This year’s theme is Expect the Unexpected – a tag line for my writing since I write more than one genre. But it also describes the year we’ve had as a planet. You all know I’m talking about the pandemic. I’m tired of being home, and tired of the news, but at least I’m not on the front lines taking care of patients or being one of them. I’m bored, not sick – thankfully. So, I write.
But in an effort to get away from the political drama, virus, and humdrum of everyday life, I bring you magic! The magic of math! As a kid I was intimidated by math. I learned early on not to trust my brain and use a calculator. That might have been a mistake, but it served me well.
When I became a grandmother and my grandson was in early grade school, he loved math. It was predictable. If you did this, then this would happen! Magic! Unless you got the problem wrong. And from the young mind who saw the magic adults didn’t came the idea for a book – Ian’s Magic.
Ian was a young boy with grade school problems. He had a brother, and they didn’t always get along, he tried to get to know a new kid in school with a big mouth and boastful ways, and then there was Thomas – another student who loved math as much as he did. Thomas was his nemesis with the annual math contest coming up. Ian wanted to win the iPad this year, so he wouldn’t have to share the family computer, but he could fail.
Ian knew that math was used in everyday life like helping his mom with her checkbook. He also learned that mowing the lawn for his dad made more money than cleaning out the neighbor’s shed. He learned that ratios didn’t always work when you were mixing hair color to make your brother’s red hair blond. But what his little brother taught him was ”in physics, weight and mass or something, two pulleys cut the weight in half if you are hoisting something up.” And that might have saved his life the day he fell over the cliff and his little brother hoisted him back up. But his brother wasn’t magic and couldn’t make the vacuum cleaner run itself while he did his math homework.
Check out Ian’s Magic a middle-grade chapter book that makes math fun – and magic! Published by Doodle and Peck and illustrated by the uber talented, Marla Jones. https://tinyurl.com/yxnszumv
Ian’s Magic by Peggy Chambers, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)
What are you reading this week?
It’s a cold January day here in the Midwest. No snow, but the wind comes sweeping down the plains. I need some warmth and to hear the sound of the surf in the distance. And what better place to experience that than Sandhill Island? Here’s a new novella about the characters who inhabit the tiny island off the coast of Corpus Christi. 
Each year I decide on a topic for the blogs I write. Sometimes I get off the beaten track, but this year the pathway is clear. “Expect the Unexpected” is what I’ve chosen. For some time, I’ve wanted a tag line for my writing and since I write more than one genre, this seemed like a good tag line and topic for this year’s blogs. 
I walked in the door at Lowes near the garden area and it caught me by surprise – cinnamon. Not the common fertilizer and weed killer smells. It smelled like Christmas. It took a while to find where they hid it. The scent was somewhere in the store. And I followed my nose. Up high above my head, I found them. Cinnamon pinecones. The scent of Christmas. I had to have those – later – closer to Christmas. If they were still there. I love the scent of cinnamon no matter the time of year, probably because it reminds me of my mother’s snickerdoodle cookies and Christmas as a child.
It’s 12 days until Christmas (I think there’s a song about that) and we have snow here on the Great Plains! If you’re from up north, you would laugh at our little snow, but it can shut us down. At least me. 
Perseverance is a word that best describes the petunias that came up in my garden this year. Several appeared voluntarily from the ones I planted last year. Seeds I didn’t’ realize were in the soil. I never went to the greenhouse. I was surprised to see them and decided to transplant them into pots that were strewn around the garden to protect them – then more appeared.
It’s Thanksgiving week! There will be turkey, stuffing, pies and lots of overeating. I will join in those festivities, but Thanksgiving will be different this year. Fewer people are traveling and that is a good thing physically, maybe not emotionally. 
