Ahh, the first days of a new romance. The flushed face. The inability to think about anything else. The sheer excitement! It seems magical.
You probably recall some of your dating failures. I confess that I am not great at romance. I’m not putting myself down. I can bake a pretty decent cake. I can roast a turkey without taking a valium first. But finding the right guy? Oof!
There was the oh-so-memorable date with a guy who excused himself a little too long and when the waitress asked if we wanted dessert, he all but shouted no! Fine with me. We had been set up by his mother. No kidding. She loved me! He loved the waitress with the top down to there and the skirt up to you-know-where. To this day I am convinced that he went back to the restaurant to pick her up. For all I know, they have thirteen kids, are happily married, and they always laugh about how he met her during a terrible date.
In Mission Impawsible, a matchmaking event is going on. Since the town of Wagtail is all about dogs and cats, it made perfect sense that singles would bring their furry friends to help them meet the right person. There’s some logic to that. If you’re a cat person with half a dozen cats, wouldn’t you want to meet another cat person who understands and shares your devotion to felines?
But since I’m not an expert at romance (cough, cough) I needed to do some research. What exactly attracts us to one person but not to another?
Turns out it’s much more complex than I would have suspected.
Most people know if another person is a potential mate in thirty seconds to two minutes! Kind of puts a fresh spin on meeting someone in a bar, doesn’t it? Don’t be insulted the next time someone spurns your interest because there’s a lot more going on than you realize.
That quick judgment would lead one to imagine that attraction is all about appearances. Not so. It turns out that when we meet someone who might be a potential mate for us, all kinds of things are happening in our brains that we don’t even realize.
We’re smelling them.
We may not sniff each other quite as brazenly as dogs do, but apparently, women are attracted to men who smell like their fathers! That seemed a little weird to me at first but maybe it makes sense. It’s a smell that evokes comfort and security for us.
The most mind-bending thing I learned is that women are attracted to the scent of men who have a different immune system than their own. Clearly, we are not conscious of this. It’s a very primal kind of thing that results in stronger offspring because they benefit from more immunities.
So, in a way, there’s actually a kind of magic going on in the background. It has a scientific basis, but we’re not aware of all the amazing things our noses and brains are figuring out for us.
About the Author: Krista Davis
New York Times Bestselling author Krista Davis writes the Paws and Claws Mysteries. Her 4th Paws and Claws Mystery is Mission Impawsible, which releases on February 7th. Krista also writes the Domestic Diva Mysteries with a new book due out in June 2018.PS. You can see how my research on the magical power of love and attraction plays out in my latest, Mission Impawsible, which will be in bookstores on February 7th and is available for pre-order. I’m not telling how the matchmaking turns out!
During this time, my biggest fear was The Basement Monster. I surrendered countless toys that escaped down the basement stairs, resigned to accept they were gone forever. He had a huge collection of toys with wheels, balls, Silly Putty and Slinkys. And, if a basement monster was not scary enough, the steps down into his shadowy domain had no risers. I was certain he could grab my ankles and pull me down between the steps to join the collection of missing toys, never to be seen again. When I began to question the monster’s existence, there was a shift in power — his diminished as mine grew stronger.
strip of cloth into the well and say a prayer for healing as they tied the strip to a branch. The cloth deteriorated and the knot fell away as the grip of the pilgrim’s ailment also released. Clooties have been tied at holy sites for over 5,000 years, but now with polyester and other non-biodegradable fabrics, this practice is discouraged. I encountered a greener version at a stone circle in County Kerry. Several hundred prayers and wishes, including my own, were written on paper left on the tree.
Let me tell you this, Storyteller. You are more important than ever. Those stories – your stories, my stories, the stories of our sisters and brothers all over the world? They could be the one very important thing that makes all the difference.
What we need, my storytelling friend, is to re-connect. In these days when we so often feel at odds with our fellow man and the world seems to be drawn into boxes surrounded by thick black and white lines, what we need it the color and nuance that story provides. We need to have thoughts deeper than those incited by a 140-character Tweet. We need to enter into the world of an African American nurse who is wrongfully accused of manslaughter in the death of one of her patients. (
Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of 
I can still remember my desperate longing to follow Lucy into the wardrobe when I first heard the story of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a child. My dad read the book to me as a bedtime story and he kept getting frustrated because I was so eager to find out what happened next that I would read ahead of him on the page. I sighed in exasperation as I waited for him to catch up. With the same desire in my heart, as I read I envisioned myself entering The Secret Garden alongside Mary Lennox. Oh how, I wanted to visit that garden. To this day, I picture a secret, magical, flourishing green place behind every garden door I see.
This past summer I was up late at our family cottage in Northern Michigan waiting for my husband and some friends to arrive. My sister and I were painting a bathroom ceiling and all the kids were tucked into beds. My mom was across the street with my nephew. My husband called and asked if I had been outside lately? He was nearby and thought he was seeing the Northern Lights. I grabbed my sister, called my mom, yelled at all the kids to get out of bed and we all ran outside to the beach. I was so amazed by the sight of the lights dancing on the water, that I honestly thought I might die right then and there. I was shaking with excitement. My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. Just a few minutes later my husband and our friends arrived. As we stood together on the beach, we marveled at the brilliance of the Milky Way. We admired shooting stars beaming themselves across the night sky. Every cell in my body was filled with wonder. That was science. And, definitely magic.
Anna Oginsky is the founder of Heart Connected, LLC, a small Michigan-based workshop and retreat business that creates opportunities for guests to tune in to their hearts and connect with the truth, wisdom, and power held there. Her work is inspired by connections made between spirituality, creativity, and community. Anna’s first book, My New Friend, Grief, came as a result of years of learning to tune in to her own heart after the sudden loss of her father. In addition to writing, Anna uses healing tools like yoga, meditation, and making art in her offerings and in her own personal practice. She lives in Brighton, Michigan with her husband, their three children, and Johnny, the big yellow dog. Connect with her on her 
Melissa is a writer, voice actor, podcaster, itinerant musician, voracious reader, and collector of hats and rescue dogs. She is the author of 
Patricia Wellingham-Jones is a widely published former psychology researcher and writer/editor. She has a special interest in healing writing, with poems recently in The Widow’s Handbook (Kent State University Press). Chapbooks include Don’t Turn Away: poems about breast cancer, End-Cycle: poems about caregiving, Apple Blossoms at Eye Level, Voices on the Land and Hormone Stew.
ecember 26th, 2016. It’s a chilly day in La Paz, BCS, Mexico – chilly for the tropics, anyway – about 65 degrees – and sky is overcast. I follow my mother and her friend Mary into a tiny tea shop in the heart of town, near where my parents, who retired to Baja Sur just after the millennium turned, go every weekend for breakfast and the farmers’ market.
The presentation takes only ten or fifteen minutes. Hector begins by sharing that tea was originally brewed for medicinal purposes, and gradually became used as the beverage it is today. While he speaks, Inez is busy behind the counter, prepping things for the tasting session to follow. Hector is such a captivating speaker that we barely notice her bustling.
We are presented with a white tea, first, and it is so pale, it might as well be just hot water, but when we sip from our lovely little cups, we are all awestruck buy the nuanced flavor. Hector tells us it’s appropriate to slurp a little when you taste tea, because that brings in air, and lets the aroma work with the flavor.
As we progress through the spectrum of tea, one of the things that we all comment upon is the incredibly short steeping time on all of these different varieties. Thirty seconds for the white teas, a minute or two for oolong, which is toward the middle in terms of strength.
lemon biscuits meant to serve as palate cleansers between cups. After the first two cups, Inez also places a large bowl on the table, so that if we don’t wish to finish any given cup of tea, we can dump it, in a slightly more refined version of a wine tasting (no spitting). No one uses it.
The last tea we sample is the one we are most familiar with: Earl Grey. Hector explains that English-style black teas often include essential oils (in this case, bergamot) to alter the flavor, or soften the bitterness or astringency.
Instead of overwhelming floral scents, there’s just enough of the essential oil to enhance the tea. Again, Hector comments on water temperature and steeping time. He also cautions us that these leaves are not to be re-used. In fact, this is the only tea of all the varietals we’ve been introduced to that Inez has made in a tea infuser – the glass pots made by Bodum that almost all tea-drinkers probably possess.
So no resolutions. Not even a new calendar. And anyway, after 60 years I recognize the veracity of Thomas Moore’s assertion: Resolutions are heavy, self-imposed expectations, all too easily cast aside, leaving the resolver feeling guilty and disappointed.