My interesting life

 

Some of my friends almost visibly wring their hands over me, spending my days at my computer, sometimes not leaving the property for days (I do have plenty of company). Several years ago Jacob asked one of his parents, “What does she do all day out there? Play on Facebook?” He should read this post. It’s true, some days are a bit boring—like when I’m bogged down in a manuscript that isn’t going at all the way I think it should. But today, I’ve been amused by the variety of projects that came across my desk.

Yes, there’s politics—if you know me at all, you know I speak out at injustice, and these days I see a lot of it. Hot topics with me today are the school voucher bill about to be considered in the Texas Senate and the appalling reaction of Texas leaders to two mass shooting within a week. So yes, I wrote to my state representative about the bill some legislator introduced to give trauma training to third graders and install bleed stations in third-grade classrooms. Third graders? I cannot abide the acceptance of violence with no effort at prevention. And tonight I’ll write my state senator protesting the school voucher bill which, to me, is a sop to the rich and part of Abbott’s program to undermine public education, which it will effectively accomplish. The proposed stipend will not enable many more families to choose private education, and unless things are changed, there’s no accountability for how the money is spent.

A year or so ago, I did the basic writing for twelve tile plaques to be placed on the exterior walls of the Will Rogers Memorial Center, chronicling Texas history. Since then, the text for those plaques has been rewritten, edited, amended, and whatever by a variety of hands including those of my good friend Carol Roark who knows far more about Texas history than I do. Today those captions came back to me once again (I think this is the second time), now in final form. Perfect. Would I just check punctuation. So I did, found lots of capitalization problems and a couple of sentences that just didn’t make sense. If you cut out extraneous stuff and take a sentence down to subject, verb, and object, nonsense jumps out at you. So back they went.

And then a newbie writer sent me a copy of her work-in-progress, a historical mystery set in Chicago. I forgot I had volunteered to be a beta reader because I’m always interested in Chicago history. I’m glad to do it, though—along the way others have helped me, and I’m glad to pay it forward.

I also had on my to-do list for today an evaluation of a manuscript under consideration at a university press, so I wrote up my notes, filled out the forms, and sent it off.

And finally, this evening I go an email from the Southwest Writers Collection containing the unpublished manuscript of a young-adult novel I wrote years ago. It had to do with the house of a childhood friend where life, at the time, seemed much more exciting than my staid household. The friend I wrote it for died several years ago, but her older sister wants to read it. So I’ve sent it off and saved a copy for myself, which I’ll read when I get to it.

With all that reading stacking up my project tonight is to finish the mystery I’m reading so I can clear the decks and review the forthcoming mystery by a friend, which I’ve promised to put in this blog, and read that Chicago novel. The mystery is a thriller, which is not my usual fare—I don’t like to be scared or depressed when I read. But this is absorbing. When it gets tense, I just take a break.

The Burtons are at the Paschal golf team’s end-of-year dinner tonight, so I’m on my own. While they eat Italian food, I’m thinking about what I can do with a can of sardines. I have plenty because for a bit every time I put anchovies on the grocery list, Jordan came home with sardines.

Not a bad day. Not boring at all. In fact, a lovely way to spend a rainy day. We had a slow drizzle much of the day—perfect for those new plants that were put in yesterday. Not so perfect for Sophie who has declined to go out except for one quick and desperate trip.