This holiday season I broke with family tradition and… traveled. Where?
To Barcelona. It’s a beautiful old city with amazing architecture. But one of the things we found fascinating is an odd Christmas tradition they have. A pooping log.
Yep. You read that right. But I’ve cleaned my language up a bit. See this ridiculously happy log hanging out in a town square? He’s called a Caga tió. A ‘shitting log’. Early in the holiday season, parents bring home a small one… each night he ‘grows’, larger and larger – provided the children keep him warm with a blanket and feed him every evening. On Christmas, they sing a song and beat it with a stick to make it poop presents, usually sweets.
I kid you not.
We have SO MANY photos of tiós. Remember, I’m raising boys.
Still skeptical? Think I’m a bit insane? I don’t blame you. I had the same reaction at first. But you can read more about this tradition for yourself HERE.
On the foggy streets of Victorian London, secrets and spies hide in a world of gaslamp fantasy
THE GOLDEN SPIDER
Book One of the Elemental Web Chronicles
Lady Amanda blackmailed her way into a prestigious London medical school…
Not the preferred method of entrance, of course, but necessary, for it’s the only way to force Lord Thornton, a professor at the school, to help her perfect her invention: a clockwork spider capable of spinning artificial nerves.
And Lord Thornton is interested… but is he interested in Amanda, or simply the invention that could cure his own debilitating injury? Neither one can trust the other, but both know this: any attraction is a danger, any romance forbidden.
But when a foreign spy steals the spider and uses it to perform grisly experiments on human subjects, they must set aside both their differences and their growing attraction to capture the killer terrorizing the streets of London.