Welcome, May!

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The past few weeks have been stressful. Training new employees, dealing with difficult customers, not sleeping well, not exercising (I’ve gained 20 pounds in the last two years), getting through family drama (two life-threatening events in the same day, 2000 miles apart: my dad’s heart attack in NM and a 9 year grandchild starting the rest of his life with Type 1 Diabetes) . . .  My CrossFit lifestyle withered into oblivion when I lost my job at the University in 2020, as Covid got going. Deep depression brought me to a standstill as I took a few months to try to reset. Since then, my physical status has been on steady decline. Now my daily schedule looks something like this: Work 3-11 pm (on a good day), Go to bed at 4 am, get up between 10:30 am and noon, get booted up and go back to work. If I get one day off a week I’m fortunate. At least I don’t have to work all night for now. That was the worst.  So I haven’t had time or energy to do much, even read, much less write. And since my

NaNoWriMo Report 9

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43,295 toward the goal of 50,000 words, at least.  Started Chapter 12 this morning and have to start thinking all the more seriously about the end.  I am, for the most part, pleased with what I have but I am also keenly aware of spots to be edited.  Got to get this story right!

Here is the first paragraph of my novel, "The Ghosts of Christmases Past":

"Scrooge was born, to begin with. There is no doubt about that. As to the specific time hardly anyone gave thought to take notice.  On one side of the clock Christmas Eve was laying to rest and on the other began to rise Christmas Day.  The clock had barely begun to toll the midnight hour when she finally began to deliver and the sound of his cry finally mingled with his mother’s own, both together drowning out the final stroke of twelve--hers a cry of pain and joy at his birth and his a cry of simply being born.  He was a Christmas baby, a true cherub and an angel, heralding his own arrival in the world with screaming, kicking, trembling fists--a real gift indeed.  These were not the best of times to be born, especially as each day was filled with the concerns of war.  This tot merely joined the ranks of thousand thousands who were already shaking their fists in the world and at the world.  God only knows what kind of man he will turn out to be and what mark he would make on the world, in the end."

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