Time for chocolate, chili, homemade bread and 50,000 words

By Margi Washburn

Well, boys and girls, it's that time of year again. Time to buy bags of chocolate candy, haul out the baking pans and large cooking pots, and begin the outline for your novel. Don't tell me you forgot?

First, the candy. Last year hubby reminded me to get several bags of what he likes to call the "good candy." We may only get a dozen trick-or-treaters every year, but someone wants to make sure they get the good stuff. He can't eat candy, so that leaves a big ol' bowlful for me, and while that should make me ecstatic, it doesn't. This time, I'm bringing the stuff to work and letting others share the goodies.

Last year, the two of us were in the dentist's office on Halloween night. Sarah the pup had head-butted hubby a few nights before and knocked a tooth loose. By the time we got home from the dentist, hubby had one less tooth and the dog had wrapped a blanket around her head, neck and one paw and was probably a heartbeat away from joining our other furry friends in doggy heaven. We rescued her, and she was fine but her master wasn't. I fixed soft foods, gave hubby a pain pill and off he went to bed for the night. We missed every single trick-or-treater and I had six bucks' worth of candy all to myself.

Second, this is the season for homemade bread, chili, vegetable soup and other comfort foods. I bought some hot chocolate mix with marshmallows a while back, so I'm ready for some serious cool weather. I've tried to make the healthy type of chili with turkey meat, but hubby turns up his nose at the appearance of pale meat floating among the beans and onions. That leaves fresh-baked bread, and I have a lot of family members who love seeing me show up at their house with a loaf of the stuff. They tell me it's usually gone in less than two days.

Finally, it's time once again for you writers out there to sharpen your pencils. Beginning at one minute after midnight on November 1st, we'll be joining tens of thousands of other budding novelists in our quest to reach 50,000 words by November 30. Scared? Feeling completely inadequate as a novelist? Well, join the club; we all get the jitters at the mere thought, but trust me, it can be done.

We've got young people right here in Kewanee who are making plans to put their dreams on paper. Some have formed a group, have a glimmer of an idea, and know where and when they'll meet. This is a fantastic development; we have kids who not only love to read, but they're excited about writing a book of their own.

Those of us who are readying ourselves for National Novel Writing Month have registered at their website: http://www.nanowrimo.org and there is a link there especially for young writers. There you will find three different age-relevant sets of worksheets to download and print out to help you along. It's OK for grownups to do this; we can all use the help. A word of caution: each of the three sets is at least 50 pages long, so make sure you have plenty of ink in your printer.

This time around, most of us will create our own little worlds inside our own homes, but some will find their way to local eateries just to have a change of scenery. Others will write in bookstores, the library and, if weather permits, outdoors. If any other story-inspiring locations arise, I'll let you all know.

So, stock up on candy, make a pot of hearty soup, and come up with a winning story idea. After all, it isn't all that long until we enter the season of miracles, so let's get a head start.

It's nice to know people are willing to point out your mistakes

By Margi Washburn


Sometimes it really hits home. You know, like when you’re on the receiving end of some well-deserved criticism that makes you want to crawl into a hole and pull the cover over the top.

My mom used to say, “what goes around, comes around.” Others call it Karma, and we’ve all heard that we reap what we sow. I wish someone had pounded that truth home to me years ago. Of course, I wish I’d started writing years ago, too, but that’s beside the point.

It used to tickle me pink to catch someone in a mistake. The more often they made the same mistake, the more I’d wonder how anyone could be so stupid. And it seemed important to share that juicy information with friends and family.

Now that I’m older and a tad wiser, at least at the moment, I see how judgmental that was. Plus, I got blasted in spades the other day and it made me stop and ask what I’d done to deserve such a cruddy 24 hours.

The morning started with hubby wanting to know why his unmentionables were now pink. I’d just bought a couple of maroon and navy blue face towels to go with the bathroom that he’s remodeling, but those were waiting to be washed separately. Seems, though, I forgot about a new long-sleeved maroon shirt someone had thrown in the laundry basket.

Within minutes, the phone rang and someone most of us are familiar with at one time or another put a different kind of damper on the morning. I shrugged it off and headed for work.

Before long it was time to head to bible study. I figured there was time for a good cup of coffee, so I headed to a favorite spot and maneuvered our car into the drive-thru lane. Weird things were happening with the speaker system, but that was nothing new. I wasn’t told to pay at the first window, yet habit forced me to stop there anyway.

It seems that I turned invisible at about that time because the young lady simply ignored me as if I wasn’t there. She pressed buttons on her machine, never looked at me once and I could see cars lining up behind me. Perhaps it was time to move forward.

Then again, perhaps I was wrong. I figured that out when I heard, “Heeeeey!” Now I was stuck halfway between windows one and two with an angry employee now giving me her full attention and a tongue-lashing.

I tried yelling back that I didn’t know what to do because she wasn’t paying attention to me, and I couldn’t back up unless I wanted to cause a wreck. I pulled up to the second window, only to be told that it would be a few minutes because, this young lady told me in a stern voice, I hadn’t paid where I was supposed to. I tapped my watch and said I was going to be late, and besides, the first woman ignored me. The window was firmly shut and I waited, just like a good little customer who had done a stupid, stupid thing.

I wasn’t feeling like someone who was on their way to bible study, but I had my coffee. It wasn’t prepared like I’d asked and paid for but there was no way I was going to complain.

Things went reasonably well until that night when I went to cover an event for the paper. On my way down Third Street, I saw a maniacal driver coming so fast down a side street to my right that I knew it was going to be close. This didn’t seem to matter to Mr. Pick-up Truck because he blew the stop sign and flung himself into the same parking lot I was headed. I couldn’t wait to see what he looked like.

Turned out this was someone who may have been running late for a board meeting. I walked through the doors shortly after he did and checked the guy out just as he was sitting down. I shook off my anger and found my way to my assignment.

In less than 20 minutes, in the midst of a conversation with a friend, I was made aware that I had made a faux pas in an article I’d done about someone several months ago. I was assured repeatedly that it was no big deal, but it was a huge deal to me. I was mortified, and things were about to get worse because someone overheard most of the conversation. A strong opinion was expressed, and I had it coming, but it still hurt like the dickens and nearly ruined the rest of the evening.

Later that night hubby and I drove over to his mom’s house and I drowned my sorrows in hot coffee and chocolate cookies. We had some laughs, and talked for hours. By the time we went home, everything from pink underwear to snarly clerks and a well-deserved comeuppance had all but faded from memory.

Still, I think I’ll watch my mouth and heed those old sayings. It couldn’t hurt, right?

Shopping trip turns into a lesson about priorities, sort of

By Margi Washburn

Usually I can describe a shopping trip with the girls from when I get The Phone Call, until we pull into our respective driveways, but this trip was different.

You know how it is. In each of our lives, there are big moments that change the landscape of our memories. Often those occasions are happy, like when we met our spouse for the first time, or our wedding, first home, first child. Memories up to that point become a bit faded or out of context because of a life-changing event.

So, I’m using that excuse to explain why I don’t remember what happened before one of our little group ended up on the floor of the restaurant after eating a loaded baked potato and a piece of pie. Plus, she kept nibbling on her sister’s lemon square, but maybe that had nothing to do with it.

A couple of hours before the floor incident, we’d gone our separate ways in the mall. I perused the bookstore, found a Dairy Queen next to an Orange Julius (now there’s a hard choice to make), and too soon it was time to meet for a snack at a restaurant inside the mall.

One of us was on a special diet, so the choice was fish and veggies. The rest of us chose the baked potato and dessert, along with coffee.

We had conversation, some laughs, and good food. It was mid-afternoon, and our part of the restaurant had about two dozen diners enjoying themselves. Then things changed.

I remember looking over and seeing her hand rubbing the side of her head. Eyes closed, she murmured something about feeling light-headed and she felt her heart beating too fast. It was kind of hard to hear her because of the noise level of the conversations around us, plus her voice was barely a whisper.

We asked if she’d like to leave, or have us get help, but she only wanted to be put on the floor so she could rest. We were in a very nice place, but the floor? What woman wants her hair to touch a floor where hundreds of shoes have been?

One would have to feel pretty awful to do such a thing, so after placing her carefully on the floor, we waved our arms to get attention. Soon, mall security was on the scene and they alerted the paramedics. Before long, our four-person shopping party was joined by about half a dozen men in uniform. It didn’t escape our notice that not only were these guys terrific at their job, they were cute, too.

While one of us was whisked away to a nearby hospital, the rest of us gathered our purchases and got ready to follow the ambulance. It took off ahead of us while we paid the restaurant bill and headed for the car. Since it was our driver that had gone on ahead with the cute guys in uniform, the new driver led us through a department store on the way to the car. That’s when things got fun.

We had to stop and pick up purchases that had been left there for pick-up on our way home. We found out that the original driver had some things at the checkout desk, but she hadn’t paid for them. None of us volunteered to do that for her, so off we went to find out how things were going.

The hospital was easy to find and the three of us were allowed inside the emergency room. Someone was looking quite a bit better, and before long she wanted to know if we’d picked up her purchases at the store. We admitted we hadn’t, she told us that was all right, and then we all had a nice, long wait for tests results to come back.

During this time, one of us made the phone calls home to let everyone know what was happening. It was our good luck that a couple of friends from Kewanee were nearby, so they offered to take me home, and as soon as the doctors released the patient, the rest would come back to town. Sounded good to me.

However, my two new car mates are the adventurous kind. They like to find a new way home every time they travel. We barreled along back roads through cornfields and around farms and for a very long time I didn’t know where I was. Thing is, the two in the front seat were having a conversation straight out of a Stephen King novel, and they were so matter-of-fact about the subject matter that it started to freak me out. One of them must have sensed something, because the wife turned around and asked if I was OK and I told her of course I was. What was I going to say?

The patient turned out to be fine; in fact, they stopped and had a sandwich on the way home. When they called from the restaurant to tell me the good news, I could hear laughter in the background. It was kind of late when the call came, so I just had to ask one question.

“Tell me you guys didn’t go all the way back and pick up her clothes,” I said.

The silence coming through the phone line said it all.

Television doctors and attorneys are too good to be true

By Margi Washburn


Those of us who grew up watching TV doctors may have come to believe, or at least hope for the experience of having a Dr. Welby care about our well-being. I know Robert Young played that part, and I also remember Medical Center and Ben Casey, with their respective actors. There’s a problem, though, if we expect real life to mirror TV life.

When we walk into our doctors’ offices we are more likely to see no less than three signs, though each are worded a bit differently, that inform us that payment is due at the time of service. Now take note: time of service does not necessarily mean that you will find yourself in the second waiting room at the time you were told, or that you will even see the doctor.

Yet you’d better have that insurance card and your co-payment before you leave. For your convenience, there are also a plethora of credit cards that will be accepted, and their bright, colorful logos are plastered everywhere so you won’t miss them. Credit cards and I have a very, very bad history so whenever I see those happy little symbols, I want to run screaming into traffic. Of course that would mean a doctor visit, and I don’t want to do that either.

Lawyer dramas tend to instill the same kinds of expectations. Just like we hope our doctors will chase us down and make sure we take our meds, we want our lawyers to believe everything we (or our loved ones) say, and we want the best defense our pitiful amount of money can buy. Golly, even those clients on TV who have no money get some astonishing and free defense attorneys. Those of us in the real world who need a good lawyer often find ourselves going nearly blind perusing the phone book and wondering if we’ll ever land a Ben Matlock or Perry Mason.

I think my life reflects a comedy sitcom. We watch Everybody Loves Raymond reruns, and I can’t tell you how many times that show hit some buttons. There’s the rivalry between brothers, the misunderstandings between in-laws, especially with Raymond’s wife and his mother. Hubby and I watch favorite episodes every week.

Whether you watched Seinfeld or not, I’d bet your paycheck that you’ve had a Seinfeld moment. There’s the friend who mooches, relationship issues, trying and failing to meet up with friends at the movies, matchmaking, waiting to be seated at a restaurant, lousy jobs and bosses, weird co-workers. There are dozens of moments like these that our family identifies with, and we’re not ashamed to admit it.

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we shouldn’t identify too closely with any television character because we then expect we can identify with them all. Missing a friend at a movie isn’t funny, matchmaking can get you into trouble, waiting to be seated in a restaurant can make you cranky, and lousy jobs can bring a whole lot of stress that none of us need.

In my real life, I know quite a few excellent and compassionate doctors and nurses. If you’ve had a bad experience waiting for the doctor, join the club. We’ve all been there, but I’ve found that most of the time, the wait was worth it. The frustration went away and took my headache with it once my questions were answered and the prescription was written.

Life is going to give us all sorts of surprises, whether we want them or not. If we keep our heads in the real world, our friends and families will help us cope with those unexpected moments like no one else can. Not even Dr. Welby or Perry Mason.

Extra: still summer in Kewanee

(Afternoon sunlight through the trees in Veterans Park in Kewanee, Illinois. A beautiful, special place.)

Yeah, I know. There are probably lots of people wondering where fall is, and I used to have fits when hot ol' summer lasted until just past Halloween. I mean, who wants to dress up in a costume and sweat while running around the neighborhood hauling in a mother-lode of candy? Been there, done that.

But when one hits their 50s and starts gently strolling down the other side of The Hill, and they live in Illinois (motto: if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes), then one learns to appreciate all of the days and nights we can run around without jackets, boots, hats and gloves. We like the lower power bills - you know, that glorious, all-too-brief time of year when the air conditioner runs less and less, and the furnace doesn't run at all (unless you're in your 80s like a certain mom-in-law.)

Hubby's getting a lot of outdoor home repairs and remodeling done now. The paint dries faster, that sort of thing, but we are coming into that time of year when the sun disappears sooner and it gets a little too dark to use power tools. And don't forget, this year we don't turn the clocks back until (I think) the first Sunday in November instead of the last Sunday in October. I hope that particular experiment was only good for one year. I can't stand Daylight Savings Time - and making it longer really frosted my cookies.

We're off to spend an evening visiting with hubby's mom - cookies, coffee and conversation around the kitchen table. It doesn't get much better than that.