kitten

Grateful this paticular November is over

Is there is a line between what is a rule at your house and what is tradition? One tradition/rule we have is sitting down at Thanksgiving. Tablecloth, stemware, turkey, hassellbacked sweet potato with butter and brown sugar cooked in tinfoil, green bean casserole from a box, mashed potatoes, pecan pie, white wine. I hadn’t planned to stop at the liquor store the day before Thanksgiving. I hadn’t planned on going to any store at all that day, but ended up needing to get cash for the groomers. The bank – in the grocery store – IS the closest ATM.

I wanted a red for that night’s dinner; we’ve had a bottle of cheap champagne forever and thought we’d open that for Thanksgiving dinner, but walking down the local wine section, I saw this label:

Table white. On sale. Sold. Only later did I see this and thought, “Okay. Let’s giddy up and go.”

My November led into the brambles of fancy terribleness which made me hate having feelings for swaths of time because they were hurt so much. The ghastly lack of ethics in the local school district flabbergasts me. It doesn’t seem to matter to anyone either, that these politicians are so slimy. And their lies. You cannot convince me they are human. (I do have more on this subject, but the hour is closing in on so many opportunities for yeses, so I‘m curtailing a rant for now in order to shine up some stories to submit before the 30 November deadline.)

Speaking of stories…I am honored to have Like A Mango-Basil Smoothie up at Sledgehammer Lit thanks to J. Archer Avary and his incredible team. It’s sans audio, but as I alluded to, this month has been hell. I chatted briefly with Hilary this morning while she was doing a thorough house inspection. She had a similar dark spot in her month. I didn’t mention this to her, but I say the lunar eclipse during the Beaver Moon – a concurrent event not witnessed in some 512 years or so had to have had something to do with the state of the way things are. So say I, writer of this blog…the one who would like to think the chaos of this month with all the ups, downs, and slap-me-sillies happened for a reason. I mean seriously, one might just as well shame midnight and blame the moon.

This is the first “real” snow of the season. I guess we could blame climate change, too.

I’m so grateful that this little one shared some time with me.

Oh, that face! No, sorry, I still don’t know what happened. No, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Trashzina took a hit out on a kitten, that lizard woman has shown no evidence of owning a heart. The veterinarian hasn’t called with results from the lung biopsy. Yes, it’s been a while but if a lab is shorthanded, as a pet owner, I’d prefer they deal with tests that could extend the life of a still-alive pet such as this one.

(No, we did not get a new cat. This is a picture of our cat from two years ago)

Or this one posing for a before and after a visit with Dana at Paw Spa.

I’d started the month fully expecting to work out some scenes and get to know new characters and places during NaNoWriMo. I was also going to write a flash a day. Instead, I have a few thousand words and about 20 flashes – most in need of a severe edit. But, I wrote. I took a Tommy Dean workshop from Pioneer Valley two days after the kitten died which helped so much to pull me away from grief. There was more to come. A friend who moved south in her retirement passed away, as did my aunt. One son got deployed, one fell severely ill. And I was doing as well as I could with that, but there was one more bit of news that broke me. I don’t want to acknowledge any more than this, but after that, the Beaver Moon underwent a lunar eclipse and though I’m struggling, I’m still here. I’m glad you are, too.

Thank you for stopping by and for the read. Salut!

Those Sweet Baby Boys

This month, there were two additions to my orbit. I plead ignorance on how to show you Zachary. (I could do it but I’m not going to because if you don’t know the parents, well…the amount of exposure his precious little face is presented to the online world is something I’m leaving in his parent’s hands. Did I mention he’s adorable? He is. He has hair!) The other baby is this tyke.

He’s a cuddler. There were other kittens hanging out around the woodshed but I haven’t seen them lately. There are eagles and hawks in the area. Foxes, fishers, and cars, too. Plus the creek, which flooded the south lawn because the bridge is too small and an arch.

That issue has taken up a lot of my time. An onslaught of promotion envelopes from insurance companies has not helped in my trying to take care of things. I’m closing in on finishing the Camp NaNo challenge of 50,000 words in a month written on top of the regular cooking/cleaning/weeding/splitting/stacking/etc. The convergence of extra demands requiring devoted attention has driven me to take up tea as self-care. (I do have lovely problems, don’t I?)

One thing that isn’t a problem is a squeaky new publication of a flash. It’s my current personal favorite. LEON Literary Review, a venue I swooned over the first time I visited, made my dreams come true by accepting The Eye of Florence and it is live now HERE!

I want to thank all the people in my life that I’ve been connecting with recently. I’m grateful for the conversations and new knowledge. It helps to know other people are finding it hard to “human,” too. I think we all are to some extent. It’s hard for some people to admit they’re in pain when others are so much worse off, but then it grows and there’s only so much some people can take of it so they blow and then it’s a mess. There are a lot of messes around and I’m trying to take of them all, I swear, but boy, is it tough with two hands and one mop.

Speaking of messes, I have so much filing to do. And I have to hunt down a user guide to the new printer that I can’t get to work even though I had installed it and had printed from it and now it won’t do any printing and I need to figure out why in my spare time which I won’t have until I finish Camp NaNo and I’m close so adios and thank you so much for stopping by and for the read!

Dogged Perseverance in the Time of Covid-19

I mentioned last time I hoped to have happy publication news to share with you and I do! The fantastic Journal of Compressed Creative Arts accepted my piece “Ethan’s Machine” on Monday and earlier this month, my copies of the Smoldr Anthology arrived.

Husband has been home. A lot. My normal days now need to be altered and with that has come cleaning and organizing. My closet is sorted. My massive paper pile is filed. I’ve made a master list of all the short fiction I’ve written and it now is printed out and color coded for easy reference. My office has rarely looks this neat.

His “homeness” did accelerate the installation of the doors in front of the kitchen sink. Why yes, they are so shiny you can see the reflective of my pants in them.

He and I kicked around ideas to protect the “babies” from this terrorist:

And came up with this protection for the cucumbers and cantaloupe I started early.

See? They are right by her bed and still standing. 18 Mile Creek is visible through the window. More proof that we really do live “creekside.”

In the interim of spring I chose to have some cheap bouquets that made life a little better.

But now the snowdrops are out and daffodils will soon follow.

And we’ve been admiring the extended unfurling of the amaryllis.

So here it is, the end of the month, and I’m writing this post. I honestly do have intentions to compose them earlier, but this year, it’s only the threat of a deadline driving me to the keyboard. Speaking of deadlines, there are a few venues closing today. And then April, I will be off to a new world as I plod my way through the goal of writing a new novel during Camp NaNoWriMo. Wish me luck and know I love and miss most of you very much. I thank you all for reading and hope you’re able to stay healthy and strong.

Thanks for stopping by and for the read!

Happy Halloween aka National Novel Writing Month Eve!

The competitions I was waiting to hear about last time all resulted in being long listed. Not bad, but not great either. Thank you to everyone involved in the Fiction Factory Flash Contest and the Brilliant Flash Fiction’s “Feed Me” contest for considering my work.

Tomorrow is the official start of NaNoWriMo. I’ve signed up. The book I’m working on needs focus to get it done. If I start with the pages I have, and add daily, perhaps I’ll complete my aim of a needs-little-editing first draft. I know, I know, people dismiss NaNo, but for me, it’s a matter of conditioning. I’ve done it so often, I can sense when I’ve made the midpoint of the 1667 words each day. Also, Husband and friends know I’ll be writing then and leave me to do the work.

Fewer blog posts is but one symptom of my seemingly having dropped off the face of the earth. I haven’t been to my writer’s group or to the Wednesday morning write-ins in weeks. I put off having people over. I’ve not followed up on getting together with others. It isn’t depression as much as stress and feelings of being overwhelmed. A lot of it can be pinned on Ben. And as of Tuesday night at 9:10pm, Ben is no longer in our lives.

Instead of the heartache of a decked out, unreliable Legacy Turbo, we’re now leasing a 2019 Honda HR-V. If car shopping isn’t on the list of most stressful things a couple can go through, it needs to be added. Divorce and suicide were actually considered just to make the process stop. And now it has. Just in time for the snow, but this time in a taller vehicle with all-wheel drive.

It amazes me how a body reacts to stress. A four-month-old travels from Texas to meet a million people in New York and develops a cold. Exhibit A:

When she arrives at our home, I’m exposed to those microbes. I’d been under some stress – not just Ben’s latest costly breakdown. As if in a textbook, two days later I’m not feeling well. The unwellness couples with new pressures and then I’m sick. I was looking up symptoms for walking pneumonia and getting “you must be dying” Google results on Sunday night. By seven o’clock on Monday, I felt a little better. Tuesday, I woke up and could breathe properly. Some colds linger, some are punctual with their symptoms, but all children are germ-spreading carriers of disease. Ah well, what can you do since they are necessary to the continuation of the species.

On the plus side of life is the fact that it is autumn. The leaves are changing color, it’s time to pull out sweaters and mock the pumpkin spice crowd. My red-eyed squeaking bat is suspended from the ceiling. My new novel has a roughly sketched out plot. The battery-operated ghost scares the dog. And our new cat is here. This is Glinda. Middle name Janis as in Joplin.

I hope your October was greater than mine. Thanks for stopping by and for the read!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

T. L. Sherwood

Creekside Reflections