2023 Goals – How I Did

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Before I get to my belated goals for 2024 (hey, I still have almost eleven months left!), I need to review my 2023 goals and how I did with them.

As I mentioned in some former posts, I broke my ankle back in August. I was incapacitated for the next six weeks or so, which should have been good writing time but wasn’t. I’ve found that the brain doesn’t really want to work when the body is busy healing itself.

So I didn’t achieve my 2023 goals completely, but I made  good progress.

On the novel front, I’ve finished the first draft of Treadwell House and made one serious editing pass. I plan to start considering what I’m going to do with it shortly. I’d hoped to finish a second novel, but given the delay, I only just started on the second book, which will be the fourth in the Market Center Mysteries series, tentatively titled Unleashed for Murder. I wrote 8,000 words before I had to hang it up for the holidays. It’s now at close to 15,000 words, on its way to being around 75,000.

I did meet my goal of 5 short stories written, though only one of them saw publication last year. My story, “The Other Wedding Crasher” is part of the Malice, Matrimony & Murder anthology, which released last November. Order links here:  https://books2read.com/malicebook I did submit a couple of other stories, but have not gotten responses on those as yet.

Due to changes in the audiobooks market, I haven’t been able to do an audio version of A Vampire’s Christmas Carol as I’d hoped. But I did get an older Christmas short story out at the end of November. The Ghosts of Christmas Present was part of an anthology of Christmas romances a couple of years ago. I’m giving it a new launch as a stand-alone. Order links here: https://kmccullough.com/books/short-stories/the-ghosts-of-christmas-present/

Otherwise, I’ve done better with the blogging, though again I had a couple of long breaks this summer. My personal autobiography and family history project are in progress, but not finished.

My Favorite Reads of 2023

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I found some very good books this year, including these (in no particular order). Some are new books (or new to me) in series I’ve enjoyed; Others are stand-alones or the starts to series.

Christmas – The Future Engineers

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My youngest daughter has four boys, ranging in age from six to twelve, and they were all here for Christmas. We’d discussed well in advance gift ideas for them, and they all seemed quite pleased with what they received.

Two trends in the gifts stood out. The first was books. They all received books from me (Grandma Karen) and from their Mom and Dad. They were delighted with them. Even the six-year-old, though he has limited reading skills as yet. They’ve all discovered the pleasures of reading!

(For the boys, one of the exciting features of visiting us is Grandpa Jim’s collection of Calvin and Hobbes books. All four of them will sit around reading those, although I think the six-year-old just likes looking at the pictures and doing what his brothers are doing.)

The second trend was they all received kits of complicated put-together projects. The twelve-year-old got a build-it-yourself safe and a wooden music box kit; the ten-year-old, a robot to construct and a wooden put-together foosball set. They eight-year-old received a solar-powered robot and a wooden pinball game. Even the six-year-old got a set of simple robot pets to put together yourself.

They wasted no time in getting to work on their projects. By the time the adults had finished opening presents, the boys were already stationed at the dining room table, deep into taking the kits apart and working with pieces. Their mom brings a set of trays for the projects. The pieces for one kit all have to stay in the assigned tray. It does help control the chaos. The two younger ones needed some adult help with their projects, but not as much as anyone expected. I had to chase them all away when I was ready to set the table for dinner.

Within a couple of days all of the new projects had been assembled, tweaked, tested, and used. Some of them had been rebuilt already. If there isn’t at least one future engineer in the group, I’ll find it completely shocking.

Christmas – High Tea

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One of the Christmas traditions for the family I started some years ago was taking my daughters, grand-daughters, daughter-in-law, step-granddaughter, grandson’s significant other, and my daughters’ more-or-less adopted sister out to High Tea on Christmas Eve.

It’s become a high point of the holiday season for me and some of the other ladies, giving us a chance to dress nicely and enjoy tea and dainty food as well as adult female conversation for a few hours in the midst of some of the busiest days of our lives.

Apparently we’re not alone in enjoying a Christmas Eve High Tea. For the past few years I’ve had to make the reservation well in advance to ensure we could get a time on the 24th. This year I signed up in September, almost as soon as the service made those dates available. I’ll do the same this coming year to ensure the tradition continues.

I’m not actually much a tea drinker – coffee is my preferred tipple – but I do like sampling the variety of interesting teas they offer. And I never thought I’d be enjoying a cucumber sandwich, but that was before I tried one and discovered they’re surprisingly delicious. As are the other dainty offerings – the ham and brie on a cracker, the salmon on cream cheese, and the mini-quiches. Plus a scone with either clotted cream or lemon curd and an assortment of cookies and mini-cakes. Most of the crew prefers the lemon curd on their scones, but I’m for clotted cream all the way.

The plates of goodies don’t look like they’d add up to a meal, but we’ve all noted that we’re feeling pretty full by the time we finish. It’s a lovely way to have a lunch on Christmas eve.

Christmas – the Tournaments

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The weather blessed us with a couple of unusually nice days (for December) leading up to Christmas, so the children had a great opportunity to play outside. The swing and the balls all saw plenty of use, but the Cornhole set got the most interest this time.

This article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornhole will tell you everything you need to know about Cornhole except why it’s called that. After some Googling, the only reason I could find involved speculation that it was so named because the beanbags used to be filled with ground corn, hence throwing the corn into the hole.  Why not?

In any case, my 12-year-old grandson decided to organize a Cornhole tournament and talked almost everyone in the house at the time into participating. He arranged pairings and brackets and tracked the winners of each round. I’m sorry to say I only made it to the second round, but my husband was the winner (and has a lovely certificate as a result).

My 10-year-old grandson got a build-it-yourself Foosball kit for Christmas and spent much of that day and the next putting it together. Based on his brother’s success with the Cornhole Tournament, he organized another one using his new game.

The contest generated a lot of fun, laughter, dismay, and tense moments. The final match came down to my son-in-law (youngest sister’s husband) and my oldest grandson’s girlfriend, Lisa. A tight, hard-fought game finally went to Lisa by a score of 9 to 8.

 

Christmas – the Gathering

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I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season, whether that means a quiet, relaxing day, time with family, or celebrating in whatever way you prefer.

We were blessed to have a large group of our family with us at Christmas, both daughters and their children, and even our first great-grandson. That meant lots of games, jokes, laughter, cocktails, and conversations.

Only my son and his family were unable to make the trip from England this year to be with us.  We totally understand, though. It’s a huge and expensive undertaking for them to fly here. We hope to see them later in the year.

Meanwhile, Christmas here was crowded and chaotic, but also a great deal of fun. I feel tremendously blessed that my children get along with each other well, as do their spouses and offspring. We’ve had the occasional drama and disagreements, but there have also been reconciliations. I also know how fortunate I am to have lived long enough to meet my first great-grandson.

Christmas morning meant a huge pile of presents under the tree for the sixteen people gathered to receive and open them.  Yes, sixteen people. My living room isn’t huge, and sixteen people crowded the place. Somehow we all made it work. And breakfast meant large pans of food, which still generated plenty of leftovers after everyone ate their fill.

Since several people were obligated to other branches of their families, we only had eleven people for dinner. Again my dining room isn’t huge and we had to put all the leaves in the table and still scrunch a little to get everyone seated, but it worked. Thanks to many people pitching in to prepare and provide food, we had more than enough to feed everyone, with leftovers to consume in the days following.

I’ll have more posts in the coming days on a few special notes about things that happened over the holidays to make them even more special, so stay tuned.

 

Happy 2024!

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Happy New Year! I’m still recovering from a great holiday season with family so I’m not quite prepared to jump into a new year yet. But I’ll post an update on the holidays, the goals for 2024, etc., soon!

What I Wish For Everyone For the Holidays

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This will be my last blog post before Christmas since I have armies of family members gathering in the next few days. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone and all the joyous reunions, conversations, meals, laughter that ensue.

There will be lots of cooking, a few crafts, church services, gift exchange, and feasting.

But most of all there will be the joy of seeing so many family members together and being reminded of the love we share.

I hope that all of you can experience some of the same this holiday season.

 

The Eccentric Christmas Tree

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I squeeze a lot of ornaments onto my tree. I’ve even occasionally called it cluttered. But I think it’s also a happy tree. Most of the ornaments have some personal meaning for me and/or my family. Some of them are heirlooms, having been handed down from my husband’s grandmother or my parents. Many are hand-made—by myself, my late mother, relatives, and particularly grandchildren. Actually, there are a lot of grandchildren-made ornaments on my tree. They’re some of the most special ones.

Here are a few of my special ones:

Made by one of my grandsons!

I made this one, probably 15 years ago.

Made by my mother.

Artwork by one of my grandsons

I made this one. The crystal at the bottom is from a chandelier that hung in the dining room of our house when we bought it. It was a beautiful chandelier but had seen better days and was replaced.

This one came from Lele, my husband’s grandmother.

The jeweled dragon on my tree.

The Christmas Balls – It Takes a Neighborhood

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I’ve talked about this here before, but every year, I’m reminded afresh that one of the most wonderful and magical Christmas decorations I’ve ever encountered is something that happens right here in my own neighborhood!

About twenty years ago, one of our neighbors rigged up a new decoration in their yard – a ball of chicken wire with strands of lights wound around it and hung high in one of the many large old oak trees in the area. Then they did another and another. Others were so intrigued by the effect that they started putting up tree balls as well.

Before long the entire short street in this very suburban area was festooned with the balls, and surrounding roads began to pick up the idea as well. Now, our entire neighborhood, Sunset Hills, in Greensboro, North Carolina, has become famous for the display.

The effect is magical. In the darkness, the balls appear to float high in the air, becoming giant, colorful baubles surrounding you. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to photograph them. Capturing them in a 2D medium flattens out the effect and without a tripod, the balls tend to come out smeared and blurry-looking. Even professionals have thrown up their hands in despair when trying to reproduce the beauty of them.

Getting the balls high in the trees is a challenge. We use a slingshot to send a weight with cord attached high into the tree and over a branch. Others use fishing rods, tennis balls, and potato guns. We don’t do as many as some others, but we do manage to hang ours pretty high in the trees.

People drive in from all over the city and outside to see the display, which does lead t one downside: traffic jams in the neighborhood. For the last few weeks in December, it can be hard to drive around the area. Just getting our car out of the driveway can take a while Occasionally traffic gets so backed up it leads to gridlock.

But the neighborhood makes an effort to turn the volume of a traffic into a positive thing for the entire city. There are several stations set up for collection of food donations, which have provided hundreds of pounds of canned and non-perishable stock for a local food bank. An event called Running of the Balls https://www.therunningoftheballs.com/ also provides meals for a food bank.

I recently found this drone footage of the area with the balls:

I’ve tried to see if I could pick out my house, but I can’t. Still, I feel sure that a few of those hundreds of balls showing in the video are ours.