Last Day in Illinois

We leave this Illinois farmhouse early tomorrow morning to return to Seymour. We could have left today but there are still some people we want to see, plus Gary and I know better than trying to brave Black Friday traffic combined with a Wisconsin snowstorm.

 

I consider these trips to Illinois as a mini-vacation, but I still managed to get a few things done while here.

First, I put all the depressing Christmas stories together into a manuscript. I am still missing two stories I forgot to bring with me, plus Wade will be adding in some of his short stories. In the end, we will have twelve of these sad tales, so I now am considering Twelve Horrible Days of Christmas as a title.

I put all my addresses into a small address book that I can carry in my purse.

I wrote a post for this blog every day and somehow found places to post them. I didn't think that would happen yesterday since almost everything was closed. However, the Galena Steak House, where we had our Thanksgiving meal, did have wi fi. Today we will go to the Sterling library late this afternoon after all the shoppers have tired themselves out. I will post this story and talk about coming here for a book chat in January.

I wrote a generic Christmas letter. I am not fond of them but this was a crazy year so I put all the writing, travels, camping and possible changes to come in a two page missive and made 30 copies. After I updated my Christmas card list, I addressed and stamped 39 Christmas cards. I still need to write one long letter to a friend and locate two addresses then the whole batch will be mailed on Monday.

With all that, I still had time to relax. I read five books while here. The last one was A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, a Wisconsin author. I kept telling Gary so much of it sounded familiar and later told him the author must have been reading Wisconsin Death Trip, by Michael Lesy. It's a book that makes my short stories tame because it is a collection of newspaper clippings and photos of Wisconsin at the end of the 19^th century. It is a litany of suicide, epidemics, and murder. I have the book somewhere around my house.

Sure enough, at the end of the book Goolrick give's credit to Lesy's work. It was not the kind of book one should be reading in a farmhouse in the middle of a Midwestern winter. I will pick up something more cheerful for my next read.

We'll be in Wisconsin for another month, then it's back here to Illinois for another week. I'm organizing book talks here.