Making Limoncello

A  friend came to visit yesterday and brought me a bottle of Limoncello liquor and a card with it saying "When life hands you a lemon, drink Limoncello."
So I'm looking for the limoncello moments in my life right now, stuck here recuperating slowly from a fractured pelvis and I have to say there are many. Like all those lovely displays of flowers that arrived right after my accident, and then the constant procession of friends who stop by to cheer me up and offer to do things. One emailed and said "this is a list of my moveable feasts. Choose one and i'll bring it over." So she and husband are coming to dinner next week and bringing the dinner.

The other gift I am enjoying is the gift of time. I'm usually in full rush mode. Finish book to deadline, send out mailing, check Facebook page, plan for speaking engagement etc etc etc.
Now I actually have time to read, to watch a movie or just sit and think. My chair is in the front window where I can see the street and the hills above us. This week I watched a heron flying low past my house. I watch the new deer twins in my front yard.

And I watch flowers grow.

An amazing thing just happened. Two years ago someone left a flowerpot with a few leaves of some kind of bulb in it on my front porch of my condo in Arizona. Since it was up a flight of stairs I wondered who would take the trouble to bring a discarded pot up and dump it on my doorstep. But I kept the pot, stuck it outside on my balcony in California and have watered it from time to time. This year... two years later...it suddenly shot out a shoot. A big fat shoot with a bud on the end. And then one day it blossomed into an amazing Amaryllis, getting better with every day.

One of the small miracles of life that I'm enjoying.

Then a friend brought me a really weird orchid. She said she looked for something mysterious for me and to start with I thought it was creepy. Now I find it fascinating. For one thing it seems to turn to look at me. The flowers are never facing the same direction twice in a row. I'm thinking of using it in a future mystery novel. I can almost hear it whispering, "How about if the victim is strangled with the tendril of a tropical vine? Or poisoned with the juice of a rare poisonous plant?

I keep meaning to ask John to bring up my watercolors so I can paint, but frankly I'm too busy!

The Best Laid Plans

So much for my updates from Malice Domestic convention! It wasn't that I was partying so hard that I had no time. I actually missed the entire convention due to an accident on the first evening. I went out to dinner with a group of friends. We were given a big table at the back of the restaurant and I dakidn't realize it was up a step from the rest of the room. At the end of the meal I decided to use the rest room before we walked back to the hotel. I turned from my chair and stepped out into nothing. I went down like a tree onto brown ceramic tile. There was no kind of stripe or indication at the edge of the step which was tile like the rest of the room.

I was taken in a taxi back to the hotel and then it was determined I should go to the emergency room. It was my first experience of being in an ambulance and such cute paramedics too, but I was hurting too much to enjoy the experience. Three friends from dinner--Carolyn Hart, Eve Sandstrom and Jan Giles--came with me and spent the next seven hours with me in the emergency room, chatting to me and keeping up my spirits. I can't say enough how wonderful they were.

Less praise for the emergency room. It didn't seem busy but it took over an hour each time between doctor visits, e-rays, CT scan and all the while I was lying on a very hard gurney. It even took an hour and a half before I got an ice pack and then only because Carolyn made a fuss.

End result was that I have broken a bone in my pelvis. It is in place and the only cure is time. At close to five o'clock in the morning we arrived back at the hotel. The staff there (Hyatt Bethesda) were fantastic. I can't say enough about their kindness and willingness. The bell man who pushed my wheelchair up to my room telephoned the next day to see how I was getting along. The hotel sent up flowers and a lovely note. How rare is such attention these days.

I also can't say enough about the kindness of my roommate, Carolyn Hart, and of Eve and Jan, and so many other mystery writing friends at the convention. They kept up my spirits, came to visit and looked after me so well. As you can imagine I was worried about how I'd get home from Maryland as I couldn't put any weight on my left leg. Then I remembered that we have emergency medical evacuation insurance (taken out in case we got sick somewhere exotic) but it worked equally well in the USA. The next day a nurse arrived for me with limo to the airport and then she accompanied me home, first class, with a limo at the other end.  So given the circumstances it could not have been better managed.

The next morning I learned that I had won the Agatha Award for NAUGHTY IN NICE. I rather think the sympathy vote had something to do with it, but I promise not to go to extreme measures to win any awards in the future!

So now I'm home in my own bed and already thinking impatiently about starting my next book. I have at least a month ahead of me not being able to move, so why not get a head start. I've already got a great idea for Georgie's next adventure!

I'll keep you updated on my progress.