Resolving to Believe...

Okay, so we're three weeks and counting into a new year, and I can't help wondering how many of us made New Year's resolutions for 2007--and how many of us have kept them.

In Baltimore where I grew up, I attended an Episcopal private school from grades six to twelve. Every Friday, we broke from classes mid-morning to attend chapel, held in the cafeteria with we students filing in and sitting cross-legged in rows on the sticky floor. I have to confess I spent most of those chapel sessions zoning out, day dreaming about what I wanted to do and be in that faraway place known as my grownup future.

One chapel talk, just before Lent, though, has stayed with me all these years. The speaker was one of the teachers on staff, a spare, slender, neat woman who seemed ancient to me at the time and who was, I'm sure now, no older than thirty-five. The topic was Lent and her point, at least one of them, was that Lent shouldn't always be a call to give up something, to deprive ourselves of some supposedly guilty pleasure. Maybe Lent, she suggested, was a time to *add* something to our lives heretofore missing. In her case, she resolved to honor the season by cooking a tasty, healthful dinner for herself each night. It seemed she was a single woman and eating dinner solo wasn't something she looked forward to. Instead she grabbed a quick bite or sometimes skipped the meal altogether. Her thought was that perhaps cooking dinner for herself during Lent would become habit-forming, an act of self-love, an affirmation of her Divinely given human worth.

This year I made a New Year's resolution, my first in years. It was just a small thing, really, a starter resolution. I resolved to start working out with my hand weights and exercise mat 2-3 times a week rather than once every week (or sometimes every other week). So far, I've kept my resolution. Now instead of a guilty binge work-out that leaves me reaching for the Motrin, I work out, feel great--and then actually am able to lift my arms the next day to dress myself. ;) Can I keep it up? There's no guarantee but, for now, I think I can.

Some resolutions, New Year's and otherwise, maybe are meant to be broken. Certainly the ones that leave us feeling cranky, deprived, even bitter rather than good about ourselves are best left by the proverbial wayside.

How do we handle it when the things we once dreamed for ourselves don't fit anymore--a relationship turned toxic, a job that no longer challenges us to create or grow, a daily routine that once made sense but now feels like a stint in federal prison.

Can we outgrow our resolutions sort of like that circa 1980 sweater with the shoulder pads and the glitter and leather patches that used to look so cutting edge cool but now seems just really sad and dated? When a dream grows old and frayed, is it time to put it aside and try on something new?

Recently I caught up by phone with a friend who moved away to Alabama. Before Pam left town, we used to hang out over dinner at her house, open a bottle of decent red wine, and have the most amazing one-on-one conversations. Pam is a big believer in making wish lists and creating vision boards. The latter are big pieces of foam board or just plain poster paper with photographs and magazine clippings and sundry small items that symbolize much more--basically what Back in the Day we used to call a collage. The purpose of the vision board, however, is to create a visual representation of how we wish our life to be--and then not just to wish it but to see and feel it. The vision board operates on the premise of the Law of Attraction. Seeing is believing. Believe it, and the good stuff will come. On the flip side, if you don't dare ask, if you don't dare dream, you don't get.

On New Year's Eve I bought a big bright red hunka foam board from the office supply store. It cost about $8 with tax, a small investment in the future. Right now it's propped against the wall in my spare bathroom still sheathed in its shiny clear wrapper. I'm promising myself, resolving if you will, that this week I'm going to change that. I'm going to set aside a night when I'm home, open a bottle of decent red wine and sit down with magazines and books and scissors and glue and tape and, of course, my piece of big red foam board. I'm promising myself I'm not going to rush things. I'm not going to make a task of this. I'm not going to beat myself up if my vision board ends up looking like a third-grader's C+ science fair project rather than a display object of beauty. (Did I mention I've never been "crafty"?). Instead I'm going to set aside the night, sip my wine, think about how amazingly fortunate I am to have gotten this far in life--and then I'm going to dare to dream and dream big. As in B-I-G. I'll let you know how it goes.

As for my friend, Pam, she's ramping up to make a whole new vision board. She's already achieved most if not all of the goals represented on her old one, including a great new job, great new living situation, and brand new car. If that's not inspiration for the rest of us, I don't know what is.

May 2007 bring the realization of all your dreams, no matter how large or small...

Hope

The Best Gift Ever

For many of us, the winter holiday season brings about an almost instant association with jam packed shopping malls, long, long checkout lines, and ballooning January credit card debt. Years ago when I was a college student, I worked a retail job at a Benetton clothing store in Towson, MD. Even after I left the local area to go off to graduate school, I would come home for the holidays and spend the break working in the store. In fact, for five consecutive years (count 'em--five) I worked the double shift from opening until closing on the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday for good reason. Very good reason.

Spending the Christmas season in the retail trenches gave me a host of great war stories, several of which stick with me today, twenty years later. Like the frantic dad who brought his small daughter shopping for a present for his wife on Christmas Eve an hour before the mall was due to close. With the clock ticking, we were picking through the leavings of folded Italian sweaters when I suggested he might expedite the search by giving me some description of the target--I mean gift recipient. (Forget knowing such vitals as say, her actual size). When he only stared at me, I could see I was going to have take the lead.

"What color is her hair?" I asked in that patient but firm voice usually reserved for small children. Professionalism aside, I'd been on my feet for coming on ten solid hours sans break and young though I was, my high heel shod feet were beginning to swell.

After a moment's hesitation, he looked me up and down and declared it was sort of like my shoulder-length chestnut brown locks. Okay, now we were getting somewhere! Then I asked, "What color are her eyes?" As it happened, I had a bunch of blue hued sweaters left in my badly dwindled inventory, and I was hoping I might have a match.

There was another pause, a l-o-n-g pause and then he looked down at his little daughter, his own dark eyes bulging, and asked, "What... what color are mommy's eyes?"

"They're BLUE, Daddy!" the child fairly shouted and then looked up at me with her own china blue eyes, presumably inherited from her mom. That look, I'll never forget it. It fell somewhere between disappointment and downright disgust. I looked back at her and though I was a twenty-something and she was probably only around eight, we shared a moment of silent commiseration over the vageries of men.

But my winter retail gig didn't end with December 25th, oh no. There followed a day even more dreaded by retail clerks everywhere than Black Friday. December 26th, otherwise known as The Day After Christmas. If the shopping days leading up to Christmas are about fantasy and infinite possibility, the days after the holiday are all about reality (and that would be cold, hard reality) and the limitations of material things to fill us up. The size 12 lady returning the size 2 sweater. The size 2 lady returning the size 12 sweater and both shocked and more than a littled miffed that the gift givers, in both cases the husband, seemed to know them so little, at least when it came to personal style.

Like Maggie in IT'S A WONDERFULLY SEXY LIFE, I'm finding more and more that what I really want for Christmas or any other holiday doesn't come inside a store box, no matter how exquisite the wrapping.

What was the best holiday gift you ever received? What was the worst? Or, if you're so inclined to share, what is the gift for which you secretly or not so secretly yearn, the one you've never gotten, at least not yet?

Whatever holiday you celebrate during the winter months, I hope it's joyous and filled with myriad reminders of the true magic of the season...

Hope

Welcome

Welcome to the launch of my new and first-ever blog. It's been a year of "firsts" for me personally and professionally. Per the latter, IT'S A WONDERFULLY SEXY LIFE is my a) first ever contemporary, b) first ever Harlequin, c) first ever paranormal and d) first ever Christmas book.

And I've just finished my second paranormal for Harlequin's Extreme Blaze line. THE HAUNTING will hit bookstores, both brick-and-mortar as well as online, this April 2007. The book begins with my heroine, Dr. Maggie Holliday, discovering a 150-year-old diary buried behind some loose wallboard in the attic of her newly purchased historic home in the Fredericksburg, VA historic district where I've made my home coming on six years now.

Having just moved from an historic home that (amazingly!) resembles my heroine's Victorian dream house, I've been struck by all the miscellaneous "stuff" you discover when you're ramping up to pack. I'd always seen myself as a neat nick but the whole house purge in preparation for packing indicated otherwise. In THE HAUNTING, Maggie finds the diary, which happens to have been penned by her previous Civil War era incarnation, Isabel Earnshaw.

What hidden treasures (or terrors) have you found when ramping up for a move? Maggie's move from the Washington, DC area to Fredericksburg, VA went considerably more smoothly than mine did. What was your worst ever absolute nightmare move? Or, on the perkier side, what the best move you ever made and why?

Whether we get there by the short, smooth easy road or the long, prickly bramble-riddled one, it's my personal belief that we're all always exactly where we're meant to be.

Here's wishing you a safe, joyous kick-off to the winter holidays...
Hope