This must be Spring!

In The Company of Writers is moving ahead. New webinars are in the planning stages and it won't be long before there'll really be something for everyone. Although our "virtual classroom" has taken just a bit longer than planned due to the editing service having taken longer to deliver than was originally promised. But I'm told that several of the segments are ready to upload and it will hopefully only be a matter of days now before the classroom is in full operation. Check out my website and you'll see.

In the meantime, here's something new, and you can call me a dinosaur, but I've just discovered Photobucket. Of course I signed right up, and above you see the first result.

Here in Atlanta the weather has finally turned warm. There have even been a couple of hot days. Yesterday I spent the day in the kitchen in preparation for last night's houseful of dinner guests for the First Seder of Passover. I prepared huge amounts of everything. There was the pot of my special chicken soup with a ton of matzoh balls and my also special charoset (grated fresh apples seasoned with sweet kosher blackberry wine, a touch of cinnamon and ginger, a breath of lemon juice and chopped pecans). I smoked a leg of lamb and a large chicken in my Big Green Egg, made latkes (potatoe pancakes) and served them with the beautiful pink sugar free applesauce I made and put up last November. There were green beans and carrots and salad, and of course gefilte fish and horseradish. And for my vegetarian long distance husband, I made Mahi Mahi and baked sweet potatoe. We topped it all off with more wine and macaroons.

When I finally realized the house was way too warm, I turned on the A/C only to discover that it was dead. Well, we survived the evening in spite of the too warm dining room and the mountains of food and wine we all consumed. How I love Passover!

I had the pleasure of sharing the Passover experience with two dear friends, neither of whom had ever attended a seder. My good friend, John Naugle, Co-Founder of Atlanta: City of Peace and my dear friend and buddy, prize winning mystery author Fran Stewart. Both were suitably and delightedly touched by the ceremony, the fun and the food.

But last night's star guest was Miss Elsa who'll be a year old on the 19th. She was wearing her "My First Passover" bib. At one point in the ceremony, that point being that it was time to go home and to bed, Elsa's beautiful mother, Teryn, guided her to the afikomen (a token piece of matzoh, unleavened bread, that signifies the haste and hardships of that long ago time). It had been strategically placed on the bottom stair and you'd have thought she understood what was happening. She grabbed it and waved it in the air, squealing with joy. Her ransom price was a stuffed Mamma Polar bear and her twin cubs, one of which was clutching a dollar bill. With love from Grammy (me, her oh-so-proud great grandmother).

Last Thursday was grooming day for my four cats and as I was finishing clipping the claws of my huge white male, he growled a couple of times and pretended to bite. I ignored him and kept going. Suddenly he let me have it with a fierce bite on the fleshy part of my thumb. Wow, did that ever hurt! I cleaned it off, squeezing it a bit to make it bleed so as to cleanse the two deep bite wounds, and went about my business.

By the next day my hand was swollen and in the late afternoon, as I was preparing to go to a cocktail party/fund raiser for Atlanta:City of Peace, I realized that I was in trouble. I hurriedly telephoned a local emergency doctor's office and shortly afterward I found myself lying on a table with an intravenous tube of antibiotic dripping into my vein. This was after they first used me for a pincushion trying to find the right vein. I was informed that if I had waited any longer things would have been far more serious. It took a couple of hours and consequently I missed a great party.

I'm fine now but I'm still taking bolus-sized antibiotic pills and will have to do so for another week. It was both expensive and painful to be such a smart aleck. For females: if you ever have to take antibiotics, it's a good idea to follow them up an hour or so later with acidophilus and some live-bacteria yogurt to avoid a possible yeast infection.

There you have it, my comments about ignoring purrfectly clear cat warnings and my resulting medical advice, and a rhapsodic narration of Passover fun.

Post a note or email me... and Happy Spring.