--teach us.  

The “educational” tag is SO over rated.  Especially when it comes to summer vacations.  My parents (a self-employed business man and an elementary school teacher) made it their mission to make sure we learned something over the summer break.  So while my friends were water skiing on Lake Michigan or riding donkeys down to bottom of the Grand Canyon or hanging out with Mickey & Minnie, my family was marching through the Smithsonian in DC or traipsing along the Freedom Trail in Boston or sitting (snoozing) through historical lectures in the City of Brotherly Love. 

   Did I have VA-CAY Envy?  You bet I did!

DEAR INCREDIBLE STORY IDEA...I will find you and I will write you!

      

One of the top questions I get asked by readers is, “Where do you get your inspiration for stories?”  The easier question to answer is, “Where DON’T I find inspiration?”  Everything I see, I wonder what the story behind it is, like these shoes in the image. It’s all about asking a few questions and then making up the answers.  

     Say you’re walking down the street of your small Midwestern town and notice that the large clock atop the town hall has stopped working. You ask yourself when and why did it stop?  A writer might (and one did) wonder if it had been struck by lightning. Hence the time it had been struck was preserved for future generations to cogitate about. That begs the question, if someone were to travel back in time and needed to harness a huge amount of energy, they would know what time the clock was struck and arrange to be there when the lightning struck. Hence with a few questions and a little imagination, you could have written Back to the Future. And you would have made a little bit of money doing so, too.

VERY SUPERSTITIOUS...

Have you checked the calendar today? Yup. It’s Friday the 13^th. Does that scare you?

According to my sources (the Internet), thirteen is an unlucky number. Historically it has something to do with the number of people seated at the dinner table. Why? Let’s see…how many were at The Last Supper? Thirteen. And we all know how that turned out. How many, according to the Norse myth, were at the table before Loki arrived uninvited and then some really bad things happened, like, people died? Twelve, plus Loki equals thirteen. The code of Hammurabi skips right over a 13th Law. There must be something to this...

Twelve is considered a “perfect” number (twelve months in a year, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve hours in half of a day.) It then follows that the number thirteen must be equally UN-perfect, right? Or so the superstitious minded say. Peoples’ fear of the number thirteen, labeled triskaidekaphobia (that’s a mouthful, isn’t it?) is evident through the centuries. Even today you might hop on an elevator in a high-rise and notice there is no 13th floor.   

CELEBRATE GOOD BOOKS, COME ON!

 

Those who know me know I don’t pay particular attention to these National Observance days. There’s too many to track, over 2,100 according to the National Observance Day website << https://nationaldaytoday.com >>. I’ll do the math for you…that averages almost 200 per month! Works out to be about six per day! More than enough to drive a woman to drink…more!

Of course, my lack of attention means I’ve been known to miss the big ones, like National Son’s Day, or National Mutt Day. But since we celebrate those every day at Casa Ormerod, no need to feel guilty about not giving a social media shoutout every time these important dates roll around.

There’s another National Observance Day on the horizon that I also celebrate every single day, but thought it’s time for the rest of the world to show it a little more love. So today I’m dedicating my blog to raising awareness of this little known but very important day.

THE DOGS DAYS OF SUMMER...What the Heck Does that Mean?

         “I’m melting….” That’s my internal thought every time I step out into the unbearably hot and horribly humid sticky-icky summer days.  But at least I can sweat, or “glow” as they say here in the south, to cool off. 

Dogs don’t sweat. Their only cooling mechanism is to pant, drawing air across those long fat tongues. Only it’s hot humid air flowing across their tongues so it doesn’t seem as if it would be all that effective. Which explains why they often resort to Plan B: digging holes in the dirt deep under the front porch where it is maybe three degrees cooler. It doesn’t seem as if they have a Plan C.

Melting dogs under porches is why these summer days are known as “The Dog Days of Summer.”

THE OH-SO-SUBTLE SOUTHERNIZATION OF A YANKEE…

Those sneaky southerners! They draw you into their gracious mannerly ways and hypnotize you with that charming long-voweled speech. Before you even realize it, you've been Southernized. I’m a born and raised Buckeye, a Yankee through and through. But most of my thirty years as a Navy spouse have been spent in the south. Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee, to be specific. When I ran across a porch plaque defining The South, I realized I just might be one of them now. 

 

The South

\t͟hə ‘sau’th\, noun

A Place Where…

 

Tea is sweet and accents are sweeter. I’ve been known to slip a “fixin’ to” in as often as possible—and it must be said with a twang in order to truly be southern.

SWEET KINDNESS

On the occasion of a recent celebration on my behalf, a dear friend contacted a woman who not only makes the best sugar cookies, she also specializes in custom decorations. My friend ordered two dozen cookies, telling the baker that I am a writer and suggesting she decorate them with writerly things like quills or a typewriter or other icons that represent my love for creating stories. The baker asked my name and my friend shared Jayne Ormerod. Isn’t that a thoughtful surprise?

When my friend picked up the cookies, the baker was so excited to share her beautiful creations reflecting images of my book covers. The sweet woman had gone above and beyond to look up my writerly profile and decorate the cookies accordingly. Isn’t that a delightful gesture?

THE WRITERLY LIFE--Pen Musings

Ballpoint pens. One of those things you probably use every day but don’t give much thought to. As a writer, I am (seemingly by definition) a ballpoint pen collector. At any given moment in time, I probably have more than one hundred in my inventory. (It’s not “hoarding” if you actually use them, correct? Just checking.)

Pens are everywhere! Tucked in spines of notebooks and journals; stuffed into coffee cups throughout the house; MIA somewhere in my car (I usually harvest at least twenty from underneath the driver’s seat every time I go fishing for a dropped French fry); and often i have at least one jammed into a sweatshirt pocket—which I will hopefully remember to remove before sending the shirt through the laundry.  

LIFE LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN, Part One

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: You’re never too old to learn something new. <<click here to read a previous blog post with a similar theme.>> 

And here we go again.

Even though I am rapidly approaching that magic number (no, not the legal drinking age, but the one for retirement), I'm still learning stuff. Every single day. I recently learned that playful pups and edible gardens do not have to be mutually exclusive. This is such a eureka moment for me, as it is contrary to a lesson I learned in my youth and have never forgotten. Dogs relieve themselves wherever they want, even if it’s in a pumpkin patch. Call me a germaphobe, but I just don’t like the idea of dog poo leeching in my Thanksgiving pie.

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS...What the Heck Does That even Mean?

<Flashback Friday…someone used a phrase the other day that I’d heard very often throughout my thirty years as a military spouse, but rarely hear in the civilian world. And when I heard it, I tried to remember what it meant. No luck. (This getting older thing is no joke!) Thank goodness I wrote this blog a decade ago that I could quickly refresh my memory. And I thought maybe some of my blog visitors would be interested to have their memories refreshed, or maybe learn something new. So here is a repeat post from April 2, 2012.>>

 At a recent Hail and Farewell (a party wherein new reports to the command are welcomed and those departing are bid a fond adieu), the Lieutenant heading off to Norfolk was offered the traditional wishes of “Fair winds and following seas.”  Since I’ve been around the Navy world for almost 30 years, I’ve heard this phrase uttered hundreds, if not thousands, of times.  But (and this may be a sign of maturity on my part) this time it got me to wondering what exactly it meant.  So I let my fingers do the surfing through the cyber world, and I thought I’d save y’all from duplicating my efforts and today seems a good opportunity to share my newly acquired knowledge.

THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

 

     The first thing any good detective does when entering a crime scene is to look for clues. Not just a quick once over, but an inch-by-inch detailed inspection for a stray hair, an unexplained fingerprint, or anything out of the ordinary. Every detail is documented, for it may become important later in the investigation.

SLEEPING IS FOR SISSIES (Or Those Not Invested in a Can't-Put-Down Book)

Let’s start the morning with a quick quiz. Pencils ready? Let’s go.

Which of the following statements best defines the term “Book Hangover”:

     A)  That feeling of sleep deprivation from staying up too late reading a book you can’t put down.

    B)  The Inability to start a new book because you’re still living in the last book’s world.

     C) That moment when you finish a book, look around an realize that everyone is just carrying on with their lives as though you didn’t just experience emotional trauma at the hands of a book.

     D)  Difficulty entering the reality of everyday life after spending the last 48 hours fully immersed in an amazing book.

DAYLIGHT SAVING--WHAT A JOKE!

Are we really “saving daylight” when we shift the clocks forward in the spring and back in the fall? Or are we really “saving energy?” Perhaps a more appropriate term would be “shifting daylight”.  

The concept of daylight saving (otherwise known as Summer Hours in other parts of the world) has gone in and out of favor.  There have always been proponents, touting the energy saved, and the opponents, saying that if people want to enjoy daylight, they should just get out of bed an hour earlier each day (I’m a card-carrying member of this camp!)  Not only is it disruptive to schedules—and anyone who has children or animals who don’t grasp the concept, this can be an incredibly frustrating semi-annual transition—there is some evidence that the number of accidents increase the week after a change as people adjust to the new light levels during their commute.

Hard to believe, the whole thing started out as a joke.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT RHYMES WITH FRIDAY?

WINE!

If a writer really cares about their readers, they will conduct careful research on a given topic. Facts must be accurate. Unusual tidbits will make the story interesting. Whacky scenarios need be plausible (hence my attempt to outrun a bull across an open field, but that's another story for another day.)

ONLY THE SHADOW KNOWS...if Spring is Coming

   

 If you still believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or that Carolyn Keene (author of the Nancy Drew mysteries) exists, then you might not be ready for the dose of reality I’m about to administer. If you want to flip over to play a game of mahjongg while the rest of us discuss this, that’s OK by me.

     Those of you still with me, you might want to sit down. 

     Is everyone ready?  Then here we go.

JAYNE'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

I thought I was alone in the world, carrying a deep dark secret. I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, this terrible, unforgivable thing I did. It started when I was a child, and has continued throughout my adult life (and that’s a pretty long time.)

Attending a conference when a well-known author asked if anyone else did this, I raised my hand. Actually raised it for all of the attendees to see! And so did a lot of other people! I wasn’t alone!

What is this terrible secret?

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW! (Or Have at Least Researched)

Credit to Tom Watterson/Calvin and Hobbes

    

 The number one rule writers are taught in the hard-knock school of writing is “write what you know.” Which is all fine and good, unless you are a pushing-social-security-age, rule-following female who writes about murder. I am going to put this out there to all of my past, present and future readers, I HAVE NEVER KILLED ANYONE just to research a book (or for any reason, for that matter). Nor have I ever stumbled across a dead body lying in the garden or sitting in an empty garage or floating in the surf (my husband has, but that’s another story for another day.) The only dead bodies I have seen/touched have been prettified, with hair styled, dressed in their best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, lying in a casket.

But I will admit to having done a few things, all in the name of research.