Monthly Archives: October 2019

Retirement eBook–Transforming my pages to ecards

By next week, I will have published my Incomplete Book of Retirement Wisdom [Impressive title, eh?].

But I thought I would add a short tutorial ahead of time that shows another way to repurpose the pages.

Here is a 90-second video for iPhone users.

I should be writing. Instead, celebrating an important holiday.

Buddy is almost always camped out wherever I’m writing…honest, he has a bed in this room! Why he chose this spot is beyond me.

National Make a Dog’s Day…

Essentials for the day:

—Order him a new toy.

–Donate to Senior Dog Rescue of Oregon.

–Follow through on the three daily walks.

–Hide treats around the house beneath stuffed animals or under well-worn yogurt containers. [Not exactly Martha Stewart Living material, but it keeps him entertained.]

And finally, give his highness time on his throne.

And let’s tie in the importance of dogs to writers with this post from Writer Unboxed.

I should be writing. Instead, prototyping cinnamon bun alternatives…

cinnamon buns
They ain’t pretty. Thus, the ‘prototyping’ label.

October 4 was National Cinnamon Bun Day in Sweden and clearly I had no choice but to honor the good folks from the way-up-north.

But ssshhhh, don’t tell them, I was too time-strapped [I.e. impatient, lazy, and disorganized] to use a yeast-based recipe.

And there it was–a lonely, neglected sheet of puff pastry in the freezer.

Time to experiment.

1. Thaw that baby out**.

2. Make up my own filling.

  • Hydrated raisins
  • Allspice
  • Gobs of cinnamon [the appropriate unit for my favorite spice]
  • Softened butter/vanilla shmear
  • Chopped almonds

3. Use the Pepperidge Farm baking instructions for a cheese-and-spinach something-or-other as a general guide and hover.

Nope, not pretty. But the ratio of pastry-to-filling–goooood stuff.

I’ll try it again…and maybe even work on the aesthetics.

True, not exactly buns…

Will I be adopted by the Swedes anytime soon? Probably not. But I thank them for their special day.

**Writers and grammar-wonks, I probably should have juxtaposed ‘thaw’ and ‘out’, but it just wasn’t as pleasing to the ear. Sorry.

I should be writing. Instead, delivering comfort…

bowl of soup

…in the form of Wor Wonton Soup.

L has been going toe-to-toe with a virus and nothing fortifies her better than this.

1. Shortcut:  I didn’t actually make the won tons. I just cut the wrappers into strips and added them late in the process. [Okay, okay, it’s actually ‘wor wonton wrapper strips soup’.]

2. What’s the difference between wonton soup and wor wonton soup?

3. One definition of ‘wor’ in the Chinese language is ‘everything’. Works for me. Think ’empty the fridge and cupboards’.

4. One of my favorite parts of making soup: watching it grow…and grow…until “we’re gonna need a bigger pot”. Leftovers? Absolutely.

5. This recipe https://noshingwiththenolands.com/wor-won-ton-soup/ outclasses the broth from the local Chinese restaurants. It’s the ginger, I’d say, though the early addition of Chinese five-spice and elephant garlic in the sesame oil-infused heat didn’t hurt.

6. Why do I keep weaving cooking into my writing?

This piece https://writingcooperative.com/want-to-write-better-try-cooking-b918272b7025   helps explain.

Overwhelmed at the thought of writing?

Fast Company’s Art Markman has four suggestions:

  1. Break it down

  2. Make an outline

  3. Just get something down

  4. Write for five more minutes

If the list doesn’t tell you enough [and it doesn’t], here is the fleshed out version.

And I would add another suggestion.

Bake…[no, it doesn’t necessarily help you generate a bestseller, but it’s great for an afternoon coffee and who knows, the caramel experiment might just pay off in a fun blog post.]

two banana breads side-by-side
I added an amaretto caramel to the banana bread on the left. I added an Irish cream caramel to the banana bread on the right.

Guys weekend!! My latest eCard

cavemen attending to daily chores

Passing this along from my other blog, retirerenew.com…

After completing a five-day ‘showing up’ challenge, I’m focusing these next four days just on my Incomplete Book of Retirement Wisdom**.

More on the challenge later…

**The book doubles as a collection of eCards.

Suggestions:

— Save/download the image above and send it to a retired/soon-to-retire friend.

— Better yet…

  1. call it up in an image editing program [even a presentation program like PowerPoint will work]

  2. slap an even better caption on top of mine or add a personal comment

  3. export it as a JPG or PNG, and email/text message it to that friend.

Writers: Looking to suck some valuable time from your already busy day? Launch an all-out investigation into whether or not you should add an apostrophe between the ‘y’ and the ‘s’ in ‘guys weekend’. I skipped that annoying grammatical gnat–I figured ‘guys’ answers the question ‘what kind of weekend?’, which makes it an adjective, not a possessive. I’ve also been sticking to the  ‘better done than perfect’ guideline. Now I can sleep peacefully…until the dog digs his shoulder into my solar plexus. [A writer’s day isn’t complete until he shoehorns ‘solar plexus’ somewhere into his digital blather.]