Truly a workday--and a bit of self promotion

 

Nothing on my calendar all day—a day to knuckle down and take care of all those brush fires on my desk. So I answered emails, checked comments on Facebook (yes I check to see who has commented on my blog because I want to be polite), straightened out my calendar (somehow I had confused Saturday and Sunday for January 1, until a friend pointed it out to me—then I had to correct with people with whom I had made plans). I wrapped a couple of gifts, wrote some Christmas messages to my grandchildren (yes, the kind with green inside) and filled out that awful form to return a package. I ordered socks for one of the girls, a tiny thing, and the sent me a large, navy men’s shirt. The return form requires a twelve-digit item number be squeezed into a quarter-inch space—impossible and frustrating! I filled in the holes in the bibliography for the Helen Corbitt project and corrected some format problems in a short story.

And that brings me to the blatant self-promotion I want to do tonight. I am so grateful to so many of you for following my career as a novelist and, I hope, reading my books. But did you know I have written short stories. Note that’s in the past tense. I probably haven’t written one in almost ten years. My theory is the right impetus has to hit you for a short story. I can’t sit down and say to myself, “Okay, I’m going to write a short story. What should it be about?” I must have the idea, though sometimes the idea can come from a direct challenge, such as the opportunity to be included in an anthology of WWII memories. I wrote “An Old Woman’s Lament about War” in a day for that one. More often, my short stories came from small incidents in the past—I’d read about something and think that would make a story.

The point of my rambling tonight is that my short story collection, Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories, is available on Amazon, and I’d like to suggest it to you if you have someone on your guest list who reads in short bursts. That’s what short stories are for. Mine are almost all about women—I think of one exception—from the nineteenth-century American West to the present. A couple of them have won Spur Awards from Western Writers of America.

The title story, “Sue Ellen Learns to Dance,” was inspired by a Dorothea Lange photograph of a Depression-era mother in a battered old pick-up, her wan and depressed children clustered close to her. One of the saddest pictures I’ve ever seen. But I balanced it with the memories of an old woman who once, young and beautiful, had danced in Fort Worth’s Hell’s Half Acre. “We were never wicked,” she insists.

“Fool Girl” comes from an incident in Harry Halsell’s reminiscence, Cowboys and Cattleland. I simply did a gender switch on the main character. Halsell’s book, by the way, is available in several editions but almost always with the same material. Part of a long line of cattle ranchers and connected by marriage to the Waggoners of Texas, he was the father of journalist Grace Halsell, author of Soul Sister, among many other books. Soul Sister is the feminine equivalent of John Howard Griffith’s Black Like Me.

But I digress, wandering away from my own short stories. The story that still makes me cry at the end came from a record in Fort Worth’s Log Cabin Village files about a Commanche attack on a settler’s homestead. “The Art of Dipping Candles” won a Spur from Western Writers and a Wrangler (Western Heritage Award) from the National Cowboy Museum. It like several others, was written quickly, as though once the idea came to me, the words just poured out.

If you’re inclined to read short stories, please check it out: Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories - Kindle edition by Alter, Judy. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

And forgive me for such an outright bragging about my own work. I just felt, as I reformatted “The Art of Dipping Candles” that the short story collection is often overlooked.

 

Loose ends—or as my professor/friend calls them, “brush fires,”—kept me busy all day. I was dealing with transferring some funds to a more conservative site which meant talking to Colin frequently and to the broker, hashing out details, reminding the broker that I have four beneficiaries, not three, and my estate is all planned. Then I had to set up an online account with the brokerage company—a nice young lady talked me through that.

Next on my list was what to do with my mother’s dressing table. Doesn’t sound like a big problem, does it—but it is. My brother has it, decided it doesn’t fit in their house, put it in the garage, but is reluctant to sell it. Yikes! Of course, I don’t want to sell it—it matches my bed and the marble-topped buffet squeezed into my bedroom. But there’s no room in the cottage—or wait. Is there? If I moved Mom’s sewing cabinet to storage and my childhood rocker, maybe it could go next to my bed. But it might crowd the room visually. I called and asked Cindy to measure it, having previously asked her to send a picture so I could share with the kids. She laughs at all this, but I don’t think she understands how serious we all are about my mom’s stuff. So, having done all that, Colin calls and says he might take it. That meant I had to figure out why I had the wrong email address for my oldest child—and re-send the pictures.

Besides, I had another problem on my mind to share with him, and he had momentous news of his own. More on all that later.

As I sat at my desk checking emails, etc., this morning, I was aware that I could hear Sophie breathing. You know that wet sound when a child is all stuffed up? That’s how she sounded. I went back and forth, trying to catch the vet between patients. Finally got him, and he prescribed a new medication that I will pick up tomorrow. Meanwhile Sophie seems some better, but I have seen these temporary resurgences before. I’ll get the medicine tomorrow.

My car is in the shop, mostly for cosmetic repair which really turned out to be repair of damage done by the environment, by commercial car washes, etc.  The shop owner who was detailing it called this morning and said he had to rotate the tires and get an oil filter for it. Then he called this afternoon to say the car has wheel locks and where is the key? I should know? I didn’t even know what wheel locks are, and I sure don’t have a key. Spent some time on the phone tracking down a solution but, as always with a VW, I landed back at the dealership. They will sell me equipment for removing the locked lugs and replacing them. “You can do it yourself,” a cheery voice said. Did she know she was talking to an eighty-year-old woman on a walker? But when I investigated further, asking about having them change out the lugs and rotate the tires, she began to talk about labor charges. Volkswagen is notorious for their labor charges, plus I would have to wait at least an hour and a half while the work is done, since I’m not mobile enough for their shuttle. I opted to pick up the parts and have the same mechanic do it. Please pray that I do not have a flat between now and then.

My left hearing aid won’t keep a charge. I’ve been experimenting with it for days, hoping to pinpoint the problem. I was to see the audiologist at 12:45 tomorrow—until I found out I wouldn’t have my car. I asked to reschedule. Then I found out I would have the car, albeit without tires rotated. I reinstated the appointment. And the hearing aid quit about one o’clock.

To cap the day off, I went to dinner with friends. The Tavern has absolutely the best hamburgers I’ve had in forever, and I enjoyed my meal and the companionship, though it was noisy. Until I realized I came home without my debit card. So add that to my errands for tomorrow.

My brain is still whirling, and I’m tired. No wonder.

The stay-at-home writer, sort of

Thankful today for a bright blue sky, plenty of sunshine, and almost balmy temperatures. I have a good friend who refers to the details of daily life as brush fires, and in his terms, I spent the morning putting out brush fires. I was reminded of an editor I used to have at TCU Press who once said she knew the advice—pick up one piece of paper at a time and don’t put it down until you’ve finished dealing with it—but she had a hard time putting it into practice.

This morning I faced recipes I wanted to put in my ongoing cookbook—some I fixed this weekend, some from earlier days—along with some tax matters to solve (who gets away with sending a W2 in March, when I sent all my information to the accountant weeks ago?), yet another revision of Murder at the Bus Depot. This time I had to unpublish it and will have to wait a couple days and then re-publish. This has been an enormously difficult book to get online, and I think it’s “them” and not me. Out of four phone calls to take care of business, I was asked to leave four messages and have only had a return call from one. Grateful it was the accountant. The other calls had to do with a pirated copy of my chili book, an appointment to check my hearing aids, and I can’t even remember the last one—what will I do if they never call back and I never remember?

A morning like this makes me so grateful for a career that I can continue as long as my brain and my fingers on the keyboard hold out, one where I can work at home in my pajamas with my dog sleeping peacefully nearby, and one where I can work at my own pace, set my own deadlines. I’m quite sure having that desk-oriented career keeps me young—well okay, not in years but you know what I mean—maybe active and alert are better words. Friends who are more mobile than I do a lot of volunteer work that keeps them on the go, and I regret that lack of mobility won’t let me join them. But sometimes I see their volunteerism lock them into schedules that are almost like working again, and then I appreciate my life all the more.

I do admit to spending too much time following current events these days—who can resist? I won’t burden you with opinions tonight, but I will quote Dorothy Parker: “Should they whisper false of you/Never trouble to deny/Should the words they say be true/Weep and storm and swear they lie.” You know without my telling you who needs to heed that advice. He must be an awful poker player.

My stay-at-home career wouldn’t be quite so happy and fulfilling if I didn’t have family and friends who come to visit, who take me out for lunch or dinner, who give me the taste of the world that I miss in my solitary work.

Tonight I had a wonderful taste of that larger world beyond my cottage. Jordan and I went to a reception following Mary Volcansek’s Final Lecture at TCU. Mary is a dear friend—she calls me her big sister—and a client of Jordan’s. It was a lovely affair and a great tribute to Mary’s long academic career. For me, it was a bonus—a chance to greet colleagues I haven’t seen in a while and visit at length with one pair of old friends. Granted, I had a hard time hearing, but it was still a heady experience and made me feel part of the mainstream again. Wine was good too.

Going to bed happy tonight.