Writing to meet a goal

 Today is one of those days that I’m writing just because I said I was going to write every day, no matter what. So I’m not really sure what I am writing about. This may be just a stream of consciousness entry, where I write down whatever comes into my head and it may or may not make any sense. 

• Our church’s (very small) Young Adult group decreased by one as we held a good-bye dinner for a young lady that is leaving. She is Brazilian, and tomorrow she will take a non-stop flight from here to Rio to see her mother . . . and then hop a plane to Ireland, where she plans to study English. I think it’s funny that she is going to Ireland to study English. She’s young, unmarried, knows at least two languages, if not more, and has a kind and adventurous spirit. She’d also like to travel while she’s in Ireland. Now’s the time for her to do it!
• The 118th House apparently showed up wearing their Bozo the clown outfits. They’ve taken six ballots, and they still have no Speaker of the House, which means the new 118th House members cannot be sworn in yet.  It’s the first time in 100 years where there has been more than one ballot to elect a Speaker. Kevin McCarthy wants the job. There are those that don’t want him to have the job. Frankly, I think the House is acting like a bunch of two-year-olds, and I apologize for the insult to two-year-olds.
• We have not seen rats or mice since we returned home from Florida. Which probably means that I will find a trail of rat poop somewhere tomorrow morning. 
• I am officially back at work; I finished proofreading 221 pages and promptly got another assignment of around 250 pages which is due back Friday. I will be working all day Thursday.
• Because of all the holidays my husband has taken, all of the traveling we have done, and the fact that the calendar has rolled over, my own internal calendar is shot. It will probably take me a week or so to get a feel for what day it is . . . just in time for Martin Luther King Day to show up and wreck my internal calendar again. (No shade meant for MLK, who definitely deserves his day of remembrance. I’m just having a rough time remembering what day of the week it is!)
• I’m still stuck on giving my antagonist in my work in progress a reason not to shoot my protagonist. This is one of those things that drives writers crazy.
• And I still need to close out our financial books for the last year.
• As members of the Peanuts gang would say, “Sigh.” Or maybe, “Good grief!” would be a better exclamation!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Sudden death

 Last month I experienced the sudden death of two people.

One was a Facebook friend who’d I’d been around for 20 years.

The other was a cousin of mine.

And we almost saw it happen again last night.

The first person, Kathy, I “met” during the days of Yahoo Groups. I joined a group made up of people who’d all read two books, Karen and With Love From Karen, both written by Marie Killilea. Marie’s daughter Karen was born in 1940 and a year later, diagnosed with cerebral palsy. It took her parents 23 doctors and two and a half years to find proper help. I read both books when I was 13 and was captivated. We in the group swapped stories about the effect the books had on us and swapped stories about each other. I joined the group right before my son was diagnosed with autism and the group was a support to me during that time. 

Kathy was one of the first people to say hello to me when I joined the group. Later, she formed another online group for people who loved books as she did. She was such a fan of the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. She loved God and was enormously proud of her family. 

She died in her sleep in mid-December, while she and her husband were on their way to a cruise to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary. One of our mutual Facebook friends messaged me and when I saw the words, “Kathy is dead,” I was stunned. The only comfort I can find is that she went to sleep and woke up in heaven. 

I saw an enormous outpouring of love and memories for her on Facebook. I thought of three people who would be totally heartbroken (in addition to her husband): her best friend, and two other dear friends she met on Facebook. 

She lived a life that will be remembered, and you can’t ask for more than that.

The other was my cousin Bill, who I wrote about yesterday. His sudden death came when he went to burn some brush and the wind blew up. He either suffered smoke inhalation, or a heart attack, or both, and died. His funeral was yesterday, and since he broadcast high school sports for a number of years,  it was appropriate to hold his funeral in the Harlan County High School gymnasium. From the number of comments I saw on Facebook, Harlan County lost a legend. 

Last night, a young Buffalo Bills football player, Damar Hamlin, tackled a Cincinnati Bengals player, Tee Higgins.  They both went down and got up. Nothing remarkable. It’s normal, and expected, to see tackles in football games.  Right? 

Except two seconds after he got up, Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field and this time, he did not get up.

The medical personnel raced onto the field, and both Bills players and Bengals players formed a human wall around Hamlin, shielding him from the audience and from the TV cameras. 

Hamlin was given CPR on the field in those agonizing moments before the ambulance arrived.  

Bills players - and Bengals players - cried, and many of them knelt in prayer for their fallen teammate. 

After an hour or so, and discussions with players and between both coaches, the game was suspended at 5:58 of the first quarter. They will not resume this game this week. Which I think is good. If the teams had tried to play again, no one would have been able to concentrate. All they’d see is the body of their fellow player, lying on the ground, his arms outstretched, receiving CPR so that he could just survive. 

I’m watching a clip of the Monday Night Football broadcast from last night. One of the speakers said he’d never seen an ambulance come onto the field. I have, one time on TV, where someone had a neck injury. (I cannot remember who was playing or when it was.) They did bring the ambulance onto the field and take the player off. 

However, there’s never been a situation where a player collapsed, on live TV, and had to be given CPR before being loaded into an ambulance. 

Damar Hamlin is currently in critical condition in the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He is alive. 

But we could have seen sudden death on the field last night.

The idea of sudden death scares me. Of waking up and finding my husband dead next to me, or of losing my son, or sister, or niece. I think it scares me because death is something that is out of my control. There is a verse in the book of Proverbs that says “no man has power over the day of his death”.  I get scared of being the one left behind having to deal with an estate. It also scares me to be the one to die and leave others to handle my affairs. 

What do I say? What is there to say in the face of sudden death? Of a relative? Of a person you only knew through a computer screen? Of a young athlete? 

“I’m sorry,” sounds so trite. “Thoughts and prayers,” sounds tired and overused. 

Life is precious when you are looking into the face of sudden death. 

That’s all I know to say.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

“Blessed every day.”

 As I write this, the funeral of my cousin Bill Ellis is about to begin. 

The funeral will be held in the gymnasium of Harlan County High School, and when you have a funeral in a gymnasium, that says something about the number of people you expect.

My cousin Bill was from Harlan, Kentucky. Harlan is not a town with large churches or large places to “put on a show” in order to raise money. But it does have the gymnasium of the Harlan County High School. 

Bill’s death has hit me hard, and I think it’s because it happened so suddenly. 

Last Friday, December 30th, the family believes that Bill went out to burn some brush in a burn barrel, and the wind kicked up very suddenly. In trying to put the fire out, he suffered either smoke inhalation or a heart attack and died. The fire department was there for several hours until the fire was gone. 

He leaves behind a wife — his second wife, whom he married after the death of his first wife — a daughter, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and a host of relatives and a county full of friends. 

Bill was 18 when I was born, and by the time I was four, he already had a baby daughter. That was my cousin Kellie, and when my family would visit from Florida, she was my playmate. Bill and his wife would later have a son, Jeff. 

I remember a younger Bill with a slightly sarcastic sense of humor. During a visit to Florida, he once jokingly asked me if someone had hit me over the head with an ugly stick. But I also remember on one visit to Harlan seeing him play in a baseball game—I think a neighborhood league or something like that—and his team lost. He shook hands with the opposing team afterwards, saying, “Good game.” I thought, “Why is he doing that? They lost!” 

What I didn’t know was that I was witnessing an example of good sportsmanship. 

Bill, for many years, was known as “the voice of the Bears” (the Harlan County High School teams),  broadcasting football and basketball games on radio station WTUK. Sometimes his wife Tami would call the games with him, and he’d often play the trick of turning off her mike (joking that he could always turn the volume down on her radio.)

I last saw Bill in 2019, when I made a trip to scatter a portion of my mother’s ashes at her father’s grave. He and his wife had dinner with Susie, his sister; and me. He showed me a bookmark where he had pasted my father’s obituary. He hoped it wouldn’t upset me. I appreciated that Bill remembered my dad in that way. (Bill was the son of my father’s sister.) It was obvious by then that he was fighting health problems but he did not complain. He was like my father in that way; he would not complain about how bad he felt. 

In reading his obituary, I learned that Bill had been an elder in the Rosspoint Church of Christ. Being an elder is not an easy task. I have no doubt he handled it with grace. 

The obituary writer pointed out what I hope people will remember about Bill when they think of him:  When anyone asked him, “How are you?” his answer was, “Blessed every day.” 

Maybe that was why he had the attitude he had about his health struggles, and other tragedies he faced in life. Carol, his first wife, died of ovarian cancer.  A few years later, his son Jeff died suddenly. In the best tradition of “life must go on”, Bill, just a few days after his son’s death, called a ballgame on the radio, and afterwards, the winning team presented the game ball to Bill. He thanked them and encouraged them to keep on walking with God, no matter what, and reminded them that if they did so, they would be “blessed every day” no matter what the circumstances were. 

I went up for his mother’s funeral in 2004, and I remember him sobbing as he stood in front of her casket. Just because Bill knew he was “blessed every day” didn’t mean that he couldn’t be heartbroken at the death of a beloved mother. 

I have a hard time understanding how God could allow certain things to happen. I don’t understand why He doesn’t intervene. I’m guessing that Bill’s widow and the rest of his family will lie awake at night asking,  “why?”. Man has asked that question since the time of Job, and pat and easy answers just do not cut it. 

Perhaps, though, the answer is not, “why did this happen?”

Perhaps Bill Ellis was placed on this earth to remind us that, no matter what, God had blessed him every day . . . and that no matter what, if we trust God, we, too, can be “blessed every day.”

In loving memory,

William Wayne Ellis, January 23, 1945 - December 30, 2022.

Rest in peace, Bill.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation. 

New Year’s writing on a bad day

 This year, I will write every day. 

Maybe it won’t be a lot of words, but I will write every day.

Whether on the current WIP (which has suffered a setback; I need a new reason for my big bad not to immediately shoot my hero) or in a journal, or here on the blog . . . I will write.

So why is today a bad day?

First off, I am not depressed. I do not have a black cloud hanging over my head and I’m not on the edge of tears. (I have also not seen a mouse since we came back from a short vacation to Florida). 

Yesterday I had a very bad headache, so I practiced some self-care and took some Advil PM and went to bed early. I woke up 10 minutes into the new year to the sound of fireworks. Many of my neighbors take advantage of any and every opportunity to set off fireworks. New Year’s is no exception. I did not find out until this morning that the Georgia Bulldogs won their playoff game at the stroke of midnight, just as the Peach Drop dropped. Now Bulldogs will be facing Horned Frogs (from Texas Christian University) for the national championship. And although I know which team I am rooting for, I am wondering what would happen if a real horned frog met a real bulldog in real life. (Bloodshed, maybe?)

Today we had church online; the service was pre-recorded and it was funny to see our preacher commenting on his own sermon in the chat room. (He and his wife are in Indiana at the moment because his wife’s father is ill.) 

Today I am also dealing with a bad backache between the shoulder blades. I think my back is getting revenge on me for all the driving we did in the four days of our vacation. We spent probably eight hours on the road getting to our hotel room in Ocala, several more hours the next day between driving to see my mother in law near Orlando, and then driving to our hotel room in Tampa. 

The next day I did driving (not hours of driving, though) when I had lunch with my BFF (she did most of the driving because she came up from Sebring). Then my husband did driving when we went to St. Petersburg to see my sister, her husband, and their daughter. 

And the next day, we spent nearly ten hours in the car from Tampa to home. Most of our time in the Atlanta area was spent crawling in a traffic jam. I was not shocked. 

Yesterday I spent more money than I wanted to buying groceries, but we will eat for some time. 

So I think my back finally said, “No more!” 

I did some self-care by taking an ice pack and lying down for a while; ended up taking a nap. 

Later this evening I will ask my husband for a back rub, probably with Biofreeze. 

It’s the back pain that’s making this day “bad”. But I am determined to write. 

Happy New Year, everyone.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Ten years later

Most of them would be in high school.

They should have had their first dates, first crushes, first loves.

Some of them should still be in the classroom doing the profession they loved. 

And at least one should still simply be a mother. 

But because of the actions of a deeply disturbed young man, 26 people died ten years ago today at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. 

Six were adults who worked at the schools:  the principal, teachers, and teacher assistants.  A seventh adult, the mother of the shooter (I will not name the shooter; he killed himself at the school), died at home, the first victim of the massacre.  

The other twenty were first-graders.

Let that sink in.

First-graders, with single digits showing their ages. 

What can I say that hasn't already been said about Sandy Hook? 

It remains the deadliest mass shooting at an elementary school. 

When you say "Sandy Hook" and "Columbine", people know immediately what you are talking about, and it is not simply a place name. They are names with horrible connotations of blood, of murder, of screaming parents and other adults, of first responders who probably still suffer from nightmares and other symptoms of PTSD.  

And as if the Sandy Hook parents weren't suffering enough, they had to endure the outrageous claims that "Sandy Hook was a hoax." When I was on the hunt for a conservative alternative to Facebook, I was part of such a group and when I mentioned Sandy Hook, the person said, "No one died at Sandy Hook. Show me proof that people died at Sandy Hook." 

I will not name the person that spent the most time tormenting the Sandy Hook families, except to say that every cent this person has should be divided among the families that lost loved ones. 

Seven adults and twenty children died a decade ago. 

Ten years later, nothing has changed.

Instead, we are society that has grown numb to mass shootings. Our ice thaws a bit when we hear about a school shooting. We scream our outrage, we offer our thoughts and prayers, we demand changes to gun laws . . . and then all the feelings die down until the next mass shooting. Lather, rinse, repeat.

What can I say that hasn't been said? Rachel still weeps for her children and cannot be comforted (see Jeremiah 31:15). 

What solutions can I offer that have not been offered?

Like a friend of mine said after yet another mass shooting, "I'm out of ideas." 

The only thing I know to do is remember the victims:  

Nancy Lanza

Rachel D'Avino

Dawn Hochsprung

Anne Marie Murphy

Lauren Rousseau

Mary Sherlach

Victoria Leigh Soto

Charlotte Bacon

Daniel Barden

Olivia Engle

Josephine Gay

Dylan Hockley

Madeleine Hsu

Catherine Hubbard

Chase Kowalsky

Jesse Lewis

Ana Marquez-Greene

James Mattioli

Grace McDonnell

Emilie Parker 

Jack Pinto

Noah Pozner

Caroline Previdi

Jessica Rekos

Avielle Richman

Benjamin Wheeler

Allison Wyatt

In memoriam, December 14, 2012.

May their memory be a blessing.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Rodent's Revenge?

Back when Windows 3.1 was a thing, it included a game called Rodent's Revenge. The player played the role of a mouse who went after cats. When it trapped the cat, the cat would turn into a piece of cheese, then slowly disintegrate.

While my family and I have not yet disintegrated into cheese, I think we may be players in a game of Rodent's Revenge.

A week ago Thursday, the exterminators came out and set traps and sealed up every place they could think of where rats were coming into the house.  We thought that would solve the problem.

Ha!

Recently, Matthew said he'd seen a rat in the kitchen, dashing across the floor and heading for the corner where the garbage was. I think I know where the rat may have gone. (No, Jimmy Cagney didn't give it to him through the door.)

I've also seen what I think is fresh rat poop in the house. So I'm keeping an eye out for where the poop is. The exterminators will be coming back next week and I can tell them where I think the rats are coming/going.

But I'm convinced that the rodents are getting their revenge in other ways.

On Sunday, I noticed that the house was unusually cold. It was either that day or the next that Matthew wanted to know if we had "an air conditioner for the heater" (meaning the thermostat setting.) I tried to get the thermostat to work and could not.

We called the pros, who came out and discovered that the heat and power upstairs had been turned off.  I think the power had been turned off to the central heat/air, and it wouldn't surprise me if the exterminators had turned it off for safety reasons while they were working in the attic.

The pros turned the head/power back on, and voila, we had heat again, for the price of $95.  (I'm reminded of the story attributed to Henry Ford who, when he had a problem with his plant, called a friend of his, who immediately fixed the problem and sent him a bill for about $1,000. When Ford demanded to know, why are you charging me so much? the friend itemized the bill:  "For tinkering: $10. For knowing where to tinker: $990.")

Okay, problem solved.

Until yesterday.

I went to physical therapy at 8 a.m., and planned to go to Starbucks afterwards so that I could finish a job due at noon. But when I came out from PT, I discovered a flat tire.  So I contacted AAA through the app, and got the message that AAA's ETA was 12:47 p.m. It was approximately 9:45 a.m.

I emailed the people I proof for and said, my assignment will be late. They said, this is a assignment that has to be turned in today, we can extend it a few hours but no more. (Which I understand. The legal profession works under tight deadlines.)

So, I decided to pull out my trusty computer and work while I was waiting. Here I am, sitting with the driver's seat pushed back as far as it will go, listening to a recording and checking the transcript as I'm going along.

Around 11:30, I got a text saying, your dispatcher is on the way; and then I got a phone call a few minutes later from the AAA worker saying he'd be there in about 25 minutes.

He arrived, changed my tire, and chatted with me very nicely while he was working. When the tire came off, I immediately saw the problem. I'd run over a screw. (Yes, my tire was officially screwed. As I write this, my husband and I are at Pep Boys getting it fixed.)

He finished about 12:15, and I immediately got into the car after being told that "you can't drive over 50 miles an hour on that spare". All the way home, I kept thinking about the Sammy Hagar song, "I Can't Drive 55."

I got home at 12:45 p.m. and told my husband what had happened, and said, leave me alone for the next 40 minutes while I finish. He made lunch for me while I was finishing the job.

Job was finished at about 1:40 p.m. When I turned it in, I immediately got a "thank you" from the people I proof for. (I'd also got a "thank you" email from them when I said, I have my computer with me so I can work while I wait.)

So, that problem was solved . . . but as the old Ronco commercials said, "But wait! There's more!"

I had been wearing a long sleeved blue shirt and during PT, I noticed a hole in one of the sleeves. So I thought, "Oh, it's a small hole and I know how to darn holes. I'll get some embroidery thread the same color and fix it."

Last night, when I took off that blue shirt, I discovered more holes.

In BOTH sleeves.

They resemble the holes that are in a pair of my jeans.

I think the rat(s) decided they wanted a midnight snack. It's interesting that they enjoy the color blue.

And, to top it off, there is a small spot on a Rubbermaid container where we're currently keeping the potatoes where it looks like something has gnawed on it. (Yes, I know we are supposed to keep potatoes in ventilated storage. At the moment, we do not HAVE ventilated storage for our potatoes that will protect said potatoes from the rats.)

Is it any wonder that I think the rodents are having their revenge?

If you hear of some slowly disintegrating pieces of cheese in the metro Atlanta area, take off your hats, hum "Taps" and make sure someone gives us all a heartfelt eulogy.

Then go on a war against any rat you find.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Oh, rats!

 The title of this piece has nothing to do with a common expression of frustration from Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang.

Rather, it has to do with literal mice.

It all started when Matthew came running to me one morning, saying, “I saw a rat in the kitchen!” 

I followed him, asked him where he’d seen it, and he pointed towards a corner of the kitchen.  I looked there, couldn’t see it, but I was sure he’d seen something.

Next, I started noticing teeth marks in the bananas we kept out on the counter. 

Finally, while sitting in the living room one evening, I saw a nose, whiskers, eyes and ears poke themselves out from behind our small couch. I said, “Oh, hello. Glad to meet you.” He turned around and ran back behind the couch. 

I nicknamed the creature Jimmy Cagney, as in, “You dirty rat!” (This is probably a good place to mention that Cagney the actor never said, “You dirty rat!” in any of his movies. The closest he came was in the 1932 movie “Taxi!”, where he yelled to his brother’s killer through a locked closet: “Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat, or I’ll give it to you through the door!”)

We set out some mousetraps, and one of them caught Jimmy Cagney. 

End of problem, right?

Uh . . .wrong.

I started noticing teeth marks in the bananas a few days later. I begged my husband, can we PLEASE call an exterminator? 

At the same time, we both started seeing rats skittering across the floor. Yes, that was “rats” in plural.

The exterminator came out, explored the house, and informed us that we had rats because he could tell by their droppings. Among other things, he told us that our crawlspace was full of rat droppings. 

Gee, thanks.

He scheduled a date for the team to come out, gave me the cost, which promptly went on the credit card. Sorry, Dave Ramsey, but this was a case where we NEEDED the credit card.

In the next few days and weeks, I saw two rats race around the house, mostly in the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Before I realized there had been rats in the house, I’d found two neatly arranged piles of dryer lint, one in the downstairs bathroom, the other in a corner of the kitchen. (Hey, even rats want comfortable places to sleep.)  I also saw one mouse scurry up the stairs. I don’t know where he/she/it ended up.

When I discovered holes eaten in a pair of my jeans that I’d left in a laundry basket downstairs, I declared war.

I would have been willing to accept unconditional surrender and a humane execution at this point, allowing said rats blindfolds and final cigarettes and maybe a final kiss from a loved one. 

But the final straw came when one rat skittered from behind the small living room couch into a corner of the dining room, skittered back into the living room and under the small couch . . . and then skittered out from under the small couch, towards the big couch — where I was sitting — and headed STRAIGHT FOR MY FEET.

I jumped up, grabbed my iPad, which I was using to chat with my BFF, and ran upstairs. 

That was the moment where I decided I would accept nothing but complete and total annihilation and obliteration.

I named the rats Ben and Willard, after two horror movies from the 1970’s featuring killer rats. I have no idea if they’re both male, both female, or one of each, and I refuse to get close enough to find out. 

They have put teeth marks in my bananas, they have taken a nice big bite out of an apple, and a nice big bite out of a potato. Putting out mousetraps for them did not work. These rats are too smart for that. In fact, they are so smart that they managed to knock down a box of crackers from the top of my pantry! 

They’ve skittered across the kitchen floor under the stove. 

And, on Halloween day, while I was in the bathroom, one of them slithered under the crack in the bathroom door! I gasped and it turned around and went out. (It would have been appropriate if I had squeaked.) 

Well, today, the cavalry has arrived. 

As I write this, the extermination company we hired is going around the house, sealing the entry points and setting traps. They will come back on the 22nd to see how well the traps have worked. 

This time, the rats will be the ones getting it through the door!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.