Knees and Pecan Pie

Fact: overcooked pecan pie is almost toffee

          Nothing makes you appreciate a full-on Thanksgiving spread more than 50 years of cranking one out single-handed. 

Victory and Virtue

 

You wouldn’t think there was anything behind that black panel at the top of my microwave, would you? In fact, the panel doesn’t even look as though it would come off, but it does. I needed to change the filter, but couldn’t remember for the life of me how to get at it.

Anti-Social

 

     

    Well, that was interesting. On Monday I dashed off a quick entry about the Crime Bake writers’ conference and in return reeled in a comment from its headline speaker. 

Weekend Crime Spree

 

I began Crime Bake, the conference for mystery writers, with a master class chaired by Barbara Ross. With twelve mystery novels, a number of novellas, and umpteen Agatha nominations, she was definitely the right person for this class called ‘What I’ve learned along the way.’

Mystery Trek

          “I’ll sign up for pep squad if you do.” Or maybe it all starts with those posse trips to the ladies room when we travel in packs, as though the path ran through an active minefield rather than a series of booths full of people enjoying pizza.

Taking Steps

          When my parents separated, and ultimately divorced, I suddenly found myself no longer in Arlington, VA with my friends, dog Tammy, and cat Mosby, but living in Tulsa, Oklahoma with my grandparents.

          We’d stayed there in past summers, so I was well acquainted with my Uncle Sam’s old cache of Pogo books, tucked away in a cupboard under the eaves. But this was for the long haul, with no apparent end date.

          Fortunately, my family were readers and so was I. My mother’s attitude was that all reading, even if it was the back of a Kleenex box, was fine, so I had free rein of the books in his old room, most published in the ‘30s and ‘40s. My Uncle had at one point been bed-bound with polio, so there was plenty to pick from.

          I worked my way through, among others, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Thurber Carnival, Bill Maudlin’s book of WWII cartoons, The Egg and I, Gone with the Wind, and even Andersonville. I enjoyed them all even if at 11 years old it’s certain that I missed many of the references and most of the nuances, but they got me through a long summer.

  

        One of my favorites was Cheaper by the Dozen, an autobiography written by two children of efficiency experts Frank and Lillian Galbraith, pioneers in industrial engineering who tried to apply the same principles to their family of twelve kids.  

          It was when my knee (which is still deciding day-to-day whether it will cooperate) was at its worst that I was reminded of the Galbraiths.

          I became my own efficiency expert.

How much could I carry in one trip? Phone can go in pocket, book under arm, reading glasses on head, plate in left hand, tea mug in right. And the odds were better if this occurred after the mug was empty.

          Did I reeealy need that loaf of bread all the way downstairs in the freezer?

          And why walk the four steps around the couch that it would take to turn up the thermostat when I could use the Nest app on my phone?

 

Ups, downs, and out

          Up :

          Good thing it didn’t happen while the grandtwins were here.

          Down:

          Monday morning, after having gotten up, eaten breakfast, and tidied a bit around the house, I stepped into the garage – literally one step – to toss a newspaper in the recycle bin and my knee went kaflooey.