April 20th

Hi, it’s Christina –

I just wanted to take a few minutes, while I was having my first cup of coffee, to wish everyone (who celebrates) a Happy Easter! I’m up really early today, because I ran out of steam and didn’t get everything done. My hubby, bless his heart, colored eggs with Dani last night, cooked up the sausage for the sausage and peppers I need to bring to my aunts, and he straightened up the living room for me, and Dani baked the cupcakes. All I have left to do is clean up the kitchen and help T.E.B. with his morning task.

PJ and Alex will be here by eight, and I would really like to be out of the shower and dressed already by the time they get here. The Easter egg hunt, baskets, and breakfast should take us to nine, which leaves Dani and my husband forty-five minutes to shower and dress before we have to leave for church.

Easter morning is fun around here, and if you’ve read Corporate Blues, you already know my family’s tradition. It will be a little strange though, with PJ not waking up here and Lys away at college, but we are still determined to make it nice for Dani.

First we start with a letter from the Easter Bunny. Here’s a copy of the note the kids will be finding this morning:

A dozen eggs for each, you’ll have to find

I’ve done my best, so take your time

Search high and search low, and then you’ll see

Just how clever this old bunny can be

ORANGE and YELLOW will be Alex’s quest

Let’s see if she’ll be able to keep up with the rest

This year PURPLE and PINK eggs are for my Dani girl

Don’t leave any behind, give it a whirl

That leaves PJ, my only lad

BLUE and GREEN eggs this year, are yours to be had

Of course I did not forget sweet Lys,

Even though this Easter, she must miss

If you see eggs of the sparkly kind,

Those are for her, so leave them behind

That’s all for right now, and I must scurry

For as you know, this morn, I’m in a great hurry

Hope your day is warm and sunny

Love your friend,

The Easter Bunny

     

Then when the race to see who can find all their eggs first is over, they open their eggs, one at a time, alternating. Inside each egg is either money, or a slip of paper saying “Pick a Gift”. After all the eggs are opened, and all the gifts unwrapped, they open their Easter baskets and make a bee line for their Cadbury egg – our traditional “Easter Breakfast”, one which, every year, makes my husband wince and shake his head. Then we scatter and start rushing around, like a bunch of chickens with a fox in their hen house, to try to get to church on time.

Some years we’re more successful than others. This year we need to be on time, because with the way they redid the parking lot at church, there aren’t as many spaces as we used to have, so our minister asked, if possible, could we carpool. My mom will be pulling up at 9:45, so we had better be ready. The one thing she doesn’t know is, she’ll be the one driving, because I never got around to cleaning out our car yesterday. I’m safe though, she would never think to kill me on such a holy day.

Okay, I should skedaddle. I hope y’all have a blessed day, and happy writing!

April 19th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Good morning. Oh what a glorious Spring day here in Central New Jersey. This is what Spring should be like, not too hot, not too cold, sunny with all the flowers and trees in bloom. I just love the Japanese cherry trees and the weeping cherry trees. The shock of pink against the lime green is so beautiful.I keep asking, but I still haven’t received one for our front yard.

I totally forgot to mention it, but yesterday marked the one year anniversary of this blog. What originally started as a two week project, has turned into a daily “must” for me. If I can’t blog first thing in the morning, my day just doesn’t seem to ever get into sync. Over the past year, you have been with me through me winning my first award for writing. You talked me down from a panic attack over going into NYC to accept the award. You cheered with me when my daughter got into her first choice college, and you cried with me when my son moved out and my daughter left for college. You rooted me on during the insanity of NaNoWriMo. We have celebrated every holiday together. You’ve sent prayers when requested. You’ve laughed with me, and I’m sure a few times at me. All in all, this has been one of the most wonderful years of my life, and in part, I have all of you to thank for it. I appreciate all of you, and may God bless you as much as you have me.

I did manage to get some writing done yesterday, again mostly from a horizontal position. Yesterday was better than Thursday, and so far today has been better than yesterday, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow won’t be too terrible. It took me a little over three hours, but I also managed to get the Easter baskets finished. (This photo is from a previous year.)

That still leaves, the eggs – both dying the real ones and filling and hiding the plastic ones, the letter from T.E.B., the cleaning, the baking, the cooking, and the grocery shopping. My hubby’s not going to be happy, but I’m sending him to the grocery store. We qualified for the free ham or turkey at out ShopRite, and it has to be picked up by today, the dog is out of his morning chew sticks, and I want juice, danishes, bagels and muffins for tomorrow’s breakfast. It’s less than ten items, I think he can handle it.

I had a nice surprise yesterday. At around quarter to six last night, my dog started fussing, so I thought he needed to go out. I open the garage door, Colby goes rushing out, I follow at a much slower pace; and there it was, a box, just sitting in my garage. I walk over and check out the label. It's addressed to me. To the best of my knowledge, I hadn't ordered anything. Curiosity piqued, I abandoned the dog, who was perfectly secure by our invisible fence, and brought the box inside.

Dani asked, "What's that?"

"I don't know." I reply.

"Who's it addressed to?"

"Me."

"Who's it from?"

"I have no idea."

"So open it!"

"That's what I had planned on doing before you started asking all your questions."

"Can I open it?"

"Sure, why not?"

I hand the box to my daughter, and with painstaking care, she opens the box. After a few minutes, she gets the box opened, reaches inside and pulls out a beautiful gold box, adorned with a royal purple ribbon and bow. Thankfully, tucked inside the ribbon is a note.

It seems the Easter Bunny is a bit of a detective, and he managed to track down my address so he could leave a box of incredibly yummy chocolate truffles, as a thank you for editing his book.

It was a wonderful and totally unexpected surprise, and I had never heard of the chocolatier. Being a confirmed and admitted chocoholic, I thought I knew (and probably sampled) most of the chocolates the world has to offer. Between friends traveling, me traveling, and a brother-in-law who sets up candy store all over the world, I thought I had them all covered. Happily, I was wrong, and missed a chocolatier who has been around since the mid-17^th century.

Bissinger’s started in Paris, sometime in the early 1600s. Then in 1668, King Louis XIV, bestowed the title of “Confiseur Imperial” on the Bissinger family for their confectionary excellence. Their name and reputation grew throughout Europe, and in 1845 they found their way to America, when Karl Bissinger settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. Over the past 169 years, Bissinger has received many Sofi awards, been featured in Food magazine, and has caught the eye of numerous celebrities including Lauren Bacall and Oprah.

See, this is what happens when you have a historical romance writer do a blog. A tiny thing sparks my curiosity, and I need to seek out its history. Hopefully I didn’t bore you too much. If you have a chance to try Bissinger’s chocolate truffles, do so. So far I have tried an espresso flavored one and a raspberry flavored one, and they were delicious. The only complaint I have is, there was no key in the box, so I have no clue what the flavors are before I try them.

Okay, enough already. I have tons to do today, and one of them needs to be some work on FTQ. I hope y’all have a fantastic day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

Write a story about Easter eggs…

I love Easter eggs, all kinds of Easter eggs.

When I was a little girl, I used to go over to my neighbor, and best friend, Nadia’s house. Her and her family made Pisanke, aka Ukrainian Easter eggs. We would use these strange sticks with a medal nail pushed through the end, we’d heat the nail up with a candle flame, dip the hot nail into pure beeswax, then draw on the raw egg. After we drew everything we wanted kept white, we would submerge our egg in yellow dye. After the egg absorbed enough of the dye to be a deep rich yellow, we would take it out, add beeswax to everything we wanted to stay yellow, then dip the egg into the orange dye. We’d repeat the process with the red, then purple and finally the black dye.

When the egg came out of the final dye bath, it looked hideous. It had lumps of grey beeswax all over it, and the only part of actual egg showing was black as pitch. Ah, but that’s when Nadia’s mom would bring our eggs over to the stove. She would warm a towel by rubbing it on the inside of a hot pan, then she would take the hot towel and start to rub our egg with it. That’s when the magic happened. As she rubbed, the ugly grey wax began to melt away, and all our colored designs started to appear.

Right from the start, Nadia’s eggs were beautiful, and mine were a disaster. My lines were shaky and incomplete. I’d miss covering portions of the design in beeswax, so the color scheme was off. I guess I just don’t have enough Ukrainian blood in me. 

I haven’t given up though, every few years I get out my Pisanke kit and give it a whirl. Although they are better than when I was young, I could never make the pieces of art that Nadia can, but that’s okay. I kinda like the silly face eggs my daughters have been making the past few years.

Your Next Challenge is:

To spend tomorrow enjoying your family, whether you celebrate Easter or not.

You have 24 hours. There is no right or wrong, just enjoy. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize how someone else chose to spend their day. Go

April 9th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Good morning. Wow, what a gorgeous day it’s starting out to be, not too cold, bright beautiful sunshine, and no wind. I’ll take it!

Today started out with almost two thousand words completely unrelated to Faerie Tale Queen, my blog or NaNoWriMo. As you know, my daughter was out sick all last week with that norovirus that’s plaguing our schools right now. She was miserable for eight straight days. So obviously, now that she’s back at school, she has a lot of work to catch up on, and the poor kid is stressing.

She missed a week, so she should be allowed a week to make up the work. That’s the policy, but apparently the policy doesn’t mean squat when it’s the end of the marking period. She has projects due – project which were assigned while she was out. She has tests she needs to take – on material that was covered while she was out. She even had to write three papers on health and/or fitness to be able to make up for gym periods she missed. HOW FLIPPIN’ STUPID IS THAT??? Are you kidding me? Like she doesn’t have enough to do without the gym teachers assigning her busy work?

This poor kid has been up to midnight the past two nights trying to get all her work finished. She is so stressed out, I’m actually worried she’s going to make herself sick again. Hence my 2K words this morning. I shot off emails to all her teachers, begging to give Dani the appropriate amount of time to complete her assignments. Telling them it is better to give her an incomplete for the marking period then to force her to hand in an incomplete project, or to take a test on something she hasn’t learned yet because she’s being forced to teach it to herself.

In all fairness, I also sent an email to Dani’s math teacher, thanking her for working with Dani to get her caught up. This teacher went so far as to arrange for another math teacher, who did not have a class period nine, to come in to her classroom so Dani could get some one-on-one help in learning the material she had missed. In this day and age, I find that level of teaching, an anomaly. NOT that the teachers wouldn’t want to be able to help their students any way they can, but that the administration makes it so difficult for them to be able to go above and beyond the way Dani’s math teacher did. My hat’s off to you Ms. M, you found a way, and it’s is very much appreciated!

We’ll have to wait and see if my other emails this morning bought Dani any extra time. If they didn’t, I fear I will have to bring my case further up the food chain, and believe me, when it comes to my kids, I have zero issue going over someone’s head, and all the way to the top head if need be. I’ve done it before, and I will not hesitate to do it again.

Alrighty, I have an extra hour this morning to get some more writing done on FTQ, and I intend to use every second of that time. I hope y’all have a great day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

The Easter Bunny can’t get motivated this year…

Another year, another basket. Who am I kidding? Another billion baskets. And for what? No one appreciates all the hard work I do. Now anyone can go and pick up their Easter candy at Wal-Mart, they don’t need me to bring it to them anymore. So why do I bother?

Why do I bother with putting up with the complaints that I hid an egg too well, and it started stinking up their house two weeks later because they couldn’t find it. Is it my fault they have the observation skills of a myopic sloth? Oh yeah, and I especially love the complaints saying all my candy is making their kids fat. Like it has nothing to do with the drive through dinners three times a week because parents are too lazy to make proper meals; or how about them wanting to be their kids friends and not wanting to upset them so they let them sit on the couch for hours on end playing video games instead of going outside and getting some exercise. Oh yeah, it’s all my fault your kid's a lard butt.

So again I ask, why do I bother? I should just hang up my basket and go soak these weary bones in some aqua waters off some tropical island. I doubt anyone would miss me anyway.

Your Next Challenge is:

One red shoe…

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.

April 8th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Good morning. It’s a rainy Tuesday here in central Jersey, but at least it isn’t too cold. As a matter of fact, we’re supposed to get up into the sixties by noon, and the sun should be poking through around the same time. Tomorrow is only supposed to get up to fifty-eight, but the rest of the week it’s going to be in the sixties. Hallelujah, Spring has finally decided to stick around.

So yesterday didn’t work out exactly as planned; I got to RV’s and she was surprised to see me. Her first words after hello were “Didn’t you get my message?” Yup, still not smart enough for my smart phone. She had called to let me know she had forgotten about a lunch date she had planned, and said I should just come on Tuesday.

Well, since I was there already, and we had an hour before her friend came, and I had brought some of the left over roast beef from Sunday, I got her dinner prepped for her, but then I left. I was home by quarter after twelve, but did I do something productive like write or finish straightening up after Sunday’s party? Nope. I took a nap.

I had stayed up chatting with my son and his girlfriend until almost midnight Sunday. Then, by the time I got to bed, it was almost one, and you know how early I get up in the mornings. I was actually a little worried I would be able to get all that running around done yesterday on less than four hours of sleep. So I guess I was lucky I didn’t have to find out.

I am going to get very little writing done today. I wrote one chapter (it was a dream sequence chapter, so it was short), and now this blog, but I doubt there will be much more. In a few minutes I have to stop and make lunches, and get Dani out the door. Then I’ll have forty five minutes to write before I have to hop in the shower and get ready for work.

So far, I have been able to keep up with the daily quotas for Camp NaNoWriMo, but I’m a little concerned, with working and all, if I will be able to stay on track. Yesterday I hit over 15K, which means I only have 35K to go and three weeks to do it. That translates to around 1,500 words a day. I’m not wigging out just yet, but since this is the third time you’ll be going through this with me, I think you know the freak out will inevitably surface.

Okay, I’m going to boogie. I hope y’all have a fabulous day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

You’re voicing your frustrations while you’re driving, and your GPS starts to answer you back.

“Argh! Where did you get your license, a box of Cracker Jacks? Traffic is backed up for over a mile. Where do you think you’re going to go? You’re just going to cause another accident, then we’ll all be screwed because you’re an IDIOT!”

Turn right in four tenths of a mile.

“You’ve said that already Sally. Soon as I can get ‘four tenths of a mile’ I’ll be sure to turn.”

I didn’t mean to offend you Donald, but you don’t yell at me the way you yell at the other drivers, and you were getting very upset, so I thought it would be a good time to speak.

“Who said that?”

Me, Sally. Well, actually my name is Susan, but I don’t mind you calling me ‘Sally’, Donald.

“Sally? Yeah right.” Since traffic was at a dead stop, Donald looked around his car frantically. He checked under the visors, in the glove box, in the back seat. “Am I being punked?”

‘Punk’d’ a television show which ran from 2003 until 2012 on MTV, created by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg. Practical jokes were played on unsuspecting celebrities. No Donald, you are not being ‘Punk’d’. It’s just me, Susan.

“What? How? What?”

Caution Donald, I detect your blood pressure rising. You need to calm down.

Okay, that was fun. I could have kept going with that one. It makes up a little for yesterday’s terrible challenge.

Your Next Challenge is:

The Easter Bunny can’t get motivated this year…

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.