So when last we left our intrepid heroine, she had just learned that her family was about to re-grow by two and that her son and grandson were moving in. Now, we also know she speaks about herself in third person, which is entirely unsettling. Josh and Aiden moved in last Saturday and all is going well for the most part. Aiden started school right on schedule and Josh has been applying for jobs and cleaning the hell out of my house. Nathan very graciously cleared out his own room for them to stay in without him being asked. What little he had (he is a minimalist) is now in the motor home and most nights, he sleeps inside because it has been down into the 30-40s at night. He crashes on the couch. We still have some things to pick up from Josh’s old place, but need a truck to do so and are working on that. Eric’s truck is having electrical issues and he is not comfortable driving it that far. Eric struggled with things for a while, but now seems in a good place. I struggled with Eric struggling rather than anything I was particularly feeling about the situation. It feels like what needs to happen and you all know I am a “go where you are led” kind of person, even if I have to trail-blaze through a jungle or conquer new kingdoms to get to where I am led. I lost some freedoms and had some responsibilities added, but hey, water over rocks. It all flows away and I’m left strong and clean with only a tiny bit of erosion. Other than Eric’s truck being out of commission at an inconvenient time, I really cannot ask for things to go better than they have this week.We can’t get Joshua’s bed due to the truck issue, but everything else, we can grab on a trip to Sacramento next week. We have no idea how long they will be here. I am certain I want Aiden to finish the school year in the local school because he is very happy there and has already been in four other schools this academic year. Josh has to get a job and find a place to live on his own. I finished what I believe is my favorite book yet, Rose of Avalon. It is the second book in the Seven Sisters of Avalon series and I am just tickled to death with it. It went into full publication yesterday in e-book format and this morning in print. You can order either by going to www.rasboldink.com. Please contact me directly if you prefer to purchase a PDF version instead. I am taking an unexpected few days off between projects. I planned to jump right into the next one yesterday, but got derailed. I have had Dragon NaturallySpeaking for months now and never installed it, never tried it. It is a speech recognition program and I wanted it specifically to dictate into MS Word my mother’s book of poetry for publication. She was a fine poet and I wanted to share her work with the world and likely still will. Last night I went through around an hour of tutorials on the program and today, installed it and did some work with it, around eleven or twelve pages. There is a huge learning curve and I do not mean with the user, but with the program. You have to work with it a great deal to get it customized to the point that it is even usable. Some simple phrases I repeated five or six times and still the program could not get it right. There are those that swear by it and I am not sure I have given up completely on it, but the time I will have to spend going back and making corrections is going to amount to longer than if I just transcribed the thing directly. There is an emotional component to the situation as well. Most of my mother’s poetry is damned depressing. She wrote poems about her deceased siblings, deceased siblings-in-law, deceased parents, deceased grandparents, deceased friends, deceased babies of friends, deceased spouses, and pretty much everyone who is dead got a poem. She wrote poems about her living friends and neighbors, the dispatcher for the cab company she used, my brothers, her stuffed animals, her clothespins, and even a poem about a damned sanitary napkin. She never once wrote a poem about me. It should not bother me and I thought I had released the hurt of that when I wrote Leaving Kentucky In the Broad Daylight. The more I read her poems aloud, the sadder I became. Finally, I just closed the book, closed out the document, and closed down the program. Mom, sweetie, I love you and I miss you, but you’re going back on the shelf. It might be vindictive in embracing an, “I was not a priority to you, so you are not a priority to me” mindset, but I’m just not up for any rejection, even post-mortum, right now. To me, it amplifies all of the other times in my whole life when I was not important enough to someone. It shouldn’t. It’s petty. My mother loved me and blah, blah, blah. For today, however, dust can collect on the hard work and emotion she poured into everyone else. No wonder I’ve been listening to the Frozen soundtrack so much lately.
Water over rocks. Doesn’t define me, barely affects me…it just flows and goes.
So no poetry book for a while, I am thinking. My heart craves new creation; not walks through the old. Maybe I will tackle it again at Samhain (October 31st, Muggles).
Instead, I expect to follow through with my first plan, which was to begin a series of short stories. I have several novels that I have worked on (literally and you might want to sit down for this) since 1982. I do not have confidence that they can grow into a full novel, so I will work on them as short stories. This will let me have a faster turnover of work and give me more variety. I think that is the next step in the process.
I really have nothing more to say than that. I feel myself fighting hard against my natural instinct to hide and hermit during a time when things seem to suck. Water over rocks. Trying to let it flow over me and not define me or damage me. Sometimes you are down on the Wheel of Life. Sometimes, you are up. Sometimes, you are under it. Sometimes, you just wish you were a drinker.