The Relief

I finally have a break! I’m tearing up with gratitude.

This has been the most exhausting semester I’ve ever had. Not necessarily the hardest, although teaching both live and on Zoom at the same time was somewhat difficult and gave less than stellar results. But long and exhausting, waiting for students to drop in on Zoom, sitting in a empty office, scuttling from office to restroom with my mask on.

The sunny days out the window seemed so distant from where I sat, even though I have the best view on campus out my window. Then the leaden skies came, and at least they matched my moods.

There was the constant threat of COVID. There was a point where 9 out of 60 students were out over either isolation (COVID positive) or quarantine (contact with a COVID positive). The virus swept through peer groups and Greek life, and although I taught social distanced and masked, the random trips through hallways and in bathrooms worried me.

I focused on the task, knowing that thinking about any of this, much less all of this, would break me. And so I became an automaton, checking off each finished class session, each office hour. Not waiting for break, because that seemed too distant.

Now I’m here, at break, and I want to cry. After this week, I have a week of waiting for students to ask questions over Zoom (and they never do too much of this) and finals week, where their exams are essay and take home. I will be at home, comfortable, during all of this. So, in effect, I have survived the semester.

And I feel like crying.

American Thanksgiving is fraught with a misleading mythology. In the great American myth, the first Thanksgiving was a dinner held jointly between Native Americans and the white settlers, bringing them together.

There are several problems with this scenario:

It assumes the Native Americans had no thankfulness rituals, when indeed they did.
It assumes that the white settlers and Native Americans lived happily ever after, when in actuality the Indians were systematically killed and driven into successively smaller parcels of land, all in the name of Western expansion.

Americans are indoctrinated into the myth at an early age in our schools. We cut out Pilgrims and Indians and learn about the myth of the First Thanksgiving. Although that dinner actually happened, we are kept away from its aftermath. We are told (or at least we were in my time) that the Indians don’t really exist, but we are not told why.

The myth and its originals are personal for me. I am a child of the white settlers and of the Native Americans. I count Michel Cadotte and Ikwesewe of the Lake Superior (now Lac du Flambeau) Ojibwe as ancestors. Mostly white but for the stories of my family, where we remember ancestors with long black hair and almond-shaped eyes.

For me to celebrate Thanksgiving, I have to separate the thanks-giving from the mythology, and at the same time remember the thanks that my ancestors gave to their Maker.

Stages of Writing

I have just gone through the first proofreading pass of the second book in the Kringle Chronicles, Kringle in the Dark. In the book, Brent Oberhauser, self-professed nerd, falls for Sunshine Rogers, who keeps the books for Yes, Virginia, a Christmas charity. Her boss, Jack Moore, receives blackmail letters in the mail and Sunshine finds significant mysteries in the paperwork buried under the category of “miscellaneous”. In a clash of wills, Sunshine and Brent break up to avoid heartbreak later. The two must find a way back together to try to stop the blackmailer and solve the puzzle of Yes, Virginia.

Right now, I rather like the book, being amazed that I could produce something that good in less than 30 days (aka NaNoWriMo project). But that’s just a stage in my writing. Here’s the stages of my writing:

Beginning: Look how effortlessly I write!
After a quarter of the way through the book: I’m just slinging words onto pages. This book is going to be a mess.
Finishing the first draft: Thank goodness it’s done.
Proofing the first draft: This book is actually good!
Finishing the first draft: There has to be something wrong and I can’t wrap my head around it.
Receiving document back from my in-house editor (i.e. husband): No, look it over again. What’s WRONG with it?
Second draft: This book is a mess.
Fast forward to book in hand: This is MY book. Don’t you hurt my little book!

I guess this means I’m a writer.

About Time

Maryville, MO is under an emergency order which limits gatherings to ten people or less and enforces the mask ordinances because of an upswing of COVID. (It does not shut down local businesses or enforce shelter in place.)

And it’s about time. Many residents of the town have proven that they can’t comply with the existing mask ordinance, thinking that their legal rights are being impinged upon.

Hint: No, your rights are not being infringed upon; you’re being asked to do what’s good for America and your fellow human beings. Don’t you want to do what’s good for America and your fellow human beings? Then we’ll make you wear the mask because the governor is calling the National Guard out to help in the overwhelmed hospitals and morgues.

It’s not like I’m not suffering as bad as the anti-maskers are. I will not be spending Christmas with my family. I will not be in Kansas City for Thanksgiving to watch the lights. I have ZOOMed my entire semester of classes. I feel lonely and would feel more lonely if I wasn’t married. But I adhere to the rules because I don’t want to be responsible for contagion.

I’m angry right now at all the people who should have refrained from meeting in large groups with strangers, who have gone about without masks and with a bad attitude, who have ruined Thanksgiving for all of us because they kept the contagion going.

Thankful for my Burdens

I make a habit of being thankful for the adversity in my life as a way to make peace with it. This year is no exception:

I am thankful for the social isolation I’ve faced with COVID-19, because I have had to learn to be patient and to wait for those vacations and writing retreats to be scheduled in an unforeseen future.
I am thankful for my bipolar disorder because I’ve had to learn to take care of myself.
I am thankful for my learning disability (the inability to visualize) because it has made me work harder on my writing.
I am thankful for every argument I’ve gotten into with my husband because we’ve both learned from them.
I am thankful for not being rich because I haven’t lost my sense of perspective.

I know that it’s an odd thing to be thankful for adversity, but to me it’s more powerful than to be thankful for one’s blessings. I have many, and I could go on about those. It always feels to me, though, that being thankful for one’s blessings is rubbing it in to others who don’t have those blessings. It’s easier for me to be thankful for my burdens.

I guess I’m busy.

I ordered eight paperback copies of The Kringle Conspiracy to sell after my book signing party requested copies. And do you know what? I lost the list! AAAAAAAGH someone threw out the piece of paper I’d written them on. I can’t believe it!

So now I’m asking my Facebook friends again who ordered copies. I think I’ve found most of them anyhow. Just missing two or three.

I feel like such a flake sometimes! Maybe most of the time, but with all the stuff going on (teaching, grading, writing, rewriting, emotional meltdown over Trump’s scary refusal to concede the election.) maybe I can’t be blamed for being a bit flaky.

What is left to do before January 1st:

Grade Case Management final case files
Grade exams in Case Management and People Money and Psych (in a couple weeks)
Meet with classes Monday via Zoom
Edit (first round) Kringle in the Night
Set up my pitches for PitMad December 3
Narrate 8 presentations for Personal Adjustment (i.e. Positive Psychology)
Finish setting up Personal Adjustment, Case Management, and People Money and Psych for spring classes
Get those books out
Rest (I don’t do that very well)

I guess I am busy. Busy is not necessarily a good thing if it stands in the way of accomplishment. Perhaps I need to learn to do things more efficiently. If I had time, I’d study that.

But today is Sunday, and I’ve finished grading a major assignment. Now to edit another chapter of Kringle. Ahh…

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!