October 2019 – Writer of Sweet Small Town Stories of Love and Family

Book Talk Tuesday: Meant to be Yours

Published on October 29, 2019October 28, 2019 by Live Vi-Carrie-ously

It’s no secret I love Susan Mallery’s books. I love her women’s fiction. I love her Fool’s Gold series. And I love her Happily Inc stories, too. This is book #5 set in Happily Inc, a wedding destination town in the California desert.

MtbY Renee has been working for Pallas at Weddings out of the Box for a while now. We haven’t gotten to know her very well in previous books. Same with Jasper Dembenski, a veteran with PTSD and a bestselling thriller writer. Neither is looking for a relationship, so it seems perfect for them to agree to a “friends with benefits,” arrangement. Especially since Jasper needs helping writing a feminine point of view for his newest book.
Of course, this is a romance, so it isn’t long before feelings get tangled up. Mallery does a great job dropping hints about Renee’s past hurts and struggles without making us wait toooooo long for the details.

And of course, we know, just like one of the characters tells him, Jasper isn’t nearly as broken as he thinks he is.

I loved how both Jasper and Renee had to learn some things about themselves and each other as they traveled the road to happily ever after.
I’m already looking forward to the next installment in Happily Inc!

I received a copy of this book from the author. I was not required to write a positive review, just give my opinion. Which I gladly did.

Book Talk Tuesday: An Everyday Hero

Published on October 22, 2019October 21, 2019 by Live Vi-Carrie-ously

There are so many good things to say about An Everyday Hero, Laura Trentham’s latest in her Heart of a Hero series. The story pulled me in from the first page. The characters are believable and I cared about them. The peeks inside the psyche of a soldier and survivor are realistic.
Greer Hadley has moved back to Madison, Tennessee after failing to make it in Nashville. She’s drifting and wondering what to do next. Ally Martinez is a grieving and angry teenager matched with Greer for some court-ordered music therapy. Emmett Lawson is a grieving and angry veteran. He lost more than a leg overseas.
Greer has no intentions of getting involved with Ally nor Emmett, but she can’t let either one drown in their grief.
Emmett is struggling with a heavy dose of survivor’s guilt and isn’t interested in letting anyone get close enough to help. But somehow Greer sees past his anger, calls him on his attitude, and stirs him off the front porch.
I love how Greer and Emmett are almost mirror images of each other. Greer is afraid of failing again, so she solves that by determining never to perform. Emmett is afraid to feel any emotion and is intent on keeping everyone, even his parents, angry at him, as if that is his just penance. Greer and Emmett can see the other’s issues and point them out, but then realize their own shortcomings.

Greer is also making progress of a two-steps-forward-one-step-back sort with Ally. But when Ally has a crisis, it takes Greer and Emmett together to help her.

I loved this story and highly recommend it!

It will be released Feb. 4, 2020, but is available for pre-order now.

I received an advance copy of this novel through NetGalley for review purposes.

Country in the City

Published on October 19, 2019October 21, 2019 by Live Vi-Carrie-ously2 Comments

Tuesday Oct 1 – Thursday Oct 3, 2019

The day after our event in Monee was October 1 and we had the day “off.” I did my monthly ag reporting job all morning while Dave did his usual trailer fussing/tweaking. I also blogged and we found the workout room. I walked on the treadmill while he rode a stationary recumbent bike.

Our hotel was in the town of Countryside. It was fairly centrally located to the event venues I was given ahead of time. And it worked out pretty well for the venues I was given later, too. We were on Joliet Road, which is part of Historic Route 66. We also got curious about Joliet Prison. It was not near us, but we considered going there if it would have been open for a tour, or even if it had a gift shop. Alas, the timing didn’t work out for us while we were there. The jail closed in 2002 and has been used in several movies. It hosted a big music festival last summer.

Wednesday, Oct. 2 was the day making us nervous. It was our big “show.” It was the state PhRMA conference. PhRMA is a trade association for about thirty pharmaceutical companies, and is also one of our sponsors/partners for the trailer. Our bosses from DC were also coming. And it was in downtown Chicago at a hotel. We were not sure about driving the truck and trailer downtown during the morning commute. Our local contact suggested getting there about 6:30 am, to get the trailer into position. We had clearance from the hotel to park under a porte cochére outside the convention center entrance.

Dave had made a friend at our hotel, a truck driver he met while having a cigar outside. Bob was from Texas, but he drives all over. He said the best time to go downtown is 4:30 a.m. Dave and I agreed to leave our hotel at 4:30. It was a good decision. We sailed into town with little traffic, found the hotel with only one wrong turn, but were able to quickly correct since there was no traffic to contend with right there. We parked where instructed. We’d been told the hotel staff had been informed about our dimensions and we were assured we’d fit.

We did. Barely. The trailer has two heating/AC units on the roof. One of the units had inches to spare above it, but, yes, we did fit.

As soon as we parked, we went into the hotel on a hunt for coffee. It was about 5:15 a.m. and nothing was open yet. Of course. Finally, a little before 6:00, the hotel cafe had coffee ready and our DC consultants arrived. We got all set up and then proceeded to wait.

And wait. And wait.

Our bosses arrived around 8:30. We got caught up and I met the big boss for the first time. We’d only spoken on the phone before. A few PhRMA staff came out about 10 a.m. for a tour. They were definitely impressed and promised to tell attendees about us.

The bosses went into the conference and gave a presentation, and at lunch time, we finally got busy. So, so, busy. We had groups of 8, 10, and I think even one group of 12. The trailer is big, but it’s not that big. At one point we had three tours inside. One just beginning, one in the middle, and one ending. Everyone, as usual, was quite impressed.

We met the consultants we’d be working with in Florida. By 2:00 the stampede had died down and we got to have lunch. The DC consultants brought in Portillo‘s hotdogs, a Chicago specialty. They were very good, with that “snap,” you’ve heard a good hot dog must have. The rest of the afternoon was fairly steady with ebbs and flows. By 6:30, it had mostly stopped and our bosses hit the road back to DC. The wind had also picked up and it was getting quite chilly. We had to stay until 8 pm, but by 7, I was frozen. I went into the conference center, found a place to sit and warm up, and told Dave to come get me if I was needed. He never came, so at 8, I went back out, we loaded up, said good-bye to our DC consultants, and went in search of dinner.

When we’d wandered around the hotel earlier that morning, (it’s on the river which has some beautiful sights).

We’d seen an Irish pub, so we walked there. We shared a Reuben sandwich which was delicious. Since it was so late by the time we left the city, it was again super easy with little traffic. Thank you, Lord! We were exhausted by the time we got to the hotel and our bed.

Thursday, our event was in the early evening, so we spent the day much like Tuesday. I worked, wrapping up a couple of freelance projects. Our presentation was at a soccer field, home to multi-teams of all ages of kids practicing. Our local contact checked it out ahead of time. It was on the south side of downtown Chicago and there was no way we could get the trailer down those narrow streets, so we compromised and brought a popup tent and some of the props from the trailer. It turned out to be a very windy evening and we had zero interest from the watching parents.

Me. Cold.

Dave & our photographer, Ty.

Our local contact walked around, passed out flyers, told parents what we had, but still nothing. We had a photographer who was there specifically to take pictures of the “crowds” at the event. I asked a young woman walking by if I could pretend to talk to her for a photo op, but even that was declined. The photographer ended up calling his wife and she got out of the car with their two-year-old, so we could stage some pictures.

We stuck it out to the bitter, windy, cold end before we packed up. For unloading, Dave had had to park the truck in the middle of a narrow street, then we hustled getting everything out. After that, he moved the truck to a school lot around the block. Now we did the same in reverse, told our photographer, his wife and daughter, our consultant, “Thank you!” and headed out. I’d found a restaurant that looked not too far from our hotel for dinner. It had good reviews, so we unhooked the trailer at the hotel and sallied forth once again.

The food was good, if a bit slow to arrive, which seemed odd, since they weren’t very busy. It was nearly 9:00 by then. I had a raw veggie and cheese appetizer plate while Dave had chicken wings. The employees next gathered in a room nearby with their own dinner plates. Dave commented that there seemed to be a lot of employees for so few customers. We finished eating, paid the tab, and saw an exit out the back, which was closer to where we parked. That’s when we discovered the crowded and very busy pub in the rear of the building, which explained a lot.

We were still bouncing between Google maps and our trucker app, CoPilot. You may remember Google sent us to a very low bridge in Indianapolis, so we tried to use CoPilot. But CoPilot is a lousy app. It just is. I tried to like it. But half of the addresses I put in, it can’t find, so it chooses a random nearby address, or just gives us, “City Center.” That’s not very helpful. And when my phone is hooked into the truck’s display screen, whenever the CoPilot app wants to tell us a direction, it hijacks the radio and won’t return it. We have to manually return to the radio station. I figured out pretty quickly to mute the directions, but still … Anyway, given that we were going to many suburban locations, we made CoPilot our default map app. But then … Monday. Going to Monee, it sent us to a dead end street. We were able to turn around and find an alternate route, but … Strike 1.

Chicago! Chicago!

Published on October 18, 2019 by Live Vi-Carrie-ously

Our first Chicago event was in a small suburban town called Monee. I asked our hotel desk clerk how to pronounce the name of the town. Money? Moany? Mownae? She wasn’t sure, so that was no help. Our event was early evening so we had most of the day to unpack and settle in to the hotel and get our bearings. We went to Target and stocked up on snacks and water for the truck.

I had a couple of hours to work in the afternoon, then we headed to Money. Moany?

We were still using Google for highways, but using the trucker app for towns and cities. Because remember our “adventure” in Indianapolis and the low bridge?? So I had the trucker app open with the Monee address. We were rolling along, lalalalalala … and it told us to turn on to a road that was barricaded. Permanently. No entrance. This was the Indianapolis low bridge situation, but in reverse.

We were able to go past the blocked off road and turn around (no small feat with a 32′ trailer). I closed the trucker app and turned to Google. We were only a few minutes late. Our consultant, Heidi, was waiting for us at the venue. A community center. We knew Heidi from Iowa so that was a quick “Hi-good-to-see-you,” and we set up quickly.

All of the Illinois events were set up in cooperation with local/state/national legislators. This was our first event in several weeks. But we quickly regained our rhythm. I only forgot one drug hiding place on my first tour. But … as we learned in Indiana and Colorado … the local people don’t know exactly what we offer. They don’t know how to publicize the trailer. We had a fairly low turnout, but those who came through were enthusiastic. I had a village trustee and another local official who took the tour. They stopped after the first five minutes so they could tweet/post on social media in an effort to get more people out.

We were about to pack up as a few more people trickled in. I took a small group through at few minutes before the official end. As I was wrapping up at the end of the trailer, David started a new tour at the front. We have a policy of never turning away anyone, but it was already past our official end time. Oh well. We have a mindset that God knows who needs to see this and it’s not our trailer, it’s His. So if David was giving a tour, then the person on the tour needed to be there.

Heidi and I packed up the outside accoutrements. The sun set. We paced. We chatted. David and the woman were still inside the trailer. Heidi and I talked about the Iowa State Fair, where we’d seen each other last. We caught up on all the personal tidbits we knew about each other (her mom loves the outdoor furniture she bought at the fair, by the way).

The woman Dave was giving the tour to finally poked her head out of the door. Whew! But no. She was just checking on her kids in the car. Because we don’t allow anyone under 21 years old to take the tour, she’d left her kids in the car. With supervision, of course. And she checked on them regularly.

By the time she stalked out of the trailer, David was smothering laughter and she was seething. He told Heidi and I later that she’d opened her home to a couple who needed a place to live. They were drug addicts and homeless, but had promised to stay clean while in her home. They didn’t keep their end of the bargain on several issues so she and her husband were forced to ask them to leave.

After the couple left, as she was cleaning out their room, she saw stuff. She didn’t think much about it. As Dave gave her the tour, she’d see something and say, “No! Are you kidding me?” He’d say, “No. This is real.” She’d respond with a story or anecdote of what similar evidence she found when she cleaned up after this couple moved out of her home. It matched what we were showing nearly exactly. It was comical and sad and all too true.

We finished the close-up quickly, told Heidi good-bye and headed back to Countryside. In the meantime, we’d given tours to the local police chief and two of his officers, a village trustee, one of the village employees (Parks & Rec?), and a few parents. All of them were amazed and impressed at what they learned.

All in all, this first event in Monee (Mawnee!) was (in my opinion) successful, even if we didn’t have a large turnout. And even if the local legislator who helped set it up didn’t show up for the event. We talked to people, we educated people, we connected to people.

And that’s what it’s about.

Thanks for reading!

Back to the Excellent Adventure

Published on October 15, 2019October 15, 2019 by Live Vi-Carrie-ously4 Comments

When we came home for the Alaska cruise, we expected to go back to the Code 3 drug education trailer a couple of days after we got home from the cruise, probably September 17. That changed to September 29, which turned out to be God’s plan all along, since we didn’t make it home until September 21.

We’d been home from the cruise two days, just about caught up on laundry, when we got a call Monday afternoon: could we leave Wednesday or Thursday, the 25th or 26th? I drew a big sigh, revised my to-do list and said we could leave Thursday. Which meant actually leaving Wednesday because for this trip we were flying out of San Francisco, which meant renting a car in Fresno and driving to SF, staying in a hotel near the airport the night before.

The cat had just started speaking to us again. I apologized profusely to him and promised him lots of shrimp or chicken or whatever he wanted when we got back in November. He was not impressed.

I changed our rental car reservation and looked for a hotel near the airport. Well. That did not go well. Everything was super expensive. I think because it was last minute. We’ve stayed near the airport before and not paid anything near those rates. I finally got something through Priceline for double our usual budget. Except while we were on our way to pick up the rental car in Fresno Wednesday afternoon, I got an email that the hotel was reneging and would not be able to accommodate us. So back to searching. I finally surrendered and paid triple our usual rate for a Holiday Inn Express with a shuttle that would take us to the airport at 5 am.

We had an uneventful drive into the city, dropped off the rental car, rode the light rail into the airport, caught the shuttle to the hotel, and checked in. We had to leave before breakfast the next morning, so the front desk staff offered to have a breakfast to-go bag ready for us. We accepted, then went to sleep in our very expensive room which was not worth it since the hotel was being renovated and we were in the midst of a construction zone.

Everything went smoothly the next day, except the to-go breakfast bag was a myth. We left SFO on time and arrived in Newark where we were transferring to a connecting flight to Portland, Maine. We grabbed a quick bite and had just enough time to find the adjunct terminal and our gate with a row of gates for the smaller, commuter flights. We chatted with a young man going to Jacksonville, Florida. He had left Italy and was eager to get home. We were all watching scrolling announcements that due to high winds in Newark, the FAA was restricting arrivals and that was impacting departures. Which didn’t bode well, since we were supposed to be boarding and there was no action at our gate.

Sure enough, the announcement came a few minutes later. Our crew was on a delayed arrival. We’d be delayed at least 45 minutes to an hour. What to do? Find a place to sit and have something to drink. We ended up next to two men who were also on the Portland flight. One was a very loud talker so we had no choice but to eavesdrop. He traveled a lot for business and was headed home to a town outside of Portland. The other man was younger, from Boston, and headed to Portland for a wedding that weekend.

Our Code 3 assignment in Portland was to pick up the trailer where it had been parked a couple of weeks previously, and drive it to the Chicago area. We had an event scheduled for Sunday, September 29th, so we had two days to drive about 1000 miles. Since we had done that a week ago, Bellingham to Fresno, we sort of knew what that was like. But now we’d be pulling a 32′ trailer. Although, we were back to the original trailer that handles so poorly in the wind.

Our personal goal in Portland was to have some lobster. Our flight was scheduled to land at about 7:15 pm, so I’d looked up a couple of restaurants close to the airport that had good reviews and we were ready. But with every announcement, our lobster dinner window was getting smaller.

We finally were called to board. Whew! We got on a bus that carried us out to our plane. David asked another passenger for a dinner recommendation, but he hadn’t lived in Portland for about 30 years, he said, so he was no help. I noticed his luggage tag was his business card and it said Harper Collins. I was just about to ask him what imprint or what he did for them, but didn’t have a chance. The flight was short and we were soon in Portland. The truck had been left for us in the parking garage and the key was taped to the back bumper. It didn’t take us long to find the truck or the key, but the key had been wrapped in 32,000 layers of duct tape (only a very slight exaggeration). It took longer to unwrap the thing than it took to find it. Then, the remote wouldn’t unlock the door. Dave had to open the door with the key, which set off the alarm, until he turned on the ignition. That seems weird to me. If you have the key, why would the alarm go off? Anyway, we were finally in Portland and looking for lobster. I found a restaurant that had great reviews in downtown Portland that was still open, (it was about 9:30 by now) so we headed there. The area was super cute and looked like it would be fun to browse in the daytime.

After wrestling the truck into a parking spot, calling our boss to ask about the key fob (turn the ignition on within 10 seconds of unlocking the door and the alarm won’t go off) and we were finally ready for our lobster dinner.

Only to find that they sold lobster rolls. Not lobster dinners or lobster tails. Well, beggars and choosiness, yada yada. We had lobster rolls and they were great! The lobster was sweet and tender and delicious. Our personal goal accomplished, we headed to our hotel.

The next morning we drove the twenty minutes to where the trailer had been parked, hooked it up and pulled out. We planned to make it to Buffalo that night, about 8 1/2 hours of driving. We debated trying to fit in a stop at Niagara Falls, but we just had too many miles and not enough hours to get to Chicago. Until Friday afternoon, when we got news that the event in Chicago Sunday had fallen through! All of a sudden, we had an extra day to get to Chicago. Which meant we were going to Niagara Falls! Of course, it’s our nature to never be satisfied, because now we were trying to figure out a way to fit in a visit to Hamilton, NY where Dave’s father was from and where Dave’s cousin lives. But that was too far off our route, by the time we got the news.

Saturday morning, we left the trailer at our hotel and drove to the US side of Niagara Falls, a NY state park. We spent a couple of hours walking through the park, along the river and to the tops of the three main falls, Horseshoe Falls, American Falls, and Bridalveil Falls.

It was fabulous, and I’m so glad and grateful we got to do that. I’m just sorry we didn’t have our passports to see the falls from the Canada side. But that seems greedy, since we had no idea we’d even be able to stop.

It was after 1:00 by the time we made it back to Buffalo, hooked up the trailer and hit the road again. We made a quick stop at New Era Field to take a picture in front of the Buffalo Bills field.

Now we were headed to Toledo, Ohio, about four hours away. After the eight hours yesterday, that was pretty easy, and left us with only about four more hours for Sunday to get to Chicago. We don’t get a lot of notice about locations and times for our events, but Friday I’d gotten a loose schedule and was able to find a suburban hotel about half an hour from most of the events. And it had a huge parking lot, which is a plus with the trailer. It worked out great. We stayed there a week and a half total.

Starting tomorrow, our Chicago events! As always, thanks for reading!