Month: August 2013

Help, my books are loose and taking over!


Books, books, everywhere books. History books. Writing books. Creative nonfiction. Novels. Poetry. Books I wrote. Books my friends wrote. Books I wish I wrote. When they’re all stuffed in the shelves, it’s not so bad, but I had a little disaster last week. My water heater gave out. I woke up Tuesday morning to find water all over my laundry room, leaking across the concrete floor and under the dog crate, the recycle bin, the cabinet and the refrigerator. I waited most of the day for a plumber, who declared the water heater dead and replaced it with a new one.
I thought: okay, end of story. I didn’t realize until Wednesday night when I happened to walk barefoot in the den that the carpet was wet and squishy. You see, the laundry room and den used to be the garage. A former owner converted it into living space. Right now I’m kind of wishing he hadn’t done that. The water had leaked under the wall from the laundry room into the den, mostly along the wall lined with book shelves. Four five-shelf units, each six feet tall, 30 inches wide and full of books. Stuffed is a better word. And those are just the ones I’ve read.
In order to get to the carpet, I had to move the bookshelves. In order to move the bookshelves, I had to unload them. Unshelved, the books expanded like rice in boiling water. So now I have books in every room of my house, including the bathrooms. I have no place to sit in the living room except the dog’s chair or the floor. The soggy den is completely off limits, full of wet carpets and big dryers.
I spent Thursday moving books and blotting the carpet with towels. Washed and dried said towels five times then realized this didn’t help the padding underneath at all. Called the insurance company. Waited all day Friday for return calls. Their crew came out Saturday. First thing they did was declare the bookshelves dead. Made of pressboard, they were soaked on the bottom. Pieces of soggy pressboard fell off as two hefty guys carried them to the front yard and left them to await a trip to the dump. The insurance company will reimburse me for new bookshelves of comparable value. But it’s going to be a while before the room can be occupied again.
Meanwhile, I’m drowning in books. A quick estimate tells me at least 500 books are left homeless. That doesn’t count the ones that live in other shelves or boxes or drawers. Every time I’ve moved, my friends and relatives have complained about the books. “Jeez, how many books do you need?” they ask.
In the house where I grew up, there weren’t many books. One little shelf in the living room held a couple Bibles, cookbooks, knitting books, and a set of encyclopedias acquired one at a time at the grocery store back in the 1960s. It’s not that we didn’t read. We read constantly, but we got our books at the library. On the rare occasion when a book was purchased or received as a gift, we passed one copy around the family. Now I probably buy three or four books a month, and I keep all the ones I like, so they add up quickly. I have been meaning to go back and reread the books on the shelves to see if I still want them, but never had time. Now I’m forced to cull my collection.
I’m looking at these homeless books on my couch, my floor, my washing machine, every flat surface, and thinking maybe I should give all of them away. How often do I actually look at them? They’re weighing me down. Is this a home or a library?
I have quite a few e-books on my Kindle. With e-readers, there’s no need for bookshelves. I can store hundreds of books on something that fits in my purse. And if something happens to my Kindle, Amazon.com will magically transfer all my books to my new e-reading device. But it’s not the same. You can’t smell an e-book, can’t autograph it, can’t read it in the bathtub. And I don’t think my e-books will be around decades from now like many of the books on my shelves.
Meanwhile, I have books all over my house. The Lick library. If you want to borrow one or two or a dozen, come on over. My rates are incredibly cheap, and I’ll even give you a homemade chocolate chip cookie as a bonus.
What do you think? How many books do you own? How many books does a person need?

Books are alive and thriving in Lincoln City, Oregon

Those who predict the demise of books should have been at the Northwest Author Fair in Lincoln City, Oregon on Saturday. I joined 49 other authors packed into long tables outside Bob’s Beach Books to sell our books, schmooze with potential customers and network with other authors. My table happened to be next to the cash register. People were lined up buying stacks of books all day. Not necessarily my books . . . but books.

The day started with drizzle but soon changed to hot sunshine. Nonstop traffic passed nearby on Highway 101, and shorts-clad tourists toured the nearby antiques shops and stopped to browse the books. They brought kids who were bored and kids who liked to read, and quite a few brought dogs that socialized under the tables. I sat two tables over from popular author Phillip Margolin, and the fans surrounded him, buying new books and bringing bags of old ones to be autographed.

At my table, lots of people admired my book covers, especially the picture on the front of Stories Grandma Never Told (shown), but not too many actually bought my books. That’s okay. I enjoyed talking to them, and many took information they may use later to buy the books from me or someone else. Meanwhile, I was taking mental notes on what kinds of book they were buying. We had a little bit of everything at the tables–poetry, history, philosophy, memoirs, children’s books–but what people were carrying out by the dozen were genre fiction–mysteries, suspense novels, romance, fantasy, stuff like that. The woman next to me, Bernadette Pajer, did quite well with her Seattle-based mystery novels. In general, I saw that people wanted to buy books that looked familiar and accessible.

How do we convince casual readers that there is good stuff to be read in books that don’t have dragons, sexy women or men with guns on the cover? That one can read literary stories, essays or even poetry for fun? Or should I just write more fiction? When I offered freebies last year for both my novel Azorean Dreams and my memoir Childless by Marriage, the novel got far more takers than the nonfiction book did. I have a new novel on the way. We’ll see what happens.

A couple of people asked me if my books are available as e-books. They prefer to read on their Kindles or other e-readers. Yes, four of my books can be purchased (cheap) as Kindle e-books. Stories Grandma Never Told is the exception. It’s so packed with photos that I don’t know how to translate it into e-book form without making a mess of it. That leads me to thinking about a future in which all books are sold in electronic form. Would we have author fairs then? What would we put on our tables? How would we autograph our e-books? I don’t think we have to worry about that for a while. The printed book is definitely alive and thriving in Lincoln City, Oregon.

If you missed the fair, Bob’s has copies of all our books, along with lots of others. When I browse the shelves at Bob’s, I want to buy everything. And Bob’s Beach Books is owned by the same family that operates Robert’s Bookshop, the biggest used-book store I’ve ever seen.

Why not read a book today? It’s good for you.

THIS is how you bathe a dog


A while back, I posted here about “How Not to Bathe a Dog”. Annie had gotten into something smelly, and I had tried to wash her off in my bathroom. As you can read in detail at that post, I wound up naked in a tub full of fur and stink while she remained on the floor. I got so frustrated I washed her out there, ignoring the fact that the water was rising and starting to trickle toward the bedroom. I wound up with a big mess and a sore back. Bad idea.

More recently, on my first day back from my vacation, I was out front washing the mud and bugs off my car when I foolishly decided it would be okay to let the dog hang out with me. Of course when I opened the door, she sprinted across the street and out of sight. Luckily we live in the middle of nowhere so there’s no traffic and she never goes very far. I continued washing my car. When the dog showed up a half hour later, covered with Thiel Creek mud, I grabbed her collar with one hand and turned the hose on her with the other. I know the water was cold and she’s scared of the hose, but I was not in the mood to mess around. Effective but heartless.
Last week, I faced another dog-washing situation. Annie had been scratching for days. Every time I looked at her, she was either scratching or twisted around staring at her tail. Her butt and legs were wet and red. Unacceptable. We’ve done the vet routine with oral and topical medications and changing her diet to see if she has a food allergy. Expensive and ineffective. Apparently she’s hypersensitive to fleas. I sat with Annie for a while, plucked a flea off her paw despite using the expensive flea gunk, and decided a bath might help. But no hoses, no wrestling in my pink bathtub.
I called a groomer to see if I could get her in, but they didn’t call back. I loaded Annie into the car, drove by the groomer’s on my way to the Post Office, and discovered that, in the typical way of Oregon Coast businesses, they were closed on a Thursday afternoon. Why? I don’t know. The sign on the shop next door said THEY were at the beach.
So, I leashed up my dog and we went to Moondoggy, a doggy daycare and spa in Newport that offers facilities for owners to wash their dogs. It’s like a car wash for our four-legged loved ones. It was great! The woman there led Annie up three steps into a big tub, closed the door, harnessed her up so she couldn’t run away and got the water started at just the right temperature. She directed me to a shelf full of shampoos, rubber scrubbers, and towels, and left us to have fun.
To my amazement, my big nervous mutt stood calmly as I wet and soaped and rinsed her body, even her private parts and her head. She may even have liked it. I know I did. Quality time with the pooch, washing away her troubles (I hope). When she was clean, I rubbed her dry with a big towel much thicker and more absorbent than any of the towels I own. Afterward, she nibbled dog treats while I paid $10. Now my dog smells good, her fur is soft, and she’s scratching much less. That night, feeling better, she relaxed into a deep sleep in my lap. Such a deal. Moondoggy rules. THAT’S how to wash a dog.
My dad says when he lived on the ranch in San Jose, they used to have places like Moondoggy to wash the horses. The only difference was they played music to keep the horses calm. Good idea for next time.
Do you have dirty dog-dog-washing experiences you’d like to share? I’d love to hear them.

Coffee, coffee everywhere, and I just want my tea

Here in Oregon, we’ve got coffee kiosks on every corner, and I never stop. I don’t drink coffee. It’s not a health thing. I hate coffee. I can choke down coffee-flavored ice cream, and I have drunk a wee bit of Irish coffee (whiskey, whipped cream, sugar, and a littlecoffee), but you won’t catch me walking around with a Starbucks or Dutch Brothers cup of java. I have nothing against those places. I love their pastries. But I’m not a coffee drinker. I think it’s genetic. My mother didn’t like the taste either.
Coffee is almost a religion here in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve got our own Newport Bay Coffee Company, as well as our Starbucks, Pirate Coffee Company, Espressgo, Coffee Stop, Dutch Brothers, Pacific Grind, Central Roast, and more. Some folks can’t seem to get through their day without hitting the drive-through. One actually HIT the drive-through in June at Dutch Brothers in Newport. She lost control of her car on the way in and wiped out a stop sign, a fire hydrant and some landscaping, ending up with her car on its side. Emergency vehicles and curious crowds lined the street like it was a parade, but the woman was not hurt, and the coffee-pouring resumed shortly after the car got towed away. She was arrested for DUII. I guess she really needed her coffee.
I don’t understand why people need so much coffee. I’ve noticed lines at the coffee places even on Christmas and Thanksgiving when presumably wherever people are going will have coffee. Folks get coffee on the way to get coffee. Of course what they’re buying may be fancy espresso drinks instead of just plain coffee. But how do they manage the expense and the calories? And how do they sleep at night with all that caffeine?
My late husband was a coffee guy, but just regular joe, please. Black. Strong. He’d buy bags of coffee beans and grind them up in this fancy grinder that sounded like it was shredding bones. An early riser, he took the grinder out into the garage so as not to wake me up. He could drink coffee at night and go to sleep just fine while a sip of his mother’s kahlua (made of vodka and coffee) would have me staring at the ceiling for hours. It was a sad day in Fred’s progression through Alzheimer’s Disease when he forgot how to make coffee.
I come from a different tribe. I drink tea. I require tea. Strong black iced tea at lunch, herb tea the rest of the time. I have been known to avoid restaurants that don’t serve iced tea, so I guess my addiction is just as bad as that of the coffee heads’. Most coffee places serve tea, but it varies in tastiness. Starbucks, for the record, I hate your chai tea.
My favorite coffee place is Arrowhead Chocolates in Joseph, Oregon, way in the northeast corner of the state. Arrowhead was the go-to place for those of us camping out at the Fishtrap writers workshop at Wallowa Lake last month. It has Wi-Fi, air conditioning, chocolate and yes, coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Plus, they have great tea. The owners take pride in coming up with new blends of teas, stuff I can’t even explain, but it always tastes good and is served over honest-to-God ice. Heaven.
Dear coffee drinkers, I don’t get it, but we’re each welcome to our own addictions. If you come to my house, I’ve got plenty of tea. If you need coffee, I’ve got some of that, too, but you’ll have to brew it yourself. I don’t remember how to work the coffeemaker either.
What’s your favorite caffeinated beverage?