Of Not Quite Empty Nests and Quiet by Konnie Enos

My full house tends to be quiet about as often as it’s unoccupied. Which is to say never. Even at 2 a.m. I can still hear someone moving about, or snoring, even if it’s a dog.

In other words, our house is never completely quiet. Partly because we do have dogs but mostly because we have night owls living here.

My days end with me being able to hear something in our house, or yard. Someone snoring. Royce in the backyard. A dog’s tags jingling as they wander through the house. Once in a while, it’s a dog, or two, barking.

My days begin with Jerry moving about our room and being able to hear Melinda moving about the house, opening curtains, letting dogs in and out, doing chores, and fixing her breakfast.

Now being as old as I am, I generally have to go to the bathroom at least once during the night. Yesterday was no different. When I woke up the first thing I noticed was Jerry wasn’t in our bed anymore. The second was that he wasn’t in our room either.

I knew he wasn’t in the bathroom, so there were only two other places he could be. In the backyard with his dog or not at home. He’s not home on Tuesday and Thursday mornings because he has a job doing some yard care for a friend of his. Since our car is in the shop he has to catch the bus, which necessitates leaving extra early.

Being Tuesday, I figured he was headed to work.

I curled back into bed until my alarm, and Xavier, let me know it was time to feed him. I stayed awake just long enough to fill his bowl and put it down for him.

Now Melinda does feed the other two dogs, Gunner and Ivan are hers. Plus the sun is up, so of course she is too. I could expect her doing her chores would be enough noise to prevent me from doing more than resting, but I was still tired enough to try.

Sometime later I startled awake with the realization that I could not hear any noises.

I know Jerry has climbed into bed in the middle of the night without waking me but as I was sprawled over his side of the bed, I’m positive he would have woken me up.

But Melinda doesn’t seem to be moving about either. I assume she is back in her room and I slept through her chores. Both of which have happened before.

However, I could use some assistance because somehow our fitted sheet had dislodged during the night and was now about half off the bed.

I went to find Melinda.

Her bedroom was empty unless you count Ivan still lying on her bed.

The bathroom was empty too, so I headed for the front room.

Nope.

The only other person I remotely saw was Royce. And all I saw was his obvious lump still curled up under his blanket, in his bed. Well, Gunner and Ivan wandering around the hall. Though they were more standing there because they weren’t clinking their tags around.

So obviously Melinda was not inside. No car, so she’s either on foot or not far. I’m not sure which one it is. I saw no point in looking for her. If she was just out front she’d come in soon enough. Otherwise, she wasn’t home anyway.

So I went back to my bed intently listening for any sounds indicating Jerry and Melinda were back, or Royce awake, while picking up my tablet.

As I work to turn it on, Melinda walks in the front door. Then before I have my app open Jerry returns. While Jerry was occupied elsewhere, I had Melinda help me make the bed.

Now things are back to normal with the normal quiet noises that usually prevail in our house.

Now I’m remembering when my house was not so quiet.

The noise from whatever tech device was on before everyone in the house had headphones, particularly the Bluetooth variety that allows Melinda to listen to music while skipping up and down the hall without letting everyone hear it.

Or someone watching the TV or playing a video game.

Or just kids playing. Or talking. More likely fighting.

So even though I don’t quite have an empty nest, I still have a much quieter one and I’m still used to the noise. I may have to resort to playing some instrumentals because if there are lyrics, I’ll pay attention to the words instead of concentrating on my writing.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Stress and Me by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

Here I sit at my computer trying to think about something to write for my post, but the overriding problem is I have another headache, or maybe it’s still the same one. It could well be the same cause.

You see I have been getting lack of sleep headaches, and when I don’t have those, I occasionally end up with a stress-induced migraine.

Lack of sleep may well be mostly caused by my sleep apnea. I am getting retested to see if that is the problem. But well, it could also be other problems. I have been having a lot of trouble lately even getting to sleep because my legs, “aren’t comfortable.” When I mentioned it to my doctor, he said that it sounded like restless leg syndrome.

But I also have a cat who seems to think he needs to wake me up several times a night at least a couple nights a week, except that could be my snoring making him do that. All in all, I’m not sleeping well.

On top of that, I get migraines.

I have two known triggers. Certain foods, which I can easily avoid (I just miss the strawberries), and stress.

The only problem is, as hard as I try to avoid stress, or at least remain calm, I don’t always succeed. Lately, that’s been more often than not since my landlord has become a significant point of stress for me.

Now try combining those types of headaches.

Yeah, I am not having fun over here.

On top of that, my carpal tunnel is acting up in my right hand. I haven’t been able to go without my brace on that hand for a couple of weeks now which wouldn’t be a problem if I were Konnie, who can use either hand equally well. I’m a solid righty.

There are some things that I can do with both hands, you know like typing, knitting, crocheting, sewing, they do require both hands though.

And I have been trying to write, however, all I’ve done is reread some old unfinished manuscripts. I’ve fixed some typos and reworded a few things, nothing more. And I haven’t even touched my sci-fi in weeks.

I keep hoping I can get the first book of my sci-fi done before November 1st, so I can start on the second book. Maybe that’s stressing me out too. It is already September. Where has the summer gone?

My sister-in-law and I had so many plans for the summer, mainly to have regular picnics, but me ending up in the hospital again, and all the headaches I’ve been getting ruined all that. We managed one picnic in all that time.

Of course, winter hasn’t quite set in yet, though it is getting cooler out and it has started raining frequently, sure sign of a stormy fall and early winter. Though Konnie isn’t saying the same thing. The other day we were talking, and she mentioned it was still hot out down in Vegas.

I’ve also seen some predictions that say this winter is going to be harsher than last winter, which only gets me wondering how the big boss at work is feeling about that. The California-raised fellow had a rough winter, and several people in the office witnessed his spills on the ice in the parking lot, let alone all that shoveling which he had to at least do at his home.

In fact, the only ones at the office who took all that snow in stride last winter were the few of us who are homegrown or from areas that at least get snow sometimes (one coworker is from Michigan which gets more snow than here). The rest were asking when winter would end by February. We were still getting snow in April. They were moaning by then. The one from Michigan was the only one shrugging off that late snow.

I mean April! Come on! The flowers are blooming, and the robins are back! Why are we still getting snow?

And maybe I should write a story about characters used to different climates trying to get used to temperatures extremely different from what they considered normal.

Though to be honest, I have a scene already written for my sci-fi where the heroine experiences some claustrophobia being in a spaceship rather than out in the open on the planet. Her biggest complaint is the lack of a breeze, so I can see her having trouble even on the hero’s home planet because he lives in a domed city, again, no breeze, and the wildlife preserve is domed too. Yeah, she’s going to have issues living on a primarily climate-controlled planet.

Now to just get it written.

And get rid of this headache!

Anyway, happy writing everyone.

ADHD and Follow Through by C.E. Plagmann

C.E. Plagman is a neurodivergent writer, wife, mother, and lover of reading, singing, and all things home. She's on a journey of self-discovery, and discovering her writing. You can find her at The Neurodivergent Homemaker. She is also Konnie's oldest daughter.

One thing I’ve always struggled with is following through on my goals, dreams, promises, chores and anything else you could think of that I could fail at following through on.

Society would call this irresponsible or flakey. Someone who can’t follow through is someone you can’t trust. But here’s the thing: I’ve always wanted to follow through. If I don’t follow through it’s not because I’m lazy or just don’t care. In fact, I probably beat myself up worse than anyone else could. And yet, growing up I heard all the time that I was lazy, irresponsible, and untrustworthy.

I learned to internalize all these words people used to describe me and believed I was all these things, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t change. So, I believed there was nothing I could do. I would just always be lazy and irresponsible.

And then I was diagnosed with ADD at the age of 20, while in college. At the time I didn’t bother researching ADD, but in the last year or two I’ve really begun to follow ADHD YouTubers and instagrammers and I’ve connected with other moms who also have ADHD. I learned that ADD is no longer the correct term and that we’re all just ADHD, but there are three types of ADHD. I’ve learned that I’m probably ADHD combined type (the other two types being ADHD inattentive type and ADHD hyperactive type.

As I’ve been learning more about my brain, I’ve learned ways of combatting the way my brain works so that I can function in our society. I’ve learned about setting up my environment to help rather than hinder me. I’ve learned that I do best with open storage that allows me to see everything (because my mind is very much an out of sight out of mind type of mind).

And most importantly I’ve learned that my inability to follow through is likely because my brain craves dopamine and new experiences and ideas. If something bores me, I won’t do it, and it’s very hard to force myself to do it. None of this makes me lazy or irresponsible. It just means that my brain thinks differently so I have to do things differently than most people.

These days, now that I’m medicated, and learning about myself, and learning strategies I’m doing much better, but there are still days where I’m lucky if the kids are fed on time and I’ve brushed my teeth once that day. You win some, you lose some. But each day, week, month, and year at least I can say I’m getting better, slowly but surely. And I can remind myself that I’m not lazy, irresponsible, or untrustworthy… my brain just thinks differently.

http://theneurodivergenthomemaker.design.blog/2022/07/18/adhd-and-follow-through/

Of Emergencies and Bolting out of Bed by Konnie Enos

The first thing I was cognizant of this morning was someone (Jerry) banging around in my room. Then I noticed the light, most of it was because Jerry had left several doors open and the light on in the bathroom.

Now, as is usual for me, since I was awake, I stumbled to the bathroom and turned out the light. We do have a nightlight in the bathroom which illuminates the room when there is no other source of light. However, it’s off because the sun is already peaking over the horizon.

After using the bathroom, I stumbled, still not fully awake, back to my bed. While I was doing so, Jerry saw me. “You’re up early.”

I grumbled. “I’m not awake.” Then climbed back into bed, taking the time to adjust my blanket and pillows in just the right way to allow maximum comfort for whatever remaining sleep I could get before I had to wake up for the day.

I had no intention of stirring until it was time to feed the dogs, and without checking the time, I knew it was way too early for that. The sun wasn’t that far up yet.

Then one thought bolted me completely awake.

It’s Wednesday!

I checked the time just before my Wednesday morning alarm went off.

Of course, I posted last week. We switch off every other week, so it isn’t my turn to write the post. But I’m flashing back to the phone call I got Monday night. The phone call that I didn’t do anything about all day Tuesday.

I had thought about possible solutions to the problem but I made no actual effort to do anything about it. So too early in the morning, I’m faced with a looming deadline and the only recourse I have left is to address the issue myself.

So I’m awake and again staring at my screen trying to figure out what to write for the post this morning.

Why isn’t Bonnie writing it?

She is currently dealing with a plumbing issue that requires effort on her part at about two-hour intervals to prevent her apartment from flooding. At this point all she can manage is keeping her house as dry as possible and what little sleep that effort affords her.

When she called Monday night to give me a heads up it was clear that she wasn’t fully awake. Between that and telling me all the effort she’d put into trying to get this issue fixed, I knew she wouldn’t be able to write this week’s post.

When she first rented this apartment, her landlord was easy to contact and he always responded promptly. That changed over the last few years.

She’d had issues even getting her rent check to him and I’m positive this isn’t the first repair that place needed when she could not get ahold of her landlord. I have the feeling he’s ignoring other tenants too.

Now? He hung up on Bonnie. He won’t return messages or make any effort to contact her thus leaving her to deal with the issues on her own.

This time, she’s contacted a lawyer because besides having to deal with the plumbing issue on her own, she’s now missing work. Work she needs to be able to pay rent, though I’m sure a lawyer would tell her that she is well within her rights to not pay rent to her slumlord.

I’m not sure what his endgame is. However, I’m sure he wants to sell the place but it was already run down enough before 2020 that he’d have to invest money, and time, in the building before anyone would even make an offer. Though it’d be more time-consuming and expensive to repair around the tenants.

I think his current lack of response is to get frustrated tenants to move out. Perhaps some of them have. But Bonnie has not only lived there for years but there is no other place she can afford. She’s looked.

I’m hoping she can get this taken care of enough that she’ll be able to do my post next week. I’m also praying her housing situation will improve because one of her only other options is moving in with family members. Most likely me.

The issue with this idea is we don’t have the room.

Melinda is the only one not already sharing a bedroom but that’s because I’m the only other female in the household. And since her old bedframe collapsed earlier this month, she no longer has a spare bed. Acquiring another bunkbed frame was far more expensive than the one we did buy.

All in all, I’m praying she can get things taken care of this week, and without having to move here.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Of Restless Nights and Loud Alarms by Konnie Enos

 

Okay, my muse is not awake.

I don’t have a single thought as to what I should be writing. Not on this or any of my stories. Maybe it’s because I’m tired.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before or not, but I tend to not sleep, or at least not well enough, or long enough when my husband isn’t home. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen very often.

However, it did this week.

It started when Tony found a job working on the other side of the state last week. When he got it none of us knew how he was even going to get there. Then there was the issue of where he was going to stay. But a week ago Sunday, he managed to get a ride up there and find a place to stay.

We had not expected to see him again for a while but this weekend he returned. My first thought was he’d quit after only one week or somehow managed to get fired.

No. He just came home for the weekend.

He assured me he had a ride back. So everything should have been fine.

Well, it turns out his ride back was flaky.

He was originally told they would pick him up at five p.m. By six we were all wondering what happened though Tony was able to get ahold of them and was told they were still packing up.

By eight we were all getting pretty concerned because he had to be at work early in the morning and at that point, we figured he might have to drive straight to work without getting some rest first.

The only solution was our car, which we clearly could not let him take since we needed it. Jerry ended up loading up so he could take Tony to work. Several hours drive north of here.

I was going to have to endure a night without my husband beside me.

Then I found out that Tropical Storm (hurricane) Hilary not only made landfall but its trajectory took it right through where Tony was working at about the same time they were driving in that area to make sure he got to work.

So besides not having my husband home, I had to worry about my husband and son driving through some severe weather.

I didn’t sleep much Sunday night but I assumed Jerry would drive right back, at least after he got some rest. Which gave me something else to worry about.

Could he get enough rest sleeping in the car? Or was he able to find a motel room for the night?

The answer was technically yes and no.

By the time they got there, they could find a room but the checkout would have been Monday morning, only about four hours after they arrived. Jerry didn’t want to pay for a full night's stay only to get four hours. So he got the room for Monday night.

This of course meant that he didn’t even head home until Tuesday morning.

Somehow, even knowing they were both fine and Tony managed to get to work on time, that was worse. I think I finally managed about three hours of sleep.

When Jerry got home he was still tired and wanted to crawl in bed early.

I was all for it. After all, I’d been functioning all day on very little sleep.

Nope.

Somehow I still went to bed at my normal hour and I only did so then because I knew I had to get my post this week up. Since I was tired and had no ideas for a post, I figured I’d better get some rest and hope I had an idea in the morning.

So I finally curled up next to my already snoring husband and went to sleep.

Then his alarm clock jolted pretty much everyone out of bed way too early this morning. Seriously, did you hear it? It was at like five a.m. Or maybe it was four. Way too early.

While I did have to get up earlier than normal so I’d have time to write this post, I didn’t have to be up that early. I managed to get some more rest until my alarm went off.

Then Melinda asked me about the way too loud alarm that went off in the middle of the night. That’s when we decided at least everyone in the house had to have heard it though two of that number probably hadn’t gone to bed yet since they are night owls. And here I’d thought that he’d gotten over the need for obnoxiously loud alarms to get him up in the morning.

At least it didn’t scare the beejeebies out of me like the first time he did that to me.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Of Headaches and Writing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I hate blank pages. It can be hard to think about what to write, and lately, thinking hasn’t been easy. You see, I have a headache. I’ve had this headache for just over a week.

Try to do any writing when you can’t even think.

Of course, you can't edit a blank page, so I have to find the words somewhere.

Regarding writing in general, I haven’t done much more than rereading some of my older stories. It isn’t like I don’t have ideas running through my head, it's just that when faced with this screen, the ideas run away leaving me with the pain in my head.

For instance, I opened one of my unfinished manuscripts and I knew I really needed to add one detail in, and in several places rework things. I reread the whole thing and didn’t make a single change! Even when I got to the place, I knew I needed to make the most significant change, I just read it and moved on.

And when it comes to my sci-fi, well, I’m still on the first book, but my brain, when it wants to work is stuck on the second book.

Do you remember when I lamented that the twin brother of the hero in my first book wasn’t talking to me? Well, he’s talking now! I’m not ready for his POV.

And with a headache, I can’t think straight enough to work on my sci-fi anyway.

So, anyway, I haven’t gotten much done at all the last couple of weeks other than trying to get rid of this headache. My doctor prescribed me pain meds and is working on getting me a sleep study done. Looks like I need a C-PAP machine.

Man, I didn’t want to go there.

Hopefully, once I can get a decent night’s sleep again, I will be able to concentrate enough to do more than just stare at the screen.

Even now I doubt I’ll be able to get a full post done. My head hurts too much and frankly, I didn’t get enough sleep last night fretting over this post.

Anyway, I tried.

I hope all of you are doing better than I am.

Happy writing everyone.

Of Knowledge and Over Confidence by Konnie Enos

Not only am I a college-educated person, but I grew up in a household with a person we affectionately nicknamed Dictionary. This is because she loved to read the dictionary and learn new words, which she took great pleasure in teaching to us, her younger sisters. We, of course, eagerly soaked up as much of her knowledge as we could.

We became accustomed to using the big, fancy words she taught us. This is very evident in all the early drafts of Bonnie’s work. As are the long wordy sentences. I’ve had to work hard with her to tone it down because her early draft writing tends to come off as more erudite than the general population of fiction readers. (Yes, I know what erudite means, and yes, I don’t generally use such big words.)

Since this is our background, I have often come across people who do not know words I consider to be common.

As an example, when I was newly wed (over thirty years ago) I was having a conversation with Jerry, my husband, and said something evidently about either mine or my husband’s siblings. With that one word, siblings, I confused Jerry to the point he had to stop me and ask what it meant. I was flabbergasted that anyone as old as we were didn’t know that simple word.

I have since learned that there are a lot of words we consider to be everyday words that others have never heard, or at least not retained a knowledge of them. I’m sure Bonnie and I could, together, come up with multiple times in our lives we have learned someone didn’t have the same knowledge of words that we do.

Now in the same vein, I have in my lifetime learned new words, generally when said words were added to our lexicon. Such as all the words we’ve added in my lifetime because of advances in technology, such as ‘internet’.

I have, however, not encountered a new word that has been in the dictionary for longer than my lifetime since I was a teenager. So I would consider such an event noteworthy.

So, several months ago when Melinda, the youngest of my beautiful daughters, used a word I’d never heard of I was stunned. At the time, we had a brief conversation about it and its meaning which included the fact that it was in the dictionary. I did not check. I assumed she would not tease me in this manner or lie about it.

I did, however, mull it over and decided it was a much easier word to use than what it replaces. Only then did I decide to look it up. You can do so yourself on dictionary.com.

The word in question is nibbling. It is essentially the same kind of word that sibling is. While sibling is gender neutral for bother or sister, nibbling is gender neutral for niece or nephew. When you are writing about brothers and sisters or nieces and nephews it’d be a lot easier, and less wordy, to use siblings or nibblings.

And, though the word nibblings was added to the lexicon in the last century, it is still older than Bonnie and I are. According to Dictionary.com, it was coined by U.S. linguist Samuel E. Martin in 1951. So in our parents’ lifetime, but well before ours.

Now for something which isn’t as surprising as it should be. Tony, the oldest of my sons, was talking to me not long ago (but after I happened to look it up) and mentioned he’d seen some post on the internet somewhere (Reddit maybe) where the word nibblings was used and someone else informed them that it wasn’t a word. This person even told them to read a dictionary.

Obviously, he is the person who needs to read a dictionary.

Of course, that got me and my three children at home into an entire conversation about know-it-alls online that can’t seem to comprehend that they aren’t as smart as they think they are. Such as all the posts that are asking readers to solve simple algebraic equations and most of the responses show a clear lack of understanding of PEMDAS.

In this day and age when information is easy to locate, why are there still people who think they know it all? If you can’t be bothered to check, or double-check, your information then you probably remember less than you thought.

One thing I do know is that by stating any information with total confidence and a bit of a condescending attitude, you come off as an idiotic jerk.  Personally, I know my data bank has been corrupted with age. I don’t tend to state things with confidence unless I’ve looked it up.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.