Day 1 of my Spring Break: Harrisburg, Pa., and Gaithersburg, Md.

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

Eva and I are traveling to Washington, D.C., so that I may grab a flight to Dublin with my traveling companion M on Wednesday.

M. and I have not traveled in about a decade, and this is probably the first time we are traveling someplace where they are not shooting each other.

But that’s another story.

Eva is on spring break and for some strange, serendipitous reason, she has no pet clients this weekend. She’s exhausted after finishing her home renovation project on our hallway.

I could have taken Amtrak from Philly to D.C., as a matter of fact that is how I am getting home. But Eva wanted to visit D.C., and thought it might be nice to visit the National Zoo. She had hoped she could introduce her boyfriend to our friends in D.C. but he is traveling to a welding competition.

Now, Eva didn’t want to make the 3.5 hour one-way trip to D.C. and then turned around a few hours later and drive home alone.

But we learned none of our friends would be home Saturday until late.

So we booked a room at the Doubletree in Gaithersburg, MD, basically because they had a breakfast, an indoor/outdoor pool and who doesn’t love the warm cookies?

And Eva never had the warm cookie experience.

So at 9:30 we checked the old in the car– she’s an old girl and has been acting a tad funny lately about her oil. It disappears and then reappears. Maybe she has some build-up. We know she’s burning some… but to be safe, we check her often. And today we checked her cool in the flat garage

She looked good. But we have oil with us just in case.

We headed to Sheetz, and by then I already needed to pee. Eva put gas in the car. I hoped to find the cookies and cream puff things but every since I decided to try them, they never have that flavor.

Next, we went to Grocery Outlet. I need my famous $7 pen set. This cheap set of gel pens comes in a plastic case and I love them. Each set lasts about 6 months before my favorite colors start running out.

Meanwhile, Eva was in charge of road trip snacks. She selected:

  • 2 C4 energy drinks in zero sugar, very fruity flavors. I find these are easier to stomach than coffee or soda when temperature can not be maintained. Plus we both like them so we can share, and save space in the cupholders.
  • A present for someone’s birthday that has nothing to do with this trip
  • sunglasses
  • A massive can of bar mix nuts
  • A fairly big box of those nutty buddy style wafer bars that Little Debbie makes but instead they were made by Nature Valley and trying to be fancy. 20 of them.
  • A bag of beef jerky– some plain, some ranch, some buffalo, all mixed in one bag

We were on the road by 10.

Around 11, we got a phone call– the dog had bit the neighbor and the neighbor went to the ER. Now, it was a minor bite, but it broke skin, and the neighbor wanted to make sure he didn’t need shots/antibiotics. But that’s another story. But it sure did put a stressful spin on the next couple hours.

At 11:30, we arrived at Midtown Scholar Books, once voted bookstore of the year by Publisher Weekly. See my review here on the Parisian Phoenix blog. (It was $4.35 to park for 90 minutes in downtown Harrisburg.)

Eva had a doctor appointment via Zoom at noon so she took that in the car and then we visited Broad Street Market. Apparently, oldest market in America in continuous operation. We weren’t hungry– all those road trip snacks but they had all kinds of ethnic food from Chinese (I think) to Korean, Jamaican to African.

1 p.m. We crossed the state line into Maryland while on the phone with Larry Sceurman.

At 2:10 we arrived at Doubletree Washington DC North in Gaithersburg MD (about 40 minutes from M’s house). We got our cookies and our parking pass. We didn’t really need our keys because I used Hilton’s digital check-in, chose my room and they had emailed me that it was ready and activated my digital key which I can use from my phone.

I picked a room on the end of the lower level, away from any noise but fairly close to the indoor/outdoor pool.

And there’s a frozen yogurt vending machine in the lobby.

Panera and CVS are within a third of a mile and there’s a food truck in the shady looking parking lot across the street that has good reviews on Google Maps. I wonder what time they open in the morning… They don’t… the internet says they are closed Sundays. I might have to head out there tonight…

Eva and I went to Habit Burger and Grill because it was three-in-the-afternoon and we were hungry but not insanely hungry and while it is a chain, it’s not one we knew. I saw it had a free self-serve pepper bar with jalapenos, banana peppers and pepperocini. So we had to investigate.

I had a nice fish sandwich and limeade.

We came back to the hotel and I did some stuff for the business while Eva did some schoolwork. We plan to go swimming tonight.

The Hallway Renovation

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

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 Write Stuff 2026 recap

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

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 Sheena
Gayle, 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.

Great date

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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.)

Two months, seriously? And a GLVWG conference

Angel Ackerman 2 Comments

Two months.

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.

Broken Thumb

Angel Ackerman 3 Comments

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.

(For more info on my hospitalization in 2023, click here.)

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.

Playing my favorite game: ER or urgent care?

Angel Ackerman 2 Comments

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.

So I guess we’ll have more updates tomorrow.

The misadventures with the curb that hates me (and the anniversary of my father’s death)

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

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.

Or maybe he was with me all along.

Elite Menagerie Habitats, Pen Argyl (Pa.)

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

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.

various fish from Elite Menagerie Habitats, Pen Argyl, PA

The finger and the feast

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

Maybe the title is a misnomer.

There is no feast, but I like alliteration.

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.

[If you would like to learn more about mallet finger: here is the blog entry about my um… accident… where I sustained an injury removing my socks. This is the entry about meeting with the orthopedic specialist.]

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.