The Young Woman's Part-Time Job

Many, many years ago, I wrote a story about a young, single woman in her 20s who, unlike many people today, worked two jobs.

However, her purpose was not the typical reason.

The full-time job was for her.

The part-time job was for everyone else.

With the funds from the part-time job, this woman ran a clothing closet and a food pantry out of her garage.

I don't remember her name or how long ago I wrote the story. But my office was the attic office in Channahon and likely before Ron and I started The Higher Ark Youth Group for our church.. 

So I'm guessing approximately twenty-five years ago.

Her story inspired me because it proved that one person through hard work can make a significant change. 

I don't recall why she chose to tackle this on her own. She may have run into obstacles that led her to simply fund it herself.

But that's how Ron and I got things done.

We rolled up our sleeves and made changes at our church.

Ron painted, using paint we bought.

Ron and the kids cleaned out, painted, and organized the pantry.

Ron stripped all the floor wax in the large and small halls and rewaxed everything.

I created an entire Sunday School program with our money, organized it, and paid for it.

We did the same thing for the youth group, remodeling three outbuildings (two garages and one attached wooden shed) on our property, hiring an out-of-work constractor to construct a fourth, and buying a shed for the "stuff."

The kids jumped in and stuffed Sunday inserts for newspaper carriers to help buy snacks and pop, etc. for the youth group.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a writer comrade contacted me and asked me to edit his second book. I'd always turned those opportunities down, mostly because my schedule was tight between family, my own writing work, WriteOn Joliet, my own fiction writing, and because editing is expensive, and I knew writers on the independent level would likely never make that money back, ever.

But he insisted he would not take "no" for an answer. So I took on this project and then a few more, charging far, far, far below industry standard rates, more of a stipend, really.

And that inspired the beginning of the book giveaways, including this book giveaway.

When my oldest son Christopher was born in 1982, we found few pamphlets by an organization called The Christophers that we began collecting for when he was older.

The Christophers had a motto that has always stayed with me: "It's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."

Lighting one candle doesn't dispel the darkness in the world.

But it can light up a room enough to see.

Happy Monday!

 

Gone Home

I was a huge fan of the novel "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott and owned many versions of the story as a child, all with different illustrations.

These next four paragraphs are among my four favorite paragraphs in the entire book because they say so much in beautiful, simple language.

So the spring days came and went, the sky grew clearer, the earth greener, the flowers were up fairly early, and the birds came back in time to say goodbye to Beth, who, like a tired but trustful child, clung to the hands that had led her all her life, as Father and Mother guided her tenderly through the Valley of the Shadow, and gave her up to God.

Seldom except in books do the dying utter memorable words, see visions, or depart with beatified countenances, and those who have sped many parting souls know that to most the end comes as naturally and simply as sleep. As Beth had hoped, the 'tide went out easily', and in the dark hour before dawn, on the bosom where she had drawn her first breath, she quietly drew her last, with no farewell but one loving look, one little sigh.

With tears and prayers and tender hands, Mother and sisters made her ready for the long sleep that pain would never mar again, seeing with grateful eyes the beautiful serenity that soon replaced the pathetic patience that had wrung their hearts so long, and feeling with reverent joy that to their darling death was a benignant angel, not a phantom full of dread.

When morning came, for the first time in many months the fire was out, Jo's place was empty, and the room was very still. But a bird sang blithely on a budding bough, close by, the snowdrops blossomed freshly at the window, and the spring sunshine streamed in like a benediction over the placid face upon the pillow, a face so full of painless peace that those who loved it best smiled through their tears, and thanked God that Beth was well at last.

My second husband Ron battled many challenges in his life and not all of them successfully.

But the most valuable of his accomplishments was bringing his three children and my six together as a single family.

And Ron's success was most apparent in this last week.

He had early onset dementia among other health issues over at least the last fifteen years of his life, and we have painfully witness the effects.

So all of us are rejoicing this morning that Ron is well at last.

Pheochromocytoma on TV

I have a voice message from my second husband Ron saved on my phone.

He left it a few years back, before dementia completely took over his mind and before he went into the nursing home (the photo below was before COVID).

I was suprised that, when he'd forgotten so much, he remembered this. Here is the message.

"Just heard something I wasn't expecting on TV. He (Hawkeye) was trying to get hold of his dad. He heard his Dad was sick. He finally got through and some other guy asked him, 'How are you doing?"

And he said, Hawkeye said, "Well, they found some kind of a tumor. They're not sure what it was. So they opened him and found it was a pheochromocytoma."

Then Ron said, "Whoa! I know what that means."

I did a quick Google search before I finished this post just to see how often this very rare tumor has appeared in the media, but I could only find the two references: one that Ron caught, and one that I caught.

Here is a clip of the episode Ron saw. The mention of pheochromocytoma is at the the 11:30 mark.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tnwg1

Pheochromocytoma is also the second disease mentioned in the "Top 5 Rarest Diseases | House M.D."

However, we did laugh our way through this episode about a prisoner who gets strong and aggressive due to excess adrenalin.

It's not like that. All those excessive catecholamines make you sick, sick, sick. You won't have enough energy to pick fights.

Still, it was cool that it got a mention on House M.D. - with even the other "doctors" on the show coming back with, "But it's rare."

That's what the doctors told me when I told them I thought I had one. My comeback was, "Someone has to have it."

That someone was me.

Which is how Ron knew about it. I'm still thankful today that I tracked my symptoms and shared my findings with the right doctor (several before him did not believe me when I said I had this). 

Pheochromocytomas are rare but treacherous catecholamine-producing tumors that, if not diagnosed or appropriately treated, will almost invariably prove fatal.

Here is a link from the House M.D. episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZVd0QKvJo8 

The Evolution of One Simple Flyer (And a Tour of My Space)

Good Monday morning!

I am back with another spammy promotion of my BryonySeries/The Book Market Holiday Book Sale.

Late Friday afternoon, Rebekah decided to design a flyer to go with the promotion. She did several versions and then showed them to Timothy.

Timothy, who had to design weekly menus at a previous job, got in the game later that night. Each version you see on my bedroom floor probably underwent no less than thirty tweaks in terms of layout, selection of graphics, font size, font shape, font shading, font color, the view on black and white versus color, and so forth.

Now a quick view of my room. Behind me is an antique dresser that belonged to my maternal grandmother, who died suddenly when I had just turned seven. I used to sleep in the double bed with her in a very small bedroom in their two-family bungalow on the southside of Chicago. That room had just enough space for the bed and that dresser.

To the right is a lamp with shelves for my books from Timothy. The bed is simple and monastic. Daniel bought the metal frame ($50 from Amazon) a couple years ago to get me off the floor. The mattress is new, as the old one had fallen apart right before the pandemic, so I'd been sleeping on an air mattress.

Everything on the bed are gifts from my kids: from the pillows to the quilts to the mattress covers. The two exceptions are the quilt with the fringe and the Bible verse (from my grandson Ezekiel) and the white quilt with the cat prints (a gift from Jasmine), which the cats, of course, have claimed.

In front of the bed is potting soil and a large planter for Chloe "Lucky" Hawk, my office plant (gift from a job shadower a few years ago), the only plant that has stayed alive under my care. Timothy bought all these gifts for Chloe, and he will transplant her - again - when he has a few moments and isn't designing flyers.

Chloe is sitting on top of my fake fireplace (a gift from Timothy last year), which is always on at night and in the early morning. Next to Chloe is all the artwork for Ed Calkins' upcoming novel "Ruthless," was still not scanned into my computer as of Friday night. Ed's wife Nancy created the cover and did all the interior artwork, too. She doesn't want any credit, saying it's all Ed's project. I'm ignoring her and giving her lots of credit.

The antique dresser next to the fireplace belonged to Ron's mother, who died a year before I met Ron. That dresser and the tall one across from it are two pieces I kept when we lost our home in Channahon after Ron lost his job due to dementia. 

The tall dresser was sitting under the attic stairs when we moved into the home and has been glued back together many times. Some of the items on top of it include two antique tea cups (gifts from Timothy and Sue Midlock), two different purple roses (gifts from Cindy and Jasmine), rose pot pourri (gift from Rebekah), and a handmade BryonySeries music box that plays real music (although not the "Bryony" theme), which was a gift from BryonySeries artist Christopher Gleason.

The tray below the dresser contains items from my bedroom in Channahon because I haven't figured out where to display them (yet).

On the dresser next to the fireplace I am burning new incense (gift from Timothy) and displaying the beautiful little tree (gift from Joshua and Timothy).

Next to the dresser by the little closet is a nightstand (gift from Daniel) that I'm using for work paperwork, my office files, and my mailings. Next to that is a laundry hamper (gift from Rebekah, who offered to do my laundry with hers back in 2013 when we lost the house and has continued to do so ever since, even folding it and putting it away).

The computer set up, including desk, larger screen, and desk lamp, along with the bookshelves to the left are all gifts from Timothy, who is sitting at the computer, back to the camera, working on the flyer. On the day we moved, I went to work. He bought the desk, assembled the desk, and set up my computer, printer, and entire office area before any other items were brought into the townhome.

By the desk lamp is a clear bulb ornament with a battery operated tealight from St. Nicholas one year. The battery finally died. Timothy bought me a new one.

Above the computer and to the left is a good deal of the artwork local artists have created for my series. Timothy has framed quite a bit of them and hung them on the walls. A stack of artwork is still stacked on my grandmother's dresser, ready for hanging.

The organizer hanging off the door is a gift from Rebekah, who has even bought organizers for my drawers, too. 

The little stuffed Woodstock on the carpet was St. Nicholas' gift to me one year. But Faith, my calico claimed it, and she drags it all over the place. My royal blue St. Nicholas stocking hanging off the door knob was a gift from Ron. It's a little bedragged, but I don't have it in my heart to replace it.

What you can't hear is that Christmas music is playing in the background from the new speakers that Timothy just bought me because the wires on the old speakers he had bought me weren't working right. And he installed them, too.

What you also can't see is all the hard work Rebekah has put into formatting and reformatting books this year past year and the work she's put in designing a second website for me since I've done some editing projects for clients this year.

While Timothy was working on the flyer, he commented on how cozy the room was. Well, how can it not be? It's filled with reminders of love everywhere you look. I spend the majority of time in this space, including most of 2020.

I'll post the flyer tomorrow in another spammy post.

In the meantime, you can access the details about the BryonySeries/The Book Market Holiday Book Sale by visiting bryonyseries.com/promotions.

Smidgen of Normalcy

I had a very lovely, quiet day for most of Saturday.

Timothy and Daniel helped Joshua and Amber and the kids move into a new home.

Rebekah played something called a switch.

And I finished the formatting for my werewolf novel Lycanthropic Summer, so Rebekah can send for the proof copy today.

About mid-afternoon, Sarah, who lives in Raleigh, called me. She was on her way to my parents' house. She'd called an ambulance for my father.

And that changed the tone of most of the weekend (He went home yesterday afternoon, and he's doing OK).

Sunday I worked, and I spent a good portion of Monday editing for a client. And that was in addition to helping to manage care for my Dad.

But on Monday morning, I experienced a slight return to normalcy.

Timothy had to paint a room at Joshua's house.

And I went, too, to celebrate the joy of the beautiful new home with family I really haven't seen (except for the surprise visit) since the pandemic began.

Now we all wore masks.

And we stayed six feet or more away from each other. That's why this photo at the end of this blog is slightly blurry.

Riley did sneak a hug around my legs. But she's four. And she did have her mask on.

No one was coughing or sneezing.  And I did spend a portion of those two hours outside in the driveway on the telephone to the hospital.

Still, it was the first testing of the masking and social distancing strategy with anyone outside of where I live.

Hopefully, the experts are right about this.

If they're wrong, well, I might be writing a different sort of post down the road.

Before we went home, we participated in a quick drive-by for Labor Day at the nursing home where Ron lives.

He was "not there" and didn't even respond to his name.

But we got to see him, and we are thankful to staff who arranged the event.

Historically, I have always worked on Labor Day. For me, it's important I honor the day by using the skills God has given me.

My main gift is the ability to communicate.

This weekend, I used it at work, for a client, with my family, and by providing many hours worth of information to Sarah and four different care providers.

No one grilled out. But Sunday night, Daniel surprised everyone by ordering pizza.

So it's all good.

Small Things

It's easy to overlook the sublime when it doesn't appear in a dramatic way.

But any gift, any act of service, especially when given or performed in love, becomes greater than its individual parts.

Here are two examples.

When the kids were young, my approach to household chores was to divide and rotate, with me being part of the division and rotation. My rationale was that the kids would not feel I was pushing menial tasks onto them or that I was "teaching" them to be responsible, etc.

Rather, my philosophy was more of "We all live here together. Let's work together to make this a clean and welcoming home."

Now that I live in a house with two adults (my youngest two adult kids), that's the way we've continued.

Until Rebekah lost her job during the pandemic.

One day, she told me not to worry about the chores. She was out of work, and she wanted to feel "useful." Almost every day since that time, she has kept the house clean, from bathrooms to laundry, to kitchen floors.

It doesn't sound like a big deal. We don't have small children or an abundance of pets (just two senior cats), so the tasks are fairly straightforward and don't take hours (although it's amazing how quickly dishes and towels pile up).

And yet, Rebekah is still handling the basest of tasks that come with living in a house. She doesn't get a paycheck and any of the lauds that come with performing well in the workplace. No one gives her high fives for cleaning underneath the stove burners. 

But her service has allowed Daniel and me to focus more on work, which is especially important for Daniel, as he's in a new position with great responsibilities.

Rebekah also takes her role very seriously. With cleaning products in short supply, she searches online for alternatives. Three days ago she found some great cleaners at a most unlikely place in Joliet (not saying where). And, yes, she read the labels to ensure they will do what she they claim to do.

She's baked a lot of homemade bread. She's cooked most of the meals. She's handled all the medications for one senior cat. She's eliminated a slew of one-time, miscellaneous tasks the rest of us keep putting off for lack of time.

And she gave me the most lovely gift for my birthday, even though she is out of work and her personal finances are tight.

The first gift was a simple handmade card with a simple but heartfelt greeting inside.

The second was a handmade bookmark.

The bookmark's design is simple: some beads she had leftover from another craft. And two small charms.

I recognized one of the charms. She had worn often since childhood. The other I didn't recognize but it came from the same place - and same person.

You see, her stepfather, who now has dementia and is living in a nursing home (where there's been no covid, praise God), used to work in the maintenance department at the school across the street from our house.

Before that position, Ron worked for a blacktop company. But when his own mother became sick, he quit the job and moved back to his childhood home to take care of her. And then he applied for a job at the school across the street, where he himself had gone to school.

It was in this home I finished raising my kids. It was at this school where Ron often paused in his duties ("Smoke break!") to talk to one of my children if they had a problem or just wanted to share something with him.

And it was at this school where Ron brought home items that no one ever claimed from the school's "lost and found" box.

Those items included jewelry that little girls might wear. If he saw something Rebekah might like, he brought it home for her.

It wasn't just Rebekah he considered. He brought home discarded library books, notebooks with blank drawing paper, winter hats, and any unclaimed item he felt the kids might like and use.

But Rebekah treasured those simple jewelry pieces. And she fashioned two of them into something I could use and ponder and enjoy.

Think a moment. A simple child's charm.

Perhaps something a parent bought for a gift or a spur of the moment purchase. The child who originally wore it, and forgot about it, is now all grown up, perhaps with children of her own.

And yet, it gave Ron great pleasure to select it and bring it home to Rebekah.

It gave Rebekah great pleasure to accept it, wear it with just the right outfit, and to feel the love of the giver.

It gave Rebekah great pleasure to take those same treasured item and turn it into another item that I will treasure. And then she did the same with a second charm.

Amazing so much value can be had in such a simple, forsaken, little girl's charm.

"Eat a Bug"

The following event brought back a memory that made me grin.

https://www.reconnectwithnature.org/news-events/event-calendar/october-2019/eat-a-bug/eat-a-bug-october-12

Years ago, when Ron and I ran The Higher Ark youth ministry on our property for our church, we had a back porch full of kids eating bugs.

Live crickets, to be exact.

For a celebration of the feast day of St. John the Baptist.

It started off with one man in his early 20s, who brought his younger siblings to the group. He approached me and asked if I thought if the kids would like to see him eat a live cricket dipped in honey. Knowing kids, I told him they would.

So he stopped at pet supply store on the way to my house to buy a bag full of live crickets. He poured honey on a plate, dipped a live cricket, and to a chorus of Ewwwws!" ate it in front of a dozen kids.

 The kids all thought it was gross until a 17-year-old, who had been running late due to babysitting, showed up and said, "Game on!"

From that point forward, the kids outdid each other as to who could eat more of them. One teen girl got a feeler stuck in her tooth and simply pulled it out.

One teen boy polished off the last three with a large spoonful of honey and turned a bit green. But he only said, "The honey is too sweet."

I was fearing latent cricket allergies and irate parents.

Neither happened.

But it turned out to be a great lesson in peer pressure for the kids.

This is nothing against the Forest Preserve District of Will County's event (many of the world's population do eat bugs, enough that the Old Testament has rules of the ones the Israelites may eat), which is a good way to teach cultural awareness.

But it does show how easily kids, maybe even adults, can be swayed, in either direction, if the right person sways them.

They went from "ick" to practically tripping over themselves to try the same activity once one of their own thought it was cool.

Something to ponder.

Illustration by Matt Coundiff for "Memories in the Kitchen: Bites and Nibbles from "Bryony." 

You Still Have To Do The Work

Many people have an image of writers (and I've seen some sellers of various products use thia image in their marketing pitches) that looks something like this:

You lazily wake up without an alarm, mosey to the kitchen to prepare a cup of coffee, enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and then spend the day blissfully transferring the stories living in your imagination to the computer, where (if you only had this marketing product), they sell millions of copies to adoring fans.

The End

Hahahahhahaha!

My mornings look more like this: wake before dawn (after hitting snooze a few times), stumble out of bed (to the delights of the cats because I'm FINALLY going to feed them), make coffee, stumble back upstairs, and sign onto the computer.

After posting a Bible verse, some good mornings on my social media pages, and birthday greetings, I then spend the next couple hours answering email and scheduling posts.

I then spend a couple hours working on my story budget while working out, as well as making phone calls (personal and work-related, and keeping up with email and social media.

The rest of the day is spent keeping up correspondence, keeping an eye on pages, writing and editing stories and news releases, editing pages, designing pages, and conducting interviews.

I am never finished and almost always push today's work into tomorrow...and into the weekend. I do not, as a strict rule, work on personal writing and editing projects during the week (no time), so all of that writing is kept for the weekend (or a vacation day).

The only day that MAY look like the aforementioned fantasy scene is Saturday, a truly magical time. For a few short hours, deadlines vanish. I've even had a few Saturdays where I've had NO "work" work to complete (rare), and I've spent an entire day working on a novel.

Here's what this past weekend looked like:

On Saturday, I actually did spend a few productive hours on the werewolf story before heading to New Lenox for a dentist appointment.

Afterwards, Timothy treated me to a cup of Gloria Jean's, which I enjoyed while addressing some BryonySeries related, non-writing chores with Rebekah, who was now home from work.

I scanned some photos for Monday's "An Extraordinary Life" photo list, took a break at sunset to get into the pool with Rebekah (the first time all year that happened), and then spent another couple hours scanning and processing photos.

On Sunday, I skipped church because I had to finish the "An Extraordinary Life" and design the page. Yes, I could have done it on Saturday, (or stayed up extremely late on Friday), but I felt this story needed a few hours of unbroken time and a fresh mind - so that's what I gave it.

I also ducked out to take a photo and, because I was in the area, to run over to Menards to look at fake fireplaces with Timothy and Rebekah (because they're considering buying one).

I then spent twenty minutes cleaning the house, and then two hours with Phyllis, a Joliet woman in her 90s. For the past year and a half, I've been working on her memoir. We are coming into the home stretch, and she actually cried when I read portions back to her.

After picking up my medicine at Walgreens, Timothy and I headed for Morris, where we spent a couple hours with Ron in the nursing home, a bittersweet experience.

Bitter because he's lost more weight, has pneumonia, and the dementia has firmly set in. "Sweet" because he was thrilled to see me. Enough that one nurse said she hadn't seen him look this happy in days.

Although he was extremely surprised I wasn't going to smoke with him and even more surprised that I had never smoked. Which left me wondering if he hadn't mistaken me for a former girlfriend in his younger years, which actually made ME grin. No matter, it made him happy for awhile.

Then it was back home for a quick dinner, a workout, and that was the weekend.

The point of this post is that a writer's life looks like anyone else's life: work and the rest of life.

Yes, there's those glorious moments of bliss in the craft, but many of those are planned, and the rest are elusive. Mostly, it's work, and you have to show up to do the work.

A writer writes, then rewrites, then cuts, edits, and (sometimes) goes online the next day to correct any typos that were missed in the process.

This is not counting the amount of time spent posting finding ways to connect readers with the stories, because many people don't read newspapers as keenly as they once did. This process is even more difficult with fiction.

Now, I'm glad I put that time into yesterday's An Extraordinary Life. I received some great feedback on it yesterday and not just from the man's loved ones.

But this, ultimately, is not where writers find most of their satisfaction. Because praise is fleeting.

Rather, the satisfaction comes from the hours spent in thinking about the structure and then hammering it out letter by letter, and then dismantling all that effort like a kid knocking down a stack of wooden blocks because it's not the castle he pictured, until finally you read something that makes feel good you wrote.

Or, at the very least, makes you relieved you made deadline and are able to go to the next project.