Happy Halloween!

I stuck it to The Man last night–I watched the Charlie Brown Halloween special last night without subscribing to a streaming service–I broke out the videotape we bought the kids when they were little and we watched it and we LIKED it, too! Take that, Multinational Conglomerate of Entertainment!

(We had to watch it last night because Mississippi State is playing on TV tonight, although I don’t know why we’re bothering–we’re playing Alabama, for God’s sake.)

My advisor has hit upon another bad habit I have when writing my memoir–I summarize conversations instead of writing them as scenes. I think I did it that way to distance myself from the immediacy of the feelings inherent in each scene, Hopefully I’m strong enough now to put them into real conversations with dialogue and reflection and not have to put up a barrier between me and the story. I don’t do it all the time but enough that it is noticeable.

Bob and my youngest are out driving–they’re practicing parking, which is her really weak point. So they are working on that while running errands.

I don’t have too much more to do on my editing this week which is good. I won’t get behind or try to cram it all in at one time–I get to think about it and make thoughtful revisions instead of just reactive ones.

I hope everyone is staying safe from the virus–keep being careful. Godspeed.

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A Nice Mention

I got a mention on twitter about one of my stories for MCIR about disability. A reporter with the LA Times found it doing research for her law school class and highlighted it on twitter as a good article for anyone interested in the case and in disability. So that was a nice recognition for my work.

I/m up early this morning–I will probably go back to sleep after I finish this. Have a couple of errands to run later today. And Bob’s laundry to do. But that won’t take long.

I’ve been sitting with Ellen Ann’s edits for a while about my thesis and I make take them up today. I need to read them all through again then start on them one by one until I finish. It’s mostly turning summarized conversations into scenes–it’s something I do when I can’t quote the conversation/ don’t remember it in all its details. So we will see what we can do with that.

Everyone hang in there about the virus. Stay safe out there. Godspeed.

Drying Out

from Hurricane Zeta–we just got a lot of rain, no damage or power loss that I know about. I hope this was the last gasp of 2020 and things will normalize somewhat soon. Points south of us got a lot of damage, particularly on the Coast. But we will survive; we always have down here.

Starting to have a schedule for doing things during the day. It helps. I need to be thinking abut posts for December for http://www.BPHope.com. I have a new one up about how I tried to educate my children about bipolar disorder and the different ways they reacted. So that was good. I have another one about traveling and keeping med schedules on point coming out likely late in October before Thanksgiving.

I got my edits last night and she definitely doesn’t like my penchant of summarizing conversations when I don’t remember all the details. So I’ll do a lot of rewriting on this section as well. I need to do laundry this afternoon and go to the grocery story–I’ll try to do it tomorrow. Hope everyone is having a good day and that you are staying safe from the virus.

Caught Up

I finally caught up on the edits I was behind on–I finished them yesterday at night. Now I will get a set of fresh new edits sometime today and will try to figure out when to get them done. But I feel good at catching up and not just letting them keep sliding to where it would be too overwhelming. But I discovered something–I’m only two pages away from 300 and only 100 words away from 80,000. So next semester may actually be cutting away at some of what I’ve written! We will see.

Now I need to catch up on laundry. I’m going to try and do that this afternoon–get my laundry caught up so I can do all of Bob’s tomorrow without mine in the way. We’ll see how that comes out as well.

I feel more energetic today–I slept in some and have been scrolling Facebook and Twitter. That’s always a good way to waste an hour or three. (Just kidding–it’s more like an hour at a time.)

Almost done with quarantining my youngest one. She goes back to school next Monday. I hope it’s the last time we have to do this, but I bet it won’t be. I’ve about acclimated to staying at home and not going out during the week except for the pharmacy and the grocery store. We do most of our running around on weekends doing errands as a family.

I’m on the downslope with my thesis; I have about six more essays to turn in and three or four more weeks to do it in. Then I turn it in and not think about it until the next semester. I doubt I do that–I’ll probably keep tinkering with it one way or another.

I need to talk to Bob abut how to do Halloween. We’ve bought candy, but I’m leaning toward just putting out a bowl and telling them to grab it themselves. Of course, neither our city nor our subdivision has made any announcements about what they want us to do. So it’s just guessing on our part.

I suppose I will go eat lunch now. My middle one is coming home to vote and eat dinner with us next week, so that will be fun. Lots of fun to look forward to. Hope everyone has a great day!

Got to Write Today

I wrote my book annotation yesterday and today need to do my research log. But that would entail doing some new reading, which I haven’t done yet. So I think I will read at lunch today and then send everything off.

Candy is here so we have had a good talk, mostly about the election. She thinks it will be obvious who won on election night–I think it will take longer but not as long as 2000. But we will see.

My youngest is home for another week in quarantine so she is getting restless. She wants to be back in school. But she is valiantly trying to get all of her work done like she would if she were at school. And at least she is doing that.

I feel better than I have for a while. I feel energetic and may actually do some revising before lunch and see how much I get done. I’m still working on my wedding but don’t have much left in that to do. Then I have all the rest of the edits to do. But that’s really the big one–get it out of the way and most others are small fixes.

We will see what happens. Hope everyone else is having a productive day. Stay safe from the virus. Godspeed.

Wake Up Call

My oldest called me this morning and got me going. She was just checking in before she went to work today. We talked for a bit and I got up. Haven’t done much of anything, but I’ve been awake. I did wind up sleeping most of yesterday afternoon but it felt good. I need to work on what I turn in tomorrow for thesis; I’ll probably start that later on.

Not too much longer before I turn in the whole thing–we finish school before Thanksgiving this year. Trying to let the kids be sick at home instead of at school. I don’t know as that has worked, but that’s the reasoning.

My youngest has another week of quarantine then she goes back to school next Monday. Hope she has been able to keep up with what she is supposed to be doing. She says she is. All I know is that she is putting in the time on the computer so I assume she’s doing school work.

So I need to get to work. Hope everyone is doing well with the virus and keeping safe. Love to all.

Sleepy

We went to Sunday School where Bob taught then came straight home because Bob’s allergies overwhelmed him. So we sat and watched Brother David Jett preach on the livestream, and he can usually keep me awake. Not this morning. I keep dozing off. Bob was too. We’re both exhausted. I think I’m just going to nap today unless Bob has objections. If so, I will revise.

I got so frustrated yesterday. I am writing about my wedding and I could not remember anything about the second song that was sung except for who sang it at my wedding. I spent time on the internet googling “Christian wedding songs 1993” and just could not come up with it. So finally I went and got out my wedding tape and played it. Turned out I was wrong on the other song I thought my sister had sung. SO i was all over te map trying to revise yesterday. It was good to watch it again. So very sweet were those days.

SO I didn’t get as much done as i wanted yesterday but I did write some. So that was good. I’m about to head out and get lunch, then eat, then set up supper in the crockpot for tonight. I thnk it’s going to be a good day, sleepiness aside. Hope everyone else is having a good day and staying safe from the virus. Godspeed.

Conference

i had a conference with my thesis director yesterday. We talked about my tendencies–one of giving away the ending to a story too early, and the other of simply narrating facts instead of reflecting on them as well. So we brainstormed on ways to correct those glitches. The first one is easy to fix now that I’m aware of the tendency. The other one is harder because I do it in some places and in other places I don’t. So that’s more subtle to catch on to.

But she gave me a lot of reassurance in the conference–she said she knew she was always ticking off points I could redo but that really, much of it was very, very good. I asked if it was boring reading and she said noooo. Fascinating reading, she said, So that was encouraging.

I actually went back and did some revising after our talk I was so pepped up. So I hope I’m able to do more today. I’m working on talking about my wedding. I think she wants me to talk about some of these areas I brushed over so that there is some relief from the doom and gloom. So we will see what happens today.

My mood is slowly improving. I guess I just had a dip and had to push through it and take care of myself for a little while. I still have laundry I need to catch up on so I will see if I can get that done soon as well. Hope everyone is staying safe from the virus and taking care of themselves as well. Godspeed.

Thesis Soundtrack

I found an oldies country station on the radio and it has been what I’ve been listening to during the entire thesis process thus far. I hoped that it would bring up more memories of being a kid and being young as fodder for my memoir. I think it’s really worked well thus far. Puts me in a nostalgic mood.

I don’t have rose-colored glasses about my raising but going back this time has tempered some of my original anger I’ve had about it. Especially now having been a mom and parented girls through all the difficult times. It’s helped give me some perspective. So that’s good.

I need to go back and start revising again. The only things I really have to do today are getting Bob’s laundry ready, a conference at 1:15 p.m., and cooking dinner. Maybe this can be the day I take back my writing for myself and work on it after this whole burnout episode. Maybe I can stop feeling burned out if I am careful with myself today. That would be nice.

Let e go check on Bob’s laundry and see what I can find out with it and get it done. Then eat lunch and revise. We will see. Wish me well as I climb back up from whatever this has been. Thanks for thinking about me.

A Good Night’s Sleep

Maybe that’s all I needed. I do feel better than yesterday, although not fully up to snuff like I’d like to be. I’m still not sure of what I can accomplish today but we will see. I hope I can work on my thesis some this afternoon. I need to go grocery shopping this afternoon. I’m going to start Bob’s laundry soon so that will get done. I have plenty to do; it’s just the motivation to get it done.

I have a conference for my thesis Friday. Not sure what we’re going to talk about–I have enough to keep turning in written out already–I just need to revise them soon so I don’t get behind.

My youngest is still in quarantine–she won’t go back to school until November 2. She’s being good keeping up with her online classes as far as I can tell. Bob wants to bring us lunch home so we are going to have that bit of fun with good food for lunch. One of these days this will all be over. I don’t know when or how, but it has to end sometime.