Missing Tiny

The worst part about transitioning between two homes for the next few weeks is missing Tiny, the best Pembroke Welsh corgi in the entire world.

Except for an hour on Saturday morning, I haven't seen Tiny since Friday night, since I worked through the weekend.

And I have a wake an hour away after work tonight, so I won't see Tiny tonight either.

When I do get back to the "old" townhome for a few hours, Tiny rarely leaves my side (which is fine with me).

Here are some nighttime photos Daniel and Timothy have sent me to show Tiny is fine.

The one with him under the boxes is my grandmother's old dresser, which was our makeshift "coffee bar," since that piece has been moved. But Tiny liked to hang out underneath it, so Daniel created a substitute.

Also, the one of him sleeping on the floor is because Tiny prefers to sleep on the floor. He would wait for me at the bottom of the stairs for our bedtime snuggle.

On far too many nights, I would simply lie on the floor next to him. He'd put both paws around my neck (as best as he could with those little short legs), one leg over mine, and bury his face in my neck with a happy little sigh. 

If you can believe, I'd drift off with him on that hard, cold floor, waking up two hours later, stiff and sore, with Tiny hanging on more tightly if I tried to move.

He's so sweet!

Chocolate Oatmeal For Breakfast

Moving from one home to another is always challenging - and we're becoming the experts, I think, since we're on our sixth move since the fall of 2013.

One challenge is not realizing you need an item until you don't have it.

For instance, I eat oatmeal every morning, mostly because I actually do like it.

But I don't like runny oatmeal.

And I don't like the taste of fresh milk.

Or the taste of unsweetened oatmeal.

So I make mine in the microwave with powedered milk and a bit of cream of wheat to thicken it - and then I add a sprinkle of brown sugar to sweeten it.

But not until I was making oatmeal after spending the night for the first time in the new home did I realize I had neither cream of wheat or brown sugar.

I did, however, have a box of chocolate graham crackers.

I cracker crumbled into powder and added to the oatmeal before microwaving both thickened and sweetened the mixture for me.

It also tasted rather good, too.

I recently wrote how I'm constantly pivoting these last few years.

And I also wrote about the importance of celebrating the "shifts" in our plans.

It's true I'm rather weary of the nonstop challenges that's keeping my family and me on edge these days.

But without the challenges, we wouldn't encounter the blessings.

Like eating chocolate oatmeal for breakfast.

A Few Photos From Moving Weekend

The Great Move of 2021 was an adventurous one. Just six of us (Timothy, Daniel, and me, along with Jasmine and Cindy) moved the contents of two townhomes into two more townhomes on Friday.

Yep. Just us.

The fun began a couple weeks ago when the developer called and said he had a delay on the units. That was potentially a problem because four of us and three cats would have no place to go. But by some minor miracle, the units were done, minus a few pieces (one bannister for Timothy and no screens in my bedrooms windows).

We also didn't have garbage and recycling cans, so that was addressed yesterday, too (by Timothy). Turns out the wait for them can be a while, too, because the units are new.

However, the real fun started last Wednesday when Rebekah spent the day in the ER due to her first and intense gall bladder attack, folllowed by my mother making a trip to the ER for a CT scan of her head after a fall.

Crunch time began Thursday as Rebekah and I scrambled to catch up at work - with the rest of the packing waiting for us on Thursday night.

What a blessing for us that Jasmine offered to spend her day off on Thursday to help pack. She left sticky notes on cabinets and closets that she emptied, helping to streamline the process.

Cindy came down after work on Thursday and spent the next couple of nights (one in the old home and two in the new, leaving a couple hours before she was due back at work). They were so efficient that I was able to pop in and out of WriteOn Joliet's Zoom meeting.

On Friday, we helped load a moving truck. We had to be at the units at 12:30 for the walk-through.

Cindy, Rebekah, and I stayed at the new homes to move boxes out of the garage and up the flights of stairs, which could be two to three flights of stairs per unit, depending where the boxes had to go (they were all marked).

Timothy and Daniel did ALL of the heavy lifting, which was hours worth of HEAVY lifting.

Setting up my work area was a priority since I was working Saturday and Sunday - and that included covering two events.

First up is a photo of the main floor of the newspace before we started filling in, followed by random photos of boxes, bags, cats, and items lurking just about everywhere. 

Rebekah and I were both off work yesterday and we used the time to get some unpacking done, although, until the heavy furniture makes it upstairs, we won't be able to finish.

Although tempers were short a couple of times, we really had no major arguments, another minor miracle considering the sheer amount of work that got done.

And finally, the best photo of all: Cindy leaving The Birches (where we've lived since May 2014) on the way to the new space. She's carrying the necessities of life: food and toilet paper. 

Moving...Again: Some Random Thoughts

As someone who loves permanence, I never thought I'd be the one to move multiple times in my life, especially over the last few years.

When we moved to Channahon to start a new life as a blended family in the house my husband's parents built, I never thought I'd move again.

But I also didn't expect early-onset dementia in my husband and having to make the care decisions one typically reserves for my parents. By contract, my parents are 86, don't have dementia, (although my father is now in the very early stagers of Alzheimers), and are in pretty good health, even considering their age.

However, when my husband lost his job, we knew moving would only be a matter of time. My three youngest children and I (two at Joliet Junior College and one recent graduate) spent nine months at my parents, then nine months in an apartment, then four and a half years in a two bedroom townhome and then the youngest two and I moved three doors down into a three bedroom townhome, where we will all spend our last nights tonight.

We went to my parents because we had nowhere else to go.

We moved to the apartment when Shaw Media hired me as the features editor of The Herald-News and I rolled out of freelance work. The apartment was a strategic move because we only had one vehicle of iffy quality - and Timothy needed it for work. Rebekah and Daniel bussed to JJC, where they worked and went to school, and I walked to work.

Unless the weather was below zero, I walked. Unless I was working remotely, I walked every single day for about a mile and half each way to and from work, from May 2014 until we were sent home to work remotely in March 2020.

In the heat. Layered up and on ice. In the rain.

We walked our cats to the vet. We walked to Walmart for food and household items. We walked to the pharmacy. We had everything we needed in walking distance.

In those early years, I voluntarily shouldered most of the financial responsibility, with the kids taking on more as they graduated, moved into better paying jobs, and made more money.

During that time, Timothy was able to save for a new car. And then Daniel saved for a new car. And now Rebekah is nearly ready to buy a car.

Where is my car, you may ask?

When Timothy buys the new one, the older one will come to me for local trips, and that is a good start. If not for COVID and his holding off in buying a new car, that would have happened a year ago. 

I feel it's amazing what can be done, and the level of recovery that can be had, when people work together.

We are not moving far. But the space is definitely another upgrade. For one, these townhomes right next to each other are completely new contructions. They are three stories high. Each unit has a garage. Each unit has a hookup in the garage for a hose. These common place items to others are luxuries for us.

Timothy is moving into a two bedroom. We are moving into a three bedroom - with three bathrooms. The complex is beautiful.

Jasmine came down last night to help pack. She will be back this morning on her day off while Rebekah and I work upstairs. Cindy will be here tonight and back in the morning. The help is wonderful, especially since I threw out my back while favoring my injured knee while lifting something heavy.

I am working the weekend, so we need to get a lot done on Friday.

Everything felt organized until last night. Ugh.

I don't like packing or unpacking.

But I am excited for new beginnings.

During our marriage. Ron and I had two vans that we ran like taxi services when we ran a youth group for our church. Anyone who needed a ride, not just in the youth group but anyone, could get a ride from us.

And in my van-less years, I have been equally blessed by friends and family who've given me rides.

Rides to and from work assignments. Rides to work when temperatures were 20 below zero. Rides to the doctor or medical tests. Rides to and from WriteOn Joliet (with coffee and dinner ALWAYS included, thanks to my wonderful co-leader Tom Hernandez). Rides to miscellanous events that are too numerous to be named.

Not one person, not a single one, every asked a penny for gas. Ever.

So I feel with this move, we are headed in the right direction to meet a future we cannot see.

But because God, not me, is in the driver's seat.

Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."

Boxes (and Retreat Update)

I started an at-home writing retreat this week, a little modified from the ones I took back in 2018.

That time, I wrote and only wrote, forsaking both social media and exercise.

This year, I'm still exercising. It's foolish to stop, and I do quite a bit of mental writing this way, which makes me more efficient at the computer.

Also, the subject matter is dark, so keeping some positive connections is a healthy thing to do.

So instead of fourteen to sixteen hours of writing a day, it's looking more like ten to twelve.

Here are the goals. Below that, what I've accomplished.

All the even chapters of The Phoenix or fifteen chapters. This is first and foremost. And I started on it yesterday afternoon and wrote until my brain shut off at 9:30 p.m. (but I did have an extremely short night of sleep Thursday into Friday).

Finish formatting Lycanthropic Summer. Since I want to release it by October 1, this is important

Finish the last two chapters of Cornell Dyer and the Old Folks Home and copy edit it. My goal is three books a year. I'm just on the first one. So I'm way behind.

Finish formatting WriteOn Joliet's fourth anthology. This is even more first and foremost than The Phoenix.

Get the content Rebekah needs for a new website. Can't move forward without this. Better make it a priority.

Get Rebekah the photos she needs for the new Bertrand book. The goal is three a year. We released one last year. Again, way behind.

So far:

Nearly two chapter drafts of The Phoenix each day, and that's it.

Under the circumstances, not bad.

"Circumstances" being I didn't start until mid-afternoon on Friday, my second son Joshua (child number three) turned thirty-five yesterday, so I spend some time on the phone with him, and we had a family issue come up yesterday, too.

Oh, and I took a two-hour nap on Saturday and a two-hour nap on Sunday. So that really cut into my writing time, too. (I really, really needed those naps).

What about the boxes?

Well, I still have boxes to unpack from when we lost our home in 2013. Since we discarded mostly everything, I don't have many. But they're still there.

I promised Rebekah we would unpack a box a day during the retreat, to be continued on each vacation day to the end of the year, until all the boxes are unpacked.

I think that's do-able, don't you?

Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."

A Moving Weekend

What does a working when moving look like?

It starts with packing up my home office and the few personal items I decided to keep when we left Channahon.

That part's easy. Those items have remained in labeled boxes since 2013. I just move those around with me, a total of five boxes.

Then, about 9 p.m. on Thursday night, after a meeting of WriteOn Joliet, I packed up my the personal items I use on a daily basis and my home office, which I also use on daily basis.

Friday: Up before 5 p.m., dragging through work until 9 until we did the walk-through of the new townhouse. Then into the office until 4:30 p.m. to honor interviews and pages that needed editing and design. Then coffee and joining the moving crew until 11 p.m. Then back on the computer until 1 and then a shower.

The moving crew included Rebekah and Jasmine when they got off work at 5, Timothy (who worked offsite and moved while participating in conference calls, Daniel, who swapped days with someone else to have the day off, and Cindy, who worked extra hours so she could help with the move.

I might also add that Rebekah and Daniel are recovering from the flu, and Timothy has a bad cold.

Saturday: Up at 7 to find the things I needed for the White Oak Library Fest. Did two videos for work, ran a few errands, unpacked a good chunk of my new bedroom/home office (an incredibly spacious room), sneaked in a walk to clear my head and encourage energy, jumped back on the computer until 11 for a couple of hours, and passed out about 1.

While I was gone, Cindy did an incredible job of moving boxes to different rooms and unpacking the kitchen. She even made dinner.

Sunday: Up at 7, walk and coffee, worked on Monday's page until 1, broke for a meeting, back on the computer until 4, walked to Walmart with Rebekah for a few necessary items (like cat food), handled a medical emergency, back on the computer for a couple of hours, while Rebekah and Timothy finished breaking down the first townhouse (where Timothy is staying, but will be remodeled this week, so he'll spend a week with us).

I might also add here that Joshua is rehabbing his house in Morris, so Timothy spent Sunday there. And Daniel worked Saturday and a double shift on Sunday.

Joined Rebekah and Daniel for Jack's pizza at 9:30 p.m., finished one last thing for work, jumped in the shower, and finally to bed with a book (was asleep almost immediately).

And THAT, is how you move without losing work time.

BTW, I'm totally digging the new space.

The cats are a little weirded out.

But they know where to find the food. :)

Illustration by Christopher Gleason for "Staked!" Follow him at artworkbytopher.com