Of Migraines and Pets

 

I just spent the last three days with a massive migraine, so this is the first time I’ve been on my computer in a few days. Maybe I should have written my post last week while I was working on my inventory of my Barbies and my books.

I finished the inventory of my Barbies, but not my books. That list isn’t complete yet. I also plan to do an inventory of my Nativities and other knickknacks, which will probably have to be done with pictures since there is such a large variety of them. Then again, I have a whole slew of pictures of my Barbies as well. I just haven’t put them in my inventory. Maybe I should.

Anyway, I am not working on all cylinders this morning thanks to being so out of it the last few days. And I should have spent some time writing or editing this last week, but I haven’t done that either.

Don’t ask me how Konnie is doing, about all know is Jerry got a new dog this last week. That isn’t big news considering how many animals Konnie and her family lost this past year. The number of animals in their house right now is less than in the past. I am just going to stick with Patches. I can’t afford to take care of more than just him. Pets can be expensive.

Though I admit to having fun putting pets in my stories. I have one scene where the hero’s dogs keep him from entering the room occupied by who he thought was a male, but he’d just learned was a female. Fun scene.

I do have dogs in another story but the only scene I have with them is the lead female discovering her stepchildren are afraid of dogs, something their father had never considered.

Animals can add a fun element to a story. I just wonder why I keep using dogs when I’m a cat person. I really should have a character with a cat or two, or more. I like the stories I’ve read with cats in them, I’ve just read more with dogs.

There are other pets a character could have too.

I have one where the hero’s family has a whole menagerie, but no cats. A dog, a parrot, a couple of parakeets, a couple of pygmy goats, and three Giant Welsh rabbits.

Well, they do have neighbors with a large variety of animals including cats, dogs, goats, and chickens, which does play into the story because they all have to evacuate because of a wildfire. And even still most of the animals I have in that story are dogs.

The lead female has a dog, and her best friend's brother has a dog. The hero's aunts and grandparents all have at least one dog each, and the family friends have a dog. That’s quite a few dogs and only a couple of cats.

I do have another story where the hero has a dog and during the story, they rescue a kitten from a storm drain. The lead female wants to keep the cat, which causes quite a scene because of his dog.

Those are the only two pets in that story, but I have a few nice scenes with them.

I have no idea why I have so few cats in my stories. I just use dogs more often. I know the first story I had any pets in, and I had it be dogs because they were guard dogs for the hero’s business. Cats wouldn’t have worked for that; I just don’t know why I haven’t had pets in other stories. Well, I do know for one of my stories. I didn’t give the title character a pet because she was too busy and had too much on her plate as it was.

Sometimes not having pets in the story is a good thing, other times they add an element of fun to the story. Though in the one with the wildfire, the pets haven’t added much of an element of fun so far, just mayhem.

Do you have pets? If so what kind? And do you put pets in your stories? Why or why not?

Anyway, happy writing everyone!

Of Late Nights and Big Frights by Konnie Enos

Recently something happened that resulted from a combination of things.

I think I’ve mentioned before that Melinda adheres to the old saying “early to bed, early to rise”. She is also extremely sensitive to noise and cannot sleep with lights on. I understand that last one because I found it difficult to sleep with lights on too.

Nobody else in the family goes to bed before ten so when she does, we shut off as many lights as possible, shut our doors, and limit the noise we make. We don’t do this merely to be nice to her. We do it to not “poke the bear”. She doesn’t hit, but she can completely chastise you if you wake her up. Let me tell you, you know you’ve been chewed out even if all she does and glare and slam a door.

Also, because of her noise sensitivity and household arguments about what people were watching/listening to, we mandated that everyone must listen with headphones unless everyone else in hearing range agreed with whatever was being played, be it a song, show, or game. With Melinda, hearing range includes anywhere within our house, even with the doors closed.

These two traits are indications of her neurodiversity.

Royce is not nearly as sensitive to sound, and he prefers to be awake at night. At night, he will generally run in the backyard. He also insists on long-sleeved shirts and long pants. His favorite color is black.

These are indications of his neurodiversity.

One thing about me is I cannot sleep with the light on. If Jerry is still awake when I go to bed, I put on my sleep mask. I also cannot have lights suddenly turned on, even if I am awake at the time. It’ll give me a headache. Yes, I have yelled at more than one family member because they flipped on a light without warning me. Usually Jerry.

I should also add that if Jerry goes to sleep before I do, I generally turn out any lights I don’t need so the room is dark enough to sleep. If I go to bed first, I wear my sleep mask.

So now the event of a few days ago.

It was later in the evening. Melinda was long since in bed. I couldn’t hear Royce running in the backyard or moving about in the front room. I assumed he was at least on his tech, if not asleep too. Jerry was snoring beside me. Not being tired yet, I decided to watch an episode of a show I like online.

With that in mind, I logged onto my computer and the necessary site. I then made sure the lights were all out and I had my headphones on.

My nice over-the-ear headphones that make it somewhere between difficult and impossible for me to hear outside noises. Headphones that I often have off of one ear during the day if I’m listening to something, so I don’t miss anything.

Now, the show I chose to watch sitting in a dark room with all other sounds cut off was a crime drama. I can feel Jerry sleeping beside me, know Melinda’s asleep, and cannot hear if Royce is even awake. Though, since I hadn’t heard Royce before I put them on, I assume I’m the only one up.

Just as I get to a rather tense scene. You know the ones where the music lets you know something scary is going to happen. Someone touched my left hand.

I kid you not. I jumped. Jerry is on my right. I look up and cannot see anyone in the dark room. I know from experience throwing my headphones off will take my glasses with it and I was positive I didn’t want to be blind at that moment. With one hand I shoved my headphones off an ear while with the other I reached for my reading light.

Taking the headphones off allowed me to hear Royce calling me. Turning on my light helped me to see him in all his dark clothes.

And yes, he did tell me he tried a couple of times to get my attention before he touched me. But he did not yell so as not to incur Melinda’s wrath and he did not turn on the light not wanting me to yell at him. Probably because my yelling would have invoked Melinda’s ire. She’d also be intelligent enough to figure out he was the one who started it. In other words, he would have gotten it twice.

I’d tell you why he needed my attention at that hour but as I said it was a few days ago and I honestly can’t remember.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

St. Patrick's Day and Other Holidays by Bonnie Le Hamilton

In four days, it will be St. Patrick’s Day. I’m also informed, thanks to social media, that the holy periods of Lent and Ramadan are going on right now, with Palm Sunday on the 24^th and Easter on the 31^st.

All of this got me thinking about holiday traditions and which ones we, or our characters, follow. I know I have touched on traditions concerning big holidays like Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but what about the others?

I don’t know about schools today, but when I was a kid, St. Patrick’s Day was a big deal, mostly because of pinching anyone not wearing green. I have previously mentioned my cousin who was vicious with his pinches back then.

Anyway, on St. Patrick’s Day, I always try to remember to wear green.

In my husband’s family, their tradition was to have corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, which is something my family never did, but now I do it every year. This year as usual you will find me at my sister-in-law’s place having corned beef and cabbage.

When it comes to Ramadan, of course, we don’t celebrate that, but we also never celebrated Lent. Growing up, Lent was just lighting a candle on each of the four Sundays before Easter, and the one we lit on Easter was white while the rest were green.

I was an adult before I learned some people give up stuff during Lent, but that is as far as it goes for me. Now Easter is a big deal. It's as big as Christmas really. But even still, it isn’t like it was when we were kids and everyone showed up at church in their new spring outfits complete with hats, gloves, and little purses. I hated those hats.

We still dress up for Easter, but then we try to dress up for every Sabbath day. Easter is on Sunday.

Other Easter traditions are the Easter egg hunt and Easter baskets, and way too much candy!

In our church, it is more about reading about the Resurrection of Christ than all those treats, just like we try to make Christmas more about the birth of Christ. However, I admit it is harder to find décor about the Resurrection of Christ than it is to find décor depicting the birth of Christ. Explaining why I have so many Nativities and only one “He is Risen” knickknack. I wish I had more. Though I do have a couple Gethsemane statues. Gethsemane had to happen before the tomb could be found empty! That’s important too.

But what about in our stories? Do we ever use some of these holidays in them?

I know I have used April Fool’s Day at least once, which is the day after Easter this year, but I don’t think I’ve ever done much about St. Patrick’s Day. Have you?

As far as stories go, I know Blue Bloods usually does something about St. Patrick’s Day, but that is a bigger deal in New York or Chicago. Wasn’t it the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade that The Fugitive got lost in?

But how about in small-town America? What kind of things would they do?

I know we never had a parade on St. Patrick’s Day, but it is usually still pretty cold on St. Patrick’s Day, I’m surprised New York and Chicago have parades for it, then again, New York has their big parade on Thanksgiving every year, which is pretty darn cold.

Around here, it is normally a white Thanksgiving.

Though if you are making up a town, or using a small town that never did much for the holiday, what would that be?

Or would it be mentioned at all?

I’m sure in Sci-Fi the likelihood of them celebrating St. Patrick’s Day is pretty slim, the same in Fantasy, but what holidays would they celebrate? What would that look like? What is the tradition for it? Is the tradition different for separate groups?

I should consider this for my Sci-Fi because what sort of culture doesn’t have holidays? For my speculative fiction, I don’t think any of our holidays are mentioned specifically, but it does occur in late spring, right before high school graduation for some of the characters. And that is in the story.

But most of what I write is romance, and I have no idea why I don’t mention St. Patrick’s Day in any of them. I clearly could have in the one where I mention April Fool’s Day because the female lead’s little brothers would make a big deal out of that too! And I do not know why I didn’t at least mention it in passing.

Anyway, happy writing everyone! And Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

 

Of Weather and Differences by Konnie Enos

Time is flying this year. Here it is already March and like the old saying it came in like a lion, roaring. This past weekend we got what the weather reports were calling a Winter storm. But around here, that doesn’t mean snow.

What we got was intense winds, blowing things around and downing some trees, or at least taking some branches off them. My daughter said she thought the wind had blown a branch off of our tree because there was one lying under it. Though it’s not something you’d notice on our massive tree. I wasn’t concerned about it. It was planted nineteen years ago, and it’s supposed to have roots that go extra deep and long. I think it’d take tornado-strength winds to pull it out of the ground.

The power company warned us about power outages but all we got was one short one on Saturday morning. Long enough for us to notice the power went off, but not long enough to start worrying about issues from its loss. I don’t think it was out for five minutes.

By Monday, things had calmed down around here. We still have some wind, but it’s quieter. The sun’s out, we have blue skies. The weather report predicts temperatures hitting the low 70s this week.

Monday is also the day I read headlines about the major blizzard hitting Northern California and into Northern Nevada. Specifically, around the Tahoe and Reno areas. They got socked in.

My son, Tony, is working in Northern Nevada so I was happy when he called. I asked him how the weather was up there and how he was faring.

He mentioned that his bosses had shut down his job site on Saturday because of the weather and the fact they had more snow and ice. He didn’t mention any power outages or other issues with the weather though his call was about him needing a ride to come to Las Vegas today. Jerry, of course, willingly drove up to get him last night, though Tony had some warnings about the road conditions up there.

Now, having grown up in Idaho, I’m a bit familiar with the weather there and I knew that by March the snow is at least starting to melt, if not mostly gone. And while there might still be snow around, the roads are clear. But March tends to roar in like a lion so lots of wind. Prime weather for some kite flying, as I remember.

I didn’t see Idaho’s weather reports, so I assumed they were just seeing typical March winds and maybe some rain. Then learning about the blizzard, I thought they may have gotten some snow from it. Though being March already, and not seeing any headlines about them getting a storm too, I assumed it wasn’t more than a light snow, something that could melt off in a day.

Since this was Monday, and I had plans for the evening, I was contemplating if I’d even need a jacket and the possibility of digging my sandals out rather than wearing my tennis shoes for the evening when Bonnie surprised me by calling.

I very nearly panicked.

It was the middle of the workday! And unlike me, she has a job. Plus, she never calls in the middle of the day.

So, my first response when I picked up the phone was, “What’s wrong?”

 Her first sentence was bemoaning the fact that the snow was up to the bumper of her car, which is an SUV! Apparently, because of the slope of her driveway and the depth of the newly fallen snow, she couldn’t get out.

I’m thinking about the nice spring weather, and she’s snowed in! Not only that, but her anticipated company wouldn’t be able to get to her place because of it. (The slope of her driveway is at least half the problem.)

Talk about March coming in like a lion.

Then, after we’d hung up, I had to laugh about the differences in our lives. From the extreme differences in our weather to the differences in our living conditions. Her only companion is her cat while I live with most of my kids, my husband, and some dogs.

Of course, she also had tons of friends, not to mention family nearby, and she lives in the small town we grew up in. I live in a huge city with no family nearby and, as usual, I don’t have as many friends.

Though we still have our similarities. Saturday, Melinda was French braiding my hair and commented on my extreme lack of gray hair. Yes, I have some, as does Bonnie, but at nearly 62 years old, it’s not much.

And, as of yesterday, Dictionary (as we affectionately call her) is 63.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.