1. Time spent at the table is never wasted. 
2. Everybody needs an extra kiss on the cheek. 3. Celebrate the body. 
4. The day is long. Take your time. 5. One helping is for sissies. 
6. There is beauty in unexpected places. 
7. The best wine is the one that's in your hand. 8. Life is loud and colorful. Live it that way. 
So despite a looming deadline on my first mystery, I find I need to take a break now and then for some fun summer reads. Here's what's on the pile and in the Kindle: 
Poetic Justice, by Alicia Rasley. I would love this book even if the image on the cover were not one of my all-time favorite paintings. It's a Regency romance that is smart, smart, smart. The story features a brainy, feisty heroine, and a dashing hero whose intelligence is as formidable as his fighting skills. At the center of the story is a collection of rare books that the lovers lust after nearly as much as they do each other. AND there are Shakespeare references. (Be still my heart.) Death at La Fenice, by Donna Leon. Friends who are rabid fans of her series featuring Venice police Commissario Guido Brunetti have been urging me to read Donna Leon for months. I have just begun this one, which opens with a dead conductor at the Venice opera
house--apparently someone has put cyanide in his espresso. I'm already hooked and looking forward to finding out who had it in for the maestro. 11/22/63, by Stephen King. My husband bought me this book for Christmas, but I haven't dared crack it open--I knew once I started King's latest, I wouldn't be able to stop. What baby boomer could resist the premise? An English teacher (an English teacher hero!) in Maine discovers a time portal in an old diner, and goes on a quest to stop the Kennedy assassination. But when he runs into a strange loner named Lee Harvey Oswald, things really get dicey. Saving this one for when I finish the first draft of my manuscript; I won't have a book to deliver otherwise! 
I am a woman of many weaknesses--caffeine, dark chocolate, cheap chardonnay, Bravo television, and Robert Downey, Jr., just to name a few. And while I can cut back on the wine, miss the housewives, and accept the fact that RDJ will never come calling, there is one temptation I can rarely resist--new clothes. A recent trip to Marshalls to check out the spring stock (that yielded some cute summer dresses, by the way) prompted me to engage in my second favorite clothing-oriented activity: the seasonal clothes switch. So while I love my flat-heeled boots, wool dresses and winter cardigans, it is high time they went into hibernation.
It's worth the trudge up to the attic just to unearth last year's surprises, like those cute metallic sandals I forgot I had. And revisiting last season's treasures is almost as good as buying new ones. There's a pleasure in those crisp, cotton blouses and summer T-shirts, and and joy to be found in the burst of color that replaces all the earth tones of winter.
It's time for breaking out the white denim, filmy tops, and shoes that reveal a peek of that new pedicure, and I'm more than ready for it. Now if I could only face putting on that bathing suit. . . *Wm. Shakespeare
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The single daffodil that brightens the scraggly plot of bushes and day lilies along my back fence was likely planted by some ambitious squirrels. I know I didn't put it there. But on this first day of spring, it serves as a wonderful metaphor for those times in life we find ourselves in places we didn't expect to be. Maybe it's the job we didn't particularly want or the college that wasn't our first choice. Maybe the house we occupy isn't the home of our dreams. Maybe we never shook off the dust of the towns we were born in, or the stories we wrote for ourselves didn't quite have the ending we envisioned. More often than not, that's the way things go in life. And when they do, we have two choices: we can turn inward and shrivel in the soil. Or we can open our buds and blossom in the sun. On this gorgeous spring evening, may you continue to bloom.
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March is women's history month, and to kick things off I'm sharing a great little gem from Alice Duer Miller, a journalist-turned-novelist who used humor to get her point across:
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It's no coincidence that this year's Best Gift Ever is a book. (As was last year's.) This Christmas, my dear friend and colleague Marie presented me with the following:
P.D. James, widely considered the greatest living mystery author, is second only to Dorothy Sayers in my personal pantheon of mystery greats. Best known for her series featuring Adam Dalgliesh, James' work is literate and complex, but she still tells a darn good story. The same can be said of Jane Austen, whom James calls "overwhelmingly my favorite writer" in an October interview. James, who has made allusions to Persuasion in two of the recent Dalgliesh novels, had long wanted to create a work that incorporates her two passions: Jane Austen and the classic detective novel.
As someone who reveres both writers, the combination of James and Austen is irresistible. What is even better is that I had somehow missed all the press around this book, so when I opened my friend's gift, I let out a giant shriek of surprise and joy. (Even in my geekiest fantasies, I couldn't have come up with P.D. James writing a mystery sequel to Pride and Prejudice.)
I have already sped through the book once, but plan a second read for savoring. Though James' Elizabeth lacks the original character's archness (and most of her wit, sad to say) her Darcy is thoughtful, brooding, and self-aware. James provides him with a rich inner life that accurately reflects Austen's version of her most enigmatic hero, and it makes the reader long for a Lizzie that is worthy of him.
But where James really shines is in her portrayal of the secondary characters, in particular Mr. Bennett, who shows up unannounced at Pemberley just to read in its magnificent library, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who says of herself, "If I went to all the people who would benefit from my advice I would never be at home." Lots of Austen favorites make cameo appearances, and there are sly references to both Persuasion and Emma.
It's a truth universally acknowledged that there can never be enough Jane Austen; what a pleasure to read a sequel from the hands of one who is worthy of her.
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No, not shopping days (trying hard not to think about that one) but my favorite Christmas songs: 10. "Please Come Home for Christmas," Harry Connick, Jr. You bet I will, Harry. 9. "Santa Baby," Eartha Kitt. Move over, Madonna, cuz this girl got it right the first time. 8. "Christmas Wrapping," The Waitresses. How can you not love this infectious little classic? 
7. "Ode to Joy," Beethoven. The title says it all. 6. "River," Joni Mitchell. For those melancholy moments that we wish we had a river to skate away on. 
5. "Merry Christmas, Baby," Bruce Springsteen. Can a Christmas song be sexy? It can if it's sung in a husky rasp by my favorite Jersey guy. 4. "Baby, It's Cold Outside," Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby. Though I'm usually no fan of Bing, he and Rosie kill this one. Hands down, the best version of this chestnut. 3. "The Waltz of the Flowers," Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. This just makes me want to dust off my old pointe shoes and pirouette around the kitchen. 
2. "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," Bach. The first few strains of this piece epitomize the joy of the season. 1. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," Frank Sinatra. Hundreds of singers have recorded this lovely song, but few have conveyed its notes of both regret and hope the way Sinatra has. (Did I mention he was from Jersey?) 
May you hang a shining star on the highest bough this holiday season. See you in the new year!
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I love Halloween. I love the spooky feeling on a chilly fall night when there's a big yellow harvest moon outside my window. I love watching the old Universal horror films, or my favorite Halloween chestnut, Arsenic and Old Lace. I love seeing my neighborhood come alive with tiny witches, fairies, robots, and superheroes. 
But this year, Mother Nature has been up to some tricks of her own, and dropped a load of mischief on us out here in the east. And to that I have to say: Really? Did you really have to snow on my Halloween parade?
Today at least, the sun is shining, and neighbors are outside cleaning up broken tree branches and upending all those overturned Halloween decorations. And there is something beautiful about fall leaves against a backdrop of snow:
But not beautiful enough to justify an early end to my favorite season of the year. My pumpkin is on the porch, my witch stands guard at the door (though she's a bit chilly), and my treat bowl will still be full of candy, weather be damned. Happy Halloween, everyone. 
It's a slightly cloudy Last Day of Summer, aka Labor Day, here in New Jersey. And while there's a part of me that longs for summer to be infinite, there's another part that's excited. As a teacher, my job is seasonal and cyclical, divided by semesters and quarters, and marked by holidays and milestones, from First Day to graduation. And though teaching feeds my craving for routine, it also affords daily surprises. And more importantly, each September year gives me and my students something life doesn't always offer: another chance. A new year, shiny as those new school supplies and clean as those new shoes, gives us all a new start. We can erase last year's mistakes, do better, and be better. And that's just one of the reasons I love my day job. The other 99 will be filing into my classroom on Wednesday.
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Oh, and guys--I know you're out there. See you in home room. ;>
