Chiggers

by Cassondra Murray



Are y’all feeling good after Jeanne’s yummy-smelling perfume blog yesterday? Well, brace yourselves, because I’m fixin' to replace that good-smelling afterglow with somethin' worse’n a pot o’ cabbage boilin’ on the stove.



For any of you who have NOT smelled cabbage cooking, “stinks” does not even begin to describe it. It’s enough to turn you against green plants and gardens in general.



I’m just warning you. So if you think you can take it, go right ahead. Read on.



No, I am not blogging about stinky stuff.



Well, then again, maybe I am, in a metaphorical kind of way.



Y’all remember the malt vs float blog from last month, right? The one where Jeanne and I chose sides? (I was float, she was malt.) That’s one point on which my evil twin, the dear Duchesse Jeanne Pickering Adams, and I, part ways. Another point on which we differ is that she prefers winter. She likes to shiver. I, on the other hand, hate to be cold, and am a shameless hoyden for spring and summer—oh and a nice long, unseasonably warm autumn that lingers until mid-December.



It doesn’t bother me at all to have the heat, as long as it’s not a horrid drought. People say, “but it’s a dry heat!” And I say, “so is hell.”



And it doesn’t bother me as long as I can get relief, when I want it, with air conditioning, a tall glass of lemonade or my grandmother’s sun tea (sweet tea, of course, as anything else is just wrong), or even a nice cool glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc.



Jeanne hates the beach. I was born with a palm tree in my soul.



In most other ways, we are indeed evil twins.



I’ll sit on the porch, sipping my icy beverage, and gently “glow” (that's ladylike country talk for "sweat" in case y'all didn't know) into the long summer evening as the sun sets in a streaky purple and cerise-colored sky, and the lightning bugs flicker across the tall fescue in the pasture. Jeanne will be fanning and wanting to go inside where it’s cool.







That love of summer firmly established, I admit that there is one thing about summer which I am never loathe to see pass.



Chiggers.



Do you have chiggers where you live?



I hate chiggers.



For you lucky souls who do not have chiggers where you live, and may not know their entymology or (sarcasm alert)the joy of having multiple chigger bites on your body, all itching at the same time…well…let me just say right here that chiggers are NOT ticks. And since we’ve known about Lyme Disease, and especially since Brad Paisley came out with that song about ticks….



I’d like to see you under the moonlight

I’d like to kiss you way back in the sticks

I’d like to walk with you through a field of wild flowers

And I’d like to check you for ticks



…..Well, ever since that, ticks have gotten way more than their fair share of publicity.



Honestly. You can see a tick when it’s crawling on you. Even the itty bitty deer ticks, though they take a bit of concentration to identify. When you take off your clothes at home and shower, you’re quite likely to notice a tick trying to make its way up your leg. I have a reasonable level of hatred for ticks (and most other things with more than two legs which attempt to crawl upon me). But that is honest parasitic advancement, in my opinion.



Chiggers, on the other hand....chiggers are sneaky.



Do you know what chiggers look like?



Probably not,because you can’t actually see the microscopic little buggers, but if you’ve ever had chiggers, you know what I’m saying. I had a picture of a chigger all ready to post, but I decided against it. I figure y'all have computers, and know how to use Google. If you want to know what these little critters look like, it's just a Google search away.



Ahem...back to the point...



If you’ve ever picked blackberries, I’m guessing you know all about chiggers.



Wild blackberries are my favorite summer fruit. I grew up picking blackberries with my family every summer. So one summer just after Steve and I got married, I was feeling all sentimental about my childhood, and when I got the chance to pick blackberries, I took it.



A friend of Steve’s had several acres, and each year he used his riding mower to mow paths around the clumps of wild blackberry bushes, or “vines” as we called them in Southern Kentucky.



I suppose these paths of short lawn-like grass gave me a false sense of security.



We spent the afternoon, and I came home to our tiny apartment with a gallon of the incredible rich, sweet-tart fruits, and my tummy already full from eating them straight off the vines. But by that evening the red bumps started to show up.

I was covered with chigger bites. Steve counted 120 itchy red bites on my body. I was miserable.



For you who are lucky enough to NOT know, most chigger bites happen in the spots where your clothes are tight. Chigger bites aren't actually "bites" you see. And they're not terribly dangerous.



The teensy little mites simply move into one of the hair follicles in your skin-- and there they set up housekeeping for a few days. A few very itchy days.



They prefer the hair follicles in restricted areas. Like the crease under your breasts where your bra rides. Isn’t that a fun place to have red bumps that are itching like fluttering hell-bats from the pits of doom?



Or your tummy where the waistband of your pants rests. Oh, and the best place of all--the elastic legs of your panties. Yeah. They congregate there--where your body moves and bends—and in places like your ankles, just under the bands of your socks.



And that movement? That just makes them itch all the more.





And there is Nothing. You. Can. Do. About. It.



Like Measles or Mumps or the flu, they have to just do their thing. Run their course.



The “experts” say they gravitate to those spots because they like the dark--areas of tight clothing. Me? I think they just go as far as they can go and most of them stop right there, where the clothing gets tight, and it’s too bloody much trouble to climb any further. And that’s where they dig in.



If I were a chigger, that's what I would do.



Lazy little sorry critters they are.





Of course, “dig in” is wrong too, according to the experts.



I suppose I owe it to the experts to say that chiggers are a mite-like thingy. And it’s the larvae which are the trouble. They look nothing like larvae to me. They look more like a tick, in their larval stage, actually. A tick you cannot see. Otherwise, the experts say, chiggers, or “harvest mites” of which there are more than 30 species (oh JOY!) don’t cause any trouble. It’s just that larval stage.



They say if you go home and shower immediately you can wash the chiggers off. I have not found that to be the case. Showering has never helped me because the chiggers have already found their spots and sandbagged themselves in.



I’ll spare you the details of their actual activity while in your follicles. The point is, they itch like all heck.



People have said for a long while now that if you paint over the chigger bite with

nail polish that it’ll kill it—that it can’t breathe then . I suppose it does appeal to the logic, doesn’t it? The idea that this layer of shellac-like nail polish suffocates the itchy little demons to death.



After all, if I’m going to itch and suffer, I’d like for the cause of it to suffer along with me.



However, being from strong country stock, as I am, I’ve never believed this. And this is one point on which the experts agree with me. They say this nail polish trick does absolutely no good.

I don’t know what I think about the experts and their opinions about chiggers. They may be right. Or not.





That evening so many years ago, Steve painted all 120 of those chiggers with pink nail polish.





When I was a little girl, my parents would get me ready to pick blackberries in the following way: First, I had to wear long pants and long sleeves. Then they took a kerosene—yes, kerosene—dampened cloth and swabbed it around my wrists and ankles.



And you know what?



Nary a chigger.



That’s right. It kept the chiggers away. And given the negative qualities of DEET, which is the only kind of insect repellent which will keep chiggers away, I’m not certain the kerosene was any worse.



But that day when I was first married, I had no kerosene, and the blackberry picking was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I thought only briefly about chiggers, then I determined to be careful.



Ha! Chiggers give no heed to careful. They jump—yes, according the the experts, they wait on vegetation and jump toward their intended hosts.



This past June I cleared the weeds away from the flower bed around my mailbox. Tall weeds. Lots of them. And guess what?



That evening Steve counted 116 chiggers on me. And he painted them with clear nail polish. I told him I thought that didn’t do any good. He said just in case it did, we should paint the chiggers.



I itched for three days.



I hate to see the end of summer, but the one thing I do not mourn is chiggers. They can freeze their little chigger hienies off with the first frost. Jeanne, you are vindicated.



I hope they go to the darkest corner of chigger hell.



What about you, Bandits and Buddies?



Are there chiggers where you live?



Have you ever had a chigger bite?



I’m not allergic to poison ivy. Are you? If so, what do you do to stop the itching?



I have a selfish motive here, because I’m writing a scene in my latest manuscript like this….have you ever read a scene in a book where the hero or heroine was all itchy?



Hmmm…it doesn’t sound all that romantic, does it?



Are you a summer person like me? Or are you like Jeanne—a winter person? Do you look forward to the greening in the spring? Or to the first frost of Autumn, when the bugs get their comeuppance?



It’s the end of summer. Are you glad? Or are you sad?





And did you ever pick blackberries?

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To Float or not to Float...

A Jeanne and Cassondra Food Fight....

Cassondra: I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, like many of the Bandits, and had a chance to spend just a bit of time with the one Bandit I sometimes refer to as “my evil twin.”

You might wonder why we would think of ourselves that way, since I’m short and dark haired, with a rather overpowering preference for black clothing, dark blue nail polish, and deep purple lipstick, while Jeanne is tall, stacked and blonde, with a tendency to wear *shudder* earth tones.

Jeanne: Hey! I resemble that remark! (Heehee. Actually, it's quite a nice description....thanks!)
Cassondra, rolling her eyes: Nevertheless, for you who might not have noticed this, we tend, often, to think alike about certain things. We’re both extremely analytical, come from strong marketing, art and design, and business backgrounds, and we both like things that go boom.

Jeanne: I love it when she calls me analytical. I SO don't think I am, but it's nice to know someone ELSE does!

Cassondra: Will you let me finish?

Jeanne: Pray, continue, my Evil Twin.

Cassondra: Thank you. We also both come from small country towns, love plants and gardening, and have a strong interest in a lot of similar things.

But when it comes to food, the similarities….well…I begin to doubt our twinhood.

Jeanne: Gasp! Say it isn't SO!!!

Cassondra: Yes! It's so! During the New York trip, a vast chasm opened between us. Yes, that’s right. We’re disagreeing about food again. And this time, it’s sacred.

Jeanne: (muffled laugh) It's a sacred cow-product! Oh, noes!!

Cassondra stifles a grin: This is serious! Y’all remember my ice cream blog, right? So you know I’m no stranger to cow-originated goodness. So it’s probably no surprise to you that I love floats.

Jeanne: Ugh.

Cassondra: Hey! I mean I don’t just like floats. I love floats. Being much like the Sally character in When Harry Met Sally, I like them made a certain particular way, of course. I do NOT want the ice cream all blended together with the soda. That’s just gross.

Y’all remember Koogle, right? Peanut butter and jelly blended together in one container? Like that. Blech. Grrrrross.

Jeanne: Oh, now that WAS disgusting. Bleech is right.

Cassondra: Thank you. But as to floats, the ice cream and the soda of choice should not become some amorphous, smooth substance. The ice cream and the soda must remain individual. It’s a marriage of two distinct and opposite individuals, one with a crisp, bright burn, and one with a sweet, soft, creaminess. It is NOT a genetic blending experiment, where everything ends up looking the same. Ew.

I want generous scoops of ice cream, with Coke or root beer poured over the top (allowing proper time for the foam to go down, of course), then poured over the top again, until the container is full to the top of soda, and then I want extra Coke or root beer on the side. While I realize there is a group of float lovers who prefer to have their Coke poured in first, then their ice cream scooped in, because, they say, it doesn’t foam nearly as badly that way, I say this is bowing to convenience. Maybe even bordering on laziness, this sacrifice of quality for speed of preparation. I am a Coke Over Ice Cream float girl.

I do not want chocolate ice cream, nor any other flavor except rich, natural vanilla. No swirls, no nuts, no candy additives. I want a bit of time for the ice cream to become malleable. Then I poke at it with the long-handled spoon so bits of it break off into the ambery liquid. So I can then slurp the glorious combination.
Yummmmm.

Now, brace yourselves, because I know you’ll be shocked. I was. But our beloved Duchesse, Jeanne, my otherwise evil Bandita twin….dare I even say it?

She does not like floats.

This, I do not understand. Instead, she likes malts.

Jeanne: Yes, yes I do.

Now let me be clear. It's not that I find a float abhorrent or anything, it's just....well...Let me put it this way. It's a million degrees here in DC this week. The humidity is about 110%, with blue skies, and no rain. I'm hibernating in the house. Hiding, actually. Do you know what that kind of humidity does to my hair? Eeeeek!

Coke, Diet Coke, Root Beer - they're all wonderful, but there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING that is as refreshing and "bring-down-the-core-temp-good" like a milkshake. In particular, a malt. You know, a mix of cold, gorgeous ice cream in vanilla, coffee, chocolate (pick a flavor, but it's got to be real ice cream), luscious milk, and malted flavoring. YUMMMMM!!!

Cassondra: Okay, we agree on the "real ice cream" part, but once you get flavors or - UGH! - MALT in there, we are at a very wide cravasse in our twinhood. I cannot understand this passion you have for malt. Malted milk balls--okay I can tolerate those. But malt in your ice cream? Yuck. Give me a good, old fashioned float any day. You know, an ice cream float - ice cream floating in a soft drink, like root beer.

Jeanne: Ohhhh no. No fizzy, fuzzy stuff messing up my ice cream, please and thank you. I'm planning to have a malt today in fact, and tomorrow, and probably the next day as a defense against the evil heat and humidity. (We have a code orange heat advisory - baaaaaad)

Cassondra: Truly, you astonish me. Why would you want to diss my perfect summer beverage? I will admit to one exception to my strict coke/vanilla combo.

Jeanne: Just the one?

Cassondra: Oh, be quiet. The one is the orange dreamsicle float, with vanilla ice cream and orange soda. Oh. My. Gosh. And when anyone has a sick stomach, I make them an orange sherbet with 7-up float. Goes down easy and stays down when nothing else will.

Jeanne: Remind me not to be sick around you. Hate to admit it but I'm SO not a dreamsicle fan. My DH - he'd LOVE for you to be around when he's sick. He's an huge fan of orange/vanilla combos, no matter what frozen form they take.

And going back to the point at hand, why would you want to ruin a perfectly good scoop of ice cream by submerging it in, or pouring Coke over it? Or Root Beer? Why, for that matter, would you ruin a perfectly good, ice cold root beer, by dumping ice cream in it?

Cassondra: Oh, please. I’m sorry, but what, precisely, IS malt? I’ve wondered this for a long while now. They never let you actually see it, and I find that deeply troubling. It doesn’t come from a “malt” plant. There is no “malt cow.” No “malt truck” drives up and unloads cans of it. They dump it into the cup when you’re not looking, then they keep their backs to you while they put in the ice cream and blend it all together.

Jeanne: *rubs hands in glee* Malt is made from grain, m'dear Twin! It's the food of the Gods, don't-cha-know. Snork!!! See, you get a grain AND a dairy serving when you get a malt!

(Nancy, that makes malted milk balls a grain food! We're saved!)

Cassondra: Maybe we should switch husbands since your husband, Ralph, likes floats and dreamsicles. My husband, Steve, likes floats, but alas, Jeanne, like you he LOVES malts. In fact he likes EXTRA malt in his vanilla malts. I have no idea how we ended up together.

He has a theory that floats, actually, are a regional thing. A few years ago, he worked for a big hospital corporation, and traveled all over the country visiting hospitals and helping with their scheduling software. He’s run across several places where floats are not served. At one point he was in Texas, (I think) when he stopped by an ice cream shop—one of the little glass-walled kind that I blogged about a couple of months ago—and asked for a float. They looked at him with a blank stare. Then they frowned.

“A what?” they asked.

“A float,” he said. “You know, ice cream with coke or root beer poured over it?”
The girl looked over at her ice-cream scoop-wielding companion. Scoop girl came over and stood near girl number one, making an impenetrable wall of “ya ain’t from here are ya” confusion. They’d never heard of a float.

I mean really! They don't know about floats! How can this be? After I’ve heard such nice things about Texas? I might start to believe that Texas really is a whole other country—an alien one where they don’t serve floats.

Jeanne: Now, I do find that hard to believe--the not knowing about floats. Or maybe it's that your region (Kentucky) and my original region (North Carolina) are so close and so similar that they DID know about floats.

However, your point about Texas being an alien country is also well taken. It IS where they filmed Cowboys and Aliens, so....coincidence? Perhaps not!

(Then again, anything that features Daniel Craig AND Harrison Ford? Rrrrrowwww!)

Cassondra, laughing: Could be, could be. Steve explained the concept, but they could not imagine pouring soda (pop, Coke, soft drink, whatever they call it down there) over ice cream.

You know what I think, though? I think they served him the malt he settled for (Bleh), then they closed the windows, and late that night, after dark, with the lights out, they scooped out some ice cream, poured root beer over it, and found their way to Nirvana. The question, of course, is whether they’ve kept it their special little secret, or whether they’ve shared it with others, spreading the float love across a barren, malt-infested land.

Jeanne: Malt infested? Oh, for Pete's sake! It's GRAIN, I tell ya'! So we're a grain infested land. Excellent. Amber waves, and all that. Snork! Tell Steve we'll fix him right up with a malt, and you and Ralph can go slurp down some carbonated milky goo drinks. I swear, I'm sending Steve a ginormous box of malted milk balls for Christmas, just to tweak you. Bwahahahahah!

Cassondra: Ya'll can have them. I'll studiously ignore them as I find Nirvana in ice cream and Coke. Oh, and your husband is too tall for me, and you're taller than Steve, so you keep Ralph, and I'll keep Steve. Kay?

Jeanne: Of course, because, hey, we chose them for other reasons than ice-cream-beverage preferences. *VEG* But when visiting all together, the four of us? Ya'll go to the other side of the table with those floats. Steve and I will keep our malts allll nice and soda-free.

Okay, so who's side are YOU on? Malt or Float?

Flavored ice cream, or pure, perfect vanilla?

Toppings, nuts, and fruits? (And here I AM in Twinhood again because I don't like cold nuts - SNORK! - nor do I like fruit goo on my ice cream)

Cassondra: Fruit goo. Ewwwww. Real fruit? That's different. Love me some bananas or strawberries....slurp...or chocolate....yummm..oh..ahem...



Jeanne: Back to being Twins - I'm there with you on real fruit on ice cream - or IN ice cream. Just not goo.
One scoop or two? Or four?

And last but not least, besides vanilla, what's your favorite flavor?
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Small Town Summer

by Cassondra Murray

I grew up in a small town.


Okay, that’s not entirely true. I grew up way out in the country, on a farm, but the town closest to us was the one we considered “our town.” It’s where we went to shop at the Houchen’s Grocery store, and do laundry at the Wishy Washy on Saturdays. When people ask me where I’m from—you know, when the conversation is not the kind where you say, “I grew up on a farm about 8 miles out of town, in a community called Glens Fork, in Adair County…”—when the conversation is brief and you’re just making nice, that town is what I say.

It had a big red brick courthouse in the middle of the town square. The kind with double doors on opposite sides of the building, so you could enter from either direction. The courthouse had a tower with a clock at the top. That clock never was right.

When I was a little girl, there were benches outside the courthouse doors, and old men would sit on those benches and tell lies and whittle.

There was a pool room down a side street. Y’all know about that pool room because I’ve blogged about it before, in the blog about ice cream. The town also had a little café tucked into a corner of the square, and a Ben Franklin store.



Ben Franklin was every kid’s dream before Toys R Us came along. There was also a Western Auto, with gardening tools, wheelbarrows, rocking horses, and a little red wagon in the front window. That’s where my dad bought some of my best Christmas presents ever. My Play Family garage. My electric train. That’s where he bought my first guitar. And that changed who I was forever.

I know I talk about my town a lot. I guess it’s because it’s such a part of who I am, and it’s a part of who I am not.
Nowadays I live half way between two towns. It’s ten miles north to the bigger city, which has a university, gobs and gobs of restaurants, and is building a new performing arts center. If you turn right out of my driveway, you go to that big town.

But if you turn left out of my driveway, ten miles the other direction is…..a small town. One with a courthouse and a square a lot like “mine.” If I have a choice, I always turn left.

And last night I did turn left, and drove to the small town to get something I needed. I noticed as I drove through, that there was a big crowd at the Frosty Freeze. My husband, Steve, wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to pick up something to eat.

Frosty Freeze is a little glass and concrete box in the middle of a parking lot. There are two big trees out front, and several picnic tables arranged under the orange-ish street lights. I angled into a space at the side and got out. I walked up to the window and got in line. When it was my turn, the girl took my order. Two barbecue sandwiches, a small vanilla malt with extra malt, and a small pineapple shake with extra pineapple. Oh, and a funnel cake.



I paid, then I sat down on the curb to wait. All the tables were full. School is out here, and high school kids moved back and forth, hovering between parked cars and around the beds of pickup trucks. A couple of farm boys climbed out of one truck and came around the front to place orders. But more high school kids hung out at the tables and around by the bug zapper, and they weren’t ordering anything. They were just hanging out.

I watched the dance of awkward wanting, and was swept away—back to my teenage years, cruising through the streets of the place where I grew up. I was swept back to the essence of all that is small town.

My town—the one where I grew up-- had the carcass of an old movie theater on one corner of the square,with a neon marquis out front that read Columbian theater in big vertical letters that reached almost three stories high.

But that marquis never lit up when I lived there. I got to see one movie in that theater when I was a small child. It closed down later that fall. The drive-in, further out on the edge of the city, was closed long before I was born. There was no roller rink, no professional or semi-pro sports team, no wave pool or museum.

There was absolutely. Nothing. To. Do.

So on Friday and Saturday nights, the kids from the farms and the suburbs, such as they were, drove into town and cruised. They circled the square, went down the big hill on Jamestown street, out toward the parkway, made a big circle around Sonic, then went back toward the courthouse, where they'd circle the square and repeat. All at about 15 miles per hour, so they could stick their heads out the windows and talk to the cars they were meeting. Sometimes they'd take breaks and hang at Sonic or Dairy Queen, or in the Pizza Hut parking lot.

This town where I sat at the Frosty Freeze is a little better off. They have an actual working drive in (refurbished) that shows first run movies. And they’re only 20 miles from the bigger city, so they can get to the mall, the arcade, and the minor league baseball games the larger town offers.


And yet it was the same. The smell of barbecue and deep fried yummy goodness. The sound of the shake mixer. The ziiiiip-pop of the bug zapper in the back, and the low rumble of big pipes on a farm boy’s pickup truck.

Parents murmuring to their children as they helped little fingers with ice cream cones, just the way they did at Sonic and Dairy Queen when I was a young girl. Bright colored bows in pony tails. Softball uniforms. Bare feet, brown with dirt from playing outside in the yard all day. Swimsuits under t-shirts. High school rings wrapped with rubber bands. A pretty girl's long hair blowing in the warm evening breeze. Tan skin and young love. The banker’s daughter and the poor farm boy. It’s the stuff romance is made of, for me.

I determined, last night, that some things time cannot change because the reasons for them don’t change. My evidence was standing right there at that window, ordering barbecue and a small chocolate shake. Even though there is more to do in this small town, there they are, just the same as we were, cruising up and down Main Street on a perfect summer night. Hanging at the Frosty Freeze.

The girl came to the window with my order, and I walked away with my white sacks of un-politically-correct food. But I also walked away reminded of who I was, to a degree. Reminded that although I love certain things about big cities, I will always be a small-town girl at heart. An artsy girl who still gets a thrill from the growl of a diesel pickup truck engine, broad shoulders and a farmer tan. All just three blocks down from a big red brick courthouse with a tower and a clock on the front.


The only real differences are that I’m a lot older, on the outside looking in now, and those farm boys stroll right by without a sideways glance.

Oh, and their courthouse clock is right.

So, Bandits and Buddies, tell me about the place where you grew up, and what said "summer" to you when you were young.



Were your summers in a small town, or a big city?


Where did the kids hang out on those long, hot evenings? Was there a movie theater? Any chance there was a drive in?

Did you ever cruise main street on Friday and Saturday nights?

Have you ever ridden in the back of a pickup truck?

Do any of y'all remember Ben Franklin or Western Auto stores?

And do you like to read small town love stories?
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One Mom's Encouragement--Dianna Love Passes It On

by Cassondra Murray with Dianna Love

Y'all pull up a bar stool and put in your order for a glass of wine or one of Sven's fabulous cocktails. I've poured myself a glass of California Cabernet, and I want to celebrate a new--and very different--project by lair favorite--and my long-time friend, Dianna Love. She's just launched something that's *cue valley girl squeal* totally awesome, and I want her to share it with you, and the reasons behind it.

If you're a lair regular, you know by now that Dianna's first book won a Rita Award, and she's gone on to co-author two successful series with #1 NYT Bestseller, Sherrilyn Kenyon. The first was Sherrilyn's original BAD Agency series. The lastest is Dianna's brainchild--the rockin' Belador urban fantasy series.

Many of you have read my interviews with Dianna in the past, and been inspired by her drive, determination, and what seems like a bottomless well of energy, which she draws on when pursuing something she cares about. I recently learned that she gives her mom a lot of the credit for encouraging Dianna to go for her dreams and follow her heart--first into art--and later into her newest passion, fiction writing.

As we head into the weeks before Mother's Day, I asked Dianna if she'd share a little about her mom, what that encouragement meant to her, and how that's led to her sponsoring a national art contest based around her latest book.

Welcome Dianna!

Dianna: *lifts her glass of Australian Shiraz* Thanks! It's always great to be back here in the lair!

Cassondra: You’re an inspiration to a lot of people because you’ve basically had two very successful careers. Many of the Bandits and Buddies know that you were an artist before you were a writer. But that's key to your latest project, so for those new to the lair, will you tell us briefly about your “past life?”

Dianna: Sure. My life revolved around art pretty much from the first time I picked up a crayon. I was blessed with the ability to draw photo-realistic art and by the time I was in middle school, I was selling detailed pencil portraits for $5 each to earn money for art supplies. My parents had five kids and no extra money for frivolous use of school supplies like paper and pencils. I have never forgotten an uncle who worked in a paper mill and brought me a ream of paper once when he came to visit. The memory of that gift has stayed with me since grade school.

Cassondra: What a great gift for a budding artist.

Dianna: *nods* Over the next few years as I grew into my teens and on into adulthood, I went from drawing portraits on 18” paper to painting them 20 feet tall way up above the ground. When I was first living alone at seventeen, I used my art to do side jobs between three “regular” jobs I held during the week. By age twenty, I was building a business in painting signs and murals. Over the next thirty years, I expanded to creating massive three-dimensional objects for unusual marketing projects and eventually created unusual high-tech advertising pieces for events like the Olympics and companies such as Coca-Cola.

(Cassondra interjects: That Coca Cola sign on the left is in downtown Atlanta--it's an example of the kind of projects Dianna's company built.)

Cassondra: I’ve known you for a long time, but only recently came to understand the roles your mom, and her encouragement, played in your art career. We’re coming up on Mother’s Day, and we've got a lot of moms in the lair with us today. I think they'd love to hear a little about your childhood and your mom. I especially love the story about the tv station interview. Will you tell that one?

Dianna: *takes a sip of Shiraz* Yes. My mother was no wallflower, but she was a wife during an era when the man had the last say in a house. With five children, there was no doting on any one, but I remember my mom coming to first grade just to see something I’d drawn. I thought I was in big trouble *grin* – that was the only reason a parent was asked to come to the school back then -- but I’d used my newsprint sheet of paper--anyone remember drawing on newsprint?--(*cassondra raises hand*) to draw an involved series of the Billy Goat’s Gruff cartoon, and I guess my teacher was impressed, because she called my mom in to see it.

By the time I reached sixth grade, my mom had gone through years of having me draw at the kitchen table and on anything I could get my hands on, plus I’d won some art contests by then.


Cassondra: But in sixth grade something pivotal happened?

Dianna: Yes. We had two six-week sessions of art that year. I was in heaven. Free art materials and time to draw--but more about that later.

My art teacher entered a batik I created in a national contest, which I knew nothing about until they announced in home room that I’d placed 3rd…and that I was to be interviewed on television. They might as well have said I was expected to travel on the next moon flight.

Now back to that "time to draw" in class thing....My dad had grown up during hard times and expected us to only study in school—and that didn’t mean drawing or painting. Art was a waste of time and money to him, so when I told them about the television interview, he said no.

I had never heard my mom naysay him, but she said yes. She dressed me up and drove me to that interview. The first and second place winners were seniors who they also interviewed. Everyone was very nice, going over questions with me before they started rolling.
That was a memorable experience to be sure.

But more than anything it made me realize that my art did count because my mom said so. Never underestimate the power of believing in your child.

Cassondra: How did you use that belief and encouragement—how did you transfer it into something concrete as you moved through your teens and into your adult life?

Dianna: My mom would do anything for her children for the short time we had her (she had a heart attack and died when I was seventeen). She patiently listened to every story, helped with everyone’s homework and cut no one slack when it came to being a good person and the best you could be at anything.

Because of her encouragement and pride in what I’d created, I never considered giving up my art. But my father told me I couldn’t depend on it to make a living. I believed that as a teen, and took mechanical drawing in school to appease him. Being a strange right brain/left brain artist who loves math, I aced the class, but one thing it did was show me that I hated the idea of engineering or architecture.

I never walked around thinking I’d be the next Rembrandt painting portraits all day, but neither did I enjoy working in an office, so I gravitated to painting signs and murals. Living alone at seventeen is a two-sided blade of positive and negative. Every day was a struggle to survive back then, but the positive is that the only voice I heard was my own and that one told me to follow my heart.

I have always felt as though my mom is nearby watching over me and I still feel her spirit with me in everything I accomplish.

Cassondra: *swirls wine in glass* I want to talk for a minute about passing on the encouragement your mom gave you. I’ve seen you sit down with new writers and help them through tough spots in the writing--or in the business--more times than I can count. But your encouragement of others didn’t start when you started writing. Once you had your own sign business and your own shop, you helped other young artists get started and taught them how to do what you did. Your consistent willingness to teach others and share the work and success might seem counter-intuitive to some people. Will you talk about why doing that fits your basic philosophy of encouraging others?

Dianna: It goes back to my mom's influence. She would stop to help any child anywhere. I remember her saying that she hoped someone would help her children when they needed it if she wasn’t around to do it at some point. She was the original “pass it up the line” person who helped others because that’s who she was.

I’ve never thought about how often I do it, because helping others is just a natural part of my being. I never considered my competitors in business or art to be my opponents or enemies, and I feel the same way about writing.

My philosophy is that the better job we all do in whatever field we’re in, the more successful we all will be and when it's writing, that’s good for readers and the business. On top of all that, it makes me very happy to see others succeed, so I benefit too.

Cassondra: When you made the switch from painting to writing, did it feel as though you were giving up one dream to pursue another? Did you have any moments when you wondered if it was the right thing to do? If so, how did you make your decision?

Dianna: I loved painting, but I’d spent so many years away from home working, in everything from cold to suffocating heat, that my urge to write came at a good time for me. I’d been making up stories in my head, so when I reduced the amount of time I was climbing to paint and build, I started writing these stories down in between times I spent painting in my home studio.

But the writing really captured me. My husband kept telling me I couldn’t continue to paint huge walls and write books, because the schedule was killing me. I work every day, but my writing was demanding so much I couldn’t keep up the pace. So I finally made the decision to go full time into writing. It was a difficult decision because I’d spent my life building a business in art, but this is where I refer back to the question about helping others--back to what I learned from my mom.

I had so many friends in the sign business by that point that I was able to place all my clients in good hands and help my friends at the same time. My husband still oversees two large sign maintenance contracts we have, but I’m rarely involved in that now.

Cassondra: You've shared how art competitions played a role in your development as a young artist. When did you first get the idea of sponsoring a national art contest, and what’s your purpose in doing that? And why the focus on high schools in particular?

Dianna: I kept thinking I wanted to create an image of Feenix, our sweetheart gargoyle in the Belador series, and started sketching on it when it hit me that this would make a fun art contest.

I had the opportunity to enter art contests from 3rd grade on, and those played a part in building my confidence in a field everyone considered a waste of time. I can’t tell you how often you hear that you can’t make a living in that field – I proved them all wrong. *grin* I think confidence-building is especially important for young artists who might let naysayers talk them out of pursuing a dream.

When I came up with the My Feenix Art Contest, I wanted everyone to be invited whether they hand -drew pictures, created on the computer or made stuffed animals, so the contest has three categories-- Flat Art, 3-D and Digital-- for each of the two division--the High School Student division and the Adult division.

Cassondra: You’ve spoken before, here in the lair, about your dogged determination to remain true to whatever you’re passionate about. I’ve heard you say “A bad day painting was better than a good day doing anything else.” How does this art contest play into that, and how do you see it encouraging others to follow their passion?

Dianna: I do believe following your passion should be at the core of what you do if you want to be happy in life. I think just entering an art contest is a big step for many artists who are timid about submitting their art to a professional group.

The contest has no entry fee and all of the initial submissions are sent as jpgs. There’s a category for digital art, but even the hand-drawn and three-dimensional art is submitted as photos for the first round. We did this to make it as easy as possible for anyone to submit.

Sometimes just the act of doing one thing to move your craft forward is all it takes to get you thinking more seriously about your art--and that's true of writing too--of whatever your art is.

Cassondra: Our Bandit Buddies run the gamut from late teens to parents to grandmothers, and everything in between. What would you say to our visitors in the lair today about pursuing their dreams at any age, and how would you suggest they encourage others in their lives to do the same?

Dianna: That’s a great question, and I have a story about how important that is.

Years back, I attended a social event at the home of a female business associate. I commented on the beautiful still life and landscape paintings in her home by one particular artist whose name I couldn’t decipher.

Her mother, who had come to live with her that year, was from Puerto Rico and spoke no English, but the woman loved to watch Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting television shows where he gave art classes. Her mother was in her mid 80s when she picked up a paintbrush for the first time in her life and shocked everyone with her talent. It been a secret passion of hers forever, but she never had the opportunity to try. Now her family has these amazing paintings to remember her by.

A lot of people have those secret yearnings.

I think we have to stop once in a while and ask the people closest to us, “Is there anything you’ve ever wanted to do that you haven’t and you’d like to do now?” Or just listen—pay attention-- when we hear that new or different sound in their voice when they’re telling us about something that has caught their attention.

Have an open mind about listening. That’s all it takes sometimes to encourage someone to pursue a dream.

*Bandits and Buddies shift to make room as Sven and Paulo set trays of snacks on the tables and bar*

Cassondra: If someone is an artist—or KNOWS an artist—who might like to enter the My Feenix Art Contest, how do they get more info?

Dianna: You can go to www.myfeenix.com and find out everything you need to know. The instructions and entry forms are there on the site. Top prize in each adult category is $1000. Top prize for students is an iPad, plus money for school art departments and books for school libraries.

Help me spread the word--and pass on the encouragement. It's never too early--or too late--to go for your dream.

Cassondra: Feenix first appeared in BLOOD TRINITY, first book in the Belador series, which was released last October. The second book in the series, ALTERANT is scheduled for release September 27th. You can read an excerpt of BLOOD TRINITY, see the blurb for ALTERANT, and meet the Beladors at www.authordiannalove.com

What about you Bandits and Buddies?

It’s not always a mom who plays the role of encourager. Has anyone ever encouraged you at a low moment? What did they say?

Have you gone for something that scared you, and been encouraged in doing so by either watching someone else, or having someone tell you to go for it?

What have you gone for “against the odds,” or what are you going for right now?

Have you taken a moment to encourage someone else in the pursuit of an important dream or goal? Who was it? Your child? Brother or sister? Critique Partner? Friend?

Who has made a difference in your life with a touch, a card or phone call or a word when you most needed it?

Sven is passing another round of drinks, so eat, drink, and tell us how you've helped spread the encouragement, or been encouraged at just the right moment.

Oh...and tell us what drink Sven is mixing/pouring for you. *grin*

Dianna is giving away two signed copies of BLOOD TRINITY and one of the coveted Belador t-shirts!
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The Little Gray Cat

by Cassondra Murray

Early in the summer of 2008, a lonely gray cat, skinny, in trouble, and so small she looked about six months old, wandered into a subdivision and arrived at the back door of a girl named Amy. Amy is a friend of ours, and works with my husband, Steve.

Maybe it was luck, coincidence, or an angel guiding Little Gray Cat, but let's just say that if you were a cat in trouble, Amy's door would have been the one you'd want to find. Because as luck, or the Divine, would have it, Amy had a soft spot for cats.

Amy cleared out an entire spare bedroom for the forlorn little cat, laid out old blankets, moved in a cat tree, litter box, and a scratching post. After a trip to the vet, Little Gray Cat took up residence, and in August, 2008, five little ones arrived. And no group of kittens had ever come into the world to more love.

They had everything they needed, and Little Gray Cat settled in to motherhood without a hitch.

A few months before that, we'd lost our beloved Max at age 17. He'd been lost in a field when his mom and siblings were taken by owls, and come to us when he was three weeks and weighed 3/4 lbs. Max was our companion for all those years, and we were devastated when we lost him. This is Max, engaging in his favorite spectator sport.




Our younger cat, Amon (pronounced Aaaahh-muhnn) was bereft. She sat around, staring out the windows, and although she made an effort to pick up and move on, no doubt she was lonely all day in the house when we were out at work. No more night stampedes through the house. Nobody to lie in wait for from the top of the armoire. It was time to find her some company. I'd always wanted a black cat, but we always seemed to end up with grays.

That's Max. on the right, with Amon, on the left. Amon came home with us after we coaxed her and her sister out from under a car in the parking lot of a Captain D's. She weighed a whopping one pound at the time. One of the employees took the sister, and Amon has been with us since.



As fate would have it, of the five new arrivals at Amy's house, three were gray, and two were black.

We went for a visit. We got to know the kittens in their first five weeks. And eventually we settled on a little black furball with big green eyes and a white snip under his chin. We brought him home and named him Umbra.





Umbra was the first kitten we'd ever brought home who had not been abandoned, and was not in trouble. He'd never known anything but love, and perhaps as a result, he loves everyone who comes to our home. Umbra knows no stranger. He's truly a laid-back cat. At sixteen pounds, he's now a hoss of solid, purring muscle.

Here's Umbra in the new kitchen sink during a construction phase just before Christmas.



Flash foward to the summer of 2010, and Amy found herself, as Little Gray Cat had once been, in the family way. Things were a little different for Amy, though. She had a fellow who loved her, and would love their baby. Amy already had her own house, so everything was set. There was just one problem.

Amy's husband wasn't fond of cats, and as time passed, turned out to be allergic to them. With a baby on the way, there was nothing to do but find a new home for Little Gray Cat.

We'd always told Amy that if Little Gray Cat couldn't stay with her, we'd bring her to our house, but Amy didn't want us to feel pressured, and we already had two cats. So we got the email three weeks ago. With the baby due in 8 days, and her husband sick from the dander, Amy was feeling the pressure. She'd taken Little Gray Cat, Umbra's mom, to the shelter.

We needed another cat like we needed a hole in the head. But sometimes that just doesn't matter.

It was 11:00 in the morning on a Saturday when we opened that email.

By the time we found Little Gray Cat on the shelter website and figured out what we had to do, it was ten minutes before noon. We needed a reference, and our vet closes at noon on Saturdays. We called anyway.

Joy, the sweetheart who works the front desk on weekends (and who loves cats, and has a few more than she needs as well) stopped everything to phone the shelter with a reference for us. We called a friend who volunteers there, hoping these efforts might help us jump more easily through the Nazi-like hoops of the shelter's watchdogs and allow us to spring Little Gray Cat from the slammer. Our friends rallied around the effort, and we drove too fast on the way there.

I have to tell you, I admire people who volunteer at the shelter. I can't do it. I cry from the time I walk in the door until I drive away. I cried a bunch, as usual, and apologized to the people at the shelter for doing so. Nothing makes me lose it like too many faces looking back at me through the bars. We sponsored another cat because we couldn't bring all of them with us.

And we brought Little Gray Cat home.

Her name is Holly (Amy had named her that when she first arrived), and it's clear that Umbra got his huge, pale-green eyes and laid-back ways from his mother.

She's obviously no longer a scrawny little cat, and is being put through laser-pointer chase drills for weight loss.



After some hissing, spitting and a bit of flying fur, the cat chain of command has been established and there seems to be a truce in the house, and Holly is taking her share of shifts on mouse watch.

She's fitting right in.



What about you, Bandits and Buddies?

Have you ever taken in a stray animal?

Have you adopted from a shelter? If so, how do you leave there without bringing them all with you?

Have you ever had too many already, but brought in one more?

How many do you have? If you don't have them now, did you have animals in your home when you were a kid?

Tell me how your furry friends came to be with you.

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Buttons

by Cassondra Murray

I've been cleaning again.

Y'all know, by now, of my ongoing mission to rid myself of stuff-itis and clear the extraneous junk out of my home and my life. I've been tossing out stuff left and right.

Earlier this fall I unpacked a box which had been stored in the garage since we moved into our present home. I tore off the tape, pulled back the flaps and dug through the wadded up newspaper. Inside was an old basket which was so much more than it appeared. It was a treasure box of memories.

It was my grandmother's button box.

Y'all know how you can spend a gazillion dollars on toys for kids, but at some point they'll end up making forts out of the boxes because their imaginations can do so much more with plain cardboard than the toy makers can ever do with plastic, lights and bleepy noises? Well, I was that way with buttons, and to some degree, I'm still that way.

Buttons are magical.

Some of my clearest and most tactile memories were of MotherGrant's button bag. For then, it was not a box, but an old cloth bag, made of flour sack that was probably older than my mother, once white but now stained, so well-worn it was smooth as silk, and with a hem sewn over at the top and a piece of twine run through it as a drawstring to hold it closed. About as humble as a container could get.

But inside? That was a whole 'nuther world.

There were a lot of things at MotherGrant's house which I could play with whenever I wanted. The pots and pans were always available for pretend meals. The kitchen chairs could be moved at will and the quilt closet plundered to make a huge fort out of the living room. I was careful, so even the family photo albums or the drawers full of vintage hats were available. But if I wanted to play with the buttons, I always had to ask.

The button bag was kept on a high shelf in the hall closet, and I remember the dull rattle-jangle when MotherGrant or DaddyMike got it down. I remember pulling the drawstring loose through the soft cloth and tipping the bag over and the ssssluice sound as the buttons flooded out of the bag onto the nappy green carpet.

Gold and silver, flashing diamonds, rubbies and sapphires, and single pearls as big as the end of your thumb. Buttons covered in costume jewels. Buttons in every color of the rainbow. Buttons half as big as your palm and buttons so small they could have been for a Barbie doll dress.

I'd run my hands through the pile of buttons, feeling them sift through my fingers and searching for certain ones I liked best. There were three enormous buttons, pale pink mother-of-pearl, shaped like big, carved flowers. Those were easy to find in the pile, even with my eyes closed. Then there were my second-favorites. They were about the size of your thumbnail and shaped like half of a small black ball. They were completely encrusted with diamonds. There were only two of the diamond buttons, and each time I had to check to make sure no more had fallen out. A few of the "diamonds" were loose in the bottom of the button bag.

My absolute favorite button was almost two inches across and was one giant flat ruby with a gold rim.

I remember when the flour sack button bag started to tear. The following Christmas, it disappeared and was replaced with the new button box. That same box was the one which has been packed away in my garage for all those years.

It was actually a little old sewing basket of a kind which used to be sold at flea markets and craft fairs. Exactly the kind of thing a little girl might "buy" her grandmother for Christmas. I don't remember picking it out for her, but yes, it's possible that I, the Goth Martha Stewart Mini-Me, committed this travesty.

The basket was cheap and stapled together. The blue and white checked cloth wouldn't have been all that bad except that the cover was padded and made into a puffy pincushion. But the screaming tomato-red pom pom glued to the top for a handle? Yeah. That's the point at which this goth chick started to scream and run. That's a picture of it, with some of the contents, there on the left.

So in my quest for Zen I knew the basket had to go. But the buttons?

No way.

I sorted them all out and was amazed at what had found its way into the button box over the years. Some of the items, like the buttons made of wood and the I'm A Happy Booster promotional pin, I remember from childhood. Others I don't remember at all, but they make an interesting collage of who and what my grandparents were. DaddyMike was born in 1905, and MotherGrant in 1908. They lived through two world wars and the Great Depression before I was even born. DaddyMike built his house with his own hands and made the furniture to go inside it, though he never learned to read and write. MotherGrant grew a two-acre garden, the most beautiful flowers in the county and could feed a table full of workhands at the drop of a hat. They were poor in money but rich in love. They saved used aluminum foil and bits of string.

Some of that string, wadded up into a little tangle, was now in the button box. There was also a thimble, a small white rock, several safety pins and a hickory nut. There were also some rusty washers, a few bent, rusty nails, a mounting bracket for a curtain rod, now so deformed it took a while to figure out what it was, part of a ticket to something indecipherable and a tiny tube of dubious-smelling ointment which, according to what I could read of the label, would cure dang near anything. There were "straight pins" which were bent and a small piece of white chalk.

It's interesting what you can notice about people by the bits and pieces of useless stuff they keep and hide away in out-of-the-way places like the kitchen junk drawer, the mason jar under the sink, or, once the kids are grown up and gone away, the button box.

These are pics are of some of the strange stuff that was in MotherGrant's button box.

If you'd grown up like MotherGrant and DaddyMike, barely surviving and saving bits of string, could you throw away those diamond-studded buttons? Even if you knew they were really only cheap sparklies?

I couldn't. I didn't. All of my favorite buttons were gone from the basket, perhaps lost a few at a time by a generation or two of younger children as they discovered the magic of buttons. But still, I separated it into a bag of buttons and a bag of other stuff and tossed the decrepit basket. I gave the buttons a new home in a bright-blue silk sewing box.

I don't understand button magic, but it's still with me. I go to the fabric store now and then, to get my scissors sharpened or to buy something for a house project, and I always stop to check out the buttons, attached to their little white cards, hanging on the wall in neat rows. I have absolutely no reason to buy cards of buttons, but I admit it. The urge is there.

MotherGrant and DaddyMike have been gone for years now. But the older I get, the more I realize just how much of my grandparents lives on through me. Part of it I "got honest" as they say around here--my love of gardening was born into me and taught to me as I put my hands in the dirt with MotherGrant. My love of the smell of sawdust came from DaddyMike's shop, as did dexterity and the satisfaction of working with my hands and making something. And I think my artistic abilities came from him too, passed down through my mother. From both of them I got the sense that things are just better if you can do for yourself instead of always relying on other people to fix stuff, or "store bought."

I also brought from their teachings a tendency to be way too sentimental, which finds its way into all of my writing, from my news articles to my fiction...and as y'all have probably noticed the past three years, to my blogs.

Oh, and the whole "Noooooo! Don't throw that away! Save it just in case" thing...this may be the last holdout of that early-childhood indoctrination.

I toss things in the trash without much thought nowadays, but a few weeks ago I was about to throw away an old, torn-up shirt. I had the scissors out and was cutting off the buttons before I noticed what I was doing, then realized the ridiculous amount of time it was taking, and stopped myself. I threw the whole thing away,

But I felt guilty about it.

I felt my new, pretty blue sewing box mocking me.

And I mean, really, you never know when you might need a button. Right?


Do any of you sew? Even for minor repairs like sewing on a button?

Do you save stuff for "just in case?"

If you toss it immediately, is there a twinge of guilt? A voice from your upbringing that says, "you might need that!"

Did your mother or grandmother have a button box?

And did you like to play with the buttons when you were little?

Do YOU have a button box?

Does anybody else in the lair have a thing for buttons?Source URL: http://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/Cassondra%20Murray
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