Category Archives: Memoir

Goodbye 2022, hello 2023

Posted on by
2

Happy New Year!

I’m not going to use this post to hate on 2022. After all, it could have been 2020 or 2021. If you weren’t in Ukraine or otherwise afflicted by tragedy, things generally got better: the world reopened, which was at least good for those without crappy immune systems in the household.

I taught Freshman English again, which was fun, although the pandemic has clearly left its mark on students. They faded away in greater numbers than usual, which a colleague told me was the new normal. Those who remained were mostly lovely and talented, though. The pandemic also left its mark on me, since I came down with COVID twice, but I can’t say I’m any the worse for it (well, actually, I’m still leery of large groups or singing in choir).

I’d gotten pretty good about the newsletter and this blog for a while, but that went to hell.  I also let teaching distract me from the current draft of PRIDE & PRECARITY, which I’ve decided needs a little more work on the ending.

In terms of literature, this was mostly just a big reading year for me. Here’s what I say on Goodreads about the 150 books I reviewed. If they have five stars I thoroughly enjoyed them. If they have no stars I probably also enjoyed them, just didn’t feel they were literally “awesome.”

Okay, yes, there are also a couple for which I put up what amounts to short warnings, because I thought they were cynically packaged products designed to trick readers out of their money, but it’s not politic to trash a book by literally saying that when you’re an author. So you’ll have to read between the lines on those. God knows plenty of other authors either actually liked them or were willing to lie through their teeth to claim they did. (That’s one of the unspoken “team player” requirements of traditional publishing. Yuck.)

But to focus on the positive: there are some recent reads I thoroughly recommend: THE DEAD ROMANTICS and THE UNDERTAKING OF HART AND MERCY were both delightful if you enjoy witty romances with fantasy elements. SEARCH was the most enjoyable literary novel I’ve read since the last post here, but also very funny and very good, written like a memoir of a woman’s experience on the search committee of her Unitarian church. I think it’s absolutely brilliant, but I suppose you may need to be someone who has served on nonprofit boards or committees or attended a church to fully appreciate its delicious dissection of the politics involved. And THIS STORY WILL CHANGE was a wonderful, thoughtful memoir of marriage and divorce.

In terms of marketing, this year I tried TikTok for posting video reviews of other books. I then quickly tired of posting video reviews of other books. Maybe I’ll finally try to do some TikToks about my own books. At any rate, this year one goal is to actually reread my own backlist and see what I can pull out of it for marketing on TikTok or otherwise.

I started going “wide” with the books, as noted a couple of posts back, but made pathetic progress. Ingram apparently never bothered to continue with the paperback I thought they were transferring from Amazon. I’ve decided to move ahead through a different channel.

In case you didn’t see it, I also had a post on five favorite deliciously wry novels with Christian themes at shepherd.com.

I will be pushing the wide publishing harder this coming year, but I also have to get ready for my first spring semester in five years, and for a class I also haven’t taught for at least that long. We are also transitioning from one internet teaching platform to another for next fall, so I need to either prep for that or walk away from all my existing digital assets, which seems kind of dumb (if tempting).

One priority for 2022 was my health, and I continued losing weight, although the 30 pounds I lost didn’t get reflected in any way in my annual blood sugar levels. I was a bit nonplussed about that. I’m now cheating occasionally, since it doesn’t seem to matter. (Though if the A1C goes up this year, I guess I’ll know it does matter.)

For 2023 my #1 health goal is to focus on getting back in the habit of lifting weights. My aging bones could use it, and maybe also my aging brain.

That’s about it for goals. Like many of us, I’m not feeling terribly ambitious right now. Making some progress day by day, week by week, will just have to suffice. I think it would, in fact, arguably be a privilege when just surviving is hard enough for so many.

And frankly my cat sometimes makes even a little progress seem like a little bit of a stretch. This was Penny assisting me as I drafted this blog post.

a cat between the author and her laptop

Are you feeling more ambitious? Let us know. Maybe you can spark something in the rest of us!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unmasking, then COVID, then more COVID

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been August since I posted here, mostly because I was asked to return to the classroom this fall by a department head suddenly short of adjuncts and I decided I would, if only for one class. After two full years out, I had a lot of work to do to get ready, so that’s been taking priority.

My son also lost his apartment and a lot of his stuff in a big apartment building fire in August, and it took a while for him to find a new place and for us to get him and his cat moved out again. (Penny the cat is so happy to have me all to herself again. Her nemesis always hogged my lap.)

Anyway, by the time my class began, I’d had my Omicron booster for a couple of weeks. I didn’t want to wear a mask in the classroom when nobody else was, so I decided to just start living life the way almost everyone out there did already, confidently mask-free. I even rejoined the church choir when it started up.

A return to normalcy! It was lovely.

Then someone in my choir got COVID and a couple of days later I came down with it, too. Of course, I could have gotten it anywhere, but sitting one pew in front of a powerful professional singer with COVID is probably a pretty good exposure.

That COVID diagnosis meant being barred from campus for five days, and then a health services interview to determine if I could go back. Luckily I had a note in the Syllabus about class moving fully online in that situation, and so it did, even though setting all that up while feeling like utter crap isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Worse, some students either never really caught on, or didn’t want to.

Paxlovid prescribed by my doctor thankfully had me feeling better very quickly, and I had those extra days at home to try to track down errant students through email and our digital platform. Then it was back to the classroom, masked in an N95, and two normal classes.

And then I went home from that class and realized I was coming down with a cold. A bad cold. This was terrible timing, with midterm grades closing in the following week, so I was happy to get a negative COVID test. I figured my immune system was just running through all the viruses I’d missed in isolation. Just to be sure, though, I tested again the morning before the next class.

It was positive. Twice. (I really didn’t want that result!) So I took the class back online, but students hadn’t had any reason to expect my Paxlovid rebound and my emails and announcements felt like they were going out into the void (actually just out to the most engaged students, as usual, but usually in person I can hook a few more along).

I’m still hunting lost sheep out there and hoping the rest of the semester doesn’t include more exciting ways to scatter them into the hills.

As for the writing? Well, right now let’s gently (and in a safe, socially distanced way) cough and say I’m on a reading break. I hit 122 Goodreads reviews for 2022 last night. A lot of them are romcoms and Regency romances and other romances because I’m finding them very relaxing right now and also, of course, because I’m about to publish one.

(affiliate link)

I’m currently enjoying AMONG THE JANEITES, by Deborah Yaffe (affiliate link at left), which I suppose counts as marketing research since my next novel is a PRIDE AND PREJUDICE update. It’s quite entertaining if you’re an Austen fan, though this book also makes it clear I’m just a dilettante.

Yoffe records a beleaguered husband’s comparison of Austen mania (especially the balls and costume play) to Star Trek convention culture. Yep. I may have picked the wrong fandom to geek out in earlier in life. I always pretty much just hoarded Austen to myself. I’m also not into cosplay in either universe, and I’ve steered clear of Austen fanfic, unless it’s been traditionally or indie published. Not because I don’t think I’d enjoy it: for exactly the same reason, I have never tried cocaine.

Anyway. I’m still here, and feeling better day by day and hoping the grades I need to calculate tomorrow won’t be too depressing. I also hope this finds you healthy and happy and wearing only whatever costumes or work clothes or sweat pants or pajamas you want to be in.

P.S. if you ever need to take Paxlovid: I’m a big fan. It worked brilliantly! Just don’t be too surprised if you might need to circle around with the virus again, and without its benefit the second time (though in my case my symptoms were not as bad as the first time, either). It certainly doesn’t happen to everyone, but it can happen.

 

 

 

 

If you’re reading this, you survived 2021!

Posted on by
Reply

And so did I, although it’s been a bit scary lately. There’s the omicron variant; there are tornadoes demolishing entire towns; there are people being shooed out of a Costco into blowing smoke and ashes. And I won’t even get into politics.

For me the last two months have also offered the banal middle-class horror of Lots of Stuff Breaking at Once. I unexpectedly require a new boiler, a more reliable car, minor (but expensive) dental work, and minor (but expensive) surgery for Penny the cat.

Penny irritated at the attention I’m giving a book.

It could be a lot worse. I have savings. I still have a house to put a new boiler into, unlike a lot of other folks. I still have my teeth AND my cat. And I haven’t lost anyone dear to Covid or anything else, knock wood.

It’s good that the new variant seems a little less brutal, at least to the vaccinated, since we’re all getting rather “whatever” about it. Last week I finally managed to get my hands on four home tests, but my stepdaughter agreed that using them was kind of pointless since they’d already had a bunch of exposures that week. We still went, because it was Christmas, and I hadn’t seen them in ages, and those kids were due for some pumpkin muffins. (The tests will come in handy before I fly to visit my folks this winter, assuming the plane actually takes off.)

If the pandemic taught me anything, it’s that I have too long taken for granted the ability to get together with people I enjoy. Like many of us, I want to do more of that in 2022.

Which brings us to RESOLUTIONS…

Yeah, no, let’s just call them GOALS

(Maybe they’re a little less likely to be quickly abandoned that way.)

Besides the getting together: 1) Take care of all the broken-down issues without much more agonizing, 2) Get back in the product management groove with the books, 3) Lift weights at least twice a week instead of maybe once every two or three weeks when I finally stop saying I’ll do it tomorrow, and 4) Work towards giving a full 10% of my income to charity on a monthly basis instead of trying to figure it out at the end of the year when (cough) I might suddenly be facing a whole host of unexpected expenses.

Yes, part of me is thinking but isn’t it a good thing you didn’t spend all that money already? Because you sure as heck need it now! But I don’t think it really works like that. Have two coats, give one away, that’s the ideal Jesus preached. And I still literally have at least three coats. (Four, if you count a really ratty one I ought to throw out.) If I’ve already spent that money, I’ll adjust as I go along. If life as an adjunct and a writer has taught me anything, it’s how to cut back on expenses.

Oh, and while the ten percent goal comes from the Biblical concept of tithing, it’s not all going to my church. I’ve been involved enough with that organization’s budget to know that while it requires my regular support, too, if I want to actually feed the poor, help heal the sick, build affordable housing, etc., I’d better support various charities that actually focus on that and do it well: Feeding America, Doctors Without Borders, Habitat for Humanity, and more, including good local charities. And most of them would benefit from steady monthly donations instead of the usual end-of-year clumps.

So I commend them to your planning for 2022, too.

So that’s it. Maybe I’ll publish the next book, or maybe I’ll hold it until I have a sequel written. I’m planning to read FEWER books in 2022, because I got to 122 I liked enough to recommend on Goodreads this year and that’s ridiculous. (That’s either #123 up there in the photo with Penny or #1 for 2022.)

And tell me your goals for 2022 if you’d like. I’ve changed the moderation on posts so that those of you who’ve had comments approved before will get published without having to wait for me to notice your comment waiting.

P.S. If you’d like more of a catch-up on my writing, I was recently the subject of a lovely interview by Suanne Schafer. Folks are telling me it’s a good read, and I certainly enjoyed doing it.

A practical inheritance: A bowl, a strainer, a brush, some tweezers, and sex

Posted on by
Reply

By Sandra Hutchison

While helping my mother clean out my 96-year-old grandmother’s house before and after she died at the beginning of this year, I was of course tempted by a number of items, mostly old tools. They became my grandmother’s legacy to me. But my favorite items are not what I would have expected.

My great grandmother’s bread bowl

Thelma’s mother set her bread to rise in this bowl. It’s not in perfect condition at this point but is clearly beautifully made (and easy enough to restore, when I get around to it). I used to make bread before I did the math and realized the increase in my electricity bill more than offset any savings in the bread budget. My current stove is gas, though, so one of these days I may actually use this bowl for its original purpose again. (Of course I have a solar roof now, so electric would save me even more money.) In the meantime, it holds just about anything that isn’t wet. In the picture above, it’s the temporary home for a stalk of flowering balsam my neighbor gave me for next year’s seeds.

This really ugly food mill

I actually bought one of these in shiny stainless steel some years back to help me process tomatoes. Maybe I didn’t know to adjust it or something, but it ended up trashing 90% of my tomatoes, so I happily ditched it in a garage sale when we moved (and warned the person who bought it that it might only be good for applesauce). But I figured I’d try again when I saw this in my grandmother’s kitchen and could see that it had clearly been used a lot. This one works like a dream, so homemade tomato sauce and tomato soup are finally in my repertoire.

A clothes brush

I only recognized this because of Downton Abbey. This is a cheaper version of the brush John Bates would use to clean Lord Crawley’s beautiful wool suits. All I can say is that I’ve finally found something to clean wool and fleece of cat hair that actually works! Yes, lint tape works, too, but it takes a lot and that stuff isn’t cheap. (And in case you haven’t already figured it out, those little red velvet lint “brushes” you may see for sale are just a good way to fill up the landfill with useless plastic.) Of course, the challenge for me is finding a cat-hair-free spot on which to brush clothes down.

Tweezers and scissors

I found a whole set of different kinds for personal grooming. No one ever warned me getting older would mean growing hair in places I never had before (and losing hair in places I had it, not that I mind that when it comes to my legs). I’ve reached the age when I occasionally just take a razor out and shave my face and neck, but plucking is way more satisfying — if I can just get a grip on the little buggers. Over the years I’ve accumulated innumerable cheap tweezers that have proven useless for anything but cleaning dirt from under my fingernails. Most of these hand-me-down instruments from Grandma’s house, on the other hand, actually do what they are supposed to. (Yes, of course, I gave them a good cleaning.)

Sex

Just kidding. Except not really. In the back room we found a stash of relatively wholesome old girlie watercolors that probably belonged to my grandfather. And in the bedroom, near the bed, we found a pretty heavy-duty electric vibrator. My mother was appalled and threw that thing away faster than I could say, “Hey, let me see that!” Still, I thought it was pretty cool that my grandmother’s libido had clearly persisted well into old age.

Of course, I’d had clues earlier, like when she gave me a bunch of really kinky science fiction novels by John Norman back in my teens. And just a couple of years ago she passed along a big bag of old perspiration-stained lingerie, as if she thought it was all too precious not to find new use. Then there was the time she insisted my mother take her recently-deceased last husband’s penis pump back to the urologist so someone else could use it. (Poor Mom!)

The young Thelma Mae Quick

In truth, Grandma Thelma was always a bit more hot mama than doting grandmother. She could be self-centered and manipulative (especially of my mother), and some of her lies stretched far beyond the social lies of the traditional Southern female. Yes, she could cook up great fried catfish or lima bean soup, but she didn’t do much other grandmotherly stuff. I never got the feeling she was aching for a conversation with me. It honestly surprised me to discover she’d carefully saved every card or letter or school photo or homemade gift she’d gotten from us over the years.

So we were never all that close, but she was still my grandma. In the end, she showed me what ninety-six years of fairly cheerful persistence looks like. I think I’ll take that as the most valuable gift of all.

Thelma and Sandra

Girls, women, boobs, bras, and the march of time

Posted on by
2
A flat chest and smoking ... two things that are not as stylish today as they once were.

A flat chest and smoking … two things that are not as stylish today as they once were.

This post was inspired by a new event at the local arts center that seeks to collect new bras for women living at the local YWCA. I know some of those women, and I think it’s a great cause. Although I clothe myself largely out of thrift stores, I know that the chance of ever finding a bra I’d want to wear in a thrift store is pretty slim.

It got me thinking about my own fraught relationship with support garments.

Today I have what doctors call “medium-sized breasts” on their mammography reports. But I’m not really a fan of what they call medium. They seem annoyingly big and floppy to me, especially now, as middle age and gravity set in.

I wish I were smaller. Like I was in junior high. Except not really. Because I hated being as small as I was then — smaller than EVERYONE ELSE. Once in seventh grade a girl sitting behind me in music class tried to flick my bra and realized I didn’t have one on. Or maybe she’d already known. “Why aren’t you wearing a bra?” she asked — loudly.

Everybody’s head swiveled our way. This was meant to shame me, of course. Who can resist a good public body shaming in seventh grade?

“Because I don’t need one,” I said, my tone pitched to suggest that she was an idiot.

“Oh,” she said, and dropped that line of attack completely. I had successfully faked her out. Because, of course, I was only pretending that I wasn’t horrified at being called out to the whole class for my bra-less state.

Seventh grade was when we first started changing for gym class and realized that we were in a grim race to develop just enough at just the right time to avoid the shame of being too big, too small, too flat, too busty, too tall, too short, too fat, too hairy, or not hairy enough.

And I was way, way behind. A boy who had a tube draining fluid from his brain was the only reason I wasn’t the shortest kid in the whole junior high school. And he was of no help at all when it came to me being the flattest.

So I didn’t need a bra yet, not at all, but I went home that day and told my mom I wanted one. It would, of course, be a training bra, which is a really weird term, as if breasts need to be trained to grow into the right shape, or putting on bras requires balance and skill. I suppose it’s really about training us into the idea that we’re probably going to be wearing one of these contraptions every day for the rest of our natural lives.

I stayed in training bras for a while. My height shot up in eighth grade, but my breasts took longer to develop. I actually grew almost inch in height my freshman year of college and I think I grew one or two cup sizes then, too. It was more than I was willing to admit, so my bras were too small for a good part of my life.

From what I’ve read, cup size denial is a major force in the universe. It’s why women are often urged to get expert bra fittings. I once tried to seek help at a Victoria’s Secret when I needed a foundation undergarment for a fancy dress that just wouldn’t work with any bra straps. It was awful. The clerks were young and had tiny perky breasts and had no idea what to do with a woman who didn’t know that she should have gone to Macy’s and thrown herself on the mercy of some older clerk who really knew her way around mommy boobs.

Through trial and error in that Victoria’s Secret dressing room with those terrible strapless foundation garments, I did finally discover that I was a whole cup larger than I thought. Apparently straps can let you get away with a really bad bra fit, or at least allow you to think you’re getting away with it.

In the back of my mind I also thought that when I got older, all bra-related angst would disappear. Why would I even need a bra? Who’d care whether I wore something under my frumpy old lady clothes? There would be no more gym classes, and no more mean girls.

But I wasn’t counting on gravity. Now, when I sit around the house without a bra on, I get boob sweat under them. And I once saw a boyfriend’s frail elderly grandmother’s breasts when I was helping her get dressed. They were long and skinny and so pendulous she probably could have thrown them over her shoulder. She was in her nineties and she still needed her bra.

That’s why I applaud the organizers for putting this event together, and why I contributed some money towards bras myself (they’re getting a good wholesale rate on them). I’m not going this year, maybe because I subconsciously associate formal dinners with things like that closet at Victoria’s Secret. If you’d like to hear other women’s tales about their bras, though, it should be quite entertaining!

In other news….

MissionaryDatingfinal“Missionary Dating and Other Stories” has been free for the last month, but I’m about to either price it up or take it down. It’s not doing much but serving as a distraction. I’d say the market has spoken on that one. So if you ever wanted it, now’s a good time to grab it.

You may wonder why I don’t pull down “The Short, Spectacular Indie-Publishing Career of Matilda Walter” while I’m at it, since it only has two Kindle reviews, but I’ve noticed that after someone downloads that one, a paid purchase is like as not to follow. So Wally and Jonathan and their little romantic comedy are at least earning their keep.