Of Worst-Case Scenarios and Simple Fixes by Konnie Enos

Last night, earlier than I usually think about going to bed, I decided I was tired, and it was time to sleep, and THEN I remembered my post. I looked at the time. I still had a couple of hours I could write it, or I could just get up in the morning and do it.

So, I took a moment to debate the issue. If I did it last night, I’d have a couple of hours to write and set up my post, but if I didn’t get that all completed, I’d have time this morning to finish. If I waited until morning, I’d only have a couple of hours to get it all done. Well, a couple of hours is plenty of time, if I have an idea of what I’m going to write about.

This brought up the next issue of what would I write about.

Well. Umm. Let’s see. Umm.

I then realized I needed sleep because my brain was not functioning, probably because I was hot. If you know me at all, you know I don’t function well when I’m hot. I’ve been known to throw up if I can’t cool down fast enough.

Jerry also was not pleased with the indoor temps. Most of us assumed it was because Melinda and I had taken the time to cook dinner yesterday which involved having something on the stove most of the day and the oven on for about half an hour. Jerry was insisting we could not do this in the heat. I was wondering how he expected to eat if we didn’t cook.

But then, because the temperature didn’t come down after we turned everything off, he went and checked the AC. It wasn’t even on.

Why?

That has not been ascertained for sure, but Jerry assumed it had overheated trying to keep the house cool yesterday. When it still wasn’t functioning this morning, he insisted it would take a small fortune to get it working again.

If you know Jerry at all, you know he is a supreme pessimist. Whenever something doesn’t work as it is supposed to, he insists it is never simple, easy, or inexpensive to fix. Ever. He always goes for the most extreme problem which would be the hardest or most expensive to fix.

Now there is one thing I’ve learned about things and how they function. Most of the time when something is not working, the fix is something easy, supremely simple, and most importantly, not expensive if it even costs any money at all.

This realization came to me when I was in my twenties and on a date with a young man whose car stopped functioning while we were trying to get to where we were going. He did just as Jerry would have and panicked about the extreme expense of fixing the major issue, he thought it was. (This was close to 40 years ago so don’t ask me what he was thinking the issue was.)

Well, I couldn’t even drive back then so I knew next to nothing about cars but when he opened his hood, I could see a part of it from where I was sitting in the front seat. I looked at the big, round black things front and center and flashed back to my mom once having some sort of issue with a car and the answer had been in that big round black thing. I somehow knew that was the problem. (Yes, I know it’s the air filter now.)

I pointed it out to my date, but he insisted that could not be causing the problem. So, he decided he had to get to a shop. It took some time to limp into the nearest one because his car would not go over 30 mph.

Now my guess was a simple clogged air filter.

Anyway, my date finally gets to a mechanic, and the very first thing the competent mechanic checks is the air filter. One unnecessary mechanic bill and an inexpensive air filter later we are back on the road and able to complete our date.

So, what has this got to do with our AC?

Someway, somehow the AC had been turned off. Simply flip the switch back to on and it’s working fine again. Thankfully.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

COVID and Me by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

If you haven’t heard already, I have COVID. Or at least I am still COVID positive. I feel fine. In fact, I am starting to feel like my old self, even if I am still in isolation because I haven’t as yet received a negative result when tested.

So, the timeline for all this is that on the evening of June 29^th, I had heartburn so bad I was coughing. On the morning of June 30^th, I considered calling in sick because I was coughing so much, but by the time I needed to leave for work, I had everything in control, and I figured it was fine.

Wrong!

By the end of my shift, I went home and took some cough syrup. By Friday morning, July 1^st, I knew I was sick. I had to call my friend at the visitors’ center and tell her I couldn’t make it. By Saturday morning, my oxygen levels were dropping and temp rising.

Now keep in mind this was a holiday weekend. I did try to contact some friends for help, but all I got was voice mail. I finally decided to drive myself to the emergency room.

I let the staff know what I did know about my condition, from my oxygen levels and temp to the fact that I was coughing up phlegm. (Having a nurse for a stepmother, I know that anything other than clear spelled a problem.)

I had hoped at this point, that it was just a chest cold, after all, I got all the vaccines and I’d been COVID-free all this time. At one point, Konnie panicked because for a while there my humble little hometown was the hotbed of COVID activity in the area.

I kept reassuring her that all my friends avoided me when they were sick. They are fully aware I’m high risk. My age, my heart condition, and my asthma individually put me there. To be honest, I’m lucky I’ve lasted this long. I have a friend who has suffered through three different variants.

So, I took myself to the hospital, tested positive, and was admitted.

Great. I have a cat. A cat that needed to be fed. And I hadn’t as yet managed to contact anyone for assistance.

Then there was the problem of informing my two closest family members, both of whom tend to panic. Konnie is at least sensible enough that I could call her directly and let her know. Her panic was mild in comparison to my sister-in-law. I knew I couldn’t call her. I called our shared home health aide.

Bre is a good kid, and very nice. She told Shirley, and she also retrieved my spare keys from my neighbor and fed Patches, on her own time mind you. Great kid actually, because tending my cat is something she isn’t supposed to do. But she wasn’t on the clock, and she volunteered.

She also managed to calm Shirley down which is the best part of contacting her.

The worst part was because of all the vulnerable clients she has, she can’t come back here until I’m COVID negative.

It didn’t help any all this happened just days before my 60^th birthday. Okay, yeah, mine and Konnie’s. The difference being, even if she were COVID positive at that time (which she wasn’t), she’d still have been at home with most of her family for company.

I, on the other, have Patches.

I’ve had some pretty bad birthdays over the years, but I’d have to say this one was the worst. I was miserable. I was still miserable a week later.

I kept trying to get back to work, but all my test kept coming back positive. I retest this Friday yet again, and I hope I’ll finally be negative since I finally feel like my old self.

But at this point, I’ve missed a ton of work.

And the missed pay aside, I couldn’t have fallen sick at a worse time, right when quarterly reports are due. My boss had been looking forward to getting them done promptly for once now that she had me to help. Best laid plans and all. Life can throw some curveballs.

She on the other hand worried about me missing pay more than how far she was getting behind without me to help.

Last Friday, she decided to look into the possibility of me working from home. It took some doing and talking with her higher-ups, let alone setting up my computer with the right program but yesterday we finally got me set up to work from home. Hopefully, it will just be for this week.

Anyway, I now have plenty of fodder for a pandemic story.

Happy writing everyone!

Of Reading and Writing by Konnie Enos

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that my youngest, Royce, has stubbornly insisted he doesn’t know how to read. This was never helped by the fact that he was functioning well below grade level in reading throughout his school years. We could never convince him that below grade level didn’t mean he couldn’t read at all.

Nor could we convince him that his ability to navigate on his tech to watch his shows and play his games indicated that he could indeed read. Let alone that his fascination with tech including using and understanding it indicated he could indeed read.

Being from a reading family, I have tried multiple times to find him something other than what’s on his screen that he would read.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten him a book on a subject he’d expressed fascination with only to have him not so much as crack it open. I mean I was trying to find what genre and style of book he would find interesting enough to read.

I know that everyone has different likes and dislikes and I have seen how finding the right genre of a book can get someone interested in reading.

Jerry is most into self-help and or spiritual-type books, so he isn’t likely to read fiction. May didn’t develop a love of reading until she found historical fiction. She particularly loves sagas that cover several generations of a family’s story. Which should have been a clue to her that the best subject for her to study would be genealogy. Once she found those classes she thrived in school and is so proud that she has been able to complete all requirements for her associate degree (this semester) and now plans to start working on her bachelor’s degree in the fall.

 Tony also will only read books in genres and on subjects that interest him.

But with Royce, I just could not seem to find the genre that would interest him.

I had noticed his fascination with anime shows, but I didn’t know how to convert that love into reading. Not even after he’d displayed his prowess at creating an entire world and tons of stories in a similar style (Grand Oracle). Now we just need to get him to write them so others can enjoy them too. But that still didn’t get him reading.

At least once I had a conversation with him about trying graphic novels, but he wasn’t receptive or otherwise didn’t act on that suggestion.

Then between sheer frustration at being unable to get him reading and just being overworked going back to school, I dropped the subject.

And maybe that’s all he needed.

Sometime after we’d discovered that he’d created the entire Grand Oracle world he started mentioning new stories he’d found and describing them to me much like he had with Grand Oracle and some of the anime shows he liked. I assumed these new ones were more anime shows.

I’m coming to realize his fascination with anime might be partly because he can find them on the internet, which he is also fascinated with.

Anyway, he’s telling me about these new shows and has even showed me a scene or two in a couple of them. I assumed they were stills from the shows he was watching.

Nope.

He either found a show he loved with only a season or two of episodes but did have online graphic novels continuing the story or he simply found such novels in a style he loved and got hooked, but now he is coming to me with “this new great story” and they aren’t shows! And he LOVES them.

The characters are drawn in the same style as anime are drawn and they tend to all be set in cultures with strong similarities to Japanese culture, where anime originated. Even the widely popular Pokémon is in the anime style. Even more interesting, the man who created Pokémon has autism. (Look him up. His name is Satoshi Tajiri.)

Anyway, Royce has now been sucked into the world of reading by his two biggest fascinations, anime, and the internet.

Having looked up some information on Pokémon, I’ve learned Satoshi Tajiri created it, but he had help from friends to transform it into the shows and games they have become. So now I’m thinking all Royce needs to get his stories out is someone to collaborate with him on creating them into graphic novel form.

So maybe after we convince him to use voice-to-text apps to get his story written out, we should work on finding an artist to help him transform it into a graphic novel.

Now back to finishing my last week of school.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Of COVID and Writing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

This past weekend I panicked two of my relatives doing one thing, but they panicked for different reasons.

What did I do?

I ended up in the hospital with COVID.

Who panicked?

Well, for starters, my sister-in-law, who lives here in town, panicked over my being in the hospital with COVID. She was afraid I was going to die because she’s already lost friends to the disease.

The other one to panic was Konnie.

Her issue wasn’t that I had COVID but that I was in the hospital with no access to my computer and a post due in a matter of days. As her last post stated, she’s in over her head with no spare time on her hands. She categorically could not sub on my turn this week.

So, now I’m home. I’ve calmed down my sister-in-law, but Konnie is still worried about me posting. Who can blame her? I am having trouble concentrating (more so than usual) and I keep dozing off.

This leaves me with sitting at my computer for a few minutes at a time trying to write something coherent when my brain would rather make the room spin than my thoughts find their way from my gray matter to the keyboard.

You would think she could be happy I lasted this long without getting COVID.

And it wasn’t like I didn’t panic myself when the ER nurse said they were admitting me. I mean who was going to take care of Patches? And who was home on the holiday weekend to even receive my call? I mean at first, no one was answering my messages, and I was even having trouble getting my church address book to open, limiting who I could contact.

I finally got a positive response, but she insisted she had no way to get into my apartment. I reminded her my neighbors had my spare keys. I’d have just called them, but I didn’t have their number!

Everything was fine until my friend let me know Patches had meowed his voice raw before she got there. He was distraught that he couldn’t find me. Now I panicked.

In the nearly three years I’ve had Patches, I spent a whopping one weekend away from home and that was just weeks after I got him. (Don’t worry, I left him with plenty of food and water.) But since then, the longest I had been away from home in a day is around 8 hours, and most days it was between five and a half and six hours. I do only work five-hour shifts. My long days are when I have stuff like appointments or errands to do before or after work. But I always return home in time for dinner until this past Saturday, a day I normally either stay home or run just one quick errand.

The way he is acting now, he has separation anxiety, because now he panics if he wakes up and I’m not where he last saw me. Either that or he’s just worried about me, considering that for the past week he has insisted on curling up next to or on me at every turn.

Yes, he was keeping a really close eye on me; I should have realized just from his behavior something was really wrong with me.

He’s starting to calm down, but now I’m worried about how he’s going to respond when I can actually leave the house again.

On top of all this, I have been trying to tweak my query and blurb for my speculative fiction novel and edit the first book of my science fiction series. (As in actually getting it finished.) I’m adding in scenes to flesh out the story better. Or at least I was trying to. Like I said, I’m having more trouble than usual concentrating.

Does anyone have time to do a critique or two on my query and blurb? If I ever get new ones written.

I’d ask Konnie, but obviously, she doesn’t have time. Me, I have way more time than I was planning to have, too bad I can’t seem to stay awake, let alone concentrate.

And to top it all off, this has been officially the worst birthday I’ve ever had, and that is saying something when heretofore my worst birthday was the one where Dad called and instead of saying hi or asking how I was doing, he announced, “He’s taller than you.”

And that was just the icing on a dreadful day all around because my husband ended up having to work on the fourth and was supposed to get the fifth off instead. It was evening when Dad called, and still no husband.

Anyway, happy writing everyone!