What Lies Beneath? You don’t want to know about this suspense! by Rolynn Anderson

My hairdryer led me into the abyss.  Fairly new, with all ‘ionic’ features, whatever that means, the ding-dang dryer was acting up.  It would blow hot hair, then cold; it would produce lots of air, then very little.  First thought: I’d bought a lemon; second thought: Is there a problem with the air vents?  Are they obstructed?  

Were they ever!  I took a tweezers to those layers of dust.  Gone!  Result: the hairdryer operated as good as new.

I walk by the refrigerator.  A yellow indicator light draws my attention and I squint to read the information.  “Clean coils!”  What?  More dust and more havoc to deal with?  On my knees, then flattened on my side, I shine the flashlight into a place no one ought to have to look.  Horrors!  Globs of dust everywhere.

Now where do I find a brush narrow enough and long enough to clean out those coils?  And how important is this task?  I use the longest brush cleaner I have; I even stick a wood lefse turner into the dark reaches, hoping I’ll gather up some dust.  I bring out globs of the stuff, but more remains, unreachable.  Yet, the indicator light goes out.  Success!

Later I think: I should have turned off the power on the refrigerator while I dug around those dark places.  I won’t forget to add that safety feature next time.

Here’s the thing.  Our kitchen refrigerator has stood in place for about 20 years.  We ‘owned’ it when we bought the house in 2000.  I swear, no one has ever cleaned those coils.  Did you know there’s a pan for collecting water down there?  How gross does yours look compared to mine?

Worse, we brought a very old refrigerator to this house to provide coolness to my chardonnay wine collection.  Forty years of chill-time?  Have I ever cleaned its coils?  Of course not!  But now I’m thinking I better, even if I don’t want to. 

Lesson to self:  One obstruction leads to another.

Question for my readers: What else have we forgotten to clean out after all these years?

Speaking of obstructions, every character in FEAR LAND confronts a barrier to their happiness.  If these people don’t solve their problems, anxiety, instead of joy, will take over their lives.  Watch how a soldier, a psychiatrist and a boy deal with trauma in this suspense novel, spiked with romance!

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http://rolynnanderson.com

Where Are the Spoons? by Betsy Ashton

Just about this time last year, my wonderful husband and I decided that our kitchen needed a face lift. When we built our house, we skimped on the kitchen, not because of space constraints but because we had never planned to live in the house full time. It was supposed to be a weekend getaway, until we fell in love with life on a lake. A big lake.

Back to the kitchen. Over nine years the kitchen wore out. Counter laminate warped; cabinet laminate separated. We had a couple of choices: redo the counter tops and reface the cabinets or redo the whole darned kitchen. Trumpet flare! We went with the entire kitchen.

We hired a contractor who worked with us on the design. Actually, he couldn't do much, since the footprint was fixed. What he could do was provide better cabinets and counters. We went back and forth over the design and choices. He gave us a start date six weeks out. Four weeks later, he called to tell us the cabinets were in and could he begin the next day.

Yikes! We'd lolly-gagged around, thinking about emptying the kitchen, doing absolutely nothing. One day! Holy hell! Terry dashed around clearing table tops and setting up portable tables. I filled them as fast as he made them available. Where ever did we get so much stuff? My first inclination was to sort each drawer, each cabinet, before stacking dishes, glassware, cooking items, on said cleared tables. With one day to accomplish this herculean task, sorting went out the window. Did I really have that many glasses? Really? How many did I need?

And the spices and condiments. Where did these all come from? Some were how old? Six years? No way. I use all these spices and herbs all the time. They can't be that old. Actually, some were more than a decade old. I couldn't believe how much I had in my cupboards. Yes, I cook a lot. I use tons of herbs and spices, but it seems I use the same ones all the time. I couldn't remember the last time I used Chinese Five Spices. The use-by date was in the last century. I tossed the bottle.

And how many pie plates does one cook need? I had 11. I now have three in different sizes. This year at the holidays we used two. Maybe I have one too many. Loaf pans. Six was three too many. If I couldn't remember when I last used something, it went into the Goodwill box. Or boxes. By the time I was through sorting, I had thirteen larges boxes of stuff to donate.

Now, none of this really has anything to do with the title of this little essay. Except that it does. We constantly lost something during the construction. First it was some of the wine glasses. See the top picture. Then it was the silverware. Our joking question became, "Where are the spoons?" Same place they were for a month or so. On a bar stool in one of the guest bedrooms.

And now, a year after construction is complete, duplicates have found their way to Goodwill and we have the kitchen completely put back together, we will look around, turn in a circle and ask, "Where are the spoons?" And we still have no good answer beyond "right where we left them/"

Do you have a similar story? If so, please share it.

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Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max, Unintended Consequences, and Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Loving Too Many Things By Betsy Ashton

The way to know life is to love many things ~ Van Gogh

I don't know what Van Gogh referenced in his comment about loving many things. I doubt he meant the mess my husband and I made over the last two weeks.

It all started with a simple statement: "We never finished the doors in the downstairs bedroom." That was me in a moment of weakness. We hired a local man to remove the doors from three closets, the bedroom and the laundry room to finish them in his workshop. So far, so good.

Left staring at the clutter in the closets, my husband said, "We should probably sort through what's here and see if we need to keep it all." Innocent enough statement. Because we had to move furniture and remove everything from said closets, we dragged items we hadn't used in like forty forevers into the office den and onto the twin beds.

I know it doesn't look like much when piled on beds, but one of those twin beds held no fewer than seven pair of ski pants, one of which still fit. The rest went into bags for Goodwill. Same held true for my clothes. I had way too many that I don't wear or don't fit. Bags found their way to my Explorer, ready for transport.

In the two weeks it took to get the doors back, delays due to snowy or icy roads, we continued to weed through accumulated stuff. Fifteen (!) backpacks and computer bags are now two, one each. More stuff in the Explorer, so much so that the first trip to Goodwill couldn't wait.

Then it was on to the photo albums, books that hid in one closet, vinyl records waiting for transfer to digital format. From three milk cartons of records, we are down to one with music I actually want to listen to. You guessed it, Explorer and Goodwill.

When all was said and done, we'd reduced the "things we loved" by fifty percent. Another purge would probably rid us of even more stuff. With the last things stored away and the basement cleaned, Mocha the kitty took a stroll through the empty space. You can almost see her heading for the door.

My husband looked at me, love in his eyes, dust on his hands. "I think we should do the same thing with the closet in our bedroom, don't you?" He's still alive. Barely.

And when March rolls in, we will continue spring cleaning from 2012!

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Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max, Unintended Consequences, and Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, which is no available for pre-launch e-book orders at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.