Last week, while I was at The Write Stuff writers conference hosted by The Greater Lehigh Writers Group, my daughter and her boyfriend embarked on a project to refinish my upstairs hallway.
Our house is nearly 100 years old and the walls are lath, plaster and horse hair. Everything in this house has settled, leading to bubbles everywhere. There are patches from all the trouble we’ve had getting stuff up and down the stairs.
Eva pulled out all the plaster the first day.
Her boyfriend put up drywall the next.
Then, she spent a day spreading joint compound, followed by her boyfriend sanding.
Then a day of painting, and a day of stripping paint from the molding.
Then, painting the molding.
And wallpaper.
And trim.
And laying down the new rug.
Which her boyfriend kept getting splinters so she bought the rug which spurred the whole six day project.
Otherwise known as how Eva spent her spring break.
It looks amazing. And she never hung wallpaper before.
I peeked inside the drop ceiling over the stairs when a piece of the tile had slid. Eva took them all out so I could get a good look at the cavernous space.
The ceiling and trim are pristine.
And that is all above my head over the stairs. It’s huge.
I asked if we could fix it up and leave it exposed and the boyfriend said, “All you need is an extension ladder and a couple of OSHA violations.”
The 2026 Write Stuff conference featured Kristin Bair O’Keefe as the keynote, kicking off with a full day workshop Thursday and two half-day each sessions with Donna Galanti (middle-grade author) and publisher at Sunbury Press, Lawrence Knorr, on Friday.
Even though I am in my third consecutive term as president of the host organization Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group. member of the conference committee, and the creator and organizer of our Friday night Genre Chats networking event, I could not afford to attend all three days. I was not the only one among the board and conference committee who had this problem.
My daughter had given me money for Christmas to get a hotel room at the venue, which proved a relaxing treat indeed (and one she enjoyed by taking a dip in the pool for an hour when she dropped me off).
Saturday registration includes Friday night activities: the Genre Chats networking event, our signature Page Cuts critique sessions where attendees can have their first pages anonymously critiqued by the conference presenters, and an evening social with an impressive spread of hummus, olives, vegetables, fruit and cheese (and a cash bar).
The Saturday sessions kicked off at 8:15 a.m. with three simultaneous presentations to cover different aspects of writing. This year topics ranged from creative-nonfiction to humor, characters to queries, and information on queries, genres and word counts. We offered individual appointments with a fiction agent, Ronald Gerber, who possessed a quick wit and knowledgeable demeanor, and nonfiction niche agent Kelly Bergh, who despite her relative youth had a comprehensive understanding of the industry and the ability to convey information in a relatable fashion.
After two morning sessions, we returned to the main ballroom for a lunch of salmon or filet mignon while Kristin presented a keynote celebrating the lifesaving powers of the maker-uppers. Gayle Hendricks attended the event as Parisian Phoenix author Larry Sceurman recently had a knee replaced and could not use his seat. She found the sessions on creative non-fiction relatable to both her life experience and her career as a graphic designer.
At the end of the day, we participated in the book fair, showing off our Parisian Phoenix titles.
Angel and SheenaGayle, Eva Parry, and Allison Stein
It was also our first time using our new tablecloth, which looked very pink, in the best way possible. And our new friend and author Sheena Stimpfl stopped by with her daughter to present me with a special gift– a custom bookmark.
So, that’s some of the official notes… but a conference like that is also full of connecting with friends, finding renewed inspiration, and perhaps even finding oneself with a drink ticket or two and whiskey sours made by a bartender who wrote a nonfiction book about overcoming mental health issues and trauma.
It’s about learning more about people you’ve known for a long time… And sometimes you find a book about finding freedom from demonic possession on Friday the 13th in the stall in the ladies’ room.
I also had time to chat with Andy Laties, the owner of Book and Puppet Company. And I even found occasions where I was able to trade for books.
In the lobby over hotel breakfast– where I ate more fruits and vegetables than I have in a month– I chatted with other attendees enjoying a custom-made spinach omelet, but I never had the downtime I had hoped for to proofread my manuscript for Absolution now that Gayle had laid it out.
Because I review so many books on Amazon, and use reviews as a way to maintain my own memory of things I ordered online, Amazon invited me to be a product reviewer several years ago.
I do my best to take my work seriously, and today I wrote a review I enjoyed reading.
(If you are here looking for more information on the writer’s conference that concluded yesterday, that’s what I’ve been trying to write when I got hungry and sidetracked by adjwa dates.)
Hard to believe that a small fruit can travel halfway around the world into my mouth… I love dates, and a good medjool date is my favorite. Or so I thought. So as someone who occasionally suffers from anemia, I love incorporating dates into my diet for the iron. As someone who loves sugary candy, dates are the perfect food to compensate for those sweet cravings. I had never had an ajwa date. At first, the small size intimidated me. The pit-to-date ratio was more pit than fruit, but once I tried the date, the sweetness and texture surprised me in the best way. They were chewy and firm enough to have a great mouth feel, and also properly giving and moist. Each one turned out to be the perfect bite-sized treat. The package is gorgeous and provides information about the type of date itself, the nutritional information and the company information. These are highly specialty dates cultivated in a certain region of Saudi Arabia (Medina), so it’s more like buying a specialty imported cheese or wine than a simple fruit. In that way, the price seems reasonable. (Think of it like “champagne” technically only refers to sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France or the cheese from the caves of Roquefort.)
It has been more than two months since I wrote a blog entry.
Now I’ve maintained my weekly Substack and done a multitude of other projects in that time but two months…
And that is pretty much how long it took my thumb to heal, and for the emergency room bill to come in.
But right now I am sitting in a hotel room at the Homewood Suites by Hilton, enjoying my second whiskey sour of the evening. It’s the middle of The Write Stuff conference hosted by the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group. Normally I might say that this is the closest to vacation that I come, but I am headed to Dublin at the end of the month.
At home, Eva is working hard on removing the plaster from the walls of the hallway in our 100-year-old house.
In 2023, I had two falls close together (two bouts tumbling down the stairs in two weeks) and in general, I tend to fall more in winter (and not even outoor falls due to weather and ice). These two factors and my hospitalization with AFib after my falls in 2023 led me to go to the emergency room yesterday because of my fall at lunch time on Wednesday.
I just wanted to make sure that this fall didn’t lead to a sequence of falls.
In similar cautiousness, today I visited my old ortho practice from when I broke my ankle in 2016. That’s the infamous “I broke my ankle and went to the Chinese buffet before heading to urgent care for an x-ray” incident. Read more about that here.
I felt silly, because my injury is pretty minor compared to other orthopedic cases. The ER told me that if it didn’t feel better in two weeks to follow up with ortho.
But I know from past breaks that the first two weeks is when the healing really solidifies and if it heals wrong, I would have more problems. And I wanted better direction on how to splint it, a better splint, and confirmation it was broken.
It is. In two places in the knuckle.
This is my right hand. At this point only one finger of my right hand has not been screwed up in some capacity.
And the doctor seemed to agree with my fastidiousness. He gave me a better splint and some first aid tape and told me to come back in four weeks for a follow up and new x-rays. His assistant gave me some Coban tape and some buddy strips for the splint.
I have a high-deductible insurance plan and I do not have an HSA, so I know I will pay more than I want to for this, but it’s my dominant hand and I need it to work.
Yesterday, in a strange turn of events, I had a fall. More of a trip.
But let’s back up. Remember that tire incident from my last post? The day after that post (which was not the same day as the incident) I came down with an ailment that still has me congested and softly coughing.
I have to wonder if I had COVID.
It’s only been the last few days that I’ve felt myself. And that might contribute to the perfect storm that put me in this position.
I forgot to take my baclofen yesterday and all I had before I went to pick up Nan for our errands was coffee and a couple Munchkins. (With Eva on vacation, those of us left behind had to take the dog to the Dunkin Drive Thru window.) I even forgot to take my blood pressure.
When I got home, it was probably 11:40. I had coffee from Panera and groceries in the car, as well as some plastic bins from the dollar store to organize the deep freezer.
I brought the coffee in first and got the dog out of the crate. The backyard had a lot of dog poo, and I wasn’t sure she peed.
So I put on her collar and her prong, leashed her up and checked for dogs and people. We went across the yard.., and the mailman popped off a porch four houses down.
I had not put on my hands-free, waist, back-up leash. So I dropped to my knees to better control the dog lunging at the mail carrier. I got her settled (the dog, not the mail lady) and put her back in the house.
I went to the store to get the items from the dollar store. The mail lady approached me to give me the mail. I accepted it, placing it in the large-ish plastic basin containing all the items from the dollar store.
I turned, got my foot caught on the dog’s outdoor place stay, and fell. I fell with a bit of a twist, landing both on my stuff and on my right thumb.
Assymmetry percentage
I landed on the sidewalk and along the steps.
I smashed the basin. It never even made it into the house.
The fall probably happened around 12:20. My watch didn’t register it as a hard fall, probably because the basin broke my fall and prevented more serious injury.
The thumb hurt but it moved well, so I took my Baclofen, had some lunch and sat down for a while. My phone suggested my gait had been awful that day.
Thumb directly after accident
At 5 p.m., I did a shift as the front counter bagger at Chick-Fil-A. 4 hours.
Had dinner. Came home. Went to bed.
Woke suddenly in the middle of the night. My thumb hurt and it was bending less than it was earlier. I went back to sleep, planning to go to urgent care in the morning. The recycling truck came around at a bit after 4 a.m., woke me, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I decided that even though I got less than five hours sleep I would just get up.
When I looked at my phone, I noticed a series of notifications. Apparently, my heart rate had been high while I was sleeping. Since I had that afib incident after my falls in 2023, I did an ecg on my phone. It was fine.
I headed for the bathroom. And as soon as I opened my bedroom door, I had to fight not to urinate on myself. With no warning. As I got closer to the bathroom, it was harder not to lose control– and in the end I didn’t really make it.
Thumb in the ER
Now my thumb would not bend at all.
I began to wonder: Do I have too many complexities for Urgent Care? With my disability and my heart history…
At 5:30 a.m., I decided to bite the bullet and walk to the ER.
A ten-lead echocardiogram was normal. Thumb shows a possible chip fracture.
I came home and called my neurologist, who is also a physiatrist, leaving a message in case she wanted to see me since I had a weird combination of symptoms. The person who assisted me asked me all sorts of questions.
While on hold with their office, I looked up the number for the Institute for Hand and Upper Extremity Rehabilitaton. I have worked with their therapists for two of my previous finger injuries on my right hand. They are now closed.
The person on the line with me from the neurologist’s office suggested I call the orthopedic specialist, especially since it’s the same doctor whom I consulted with when I broke my ankle ten years ago. The ER advised I call them if it got worse or did not improve.
But I would like to confirm whether or not it is broken and get a better treatment plan than this huge, cheap splint the ER gave me.
The person on the phone at the ortho’s office assured me that it was smart to be seen, right away, versus waiting for time to pass. She even had a cancellation for tomorrow morning.
On Thursday night, I left my very part-time job exhausted. Eva had asked me to come pick her up at her father’s so he wouldn’t have to leave home again. I made a wrong turn on the drive I’ve made 1,000 times– and almost got lost.
I wasn’t wearing my good glasses. I didn’t have my readers and the perscription was a couple years older than my current one, but they were the glasses that best matched my outfit and I didn’t expect to be driving outside of my normal routine.
And then I reached the hill at the intersection 13th, West Lafayette Street and Bushkill Drive.
I hit the curb at this intersection fairly often; I think a lot of people do. Knock on wood– it’s the only thing I usually hit.
I last hit the curb in September 2024, causing a bad flat. This was about two days after I drove by myself from Atlanta home in one day, 13 hours! Without incident.
I couldn’t have been going that fast because I’m fairly certain I had stopped at the light. But somehow I not only hit the curb, I think I drove over it.
The tire pretty much exploded.
I pulled onto the side of the road and texted my daughter to contact AAA. She and her father came and Eva attempted to change the tire herself, and she got all the nuts off. But she didn’t have a good enough jack for a car parked on ice on a hill. And she didn’t chock the wheels.
So after the car almost rolled over her arm, we waited for AAA.
Eva took the car to Mavis the next day and as we knew, the tire was shot. But we… no, I mean I… bent the wheel rim.
I called the Volkswagen dealership and they said it would take 4 days to get the part. And I thought to myself, I have a 2015 Jetta. There’s got to be a million of them in junkyards with perfectly good wheels.
That was my dad’s voice.
So Eva called the Hubcap store, and an hour later we found ourselves in West Easton in their industrial park facing a perimeter-guarding goose and an ominous gate.
If you look at the photo, there’s a small triangular roof behind the garages. That’s where we needed to go.
And the building had a sign up at the crown of the roof but not on the door.
And when we walked in, they had our Jetta wheel rim on the floor. It was $175. I had $100 cash in my wallet that I intended to take to the bank and put the other $75 on my Amex.
And then Eva went to Mavis and made an appointment to get the wheel mounted the next day.
And then we had a snowstorm. Which Eva handled like a champ with our crappy spare tire
Eva returned to Mavis the next day and two tires (another tire had a bubble) and $415 later we had all four tires again.
Now it’s almost midnight on Monday, on the day by dad died four years ago, and I find myself wanting to tell him so badly:
You didn’t even have to tell me and I found a wheel rim for my car.
I woke up feeling rather neutral on a dreary November day. I’m drowning in work– not uncommon for a small business owner– and keep receiving less-than-ideal news. The news is nothing worth complaining about, but certainly adds to my metaphorical plate.
I had promised a friend I would accompany him to the fish store today. The fish store turned out to be Elite Menagerie Habitats on Main Street in Pen Argyl, Pa., which is more or less my old stomping grounds, the Slate Belt.
The visit certainly improved my mood as I experienced awe and wonder at the variety of her tanks and the vibrancy and health of her fish. The care and passion she has for her stock is evident.
Now, my husband and I made some attempts at keeping fish many moons ago (and we named them all after Muppets) so I do know a bit about how much devotion and knowledge it takes to keep a healthy aquarium. Part of me would love to keep a tank again, for the relaxation and meditation angle of it, but I don’t have the time, patience, or resources to be a good aquarium caretaker.
For more information about Elite Menagerie Habitats, this is their website. And I am posting this is hopes that perhaps other people might wish to support her and her small business. Because small business is hard.
I went to the hospital yesterday for a specialty diagnostic ultrasound of the middle finger of my right hand. I’ve been having issues with it for six months. There were about four instances, about once a month where when I reached for something, it felt like the finger exploded and I screamed out. The pain only lasted 20-30 seconds, but the whole experience reminded me of when I had a mallet finger on the neighboring ring finger. And I keep expecting to see that finger drooping.
And every time I move the top of my finger independently of my other fingers, it clicks. Not painfully, but it’s noticeable. It’s just weird.
Today I had to go to St Lukes Bethlehem, which is the main urban campus of the hospital network because if the specialty nature of the ultrasound. I did not know that the parking deck was under construction. And for the first time in my life, I had to use valet parking. I technically had enough time to look for parking in the neighborhoods near the hospital but… I thought that stress would be higher than just using the valet service.
I checked in at the kiosk, and thinking about it now I never had the chance to check if my Able Pay was on my file because I will be paying for this test out of pocket. I have a high deductible medical plan and I have about $1,200 left of my $3,500 annual individual deductible. Able Pay gets me a discount on procedures and offers me interest-free payment plans.
Of course they asked if I might have had a fall and I had to tell them, “Of course I might have had a fall, but not one I can connect to this problem.”
The test itself involved the doctor and the radiologist– and the doctor could feel my clicking finger. BUT because of the nature of the click, remember it only happens if the finger is acting independently, he couldn’t get an image of it. The way he held my finger to get the image prevented the click. OR he couldn’t get the ultrasound into the proper place at the right time.
He found fluid around the joint, but he couldn’t say whether or not it caused or was related to the click. And he couldn’t see anything wrong.
He said he could “grill me” longer and keep trying weird things to take the image, but we both decided it wasn’t necessary. If he didn’t see anything structurally worrying AND I no longer have the pain– then I’m satisfied.
My neurologist asked if I wanted to see a hand specialist as a next step to examine the inflammation. I said no, unless the pain returns.
In the meantime, influenced by my experience at the Hindu temple and my recent overeating/ weight gain, I have done an impressive (in my opinion) job removing animal products and artificial sweeteners from my diet. I am working to reduce caffeine consumption but that has not been as successful.
So far this week, I have had no meat, milk only in my coffee, two servings of cheese, and I may have consumed eggs in baked goods that I did not make. But the main baked good in question is packaged gingerbread cookies that came from Grocery Outlet. They are GMO-free and I have eaten four small cookies (which comes out to one per day).
The scale is three pounds down, which might be because I moved the scale and this is an old house. I am also surprised that my protein levels have still been hitting 60-80 grams a day.
Eliminating animal products and artificial sweeteners is a great way to be mindful about eating. Sure, I want to promote preserving resources and eliminate animal suffering, but there is less food noise to contend with if you start with the vegan options and ask “will one of these work?” and the bonus is that I end up getting more fiber and meeting my fruit and vegetable goals because plant-based non-manufactured foods are often the most nutrient dense.
Today I visit the ENT to set up an old lady hearing test.
When I was in college at what is now Moravian University, we had to take several religion classes to fulfill our liberal arts requirements. We had to take one on the Bible, and I took Old Testament. For one of my world culture religious requirements, I took Religions of China and Japan, where I learned about Confucianism, Taosim and Zen Buddhism.
My daughter, now at Lafayette College, also a liberal arts institution, has taken several religion classes because it seems to be the only department with courses open when her class year registers. And unlike her parents– she has no interest in English classes. She also can’t take classes at lunch time because of her dog walk clients, and she would prefer not to take any more classes with labs.
This semester, she has two religion classes, an astronomy class (space math) and a class in her major department on psychiatric diagnoses. Her two religion classes are Religion in World Cultures and Anthropology of Religion. For her world cultures class, she has to visit a religious site/service and write a reflection paper.
Some members of her class are visiting the local mosque. Not us. During the summer, I had seen a video or some social media post about BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham North America. I was pretty sure the TikTok algorithm suggested it. I showed it to Eva because I thought then it would make a fun road trip– simply because of the architecture.
We watched the orientation video that discussed the basics of their beliefs and the construction of the campus– which began around 2011 on 185 acres, took 12,500 volunteers and was more or less completed in 2023. The limestone was carved in India and shipped to the United States where it was reassembled “like a giant jigsaw puzzle.”
Even without reflecting on the spiritual spaces on the campus, their design includes so many statues, people, animals, and even hands and feet (as a sacred connection to the divine).
Our first stop was the mandir where we joined a prayer ceremony. Shoes off and divided into men and women, we sat on the heated marble floor in silence. The chants and prayers were familiar to the Hindus in the audience who joined in with strong voices and rhythmic claps as the leaders (monks? swamis?) in orange performed gestures before the (shrines?).
This was my first time experiencing anything Hindu, and I apologize for mixing up the words regarding the leaders, the representations of the Holy, and whatever instruments they used for the prayer ceremony we attended. I do understand and appreciate that touring the campus is an exercise in personal spirituality and a journey into the divine.
Swaminarayan refers to the type of Hindu faith and Akshardham means large temple.
And the architecture of the Akshardham in New Jersey follows the guidelines from Hindu scriptures, including an 80-foot spire that reminds those viewing it of the search for higher truth and the divine.
Let me repeat that I know nothing about Hinduism, but I did buy some books today: Hindu Vegetarianism, Hindu FAQs and Hindu Funeral Rites. So, hopefully this will spark a journey. I marveled at the expansive statues in the Akshardham and compared them to Christian stained glass window, as a way to share with the illiterate population the tenets of the faith. (And I loved the reminder that feet connect to the ground and the spiritual.)
The campus itself was beautifully landscaped and organized and moved people from place to place, maintaining order yet allowing everyone freedom to explore. Everything– from the statues to the levels of the water feature in the front of the grounds (symbolizing purity and the sacred rivers of India)– had symbolic meaning.
After we perused the grounds, the buildings, and even the construction timeline, we visited the food shop. And we bought a bunch of snacks to bring home (mango cookies, cashew fudge among them).
Then, we hit the food court. I wish we had a paper menu I could share with you. Eva had a saucy cheese street dish (Pav Bhaji) with toasted rolls, a mango lassi, a fruit drink AND a cup of hot masala chai. I had the cauliflower (Gobi Manchurian) and a odd little cookie coated with saffron (Kesar Vati).
We spent $20 in the gift shop, $20 in the snack shop and $40 on lunch.
The scents of incense, tastes of good vegetarian Indian street food, warm floors beneath our feet, exquisite art surrounding us, welcoming staff and volunteers, beautiful chants and prayers, and the deep spiritual vibe made the day an enlightening adventure.
Angel Ackerman 