Jae's Rants

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Risks to Christmas Spirit.

Nothing puts as big a crimp in Christmas spirit like shopping. Oh the stores are decorated and the music is cheerful and happy, but the rest of the experience makes being holly and jolly nearly impossible. Oh, it's more than just the crowds, the prices, the hustle and bustle, it's certain people, certain archtypes we all run into during the Christmas shopping season.

Let's start with the Middler. Parking is a frustrating task. The malls and department stores are jammed and finding a parking place within a mile of the entrance is an exercise in futility. And it's made even more difficult by the Middler. The Middler is the person, usually either a middle aged woman or two or three teenage girls in a gaggle, who are walking down the center of the parking aisle. No, not walking, meandering. You can't go around them and it would be rude to honk at them to get them out of the way. They simply make a difficult job even more difficult.

Then there is the Princess. The Princess is the woman who has parked her cart in the center of the aisle at the department store while she looks over every single item on the shelf. Or she blocks the narrow spaces between clothing racks while she stands there pulling out each and every color and style of garment examining them. She doesn't even bother to look around behind her, it doesn't even enter her mind at all that anyone else may need anything because she is special.

Now the Princess part II is also the woman who walks up to the counter behind you and proceeds to interupt your conversation with the sales lady because she just needs to ask a quick question or she just needs to get that item right over there. If you pointed out to the Princess she was being rude she would undoubtedly be offended. She would think you were rude and unreasonable because after all, she is special and what she wanted was more important.

These people make it hard to keep the Christmas Spirit alive. They make it hard to remember to be kind and courteous. They make just being a good human being difficult.

AND NOW

One the Seventh Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me...

Seven Seductive Santas.

Santa #3 seems to look especially nice in his suspenders. Come back tomorrow for Santa #4

Do you want to win some fantastic holiday reading? If so come celebrate the Twelve days of Romance with 12 authors from Ellora's Cave, Wild Rose Press, Total-E-Bound and Cerridwen Press. Each day beginning December 8th and running through December 19th one of the twelve authors will tell what their "True love gave to them" on either their blog or website.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners. The prizes –
1st prize--6 books
2nd prize--4 books
3rd prize--2 books
All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Anny Cook Winter Hearts
Sandra Cox Boji Stones
Bronwyn Green Ronan’s Grail
Heather Hiestand Cards Never Lie
Barbara Huffert Deal of a Lifetime
Amarinda Jones Mad About Mirabelle
Kelly Kirch Time for Love
Cindy Spencer Pape Cowboy’s Christmas Bride
Brynn Paulin Fallen
Jacquéline Roth Access Denied
KZ Snow Mrs. Claws
Lacey Thorn Earth Moves

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Not so Christmasy Day

Sorry, no warm heartfelt memories of Christmases today and this blog may end up being TMI for some folks (too much information) but damn it, it's what's in my head.

The main design flaw in God's creation is the lack of a reproductive off switch. Think how useful this would be. I mean this beyond the idea of unplanned or unwise pregnancies -admit it, we all know someone who should not be allowed to reproduce. I'm talking about the unnecessary inconvenience and down right painful experience no reproducing women experience on a monthly basis.

I don't have children. I will never have children. So why on earth do I need to have a menstrual cycle? Why can't I simply shut off my uterus? I don't mind if my ovaries work -or attempt to in my case. I can use the estrogen. But why do I need a uterine lining every month that is only going to cause me a great deal of pain?

Oh, I've tried to rid myself of this menace only to be told by my doctors that since my reproductive system isn't "unhealthy" (and having Polycystic Ovarian Disease isn't considered unhealthy?) removing said reproductive system would be "elective surgery." Not covered by insurance. Bastids!

Don't mind me. No I'm not PMSing. I don't have PMS. I'm MSing and it sucks!

But now, on to more appealing things.

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

Seven Seductive Santas

Santa Nick is a cutie. Check back tomorrow for Santa #3.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners. The prizes –

1st prize--6 books

2nd prize--4 books

3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Anny Cook Winter Hearts
Sandra Cox Boji Stones
Bronwyn Green Ronan’s Grail
Heather Hiestand Cards Never Lie
Barbara Huffert Deal of a Lifetime
Amarinda Jones Mad About Mirabelle
Kelly Kirch Time for Love
Cindy Spencer Pape Cowboy’s Christmas Bride
Brynn Paulin Fallen
Jacquéline Roth Access Denied
KZ Snow Mrs. Claws
Lacey Thorn Earth Moves

Friday, December 14, 2007

The Year With(out) a Santa Claus

I was thirteen or fourteen that year. It was the year I was baptized and the year my family lived in a small ranch style house in a neighborhood most people wouldn’t venture into during the day, let alone at night. Our street sat right on the dividing line between the territories of two rival gangs. No, this wasn’t New York, L.A., or even Chicago. It was a relatively small Midwest town who had seen recent influxes of people from the larger cities like Detroit and Chicago. With these new comers came the gangs. But oddly enough they didn’t bother us. Our street was neutral territory. And the gangs aren’t what I wanted to talk about.

We were very poor that year. Not just “things are tight” poor, but “the cupboards are bare” poor. We often ate only one meal a day because there was very little food. Breakfast or lunch had to be scrounged from left-overs in the fridge or were limited to buttered toast with government surplus butter and the twenty-five cent loaves of white bread from the day old store. The recession of the 80’s was hurting everyone. Almost no one we knew still had a job as most of the plants in town had closed down. Our small town lost General Electric, Hyster, Caterpillar, General Motors, Quaker Oats and even our Chuckles plant. (Remember the little gummy candies in the pack with assorted flavors? My grandmother worked for 30 years making those things. But that’s another story.)

Christmas? No way. We kids knew how bad things were and we didn’t even talk about presents. As the oldest of the kids I knew that while some of the younger ones still thought Santa would remember them, they were in for a big disappointment.

One day my stepfather came home from helping a friend who hauled off people’s trash to help earn extra money. That day he came home with the back of the truck filled with scrap lumber. He called us out to help unload it and I thought he was crazy piling up old pieces of wood. That night after my siblings had gone to bed, he put on his coat and went outside. He came in with an armful of wood. Now I was sure he was crazy.

He cleared off the table and laid it out. With a pencil he began drawing a pattern on a piece of cardboard. It took only a few minutes for me to be enthralled watching. I love woodworking. I love the smell of the wood, the feel of it, how it smooths itself and how the creations take shape. If I’d have been a boy, I’d probably have become a carpenter. After letting me watch for about a half an hour as he used his scroll saw to cut out the patters he looked up at me. After a long pause he handed me the piece he’d cut out and a piece of sandpaper. “If you’re going to watch, you might as well help.” And I did.

That December I helped him make doll cradles for my sisters and a rocking horse for my brother from the bits and pieces he had scrounged from other people’s trash. We stained them, painted them and lined them with scraps of a garish blue velvet that had also been salvaged. I helped my mom sew little mattresses. I helped my stepfather glue yarn my grandmother gave us to the horse for a main and a tail. The same blue velvet lined the rocking horse’s saddle. We kept all of this hidden during the day and pulled it out at night to work on after everyone was asleep.

A couple of days before Christmas, my mother stood in line at the Salvation army and picked out a couple of second hand dolls. She brushed their hair, cleaned their plastic bodies and my grandmother sewed simple little dresses for them from scraps. On Christmas Eve I helped arrange these treasures under the tree and went off to bed. There would be nothing for me the next day when I awoke, but it felt so very good to know the younger kids would awake to find that Santa hadn’t forgotten them after all.

When morning came I followed them into the living room. I couldn’t completely suppress my disappointment that there would be no gift for me, but I tried hard not to let it show. To my amazement there was a rectangular wooden box sitting under the tree. It had been pieced together from strips of wood, stained a dark walnut color and the words “Holy Bible” had been burned into the top and outlined with gold paint. I lifted the lid to find the same blue velvet lining and a white Bible. I didn’t care that the Bible had been bought cheap because someone had ordered it with their name and not picked it up. I didn’t care that the name on it wasn’t mine.

My father had left my mother and me before I was two. He never had any contact with me and I could pass him on the street today and never know. All my life I had felt the void. But in that moment I realized the man sitting on the sofa smiling smugly was trying in every way he knew how to be a father for me. I realized that despite all the problems we had, he thought of me as his daughter. He and I had worked into the early hours of the morning on the kids toys. This gift meant he had stayed up even later to finish this for me.

Santa Claus came that year to our house. He didn’t just bring dolls, cradles and a rocking horse. He brought us a father.

On the Seventh Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me...

Seven Seductive Santas

Be sure to check back here each day for the next seven days to see all seven seductive Santas!

Participating Authors/Books:

And don't forget to check out eMuse online literary magazine. The December issue is out tomorrow, Dec. 15th. See www.emuse-zine.com for original fiction, book reviews, poetry and art.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

If That’s True, Why Aren’t Things Changing?

Coming on the heals of my last blog, I couldn’t help but comment on this.

I read a poll result on AOL today that made me stop and ponder. The poll asked men what they found attractive in woman and focused on the question of weight and body type. As anyone who has ever seen a magazine, billboard, newspaper, televisions program or movie knows society tells us that the perfect beautiful woman, the “supermodel” is a size 0, while in the days of Cheryl Tiegs and Christy Brinkley they were a size 8.

A size 14 woman, the average size for an American woman today, is told she is a “plus-size.” Marilyn Monroe, the icon all over the western world for beauty, glamour and sex appeal was a size 14. Today they’d be plastering pictures of her on the front of magazines talking about how “fat” she was and how everyone was on a death watch because she was so fat she was going to die.

According to the poll on AOL today, 80% of men said they prefer a voluptuous, curvy woman. Only 5% say they found the supermodel-thin women attractive.

That’s great. That’s wonderful. But it’s not the first time we’ve heard this. Polls have been saying for years now that men don’t want these thin, half-starved women, they want a woman who has all the curves, softness and fullness of a woman. They want Marilyn Monroe not Kate Moss.

What I don’t understand is if this is true, why haven’t the advertising companies, the fashion magazines, the Hollywood machine and all the others who glamorize the pencil thin female responded? Why is this still the pervasive image in our society? Is it because men say one thing in the polls because it’s politically correct and yet put their money down in a different direction? Is it because the advertising companies, fashion and entertainment industries are trying to shape public opinion and just keep trying?

I have a feeling it’s neither of those. I have a feeling that we women need to look at ourselves for this one. Men are saying we are sexy when we are full-figured and curvy. The media says we are beautiful if we are emaciated and you can count our ribs. Which message are we buying? Which message are we putting our money behind? The latter. How many of us have joined gyms because we “wanted to get healthy” or because we wanted to lose weight to look better? Be honest. How many of us plunk down hundreds of dollars each year for the creams and ointments that promise to make us young and beautiful forever?

I know I’ve said this before, but it’s true. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a beer belly, bald-headed, and excess body hair and still think they are damned sexy. I’m just saying, maybe we need to look at who we’re listening to about what makes us beautiful and how sexy each of us is.

1st prize--6 books

2nd prize--4 books

3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Participating Authors/Books:

And because it's my blog and I can, a little self promotion:

Access Denied
Jacquéline Roth

In Sanctuary the Committee controls everything, food, healthcare, housing, information and even love. The Committee’s life guides match the single residents for three month compatibility assignments. Everyone gets ten chances to find true love or at least an acceptable partnership. There is something special about Leah Bradley. She has the unique ability to reach out and really connect with the people in her life, but if she’s so special why is she facing her seventh assignment? From the moment she meets James he makes it clear he grants no one access to his life or, especially, his heart. Brooding and sad, he carries a darkness inside of him that swallows another part of him every day. What’s worse, he seems to want it this way. Leah slowly loses her hope and her heart. But just when James begins to see Leah the way she truly is, he’s forced to ask himself one question: Does the Committee really have happily-ever-after in mind?

Available Now at Cerridwen Press

Coming January 17th :

Measure of Healing
Jacquéline Roth

Alejandro Ramirez’s Were-Cougar mother drove him out after his first transformation at the age of fifteen leaving him to seek out his human father and find the family his human side craved but that his animal side can never embrace. Now a man, he finds himself responsible for a traumatized Were-Cougar child. When he turns to the Weres for help, they send him to a human. Dr. Gabriela St. Jerome knows of the Cougars and hates them with every fiber of her being. But now she must swallow that hatred to work with Alejandro to help a Were child who has been thrown into transformation far too early by the horrific death of his mother. As they are forced together in the remote woods of the North Georgia Mountains, both find their mutual attraction overwhelming. But if Brie gives into this man and her own passions, it will cost her dearly. It will cost her her life.

Excerpts for both books available at http://www.jacquelineroth.com/

Monday, December 10, 2007

A Little Tough Love

I really hate when someone begins a sentence with the words “I don’t mean to make anyone angry…” Yes you do. You just don’t want them angry at you. So I won’t begin this little bit of tough love by apologizing for it in advance.

This may seem an odd thing to be irritated by, and I wasn’t at first, but the more I thought about it the more ridiculous it became. I was shopping Sunday afternoon for a Christmas gift for my mother. Like me, my mother is a plus-size woman. I was in one of my favorite clothing shops, Catherine’s. I love Catherine’s. The clothing there is from designers who are truly designing for us big girls and not just little people’s clothes cut bigger. Let’s face it, no matter how cute that tight belly shirt and the low rider jeans are on a young miss, once you crest a size 16 you should probably rethink it. But the clothes in this store are elegant and classy and if you watch the sales, affordable.

However…

While shopping I noticed a rack of clothing marked with sizes 4-12. I was completely befuddled and wondered if they were expanding or if there had been a mistake in ordering. Surely 4-12 was not now considered plus-size. As I pulled a pair of size 12 jeans from the rack to examine them I realized these were not size 12. An examination of the sign on the rack revealed that these jeans were “right sized”.

What is “right sized”? Well according to the signs it is a way of resizing plus-size clothing. That size 12 had a 56” waist. That means it was the US size equivalent of a 34W. These were plus-sized clothes that had labels declaring them in single and lower double digit sizes.

Right sizing? Hell no. It’s vanity and some serious self-deluding. Let’s face it ladies, those of us buying that right sized size 12 haven’t seen a size 12 in a very, very long time. Do you really think you’re fooling someone with the size 12 label?

I look at it this way. This is my body. It requires only minimal maintenance from time to time and nothing on it is broken. It ain’t the prettiest model on the showroom floor but it gets me where I’m going. The most important part of this being that it is mine. I’m a size 34W. Would I like to be a size 12? You bet your backside I would. Is that going to happen because someone changes the label in my jeans? No. It will happen when I have the self-discipline and motivation to take care of the issue. (And a bit of help for the PCOD wouldn’t hurt.)

So let’s reboard the reality train. Stop being so worried about the messages you are getting from society about your body that you start trying to fool yourself. It won’t work. You always know when you’re lying.

Do you want to win some fantastic holiday reading? If so come celebrate the Twelve days of

Romance with 12 authors from Ellora's Cave, Wild Rose Press, Total-E-Bound and Cerridwen Press. Each day beginning December 8th and running through December 19th one of the twelve authors will tell what their "True love gave to them" on either their blog or website.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners.
The prizes –
1st prize--6 books
2nd prize--4 books
3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Participating Authors and books:

Anny Cook Winter Hearts
Sandra Cox Boji Stones
Bronwyn Green Ronan’s Grail
Heather Hiestand Cards Never Lie
Barbara Huffert Deal of a Lifetime
Amarinda Jones Mad About Mirabelle
Kelly Kirch Time for Love
Cindy Spencer Pape Cowboy’s Christmas Bride
Brynn Paulin Fallen
Jacquéline Roth Access Denied
KZ Snow Mrs. Claws
Lacey Thorn Earth Moves

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Contest Kick Off and Other Ramblings

A Dog's Life?

Hello. My name is George and I'm filling in for my Alpha dog on the blog today. You see she is currently laying on the sofa with a wet cloth on her head. Don't worry. This is common after a trip to the vet. I think her headache starts sometime after we leave the exam room and when we get in the car. I think going to the check out counter causes it. Personally, that's my favorite part. The shots, and other horrible unmentionable things they do to us poor dogs, are over and I get a cookie for being a good boy. Then we get back in the car and go home.

Any minute now the Beta dog will get home and the usual vet day discussion about how there are too many dogs will start. I have to admit I agree on this. It would be much better if it were only me, the George dog, here. Much better if I didn't have to put up with Shiloh, the psychotic cocker spaniel -no, really, I've seen the Alpha give her her anxiety pills. Of course there's Gracie Sue. She's the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who is nice, but just not too bright. She likes to play flying squirrel off the back of the couch and guess who she usually lands on? Someone needs to tell the people who write the breed books about her. "Not for rough play" my docked tail! Now Wendell is okay. He's a mini-dachshund. Only problem is I have to share my house with him because I'm his "warm fuzzy to curl up with at night" according to the Alpha. Oh, the things I put up with to please my Alpha dog.

So while my Alpha moans about the high cost of vet bills (which by the way could be avoided if she just stopped taking us there to let them torture us) I thought I'd add my own note to her blog. This won't surprise her, Alpha says I'm a very smart dog. I even know how to cook. Okay, that was an accident. I didn't mean to turn the stove on when I jumped up to check out the interesting smell coming from the pan. How was I supposed to know bumping those knobby things would make fire and fire would burn up Alpha's favorite pan? And the incident with the roast? How was I to know they didn't mean for me to finish it off? They left it on the counter while they ate. I say anything left out is fair game.

Oooh, the Beta's home and I smell take out! Gotta go.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Christmas Tree, O’ Christmas Tree

So the tree is up. Oddly enough it’s in the kitchen. Our townhouse has three floors and the only place with a large window that faces the street is our kitchen. So this past weekend we rearranged the dining table out of the breakfast nook and set up our tree.

This is generally a rather interesting event in that neither my SO nor I are mechanically inclined. But I don’t want to gripe about the hassles of decorating or the potentially enormous electric bill that will have us cringing at the end of the month.

I want to talk about ornaments. For more years than I was aware I was doing it, I’ve added ornaments to the collection that had meaning to me for the year. This means our tree is a hodge-podge of decorations rather than one of those neat, elegant and perfect “theme” trees with its matching baubles and bows. But unwrapping each of the odd little trinkets brings a special memory and that makes it my favorite part of the holiday season.

On the tip of one branch hangs a gold toy train inscribed with the word “Robbie”. We don’t have children, so our nieces and nephews are very important to us. This tiny gold train marks the memories of my first adult Christmas when I bought cheap $1 ornaments at WalMart and had them inscribed with the names of my darlings. Robbie is the oldest of my siblings’ children. First born and hasn’t stopped going since. He was a born athlete, a charmer and a funny boy who grew into a funny man. When his picture used to grace my desk at school, my students remarked on his resemblance to Adam Sandler. He does look like him, only I think Robbie is funnier. The little snip is now 25 years old and has made me a great-aunt. I shall have to think of a suitable revenge. Perhaps spoiling his little girls will do.

On another branch hangs a gold and red frame bearing the words, “Our First Christmas”. We hung this ornament on our tree the first year we shared a single home and a single tree. I look at the date on it and sometimes wonder that it is so long ago, and yet just as often wonder that it is such a short time that has passed. I think about my SO meeting my family for the first time. On the day of our wedding. We held it at my parents’ home and the room was full of at least 50 members of my family. My poor darling was limited to just one old friend. It seemed Illinois was too far from Florida for anyone else to make the trip. Some day I’ll tell you about my family. Just remember, these are the people with the inflatable snowmen and who stapled themselves to the roof of their house.

One of the most bittersweet ornaments on the tree is a small black lab puppy with angel wings. This ornament marked the first Christmas in over eight years that I spent without my faithful Wallie. Big for a member of her breed, Wallie was gentle, loving and patient. When my life fell apart several years ago, I found myself divorced and alone except for Wallie. She stayed with mom and was my reason for getting out of bed, my reason for making myself pay attention. I never had to use a leash with her after we moved, the two of us, into the small one bedroom apartment. She wasn’t about to let mom get too far away. Shortly after I met my SO, I was in a rather serious 5 car pile up on I75 north of Atlanta. It was the Friday before Memorial Day, so traffic was very intense. Wallie was in the backseat and it was in this accident, I lost my dear friend. So the little pup with angel’s wings reminds me of her each year as I hang it on my tree.

This year’s addition is a happier one. This year’s addition is The Frog Prince.

Froggie is a sweet green frog sitting on a brightly wrapped package, holding a glittering engagement ring behind his back. Why this one? Because this is the year I sold and published my first romance novel…my first novel period. And this is the year I became a Froggie. My Cerridwen Press editor maintains a group for the writers that work with her called the Frog Pond. And we happy little writers are the froggies.

So the frog prince sits on my tree. A hot cup of tea in hand. And yes, my dear editor, my behind is in my chair and my fingers are on the keyboard.

******************************************************

Do You Like Good Book? The count-down is on to:

1st prize--6 books

2nd prize--4 books

3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Participating Authors/Books offered for Prizes: