Review: The Snow Kept on Falling by Kathie McQueary

The Snow Kept on Falling by Kathie McQueary
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you, Cheryl. This was fun. I do have the child’s point of view about snow. I get very excited. And yes, I understand why Gramma said what she said. We have had snow around Halloween. But it never stuck. So when it started snowing on All Saints Day, November 1st, I figured it would melt away. Guess what? It still hasn’t melted a bit. It isn’t as deep as the picture book’s snow. But the snow is still here because we haven’t gotten above freezing for this month, often hitting nearly double minus digits. Sadly, it isn’t that fluffy stuff of the first snow. This is the dangerous to walk or drive on snowy ice. The kind my husband broke his shoulder in a few years ago.

This fun book reminded me of the Henry and Ramona stories I read to my children. I felt the cold and smelled the hot chocolate. As a mother, I relived dressing my kids in the snowsuit on the few snow days we had back then. Over and over, strip, dry, redon the suits, rinse and repeat. It’s worth searching out and reading. In fact, my friend led me to read it on Open Library  . I also found it on LibraryThing  . I must admit that I wouldn’t pay $26 for this book, even if the pictures are retro fun.

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Review: Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail by Carrot Quinn

Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail by Carrot Quinn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book will stay with me for a while. Erin Spencer (Narrator) made me feel like I was right there, on the trail, soaking wet or extremely tired. Sometimes a narrator is so good that you think it has to be the author as they seem to maintain the cadence of the written speech as if it were their own. It was fantastically done.

That means the writing was natural and felt genuine. This was a journal of sort of the hiker, Carrot Quinn. She was honest and told the good and the bad of her travels. There were times that I laughed out loud at what happened. And there were tears of seeing the incredible scenery and tears of hurt along the way.

I have to admit I want to do this. But it seems so far away from possible when just getting the dog and I out for our mile walk is tough. A windy day will keep us in. Rain is my dog’s least favorite. She won’t go out, yet I have the raincoat and boots and plenty of umbrellas. Snow is my favorite, but my dog can’t handle it very long, even with coat and pad coverings, so we walk around the yard. So much for my trek.

So it is fun to live vicariously through those who do the long hikes or marathons. Inspiration helps with daily life and gives hope for more.

I want to read this again soon.

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The Fire I Left in Oregon

https://katu.com/news/local/bootleg-fire-burns-area-larger-than-portland-eugene-and-salem-combined-in-under-a-week

Catching Up

I can’t believe we have been in this house for over a month now. Isn’t it funny how you fall into your rhythms again after being disrupted by a move or other trauma? There are still boxes in the living room. That’s the only room to have no furniture. (We need couches and chairs and a coffee table still.) So the boxes sit there until we can get around to them. Most of the boxes with my name on them are books. Since a couple of the bookshelves at the old place broke down we didn’t bring them along. So my boxes of books have no home yet. : -(

Can you believe I finally have an office/studio/craft room? I have my piano on an interior wall. I have my sewing stash, and crocheting/knitting stash, and scrapbooking stash, and bookshelves full of books, and a couple boxes full of books. My desk is a simple card table.That works for all my needs. There are two wonderful windows in this room. One faces north, where in the far distance I can see some hills that make the shape of one of those Easter Island gods laying down looking at the sky. And miles and miles and miles of sagebrush, and the wonderful sky. The other window faces west, and although I can see the sunset there, there is also a neighbor who lives very close on that side whose house blocks the view. He’s a nice neighbor so I can’t be too upset. As the winter gets colder, I appreciate that west window. It keeps the room warm from early afternoon until dark. It does get a bit of a glare, but I have curtains.

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween, Samhain, and a sacred All Hollows night and day.

Meaning no disrespect to you, who enjoy it from either point of view, but October 31st has been NaNoWriMo prep day for me for the last 14 years. In fact, usually, the whole month of October is NaNoWriMo prep. But somehow I couldn’t settle my mind and making an outline or create my characters until the last couple days. But make no mistake. I knew I was going to be doing this again. For some reason, I didn’t win last year. I don’t remember why. I just didn’t get that into it, I guess. I can’t even remember what last years’ was about. But I do remember getting into the one the year before. It was fun.

Funny how during Nano, I always seem to find other things to do besides writing. I seem to be so much better at housework. There’s always a lot of research to do. Oh, and look at me, I’m blogging! But I did reach 1767 words last night. I usually stay up until the witching hour to start on a novel. Last night I got sleepy! But around two o’clock I was awake again. So I crept into my wonderful office, put on my headset and started writing via Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I did have a chance in the quiet of the night, to start my outline and do better research on my characters. The sad thing is, my outline only took me to chapter 5. And last nights’ writing took me all the way through chapter 1. Oops! Guess I’ve got a lot more planning to do!

Oh! I meant to tell you about life in the country with no car. When we lived in Reno, we didn’t have a car for quite a while. Mostly it was due to not having the money to fix the car we had and then to the landlords who wouldn’t let us keep it till we did have the money to fix it. But that was okay, there.We have a lot of good businesses really close that we could walk to or take the bus to. We got ourselves a little shopping cart to walk back and forth to and from the stores. Worked out quite well.

But now we are 1.7 miles from the nearest store, a little farther to our little library, and 2.8 miles to the post office. They don’t have door-to-door, mail delivery here in Christmas Valley. I’ve never lived in a place where they didn’t have door-to-door mail delivery, so this is an adjustment. Taking a walk a couple times a week is healthy and gaining room in my waistband. And…If you don’t have a box at the post office and they seem to have run out, you must go after three o’clock to pick up your mail. Because that’s when they receive the mail for those who don’t have a box. Which during this first month has not been easy. This is the desert after all. From three o’clock through about six is the hottest hours of the day. So we took our time and made sure we had water with us and learned to wear a hat. Now that it’s getting colder and the days are getting shorter, it’s becoming the coldest part of the day. I’m learning to adapt.

There is a Senior bus here, and the kind of dial-a-ride for seniors or the disabled. The bus takes us to Bend or La Pine or other areas a little ways away. The dial-a-ride people, pick us up at home and take us to the bus, or take is to doctor’s appointments or even to go visiting if we call them soon enough. That makes not having a car a lot easier.I think it’s a feature of Oregon and other states need to do this, too.

I’ll bet you catch everybody up to date on my little corner of the world. Happy November, and good luck with your NaNoWriMo’s!

Move Made Manifest

At last, the “iffy” trip and the “iffy” purchase of the acre and the double wide mobile have manifested. I’m sitting in my office/studio/escape looking out my window and seeing miles and miles of sagebrush. I can see little tiny hills far, far away and I can see the horizon. And the sky above goes on forever with feather clouds here and there.

As I sit here I can think of all the times I wondered if this was really going to happen. All the things that could go wrong did go wrong. They made me doubt that I should do this. They made me determined to try harder, but I didn’t want to press the gods that made this happen. What if I were to find out that I’m not supposed to do this? But what if this is exactly what I’m supposed to do? And I go around in circles with this batch of questioning. Still, I was packing boxes and packing boxes and packing boxes.

You see the two-bedroom apartment cave that I lived in before cost me over double what we will pay for this place. Our lease was up and we knew we wouldn’t be able to afford to live in that cave another moment.

In spite of how small the place was, we filled a van that should take a three-bedroom home and still had so much more to figure out how to get it here, or if we should toss it. And that was with C’s son moved out. His bed was the sofa and that was his sofa. So where do we get all this stuff? And how did the place get so dirty? Well, 2+ years in bed basically. And of course, we all know that nobody else cleans except the woman of the house. The pain of the fibro and the depression and the social anxiety all of the bundled up for those two years and all I could do was lay in bed. I tried to get out. I wanted to see friends but when I got to the day of doing it. I’d hit a flare. But this summer was different. I felt better. I got to go on a couple road trips. I got to go swimming. Whatever made me feel better, I am so thankful for it. The “iffy” trip gave me hope, gave me something to live for. And here I am, ready or not!