On the days leading into Christmas, my washer started making a weird noise. And like any self-respecting, overworked single mom with not enough time in the day, I decided to leave it until after the holidays. This, BTW, was the wrong choice.

My teenage son's fast food uniforms were soaking in the water that wouldn't drain on that final load, so I pulled one out, hand rinsed, wrung it out, and dried it so he could get to work. The second uniform I tossed in with the towels and we proceeded to make merry over the holiday.

After the holiday, the bin with the damp uniform started to emit the kind of stench that makes you power clean your refrigerator, so I drove to the nearest laundromat. Here's a little known fact. Laundromats aren't as common as one would think. We don't have one in our small suburban town, so I had to drive 30 minutes into Colorado Springs, but in the end, the laundromat was shiny, inexpensive, and quick. The clothes were clean, so problem solved, except...

The stench I thought was coming off the dirty uniform... remained.

I incorrectly assumed that having a male roommate would mean someone around the house to do this kind of thing, but in reality, he could go longer with dirty clothes than I could. I blinked. My son was at work, so it was up to me.

The water I had left to sit in the washer tub now had a slimy coating forming on the surface that looked like a mixture of grease, raw chicken, and sludge. We've been dealing with a series of unfortunate events, outside of and larger than the washer, so it didn't reach the top of my priority list until this morning. I drank my morning coffee while watching YouTube videos, and once I was sure I knew what I was doing, I changed into my least favorite athletic wear and set to work.

The first video I watched was this great 1 minute video that showed the control panel of my washer doing what it's been doing to me. Solid, it's a common problem, but... what do I do about it?

The next video had more info. The narrator, a thoroughly nice appliance repairman said merely to "drain the tub." Great, thanks for that, but if it *won't* drain--which is why it's broken--how do I do that? Is there a plug like at the bottom of my ice chest to drain? Nah, that would be too easy.

The next video was a DIY dad. Finally, someone my speed. He knows there are people like me, intelligent but mechanically inept, who need a play by play. His suggestion was to use a shop vac to suck up the water, as he proceeded to demonstrate. It was a beautiful thing; the only problem was that I don't own a wet-dry vac. Most days, I'm happy if my regular vacuum continues to suction the dog hair out of my carpet, and going out to buy a shop vac post-holiday is nowhere near my budget (see series of unfortunate events).

As an aside in the video, DIY dad suggested scooping the standing water out of the washer tub with a cup.

I've changed disgusting baby diapers and poo-filled undies during potty-training. I've cleaned up all kinds of gross kid-vomit, dog mess when someone fed the Neurotic Dog watermelon, replaced the seal attaching my toilet bowl to floor, and even drained the water from my hot water heater when it exploded. I'm relatively handy with tools, having renovated an old Victorian, and I've done my own handy work as a single mom for years.

None of those things prepared me for the smell as I leaned down and scooped cup after cup of water from the washer tub into my tiny bathroom garbage can. I make a living off words, but there are no words for the absolute disgusting stench as I lean into the tub to scoop more water. Putrefaction, today's word of the day, comes as close as anything. Scoop, scoop, scoop. Carry the water to dump down the toilet. Gag. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

On the video, DIY dad pours the contents of his wet-dry shop vac down a drain, saying "that's disgusting." What an epic understatement.

I finally clear enough water to remove the agitator and take it downstairs to rinse in the mud sink. Underneath the agitator is a series of strings, lint, something that looks and smells like poo, and hair. It won't just rinse off, so I leave it to soak. My daughter is in the living room, enjoying her coffee, and says "you're doing good, Mom."

At this point, it feels like she's trolling me as she holds her t-shirt over her nose. Upstairs, I scoop as low as I can, but there's a thin layer of water on the bottom that the cup can't reach, so I soak it up with last summer's beach towels. Maybe it was two summers ago. They cost a buck apiece, and they are now in the outside garbage can where our neighbors will think we've buried a decomposing body.

I'm afraid to tilt the washer on the floor as both the appliance repairman and the DIY dad suggest, because there's still a layer of water below the surface of the wash tub that I do not want on my floor. I don't have any disposable towels left at this point, so I tilt the washer back, hear the brackish water slosh in the subfloor of the washing tub, but once it settles, I can see underneath, which looks exactly like the video, but I don't have the upper body strength to twist the drain pump counter clockwise. Thankfully my son arrives home, and I tell him I need his help.

He looks up from the entry to where I'm standing at the top of the stairs and says, "Smells bad." No kidding. He suggests I open the window in the laundry room. "Gee, why didn't I think of that." Catching my sarcasm, he suggests a fan. And yes, he was right. I position multiple fans as my son climbs the stairs and says, "you know I have gloves, right?"

No, why would I know he has sterile gloves from work? He pulls on the blue plastic. I look at my hands, thinking they will never be clean. He twists the part as if it's the top of a soda bottle, and it comes off with grody strings attached. Still wearing the gloves, he takes it downstairs to clean out in the mud sink with the agitator.

The washer is 15-20 years old. I got it after my daughter was born, and somewhere around my son's birth, so it's lasted longer than expected and these hidden parts have never been cleaned. It had decades of human and dog hair wound around the drain pump. My son cleans it out, not even disgusted, and tells me I've obviously never worked fast food (thank God for that!).

Still, the stench is now all over the house. The dogs whine to go outside and stay out. My daughter has her t-shirt over her nose. My son wraps a scarf around his mouth and nose. I'm afraid my sense of smell has been burned by the putrid decay wafting off the laundry tub.

It's midwinter, cold, but every available window is open. My son adds a hanging car deodorizer in the laundry, lights a candle, sprays his body spray into the fan, and when those don't work, suggests lighting the body spray on fire (boys!).

The drain pump is clean and drying, night has fallen, the house is frigid. I used to think handymen and plumbers charged too much, but today was my Gone with the Wind, "as God as my witness" moment. I will *never* scoop putrified water again. I will pay the repairman what is a healthy wage for the type of work.

Some day. Today, I need to go disinfect my nose.

It’s all fun and games until someone ends up dead. Oh, wait, that’s a tagline for my books. J
 
Christmas is my favorite holiday, but when I read recently that the most dangerous part about the holidays was a Christmas tree, I was surprised. Christmas tree fires are some of the most deadly fires. According to the National Association of Fire Protection, “These fires caused an average of 7 deaths, 19 injuries, and $17.5 million in direct property damage annually. ”
 
It got me to wondering. How dangerous is Christmas? So below, I offer the Top 5 (slightly facetious) dangers of Christmas
 

1. Death by Family. I doubt you’ve heard of this rare syndrome, but forced and prolonged contact with family you only see once a year is rife with danger.  Prolonged conversations with the uncle who can’t hear, the aunt who spouts your latest bad news at the top of her lungs, the sibling who won’t let you forget the time you put gum in her hair when you were four, and the constant rub of old hurts and insecurities. Beware. Herein lies the biggest emotional danger of Christmas.
2. Death by Chocolate. I know what you’re thinking. Totally worth it, but this holiday danger goes beyond chocolate. There are the requisite baked goods from the neighbors, the goodies your coworkers bring to the carb-coma table, the box in the mail and the stuff in your stocking. It is a slippery, calorie filled slope, my friends.
3. Death by Music. A local radio station starts playing Christmas music beginning November 1. We haven’t even had snow yet, and some chipper DJ wants me to listen to Christmas music for the next two months. Such behavior could induce seizures ... or at least the desire to wear earmuffs.
4. Death by Light Display. The need to keep up with the Griswolds has us climbing onto a slippery roof to staple strings of lights around the rim and along the roofline. We plant yard art, put wreaths and lights in every window, and display our tree in the front window for the one time a year we actually want our neighbors to peek inside. If we survive the fall off the slippery roof, we still risk electrocution, lead poisoning (apparently that’s a thing), and a utility bill that will give us heartburn for the New Year.
5. Death by Stress. The holidays are the most stressful time of the year. The snow-packed streets are ice rinks, the malls are jammed, and the joyful crowds are often less than joyful. We worry about finding the perfect gifts, cooking the perfect meal, and having the most beautiful decorations. That kind of perfectionism leads to an ulcer. And a strong urge for a stiff drink in the middle of the day.

 
You shouldn’t take the risk. Stay home. Read a good book. :)

There's a pot roast cooking in the crock pot, which makes my daughter a little peeved. There's nothing traditional about a Yankee Pot Roast--at least for our family--and somehow this college kid thinks that turkey and G's cranberry sauce is it. "THE" Thanksgiving tradition.

But for me, the tradition has been to spend hours cooking the turkey for the kids to eat in ten minutes and leave me with more hours of kitchen cleaning. So I didn't ask, I just did. We're having roast. IN a crock pot (easy clean up). Although, somehow, the "what?" exclamations led me to add the fixings: stuffing (with roast?), mashed potatoes (what about the ones cooking with the roast?), yeast rolls, Mac n cheese, green bean casserole, and pie.

Oh, snap. What do you mean no pie?

Because the kids' childhood was spent every other holiday with their father--home for Thanksgiving every other year and Christmas on opposite years--meant we didn't build much in the way of traditions. At least not the kind my mother would have made.

She did it all. Turkey that she baked in a brown paper grocery sack (something about keeping it moist) that she basted and cooked for hours. The biggest kettle filled with potatoes we were conscripted into peeling. Ten pounds maybe more, depending on who she invited. There were always invitations to those without family, and room for everyone at Mom's table. She didn't go for the green bean casserole, but there was always two or three vegetables, making sure our favorites showed up on the table. Buttered cabbage for me. Stuffing, gravy, rolls, and Mom's fresh fruit salad when we had the money. Multiple kinds of pies. And the knuckle killing mess of Mom's Orange Cranberry Relish. Sometimes, all this for our family and dozens of others who didn't have a family or table of their own. That was Mom's best tradition.

Of course, in later years, she'd beg to go out to eat rather than stay in and cook, "but what about leftovers" and the Thanksgiving prayer, and the circle of "what are you Thankful for this year?" so that she never really got to go out to eat on the holiday. Guilt will sometimes do that to moms, which is why I added the "fixings" to our pot roast.

We started our day earlier than my mom would have put in her turkey, because my college freshman daughter didn't fly into Denver until the early morning flight Thanksgiving morning (and is leaving Saturday evening). Since I had the roast in the crockpot by 5:30 am, I thought about other traditions. What would we DO other than eat?

At Mom's we would have listened to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant." Ronnie, the oldest brother I was raised with, was nearly a generation apart as my parents had us kids all 4+ years apart, and he was the definition of the hippie generation right down to the pot-smoking and protest songs. Ronnie's the brother that ran away to join the Carnival (not a joke), and Mom had some guilt over that, so she typically acquiesced to his request. We listened to this song when Ronnie was there because he liked the song, and when Ronnie wasn't there...for much the same reason. It brought Ronnie back to us.

Which worked well for my childhood family, but what about my kids who've had a splintered holiday and rare traditions?

Well, the one thing we did as a family was go to the midnight showings of Harry Potter movies, which often came out in the month of November. In fact, my pseudo birthday for the movie theater club is in November, because one November the newest Harry Potter movie came out and I didn't have $$ for popcorn. But movie club members got free popcorn. :)

So while others were just waking up and shoving a turkey into the oven, we headed straight to the movie theater and the latest Harry Potter flick (Wizarding World, really, the newest Fantastic Beasts movie). Popcorn and movies is a tradition I could get behind, but even as we headed home, the kids were talking new "traditions." They want to go shopping (kill me now) after we digest our food (still no pie).

I vote for Scrabble, a game I always played with my mother, and card games. A true family day (although I think I'm going to lose the vote for shopping, but as long as I have to go out to shop, I'm getting my mom's wish and stopping for pie afterwards). My daughter wants to decorate...for Christmas. My son looks at her like she's lost her mind. "It's a tradition," I tell him before realizing he's only seen it...every other year, and the last time we'd been in the middle of moving, so we hadn't had a chance to decorate.

Traditions are strange, I'm thinking now. I've been deployed over Thanksgiving. Other times, post-military, I worked retail so I didn't get the "traditional" meal. I've eaten with friends when my kids were with their dad, or stayed home and binge-watched Christmas movies. Since Mom died, there hasn't really been a constant, and I see the same with my friends. I have one friend who still goes to her father's...with her adult children who are starting their own families. I have another who is finished with the home and hearth, and choosing to eat dinner with her boyfriend and his kids. Another who is grieving for a lost parent. A half brother who is older than my mother would be if she were still alive. And he's alone most days; someone who would have been welcome at my mother's table if he'd been local (and that's even if he weren't related).

My daughter is napping and my son is off to the gym. I'm worrying about traditions, and how to bring them home as they head off into college, and soon adulthood. How do I bring them home for the holidays when we haven't established definitive traditions? How do we establish them now?

After we eat and clean, we listen to "Alice's Restaurant" while playing Scrabble. We talk of Mom and Ronnie, my other brother Mike. We talk about college and future plans, the pot head who lit a joint in the gym earlier in the day, and my son stakes the claim for making a Turducken next year. A friend surprises us by bringing a pound cake for dessert.

And later, we'll head to the Black Friday sales (ugh), but afterward, we'll enjoy coffee and pie at a local cafe.

Sounds like the start of something good. God willing, even if we have to keep cooking and eating the typical Thanksgiving dinner (or a Turducken next year), we can start a new tradition. Pie at a cafe.

​Anyone know if Alice's Restaurant is still around?

Attendance at the American Association of University Women (AAUW)-Colorado Springs Branch Authors’ Day provides many gifts:  First of all, you will enjoy the personally expanding experience of hearing authors Mary Taylor Young, author of 17 non-fiction books about the landscape and heritage of Colorado, J.D.R. Hawkins, a rare female Civil War author of a fiction series told from the Confederate perspective as well as non-fiction works, and Cindy Skaggs, author of seven romantic suspense novels.  Additional gifts are the enjoyable association with like-minded people, lovely items to purchase at the silent auction, books to buy and have autographed by the author, a delicious breakfast, AND encouraging aid to local women college students to complete their degrees. 

All of the proceeds from ticket sales, silent auction, book sales, and donations will be put into the branch’s Local Scholarships Fund.  Each spring students from the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs and Pike’s Peak Community College apply for our Local Scholarships; the winners are chosen on the basis of academic excellence, financial need, personal statement, and recommendation.  In recent years the AAUW-Colorado Springs branch has awarded a total of $31,000 in college scholarships to local women, mostly funded by our Authors’ Day.

Saturday, October 27, 2018
8:30 am - 12:00 noon
The Colorado Springs Shrine Club, 6 S. 33rd St.
 
08:30 Registration, silent auction, breakfast
09:10 Welcome
09:30 Mary Taylor Young (author)
10:00 Silent auction
10:15 JDR Hawkins
10:45 Silent auction, book sales
11:00 Cindy Skaggs, Speaker
11:30 book sales, final silent auction bidding

​Price:  $40.00    RSVP:  by Monday, October 22
Buy tickets:  Pay on-line with a credit card at http//coloradosprings-co.aauw.net  OR  Make checks payable to Colorado Springs AAUW and mail to Jeanne Marsh, 850 Timber Valley Rd., Colorado Springs, CO  80919.

Good morning from Colorado.

For those of you following me since my first release, it's been a VERY long time since I've done any promo. Check below the name block for exciting news about upcoming Team Fear releases.

As a thank you for your patience, I am offering a free e-book copy of Live by the Team. If you haven't purchased it yet, subscribe to the newsletter for your free ebook.
​
I love my military guys, but before I started the Team Fear series, I wrote FBI/Mafia Romantic Suspense. It all started with Sofia Capri, the former wife of an infamous crime boss who teams up with an FBI agent to find a kidnapped child.

As a surprise bonus, my publisher has placed this first in series on sale for $.99 this week only.

UNTOUCHABLE
Sofia Capri is untouchable. She exists outside of the law...and outside of the criminal world. When her son is kidnapped, Sofia will do anything to find him. Lie. Cheat. Steal.Anything but trust. But as the stakes rise, will she learn to trust FBI agent Logan Stone? Because he's the only chance she has to get her baby back...

Now the heat is turning up...and time is running out...for everyone.

GET Untouchable on Kindle
Google Play and Barnes & Noble.

Happy reading!
Cindy

PS. I'm super stoked that Entangled picked my cover of An Untouchable Christmas for their promo (cuz that book cover rocked!).

PPS. For those of you (im)patiently waiting for the next Team Fear book, it's in the hands of the editor now and I anticipate a November 2018 release for Team Fear 4. Who do you think (hope) is the next hero? Tell me what you think on my Facebook page.​

The Team Fear series and a fiction novel in the production pipeline center on men and women in the military.
Why?

• Because I'm prior military. They're what I know.
• Because military men and women have my utmost respect.
• Because as a country, we owe our fighting men and women for their sacrifice.
• Because I'm inspired by books like the one below.

If we read much or often, then we will soon find our world expanded through the beauty, struggle, and/or reality of another writer's work. One writer who does that for me is Tim O'Brien.

• Tim O'Brien is the man behind the book of short stories entitled The Things They Carried, which is a collection of war stories from Vietnam. The story that the book is named for can be found in full here.

​

• O'Brien says he wanted to resurrect the people he served with as fictional characters, to, as he says, "Cast a light on the things that have been forgotten."
• What I find interesting is the way in which he used real life to influence, inform, and inspire his fiction writing. The Things They Carried is filled with a group of characters who are people he served with, but used in a fictional way (and some of the characters are a conglomerate of multiple real people), which is a cross between fiction and nonfiction that I find fascinating.
• Surprisingly, Tim O'Brien influenced my writing by my willingness (or drive) to write my own "war stories," that showcase the best and worst of mankind in the same horrific events, and how do these events impact the lives around them? How do people recover from them? Do they recover? O'Brien wrote another story entitled "How to Tell a True War Story," in which he discusses Rat Kiley, a true person who becomes a character, in an even more direct way expressing how fact and fiction mesh.

The short story "The Things They Carried" opens with these lines:

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending.

As we read through Jimmy Cross' story, we see how he copes with the war through imaginings about the elusive Martha, who keeps pieces of his soul clean (notice how he cleans his hands before reading her letters) while the rest of him is "dirtied" by war. It is a painful and personal story that hits me in the feels every single time I read it. O'Brien's style is very direct, yet he buries the truth within his narration, circling ever closer to the true moment by recycling the story and its impact on every other character in the story.

• This book is obviously a fiction war story, so if you went into the bookstore, you might find it shelved in war stories, fiction, or short story collections, but to me, it's a story about human strength and the ways in which we cope with horror.
• This story continues to resonate with me. I have been in and around the military my whole adult life, and I connect to O'Brien's characters by seeing pieces of them in the military men and women I know. The love of this story led me to O'Connor's "The Guests of a Nation" and the book Regeneration by Pat Barker, a fictional story about Siegfried Sassoon (if you took Brit Lit, I'm sure you've read Sassoon's poetry, particularly "The General").

I've written before about how this short story has on more than one occasion caused me to write about the things that I carry, the tangible and intangible. I carry a messenger bag and a laptop. I carry parental guilt and debilitating fear.

What do you carry?

Just in time for summer vacation. "You'll never go in the water again!" Oops, wrong movie franchise. What has me angst-ridden at the mere thought of going into the water is not Jaws! Although, the scene with the 3 men getting drunk and showing off scars is great storytelling. In fact, it's one of my favorite movie scenes.

​No, what's in the water this time is far scarier than a shark. At least to me, because while I absolutely love being on the edge of my seat while reading or watching a thriller, I do not read, write, or watch horror.

Several months ago, I ran across this article on Bloody Disgusting (talk about truth in advertising) that freaked me out, so I really shouldn't have clicked the link, but that seemed wimpy, so, I hit play. In 2013, a Friday the 13th fan by the name of Doug Klein found an interesting way to show his love of the man in the hockey mask.

Go on, you know you want to.

I won't be diving into Crystal Lake in Minnesota anytime soon.

And then earlier this month, I ran across a quite different underwater sculpture. I'm fascinated by the idea that people plant statues underwater for our discovery if we're brave enough to dive, but this next sculpture doesn't require a full-on dive. In fact, you can see it from snorkeling depth.

This article I found on Atlas Obscura, which is one of my favorite new sites for cool and interesting stories. Since I'd already been creeped out by the Jason statue, I was a bit hesitant, but turns out, it was safe to click this one. The article discusses the history of the statue, but I find the photos fascinating. The statue is called Christ of the Abyss (the 3rd statue taken from the same mold), and it is located off the Florida keys. The first Christ of the Abyss is in Italy, and the second was given to St. George's (Grenada).

And given those cool and interesting things under the water, I had to find more, which lead to this 10 Weirdest Things Ever Found in the Ocean. All in all, an interesting little rabbit trail through underwater art. And I didn't even have to go diving to experience. :)

Well, now my Youtube recommends is completely jacked. The next recommendation is the 10 Creepiest things ever found in the ocean. Maybe next time...

They had me at the Knights Templar. As a fan of Dan Brown's DaVinci Code and other thriller series discussing the Templar Knights, this Atlas Obscura article on what the Templar's ate is fascinating, especially considering the Templars lived considerably longer than their contemporaries.

The Templar diet was surprisingly modern. They ate meat no more than 3 days per week. The article mentions a Tuesday fast, so no food on that day (yikes!), which leaves Sunday, Thursday, and Friday as days for seared animal flesh. On Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, they ate mostly vegetables, eggs, cheese, and bread. Plus wine.

Let me see if I have this correct:

• Sunday: Let them eat meat!
• Monday: Veggie day.
• Tuesday: Meat day, unless it's your fasting day; then, "No soup for you!"
• Wednesday: Veggie day.
• Thursday: Meat: Charred animal flesh.
• Friday: Lenton fast (no animal products: eggs, milk, cheese, or meat), although they were allowed fish, and developed their own Almond Milk as a dairy substitute (and here I thought my almond milk creamer was a new idea). I think we can safely call this a Veggie day, although I wonder, is this the origin of Fish Friday during Lent?
• Saturday: Veggie day

As they conclude in the Obscura article, "many of these rules resemble modern dietary advice: Lots of vegetables, meat on occasion, and wine in moderation."

​It’s all fun and games until someone ends up dead. Oh, wait, that’s a tagline for my books. J
 
Christmas is my favorite holiday, but when I read recently that the most dangerous part about the holidays was a Christmas tree, I was surprised. Christmas tree fires are some of the most deadly fires. According to the National Association of Fire Protection, “These fires caused an average of 7 deaths, 19 injuries, and $17.5 million in direct property damage annually. ”
 
It got me to wondering. How dangerous is Christmas? So below, I offer the Top 5 (slightly facetious) dangers of Christmas
 

1. Death by Family. I doubt you’ve heard of this rare syndrome, but forced and prolonged contact with family you only see once a year is rife with danger.  Prolonged conversations with the uncle who can’t hear, the aunt who spouts your latest bad news at the top of her lungs, the sibling who won’t let you forget the time you put gum in her hair when you were four, and the constant rub of old hurts and insecurities. Beware. Herein lies the biggest emotional danger of Christmas.
2. Death by Chocolate. I know what you’re thinking. Totally worth it, but this holiday danger goes beyond chocolate. There are the requisite baked goods from the neighbors, the goodies your coworkers bring to the carb-coma table, the box in the mail and the stuff in your stocking. It is a slippery, calorie filled slope, my friends.
3. Death by Music. A local radio station starts playing Christmas music beginning November 1. We haven’t even had snow yet, and some chipper DJ wants me to listen to Christmas music for the next two months. Such behavior could induce seizures ... or at least the desire to wear earmuffs.
4. Death by Light Display. The need to keep up with the Griswolds has us climbing onto a slippery roof to staple strings of lights around the rim and along the roofline. We plant yard art, put wreaths and lights in every window, and display our tree in the front window for the one time a year we actually want our neighbors to peek inside. If we survive the fall off the slippery roof, we still risk electrocution, lead poisoning (apparently that’s a thing), and a utility bill that will give us heartburn for the New Year.
5. Death by Stress. The holidays are the most stressful time of the year. The snow-packed streets are ice rinks, the malls are jammed, and the joyful crowds are often less than joyful. We worry about finding the perfect gifts, cooking the perfect meal, and having the most beautiful decorations. That kind of perfectionism leads to an ulcer. And a strong urge for a stiff drink in the middle of the day.

 
You shouldn’t take the risk. Stay home. Read a good book. J