What I Wish For Everyone For the Holidays

Karen McCullough Posted on by

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

Karen McCullough Posted on by

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

Karen McCullough Posted on by

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.

December is for Decorating, Shopping, Baking, Cooking, Wrapping, etc.

Karen McCullough Posted on by

This is my absolute favorite time of year. I love pretty much everything about Christmas celebrations: the lights, decorations, music, baking, and wrapping presents. Most of all, I enjoy getting together with friends and family, some of whom I may not have seen for a while.

I don’t love the cold weather, but I can live with it, especially since it doesn’t get that frigid here in North Carolina. I don’t love fighting crowds in stores and parking lots, so the advent of online shopping was a godsend for me.

But I thoroughly enjoy decorating – the house, the tree, the outside lights, etc. I’m not much of a cook, but I do like baking cookies, something I only do at the holidays.  (If I baked cookies all year long, I’d end up eating far too many of them! I have no will power when it comes to cookies.)

I like the challenge of the Christmas dinner, though these days I’m more of an executive, directing the various kids and grandkids in what to prepare and how to serve, than an actual chef.

Wrapping presents is a fun thing to do while keeping my eye on any of the many football games going on at this time of year.

The only Christmas prep I don’t really care for is cleaning the house to be ready for the invasion of family and friends. But it’s worth the work to have the company of all those beloved people.

The Ghosts of Christmas Present is Available

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I originally wrote this short story for an anthology that released a couple of years ago.

I can’t honestly say where the idea for it came from. As I recall it started with the image of a young woman pulling into the driveway of the house where she grew up and noticing how gloomy and uninviting it looked. The place is rather ramshackle and neglected. And though it’s just a few days before Christmas, no decorations light or soften it. Lindsay doesn’t want to be there.

Since at that point I had no idea why she was there, and why she didn’t want to be but had come anyway, I had to start asking myself those questions.

This is the way I generally work. A story starts with an idea or a couple of images converging in my head and I look for what’s behind them.

It wasn’t hard to combine the gloomy house with why she didn’t want to be there. Her upbringing there had been less than happy. I began to fill out the details of that… Cold, unfeeling foster parents who were in it mostly for the money and didn’t approve of unnecessary expenses or celebrations.

So why had she come? Probably because someone had asked her. Who might that have been? It had to be someone she cared about and who cared for her while they were growing up. Someone she felt she couldn’t deny. A foster sibling, most likely.

Why was Josh, her foster brother, there, though, and why did he want Lindsay to join him? You’ll see. And why was Lindsay even more horrified when she learned Josh had brought along his best friend? Is there any way to salvage a merry Christmas from this mess?

You’ll have to read the story to find out!

Read An Excerpt 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMDDXLNJ
All Other Markets: https://books2read.com/u/mdP5Gd

What I’m Working On

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Because the holidays are upon us and I’ll be hanging up the writing soon, I wanted to share where I am with various writing projects.

I’ve spent most of the current year working on one book with the working title of Treadwell House – Sanctuary. The first draft is finished, and I’ve already done some significant revamping on it, but I’m not quite satisfied with it yet. I’m giving it the holidays to marinate in my head before I do a final rework.

I’ve also written a couple of short stories in the last month. One is a Christmas story that I’m especially happy with. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet.

And I’m currently writing the first draft of the next book in the Market Center Mysteries series. This will be book 4 of a 5-book series. I left my heroine in a somewhat unhappy state at the end of the book 3, Playing at Murder. She’s begging me to help her move on and resolve some issues. This book will be set at a pet products trade show, with the possible title of Leashed for Murder. Or maybe Unleashed for Murder. Or maybe even Collared for Murder.  Stay tuned.

Happy Thanksgiving

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To those of you who celebrate it today: Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s almost de rigeur to talk about the things you are thankful for today, and I’m not knocking that. It’s a good thing. A very good thing.

For the past few years, I’ve tried to cultivate gratitude in an active, conscious ways. It’s helped me cope with the ups and downs of life in general and the life of a writer, specifically.

I frequently remind myself of all the huge blessings I have: a wonderful husband, a great family, some very good friends, a warm, water-proof house, and food on the table. They’re the biggies and I never want to forget just how rich all of that makes me.

For a special day of gratitude, I thought I’d consider some of the less obvious things for which I’m grateful. In no particular order:

My Kindle: I love that I can carry literally hundreds of books with me when I travel or just go to the dentist’s office. I still love paper books, too, but I find it increasingly hard to read them as my vision deteriorates. For me, the biggest virtue of the Kindle is that it turns every book into instant large print.

My Garden: I’m not a fabulous gardener by any measure, but I love watching things grow and I enjoy my flowers. There’s something so satisfying about digging in the dirt and producing beautiful results.

Chocolate Chip Cookies: Do I really need to explain?

Reto’s Kitchen – They’re a catering company right down the street from us. During the pandemic they began offering a twice-weekly meal you could order ahead and pick up from them. Sometimes the meals aren’t to my taste, but mostly they are – and they’re always delicious. I’m so happy they’ve continued to offer this service. We don’t get out as much as we used to, so it’s nice to have access to restaurant-quality food occasionally without having to get dressed up, etc.

The Greensboro Grasshoppers: They’re our local minor league baseball team, a class High-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. My husband and I both love baseball, and we can see professional (though not Major League caliber) games live at a fraction of the cost of going to an MLB game (and that’s not including transportation and hotel stays for the nearest one in Atlanta). It takes us five minutes to get home after the game is over.

November is for Baking

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I like to have lots of baked goods on hand for the holidays, including a good supply of home-made cookies. With a houseful of visitors for Christmas, they go fast. And I give batches away as gifts, so I need plenty.

I generally figure 4 batches of chocolate chip cookies, 2 large batches each of sugar cookies, orange cookies, molasses cookies and cinnamon crisps. At my age, I generally only have enough energy for a couple of batches at one time. All totaled, I probably make 40-50 dozen cookies. To manage that many I have to get a head start, so once I’ve converted the Halloween pumpkin into delicious things, I get right to work building my cookie inventory. Fortunately they freeze well.

In fact, some of my children prefer the chocolates chip cookies frozen, harking back to the days when they were young, and I thought I could thwart the cookie thieves by hiding the loot in the freezer. As if! Turns out they learned to like them frozen.

The cookie baking goes back even farther in my life. My mother used to bake loads of cookies around the Christmas season (and we were all just as given to scarfing them behind her back). We often ‘helped’ her decorate the sugar cookies with colored sugar sprinkles. While I’m mixing and rolling and sprinkling, I often think back to warm memories of those days.

Which is why I always try to make it a point to let my grandchildren ‘help’ me bake some when they come to visit.

Gardening in Autumn

Karen McCullough Posted on by

Things got out of hand in the garden quickly when I was unable to get out and work on it for a couple of months. Some of the garden beds became overrun with weeds and dead flower heads.

Kudos go to my husband, who took the time to water my many outdoor potted flowers during some dry days in late August. As a result of his efforts, I didn’t lose any of those plants.

Now, however, all of the growing things are in retreat, from lack of care and cooling weather. We had the first frost of fall a few days ago, which brings most of the flowering plants to a sharp end. Before that happened, I went out and cut the last zinnias, marigolds, and roses to bring in and enjoy a few days longer.

There’s lots of clean-up to do, though I generally let the garden beds and dried flowers sit for most of the winter. The birds love the seeds. Goldfinches flock to the dead zinnia flowers. I’m told other critters appreciate the leaf and stalk litter for overwintering.

We do rake leaves off the lawn to keep the grass healthy, though we’ve been gradually reducing the amount of grass we have, extending natural areas and cultivated beds into what was formerly lawn. And it’s a heck of a challenge to discourage the grass and weeds from restaking their claim to that territory.

But…the camellias now have buds, showing they’re getting ready to put on their  late winter show. A few perennials have new growth near the ground, which will form the base for next years’ efforts. Amid the dying of most of the garden plants, there are signs of hope for things to come.