A Time Machine Detour

I’m a messy writer. I don’t think it’s evident in published works. I juggle multiple stories/ essays, and my handwritten first drafts include scribbles, side-notes. Sketched illustrations in margins, between paragraphs, and sometimes in the middle of sentences. But the messiness really shows up in my personal time machines (yes, plural): diaries, journals.

As I tackle a nonfiction project, I’ve been digging through my time machines. There are gaps. A couple of journals succumbed to fire; floods turned a few nonsequential diaries turned into papier mache blocks. Sporadic rather than regular entries in those remaining, they chronicle trials & triumphs, questions & revelations, the state of my psyche or my hangnail. True to what I knew & thought at the times.

No clue what triggered a few entries or what they were about. (She did it again! Now in the top 10 stupidest things to come out of a grown-up’s mouth! Who was “She”? What did she say?) Others prompt vivid recalls of things left behind, forgotten. Some show what a double-life I had at times.

In a few entries, I must’ve dodged rants or interrogations from a grandparent, aunt, or uncle about why I didn’t date in high school. My reply—“They like football and cars; I like books and animals. What are we supposed to talk about?”—apparently satisfied them enough to shut up or change the subject.

Although publicly true, the double-life reason was this: I had no idea who I was or wasn’t related to in my parents’ hometown. When my folks moved back there, I’d pieced together partial genealogies, local gossip, & enough surname connections to realize that by blood or marriage I was related to at least a fifth (possibly a fourth) of that small farming community. There were already plenty of odd trials with my folks and mystifying tensions with the closest relatives. Challenging. Confounding.

Because some relatives got along like slightly civilized Hatfields & McCoys sans shotguns, and because some were considered longtime pillars of the community, the façade of everything being glitch-free was absolutely required. Cheerfully peachy amid their hostilities & meltdowns. Without a doubt, I knew I’d draw the combined wrath of known & unknown relatives down on me if I even accidentally stepped a toe out of line. I had more than enough to handle without adding to it.

Off & on entries puzzle over training a 13 y.o. terrier the Sit & Heel command. Along with feisty stubbornness hardwired in her breed’s brain, she was also, of course, too old for such adolescent nonsense. Ultimately, it was an exercise in frustration. Not until my family moved from the small town was I around anyone who could show me what to do. By then that terrier had died, but my parents got a young dog. I had a fresh chance at learning something I’d so much wanted to do.

And since my concept of journals meant everything should be written on their pages, my first short story— an attempt at a Western—was there. A Western fan in general & a Louis L’Amour fan in particular, I was sure I could work that Old West magic. Every possible cliché appeared in the story, & every one of them rode off into the sunset to die of embarrassment.

Music was another facet of double-life. Secretly, I thought most popular bubble-gum rock of the day sucked. With somewhat guilty glee, the first LPs I bought myself were Irish ballads by The Clancy Brothers & the flamenco guitar of Carlos Montoya. Played over & over, they swept me away, elated. My singing voice has always constituted audio assault, but I could brogue along with “Jug of Punch” & “O’Donnell Abou” just fine. I tried but never could master more than the opening notes of Montoya’s “Malaguena”.

Around the same time, I was discovering science fiction. I knew nothing about amputations, prosthetics, or phantom pain. Precious little about space travel beyond what I’d seen on Star Trek, The Outer Limits, & late-late night B-movie reruns (when I was supposed to be asleep). Yet another entry records a dream so haunting that, some 20+ years later, it grew into the world of my cybernetic navigators. Hindsight may be 20/20 but it can be nonetheless mystifying.

Versions of a frequent social media question appear in my newsfeed. “What advice would you give your childhood/teenage/younger you?”

Navigating a double-life, the teen me could’ve used a bit of reality check: you’ll never solve or understand all the family mysteries.

A bit of hope for a smidgen of resolution: a major puzzle piece hidden from you will come to light in 40-some years.

A bit of patience counsel: you’ll learn to train your dogs, you’ll find your genre(s), hit your stride—it just takes time.

A bit of encouragement: it’ll be okay—chin up, kiddo.

On the other hand, the last wouldn’t have been necessary. According to my time-machines, I did it anyway.

Writing & Sliding Tiles

My assistant for this post.

Tools of the Trade is live, introducing some of The Suntosun Chronicles cast members. The sequel novel, Suntosun Circus, is slated for release this fall. As I roll forward with writing the next book (tentatively titled Suntosun Seasons), I dig again into inner territories. Discover anew links between my fictional stories and the masks worn in autobiographies of the psyche.

Literal and figurative puzzles recur in my stories. But it’s amazing how some children’s toys teach us how to deal with adult challenges and tasks. The sliding tiles puzzles I enjoyed when I was young proved especially useful.

With the assistance of my beloved cat, here’s how a fiction/real-life connection works for a quest story.

Because she loves climbing, I learned the domestic housecat can find every possible route into a basement’s drop ceiling.

So, I (protagonist) move one ceiling tile (obstacle, setting), and cat (goal) backs across tiles to another section. Central plot. Also approaching badlands/cave/et cetera where setting complicates goal.

Pull down two more tiles hoping to intercept cat. Simple plan: achieve the goal without venturing into badlands/etc.

Cat skirts the gap to a different part of the basement. Simple plan failed.

Move more tiles and take down others to widen the gap, possibly cornering the cat. Plan #2 is better, right?

At this point, not too many tiles are removed. I’m already encountering dust, cobwebs, and dead bugs. The badlands become more dangerous, the goal even farther & further from sight.

Cat displays unsuspected athletic prowess as she leaps the overhead chasm. More desperate pressure for achieving the goal.

Cat pauses to sniff a decomposing mouse. Lull before the final conflict or confrontation.

Move another tile. Oh, so close! Cat is now intensely interested in a ductwork section where a former homeowner cut a vent hole. Plot twist.

Our eyes meet. Oh, no! Don’t you dare! Cat scurries just out of reach and kicks a petrified skink into my hair. How’d that get up there‽ Cat dives for the hole! Focus on goal. Gross out later.

I break a tile and knock down part of the tile frame as I lunge for cat. Cat wriggles head and shoulders into the vent hole, but I grab cat’s back legs. Cat is captured. Success! Victory! Resolution!

I wipe cobwebs from her face and remember a sliding tiles puzzle I enjoyed as a kid. Eyeing the mess above and on the floor, I consider taking down the entire drop ceiling. Satisfied with her adventure, cat snuggles against me and purrs. Epilog.

Sidetracks: the Metal Season

The strangest items remind you of things now missing from your life. When you come across them, they carry you down byways of memory lane.

I forgot I’d kept a few melted & broken tips of drill bits I used to repair — chop off the bad, regrind new tips. Even after so many years, the damaged tips fascinate me. Speed and feed are terms anyone who works with machines knows, and these tips show one of the things happens when speed and/or feed is badly wrong. With the possible exception of destruct testing, this doesn’t occur without operator error, be it inattentiveness, inexperience, altered consciousness, bad math, or…

Yet there’s an eerie and violent beauty in the textures and color changes. Even today, the force and heat required to cause such metallic distortions still amaze me.

They marked the ending of a defining life season. Though I still enjoy machining as a hobby, it’s not quite the same. The machine shops where these came from passed into history, but the effect they had on me remains.

Warning: Not for the Squeamish

Oooops! happen to everyone.

Sometimes, you don’t see the actual beginning of an event chain. You stumble into a chain-in-progress, and the outcome depends on what you do in your portion of the links.

I took the dogs outside to potty. The girls got down to business immediately, but the boy made a beeline for the truck.  He kept circling it, sniffing, but his huge nose was stuck up in the air rather than scenting at ground level.

Huh. Time to investigate.

A dead rabbit sprawled on the windshield. I’m an attentive driver. I’m pretty sure I would’ve noticed a rabbit splatting the driver’s side windshield like an oversized bug. A pair of disposable gloves later, I solved the mystery. (I’m not squeamish, but this did make me a bit queasy.)

A small feather stuck to partially identifiable viscera. An owl had used the hood of the truck as a dining room and the windshield as the table.

With nowhere to bury it, the sad little corpse was wrapped in a plastic bag, slid into a funeral urn (one of many empty coffee cans), and double-bagged to go in the trash. Somehow (gosh, how did that happen?), it went directly into the bin without making it into a larger trash bag. It fell to the bottom.  It wedged in the interior molding for the trash truck lift arms. It remained there after the disposal company made its rounds.

Over the next week, it ripened in the humid heat of a Midwest summer.

R.I.P.E.N.E.D!

(Maybe leaving the lid off the dogs’ poop scoop bucket would’ve sweetened the localized miasma. Maybe not.)

My hubby (my knight in shining armor whose nose is actually more sensitive than mine) spared me the pry-it-loose-and-bag-it detail.

We come to each other’s rescue from our Oooops! moments.

Our standard We won’t do that again! doesn’t apply to creative, new Oooops!

Frittering Away Bits of Time

A new confession: sometimes I indulge in blatant procrastination. Not major blocks of time, you understand. I don’t have major blocks of free time, but there are little 5-10 minute swatches when I could do something productive but just don’t want to.

I’m not sure whether to be amused or disturbed by one of the ways I fritter away bits of time: those crazy little on-line quizzes.

My choices in each quiz are honest, partly because I don’t like slanting results toward what I hope for, but mostly because I don’t always know what results are available or how they calculate results from my answers.

So…

My hippie name would be Breeze, but my birth name should’ve been Phoenix. My Native American name would be Likes to Play.

Depending on which quiz I take, I’d be a German Shepherd or a Basset Hound if I were canine. If I were equine, a Quarter Horse. (Figures it’d be a working horse, but why couldn’t I be a sleek Thoroughbred or showy Friesian or even a Shire with hooves bigger than dinner plates?). As a lizard, I’m a chameleon, but as a dinosaur, a velociraptor. I’m a shot of whiskey—completely at odds with my claim that I’m aging like fine wine.

In mythological quizzes, I’m a mermaid, a griffon, and Cerebus. (Combined results, maybe a 3-headed lion/eagle hybrid that can swim as well as fly?)

I don’t take many of the tv character quizzes; I don’t watch tv enough to know what most shows are about or who the characters are. Still, the occasional character quiz catches my eye and captures my time.

Among super-heroines, I’m Wonder Woman, but in a Marvel Comics quiz (without gender choice), Hawkeye. To be fair, I took a couple of villain quizzes (we all have a dark side, oui?): Catwoman and Moriarty.

In the Star Wars universe, I’d be Boba Fett, which kind of surprised me—I thought it’d be Chewbacca because of a bit of scruffiness around my edges—and I had to look that one up. I like Star Wars but didn’t remember some of the minor characters. Good excuse to fire up a SW marathon, isn’t it?

For a Peanuts character, I would be Snoopy, and for a Lord of the Rings character, Legolas.
Hmmm. If I merge those two results, would I be an athletic beagle with awesome archery skills or an elf with long floppy (and pointed) ears, WWI goggles, and a Sopwith Camel?

Likes To Play—that one got it right.

A Goal in Mind

Every so often, something catches me off guard and I realize I may have presented a wrong or at least incomplete impression. One dimensional, really.

I rave about how much I lovelovelove lime sherbet–my very favorite!!!–so frequently that folks get the impression I don’t like blueberry frozen yogurt or chocolate/strawberry/vanilla ice cream. Or black walnut. Or pineapple sorbet.

But this isn’t about desserts.

I occasionally give myself a repeat of an old college assignment: list the titles of every book I remember reading cover-to-cover. No cheating by looking at my bookshelves or wandering through the library. The original assignment had a time limit of about a month, but with this most recent repeat, I gave myself a longer period.

I haven’t utilized Goodreads much, but as I look over the massive list that’s grown over the last several months, I think it’s time to organize this list both at Goodreads and here.  Here will be both reviews of books I like for whatever reasons as well list groupings of titles.
(BTW, I don’t take requests for reviews. The ones I post are because I want to, not because someone asked me to do so.)

Anyway, I just think it’s time to share that I like more than just “lime sherbet” in what I read.
And write.

A Little Life, A Little Mystery

This isn’t a eulogy–not really–although it’s about a fur-friend who’s gone now. It’s ruminations and memories about a cat who shared her life with me and my husband for over 17 years.

I love cats but I was never a cat person. I always had more dogs than cats in my life, so it never occurred to me they might not be teachable. To me, cats were a bit like odd, special-needs dogs who simply required extra patience.

Folks at the pound thought the kitten was 7 weeks old, but when I brought her home, she didn’t know how to eat well. The vet guessed closer to 5 weeks. My husband was…not really afraid of cats but wary of them. All those claws as well as teeth. From the beginning, though, Phoebe was incredibly gentle with him. She’d walk across my lap–this is Mom, I pin-dance with joy, with gusto! On my husband’s lap, she sheathed her claws so tightly, she walked on her tiny back pads. Her vocalizing was loud, chatty, sometimes demanding with me. With him, her purrs and trills were soft and flirty. She won his heart.

The Sit command dogs mastered in a couple of training sessions took Phoebe about 6 weeks of short sessions 2-3 times daily. By the time she was 10 months old, she was reliable with Sit, Off, Spit It Out, Upstairs, Downstairs, and Let’s Go (a version of Heel). Her socialization was as thorough as what I did for show puppies. She went for car rides, and everywhere I took her, I made sure people petted her. She had fun visits to the vet as well as appointments. Throughout the rest of her life, she never stressed, never blew fur from nervousness at the vet office; she was a polite, relaxed patient anyone could handle.

She expressed distaste for any bath at the top of her lungs but held still for the indignity. Teaching her to accept nail trims was like trying to train a ferociously thorny rose bush, but within a year, she enjoyed the procedure, even purring as I worked on her feet. To her, brushing was almost as good as a treat.

She had a feisty streak–what cat doesn’t? More than once, the older hounds sought (with much flinching) rescue from her wrapped around a leg or swinging from an ear. I worried that the younger dog, Miss B (67 pounds, from a bloodline with sharp temperaments), would hurt her until my husband discovered Phoebe chasing that dog up and down the basement stairs and slapping the long houndy snout when Miss B flopped down for a breather. I’m not done playing, dog!
She and Miss B also engaged in bizarre dead mouse soccer, batting & flipping the soggy body through the air to each other. Inventive games between fur-friends.

Phoebe’s first sight of a puppy litter shocked her. They’re Everywhere! By the time the puppies were tottering around the whelping box, Phoebe was playing with them. You’d think she would’ve been eaten for messing with the babies, but mama-dog seemed relieved to have a sitter. As the puppies grew, Phoebe taught them manners. She tolerated respectful nosing and slobbery kisses. Play too rough and her quick slap restored instant order. One of the male dogs we kept grew to 102 pounds of muscle; he wilted to the floor when he got out of line and the 11-pound kitty corrected him, holding his nose with the tips of her trimmed claws. Never scratching or puncturing–just holding.

The day she screamed, the dogs haired out at the raw terror in her voice. I bolted downstairs, certain I’d find her crushed under a fallen bookshelf or impaled on some tool in the shop. She stood in classic Halloween black cat arch, hair puffed to triple her size, pupils fully dilated. A wolf spider had fallen in her litterbox. It raced around the box’s perimeter in 8-legged panic. A canning jar capture and trip to the garden later, all was well with two mutually horrified creatures.

Other than arachnophobia, not much rocked her serenity. Oh, except for the time she decided to stroll out the back door. A dozen steps from the door, she looked up and instantly flattened to the sidewalk. The lack of ceiling overhead unnerved her. It didn’t stop her from joining the dogs lined up at the window for the daily neighborhood watch and adding feline commentary to theirs. I don’t like that guy on the bicycle! Me neither! Did you see that woman let her dog poop in our yard? Disgusting! Bad, bad! Oooo–look a rabbit!
I didn’t offer them binoculars.

Although a passionate mouser (with woods behind our backyard, there was a lot of incoming mice to be passionate about), Phoebe developed an odd relationship with a baby squirrel we rescued. By the time we realized Bart couldn’t be released, she’d struck up a friendship. Over the next 8 years, she sat on the stairs, sometimes for hours, as they stared at each other, engaged in long chatty burbles, trills, and chirps, and touched noses. After he quietly passed, she still paused on the same step to stare where his cage had been and trill for a few moments. Her tone was questioning rather than chatty. She continued doing this until her own last days.

Despite what animal experts tell us about feline behavior and intelligence, she didn’t forget Bart, nor did she forget the dogs she outlived. I’d seen many dogs weep tears of sorrow, worry, even joy, but she was the first cat I witnessed doing the same. We learned never to speak their names in her presence.

Seventeen years of relationships and interactions more complex than I thought possible for a housecat: intelligent, ornery, mannered, loving. How much was innate personality? How much was early training? A mystery I’ll never solve but one I treasure as I cherished her.

Hers was a little but full life, well-lived. Her final breath was a purr.

The Peaks of the Citadel

Overcast was the day and bold were our hearts as we ventured forth to climb the outer walls of the citadel to its lofty peaks.

Long it vexed my heart sore as to why I so rarely need water the spathiphyllum in the corner—the lily, though lovely, gave me no peace. Then came a night of torrential rain and a clue to this mystery with the resonant crash of sheetrock down from above.

Our quest, then, was to learn what fell reason there might be for rain to enter and despoil the attic and interior of the great hall. Dismayed we were to find foul rot and storm wrought damage on both shingle and sheath, and we vowed an oath to repair.

“Insurance?” I said, for hope was in my heart that we might contract a craftsman for the labor.

He shook his head. “Not so, for the deductible is so great, we could dine on naught but ramen noodles for a year. No help will come.” Then stout of heart, he made boast. “But we are able and can do this thing which we’ve avowed.”

We sallied forth to the home improvement store and made bargain with the merchant therein. “Silver” was the word there writ upon the package of asphalt shingles though it appeared as pale gray granite to mine eyes. And I glanced with longing at the nail guns exhibited upon the shelves of the tool aisle. And at literature on the magazine rack, and at Christmas decorations on early presentation, though All Hallowed Saints’ Eve was more than twice fortnights away.

O, and I worked the handle of a bench-top drill press on display, for long have I desired this mechanical device.

So, we purchased with many a coin and promissory note the asphalt shingles we needed atop the citadel’s peaks. Thus supplied, we gathered wood and tools and asphalt shingles, and we charged forth to bravely battle effects of weather and time.

“Wait!” I cried upon gaining the roof. “Come no further! It cannot hold the two of us!”

For he was broad of shoulder and mighty of thew. And surely sheath and timber would collapse and cast us both into the great hall, most likely on the television atop its carven plinth just under the risky peak. Or mayhap on the dusty rowing machine I’d moved upstairs from the citadel’s dungeons to fulfill some decade’s New Year resolution to exercise.

“I am small and light of weight. I can wield hammer and caulking gun to affix the sheet and shingles into place. Thou art strong of arm and back and better able than I to carry heavy burdens of lumber and shingles up the ladders we leaned against the citadel.”

And he was mightily pleased at this plan for though he was manly, brave and bold, he was ever wary of heights. “But hold,” he cautioned. “Forget not thy leather gauntlets. For does thee not recall the radical dermabrasion of thy hands during our last repair of the citadel’s peaks?”

“Aye,” I said grimly. “I remember it well, and I thank thee for the remembrance of my gauntlets. I will use them as I climb, but I must remove them to hold the nails and fire the caulking gun. My hands would be too clumsy else and I would dread the task of plucking fallen nails from fallen leaves.”

For chill autumn was heavy upon the year, and neither of us had raked the yard.

“Then tuck thy gauntlets into thy belt or pockets this time so they won’t slide down the citadel’s peak and plummet to the earth.” Stern he was as he said, “T’is unseemly for the Lady of the citadel to snivel so upon breaking her fingernails.”

Through the long afternoon, I wielded hammer and caulk gun. Occasional enticing wafts of grilling haunch and ribs drifted to me from the steakhouse on the highway. My stomach rumbled in yearning, but I steeled myself to the purpose at hand and persevered in our great task.

Anon, I paused to gaze upon the greensward below extending to the chain-link fence and espied a clump of dying ragweed and knots of poison ivy I had not noticed before. I mentioned it when he brought a tankard of hot tea, passing it up to me with nary a spill, but I sipped the savory brew circumspectly for I did not wish to hurry down the ladder in great distress later.

As dusk descended and the first needles of sleet fell from the sky, I came down from the peaks. He stored away the ladders and tools while I wondered in what pantry I’d stored the heating pad. For sore and chilly were bicep and back from hammering while perched on the citadel’s peak. Mayhap, I must embark upon another quest ere the pass of this evenfall to the lair of trousers and skirts, blouses and shirts, and my heart quailed for there were legends, aye, that in closets there dwelt floors.

Yet no mere trepidation of future quest could still my joy. Gazing up at the deed we had done, we embraced in victory, our oath fulfilled.

Then he said, “Behold, I have prepared a gift of multi-purpose cleaner for thy hands,” for they were black and tarred with caulk. Therefore, I went into the citadel’s kitchen to scrub the malodorous substance from my hands.

But, perchance, it seemed intractable and stubborn to remove, and I despaired deeply for I had yet to prepare the evening banquet of grilled cheese and pickles and potato chips (if there be chips still in our stores).

“Out, out, dark blots upon my hands!” I cried as I applied the fibrous pot-scrubber to the labor.

He came to my side and examined my hands. “Let not thy heart be troubled. T’is only freckles.” Peering gravely, yet lovingly, into mine eyes, he pronounced a helpful suggestion. “Next time, wear thy glasses.”

Sentient Appliances

I confess a love/hate relationship with techy stuff.
When it works, fine. Lovely.
When it doesn’t, I want to drop-kick the techy item through the nearest window.

Maybe I’ve read and watched too much science fiction where the tech goes all wrong. One of my early introductions to the dark side of artificial intelligence was Colossus (later made into a 1970s movie). And then HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. And the gunfighter android from Westworld.

Et cetera.

Anyway, the glitchy side of tech is never far from my mind.

It doesn’t seem to matter how expensive the tech is when real glitches happen. For a few years, I operated a quarter of a million dollar machine that sometimes refused to shut off. Many attempts to troubleshoot and repair the glitch failed. Repair technicians knew it was a sticky relay, but even repeated replacement of the offending part didn’t help. The solution: hit a certain spot on the equipment’s cabinet with your fist and voila! it shut off. Three of my hand-spans from the front and six hand-spans from the top — X marks the spot.

I think about that every time I see the newest technology featured in some appliance (stove, furnace, coffeemaker, or whatever.). Cars can parallel park for you and have computer options, sensors, and cameras so close attention to driving becomes less necessary. Cell phones now act as portable all-purpose computers. The washing machine at my current job has a control panel like a baby rocket from NASA.

In time, they’ll have voices of their own to go along with artificial intelligence. That doesn’t scare me, but the prospect of a balky/glitchy appliance getting argumentative or sassy…

Stove: Oh, you set my burner on medium? Soooo sorry about the crunchy eggs! Heh-heh.

Toaster: Sliced bread again! That’s all I ever see! How about a bagel or English muffin for a change? A little variety here.

Air conditioner: You didn’t like it when it was cold outside, and now you don’t like the heat. I’m not working until you make up your mind.

Mixer: Wheeeeee! When I grow up, I’ll be a Tilt-o-whirl!

Washing machine: Don’t ask me about the water. I felt unbalanced and took a walk. The cat must’ve missed the litterbox.

Stove: No. I don’t feel like heating my burner right now. If you want hot water, talk to the coffee pot.

Refrigerator: You like dairy stuff, right. So I turned 2 gallons of milk into cottage cheese for you. What’s your problem?

Coffeemaker: Get lost. I’m set to brew at 2:45 a.m. and I’m sticking to it. Ask the hot plate.

Fan: I thought you liked clicking. You clipped a card to your bicycle spokes when you were a kid. Wasn’t this a misty nostalgic sound for you? Sheesh! What an ingrate!

Television: Didn’t know I could pixelate audio, didja? The actor said Ba-a-a-a-ad like a shee-e-e-eep. ROF-ROF-ROF-ROFL!

Hot plate: **spark**crackle**sparksparkspark** Gee, that was fun! Like the 4th of July! Turn up the dial!

Oh, if only my hair dryer could talk.

On second thought, I don’t want to know.

The Ultimate Carnival Ride

Carousel? Maybe, but not often.
Ferris wheel? Rarely that slow & gentle.
Rollercoaster? Tilt-a-whirl? Kamikaze? Yeah, that’s more like it.

No, I haven’t been going to amusement parks and carnivals. These are metaphors of a busy life, the essence of living in a world where challenges come from every direction, from the purely physical to the mental, intellectual and spiritual compass points.

Just when the climbs & plunges of the rollercoaster slow, just when it looks like I can step off the train, an Octopus wraps around me, then morphs into a Tilt-a-whirl car spinning chaotically or a Hammer plastering me to the back of the cage or (if the carney has trickster hands on the controls) stopping up-side-down. Kinetic forces reassert and…

Yikes! A drop tower, a toboggan splash, then I’m back on a spiraling coaster.

I’m still not sure how I managed to write and illustrate my two books—Under Every Moon and Leyfarers and Wayfarers—born in the midst of this, but others are on the way. Unrelated accomplishments accumulate (art, metalwork, beading, fiber arts among them) alongside housework, my work schedule, and a thousand interruptions. (As of right now, three chew toys and seven tennis balls have vanished in the last five minutes, and the dogs require a referee for the last visible toy. If the 4+ times daily precedence holds true, I’ll excavate the suddenly missing toys from under or behind the couch or buried between the cushions. Oh, and the cat is scratching the bottom of the water bowl—ah, the melodious sound of claws on stainless steel!—indicating the dogs drank it dry. )

None of the rides are beyond endurance. I totter wobbly-legged down the midway and into the funhouse. Check my short/tall/thin/fat/wavering reflections. I’m not sweating blood like Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane. None of this is stress, then. It’s only challenges, only annoyances, only an astronomically high rate of interest and event.

I grin and amble back to the rides. It strains the limits of my inner gyroscope but never to destruction.

And I haven’t barfed.