Santa may be struggling around here this year. I present to you the saga of the local FedEx meltdown, in which there is apparently a mountain of undelivered packages, with more arriving every day, so they can’t keep up with it. This crisis has taken over the town Facebook group, as people are bonding over sharing stories of failed deliveries. I’ve met so many people through this. We should organize a potluck.

It all started the Friday before last, when we got snow that made the roads difficult (school was cancelled), but it cleared up quickly. But then there was another round of snow on Monday, and roads didn’t get cleared until mid-day Tuesday. This apparently threw FedEx off because packages didn’t get delivered Friday and Monday, but more packages kept coming in, faster than they could deliver, until it got out of control.

I was supposed to have a package delivered last Tuesday. They gave me a delivery window. I went out to shovel my porch and front walk so they could deliver. Then the delivery window passed and the status changed to delivery by end of day. When it started getting dark, I turned on my porch light. At about 6:30, the status changed to delivery by end of the next day. The same thing happened again on Wednesday, with a delivery window that passed, delivery by end of day, then delivery by end of next day.

Thursday, with the delivery window I got the name of the driver who was on his way, and the scan record showed that it had been put on a truck (which suggests that those previous days it never even made it onto a truck and was never actually out for delivery). After the delivery window passed, the name of the driver changed and it said by end of day. Then I got a bright orange flag on the delivery, saying it would have to be rescheduled because of dangerous weather and they would notify me when they were able to schedule the delivery. Mind you, this was a day when even I, the weather weenie who won’t drive if it’s raining, was out driving. The package was scanned back into the FedEx facility.

The next update came Sunday morning, when it was scanned on a truck and out for delivery. They gave me the name of a driver. And it was stuck there until this morning, with the only update being that it went from delivery by end of day Sunday to “we’re actively trying to find a delivery time for you.” It wasn’t scanned back in, and it still said that my driver was on his way. We had a really bad cold snap, and I worried that this poor guy had frozen by the side of the road, since he was still on his way days later.

Now the package was supposedly scanned onto a truck this morning, for delivery this afternoon. I’m not holding my breath since it doesn’t say anything about a driver being on the way. This is just something for my office so it isn’t crucial. I just get frustrated with the constant changes. If they’d simply said that they were backed up and they would deliver next week, I’d have been fine with that. I get annoyed when it’s day after day of being told it will come and then they don’t show up. But there are other people in town who have perishable items like food or medication that was shipped in dry ice or in cold packs, and it’s now been out too long to be safe. There are people waiting on Christmas gifts that they ordered in plenty of time and that got to town more than two weeks before Christmas but that may not be delivered in time. Businesses haven’t been able to receive items they need for their businesses, and they apparently aren’t making scheduled pickups for businesses trying to send things. One of the pharmacies in town isn’t getting shipments of medicines. There are people expecting packages that require a signature who have taken off work to wait for the delivery, only to have it not show up.

People who work for FedEx say they’re completely buried after getting backed up. When people offered to go to the facility to pick up their packages so they wouldn’t have to deliver them, they said that wouldn’t work because they couldn’t find the packages in the pile of backlog. The only way they’re able to chip away at it is to just load packages on trucks as they can go. I’m picturing something like that episode of I Love Lucy where she’s working on the chocolate conveyor belt and it all starts piling up, but with packages piled everywhere and still coming in.

There are other things I want to order to finish setting up my office and kitchen, but I may wait until after Christmas to see if they get settled down rather than adding to the pile-up.

This might make a fun Christmas movie plot, with the delivery service overwhelmed with packages and a bunch of people from the community dress up as Santa to come help them deliver so that Little Timmy in the cancer ward can get his present on time. I doubt FedEx would allow that, but in Christmas Movie World you could make it work.

Supposedly, last winter was unusually snowy for around here. Everyone kept telling me how unusual it was that we got a big snowstorm in early January, reinforced by another one a little later, and then it didn’t get much above freezing all month so the snow never went away.

And now we’ve already had two big snows this season. We got the first one on Friday, with the snow tapering off later in the afternoon after dropping about three inches of very fluffy snow. Then the weekend got into the 40s and was sunny, so the roads were clear and most of the snow was gone. Then it started snowing very early Monday morning and snowed all day, into the evening. The forecast here was for a trace to an inch, and we ended up with close to five inches. It’s dry, fluffy snow, so apparently it has the same amount of water as what they forecast, but it was colder than they expected, so it was fluffier. Everything’s been shut down. I was supposed to get a delivery today, so I went out to shovel the walk and the front porch, but then they changed the delivery date late in the day. Of course, that meant I got little done because I was so distracted by waiting for the delivery and checking to see if it was here. Then it got changed to today.

It’s warming up, now above freezing, so the snow is gradually going away, but we’re supposed to get another round Friday. Depending on which forecast you look at, we’ll get either a trace or a foot. Since the last trace ended up being five inches, I’d probably better prepare for a foot.

I put up my Christmas tree on Friday, but I haven’t decorated it other than the lights. It’s a tabletop tree that came with pine cones and red berries on it (I suspect whoever made it doesn’t know how pine trees work. They don’t have red berries) so it looks festive even without ornaments, but I may do the real decorating during Friday’s snow and call that my “office party.”

All the snow does help me feel festive. Unfortunately, it kills my productivity. Maybe someday I’ll be used to it, but I can’t seem to do anything when it’s snowing but look out the window and watch the snow. On Monday, I spent the whole day looking out the glass doors in my den. In addition to the falling snow, there were swirls of snow when wind picked up the dry, fluffy snow and blew it around. It was utterly mesmerizing.

I did get some quality thinking done, though. I’ve started developing the next Rydding Village book, and now I have a pretty good idea of the main characters. I guess that counts as productivity, since book brainstorming is what I planned to do right now. I can do that while watching the snow fall.

I’m back from my Thanksgiving journey, which involved traveling across four states (parts of two, completely crossing two). It’s a two-day drive each way, which is kind of draining, but for Thanksgiving travel it’s probably less draining than flying would be, since I’d have to either change planes multiple times or spend a lot of time driving at each end of the trip. Travel is one thing that was made worse by my move, since I went from living a two-hour drive from my parents’ house and 15 minutes from a major airport to living a two-day drive from my parents and living near a small regional airport that currently only offers flights to one city (they’re adding a city next year). Since my parents also live near a small regional airport or else a long drive from a major airport, that complicates travel. So, I drive.

It’s actually mostly a pleasant drive. There’s some beautiful scenery. It gives me a lot of time to think. I brainstormed a book while I drove and came up with some good ideas. I sang along with my driving playlist and got in some good vocal exercise. The tricky part is planning the trip. Since it’s two days and driving all day, it can be challenging to find a good time to travel. I had to head out a day earlier than I planned because there were storms forecast, and that meant I had to rush my preparations. It was a good thing I did it, though, because I’d have been driving through heavy thunderstorms a whole day if I’d stuck to my schedule. Then on the return trip, I had to fit my travel in between a big storm front that brought heavy rain and a front with freezing rain. The heavy rain/thunderstorms were a day ahead of me as I traveled and the freezing rain was a day behind me, but I had perfect travel weather. I just had to deal with some nasty traffic because I was driving on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

For that, I thought my navigation system had lost its mind. I left early in the morning and was making good time when suddenly it moved my estimated arrival time to half an hour later. Then a little later it moved it 15 minutes later than that, with nothing changing about my driving. There was a small traffic slowdown from a wreck, and I thought it might have been accounting for that, but it added 10 more minutes (it also told me the wreck was 900 feet ahead right after I passed it, so I was losing faith in my nav system). I got to where I was 50 miles from my destination and it told me I’d be there in two hours, so I thought it was nuts.

Then I saw the brake lights ahead. There was apparently a wreck, according to the highway signs, but it must have been cleared by the time I got there. We started moving again, and there were signs for another wreck, and there was another slowdown but no signs of the wreck. Then another slowdown with no explanation. Because they’d cleared the wrecks by the time I got there, the slowdown must not have been as bad as the travel time had originally estimated because the arrival time flipped back by half an hour and I was only about 40 minutes later than the initial estimated arrival time.

Still, that was better than the freezing rain I’d have had if I’d waited a day. We got snow and ice overnight after I got home. They even cancelled schools on Tuesday, though it did warm up, so it would have been clear by the time I got here.

It’s good to be home. Now I need to do the house cleaning I was planning to do in my initial travel prep schedule. I like to have everything ready a day early then spend the last day tidying everything that got messed up while I was packing and then have time to relax before travel. The cleaning and relaxing didn’t get done when I changed plans.

Since it was icy and I was tired, I did that relaxing yesterday on my first full day home. Now to tackle the cleaning so I’ll be ready to put up my Christmas decorations. It’s my first Christmas in my new house, so I’ll have to figure out where to put everything. The house is really tiny and full of furniture (and books), so there isn’t much space for a tree. I bought an artificial tabletop tree, and I have the garland I used to put on my loft railing and stairs that I’ll have to position. I don’t have as much stair railing, so maybe some can go on the old chimney in the kitchen or on the bookcases in the living room and office.

Next week is a holiday week, and I’m making a grand expedition across the country to Texas, so I won’t be posting next week. After seeing the weather forecast that called for a big thunderstorm to cross my path on one of the days I’d be driving, I’ve moved my travel plans up a day, so today’s planned big thoughts will have to wait until later because I have to cram two days of to-do lists into one day. Eep! I got a lot of it done yesterday when I started thinking I’d have to adjust plans (the chance of thunderstorms and tornadoes in Arkansas was not encouraging), so I should be able to do it, but my rough estimates come down to about six hours of work today. I hope I’m overestimating, but better to overestimate and have extra free time at the end than to underestimate and run out of time.

Normal posting will resume the week after Thanksgiving.

One of my ongoing struggles is planning. I love to plan, but I tend to be very unrealistic about the plans, so they fall apart once I start implementing them — if I implement them. I get a lot of satisfaction out of planning, but then often my brain decides it’s done, so I have a plan but feel no need to carry it out. I also tend to get enthusiastic about something and overestimate what I can get done when I’m impatient to dive into it.

I had an old story idea (really, more of a concept/situation) lying fallow for a long time because I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then I had a burst of inspiration about it and came up with the right thing to do with it, and it’s something that would be pretty marketable right now. I got very enthusiastic about it and planned to get it developed and outlined before Thanksgiving and then write it during December.

Meanwhile, I was feeling overwhelmed because I dove into working on something else as soon as I was done with Weaving & Wyverns, since that was the start of a quarter and I was eager to get going on my plans for the quarter. I didn’t do a reset/regroup like I usually try to do, getting caught up on housework and taking a mental break. I thought that the time I took off for fall exploring would count. But it didn’t. I’d stalled on some of my setting up my house when I dove into writing the book, so the basement, spare room, and office are still in chaos, and that bothers me, but I haven’t been allowing myself to take the time to deal with it.

I had a burst of realism yesterday when I realized how soon Thanksgiving is and how soon it will be before I travel for the holiday. This story is nowhere near ready to write. I have the backstory and setup, but the characters are still vague, and I have only a broad idea of what the plot should be. It needs a lot of thinking time. Even if I devoted the entire next week to full-time story development, it wouldn’t be ready to write after Thanksgiving. As such, I’m letting myself take the rest of the year to regroup and think. It may take me all that time to develop the new idea, and then I also want to outline the next Rydding Village book. Then there’s planning for 2026. And getting the house in order. The to-do list I came up with is pretty hefty. And since I’m in the choir and we have a number of big events in December, I need to account for that, too.

I’m planning to do a lot of writing next year and not a lot of publishing, since I want to stockpile some books and try to get farther ahead of the publishing schedule. That means getting some systems and schedules in place, which is also on the to-do list for the rest of the year.

I feel a lot better about giving myself permission to take time to breathe and think. And clean. I’ve been trying to work during the week and then I’ve been exploring on the weekends, so the house is getting cluttered. It’ll be nice to finish my office so it’ll be a pleasant place to work. I want to get enough of the new idea figured out that it can develop in the back of my mind while I write the next Rydding Village book, and then I can dig into specifics and it might be ripe for writing.

Today, though, may be an out and about day because my neighbors are getting a new roof installed, and after two days of hammering, I need to get away because I can’t take it anymore.