I am still alive. Suffering near constant headaches and dealing with digestive issues often is not a lot of fun but I am doing the best I can, trying to stay positive, and keep on keeping on. I’m behind on holiday baking, haven’t started, and struggling with certain chores. My crafting is almost on track though, so let’s celebrate that. Here are a few of my projects:
My first few gnomes, some felt xmas trees, and my first attempts at Scandi-inspired ornaments.
This Friday I will be making gnomes and gingerbread men with the teens & tweens at the library. My instructor had to cancel as she has come down with Covid. Yikes, she was fairly careful and still got it. Scary as I am fairly careful and do not want to get it. Anyway, she is a great instructor as was bringing all the felt and scissors, needles, thread, threaders etc. So now I am raiding my stash and what the library has and we will have to make-do. The worst part will be the kids having to make-do with ME as an instructor, I am not good at it. So, I have simplified the projects and will be providing some already cut pieces for them to work with in case I can’t explain anything… which it pretty likely. On the plus side I supposedly have 6 kids showing up to this so, wow. That hasn’t happened since before the plague!
Anyway, my head is pounding and everything hurts so I’ll leave it at that. I hope you are all well and staying healthy.
Hello to any who might still check this blog. I am still alive, though suffering a flare up of an existing, exhausting condition. It’s been over a week of not being able to work and getting very little done. It’s demoralizing. Anyway, I am looking ahead and hoping next weekend will see enough of an improvement that I can run my zombie workshop at the library. I don’t think I’ve shared many of my zombies, probably should have checked before posting but this headache means I am not going to so, here are some of the little blighters.
I like the green ones best and I like the little guy in overalls w/ the yellow shirt the very best. His name is Slurpie and I love him. I’m realizing that I need to pay more attention to the goofy gore and make sure all my zombies actually have some zombie features beyond just the eyes. Some of them don’t obviously look like zombies and that is a shame.
I’ve also made, using the basic zombie template, Drizzt for my husband’s birthday.
I’ve done all I can and I need a break from stress and worry so I’m here to talk about things that are bringing me joy in some way, things that take me out of myself and distract me, all that sort of stuff. So, onto that! First things first: Books. They are my sanctuary, my education, my consolation, and my many, many other lives.
Current/Recent Reads:
The Ballad of Black Tom; by Victor LaValle (fantastic mythos-related story)
Adventures in Opting Out; by Cait Flanders
Disfigured; On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space; by Amanda LeDuc
The Library of the Unwritten; by A.J. Hackwith
The Only Good Indians; by Stephen Graham Jones
Dirt to Soil; by Gabe Brown
A Deadly Education; by Naomi Novik (The latest Fantastic Stangelings Bookclub read)
Beowulf; by Maria Dahvana Headley
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet; by Becky Chambers
There are other books, of course, but these are all the ones seriously in the flow at the moment. Other wonderful things I like to fill up my senses with: Shows!
Community. (Hulu & Netflix) My current comfort watch. Brilliant show with a ton of laughs and lots of heart.
The Haunting of Bly Manor. (Netflix) Pure gold so far. Atmospheric, subtle horror, perfect storytelling. I think I’m on episode #5 and I am having such fun. As always, my brain is whirring on ahead of the story making guesses and trying to expose the whole picture. I spotted a few things before they were revealed but, wow, there is so much here to unpack and it is glorious.
Liziqi. (YouTube) My ultimate escape from my own reality mixed with my ultimate life goals. Somehow relaxing and inspiring at the same time.
Good Omens. (Amazon Prime) We’re on our own side. Perfect.
Vienna Blood. (Dvd from the library) Very cool, entertaining, a bit like a Sherlock Holmes homage. Victorian Vienna. Hitting a bit close to reality with the superior race nonsense but a good crime procedural with interesting characters. Some absolutely stunning voices among the cast; loads of deep gravel in varying flavors. Particularly the lead detective and his rival. (I’m a sucker for a really good voice)
Shetland. (Dvds from library) Love, love, love this. I love the way this show is paced, the slow unraveling of the clues, the deep sense of Place. The landscape as another ever-present character. I have sadly finished all the available seasons of this and…
Vera. (Dvds) The same author wrote the books this series and the series Shetland are based on. Brilliant TV, just brilliant.
Videos of babies laughing hysterically, goofy pets, etc.
There are many more shows I could list that are excellent distractions but these are the ones I’m currently living inside. I’m also playing RPGs, of course. I am currently playing in; Hell’s Rebels (Pathfinder) on most Tuesdays, Azartia (a friend’s homebrew D&D) on Thursdays, and Age of Ashes, (Pathfinder) on Sundays. I am also running; Extinction Curse, (Pathfinder) on Saturdays and The Slithering, (Pathfinder) randomly, and my hubby is running the teens from the library through Age of Ashes as well. I’m playing 2 Human Druids and one Gnome Bard multi-classing into Druid and experiencing whiplash between characters. My bard is level… 12? 14? Something, and in Pathfinder which is designed for characters to be heroic. She is a blast to play, and absolutely good time. My Pathfinder Druid is low level, fun but kind of a letdown after playing the high level bard. The D&D Druid is… fine. She has a few pretty great spells that are fun/effective but… D&D 5e is just, well, it’s awful. Simple to play? Try; Over simplified, broken, frustrating. Cat, my druid, is level 9 with a 15 AC… The champion in our party has only a 20 AC. We get hit constantly, just absolutely constantly. The game is just not on a heroic scale at all. It’s dumbed down to the point of, why am I playing this? But yeah, it’s a distraction for a a few hours a week and time spent with friends. There are a lot of laughs as we play. Many laughs come from failed saving throws.
Other:
Knitting: one big project for a present, over half done now. ^_^
Work: 2-3 shifts a week, busy, on my feet, frustrating with Covid restrictions but, hey, I love it anyway and I’m lucky to have a job at all.
Baking/cooking: my daily chore and sometimes creative outlet.
Macrame’. I just got supplies to start doing this. I’ve been wanting to try it for ages, since like the 70s. Just getting around to it!
Holiday planning: well underway, constantly on my mind, so much to do!
De-cluttering. On the back burner but always on my mind. I want to get the excess out of here and have a semi-orderly, uncrowded, welcoming home.
Writing. Blogging here, jotting down ideas that keep coming to me, writing for work, which is fun and cool that I get to write for work at all. It’s mostly instructions for craft kits I make up or promotional writing for said craft kits, but still.
Sigh, and now the world is calling, I’m afraid, and I must answer. Stay well, be safe, see you soon.
Laying low today with a horrid knot in my back, watching Liziqi and trying not to know anything about politics today. Final word will not be for a few days yet as all votes are counted so… I just can’t take the ups and downs right now, my stress is pretty well maxed out.
So I lie on this heating pad and I watch Liziqi and the world falls away. Here is a short video of hers to brighten your day, just in case you need it as bad as I do. https://youtu.be/d1MLIw6mP2k This woman inspires me and her videos calm me when my nerves are jangling.
Life continues, I am now working on getting ready for Thanksgiving. There is so much to do and I’ve already tried to get a turkey once and found none in stock. I guess I’ll just try each week until I get one. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get everything we need, so many traditional dishes to make.
My boss will be working from home after a possible exposure to Covid19 so that will be a bit of a strain on the library. She really keeps things on track and level around there and I know being short staffed is going to mean we can’t do as much as we usually do. Hopefully she is fine and will test negative. She’s an awesome boss and a truly good person.
Ok, that’s it, that’s all I’ve got today. Be well all of you.
So, I’m sorry for going all “Winter holidays” there before enjoying the Fall. Halloween is probably my favorite holiday of all and I shouldn’t short change it like that. How rude! So I’m here to talk about candy, costumes and what’s going on instead of trick-or-treating and in-person parties this year. First, I love this idea for little kids or pretty much anyone:
How fabulous is this? Obviously, I think those with sensitive little ones should play fast & loose with the word “scary.”
Decorate for Halloween, make Halloween themed snacks, and have everyone in your household dress up in costumes. Then mix & match from these ideas:
Take out some Halloween themed books or collections of ghost stories from your local library and have a read-aloud by candlelight or flashlight.
Make a Facebook group and ask friends and family to dress in costume and post pics or do a Zoom gathering to show off costumes and socialize.
Hokey monster movie marathon. (Godzilla and that era or any of the wondrously bad/hilarious sci-fi channel monster movies.
Create and decorate a Halloween Tree. My middle daughter started this when she was 3. We were getting ready for a little Halloween party and she asked; “What about the Halloween Tree?” I was like; “whaaat?” and asked her if she meant the tree with the lights and decorations because that was definitely the Christmas Tree… yep that’s what she meant alright but it was a Halloween Tree and she obviously thought I was suffering from extreme early-onset dementia or something because i was clearly misremembering. SO, I made a Halloween Tree. All you need is some smallish dead branches and something of sufficient weight to hold them up. I used a vase full of stones. Just arrange the branches to look like a dead tree, add some lights and spooky decorations and you’re done. Our first tree had a small string of white lights but you can now buy orange or purple Halloween lights. For decorations We make ghost out of Kleenex and string with faces sharpied on them, and some pumpkins and cats cut out of colored paper. Ours is usually sized to make a great centerpiece.
Bake some Halloween themed sugar cookies, the kind you cut with cookie cutters, and let the kids decorate and eat them. You could make this part of a Facebook group w/without costumes. Have friends and family share their kooky cookies.
Find out what, if anything in these crazy times, your local library is offering for Halloween. I am having a Make-Your-Own Monster event with a randomly drawn prize, and offering take-home crafts of Fall lantern kits, shadow puppet kits, and friendship bracelets. My counterpart in children’s services is offering several take-home kits for the little ones. Some libraries might be having costume contests by having patrons submit photos.
Some radio stations are definitely having costume contests w/submitted photos. One in my area is offering a prize of $100 or $200 on a debit card. (I can’t remember the amount)
Make a round layer cake and decorate it to look like a Jack-o-lantern.
If you and your kids or housemates play tabletop RPGs (Role Playing Games) run a special one-shot Halloween game. The possibilities here are nearly endless and can range from a child-friendly, goofy Scooby Doo vibe all the way to a Creepy, gritty, gorey Walking Dead/horror movie vibe. Call of Cthulhu is my go-to. One shots are perfect for it as player characters generally go insane when exposed to the Mythos anyway.
Create a LARP, if you’re feeling ambitious, and have enough people in your household. LARP stands for Live Action Role Play and it can be a lot of fun. This one takes more prep than any of these other ideas because you need to have a plot, props, maybe an accomplice, etc. The simplest way to do this is to get your hands on a boxed Murder Mystery game that contains all the characters, clues, etc. A few years back I created my own LARP for my youngest when that’s what he wanted to do for Halloween. I had 3 days and no money to spend so it was unpolished to say the least. But it was fun. It involved splitting our group in 2, a scavenger hunt for one group so they could find a book about Halloween that contained clues as to what they had to do, and the other group had to come up with 2 word clues to try and help the first group when they got stuck. The second group had accidentally been pulled into the afterlife and were stuck in a waiting room with a booklet of their own outlining their situation. They also got snacks and hot cocoa. The first group had to find the clues, figure them out, and conduct a ritual to get group 2 back through the veil between worlds. I wrote the booklets and decorated them with woodcuts of skeletons and such from online and set up the afterlife waiting room in our shed.
I have a bit of a headache so that’s all I’ve got for right now. Please feel free to add your awesome ideas in the comments. Or your really dumb ideas, those can be a ton of fun! ^_^
Just a couple of pics I dug up: goofy jack-o-lantern idea and one of our Halloween Tree centerpieces.
Years ago when I was asked to list my favorite authors I realised, looking over my list, that most of them were men. My list had writers like Tolkien, Guy Gavriel Kay, Christopher Moore, Neil Gaiman, H.P. Lovecraft, R.A. Salvatore, and loads more. There were two women on my list: J.K. Rowling and Caitlin R. Kiernan. I thought about what I read and reread and added Anne Bishop because how did I forget her? I read her stuff all the time! But still, I had at least ten male authors to three female and I wondered, why? Do I really prefer the writing styles/tones/etc of men? Or was I just not exposing myself to many female writers?
So I started consciously choosing to read fiction written by women. I found Gail Carriger, Mira Grant, Genevieve Cogman, and N.K. Jemisin. Lately I’ve discovered Diana Rowland, Brigid Kemmerer, Kira Jane Buxton, A.J. Hackwith, Angie Thomas, Ijeoma Uluo (nonfiction), Sherry Thomas, Cait Flanders and Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I gravitate toward books by women. If I’m looking at a book it is more likely I will buy it if the author is female. Not that I shun male authors. I’ve also found Chuck Wendig, N.S. Dolkart, Jim C. Hines, and James Lovegrove in recent years and I love them. My personal bookshelves are pretty egalitarian at this point. But I recently noticed that the YA Collection I curate is pretty slanted toward female authors so now I’m working on restoring balance. I’m scanning professional journals looking for male protagonists and male YA authors and it seems to me that there are actually a good deal more women writing YA than there are men, or maybe that’s just the releases of the past several months… I know for sure that YA is heavily tipped toward fantasy and it takes some effort to find other genres.
I want the collection to be balanced, to represent all the types of people that might browse it or use it. I want male authors, female authors, authors of color representing all the colors there are, and LGBTQIA authors. Stories featuring all types of characters, from all walks of life should be in the collection. And all genres, all interests… just a good variety, a good sampling of what is out there. Right now the YA collection is organized alphabetically by author and I would LOVE to organize it by genre and then alphabetically by author within those sections. We don’t even, for the most part, add gere stickers to our books, so it is really hard to help teens that just want to see a selection of romance, or horror, or sci-fi etc. There are some stickers but they aren’t used consistently. I really want to change that. Overall, I’d say now is the time to try to do it with the library not being open to patrons right now. I could take it all apart and put it back together… but first I should weed it. Goodness knows I haven’t properly done that yet. At the same time, we are busy, busy with phone calls and curbside pick up and trying to plan for next year.
Hmmmm, maybe I’ll just start with the “New” section… just organize that by genre and see how it goes? It would make things easier for sure if I could get it done. So many teens want a specific genre and it would be a huge improvement to be able to just show them the section so they could browse independently.
Life feels weirdly paused right now. Not that things aren’t happening, lots of things are happening, I just feel like I’m holding my breath, waiting to be able to relax and breathe. My son has started his senior year of HS, and my husband is putting in 90-100 hours per week at his job, mostly from home, and I still go to work 2-3 times per week but the library is still closed. Patrons are getting really cranky about not being allowed in to browse, and I get it, I love browsing too. But we are doing many hours of curbside pick up and we’re even delivering items to patrons as well as putting out story walks and giving out take-home crafts. It’s the best we can do for now until the Board of Health and the Trustees decide to open the doors. Oh, we are also setting appointments for patrons to use the computers.
Right now we are working on setting up a time for some limited outdoor browsing of new items in our collection. We’re hoping to do it once a week so patrons can have at least some opportunity to browse. I’m also trying to get a grant to put together a take-home painting kit for some time next year. I want to provide canvases, paints, brushes, and a relevant book for beginners. It is way beyond the kind of kits I’ve been sending out so far. We put together kits mostly from art supplies we had lying around and added LED tea lights, glass jars, or skewers. We did have the stained glass kits which were expensive but those were bought with a grant that was supposed to cover a stained glass workshop event so I guess the painting kits would be comparable.
We’re ordering books again! It’s awesome. I hated only being allowed to order virtual books. I mean, they’re better than not having books at all but it is nice to be able to have new books for the shelves again. I was trying to diversify the collection before the pandemic and now it’s much easier. I feel like more books by writers of Color are being published and are getting promoted more, they are easy to find right now so it’s a big help. There are some excellent YA novels coming out, too many, I can’t keep up!
I’m in a weird headspace. I’m going to stop writing now. I hope you are all well safe.
I just looked over at one of my very latest purchases, online purchases, I haven’t been inside a store since early March, and I was struck by the feeling of peace it gave me just to look on it. It’s a cellophane package containing, I think, 240 little skeins of embroidery floss in what I am calling “Every Color” with capital letters. I think there are 2 of each color so, really, there are many more colors in the world than in this little package, but it is honestly beautiful and I feel like I could make any design my heart could desire with this lovely collection of thread. It only cost about $15 which makes me happy because I love good prices. I’d be happier if I’d found it used, like if I’d stumbled on it at a tag sale or in a charity shop, I prefer second hand things. Second hand purchases save things from the landfill and can be had for pennies on the dollar of their original price. Awesome all the way around.
Anyway, The feeling I get looking at this colorful bundle was striking because I’ve been feeling so stressed lately what with the global pandemic and the failure of our leadership to contain or manage it and so forth. That peaceful feeling made me pause to think about it and I realised what I feel when I look at my packet of embroidery thread is wealth. I feel a great feeling of “enough,” of satiety, I feel content and confident that whatever I need to do with this thread I have got it covered. To me that is wealth. It’s the same feeling I have when my cupboards and fridge are full and their contents are varied. It’s that same feeling I have when my TBR (to be read) pile is vast, deep, and partially unknown, & when I know there are several books lurking there that I am positively hungry for. And it is the same feeling I have when I have several unpainted canvases, tons of paint, a bag of colorful yarn, or a drawer full of clean undies and socks. Oh! And empty notebooks and pens!
I feel so wildly, undeservedly lucky when I can look and see that any of these things are true, but I have realized that the truest wealth is time, is self-determination, getting to actually choose how you spend your time. I mean, we all probably know this, that time is the most precious resource. We have what we have and we cannot make any more of it. We can’t save time we can only spend it. I think the lockdown, and having to go back to work, made me see it clearly, undeniably, and deeply for the first time. For a few months, I got to decide when I worked, when I rested, when I ate, etc. It was disturbing and difficult at first, I made myself get up and go to bed on my normal schedule. I scheduled work activities each day, 2-3 hours per day to get the same number of hours in as usual but never having to work 7 in a row as I had at my job. That felt nice at first but wore on me terribly over time. Instead I worked about 4 hours 3 times a week and found that better, better still when I clumped those days together, though I was still able to be flexible to accommodate webinars and such. I finally found a wonderful rhythm, a way to order my life so I felt less stressed, had time to relax and pursue art, crafts, reading, journaling and other writing. I felt better than I had in a long time.
Now that I am back at work coving my usual schedule, quite honestly, I hate it. I work Monday and Friday evenings and all day every-other Saturday. It isn’t the number of hours that’s the problem, not at all, it’s 8 hours one week 15 the next repeat indefinitely, no problem. It’s being locked into the days and times. It eats me up, it destroys my ability to relax on any day I have to work and makes me feel rushed, pressured, and stressed. I’m back to 2-3 days per week where I am not home to make dinner and 2 days where I don’t get to eat dinner with my family. And the evening hours are not great for me to be working during. I am not at my best then, I am mostly spent by about 5:30 PM, just biorhythm-wise. My body wants me to recline and relax in the evening, or stroll, maybe. My body communicated this quite clearly to me when I was the master of how my hours were spent. I can get a LOT done in a day if I know that once dinner is done I am “off the clock.” Without work taking me away from my home I was able to use my clothesline much more frequently, I got into a habit of foraging berries and making breakfast smoothies, I started walking again for exercise.
It doesn’t help that no one else in my house is leaving it for work yet. My husband is locked into just brutal hours of work, stressed to the max and completely burned out with his job. I am not saying I envy that, I feel horrible for him, what is expected of him by his job (I.T. Professional) at this point is ridiculous and cruel. He is expected to do it almost completely during work hours but of course he can’t confine all that he has to do to those hours, there is just way, way too much. I need to be more grateful that I have as much lingering self-determination as I do, I am going to work on that. BUT, I think it is insane that most people live by the clock, serve corporate or other masters, and are expected to give SO MUCH for SO LITTLE in return. And, shockingly, people are expected to be grateful for even the worst, crappiest, most slavish, dehumanizing jobs. That isn’t me, but it is a LOT of people. Chained to clocks, having to work through illness, injury, at jobs that actually cause them considerable hardship. That is messed up!
Everyone deserves to work a reasonable number of hours and still make a living, have a life worth living, with a schedule that makes sense. Maybe we can’t have the ideal life where we determine what we do with each hour, but we should all have a good, satisfying, and dignified life. We all deserve time to relax, to seek entertainment & education, to spend time with family and friends creating memories. My husband was set to take a week off in March, instead he’s been working his ass off, straight through, at a very stressful job, since New Years Day. He’s got a good job, one that grants him 3 or 4 weeks “vacation” a year. So far he’s only been able to take a day here or there, I think he’s only taken 1 or maybe 2 off honestly, July 4th, the Friday before it was just off for everyone at his job, that’s the only day. There is no way he can take time off now, everything is a mad scramble getting ready to open the school for the fall, with no actual plan for NOT opening… which will likely be forced upon them at the last minute. It’s insane. And he can’t take time in the fall, of course, or likely anything like a week off until Christmas. He will get a few days at Thanksgiving though. They had damn well better let him save all the vacation time he is unable to take now. Gods, I hope so. He needs to take at least a month straight off just to recover from this.
I’m a librarian, I read a lot, well, I read as much as I can in between all the other things I need to do, have to do, and like to do. I finished a book last night and looked around to see which one I want to pick up next and found that I am reading quite a few at once right now. Typical, I switch books as my mood changes unless one really grabs me. That used to happen all the time, now it’s rare, but it’s such a delight when it happens.
I just finished Vagabonding; by Rolf Potts and Mark of the Demon; by Diana Rowland and I enjoyed them both. Vagabonding is a sort of travel book that encourages you to wander on a more long-term basis. It’s well written, full of tips, hints, and encouragement for would be vagabonders. I sincerely hope to be able to follow its advice one day. Mark of the Demon is one of those rare books that grabbed me and made me read it. I read the first few chapters a while ago and had to put it aside, I think it was the pandemic that distracted me, I picked it up again a few days ago and just flew through it. It is part detective story, part urban fantasy, with a dash of sex/romance. It is a terrific read and, happily for me, the start of a series. I loved it enough that I ordered the next 3 books in the series before I’d quite finished the 1st. Diana Rowland is a treasure! And to think I only discovered her because of the dragons in her yard. https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2018/12/19/neighbor-anonymously-called-christmas-dragons-her-yard-demonic-so-she-put-more-up/
I’m currently just barely started on The Color of Law; by Richard Rothstein and very excited to read So You Want to Talk About Race; by Ijeoma Oluo which arrived in the mail yesterday. I’m doing my best to educate myself about racism and what we can all do to end it and build a better world. If anyone has any suggestions of helpful books on the subject, especially those by people of color, I would love to hear about them. Please leave a comment!
These 3 books ^ are all relating to the Summer Reading theme for 2020 which includes fairy tales and folk tales. I had really hoped I’d be done reading them ages ago but even with the lockdown I didn’t get them read. How to Fracture a Fairy Tale; by Jane Yolen is, unfortunately, not a how-to book. It is a collection of fractured tales that is perfectly wonderful, I had just hoped it was a ton of advice and examples of how to actually fracture a fairy tale. I’m running a writing contest for the teens at my library this summer and I did not examine this book before buying it. I’m a little bit impulsive and quite whimsical at times. The Witch Must Die; by Sheldon Cashdan is a book that examines and dissects the meaning behind fairy tales. So far it is interesting and I am learning that there is practically no end to the number of fairy tales I hadn’t heard of before picking up this book. Fairy House; How to Make Amazing Fairy Furniture, Miniatures, and More From Natural Materials; by Mike and Debbie Schramer is exactly what it sounds like. Filled with tons of colorful pictures it is a delight to the eye. Though some examples can be very specific, and might use materials not everyone can find, they still function very well as inspiration for one’s own creations. I am hoping to make great use of this book for my own projects this Summer and, hopefully, with the teens for a Fall workshop, pandemic permitting.
These 3 ^ are books I’m reading in a determined, not to say desperate, attempt to overcome my longstanding status as a blight Druid who tragically loves plants and wants to be a regular Druid. I love books on urban farming and small space gardening even though I live in a rural area because I am almost completely hopeless at growing food. Books on urban farming tend to be much more cheerleader-y and encouraging to people who don’t think they have the space or talent to grow anything so, obviously, they are my go-to.
And these are books involving a spiritual path that I find fascinating and compelling but that is not my own specific path. I find myself in the awkward position of being a solitary Norse Pagan, a path not best suited to being solitary. So I find comfort in books about Wicca which is much more commonly pursued alone. The Earth Path; by Starhawk is, so far, quite good. I find much of value in her writings in general and when I started reading this one there were fires devouring parts of Australia and California and the book opens dealing with fire season in CA so it felt ridiculously relevant. The other 2 deal with herbs, plants and place and are part of my frustrated Druid recovery issues.
I read Silent Hall; by N.S. Dolkart some time ago. I absolutely loved it. Somehow I managed to miss that 2 more books were released in the series, which I think is a trilogy and therefore complete now, and now I have these 2 on my teetering TBR pile. (To Be Read) The special thing about these 3 books is that the author held a drawing to give away a few sets of his books to celebrate Father’s Day and his 11th wedding anniversary and I won one! They are all signed and I couldn’t be more excited to find out what happens to the little band of heroes I grew to love. I can only speak to book one which was very much a coming of age fantasy adventure with an interesting cast of characters who set out to save the world or the kingdom against pretty impossible odds. It’s been a couple of years and the details escape me but my enthusiasm remains high. I may actually re-read book to catch hold of the thread again. N.S. Dolkart is an author I expect great things from.
So, that ought to keep me out of trouble this summer! Plus I’ll be fitting in the ‘Demon’ books I’ve got coming in the mail … somehow. That may involve losing some sleep to reading time but I expect it will be well worth it. What are you reading this Summer? Let me know!
We’re easing back into the work routine, it’s going fairly well, despite one abusive patron already, during my second shift back. Keep it on the road lady, I haven’t used the system or tried to locate a book or dvd in months! Oof. I have caught up with making all the flyers I need to and am working on assembling materials for the take-home crafts, and packets of information for the contests I’ll be running and things like that. I’m learning all the new protocols, all the new procedures, etc, even as we wait to phase most of it out whenever that happens. I’m enjoying being back in the building, being among the books, getting to casually chat with a coworker, even at a distance and through our masks. I’ve got my new materials budget starting next month, it’s been slashed, but I will make do. I’ll hunt for what bargains there are to be had, solicit more donations of gently used books, etc. That’s all good. And yet I am still contemplating quitting my dream job.
I get stressed out having to go there, stressed by the extra steps we need to go through to track curbside pick up, stressed trying to talk on a phone through a mask, while the phone slips against the mask as I try to use the computer, stressed by all the cleaning, the cleaners make my skin peel, the gloves make my hands wildly sweaty and uncomfortable, I’m just very stressed by work right now and by the pace at which people are rushing to “get back to normal” without adequate time between steps to see what impact the lifting of restrictions will have on virus spread. They are just going to create a new surge of this horrible virus and we are all going to be forced to quarantine again. 😦
Stress is a big factor in my negative feelings toward working, but it isn’t the only factor. I got used to a new, softer rhythm of life, I have been able to be a better wife, better mother, better pet-mom, vastly more prolific artist, and despite all the stress of the pandemic a generally happier person in a bunch of ways. I had more time to read, more time to learn new things, I liked it. Normalcy kind of sucks. Being stressed, rushing places, having to plan dinner for my family and a stupid, sad separate dinner for myself. (usually a couple of granola bars and some water for me. bleh) Not working allowed me to reach out, online of course, and keep up with my friends more, connect in new, untried ways that have turned out to be hella cool. I feel more of a sense of community with all my friends than I did when we were all rushing out to jobs all the time, driving kids around, constantly running errands and busy, busy, busy! Not that I was idle at home, I mean now I am cause it’s a billion degrees out, but I was painting, writing, working from home, cooking a lot, reading, planning, dreaming, just living. And it was good.
We’ve been lucky, we’ve been able to continue to work from home through this nightmare, we have been getting paid when others have been laid off temporarily or permanently, lost their insurance and suffered hunger while not being able to pay their bills. We have friends who are struggling through this and it’s just so stressful. We help where we can but I wish we could do more. I want to fix all the problems and it sucks that I can’t, that I have to choose where I feel like we can make the best impact at any given time. When the virus comes roaring back and we are all forced to go back home I think it might be worse the second time around. Folks that lost jobs will probably still be out of work and how are they supposed to eat and live if our damn government doesn’t support its citizens? Doesn’t ban evictions and suspend the machinery of rent and mortgage collection and tell the greedy utilities they aren’t allowed to shut people off? If our government was more functional we would have universal health care, a strong safety net, and much else that the rest of the civilized world already has. We need to fix that!
On the plus side I supposedly have 6 kids showing up to this so, wow. That hasn’t happened since before the plague! 
Gen-Xer Remix 