Life

Still Snowed In

I’m still snowed in. School here has been cancelled all week. We’re supposed to get more snow tonight, but then it’ll get above freezing over the weekend, so I may be able to get rid of the wall of ice surrounding my car, and I might be able to venture out. I don’t really need anything, but I might need some groceries next week.

Apparently, this is unusual here. It’s been interesting reading the town Facebook group to see how people are reacting. Half are acting like it’s all an overreaction and half are freaking out because the roads are icy. The hills in this town are really steep, so I can see why they wouldn’t want to run school buses full of kids on possibly icy hills.

Meanwhile, they got ice and snow back in Texas, so it’s not as though I’d have avoided this if I hadn’t moved. And I haven’t lost power.

It’s been a good week for work since there wasn’t much else to do. I re-read all of the book I just finished writing, made a revision plan, and did the major surgery revisions. I did the major rewriting midway through when I realized something was wrong and went back to fix it. That meant I didn’t have a lot to rewrite. Mostly, it involved deleting a couple of paragraphs so that a piece of information got revealed later. I didn’t have to add that info later because it turned out it was discussed a couple of times. I then had to fix who knew it later in the book.

Next up, I’ll do the fixing the words edit. That’s the nitpicky part when I read out loud to make sure the words flow well and the character voices sound right. I also find where I use the same words too frequently.

I’m not going to try to put a release date on this book until I get with the cover designer and see how this round of edits goes, but February seems doable unless the designer is really backed up.

In other news, if you like the idea of an all-you-can-read subscription service but aren’t keen on giving Amazon money for Kindle Unlimited, Kobo has a similar service called Kobo Plus. This one’s a bit more author-friendly, in that they don’t require exclusivity. Amazon doesn’t let authors sell their e-books anywhere else if they’re in Kindle Unlimited, but with Kobo Plus you can sell your books wherever you want. I put all my independently published books in Kobo Plus. Here’s a group of cozy mysteries that are available in Kobo Plus, including mine. (And it would help me get credit for this promo if you click on the link, even if you aren’t interested in Kobo Plus.)

Life

Starting with Snow

I had grand plans to get off to a serious start to the year on Monday — and then we got hit with about 6 inches of snow Sunday night.

This really shouldn’t make any difference to me. I work at home. But there’s something about a snow day that takes over the brain. It’s a mental state that says normal operations have ceased. I’ve actually managed to hit my work quotas, but it’s been a struggle because all I want to do is bake and curl up under a blanket with a book.

A view of a back porch and yard on a snowy day. The yard is covered in thick, fluffy snow, like a generous coating of whipped cream. The patio furniture is bare black metal mesh.
Looking out through the window of my back door at the yard. I won’t be sitting on the porch anytime soon.

I’m glad I went out for groceries on Sunday because otherwise I’d have been in trouble. As much as people in more northern states tease Texans about shutting down at a hint of ice or snow, I can’t tell that it’s much better here. The entire area shut down on Monday. City offices and some businesses opened part of the day on Tuesday. Schools have been out all week. They do plow the streets. My street is cleared of snow, but I bet it’s icy today because we got a lot of sun and were around 30 degrees yesterday, and now today it’s really cold, so there was probably melting and re-freezing. The thing about the snowplow is that it cleared the street, but it left a wall of ice and snow on the sides of the street, so my car is pretty much walled-up. I tried clearing out some of it yesterday, but my plastic snow shovel wasn’t up to the task. I may need a jackhammer. So, I could drive on the roads to get somewhere, especially since I have all-wheel drive and even a special setting for driving on snow, but I can’t get to the road.

One thing that’s better than in Texas, aside from snowplows, is that I haven’t lost power. The last time I was in weather this cold, I had no electricity — and no heat. I’m nice and warm inside, and it didn’t even feel all that cold when I went out yesterday to shovel.

The original forecast, up until Friday evening, was that we’d get a light snow and then it would be above freezing later Monday and on Tuesday, so it would all melt. So I didn’t go grocery shopping since I wasn’t close to running out of anything. Tuesday would be a good day to go shopping. Then they changed the forecast to say it could be bad, and I decided to head out Sunday morning, just in case. That was when I bought the snow shovel and I stocked up on milk, bread, and some things I could eat in case we lost power, like cheese and crackers. I’d have run out of milk today, and we haven’t made it above freezing, so the snow and ice aren’t going anywhere. We might make it above freezing on Sunday. Then I may be able to dig my car out.

I’ve learned that off-street parking would be really nice when I get a permanent house, so I might have to clear a driveway but my car won’t be buried by the snowplow. I need some boots that will work in snow (my waterproof hiking boots do okay, but aren’t tall enough to do much good in deep snow — fortunately there’s a crust of ice on top of the snow, and I’ve managed to walk on top of the snow, only sinking in a little). I need a metal snow shovel. And if they forecast any kind of winter weather, go to the grocery store, even if they’re saying it’s no big deal.

Books, TV, Life, movies

2024 in Review

Happy new year!

I’m still considering this to be a semi-holiday before I plunge back into my regular routine (or my new, improved routine) next week, but it’s a good time for a year in review and a look at what’s ahead.

The big thing for 2024 was my cross-country move. That was a major change of scenery and lifestyle, and it really disrupted things for a while. As a result, I didn’t get as much written as usual, and I had the fewest books read of any year since I’ve been tracking.

It was kind of a reading slump year, probably for a lot of reasons. I know I didn’t read a lot during the prep/packing/moving/unpacking phase. I also didn’t have a lot of work-related reading. I wasn’t doing serious book research, so I didn’t have any reading that fit into my working time. Usually that accounts for a lot of books every year. I think I’ve been getting out a lot more, too. During the fall, I was out exploring most Saturdays, time when I might have been reading. In the summer, there were concerts in the park in the evenings.

But, if I’m being honest with myself, I wasn’t really prioritizing reading time. One issue with not having a dedicated office is that I have the computer right in front of me all the time, and it’s easy to fall into the habit of surfing the Internet or doing online puzzles and not pick up a book. One of my intentions for the new year is to be more deliberate about how I use my time. It doesn’t help that now I’m getting my newspaper online. When I get a house with an office, I may see about getting a larger tablet to use for things like newspaper reading so I can keep the computer in the office — and I won’t set up the tablet to access any of my social media accounts. I have a tablet, but it’s a small one the size of a book, which isn’t great for reading newspapers.

I think my favorite find of the year was the Seven Kennings books (first book is A Plague of Giants) by Kevin Hearne — a really different approach to epic fantasy with a very fun narrative style. I read those early in the year, before the move, so I was surprised to check my records and see that I read them in 2024. It seems like so long ago.

I didn’t really watch TV in 2024 other than on streaming, and there I was mostly catching up on older things I missed. The transition to the eastern time zone has messed me up for network TV because everything’s on so late. I enjoyed the Star Trek series Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds, and I’m loving the Star Wars Skeleton Crew series. I’ve been rewatching The Office. I’ve just started The Day of the Jackal.

I don’t recall what movies I’ve watched. I need to start writing down what I’ve watched. I haven’t gone to a theater, so I haven’t seen anything truly new. I’m not sure what I’d say my favorite of the year has been.

The early part of this year may end up being a bit chaotic, as I’ll be house hunting and then moving again. I have this apartment until early May, so I really hope I find something by then. I’d said I wanted to experience at least part of a winter before I make the decision to buy a house, but even though it’s colder than I’m used to (and I need warmer clothes), I can’t think of any other place I’d prefer to live. This area really seems to be a Goldilocks zone for me, just right on the metrics that matter to me. I would like to meet more people, and I’m gradually getting involved in the community. I think getting permanently settled will help.

I normally set outcome goals for each quarter of things I want to accomplish, but for work I’m going to be focusing on behavior and dedicating a certain amount of time each day to my main work tasks. That should lead to some outcomes, and once I’ve established the habit (or re-established, since that was what I generally did before the move disrupted everything), then I can worry more about outcomes. I’m also trying to get back into some exercise habits. That should be easier once I have a house. I don’t really have good space for yoga (I have to adjust to fit in some of the exercises without bumping into things), and the place is too small to get in steps just moving around. But I do get a fair amount of walking just going around town, since I can walk downtown. I walk to the library, to church, to the farmer’s market, to the bank, and to concerts and other events. I live near the top of a very steep hill, so walking anywhere involves some climbing to get home, and since I’m on the other side of the hill from downtown, I have to walk up first before I walk down the hill to town, so it’s literally uphill both ways.

Speaking of walking, I have to get to the library to pick up a book while it’s still above freezing and before it starts snowing.

Life

Living in a Christmas Movie

I haven’t done my usual binge of TV Christmas movies this year, and that may be because I feel like I’m living one. I’m the city girl who moved to a quaint little mountain town that has a bunch of customs and festivals. I feel like a Hallmark movie is going to break out at any moment.

I’ve spent the last couple of Saturdays caroling in the picturesque Victorian downtown full of cute little shops. There’s a downtown music school that puts this together, supposedly for their students, but they welcome the whole community to join in. There’s a bit of warming up and practice at the music school, then wandering the downtown area and pausing to sing. It was so much fun. Just about everyone in the group was a singer with some kind of training or choir experience, so we were throwing in things like harmonies and descants, and it sounded really good. People stopped to record us, and a lot of people took pictures. We added to the ambience for holiday shopping. Last Saturday, there were a number of events and other things going on downtown as part of the shopping day, so we ended up meeting with Father Christmas and “Merri Christmas” (his wife), who were dressed in Elizabethian-style attire (appropriate for the home of the American Shakespeare Center). Then just down the block we ran into the Grinch and Santa Claus. Santa was a signing Santa doing an event at the local Club for the Deaf, and he joined in with us, “singing” along in sign language. It turned out the Grinch could sign, too, and Santa and the Grinch were having conversations across the street, but I don’t know what they said. (I really need to learn sign language because there’s a large Deaf population in this town and all I can do is finger spell.) After roaming the main downtown area, we passed through the winter farmer’s market, sang a few songs inside the glass studio, where they already had some musicians playing (they accompanied us), and then made a stop at the brewpub, where they had a Christmas market in the beer garden. We sang for their Facebook Live to promote the market, then we had cocoa or beer before heading on to sing for diners in a restaurant, and we wrapped up at a spot where they have one of those public pianos on the sidewalk. It was all very fun and festive.

A group of people stand on the steps of an ornate early 20th century bank building, dressed for cold weather, holding music books. An old-fashioned Father Christmas in a fur hat stands with them.
Father Christmas (on the right) joined us for caroling in front of the old bank building. I’m the one in the long black coat in the middle.

Another tradition they have here is a holiday display along the road that runs through the park. Businesses, organizations, and individuals can set up displays, and the city provides electrical connections. We had a relatively warm evening this week, so I walked it. Some of the displays were blatant advertising, some were traditional Christmas scenes, some were pretty clever, some were pretty. As I walked around the loop, the Christmas movie was writing itself in my head. In the movie, there would be a prize (I don’t know if the real one is a competition), and the main characters would be competing for the prize because they need the recognition and prize money to save their business. Their displays would get more and more elaborate as they try to top each other, but then they’d learn about a charity that needed the recognition and money, so they’d team up to add stuff from their displays to the charity’s display.

A Christmas display designed to look like cut paper, showing the silhouette of an old church building with an arch over it and white lights giving it a glow against the night sky.
This was the light display in the park from the church I’ve been attending, showing the historic church building.

I’m probably going to stay inside this Saturday because I have housework and cookie baking to do and it’s going to be really cold. Then Sunday night the youth choir at the church I’ve been going to is having a concert, which is being followed by a carol singalong in the church hall (the reason I’m baking cookies). I might do a jaunt downtown on Tuesday, then there will be a candlelight service at night in the church. This church is a Gothic Revival church built in 1850 (the congregation dates to 1747) that’s on the National Register of Historic Places, and some of the stained glass windows are Tiffany originals. I imagine it will be magical on Christmas Eve with the candlelight.

We’re not supposed to be having any snow for Christmas itself, though there’s a chance for some flurries today. The mountains to the west will be getting snow, and that will be visible from here, so I’ll be able to see snow-covered mountains as I go out and about for the next few days. I need to get some nice boots I can walk in. All my boots have high heels, and it would be very Hallmark heroine of me to teeter around in snow in high-heeled boots (so I could fall and be caught by a guy wearing flannel), but I’ve lived around snow before and know that’s not a great idea. I live so close to the church that it feels weird to drive there, but the walk involves a pretty steep hill, and I wouldn’t want to try it in heels. My toes got a bit cold during the caroling, so my current shoes aren’t up to winters here.

I’m going to take a holiday blogging hiatus. There may be a year wrap-up post next Friday, but otherwise I’ll see you next year. Happy holidays!

TV

Skeleton Crew

I’m not really in the demographic it’s aimed at, but I’m thoroughly enjoying the latest Star Wars series, Skeleton Crew. This is an adventure set in the Star Wars universe about a group of kids who find what they think is a secret cave that might be a lost Jedi temple, but it turns out to be a buried spaceship that takes off and blasts into hyperspace when they accidentally wake it. Then they have to find their way home, but there’s just one problem: No one knows where their home world is (though everyone would love to find it, since it’s rumored to hold great treasure). They have the help of a shady man who seems to have Jedi powers and an old droid who’s the only survivor of the ship’s original crew, who seem to have been pirates. It’s basically Goonies meets Treasure Island in the Star Wars universe.

I know George Lucas has said that Star Wars has always been for kids, but that’s a bit of revisionist history (like so much of what he’s said about the development of the saga). The original movie was pure Boomer bait, a nostalgic reimagining of the adventure serials kids of his generation saw when they went to Saturday matinees at the movies, those cliffhangers that were swashbucklers, westerns, or space adventures. The movie was child-friendly, with sanitized violence (in spite of having one of the biggest body counts of any movie, thanks to the destruction of an entire planet), mild language, no sex, and some comic relief characters. It appealed to kids, but it wasn’t aimed at kids, and that’s part of why kids liked it. There were no shoehorned-in child characters so we could have someone to “relate” to, nothing inserted strictly to appeal to kids. It was a grown-up movie that was still fun, so kids felt like they were getting in on something. Today’s executives would call it “four-quadrant entertainment,” which just means that everyone enjoys it. The whole family can go and have fun. When Lucas tried to aim at children with The Phantom Menace, it just came across as pandering, like kids aren’t sophisticated enough to enjoy a movie without a kid in it and without a clown. Even though Lucas was a parent at that point, he seemed to understand less about what kids liked then than he had with the original movie.

This series is specifically targeted to younger viewers. Most of the main characters are children. But it feels a lot less like pandering than The Phantom Menace did, which makes it more adult-friendly. When I was a Star Wars-obsessed nine or ten-year-old, back when the only Star Wars was that first movie, I would have been over the moon about this series. It would have hit almost all my buttons. I would have wanted to be the main girl character, who asserts herself as captain of the ship but who fears she’s not up to the task when things get serious. There are adventures and narrow escapes. There’s a touch of humor but no annoying clowning. There are literary references (lots of hints of Treasure Island, and the droid on the ship is SM-33 — so he’s Smee!). The only thing missing for child me would have been a cute boy to crush on, since the main boy in the cast has a bad Too Stupid To Live problem and even child me would have found him annoying, and the other boy is basically an elephant (and a dweeb, though a sweet one). Adult me has Jude Law, who isn’t an actor I tend to look for but I like him when I see him. I wouldn’t go to a movie just to see him, but I always seem to enjoy him when he’s in a movie I’m seeing.

This series feels a lot like those old cliffhanger serials, with narrow escapes from dire situations, and each resolution leads straight into a new problem. The episodes even end with cliffhangers. It feels like Star Wars getting back to its original roots. There’s also an overarching mystery of what the deal is with the kids’ home world that seems to have been isolated from the rest of the galaxy for some time and which seems idyllic but which has some unsettling dystopian vibes.

The series is enough fun to help tide me over until Andor resumes next year, and I’m enjoying letting my inner nine-year-old come out to play. Star Wars + space pirates isn’t a bad combination.

Books

Bad Choice

I learned this week that I need to be a lot more careful when I’m selecting books at the library.

It’s the time of year when I want to read moderately Christmassy rom-coms/chick-lit/women’s fiction. Not necessarily an all-out “Christmas” book, but a book that happens to be set around the holiday season. That makes them tricky to find. If it’s not mentioned on the cover, I have to flip through it and see if any particular keywords pop out. It’s especially helpful if there’s some kind of date to start each chapter.

On my last library trip, I found one that I thought might work. It was in the “unhappy wife wanting a different life” category, and I tend to prefer single woman stories to either “unhappy wife” or “wife discovers that her perfect life isn’t perfect when her husband dumps her” stories, but I didn’t have time to do a serious search in the library, and the storyline sounded interesting. A flip through caught a mention of Christmas. The cover was cartoony, suggesting comedy. So I checked it out.

I should have also read the marketing blurbs above the book description. I tend to skip those because I don’t want the publisher telling me that a book is “unputdownable,” “heartwarming,” or “hilarious.” However, it would have been a clue that they used the word “sinister.”

It turned out that this was not a quirky chick lit/women’s fiction. It’s a psychological thriller—a quirky one using a lot of women’s fiction/chick lit tropes, but it’s still about a woman who becomes obsessed with a serial killer to the point she ends up institutionalized (that’s in the prologue, then the book is about how she ended up there). The Christmas mentions were in a chapter of her in the institution (the book switches back and forth between the present and the past), comparing life there to Christmas afternoon, with the staff bringing out puzzles and games with the kind of forced cheer a mom has on Christmas afternoon when she’s trying to keep everyone together and in good spirits with lots of activities. My quick glance had shown me multiple uses of the word “Christmas” and the mention of a mother bringing out puzzles and games. I missed that it was an analogy, and a fairly dark one at that, since the Christmases the narrator was remembering were tense and unhappy.

That’s not exactly the fluffy holiday read I was hoping for. Yikes! I guess I should read the marketing stuff. I may or may not agree with whether a book is “unputdownable” or “hilarious,” but I do want to know whether the publisher considers the book “sinister” rather than “heartwarming.”

I have now done some research and found a couple of books that might fit the bill, and I’ve requested them from the library, and I checked out an e-book for the time being. This weekend will be busy, but I’m hoping to finish the draft I’m working on early next week, and then I will have some time to sit, listen to Christmas music, drink hot cocoa, and read, and I’ll have proper reading material for that.

Now I kind of want to write the book I thought this one would be. It’s the kind of concept that could either be quirky and funny or sinister, depending on how it’s handled, and I want to do the funny version. I’ll add it to the idea file.

movies

Mean Girls

One of last weekend’s movies was Mean Girls (the original, not the musical). I’m not sure why I was drawn to it. I think part of it was that I was looking for movies that contained Christmas elements but that weren’t “Christmas” movies, and I remembered the talent show scene.

I saw this movie in the theater when it was originally released, though I think I caught it later in the run at the dollar theater. My agent had suggested I consider writing young adult, and since it had been a long time since I was a young adult, I was doing research. I read the non-fiction book the movie was based on, then decided to go see the movie. The book was a bit uncomfortable to read because it brought back a lot of memories. I’d seen and experienced so many of the things the author mentioned about how girls treat each other, and I had a similar reaction to the movie, though I was lucky to be a teen before three-way calling was common (and I can only imagine how social media comes into play).

Though one big difference for me was that my Mean Girls experience came in elementary school, not high school. The popular girl in my high school class was popular because she was really sweet and nice. She was also very shy and introverted, so she just hung around with her best friend. There was no entourage, no group of wannabes. I was sort of in the tertiary level of friends with her, since we had most of our classes together and were in the same Sunday school class at church, so we were “school” and “church” friends, though we never hung out together away from school. I wasn’t really included or welcomed in high school, since I was the new kid in a place where most of the kids had been there at least since elementary school, but I wasn’t bullied. I was just left alone. I think it did help that for my freshman year I had some bully protection from the senior girl I sat with in band who was the queen bee of the school that year. If you’ve ever watched that reality show about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, I shared a music stand with Kelli (the director of the cheerleaders) as a freshman, and although we didn’t really talk and I wouldn’t have considered us friends, I also got the sense that I’d been put in the “don’t mess with her” category, and the older guys kind of watched over me while the senior girls were fairly nice, and no one younger went against that.

But my elementary school experience could have been a case study in that book, not at school, but at home. We moved to a small, isolated neighborhood on an army post the summer before second grade. There weren’t enough girls for there to be multiple cliques, so everyone from first through third grade hung out together, with maybe eight girls at the most. I was the only girl in my grade most of the time, so it was the third graders, me, and a few select first graders. There was very much a queen bee who ruled the group and decided who was in or out, and she was a mini Regina George. She dictated what TV shows everyone watched (there was no point in looking for anyone to play outside with while the Bewitched rerun was on every evening), what clothes everyone should wear, what foods were in and out, etc. I remember that the worst thing anyone could say about you was that you were “conceited,” and it didn’t take much to be considered conceited. Just having confidence or thinking you were at all good was being conceited. She loved to set up traps. One of her favorite things for us to play was beauty pageant, where you had to show confidence and be willing to show off a talent to win (she was the judge), but if you acted like you thought you were any good you were conceited.

I think most of the power she held was because there were so few girls, so if she didn’t let you in the group, your only option for friends would be the boys or whoever was also an outcast at that time, mostly the one girl a year younger than I was who was never really in the group because she was considered weird. The queen bee mostly let me in the group, but I didn’t fit in well since I was younger than most of them. It was most stressful in the summers. During the school year I had friends at school and was involved in activities after school, so I didn’t need friends at home so much. It was during the summer when she really flexed her power. I remember a bit of angst especially the second summer, when I went in and out of favor. That was when I learned I didn’t mind playing with the boys or with the weird girl, and when the queen bee thought she was losing power over me, she really doubled down. I came in last for all the beauty pageants. She moved away sometime when I was in third grade, and all the girls in the neighborhood felt like we’d had a weight lifted. We didn’t have another mean girl like that, and the girl group was a lot less cohesive, more smaller groups of girls or else blending with the boys.

That experience inoculated me against the whole mean girl routine. I learned that they don’t have power over you if you don’t care what they think about you. I was bullied during the second half of sixth grade and seventh grade but I didn’t notice until they escalated to the point of getting physical because those girls weren’t even on my radar for noticing they existed, let alone caring, and that frustrated them enough to lead them to physically attack me so I had to notice them. I don’t recall them being particularly popular, and I don’t think anyone cared all that much about being friends with them (though it’s possible I was oblivious since none of my friends cared about them, but other girls might have wanted their favor). They didn’t have power and were trying to get it.

In the town where I used to live, they had a bad mean girl issue in elementary school. It got so bad they brought in counselors to try to deal with it, and it didn’t do any good. The son of one of my friends was in that class, and my friend said the boys in that class didn’t start dating until they were in college because they were so turned off by the girls they were in school with. They didn’t realize until they got to college that girls could be fun and nice instead of hateful bitches. That fits with my experience that it was less of an issue once we hit the teens. But I guess a movie about 8-10 year-old mean girls wouldn’t have had the same box office appeal. I don’t know if that crop of girls retained power in high school, but that school was so big that it would have been hard to have a core clique. It’s a lot easier to take over a class in elementary school and rule over who gets invited to birthday parties, etc.

writing life

Routines

I’m having a hard time getting back into the swing of “normal” life after Thanksgiving. Part of it is that driving 9 or so hours a day for two days straight is tiring and there’s some recovery time required. Part of it is the break in routine, with time to get ready for the trip, then being gone for so long. I’m very much a creature of habit and routine, and messing up my routine really throws me off.

When I find a pattern of behavior that works for me, I can go on autopilot and function really well. Stuff gets done. But break that pattern in any way, and it all falls apart. One phone call during a time I have designated for other stuff will ruin the whole day. I have a really hard time getting back to where I should be. One ruined day can throw off the rest of the week. I also form new habits pretty easily, intentionally or not. A couple of days of doing things differently, like taking a day off, and that becomes the new normal, so it’s hard to get back to the routine.

This is why I struggle with work/life balance. It’s very all or nothing. Either I’m working according to my usual routine or I’m getting nothing done, and deliberately taking a day off for holiday or vacation will mean my routine falls apart and I have to rebuild it when I go back to work. If I take a week off, it’s like “what was I doing and how does this work?” when I come back from vacation.

I’ve tried all kinds of time management systems, and what works best for me is a fairly rigid schedule that I don’t deviate from in any way — I write at this time, exercise at this time, do this housework task at this time on this day — but I’ve never managed to stick with it for long because life happens to disrupt any routine and I burn out if I try to keep up a rigid routine for an extended period without a break. And then when I take a break I have a hard time getting back to the routine, so it falls by the wayside for a while until I get frustrated with myself and create a new routine.

I have managed to do okay with a weekly reset, so I’m hoping that on Monday I can get back to “normal.” It’s always hard to try to start a work week in the middle of the week. I will give myself some time off for the holidays later in the month, but I may not try to take a big break from writing.

And I’ll keep trying to come up with a system that works to keep me on track. In my dream life, I work diligently on my writing until I hit my daily goals, then do some business and promo work, and then the rest of the day is used for housework, life maintenance, and leisure. I would take long walks, read, do some music stuff, and go to local events. As it is, I fritter away time throughout the day, not accomplishing much or doing anything really fun, manage to hit my writing goals by the end of the work day (maybe), then have to deal with cooking and housework and fritter away more time. Writing down how I spend my time doesn’t work because it changes my behavior so that what I record isn’t an honest assessment of how I really spend my time but rather a record of how I want to spend my time. So maybe I should do that — make a grid for the day and keep track of my time like I had to do when I worked for a PR agency and billed my time to clients.

But for now, I need to get to writing and get my brain back into this story.

Life

Back Home

I’m home again after more than a week away and after two long days of driving. I can’t make that drive too often, but I enjoy the thinking time along the way.

Something occurred to me as I got closer to home: I’ve now made that drive three times. The first time, I was on a vacation/recon mission to a place I’d been reading about but that I’d never visited to see if I liked it. The second time, I’d uprooted my whole life and was moving to an apartment I’d only seen online on a street I’d only seen online. This time, I was coming home, and it really felt like home, even though I was coming from a place I’ve considered home (though I’ve never actually lived in the house where my parents live now). I missed my mountains.

With Christmas coming so soon after Thanksgiving this year, it’s a good thing I got my fill of fall. We started getting fall-like weather and color in mid-August, and there were still a lot of pockets of red and gold leaves along the journey. But on the way back I got a real transition to Christmas mode, since it started snowing soon after I stopped for the night outside Nashville on day 1. It was a light snow, mostly just flakes dancing in the air, and the ground was warm, so it wasn’t sticking. The roads were clear the next morning, but there was a light dusting of snow on the hills facing the road. In spots, it was a heavier dusting, while in others there was just snow in the nooks and crannies. I’d made a playlist for the trip that mixed Christmas music in with other music, and the occasional Christmas song made a nice accompaniment to the scenery. It seems to have been a narrow band across northern Tennessee and southern Kentucky, reaching into southern Virginia. I dipped below it when the road went south to Knoxville, then came back into the snow when I turned north in far eastern Tennessee and headed for Virginia. There were some flurries there, but the roads were still clear and I never had to use my windshield wipers because the flakes were so light and my car is apparently so aerodynamic that the flakes just went up and over my car instead of hitting the windshield. It was a best-case scenario for snowy driving, just enough to make it pretty without affecting the roads or visibility. As I got farther north, I made it above the band of snow, and it was just green around my area. We’re supposed to get some snow tomorrow morning, though.

I’ve done my holiday travel for the year, and I already got my shopping done, gifts wrapped and left with my parents, so now I get to have a no-pressure holiday season. I’m not in a choir now, so there are no rehearsals or performances. I don’t have any parties I have to attend. There are a lot of local events that I can do, so I won’t be bored or lonely, but there’s nothing I must do. I can choose the things I want, or I can stay home in my pajamas, drink cocoa, and watch Christmas movies.

Among the activities are multiple Christmas markets, a group getting together to do caroling in the downtown shopping district on Saturdays, a couple of holiday teas in historic homes, a tour of historic homes, multiple church services and concerts, and a Christmas dinner at a church for anyone who might be alone (I plan to help out and eat with them). I could probably fill up all the weekend days and nights between now and Christmas, plus the week of Christmas, but I imagine there will be a few quiet days or nights at home, especially depending on the weather. It doesn’t feel as cold here for the temperature as it does back in Texas — I felt colder in the 40s in Texas than I did in the 30s in Virginia — but we’re going to have some days that are really cold. Right now, I’m waiting for it to go above freezing before I run some errands. One errand in the next couple of weeks may involve buying a new winter coat. I’m not sure my Texas “heavy” coats will be heavy enough for the weather here.

Life

Winter is Coming

I’ve loved the autumn here, but we got our first taste of winter yesterday. I was making dinner, looked out the kitchen window, and I thought I saw snow. A moment later, it was snowing so hard that I couldn’t see the houses a block away. It only lasted about five minutes and it was still above freezing, so we only got a light dusting and it didn’t stick for long.

A light dusting of snow covers the ground. A dark path leads from the camera toward the street, going between tall trees. In the background, red brick houses have snow-covered roofs.
If you squint, you might be able to see snow in this view from my front door.

The term they used on the TV weather report was “flurry squall,” which is apparently what you get when it snows hard enough to create limited visibility, but it’s for a very short time. It’s like a mini blizzard. To be a true blizzard, it has to snow long enough for there to be accumulation on the ground. If you’re caught in one of these while driving, it can be dangerous, but you’ll be out of it very quickly. If you’re not driving, it’s just pretty to look at for a few minutes.

We’re supposed to get more of those this afternoon. I already have bread rising to bake because it’s definitely the kind of day for that sort of thing. I hope to get some good writing done, if I’m not spending all day looking out the window for snow. My inner child definitely comes out the first moment I see a flake in the sky. From what I understand from people who’ve lived here a long time, they do get snow here, but it doesn’t stay around all winter. Most winter days it gets above freezing during the daytime, aside from occasional cold spells, so anything that falls only lasts a day or two. I’ll need to get a snow shovel to clear off my walk and dig out my car if I need to go anywhere, but I should be able to stock up on supplies based on the forecast and wait it out or else walk to get anything I need. I’ll have to see if I need to get snow boots or if my waterproof hiking boots will suffice. So far, I haven’t needed a heavier winter coat. I haven’t even used my existing winter coats, just lighter lined jackets or sweatshirts. It seems to feel warmer here than I’d expect based on the thermometer. I’ve walked downtown to go to church in just a light sweater with a lined suit coat over it when it was 39 degrees. I went out to look at the snow yesterday while wearing a sweater over a sweatshirt.

It’s supposed to warm up tomorrow and be windy enough that anything that falls today will be gone by tomorrow night. Which is good because I’m heading out for my Thanksgiving travel on Sunday. I’ll be heading over several rivers, through a lot of woods and over a couple of mountain ranges. I won’t be posting my blog next week, as I will be enjoying time with my family. I might post updates on social media, if you follow me on Facebook or BlueSky.