My mother died of cancer 18 years ago, one day before seeing her great grandson born.  She tried desperately tried to hang on to see that little bundle of joy, but nature had other ideas.  The next day I became a grandmother.  I couldn’t attend the birth because I needed to help my dad, who had Alzheimer’s and heart disease, plan a funeral.  That morning I put my husband’s pickup in a ditch when I hit the only patch of ice in the whole town.  They say things come in threes.

In my quest to empty closets before my kids must tackle the mess, I began going through some of the things related to the death, burial and probate of my parent’s estate.  Why I kept all the paid bills from the probate I’ll never know.  It might be a good idea to keep them for a year or so after the probate, but 18 years?  I mean really. But they went into recycling today after I picked through making sure there were no Social Security numbers on the papers.  I shredded the ones that did.

I also found a couple of boxes of my father-in-law’s things. In one were two flashlights that still worked after sitting for 14 years!  I need to send a letter to Duracell Batteries congratulating them.

I just wanted to let you know I am still working on clearing my life.  There remain seven boxes in the front bedroom closet that I will tackle this summer.  I hate to think they are seven boxes of pictures.  I have two sisters who might be getting packages in the mail! I think my closets have been storage bins long enough.

Yesterday the Enid Writers Club and the Public Library of Enid and Garfield County hosted a writing workshop with Jennifer McMurrain http://www.jennifermcmurrain.com/ as speaker.  She talked about being Indy Strong – or being a self-published author.  Jennifer has created her own publishing company – LilyBear House http://www.lilybearhouse.com/ – and she is the author of 17 books, short-stories & novellas as well as has participated in several anthologies.  She writes for Chicken Soup for the Soul and is an Amazon Best-Selling author.  She lives in Bartlesville and was kind enough to travel to Enid for our workshop.

I’ve known Jennifer for several years and always marvel at her energy.  Mother of a grade-school aged daughter and soon to be mother of number 2, she takes her job as novelist seriously.  She writes every day and she self-publishes those works.  She also is involved as a beta reader for Andrew Kaufman – Amazon award winning author. I’d like that job!

As usual, I learned tons from Jennifer – mostly I learned I need to find some of that energy too.  She is gentle and caring and always lends a hand to other authors.  I can’t wait to see her again at the OWFI Conference coming up in May.  If you’ve never attended an Oklahoma Writer’s Federation, Inc. conference check them out https://www.owfi.org/. They have great speakers and you are bound to learn a lot and meet some very interesting people, like Jennifer.

Are you writing this week?  Tell me about it.