The Firecracker's Fuse, A Tale from the Inside

No, not from the inside of the firecracker. I hear tell it’s just some stinky powder stuff in there. I’m talking about from inside the house. Yeah. The important word here is INside.

Perhaps a little background information is in order. Every July 1^st through 4^th my family (OK, my husband and son – leave me out of it for now) runs a fireworks stand from our garage. They do this for two reasons.

1. My husband puts on a public display every year for our community. It is held at our church with a potluck supper, firecrackers for kids, military salute and the finale of a fireworks display set to music. It is quite a production, draws a big crowd and I am so proud of him for the fantastic job he does with it.  But, blowing up all those fireworks can get expensive, hence, the fireworks stand. We use the proceeds from our stand as funding for the public display.
2.  They just plain love fireworks.

Running a fireworks stand is great fun.  Anything I might have been heard to say to the contrary should be ignored. It’s fun because I wouldn’t trade the community outreach of our public display for even a nice quiet 4^th with nothing to do. The display is AWESOME!!!

Now, that said, let me go a little further. Heat is not my friend. I would go so far as to say heat is my enemy. We do not get along well. We don’t work and play nicely with one another. We don’t even try anymore. But because our founding fathers chose to sign the Declaration of Independence in the dead of summer, we now have this wonderful holiday forever stranded there as well. Long story short, I can’t sit in the fireworks stand for four days and swelter. Furthermore, no one wants me to. I hear tell I can get a little grumpy if I’ve endured the heat for anything longer than two minutes.

So, I stay inside. Yeah, I feel guilty. Well sort of. We have extraordinary help for our stand. They do much better than me, probably because they actually like fireworks. I’ve personally never been able to make that admission. But I have found things I can do from the inside that are helpful – or maybe they’re just humoring me?

I can make signs and price tags. I can count money and pay expenses. I can keep track of change, debit card machines and cash register paper. I can turn on the outside lights when it gets dark and I can help desperate little children find the bathroom when Dad has been gazing at artillery shells for a little too long.  Oh yeah – and I can cook. Our fireworks stand workers insist on being fed. Fortunately they like “to-go” burgers and fries and carry-out pizza. But I do cook for them too. This year I made brownies, tacos and red/white/blue rice krispy treats. I have an extra especially awesome Pinterest board for 4^th of July with lots of fun recipes and decorations. But the main point here – it is all done from the inside.

Customers don’t see me. I don’t see them. If the Statue of Liberty stopped by to replenish her torch, I wouldn’t know it. (We did have someone bring their pet snake this year. Kind of glad to have missed that.)  I don’t know the difference between a missile and a shell. I don’t know why they call those square things a cake and don’t even get me started on the box/brick/case issue. No, I was meant to enjoy 4^th of July from the inside.

My son and I were discussing our favorite months this past week. His favorite month is July. Mine is January. “Why?” I innocently asked. “Why would you pick July as your favorite month?” He started naming off the reasons. Summer, sunshine, warm weather, county fairs, no school, and – you guessed it – Independence Day!

I hated to admit it but those very same reasons are all the things that make July my least favorite month. Oh well. I’ve made it to August now. Just get through my second least favorite month then we’ll be on our way to autumn.  And that same son who loves July, I am fond of reminding him that he is the main reason I have unfriended summer. He was a summer baby – forever changed my thermostat. But that’s another blog.

And the meaning of all this (if you’ve read my blogs before you know there is always a moral to the story. I’m as bad as Aesop.) We’re all different. Some of us like things others of us don’t. And guess what. We’re both weird. We can’t point our fingers and call someone else strange because they’re different than us. It takes all kinds of people to make up our world. Just how successful would anyone’s fireworks stand be if not for the people “inside” the firecracker – where it’s nice and cool I might add. And btw, that’s supposed to be a metaphor. It applies to more than firework stands!

When All Else Fails Try Popcorn

                It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a blog entry. Not because I don’t want to but because I’ve entertained the thought I have nothing to say about my life experiences that anyone would want to read about. I have not been skydiving (nor will I ever). I have not been lost in the mountains at night (like my friends David and Kim). I have not made a trip to the emergency room with a bleeding child (at least for many years now, such as my friend Bridgette did this week.)

                So what have I done since I last made a public proclamation about my life? I’ve completed edits on four of my books to add that dreaded male point of view (see last blog post.) I have been on a virtual writer’s retreat with my friends from Seekerville.( http://www.seekerville.blogspot.com/) I have survived another 4^th of July (and all that represents at the Regnier household.) I have joined Romance Writer’s of America. (woohoo!) I have had my beautiful over-furry dog shaved for summer (she looks like a sheared sheep.) I have overused parentheses (like a novice writer might use exclamation points.)

                Oh, I know. I have made peace with my broken microwave. Everybody ought to be interested in that.  Do kitchen appliances develop ‘habits’? If they do, I suppose I could call my microwave’s latest behavior a bad habit. A few months ago I noticed that occasionally when I closed the door, the light would not go off.  In turn, that meant the microwave would not work. I soon learned I had to open the door, shut the door and try it again. Not really such a bad thing.          Until this bad habit got worse. . .

 It happened more and more often. It took harder “shuts” to get the light to go out until I was almost slamming that door. But I would endure. I took the opportunity to get in touch with my microwave, understand its idiosyncrasies and how to work around them. The secret lies in letting it think it has gotten the best of me when I’m really only playing along. Which was all fine and dandy until others started noticing the problem. . .

 My husband, though incredibly patient and loving with me does not carry forward this characteristic to microwaves. He would become annoyed when his coffee didn’t warm up like he told Mr. Mike to do. My son, home for a respite from college called me at work. “Mom. What’s the matter with the microwave?”

                I explained to both of them how to solve the problem. A slam of the door, a kind word for Mike and he would usually straighten out his attitude. Nope. Didn’t work. For either one of them. Perhaps they don’t have the gentle encouragement my friend Mike needs to complete his work.

                Hubby calls Mike ‘stupid thing.’ Son claims Mike is ‘possessed.’ Both a bit extreme, don’t you think? With absolutely no smugness and in total humility I showed them both that indeed, I could sweet-talk Mike into doing what I asked. Needless to say, they weren’t impressed.

                Now, go with me back to firework stand week. It is the night of the big display, the whole reason we do a firework stand in the first place. Hubby and son have left to set up for said fireworks display. My fabulous, hard-working, heat enduring helpers Lance, Chelsea and Annie leave me alone in the stand for a few minutes while they go inside to make their supper. Warmed up leftover pizza. Yep, you’re a step ahead of me. That involves a microwave.

                I can hear them laughing from all the way outside. They’re having too much fun. No, they’re just trying to make Mike work and he is being particularly lazy. Lance pushes every button imaginable. Surely that popcorn button will kick Mike into action. Nope. Not even popcorn works. Chelsea hollers at me from the back door (amidst squeals of laughter). “Cindy, how do you work the microwave?”

                This time it even takes me awhile to undo all the button pushing they tried, but finally I get Mike woke up enough to warm their pizza. Those kids laughed about me and Mike all evening and the next few days. The story even made its way to facebook. (see photo of Lance and Chelsea – don’t they look perplexed?)

                But, even with this fiasco on record, Mike and I seem to be getting along fine. I can make him work when and how I want to with very little coaxing. Never mind that I’m the only one that can seem to convince him.

                I have such a wonderful husband. He took me out to eat a few nights ago and invited me to go microwave shopping. What? Send my buddy Mike to a microwave junkyard? No! I can’t do it. We understand each other. He trusts me. I can’t let him down.

                Maybe I’ll have to give in though. At least before next year’s fireworks stand. My dear Mike gets a little more cantankerous with each passing warm-up.

 And the moral of this story? So many times in life things do not go our way. It doesn’t work out like we planned. That happy ending we had in mind gets postponed or even canceled. Instead of becoming angry, stomping our feet or giving up, maybe we should just try again? Learn how to live within the boundaries of where life takes you. Reach for the stars but if you can’t quite touch one, reach for a sunbeam instead. Life takes detours every day. Guess what? It’s out of our hands. Trust the One who has it all under control. You still may not be able to nuke pizza but you won’t be sorry either.

What's Your Point of View?

Remember back in whatever grade it was when you had to learn point of view? You know, stuff like first person, third person, omniscient and all that. Boring stuff, huh? Unfortunately, some of us are a little different breed and actually get excited about things like this. I think I just admitted to one of my idiosyncrasies but you probably already knew it anyway.

Well, here’s the thing. I’ve wanted to be an author for a VERY long time. I think that ‘when-I-grow-up’ wish dates back to second grade – even before I knew about John Boy Walton or had met up with Laura Ingalls Wilder on the library shelves. That might explain why certain pieces of information that are fairly meaningless to most of us kind of stick with me and make an impact on future decisions. Case in point:

Several years ago – probably many years ago because I don’t remember when exactly, I read one of those pieces authors are fond of writing titled with some variation of “What advice do you have for those who would like to be writers?” I can’t remember who the particular author was either but the gist of her article – that I remember vividly.

The advice she gave to would be writers is always use a single point of view. Now this terminology is a little different from first person or third person thing. What she meant was to tell your story from only one vantage point, most probably that of your heroine. Therefore the reader would see only the thoughts and feelings in the heroine’s head without the advantage of “head-hopping” or going from one character to another to find out what they’re thinking. This author had been very successful with this approach. Her reasoning was that in real life this is the way it happens. In our own life circumstances we don’t know what others around us are thinking unless they tell us. More realistic then. Made perfect sense to me at the time.

When I wrote the eight romance novels that I currently list in my repertoire, I used this technique of single point of view. Some of you reading this have read some of those novels. You know what I mean. I never, not once, ventured out of my heroine’s head and hopped over to someone else’s, aka, the dreaded “male point of view.” I find myself pretty much unqualified to write from a male perspective. Who knows how a man thinks? Certainly not me. Any ladies out there, if you understand male perspective perhaps I could convince you to share some insights with me.

So, it took all this time, 8 books and many rejections later to figure out that THINGS HAVE CHANGED. Hello. Time to come out of the 1980s and step into the here and now. No one writes books from single POV anymore. I can’t name one fiction romance I’ve read, written within the last ten years (and I’ve read a LOT) that uses single POV. So, I had to be sort of hit over the head with this concept. I participated in an online editor chat a few weeks ago where this point came up. Industry standard is now at least two POVs (hero and heroine) with an approximate even split between the two. Most publishing houses won’t even consider anything else. A few are still out there that might, but when you’re a newcomer wanna-be like me, straying from the norm is not the most recommended road to travel.

First, I went through utter dismay. All 8 of my novels were trash. Hide them. Never let them see the light of day. It’s too embarrassing that I actually wrote like that. But, I couldn’t do it. Those are my babies. But what to do? I couldn’t send them out into the harsh real world without the proper upbringing.

I consulted with several of my author friends and also the highest authority I could find in my tight circle of literary advice-givers. My sister knows everything and doesn’t hesitate to tell me!  Jill, and every other author friend I asked including my 1K/1Hr group on facebook said the same thing. Just change your stories. Hmmm…. Easy for you to say!

One friend said this. Change the first story to make about half of it from your hero’s perspective but keep it the old way too. Lay them side by side and see which you like best. Or better yet, which one a future editor might like best. Good advice.

 All I could think of was how much time this would take and how awful it would be to decide how to cut half of my heroine’s story in favor of my hero’s. I hate cutting. I’m terrible at it. I jumped in anyway. Guess what? I had so much fun getting acquainted with my hero I didn’t want to stop. He actually turned out to be a pretty cool guy – though not nearly as perfect as what he seemed to be from my heroine’s eyes. I enjoyed it so much I was done revising my first book within a week. A week! That’s all it took. Of course I had some sick days and snow days thrown in there and I’ll probably have to go back to work eventually so the others won’t go as fast, but still. There’s reason for my scissors to plow forward. I can hardly wait to get connected with my other heros and find out more about what makes them tick. Sigh!  I’ll have those poor girls falling in love with them all over again in all kinds of different ways.

If anyone read my printed version of my first book from a few years back and picked it up to read it  today, you would not recognize it. Same story, same characters, told in a completely different way. But this is a good thing. And onward I go. 

Oh, btw, I will share more about this later when I have further info but check out this link and THANK YOU to all of you that voted!                   Family fiction contest

Transference of Pain

So it’s the day before Thanksgiving. I’m sitting in the dentist’s chair pointing out the tooth that has been causing me pain the last few days. “it’s that one right there, third from the end, the one with the silver fillings.” Add your own sound effects what I sound like with a mouthful of fingers and dental instruments.

Dr. Jerry looks confused. He taps the tooth, taps it again. Nothing. He peers at the x-rays. “It looks fine.”

“Well, it’s not hurting right now but yesterday I couldn’t even eat.”

“I don’t know how to fix this for you because I can’t see anything to fix. Hmm…. What about this tooth back here?” He taps on the wisdom tooth that has been chipped off at a slant since last New Year’s eve.  “This chip could be causing you some trouble. You know some day you probably need to have that tooth pulled.”

Exactly what I don’t want to think about right now. “It couldn’t be that wisdom tooth. It’s been like that for nearly a year. Anyway, it’s this other one that’s hurting. At least it was hurting.  It’s not right now.”

That’s when I got a lesson in a thing called ‘transference of pain.’  Dr. Jerry patiently explained to me, even using illustrations from a book – the sort you would never pick up to read - lots of open mouths, tongues and slobbery teeth.  Apparently there is a nerve that runs from close to the ear down through the cheek and jaw and into our gums. It branches off into two parts, one extending to the upper teeth and one to the lower teeth, then following the gum line all the way around to the middle.

“Because there’s only one main nerve here, sometimes we feel pain in a different area from where it’s really occurring. A problem back in your wisdom tooth could actually cause you to feel pain in a different tooth.” I’m sure I looked a bit skeptical. “In fact, this tooth down here could even cause it to feel like the pain is in the upper teeth, make your ear hurt or even your throat.”

OK. Now he had my attention. Yes. I had felt pain in my upper teeth, ear and throat, not to mention the third tooth from the end with the silver filling. Maybe there was something to this transference of pain thing.

“Tell you what. Since you’re not feeling it now, maybe the issue has resolved itself, something caught in there that washed out. We’re coming up on this long holiday weekend. If the pain comes back you call me and I’ll give you something for it and start some antibiotics. Otherwise let’s think about having that tooth pulled sometime soon to prevent any more trouble.”

Fine. As long as I can go home now. But it wasn’t fine. The tooth started hurting again within an hour after I left the dentist’s office. I took a lot of Tylenol. I made it through Thanksgiving. By Friday the pain had worsened until it was excruciating. At one point it was throbbing so hard I thought I might pass out. Time to call the dentist. Wow. I felt horrible – calling him on a holiday and all.  But he was very nice about it.

My sweet husband went to town, not for Black Friday shopping but to pick up prescriptions for me. I could only hope they would help. They did, eventually. By Sunday I felt quite a bit better but I still didn’t dare get too far away from that bottle of pain meds.

Monday morning I called the dentist. He didn’t need to see me again. The instructions were “Get it out of there.” They made an appointment for me with the dental surgeon on Tuesday for consultation. The surgeon looked at me a total of about 10 seconds and seconded that motion. “We need to get that wisdom tooth out of there.”

They asked me when I wanted to do it. Next week? Two weeks?

 “Are you kidding me?” I scheduled that extraction for 8:00 a.m. the next morning.

I was there early and ready – oh so ready. The tooth was pulled with 4 shots of numbing medicine and very little effort. It came out in 4 pieces. “Yeah, that thing was cracked through the middle. No wonder it was causing you so much pain.”

I spent the day at home feeling sore but happy. That tooth would never provide me with any more wisdom but it was a small price to pay. And yes, all along Dr. Jerry was right. It was not the 3^rd tooth from the end with the silver filling. It wasn’t even an upper tooth, my ear or my throat. It was the cracked, chipped, broken wisdom tooth I thought was so innocent.    

And so my lesson in transference of pain. And the moral of this story? I know another great method for transference of pain. It’s called prayer.  1 Peter  5:7

A Flood of Thanksgiving from a Thanksgiving Flood

You know that saying about not appreciating what you have until you don’t have it? I experienced that not long ago. The story begins with a rather distasteful event. It was a Saturday afternoon. I was doing laundry. No surprises there. Then, walking into the downstairs bathroom I noticed water on the floor. “How did that happen?” No one answered the question. “Oh well, this load of laundry is almost done. “ I stuffed it in the dryer then picked up the now soaked floor rugs and several towels I used to sop up the excess water and threw them into the washer.

All is fine for awhile until the washer starts its second spin cycle. This time we see it happen. Water is gushing out of the toilet so fast that the bathroom floor (now minus the rugs) is flooded and water is running into the kitchen. I couldn’t think what to do. I panicked, just stood there staring. Fortunately my husband had the presence of mind to associate our indoor river with the washing machine and ran to turn it off. Yep, the water stopped.

So you can see where I’m going with this. After cleaning up the newest flood I have a whole laundry basket full of soaked towels on top of the towels and rugs already in the washer – and yet I can’t wash anything. And, if the washer causes the toilet to overflow – what else might produce similar results?

Thus began a rather difficult week. I couldn’t wash clothes. I couldn’t wash dishes. I could take a spit bath without too much water and flush the toilet now and then, but mostly we tried to curtail pouring anything down our drains. Need I mention this was rather inconvenient?

The plumber was called Monday morning but said he couldn’t make it until Thursday.  I convinced myself I could live with this minor bit of discomfort for a few more days.

Plumber arrives on Friday. He uses his driller thingy to go clear down through our drainpipes and out to the sewer line in the alley. “This should fix it, right?”

“Well, you can try it, but I don’t know. I couldn’t get it to go through to the main line. Something is blocking it, like maybe part of the line is collapsed.”

But I remained hopeful. I tentatively put a load of underwear and socks in the washer (we were getting rather desperate for thus named articles of clothing that didn’t get washed the prior weekend.)

Result? You guessed it. Another flood in the bathroom. Another load of wet towels I can’t wash. By this time the dishes are piled high, I’m feeling a little frustrated and wondering if I will have to break down and – horror of horrors – go to a Laundromat!

Another weekend of no water. Plumber is called Monday morning. “Okay, I’ll bring my digger out and we’ll dig through your back yard and see what we can do. “

Great. Sounds lovely. Did I mention it’s now Thanksgiving week?

“I’ll be out of town over the holiday but I’ll try to make it by next Monday.”

Another week of no water? Can I do this? Nolan just came home from college with a ton of dirty laundry.  I need to cook a Thanksgiving meal that might require some clean dishes. Yes, I know. I could have done the dishes the old fashioned way, but I wasn’t quite that desperate yet. Nolan insisted he could take his laundry back with him and do it himself. Really? Maybe it would all work out.

By the weekend after Thanksgiving my totally awesome husband figured out a system. If I ran the washing machine through one cycle, stopped it, then waited about an hour before I started the second cycle, the water would have time to drain without making a flood. I could do laundry!  Sort of. What’s more, the same solution worked with the dishwasher – and the bathtub. Yes, I was feeling a little better. At least our clothes were clean now and I had avoided the dreaded Laundromat.

So to spare you all the unpleasant details, the plumber and his digger showed up on Tuesday next, dug up our backyard and made my dog really happy by being in her pen all day and paying lots of attention to her. They fixed the lines (I don’t understand all the details of the actual problem but all I cared about was having it fixed.) By the end of the day, it was.

Thank you, Mr. Plumber. You have my utmost respect and gratitude for the yukky, dirty, smelly job you do. Anybody know the Anne Zimmerman song about “The Plumber is the Man”? It was one of Randon’s favorites. I’m sure he would be singing it at the top of his lungs about now.

And the moral of this story? Let’s all take a moment to be grateful for things we often take for granted – like indoor plumbing. This fiasco showed me how I don’t appreciate so many things that I should – and during Thanksgiving week at that. Ironic? No. I just think God has a wonderful sense of humor.