Happy Thanksgiving...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!

Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Brahma

My sister, on her way here to visit, made her husband turn around so she could take this photo. I think I can understand why. When is the last time you saw a giant Brahma bull dressed up like Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer--with Santa Claus riding on his back?

I know. But I guess it beats the meat aisle at Walmart.

Merry Christmas. (sigh)

The Empire Hotel

Come take a photo tour of the historic Empire Hotel. The 1855 section had a "walk on" part in at least one of my historicals, i.e., THE BRIDE FAIR. I keep hoping somebody will step up and save it. I thought for a while it would actually happen--an honest to goodness restoration. But then that fell to the wayside in the wake of the Wall Street shenanigans.

Click here to see the interior.

Rainbow-sharing...

An unexpected pleasure on a trip to the F&M Bank yesterday. This was taken from the bank parking lot--the trees are gorgeous, aren't they?

On the left, through the trees, is a house I often when to with my dad when I was a little girl. The man who lived there and my dad were both "dog men." ("Dog men" have a lot to talk about.)

The two-story white structure on the right is a small apartment house behind the two-story stone house that used to be Dr. Oliver's medical office. (Had to go there more times than I like to remember.) The big stone house is still there, but I'm not sure what, if anything occupies it.

On the far, far right--completely out of the frame--is the house that belonged to a woman who lost both her sons in WW II. I believe her name was Mrs. Holshouser. Even though she's long gone, I always feel sad when I see it. Not so much at that particular moment, though. Rainbows help with things like that.

And this concludes my Rainbow Connection for this time...

Clocks and Me...

I've been tinkering with the anniversary clocks--two of them, both of which chime like clockwork, but mostly not the right number for the hour it happens to be. For example, one chimes twice when it's 10 AM and not at all when it's 10 PM. The other one is just as numerically challenged, although both of them do just fine if it happens to be 12 noon or midnight. It's been that way for years. Suffice it to say, if you want to know what time it is at my house, do NOT count the chiming.

Anyway, as I said, I've been tinkering, not because I intended to do something about the mismatched chimes, but because I had to reset them AGAIN thanks to that Fall Back/Spring Forward nonsense. (No, I don't like Daylight Savings Time. The only time I liked it was when I was 10 and NC didn't participate in the practice, so all the television programs came on an hour early. I got to see all kinds of  programs I'd never seen before and I LIKED it.)

But I digress. I finally got around to resetting the anniversary clocks, only to find one had stopped running altogether. New batteries should have taken care of that, but didn't, so I tinkered. And fiddled. And tinkered. I got the thing running again, but it wasn't chiming. And then it was chiming, and not only was it chiming, it was chiming the right number. And somehow so is the other one, the one I didn't tinker with except to run the hands forward until it was an hour earlier.

Imagine that. Clocks chiming ten when it's ten and two when it's two. It's nice. I like it.

It makes me happy.

Till next time...

Mt. Pilot...

Apparently State Park personnel tried to burn down Pilot Mountain. (Mount Pilot of Andy Griffith Show fame, that would be.) It was one of those "prescribed burn" things. I heard someone comment that people and the media were just "overreacting." I once stayed with a very nice Pilot Mountain woman when I was a member of a classmate's wedding. This was the view from her front door--without the flames, of course. If she still lives there, and not being a total idiot, I imagine she's been "overreacting" quite a bit.

My Heroes...

Giving my humble thanks to veterans everywhere, and especially to "my" veterans, many of whom who are no longer here:

Richard

Daddy

"Moose"

Frankie

Genaro

"Pop"

Raymond

Floyd (who didn't come home from the war)

Brantley

Dean

Gary

Randy

Steve

Sally

and all the men from my childhood who answered the call when their country needed them. I was a little girl who grew up surrounded by heroes who did their duty, and I am all the better for it.

It's The Truth...

IF YOU TELL ME YOUR GHOST STORY, I'LL TELL YOU MINE...

Halloween is nigh, so I was thinking. Have you ever had a ghostly encounter? I think I have and I'm going to tell you about it.

Once upon a time, I was a young nurse working night duty on a surgical unit at the local hospital. The unit was a T-shaped wing in the "old" part of the hospital which had been built in the 1930s. Everything about it was "old," the decor, the terrazzo flooring, the call lights. Those worked by depressing a button on the end of a cord until it clicked and stayed in. To turn it off, you clicked again and released it so that it popped out.

On the annex part of the "T," which led to the "new" part of the hospital, there was a small, no amenities room. By that I mean, no bathroom, no closet, and just big enough for one bed, the bedside tables and a chair. It was usually a kind of "overflow" room for late night admissions, but for several weeks it had been a "dying room" for a woman with a terminal illness. She was in a great deal of pain, and her call light would come on often during the night. "Pain management" was an oxymoron then--perhaps it still is--but at that time pain medication was ordered at rigid, tightly controlled intervals and never given early, which was the reason her call light came on so often. She was locked into the Job-like suffering of "How long?"

One night, when I came on duty, I was advised that the woman had died during the day, that the room had been cleaned, repainted and was ready for another admission. As the night progressed, I happened to look down the annex hallway just when a room light over a door came on. It was the "dying room." I walked down the hall and went inside. No one was there. I wasn't afraid. No goosebumps or raised hair or anything like that. Nothing on my mind but addressing the problem at hand. I picked up the call light, clicked the button to release it and thus turn it off, and left the room.

It wasn't until I was halfway back down the hallway that I realized that the call light button had been pushed "in" -- which is the only way it could be turned on. The button was IN. A well-used, antiquated call light could get to the point where the button would pop "out" and thus not stay on without the patient having to hold it, but they never popped "in." I knew there was no one else in the room. I knew no one had been in the room because I saw the light come on, and I went immediately to check on it. There was only one way in or out and no one could have left without me seeing them.

So I was puzzled. VERY puzzled, and I thought well, maybe there's a short. Maybe the button had gotten pushed in when the room was cleaned and never released because a short made it go off so no one realized it. In any event, I didn't have time to worry about it. I had a whole unit with rooms full of post-surgical people I could actually see.

But twice more during the night, the light came on. Twice more I went into the room, found the button pushed"in," and I turned it off. I must say, by the third time, the goosebumps were there.

How did the light thing happen? I didn't know then and I don't know now. I only know that it did.

Book Bulletin...

The new release will be a Love Inspired Historical, titled AN UNEXPECTED WIFE.  The release date is July 2013....