Book Review

History – and adventure – abound in the disrupted nation of Greece, especially on the isle of Patmos. In sore need of work and money, Dmitri takes on a job to sail some goods for a client to a pick up spot in the midst of the sea. Although he knows the goods must be illegal, he has no idea what he will be asked to do in exchange. Or how he will be caught up in the adventures of two Americans, Nick and Carey, who are in search of ancient Greek artifacts which have gone missing.

With the backdrop of the lovely Mediterranean and a Greek world thrown into economic turmoil, Davis Bunn tells a story of a plot to steal an infamous artifact from the isle of Patmos. Fast paced and easy to read, The Patmos Deception is an interesting book, although the author doesn’t give a lot of time to building a truly intriguing plot of missing artifacts or answering the question of how they might be recovered. I thought the mystery could be deeper, but still enjoyed the book.

http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-patmos-deception/345150

This book was provided by Bethany House Publishers for review purposes only.

Home for Christmas

It was wonderful to be home for Christmas. To be with my parents, most of my siblings, the dogs…to eat great food and not have to prepare it…just to have nothing to do for many hours and sleep in in the mornings. To be home.

We arrived Christmas Eve in time for dinner (one of the “few” traditions we still keep, as Jenny said – probably the understatement of the year). Funny enough, I couldn’t sleep that night as if I was waiting to hear Santa on the rooftop. So, I was a little tired early the next morning when my siblings woke us up. So, I took a nap on the couch while some of my siblings watched The Expendables 3. No, it wasn’t hard to sleep through all the gunfire and car chases.

Christmas day was as it always is: restful, good food, nothing to do. The next day, Mom and Dad took Ed and I to lunch, although the first two places we wanted to go were still closed for the holidays. Same with the ice cream places we tried, although we found something yummy! Played games, watched movies, felt into bed exhausted.

We brought back a few of my things from home – a bookshelf, books, Christmas things, photo albums. At this rate, it will only take a larger vehicle and another five or six trips to get everything to Pittsburgh. But that’s okay. I’m just happy to have more of my books at my own home – including all my children’s books I’ll get to read to my own little one in a few short months.

It was a wonderful Christmas!

The Best Husband in the World

At the age of thirty-four (with only two months remaining until I turn thirty-five), perhaps it is time to grow up. I mean, I’m not only of legal age to drink, and drive, and vote but I am married, I do file taxes and now I’m pregnant. But according to Haley, my roommate in Texas, you don’t have to actually grow up until you purchase a vacuum cleaner. And since I haven’t done that yet, I’m holding out.

I always knew in life there comes a time when you can’t go home for Christmas. I made that transition with my birthday and with Thanksgiving, but I hadn’t come to that crossroads with Christmas…until this year. And when I found out the truth, I spent half the day crying. I was hoping it would be the one thing in my life that didn’t have to change this year. Much of my life these past six months has felt uprooted and tossed into a foreign city where I can’t seem to find a place to even dig a hole for my drying roots. But Ed works in retail. And I’m pregnant – so that didn’t help the fact that I cry at lots of things these days so I just couldn’t stop the tears.

After church that evening, I felt a bit better about it all despite a stray tear here and there. A man giving a missionary report (who is a former missionary himself) commented that we should remember those who have given up the places of their comfort, their jobs and even their families to go where God has called them – a strange place where they don’t even speak the same language. I, by no means, measure up to the level of a missionary but it rang very true in my own life and I tried to view my new, strange place as where God has called me for some reason I don’t yet know.

And, I do what I do best, threw my thoughts into planning a nice Christmas for just Ed and I in our little place in Pittsburgh. What should we have for dinner? What games should we play? What movie should we fall asleep in front of? By Wednesday, I had adjusted myself to the idea that I would not see my family for Christmas and, even though I wouldn’t get through the holiday without some tears, everything would be fine.

Then I got home from work and Ed said he had a Christmas gift for me. He wanted to give it to me early – had to give it to me early – just wasn’t sure how early. On a scale, Ed isn’t a gift-giver. It’s just not him. But he has thrown himself into seeking gifts for me for Christmas a little too much. I had given him cash and told him that was his limit, but now my mind wandered to the emptying checking account as we wait for his paycheck at the end of this week and wondered what check was about to bounce. But I didn’t say that – yet. I just told him it was up to him.

He thought for a moment and then said, “I’m taking you home for Christmas.”

It was one of those moments of wonder and I just stared at him. He shrugged, said he had been talking to his bosses at work about how disappointed I was not to go home and they said it wouldn’t hurt anything if he had the weekend off. So, he took it.

And I cried. More tears that wouldn’t stop. I’m going home for Christmas.

Next year, I’ll grow up.

What About Santa?

I’ve tried, since moving to Pittsburgh, to be very precise with my address. When I give it out, I always give out the borough I live in, not the city of Pittsburgh. And, after making a point to find out, I add the four digits to the end of the zip code. Mail still gets directed the round about way and I still get other people’s mail (from the address in Bellevue that is the same as ours), but it seems to help.

I try to do the same when I order something I know will be delivered by UPS. But that doesn’t seem to yet alleviate the necessity of not only calling but also chatting online with a representative about a box that doesn’t get delivered. I use to think, when I lived in Texas, we had problems with the Fed Ex guy who was afraid to cross over the railroad tracks and explore down the winding dirt road we lived at the end of. But that’s nothing compared to the back-and-forth just trying to get a box on the right delivery truck.

When trying to explain to the rep in the chat room my dilemma of my address being identical to another address (minus the extra four digits of a zip code), she asked the very astute question: If there are two addresses exactly the same, how does anyone know where to deliver a box?

My point exactly.

But let’s look at the bright side: this problem has increased my prayer life. I pray a lot over my mail and boxes, that they will get delivered to my door. I’ve even prayed for the appearance of an electric bill that hasn’t shown. I mean, I don’t want my electricity turned off.

My sister Katey texted me earlier this week to ask for my address so she could ship something. I gave it to her very precisely and added that is of utmost importance to address is very precisely so the box has a chance to actually be delivered to my door. Her response?

“In Pittsburgh, I bet even Santa has trouble finding his way around – and he doesn’t have to use streets.”

Yep. In this city it doesn’t matter if you have a chimney or not. That’s a problem kids have worried about for decades but Santa seems to overcome. In Pittsburgh the problem is entirely directional. I mean, does the naughty kid live on Orchard Ave in Avalon or Bellevue? What if the nice kid gets nothing because Santa found the other address and not his?

Let’s just say I’m glad I’m not Santa.

Christmas Baking

In my family, Christmas baking is just as important as a tree, or gifts, or any other tradition you could imagine. Starting the day after Thanksgiving with an extravagant, imaginative array of colorful gingerbread cookies, the race to fill every tin and large container in the house is on.

When we were growing up and had more time to spare (no college classes or full time jobs), we fought over who got to bake what cookies. And we usually made double batches of everything. We had enough cookies to throw a party (which we did for several years). Now the baking has fallen back to Mom and other treats have been added to the collection as baking is done to give away to this boss or that friend. I go home for the holidays to find tins on the hope chest filled with I don’t know what – all of it very good, of course.

Now I have a home of my own…and don’t have to fight with anyone over who gets to bake what. But there’s also only me and Ed. And even next year the baby won’t be eating cookies. So, I haven’t pulled every Christmas cookie recipe from my book to bake. I’ve picked my four favorites. And most of them will go to the neighbors and jobs for co-workers to eat. But you just can’t have Christmas without some baking.

I started with Spritz because they’re my favorite. Then I made a batch of gingerbread. Only one batch. And I used a different icing recipe I really like because I wasn’t going to make every color in the rainbow and spend the next two hours decorating. (As my family will tell you, I’m not the overflowing creative one when it comes to that job. I’m more methodical and line up little gingerbread men like an assembly line.) I also drafted Ed to help roll the dough, and cut the cookies, and decorate – something he hadn’t done in over 30 years! Doesn’t he look like he had fun?

Now I am off to my kitchen to dip pretzels. Because, after Spritz, those are my all time favorite. Then I’ll make a batch of Sandies later this weekend. My baking done, I’ll package some up as gifts, make up some plates to take to our workplaces for others to get fat on and leave the rest for Ed and I to enjoy. And this year I don’t even have to worry about the calorie count. I’m supposed to be getting fat, right? If only too much sugar didn’t make me sick these days…

Memories of…Jenny!

Since I don’t have a birthday very close to Christmas, I don’t know what it’s like to have to squeeze in your birthday between all the other festivities of the season. But I do remember being rather excited about having a baby around Christmas. Almost like an extra Christmas gift.

I think Jenny was due somewhere around the 19^th of December. The orderly, patterned part of me wanted Mom to hold off for a couple of weeks and have the baby in January of 1992. That just made sense as thus far we had been born in 80, 82, 84, 86, 88 and 90. 1991 was going to break this wonderful pattern. I don’t think Mom was at all interested in that (although in 1995, Caleb would be two weeks late).

And it was just as well that Jenny didn’t wait two more weeks. She weighed in at 10 pounds, 9 ounces when she arrived on December 13 – a Friday. A cold Friday in Connecticut, but no snow. I remember Katey and I celebrated by doing arts and crafts, making all us girls hairbows to wear from some shimmering blue garland stuff. Perhaps that was a prediction of how artsy/crafty Jenny would be.

Dad referred to Jenny as “Katey’s twin born 9 years late”. And she was. Red hair. Musical. Crafty. And – freaky as this was – she’d pull the exact same outfit combinations from the hand-me-downs in her closet that Katey had worn. But Jenny was also her own personality.

From “stupy” clowns that lived in our Massachusetts basement, to “playing the piano” in the windowsill (we did finally get her a toy piano), to broken swings she couldn’t remember; Jenny lived in a world of her own making. She never was three years old. We had never seen anyone simply skip over math problems or grammar questions not because she didn’t know the answer but because she just didn’t see it. And she was always big enough that most people thought she was older than at least Grace (much to Grace’s chagrin).

Jenny has the heart of a giver – making something and turning around the next minute to give it away. She sewed enough doll clothes for the little girls at church they must have had boxes overflowing with adorable outfits. She loves to bake cupcakes, spends hours on her piano or at her sewing machine and is a big Garfield fan.

Happy 23^rd Birthday, Jenny!

At the Post Office One Day

“Did Adam get out of the trap?” Mary, the postal lady, asked the older woman there to get her mail. Concern filled her voice.

Now that’s a question to perk anyone’s interest, and it perked mine as I stood in line waiting my turn. There were a few other people hanging about…the Bellevue post office is like the barber shop in Mayberry. I wondered if Adam was the woman’s son and what sort of hunting accident he had gotten himself into.

“Oh, yes,” the woman answered. “So-and-so and so-and-so got him out. But they left before the firemen and paramedics arrived.”

Okay, I wondered to myself. What sort of friends are these? Of course, hunters are in a class of their own.

“And Charlene is having a baby,” the woman added.

I wondered if Charlene was her daughter.

“She is?” Mary responded happily.

“Yes,” the woman replied, “but Billy doesn’t know it’s his.”

The light in my head began to dawn…then broke out in full sunshine with Mary’s next comment.

“Does Charlene know that Adam’s back?”

“No,” the woman said. “She’s seen him, but she doesn’t recognize him. He had plastic surgery.”

Soap opera! I started laughing as the woman gathered her mail, answered a few more questions about what was going on in her soap opera world and left.

“What was that? General Hospital?” one of the men hanging about asked Mary.

“No. The Young and the Restless. She knows everything about it.”

I laughed all the way home. Such is a trip to a small suburb post office!

*if I got these soap stars character’s names and situations a bit wrong, please excuse me – the only young and restless I know is the one moving about in my womb!