Goat Tales and Ducks and Donkeys

Yesterday we spent the day at a farm with a petting zoo. So here are a few shots from our day out. Above is a picture of a huge turkey.

T with the goats. The big one was quite a pushy fellow as you can see.
T with the donkey she fell in love with. If we could have, she would have gladly taken the donkey home. I felt we already had enough asses at home.
D enjoying the shade at the pavilion while waiting for her root beer float. And to her joy, her sister followed that up with a decadent cherry Italian ice--jumbo size.
Neighbor (and chauffeur) Jane and T feeding the goats and for their generosity they received a thick coating of goat spit on their hands. Fortunately we had a package of wipes handy.
Jane with D feeding the goats. D was enchanted by the goats. She ended up feeding the goats three of the little prepared containers of feed you can buy from a dispenser.
Encounter with the goats. When they realized she had food, they followed her around, every where she went.
This farm is also a nursery. The colors were glorious and everything was in bloom. We had a great day.

All three "kids" and Nanna had a great time.

anny

Open doors and oddities

Because it's summer in Maryland, we have the air conditioning on. We don't normally have to deal with loss of the AC due to open doors or windows but this week our granddaughters are staying with us and since there is no AC at their house, they're not used to closed doors and windows.

I've lost count of the times I've reminded the younger one especially that the door has to be closed because the AC is on. Some days the pollen counts aren't too high and I will flick off the AC and open the doors and windows, enjoying the breath of fresh air in the apartment, but other days, the outside air is just too bad for me to breathe. Then every door and window in the apartment are shut up as tight as possible and the AC is kicking in high gear.

When I ask the little one why the door is open, she sends me a baffled look and says, "Because I'm looking outside."

I confess that I'm just as baffled because I don't see the difference between looking through a window and screen or just looking through the screen. Why open the door?

That's not the only thing I find baffling. Why is it necessary to pace from one end of the apartment to the other like a tiger on speed when talking on the telephone? Why is it impossible to sit or stand still? This is a spreading phenomenon I've noticed more and more recently and I wonder at the root cause for pacing.

Then there's the necessity to scream while playing outside. There's no problem with wondering where they are. The entire neighborhood knows that they're outside playing because of the screaming. It must been a good thing. Every time they talk to their parents, they tell them they're having so much fun playing outside.

Probably the one that really gets me as an adult is the total impossibility to sit still. Legs wiggle, ankles jiggle, fingers twitch, and there's an entire symphony of snaps, pops, impromptu dance steps and swaying butts. Just watching makes me tired.

That's a terrible way to start a new week.

anny

Caterday, Caterday...

Have a great weekend!

anny

The Swimsuit Wiggle

There are a lot of things I love about swimming. The sunlight, the sparkling water, the absolute weightlessness of floating in the pool. Then there are the things I don't love.

Bathing suits. Bathing suits for the zaftig woman are...limited. When you find one that fits, you grab it immediately. Almost all of them have stretchy underpinnings that help you suck in the gut. And that's wonderful when you're pulling it on over your hills and valleys when the suit is bone dry.

But occasionally, you have to make that emergency trip to the ladies room. Obviously, the suit has to go. And the trip down to the knees is pretty easy. However, the return trip requires what I call the Swimsuit Wiggle.

First you pull the suit up as high as it will go. Then you gather it up in your hands (one hand on each side) and tug while wiggling your tush (and most of the rest of you). It's roughly like trying to put on a wet girdle.

It wouldn't be bad if you had room to maneuver, but if you recall the reason for taking off the suit in the first place, you'll also realize that you're most likely standing in a tiny stall with zero room for movement. So while you're wiggling and jiggling and tugging on a darned suit that's sticking to your skin like it was superglued on, you're also whacking your elbows on the walls... the toilet paper holder... the door... and hoping that you don't slip on the wet floor and end up spreadeagled on the toilet.

For some ungodly reason, the bathroom/shower room is freezing--even in the height of summer. Goosebumps ripple over your jiggly curves giving the Swimsuit Wiggle another dimension.

Eventually, you either end up with the suit slithered in place--or you call for help. I seriously considered calling for my granddaughter to come and help me dress and that would have been the final humiliation. But just as I was almost ready to give up, the suit let go of its iron grip on my cellulite and snapped into place like a rubber band.

Dignity almost intact, I returned to the pool determined to never ever go swimming again after drinking an entire bottle of water!

anny

Excellent beach reading!!! Lonestar Lycan by Regina Carlysle is available today. This is wonderful. Don't miss it!

She came to dusty west Texas to bury the dead. But one look from Joe’s smoldering eyes made Quinn Harlow grow wet and needy. The cowboy was too big, too sexy, too everything, and more man than she’d ever had before. Though she was just a visitor, her heart begged her to stay and find her destiny with him on these desolate plains.

Joe McKinnon, alpha of the Wolf Creek pack, takes one look at his destined mate and knows he’ll have his hands full dealing with the sassy female. A single glance has his cock going hard. One touch has him willing to move mountains to claim her. He knows it won’t be easy to tame the woman who holds his future in her hands.

Reader Advisory: Includes a scintillating M/F/M ménage scene. Enjoy!

The Longest Twenty Minutes...

Well, not yet. I went to the dentist yesterday. Now my experience with dentists has not been good. Not good at all. My pain threshold in my mouth is darned near zero and most pain blockers don't work for me. So, visiting the dentist is generally a painful experience.

In my past experiences, I've found that most dentists do not take the pain problem seriously. My tenure with them tends to be short-lived. And consequently, my dental health has suffered.

My current dentist at least acknowledges that the procedures she's subjecting me to are painful. And she works as fast as possible. But, that doesn't make it hurt less, you know? Currently I'm undergoing something called "scaling". It's as uncomfortable as it sounds. And now my gums feel like they're vibrating. Yummmmy.

I'm consoling myself with runny, melted chocolate ice cream. After this, I'll bravely take on the saltwater rinse, the meticulous brushing, and the teeny little brushes between the teeth and finally the mouthwash. If you hear me screaming across the country... well, say a prayer.

anny

Join us tonight at our chat on EC yahoo loop from 8 PM to 10 PM for excerpts and fun. Anny and friends!

Independence Day Memories

It was a chilly, chilly day in upstate New York--chilly enough that a fire felt wonderful and comforting.
Gabby the family dog, checking out the firepit and the freshly mowed grass. Who knew? There might be an old bone to discover?
T and D in the backyard, getting the lawn mowed in readiness for the picnic. With all the rain the northeast has had this spring, the grass is growing fast.
Backyard cookout. It's a Fourth of July tradition.
Evening sky on the Fourth, right before the fireworks started. The trestle is a Federal project to turn an old railroad bridge into a scenic walking trail over the Hudson River.
This is a couple we met at the pond the next day--and the snapping turtle he snagged in his net. Boy was he excited. He lives in New Jersey and was in the area for the weekend.
Reflections in the pond. There were a lot of pussywillows around the edge. I took the opportunity to have a real close look (research purposes, right?)
Oops! This is the frog that my oldest granddaughter accidentally caught with her fishing pole. As you can see, once released he was off and hopping.

Of all the holidays from spring to fall, July the Fourth holds the most traditions for me. And of course, the two most traditional are the family cookout and the fireworks displays. Everything else is the frosting on the cake.

anny

Smile...

I used to make my coworkers very nervous. They said I was (a) too happy and (b) too nice. It's an interesting turn of events when we reach a stage that smiling is suspicious and surliness is the norm.

On my little jaunt this past weekend, I encountered a LOT of people. They ran the gamut from extreme surliness to extreme pleasantness. What I noticed was the way that attitudes were contagious.

A nasty cranky woman waiting in the line for the restrooms as the fireworks infected everyone around her with her impatience and anxiety.

A friendly fast food worker sent everyone he dealt with on their way with a smile--a smile that lasted a long while.

My five year old granddaughter made our middle-aged waitress' day when she gave her a sunny smile and said, "You're pretty." There was nothing we could have asked for that would be too much for our waitress to provide.

Smile... it costs nothing.

anny

Tales of frogs, fish, and turtles...

D in the back yard before the picnic.


D at the pond freeing the fish.

The teeny frog hitching a ride on the turtles back.

T with the turtle!

D with the teeny-tiny frog.

D with Mommy's fish...

The Pond.

T with her fish.

Today the house hunk and I are on the road again on our way home. Our granddaughters are with us, coming for a visit of two weeks. In the meantime, I thought I would share some of our fun from yesterday. We went to a lovely park with a pond in the afternoon. The girls fished, caught frogs and turtles. So above are a few of the things they caught, some by design and some by accident.

Fireworks Extravaganza

On one of the coldest Fourth of July evenings that I remember in a long time (61 degrees) I went with my family and sat on the banks of the Hudson River to watch a wonderful fireworks extravaganza. People milled all around us. Boats crowded the river waters. The city fire boat offered a display of water sprays that were colored from the shore. It was a lovely evening.

I hope you, too, had a lovely holiday weekend.

anny

Jericho Hollow

Meet the Jericho Family... a middle class angel family, assigned to earth to protect humans that work to apprehend criminals that prey on women and children. The family has a secret, though. They've been granted the power to shift into any animal they wish in order to accomplish their missions.

In Winter Hearts you meet Quinn, the oldest of the Jericho children and his lady-love, Unity Brooks. Unity is on the run from criminals who intend to capture her for sale in a white slavery ring. But true love triumphs when Quinn rescues her with the help of his family and his partner, Sebastian Spade.

In Surpassing Pleasures, Quinn's sister, Zipporah and Sebastian finally stop running from each other and admit that they're falling in love. But how will Sebastian deal with the family secret? True love will stand the test.

Winter Hearts and Surpassing Pleasures--meet the angels of Jericho Hollow.

anny

The Meeting

I always find the "meeting" interesting. What meeting is that, you say? Well the meeting between the hero and heroine. How does the author engineer that first meeting?

Very rarely, the hero and heroine are longtime acquaintances. That used to be a popular scenario, but over the years the "girl next door" has fallen out of favor. Now, most couples meet in some interesting or even humorous way. So one of my favorite pastimes is collecting odd meetings.

My friend, Amarinda has the most inventive mind I know of. She engineers incredibly off the wall meetings for her hero/heroine. I believe my favorite is the story with the heroine jogging through the cemetery where she meets the hero (a vampire) and succumbs to his seduction against a headstone. There now. Didn't I say her meetings were unusual?

Another of my friends, Regina arranged for her heroine to meet the hero through a mirror. Her heroine looks in an antique mirror, sees a huge black wolf that changes into a naked man, and presto--they're together. Sort of like Alice through the looking glass, right?

My friend Cindy introduced her hero and heroine through the device of a rescue. The heroine is under attack in a park, the hero happens to hear her cries for help and ta-da, he's on the spot to rescue her. How could she fail to fall for the handsome hero?

I tend to be far more pedestrian with my meetings. When I was thinking about writing this post, I realized that most of the meetings in my past works were really very unexciting. The couples met through family or longtime friends. Nothing exciting was going one, at all. Then I remembered that Honeysuckle met her men in the bathtub in an inn. And in Winter Hearts, Quinn was drugged and bound to Unity with duct tape--half naked.

So maybe there's hope for me. I'll have to think of some more exciting and unusual meetings for my characters. I need something that is electrifying and unique. Somehow, I don't think that my meeting with my eventual husband would qualify. We met on a blind date. A blind date where we played cards with another couple and ate popcorn. I think I was home in bed by ten o'clock. Exciting stuff, I guess when you're a young seventeen.

How about you? What are your stories? How'd you meet? Or, what's your favorite meeting engineered in a book?

anny

Surpassing Pleasures in 1...2...3

On Friday the sequel to Winter Hearts will be released! Surpassing Pleasures is Zipporah and Seb's story. Thought I would just give you a little taste to whet your appetite!

Blurb:

Special Agent Sebastian Spade, has worked hard since he met Zipporah Jericho to convince her that he’s her man. But every encounter ends with Zip dancing out of reach to protect a family secret. When they are brought together by a murder, Seb determines this time he will never let her go.

In the bedroom, on the road, in a secret cabin in the woods, he masters her body by daring to satisfy her deepest desires. Together as they explore the forbidden pleasures that await them with every touch they discover trust is another word for love.

Excerpt:

Zip knew it was going to be a bad week when she found a body in the ladies restroom. Fortunately, it wasn’t her first discovery of a body so she didn’t scream or do any of the other stereotypical sissy stuff but it did piss her off. No woman should have to deal with a dead person when it was that time of the month—unless it was somebody the woman had finished off herself.

The woman’s short blonde hair was mussed, sticking out in all directions. The knife protruding from her back was a pretty clear indicator that death wasn’t accidental. And the pool of blood surrounding her left little hope that she survived, so Zip elected to go for help.

She backed out into the hall, bumping into Sebastian Spade, her brother’s coworker.

“Zip?”

“Body in the restroom,” she blurted out. “Dead body.”

He tugged her out of the way, pressing her against the wall next to the door. “Don’t move.” He slipped his gun from his holster, opened the restroom door with his shoulder and peeked inside. Damn. It certainly looked like a body to him. Approaching the woman, he leaned down and checked for signs of life though experience told him the woman was gone. He blew out a quick breath, pulled his cell phone from his pocket and punched his partner’s number on speed dial.

“Yeah?”

“Me. Your sister just found a body in the restroom.” Before Quill could ask any questions, Seb turned off the phone and went back in the hallway to join Zipporah. “Quill’s on his way. Do you need to sit down?”

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest to hide her trembling hands. “No. I’m okay until he gets here.” Her quick visit with her brother, Quill at the local FBI office had turned out to be a bad idea. She thought about asking for her purse, still on the restroom floor where she’d dropped it but decided that was a bad idea. Maybe Quill or Seb would be able to return it to her later.

Seb crouched next to her while they waited. “How about telling me what happened?”

She rubbed her arms with trembling hands. “I stopped in the restroom to brush my hair. It’s windy outside. A-and there she was on the floor.”

“Did you recognize her?”

Zip shook her head. “I didn’t see her face.”

He just nodded and straightened up as Quill rushed down the hall toward them.

After that, things went downhill fast. Zip spent the next few hours in the company of another of Quill’s team members while the crime scene was processed. Finally, her brother produced her bag and sprung her from the cold sterile office so he could take her to lunch.

Ensconced in a back booth in a small restaurant not far from the office, Quill silently regarded his younger sister. Once their waitress brought them coffee, he asked, “What happened? I know you told everyone else your story but now I want you to tell me what you didn’t tell them.”

“She was one of us.”

Disturbed by her news, he dropped his head. “You’re sure?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Since you were the one who found her, I wasn’t permitted to enter the crime scene.” His wry answer almost disguised the chagrin he suffered at the slight. Almost. It had been a long two weeks for Quill and his exclusion from a crime scene was just one more item in a growing list of slights that threatened his job since the fiasco at Marshallwoods Tech.

“I see. What are you not telling me?” she asked.

“As of now, I’m on paid vacation until further notice. Someone up the line decided I would be less of an embarrassment if I wasn’t around for a while. Apparently it wasn’t very professional to allow myself to be drugged and bound to the very young woman I was investigating. Especially since we were half-naked.”

And then things happened...

In other news, I'm happy to announce that Deborah won a free copy of Surpassing Pleasures. Deborah, please e-mail me at annycook67@yahoo.com so we can make arrangements!

anny