It’s less than a week before Christmas, and I don’t have all my presents wrapped. I don’t even have all of them! And I think a couple will be late. While Konnie on the other hand was pretty much finished with her Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving. (She actually sent me my Christmas presents when she sent me my birthday present back in July!)

Yeah, we’re quite different.

As far as Christmas trees go, the last I heard, her tree had been up for years, as in never taken down, while over here people think I’ve decorated for Christmas when my tree isn’t even up!

Okay, I admit it, I have well over a hundred Nativities in my front room alone. Needless to say, they are out all year long.

And that isn’t to say I have no other knickknacks in my apartment. I have owls and eagles, and few other religious statues including one of Noah and the Ark. I just have a much larger collection of Nativities.

And if you’re asking, Konnie collects Christmas villages and Barbies. (Okay, yes, I have Barbie’s too, we started that collection together as kids, but she has way more nowadays.)

I, on the other hand, have never really cared for those Christmas villages. I mean I’d look at them in the stores, but never interested enough to buy any, until I learned Konnie likes them.

Though giving and getting gifts isn’t the important part about Christmas, neither are all the trees and lights. The important part is that tiny babe in the manager.

I remember as a kid going downtown for Christmas shopping, and I noticed several stores had “Merry X-Mas!” painted on their windows. My first thought was about how our big sister (affectionately nicknamed Dictionary) taught me how to spell Christmas.

She asked me to spell Christ, which I did, then she asked me to spell “mass”, which I also did. Finally, she said, “Now put them together, but drop the last 's'.”

I have never misspelled the word since! But on seeing those signs saying “X-Mas” I said, “They’re taking the Christ out of Christmas!”

It was so wrong! It’s still so wrong!

I hate to see that, drives me nuts.

It doesn’t bother me when someone says, “Happy Holidays!” because I know there are several other holidays around this time. And it is a time to be happy, no matter what holiday you celebrate. That’s no big deal, but taking the Christ out of Christmas, that’s huge and unacceptable.

Not too long ago, I went to talk with my bishop (my pastor if you will), it was the usual annual chat every bishop does with every member of their ward (congregation), but well, he is a new bishop, and so it was a get to know you kind of chat this year, and at some point, he asked if I’d decorated for Christmas yet.

“No, but you might think so if you entered my living room. Everybody does,” I said, then explained about my collection.

He beamed, “At least your focus is in the right place.”

Yeah. It’s kind of hard to forget the reason for the season when the reason for the season decorates my little apartment all year long.

And I know this last year has been hard on a lot of people, COVID, the shutdowns, everything, it's been a pain, and I see a lot of people who are having trouble finding the Christmas spirit. Not a whole lot of places are decorated, and I know plenty of people are still struggling.

I’m sure, if we didn’t have to wear those darn masks all the time, I’d see a lot of frowns. I do see a lot of slumped shoulders and listless walking.

Not a lot of people saying “Merry Christmas,” or “Happy Holidays,” these days.

My sister-in-law said it best when she told me, “It didn’t feel like Christmas.”

And she said that with snow on the ground!

She was equating Christmas with trees, lights, brightly wrapped presents, and all the commercial dressings of the season.

That isn’t Christmas.

Christmas is that babe in the manager who grew up to be that man suffering in Gethsemane and on Calgary. Christmas is about celebrating the love Heavenly Father has for everyone by sacrificing his Only Begotten Son to save us all.

Christmas is as much about the Atonement as Easter is because without Christmas, there would be no Easter!

Without the gift of His Only Son, we wouldn’t have either holiday.

So, Christmas isn’t about Santa and gifts any more than Easter is about the Easter Bunny! And it isn’t about the anticipation of opening gifts on Christmas morning, it's about what we’ve already been given.

Anyway, happy writing everyone, and Merry Christmas! 

Of Plans and Birthdays by Konnie Enos

 

I’ve been contemplating what things I have to do this week. Admittedly, not much.

Our family schedule isn’t packed with appointments, even counting video and phone ones. We’ve cut our grocery shopping trips to just once a week. This cuts costs because we’re using less gas and also not have $60 shopping trips just to get $20 worth of needed things. We’re also doing meal planning and trying hard to stick to the shopping list. Though that doesn’t always work.

For example, last Friday Melinda, Royce, and I discussed our meal plan for the week, one of which was tacos. Melinda then checked our supplies and wrote our shopping list. I did the shopping. I noted she didn’t list chips or shells but I knew we didn’t have any, so I got some of both. Unfortunately, while I noticed she didn’t list tomatoes and shredded cheese, I thought we had some. I didn’t see or even think about lettuce.

Guess when we realized we didn’t have lettuce?

Melinda figured it out while she was preparing the vegetables. At the time my husband and I were across town at a doctor’s appointment. Between the length of the appointment and rush hour traffic, we arrived not long before dinner time. So we ate our tacos without lettuce.

It is December and I’m sure many people are still rushing around trying to get last-minute gifts, but I prefer to plan. I have exactly one gift left to wrap. Other than that all I need to do is the treats for the stockings, which I can’t do much in advance unless I want to buy those two or three times before I need them.

The only other things to do are chores and finances, both of which are under control at the moment, by some miracle. So I’m left with three choices. Tidying up my currently a bit of a disaster corner of the room, do some handcrafts, or work on my writing.

I have no projects right now. I have some ideas but I don’t have the yarn yet. I do have handcraft supplies, but I don’t have any ideas for them. The yarn I have is all leftovers from other projects, so not enough for the projects I have in mind.

So writing.

I could edit any of the three wips I’ve managed to get to the end on. Just which one and what edits do they need? Two of them need quite a bit of work since they could both use some content changes. For the other one, I need to do some line edits but I think the story itself is working.

I could work on it, but I’m honestly afraid too. Mostly because I figured out the content errors on the other two while I was attempting to do some line edits. So I guess that means figuring out which one will be easier to fix. The one I may have to revert to a previous version on or the one I have to either add to or change a great deal of the content and fix a timeline issue. The timeline issue was why I stalled out on working on it last month.

Of course, I also need to look for employment since it’s clear we can’t cover our budget with just my husband’s income anymore. I was hoping between not having to go many places (i.e.: using less gas) and having fewer people to feed (my oldest son moved out) not to mention not needing supplies to pack any lunches that our budgetary needs would decrease.

Good news. Our gas budget has gone down. Last month we used about a quarter of what I usually budget for. (Two tanks instead of eight in a month.) And the cost of gas seems to be coming down.

More good news. Even though we are now buying Kleenex and disinfectant wipes, we’re still not spending as much on household supplies.

Bad news. Grocery prices must be increasing or we’re just plain eating more because our budgetary needs in this area have increased over the last couple of months, even with our efforts to cut costs.

All of which means we need more money coming in.

This means, I have to figure out how to get my unemployment benefits started (I am eligible) and try to look for work, which, because of current conditions, means looking and applying online. I guess I’m busy after all.

Another thing on my schedule in the next week is celebrating my son’s birthday, though I don’t know when.

He is currently working extra-long days and workweeks. His weekends start on Monday and he is usually spending the day catching up on sleep. His birthday is Monday.  So maybe Tuesday.

Happy birthday Tony.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Writing & Patches

 I want a break from my computer.

That doesn’t sound very good when you consider a couple years ago, I got over 90k in the month of November, and this year I barely managed to get 50k and that on the 29^th of the month!

When Tom was alive, I could reach 50k by Thanksgiving, or even the day before, this year more often than not, I took a nap after work instead of writing. If it hadn’t been for Zoom based write-ins, I might not have finished at all! At least I had something to focus me because the rest of the time I was working, napping, or distracted by my phone.

Maybe what I should do is turn my ringer off anytime I want to sit down and write.

Though that wouldn’t help completely because you see, Patches has a tendency to decide he wants my attention as soon as I open my laptop.

I swear, he’ll be napping across the room and as soon as I open my laptop, he jumps onto my add-a-space (what I use for a desk) wanting my attention. You would think he was a kid, not a cat.

I mean, I know the tendency of kids to always seem to know when their mother was busy and absolutely need their mother at that very second. Kids always interrupt their mother as soon as she sits on the john or puts a phone to her ear. Konnie has complained about this several times, and I promise, I have seen it myself. But I’ve never seen that in a cat!

And worse still, Patches follows me all over the house, I swear, when you walk by my apartment whatever window he’s in, that’s the room I’m in nine times out of ten.

Of course, that’s if he’s in a window, and also is contingent on if I have company or not.

Patches loves to go outside, but if someone knocks on my door? Boom his gone, hiding in my room somewhere. If they stay long enough, or if he knows them already, he will come out, but at first, he hides.

I have seen house cats, as in cats that never go outside, hide from visitors, but never a cat that goes outside every time I open the door. It isn’t as though there aren’t other people around my building during the day, because there are, it is an apartment building after all, albeit a small one, but the only time he’s ever decided he didn’t want to go out after all was once when the garbage truck was out front getting the dumpster and another time when it was raining pretty hard.

Boy did he dive back into the house that time!

Oh, I almost forgot a couple of times when he heard a dog barking nearby, not even a big dog, it was clearly a smaller size just by the tone of the bark and this is a cat that lived in a house with labs and Labradoodles for the first eight weeks of his life. But I promise, a few weeks ago, as I backing out of my driveway, I spotted a small mutt (this dog was about the same size as Patches, but I couldn’t distinguish a bred) come over the divide between the land our building is on and the neighboring land, and Patches, upon seeing him, arched his back, hissed, the whole nine yards. 

So, I guess maybe he isn’t all that fearless, but man I never expected that! Had I not been running late at the point; I’d have stopped and let him back in.

Newsflash, he was fine when I returned after work.

Though I have to admit at one point I thought maybe Patches was afraid of men. Based on the fact that on the day my male landlord came with two male helpers to do a bunch of repairs and maintenance and the entire time they were in and out of my apartment, Patches would run and hide when they came in, and tiptoe out, like he was checking if it was all clear, the second they left, then disappear again when they returned.

But he blew that all away when a friend of mine called and asked me if I wanted the Sacrament brought to me because her husband was willing and able. I agreed and thought Patches, who knew my friend from previous visits might just come out after a minute, but wouldn’t go to her husband.

So, who does Patches go to first?

Her husband!

Okay, he’s not afraid of men after all.

Sometimes I feel like he’s acting like a toddler! Following me everywhere, demanding attention when I’m busy, and occasionally throwing tantrums!

Happy writing everyone! 

Counting Blessings by Konnie Enos

 

This past Thursday, with the words of the hymn “Count Your blessings” going through my mind, and knowing this post needed to be up the day before Thanksgiving. I decided to count mine. The Prophet Russel M. Neilson gave his talk about gratitude the next day.

Here is my list.

·         My legs. While I did break my back nearly 50 years ago, I didn’t damage my spinal cord and I still have full use of my legs.

·         My eyes. I do need glasses and right now cataracts are making seeing difficult, but I can still read and write.

·         My hands. Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time with numb fingers from carpal tunnel, but my hands still work and I can generally do what I need to, including typing.

·         My ears. I have tinnitus but it isn’t annoying and usually quiet enough that I can hear just fine.

·         My brain. At my age, my memory isn’t wonderful and my kids are always commenting on one more thing I seem to have forgotten. However, I can still think, imagine, create, even form opinions. I can also still remember most things.

·         My height. I might not be tall but I can still reach the bottom shelf of the cupboards and I have my step stool for those higher things. Plus, I have tall kids who are willing to help.

·         My children. All my children have Autism or ADD/ADHD or some combination thereof. Add in some bipolar and anxiety or PTSD and yes, my kids have been a handful, but I love them all and couldn’t imagine my world without them. I also totally adore, my son-in-law. He is the best father and most loving husband. Then there is my adorable granddaughter which we wouldn’t have if he hadn’t joined the family.

·         My husband. He is the sweetest, most loving man even if he is completely clueless about how irritating he can be. I would not be at all surprised to learn he, and his youngest sister, are on the spectrum. That might explain my kids.

·         My house. Yes, it is fifteen years old and desperately in need of some repairs. Appliances are a priority. Painting walls, replacing flooring, and curtains, even putting in much-needed screens can wait. The walls and doors are solid and the roof doesn’t leak.

·         My help. My youngest son and daughter are doing their best to help with all the chores including each taking a turn to cook dinner.

·         Our water heater. You don’t know what a convenience this is until you have a go a day or two without it. We were even blessed to be able to replace ours fairly quickly with only a little bit of headache.

·         Our A/C. In the desert, A/Cs are essential. Being without ours for a few days while the temps were still in the triple digits was not pleasant. Fortunately, it was quickly repaired.

·         Our car. I’m not fond of having such a high car payment, but at least the car runs well, we can get everywhere we need to be.

·         My clothes. I realize I don’t have much because it’s really, really difficult to find things that fit and are modest on my petite ball of a frame. So I’m grateful I can find somethings that do fit (Thank you, Woman Within). At least I don’t have my daughter’s problems. She is a petite bean pole, a skinny one, so it’s harder to find things that fit. She has fewer clothes than I do.

·         My shoes. I only wear shoes when I have to, but mine are in good shape and fit my small feet. (Yeah, children’s shoe department.)

·         My country. Right things are a mess and I’m not sure it will ever return to normal. We can still choose where to live, where to work, what to eat or wear, and what education to get and where to get it. We can still form our own opinions. This is still the land of the free.

·         My Lord and Savior, my faith. It’s the most important. Without God we are nothing. With him we are everything.

Whether or not you participated in his challenge, I’d like to challenge you to write up a list of the things you’re grateful for and post them. Respond here, post them on your social media, or just hang them up somewhere in your home where you can see them daily.

Also, while you are writing your list, remember Betsy ten Boom’s gratitude for fleas and lice. She could see how the pests were blessing them. So let us see the silver lining in all our circumstances.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Missing Things and Other Stuff by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

Don’t you hate it when you misplace something you use daily?

Last Tuesday, I used my little swiss army knife just like I always do every morning. I can’t swallow anything whole, so I can’t swallow capsules, I have to break, or cut, them open and mix the contents into my food. I absolutely did it last Tuesday.

When I am not using this knife, it goes in a certain pocket in a certain wallet/purse, that goes in my larger purse. I swear I put my knife away Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon, I needed my knife.

I got out my wallet, but guess what – no knife. I searched the whole thing -- twice. Not there. I searched my bigger purse, taking out most of what was in there, but didn’t see my missing knife.

I didn’t see it Tuesday, I didn’t see it Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday even though I searched the whole house.

On Friday, yet another thing went missing, I just didn’t notice until Saturday morning when I needed to leave for work and couldn’t find my sunglasses.

Now I know I had them on Friday morning as I ran errands and went to the Pocatello Visitor’s Center because the sun was out, and I am light sensitive. I am so sensitive that I have to wear my sunglasses when the dentist turns on his bright overhead light. Needless to say, if the sun is out, I need my sunglasses.

I took most everything out of my purse, certainly enough that if my sunglasses were there, I’d have seen them. They weren’t there, and now I had a choice, call in late to work, or deal with the resulting headache from not wearing my sunglasses.

I went to work and took a couple of pain pills before I clocked in, and another couple of pain pills when I returned home, all that time thinking that I have the next two days to find my sunglasses without having to deal with going outside.

Yeah right!

While we are currently unable to meet for church because of Covid, I did still have an appointment with my bishop at church. Nothing serious or anything, just the annual, “How are you doing,” interview.

I still couldn’t find my sunglasses. I just took some pain pills when I was done.

Oh well, I still have Monday to find them.

Wait a minute, no, I was in need of lunch supplies, and well Patches had his annual vet checkup.

So, at this point, I’d mostly emptied my purse twice, and since I misplaced my sunglasses, I’d gotten into my car four times, and still hadn’t found them.

I do have kitchen shears so I made do without my little knife, but this sunglasses thing was getting a little tiresome. I decided to completely clean out my purse. It needed to be emptied of receipts and junk anyway. So, I dumped my purse, and found – my knife!

Oh well, another headache coming.

I reload my purse and get Patches. Outside I got into my car pretty much like I always do. I stood outside, leaned in, and placed my things on the center console, normal stuff here. This time I also put Patches in the car and as I did, I noticed something sticking out between the center console and the back of my seat.

Now please keep in mind that my seats are black, the console is black and my sunglasses are black, but there is a small space between the console and my seat. I promise I did search between the console and my seat, the seat part. This was the back of my seat! So please give me a break.

At any rate, I found my sunglasses! And I found them before I pulled out of my driveway and away from the morning shade the building provided me. Yeah!

Now the only thing I have to worry about is NaNo.

Just to let you know, I am not ahead like I usually am. I reached 25k on the fifteenth, the day you’re supposed to reach the halfway mark, because, guess what, it is the halfway mark of the month!

It's just that I can’t write every day. Not for the lack of trying, but some days I come home from work so tired I take a nap, then its dinner and back to bed. Yeah, I’m lucky I have just over 30k at this point. In fact, my word count is so spot on. I should finish on November 28^th. I’m usually done by Thanksgiving.

Oh well, life goes on.

So, how are all of you doing this year? How is your writing going?

Anyway, happy writing everyone!

Of Milk and Budgets by Konnie Enos

As I have mentioned, my daughter, Melinda, has taken over the grocery shopping. About a month after my oldest son moved out she and I discussed the fact that our grocery bill had gone up, not down.

I assumed it was due to prices but it concerned me because my husband’s income could not cover the increase and I already knew my temporary job was coming to an end. (Note my last day of work was October 30^th.)

I suppose because I haven’t been doing the shopping for nearly a year I didn’t realize exactly why our grocery bill was so high. Melinda did.

She’s insisted we start doing meal planning and plan shopping trips accordingly. She has also put her foot down on multiple grocery runs a week. She said we’d need one or two items but people would add things to the list so she was spending over $60 each time.

Yeah, that adds up fast. I agree some planning and fewer trips will help.

Now the issue.

We go through a lot of milk. So much in fact that our fridge cannot hold enough to get us through the week. Now with five growing children, I never thought much about going through 10 plus gallons a week. However, now my children are all adults.

Not only that but two of them have moved out and another two of them cannot have dairy products. I also don’t drink milk very much. If I have any, it is to pour some on my cereal, a meal I don’t have very often.

So one day, a few weeks after Melinda and I had discussed the grocery bill, my husband, Jerry, pointed out that we were again low on milk and someone would have to go to the store.

An argument ensued. Melinda refused to go to the store for more milk.

Why?

Because she’d bought 5 gallons only three days before which meant we were going through about a gallon and a half a day.

Now a gallon, or two, a day isn’t unreasonable when you have a houseful of growing children. However, as I said, four of my five children no longer live here or no longer consume dairy and I don’t drink much milk. If you add that up, it means there are now exactly two people in our household who have milk daily.

Two people consuming more than a gallon a day and both those are adult men.

Well, Jerry is insisting we need milk. My son, Royce, is understanding about cutting back but still insists we need milk. My daughter is still refusing to go back to the store.

I’m calculating just how much we’re spending on milk a month and wondering how to curtail it. Then Melinda emphasis the point that she spends at least $60 every single time she goes to the store. Five gallons of milk is less than $20.

I’m starting to see her point. Royce is conceding, he could drink less milk. Jerry is not.

At one point in the argument I finally said, “If this keeps up, I’ll have to limit how much milk people get to a glass a day.”

Now I’ve never limited the milk because I was raised in a household that did limit it, for growing children. This is probably why I don’t consume much to this day. However, I wasn’t about to do this to my children because you need milk for growing bones. The only reason I even considered it was because my one child still drinking milk is no longer growing and doesn’t need to consume half a gallon of milk a day. Neither does my husband.

Now Royce took this limit as already being enforced. Yeah, milk consumption has gone down.

However, when I said this Jerry had a tantrum. “Well, then we have to limit yogurt to no more than one a day.”

Now we always have yogurt in our fridge. Both Chobani and Yoplait, and occasionally some non-dairy yogurt. Yes, we go through quite a bit of it, but what my husband didn’t realize is that none of us eats more than one a day. I am the only one in this family who consistently has one every single day. Me, one person, I eat a Chobani every day.

When he made his statement I turned to him and said, “That’s all I eat.” Then I asked Melinda how often she bought me yogurt.

“About once every three to four weeks.”

Why? Because I plan. No multiple trips to the store.

I’m not sure if my husband is drinking any less milk but we haven’t gotten any since Saturday and it’s Wednesday already. Hopefully, our grocery bill will now go down.

Oh, and thank a veteran for their service. It’s Veteran’s Day.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day. 

NaNo 2020 by Bonnie Le Hamilton

And we’re off! Or should I say, I’m off since Konnie doesn’t NaNo.

If Konnie’s family weren’t so dependent on her, then she could at least attempt it, as it is if she were to write 50,000 words in a month again, they may . . ., you know, I have no idea what they’d do, since they certainly wouldn’t kill her.

I do know the one and only time Konnie managed the feat, her family was rather upset with her.

I’m just kind of irked at how long the rough draft of that particular tome ended up being. The problem is her editing is adding more than its deleting. She’s adding details. Okay, that thing’s a series, not a stand-alone. Four stories, all interconnected and overlapping.

They overlap so much it’s hard to figure out where to divide them into four. Adding to the problem is the fact one of the stories is longer than the others, and at least one isn’t long enough to fill a novel. Konnie is having trouble dividing it.

On the other hand, I also have a series . . . well, I started something I hope to be a series. But right now, nothing is overlapping, and it is mainly about two brothers (twins) and what they do, accomplish, during a war their people are in with a neighboring planet.

Yes, it’s a sci-fi, but then so is Konnie’s massive tome. But unlike Konnie, I do have one finished – sort of sci-fi. The main characters are descendants of aliens from another planet, but it’s set on contemporary Earth.

I have a feeling that a certain nephew of mine would much prefer my unfinished sci-fi to the completed one, because he read the finished one, and complained to me, “Too much mushy stuff, not enough action.”

He, being a young boy wanted more action-adventure than romance. I told him he wasn’t in my target audience and asked why he even bothered reading my novel. He couldn’t even answer that.

Of course, that happened years ago, not long after I finished the rough draft and he got ahold of his mother’s computer, found the story in her files, and read it!

Yeah, that shocked everyone.

His opinion of the story didn’t surprise anyone.

But like I said, “He isn’t in the target audience.”

Actually, I’m not sure he would enjoy my newest sci-fi, because it has romance too. It’s a war story, so it does have action, but I write romance.

And that brings me back to the purpose of this post; National Novel Writer’s Month.

I am participating, as I do every year. The information on my account says I’ve done it for sixteen years. I can’t believe it's been that long. I mean I know it's been a while, and certainly longer than six years, since I know I started doing it long before my husband died, six years ago. I’m just surprised it was that much longer.

I’m also dumbfounded at how long ago I wrote the rough draft of the novel I’m currently trying to sell.

I mean really, Claire was in like middle school! She’s a mother of a toddler now!

Boy does time fly.

And it flies even faster when you are trying to do word sprints. Too bad the ideas can’t come as fast.

Anyway, I am doing NaNo, and I think I’m going along okay. Here it is only the fourth day in and I already have just over almost 7k words as of last night. The exact count, at the time of this writing, is 6,957 words.

All I can say is I’m glad I'm over the daily goal minimum because I haven’t worked on this story yet. Hopefully after work. At least I only work five hours a day. I'm glad I don't have to work eight or nine hours a day.

Actually, I tend to fall asleep soon after I get home. Not going straight home from work just makes it harder. Too late for a nap, too early for bed.

I feel for those who have to work full time. I certainly can't.

Working is hard.

Working and trying to find time to write is even harder. I either take a nap at 4 PM each night or start yawning, or dozing off, before Voyager comes on.

I like to watch the older Star Trek shows.

Of course, right now I’m trying to do word sprints, and write my post, because it is NaNo after all.

So, how is everyone doing so far? I know it's still early. I know those who are ahead right now (like me) may end up fizzling out later. Some do. I just hope I don't get behind.

But happy writing, everyone!