“Mainly Jane” Lives!

April 26, 2018

I know, I know. It’s been forever since I posted here. Forgive me. I kept meaning to, and this post is swiped from the newsletter to subscribers I mailed out recently so it’s sort of cheating, but life continued to get in the way of a real post. The big news is I’m moving. (Gulp!) My husband Michael and I sold our house in Litchfield County, Connecticut, an area we love and intend to visit in the summers, but we didn’t love winter in the Northeast. At first we thought we’d try being snowbirds and spent the past five months in St. Petersburg, Florida. It turned out St. Pete is fabulous! The beaches and Gulf of Mexico are gorgeous, no surprise, but it’s the downtown area that blew us away. What a vibrant, lively, culturally rich, “hip and happening” place! From museums to restaurants, St. Pete is walkable, easy to navigate and right on beautiful Tampa Bay – plus my Yankees play their spring training games right across the Bay in Tampa. We were captivated and decided to make St. Pete our primary residence. Next month, we’ll be moving into a condo overlooking the Bay until we figure out where to buy. It’s on Snell Isle, just over a charming bridge from downtown, and the view from our place is spectacular. I’ve never been a “condo person,” having lived in houses since my youthful apartment years in Manhattan, but I’m looking forward to letting someone else handle maintenance problems, not to mention making new friends down at the pool.

The view from our sixth floor balcony

National Women’s Health Week in D.C.

But life won’t be all sun and fun and tennis (I’m playing again after a long layoff). In the middle of our move, I’ll be taking a quick trip to Washington, D.C. to participate in National Women’s Health Week. Invited by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, whose mission is to enhance the health of people worldwide through its support of medical care and research at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem, I’ll be speaking on a caregiving panel on May 16th as part of Hadassah’s Women’s Health Empowerment Summit – a huge honor for me. Hadassah will promote my appearance by selling copies of You’d Better Not Die or I’ll Kill you: A Caregiver’s Survival Guide to Keeping You in Good Health and Good Spirits. I’m excited to be on a dais with many well regarded experts in the caregiving field, and I hope I can spread the word about how essential it is that caregivers take care of our own health as well as that of our loved ones. Having a husband with a chronic illness and a mother who suffered from dementia, I know whereof I speak. If you’re caring for a loved one with a chronic or progressive illness, please do check out the book and please take care of you!

A New Book on the Horizon

As for my next book, it’ll be nonfiction and it’ll be a kind of a bookend to the caregiving guide – i.e. it’ll deal with what happens after the caregiving ends. The subject of death and dying is in the zeitgeist these days, and I intend to tackle it with the same candor, humor and personal storytelling I deployed for You’d Better Not Die. It will focus on my mother – our relationship, my sense of loss when she “disappeared” from my life and, here’s the biggie, whether those who’ve passed on are still with us in some form. The book will explore my efforts to communicate with my mother after her death and explain how others can connect with those they’ve lost. It will detail my spiritual and emotional journey in the tradition of books like Wild and Eat, Pray, Love, and I can only hope it’ll find as wide a readership as those narratives did.

My mother and I at my wedding in Ridgefield, CT

A Beautiful Day

Speaking of weddings, Michael and celebrated our 25th anniversary this past fall by having a very informal renewal of our vows at our Connecticut house. It was just the two of us and a photographer, but it was very special. I ordered the same bouquet, headpiece and boutonniere we wore 25 years before, and we exchanged moving words of love and commitment. Tears were shed, but there were laughs, too. A beautiful, beautiful day for us.

Scenes from our special day

A New Romantic Comedy

And finally, for those asking for another romantic comedy, yes, there will be one. I love the genre, always will, even as it falls in and out of fashion. So whether I bring back Elaine, Jackie and Pat from Three Blonde Mice and Princess Charming or come up with a totally new set of characters and hijinks, my goal will be the same: to entertain and take you away from the daily grind.

And while I’m on that subject, there are rumblings from Hollywoodland that two of my romantic comedies are drawing movie/TV interest again. Nothing concrete to report, but I’ll shout from the rooftops if there’s a deal!

Meantime, stay in touch by emailing me, visiting my web site or reaching out on Facebook and Twitter. I love hearing from you.

More next time!

Jane

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

July 25, 2013

Yesterday I spent the day with my old friend Lois Juliber. I hadn’t seen her in years because I live on the west coast and she lives on the east coast and we lead very different lives these days. When I was a New Yorker, she and I played tennis every weekend in the summer and spent memorable evenings with our husbands and other friends and it was great fun. Now I’m holed up in my home office in California writing and she’s traveling the world. The former VP of General Foods and Vice Chairman of Colgate-Palmolive (we’re talking about one of the highest-ranking women in corporate America), she now either chairs or sits on multiple boards. In between trips to Uganda, she plays a mean game of golf and has played the world’s best courses. Yesterday we met up and caught up and talked for hours. At times she was making me awestruck with tales of moving in circles I couldn’t fathom. At other times she was “just Lois,” telling me with pride that she has all the hardcover copies of my books displayed at her house. It was a lovely day.

As have been so many other days during my month in Connecticut. I’ve had laughs with old publishing pals and have reunited with one of my closest friends from summer camp. I’ve seen cousins I rarely get to see. And I’ve spent time with my mother, who came to California for her 96th birthday but rarely ventures out of New York.

So with only a week to go on my summer vacation, it’s with a wistfulness that I go about the rest of the trip. The weather has turned cool – kind of strange for July – and I slept with all the covers on for the first time since I got here. Maybe it’s telling me it’s time to go home. Or am I home? Hard to tell right now.

Summer In Connecticut Means This

July 7, 2013

Spending the month of July in Washington, CT in beautiful, bucolic Litchfield County, has become a tradition and there’s nothing I don’t love about it except the mosquitoes, which love me as much as I despise them (and I’ve got the bites to prove it).

California is home now, no question, but there will always be a pull toward the east coast where I was born and raised and still have family and friends. Besides, while others complain about the heat and humidity, they’re just fine with me. I’m always cold in California and in Connecticut I can go sweater-less and enjoy it.

One of the best reasons for coming east is to head over to the Bridgewater Village Market for pie. And I don’t just mean any old pie. I mean pie as in the best crust, the best fruit, the best everything I’ve ever tasted. We had their blueberry pie on July 4th and it was as heavenly as ever. I don’t know how they get it right every single time, but they do.

I’ve already had my share of corn on the cob too, plus swordfish straight from Maine. (The best fish purveyor around these parts is a guy with a fish truck that he parks on Route 7 in New Milford; he drives down from Maine all night so he can sell fresh fish and seafood from the truck – he’s known as “the fish guy.”)

Swimming is another pleasure that’s exclusive to my visit here. I never swim in California. Too cold. But here I plunge right in and it feels great.

The only bad thing about my month here is that it’s just that: a month. Much too short.