Merry Christmas, even if it's a day late! I hope everyone enjoyed their respective Winter Holiday of Choice as much as I did. This year I refused to panic, I didn't worry about the dog tracks on the carpet, I didn't obsess about having the silver polished, and I didn't get upset with my family and their quirks, I embraced them. It was a great day, a great Christmas, probably one of the best. I am blessed, so very blessed.

But it was the first Christmas without "Santa" at our house, and that was a little sad. My son in his 8-year old wisdom "figured it out" this summer, and he embraced the "No Santa" reality with so much gusto he wouldn't even allow us to say "Santa" in the house, although I've explained to him that Santa is part of the magic of the season and we will continue to cherish it in our hearts. He gave me a look like, "You grown-ups are crazy, make up your mind."

But there were no cookies or milk for Santa on the countertop, on the special Santa plate. There was no sprinking of Magic Reindeer Food in the front lawn in the winter chill of a Christmas Eve. We even had to wake our son up at 7:30 on Christmas morning, instead of hearing him call out to us at 5am from his bedroom. It is a strange rite of passage, and I'm feeling melancholy about it all.

On the flip side, my son was thrilled with all his gifts, and somewhat reassured when Christmas morning proved to be just as much fun as when Santa existed. He is such a good kid, and we are so blessed to have him in our lives, because not everyone is so blessed, and my melancholic indulgences pale when I think about a tragedy close to my family.

A good friend of ours recently lost his recently-married son in a motorcycle accident, a senseless, useless waste of a young life, and it is so sad. We don't know what to say to him, we don't know how to help him and his family, we can only pray for them for the passage of time to heal their hearts. We can be there for him when he is ready, but I can't imagine what he is going through right now.

Death is never a pleasant topic to ponder, but during the holidays, it seems ever so much more sad and hopeless. My prayer is for everyone who has lost a loved one or friend during the holidays to find a moment of peace and comfort. A moment of clarity and thanksgiving in a memory that can sustain them. There is joy in the world to be found, but the struggle to find that joy might take a very long time, on a very difficult journey.

If you know someone who has suffered a loss or is alone this season, give them a hug, invite them to dinner, and share a laugh with them about the person they are missing more than anything in the world. By connecting and reaching out, we remind others and ourselves that we can stay strong through love, through bonds we create and keep, through gestures and traditions. When we keep the memories of those we love alive, it is easier to make it through the difficult times.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Peace Be With All of You. We are all Blessed, even though some of us ignore the blessings that stare us in the face. God loves us, and He will never leave us. Thanks be to God for our blessings, for each other, for our time on this earth.

Bunkie

Sinus Infection as a Weight Loss Tool

Why is it that immediately after the fun and frolic we know as Halloween, germs promptly attack us from outer space, invade our bodies, and make us miserable until April? No matter how many times I wash my hands, alien viruses invade my immune system and shut down my mother board down...for weeks. Don't kid yourself, you're not getting frequent colds...it's just one major huge germ that screws with us for months: you might feel better for a few days or even a week, while the germs are on vacation, then they work overtime and POOF, you have a relapse.

The fashion world should design a Kleenex box necklace...at least we would be in style as we haul around the most necessary item in our wardrobes for six months. I can deal with all the nose-blowing and coughing, for the most part. It's the not being able to taste anything part that wears me out. Taste is imperative to a Foodie, and that's where I bog down.

When I get a sinus infection, as in, every week of my life between October-April, I can't smell anything. And I can't taste anything, either. Wow, nature's serious weight loss tool, right? If you can't taste, then food loses its appeal, so why bother, right? You should be able to drop, say, twenty pounds over the course of a healthy sinus infection, shouldn't you, by subsisting on cough drops and Nyquil?

The problem is that we Foodies, we gotta eat real food, or we'll go crazy, because it's what we live for. Here I am, sinuses packed full of stuff you don't want to imagine, can't breathe except through my ears, and I've been dreaming all morning of a Taco Bell Burrito Supreme. Naturally, at lunch time, I head for the Border, take a bite out of that puppy...only to experience a loss that is comparable to extreme grief. It looks good, it feels right in my hand, the textures on my tongue are intact...but it's like eating cardboard, there's no taste. Wait, cardboard has a taste. This burrito is totally devoid of any flavor whatsoever. The scary thing is that it reminds you of that dreaded essential tool of dieting your mother told you about whenever you complained of hunger...it tastes like water. Nothing. Zip. Nada.

But it's lunch time, which means I'm supposed to eat. So I alternate taking bites of tasteless burrito and blowing my nose, hoping to get the tiniest smidgen of taste in my mouth, but all that happens is that I clog up my ears and spill burrito all over my shirt. I stare at my half-eaten burrito, and do the unthinkable...I throw it away.

I find a mini-Snickers bar leftover from Halloween. This will taste good, it's chocolate, I hope as I pop it into my mouth. Do you realize how awful a Snickers bar is when you can't taste the caramel, the nougat, the nuts or the chocolate? Your brain knows there's a Snickers bar in your mouth, it feels right, but there's no taste. You feel as if you've just eaten a mouthful of rubber cement, and you begin to gag. You can barely swallow that mini-Snickers bar...you decide a glass of water will do just fine...a glass of water?

No wonder beauty pageants are held after germ season...

What, Exactly, Made Rosie "Crackle?"

Last night I had the distinct pleasure (I'm serious!) of dining with my husband and young son. It is our Monday night tradition to eat at the local Chik-Fil-A (translation: Mom doesn't have to cook because it's Family Nite).

On Family Nite, there's usually a person wandering around the restaurant, dressed in a very large Chik-Fil-A Cow costume. It is apparent that this poor soul can't see a thing in that cow's head, because he/she/it takes very tentative steps, and when he/she/it attempts to hand you a coupon for your trouble, the coupon is always about a foot away from where it should be, if you were actually being handed said coupon by a person who was not wearing a large cow's head.

On this particular evening, the Cow was distributing those little vented paper hats that 50's-style diner cooks used to wear...or at least, I imagine that they wore them, seeing as how I wasn't born until 1959. In any case, my son made it out of the restaurant with one of those paper hats on his head, and all this nostalgia made me scan the car radio pre-sets until the Oldies station blared loudly enough to make the steering wheel vibrate.

Just as we pulled away from Chik-Fil-A, Neil Diamond's hit, "Cracklin' Rosie" began to play. Now personally, I have always liked Neil Diamond...most of his songs can make you want to sing out loud, or in this case, play it now, play it now, play it now, my baby...

So there we all were, two normally reserved middle-aged adults and an 8-year old boy wearing a paper hat with cows on it, belting out "Cracklin' Rosie" at the top of our lungs. People stared at us as we stopped at red lights. In one special moment of red-light hilarity, I popped open the sunroof, told my son to unbuckle, and he gleefully stuck his paper hat-wearing little head out into the night, screaming, "Oh, I love my Rosie child...she got the way to make me happy..."

How he knew the words to this 35-year old song, at the tender age of 8, I don't have a clue. And yes, he did re-buckle his seat belt when the light turned green.

When Neil was finished singing, my son asked, "Mom, why did Rosie crackle? Was she struck by lightning?" My husband and I looked at each other, silently mouthed "Harvard" as we so often do when astounded by our offspring, and then I said, "Hmmm, well, that could be a plausible reason for someone to crackle...or maybe she was unwrapping a candy bar."

Luckily a Supremes song came on, so we quickly changed gears. My dear husband loves the Supremes...there is nothing like a grown man singing "Someday, we'll be to-gehhhh-thuh" in a falsetto to make you drive as fast as you can toward the house.

If you know the real reason why Rosie crackled, please, do tell.

You Eat the Pumpkin... Point Me Toward the Chocolate!

It's November, which means that:

1. Leaves fall
2. Sweaters become desirable
3. People try to force-feed you cooked pumpkin in various and sundry forms


I like a good slice of pumpkin bread, or a pumpkin cookie, or even a pumpkin cream cheese muffin from Starbucks on occasion. But I cannot abide pumpkin pie, no matter how flaky the homemade crust, or how sweet the dollop of whipped cream on top. And let's face it, after you've smelled pumpkin pie spice for roughly three minutes, you've pretty well captured the essence of Thanksgiving, and it's time to move on to better things. Like chocolate.

I'm not dissing Thanksgiving...we all truly have more blessings than we can count. I'm personally a fan of breaking bread with friends, family and even strangers, it's good to have fellowship. But something isn't quite right with a tradition where we strain our respective dining room tables with more food than we can possibly eat in one week, when people are homeless and starving and displaced. My family seeks to overcome this inequity by inviting scads of people we barely know to dine with us...and then of course, asking them to bring a dish. Heaven forbid we run out of green bean casserole.

And then to add insult to injury, after enjoying all this thankfulness and fellowship and gravy, you are considered Un-American if you don't blissfully partake of a slice of pumpkin pie. What? your relatives ask you, How you can you not like pumpkin pie?

I'll tell you how...I prefer not to eat things that remind me of my son's diaper years.

I bet if that good Pilgrim lass Priscilla Alden had known about chocolate, she'd have whipped up a chocolate pie that would have sent Squanto and his pals into the forest faster than you can say "seconds," foraging for more cocoa beans. And today instead of Hershey's, we'd have Squanto's, an American chocolate bar, invented by a Native American. Go figure.

Alas, the pumpkin pie tradition is slow to die. In fact, people continue to find new and interesting (to them) ways to cook with pumpkin. I admit it, pumpkins are very cute. But I prefer to hack my pumpkins into Jack -O'-Lanterns, then smash them into a bazillion pieces when the neighbors aren't looking. As David Letterman knows, there's nothing that says "smash" like a pumpkin.

So all you Martha Stewart wannabes out there, keep your pumpkin pie recipes to yourselves; at my house, we're having chocolate fudge pie, because Squanto would have wanted it that way!

Bunkie's Good Health Tip: Stay Indoors & Avoid Food

I'm officially now a middle-aged woman. Walk with me as I take my Inventory: raging hormones, horrible moodswings, hot flashes, pains everywhere, and a tendency to speak my mind in a very loud voice. My family walks on eggshells, my girlfriends don't see anything unusual, and total strangers think I'm a complete lunatic.

And now, we (that's the 'royal' we, and don't you forget it) have been diagnosed with Rosacea. Those fun-loving little bumps and pustules that appear smack dab in the middle of your face, for no apparent reason, just because there's a catastrophe of epic proportions occuring in my ovaries.

Who knew? I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and thought I had been Teleported back to the Land of Adolescent Acne, which as I now know, was simply a preview of the real hormonal rages to come.

I did what any self-respecting middle-aged woman with pustules on her face would do, I loudly demanded an immediate appointment with my dermatologist. It worked. He whipped out that huge 10X magnifying-glass hood, stared at my face for a few seconds, then pronounced the diagnosis. "Great!" I said. "Hand me some cream or something, so I can get rid of it."

My dermatologist smiled and took a deep breath. The kind of deep breath people take when they anticipate a killing blow. "Oh, no...I'm afraid with Roseacea, you can treat it, and you can reduce the symptoms, but there is no cure. I'm sorry to tell you this, but Roseacea can often be a side-effect of menopausal hormone activity." He smiled again. I wasn't smiling. I was trying to determine whether I could take him out with my purse...one well-placed blow to the skull...then I remembered I wanted to rip out a recipe for chocolate pie from the exam room copy of O, so I was momentarily distracted, and the dermatologist escaped with his life.

Now I have to wash my face twice a day with a soap that stinks like a basketful of rotten eggs, and the scent lingers for hours, so I'm sure people think I have really bad gas, as well as really bad manners. At night I spread this invisible sticky gel on the "affected area," which in my case, is my entire head. I admit this regimen has worked and I no longer look like a villain in a cheaply-produced Batman movie, but good grief, what else???

Always a glutton for punishment, and always one to think I can cure myself of any medical ailment, I read the pamphlets provided to me by my doctor. Here is what the pamphlet advised, to minimize and control Roseacea symptoms:

• Avoid the sun, as well as exposure to heat, cold, and wind
• Do not use any hygiene or beauty products containing alcohol
• Avoid caffeine, alcohol, chocolate, spicy foods, (i.e., anything that tastes good)
• Avoid dairy products including cheese
• Do not wear makeup or sunscreen
• Avoid over-exertion and perspiration

So! Am I living the High Life, or what?

Stop Beating (and Eating) Yourself Up!

I just spent 4 days with two very influential women in my life...my friend Jayne, who is an accomplished poet and a collaborator with me on our next hilarious book about menopause...and my friend The Clay Lady, Danielle, who has owned a successful business teaching kids how to make clay art for 23 years. Both of these women are wise, warm and hysterically funny, and like me, they understand that Chocolate is a Food Group! They get it.

The three of us hunkered down together in our little booth at Nashville's Southern Festival of Books, braving cold, rainy weather and drinking lots of hot tea. Who knows if it was the weather, or my hormones, but apparently I was doing the Self-Denigration Thing in a big way, at my own Private Pity Party, every time a friend stopped by our booth. I didn't even realize I was cutting myself down, until finally Danielle grabbed me and said "STOP! I have listened to you whine and lament your failures all weekend, and now, we're going to talk about your successes!!"

And so we did. And every time I tried to duck and run into that familiar "but" territory, where Why Me? and If Only... lurks in the shadows, Danielle simply shook her head, smiled, and insisted, "Look what you have accomplished! Look what you have achieved! In 4 years!"

It dawned on me that she is RIGHT! I am my own worst enemy! I am more successful than I ever dreamed I could be, compared to where I started 4 years ago, but instead of celebrating that success, I'm drowning in self-pity, afraid to step up to the plate and hit another home-run.

Thanks, Danielle, for slapping me into reality and out of my never-ending personal comparison to that long-suffering soul, Job! Despite my raging hormones, despite my failures and the yucky weather, or the umpteen things that can go wrong and will, I can do it!

As the great philosopher and poet Ovid said, "Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish."

How lucky I am to have fished in the pool with Danielle!

When Did Hair Removal Become So Important?

Today I received a hysterically funny email from a good friend, about a woman's attempt to use wax strips on her bikini area, and how in the process, she glued her bottom shut! Don't you just know those paramedics were howling??

Why do women put ourselves through this misery, just to remove a little hair? Isn't the hair on our bodies there for a good reason? Why is it so repulsive to us? Personally, I would love to take all the hair from my body, and glue it to my scalp, since I'm one of those lucky women who suffer from fine, thin hair with a mind of its own. I used to have lots of hair on my head...so much, in fact, I looked like a Fiji native. But then my son was born, my thyroid decided to stop functioning, and voila, now you can see the portal to my brain!

Call me indiscriminate, call me a tomboy, but in truth I am lazy, and I just don't see what all the fuss is about with respect to hair removal. I shave my legs when necessary, but I know women who shave every day! Good grief, who has time for that, let alone the lovely leg rash I'd get from daily hits with the razor! I'm probably not a good candidate to offer an opinion on bikini waxing, since the only time I was eligible to wear a bikini was when I was 5...hair is typically not a problem when you wear a size 18+ swimsuit...there's lots of extra fabric down there to cover stuff up, and let's face it, nobody's looking at you anyway!

Now that I'm officially 'middle aged,' I have discovered long, black hairs sprouting from my face and neck. For no apparent reason. Geez, am I gonna have to shave my face, too? And now that I need bifocals, or trifocals if I'm honest, isn't it FUN trying to remove those facial hairs, and navigate the mirror and the tweezers, but instead you pull out your eyelashes by mistake?

This is where I've gotta hang with the French ladies...no wonder they have so much free time to sit in cafes, bake their own bread and walk their dogs...they're not spending 3.5 hours a week removing unwanted body hair. If someone would only invent a Chocolate Hair Removal Product...then maybe I could get interested...

Extolling the Virtues of a Chocolate-Dipped Cone...

This is my "author" busy season, one in which I spend lots of time giving speeches and trying to sell books at a host of literary festivals around the country. If I'm lucky, I get put up in a nice hotel, sometimes there are pillow chocolates involved and turn-down service. Sometimes there are flies at the buffet (see Akron, previous...or better yet, let's forget about Akron) and sometimes there are fancy desserts at hoity-toity receptions with really big-name authors.

I was taught never to refuse food that is offered to you...which is why I continue to struggle with my weight! But I've recently observed that I do indeed have two sides to my personality: the Author side, where I hang with famous or-famous authors and celebrities, and we all talk about ourselves until everyone's sick to death; and the Mom side, where I do endless loads of laundry, drive carpool, and apply Band-Aids to skinned knees.

Speaking frankly, I love both worlds for what they each represent. But I gotta be honest, the desserts on the Mom side are so much better! Petit fours are all good and fine, but let's face it, you'd have to eat about 100 of them to really get enough to be satisfied. And you can't really do that in public, at a fancy reception.

But when you're a Mom, you can drive your clan to the local DQ, and treat everybody to a chocolate-dipped cone. What a simple, timeless treat! And it's dark chocolate, so it's GOOD for you! Can you imagine me filling up my Mom-mobile with a bunch of famous authors and driving them through DQ for a chocolate-dipped cone? They would curl up and die. They would lash me with their laptops.

So this weekend I'll be hanging at Nashville's Southern Festival of Books. I'll be in Booth #36, The Comma Goddesses. But pay close attention, because when I'm out walking the crowds, I'll be the one with the chocolate-dipped cone!

Today I will extol on the virtues of a very unique chocolate candy bar, Nestle's Violet Crumble, named, I'm guessing here, for the character Violet in Roald Dahl's Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. I must admit, I personally laughed until I very nearly wet my pants this summer, when I watched Johnny Depp's amazing on-screen antics, and the Oompah Loompah's homages to old movies were just what I needed to hearken me back to my film school days. But my son and I were the only ones in the theater laughing, so I guess Tim Burton's genius didn't necessarily have the same effect on the general population, who seemed to prefer Gene Wilder's singing in the original film version from the seventies.

Ok, I digress, but my friend Carol brought me a King-sizeViolet Crumble from Australia, where they are all the rage. This is an 8" long piece of 'enhanced' honeycomb, coated in chocolate, and the light crisp texture is amazing. It literally snaps in your mouth. And how good for you, honeycomb! The ancient Romans ate honeycomb and touted its health benefits, so let's review, a candy bar that is good for you, what's not to love? Leave it to the Swiss to figure this out, and leave it to me to want scads of Violet Crumbles in my pantry, but alas, I don't think I can buy them in the US of A...and there lies the problem.

Don't you hate it when you eat something new that you become addicted to, and you can't find it in your local area? My sister, who works in the UK, brought me the most wonderful concoction, a combination of hazelnut and chocolate, made by Ferrero in Italy, and I'll be danged if I can find them here. Oh, to be a world traveler, pockets full of strange coins and colorful bills, to be able to peruse the shelves of the world's candy stores...

I've saved one last bite of my precious Violet Crumble. If I write another chapter in my novel today, I get to eat it. It's sitting there on my desk, taunting me. Did I say that 'chapter' could be considered to be a couple of sentences?

Make New Friends & Keep the Old...One is Silver, the Other Will Buy You a Drink When You're Stuck in Akron

Yeah, so it's been awhile...ok, 8, 9 months since I blogged. Get over it. I'm back with a vengeance and determined to talk at you at least 3x a week, as part of my New Discipline. Goes along with my New Diet & Exercise Plan. Hey, wanna buy some real estate? Sorry, I digress.

Spent the weekend in Akron Ohio. Very nice people there, let me say that straight out. Kudos to them for trying to start a Reading Festival, very ambitious, you are to be congratulated. And I am fully cognizant that the Rust Belt is still very rusty, hard times and all that. I'm sorry, but it wasn't my fault, I don't own Goodrich.

But let's just say there were some technical difficulties with the Festival. There always are, I can deal with that. But flies swarming the breakfast bar at the hotel are never a good thing, even when one's room is paid for, thank you, Akron. Next time, skip the shuttle service (it was a lovely 3-block walk) and spend more on the hotel. One that can pass the health inspection, perhaps?

And here's a note to the Festival Organizer: if you schedule an Author (that would be moi) to speak, you probably should ask the caterers not to roll their very large carts down the side of the room during the Author's remarks...thanks to the ladies who tried to listen to my speech, we enjoyed a great laugh after the third cart swept by and our eardrums burst, plus our sign-language interpreter ROCKED, which was a good thing, because by then we were all deaf.

The only good thing I can say about my trip to Akron, aside from the fact that I had the foresight to bring along some Kit Kat bars, is that I hung out with 2 amazing, iconic women: syndicated columnist Kris Radish, and actress-par-excellence, Marcia Wallace. Let me be specific: we didn't just hang, we clung to each other, the sole bastions of sanity and reason amidst an Event Gone Sour. If I hadn't met these ladies, I would have kicked some serious ass and taken names, but as a result, enjoyed a very pleasant dinner (thanks, Bricco's!), lots of laughter, and resonated with the new bonds of friends who already seem like childhood pals.

Kris & Marcia were my lifeboat in a sea full of sharks and men who name-dropped and strutted their meager publishing successes around like Mick Jagger in a henhouse.

Kris & Marcia are the real deal; thanks for spending time with me, sharing laughs and stories, and remember, we'll always have Akron. NOT, you will recall, ever again in this lifetime!