Inspiration

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about inspiration. About where it comes from, how we receive it, whether we have any control over it. You know, the easy questions.

Take the story behind my first novel. At one point, one day, I got the image of one of those old station wagons, with the wood-paneled sides--I mean a really old one, from the forties, maybe. I'm not a very visual person, nor do I have much of an imagination. But suddenly I had in my imagination the image of this car. Where it was painted, the paint was old, faded, chipped and dented dark green. The wood panels were scarred, marred. A really old car.

I watched (in my head, remember) as this car turned in to a tree-shrouded lane and disappeared. The road, I noticed, was dirt. There was a small cloud of it still hanging in the air after the car was gone. I also saw that there was no sign naming the road, as a street or as a county road. And I suddenly realized that, though I hadn't seen them, the inhabitants of the car were two women. Old women--or at least older--as would befit a car of its advanced age.

About a dozen or so years ago, I joined one of the offshoots of what was then the Austin Writers' League. The group was called Novels in Progress, and its members were NIPpers. We came together to share what we wrote, the novels we were beginning, struggling with, or polishing up for publication. As it became clear that I'd have to produce something for the group to push around and poke at, I sat down one day in front of my Mac and--didn't have to wait too long--suddenly there was an image in front of me. A child's sneaker, red and empty. And I began to write.<

Couldn't get much beyond a first chapter, though my group got quite a bit of mileage out of it. But I couldn't figure out where the story wanted to go. Was the owner of that sneaker, a small boy, going to make it to the end of my novel? Had he been kidnapped? And who was this person who had seen the sneaker? She was a woman, I knew that much, and she was not a terribly worldly woman (sort of mirrored me, her creator. Imagine that!). But was she going to fall in love with the policeman who answered her question in that first chapter? And--oh my goodness, look at that! One of those two women in that old station wagon had also showed up in that first chapter. Where did she come from? And where was she going to wind up? What part was she going to play as the whole thing unwound?

Those questions just ran around in my head like a herd of loose cats. I had no idea how to corral them, to manage them into a story that those NIPpers would approve of. Until one day, when my friend Joanne and I wound up in a car together with a couple of hours to entertain each other. I mentioned my story, she asked me to tell her about it, and I did. I told her about that first chapter, with its red sneaker. And when I'd gotten to the last page of that first chapter, my mouth continued to move and a second chapter manifested, and then third, and by the time we'd reached Brooklyn, our destination (almost under the bridge, as I remember it), I was mentally typing "The End" on my narrative.

Where the heck did it come from? And I could also ask, where did it go? I didn't have a tape recorder on that trip, which was something I regretted for a long time, because neither of us could remember everything--or even most of the things--that I had said. I thought for some time--years, actually--that I had lost that story. But it wasn't lost. It was waiting for me to reach the point where I was ready to put it down in a more permanent form. When that time came, last November, elements had changed, endings turned up in very different locations, characters disappeared and were replaced by more interesting ones. This time, the story made it onto the page, all the way to the end, and it flowed just as easily as the first one had, and the place it came from was just as mysterious as ever.

And I still don't know where that place is or how it works, or how--or even whether--we can have any control over it. But it sure is fun to be dipping my toes in that stream, to be catching some of the ideas and urges that are available when we tap into it. In fact, I'll tell you about some of that fun, maybe in the next post.

Till then, buy the book, Awakening, if you haven't already, write a review if you have, and in either case, tell all your friends about it. That's your job. Mine is to write the next book. And then the next. And I'm on it!

Pie in the Sky

I wanted to talk a little bit about dreams. About how far you can go. About how far is too far. About what might hold you back. In essence, I'm talking about pie in the sky. 

I looked that phrase up just now, and I found two slightly different meanings. The first is an empty impossible wish, but the second is something that is not likely to happen--but is not impossible. I'm hanging my hat on that second meaning.

So now, what does pie in the sky--in either form--have to do with Patsy in Writer/Wonderland? Well, it's like this. Think Howey and Hoover, just to start with. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal talked about one Hugh Howey, who wrote a short piece about apocalypse and put it up on Amazon for, I think, $.99. Sort of like what I did on Monday, only 1/3 the price of my book. But that's okay--his was just a short story, or rather part of a story.

After a bit, he put a second part of the story up--maybe he upped the price, a bit--I can't remember. Anyway, a third followed, then a fourth, and finally, a fifth. And I think by that fifth installment, he was charging a bit more. And by that fifth installment, he had garnered a huge following! To condense his story, he condensed his stories--into one volume that he has titled "Wool" and that he's selling for $5.99. And he's selling 'em by the cartload. He's made a million simoleons, as my dad used to say. Traditional publishers are knocking his door down to take over his book, make paperbacks, hardbacks, movies, all kinds of media. And he has said, pretty much to everyone, no, my electronic publishing empire is not broken, it does not need fixing, so no, I'm going to keep taking care of that part of things. Now, I will consider selling the rights to the other media. . . And I think Mr. Howey has done that, garnering himself another cartload of simoleons. Good for him.

Then there's Colleen Hoover. Actually, Colleen came before Hugh, both in the alphabet, and chronologically in the publishing world. Before I tell you about Colleen, I must disclose the following: Colleen is the niece of my daughter's next door neighbor, and Aunt Jean Ann made my daughter aware of what I'm about to tell you long before most of the rest of the world knew about it. I want an Aunt Jean Ann in my life, for reasons that are about to become clear. 

Anyway, about a year and a half ago, Colleen Hoover decided to write a book--or perhaps she finished one that she'd been working on for a while. Or maybe it was the 31st book she'd penned since she was a romantic teenager. Whatever, she wrote a book, titled it "Slammed," and put it up on Amazon, like Hugh Howey, for a mere $.99. I don't think Colleen and Hugh were talking, but they both had the right idea. Colleen talked about her book (and so did Aunt Jean Ann, and probably every other member of her family and all her friends) on Facebook, in a blog (sort of like this one, actually) and wherever else anyone would listen (I don't know that last for a fact, but I'd bet my book sales on it). 

And pretty soon, there was another book up on Colleen's Amazon bookshelf (and that's actually what Amazon calls it. I have a bookshelf, now, too, though there's only one book on it), This was called "Point of Return," and people who'd bought "Slammed" and loved it now lined up to by "POR" (that's how Colleen refers to it). Then came "Hopeless"--that's the point that I hopped on her boat. I bought "Hopeless" for--I think--$1.99 or $2.99? Something like that.

And now Colleen's getting high six-figure advances from traditional publishers and she's doing all right for herself. If you want to know just how well she's doing, read all the way to the end of that article I added a link for up there. She's mentioned there--and Publishers Weekly lists her as their #2 ebook author for the first quarter of 2013. How 'bout them apples!

She said it (or something very like it) herself: never in her wildest dreams 18 months ago could she have imagined it'd go this far. Well, that's probably not quite true: she was probably dreaming pretty regularly about pie in the sky back then. The thing is, there actually was pie in her sky, and she's chowing down on a big thick slice of it even as I write this.

So can you guess where this is going? Yup! I think there's some more pie up there, enough so that I can have a slice of it, too. There's enough for Hugh, for Colleen, for the millions of other authors out there, and for me. That is, if everyone I know and everyone they know and everyone they know. . . . will buy a copy of my book, Awakening. And then a copy of the next one--which, by the way, should be out before I even get the first royalty check for this one! YAY!

I'll take a slice of blueberry, please--and yes, heat it up and slap a scoop of vanilla on there, if you don't mind. Mmmmmmmm. 

An Overnight Sensation!

I guess I should consider changing my blog title to "Patsy in Writerland," because that's where I live these days. But it's also, in many ways, still Wonderland, too, so I'm not going to fix it. At least not until it appears to need fixing.

And yes, I'm back. After nearly four years of silence, the floodgates have opened and words are spewing forth, gushing forth, flooding forth. This flood of words first showed up on my computer and then in my iPad. Then it overflowed into my emails, and now the waters are lapping here, at my blog, where the drought has been harshest and has lasted for many, many months.

But no longer. I'm writing--novels, emails, and blogs, not to mention letters, notes, and grocery lists. Anywhere there's a keyboard, my fingers tap and words fly out.

Today, in this "rebirth of a blog," I'm focusing on this novel thing, this mushroom of creativity that suddenly--almost overnight, it seems--pushed its way out of whatever soil it had been sleeping in for more than 70 years and grew to a size, shape, and solidity that, finally, demanded that it be plucked and laid out on the groaning banquet table of self-published novels for possible consumption by--you the reader!

The seed was planted more than ten years ago, when I brought a fledgling chapter to a writing group in Austin for their gentle ministrations. Taking to heart some of what they told me to do, I gave that chapter a new set of feathers and tried pushing it out of the nest again. Splat! Not very successful. So back into the recesses of the nest it went, to lick its wounds and work on yet another set of feathers.

My first title page--home-grown, yes, but
adequate to the purpose--at least for now! 

Comes November 1, which many in the writing world know as the start of NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, or NaNoWriMo. For the third time in nine years, I took on the challenge: write at least 50,000 words of a novel before midnight, November 30. I torpedoed that poor bedraggled first chapter and started in from scratch, sending words onto the page as fast as I could get them there.

And the words just poured out. In the middle of the month, I flew from here, Murray, in western Kentucky, up to Maine for Thanksgiving with my son and his family--and every day, while the rest of the family worked or went to school, I sat at my iPad, bluetoothed keyboard smoking, and continued to write. Took Thanksgiving Day off for some excellent turkey, but was right back at it on Black Friday. By November 30, I had over 53,000 words. I had met the challenge! But I didn't stop for even a day, and, by February 19, the word count was more than 145,000. And it was pens down.

What amazes me now, looking back, is that there was never a moment where I sat, hands poised over the keyboard, and wondered what to say next. Never. At night, I'd write scenes in my head, changing dialogue, redressing this character or that, choreographing a love scene or a rape. By day, the words flowed out of me as if they'd been fashioned into a chain that could be pulled out, one link after another, in the right order (mostly) and ready to be engraved onto the page.

Even before that February day of completion arrived, I'd already begun scripting the second novel in my head. So there was hardly a gap between "The End" of one novel, and "Once upon a time" of the next. Hey, man, I thought, this novel-writing thing is unbelievable! So easy! And what the heck is writer's block, anyway--something to eat?

In a nutshell, that's how, at the age of 71 and a half, I became a novelist. It's like those middle-aged film stars who are suddenly--overnight, it seems--the talk of the town. Yeah, right, never mind the fifteen or twenty years of struggle, of bit parts, of waiting table hoping for those bit parts. And that's sort of how I feel about my sudden career change. It was overnight--but it took years to get here.

But more of that next time. For now, just let me give you a link to that first novel, if I haven't already emailed it to you.  Put the following into your browser, and you're there:  www.amazon.com/dp/B00CD7WQUK. And, if you read it and like it, don't forget to write a review! Thanks.

Only Connect

Ahhhh, connectivity. . . .

For once, I have an excellent reason for the 3-1/2 weeks since my last blog: I've been adrift, alone, unconnected to the world. And now, finally (well, yesterday), I got re-connected. YAY!!!

To explain: since I left Austin, I've spent 2 nights in hotels, which were the only times my computer has been able to get on the internet. And since I arrived here in Aiken, my cell phone has been unable to find more than 1 bar (and usually not even that) of signal--and to find that one bar has required that, whenever my phone rings or I want to place a call, I've had to leave my house and talk out in the driveway. In 93-degree heat AND 100% humidity! NOT an ideal situation.


[Speaking of my driveway in Aiken reminds me that, for most of last week, an empty ABF trailer sat in it (since ABF didn't come to pick it up until Thursday). That's getting a little ahead of my story, but I wanted to include a picture of the trailer as it was parked for loading at the apartment building in Pasco. Here it is, and please note that my apartment was on the far side of the building at the left. The movers figured they walked an extra 10 miles to cart everything all the way around the building and get it into the trailer!]

Back to my explanation. To check my email, I've traveled each evening to the hotel near here where I spent the last night before my furniture got moved into my house and asked if I could use their business center for that purpose. They've graciously allowed me to do that. But as of yesterday, I've solved both problems: Atlantic Broadband installed cable/internet/phone service, so I am now--after three weeks--reconnected to the outer world. It has really been an experience, living as we did back in the 1960s and 1970s, with only snail mail to keep me in touch. If I hadn't had some time in the car with NPR, I wouldn't know that we lost Ed MacMahon, Farah Fawcett, and that Michael guy--what's his name? Michael Jordan? Michael Jones? Whatever.

But that's all behind me--as is the whole move--and I want to set down here some of the more exciting points of my trip for those of you who might be interested. It'll take me 2-3 postings to get it all in, I expect, but bear with me. Or go read something else--I'll never know and there will NOT be a quiz.

Let's see: I left Pasco on Sunday, June 7, after JR, my wonderful mover (that's him on the left), and his cohort, Brian, had packed all my stuff. JR and I cleaned up the apartment and then I took him to Outback (his favorite place) for a well-earned prime rib dinner. We spent the night at the Best Western next to the Pasco Airport. On Sunday morning, we took the moving equipment and extra boxes back to U-Haul, took one last look around the apartment, and then I put JR on a plane back to Las Vegas, and I headed east and south towards Austin.

Backing up a bit, here's JR with his handiwork. He packs stuff as if he were doing a jigsaw puzzle. He is truly amazing! Here, the trailer is almost packed--the twelve linear feet at the back end of the trailer, that is. When they were done, JR put up a barrier, and then ABF filled the rest of the trailer with other loads that went other places.


Also want to show you the rains that didn't come until we were all through with the job. It was really a perfect day for a move!








That first day I traveled 635 miles, stopping long after dark in North Salt Lake City, Utah. The things that stand out on that leg of the trip are 1) my lunch at Nell's-n-Out in La Grande, OR, where I had the best french fries I've ever had in my life, along with some pretty doggone good fish and a memorable milkshake; 2) the fact that, when I reached the Best Western where I spent the night, Steve at the front desk let me leave my car (which contained all of the things I treasure the most) right in front of the hotel where the light was strong and he could watch it for me; and 3) the GORGEOUS scenery in Oregon, Idaho, and Utah. The unfortunate thing is that I couldn't/didn't stop to take lots of pictures. But trust me, I was constantly doing an "Ahhhh" or "WOW!" or "Ooooo"--and wishing that my bamboo plant could talk back to me and let me know that I really was seeing all this beauty.

I'm including a picture here of some gorgeous Oregon scenery, but I remember particularly the storms in Idaho. There'd be lightning off in one direction or another, and then a spattering of rain on the windshield--with huge spectacular cloud formations in every direction around me. And I'd say, "Thanks for all of this--it is truly unbelievable. But I don't want any rain on the roads I'm traveling, please, since I'm leery of planing in the water/oil slick that initial rainfall creates." [My hesitancy comes from nearly getting killed when my car planed in Tennessee in 1984.] And sure enough, the spattering of rain would pretty much stop. I make no claims (other than my usual one of focusing on what I want in my world), but I have to say that for three of the four days of my trip to Austin, I was constantly surrounded by clouds and storms but almost never even had to put on my windshield wipers.

I'm grateful for that, and also for the fact that I stopped when I did on that first night (here's where my car spent the night--right at the front door!), because, if I'd gone on, I'd have missed the most spectacular scenery of my whole trip, which was the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City and the passes I went through heading east out of Salt Lake City and into Wyoming. The traffic and construction in Salt Lake City on Monday morning was a challenge, especially because my jaw was constantly dropping as I tried to take in the scenery, but suffice it to say that I made it--and will forever have those gorgeous mountains in my head.

It's funny: I've always thought of myself as an ocean person, since my favorite spot on earth is Bustins Island, Casco Bay, Maine. But now that I've pretty much left the mountains behind, after 2-1/2 years surrounded by them, I'm finding that I miss them--perhaps even more than I do the ocean when I have to leave it. Wonder what that's all about. . . .

Well, the only other thing to say about this leg of the trip is that, when I figured things up that night in my North Salt Lake City hotel room, I found that my trusty 1999 Toyota Camry had done all those miles at the phenomenal rate of 33.5 miles per gallon. Pretty good, right? But you ain't seen nothin' yet, folks!

I'm going to stop at this point, put in a few pictures, and save the next leg for my next posting. Hope that'll be tomorrow--but no promises.

Moving Right Along

It's only been a few days since my last post. I'm very proud of myself for not waiting a year between posts! The most important development since my last posting is that I have decided on where I will live in Aiken. This was a difficult thing to do because I got so little information from the real estate agents that I contacted for help. The first one took a week to get back to me (although once she DID finally get back to me, she was very helpful). The second one was brusque, promised me pictures of the property she was offering, and never delivered on them. I then talked to my daughter-in-law, Sandy, who is an agent with ReMax in Portland, ME, and said she'd try to find someone in a ReMax office in Aiken to help me. That didn't work out (no ReMax agencies there).

The fourth time was a charm. I've been working with Rachel Harper, who with her son Lester owns Harper Realty in Aiken. She had two house to offer, one that was 50+ years old but well-maintained, close to downtown, and not too far from the job-site. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, hardwood floors (which is a turn-on for lots of people, but not for me), a carport, and came with a washer and dryer. It's in a nice older part of town (one that I can remember driving through often between my hotel/work and whatever we did for entertainment downtown, back when I was working in Aiken. It was reasonably priced at $875/month, and if that was all there was, I'd have been quite happy with it.

However, Rachel told me about another house, only 2-3 years old, in a development south of Aiken (towards the job-site) that is so new, it isn't yet labeled on Google maps (although you can see the first few houses being built on the terrain view). It does show up on MapQuest, however, if you're interested in seeing it. It's at 909 Watsonia, Aiken, SC, 28903 (and that's my new address, right there, folks!), and it is a full house, with a great room, a back porch and a front porch, a 2-car garage, and a yard. It's $200 more than the other one, but since I could be there for as long as three years, I've decided I might as well be comfortable. I'll probably hire a lawn service to maintain the yard (since I don't have a lawnmower and don't want to invest in one), and I may even lay in some potted plants for outside, if there aren't many plantings already there (Rachel says it hasn't grown up much, since it is so new).


I'm including a scan of the floor plan Rachel sent me yesterday. I thought about the three places that I've been told about last night and this morning, and then did a Cybil Shepherd (told myself "I'm worth it"), called Rachel, and cemented the deal for the Watsonia property, the most expensive. As Karen pointed out today, though, Rachel says I'll save 15 minutes each way on my commute, which adds up to 2 hours a week. Right there is a substantial savings of time, which really helps make the extra $200 in rent not a problem at all!

I'll send the paperwork in to Harper Realty this week, call the various utilities (Rachel has supplied me with all of that information--the electric company is SCE&G, which is who I indirectly worked for on my 3-month job earlier this year--it sure is a small world!), and get that set up, and pass on my new address to those who need to know (like my old utilities and the Post Office, etc.). All that's left now is to actually get there!

That means continuing to pack boxes here. I've still got some more books to pack, but as of this afternoon, I have officially given away all the books I've been able to part with (and for this former English teacher, that has been an amazing pile of them!), as well as 37 issues of Cooking Light, 13 issues of Light & Tasty, AND 16 issues of Etude Magazine, which was a large monthly publication containing lots of music for piano students. Almost all of these 16 magazines were published before I was born! I was reluctant to let Etude go, but I tried twice to sell them on eBay, and neither time brought more than 2-3 nibbles. I donated all of this today (and half my videotapes last week) to the library system, which is having a major sale this coming weekend (coincidence? I think NOT!). So I figure someone who will really use this music will buy it for cheap and enjoy it. That is a MUCH better fate than languishing for more years in my cupboards.

JR (my fabulous mover) comes Friday night. Now I not only have an address for him to give his driver, but I have a floor plan. I can now show JR where I want the piano (the interior wall of Bedroom 2), where I want the small wicker table and 2 chairs (the breakfast nook), which wall to put my desk on (the outer front corner of Bedroom 3), where to put all my mother's boxes of photographs, etc. (the outside wall of the garage), and so on. Am I boring you? I apologize, but I have to say this is SO exciting to me that I'm having a hard time remembering that it is NOT world-altering and earth-shaking to anyone else.

I guess that's it for tonight. I probably won't get back to my blog until I'm on the road. To give you a thumbnail of the trip, I expect to get from here to Salt Lake City on Sunday, on to Denver on Monday, a night with my sister-in-law Kay and her husband Rick in Ardmore, OK, on Tuesday, with arrival in Austin sometime mid-afternoon on Wednesday. I'm spending Wednesday night with Lisa (though I hope to see Karen and the boys for at least a while Wednesday afternoon. Today was their last (half)day of school, and Karen, as is her tradition, took the afternoon off and picked them up and brought them home to start celebrating. Unbelievably, Jon-Michael is now officially a fifth-grader, and Jason will be starting 1st grade in the fall. I can't resist (and this blog is light on pictures anyway), so here are some pictures of the boys at the crawfish boil they enjoy each year up in Fort Worth.


Here's Jon-Michael quietly playing his gameboy, while the world goes on around him.









And here's Jason, up to no good with one of the guests of honor at the crawfish boil. . . .

And here's what happens when you mix those ingredients!



But just to reassure you that there's not always such excitement with these two, here they are exhibiting some of their very best behavior.

Onward. . . .

Go East, "Young" Woman

I'm embarrassed to realize that it's been over a year since I last blogged. Much has happened, much is in the throes of happening, and much has yet to happen, and I've been telling people about it all for the last month or so. It suddenly occurred to me today that I should be blogging it. Then whoever wants to hear what's going on with me can do so at his/her leisure. And from now on, I only have to tell the story once! So here goes.

I came to Washington state almost 13 months ago (5/5/08 was my first day on the job that brought me here--which I talked about in my last blog). I was blown away back then by how beautiful this place is and by my gorgeous apartment, and over the year that's passed, those feelings have only increased. I have LOVED my time here! And in the last six months, I've met three women my age and with similar interests, and we've become fast friends. Here I am with Judy, one of the three. So all of that will be hard to leave. But leave it I must--and am about to do--as you will see.

My original job ended sooner than any of us wanted--12/5/08 was my last day, and I immediately got on a plane for Austin: if I'm not working, I might as well be traveling! I spent 10 days in Austin, and while I was there, my "manager" in New Hampshire arranged for me to have a phone interview for a new job. I did the interview, which I thought went quite well (the fellow, whose name was Peter, was going to be in Yarmouth, ME, visiting his mother for Christmas, at the same time as I'd be in Westbrook, ME, visiting my son, so it even looked like we might meet). I did, in fact, go on to Maine on 12/20, and stayed there until 1/4/09, seeing friends and family and thoroughly enjoying Christmas--but I did not meet my potential new boss, due to inclement weather (in Maine in December? Who'da thunk it!).

I actually didn't hear about the job until I'd been back home for a couple of weeks--I was beginning to be nervous! Can I interrupt here to add a picture of the wind turbines that I can see from my apartment, but that (in this picture) are up close and personal? More about these wind turbines in a future blog. Anyway, Peter did finally call and I was hired to spend 3 months writing training documents for his company. The training documents were for a pollution-removal process at two coal-fired power plants in South Carolina, and Peter felt it would be a good idea to have a site visit to familiarize us (he had hired two editors), so I flew to SC at the end of January and spent a week touring the two plants. THAT was an experience: picture me in hard hat and steel-toed shoes, as I put it, "boldly going where no 67-year-old fat lady has ever gone before." I climbed to the top of a 7-story limestone milling structure and then came back down, and pretty much followed everyone else around this fascinating place for 3 days in one plant, and two in the other. Then I went back home to write with my fellow editor. This arrangement could NOT have happened 10--or even 5--years ago: I worked for a company in NH whose client (in MA) needed documentation for 2 plants in SC, and that documentation waw provided by two editors, one in WA and the other in TN. 

Anyway, that job ended on 4/8, a few weeks early, and that left me adding to the fast-growing unemployment statistics here in Washington state. But I have to say I was never fearful that there wasn't something fabulous out there for me! And sure enough, my "manager" in NH asked me almost right away if I wanted to go to the Savannah River Site in Aiken, SC (where Kent, my former partner, and I had already spent two 2-3 month periods helping on proposals back in 2003 and 2005) for a salary that knocked me over! I am still not taking it in. In the middle of this recession, I'm going to be making more than twice as much as I've ever made in my LIFE! Absolutely incredible!

Well, needless to say, I said "YES!!!" It took a while for the offer to actually come, but it has come, I've signed my contract, and all I have to do now is get there. And leave here--I'm picking this point to show you part of the view from my apartment, the cable bridge in Pasco that just fascinates me. Anyway, that part of the adventure, too, is proceeding absolutely without a hitch. I took a "can't hurt to try" attitude a few weeks ago and called my wonderful mover from Las Vegas, hoping I could persuade him at least to come up here and pack my stuff onto whatever vehicle I could get to take it to SC, and he said, without hesitation, "For you, I'll do the whole move." That was almost as mind-bending as the job itself.

As I write this it is Sunday night. JR, my wonderful mover, will arrive on Friday night, pack my things onto an ABF trailer on Saturday, and fly back to Vegas on Sunday. After I take him to the airport, I'll head out for points south and east: 2,148 miles from my door to Karen's in Austin. I hope to make that trip in 4 days (3 nights), and I also hope to blog along the way to let y'all know how I'm doing. After a week in Austin crammed with lots of interesting events, I'll head directly east approximately 1,100 miles to South Carolina (or perhaps Georgia, since it's looking like there are more opportunities for house in Augusta than in Aiken). My mover will fly in from Vegas to meet me and my stuff, which should arrive on 6/19, we'll unload on 6/20, JR will fly back to Vegas on 6/21, and I'll start work on 6/22.

That's the bare bones of the next three weeks. I'll try to keep you up to date on stuff as it happens (what do they say? "Pictures at 11"? although I'm not going to put many pictures into this blog). Meanwhile, I've had a lot of time to sort through stuff and cull out what I haven't used for years (decades, in some cases). I've cut my books down by nearly half; I've given away more than half of my video tapes, I've gotten rid of almost all of my CDs (after digitizing them to my hard drive), I've got several pieces of furniture that I'm going to give away or sell, and this last week is going to be spent disposing of, one way or another, at least half of my clothes. This is going to be the easiest and pleasantest move ever! There's no "bad Elizabeth" to deal with (see earlier blogs on the move from Vegas to here), JR is the best when it comes to packing, and I'm going to have everything but my dishes and pictures packed and waiting for him.

One of the best aids in this move was a visit by my lovely daughter, really the only person to visit me here for the entire year. Her company, TIP Strategies, just established a new client in Ellensburg, WA, about 113 miles up the beautiful Yakima River valley from here, and she went with a team from TIP to meet the new clients on 5/6. They had their meetings, did some touring of the area, and then, on the next day, Thursday, 5/7, they "released" Karen to me and we drove back down here to Pasco and the Tri-Cities, where we spent the BEST 3 days, unhassled by kids, husbands, agendas, or whatever. We did some sight-seeing, visiting places I'd always intended to see but hadn't yet--and would never have seen if she hadn't come. Here we are at the site of the wind turbines, which I can see from my apartment. We also tackled my books. Karen is THE BEST at helping me go through things and recognize that I don't need to be carting this, that, or the other across the country AGAIN! As I say, nearly half my books are gone (and I now have over $500 in store credit at Hastings and a local bookstore. I can use that credit online, and I have vowed (to myself and to Karen) that I will give up two books every time I order one!

I've sprinkled a few pictures throughout this blog, hoping to give you some idea of how beautiful things are here. But they really don't do it justice. Still they're an attempt. I'm hoping, too, to give you some more information on the upcoming job, some other events that I'm excited about, and where I hope to be living in SC/GA. And, as I say, I'll blog my way from here to Austin, and then from Austin to the east coast, as the days go along. For now, though, this is Patsy signing off on one of her last days in this west coast Wonderland. 

 

Leaving Las Vegas

I promised in last week's blog to tell you how I came to be living in Washington state, and, true to that promise, here is the $2 version. Anyone who expected the 25-cent version doesn't know me very well!!!

This chapter of my life started when I was laid off (2 weeks later than expected, actually) on March 16. A few days before my last day on the job, I had had a telephone interview for a job with the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. The interview went well, and RED Inc., the staffing augmentation firm I had been working for since last October, when Intera had to lay me off, felt that I was a sure thing.

While I was waiting to hear, I took an 8-day hiatus and went to Austin, to see the grandsons, to check out my condo and my WONDERFUL property manager, and to reconnect with my good friends there. It was a perfect time--about which more in a later blog, perhaps.

Anyway, the D.C. job looked good--they just were waiting for the contract officer to get around to writing the contract. I was okay with going to D.C.--not ecstatic, but okay, since they were going to pay all lodging expenses--in addition to $1/hour more than I had been getting--AND monthly flights home, wherever I decided that was each month. Also, right after I got back from my Texas trip, a former co-worker recommended me for an editing job out at the Nevada Test Site--that job didn't yet have a job description OR a budget, but the fella seemed very interested in hiring me once those things had gotten firmed up. So I waited.

By April 16, a month after my last pay check, I was feeling a little nervous and my bank account was getting kind of skinny. On that day, Wednesday, a friend emailed me a website, roadtechs.com, that catered to technical people who didn't mind travel. Well, that sounded like me, and I looked on the site, and that night, just for grins (because the job had been advertised already for over 3 weeks, so I was pretty sure it was gone), I pushed one button and sent my resume for a tech editor's job at Hanford, WA.

To make a long story short, I got the job, and I now live in WA state. And I LOVE it here! The job was offered through a staffing augmentation company based in New Hampshire, I interviewed for it by phone the day after I applied, and I was told I had it the next Tuesday--while I was in Maine! That's how things happen, when you go with the flow. They wanted me to start on April 28, the day after I got home to Vegas from a week in Maine, but I said no way. My lease was up in Vegas and I figured I might as well move my stuff out of that apartment and into something up here, so I took the rest of that week to get ready to do that.

I took three days to drive up here, May 2 through 4, and started work on May 5. I LOVE my job and I love the people I work with. I'm part of a 4-person team that's working on procedures for the IT part of the work here at the Hanford site--I'm subcontracted to Bechtel, which is working with Washington Group International, a company Kent, my former partner, and I did a lot of work for.

But even more, I LOVE this area, and I especially LOVE my apartment. I have the best view in the whole valley here, a broad view of the Columbia River valley and the mountains on the other side (well, they're hills, really, low and round, with wind turbines marching in lovely rows across the horizon) and nothing but vista in between. It's a panorama that takes my breath away every time I look out my windows or go out my door. And for 2-3 days, I didn't even think I was going to FIND an apartment!

Sunday, the day I got here, and Monday and Tuesday, I went looking after work--and there was NOTHING available in Richland, where the office is, or Kennewick, where all the apartments I had looked at online before I came up here seemed to be located. The weather was gorgeous, and it seemed that spring had sprung and everybody was out looking for a place to live here in the Tri-Cities area (that's what it's called). On Wednesday, though, John, my boss, said I should look over in Pasco (the third of the three cities), that he lived there and his daughter lived in a very nice apartment complex there, and he was pretty sure I could find something.

He was right: I have a 3-bedroom apartment (which is HUGE--1,326 sq. ft.--I had planned to get a garage, but I really don't need one except for the car and since the garages are way on the other side of the complex, why bother?) for $350 less than I paid for a smaller three-bedroom apartment in Vegas. I have an office in one bedroom, my piano and books in another, and there's so much storage all over the place--closets everywhere--that even I can't fill it up.

Moving was, in almost every way, a dream--a bit expensive, but so well-done that the money was happily spent. The ONLY fly in the ointment turned out to be my roommate, Elizabeth. Yep, another "Bad Elizabeth"--not QUITE as bad as the first one, but certainly a real problem when I was trying to move. [A little note here for those who are worried about things like this: one of the best of the many wonderful things about this apartment is that Elizabeth is NOT in it--and I will never live with a roommate again--no matter WHAT her name is. As I said to someone recently, poor Elizabeth is stuck with living with herself, but--thank god--I am NOT!!!]

She absolutely seemed to do everything she could to make problems, though it would have been so easy to be helpful. I had to leave on 5/2 and the movers came on Thursday, 5/8, six days later. She was planning to move on the weekend of 5/3 and 5/4, before the movers came, into my old one-bedroom apartment, two doors away from the apartment we shared. She picked those days because her boyfriend could help her. Seemed perfect: she'd be all moved out, and my movers (who are the GREAT Crown Mover guys who brought my stuff from Austin last October) would only have to empty the apartment--all her stuff would be gone, and it would be a lead-pipe cinch, right?

Wrong! First, Elizabeth "forgot" to put her application in for the other apartment, so she couldn't move in over the weekend. She let me know that on 5/2, the day I was set to leave for the drive up here, so there wasn't much I could do, and I was VERY disappointed (though not really surprised--the whole year that I knew Elizabeth, she NEVER did things on time and she rarely did ANYthing she said she was going to do--one thing she taught me was the true meaning of "procrastination."). However, all did not seem lost. I said to her, over and over and over before I left, "Please, Elizabeth, just be sure your stuff is out of the kitchen [that was the only place in the house where our stuff "blended," so to speak], and put the four pieces of furniture I loaned you for your bedroom into the living room, so the movers will know to take them." "Yes, I will," she said over and over and over, "I don't have much stuff, so it'll be easy to do and Delfin [her boyfriend] will help me." And she had Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights to move her stuff out of the kitchen (that was the most important part). Not a huge task, not an impossible job, by any means, and not a job that would be difficult to do to help a friend.

AND help herself, because, as it turned out, she had a really really difficult day on the day the movers came. And so did they. She was only just barely out of bed at 9:30 a.m. when they showed up--and she had not done ONE THING towards moving into her apartment in the six days after I left. I was absolutely incredulous when the movers called me that morning to tell me of the problems she was causing. They'd pack a box of kitchen stuff--and she'd be right on top of them saying, "No, that's MY stuff, you have to unpack that." Or she'd be running around saying, "Where are my sunglasses? I can't find them. I'm sure you packed them in one of those boxes. You have to unpack those boxes so I can find my sunglasses."

And she called ME in a panic because the electricity had been turned off (as she and I planned for it to be)--and how was she going to CLEAN??? Aside from my lack of real concern about her problems, since she had created so many additional ones for me, I wondered what she thought I should do about it, 1,000 miles away and hard at work at my job. The hardest work she does on any given day is complain about how terrible her job and the people she works with are, so I guess I understood her lack of comprehension about my being unable to help because I was "at work": it is, after all, a fairly foreign concept to her.

When the dust settled, and the movers finally got underway--you guessed it: they didn't have any of the stuff from her bedroom that I had loaned her. She hadn't even bothered to pull that stuff out and put it where it could be packed. And things like my mop and broom and stepstool didn't come, and about half my silverware and glasses were still in the dishwasher, which she didn't bother to open and unload for them, so they didn't come. Oh, yes, and of course, she didn't bother to make sure that the cable company's box and remote and modem stayed in Vegas--that all arrived up here, and I had to pay to send it back. All in all, the move was an unmitigated disaster from that end.

However, the movers did an absolutely fabulous job on everything that didn't have to do with Elizabeth. They packed things superbly--and very quickly, except for (they estimated) the 1-1/2 to 2 hours that her nonsense cost them. And at this end, they were supposed to arrive at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, the day before Mother's Day, but they actually got here at noon on Friday. There were two of them, and they just drove the whole 1,000 miles without stopping except for gas. Amazing.

My lovely friend Melinda, here at the Crossings at Chapel Hill (the name of my new home), was happy to let them get into the apartment after I got off work on Friday, and they had everything unloaded and in place by 8:30 that evening. I brought them back to my motel room, where they had a quick shower, and they were on their way home by 9 p.m. They both have wives and young kids, so they really wanted to get back for Mother's Day--and by golly! They worked very hard and they did it!

I've been unpacking ever since--fast on the early days, because I kept needing this or that to get going--didn't find the few pieces of silverware that Elizabeth DID let me have until I'd been here about 10 days, for example. I'm going a bit more slowly now: mostly what's left is books, and you can only read one at a time.

In several of the lovely emails Elizabeth sent back when I voiced my frustration over her roadblocking everything, she provided a new name for me: "Materialistic Bitch." I can't argue with her that I certainly have more "stuff" than she does: All she ever bothered to bring to Vegas was a bed, a TV, and her clothes; the rest she left in a storage room in Oregon. Once in Vegas, she bought a table to put the TV on in her bedroom and some dishes--and that was it. My sense that she'd be happy in her frugality to share an apartment so that, without having to pay for it, she'd have furniture to use, turned out (she said in her emails) to be wrong: she always felt that since she didn't have as much "stuff," she was being WAY over-charged to have to pay halves on the apartment.

The interesting thing is that, like the first "Bad Elizabeth" that many of you had to hear me bitch about for the six months it took to get her out of my condo, this "Bad Elizabeth" also did me some good. The first one introduced me to Abraham, which has been life-altering and SO instructional and helpful. This one has gotten me to thinking about two things: procrastination and "stuff." She taught me by her eloquent example to set myself something to do--and DO IT. Don't try to put it off, don't think of reasons to do it tomorrow, and, above all, don't spend the time you could be spending DOING the thing sitting in front of the computer watching music videos on YouTube (well, that's what she does all evening--and much of the day. I tend to play poker on pokerstars.net). Just do it--now there's a slogan for the times! And as to "stuff," I've been thinking a lot about what I do and don't need.

Here's what I've been thinking: my job ends on 12/31/08 and my lease here is up on 5/31/09. That five-month period will, I think, be easy to fill with income-producing activities. They're already telling me on the job that I should be able to get on with Bechtel itself, or, through my New Hampshire company, with one of the other big firms here, Washington Group, Fluor Hanford, Areva. And there's always free-lance editing right from my apartment, which is my preference and should also be easy to do. But when 5/31/09 comes and I DO leave here, I'm going to have the furniture that I bought in Vegas, my piano and desk from Austin, and a FEW books--and not much else that has to be packed up and moved back to Austin. And I'm NOT going to procrastinate on doing the sorting, recycling, and throwing away!

So. That's how I came to leave Las Vegas and wind up here in Pasco, Washington, home of the Tri-Cities Fever (an Arena Football League team that I'm going to go see next weekend--my boss says it's GREAT fun: hockey with a football!). My first blog, last week, talked a bit about the beauty that is rampant here--quite a different kind of beauty from the dramatic natural beauty and the bling-and-neon beauty of Vegas--but in its own way JUST as remarkable. You ought to see the roses that I drive by every day on my 10-mile commute (about 6 miles is done at 70 mph, so it's only a 20-minute business one way). The roses climb fences all along my route and just burst out in the most glorious colors and in full rich profusion. One of these days I need to stop and get a picture.

But for now, that's all. In upcoming episodes, I'll tell you about my drive up here, about the site and the people I work with, and about other things that make this one of the neatest and best--and friendliest--places I've ever lived. Not to mention my Six-Month Plan that I'll be putting into play next year. Oh, life is good--and then it gets better!!!