Of Road Trips and Phone Calls by Konnie Enos

 

This week my daughter had a doctor’s appointment about an 8-hour drive from our home. This requires some planning to make it on time. After covering who was going (i.e.: drivers and patient), securing a place to stay, packing needed items, and procuring road snacks, we loaded up the car and left the house.

We did not, however, immediately, head out of town because the car needed a full tank before starting on such a long trip.

After being on the road for a while, we all needed a bathroom break. When we stopped all three of us got out of the car without our phones.

Yeah, I know, an amazing thing in this day and age but my daughters aren’t glued to their phones and I hadn’t even thought about the fact I was leaving it in the car. After all, I wasn’t going to be out of the car that long.

Not long after we returned to the car the phone of my daughter and the designated driver started ringing. (Other daughter doesn’t drive and I don’t do long distances. My max driving time is two hours and even that is iffy.)

Anyway, she answered her phone and it was her youngest brother.

I’m not at all surprised he called, even after such a short time. After all, I had left him home alone with his dad. My husband, being his normal self, manages to annoy all his children, the youngest daily but since he is on the spectrum, it’s really easy to annoy him. I’m honestly surprised he has called only three or four times since.

I mean between his father finding ways to annoy him daily and his nearly daily need to discuss his favorite shows with someone, which is usually me since I’m the only one in the house who will listen, I expected regular calls.

So his call didn’t surprise me, nor did him calling every phone but his youngest sister’s before he tried her phone. After all, she was driving.

No, what surprised me is what he said about calling every phone in our car.

You see he told his sister he’d been calling us for two hours and was starting to panic since none of us had answered our phones.

Mind you as soon as we knew he’d been calling my other daughter and I checked our phones. We had one missed call from him each, both while we were out of the car to use the bathroom.

But according to him, he’d been trying to get ahold of us for two hours.

My daughter excused our not getting his call was because we’d been driving through mountains for the last couple of hours.

Of course, we were driving through mountains, just not for a whole two hours.

As I mentioned, we’d stopped for a bathroom break, our first such break on our trip. We planned all our stops as close to two hours as we could. That’s right, two hours.

Two hours previous to his calls we were barely leaving the city.

We not only weren’t in the mountains yet, but we’d also left the house no more than half an hour before.

So according to my son, he got frustrated and annoyed with his father, who he is spending three days with, within thirty minutes of us leaving the house.

 Worse, now he had to call because his brother, who was supposed to be gone the whole time we were, had returned home already.

My two boys get along like oil and water. On top of that lately, my older son has been moody, grumpy, and fairly hostile.

Now my son has to deal with his clueless dad and his grouchy brother.

I kind of feel for him, and my sister. The last time he called I let him know I was busy.

His solution?

Call his aunt.

So my sister got the opportunity to listen to my son talking about his current favorite shows and what’s happening in them.

Though honestly, I can’t do anything about how people at home are annoying him when I’m in a different state.

I’m sure when I finally get home I’ll get an earful from my son.

Oh, the joys of motherhood.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Curve Balls by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Life has a way of throwing curveballs.

Right now, those curveballs are kicking my you know what.

I haven’t been able to work for the last eight years because of my heart condition, the problem is, in the twenty-six years before that, I only had one job, and it only lasted six weeks, about all I could handle of it. (It stressed me out.)

Yeah, I wasn’t handling stress well before I was told to avoid it because of my heart.

Now I need a job.

Problem one, my doctor said I can only work part-time.

Problem two, aside from my CHF, I also have flat feet and asthma and am obese. I can’t stand long or walk far without one of those things causing problems.

Problem three is of course my work history, totally nonexistent for more than two decades of my adult life and well, what skills I did have thirty-four years ago, I can no longer use, because, well I am now physically incapable of doing custodial work.

My skill set these days is more suited for an office, but well, I can’t type fast enough to be considered a proficient secretary, and while I know MS Word, I do not know MS Office. I’ve never even managed to figure out Excel.

And then there is the whole being on the spectrum thing. I’m just having trouble getting everything done I need to do, and my to-do list keeps getting longer, while I sit around trying to decide what is most important.

I have honestly always had trouble prioritizing and now that I don’t have anyone around to keep me on track.

I miss Tom!

Of course, if Tom were still alive, I wouldn’t be in this boat, since while he was in my life, I mostly didn’t have to work, and for that one anomaly I found a solution that didn’t require me to work after I quit.

Then again, part of the stress of that job was transportation since my job was in the completely opposite direction of Tom’s job at the time and we only had one car. Let alone that we were living clear out in the country.

But it doesn’t change that I have to avoid stress.

How do you avoid stress in a work situation?

I mean really. Work is stressful. Finding a job is stressful, particularly during this pandemic while so much is closed. I find it especially hard to trust all these online job sites, and I’m getting tired of having to navigate through what is essentially ads without even finding a real job offer.

I want to talk to a real person!

And I still need to improve my typing speed. You would think with all the typing I do that I would be pretty fast, but I’m not. Just ask any of my friends I’ve been in word sprints with. I’m always last, period.

My average is twenty-five words per minute and secretaries need to type at least fifty. Yeah, I have a long way to go.

What really bugs me, is I did take typing in high school, and to pass that class you needed a net word count of sixty per minute. I did pass the class, but somewhere in the years where I didn’t have a typewriter available to me, my speed slowed down considerably, and I haven’t been able to pick it up.

Maybe more word sprints would help. I have no idea.

All I know is, I need to try harder.

I need to do more than just set goals, I need to set daily goals and I need someone I’m accountable to who will keep me on track.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve set a list of goals for a day, and by the end of the day, I didn’t get any of it done, or very little, and it doesn’t faze me. Now if there is someone expecting me to do something by a certain time and date, by golly I’m going to get it done.

Too bad, I have no one making sure I get my everyday chores like dishes, laundry, sweeping, mopping, changing the litter box done.

The only chore Patches yells at me about is feeding him. So, he isn’t much help on the rest. In fact, he gets in the way when I try to do them.

I’m trying to do laundry; he’s playing in the laundry baskets.

I’m trying to do dishes; he’s climbing all around the sink.

I’m trying to sweep; he’s either attacking the broom or chasing the dirt away from the broom!

At least mopping and vacuuming scare him away, but he also gets in my way when I’m trying to dust!

Happy writing, everyone!

 

Of the Handiness of Directions by Konnie Enos

 

Not long ago I came across someone’s description of their mother-in-law’s inability to remember right and left or the cardinal positions. This description brought back memories.

My husband, and at least one of our children, cannot see a map in their head. Because they can’t, they have difficulty remembering how to get to places they’ve been multiple times.

My husband has crisscrossed the town we were living in to run a few errands. Errands I could have done by making a well-planned loop to every place I needed to go, getting me back home in whatever amount of time I had.

My husband would pass places he needed to go while going to someplace else he needed to go. Once he was driving my brother to run some errands one of which was taking my brother to his bank. I could have done all errands in about an hour. My husband took at least three, including passing said bank FOUR times before he finally stopped. My brother was furious and refused to ride with my husband ever again.

I took a little more persuading. The experience that finally got me to take over the driving, or at least make sure I could map out our route was when our two oldest were in grade school. I told my husband I had errands to run and he decided he did too so we should just go together. Due to our daughters arriving home from school, we had about two hours.

He drove. He also ended up crisscrossing the town. (He didn’t let me dictate where we went next at any time during this.)

Two hours later I had to call my brother to get the girls off the bus since we weren’t home yet. Thankfully his kids rode the same bus and my girls had to walk past his place to get home. We were at least another hour getting home.

The infuriating part is I knew I could have done all the errands in half the time, and he knew when we needed to be home by.

He did things like that so often that I started doing the driving and I rarely let him do errands with me. If we must do them together, I’m mapping our route because I’m not wasting time.

Another thing he’s done before GPS was readily available, is call me from wherever he was saying, “I’m lost.”

“Okay, where are you?”

“I don’t know. I’m lost.”

I had to patiently ask him for landmarks or to take note of a street sign he was passing then try to figure out what direction he was heading without him knowing that fact. Once I’d established where he was, I could give him directions to get home or to wherever he’d been going. Before GPS, this happened regularly. Now he generally turns his GPS on whenever he gets in the car unless one of us is with him to give directions.

Now, as I said, at least one of our children is unable to map things out in their head and remember how to get from point A to point B.

When our youngest daughter got her learner’s permit she needed my directions to get to places she’s been multiple times. Her excuse was she’d never paid attention as a passenger. When she kept needing directions to places she’d driven to several times I figured out she takes after her dad. The big difference is she can still manage to drive around without getting lost or wasting time backtracking. Yes, she has GPS but I don’t think she relies on it as much as her dad does.

Of course, neither of them have any trouble remembering which hand is right or left.

That would be me. I can’t tell you the number of times I was giving my husband directions and I’d tell him to turn left, or right, and when he went to do so I’d tell him it was the wrong direction. I knew which way to go, I just repeatedly mixed up left and right.

Now, in the story I read about the directionally challenged mother-in-law, they reminded her of which was left or right by giving such hints as “you know, the hand you write with”.

Such hints would only confuse me. (I’m ambidextrous.)

The solution in my family was “this-away” (right, as in towards me the passenger) and “that-away” (obviously towards the driver, left). My kids grew up with this and still use it.

Also, I’m perfectly fine with cardinal directions. It’s just that left and right thing that trips me up.

But since members of my family can’t do it, I always wonder who can “see” the map in their head and who can’t.

What about you?

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Differences by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

As the title of this blog states, Konnie and I are mirror twins, as in mirror opposites, but not really in personality, unless you count that I am on the spectrum and she isn’t.

Another way we are different is pets.

She has a dog.

I have a cat.

I’m not really much of a dog person, and Konnie tries hard not to call me on garbage day or when the mail is due simply because I can’t stand the cacophony caused not just by her dog, but her husband’s and two daughters’ dogs as well. Multiple dogs yapping their heads off is not pleasant.

I, on the other hand, have to deal with Patches, which sometimes can be trying.

Like the other day, I hurried to the bathroom, as I did so, I noted I didn’t have to avoid Patches underfoot while I ran, but beyond that, I didn’t notice where Patches was.

I entered the bathroom and kicked the door closed. Now I did this because Patches can partially open the living room curtain, and you can see out the window from the toilet if the door is open. I did not, however, push the door all the way into the jamb. It was touching but not in.

Well, I’m just finishing up my business in there when I hear distressed yowling coming from Patches. I rush to the door, my heart hammering in my throat, open it, and Patches look up at me then quietly finds a spot to lay down on the living room floor, as calm as can be.

Ye gads, cat! Talk about giving me a heart attack!

But that isn’t all, the next time I went to take a shower was the complete opposite. Now, whenever I take a shower, I don’t want him jumping in with me, so I close the door all the way. This time I actually closed it in his face, since he was following me.

No big deal, I’ve done it before. He’s usually following me.

But this time he didn’t meow at the door or stick his paws under it while I was getting undressed, which was not usual. Not by a long shot.

As I finished up and got out, well, I expected to find Patches resting somewhere near the door, watching, waiting. That is his usual reaction, but this time there was no cat in sight until I entered my bedroom.

He was chilling on my bed.

Now, I’d like to point out my bathroom door is open, except when in use. In the first instance, Patches didn’t see me enter the bathroom, but clearly, the door was closed, it is only closed when I am in there. So, where was I?

In the second instance, he saw me close the door, so no problem. The only issue was that he didn’t react the way he normally does when I close him out of that room.

I just don’t get why he got upset the first time, and I wonder if that’s how he reacts when I manage to leave the house while he’s napping in the other room. Does he yowl like that until he hears my car pull into the driveway? He always jumps in to the living room window while I’m still braking on those occasions.

All I know is no one has ever complained about him yowling, and he seems fine when I first see him upon my return.

At any rate, I know Konnie doesn’t have those issues, both because her dog follows her all over the house and because if Konnie ever managed to get in the bathroom without Mable seeing her, well there are other people, and dogs, in her house.

She also doesn’t have another issue I’ve had in the last couple of weeks.

The other day, I thought I was out of clean bath towels. Emphasis on “thought.”

So, with that in mind, I gathered all my laundry, sorted it, and started a load in the washer. When I went to put that load in the dryer, I opened the door, and – I’m not out of clean bath towels after all.

That would never happen to Konnie because of the sheer number of people using her washer and dryer compared to mine.

I forget a load in the dryer, it stays there until the next time I do laundry. When Konnie forgets a load in the dryer, it stays there until someone else needs the dryer. There is always someone else who needs the machines. Around her house, there is often a line for who needs laundry done or to use the bathroom.

Cats have no use for bathrooms and laundry rooms, so no lines here. 😊

Happy writing everyone!  😊

Of Heat Warnings and Air Conditioners by Konnie Enos

 

Like much of the United States, we have had severe heat warnings around here all week.

Our daughter, who lives in Oregon has complained about how hot it is and the fact their small window unit is not sufficient to cool their small apartment. Most days when I talk to her, our granddaughter is running around in just a diaper.

Living in an arid desert, as we do, I hadn’t been paying attention to the temps. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but around here winter is in December/January. Spring is usually February (that extreme cold snap in February of 2018 threw us). By March we are starting to get those warmer temps and the air conditioner becomes necessary. Those temps usually last through October. November is fall. July and August are the hottest months of the year so we expect them in the triple digits, daily.

Sever heat warning means it’s over 110 degrees. Sunday we hit that and they’re not expecting us to get below it until next Sunday. In fact, for the first time that I can remember, we got an automated call from the electric company asking us to conserve power between 2 and 9 p.m. Thankfully we have solar panels and, with plenty of sunshine, they’re working great.

Since everywhere you go around here is air-conditioned, even the cars, I’m never out in the heat for longer than it takes me to get in or out of the car and back into air conditioning. In other words, I haven’t noticed the temps beyond my husband commenting on it when he’d pick me up from work, during the hottest part of the day.

Now, despite the temps, our system can keep our house comfortable normally.

Sometime in the last few weeks, our youngest started complaining that our indoor temp was not staying as low as we like. Monday some of his siblings joined him in pointing out that our thermostat was set for one temperature but our indoor temps were several degrees higher and rising.

Now, this is a cause for concern. Nobody wants their air conditioner to expire in the middle of a heatwave.  We voiced our apprehensions to my husband.

What did Jerry do?

Well first, he listened to the outside part of our unit. Then he decided he needed to inspect the unit in our attic.

Now, this in itself is a production because the only access to the attic is through our daughter’s bedroom ceiling. And the first issue wasn’t getting a ladder. It was having someone (my husband refused to disturb her himself) knock on her door and let her know what Jerry needed to do.

Before long he has hauled his ladder into said daughter’s room and he climbed up into the attic.

I wasn’t at all sure what he thought he could do, but while he was checking things out I started the processes of contacting our HVAC company.

Now they’d come to do their regular service on our unit in early March and said someone would have to come back and finish the job.

I’m not sure if they were just really busy or it was because COVID hit, but they never came back and my husband hadn’t been able to get in touch with anyone there. He left messages but they never called back.

I had no better luck until I tried the company’s online site and the chatbot there. Before long I was talking to a person and they set up an appointment for the next day (Tuesday).

This would have been great, but my husband had decided our system was going out, yet again.

How does he deal with such things?

HE TURNED IT OFF! In the middle of a heatwave!

Monday was a very uncomfortable night for sleeping around here.

My husband did get a couple more large fans and placed all the ones we have throughout the house and going full bore yesterday but it still did not get the temperature to comfortable levels.

Thankfully the guys from our HVAC company finally arrived yesterday evening. They at least got the air conditioner back on. Between that and our fans still going we’ve been able to slowly bring the temp back down to a comfortable level. And they’re covering the repairs because it was their lack of service which caused the issue. (Yeah for that because we’re talking a couple of thousand dollars.)

How are the rest of you dealing with the heat?

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Author Bio's by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to write things like resumes and author bio’s? I mean its easy to talk about things you’re going through, but praise yourself? Put yourself in a good light?

Come on!

I mean who am I?

I asked for help with writing an author bio and most of the advice I got was on how I should write about how I’m the EXPERT on my topic.

I’m a fiction writer for crying out loud!

The closest I come to being an expert on the topic of my story is that I wrote it. That isn’t to say someone else can’t write something similar. Fiction is made up; anyone can do that.

Okay, not everybody can do it well, but that doesn’t mean someone else can’t come up with a story similar to mine. It wouldn’t be exactly the same obviously, because no one else can think the way I do, not even Konnie. She didn’t come up with this story, I did. 

Though if my mirror twin can’t concoct a similar story, then maybe I am the expert on this story. Who knows?

Then again, Konnie and I have never come up with similar stories, unless you count that so many of our stories are romance, and usually YA.

However, one of Konnie’s stories is a fantasy and I promise you; I am never going to write fantasy.

Yes, I like The Chronicles of Narnia, but it took Konnie a few years to finally convince me to read them, and she never got me to read anything by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m not much into fantasy, and she enjoys it.

Though I admit we both write sci-fi as well as romance. I’m frankly just shocked she wrote a sci-fi before I did, unless you count Mathias’ Dilemma as sci-fi. He is an alien from outer space, but it is also a contemporary romance, still I definitely wrote the rough draft of that before she started what she calls her opus.

However, there is another fact, Konnie’s favorite author write’s fantasy, while my favorite author writes mysteries. Note, I do not write mysteries.

I have come to realize mystery writers are not pantsers — I am. I guess I’ll never figure out how to write a mystery or even a romantic suspense. Though I read quite a bit of both.

All I’ve actually written is sci-fi and romance, Konnie has both those and fantasy.

Maybe I should try harder to branch out into mystery.

And all that doesn’t get my bio written.

I think the only good advice I got was to mention how long I have been writing, my attendance at the Snake River Writer’s Conference last year, all the years I’ve participated in Nano, and my membership in the Pocatello and online writing communities, showing me to a serious writer despite not having any novels published, yet.

All good.

But would it help or hurt to mention the various club newsletters I’ve either contributed to or edited? I’m guessing it wouldn’t. I’m also guessing that one poem which was published in a local magazine that is now defunct wouldn’t help me either. By the way, it went belly up because they promised to pay for the works they published and didn’t.

I’ve actually had two poems published, but the second one was only published in small group newsletters or bulletins.   

Yeah, I’m not much of a pro.

Another thing I’m not sure about mentioning is my blog, or rather our blog, since I do share it with Konnie. Do I mention it? Do I mention being a mirror twin and my sister writes too? Do I mention all the family I have who writes?

Our big sister once upon a time contributed to her local newspaper, and I’m not talking letters to the editor, which I have done on several occasions. As I’ve mentioned before, writing is in our blood, and I traced my line clear back to William Shakespeare’s grandfather. I sure wish I could mention that in my bio! But I doubt that would help.

How does this sound?

Bonnie Le Hamilton started writing in sixth grade when her teacher assigned short stories to the class. From there she branched out into writing plays and poems before she started writing romance novels in high school, but she didn’t start writing seriously until 2000, after she finally got online and joined an online writing community.

Today she is a member of both Pocatello Writer’s Group and PokyWriters as well as several online writing groups including National Novel Writer’s Month, which she has participated in since 2003. She’s also attended the Snake River Writers Conference. Plus, she is the co-author of lifeasmirrortwins.blogspot.com.

Does that sound okay?

Happy writing everyone!

Of Monotony and To-do Lists by Konnie Enos

 

“I am done. I am so done.” Yes, I said that. Then I added, “Until tomorrow.”

I’d spent at least three hours doing some of my monthly paperwork which is dependent on us receiving money. Jerry had gotten his, but I had not, hence I wouldn’t be done until I received mine, today. Then again I’m never done because money is always going out and coming in.

I think my son put it perfectly, “No matter how often I do them, I’m still going to have to do chores. It never ends.”

I laughed. “Welcome to life.”

Yes, the dishes are always going to need doing. You’re still going to have to clean off tables, counters, and stove. You’re still going to have to collect the garbage and make sure it’s deposed of. You’re still going to have to sweep, mop (and vacuum, if you have rugs). There are still surfaces to dust and bathrooms to scrub. There are still clothes to get clean and meals to prepare. You also still have to shop, for groceries, cleaning supplies, and toiletries.

If you have pets, as we do, there is still feeding them, making sure they have ‘bathroom’ access (letting the dogs outside) and brushing them, bathing them, and taking care of their medical needs.

I’m sure my son considers bathing one of those chores he hates yet always has to do.

No matter what chore you manage to get done, it is still going to need to be done again. Maybe not the next day, but eventually. That is life.

Complaining isn’t going to change it. Living on your own isn’t either. No matter what you do in life, like it or not, there is going to these pesky tasks that must be done regularly and they’re never going to stop needing doing. Both chores and to-do lists are never-ending. There is always something else that needs doing.

In fact, in life, there are always tasks that must be repeated. Even at work. Whether you own the business or just have a job, there are tasks, no matter how mundane which has to be repeated often.

At this moment, I can’t think of any tasks which would never need to be done again as long as you’re alive. That is what life is. Some of those tasks are pleasant to do and some you’d rather avoid.

Then there are the tasks you can’t do, which still need doing. I can’t sweep or mop a floor. (I can walk, but being on my feet for that long kills my back due to breaking it nearly 50 years ago.)

I also detest scrubbing bathrooms, but someone has to do it.

While I don’t mind cooking, I hate having to always decide what gets cooked. I mean you have to when you live alone but in a family this size someone else can decide once in a while.

My son hates chores period. If he’s required to do it, then he’ll put it off until we start yelling at him, then he’ll complain the whole time he’s doing it. Though I think he likes complaining because he’s always doing it.

My husband just plain hates chores too because he does everything in his power to avoid all household chores. (I’d love to get him off his duff, but he’s stubborn too. His attitude is also why I have so much trouble with my son doing chores.)

So what never-ending chores to you hate or avoid? Which ones do you enjoy? Have you found ways to make the unpleasant tasks easier to bear or do you just muddle through them? Does music blasting through the house mean someone is doing chores? Do you find your to-do list getting ever longer because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day?

Chores have to be done, but what things do you do to make life pleasant?

Do you read, write, or do handcrafts? Do you do puzzles or word games? Do you exercise? (Yes, unbelievably some people like exercising.) What is that thing, or things, you do to relax or let off steam?

A good life must be balanced.

If you have to do those unpleasant tasks then when you’re done reward yourself with an equal amount of time to do something you do enjoy. I suggest putting both pleasant and unpleasant tasks on your daily to-do list. You’ll check more off and feel better about what you are accomplishing.

I mean you’ll have to do those unpleasant tasks anyway, why not make your day as pleasant as possible?

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.