For the fantasy world I want to build so I can set a bunch of loosely related stories there, I’ve been reading a lot of history. I’ve always been a big history buff. I read history for fun and most of my electives in college were history courses. And yet I’m still learning new things. There are aspects of history that I’m only just now starting to understand.

I know it’s a broad topic, but in general, I think the way history is taught in American (or possibly just Texan) schools is woefully inadequate. All my junior high and high school history teachers were coaches. That meant they taught history by telling us to read the chapter in the textbook and answer the questions at the end of the chapter while they sat at their desks and read the sports sections of all the newspapers the library got. Occasionally, they’d show a film. Even so, they never seemed to get all the way through the textbook. In eighth grade, American history, part one, ended just before the Civil War, even though the textbook covered the Civil War (though I guess we were lucky there because some schools in the south never cover much other than the Civil War). Then in 11th grade, it picked up after Reconstruction but barely got beyond WWII. World History was even worse. I got so frustrated in that class that I took over and started teaching it in a vain attempt to make it even slightly interesting.

If all you knew of history was what you learned in school in the schools I went to, you’d be utterly ignorant, which explains a lot about our nation today. Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it, and all that.

I picked up more in college, but those were deep dives into particular topics, and I was focusing on modern European history because at the time my goal was to be a foreign correspondent.

I didn’t get a really good understanding of the American Revolution and the issues relating to it until I started researching the Rebels books. In my recent reading, I finally get what was going on with the Thirty Years War, in spite of growing up with ruins from it all around me. I’m starting to have the big picture of world history click into place, which makes some current events make more sense.

The problem with the way they tend to teach history (at least, in my experience) is that they focus on names and dates, when really it’s about stories. Some of this stuff, you couldn’t put it in a fantasy novel because it would be considered too outrageous to be believed.

I kind of love that it now counts as “work” to read lots of books about history. I seem to be working my way through the history section of my local library branch.

The work on my walls is done, and I’m enjoying a day of having my house to myself. Now, though, I have some serious housework to do. I dusted away the worst of the fine, white powder that was covering everything, but now I probably need to do a thorough vacuum of the carpet and a more thorough dusting. And I probably should make use of my steam cleaner on the carpet. Then I need to put everything back in my hall closet, which was part of what was redone.

Now I can finally get around to thinking about replacing the flooring, but I so don’t want to deal with the hassle of waiting for workmen to show up. I’d also have to box up and move just about everything that’s downstairs, then put it all back. I’m not sure that any value new floors would add to the house when it comes time to sell would make up for the cost plus the lost productivity of about a week worth of work.

I’m trying to get back in the swing of my routine, but I couldn’t resist not having to worry about being ready and waiting for the workers to show up this morning. It’s been nice just sitting around and drinking tea.

One thing I’m realizing is that my quirk of not being able to read books in a series back to back without burning out may also apply to writing a series. I’ve generally had months between books, at the very least, and in between I’ve worked on something else. This time, I went straight from editing book one to trying to draft book two, and it’s not flowing. I don’t know if that’s because I was interrupted unexpectedly by all this disruption, which started last week with people showing up to assess the damage for estimates (sometimes with no appointment) or because of the burnout factor, or because the brain is trying to work on several things at once. I got some additional ideas for scenes I’ve already written last night, so we’ll see if doing a little revision will get me back in the flow.

Meanwhile, I used the time I was hiding in my room while the living room was being ripped out to catch up on bookkeeping. The accounting for my taxes is pretty much done. I’ll just have to plug the numbers into the forms.

This may not be a very productive week. There was a leak in my house around the front window a few years ago, and it took the condo association years to get around to fixing it, so the baseboard and front wall were damaged. It’s taken years since then for them to get around to repairing it. I don’t know how many contractors have trooped through my house to look at it. There was an appointment set today for what I thought was yet another estimate, but it turned out they were here to do the work. At the moment, they’re cutting out sheetrock and ripping out baseboards.

The next step is for them to spray stuff inside the walls to kill off any mold, and that will have to sit for a few days. Then they’ll put up new walls and repaint. I may be living with open walls for a while, and my schedule is going to be iffy because I have to be home when they’re working. It’s hard to concentrate on writing while people are in my house, ripping out walls, so not much writing is likely to happen. I’m holed up in my bedroom while they work in the living room. I need to get the office upstairs so that I can work in it later in the week. I’d been planning to do that this weekend, since I thought they were still getting estimates.

I’m not complaining (much) because I need this work done, and I think it will make me healthier if they take care of any mold and mildew. And it makes the house actually sellable. I want to get it over with. But the process is probably not going to be much fun.

I think I’ll be focusing on research reading and brainstorming, since getting in the writing zone is going to be hard. I’m not someone who can write at a place like a coffee shop. I need solitude and silence.

I’ve been talking about doing a short trip up to the mountains in Oklahoma (yes, there are mountains in Oklahoma) to do some hiking ever since last fall, but it seems like every time I had a couple of days free when I could go, there would end up being storms forecast on those days (and you don’t want to be in Oklahoma when it’s storming). Meanwhile, I’ve been stockpiling Hilton points and was in danger of losing them if I didn’t stay in one of their hotels soon, since none of my conventions this past year were at a Hilton. But this weekend is supposed to be nice and unseasonably warm, and there’s a Hampton Inn near one of the parks I was looking at for hiking, so I’m taking a mini vacation.

The plan is to do a little hiking and then enjoy the indoor pool and hot tub. It doesn’t look like there’s anything I want to see on HBO on the night I’ll be there, but I have a ton of books loaded on my tablet, so there may be some hanging out and reading.

And now I have to get ready for it. I checked out my swimsuit and found that some of the spandex has died. There’s a big patch down the back where it’s visible (and getting a bit see-through). So, I need a new swimsuit. And snacks, of course. Those are critical for a road trip. As is updating the playlists on my phone. I think I still have Christmas music on there that needs to be deleted and then replaced with a few new CDs I have to rip into the computer.

I’m not normally this spontaneous about travel. Then again, when I go overboard with planning, I tend to never actually take the trip. It’s as though once I have it all planned, I feel like I’ve already taken the trip, and the actual trip can never live up to the one I took in my head from visualizing it so clearly from all the planning. Maybe I need to do more trips of the “where can I go this weekend?” variety.