2017 Got the Last Laugh

December 31, 2017 — Pat Bertram

2017 was a year of pain, surgery, healing, doctors, drugs, along with various other maladies and challenges that kept me unwell for more than seven months.

I thought I’d be going into 2018 strong and relatively healthy, but 2017 got the last laugh. Here it is, the final day of the year, and I am sick again, this time with an intestinal bug. So much fun!

And so my prediction in Getting a Head Start on New Years Resolutions came true. Before I even started the year, my resolutions have gone by the wayside. That list has now been downgraded to a “to do list.” (Which, to be honest, was all those resolutions were in the first place.)

Despite that, with this post, as unpleasant as it might be, I have fulfilled my fifty-day blog challenge.

Wishing us all a healthy 2018 and challenges that are as pleasant to fulfill as this challenge was.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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Have a Wonderful Penultimate Day!

December 30, 2017 — Pat Bertram

“Penultimate,” means the second to last in a series, and today is the second to last day of the year, which strikes me as something special to celebrate. We have all, even the most curmudgeonly among us, at one time or another celebrated New Years Eve or New Years Day, if only with the purchase of a new calendar or a perfunctory toast with a bit of bubbly, but it seems as if this day is just as worthy of a toast as those two more iconic days. I mean, how often does one get to use the word penultimate? For that alone, I will pop open a bottle of sparkling apple/pear juice and toast the day.

Being cognizant of the second to last day of the year also gives us a chance to ease gradually into the end of a year/beginning of a new year cycle. Too often it seems that one second it is the old year and the next second it is a new year (I’m being silly here because obviously, that is the way things work), and celebrating this day gives us more of a buffer, an extra day to reflect on what was and what we hope will be.

20171230_111436.jpgBesides being penultimate, today was worthy of celebration in itself. For me, anyway. It was a gorgeous day, a perfect day for a practice hike. So I shrugged on my trainer backpack (my real backpack but with minimal weight) and headed out. That I could even walk three miles with ten pounds on my back and two pounds on my front (a fanny pack flipped to the front to make the water bottles more accessible) is something to celebrate. Even more — for a few minutes during the trek, I stopped feeling all that weight, which makes me think I will eventually be able to add more without any trouble. (Well, a little trouble. I was trying to make sure I stood upright instead of leaning forward, and I must have forgotten to tilt my hips forward to lessen the hip arch, and I can it feel it in my lower back. Ouch.)

Still, a little pain never hurt anyone, and pain in itself is something to celebrate. It means we’re alive! And that, for sure, is something to celebrate.

So, have a wonderful penultimate day!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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Time Warp

December 29, 2017 — Pat Bertram

I went to the grocery store today, and for a second, I felt dizzy, as if I had stepped through a time warp. I could have sworn Christmas was just a few days ago, that the new year hadn’t even started, but this is what I saw:

20171229_133023.jpg

Valentine’s Day? Already? Tell me it isn’t so!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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Getting a Head Start on New Years Resolutions

December 28, 2017 — Pat Bertram

I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions. Except for the calendar change, there isn’t anything that makes one year different from another. Seasons are cyclical, orbits are cyclical, life is cyclical — and by their very natures, cycles have no beginning or end. Still, a new year is a useful convention in the same way that a new day is a useful convention, giving us the feel of a new start, and so I am getting a head start on my resolutions.

Often during the year, I resolve to go back to a healthy diet and be more conscientious when it comes to an exercise program, but however disciplined I am, there comes a day when I simply do not care, and there ends the discipline. (This is, I think, a lingering effect of my grief over Jeff’s death, and seems to be a cycle that many of us left behind succumb to. On the one hand, we want to do what’s right. On the other hand, it makes no difference what we do — healthy or not, we all end up in the grave or the crematorium.)

I am going through one of my disciplined stages (or rather, my wanting-to-be-disciplined stage since this is only day two of this new cycle) in an effort to “youth” instead of “age.” Impossible, probably, to ratchet back the toll of the years, but it would take such a miraculous feat to enable me even to attempt my impossible dream of an iconic hike.

The only item on my disciplined to do list that I did not follow yesterday was perhaps the least important — the no eating after 6 o’clock rule. The others I did — stretched, lifted weights (very light weights considering my weak hand, wrist, and elbow), ate plenty of vegetables, and skipped the sugar, wheat, and milk products. Most importantly, I strapped on my backpack, added a bit of weight (the whole contraption weighed maybe eight pounds) and went for a two and a half mile trudge around the neighborhood.

Who would have thought so few pounds would make such a difference? I could walk but not with any bounce, speed, or glide to my step. And even though I used trekking poles and kept myself upright (too often you see people with backpacks bent over from the weight) my lower stomach muscles feel tight, and the inside of my thighs right above the knees are sore. (These must be muscles that my various dance classes don’t develop.) Those pains are in addition to an all-over body ache.

We’ll see what happens after a few days of this disciplined life. Before even the new year begins, I might have already broken my resolutions. But maybe not. There is that impossible dream — the unreachable star — to stretch toward.

Or trudge toward, as the case may be.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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Up Over and Down Under

December 27, 2017 — Pat Bertram

An Australian friend believes that the Southern Hemisphere is on top, and the Northern hemisphere is down under because as he says, “Australia is slowly sliding down towards the Equator and the Northern Hemisphere, and as the force of gravity makes things slide down not up I know we are on top cos we are sliding down, See?”

Makes sense to me. And a whole different way of looking at things. It gets tiring have to be up all the time. If we were naturally down, any sort of “upness” would be a special bonus, not a requirement. We’d still have the weight of the world on our shoulders, but at least it would be understandable since the weight of the world really would be on our shoulders.

Calling the hemispheres northern or southern is merely a local designation in relation to earth’s poles. In reality, a globe spinning in space has no up or down, no south or north. From that point of view, the same gravity that is pulling Australia toward the equator is keeping us all from spinning off into the heavens.

Whew! I feel upside down now, not really sure which end of me is up. I just hope gravity holds long enough to keep my feet on the earth for as long as I live.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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Fun and Clever and Unique

December 26, 2017 — Pat Bertram

I love talking about my books, though I seldom get a chance. Luckily for me, the following conversation with my sister was caught on text!

SISTER: I’m into chapter 6 of Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare and I have so many questions and comments!!!!!!

ME: You like it, though?

SISTER: Love it! It’s fun and clever and unique. Is the cover photo actually one of your dance mates?? Is there a Deb character in your class? How fun that you condensed your family into one representative sister and brother.

ME: Almost all the people are real. Yes there is a Deb, though she is a composite character and caricatured a bit. The first few chapters tell the true story of the story so the cover is exactly as described in the book. The woman on the floor is Grace, the one who suggested the project.

SISTER: That is so fun!

ME: Many of the conversations in the book actually took place. Buffy really did say, “I’m not the one who volunteered to be the victim.” Oddly, after the book was written, Grace asked how I picked her. She had forgotten the whole thing was her idea.

ME: Perhaps the only truly fictional character is Pat. I’m not sure she exists. 🙂

SISTER: Pat???? Are you referring to Pat in the Hat? Trust me, she’s very real.

ME: It was fun writing as me. I didn’t have to worry about a character arc. Just show my feelings. It’s amazing how much of those first chapters are as they happened.  The cops kept showing up (going to lunch at a nearby restaurant) and it was a bit freaky to see them when we were talking about killing Grace.

SISTER: And btw, it’s very surreal to be reading a book by Pat featuring a character who is Pat, while texting with Pat (the writer? the person? the character?) hah!

ME: Now you know how it felt writing the book. I kept thinking Grace was dead, and then she’d show up for class. At one point, I really did consider asking one of the lunching cops what the procedure would be if she died, and I remember thinking, “I don’t need to ask. I’ll find out when she’s dead.” The whole thing was totally surreal.

SISTER: I can imagine!

ME: Don’t be surprised if your “surreal” comment shows up on my blog.

SISTER: For the record, I don’t mind being quoted.

ME: Remember that blog I did when I asked you  if it was bizarre reading a sex scene written by your sister? Well, that is one of the highest “hits” on my blog because of the juxtaposition of those two words: s e x and sister. You would not believe how many people in the world google, “how to have s e x with my sister,” or “how to get my sister to have s e x with me,” or the ever popular, “how to f*** my sister.” Truly bizarre.

SISTER: OMG, that is wild. And in the vernacular of today: ew

ME: I know. Totally ew.

Let’s hope this blog doesn’t have the same ew factor.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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A Gift For You!!

December 25, 2017 — Pat Bertram

 

Wishing you a warm and safe holiday weekend and a new year filled with possibilities.

 Click on the gift to open. Have fun!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in culture, life. Tags: , , , . 3 Comments »

Feasting!

December 24, 2017 — Pat Bertram

I hadn’t planned on doing anything for Christmas this year, but somehow I am ending up feasting again and again, and the day isn’t even here yet.

It started last night with Pasta Night in a Box (a complete salmon pasta dinner that I fixed last night and shared with my landlord), continues this afternoon with lunch with a friend (and the beautiful flowers she gave me!), and will and end on Tuesday after Christmas when I have a tea party with my dance teacher to share a gift basket I received from a relative.

Meantime, there is tonight. Since I hadn’t planned on doing anything for Christmas, I obviously had no intention of cooking a Christmas dinner (Christmas Eve dinner, to be exact), but when turkeys went on sale for so cheap that I could buy a whole small turkey for the price of a pound of ground beef, I went ahead and bought it. I am pretending I don’t know about the horrors of turkey farms, and anyway, the poor thing was already sacrificed, so the least I can do is honor its gift. To that end, I stuffed the turkey with celery, oranges, carrots, and apples, and am currently crockpotting the bird, as well as making turkey soup, and cranberry sauce with oranges, apples, and honey.

That’s a lot of cooking for someone who planned to enjoy a lazy couple of days.

Still, it was fun cooking — I haven’t really had a kitchen in a long time, at least not the sort of kitchen I wanted to spend any time in. (The kitchen in my last place was so encrusted with grease, there was no way to ever get it clean, no matter how much I scrubbed, and when I was on the road, the only “kitchen” I had the use of was my Solo camping stove.)

The one thing I had planned to do — go out to dinner with a few friends, I cancelled out on. I just couldn’t face another long wait standing in line. Maybe not the best reason for saying “no,” but I seem to be doing that more frequently lately. (It’s not as bad as it sounds — for most of the past seven years since Jeff died, I’ve tried to say “yes” to almost everything that came my way in an effort to feel as if I were living, so saying no is a nice departure.) Since I now have the day free (I won’t even have to cook since there is plenty of pasta left, and there will most of the turkey and cranberries), I am considering hiking to a friend’s house to deliver a gift. Six miles round trip. I wonder if I’ll make it, though stoked with all this feasting, I should have plenty of energy.

We’ll see. Meantime, I need to go check on my turkey.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in being me, culture, life. Tags: , , , , , . 10 Comments »

All I want for Christmas

December 23, 2017 — Pat Bertram

Unlike you — or should I say unlike some of you — I did not go shopping today. I did get a burrito at a taco stand, though I don’t think that actually counts as “shopping.” Instead, I again spent the day at my storage unit, clearing out more of my things. After getting rid of three carloads of stuff, the storage unit looks even fuller than it did before. (Admittedly, a Volkswagen Beetle carload is not the same as an SUV carload, but there should have been some obvious indication of all the work I did.) I still haven’t gone through everything — I only managed to get to about a fourth of what’s in the unit. The rest is packed in tightly, but little by little, I will find a way to get to it all.

Next I have to clean my room. Much of the stuff I need to sort through I brought here, so the room looks like a mini storage unit. So unattractive, and such a mess!

But that’s a project for tomorrow.

Tonight I’m writing this blog and drowning my sorrows in sparkling apple/peach cider.

Not that I have any real sorrows at the moment other than the very sore muscles and aching ex-broken hand from all the lifting. There’s nothing I particularly want. (Lucky you! If you were thinking of getting me a Christmas present, you are now off the hook.) And, considering the amount of stuff I still have, there is apparently nothing I need.

The few things I do want are more for the future, and I am making a concerted effort not to worry about things I cannot (or will not) change right now. When the time comes to worry about money or . . . anything . . . then I will. So even though someday there will be things I need, I don’t need them now.

Of course, there’s still that impossible dream, but that’s not about wanting, either. It’s more about doing. Striving toward a goal. To that end, I got my backpack out of storage, and beginning in January, I plan to stash a gallon bottle of water in the pack, and see if I can walk around the block. (A great tip I read once — use water to weight a practice pack, that way, if you get too tired or sore, you can dump the water to lighten the pack. There will be no dance classes that first week in January, so if I destroy my feet carrying that extra weight, I’ll have plenty of time to recuperate before I need to use them again.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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Getting and Getting Rid Of

December 22, 2017 — Pat Bertram

Tomorrow is Super Saturday, a day that rivals Black Friday for total number of sales. An estimated 126 million people will be shopping tomorrow. I won’t be one of them. If I am not comatose from exhaustion (I spent most of today working on clearing out stuff from my storage unit) I will be spending tomorrow in the storage unit again seeking more punishment.

I hadn’t realized the irony until this very second — tomorrow, 126 million people will be getting stuff, and I will be getting rid of stuff. (Or maybe that isn’t irony. Maybe it’s balance, but there is no way I can get rid of enough stuff to balance out all the new purchases everyone will be making, so I’ll stick with “irony.”)

It’s an interesting experience revisiting possessions I haven’t seen in so long. I’m finding things I didn’t know I kept, which to me is an indication that I should get rid of them since obviously, I have no real attachment to the items. On the other hand, I can’t find things I am positive I saved. Yikes.

I’m also repacking boxes that have gotten smashed from too much weight sitting on top of them for two and a half years. So much fun!

I hope your pre-Christmas weekend is as exciting as mine.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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