I attended Enid’s Fly Film Festival https://filmfreeway.com/FLYFilmFestival yesterday. The eighth for Enid, but a first for me. I went with friends on Saturday morning to Enid’s Gaslight Theater and it was cool and comfortable inside the theatre. Drinks and snacks were available and there was plenty of seating.
I love to support the local arts and yesterday was so much fun. I was only there for the morning films, but they were great. It seemed each one was better than the last. I saw short independent films, and you could tell by the audience if the film company was present. I was unable to stay for the longer feature-length films though I wanted to. I watched the credits as they rolled by and recognized at least one writer.
These films are created over the year and then entered for a contest. The categories were Best Short Film, Best Oklahoma Short Film, Best Student Film, Best Documentary, and Best Feature Length Film. I wasn’t present at the Awards Ceremony and didn’t see who won, but I also didn’t get to see all the nominees. Maybe next year.
The film community gathers for parties after the day of films and I’m sure they earned the right to party after a year’s worth of work on films.
I look forward to next year and spending more time at Enid’s 9th Fly Film Festival.
What are you reading/writing/viewing this week?
It’s raining in Oklahoma! And finally cooling down those intense temperatures. I looked out the front door and saw a large garter snake on the sidewalk trying to get out of the flooded flowerbeds that were cracked and dry last week. Hard to blame him. But rainy weather is a good time to write, and I’ve been working on my third novel on Sandhill Island. I’ll work some more on that today.
A few weeks ago, I got a message about the death of Jim Christina of The Writers’ Block online radio show on LA Talk Radio. Jim had become a friend over the years as he interviewed me several times when I had a new novel published. “Let us know when you have a new book, we’ll talk,” he’d say. I believed him and emailed them with a new publication and was always welcomed. Hopefully, I didn’t overstay my welcome. But he always made me feel at home.
It’s the dog days of summer! It’s been a while since we’ve seen temperatures this high and I’m ready for fall.
I’ve been writing. I’m working on the third Sandhill Island novel and as always, I love being back there. It helps to soothe my need for the sea.
This week, following a 50th anniversary celebration, my husband had his third shoulder surgery. Yes, I said third, on the same shoulder—in a year. I guess the older you get the more your body refuses to heal correctly. The surgery didn’t hold the first time. His body reacted badly to surgery the second time and they had to quit before they could finish, and the third time was the charm, we hope. 
June 24, 1972, I married the love of my life at the ripe age of 19. We were broke, living in his parent’s rent house, with a baby on the way and no idea what to do with it. But we persevered. 
Then after our freshman year of college we married. The baby came much too quickly, and we were both terrified. But she soon taught us all we needed to know about how to parent her. Four and half years later we did it again—this one a boy.
It’s Father’s Day and since I wrote about my husband’s days as a father last year, this year I’ll talk about my dad.
He hired on at Vance AFB in 1960 to teach maintenance. He spent some time in Houston with NASA as Director of Aircraft Maintenance. Then later returned to Vance and retired in 1989 after becoming the Director of Aircraft Maintenance for them. 
(I’m the middle kid in front of him). 
Toward the end of his life, in the hospital for heart surgery while my mother suffered with lung cancer and chemo, his dementia increased. His doctor smilingly told me Dad thought he had once worked for NASA. I informed the doctor that the frail old man in the chair who couldn’t remember what he ate for breakfast that day did work for NASA and that was the one thing he still remembered. It was the highlight of his life—next to his family.
It’s been an uneventful week. I like those now and then. Next Sunday is Father’s Day and the following is a milestone anniversary for my husband and me. Fifty years—and they said it wouldn’t last!
Several years ago, my aging neighbor across the street brought me some strawberry plants in a three-pound coffee can. He could grow anything, and they were overrunning his little area where they were planted. I was excited to grow strawberries in the front flower bed. They lasted a year and fed the birds. I was not a successful strawberry farmer.
