Mrs. Claus Knows Everything

Wanted: Christmas Miracles

Hello all,

Mrs. Claus thought it would be helpful if you could read the first page or so of each of the three stories in my new book WANTED: Christmas Miracles.

Amazon only: Wanted: Christmas Miracles

Mrs. Claus is magical and she knows stuff like this. She is, after all, the person who really brings Christmas to everyone. She handles the toy shop, the gift list, figures out who’s been naughty and nice, takes care of the reindeer, encourages the elves, fixes the sleigh, makes all repairs, and sets the GPS for Santa’s ride through the stars.

I have a habit of listening to her.

Below are the first pages of the three short stories within WANTED: Christmas Miracles. I am wishing you time to read them, time to be alone with your wine / hot chocolate / Christmas cookies and time to enjoy the holidays without feeling frazzled / overwhelmed / dreading your in-laws.

Cheers.
Cathy

A Very Merry Christmas:

I live on the top floor of a three-story brick house built in 1889 that I bought about a year ago and transformed into my bed and breakfast/morning café business.

When I’m in my bedroom with the peaked roof I can see all over Telena and to the Elk Horn mountains. I feel like I’m in a very tall, old tree house with a claw foot tub.

My bedroom is a lovely place to temporarily lose my mind. I decorated my four-poster bed with a light yellow flowered comforter, and a mountain of white pillows, with white lacy material draped over the posts. I have a white dresser and desk and a pile of books to read by my nightstand.

How would Logan look in my bed? I smashed that thought because then I would have to deal with his look of disgust when he knew what I know about myself.

Also on the third floor are two other small bedrooms for Sarah and Jacob, my sister’s kids who have had too much heartbreak in their lives and now live with me, a living area with French doors to a small deck, and a bathroom.

My home has a coal chute through which, obviously, coal used to be funneled. I have an old carriage house on the property that used to house, obviously, horses and a carriage. The home has a short stair rail because people were much shorter when this home was built, wide, ornate white trim, and eleven-foot tall ceilings on floors one and two. Downstairs there is one guest bedroom, a parlor with a piano and a fireplace, a sun-filled dining area with a fireplace, and a kitchen.

On the second floor there are four bedrooms that I’ve decorated with four-poster beds, wooden chests, old-fashioned wallpaper, stacked hatboxes, and armoires.

I have named my bed and breakfast, “Meredith’s Bed and Breakfast,” because at the time, in the midst of a stress tornado, I couldn’t think of anything more clever.

I did some research, and my home has more history in it than a history book.

It was built by a Jewish businessman. He had five daughters and a wife. One of his girls ended up marrying the boy who lived directly behind this house; another left town with a convict.

Apparently he was a handsome convict.

A railroad executive also lived here with three different wives, who all predeceased him. He had nine kids, a timepiece, and a top hat. I have framed that photo in my entry. A mine owner lived here, alone, and he apparently fancied the ladies. A millionaire lived here for two decades and never left the house. Three sisters bought it at one point.

One owned a bar; one worked at a church; one was a doctor who provided birth control to Telena. They had many “gentlemen” callers. It was also once a popular house of “ill repute,” as confirmed by an old newspaper article. The madam in charge was named, no kidding, Hearty Tallfeather.

This is not my house. My house is a mess right now.

Christmas in Montana

I am, currently, the manager for the hard-rock band Hellfire.

I am quitting tomorrow. My boss, front man Ace Hellfire, real name Peter Watson, son of a pastor, will be unhappy.

It’s going to be a sticky situation, but it doesn’t change my mind.

I have been traveling the world for ten years with Ace, his band, and crew. I have listened to more eardrum-splitting concerts and head-banging rehearsals, and been witness to more temper tantrums and wildness than I ever wanted to see. My nerves are shot, my exhaustion complete.

I don’t think I want to travel again unless it’s to a remote cabin in the woods.

I love to sew, but I haven’t sewn in years. I love to embroider, but I don’t know if Iremember the cross-stitch. I love to cook, but haven’t followed a recipe in way too long. I love to ski, garden, and ride horses, but I never do any of those things.

I have lived out of suitcases for much of every year, my outfits a collage of color, but now I want to find a home, stay in it, and set up a sewing room.

I am a country girl from Kalulell, Montana, who has been working with hard-core rock musicians out of Los Angeles and I am done. I am headed home for Christmas, and then I will figure out Plan F, the F standing for my Future.

I miss small town life. I have always missed it, especially during the Christmas season. I did not miss, however, what happened on a snowy, dark night on a curvy road. It still haunts me.

Some might say I ran from small town country life, that I wanted the twinkly lights of the city and the excitement.

They would be wrong. I was never running from it. I loved it.

I was running from him.

I wish I could make pretty cookies like this.

Suzanna’s Stockings

I didn’t look dead.

At least, not yet.

But I didn’t look too good, either.

I watched a nurse in purple scrubs flutter about my bed. I was glad to see that she had gray hair, all plaited into tiny braids, and that she was not some young thing with a skinny waist, sleek hair, and perky boobs.

No, if I was going to be surrounded by blipping and bleeping machines, IV poles, and rails around my mattress in a darkened hospital room, I wanted someone experienced poking and prodding at me.

She examined a chart, made some notations, checked the machines, my pulse, my forehead, then, for a second, she stood, examining my pale, pasty face, half-hidden by an oxygen mask, her expression tired and sad.

I glanced at her nameplate. Adanna. She shook her head, sighed, then left the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

I continued watching myself. Myself wasn’t moving in the hospital bed. Myself was hardly breathing.

My hair was splayed out on the pillow, blah and boring. I hardly made a mound at all under the thin hospital blankets. Was there a body? Or was my head attached to my neck and that was that?

I hadn’t realized how skinny I’d gotten.

Yuck.

But I had been busy. My gift shop business was struggling and I had almost no money.

The Pooles were headed for disaster and I didn’t know how to help them, Carly had a secret, Patricia seemed downright…scared, our beach town’s very character was at risk, Ronna was deteriorating, Jack Benson was wreaking havoc in my life and in my nether regions, and I was engaged to someone else.

Most of all, I was trying to be happy.

Yes. Trying hard. And I was almost there.

Sort of. Not really.

Actually, the happy part hadn’t been working.

Waiting for Santa to come down my chimney. Heard I’m on the GOOD list this year.

I sat down on the hospital bed next to myself and picked up one of my hands. Limp. Cool.

Deadlike, my nails chipped and ragged, my hands cracked with dryness.

Cold Oregon winters on the coast, especially here at Canyon Beach, can do that to you.

Perhaps I’d get the first manicure of my life when I left here.

My face, white like a toilet, and so very still, appeared to be almost caving in on itself.

Sheesh. Maybe I’d get my first facial, too.

At that moment all the machines in the room started ringing and zinging, a light flashed, an alarm blared. I scrambled off the bed so the doctors and nurses charging into the room could get to the me lying there in bed with an oxygen mask.

They hollered orders at each other and a huge light was swung over my body. Tools whipped from one hand to another, a machine was rolled in and liquid stuff dropped into my IV.

“We’re losing her!” a doctor shouted. “She’s crashing, people!”

Merry Christmas! Happy holidays!

Many years ago, in the North Pole, amidst the leaping reindeer and the busy elves, these stories were previously published in “Our First Christmas,” “Holiday Magic,” and “Comfort and Joy.”

Have a lovely day.
Cathy