Plans

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.

Gary and I will get up at 5:00 am so that he can get an early start to Dixon, Illinois. He's going there to help his aunt with her yard work. He should be on the road by 6:00.  Then I have to hide some eggs for Evan's Easter egg hunt and clean the house.

At the same time, I have to start Easter dinner because Chris, Tisha and Evan will be here after church. I am a bit concerned about it because though I can get the scalloped potatoes and ham in the oven, I have no idea how long the church service will take.  While the rest of the meal is easy enough to prepare ahead of time, without Gary there to keep an eye on on the pan, the potatoes could wind up either burned or under-cooked.  Besides the Easter celebration, we are having communion, there is a baptism, and a reception of new members.  If there's a short sermon, no problem, but what are the odds of that?

I may slip away during the sermon, come home (only four blocks away), check on the meal, and go back in time to play the offertory with the organist and direct the choir in the benediction.  Or...I'll ask the choir to do a three Amen benediction and have the organist give them their cues and I'll leave early.

Whatever I decide, the first order of business is to get to bed early so I have plenty of sleep.

The Sixties

I've been working on a series of short love stories for Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

I began with "Love and Phenology" two weeks ago, loosely based on my relationship with Gary.  This week I wrote "Love and the Sixties" based on the time I lived in Chicago and met my ex-husband.  It is fiction but I certainly used some real events.  I was involved in the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and wound up in a movie theatre with my finance, for example. There was a bed overhung with apidistra,  but it was at a friend's apartment. That's where we ate limpa bread slathered in honey. There was a bag lady, but she barely was part of the true story. I showed my first draft to the critique group on Tuesday and they thought the bag lady needed a bigger role, so I enlarged it.

That is the way I write fiction, taking bits and pieces from my own life, moving them around and adding more bits and pieces from my imagination until I have a story.

My writing partner Wade says "Love and the Sixties" is the strongest story I've written so far.  I don't know, I never really have a sense of what I've accomplished until months later.

I've decided to continue in this vein, so my next story will be "Love and the Seventies," so I am asking myself, what was I doing in that decade.  What was going on in the United States?  Where was I living?
What kind of plot can I invent using the facts I've got?

I do enjoy writing.  So many stories to tell.  I wish I had started earlier.

Health

Gary and I have been on a health kick lately.  We go to the fitness center three times a week to lift weights to work on our upper body strength. I've been adding weight to my regimen all winter. I can tell it's helping now that I am gardening and lifting brush.

Gary is walking on a treadmill.  I walk around town and use a recumbent bike.

He's cutting down on cholesterol, I'm watching my calories. We try to eat the proper servings of fruits, vegetables, dairy and nuts. We eat whole grain bread. We eat fish twice a week and have cut down on red meat. We both take vitamins.

Gary seldom has a problem with sleep but getting enough sleep can be a problem for me.  I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, but I've learned that I can simply be awake for an hour or two then go back to sleep.  During those hours, I read, do sudoku puzzles, or make notes about whatever story I am writing.There's always a pad of paper with a pen next to my bed. There's always a nap in the afternoon if I need it.

So here we are, doing everything right.  Why does he have a cold?

Sickness and Health

Gary has a cold or flu today, we're not sure what.  He's coughing and sneezing and generally doing yucky stuff.  He has been sleeping much of the day and will take Theraflu to get through the night.

He doesn't want me to do anything. He actually has a "do not disturb" sign on the bedroom door.

This is fine with me, because with such a beautiful day, I've been outside working on the gardens.  The bright sunshine is making me feel so good. So for the moment, it's Gary's sickness and my health.

My worry is that by the weekend it will be my sickness and then how will I get through Easter services? I've suffered through services like that before and it isn't pleasant.  I'm hoping that the flu shot I got in November will still be effective.

*****

Wade Peterson and I have been writing weekly short stories for our Black Coffee Fiction blog since September.  We now have a total of 28 stories between us.  Our next plan is to put together a short story collection and self publish it as both an e-book and a paperback by October.  So this week we began to select the stories.  We're thinking about holding back on the depressing Christmas stories and making them into another book later on.

We are asking our readers to give their opinions. Are there any stories that they particularly liked?   Check them out at http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

Wisconsin Election Day

Sometimes I wonder what my foreign readers think of this country's politics.  We do seem to be very silly lately. 


Today was an election day here in Wisconsin.  There were local elections, but everyone from city council members to county judges were running unopposed. That happened a few years ago, and in disgust, I threw my name in to run for city council.  Darned it I didn't win and I was stuck on the council for two years. I learned my lesson and never did that again. 


The only real reason to go down to vote was for the referendum to expand the Fox Valley Technical College.  I always vote for education, and FVTC got my vote.  


Then there was the Republican presidential primary election. In Wisconsin, the electorate can choose in which party's primary election to participate.  President Obama was on the ballot but was running unopposed in the Democratic primary, so I decided to mess with the GOP.  I asked for a Republican ballot. 


Which of the candidates would get my vote?  It wouldn't be Romney, because if he takes Wisconsin, he'll get the nomination.  From the standpoint of the Democrats, the longer the GOP candidates tear each other apart, the better it is.  From a logistics standpoint, I should have voted for Santorum, but his ideas on the role of women are so awful, I couldn't force myself to do that.  


Gingrich?  Paul?  Then I noticed that Michelle Bachmann was on the ballot.  She quit the race months ago, but her name was still there.  That was such a ludicrous choice, it was perfect.  So Bachmann got one vote in Seymour.  


One good thing was that the GOP's attack on citizens' voting rights, the voter ID bill, was declared unconstitutional by a judge who placed an injunction on the law.  It will probably go all the way to the US Supreme Court but for today, it wasn't in effect.  


After we left city hall, I had to run next door to the police department.  Our United States Supreme Court decided by the usual 5-4 margin that the police can strip search anyone they arrest for any cause.  I could theoretically get a strip search for walking a dog without a leash.


Sure enough, one police officer was there, a cute one.  Seymour does have the best looking cops around. I had to tease him.  I asked him if I were to be arrested, if he would do the strip search.   He turned a lovely shade of red. 


Political silliness has that effect on me.  It's been that kind of day.  

Gardening

Two years ago, I was walking with a cane and wearing a knee brace and couldn't get into my garden.  Last year we had rain or snow almost through Memorial Day and with all the mud, I couldn't finish clearing, and planting didn't happen either.

Now with a warm spring and a lovely piece of equipment Gary gave me, I am once again enjoying gardening.

When the Yardworks bench is in this position, I can sit and work on things like pruning bushes.  When I flip it over,

it becomes a nice soft  kneeler.  The bars on the side make it easier for me to get up and down.  (I am, after all 68 years old.)

When this equipment isn't in use, it easily folds up and hangs on a nail in the garage. 

Clearing flower beds gives me the chance to take out any frustrations or aggravations out on the weeds.  I particularly like going after dandelion roots and slicing out the junk trees and shrubs.  There's a lot of yanking and digging involved, so I am getting a great upper body strength workout.   

So I continue working from one bed to another.  I should have the entire job done by the end of the month. 

April Fool's Day

We must be getting old, Gary and me.  Neither of us thought about playing tricks on each other on April Fool's Day.

I do have a tricky problem.

I direct the chancel choir at the Seymour United Methodist Church.  We do our best to select anthems that add to the service by coinciding with the pastor's sermon.  For instance, last week we sang "Bearing His Cross" because she was speaking about Jesus's torture and his journey through Jerusalem carrying the cross he was to be crucified on.  Today was Palm Sunday so we sang "Triumphal Entry" as a call to worship, but the sermon was about the crucifixion so we had a song about that, too, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross."  

After Easter, Pastor Rebecca is embarking on a series of sermons on controversial issues. For the most part, we can easily find anthems but two of the topics are abortion and homosexuality.  Whew!  Where do I find music for those subjects?

In fact, I came up with a song for the sermon on homosexuality. "Somebody Bigger than You and I" works with the idea of God loving us as we are, which seemed to fit with the theme for young gays and lesbians, "It Gets Better".

But abortion has us stumped. In addition, from what I can tell, the choir is split on the issue. (I'm pro-choice myself.) It finally occurred to me that our choir hasn't had a break for months.  Maybe that will be the Sunday to take one.  Gary has been talking about a trip to Illinois to work on his aunt's house.

Unless someone has a suggestion, I think that's what we'll do.