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Never lacking for something to say, Elizabeth shares everything from All My Children to Writing and all the life that’s in-between . . .

Weekend Advice

May 8, 2008 – 4:00 am

Okay, the weekend is nearly here and I know some of you are probably making plans. Good idea. And even if you haven’t, I have already done your weekend entertainment itinerary. I know, I know, how kind of me. You’ll thank me even more once you’ve gone and seen:

Ironman.

Believe you me, if I can find a way to go see it again, you’ll find my backside planted in a multiplex with a bucket of popcorn and my eyes all over me some Robert Downey Jr. Now, first off, I am HUGE action film, superhero sucker of a movie goer. But I never get choked up over an action film. You won’t catch me getting a bit misty eyed over Spiderman or feeling the need to give Arnold a hug. But damn, if RD Jr doesn’t have your heart beating and make you feel his pain. He’s always been a great actor, but he’s hit his stride with this role.

And even for all the big bangs and crashes, it is at its heart just a really, really good movie, great acting and some wonderful comedy. An afternoon with Ironman is an afternoon well spent.

But then you might be feeling, well, in need of a little culture. You know, what my husband calls “those old ladies in bonnets” movies. Well, get your bonnet out and settle down for Cranford on Masterpiece Theater. Even if you missed the first installment this past Sunday, there is a good chance your local PBS station will be repeating the first episode before this Sunday’s next installment. Find the time, grab the remote and settle in for a beautiful story of small town England in 1842 and on the verge of finding itself in, horrors of all horrors, the “modern age.” Add to that, some gracious and sublime acting. Even the skeptic in the house, who was dismayed that I was calling dibs on the TV during the sacred 10:00 o’clock news, was riveted after the first hour. And make sure you have a hankie or two nearby by the end. Even my husband was crying. You can use the one you nearly need when you watch RDJr.

By Elizabeth | Posted in Movies, Television, Movie Stars | Comments (3)

My Favorite Event

May 5, 2008 – 4:27 am

I know, an author shouldn’t have favorites, but I really, really, love going to the Rose City Chapter’s Reader’s Luncheon for Literacy. Ah, let me count the reasons”

1) I go down in the most civilized form of travel available. The train. And when you take the train from Seattle to Portland, you have views like this:

And this (South Puget Sound):
And you can get a little work done:
No one confiscates your banana or your water bottle. You can work with the scenery rolling by and no worries about I-5 traffic and parking when you get to Portland. In fact, I walked from the train station to my hotel. How very green of me. We won’t mention the cupcake I picked up on the way from Cupcake Jones. Thank goodness they don’t have one of these in Seattle.2) And when I get to Portland, I stay at the same hotel as the luncheon, the Governor, which is this wonderful, elegant old hotel that has been lovingly restored. I had this wonderful corner room, ALL TO MYSELF. It was bright and sunny and I spent an hour curled up in a chair and read, feeling quite decadent. And there was the cupcake to help with that as well. This was just a huge treat for me, because I get very little time that isn’t wrapped up in writing, and family and kid stuff. And then if my rapture wasn’t complete enough, look what they handed me when I checked in:

Are you freakin’ kiddin’ me?! Room service Starbucks? I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. That or they were going to have to evict me. Now after I got over the idea of having a man in a uniform deliver my steaming hot, non-fat, one sugar in the raw latte (and walked my lazy butt downstairs and got my own) I took a knitting class that night at Knit-Purl, which also happens to be right across the street–which only added to my feeling so pampered–no one to cook for, no one to get some where. Just me knitting away for three hours with other knit geeks. Pinch me, I’d gone to heaven.

3) But here’s the icing on the cake, not to be confused with pile of frosting that was on my Cupcake Jones: the luncheon. Where I get to see old friends:

(Delilah Marvelle, Christina Arbini and Kelli Estes looking pretty) And there are the raffle tickets that I buy:
And there are the people who win the baskets:
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o265/elizboknits/DSCF3171.jpg
Now I have a reputation of always hosting the lucky table. For two years running it was Earlee from Idaho who would sit at my table and win more baskets than would fit in her car. But this year, these were my lucky tablemates. Oh, yes, they won all that–books, chocolate, treats and goodies. And it even works for me, because I won one too–but then I entrusted it to Kelli to bring back to Seattle, loaded with goodies and chocolate, so you all are my witnesses on that if I get an empty bucket and a couple of used, chocolate stained paperbacks from her.3. I go to hear the speaker. They never miss. And this year was no exception. My good friend Suzanne Macpherson gave a hilarious talk and I made a fool of myself laughing way too loud. But she and her Barbies were hilarious. And, Suz, I still maintain that my Tammy doll was not the Barbie wanna-be slut you described. My Tammy was always a proper lady.
I think I smiled like this all the way home. Because it really is my favorite event.Got something you really like to do every year? Share! We could all use weekends like this and suggestions are always welcome.

By Elizabeth | Posted in Booksignings, Travel, Reading | Comments (12)

You’ll never believe what I found

April 28, 2008 – 4:17 am

sitting in the front row of my Jane Austen talk last week. In fact, the entire night was sort of a series of unexpected moments.

But before I give the real shock away, let me tell you, I am so relieved those chats are over. While I’m usually pretty confident I know more about the era than the average bear, I always get nervous before I do a talk on Jane Austen. Because she is so beloved, so studied, so written about. So I did my talk by skirting Jane and just talking about her era. That is fun. Sharing those tidbits–like Jane losing her writing desk while she was traveling because it looked like everyone else’s traveling desk–sort of the ubiquitous black suitcase you see today going round and round on the baggage carousel. Or how people then overspent, run up debts and built houses and lives they couldn’t afford.

Ah, the world and mores and times may change, but people, God bless them, never really do.

For me, going to the talk out at the Snoqualmie Library was like taking a step into my past. I used to live out there, in the woods, near the river. When it was really the sticks and no one lived so far off the beaten track. But these days, civilization has discovered what my parents knew all those years ago when they moved out there. The place is gorgeous. Look at this million dollar view from one of the housing developments I passed on the way there:

And then there is the view from Starbucks. (If you grew up out there, you’d chuckle as I did when I saw it. I mean, Starbucks in Snoqualmie? ) This is the hometown of the Mar-T Cafe, of Twin Peaks fame, for goodness sakes, hardly the suburban/urban homeland for a skinny grande with a raw sugar.
So if that wasn’t surprising enough, imagine as I began my talk with this:
Yes, no need to check your monitor resolution. That is four high school guys sitting in the front row of my talk on Jane Austen’s England. And if that wasn’t enough to rattle me, it was snowing when I walked to my car. Yes, snowing. The last week in April. In Western Washington. But come on, I’d seen enough that night not to be shocked. I was even on the lookout for Bigfoot hitchhiking as I drove home. I bet he’s a caramel macchiato sort of guy, don’t ya think?

So, hey, what’s surprised you lately?

By Elizabeth | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (5)

Patience

April 21, 2008 – 4:26 am

This is probably not a word that most people would use when describing me. I am not the most patient person. I want things to happen. Now. Not months from now, not years from now. But now. Today. Immediately. And so I became a writer. I can just see career counselors and life coaches all over the place just shaking their heads. Because writing is all about the patience. The hurry up and wait. A one page at a time sort of existence. I can’t just get up one morning with a brilliant idea and sit down at 9 with a latte in hand and chuck out 400 pages of brilliant text and be done with the idea before the I have to fly off for martinis at 5 somewhere hip and happening.

I have to live ideas for months and sometimes years, before they even get to the front of the queue and then they have a good six to nine months of nagging at me to sit my butt down and work. Yes, work. At times banging my head against the keyboard because the words won’t come, and other times against the walls when others get the bonuses or perks that I want, yet they seem to get with very little effort on their part.

Impatience has a way of coloring your gaze with jealously.

But over the last few years I’ve found that I have more patience than I thought I did. Or maybe I’ve learned how to live with patience. Or I’ve come to “a-hem” a certain age where patience is a little more embraceable. The funny thing is, that when you go along with the notion of being patient, of waiting, of letting life run its course and the right path will open up for you, one step at a time, the world moves along at a much smoother pace. A lot less wall banging.

I suppose one thing that taught me this is knitting. Yes, knitting. Talk about the ultimate craft in patience. A sweater is knit one stitch at a time. Take a look at a sweater and imagine how many stitches go into that. Knit one at a time, over and over again. This is the second part of patience–the faith part of it. That if you take that one stitch at a time, write one page at a time, with each step you are closer to finishing. The other day I picked up a sock I had set down last fall and hadn’t finished. I had forgotten how to turn the heel–which is the part of knitting that makes that pocket for your heel and turns the sock that 90 degrees you need to go. Now my problem was that I tried to do it at 10 at night. After several frustrating attempts and some really bad knitting, I nearly tossed the entire thing in the garbage. Instead, the next day, I sat down at the table, with instructions right in front of me, a latte at my side and turned that darn heel. One stitch at a time.

Matthew’s autism has probably also had a hand in getting me to this place. We spend months on waiting lists for services. We spent so much time on one list, by the time his name came to the top for help, he was too old for the program. But on the other hand, as I look over the past five years that we’ve been coping with this issue, that when that call comes, that slot becomes available, it is the right time for him to have those services. The right TA, like our beloved Kelsey, or an awesome teacher, like his Mr. Perkins, comes into our life and helps bring Matthew one step at a time out of the isolation that autism is.

Patience is faith. Faith that our footsteps are being guided and that what we really need (as opposed to what we jump through hoops and run in circles convinced that we need) will be there when we can put it to best use.

What have you been avoiding? What are you impatiently waiting for, yet never seems to happen? What steps, rather than leaps, will get you there?

By Elizabeth | Posted in Autism, Life, Writing | Comments (4)

Let Them Eat Cake . . .

April 14, 2008 – 4:07 am

I have to admit it. I suck at decorating cakes. I mean, I really stink at it. And don’t suggest a cake decorating class. I flunked. Twice. It is humbling to have the cake decorating teacher suggest, ever-so-politely, that while my desire to learn how to make cakes special for my children’s birthdays was admirable, I might want to just buy them from Safeway. Sigh.

And then there was the Seven Minute disaster. I called my mom in tears after I had gone through all my sugar and eggs and 4, yes, FOUR attempts to make Seven Minute Frosting. “Mom, I can’t get it right. It just sits there.” Mom to the rescue. She comes down, watches me ruin yet another batch, and even she was baffled. The Queen of Seven Minute Frosting and my own mother had the nerve to suggest, that perhaps I should just stick to ready made. If you knew my organic lovin’, never-make-it-any-way-but-by-scratch-and-with-love mother, it was like being told I had been dropped off on the doorstep as a baby by really odd strangers.

Now that doesn’t mean I still don’t try. Believe me, I got rejected as a writer all over town before I sold. Every editor I’ve ever worked with (5 in total) all rejected me at one time or another. So even being told to shove off by the nice Wilton Lady or even by my own Mother wasn’t enough to stop me from committing crimes against cakedom in the privacy of my own home. I mean, I can learn this. I can master this. But when the husband looked at my last attempt (February 12, 2008 to be exact) he was less than kind. “Honey, please do us all a favor. Don’t frost them.” Oh, the cake is very edible, and so is the frosting (as long as I stick to Buttercream) but together, I turn it into an eyesore, a birthday homage to Jackson Pollock.

But after the February birthday in our house, comes the April follow-up. Here was my chance to redeem myself. Now over the last year or so, I’ve taken to reading Jane Brockett’s Blog, Yarnstorm. She knits, cooks, and takes wonderful photographs that are a delight for the soul. Jane also wrote the book, The Gentle Art of Domesticity. And of course, she bakes cakes. Or rather, she can decorate them. Without any help from Wilton. Why just look at this magic! Or this one. Look how she doesn’t even frost the sides, and yet, it is still a work of art. I felt inspired. I felt breathless. This I could do.

And see if I didn’t:

Other than the kitchen looking like I was battling icing demons, I nailed it, and the kitchen cupboards, the floor and one of the kids when they wandered by and I brought the hand mixer up a little too fast. Sure, Jane’s kitchen probably never looks like this, so I’ve also done the homey, beauty shot:

And just so you can have a little food for the soul on this Monday morning, here is my close up:
Take that Wilton! And my heartfelt thanks to Jane Brockett for saving me from a life of cake decorating humiliation.

By Elizabeth | Posted in Life, Recipes | Comments (2)