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My pre-travel rituals: packing and disasters

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

I've already started packing for Malice Domestic. Not quite halfway packed, but I still have a couple of days. If I were talking to my friend Barb Goffman, I would tell her that I am 42.51% packed, mainly because I know it would send her into peals of laughter.

Okay, I'm a geek. I use an Excel spreadsheet for packing.

My spreadsheet contains a couple of pages on which I list everything I might possibly want to pack when I'm taking a trip. Several hundred items. Some of it's stuff I'd need for just about any trip, like socks and shampoo. Other items are for specific kinds of trips. If I'm taking a plane, I don''t want to forget baggies for going through security. Coat and gloves if I'm heading into cold weather. Sunscreen if my destination's beachy. Bookmarks and hotel addresses for a convention. Dressy clothes if there's to be a banquet.

And at any given moment, if someone asks me how my packing is going, I don't have to fall back on imprecise statements like "barely started" or "halfway there" or "almost done." I can tell you precisely. To two decimal points.

Okay, it's a useless statistic. Is it any more useless than most statistics?

I try to start packing a few days in advance, in case I'm out of something I need to take with me. Gives me time to run a load of laundry if I'm out of clean socks, or renew my allergy meds if I'm running low.

But the first thing I do is go through and mark the stuff I don't need with an "N" for "no." Gives me a big head start. So if I announce that I'm, say, 20% packed . . . I probably haven't really started throwing things in the suitcase yet; I've just made the first round of decisions on what I don't need to bother with.

Then follows that laundry, and probably a trip to one or more stores to stock up on supplies. An orgy of charging camera batteries and Mophies--external power supplies for when my phone or my iPad runs low. I won't say I'm a well-oiled machine, but I manage to get it done, and I don't usually leave behind too many mission critical items.

But all the while I keep my eyes open for another familiar pre-travel tradition: the inevitable small disaster. At least the disasters usually stay small. Before one trip the dishwasher broke--and of course dishwashers never break down after all your dishes are clean, so you end up doing a lot of hand dishwashing if you don't want to return to squalor. Before my Easter trip to Yorktown this year, my EZPass transponder broke, which means until the new one arrives--probably while I'm at Malice--I have to stop and pay in the cash lane instead of breezing through the fast lanes. I thought I'd escaped without a pre-trip disaster for the next trip--to New York for the Edgars--but when I got up to go to the bathroom in the pale light of early morning, the hinge that holds the toilet seat onto the toilet suddenly snapped, sending me flying. Fortunately it's a small bathroom, so instead of falling and breaking anything I merely ricocheted off the (fortunately very sturdy) shower door.

I didn't have time to hit Home Depot for a new toilet seat, and I knew I'd only have a couple of days before heading to  Malice, so I ordered a toilet seat online and felt very efficient when it arrived--on Sunday rather than Saturday, but never mind. Still efficient.

Or so I thought. Unfortunately, instead of having a normal bolt, the toilet seat I ordered comes with a plastic bolt that, for installation, requires you to use a wrench to tighten it until its top snaps off. All my wrenches are hiding at the moment, so I borrowed one from the neighbors and set about installation. And failed. Maybe Superman could tighten that bolt to the snapping point. I can't. The miserable mutant toilet seat goes back tomorrow; I'll be making that Home Depot trip anyway; and I'm hoping the whole bolt fiasco counts as this trip's disaster. Unless I get to count the humongous tree on the border between my yard and my neighbors' yard, the one that fell down during the tornado that happened while I was down in Yorktown. The tree guys will be here tomorrow for their second day of work on that--surely a small disaster in its own right.

So I should probably do a little more packing before I hit the hay, just in case there's another small disaster lurking to eat up my packing time. 

I'm up to 46.44% now. And wondering . . . hmm. Does Meg pack with a spreadsheet?

When Did You Know There Was No Easter Bunny?

By Elaine Viets

My husband Don, who's more savvy than I am, figured out the Easter bunny at age five or six. "I just knew it wasn't real," he told me.
I was a little slower. Actually, I was a lot slower. I should have figured it out years earlier. I mean, think about it: A giant male rabbit runs around filling all the Easter baskets in the world in one night? Did I know any man who did that much domestic work?
Most dads in my neighborhood couldn't organize a backyard barbecue. They poured equal amounts of beer into themselves and into their barbecue sauce, and then took all the credit for flipping a few burgers. It was the moms who made the potato salad and brownies, cooked the corn on the cob, bought the burgers, buns, beer, paper plates and napkins.
But like I said, I was slow to catch on. I still believed in the Easter bunny when I was nine years old. Since I was a tall child, who looked older than I really was, my mother was embarrassed by me prattling about the Easter bunny. She was afraid people would think I was simple. Like most kids, I'd given up candy for Lent, and all I could think about was the treats the Easter bunny was going to bring.
So what did Mom do?
One afternoon, about two weeks before Easter, I came home from school, opened the fridge, and found the whole family's Easter candy in the fridge: eight chocolate bunnies, boxes of fancy foil-wrapped eggs, bags of little milk chocolate eggs – the whole luscious, sweet-shiny horde – on a shelf where I could see it.
I was shattered.

Confronted with this body of evidence, I was forced to conclude that there was no Easter bunny. Some of the fun went out of the holiday, though the candy still tasted good.

Good Housekeeping magazine wrote an earnest article about this childhood milestone: "When Should I Tell My Children the Easter Bunny Isn't Real?"
The magazine suggested that when your kid starts catching on, a good way to gently explain this is to say, "The Easter Bunny is a lot like other things you know aren't real, but used to believe in — like the monster under the bed."
What? That is a dangerous thing to tell children.
Everyone knows the monster under the bed is real. But if you keep your arms and legs from hanging over the side of the bed, he can't get you.
So when did you know there was no Easter bunny?

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St. Louis chocolate, toasted ravioli, and other city treats star in my seventh Josie Marcus' mystery shopper mystery, Death on a Platter. Win the new e-book. Click Contests at www.elaineviets.com

Doing hard things

The other day on Twitter, a young woman I didn't know posted that she felt like there was no point in writing because she could never be "as good as" some of the published writers she was reading.

I decided to reply to her - this is a Pay It Forward business and I have A LOT to pay forward.

"*pssst* Can I share a not-so-secret secret? We all feel this way. Every single one of us. Bestsellers, award winners, mid-list, indie ... if you DON'T think it, you're either lying or you're an idiot."

And it's true. The vast majority of writers I know admit to feeling unprepared to write a book. No matter how many they've written and published. Sue Grafton. Hank Philippi Ryan. Neil Gaiman. Maya Angelou.

It's not just limited to authors, although I think authors and other creatives are especially prone to it, but human nature to doubt ourselves.

It's easy to give a stranger advice over the internet. I have no skin in that particular game. I can drop my little piece of wisdom handed down to me from the writers who came before and hope it sticks.

When you're a parent, it's an entirely different matter. I have nothing but skin in that game. I literally made this person's skin and their bones and their brain.

In the past ten days, I have attended the Admitted Freshman Day at the college my daughter will be attending starting this August and she turned eighteen. Two milestones in a young adult's life. Except she was the same girl after those two events that she was before them. 

That's not just my perspective. It's hers. She'll always be my 'little' girl (she's been taller than me for five years now so little isn't literal) but she's come to the moment in her life where she's realizing that while she is a legal adult she doesn't feel like an adult.

She's an impostor adult in her mind. An impostor adult that is allowed to make her own decisions about her medical care, to pierce or tattoo her own skin, who to vote for, whether to open an IRA - regardless of what I want or what her father wants. Except she has spent eighteen years asking for things - can I do this? can I have that? what should I eat? what should I study? what should I wear? All decisions we've done our best to put more and more back on her in the past few years.

But she doesn't feel qualified to make those decisions. She wants the freedom to make her own choices but is afraid of the consequences of making the wrong choice. The fear in her eyes when I explained to her that feeling that way was the most adult she'd likely ever feel should have made me sad but letting her in on the secret was her biggest milestone. 

"You mean, I won't ever really feel like an adult?"

No, my precious girl, you will never never feel like an adult. Adults have jobs and pay bills; buy houses and have babies; get new jobs and move to new places; raise kids and send them out into the world but inside we're all waiting for that moment that someone looks at us and sees for the first time that we should not be in charge of anything let alone other, smaller, more vulnerable people.

That's never happened to me. Not even once. I guess we should all be grateful there's no website to "review" our adulting like there are to review our writing.It would really suck to have to read that my parenting looks like "a poor imitation of June Cleaver on her worst day" or that my cooking is "an abysmal crime against carrots." 

Let me tell you though - those people would never be invited to my house for dinner again. My carrots are excellent! Steamed until tender but not too soft, tossed with butter, honey, and a dash of cinnamon. Go ahead. Try them. I'll wait.

Back from Canada

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

I hereby issue a blanket apology to anyone who was expecting to hear from me in the last several weeks. It wasn't just that I went to Left Coast Crime--I did, and had a lovely time. But what really took me off the grid was my trip on the scenic trans-Canadian railway from Toronto to Vancouver and back. About the only less-than-optimal part of the trip was that ViaRail, Canada's passenger railroad, doesn't offer Wi-fi on this route, and we were often out of range of any cell phone signal for hours at a time.

I'm still catching up. Heck, I'll probably still be catching up by next Left Coast Crime. But I did have a lot of time to think on the train--think and take photos. A bit challenging sometimes, when the scenery was whizzing past so fast. Here are a few of my favorites from the two train rides.

It's in the little things

by LynDee Walker of the Femmes Fatales.

I might write about twisted people who do terrible things, but at heart, I’m a big sunshine-and-rainbow-hearts Disney nerd. 

Yep. I know all the words to all the songs, we have inside, instantly-recognizable-to-us family jokes about movie lines, and Walt Disney World is probably my favorite place on the planet.

I didn’t set a toe on Disney property until I was married—darling took me for our first anniversary because I’d always wanted to go but my mom was never able to afford it. We spent seven days in glorious Florida sunshine in February, I rode every ride (even the ones that scared me, because Disney), and I was hooked. Almost 20 years later, walking into any of the parks still brings me a feeling of simultaneous peace and excitement I don’t quite find anywhere else. 

I booked a surprise trip for darling’s birthday the following year, and we started daydreaming about taking the kids we wanted to have someday. I wondered and worried that our imaginary-at-the-time littles would grow up going fairly often and be bored of Mickey and magic by the time puberty rolled around.

Having just returned from my teenager’s sixth Disney trip, I’m thrilled that she still loves the parks as much as I do—and amazed that even with the time evolution of taking older kids meaning we had little choice but to go during spring break peak time (having a kid who plays high school basketball means our days of wintertime trips are past), this was our best family trip ever, and that was entirely in the little things.

My little boy is 10, a talented athlete and adrenaline junkie, and he bores easily and is forever asking questions about everything around him (I wonder where he gets that?). He’s in a big transitional year, getting ready to head to middle school in the fall, and I wanted this trip to be one he’d remember fondly even when he has little ones of his own someday. I asked him on the last day which part of the week was his favorite, expecting a high-speed roller coaster or the absolutely enchanting Avatar ride at Animal Kingdom to come out of his mouth in response. 

“I liked being at Epcot best this time,” he said thoughtfully. “Because I got to spend special time alone with you and with my big sister, too. That was the most fun part of the trip.” 

A fifth grade boy gets to spend spring break at Disney, and his favorite memory is walking around World Showcase with his big sister. That right there was worth every penny we spent on this trip, friends. 

Similarly, my teenager enjoyed being the Disney expert, leading her younger siblings on private adventures while Darling and I spent time alone in the parks for the first time in more than a decade. And my little one? She loved the flower sculptures at the Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival, and getting to sit in the front on Space Mountain.

Sitting on the plane Friday morning watching Orlando disappear beneath the clouds that rolled in behind the perfect weather we’d enjoyed for nine days, I realized that I was happy to have another round of wonderful Disney memories, happy my littles still love to be there as much as I do, but happiest that it’s not about big-ticket souvenirs or how many times they got to ride Everest for my kiddos—it’s about being together and laughing and living in the moment. Not sweating the small stuff. Darling and I have given them much more than a love of travel and Mickey, and sitting here with my feet still recovering from nine days of walking around 10 miles each, I can’t wait to go back.

What time is it?

by Kris Neri of the Femmes Fatales

They say great minds think alike. I don’t know if that’s universally true, but sister Femme, Elaine Viets, and I both took issue with time changes lately.

Why do we spring forward and fall back? Why do we go on Daylight Saving Time?

I never saw the point of it, but after living for fourteen years in Arizona — one of two states, along with Hawaii, that doesn’t change times twice a year — it was hard to go back to it. Elaine reported that she felt “off.” I felt sleepy, as if I’d gotten up too early. That first morning seemed so dark, my body yearned to go back to bed.

Arizona’s situation is actually kind of odd. The state does not change times, and the Hopi Homeland, which claims a part of the state, does not, but the Navajo Nation, which claims a much larger part of the state, does. Depending on a traveler’s route, it’s possible for the time to bounce forward and back multiple times. And since cell phones mostly adapt to local times, they know it. When I lived in Sedona, lots of tourists who experienced that told me they thought they were losing their minds. 

Being one of the only places that doesn’t change can also seem problematic. While the local channels do adjust so the times of the local newscasts are the same, all network and cable TV shift an hour. Essentially, for part of the year, Arizona is on Pacific Time, and for the rest of the year, it’s Mountain Time.

Talk about feeling off. But you get used to it. And just when you do, it’s time to change back.

According to my research, the idea of setting clocks forward a hour in the spring and back in the fall was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in an essay, “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light,” which was published in a French journal.

Daylight Saving Time has been used in the US and some European countries since WWI. It wasn’t formally adopted in the US until 1918, however, and even then it largely fell out of favor and wasn’t consistently used. 

That should have told them something.

During WWII, Roosevelt instituted year-round Daylight Saving Time. But after the war, states and municipalities were free to institute it or not, as they chose. You can imagine the confusion that created — the Arizona time-bouncing situation on a grand scale.

It wasn’t until 1966 that a uniform system was instituted, though the start dates have changed since then.

The rationale has always been to conserve the fuel necessary to create electricity.

Growing up I’d always been told that we changed times to benefit family farmers, to give more sunlight hours after school when the kids could help out in the fields. I learned that bit of wisdom from my mother, though, apparently, it’s an old wives’ tale (Well, she was an old wife.).

It seems agriculture has always opposed changing times. It doesn’t benefit farmers. Livestock, such as dairy cows, don’t understand why their milking times should change. All animals expect to be fed when they usually have. It also means that crops picked before the sun comes up need a longer time for the morning dew to dry. 

Living for a long time in a state that doesn’t change times, and in a town that attracts millions of tourists, I’ve had countless discussions about it. Most of the people in my unscientific sampling believe DST to be unnecessary. 

But a small minority love it. Such as chambers of commerce. Turns out it’s been documented that when we have more daylight hours, we spend more money in stores and on outdoor activities. 

Once a man told me that he liked DST because otherwise his daughter would be waiting for the school bus in the dark. I almost cracked up, although I did manage not to embarrass him. It’s actually the exact opposite — it is darker in the morning during DST. I’m guessing he never really took her to the bus stop. Maybe that was mom’s job.

Personally, I agree what what’s said to be a Native American reaction: When told about Daylight Saving
Time, and old Indian supposedly said: “Only the government would believe that if you cut off a foot at the top of the blanket, sew it onto the bottom, you’ll have a longer blanket.” 

Sounds right to me. 

Where do you fall on the Daylight Saving Time debate?

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Camping Out

 I’m up past my bedtime.

Why? Some kind of April Fools’ joke on myself? No. I’m up until an hour that’s going to make it painful to get up for work in the morning because today (Monday, the day I’m writing this) is the first day of Camp NaNoWriMo.

Many of you may be familiar with NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month. Every November writers worldwide challenge themselves to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. From “Once upon a time” to “The end,” that works out to just under 1,700 words per day. A lofty goal. Lofty and intimidating.

The folks behind NaNoWriMo came up with a challenge meant to be less daunting—Camp NaNoWriMo. Camp happens twice a year, in April and July. Writing goals are flexible. A minimum of thirty somethings—words, pages, hours, whatever else you can quantify, your choice—and you’re in. Just like at summer camp, you can join a cabin, in this case a virtual one. Your cabin mates are your writing support group, a small group of campers you select yourself or trust to the magic of algorithms. There are also camp counselors, authors who give pep talks and advice and answer questions. Each camp counselor is responsible for putting together care packages, short snippets designed to inspire, for one week.

This year, I’m joining Camp NaNoWriMo as both a camper and a counselor. I’m sending out care packages this week, the first week of April. My first post, for April Fools’ Day, was on procrastination. Rather, how not to procrastinate. Which is funny because procrastination is my super power. I’m really, really good at it. Which is why I’m up past my bedtime.

But better late than not at all. I resisted the urge to say, “it’s too late” or “I’m too tired”. I wrote words. Words that start to tell a story. A story that I’ve set a goal of having half-finished by the end of Camp. I’m going to receive as well as send care packages. I’m going to be a part of this supportive, caring, loving writing community and challenge myself to power through.

 

Are you a procrastinator? Share your tips for breaking the habit.