Musings
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Sunday Snippet: The I’m Really Tired and I Got Nothin’ Edition
I’m not going to whine, even though I feel like I could. Isn’t it funny, though, how you can’t seem to catch up on sleep? Why, do you suppose? I mean, it makes sense to me that if you miss some sleeping time, then sleeping more later should fix it. But things don’t seem to work out like that. Right now, I feel like I could sleep for a week, but I can’t do that, so here I am. On the upside, I’m at the lake, I’ve gotten to swim several times this week with friend Moe and Grandboy and Son, and we had time with our kids up here.…
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Sunday Snippet: The Travelogue #1 Edition
We made it to California! Writer buddy and fellow Tule author, Carol Light and I are almost to our Tule Author Retreat. Carol flew from her home state to mine, where I joined her on a very crowded Southwest flight to Dallas. After a couple of hours hanging out in Dallas, we caught our flight to Burbank. Both flights were full, but honestly, no delays and everything went so smoothly. Tired, but happy, we got a Lyft to our hotel and settled in. Since we didn’t have a car and the hotel is in rather an industrial part of Burbank, we opted for supper at the hotel restaurant and were…
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Sunday Snippet: The How Does It Happen Edition
It’s July. How did that happen? I’ve been married for 50 years! How did that happen? Grandboy is 11. How did that happen? I’ve got 14 published novels and another two on the way in 2023, plus I’m contracted to write four more books for Tule. Whew–how did that happen? I’ll be 70 in two months, how the hell did that happen? Can you tell I’m a little overwhelmed with… well, life stuff and work stuff at the moment? I am, yet I go on ahead and do what needs doing because don’t we all? Right now, it’s all about the writing… People ask me all the time, “How do…
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Sunday Snippet: The Whine, Then Find the Sunshine Edition
It’s been a tough week. My shoulder hurts, really aches, from spending so much time in front of my computer, working on editing gigs and writing Jack and Maddie’s story. Son is dealing with a lot of stuff that I wish so much I could take off his plate, but I can’t. I can only listen. (Even when they’re in their forties, your mom instincts kick in.) We’re doing work on the lake cottage, making choices about where we want to spend refurbishing dollars this year, except that those dollars now have to be shared with medicine expenses because I hit the damn doughnut hole with my heart meds this…
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Sunday Snippet: The No Thanks to Aging Edition
Been thinking about aging, particularly after the neighborhood yard sale we had this weekend. So many of the folks participating were our age or older and as anxious as us to purge some of the stuff they’d had in their homes forever and a day. Ironically, a lot of the people wandering the ‘hood buying the stuff the rest of us were getting rid of were… wait for it… people our age. Go figure, right? A few years ago, when Husband and I moved from our home of 37 years to our new place here in the ‘hood, we did a major purge. Like truly big. A wonderful group of…
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Sunday Snippet: Another I Got Nothin’ Edition
Seriously…I got nothin’. Right off, I’m late with this–usually I have it up at 6:30; it’s now 7:15. I lingered in bed this morning because it is a dang chilly morning here at the lake, we worked hard yesterday, and the kids came for supper and Euchre and we stayed up late-ish. We did have a great time after supper. Son went around the table for a couple of hours and had each of us pick a song we wanted to hear. He cued every one up on his Apple music app and played them through our Bluetooth speaker, so we listened to a mad variety of music from the…
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Sunday Snippet: The Mom Edition
It’s Mother’s Day and although I sometimes have trouble with whole concept, which I once was convinced came about because a greeting card company needed sales. Turns out my cynicism button had been pushed because that’s not how it came about at all. A woman named Anna Jarvis spearheaded the celebration of Mother’s Day because she wanted to honor her mother who’d passed three years earlier. She ushered in the first Mother’s Day with a church celebration in West Virginia. And on May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson designated the second Sunday in May as national Mother’s Day and asked Americans to give a public thank you to all their…
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Sunday Snippet: The Spring Fever Edition
Mushy mind—it’s a thing and wow, do I have it right now. I have a very bad case of mind mush—my ability to focus and function is seriously out of whack. I’m not sure if it’s spring fever or what, but fact is, I’m just not able to focus on much of anything right now. I think I’ve mentioned before, probably in the spring, that my grandmother used to say she was muzzy—isn’t that a great word? I’m muzzy. I’ve got four books to write for Tule Publishing in the next two years and my heart frequently stops (not really!) at the thought. I’m about 15K words into Jack Walker’s…
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Sunday Snippet: The Spring Cleaning Edition
We spring cleaned yesterday–every room from stem to stern–and the house looks and smells so fresh and I’m very glad, but… Is it just me or do we care less about housework as we get older? Once upon a time, Mondays and Tuesdays were my housecleaning days. I literally cleaned for two solid days, working my round butt off scrubbing floors and bathrooms, vacuuming, dusting, doing laundry. At least twice a year, I pulled everything out of the china hutch, washed every piece, and put it back in, all shiny clean. I reorganized closets and drawers four times a year, washed windows every spring and fall (I still do that!),…
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Sunday Snippet: The Spring Is Here Edition
Right off, Happy Easter to all who celebrate! Spring seems to be springing already and you know, between health stuff and writing like a madwoman, I am more than ready. The gardens are coming to life–check out my hyacinths–aren’t they pretty? We’ve had a typical March in the Midwest—warm, lovely, sunny days and then cold, gray, and chilly ones. But now it’s April, and somehow this spring seems particularly promising, because ever since all this heart stuff, everything has felt…I dunno—unsettled. I’m not the only one feeling a sea change—with the weirdness that politics has become, I think the whole world is in this boat on many different levels. Liz…