Archives - Weekly Update

Looking at my hands as I type I still have cuts healing from my Thanksgiving cooking adventure. I definitely wreaked havoc on my hands with my chop chop chopping. I have 16 knives and I have proven that I know how to use none of them. And in my rushing to cut I usually do the wrong thing, a knife slips and thus bandaids become a stock commodity when I set out to cook. I have thought about taking a course in how to use knives. I always love watching chefs on cooking shows chopping/slicing/dicing away with precision, but there's never enough time for that.

Thanksgiving was a big celebration around our house this year, and I loved it. I come from a small family with just one sister who lives in Atlanta, so it's tough to make a family holiday big without lots of flying, and she never comes in for Thanksgiving. My parents live nearby so they joined us. We also have some great neighbors who I never get to spend enough time with, so this holiday provided the perfect time to make that happen. We gathered, ate, laughed (a lot) and somehow doing this made me think of the Pilgrim celebration, people just coming together to celebrate and spend time together. I mused a past turkey near disaster in a blog earlier this week. You can read it here.

When I last left off I was in Miami holding a raccoon at bay. Luckily my weekend at the Miami Book Fair continued much more smoothly with great times and terrific laughs. You can read the blog that tells you all about the adventures of me and my two intrepid boy readers here.

"Wish you were here." How many postcards have you sent with this line over the years? I know I have sent my fair share. I am in Miami for the Miami Book Fair, which is in its 23rd year; I am attending for the third time. The dates moved up a couple of weeks this year, and thus the Fair is coinciding with my boys' school break for Teacher's Convention and they have joined me for this trip. It's fun sharing the places that I travel to with them. Of course, with them the entire experience takes on a new tone. They have a pretty good grasp of dealing with the hotel personnel, so this morning as I wrote they handled their own needs from housekeeping, room service and the concierge. There was a steady stream of people in and out of the other room as I sat writing, but since calm seemed to be prevailing I just kept writing.

There are times I feel like I spend my life packing and unpacking. Sunday I leave for a conference in Chicago for a few days and come back late Tuesday. I head to the Miami Book Fair on Wednesday night. This time I am bringing the boys who have a few days off from school. It will be their first trip to the Fair, and I am looking forward to sharing it with them.