I saw Amish people

See that? In the window? See that Amish head? Total accident. I actually took four shots of this parked buggy, and in the last one I got a little happy surprise. I didn't want to actually try to take a picture of an Amish person because one of the premises of my book is treating Amish people like normal people and not circus freaks, and while the urge to snap is very strong when faced with the strangely bearded, I resisted and, in my opinion, was given a little present for my moral fortitude.

Ha ha. Anyway.

After we purchased our plane tickets for my grandmother's memorial service, I posted something about our trip East on Facebook. My editor then asked if we were headed to Amish country...and it got me to thinking.

Were there Amish in North Carolina?

I knew Grandma wouldn't mind. She would have rolled her eyes and drawled, "Honey, if you need to go see the Amish, go see the Amish." And that would have been that.

Technically, there is only supposed to be one settlement, in Union Grove, but the settlement we visited was in the much-closer town of Hamptonville. Goes to show that the Amish settlment censuses (censi?) aren't wildly accurate. We also saw...


A buggy sign...




...and a traveling buggy with real people in it...

...and Amish kittens.

The last two shots are brough to you by my cousin Melissa, seeing as how I shot a slew of photos without my memory card inside my camera. I have grieved the loss and moved on, although the shot I'm saddest about loosing is the black kitten walking through an Amish-carved spindle-thingy.

Grieved. Moved on.

Anyway, we stopped at the Shiloh General Store, where we ate Amish ice cream (good stuff), bought fudge and Strawberry-Rhubarb butter. The store was run by an Amishman; a young lady served us the ice cream. We chatted with the older gentleman for a little while - once he found out we were from Oregon, he asked if we'd ever been to Sisters. Aparently there's a farming periodical that's published out of Sisters, and it was the only connection he had with Oregon.

He also told us about his son-in-law who ran a woodshop down the street, so we hiked down a bit - that's where we found the kittens.

All in all, a great trip. I didn't work up the nerve to ask anyone any questions, although in hindsight there were several things I could have asked and sounded intelligent about. I mean, it's not like I haven't researched these people for the last several months.

For a change of pace, we went to the fair that evening. We watched pig races (winning piglet gets an oreo), and I got to pet a camel :

Also fed it a carrot round and nearly lost a finger (more user error than camel violence).

We had a wonderful trip. I got to see my grandpa, as well as aunts, uncles, and cousins I don't get to see very often. And we really want to go back, although the next trip will likely involve fewer Amish and more of the BMW factory tour...

In Memorium

My strong, sassy, southern grandmother, Anna Claire Manton went home to be with Jesus early October 4th, 2008. After many years of poor health, she passed peacefully while my aunt sang her hymns. She was 84.

She met my grandfather in February of 1952. Charles was taking roll call at choir; she was new. He noticed her long, dark brown hair and red shoes and decided "I want to get to know her." They married five months later. My father was born a year later.

Even after the arrival of my aunt and uncle, the family remained a family of choir members. My dad started singing in the church choir at a young age. One Sunday, he and my uncle were sitting in the balcony, playing around squeezing each other's hands in the hymnals. Grandma left the choir loft and went up to the balcony to restore peace. She told my father that if she didn't get to sing in choir, he wouldn't get to either.

That was enough.

She's the reason I had a blue-sequined tutu to wear to my "ballet" class. She moved heaven and earth to get herself and my grandfather to my high school graduation.

Danny and I flew out to North Carolina for the service. It was one of the services that's easiest to attend; the kind where the one who passed is at home with Jesus after living a life full of love. I'm sad that Danny never got to meet her. But by the time we met, my feisty grandma had little energy and less of the personality we all remembered. So Danny gets to hear the stories of how she was, and remains in our hearts.

I have my memories. The photo at the top was a part of our wedding slideshow. I have her mother's cameo, which she gave me at graduation. I carried her black felt clutch bag to her service. I'll miss her, but look forward to seeing her again.

The Trouble with Boots

Okay. I promise that I really will, at some point, write about my time in North Carolina and talking to Amish people and maybe even something about writing. But right now I'm still jet-lagged and spacey and feel like I about killed myself putting out 315 words yesterday. Not good.

So, although I can't get myself to sit down and organize the Amish pics I've got, I can riff on shoes for a moment.

Women's boots to be exact.

See, when I got my book advance, we stuck the bulk of it in savings but earmarked a small portion for "mad money." I really wanted a pair of tall boots, but had never been able to quite get myself to spend money on them. This is partly when I was still in my cheap shoe/bulk buying phase, a time when $20 bucks was a lot for a pair of shoes. Beautiful days, effectively ended by my physical therapist who insisted on supportive footwear.

(Actually, she really wanted me in running shoes, but I just couldn't get there. Wearing a beautiful, hand-knit lace sweater with running shoes? Why shouldn't I just wear pleather while I was at it!)

The Born shoes have really worked for me, so I went to the Born website (which features Nordic models with really awesome sweaters and blond dreadlocks) and found a pair of boots. Beautiful boots. Beautiful, really leather boots, with hand-stitching and a not-too-high heal. I called the local nice-shoe store and they ordered them in.

Which took forever. Seriously, I think they put them on the slow boat from Finland. I had dreams about these boots. They didn't fit right, they arrived and they looked completely different...something was wrong. I checked the website again, and they looked the way I remembered. And when I'd returned from North Carolina, the shoes had arrived in the store. I went down, zipped them up and...

They were too large in the calf. Waaaayyy too large. As in, Scandanavian women clearly have calves of unusual size.

Danny bought me the Anniversary Sleeping Beauty DVD, and we listed as Briar Rose opined that "if you dream a thing more than once, it's sure to come true." Well, I dreamed twice that there was something wrong with the boots. Sleeping Beauty totally called it.

I tried a couple other boots at the store. Same problem. Danny explained that night that I have unusually narrow calves for a woman. He knows this because he studied ski boots. But where most women's calves, apparently, curve out, mine stay the course to my knee.

Not to be discouraged, we (my mother/untiring shopping companion) went to the newly opened DSW store this morning. SAME PROBLEM. And if the calf fit, the shoe was incredibly uncomfortable. After DSW, she suggested Miss Meers in Oakway. Long story short, there are two pairs of the same Franco Sarto boots (same boot, different size) winging their way from the Corvallis Miss Meers store for my consideration (cool store, by the way. Great shop, especially if you're a shoe snob).

There's a bit of grieving. I really, really wanted leather boots, but the real-leather ones are the ones most likely to be cut for the women with Amazonian calves (whom I now envy).

Boots come Tuesday. Hopefully I won't dream of them. Will post more later.

Of Bikes and Ballrooms

Danny and I started our Intermediate Ballroom class last night. We took ballroom through the Hosanna dance studio all last Spring, and with a bit of chatting, Danny agreed to continue this fall.

Class starts off as usual, we discover we remember more of the foxtrot than we'd anticipated. Our fabulous instructor shares her plans for the class, and we agree that it's better to look smooth on the dancefloor and less like Cloris Leachman. (Of course, none of us are in our eighties, so if we did look like Cloris, there would be a problem).

Anyway, we're learning how to do inside and outside turns out of promenade position, and our instructor launches into a short lecture on proper head position, and the fact that we need to keep our heads up and pointed in the direction we want to go. If we look down at our feet, we'll become unstable. We go where we look. The eyes are the body are connected.

Danny and I had heard all this. We'd heard it in our motorcycle class. Had it nailed into our heads in our motorcycle class.

I never would have imagined, but it's true; there are similarities between Ballroom dancing and riding a motorcycle.

If only the shoes were similar too.

Confessions of a Biker Chick

If you're a single woman and not picky, learn to ride a motorcycle. Seriously, when we showed up for our class, the men far outnumbered the women. And if you're a fan of the handlebar moustache, all the better.

Being picky and married, I brought my own man. More accurately, he brought me. It's not like I would have decided to learn to ride on my own. But Danny began his motorcycle crusade a few months ago. He wanted to get a motorcycle and take the Team Oregon safety course, and if I was going to see him at all that weekend, I would need to go too.

I figured, what the hey? Jayne Tate in Plain Jayne rides a bike; learning to ride would probably be a good thing. Faster than you could say "ease up on the throttle", Danny had us scheduled.

Some surprises:

1. I was not the only person to bring knitting to the Thursday classroom session.

2. 80% of motorcycle accidents are single-vehicle crashes, and most of those are because the motorcyclist botched a turn.

3. Of the multi-vehicle crashes involving motorcycles, most occur because the car driver didn't see the cyclist: visibility is key.

Then the instructor went through a show-and-tell with his gear. There was a lot of Kevlar involved. Apparently, most motorcyclists collect gloves. All of a sudden I knew what my husband was getting for Christmas for the next twenty years.

Operating a motorcycle is harder than it looks; you're essentially driving a stick-shift car on two wheels. The gas (throttle), front brake, on/off switch, and starter are all on the right hand alone. The back brake is operated with the right foot. You shift gears with your left foot while clutching with your left hand. Confused? It gets better. You stomp down to shift down, and hook your foot under it to push it up when you want to shift up. Neutral lives between first and second gear only, and on the bike I rode, only turned up when you didn't want to be in neutral. You want to keep your clutch "covered" (your hand over it) at all times, but you don't want your hand on your brake. If you do, the instructor looks at you with the intensity of a cop and slaps their right hand as a signal. Like that's not intimidating.

One of the most important things about riding is to look where you're going. I know that sounds obvious but let me explain. When you turn, you actually turn your head completely before you start the turn. If your head is turned far enough, you'll make a nice, tight turn. If you don't, you'll go wide. You can move your eyes anywhere you want, but your head has to be cranked over to the side to turn correctly. When we ran through swerving around cones, it was hard. You want to look at the cones, but the moment you did, you'd run over them. By looking up and watching the cones in your peripheral vision (as well as a lot of hip-action in the leaning), I was able to get through the cones okay.

We spent four hours riding on Saturday, and five on Sunday. Sunday was tough because it was 84 degrees and I had to be wearing long pants, long sleeves, gloves and boots, not to mention a helmet. I was uncomfortable but protected. I fell over during the Saturday session - hadn't quite figured out that I was supposed to actually use the throttle. I didn't have enough momentum to keep my balance, and gravity did what gravity does. Because I was wearing my leather gloves, my hand didn't get chewed up.

In the end, I passed the written test as well as the driving evaluation, although the instructor emphasized that I needed LOTS of practice. But when you consider I hadn't ever thought about driving a motorcycle until the summer, much less ever tried...it's not bad.

I'm glad I took the course. If nothing else, it's made me a better driver. I have LOADS of material for the book, and I got to learn something new.

Plain Jayne has been difficult in some aspects, mainly because it's Amish and I'm not. But getting to take the class helped me to get into Jayne's world and understand a small part of it. I got to do something book-related that did not involve me sitting in front of my computer. My hope is to learn something new with every book I write. As a writer, I think it's vital to stay fresh and continue to learn.

Although if the next thing I learn happens in a climate-controlled situation with both feet on the ground, I certainly won't complain.

The Shifting

It's getting cooler. The sky turns dark before we have a chance to take an evening walk. The alarm goes off in the morning, and I'm sure it's a mistake. And I have to wear socks again.

Summer is leaving, and I'm not okay with it.

I'm a skirt and sandals girl. And while barefoot season can wreak havoc on my feet (my carpet gives me pool toe), I don't have to fuss with socks - if they're clean, if they match, if they're mine (I dive into Danny's stash a lot).

We didn't get Summer until June this year. Scratch that. Winter didn't end until June. There wasn't a whole lot of spring, just an end of a long, dreary winter. Not looking forward to that again.

But I'm trying to remind myself of the things I like about Fall. Things like cocoa, Pumpkin Spice lattes at Starbucks, comfy sweaters, rainy reading days, rainy writing days where I'm fine being indoors for once, being able to drive the pickup without missing the A/C, stew, the leaves changing eventually (above picture is last year's leaves), knitting wool, Thanksgiving movie season (and the start of Oscar releases)...

and not having hangnails on the bottom of my big toes.

Any others? What else is nice about the changing of the seasons?

Signed contracts and other items of note

On Monday, September 8, I signed a two-book contract deal with Harvest House Publishers. The first book, Plain Jayne, will be released in 2010. The second, most likely a spin-off follow-up, will be released in 2011.

Monday was great fun, if a bit overwhelming. I arrived at Harvest at noon for my tour of the building. Accompanied by my fantastic agent Sandra, we toured around and met a great many people. After lunch down the road, we returned and commenced the signing of the contracts.

Signing contracts is not unlike signing a will. It's legally binding and requires you to pratice your signature in a variety of locations. Frankly, it's been useful in keeping my wordcount up.

Granted, I did the month-count and found that, with the pace I've been working at, I'll land right where I wanted to be if I continue the death march (see http://www.despair.com/quality.html) without slowing until the end of March. While comforting, after last Christmas's craziness, I realize having some additional buffer time is kinder to my peace of mind, as well as my husbands. Madness is what we're hoping to avoid, but as a fiction writer, I an realistic (see http://www.despair.com/madness.html).

(Last Chistmas, I got the brilliant idea that we/I should make all of the Christmas gifts we gave. This led to five knitted hats of varying levels of complication, two scarves, two framed photos, and a lot of beaded earrings. My hope and goal for the upcoming yuletide is to avoid Christmas knitting altogether.)

So that's the book stuff. Very exciting stuff. In other news:

1. I cut off seven inches of hair.

2. I have finished 2 1/2 chapters since signing.

3. The little children in our complex have started school, and life is quieter.

4. I will be learning to ride a motorcycle in two weeks.

5. I will have to wear hiking boots for that event.

6. I don't know that I've ever worn hiking boots.

7. My home is still untidy, but with the landlord inspections occuring next week, that will have to change.

8. I finished (mostly, save the button) a sweater (more on the similarities between writing and knitting later.

9. I made a blueberry-raspberry grunt Wednesday. If you enjoy baking and don't have Mary Englebreit's Sweet Treats cookbook, then hie thyself to half.com. It's the best.

10. Both books (Plain Jayne and Untitled) have ISBNs. Which means that, at some point, the madness I see onscreen will turn into a real, live, paper-filled book.

Exciting stuff.