Good morning, Mt. Oly! Please welcome our guest Goddess for the day, New York Times best selling author, Eloisa James. The fourth fun and naughty installment of Eloisa’s Desperate Duchesses series, When the Duke Returns just hit bookstore shelves. Please give Eloisa a warm Goddess welcome!

 

Children and Life.

I recently got a letter from a friend of mine who has just had his first baby. “You were right,” he wrote, “life has no meaning without her. I can’t imagine life before she was born.” 

 

I had to read that sentence three times. Had I really said that? It’s not that I don’t agree…in a kind of philosophical way. But I must have had a glass of wine in my hand when I voiced it.

 

The “meaning of life” becomes a diluted concept, when you’re living with a teen and a tween.  I spent this week desperately trying to write a manuscript due January 1.  My son spent the week rolling out of bed at noon and then paying me regular visits, during which he would throw himself into a chair and say in the flat, accusing tone of a prisoner held without bail for fourteen years:  “I’m bored.  Bored, Mom. Mom? Did you hear me?  Bored.”

 

Guess what?  One of my characters in my latest book, When the Duke Returns, is an adolescent boy.  WTDR has one of my favorite plots:  a husband and wife who have never met.  A romance writer’s challenge when writing Marriage-of-Convenience plots is to keep the two out of bed until the right moment – but guess what?  The hero’s brother Godfrey is very helpful in that respect.

 

Can I just say that sometimes the “meaning of life” is a diluted concept? Let’s start with the premise that we all adore, love and admire our children, be they animal, mineral or human. But “We can’t imagine life without them”? Ha!

 

 

I can.

 

Anyone remember morning sex? Dozy, sleepy, roll over and make-the-day-start-out-right sex? The kind of sex that disappeared along with the patter of tiny bare feet?

 

How about a relaxed cup of coffee while you read the entire New York Times cover to cover (or whatever your local paper may be)? In those days, a husband or partner might wander out for muffins or bagels and cream cheese…these days, he’s too busy trying to separate adolescents fighting over the last piece of toast with the concentrated energy of bulldogs.

 

And finally…remember dates? DATES? Dates were when a man you didn’t know very well called you up and asked you out for dinner. You got spiffed up and put perfume in various places around your body, and opened the door with a smile. You looked great. He looked…whatever. Maybe great, maybe not. Who cares? You went out to dinner, to a movie — and there was nothing saying that you had to be home at 10 o’clock. It was all exploration, all discovery. Oh brave new world!

 

Of course, there are moments when morning sex, and dates, and calm coffee mornings seem overrated. Those would be the moments when someone isn’t upchucking in the bathroom, or rolling around the floor pulling someone else’s hair, or screaming like a banshee. Those would be the moments when the child in question isn’t accusing you of making him bored.  Moments that almost make me think that without children…I might be bored.

 

But before that idea gets stuck in my mind…What do you miss most about life before children? Or if you’ve avoided the whole procreation business, What would you least like to give up if your household was invaded  by small, sticky, albeit loving, persons?

 **note from Handmaiden Kim: Eloisa has generously offered 5 copies of the first book in her Desperate Duchesses series, Desperate Duchesses! Just leave a comment below to be entered.

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When I was a kid, there was a period of time we lived in town while they did something out at the ranch, who knows what, and the woman across the street used to take our her binoculars and look our way.  I knew this because my mom would stand at the window looking her way and say, “Hey, she’s spying on us!”

I don’t have binoculars, but God knows I’ve wanted some.  I have discovered I am a very nosy person.  I look around at stop lights to see what people in their cars are doing.  One day, I saw a man in a car next to me who was sobbing.  How heartbreaking is that?

My office is in the front of the house, so I have a full view of who gets UPS or Fed Ex deliveries, how often, and how big.  I see when they get new furniture.  I see what they throw out in the trash.  I pay attention.

It’s not just my neighborhood, either.  I never miss Dear Abby or Dear Carolyn in the paper.  That’s like looking in someone’s window to read about the dysfunction in their lives without fear of getting caught.  A freebie, if you will.  I get really irritated when Jack London comes home from work with a juicy tidbit about a co-worker,  but doesn’t ask the pertinent questions or investigate as he ought.

I think that is why I like to read.  That’s really peering into other people’s lives, isn’t it?  Who cares if they are made up people?  It still satisfies that curiosity in me to see what they do and what they are thinking.

Now lest you fear if you were ever with me for an any length of  time that I might go through your purse, never fear.  I have personal boundaries and a few ethics.  I nose around strangers, not friends, because that would be crass and rude.

How nosy are you?  Do you know what your neighbor is up to?  Do you have a nosy neighbor that keeps tabs on you?

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I’m in the process of digging out my Christmas decorations – the light-up snowman who sits on the porch beside the two light-up penguins (yes, I know penguins are Antarctic animals, but they don’t), the lights for the eaves, the Christmas tree and ornaments, the cinnamon-scented candles, and the fake poinsettias.

I know some stores decorated for Christmas the day after Halloween, and while my sisters and I used to have a contest every year over who saw the first Christmas commercial on TV, we gave up when they started airing before school started in the Fall.

Which leads me to my question – is it possible to overdo Christmas? Down the street from me one day the lawn was green, and then the next day it was white, covered with blinking candy canes, red, blue, green and white Christmas trees, a small herd of grazing white deer, a pair of trains where the lights make it look like the wheels are turning, and ice skating Peanuts characters. All on one lawn. Individually the various items are cute, and even pretty, but all together it kind of looks like the holidays barfed all over the front of their house.

Maybe I’d feel differently if the snow had been real and not big rolls of cotton sheeting, or if it was 40 degrees outside instead of 80. But I don’t think so. I mean, I like to decorate, but to me Christmas is a soft, twinkling holiday. A huge volume of decorations makes it feel…strident, hard – like if you show up at their front door you’d better have gingerbread cookies and eggnog on your person. Kind of the “I’m having fun, dammit” variety of holiday.

Am I wrong? Is it the more the merrier where decorations are concerned? Do you decorate? Which holiday/s should you not decorate for? (And yes, as you can see from the photo on the right, someone apparently decorated with mating reindeer.)

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I hate exercising. It’s sweaty and boring and gives me cramps in my hamstrings. I wish I loved it. I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who loves to jog. I see them running around and they look so healthy. A few years ago, I even bought really cute jogging shoes as an incentive to get out there and run my butt off. I made it about half a block before I had to sit on the curb with my head between my legs so I wouldn’t pass out. The neighborhood kids were really impressed.

In my blog last Friday, I shared several examples of the benefits of not exercising. Not being shot across the gym by the Abductor thigh tightening machine was just one of those examples. In past six years, I have joined six different gyms. I always join in January but quit by March. The sad truth is that this is the time of year when I always pack on weight. Then I spend the next five months dieting. This year though, I want to do things differently. I just joined Weight Watchers online and I’m thinking of taking dance classes. Maybe jazz or tap. Mr. G suggested pole dancing classes. Those girls have to have a lot of upper body strength. At least that’s his argument in favor of the stripper pole.

So my question to everyone is: how do you learn to love exercise. Or do you? Is there a fun way? Or at that very least, non painful?

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Lisa H is always giving, giving, giving - especially to For Refreshment Only Sunday!

Her latest gifts were especially tasty. Check ‘em out:

You guys know I have a weakness for a man in blue . . . and out of blue, now that Lisa’s sent such a tasty post-turkey-day treat!

Happy FROS, m’dears! And Lisa H, THANK YOU!

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When Pocket asked Julia and I to do novellas for our new anthology, they first said that they wanted the theme to be unusual Christmas traditions, which is why Julia mentions Hogmanay and sword dancing, Jane Feather covered the Lord of Misrule, and I incorporated Snapdragon into my story. Then they decided not to do it. Oops! So there we were, with all our weird customs worked into the stories. C’est la vie.

But in the course of researching my story, I discovered there really were a lot of strange Christmas customs out there, especially in Great Britain. Take Wales, for example. They have one involving a dead horse’s head. I kid you not (the Mafia would have loved this one). It’s called the Mari Lwyd, and it involves carrying around a horse’s head on a stick dressed in a sheet. Sort of like caroling. Only with a horse’s head.

My family had a less bizarre Christmas tradition, though it WAS weird. My dad always made pretzels on Christmas Eve. You know, the kind they sell in the mall–the bread-y kind. I don’t even remember why or how it started. Then there was the year he made chocolate ones, and they looked, um, exactly like turds. Rather unappetizing. He never did that again. But that tradition has stayed in our family for years.

So what about you? Any weird Christmas traditions in your area? Any odd ones practiced by your family? Or are you all just traditional folks at Christmas?

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I don’t know about you all, but I am in a food coma. I promised myself that I wouldn’t over eat, but as I sit here and write, I can actually feel my butt getting bigger from all the pie with extra whipped cream. I thought about maybe exercising, but then I ran across the following articles and am rethinking the pros and cons of shedding a few.

A 38-year-old woman described as “very large,” using the “abductor” thigh-tightening machine at the New York Sports Club in Harlem in July, failed to dismount properly, according to a witness, and was “sling-shot” off, across the room, startling other gym users. Paramedics had to use a “Stokes basket” instead of a regular stretcher to carry her out, according to the New York Post.

Clair Robinson, 23, told an interviewer in September that she believes the only reason she survived the deadly flesh-eating infection recently was because she had too much weight for the bacteria to consume. “Being big saved my life,” she told Australia’s “Medical Emergency” TV show.

Though Mayra Rosales, 27, stands charged with capital murder in Hidalgo County, Texas, she was not ordered to jail pending trial but was allowed home detention because of her obesity. At about 1,000 pounds, Rosales requires special transportation and facilities and was ruled by a judge in August certainly to be no “flight risk.”

How about all of you? Did you over indulge? Are you hitting the treadmill today or are you out risking life and limb on Black Friday?

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