June is Bustin' Out All Over

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING:  Memorial Day weekend is over, we’ve said good-bye to 

May, and this is the start of the first full month in June, or, as I like to call it: summer.

 

We all have different markers for when the season begins - the aforementioned holiday 

weekend, the end of the school year, that blast of cold air as the office’s annual pre-set 

AC comes on whether it’s 50 or 90 F. But without a doubt, June is the start, the first 

month of summer, the month of weddings and graduations and my birthday, which is 

why I know it’s so great.

I have certain rituals that mark the start of the season. First and foremost, I bring the 

warm-weather clothing and the fans down from the attic, and carry the winter things up. 

The parkas and scarves move from the foyer to the less-accessible front hall closet, and 

the boots disappear in favor of sneakers and flip-flops. 

There’s summer-specific beauty rites: a pedicure with bright nail polish and sunless 

tanning lotion after showers (I wear it under my SPF 50 sunscreen.)

 

On the first really hot day, I’ll make myself cold tuna-mac salad, a 1960’s style dish that 

was one of my mom’s staples back before she started replacing gobs of mayo with 

heart-healthy alternatives. I’ll add a few things to my grocery list: lemonade mix, lime 

and strawberry popsicles (which Google tells me I should refer to as frozen fruit bars,)

 Miracle Whip (come at me, haters.)

And of course, as we discussed last week, there’s the joy of finding a horde selection of 

great summer reads.

Reds, what rites and rituals mark the start of summer for you?

HALLIE EPHRON: Ah, summer… Number one is opening the windows. This year I’m 

having the windows washed, a pricey but necessary (at least once every five years) 

endeavor.


Number two, birds! There’s usually several nests in my backyards and then comes the 

fun watching the gawky hatchlings fledge. When you see four cardinals together and 

not killing each other or mating, they’re nest-mates.

And on the watch for lady slippers at the base of trees on my walks. 

And, oh yes, finding someone to help me hoist my a/c from the office floor and into the 

window. It’s the only room I really need it for. Any volunteers??

LUCY BURDETTE: First is a tuna melt on rye when my favorite snack bar opens. 

Deep River potato chips on the side. Pretty soon the farmers market will provide more 

than greens and radishes, though we are enjoying lots of those!

 

RHYS BOWEN: Lucy and I have had a sneak preview of summer at our other homes. 

It reached 95 before I left Arizona. Now I’m back in California with weather in the 70s. 

My first summer task is to take heavy winter clothes downstairs and bring up summer 

ones. Then go through and weed out those I no longer wear. (I wore a white jacket this 

week. It’s after Memorial Day so I’m allowed to.)

 

Things I look forward to: Thursday farmers market with all that organic fresh produce. 

And sitting out on my deck on a balmy evening, glass of Aperol Spritz in hand, enjoying 

watching the sun slip below the hills.

 

JENN McKINLAY: Summer is…less fantastic for me. I’m saying good-bye to my weekly

 farmer’s market outing until October. The AC guy has to come out and
make sure our 

unit is all good. You never want your AC to die when it’s 115. The pool starts getting 

used daily to exercise the dogs - this is actually one of the highlights! 

 

 

And my garden starts to shrivel up and die until late July when it’s time to plant the 

pumpkins and hopefully a robust monsoon season will do the watering. Woo hoo! 

And the highlight of summer is the annual trek to my mom’s summer house in Nova 

Scotia. We count the days until we’re back on the Bay of Fundy, fishing in the trout 

stream, hitting the local farm stands, and running on the beach! Can’t wait! 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: The winter clothes migrated back into the attic here back in 

April! But June does really feel like the beginning of summer, especially with all the 

summer produce coming into the market and the frogs singing in the pond.
But every year I indulge in a little beginning of summer ritual–driving through our 

favorite barbecue joint. We have a great multi-awarded barbecue place but somehow 

when it’s cold it drops off my radar. 

 

But that first warm evening with the lengthening twilight, I love to drive 

across town and sit in the drive-through line with the windows down, smelling the huge 

smokers and watching the light fade over the western treetops. And if I get into the fried 

okra before I get home, don’t tell…

 

JULIA: Readers, what starts your summer? 

Images by freepik, gpointstudio, wirestock, freepik, vecstock, and chandlervid85, all on Freepik.com

All Summer in a Day

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Today is arguably the last Monday of summer - next week is Labor Day, which is always bittersweet as it heralds the end of the season (if not, for some of us, the end of suffocating heat!) This week on JRW, our attention is going to turn to the World Mystery Conference, Bouchercon, but before we do, let’s take our traditional accounting of what summer pleasures we did and did not manage to fit in between Memorial Day and now.

What I did: Saw family. I saw SO much of my family, I’ll be happy not to spend any more time together until Thanksgiving. I love you, kids.

Went to a Sea Dogs game in Portland, with much of the aforementioned family. It was a rare perfect sunny day in what’s been a wet, cool summer here in New England, and we had a great time, even though the Sea Dogs went down 7-5.

Celebrated the Fourth of July by watching Independence Day with the Maine Millennial on Monday and had an amazing indoor (that rain again) BBQ at a friend’s house on Tuesday.

Took a mini-writing retreat with Jessica Ellicott and had the great pleasure of spending a whole day writing and talking craft and business under the shade of her gazebo in utterly perfect July weather.

Went to the movies in person, which used to be a summer standard, but has become rare for me since the pandemic. Youngest and I saw MEG 2: THE TRENCH, which was the perfect tongue-in-cheek action flick.  I even bought movie popcorn: I know it’s all oil and chemicals, but it’s so tasty.

I had a whole watermelon to myself!

What I didn’t do: It’s a long list. No trips to the beach, no grilling outdoors, no summer theater (which I managed to do even during the shut downs in ‘20 and ‘21.) No swimming at Celia Wakefield’s Lake House, or in the nearby Saco River - there was so much rain my area was closed to swimming due to bacterial contamination!! No Chamber Music Festival. No hanging out with a book and a glass of chilled rode on the patio. No garden other than what sprung up from last year. 

All I can say is, 1) this fall had better be spectacular, and 2) the next time a family member calls with a crisis, I’m pretending I broke my phone and hiding until it passes.

How about you, Reds?

RHYS BOWEN:  I always have plans for the perfect summer: picnics at the beach, a book beside the pool, an adventure once a week. And then suddenly it’s September! What happened? Our summer in Marin County had not been stellar. A lot of cold foggy mornings. And I have escaped to the beach a couple of times. But still…. Not that perfect lazy, hazy days of summer 

I must confess that five weeks of it were spent in Europe so no whining here! England, Jersey, Brittany. All good. And lots of family encounters. Also good. And a new irrigation system that now has plants covering my bare hillside. I’m off to Bouchercon on Wednesday and hoping to steal away to the beach when no one’s looking!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I have no idea what I did. Yes, I do, it wrote. And was on book tour. It was great, and wildly successful, and hurray, but yikes, it’s about to be September. We didn’t grill, because it seemed to be raining all the time or SO HOT!

A new house went up next to us, so we were in a constant din–truly one day, there were TEN guys on the roof next door with nail guns. Just imagine. And they started at 7. AM. 7 AM!!

We didn’t sit by the pool, because see above. But we had so many bunnies! BUT I did do some fantastic full-house signings, really amazing, and interviewed Shari Lapena in person, taught at the Writers Digest Convention and saw Hadestown with Hallie–she mentions it below, too! AMAZING, as she says.

AND sold two more books, book 16 and 17 no under contract! So yay. Somehow, even with all the rain, it was still lovely.

JENN McKINLAY: This was not the summer to miss out on a trip to my mom's cottage in Nova Scotia but I did miss it and lived through every day that was over 110+ here in AZ. Blerg.

Instead, it was the summer to spend repainting the interior of our house, rebuilding the catio, revising the next romcom, and swimming with the dogs in the pool every single day. I also got to spend a glorious time literally up in the trees with the Hub and the Hooligans in Flagstaff, where we did an extreme obstacle course 30-60 feet up in the air which included jumping from swinging log to swinging log, climbing fishnets hanging in the tops of the pines, and zip lines. Truly, it was like something out of American Ninja Warrior. Hooligan 2 also turned 21 and wanted to visit a casino. Kid won $600 off a slot machine. We told him he could never go again because he’d never be that lucky again. LOL. 

HALLIE EPHRON: Oh, Jenn, you were due for a good summer. Hope you’ll blog about what that obstacle course was like. Sounds terrifying.

My summer began with July 4 on Peaks Island (off the coast of Portland Maine) with family. Fireworks and barbecuing, long walks and swimming.

After that, I taught at a bunch of writing conferences, including an old favorite on mystery writing at Book Passage in Marin. And another favorite, at the Willamette Writers Conference via Zoom.  And I was thrilled to get invited back to the Writers Digest Annual Writers Conference in NYC at the Hilton in Midtown. Great meals, and I got to hang out with Hank(!) and went to see Hadestown which was AMAZING! 

Next week I go back to Peaks for a Labor Day weekend relax-athon and hangout with the spectacular Franny and Jody, my grands.

So all in all a pretty terrific summer. Oh, and I also got named my town’s Writer in Residence for 2023-2024. Which gives me lots of good stuff through to anticipate.

Life is good. A year ago I would not have said that.

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: The traveling part of the summer was terrific! In early June I flew to LA for the California Crime Writers’ Conference, my first conference in three and a half years, and it was wonderful to see friends, make new friends, and talk writing again! I didn’t mind the “June glooms” a bit. Then a whirlwind week at home, then off for almost a month in London. What a great trip. Mostly nice weather other than a couple of too-warm days, loads of terrific research for the book in progress, and an unexpected side trip to Bath.

Alas, I arrived home mid-July just as the triple-digits-no-rain remainder of the summer set in, and have spent the last six weeks just trying not to melt and to keep the poor plants alive. 

One fun thing–we’ve done a lot of work on our pond and added new fish (after losing all but one of our huge koi last October) and have really enjoyed watching the little swimmers in the few minutes we can stand to be outside!

 

 LUCY: I think you've already heard about our multiple family visits and the lovely food I've been eating, so I won't belabor that. Most unusual and fun event? I played in my first ukulele "gig" last weekend. Remember the band I hired for John's big birthday bash? Turns out one of them runs a ukulele club at the Scranton Library and my pal Steve and I have been attending. Fred the leader encouraged us to play in public at a festival on the town green. It was very low pressure (read, low attendance) and super fun! Other than that, writing, writing, writing.

JULIA: Hallie definitely wins the award for "Best Spent Summer," with Debs in the No. 2 spot. How about you, dear readers? How was your June, July and August?  

 

Photos courtesy of Rebecca from Pixabay, freepix and Flagstaff Extreme

Fit Happens!

Jenn McKinlay: It’s been four years since I gave up my day job, which involved playing Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero with the teens and parachute jump and bubble time with the toddlers. Yes, I was a part-time children’s librarian and, boy howdy, did those kids keep me fit.

Now that I’m a full time writer, I have what is essentially a desk job. I am like the “time to make the donuts” guy, but it’s more like “time to make the pages” gal, but I don’t have a mustache or access to copious amounts of pastry. Darn it – on the pastry not the mustache.

I try to write ten pages a day, which is a lot of butt in chair time, especially when I spend seventy-five percent of that time with my fingers perched over the keyboard staring out the window waiting for the words to come. Some days it’s quite a long wait not unlike the back of the line at the DMV but without all the entertaining people watching.

So here I am, getting all the things my friends, who’ve been cubicle moles and desk jockeys for years, warned me about. There is some posterior spread happening, as well as a pooch over the waistband that is actually in the shape of a donut. Why can’t these things be considered attractive? 

My muscle mass since the early years of wrangling hooligans into baths, beds, cars, shopping carriages, swings, and my lap, has diminished considerably into a more spongy substance, which is sad because at my best, when they were both under three, I think I could have bench pressed a car.

A few months ago, I decided that I had to make more of a structured effort to work out. I’ve never belonged to a gym, and that staring out the window thing takes a lot of time, so I didn’t want to give up anymore by having to drive to a place to sweat in public. Why humiliate yourself in front of others, when you can do it at home in front of your pets?

Okay, first up, I got the thingy-- yes, technical name-- that was all the rage developed by some lady on Shark Tank. Seriously, this thing was next to every checkout counter from Walgreens to Ace Hardware, you couldn’t avoid it if you tried. I didn’t try. You’re supposed to stand on it and swivel back and forth like doing the twist only on the plastic thingy-- I know, enough with the technical terms already. Hub watched me tackle this beast and his observation was, as he yelled after me, “I don’t think you’re supposed to be able to leave the room on it.” It now lives under the TV console for future use at a yard sale.

I HATE YOU.

Next, I decided I needed arms like Michelle Obama, because that would totally distract from the flab that was my doopah. Push-ups were the way to go. But I wasn’t going to settle for regular pushups. Heck no! I bought these two swivelly handle dealies – yes, more jargon – to maximize my efforts. Uh huh. The hooligans came home and found me lying face down on the floor between the dealies. I didn’t have enough arm strength left to pick myself up. After they hefted me to my feet, I think they threw them out or hid them. I have not seen the dealies since, but in all honesty I haven’t looked that hard.

I HATE YOU MORE.

Finally, my latest purchase was the ginormous rubber band thing-a-ma-jig. I have since come to the conclusion that whoever invented this thing, hates their fellow man. Not just hates them, but wants to torture them, too. I watched a YouTube tutorial, convinced that this was the item for me. I studied the routine and then put on "Happy" by Pharrell Williams and busted out my moves. Halfway through the song, I felt like I was made of Jell-O. I lost my grip on my rubber band and it thwacked me upside the head. In short, it was not a "happy" workout.

I HATE YOU MOST OF ALL.

So, now I have a treadmill and am attempting the dreaded 4X4 intensity workout (four minutes of hardcore running four times with brisk walking wedged in between intervals). If you don't hear from me...assume it did me in!

How about you, Reds? Do you exercise? And if so, what are your preferred torture devices…er…accoutrements?

HALLIE EPHRON: I used to go to a fitness center and take a class twice a week. Loved it. But the my hip went wonky and I ended up in PT... so now I exercise alone. At home. In front of the TV. Exercise bike. Floor pad. It's all very sad.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, I have to say I have aerobic danced until I got shin splints, and I ran until I blew out my knees. I loved stationary bike, but got over it.  I really tried Nordic track, but I am not coordinated enough. And then---I discovered walking. I am in love with walking. I have a wonderful treadmill, and I walk. I get to watch movies, and news, and episodes of Chopped. I walk outside, when the weather is even marginally bearable.  It's fabulous. And with my beloved FitBit, neurotic me gets constant approval.  I get ideas walking, and get to be off my phone, all good.  Who could ask for anything more? 
Well, I guess I could, I have zero upper body strength. It is embarrassing to try to put my suitcase up in the overhead. Any ideas?

LUCY BURDETTE: I consider it a necessary evil--do not want my bones to disintegrate as I get older. When in Key West, I go to a small local gym where my trainer, Leigh, cracks the whip twice a week--mostly weight training and balance. Unlike my hub, I would not do these things without an appointment! In CT, it's a pilates class. And I also choose walking, Hank. Tonka is a good motivater there, and I get a lot of good ideas while putting one paw in front of the other. 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hank, you need to get some weight resistance training going - slender white women are far more prone to osteoporosis and other bone problems than anyone else. My mother, who's been a size six her entire life, has excellent cardiovascular health but has been struggling with finding a bone density medication that doesn't have nasty side effects. 

As for me, I've NEVER been a fan of exercise-qua-exercise. From my teens to my early thirties, I skied as much as I could every winter, and in my thirties I picked up running (usually while pushing a jogging stroller.) At the gym, I loved lifting weights, and I also enjoyed hiking and cross-country skiing. Unfortunately, my genetic heritage of arthritis caught up to me. By the time I was  fifty, my knees were in bad enough shape that all those sports were closed to me, and now I can't even walk for more than a mile without pain. (My doctor has recommended knee replacement surgery, which I will get just as soon as I'm in a position where I don't have to drive anywhere or do anything for three months.)

So I've switched to swimming at the Y, which I really like, despite the fact that I am a terrible swimmer. I'm like the little old lady driving 35 in a 50mph speed zone. It's embarrassing when I have to share a lane. I've been interested to hear about Lucy's experience with a trainer - there are trainers available at the Y, and I've been considering hiring one for a few sessions to get me back into weight work. I'd like to know how to strengthen the muscles around my bum knees while not, you know, injuring myself.

INGRID THOFT: I love exercise.  I do!  I love working up a good sweat in the weight room or on the stair climber (the thing that looks like a giant rolling staircase.)  I used to spin a lot and do Zumba, but my back issues put the brakes on those activities.  Now I lift and do the stair climber, elliptical, and hills on the treadmill.  I also love to walk outside when possible and hike when the weather improves.  Swimming is great, too, but preferably in the ocean.  Swimming laps bores me to tears.

I work out with a trainer, and I highly recommend it.  Even if you only have a few sessions, a good trainer will design a program so that you get the most out of your time at the gym.  Even though I love to exercise, I don't want to do it all day, and I love having a plan and getting it done.  I second Julia's suggestion about weight bearing exercise for slim, white ladies, and really, all ladies.  There are plenty of exercises that can be done using your own body weight (that's the sort of info a trainer can provide) that contribute to better bone density, which is a huge issue as we age.  Plus, then you can get your suitcase in the overhead yourself!

A friend of mine says that when he exercises it "feels like a sunny day in my head," even if it's pouring rain in Seattle.  I couldn't agree more!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm a walker, too. I've never been good at any sort of program, or exercise equipment. And I've had dogs for most of my adult life so walking is both a pleasure and a necessity. It's also great for generating chunks of scenes and dialogue and working out plot issues! My new insurance includes a free membership to LA Fitness but I really really doubt I will darken their doors. 

Although I have to say I've fallen off the wagon a bit this winter. There's just been one thing or another, and it's been unusually cold here (I know those of you from the Great North are laughing at me, but I'm a weather wimp.) So I really need to start getting out there every day!

(Does the constant lifting of two-year-old count as weight training?)

RHYS BOWEN: Absolutely, Debs. I developed huge muscles lifting grandkids in and out of the back seat of cars in their car seats! I have always been a hiker. I still love to hike with friends--it's therapy as well as exercise. John and I walk every day. I swim most days. I used to be a passionate tennis player, then a disk between my shoulder blades was damaged so no more tennis for me. Sob. My favorite form of exercise involves the ocean--which is hard in Phoenix, and in California where it's too cold. I love snorkeling and boogie boarding.

For the past two months I've been going to physical therapy twice a week for a problem knee/ankle. PT stands for physical torture. It's like a personal trainer, only worse. Three sets of twenty. Now with a band around your ankles. But I have to say it is working brilliantly and my knee is back to normal. My ankle still suffering from the torn ligament between the two. So standing on one foot and raising and lowering myself is still not fun.


I really believe that physical exercise clears the brain and lets me work better. 

JENN: I agree, Rhys, it does clear the head. I am very active. I'm just not very structured about it. I think you and Ingrid are onto something with the trainer!

What about you, Readers? What's your exercise jam?