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!

Of Midnight Hours and Lights at the End of the Tunnel by Konnie Enos

 

It’s late, I’m yawning and I’m fighting sleep as I attempt, yet again to write a cohesive, intelligent, and most importantly comprehensible blog post.

Why am I doing this, yet again as the clock slowly counts down the minutes left until midnight? Yes, we’re talking minutes, though by the time I’m done, it’ll probably be well after the hour.

As I’m thinking about all the reasons that I have so little free time right now, I am repeatedly asking myself why I choose to do this.

I’m the one that committed to contributing to this blog every other week.

I’m the one who willingly took on handling our family’s finances.

I’m the one who committed to doing my share of the cooking and cleaning.

But mostly I’m the one who committed to finally getting my bachelor's degree.

Now the idea of going back to school wasn’t daunting to me. It’s not the first time I’ve attempted to get my degree as a mother. The first time I tried Royce was barely in pre-K.

I should have realized when both of my most recent attempts had me dropping out mid-term at least partially due to the stress. I look back at these semesters and wonder how I thought 12 credits was so stressful.

To help anyone who doesn’t understand the college system of credits. Each credit is supposed to align with 1 hour of classroom instruction. And for each credit hour, you should engage in 3 to 4 hours of study time. That means 12 credits would equal between 36 to 48 hours of study time. That’s a full-time job.

When you’re trying to do that on top of taking care of your family and running the household it can be very stressful. Now imagine having a job, even just a part-time one, on top of that.

Now, as you can imagine, each credit hour also indicates how much material there is to learn and how much effort you’ll have to put into it. Therefore a 1-credit class wouldn’t be that much work, whereas a 2 or 3-credit class would require more effort. For me this generally means I can do that 1-credit class in under 3 hours a week while the 2-credit class is going to take at least 6 hours and the 3-credit classes will require at least 12 hours of work, sometimes more.

While some people may take 12 to 14 credits, they are taking some easier classes mixed in with the difficult ones. For instance, in the past, I have taken as many as 13 credits in a semester and I’ve done so without taking more than three 3-credit classes.

Last semester I took four 3-credit classes, then added a 2-credit class. One would think earning a couple of B’s would be indication enough to reconsider taking that many 3-credit classes at one time.

It wasn’t enough warning for me.

I did look at not taking so many classes this semester. My idea was to take twelve credits and the remaining three over the summer. The problem was not one of the classes I still needed was offered over the summer. My only other choice would be to take some of the courses in the fall semester.

I rejected that idea and right now I’m not even sure why I decided I’d rather take 15 credits this semester. I suppose so I can get it over with. I certainly didn’t consider how much work it would be.

Not only do I have 15 credits, but four of my classes are the harder 3-credit ones. But it’s even worse than that. I’m doing my internship too. Internships require that you put in 10 hours of work per week. So, on top of the nearly 60 hours a week in homework that I have, I also need to put time into doing my projects for my internship. That’s well over 60 hours a week. AND I still need to do my share of the posts here, and then there is my share of the household chores.

Is it any wonder that I’m often still up at midnight trying to get one last assignment or task done?

Then, after staying up so late, I still need to get up at least no later than 7 am because fur babies want their breakfast. Of course, I also have a full slate of things to get done each day so sleeping in is never an option. I also always hope I can finish enough tasks and assignments so that I can get to bed at a reasonable hour. For me, that means before midnight.

Thankfully I can see the end of all this effort. Today there are officially only three weeks left. Then I can get back to having more time available for other things, like writing.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Of Vacations and Work by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I don’t know how your week went, but this past week for me wasn't fun.

For starters, my direct supervisor took her first vacation in two years leaving me to do her job. To say the least, I was overwhelmed just at the prospect of being the only one in our office for an entire week, let alone that I can only work twenty hours a week, and my supervisor puts in somewhere between forty and sixty hours a week.

For one thing, I was afraid the phone would be ringing off the hook. Normally I don’t answer the phone. And I felt out of my league the first time I answered the phone, but I managed it. I thought, “Okay, I can do this, just as long as it doesn’t ring off the hook,” and believe me it has.

My supervisor had messages come through while she was on the phone.

Though my week was going okay, I even had one day where I just sat around and knitted waiting for the phone to ring, then I got an urgent call. Dang, what do I do now?

I was panic-stricken and even texted my supervisor for advice.

From that point on, I did the best I could do for the client, except she wasn’t the only one, I got two more clients the next day. And with each call, I panicked. Though to be honest those two were not as urgent as the first. That first one could not wait until my supervisor got back, period.

I must add she left me a list of things she wanted me to do while she was gone, other than dealing with calls, those things were more in line with me really just being a data entry clerk, even if my training included dealing with clients.

She fretted that she didn’t leave me enough to do because I can type so much faster than she can write. I finish entering the data in less time than she takes to write up her notes, and her notes are phrases, abbreviations, and cut-off words, I turn that into full coherent sentences.

The thing is, I was only idle one day, and at the end of that day, I realized I hadn’t worked on one thing on her list. But it wasn’t all that hard. I did finish that list for her, despite dealing with calls.

But I’m also glad that week is over.

Though now we have to do our quarterly reports. I haven’t done those before.

My supervisor thinks I finish in a flash because I’m all caught up with the data entry. She never managed that with the data entry, ever. Her supervisor was in fact glad I started working there simply because she hoped I could keep my supervisor on task better.

From the second I finished inputting one case file my supervisor has fretted that she could keep me busy for a full twenty hours a week. And believe me, she has often said, “Uh, let's see, what else can you do for me?”

But I had all files current within a week of starting, and I even cleared out all her old files that didn’t need to be stored anymore.

I can complete more in five hours, four days a week, than she can manage in eight hours five days a week. Though admittedly she does have to deal with calls, and I don’t when she’s around.

The fact is, I’m just a fast worker.

I do like working there (when I’m not stressed out by taking care of clients). The work is easy otherwise.

The people I work with are great.

And I’m sure Konnie can do the job I have far more efficiently, mainly because, unlike me, she can multitask. I have to do one thing at a time. And she doesn’t have my heart condition, so she can work a forty-hour week.

Then there is also the fact that she types faster. Believe me, my fingers don’t fly as fast over the keyboard as hers does.

She has more work experience than I have too. Not only because she got married four years after I did, but because I was able to be a housewife my whole marriage, she worked on and off during her marriage to help make ends meet.

That and she has a college degree and I don’t.

But from all this, I think I could draft a story where a simple employee had to take over for the supervisor short term. Then again, it reminds me of Dick Francis’s novel “Straight” where the main character has to take over as head of his big brother’s company. Talk about being in over his head!

Anyway, Happy writing everyone!

Of Lost Files and Sheer Panic by Konnie Enos

On Wednesday, June 1^st as my blog post was going up Bonnie told me she did not have a copy of the picture. Okay, no problem. I had that saved, with all my other writing-related stuff, on one of my jump drives. Easy fix.

Then I ran into a HUGE problem.

I could not open that jump drive. AT ALL.

Panic set in.

That was the only place I’d saved any of my writing. Well unless you count that my computer automatically backed it up somewhere every time I plugged in any of my jump drives.

So okay, automatic backups. Where?

My first thought was my one drive.

It was not.

Not being able to find it on my computer I called my tech expert, better known as Royce, to help me. He always fixes my problems eventually.

He searched. After several minutes of fruitless effort, he found copies of my folders. You know the ones I’d made to save all my writing within. Wonderful!

I started clicking through them.

Every folder was empty. No documents. Not even old ones.

Royce said he’d try and advised me to let him save all my jump drives to his one drive. He did this. Well, for my other three jump drives. He still could not access the one with all my writing.

Being unable to find anything but empty files, I was understandably upset. I could find no other copies of my documents. Now it’s true that I’ve given copies of some of them to Bonnie and even Melinda, but I knew for a fact I had not given the most recent versions of my fantasy or my sci-fi to them because I’d worked on both since the last time that I shared either with anyone. And I had some stories that I’ve never shared, at all.

My only hope was to find someone who could access my jump drive and save the files on it. But that would take both time and money. I have no money to spare and am way too booked with schoolwork to take time off to find what I need. So, it’s waiting until I have more money and time.

All things considered; we’re talking months in the future. Even now, I have no idea when I’ll be able to afford to pay someone to try to access or fix my jump drive. I don’t even have time to get Bonnie and Melinda to find what copies they have.

I’m resigned to waiting until I finish school. Fortunately, this semester ends July 20^th, and it’s my last one. I’ll need to find work, but I should be able to dedicate some time to trying to retrieve what files I can.

I had no choice but to focus on due dates for both homework assignments and bills. So, mourning the loss of every file I had on all my writing, I tried to concentrate on, well more pressing things. Certainly not more important because as a writer your WIP files are the most important thing.

But in the back of my mind was still that niggling thought that my computer had been automatically updating a backup file on all my jump drives every time I used them. So there had to be a backup somewhere.

So, Monday, having a blessed reprieve from stressful levels of homework, I decided to dedicate some time to see if I could find those missing backup files. I knew they weren’t in one drive, so I investigated my Google Drive.

My opening page showed nothing promising. Clicking on “My Computer” and “Shared with Me” wasn’t helpful either. Clicking on recent brought up a page showing just my most recent activity, but it had a scroll bar.

I started scrolling down. And down. And down some more.

I’m seeing files that would have been on all my jump drives, except the one with my writing on it. But I’m seeing jump drive files, so I keep scrolling.

Believe it or not, I hit the jackpot!

I found exactly one file from my writing jump drive. And miracle of miracles there were followable links that lead me to all my files! Well, most of them. I could not find my post from two weeks ago or another paper I’d been working on.

Since the post was up, I still had a copy of it, so not lost. As for the other paper, I was sure I’d saved it somewhere and under a specific name. Since it wasn’t among my writing, I decided to look on my jump drive where I’d stored a variety of files. And I found that too!

Nothing like finding things you thought you’d lost. Oh, and back up your backups!

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Of Birthdays and Age by Bonnie Le Hamilton

This past Monday was my sister’s-in-law birthday. No big deal except this is the sister-in-law that lives here in Pocatello. Needless to say, I attended her birthday party Monday after work.

At one point during the evening, Shirley tried to tell a young friend of ours that she was fifty-eight.

I looked at her and said, “You are sixty-one as of today.”

Breanna, our young friend, took that in stride, but later when I mentioned I was forty years older than her, her eyes just about bugged out.

Now I must point out that Breanna is a home health aid for both myself and Shirley, and she knows that we have to be at least fifty to qualify for the program paying for her services. Also, she knew that Shirley was older than me, but apparently, she hadn’t gotten the memo on how much older Shirley is. As such, she had figured my age to be somewhere in my early fifties.

She was closer to correct than most people usually are. 😊

Breanna doubted I was really as old as I said.

I told her I was born in 1962.

She was still shocked and actually asked her coworkers present if they thought I looked sixty.

They were all surprised.

Okay, it’s in my genes. I do not look my age. I never have. Konnie can say the same thing.

And it really has little to do with our height. We just don’t look our age, and that has something to do with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

Anyway, EDS is genetic.

Konnie and I have mild cases of it, but a prominent side effect of this condition is not aging as fast as others. People with this syndrome just don’t look their age.

Now Konnie and I are on the recessive end of this problem, hence the “Mild” part. Konnie’s middle daughter inherited EDS from both her parents, and her father’s isn’t a mild form. It seems that mild plus medium equals severe. The poor kid got it worse than any of her siblings.

Of course, if she reads this, she’d probably point out how far into her twenties she is.

Yeah, I know, even Konnie’s youngest has surpassed the 20-year mark. Technically none of them are kids. But they are all twenty-nine or more years younger than me, so yeah, they still are kids to me.

By the way, for those of you who hadn’t heard already, my doctor confirmed I have a mild case of EDS on my last checkup. Explaining all my problems with my knee going out of joint. Which is minor compared to Konnie’s husband Jerry, or well, most of their kids have had way more problems than I have. They all have it.

Such is life though.

Konnie and I have other relatives who most assuredly had EDS. One uncle, in particular, could bend his thumb all the way down to his wrist. EDS is essentially “loose ligaments” some people have “looser” or more flexible ligaments than others.

Most contortionists probably have EDS.

In fact, CSI: NY did have an episode where the victim came from a long line of contortionists in a circus. During the show, a character pointed out that a lot of people with EDS became contortionists, simply because it was something not everybody could do.

Don’t ask me to do that.

I mean, back in my younger, slimmer days, I was quite limber, surprisingly so, but that was several decades ago.

Nowadays, the only aftereffects of EDS I have is a bad knee and the luck of not looking my age.

Then again, maybe Breanna and her coworker, all being in their late teens to early twenties, expect anyone who is sixty to have a head full of gray hair. 😊

Well, I do have a little white, down the center of my otherwise brown hair, just not a whole head of it. I also don’t have a whole lot of wrinkles.

As a teen, I hated not looking my age. Now it’s kind of fun.

But all this got me thinking about my characters and why I haven’t had one getting mistaken for being younger than they are. Or something like that. It’s not like it doesn’t happen to other people.

I read a story a while back about a young lady who was a teacher, and a fellow teacher took her for a student and snatched her phone out of her hands. And another young lady had a fellow teacher haul her into the principal’s office for being out of class when she was on her break period, and the principal was her friend.

So, there are stories about people not looking their age, and I’ve certainly experienced it, so why haven’t I written it?

Anyway, happy writing everyone.