It’s been three weeks since my spinal surgery and I’m feeling human. I walk and practice my physical therapy exercises and I’ve even had to get back into cooking. I’m doing well.
It’s been a strange and hot summer. No trips. My husband had his first cataract surgery (and another looming in the distance) and my surgery. The world is in the middle of a pandemic and we can’t travel outside our own state comfortably.
We renewed our passports recently because they were about to expire only to find we can’t travel outside our country because no other country wants us. We might be infected with Covid-19.
My blogs this year were about having more experiences and I was thinking travel. Well, the world had other ideas. I’m experiencing what it is like to have surgeries and be stuck in the house. But I’m getting some writing done! Pandemic or not, the world goes on.
I’m almost finished with the second in the Keystone Lake series, Blooming Greed. I really need to drive to Keystone lake in eastern Oklahoma and get a tour of the dam, but I can’t right now. They may not be giving tours at this time. I’ll call first. In all the time I owned property at that lake, and saw the dam in flood stage and drought, I never toured the dam itself. I’ve done about all the online research I can do.
This is the summer of our discontent. I’m not alone in my complaint. At least I’m not sick in a hospital with a tube down my throat. I’m not unemployed with small children because my place of business is shut down. I am really doing fine, just had my plans disrupted. So, I write. Maybe I will write better because I’m desperate. And when I can’t write, I read. So many books, so little time.
What are you reading in this our summer of discontent?
I’m reading a new book, Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray Love. You might like it. It is about living the creative life and is mostly geared toward writers, but also other artists.
I spent a couple of days this week at the Oklahoma Heart Hospital South. No there is nothing wrong with my heart. But my spine is another story. My neurosurgeon works out of that hospital and he gave me some new scaring, my third back surgery, and I have some new fusion in the L4 L5 area.
Sandhill Island is a mythical place – a place in my mind. But I could live there. I would love the slow pace and the self-reliant people who live near and on the water. They have adventures, romances, and lives of every type. They are islanders. As I write about them I can smell the salt air, and hear the relentless waves washing up on shore.
IT’S HOT OUTSIDE! And I’m not talking about the political scene. The temperatures in Oklahoma have reached the century mark and the humidity is trying to keep up with it. If you’re going outside, do it early morning or late evening. I’m sure it’s the same wherever you are.
If you follow my blogs you know they’re normally light. I talk about the current book I’m promoting or the flowers blooming in my garden. But today, I had to say something serious.
I’m sure the rest of the world is having as much trouble staying home and doing nothing as I am. But this is getting ridiculous! It’s not as if I am doing without, we have food to eat and a nice home to live in, but I really want to travel. And I can’t at this time.
Last year when The Wild Rose Press called for submissions for novellas based on a fictional Vermont Inn, the noise of mad scribbling and typing could be heard around the globe. Not all of The Wild Rose Press authors live in the United States. The story would be built around a quaint Vermont Inn nestled in a tiny town with lots of eclectic characters.
It’s Mother’s Day and today we celebrate mothers everywhere and their contribution to the world. I looked for a picture of my mother in the stacks that desperately needed attention and came up with this one. She was young, maybe unmarried, I don’t have a date on it. She married Dad right after WWII and they had my oldest sister a few years later. Eventually they had 3 daughters. I resisted using the one of her in a bathing suit. She might have come up from the grave to chase me with a stick! She was a piece of work.
The second picture is my daughter who is now a mother too. This adorable photo was taken when she was about two years old. She has been my lifelong friend as well as my daughter. I had her with I was barely 20 and I had to practice motherhood on her. But when her brother came along was when I really became a mother. Women with one child are mothers, but women with multiple children should be canonized before death. I have a niece with 8, my grandmother also had 8, and I have a friend who raised 5 on her own. I only thought I was stressed. Stressed, but blessed. I couldn’t have survived without them.
Last week in my blog I talked about the Heavener Runestone 
