The first house I ever owned has sold, the funds disbursed, and I am excited about what comes next.
Good News
Just about every day this past week has brought some piece of good news, but here are some of the highlights in no particular order...
A recent Airbnb guest booked my property for a one night stay as she and her husband were moving cross-country. Upon stepping into the house, he realized he recognized my books. He read the War's End series while on deployment and was so excited (his wife said he totally fangirled) that he bought the signed paperback versions of all three! How random and cool is that?!
While buying interior doors for our Cottage East renovation, I began talking to the seller and he realized he knew my husband and had my Short-Term Rental Success book in his shopping cart. The world is a very small place, people!
One of my Tuesday night pool league teammates ordered War's End: The Storm. "You've written a ton of books!" she said to me last night. Well, yes, it seems I have!
After visiting Eureka Springs earlier this month, I applied to the Writer's Colony for a residency in December. I was accepted and will be spending a week in mid-December there, writing my little heart out and being fed by their chef-in-residence. How cool is that?!
I heard from an audiobook listener. He listened to the War's End series and said he especially enjoyed the narration of the third book, Tales of the Collapse, which I narrated. That made my month right there!
I bought a truck! A lovely 2023 Nissan Frontier with less than 2,000 miles on it that had just come off lease. She's a beaut. I can't believe I own a truck and don't owe a monthly payment. That felt amazing (thank you house sale!).
I bought a used massage chair - and brought it home with the truck in her inaugural first haul
As I type this blog post, Bulky Item Pickup is hauling off a couple of piles of broken flooring and old wood out of Cottage East, our next in line renovation. We have a large pile of rubble on the upstairs level, some vacuuming to do, and then we are ready for framing and an electrician. So exciting! The downstairs still needs nail removal (lath and plaster has a TON of little nails), flooring removal, lots of cleaning, and a few tiny repairs and framing before we can set the electrician loose on it as well. Today, however, we are installing a window a/c unit inside so that we can deal with the high temps for more than an hour at a time. It's hard, dirty work that is only made more difficult by the heat index creeping up.
Having Roxy (yes, I named my truck) has already transported a massage chair, two bathtubs, and six interior doors. We have a tow hitch package on its way, and that will allow us to haul all manner of supplies (and furniture) necessary to complete our work on Cottage East, Cottage West, and our future projects on our own house.
Finally, we will get to begin work on our own home. I'll get central air for the first time in over a decade! I miss central a/c, I really, really miss it.
On the Serious Side
I kind of despise politics. Mainly I despise debate, and how very personal it seems to become. And I really dislike folks arguing. Maybe it's childhood PTSD, who knows? And since this is an election year, things are exceptionally dysfunctional in our little corner of the world and promise to go downhill from here until November. It seems that we get on these tangents ("we" being folks on social media) and the rhetoric and infighting gets worse, and worse, and worse.
As of late, Project 2025 keeps popping up in my feed. Specifically, with statements like "Project 2025 will end benefits for [fill in the blank]" or "The only valid family is a working father married to a stay-at-home mother and their children." Now, that last one helpfully included the page that the supposed quote or summary came from. And me being me, I had to go and look it up.
My teenager is convinced I'm autistic. I don't think I am, but I do think I have trouble relating to and understanding others at times, so it is likely I'm somewhere on the spectrum. Who knows. In any case, I'm a very literal person. And I especially dislike summaries such as the one above, when the actual verbiage is this:
Goal #3: Promoting Stable and Flourishing Married Families. Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity,” subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage. These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families. Working fathers are essential to the well-being and development of their children, but the United States is experiencing a crisis of fatherlessness that is ruining our children’s futures. In the overwhelming number of cases, fathers insulate children from physical and sexual abuse, financial difficulty or poverty, incarceration, teen pregnancy, poor educational outcomes, high school failure, and a host of behavioral and psychological problems. By contrast, homes with non-related “boyfriends” present are among the most dangerous place for a child to be. HHS should prioritize married father engagement in its messaging, health, and welfare policies. In the context of current and emerging reproductive technologies, HHS policies should never place the desires of adults over the right of children to be raised by the biological fathers and mothers who conceive them. In cases involving biological parents who are found by a court to be unfit because of abuse or neglect, the process of adoption should be speedy, certain, and supported generously by HHS.
Now. Please understand that I do not agree with much of this. It is inflammatory rhetoric. It diminishes single parents, it tosses a "look at the bunny" bullshit move with LGBTQ+, it misrepresents and skews how many of us who have been single parents have experienced poverty, single parenthood, education, family cohesiveness, and life in general.
That's MY take from it. MY opinion. MY issues. I probably have more issues and could elaborate, but I don't see the point in doing so.
That said, summarizing it, with a quote that again, puts someone else's skew on it, is misrepresentation. Worse, it's encouraging lack of thought and assuming that someone cannot read that and come to their own conclusions about how wrong (or right, again, others opinions are just as valid as mine) it is.
Now again, perhaps I am far too literal for my own good. But my response to the FB post, in which I pointed out those words were not used and simply said, "I urge everyone to be more careful about spreading misinformation or generalizations. We need to do better, or be more accurate in our sharing" was met with poorly masked hostility and derision.
Personally, I don't care which side of the fence you are on. I don't. Just as I don't care about your religious beliefs, or lack thereof, your vegetarianism or keto diet, your wish to have children or not, and a long list of other decisions we each make in our hopefully long lives. You are not me, and I am not you. And thank goodness for that. We NEED diversity of thought, of vision, we need it to make our society rich and yes, complicated. What I am concerned with is the spoon-feeding of information, and "summarized with an agenda" spoon-feeding at that, and how that leads to the ratcheting "us versus them" mentality I see increasingly occuring.
Hell, I'm too liberal for some, too right-minded for others, and I can't even agree with the libertarians. But here were my morning thoughts on the whole thing this morning. Take them how you will...
I think that we have lost something vital in the past few decades. The ability to have civil discourse on a subject we disagree on, or that vexes or confuses us, and instead, we run to our camps, we allow clever little snippets to make up our minds, and we vote as we are told to do by those we consider to be trustworthy. We need to get that back.
Don't accept the Cliff Notes version without question. Don't deposit the Cliff Notes version and expect compliance and acceptance. If you have a question, a concern, be inquisitive, dig deeper. Social media might be the best, and worst, thing that we have invented.
Lastly, check out the most recent Moth Radio Hour. Specifically, the Voicing Hard Truths episode with David Litt. A clear example of how one little mistake on a speech-writer's side of things caused an international incident. Add another line item to the long list of jobs I would never want to have.
Be well, folks.
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