Planning a Vacation During a Pandemic

I feel like there should be sitcoms devoted to the comical ways life has changed since this pandemic. Like the fact that I received this in the mail yesterday:

It's from a Jehovah Witness who, due to social distancing, was unable to come to my door. Now their only path to converting all of us heathens is to hand write really long letters. I was so tickled by this little piece of mail that I almost didn't have the heart to throw it away. (Almost. I ended up throwing it in the fireplace. I do appreciate this lovely woman's effort, though).

But nothing beats trying to plan a vacation during a pandemic. Last year, my extended family (Mom, Dad, sister, brother in-law, nieces, etc.) and I booked a summer cruise to Alaska for my grandpa's 90th birthday, which falls on July 13, 2020. At the end of May, our cruise was cancelled. We were disappointed, but we moved on. We found a resort on the island of Kauai that was still welcoming tourists. We booked the resort and all our flights. In some ways, the new vacation sounded more fun than the original.

Then in June, Hawaii brought down the hammer. They decided that anyone flying into their islands would be required to be quarantined for fourteen days. Not a possibility for us, considering we were staying for only a week.

After that, Clint found an amazing deal for an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. Jamaica has no travel restrictions or quarantine requirements--they're pretty much welcoming tourists with open arms. Clint and I went ahead and booked it. My mom and my niece were super excited, viewing this vacation as even better than the first two! The one caveat was my sister would now need to get passports for her kids super fast since we were only a month out from our vacation. No big deal; the passport agency is willing to expedite passports for an extra fee. 

Oh wait. No they're not. Not during a pandemic. Apparently a worldwide virus required them to downsize their staff and they no longer have enough employees to expedite passports. 

So we waved goodbye to our Jamaican dream. After that, the conversations regarding "Where should we go for vacation" reached ludicrous levels, with a lot of manic-type crying and kicking and screaming (along with some hair pulling) over the subject. Some ideas originally open for discussion due to the public reopening were quickly disregarded due to these same areas going down into lockdown again, or due to safety concerns with the recent looting/rioting (because, you know, a pandemic isn't enough. Let's throw social upheaval into the mix as well).

So what's the verdict? What did we decide to replace our beautiful Alaskan/Hawaiian/Jamaican trip with? Are you ready to be awed by the glamor of my upcoming vacation?

We're RV camping at a KOA about 2 hours from my house.

*sighs*

Yep. Most of life's 'new normals' are inherently unfunny, but there is some humor in all of this if you look hard enough. Like, really hard. Really really har--yeah, okay. I hate this sh*% too.

Typewriters

Three quick things:

1. Shannon's MIA because she no longer has a laptop.  Unless a new one spontaneously sprouts from one of those tall Pinecone trees in her yard, this problem might go on for a little while.  Until then, let's just pretend this blog is mine.  ALL MINE.  *insert maniacal laugh here*.
2. DoT is still moving forward.  This is noteworthy only because I thought once I started back to work, it would be shoved on the back-burner until summer break next year.  It actually depressed me--the thought of all that hard work sitting around, collecting dust.  As it turns out, I was able to apply my grandpa's advice.  I find an hour here, twenty minutes there, to keep the story alive.  It's awesome to see my word count bar moving forward every day.  It's not moving forward in big leaps like it was over summer break, but it is slowly inching it's way toward 100%, and the thought of reaching that finish line makes me absolutely giddy.
3. We bought Elijah a typewriter for Christmas.  I know--weird, right?  Like what nine year old boy wants a typewriter?  But it was inspired by a lyrics video for "The Lonely" by Christina Perri.  Elijah saw the video and fell in love with the typewriter and asked if he could have a working typewriter for Christmas.  I laughed, telling him, "Dude, they don't make them anymore."  But of course the writer in me fell in love with the idea of purchasing such a nostalgic piece, so we shopped around and purchased this one from eBay:

I'll have to let you know how long the honeymoon phase lasts with this thing before he casts it aside and returns to his iPad.  But I figure once he's bored with it, I can put it on display somewhere--maybe next to a quill-pen and a jar of ink--and daydream about the writers of yore.  And then maybe I'll feel inspired.  You know, to get off my ass, quit daydreaming, and actually write something.    

Oh yeah, the video.

  

Something Shallow/Something Sweet

Something Shallow: Summer's winding down to its end, so Trin and I decided to have some fun with hair coloring before she's back to school and I'm back to work.  She ended up with blue streaks, and I ended up with pink (I wanted blue, but she called dibs on it first).  This should [hopefully] wash out before the first day of school, but if not, it won't be the first time students have seen me with pink hair (I tend to lose bets).

See, it's just a tiny bit, although the streaks do go all the way down the back. I'm going to miss them when they're gone.  I get bored with my normal hair color.  Same with boring car colors.  Remember how the fifties-era cars were every shade of the rainbow, from candy apple green to Pepto Bismol pink?  What happened to those days?  Now cars are all white, and black, and beige, and red.  Just standard medal colors.  I think I was comparing this to hair, but it's late and I forgot what point I was making, so moving on. 

Something Sweet:  I told my grandpa in my last e-mail that I was starting back to work next week, so now my manuscript was going to come screeching to a halt.  This was his reply:

Remember, when you return to work, keep a note pad and jot things down so they aren't lost forever.  A writer learns to manufacture time; a few minutes, at times an hour, squeezed in between your demanding activities, to keep his or her story alive and growing.  It's like being in love; always on your mind.  I'm thrilled at the possibility you may have inherited this gift . . . from somebody in the family. 

Love ya, Grandpa

I loved this response in general because he didn't let me off the hook.  He basically said, "Yeah, life's tough, now get back to writing."  But the part where he said "It's like being in love" moved the hell out of me.  I think it's because a) I've never heard my grandpa make a reference to make-your-heart-patter-type love before, and b) he understands that ridiculous passion for creating stories from a blinking cursor.

The Rambling Times

On my old blog, I had a tendency to talk about a bazillion different things within one post.  It was very ADHD-esque.  For this newer blog, I sort of vowed to not do that.  I wanted to keep this new, uncluttered blog ramble-free, with each post focused on one topic.

Yeah, that ends now.  Sorry.  The good news is I put headings on everything, so you can skip all the boring stuff.

Guess I'll see you in three seconds at my siggy at the bottom of the page.

So, the happenings:     

Youth Safari:  We went to this very cool thing on Saturday called "Youth Safari," which is sort of like an outdoor expo-type-thing designed to introduce kids to outdoor activities that their grandparents' generation enjoyed.  There was rock-climbing, fishing, shooting (including black powder), archery, sling-shots, falconry, kayaking, and other things I can no longer remember.  It cost $30 per family, up to six members, and all of the above activities were included in that price.  It was very cool.  I have pictures on facebook, but I'm too lazy to retrieve them right now.  I might add them in later.

Raging Waters:  We went to Raging Waters on Monday.  We had an awesome day, with only two small mishaps.  The first was Clint got physically assaulted by our last slide--purple bruises all over his legs.  That's what happens when big boys go down slides.  The second was the fact that we took about a dozen photos, and only three came out.  Something is wrong with the photo app on Clint's camera, and it corrupted his pictures.  Here's the three that made it (so sad):

Hubby's Promotion:  Clint got accepted into engineer training at his work.  Here are the pluses to his new job:  

• It's a huge raise.  As in a we're-looking-into-installing-an-in-ground-pool-this-February-type-raise.

Here are some downfalls: 

• His hours are going to royally suck.  
• He has to train in Kansas for three weeks in August, and two weeks in December.
• Training is a total of five months, and his raise doesn't kick in until after he's finished (hence the pool in February).  
• He had to sign a contract yesterday saying if he fails his training in Kansas, they can fire him.   
• We're trapped here in the High Desert for three years. 
• He can't go on the cruise with me in November.  
• I don't like change.  

So the pluses and minuses aren't quite balanced.  I wonder if all of this is worth one stupid pool?  (The obvious answer is yes, yes it is. Hello, it's a POOL).

Dinner with Kristyn:  Kristyn is visiting from Texas, and we just had a fantastic dinner at Johnny Carinos last night.  She comes up about once a year, and it's practically a tradition now for us girls (her, Shan and I) to meet for dinner and gab for a few hours.  Dinner was fun, even though my first seat tried to swallow my ass and our waiter kept calling us his babies ("How are my babies doing?").  Overall, it was our usual awesome visit and I'm excited to see her again in October.

DoT:  I'm up to almost 53,000 words, but that doesn't seem like a big enough increase to change my word meter.  My grandpa has been amazing.  He helped me to reorganize my ten chapters into fifteen, and edited my entire manuscript (what I have so far).  Damn I hope I can get the thing published in his lifetime.

New cover concept:

I really like this one, although I would modify this image to include some of the symbolic items from my story.  Such as a grandfather clock tower in the distant mist ahead, with the time "7:17" peeking through.  I would also have leaves falling around her, a rat sitting on one of those posts, and a sundial pendant dangling from her right hand.  Okay, that's a lot.  But it looks amazing in my head.  And of course, I would change the fonts--Word fonts are so dang limiting and practically shout out that the cover was pieced together by a novice.  If I do decide to self-publish, my twitter friend and fellow writer Scott Moon referred me to this site that designs book covers for a mere $99: Pro Book Covers.  They've designed three covers for Scott now, and all of them look incredible, but none of them have that "YA" look I'm going for. I might go through them, but I still plan to shop around first.

Ifeoma:  I have to mention Ifeoma at least once on this blog.  She and I met through twitter, where we discovered that we were both working on manuscripts that we had both dubbed "DOT" (hers stands for Daughter of the Twelfth--isn't that a fantastic title?).  As it turns out, Ifeoma is not only my newfound DOT buddy, but she is simply a sweetheart of a person and a talented writer.  Check her out here.

Clocks:  I didn't realize it until the kids pointed it out yesterday, but I guess I'm sort of getting obsessed with clocks and time.

Blue:  My favorite color is now blue.

Okay, I think that covers this edition of the Rambling Times.

Hello Idiot, You Haven't Written a Book Yet

Summer's plugging along.  I wake up every morning and get to choose what I want to do.  Yeah, I know.  You hate me.  No worries; I'll be losing my mind with the rest of you workaholics come August.

Today I pulled out the weeds popping in around the pond and spruced up the area.  Exciting stuff (this reminds me of the time Mr. Moore challenged me to write about a super-boring day as if it wasn't boring, except for this time, it really is boring).  I also went to the movies with Clint and the kids.  I'm getting tired of going to the movies, but he loves it, so I bribed him.  I told him if he cleaned up the house (superficially), I'd go with him.  It was worth it.  I got nice buttery popcorn and my house looks great.

Yesterday was ridiculous.  I spent hours building an author's website.  The website looks awesome, with plot synopses for all four novels in my make-believe series and links to Amazon where you can buy all of them.  Except for one tiny problem:  These books don't exist.  I even included one-sentence reviews of my books from imaginary magazines like the "Station Stop" and "Tardis Talk" (that one was Trin's).  According to the Tardis Talk, my book is "easily the most intricately spun time-travel fantasy fiction novel of our generation."

Have I mentioned yet that THESE BOOKS DON'T EXIST?

It was probably one of the most ridiculous activities I've ever engaged in.  It was so addicting.  I guess some people have their Angry Birds and Candy Crush; I have my imaginary website for my imaginary books in the imaginary world where I'm an author.  The good news is around 11:00 last night I came out of my happy little cloud and realized "Hello, idiot.  You haven't written a book yet."

So there was that.

On that note, I visited my grandparents in Camarillo, and had a great time swimming with my grandma and talking shop (aka: manuscripts) with my grandpa.  He read the first eight chapters of DoT and gave me amazing feedback.  I think my grandpa would have made an incredible editor if he had chosen that route.  The last piece of feedback said this (I cut it out and pasted it into my manuscript notebook):

It might not be quite as elegant as the Tardis Talk's review, but hey, it's real.  Of course it came from my grandpa, so you have to take that with a grain of salt.  But still, I was thrilled that an 84 year old man found something worth reading in a story that I geared toward high-schoolers.  That same 84 year old man also discovered I used the word "just" in my story over a hundred times, but we won't talk about that.

One more thing before I sign off.  I'm changing the title of my book again.  "Face of Brahman" isn't doing anything for me.  I thought it might grow on me, but it's not.  And after thinking about it, it occurred to me that even I would probably walk right by a book with that title.  That's a pretty bad sign.  So now, I'm very tentatively calling Book 1 "Spiraling," Book 2 "Smoldered," Book 3 "Frigid," and Book 4 "Revived" (you can find all of these titles on my super cool website).  Other than a few obscure self-published pieces that use another tense of one of these words, the titles seem original enough.  As far as the series' name, I've reverted back to "Daughters of Time."  I can't help it.  I can't imagine the series being called anything else.

So off I go to change that sidebar name...again.  

Snail's Pace

I've been plucking away at my DoT manuscript, and I have concluded that I am the SLOWEST writer in the history of writers.  I just looked it up on my old blog and found that I started writing this novel on June 6, 2011.  TWO years ago!  Is this normal?  I feel like other writers are creative geniuses--they get an idea and run with it, burning the midnight oil in a writing frenzy until they have their entire story purged on paper (or screen).  If I ever do get this thing published, I hope my readers like being in a state of static anticipation, because it will be another twelve years before the sequel comes out.

But--I AM moving forward, and here's where I'm at!  (<--even a slug can be proud when it spends all day sliding forward five inches):

The last time I posted a word count was here at Ocean in a Cup, and I was at 23,427.  So I've officially added 10,000+ words over summer.   I now have almost nine chapters, but I am still missing chapter 5.  My current goal is to fill in the much-dreaded-chapter-5-hole in the next couple of weeks.  It's a tricky little bastard, because the more I try to fill it in, the larger it gets.  It's a hard phenomenon to explain...writing doesn't always follow scientific principles.  But that hole has become like this big mocking thing that likes to taunt me with its omni-holeness.  

On a semi-related (but not really) topic, I drove up the mountain to take my 15 year old niece Cassidi out to lunch today.  She is such an awesome kid, and I never get to spend one-on-one time with her.  We talked for three-and-a-half hours--mainly about "girl stuff."  She's a fun-spirited teen with the emotional maturity of an adult, so it's often easy to forget that she's not one, and honestly, I enjoy talking to her more than most adults.  But she also picked my brain about my manuscript, which was very cool (I don't get opportunities to talk about it much).  She has been so excited about my book, which gets me excited about it because a) her enthusiasm is contagious and b) her age group is my target audience.  She also gave me tips today about what NOT to put in the book (i.e. "Don't put a scene where the main character is describing her attractive features in a mirror but pretending she doesn't think she's pretty--that's so annoying").  What trips me out the most about writing a book is the people in your life who emerge as your biggest support system.  I always expected Clint and Shan to root me on (although the quantity of their encouragement is staggering).  And of course, my grandpa.  But a sixty-some year-old retired teacher from my work?  Or my 15 year old niece?  Or others, who emerge from the woodwork every now and then to cheer me on from a distance?  Those are the ones that take me by surprise.  

  

Jamais Vu

Most people are accustomed with the term"déjà vu," which is the feeling or sensation that an unfamiliar/novel experience has been experienced before in the past. Many people, however, are not familiar with its opposite, "jamais vu", which is the feeling that something that should be familiar is actually unfamiliar. According to Wikipedia:

Jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before...Jamais vu is most commonly experienced when a person momentarily does not recognise a word, person, or place that he or she already knows...

I only bring this up because I have been experiencing this lately!

 Or am I just losing my brain cells?

Incident 1: I have an opal necklace that I frequently wear (Jeremy bought it for me as a graduation present). A couple weeks ago, a coworker admired the necklace,and asked if it was opal. I hesitated, because suddenly, I was no longer sure it was an opal. Part of me rationally knew that it HAD to be, but it just seemed....wrong. I kept thinking opal sounded like the wrong stone, and every time I said or thought of the word, it generated an image of a fake pearl. For days afterwards, I tried to recall exactly what the name of the stone was, even though my brain kept screaming, It's OPAL you moron!!!

Incident 2: My favorite news anchor is Shepard Smith. Although I don't get to listen to his program that often (it conflicts with my work schedule), he has been my favorite news anchor for several years now. During the aftermath of the recent Boston terrorist attack, I was listening to the news in my car, and the news reporter stated, "And now we take you to Shepard Smith, who is in Boston..." Suddenly, "Smith" sounded incredibly mistaken. In that moment, I had the feeling that his last name HAD to be something else, because it couldn't be "Smith."

Incident 3: I was in the car (again), listening to the radio. The song "Bittersweet Symphony" came on, and that's when this jamais vu crap hit me again. I was mentally snagged on the word "bittersweet." This time, it actually was a good feeling though. I was turning the word around in my head, marveling over the simplicity of it, and wondering why the English language didn't jam other contradictory words together, like "darkbright" or "nearfar."

This feeling has hit me several times even prior to these incidences (which I believe is the case for many people). I remember several years ago, when I had been up writing an essay for hours, I suddenly started to doubt the spelling of the word "the." In that moment, I was convinced I was misspelling it. I also recall a couple times repeating a word out loud over and over and OVER until the word lost its meaning and I started to doubt whether the word even existed. Wikipedia describes this as "brain fatigue".

Well, one word that I will never find unfamiliar is the word "mattress." I plan on collapsing on it.......right now.