Guilty Pleasures

It's funny that I have traveled throughout Europe, snapping photos of delicious meals, breathtaking landscapes, and castles built stone by stone by medieval peoples, yet I never felt guilty about flaunting it on my blog.

Florence as the sun sets

Maybe I pictured you enjoying the journey with me.

But since I've been in Florida, the guilt has set in. How can I share pictures of my newly polished toes hanging over the edge of the very blue pool as the frogs and alligators croak in the nearby pond.

Dare I post a picture of the sun setting over the Gulf of Mexico as the breeze whips up the waves, and we retreat to a balcony overlooking the water while we dine on grouper sandwiches and key lime pie?

Sunset from Passe-a-grille beach over the Gulf of Mexico

One bite gone

As the weather has turned cold for most of my friends in the north, I'm beset by guilt that I'm living in a place where the weather is practically perfect. Sure, I've complained to my running friends about the humidity and I've carried a sweat towel with me to wipe the salty drops before they reach my eyes, but November and December are pretty perfect weather-wise in Florida. The temperature has settled in the 70s, sometimes 80s. The sun has shone as we lazed by the pool. Earl has taken a dip nearly every day, and I joined him quite often, especially when I returned sweating from a run.

Not since the days right after college have I spent so much time living with my parents, and unlike those rebellious days of my early 20s, it's pretty sweet to have four adults living in a house. We take turns cooking and doing the dishes. We choose a cleaning day and run vacuums over the floors of the two-story house. We gather in the game room each night as the sun sets to play euchre.

We celebrated Thanksgiving, just the four of us. I got to be here for Mom's 81st birthday the following week, gathering at Red Lobster for daiquiris bigger than my head. Then two weeks later, we feted Dad as he turned 82. I can't remember the last time I got to be with my parents for their actual birthdays.

And after Dad's surgeries and his sessions in the hyperbaric chamber (oxygen) and seven months without playing golf, his foot is finally healing. We've been working on his stamina, increasing his steps daily, coercing him into playing bean bag in the backyard. He and Earl started putting and chipping at the golf course across the street and even ventured out to play 15 holes. He's not taking it too fast, continuing to heal, so he can play golf when my brother arrives after Christmas.

This sojourn in Florida, daily time spent with my parents, basking in the sun, makes me feel guilty. Tomorrow, I'll head to Ohio where the cold weather awaits me, and I won't be lording it over anyone as I settle under gray skies, but I'll be surrounded by friends and family, so that might make up for the weather.

Tuesday Intros -- Abby's Journey

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
I am reading Abby's Journey as part of a blog tour for the author Steena Holmes. I think they contacted me because of my love of travel, and the character Abby travels to Europe to experience the Christmas markets.
This story is about Abby whose mother died giving birth to her, and since Abby was premature, she has always had health issues. When her doctor gives her a clear bill of health, her grandmother whisks her away to Munich, Salzburg and Brussels so they can experience the Christmas markets, something Abby's mother always dreamed of doing.

Here's the intro, a prologue which is a letter from Claire, Abby's mother, to her husband, before she died:

Dear Josh,
I've written this letter a thousand times (okay that might be exaggerating just a little, but I have written it a few times now). At first, it was a list of parenting tips, because that's what I do, I write lists. And then you would read it and memorize it, because that's what you do to humor me.
But then I realized that I don't want the last letter I write to you to be solely a display of my inner control freak. But Josh, the list is a good one. It really is. So how about this -- I'll add it to the end of this letter on a separate sheet, so you can post it on the fridge or leave it on your desk, somewhere you can reference it when things get too hard.

 I'm also joining in with Teaser Tuesday which is a weekly bookish meme, hosted Ambrosia @The Purple Booker.
Here's my teaser from page 6, which is a letter to Abby from her mother:

"Don't be afraid to dream great things -- things you think are beyond your grasp.
Trust me. I know what I'm talking about. If I'd given up on my dream for a baby, you wouldn't be here. And honestly, I can't imagine that. 

What do you think?
I'll be reviewing this book on March 16 if you want to come back to see what I think.  

Dreaming of France -- Feeling Safe in France

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

This is a guest post that I did for a blog called "The Book Tree" and I thought I'd share it here.

In my latest novel, Paris Runaway, when a 17-year-old bolts to Paris, all the mother can picture is danger. She’s seen the movie Taken! She knows her daughter could fall into the hands of sex-slave traders. But even more, she fears the radical terrorists who make Europe their home – the suburbs of Paris or the outer arrondisements of Brussels where immigrants live in poverty. She watched the news that November night when terrorists killed young people in restaurants and at concerts in Paris, when we all posted “Je suis Paris” on our Facebook pages. So the mother chases after her daughter, hoping to find her safe and take her back to Florida. What the mother finds is a different way of life that seduces her.

The same is true for me. When I am in France, I don’t feel in danger.

Sure, when I was young and traipsed through the streets of Paris alone, I received some male attention. I was 23 when I spent three months in France. Freed from my nanny duty, I would venture into downtown Paris by train and see the sights – the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, l’Orangerie where Monet’s water lily paintings cover the walls.

As I walked through Paris, my eyes round in amazement, men would call out to me, try to engage me in conversation. My plan of action was to ignore them – no eye contact, no smile, no recognition. And for the most part it worked – until it didn’t.

I’m not sure where I had been that day, when a persistent young man decided to get my attention. He called out to me in French. Then in English. He tried Spanish and a few other languages too. I continued to walk, head up, ignoring him.

He walked backward beside me for a while, trying to get my attention. Then he simply followed me, speaking the whole time, wheedling, trying to entice me. As the minutes passed, I began to grow worried at his refusal to leave me alone.

Ahead of me, inside a black, wrought-iron fence churchyard, I saw a door open in a stone building and the sound of organ music filtered out. Without glancing at the insistent man again, I slipped into the door and perched on a wooden kneeler, sitting through an entire mass to escape the dogged man who might, or might not, have been a danger to me.

Now, I’m a true grown up. Men might occasionally smile at me or nod their heads, but no one tenaciously tries to win my attention as I sight-see in Paris or Marseille or Aix en Provence.

When I tell friends and relatives that my husband and I plan to move to France, they cluck in worry. “It’s so dangerous there,” they’ll say.

Sometimes I simply point to the newspaper and the latest gun deaths in the United States, which is much higher than in France. Most of the time, I’ll shrug (I’m practicing my French shrugs) and say, “C’est la vie!” That’s life. We can’t be afraid to live the life we want; otherwise, we might get to the end and realize that we made it safely, but we forgot to enjoy the journey.

I hope you’ll take a journey in Paris Runaway and see what the main character, Sadie, chooses to do.

Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France today. Please leave your name and blog address in Mr. Linky below, and leave a comment letting me know what  you think about my love affair with France, or your own passion for the country and its people and cultures. Also consider visiting the blogs of others who play along so we can all share the love.

Long-Distance Parenting

Today, I had one of those days where I wonder if I had too many children. Not really, but I received two frantic phone calls from my kids.
First was Grace.

She's on a European adventure, and for the most part, she's on her own. She headed to Aix en Provence today to stay with my lovely friend Delana. Grace took the TGV (the very fast train) from Paris to Aix. She wrangled her big black suitcase from the Paris hotel to the train station then hoisted it up the steps. She had three hours or so until the train got into Aix en Provence. Then she would take a bus to the city and Delana would meet her there.
Apparently, Grace fell into a very deep slumber, something like Sleeping Beauty but without the brambles growing up around her.
When she awoke, she wasn't being kissed by a prince, but she realized that the train was pulling out of a station. Thinking she had missed her stop in Aix en Provence, she asked the people around her.
She had, in fact, missed her stop in Aix en Provence and had continued to sleep while the train stopped in Marseille and left there too!
I didn't think the train went any farther than Marseille, which, as you may know, is nestled right into the corner of the Mediterranean Sea. But apparently it kept going, as she realized when she woke up.
The TGV is not one of those trains that stops frequently. I've been on the TGV when it left Paris and didn't stop until Aix, or Avignon at the earliest.
For all I knew, the next stop could be Spain or Italy.
As we talked by cell phone, spending $1 per minute to ponder the possibilities, Delana called to see if she was on the bus.
So we hung up and I tried to take a nap.

This area looks close together, but you can see how close Italy and Spain are too.

Unlike my daughter who falls into a deep sleep easily, I've been up since 2 a.m. I taught class at 8 a.m. and have to teach again at 6 p.m., so I thought a nap was a necessity for me. But I lay in bed wondering what had happened to Grace. I kept incessantly checking Facebook, where I had posted her dilemma. Helpful friends in the U.K. and France were giving me tips or offering suggestions (Thanks, Anne and Corey!) Anne called the rail office to see where the train went. Corey, who lives in Provence, offered to pick her up in Aix or Marseille or Avignon.
Realizing I couldn't possible sleep, I called her back on that expensive cell line to see what had happened.
She had just exited the train at Toulon. The train people gave her a note that allowed her to return to Aix en Provence, where, she should be right about now. Fingers crossed.
As I gave  up napping, I sat with a book on the couch and my phone rang. Spencer is in Athens. Not that Athens, the one in Ohio. He has his first apartment which he moved into a few weeks ago.

He set up the electricity for the apartment before he moved in, and it was all working when we moved his furniture in. Apparently, though, he didn't bother opening the letters from the electric company which told him to pay a deposit.
So last week, just after he got internet set up in his apartment, the lights went off.
The electricity was turned off, which meant, he had no internet, no stove, no hot water, and no way to charge his cell phone, which also serves as his alarm clock.
It's been a bit of a challenge, but when he came home Saturday, I helped him set up his online account and make a payment to the electric company. We hoped he'd get electricity back today.
When he phoned, I figured he would tell me the power was back on.
Instead, he said, "The carbon monoxide detector is going off."
"What? Are you sure it isn't the smoke alarm?" I asked.
"It says carbon monoxide detector right on it," he replied.
Since it is plugged in, I thought maybe the electricity had come back on, but it hadn't.
We told Spencer to go outside and to call the maintenance guy to come right away.
He didn't call or text to update me, but when I texted him, he said it just needed a new battery rather than having actual carbon monoxide in his place.
Earl was home for lunch and we both looked at each other. What would come next?
Tucker just took our cat home with him the other day. Would he call to say the cat was lost?
We're ready for anything, and still wondering if we had too many kids.

Dreaming of France -- France on Pinterest

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

One of the great things about being a Francophile is that there are so many other people who love France too. It's fun to make connections with them, to live vicariously through them, and to have them share my experiences too.
Mostly, I do that through my blog, and my novels, but today I made a discovery on Pinterest. There's a whole section called France full of people who are hankering for some Francetime, just like me.
My friend Sheila convinced me that I should join Pinterest to promote my books. She's on Pinterest because she's very crafty and also does interesting things with foods. I'm sure there are ways to promote my books on Pinterest, but I immediately got sucked into the France world.
I've created one "board" that's called "Places to Visit in 2015."
I put a map as the background and pinned 4 different places on it. I attached pictures to each place. Two of the places, I've never visited, so I could choose pictures from Pinterest. Two of the places, I've been before, so I uploaded my own pictures.
I'm not sure what to do with it now, but I guess we'll see what happens.
But the most fun will be looking at the things other people have posted. When I typed in "France," the screen that came up was full of exciting options about France. Many regions of France were represented too.

Okay, sorry, I'm back. After I posted that picture and the link, I went back to Pinterest and kind of got caught up reading the articles. And one of the new French words I learned was "hop," which is pronounced "up" and basically is used where we might mutter "okay" to ourselves. See how handy Pinterest is going to be, if I don't spend all my time reading the articles.

Hope everyone else has something lovely to share about France. Thanks for visiting and for leaving a comment. Please stop by the blogs of the others who share on Dreaming of France.