Filling In by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

 

Last night, Konnie called me saying she had a problem. Now, let me point out that Konnie rarely ever calls me when she has a problem because, honestly, I live too far away to be of much help, and she knows my income is far less than hers, so I can’t possibly help with money. That is the first point you must understand.

The second is obvious; it was Tuesday night, meaning the problem has to do with the fact that it is her turn to post this morning.

Now we have switched turns several times and for various reasons, but I might point out that my reasons have more often been my health, while hers have more often been either computer issues or a time conflict.

I have myself had computer issues, and I was without a working computer for around three weeks at one point. (She wasn’t happy with me during that period.) I have never had a time conflict with posting. However, I am forced to note that her time conflicts always centered around the needs or activities of her other family members.

Even when my husband was alive, he was generally at work on Wednesday mornings, and the very few times he wasn’t, he was in bed sick. Ergo, even when I did live with another human being, I never had time conflicts. Since I am the one making Patches only appointments, there is never a conflict.

Of course, her calling when she did meant she couldn’t post this morning. The unusual part was that it wasn’t computer issues or a time conflict (which she generally knows days in advance anyway). No, this time it was her health.

Now, let me remind you that more often than not, my health has been the issue with my posting. A lot more.

One such time was when I slipped on the ice and fell hard on my tailbone. That particular part of my anatomy was so bruised I couldn’t sit up for weeks. In fact, I eventually got upright by acquiring a donut pillow, which took time.

There was at least once where I was in the hospital, though I was able to get a friend to bring me my laptop.

At any rate, I have physically been unable to post more often than Konnie has, though she’s had more outside forces getting in her way than I have.

That’s more the nature of our living situations than anything, but anyway, Konnie became upset that she was calling me with such short notice. Believe me, normally she gives me a couple of days, if not more. Right around fourteen hours was short notice for her, and she began to cry.

I’m going to blame that on how bad she felt physically, because honestly, she’s covered for me more often than I’ve covered for her. There was no need for her to feel bad. Anyway, I told her to get some rest and not worry about it.

At the time, I was thinking about opening my computer and doing some writing anyway.

It’s not like she called me at eight o’clock in the morning to tell me. (By the way, I have done that to her, but it was computer issues.)

Fourteen hours to write and edit a post seems like a luxury of time.

Now if only I can get my knee to cooperate with those plans.

 I might mention that I have had technical issues more often than her, but that could be because she has a tech genius under her roof. I just have a cat.

Konnie’s youngest is autistic and really into technology. If Konnie has tech issues, she calls for her son, who is in the next room. If I have tech issues, well, honestly, I call for her youngest too, but for me, he’s two states away!

More than once, he said he couldn’t help me, simply because he was too far away.

I mean, he tries to walk me step by step through what needs to be done, but it just doesn’t always work.

Let me remind you that Konnie and I are Baby Boomers, from the tail end of that era, but part of it. We predate all the technology that her youngest son loves so much. The technology he grew up with, having been born in this century.

Konnie and I grew up with dial phones until push-button phones were invented. I can remember those being so cool to have.

Oh, let's be real here, I can remember when color TV was a luxury. Phones that didn’t have to be mounted on the wall, and didn’t need to be dialed, those were nice, and car phones were luxuries only for the rich.

Oh, how things have changed!

Anyway, happy writing, everyone!

Logic and Writing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

 Has logic died? Or do today’s authors think that logic doesn’t apply to fiction?

I’m asking a serious question here because I’ve come across a couple of Facebook stories that defy logic, making the story unbelievable.

Story number one is about a grandmother who works to alienate her grandson from his mother. Now I must point out that the story makes it clear that this is his bio mom, but the grandmother repeatedly tells the boy that his mother isn’t blood.

Yet nowhere in the story did either of the grandson’s parents point out the flaw in this statement, and most glaringly, the thirteen-year-old grandson never figured it out. That part of biology I knew full well long before I entered junior high health science class in 7^th grade! At thirteen, the kid should be in 8^th grade. Or do they not teach that part of biology anymore?

The grandmother’s insistence that her daughter-in-law isn’t a blood relative of her grandson is ludicrous, and the fact that no one points out the flaw in her logic is illogical.

But that isn’t the dumbest logic mistake I’ve come across in these stories.

This second one is even worse if you can believe it.

In it, a newborn died while still in the hospital, and it took the hospital staff five years to discover that it wasn’t a genetic issue that killed him, but rather poison. I mean, there was a cover-up, but during the trail while figuring out how the murderer got to the child, they found a pharmacy tech at the hospital whose access code was used.

During the cross-examination of said tech, he admitted to letting his then-girlfriend use his ID badge and access, but also admitted to telling said girlfriend where sodium chloride (the poison) was stored in the hospital pharmacy.

Now, let’s discuss this. First, why would his girlfriend need his ID badge and access code to the pharmacy to visit the maternity ward at any time of the day? And why the heck would she need to know where to find and have access to a deadly poison to visit her sister-in-law and newborn nephew in the maternity ward?

And why didn’t the blanketty-blank stupid tech mention any of this when her nephew was dead by morning?

Yes, there was an effort to suppress and hide the true nature of his death by the in-laws, but there is no mention of having bribed the tech, let alone why the tech never figured out that she was up to no good before his scheming girlfriend actually entered the hospital.

I’m not going to point out that said newborn nephew was the first grandchild, but five years later, when it all came out finally, said girlfriend was married to someone else and had school-aged offspring, as in more than one. That timeline information never made sense to me, but oh well, it doesn’t change that any intelligent person (and one assumes that a pharmacy tech is intelligent) would have stopped and questioned, “Hey, hold on a minute. Why would you need access to a pharmacy to visit a maternity ward? And why the heck would you need the exact location of a poison to visit a newborn infant?”

Most importantly, an intelligent person should have reconsidered giving her his ID and access codes and should possibly have reported this to the police. And he most certainly should have reported this to the authorities when the nephew didn’t survive until morning!

And the author is stupid to think that an intelligent person wouldn’t at least think, “Hey, wait, this is messed up.”

Because I’m telling you this is messed up!

In the first story, it would make more sense if the child were considerably younger than thirteen for him not to understand biology enough to figure out that his grandmother is an idiot, but his parents didn’t even correct that lie when they learned it! That’s plain messed up.

For the second story, I can honestly say that I don’t write mysteries, but only because I’m too much of a pantser to manage the intrigue of a mystery properly. That isn’t to say that I don’t know mysteries because I do. Two of my favorite authors are Dick Francis and his son Felix. I read mysteries all the time.

Maybe the problem is that the new generation of authors doesn’t think that any of their readers will notice the flaw.

Newsflash, I wasn’t the only reader to notice that flaw in the first story.

On the second story, I wasn’t able to get back to the comment section after I came upon that momentous flaw with pharmacy tech.

So, again, is logic dead? Or do authors today not know how to fix plot holes?

Happy writing, everyone.

Of A/C’s, Expenses, and Homes by Konnie Enos

Yesterday, Bonnie called me to remind me that today was my turn to post.

It was a nice gesture, but I already knew that. I also knew I yet again did not have any idea what to write about. My brain was actually too focused on what happened last Friday.

So, what did happen Friday?

My husband had an early appointment and left the house before the rest of us even woke up. Then, as I was just getting up, my son told me that we’d gotten an alert about an issue with our A/C system.

My husband had been notified and, as usual for him, his solution was to turn it off for now. That had been his solution with the central heater when it started malfunctioning. The only problem was, we couldn’t possibly fix it, so our heater had stayed off for several years. Fortunately, it doesn’t get that cold here and we managed with a few space heaters.

But air conditioning is a different matter. Not only does it get hot here, but I don’t handle being over-heated at all.

I made up my mind I would call our heating and air conditioning service at a more reasonable hour in the day and see when someone could check it out. Then, just as my husband came into our bedroom (returning home) my phone rang. It’s our service. They got the same alert we did and asked when a technician could come out to check on it.

I knew them checking on our system was a free service so having them come out wasn’t a problem. Needing to pay for whatever needed repaired was an issue. I made the appointment for later that day and then prayed it wasn’t an expensive issue. Something minor or easily fixed was the best outcome for us.

My experience with things breaking down is that the simplest, least expensive, solution is often the case. Except when it comes to anything in our house.

Part of this might be because the house is over 20 years old now though we’ve already replaced all major appliances including the water heater and both toilets. And while we’ve done major repairs to our central heating and air conditioning system, we had not replaced them. That alone explains the heating unit dying and the A/C having an issue.

So, the technician checked out our system. The issue wasn’t something minor. It was the system was over 20 years old and needed replaced.

I knew the cost of just repairing something that major was more than we had in our saving account. Actually, probably more than all the money we had combined.

But not repairing it meant spending the summer months dying in the heat with nothing but fans to keep us cool. Maybe in a different climate that would work, but the temps here easily reach over one hundred degrees (Fahrenheit) and usually starts doing that by April, or May at the latest. And clearly it was almost May. Not only that, but I had already asked to have a fan turned on and aimed at me. A fan that I had repositioned twice to ensure it was doing it utmost to keep me from over-heating.

Yes. I was not going to survive without A/C.

The technician told us we couldn’t just repair the A/C unit. The part was too old to repair. It needed replaced. But then so did our heating unit, but we’d known that for a few years.

The only option was to try and see if we (or rather me) could get approved for a home improvement loan at least large enough to cover replacing the A/C.

For some reason I was approved for a loan large enough to cover replacing everything. Still a sizeable monthly payment, but I’ve already figured out what we can handle without tightening our belts too much. Mostly just putting less into savings for the time being. So, hopefully we have no other major issues for the next several years. After all our issues over the last couple of years we simply could not handle them.

Yes, we got everything replaced. Rather quickly in fact. They had our new unit in and functioning by the end of the weekend.

After that was all said and done, I realized that we’ve actually lived in this house for 21 years as of last Thursday. Twenty-one years, and yet my lifetime average in one place is still about 2 years. And most were in the city I grew up in.

Finally, my baby, my biggest kid, will be a quarter of a century old this weekend.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Editing and Publishing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I am beginning to hate digital content online. The mistakes I see the online stories are glaring, obvious, and jarring.

Case in point, I read a story on Facebook that seemed compelling, but it had a massive mistake. In the story, a small child swallowed something which was caught in her throat. In the early paragraphs the main character, who was the father, noted that his wife was not wearing her wedding ring, but it brushed it off because she hadn’t been wearing it for months because she lost it.

Later in the story, the author reveals that object stuck in his daughter’s throat is HIS wedding ring which had been missing for months.

Do you see the error?

Now I know since the first statement is near the beginning of the story and the last several pages later most people would either brush the error as misremembered or not even notice the inconsistency at all. The problem would be I’m not most people. If I’ve read something, I remember it. I can’t quote exactly, but I remember it.

That is why I have so much trouble with these online stories, but lately I’ve even found continuity errors in published books! Books I enjoyed, except for the continuity errors, which I honestly tried to ignore.

We can start with the series I am currently reading. I found it on Amazon, a sweet romance. I love sweet romances. This is an author I’ve never read before. She is a wonderful author, I love her stories, except for the continuity errors. Most of which are from one book to the next.

In one book of the series, the bride of the oldest son was living with the matriarch in the old family home and helping on the family ranch while the oldest son finished his enlistment. In the very next book, said daughter-in-law is barely even present in the story, and at one point the matriarch is home alone, with no mention of where, well any of the daughters or daughters-in-law are at that time. Some were clearly at work, but, again, one worked at the ranch where the home was.

That is not all, in one book the youngest daughter and her new husband were leaving for a year tour/honeymoon in Europe. Yet in the next two books, only weeks or months later, they are still around. They practically eloped because he had to get on his tour immediately, yet months later they had not left.

That is in a series from one book to the next. And while I enjoy the stories, those errors bug me, big time.

But that is not the only continuity errors I found. In a single book the last name of a minor family in the storyline was on one occasion changed to another name, and on a couple of other occasions the first names of two of those family members were also changed.

Now I know how an error like this can occur. It has happened in the editing stage for both Konnie and me. We changed the character’s name for whatever reason and missed a few places where they needed changed.

This happens, but this kind of error that line edits are supposed to catch. This is a published book!

I want to make this clear that all these errors are editing mistakes, not writing mistakes. The writing is solid, the story compelling. The editing leaves something to be desired.

And it is not just continuity errors. In some Facebook stories I’ve seen stories where some words are only partially there. Not missing entirely, not misspelled, or the wrong spelling for a word that sounds the same, but means different things. Which are mistakes I have made when I’m typing fast. I’m talking about typos where the complete word is not even there! Unless of course there is a word that is just “ing.”

I find it most disheartening that a multi-published author couldn’t maintain the continuity of her work from one book to the next.

I mean I’ve spent most of my life outraged that all the books in the Boxcar Children series completely ignore the continuity of the series after book nineteen. However, after that point, the original author did not write the additional books. It is still inexcusable, but different people wrote them. Except to have a single author make these kinds of errors? I wonder if I’m the only one who cares about continuity, though I know I can’t be. I can’t be the only one who remembers everything they read, and I most certainly am not the only one on the spectrum.

All I can say is, “Do better people!”

By the way, I have found typos in the local newspaper as well.

Anyway, happy writing, everyone!

Of Writing and Interrupting Family Members by Konnie Enos

 Look closely, there is only one dog in this picture, the other one is a picture of a dog.

Yes, I’ve been thinking of my post and what I could write about. Writing my post is on my to-do list, so I’ve been contemplating it since at least Sunday.

When my alarm went off this morning, only the thought of having nothing written down before the deadline got me to sit up and open my computer.

Of course, computer open, Word open and fingers on keys, is not stimulating any ideas.

The writing experience isn’t usually putting words on paper in an easy flow of words. It’s usually choppy. Typing/writing a few words, reconsidering it and erasing all or most of them. Getting a paragraph or two down and then deciding you started at the wrong place or left information out. Typing a few sentences and realizing they just don’t fit the flow you’re trying for so deleting them. Or just plain pausing for minutes, hours, even days, trying to figure out how to go from where you’re at to get to the end of the line, sentence, paragraph, page, chapter, book.

And the hardest part isn’t coming up with the ideas but trying to get the words to flow in easy, readable lines that clearly present your ideas.

And amongst all the attempts to just write you have to deal with all the activity around you because, unless you live with no other living beings, you are going to get interrupted for one reason or another.

If you have a cat, like my sister does, then the likelihood of having said cat sitting on your keyboard to get your attention is high.

I don’t live with cats, but we do have dogs.

Our largest, and youngest one, Lakota, does not like me. She’ll get on my bed but only on my husband’s side and I can get her off simply by saying hi to her. Our tri-pod, Xavier, isn’t getting any younger and often just finds a soft place, often on the foot of my bed, to sleep. Except for his snoring and his incredibly stinky farts, you wouldn’t even notice he was there.

But the one I’ve been dealing with the most lately is our little guy, Ivan. He’s 16, which is incredibly old for a dog, and his health is showing his age. He very much prefers to be snuggled up to a warm body sleeping all day.

Now even as old as he is, he still has the presence of mind to prefer a warm body that isn’t going to be moving that much over one that is constantly getting up to do something, even is that something is pacing the hall.

In my house those warm bodies include my husband, who is constantly moving from one place to another. Finding him at any given time is an exercise is eliminating which seat he isn’t in at the moment. Even then, he is rarely still. So obviously, Ivan has no interest in snuggling with him.

My daughter, who is his first love, also does not sit still for long. She runs this household and spends much of her morning making sure our house is as clean as she can possibly maintain it at. And when she’s not cleaning or cooking, she could just as easily be pacing, either getting out energy or just thinking.

As for my son, he spends a lot of time in his room, I’m sure a good chunk of that is sleeping, but he’s just as prone to pacing as his sister is and changing where he is sitting as his dad is. And maybe Ivan has other reasons too, but he doesn’t spend much time with my son.

Then there’s me. I’m easy to find. I’m generally sitting right where I am right now. In my bed. Sometimes I’m on my tablet. Sometimes I’m reading a book or crocheting. Sometimes, like now, I’m on my laptop though what I’m doing on it varies.

I’m not writing anywhere near as often as I think about doing it. Most of the time when my laptop is out I’m watching something or dealing with bills and such. Anymore, I do most of my writing when I have to. Like when my post is due.

For all these reasons, Ivan has started spending his daylight hours sleeping next to me. Well, usually.

When he came in this morning, he seemed much more intent on curling up in my arms. So, about half this post was written with eight pounds of soft fur sleeping in my arms. He has decided to be next to me as usual now. Perhaps he finally figured out that my arms simply weren’t as still as my legs are. You know, since I kept moving them to type.

But at least his activity helped me to get my post written.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Switching Places by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

Last week Konnie wrote about us switching places, and she said we never tried it in junior high or high school, which isn’t quite accurate.

Yes, we never tried switching places on April Fool’s Day, but we did switch once. During the first week of seventh grade, ergo, not as a prank. In fact, the only person we intended to fool was Konnie’s assigned locker partner, who was being an unmitigated brat.

To put it simply, at one point this cretin got a new lock for their shared locker but absolutely refused to give Konnie the new combo. She was going as far as to block Konnie’s view while she opened it!

Konnie tried everything she could think of, including complaining to their homeroom teacher who told Konnie she couldn’t do anything about it and to work out a compromise.

What kind of compromise can you work out with someone who refuses to budge?

Konnie was at her wits end, so I turned to my best friend, my assigned locker partner, and told her Konnie and I were switching places for homeroom only. I did tell her why and she was all for it.

I think a few of our other friends from the previous school year recognized we’d switched places, but none of our friends from the previous year was in Konnie’s homeroom, so no trouble.

When it came time to get into our lockers I used as much force as I could muster to get her to let me see the combo. She was stronger than she looked. So, knowing Konnie’s teacher would be no help, I took off to the front office to air my grievance about this brat.

The school secretary had the same attitude as the teacher.

I admit it, I lost my temper, and back then I had quite a potty mouth, which got me scolded and threatened with expulsion from the secretary and the principal. All of which increased my tirade.

Our big sister’s best friend was only in ninth grade, so not in high school like our big sister, and she heard me yelling so she came to find out what was wrong.

She pointed out that the school staff did not want to deal with our mother, who taught me the potty mouth, and was also a journalism student at the local university. She basically said, “Mistreat her daughters and you’re going to be in the news.”

She also insisted that Konnie could share her locker, since she didn’t have a locker partner.

Konnie moved lockers.

The brat got what she wanted all along, but I’m not sure she enjoyed it.

Before week two of that year was over, the whole school knew why a little seventh grader had a locker in the nineth grade hall. And they knew who caused that change.

I don’t know if she learned her lesson or not, but I do know she didn’t make a whole lot of friends that year, and I saw her get hazed more than once. Actually, I saw her get hazed repeatedly.

And if you are wondering, Konnie and I did not get hazed at all that year due to the threat our big sister had issued at the end of the previous year, just before she advanced to high school. She promised that anyone who dared to haze her baby sisters would get it twice as bad when they got to high school.

The high school in question was notorious back then for horrendous hazing and there was no way any of us could have known then that by the following school year we would be living in a different city altogether.

The threat worked.

Actually, once my best friend and I were walking away from the school when a guy came up behind us. I think he had skates on, I can’t remember for sure, but he dove between my friend’s legs and smeared red lipstick down the inside of both her legs. When he jumped to his feet and actually looked at us, his expression turned to horror and he yelled, “That’s Jacki’s kid sister!”

I turned to find another guy stop dead in the middle of an attack run on me, also horrified.

I took advantage of their terror and yelled at both of them, “Touch my best friend again and you’ll regret it!”

There was another incident that year where a guy got a towel and was flicking the girls in the gym. The other girls ran; I turned and faced him, asking his name.

He asked me why and I said, “Well, I need your name to tell Jacki. You know Jacki Westover, my big sister.”

He hightailed it out of there so fast the other girls cracked up.

But anyway, we did once trade places in seventh grade.

Happy writing everyone.

Of Switching Places and April Fool’s by Konnie Enos

 

Last night Bonnie called me to remind me it was my turn to do the post which I honestly hadn’t been thinking about because well, I am sick yet again. But I did promise her I’d get something up. So here I am at way too early in the morning typing well, something.

You see, which is usually the case, I had no idea what to write about. This had me spending the next hour or so after she called trying to generate an idea. Not coming up with one, I felt getting some sleep and working on it this morning might help.

It was as I was preparing to get into bed that a thought occurred to me. You see I had just been updating my planner, so it was prepared to handle this new month. I realized that today is April 1^st. In other words, April Fool’s Day.

Now I have never been into playing pranks on people. In fact, the inane antics of the males in our family when I was a teenager turned me completely off the whole thing. Generally, I just ignore that it’s April Fool’s Day.

However, being an identical twin Bonnie and I did try switching places. The only two times I can think of was when we were about 9 and I do not remember which one we did first, but I’ll start with Momma.

We were in the living room of our home and for some reason decided to convince our mother that she had us mixed up. It was way easier than it should have been. And far harder to convince her that we’d been pulling a prank on her. But then she was never able to completely tell us apart anyway. When we called her, as adults, the two of us would have to specifically tell her which one we were, each and every time. (For that matter, our dad was just as bad.)

Obviously, fooling our mother worked so we decided to switch places at school one day. This was one of those schools who had multiple classrooms for our grade and was among those idiotic schools who also felt separating twins was a requirement. We were in different classrooms.

That morning, I went to her class and sat in her seat participating in the lesson with her classmates. We were only a few minutes into the lesson when my teacher came to the classroom with Bonnie and switched us back. Of all the people we interacted with that morning, my teacher was the first one to figure it out.

We honestly never attempted to switch places again. And no, I don’t think either of those efforts happened on April Fool’s Day. (Don’t quote me on this because that was long enough ago that I seriously can’t remember dates.)

But this post is about April Fool’s Day, so I also remembered one event that did happen on that day.

About three years after the aforementioned events, we were at a different school (not a newsflash, we were always at a different school back then). At this school the principle understood twins and refused to place them in different classes.

Now this teacher, for whatever reason, could easily tell us apart. She simply had no issues with mixing us up, unlike our classmates who were always mixing us up.

Now the morning of April Fool’s Day we were walking to school with a friend who lived on the same block we did, and she brought up the fact it was April Fool’s Day. Neither Bonnie nor I had even remembered that fact. We had not made any efforts to switch places and didn’t think it would work anyway because our teacher could tell us apart.

That particular day must have been a switch day anyway because, other than our friend who knew we weren’t switched, every single one of our classmates had no issues getting us by the correct name that day. And our teacher? Well, she was absolutely convinced we’d switched places. I know she told us to get into our correct assigned seat at least once when we were already in our correct seats.

The one time we didn’t make any attempts to switch, everyone around us assumed we had.

Once we hit junior high school, we knew the possibility of switching at school was impossible. Mostly because our classes were different. But that’s also when other students, mostly of the male persuasion, started assuming there was only one of us. And they were constantly mad at her because I didn’t say hi to them in the hallways.

What can I say. I’m the shy one. I wasn’t about to talk to guys I didn’t know.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.