What Do Burials, Hurricanes, and Writing Have in Common?
The past couple weeks have been pretty unsettling.
First was the trip to middle-of-nowhere New York to hang out with family and inter the cremains of my husband’s parents. My husband and his sister flew up on Sunday, and I followed on Wednesday. We were staying in an AirBnB near the cemetery, on a small lake in the Finger Lakes region. Other than a country bar that served surprisingly tasty down-home cooking a mile away, there was nothing nearby. The nearest grocery store was 20 miles away.
Not my kind of place at all. And sleep was nearly impossible. The bed I was using might as well have been a board with a cloth covering. I mean, that sucker was h.a.r.d. Add in all the stresses of being surrounded by my husband’s family, and it was not a comfortable situation at all.
On Friday my kids arrived, thank goodness. They were staying nearby (on the other side of the lake), in a VRBO rental. They’re scattered all over — Orlando, FL, Providence, RI, the middle of New Hampshire, and Rochester, NY, so I don’t see them as often as I’d like. My oldest, who lives currently in Antigua, didn’t make it.
Saturday was the interment ceremony, which was not without its challenges. When we arrived, we discovered that the holes hadn’t been dug! I’ve never seen my brother-in-law so upset. Turns out the guy who was supposed to dig the holes had gallivanted off to the state fair. One of the relatives went to see if he could buy a shovel at the Dollar Store a few miles away, while my brother-in-law worked the phone. He finally got the hole digger’s sister to agree to come out and do the necessary. We should go back to the house and return in an hour.
This we did, and when we returned we found two neatly dug holes. Fortunately, since we were interring ashes and not caskets, the holes didn’t need to be very big and apparently they have a machine that excavates them quickly and evenly.
We left on Sunday, and I arrived home at 12:45 AM on Sunday night/Monday morning. I was pretty tired. Exhausted, actually. But no rest for the wicked. Monday morning I had to lurch into action to prepare our house for the impending arrival of Hurricane Idalia.
We decided to be sensible and spend Tuesday night at my sister-in-law’s. Our house is surrounded by lots of very big, very old trees. Hers is not. And she has a generator and it was pretty much guaranteed that we would lose power.
So, after unpacking on Monday, I packed again on Tuesday and off we headed, to spend the night in another uncomfortable not-my-own bed.
Fortunately we got lucky, the storm moved to the east in time, and we avoided the worst of it. People not that many miles away from us suffered devastating losses, mostly from flooding. We drove back to our own place on Wednesday afternoon to scope out the damage, which was almost nothing. Like I said, lucky. And our power and internet were both back on.
We happily moved back home. All was well until about nine o’clock that night when, for some reason, the internet went poof! and was gone. It came back late the next afternoon.
But it’s taken me a week to start feeling like myself again, so I’m just now getting back to the book. And I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed with all the moving parts and pieces that need fixing. It kind of feels like the disorganized mess my life was for a little while.
I’ve been experimenting with some different tools to help me keep track of everything. I started a spreadsheet, and I set up an actual, physical bulletin board because I felt the need to have something tactile, some cards I could physically move around. I reinstalled Scrivener, because it’s good at moving scenes around.
But I think it’s time to go back to Milanote (I wrote about it a while ago, here). It’s the tool that resonated with me from the get-go. I’ll let you know how that goes.
What I’m Reading
This week I did something very odd. I actually started, and then walked away from, two different books. This is something I rarely do. Often, even if I don’t like a book, I’ll continue in hopes it will get better, but I decided these were irredeemable. Not well written, poorly structured, and I just didn’t care about the protagonists.
Life is too short, and there are too many good books out there. . .
Domestic Diva Series
I’m still happily re-reading this delightful series by Krista Davis. (I wrote about it a couple weeks ago, here.) I’m up to the ninth in the series now, The Diva Steals a Chocolate Kiss. Still enjoying it.
Buy Me a Chai
Some of the links I include in this email may be affiliate links. What does that mean? It means you pay the same — or in some cases a little less — if you click and purchase, and I get a small commission. It’s not a lot, but it helps me buy a few chai lattes here and there. . . Or, if you like what you're reading, you can Buy Me a Chai right now. Thanks! (If you really like what you’re reading, you can upgrade to a paid subscription and buy me a chai every month!)
Harriet Gordon Mysteries
Harriet Gordon lives with her brother, a minister and the headmaster of a boys school in Singapore. She’s trying to put her life back together.
After her husband and son died in Bombay, she had returned to England to live with the parents, as was expected of her. But the constricted life of a post-Victorian English widow was too stifling, so she moved to Singapore where she could be of use to her brother and the school.
A qualified typist, she takes on freelance clients, and things are looking up for Harriet until she discovers her newest client stabbed to death.
There are three books in the series by AM Stuart: Singapore Sapphire, Revenge in Rubies, and Evil in Emerald. A fourth, Terror in Topaz, is due in October, and I’m anxiously awaiting its release.