Kitchen toys are great fun.

My favorite has to be my Cuisinart coffee maker. This would be because, without coffee, there is no existence. My shiny friend grinds the beans every pot. I load it the night before so that a mere push of the button is all that is necessary for life to flow back into my shivering, semi-comatose body every morning.

I also like my timer that looks like a skull. Very Hamlet.

There’s also my avocado knife, egg slicer, the pan for cooking ladies’ fingers, a device for making tortilla salad bowls … the list goes on. I love to cook. More specifically, I love to accumulate cooking gear (not that I have room for it in my closet-sized kitchen). I have been known to carry on long-distance communications regarding the acquisition of the right frying pan (which was just right, in case you read this, o cousin mine).

A new city means finding new cooking shops and when I discovered Sur la Table on a visit to Portland, well, it was a love match. I got the cutest bright red colander, just the right size for a few cups of blueberries. How could I leave it behind?

Why does this stuff turn me on? I think because a) I like food and b) the kitchen is symbolic of well-being. Parties end up in the kitchen. Togetherness happens around a table. It’s warm and bright and nurturing. It’s only natural to equip it with amusing, useful, and sometimes just indulgent doodads.

My current home improvement project is to put in a stainless steel backsplash, which is going to make the work area look 100% better given the current surface is old, peeling wallpaper. I’m taking before and after pictures. I’ve left the kitchen upgrade until last because of the disruption involved, but it may be the one I appreciate the most!

Has anyone else redone their kitchens? Any words of advice or war stories?

As I’ve thought about the “what do I want from 2011” subject, I’ve found it hard to narrow my wish list down to one thing. I’ve been in the land of big goals for the last few years, and I have achieved many of them. Yay for me. Unfortunately, that comes at the price of a lot of other things, usually those small grace notes that make life more than an act of survival.

I’m not talking huge stuff. I’m thinking of afternoons on the couch reading, time to sort through my collection of movies, or hours spent idling in a garden centre wondering if pink petunias would look better next to celosia or thrift. In other words, all that fun and variety we tend to forego when faced with monumental goals, such as making an unreasonable book deadline (And let’s be honest—when faced with that due date, they all seem unreasonable.)

Ironically, not only do those idle hours provide R&R, they also afford the opportunity to push the envelope. Just as big projects tend to jettison that afternoon spent getting a pedicure, they also squash any chance a writer might have to develop whacky ideas. There isn’t the time to make up stuff for the sheer joy of it.

This is a sad thing, because that’s where a writer gets practice with ideas and techniques that can later go into “real” writing down the road. I knew a fiddler who called this kind of activity “woodshedding”—that is, going out into the garage where no one could hear him and making his mistakes with impunity. When he was satisfied with his new licks, he’d come back in and share. Everyone—from gymnasts to chess players—needs that safe space to take risks and to feel the metaphorical wind in their hair.

So my goal for 2011 is to go reacquaint myself with that woodshed, and to try something daring. Maybe it’ll make it into a published book, and maybe it won’t. That’s not the point. It’s the sense of play and freedom I’m after. Call it research and development or call it goofing off; I want to see what craziness my brain is capable of.

The question of how to spend a cold winter’s night does sound like a no-brainer for the torrid imagination of romance writers. However, even the most romantically afflicted occasionally wants to use a bed for sleeping. Sounds simple, right? But in a world filled with to-do lists, work issues, dissatisfying conversations, and other naggy crud, sometimes a full night’s snooze is elusive.

I’m one of the chronically sleep deprived. Some of it’s periodic insomnia (usually around book deadlines), some just the result of running out of time. Back in the heady days of my first basement apartment and way too much sociability, I could survive on three hours a night. Or thought I could—my powers of self-deception were remarkable back then. But now that I spend more time in meetings with other theoretical grown-ups, I have to give the illusion of paying attention. That’s a little hard to do with one’s eyes drifting shut.

According to my intense research of various studies (as seen on the Internet) most adults require seven to nine hours of sleep for optimal rest. Among other things, that’s when cell repair/rejuvenation happens and various metabolic processes take place. The body releases growth hormone and melatonin and assorted things that make our internal furnace work properly. When that doesn’t happen—such as when we don’t sleep long enough or wake up repeatedly during the night—growth hormone levels drop and stress hormones like cortisol rise in our systems. Basically, our bodies become convinced that we’re under attack. Our metabolism drops to a crawl, storing everything it possibly can because it thinks we’re going to need it for fight or flight. Eventually, our adrenal system burns out, and so do we. One of the nasty side-effects of all this is an inability to properly burn carbs, which can lead to high blood sugar problems and occasionally diabetes.

No, I’m not a medical doctor and you should see the experts for a complete and accurate description of this phenomenon. However, the point is that we need rest or we break. We gain weight, we’re tired, we’re sick and we age faster than we need to. If that’s not bad enough, lack of sleep lowers leptin levels, which makes us hungry all the time.

So how are we supposed to get enough down time? Obviously, prioritizing bedtime is a must, but there are a few other tips I came across, some of which surprised me.

First, avoid looking at TV, computers or other backlit screens (which will include some e-readers) for half an hour before bed. Your brain thinks all that bright light means it’s daytime and not sleep time.

Forget drinking warm milk or having a snack for several hours before bed. The increased blood sugar throws off the hormone release cycle that happens during periods of deep sleep. The best practice is to stop eating after dinner is done.

Don’t exercise right before bed, but do exercise during the day. If you’re physically tired, chances are you’ll sleep.

Don’t do work in your bedroom. If you study or work where you sleep, it’s harder to switch off and rest. Unless, of course, you’re taking the microeconomics course I did a few years ago, which had a guaranteed soporific effect.

We all know that it’s important to get enough rest, but the medical consequences of not doing so are far more dire than I knew. I believed, as so many do, that working the extra hour or two each night would get me further ahead than hitting the hay on time. Not so much, apparently.

Of course, this is a blog by romance writers, so I’ll give the last word to Elizabethan dude Sir Philip Sidney, whose hero is pining for his lady love. It’s one of my favourite poems.
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Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low.
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw:
O make in me those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.

In my nuclear family, it was expected that one would be an artist of some sort. Maybe of several sorts. That was cool. I never had to go through the awkward talk about having unwanted artistic ambitions. It was assumed I would write, paint, dance, whatever and maybe all at the same time.

However, I also had to have a practical career—so there were no awkward talks about ONLY being an artist. It was a given that I had to put food on the table and a centrally-heated roof over my head. No starry-eyed visions of Bohemian garrets. After all, we lived on the prairies where freezing to death was a literal hazard. Plus, my parents were both involved in the arts. They knew what their daughter was facing. So I learned to type in Grade 10 and went to university to become a teacher (which I never did, but that’s another story).

Sensible? Not everyone thinks so. Some assume that artists aren’t for real until they quit their day jobs. Well, I believe in my talent, but I don’t believe that I will be automatically rewarded for it in monetary terms.

Do I think I SHOULD be able to live by my writing? Sure, but at the same time that popular conception says we aren’t legitimate unless we’re an economic success, there are plenty of people who claim artists should work for love alone and stick everything on their websites for free.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that our society has conflicting ideas about the cash value of creativity. Nobody questions whether or not a plumber, nurse, or flagman should get their wages, but when a school budget gets cut, the arts are the first to go. Unfortunately, in our society money = worth. We might feel warm and fuzzy about culture, but we don’t make it a priority. When it comes down to brass tacks, it’s just not that important.

With messaging like that, it’s a wonder anyone still values their own creative vision. Sadly, many do not and we’ll never know what those people had to say.

The point is, I never had a problem telling my family I wanted to be a paperback writer, but the big bad world at large was another matter. I might have said that I was planning to be a flea wrangler with the same results—something between benign indifference and outright scorn.

If 2011 brings nothing else, I hope it brings a sea change in how it regards writers and painters and dancers. I hope it gets more people into galleries, concerts, and bookstores. And, I hope it gets more people into art supply stores and music schools and writing classes. It’s the Tinkerbelle principle. We need to honour our collective creativity, or it wastes away. Starving artists eventually starve or give up.

If we all do something to participate in or support the creative life, it WILL become possible for more and better art and artists to thrive. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I’ll take what I can get. What creative thing are you going to do this year?