COVID Thanksgiving and other plans

Before COVID, we had plans for Thanksgiving. We had reserved a room at the Southmoreland on the Plaza in Kansas City, and we were going to brave the crowds to watch the Plaza Lighting Ceremony . We were going to window shop the Plaza for Black Friday and soak up the holiday atmosphere. (We live hours from our families and we get very little time off at Thanksgiving.)

And then COVID came.

Our Thanksgiving this year will be at home, where we are cooking an India-inspired Thanksgiving meal of tandoori turkey breast, mixed greens, sweet-potato and lentil dal, raita, chutneys and naan. And our local baker’s macarons for dessert, which are not Indian, but will have to do.

We’ll put up our Christmas decorations on Black Friday and start through our list of Christmas season videos (we have about 10 or 12 to view over the weeks). We will get quality time with our four cats. I will not be grading homework till maybe Sunday.

Maybe I need this this year. It’s been a year where my life’s been turned upside down by COVID, where I’ve had at least two mini-breakdowns to work through between COVID fears and post-election fears (and I didn’t miss a lick of work from them), where my retirement goals were put into turmoil by a change in university policy with health insurance.

Philosophically, maybe this is the year I need a break for Thanksgiving. Even though it’s just three more days of isolation (given the current COVID rates in Missouri, this is a good thing) it’s three days of festive and restful isolation to ready me for the last weeks of the semester.

The Owl in the Christmas Tree

This week in the US News, a story unfolded that is just too cute for the Christmas season. A small saw-whet owl rode two hours from Oneonta, New York to Rockefeller Center, New York City. The tiny and photogenic creature is now living in a box in Saugerties, New York until it can be released tomorrow.

I have a special fondness for this story, having spent five years in Oneonta. Oneonta is a small town sitting at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, known for its university (SUNY Oneonta) and its summer little league baseball tournaments. It’s a charming town of old houses and a park full of evergreens; it’s a quirky town with an eclectic mix of stores in its downtown.

Oneonta is a place where there should be Christmas stories. Nothing quite as virginal as a Hallmark Christmas movie, but maybe a Lifetime movie with its more complicated line set to a white Christmas.

So fitting it is that a tiny owl in a lopsided tree would venture forth from there and find itself in the big city.

Someone will write a children’s book about this. I wish it would be me, but I don’t write children’s books. I hope it’s an Oneonta native, for there are many artsy sorts in the foothills of the Catskills. I would read that book, and possibly try to get it signed with my other autographed children’s books.

This post wouldn’t be complete without a picture:

NaNo winner!

I did, finally, finish NaNoWriMo today with 50,600 words. Now what?

Now comes time to edit. I plan on running this book through my best editing efforts, after which I will send it to a developmental editor to make it the best romance I can send out.

The name of it, if I haven’t mentioned, is Kringle in the Night, and it’s a sequel to The Kringle Conspiracy, which is out right now on Kindle.

Right now it’s really rough. It needs a little more Santa magic, and a little more of the noir feel I wanted it to have for the sake of the title. It needs some better word choices, and the little details need to be checked for consistency, and it needs to be checked for passive verbs and redundancies and overused words and maybe even words that are too big.

It needs a lot, but that’s okay. NaNoWriMo is not about writing a polished product, it’s about writing a first draft that will need more work to get to the final product. That’s what December and beyond is about, and I will live with this book daily during the Christmas season editing one chapter a day.

Deep breath. It’s done! For now.

NaNo Winner — almost.

I’m almost done with NaNo. 48,300 words as of this morning. 1700 words to go.

I can’t believe I made it. I haven’t written a novel in a year or two, choosing instead to edit the ones I already have. I’m writing a romance novel, and despite the fact that I’ve got a romance novel published (A shameless plug for The Kringle Conspiracy), I still feel like I don’t get romance novels.

And then there’s the pandemic and the election, and our current president acting like the supreme leader of a banana republic (which I suspect is unfair to banana republics everywhere), I felt stressed enough to quit a couple times. But I didn’t.

But it’s nearly done, and then I will edit and edit and mercilessly edit. There are things I want to add, and probably a couple places I want to condence. I think promising myself ten pages a day should help the process.

Ahh. I never thought I was going to finish this one!

More COVID in the Neighborhood

We’re having a worsening bout of COVID here in Missouri at the same time the state has loosened its restrictions on classrooms such that the classroom doesn’t have to quarantine if everyone wore masks. Kansas City has gone back to restrictions in public places, and it would be a good thing if Maryville, with its booming rates of transmission among the students, followed suit. At least we’ve renewed our mask ordinance till January.

Our students will be off campus for the last couple weeks of the semester and will take their finals online. I hope this reduces the contagion we’ve seen.

Planning for Spring semester, I will be teaching the way I did last Fall — through in-person and online at the same time. It’s hard to do this, and I don’t feel as effective a teacher as I have been. This whole year has been hard. But it’s been hard for everyone, and I don’t mean to gripe.

I guess I can’t wait till Winter Break.

Bad spells

I’m sitting here trying to remember back to my absolutely harrowing mood of a week or two ago and I can hardly do so.

My brain confounds me. My body confounds me. When I am in a bad state the two are one and the same — my stomach tightens up, my bowels loosen; I feel cold flow through my veins; my adrenaline ramps up and at the same time I cannot move. I cry, I shriek, I say nothing and the crushing horses’ hooves keep advancing.

What turns the tide back to normal, I don’t know. Was it the news? That good cry? The 12-hour sleep? The cognitive exercise? All and none of these? The passage of time? I don’t know, but if I did that would be my sacrament.

Maybe it’s a good thing that I remember my bad spells only vaguely. Maybe it preserves my self-esteem not remembering how helpless I felt, how utterly agonized.

Today, then, is a good day.

Major undertaking

We’re replacing the tuner for our stereo system today. It’s only 15+ years old, but it’s hardly top of the line, and it’s started making unpleasant buzzing and popping sounds. Cue in Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” — “DEE dee dee ZZZZRRRRRPPPZZZZZT”

We bought its (used but newer) replacement through Facebook Marketplace the other day for $100, so today we’re going to install it.

I got Richard at the right moment to agree to install it. Otherwise it could have sat on the couch for weeks. We have a habit around the house of getting a new gadget and letting it sit. And sit. There are so many life-changing gadgets in this house that are not, in fact, changing my life. The air fryer is not frying, nor is the instant pot potting. So I really want the tuner tuning.

The replacement of the tuner requires more work than I had apparently considered. I just labeled a bunch of wires ‘front center’, ‘front right’, ‘front left’, ‘right surround’, ‘left surround’, ‘active subwoofer’, ‘passive subwoofer’, and ‘passive-aggressive subwoofer’. The latter is probably the one making ominous popping noises.

My task in all this is to label things and stand back, because this is RICHARD’S STEREO. And I’m fine with this, because my concept of a fancy stereo is one of those all-in-one bricks that Wal-Mart sells, the one with the two breadbox-sized speakers and nothing that looks like a subwoofer.

The old tuner is out, and I am eternally grateful Richard’s taking care of this project because there are entirely too many inputs for my comfort.

For some reason I’m really hungry for a plate of barbecue, Kansas City style. I have no reason why.

Now What?

I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish and experienced everything I needed to experience by self-publishing the book.

I wanted to have a “book-signing” party. I wanted a listing on Amazon. I wanted to sign books, even if it was just among my friends. These are all shallow goals vs making big sales, but I’m pretty sure that Amazon is so glutted that making sales is a pipe dream anyhow.

If I’d have known it was this easy to settle that howling need, I’d have done this sooner.

What are my stretch goals? I don’t know right now. I’ve been too busy with writing for NaNo and grading to think about it. It’s going to be something about advertising, though. I need to make that into a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound) goal.

2323232323232323232323232323232348eu4444444444e (I’m leaving the above typo here, as my kitten Chloe had something to say).

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th. It’s a good thing I’m not superstitious.

Or maybe I am. I throw salt over my left shoulder when I spill it. I don’t walk under ladders — though there’s a good reason there; walking under them tends to upset them.

I don’t open umbrellas in the house, mostly because my mother gently told me that open umbrellas in the house were bad luck. I instead go through an awkward dance of opening the umbrella while it’s sticking out the door and I’m still inside.

I don’t break mirrors. Who does? They’re a silvery bitch of a mess to clean up.

Black cats are welcome in my house. In fact, I have one. I sometimes consider her bad luck, especially when she accidently trips me.

I whistle indoors, but very poorly, so I may only be summoning mediocre luck instead of bad.

Truly, though, I don’t think any of this makes a difference on Friday the 13th. We are all victims of confirmation bias on this day, infusing the random occurrence as bad luck in solidarity with the millions of others who do the same. Strangely, I don’t hear people blaming a dire event on Friday the 13th

The superstition behind Friday the 13th, in my opinion, a mass celebration of the stupid little things that happen to us. And that, with a little superstition, I can get behind.

emerging

I don’t know how many of you are out there, nor do I know most of your names, but know I appreciate you. I think I’m crawling out of my prickly stress coccoon, which I picture as being something like a datura shell I curl inside of, hoping for peace.

The truth is probably not as dire as I paint it, and eventually Trump will leave office. The country will start to recover despite a deadlock in the government because thank Goodness there are things like executive orders and Trump set the precedent of using them right and left. The vaccine for Corona may be ready by mid 2021, and we will be able to hug again.

I’m writing. I’m still writing, breaking a NaNo streak of failing every even year since the 2016 election. That’s only two NaNos worth of failure, but I was pretty steady before then. I think I remember what I like about writing, and I think I’ll be able to continue it.

I also remember that I may have to put the big books, the fantasy books, out there again to traditional publishers. If I get my self-promotion game going, I may be able to put them out using that route.

I feel like I’m coming back to myself, someone who does better at doing than being. Thank you for listening.