I recently did a presentation for other writers on the use of child characters in adult fiction. At one point I found myself passing along the following observation: Underdogs tend to be far more knowledgeable about overdogs than conversely. Ask a kid to imitate a parent, and you will get the impersonation to the life, right down to intonation, word choice, and gestures.

Ask students to describe their teacher, ask workers what the boss is really like, ask a victim what they notice about their abuser (be prepared for a detailed reply with that last one). If you put the same kind of question  to the dominant party, you are more likely to hear generalities and guesses in response. It’s the difference between paying attention because that’s useful, and paying attention because your survival might well depend upon vigilant observation and recall.

I think this is part of the appeal of the child character. An Atticus or Winnie or Rose is keeping closer watch on the adult cast of a book than the reader is. When Atticus is being chastised for disobedience, he can retort that Julian disobeyed orders himself–of course, he did–when another adult would hesitate to point that out, if they even made the connection. Atticus was probably ahead of most readers when he came out with that argument, but to a child, keeping track of who obeys and who disobeys is not a detail.

In real life, the ramifications of the “less powerful viewpoint theory” are more complicated. If our most accurate reporters are the underdogs, where do we hear what they have to say? In past centuries, children were everywhere. They worked lived, died, and played–in the fields, church pews, taverns, mines (alas), shops, and streets. Many were expected to contribute something from a young age, and valued as a result. They were seen, regardless, and thus they had a chance to  be heard.

I think often of Charles Dickens’s experience. His father, mother, and younger siblings were tossed into debtor’s prison when Charles was 12. He was considered old enough to support himself, and took on a dreary job as a copyist, working long hours for little pay, and sleeping rough. Because of his early experiences, we have the brilliant social commentary of Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, and the scathing indictment of greed that is A Christmas Carol. Little Charles paid attention. His life depended on it.

Of course, I’m a grandma now. The topic of who is listening to the truth according to  the children (among many other less powerful demographics) is much on my mind. I sometimes think, “Eight-year-old Grace would not want me to set the alarm.” And I don’t set it. Or, “Eight-year-old Grace would tell me to give up on this scene and go to bed.” And I put the scene aside and try again in the morning. She was sensible and compassionate, that younger me, and her advice is usually sound, particularly as it relates to self-care and relationships.

Have you been an underdog? When you were, who listened to you? Are there underdogs who can trust you to listen to them now?

PS: Speaking of Julian and Atticus… A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes is already available from the web store!

I recently visited my daughter and grandson in Portland, OR, and oh, by the way, a granddaughter is expected in May. I looked around Portland wondering, “Could I be happy here?” A merely hypothetical question, of course.

Happy is a relative term, and if I have enough good books, enough quiet to do my writing, and my pets are taken care of, I can probably be happy in a lot of places, but not all. I’ve spent enough time in San Diego, for example, to know that is not my kind of sitch. The ocean annoys me. I don’t know why, but I look at a sea vista and feel crabby. This has been true of me since childhood. The population and traffic density are intense in San Diego compared to what I handle well, and I would desperately miss my big trees.

But Portland? While visiting, I tooled up the Columbia River Gorge to meet my younger brother for a pizza in Arlington. (TERRIFIC FOOD at the Big River Pizza and Grill. The grilled cinnamon roll ought to be illegal.) The scenery along the river is mile after mile of breathtaking, and there’s Mt. Hood popping up around every third bend. Talk about big trees…

I asked myself, “What’s the best thing so far about Portland?” Why move here, in other words, other than the obvious lure of family? Welp, have you seen the Portland Rose Garden? Have you smelled the Portland Rose Garden? Then there’s the old growth forest barely fifteen minutes outside of town. And yes, it’s gloomy here at certain times of the year, but as I type this, the Pacific Northwest is not looking at any single digit temperatures thanks to the old polar vortex.

I also like the Oregon Health Plan, which is essentially universal health care. My brother moved here from Montana, expecting to continue in his self-employed endeavors, which had meant expensive, lousy coverage. Oregon offered him full coverage at exceedingly reasonable rates, and for many people with no income, full coverage is free. This is actually cheaper for the state than expecting low income citizens to make do with emergency room band aids and medical neglect.

I love my little place in Maryland, but I wouldn’t advise anybody to move there. In my county, the safety net is nearly non-existent, social trust is quite low, environmental awareness is suspect, and if I wanted to recycle anything, I’d have to drive fifteen miles one way to one of very few locations accepting recyclables and pay for a permit patronize the facility.

What I am attached to in Maryland are my memories. Dear old Augustus Cat is buried in the back yard. Pasha, Sweetie, Stretch, and Prince all spent pensioner years in the paddock across the stream. I raised my only child there and planted thousands of flowers over the decades. But if the best thing about a place is simply memories… maybe it’s time to re-evaluate?

What’s the best thing about your present address? Why would you encourage someone to move to your neck of the woods?

PS: A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes has been published in print!

I’ve added another step to my end of day list of gratitudes. I still list five things I’m grateful for unique to that day, but then I ask myself: What went right? Sometimes, there’s overlap. The store had all the stuff I needed, I could afford to buy what I needed, and so forth. But sometimes, “What Went Right?” sends me thinking in a slightly different direction.

On my list of five, I probably forgot that getting the heating element in the dryer to come back to life (again) was just a matter of unplugging the darned thing and plugging it back in. Or it didn’t occur to me that the potty responded favorably to a vigorous application of the plunger and, boy, NOT having to call a plumber is just about the definition of something going right. Another version of things going right is when I sit down to write with no particular idea what the next scene should be (this happens about half the time), but the manuscript pulls me in, and the scene that happens is actually… pretty good.

I am focusing on this question for two reasons. First, because it popped up as part of my certified therapeutic riding instructor training. My mentor asked me, after one of my less inspired efforts to teach, what in the lesson had gone right. I had to search and sort for the longest time, but so much had gone right–no tears, no falls, no tantrums, no horses going lame, some fun, some learning, some enjoyable exercise. But I stared at the floor and had to have a big think before I could get out of What Went Wrong mode.

The second reason I’m focusing on What Went Right is because I know our brains are pre-wired (not hard-wired) to focus on what’s wrong, what’s negative, what’s bad. Our chances of survival benefit (up to a point) if we keep the bad stuff top of mind, so we can avoid it happening again or get it fixed. Media, both social and news, exploits this tendency without limit, bombarding us with calamities, disasters, impending doom, and (for variety and human interest) the occasional narrow escape. All of that stuff deserves notice, certainly (big hugs to SoCal, where my parents happily dwelled for more than forty years), but it can’t absorb our entire bandwidth all the time.

We aren’t meant to live, and we cannot thrive, on a steady diet of gloom and despair, and in fact, in my life, things are rarely that daunting for long. Sure, it’s shame the feral cat I’ve been trying to catch for weeks popped out of the net, when I darn-near caught her. Frustrating to say the least, but it’s not the note I want to end my day on. I’ll get her one of these days. I’ll figure out where the Elusive Earl’s black moment is supposed to go. I’ll get Lord Julian’s rigged horse races sorted out, though I accomplished none of that today.

And if I let the Houdini cat and unresolved plots stay top of mind, I’m not likely to see all the problems I did solve and all the problems that never arose.

So what’s gone right for you recently, no matter how inconsequential or small it might be?

And… I’m sending out my first round of ARC files for A Gentleman is Sinister Schemes this weekend, so stand by for yours. If you don’t have it by the end of the week and want one, just email me at [email protected] and let me know which device you read on.

Every item that has appeared on Lady Violet’s and Lord Julian’s covers is sitting upstairs in my guest bedroom, and that accumulation of clutter, genuine antiques, and flotsam is driving me nuts. In a similar vein, I’ve lost around 85 pounds, thanks to the GLP-1 agonist mounjaro and thus I have about two and half wardrobes that no longer fit  but still take up space in my closets and drawers.

The end of the year finds me in the mood to purge and prune, to free up space in my house and my life. I am no Martha Stewart–far from it. I have tended to view my house as a roofed campsite. In the past year, though, I’ve also fitted the place out with a heat pump, replaced the well pump and tank, replaced the whole electric panel, and upgraded the inside heating back up system.

I experimented with pollinator strips in the yard (one out three came through), planted four different kinds of fruit trees, and started a berry patch.

It’s as if, having revised my outward physical appearance, I am now more susceptible to the urge to get after my environment. It might also be that losing weight means I have more energy for basic domestic projects, though I am not now and never have been any sort of buzz saw. My dear mama had more energy in her eighties than I had in my forties, and her ghost still has me beat by a 2200-step mile.

My Christmas present to myself will be big bags of clothing taken to the Goodwill drop off, and a serious culling of the cover object inventory. For starters. I want my closets, drawers, and guest bedroom back. I want simplicity and efficiency in my domestic spaces, so I’m not hunting through a dozen pairs of black yoga pants (I am not exaggerating) to find the one pair that does fit and has recently been through the wash.

My wish for myself is that debriding my house of unneeded stuff will create mental space as well. The New Year is almost here, and I would like to spend it writing terrific happily ever afters and whodunits, not hunting for clean yoga pants or wondering who might like to have a genuine, slightly worn Victorian traveling desk, or a brown top hat, or a big old chess board…

What is your holiday gift to YOU this year?

PS: The web store has a few stocking stuffers on offer: The audiobook version (just in!) of A Rogue in Winter, and the ebook versions of The Holiday Duet, and What A Lady Needs for Christmas are each priced at $.99. I also figured out how to wangle the back end so that you can download the Rogue in Winter audio files even if you don’t have the Bookfunnel app. Tell Pietr and Joy I said hi!

And PPS: The blog will be on hiatus until early January, when I will be back, with–I hope–ARC files for A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes.

Teddy–AKA Mr. Terrffic

When I student-teach a riding lesson, a very experienced instructor is in the arena at all times, sometimes at my elbow, sometimes simply observing. When the lesson is over, we debrief. What went wrong, what went right, next steps for this student, open questions… It’s old-fashioned mentored learning, and I like that (mostly).

I finished up a lesson where a good time was had by all, but my almighty lesson objective–walk/halt/walk transitions, or some other utterly dazzling equestrian feat–hadn’t really gotten across to one of the students. “What else should I do? What should I do differently?” Because my endless flow of brilliant instruction hadn’t worked, my imagery had fallen flat, my pantomiming the correct aids was useless when the student was watching where her horse was going (always a good idea) rather than watching me…

The senior instructor thought for a minute, then said, “Let them fail.” She did not mean, let the student become in any way unsafe, nor was she advocating a downer lesson. I wasn’t sure what she meant, really, other than maybe–???–allow some trial and error? I have much to learn. MUCH.

Another week rolls around, and a student who normally rides as part of a group ended up having the lesson all to herself. She’s an utterly delightful child–sweet, bubbly, giggly–and she’s been taking lesson for a while. In groups, she tends to be a follower, and almost never asks questions.

I thought the exercise was simple: Stop the horse in the exact middle of the arena. The center of the arena is like the break room for the horses. It’s where they get to stand around while stirrups are adjusted, girths are checked, and where the dismounts often take place. But on this occasion, the 25-year-old pony decided that he would just keep moseying along toward the (securely latched) gate. He wasn’t rude about it, he simply kept shuffling in the direction of his version of the promised land.

I’d already told my student to shorten her reins, to make her reins shorter, to move her hands down to the yellow section of the reins so she had a better feel of the horse’s mouth. She smiled and laughed and told the horse to stop and asked him to stop and told him he was supposed to stop.

Toddle, mosey, shuffle.

Teddy was a pony on a slow-mo mission. The horse leader very wisely did not intervene, and when I would have put a hand on the reins to stop the wee beast, I instead wondered aloud how anybody could get a horse to stop with such looooong reins?

As Teddy made it darned near to the end of the arena (nice try, Tedster), the rider shortened her reins (a not-so-simple business of sliding both hands wide on the reins, then bringing the hands together), and stopped her horse.

Oh, thinks me: Let them fail. From that point on, the rider’s steering was more effective, and she was more focused on communicating with her horse in ways he understood. The lesson for me though, was that to not intervene, to let the horse be the teacher (within the dictates of safety), to trust that the student will eventually puzzle out the solution… that’s hard. That’s… hooboy. I’m not supposed to help, not supposed to fix anything, not going to fix anything by controlling the outcome?

Hard, but in this case, for me to let the student fail was the path to a learning moment for the student, and for me.

Have you experienced any educational failures in life? Have you had to step back and let others fail for the sake of a useful lesson?

PS: I’ll be going on holiday hiatus after next week’s post, and be back in the saddle in early January. I hope to have ARC files for A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes right after the first of the year. Wheeee!

I’m pretty sure that if not for texting, I wouldn’t hear from my thirty-five year old daughter much at all. She loves me, she misses me, she wants to keep in touch, but email and phone just don’t work for her. So I get the occasional cheery text, or short update, and sometimes we even get a little text-conversation going (I refuse to refer to it as a thread).  In an emergency, she will answer the phone if she sees it’s me, but I got word that I was to be a grandma by… text.

I dislike texting intensely. Because it’s phone-tech, it is designed to be intrusive and un-ignorable, but the actual mechanics of communication, letter by letter on a teeny screen and micro-teeny keyboard, are also tedious as heck. (Because predictive text trains AI, mine is turned off, and was even before AI for being intrusive and so frequently wrong). The back and forth of texting is stilted, and particularly in groups, gets out of sequence easily. But Millennials and younger people apparently prefer texting, so I grump along mostly in silence.

The reason many young people give for preferring texting is that they can control their content more precisely than they can with a spoken dialogue. They can choose every word, choose whether to use emojis, choose jargon or abbreviations, and how quickly to reply.They also claim that texting lets them control the timing of their communication so they contact friends when convenient for them. (Presumably not so conveniently for the friend, because to not reply to a seen text is apparently rude.) To phone without first asking by text whether the time suits is also apparently rude.

I find these reasons ridiculous as applied to friendly texts (I can tolerate practical texts along the lines of: Running 5 min late, see you soon.) If you’re going to blow up a friendship over the use of a word here or another word there, it wasn’t much of a friendship. If you think emojis are more precise and nuanced than your tone of voice and facial expressions, you delude yourself. To my mind, all the justifications for texting come down to: Communication is hard, good communication harder and even scary. We’re so afraid of each other, we’d rather tiptoe through texting than do the hard work of communication.

I can cite you study after study proving that constant texting reduces cognitive and linguistic abilities as well as productivity, that the hunched over posture we assume when using a smartphone is bad for our health and mood, that the result of all this “wonderful” connective tech is anxiety, short attention spans, more car accidents, smaller vocabularies, and people who won’t order a pizza unless they can do so by text.

I want to put a sign in my yard that smartphones are the new smoking. We have the data warning us that these devices should be approached and used with extreme caution. An IQ is a terrible thing to waste, and a decent mood just as precious. But if I want to communicate with my daughter…

What aspect of taken-for-granted life right now do you think future generations will look back on and shudder over?

Teddy–AKA Mr. Terrffic

Much to my surprise, I am coming up on the end of my first semester as an aspiring therapeutic riding instructor. I am by no means done with my apprenticeship, but I wasn’t sure I’d make it this far. I’m pausing to reflect and take stock. What have I learned these past few months? Where were my expectations upended, what do I need to focus on going forward to be the best I can at this new undertaking?

My first revelation is that the required lesson plan can be a huge distraction from learning if I allow it to be–and I have. Example: I put together a spiffy little exercise about adjusting the horse’s pace within a gait. Can the rider ask for a faster walk without breaking into the trot? A slower trot without cuing the walk? Very important skill for tuning up communication between horse and rider, ensuring reins are the proper length, and giving the student tools for maintaining safe distances when riding in a group. How wonderfully functioaln this objective is. One might even say elegant, might one not?

The lesson went along safely and the student seemed to enjoy the time in the saddle. The supervising instructor had to gently point out, though, that the student wanted to use the hour to do more independent riding, and thus the rider was without a horse leader for much of the lesson. The plain evidence right before my very eyes was… my rider was having trouble steering.

But there I was blathering away about exhaling to achieve a downward transition, and congratulating myself on keeping the lesson on track time-wise, while Mr. Very Smart Pony (Teddy) was blowing off his rider’s attempts to keep him from the middle of the arena (the universal rest stop location known to all school horses from time immemorial). Steering is kinda right up there with whoa and go in terms of basic abilities, and rather than focus on that gap in the student’s skill set, I remained determined to execute my brilliant lesson plan.

Note to self: Be more nimble Grace–adjust your pace within the teaching gaits--and pay attention to the student rather than to prioritizing the syllabus.

The other lesson I’m taking away from round one (so far) is that joy is central to the learning experience. Compulsory education ignores this truth at its peril, but the extra curriculars know it well. Nobody has to learn to play the tuba. No nine year old is required by state law to schlep out to the horse barn in the pouring down rain to work on the posting trot. Both are difficult undertakings full of set backs, frustrations, and plateaus.

The first goal of all my lessons–after safety, safety, and safety–must be providing a positive experience at the barn. If you want to improve every single measure of success at a struggling school, introduce an instrumental music program. Even the students not involved in the program will have better attendance, better grades, and fewer disciplinary incidents. My theory behind that miracle is that music teachers (art teachers, drama teachers…) know that joy must be on the syllabus, and the world has more tuba virtuosos (and high school graduates generally), and happier school cafeterias because of it.

So in addition to my spiffy, one might even say elegant, lesson plans, I will be bringing my sense of humor, my smiles, my corny jokes, and my love for all things equine to the barn. At Teddy’s suggestion, I also ordered some kazoos.

What teachers do you recall with the most respect and gratitude? What was their superpower?

PS: The audio version of Worth More Than Rubies is now available from the web store!

We finally had a hard frost, and I got to thinking about why that made me happy. What about this time of year, which most people consider dreary and chilly, gives me a predictable sense of well being?

I had to think about that, and my cogitations yielded some possibilities. First, late autumn is when the world goes quiet. The lawnmowers and weed whackers are put away. The jacked up pick-up trucks still go by with their music thumping, but their windows are closed and so, much of the time, are mine. Then too, there’s simply less traffic. More darkness means more staying home, apparently.

Another quality I enjoy about this time of year is that when the sun shines, the daylight is brighter but not hotter. I love big trees and live among them, but once the leaves fall, sunshine comes barreling down from the heavens unimpeded, and my house is actually cheerier for the trees going naked.

Then too, bye-bye bugs! And the hot tea becomes more of a special treat. If we’re having hard frost, climate change hasn’t yet ruined everything. There’s hope!

This season is also when I plant bulbs, and that is my favorite kind of gardening. Toss ’em in, wait a few months. Admire results. No watering or weeding, no waging war against the Japanese beetles or the deer. Just plant, wait, pretty. When I go out to weed the blueberry patch for the umpteenth time (because tenacious weeds came in with the big load of mulch, of course), I’m always a little resentful. All that work for a few cups of berries?! Not so with the bulbs.

I like that we get a procession of holidays, from Veteran’s Day onward through February, and I think that has all kinds of benefits. I no longer commute, but a holiday still means a day when I won’t be bothered by work emails, Zoom meetings, work texts (I despise texting, for the most part), or other interruptions. Holidays can be the best writing days, and I treasure those whenever they come.

So I like this bleak, dreary, chilly time of year quite well. My dad was no fan of cold weather whatsoever, to the point that he retired early to San Diego, and there he did stay until his earthly span was concluded some forty-two years later. Dad, who was rail thin, once told me that he loved getting into a closed-up car that had been sitting in the sun, because only then did he finally feel warm. He was serious.

And I am seriously enthralled with this time of year. I perk up, I nest, I write. I feel calmer and more at peace. I would miss the changing seasons, but I always rejoice when the first frost hits.

What is making you rejoice at this otherwise dreary time of year?

I have fallen into a pattern of wasting Saturday mornings, and that feels both good and necessary. My schedule has more structure in recent months, in part because I’m pursuing an equestrian teaching credential, and in part because I’m keeping both a romance series and a mystery series moving forward.

I’m for the most part pleased with my life, grateful for my many privileges, and enjoying my challenges, but… I get overwhelmed. Life intrudes on my plans. Health care makes demands (muttering in the direction of the peridontist’s office), the house must be at least minimally maintained. I over-schedule myself, and then come some gratuitous nights of bad sleep or some pet-upheaval.

A couple days ago, I made myself my usual “banquet” tea to the start the morning: Local honey, heavy cream, and… geez my first cup of the day tasted really weak, and then I realized I’d forgotten to put in the, um, tea bags. Twice this week, I grabbed a tube of toothpaste from beside the sink only to realize a moment later that I’d just squoze moisturizer onto my toothbrush. (The moisturize now resides on a shelf across the bathroom from the sink.)  I buzzed over to Virginia for one of my monthly Fried Pickle summits with friend Graham only to realize I’d gotten the venue, time, and day of the week correct, but the date wrong.

When I start hydroplaning like this, it’s tempting to lecture myself: “Grace, you must focus. Make some lists, my dear. Get organized. Look for efficiencies! Books do not write themselves, the trash will not levitate out the door.”

But Sister Scholastica Grace (who sounds  a lot like the Sisters of Saint Joseph who taught at Our Lady of Victory school) is off the mark on this one. Right now, for whatever reason, I am like the kid who is getting good-enough grades and who generally does her chores without much (loud) complaining. What I need now is to watch cartoons for a few hours. I will get to my weekend chores, I will take out the trash, but to re-connect with myself, and to rest the weary parts of me, I need a Saturday morning where I play a dozen games of Solitaire BEFORE I try to be productive.

I need to collect the last of the dahlias, to let a day go by when I schedule nothing, control nothing, and–be strong, Grace Ann–accomplish nothing. Why is this so hard? Yes, some anxiety and negative emotions might bubble up if I reduce my RPMs, but so will some consolations, silver linings, and new perspectives. I might figure out why the Earl of Dunhaven won’t declare himself to the woman he has long adored.

Or I might let just one day slip through my fingers. I do fear that one slack day will turn into a  hundred, but never before in all my born days has that happened. The probability of banana-peeling my way into an abyss now is not great.

So I will be figuratively watching cartoons this Saturday, wandering around in the yard, dipping into Dick Francis in the afternoon (oh, the decadence), and getting absolutely nothing done.

Does anybody else reply to the inner nuns with this strategy? They mean well, those nuns, but truly, I need time to pick me some yard flowers.

PS: Lord Julian’s holiday mystery, A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe, is now available from the usual suspects and the web store. It’s a little early for Yuletide tales, but never too soon for a fun whodunit!

When I am queen, the US campaign cycle will be shortened to 60 days, period. Our British friends manage to get all contrary and polarized with campaigns conducted in 25 working days (you read that right). They have snarky town halls, divisive memes, public mud-slinging with all the trimmings, and seem mostly content with how their abbreviated campaign window works.

The Brits even require equal coverage of opposing candidates on commercial media without any sign of this resulting in the end of the world (we used to have the same requirement, quaintly referred to as the Fairness Doctrine). If you want to read more about the UK alternatives to spending billions on campaign ads, this article is a little dated, but offers a good summary.

I am weary of politics, anxious about the election, and ashamed of what we’ve allowed our political rhetoric to do to our sense of neighborliness and community. I am not queen of a big enough world to do much about all that, but I am the queen of me.

In that capacity, I have issued a few royal proclamations recently. The first of which says that after listing my five specific gratitudes at the end of the day, I get to listen to three songs. Music is about the best tonic for preserving neuroplasticity, aced out only by the combination of music and dance. Music can elevate mood, reduce blood pressure, reduce heart rate, and boost memory, for starts.  So I’m signing off with the good stuff–Huey Lewis, Dave Brubeck, Creedence, the Pointer Sisters, Vivaldi, Phil Collins, and one of my favorites, Rostropovich conducting the NSO in The Stars and Stripes Forever in Moscow. (Or if guitar is more your thing, this version by acoustic soloist Doug Smith is jaw-dropping.)

I am donating to a charity of my choice (different ones), every day in November. Not a lot, but enough to remind me that I’m not powerless. Compared to a lot of people on this earth, I DO live like a queen. Twenty bucks can buy fifteen pounds of rice, which cooks up to nearly a hundred servings. Thanks to my readers, I have that to donate, and really, much of the benefit of generosity lands on the giver rather than receiver.

I am planting my Holland bulbs. They are the easiest of yard flowers. No weeding, no watering, no fertilizing even (the first couple years). I put in a bag of daffodils and it reminds me, “Spring will arrive, flowers will bloom.” I also like the idea that anybody who drives by my house next March will get to see some cheery blooms, and of course, gardening is good for both physical health and mood.

So I’m doing what I know to do (in addition to binging the books of the late Dick Francis), and I think it’s helping me be less fretful and unsteady. I am not changing the course of the universe, but I am putting aside the doom-scrolling for small actions that have meaning for me and keep me focused on the good and the constructive, of which there is much in this life.

How do you batten down the hatches when the winds of worry threaten to blow your house down?