Karen Sandler

Tag: holidays

  • Holidays, Family, Memories

    With the November and December holidays approaching, I’ve been thinking back to how we celebrated in the past. As I was growing up, every holiday get together took place at Grandma’s house. From New Year’s Day through New Year’s Eve (including all the birthdays), everyone gathered at Grandma’s for too much food and drink, and sometimes way too many presents. After dinner, we’d often crowd around the dining room table for a poker game.

    How I learned the crucial life skill of playing poker

    By the time I had my first son, my mom and stepdad had bought a restaurant overlooking Mono Lake, and Grandma moved up there with them. After that, we celebrated at least Thanksgiving and Christmas in the dining room of the Mono Inn. It was a long drive (7 hours) with a toddler and a baby, but so beautiful once we were there.

    Left, the family restaurant, middle, the restaurant dining room with all of us crowded around the table, right, Mono Lake CA

    All those years that Grandma hosted the holidays, she did all the cooking. When I was old enough, she’d let me do the relish tray, but other than that, it was all on her: the turkey (for Thanksgiving and Christmas) or ham (for New Years and Easter), the mashed potatoes or potato salad, the yams or her incredible baked beans. She did it all. Amazing.

    The dessert table, as if we had room after a huge Easter dinner. It’s possible I made the bunny cake.

    How do you do your holidays? Always in the same place, or do members of the family trade off? Let me know in the comments. It would be great to share stories.

  • RTW – Balancing Reality and Fiction

    This week, YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday asks the question, How do you balance hectic times like the holidays with your writing schedule?

    Um, yeah. How do you do that?

    I’m not sure I’ve entirely figured that one out. The good news is, I’ve been under contract with a publishing house nearly every holiday season for the past dozen or so years. The bad news is, that means I’ve got a deadline staring me in the face every year all through the holidays.

    Which means I have to stay focused and on task in November and December. Yes, I’m longing to go Christmas shopping (or Hanukkah shopping–our family goes both ways). I’m dreaming of baking Christmas (or Hanukkah) cookies. I’m jonesing to go up the hill to one of the local tree farms to cut down my tree. But I can’t just take off all the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas (much as I might wish it) because that darn book isn’t going to write itself.

    So what do I do? I do cut myself some slack. I choose a day or afternoon for the tree cutting, for the baking, for the decorating. I work hard on the days when I don’t have holiday festivities planned and get as much written as I can. I tend to do the Christmas shopping in one fell swoop, demanding a list from everyone, and storm the stores on a weekday when they’re less busy. And I keep an eye on my word count and the number of days remaining until the deadline.

    I do find it annoying to have to write during the holidays. Even worse, my birthday is smack dab in the middle of the holiday season, so there’s another distraction. But I also know that I’m very lucky to be working under contract, to have that deadline, so who am I to gripe?

    How about you? How do you keep working during the holidays? Christmas carols on or off? Christmas cookies stacked on your desk? Is your office decorated? I wanna know how the rest of you do it.