A Slice of Orange

MANNA TIME

By Kitty Bucholtz

Whenever I hear or see the same thing three or more times in a short period of time, I have a tendency to stop and say, â€œGod, are you talking to me?â€ I always joke with him that I can be stubborn and hard of hearing but if I see something repeated, I promise to stop and at least ask if heâ€™s trying to get my attention. I had this experience last month.

Iâ€™d been reading about the Israelites and how God provided manna for them to eat in the desert. The same topic came up in a sermon and in bible study within two weeks. I started thinking about it, wondering if there was a reason I was hearing about it so many times in a short period. Iâ€™d been praying for help in keeping my writing schedule as my first priority without losing control of everything else. What did the Israelites have to do with that?

Writing in my journal, I figured out the answer. The Israelites had to get up early every morning before the dew dried up and gather the manna from the ground. No sleeping in or being lazy. If you didnâ€™t feel like getting it on Tuesday, you didnâ€™t eat on Tuesday. The manna was going to be provided every day, but it wasnâ€™t going to just show up on their plates. The Israelites knew in a general sense that God had promised to take care of them, but now they had to form that into a daily, practical trust and obedience.

My general goal of putting my writing first so that I can create a writing career is a good and noble one. But the fact is I wasnâ€™t making it happen. The day I figured that out in my journal was the beginning of a change in my writing. I began starting each day writing â€œmorning pagesâ€ (from The Artistâ€™s Way) and pushing myself to â€œverbalizeâ€ all my hopes and fears about life in general and that day in particular.

I wrote about the guilt I felt putting my writing in front of getting my taxes done, and in front of other commitments. I wrote down the hundred things I thought I had to do, and realized that many of them could be put off one more day, reminding myself that I only needed to get that dayâ€™s writing done. I found that â€“ just like Julia Cameron promises â€“ getting everything else out of my head, recognizing it and moving on, opened up my writing!

Not only was I suddenly writing for four and five hour stretches, but the writing was far more productive, efficient, fun, and just good! I am amazed at how quickly the writing improved and the joy returned. And strangely, the other items on my to do list were surviving the wait. Some got done in the nooks and crannies of time my writing used to occupy. Some got picked up by friends and family. Some are still waiting.

Iâ€™m always amazed and sometimes embarrassed when God shows me he cares about the things that are important to me. But Iâ€™m extremely grateful! Now I start each day with the morning pages, and move right into the novel writing. My head is fresh and clear of â€œtrashâ€ and it shows in the writing. I laughingly tell God Iâ€™m now living in â€œManna Timeâ€ â€“ every day focusing just on what needs to be done that day, or if Iâ€™m particularly stressed, what needs to be done in that hour. Sometimes I hear MC Hammerâ€™s theme song â€œHammer Timeâ€ in my head. Thatâ€™s when I know I got my quirky sense of humor from my Maker. In any case, Iâ€™ve found a successful new way to write â€“ and itâ€™s worth it!

Kitty Bucholtz writes romantic comedies because, well, she lives one! She wrote her first book in the NBC cafeteria, the second snowed in at a Reno hotel, and the third from a tiny apartment in Sydney. Even though she loves talking about, writing about, and teaching about writing, sheâ€™s pretty sure she knows at least three people who arenâ€™t writers.

Things That Make Me Go Mmmruh!

Everyday Hero

by Geralyn Ruane

Far and away, my favorite Oscar moment this year (only because Viggo didnâ€™t win) was this: after a commercial break, Jon Stewart invites Marketa Irglova back on stage to say the thank you she didnâ€™t get to voice because the orchestra cut her off after she and Glen Hansard won for best song for Once, the little movie that could. My goodness, the woman helped make internationally beloved film music with little more than a magnifying glass and a kazoo. She deserved her moment at the mike. So good for you, Jon Stewart, for making sure she got it! Mmmruh!

I love it when that happens â€“ when someone decides they do not like what is happening, so they do something about it. Mmmruh!

After Wilma Melville retired from teaching gym, she decided that 15 FEMA-certified Search and Rescue dogs in the U.S. were not enough. She has since trained 85 more FEMA-certified Search and Rescue dogs and teamed them with trained fire fighters. Canadian high school students David Shepherd, Chris Spencer, Travis Price, Nick Sullivan and John Kennealy got sick of bullies terrorizing kids at their school, so they started wearing pink shirts to encourage solidarity against bullies. Pink Power is now spreading across the land. Judie Mancuso and her husband decided to live on half their income so Judie could quit her job and fight 24/7 for animal rights and righteous animal legislation in California. Mmmruh, mmmruh, mmmruh!

I know, I know. We all donâ€™t have an Oscar stage and an audience of millions at our disposal. And some of us have no affinity for dogs, no Gatsby-like posse, no passionate crusade. Thatâ€™s okay, though. We get to be everyday heroes, and those are the very best kind. The kind that change lives for a moment, make a day better, make an hour sweeter. And what is life, if not a double helix of tangled moments, days and hours?

I met Zam freshman year in college: I had an abysmal wardrobe and a perpetual wallflower complex, while he had the aplomb of Cary Grant and the biting sass of Bea Arthur. But do you know what I remember most about Zam? One day we were standing in the Student Union at the top of a steep staircase when a woman started bumping her way down with a baby carriage. Zam dropped everything to help the pair get safely to the first floor. I stood at the top of the staircase looking down at Steve (Zamâ€™s real name is Steve Zambriski), wishing I were in love with him â€“ he was just so magnificently compassionate. Mmmruh! Good thing I wasnâ€™t in love with him, though, since he turned out to be gayer than a box of birds. Youâ€™d think the nickname â€œZam,â€ and the Cher karaoke would have tipped me off, but at least I didnâ€™t fall for him and get my heart pulverized by the naked truth. But as naÃ¯ve as I was, I could recognize the heroic â€“ even through the buzz and bustle of the Student Union.

So hang up the cell phone and listen to your kid talk about how stupid his math teacher is. Give up your seat to the guy who looks really tired. Put your shopping cart back and make someone work a little less hard for minimum wage. Be an everyday hero.

Try it.

Every day.

Geralyn Ruane’s new favorite numbers are 18 and 1. She co-hosts the radio show Better Times After 50 on AdviceRadio.com when she’s not drinking chocolate milk straight from the spoon or writing humorous women’s fiction. Her short story â€œJane Austen Meets the New York Giantsâ€ is published in the New York Times Bestselling anthology The Right Words at the Right Time Volume 2.

My Mother

By Diane Pershing

Two and a half weeks ago, my mother was dying. We were together in her hospital room, where she was coughing and feverish, a ninety-year-old with severe pneumonia and a high temperature. We all know what happens to someone with that set of problems, right? We both had tears in our eyes. Hands shaking, she removed a beautiful square cut diamond ring from her hand and gave it to me. “It was my mother’s ring,” she said, her voice croaking with inflammation and exhaustion. “I want you to have it.”

I didn’t argue-first of all, it was a dying woman’s wish. Secondly, it’s beautiful and I’ve never had a diamond ring in my life. I took it, put it on the ring finger of my right hand (so no one would think that Ken had finally popped the question), and it was done. Together, we looked at how it sparkled and shared a moment that both of us sensed was one of the last.

Cut to: A week later. While the pneumonia was still pretty bad, her fever was down, her white blood cell count was down, and it seemed she wasnâ€™t going to die after all. I looked at the ring, looked at her and said with mock distress, “Ma, do I have to give it back now?”

She tilted her head to one side, enjoying the face I made, and said, “Nah. Itâ€™s yours anyway. Keep it.”

And I have. It’s here, sparkling still on my hand.

At present, Mom is out of the hospital and in a convalescent facility. She is still ninety and is weak and frail, but she coughs less, sits up more, walks a little with the aid of her walker. She is oh-so-slowly getting better.

As for me, I am a wreck. Caring for an elderly woman one loves unconditionally is not for weaklings. There is the necessity to be with her for hours and hours, because she needs reassurance and love and comfort, not to mention attention she does not get from nurses who are overworked and overstressed. There is her mail, her phone, her home, her bills. Running around getting the bedside table, contacting doctors and getting her meds right, and buying books light enough for her to hold but with large enough and dark enough print to read, Depends, looking for her favorite chocolate because she eats practically nothing at meals, making phone calls to be sure her care is attended to. This is not me whining, this is me stating a fact: I am past middle age and caring for an elderly parent and I am not an uncommon statistic. With the help of modern medicine, they’re living longer and we’re in charge. Fact, indisputable fact.

What does this have to with the blog offered by a writer of romances? A lot. Ask me where I am on the book I was deeply involved with two and a half weeks ago. The answer is: not any further along. I cannot write, I cannot concentrate, I cannot sit still and stare off into space and find the right phrase, the right image, for the scene I am creating. I CANNOT WRITE.

I think about the perfect writer I have in my headâ€”the one who can compartmentalize, who creates to escape, who, in face, finds solace and peace by writing . . . and it’s not me. Mom is in my head, not my book. The next chore to take care of for mom is all I can really think about. Plus getting enough sleep, eating properly, avoiding getting sick myself. Exercise? Fuggedaboudit. Life is about mom. For now. For the near future.

Because there will be a future without her in it. I want to enjoy the time the two of us have left, lap it up like a cat with a saucer of milk. She gave me life and loved me until I could exist apart from her. I salute my mother, and the book will have to wait.

********************
Diane Pershing wears many hats. She is a multi-published award-winning romance novelist, voice-over actress for commercials and animation, and the President-Elect of Romance Writers of America. Her latest Silhouette Romantic Suspense, ONE TOUGH AVENGER, third in a trilogy, was released January 2008.

Wishing for just one more day?

Havenâ€™t we all wished for more time? This year weâ€™re lucky, it happens to be a Leap Year and theoretically we all have one more day.

What would you do with one extra day? Would you squander it in your pajamas eating junk food watching a Mike Rowe marathon on the Discovery Channel? Would you use it at the office to catch up on filing? Or would you do something you always wanted to do but never had time for?

My friend Susanne, a leap year baby, is wildly enthusiastic about turning 10 years old today. Iâ€™ve known her for 11 years and sheâ€™s been married for 17.

Speaking of marriage, itâ€™s also Sadie Hawkins Day — the day when it is acceptable to propose marriage according to a tradition started in 5th century Ireland. St. Bridget convinced St. Patrick to allow women to propose on this very day. If the man refused, he was fined either money or a gown. (By the way, St. Bridget proposed to St. Patrick that day; he said no).

For the majority of us, February 29th is simply an extra day we have to work. Even so, February 29th gives us one more day to dream, to laugh, and have just a little more time with the ones we love.

What are you doing with your one extra day?