An Uneventful Year: Personal Note

                It's a strange experience. I was trying to write a recapitulation of this past year for a Christmas letter for my father that began with a reassuring, "It's been an uneventful year." I didn't get to print and mail that letter, but I decided that I needed to take a better look at the year.

                About a year ago, this blog changed from an occasional, "What's happening in my life" blog to a daily Scripture and thoughts blog. Somehow, I have managed to write 390 blogs posts. It seems to me that I haven't posted as many "What's happening" entries as I may have. That may change in the next year.

                In January, I joined the Jerry Jenkins Writer's Guild. The story I had been working on got put aside, and Zheann's story began to take shape. It has been a roller coaster ride. There have been times I felt like my soul was being shredded by the criticisms I've received. Other times, characters have informed me that they weren't going to do what I had planned. It is a much different, better story now than it was when I started, I think. There's a lot of work to be done before it is ready to go to a publisher.

                I wrote about seventy five pages, then decided to jump ahead to when my main character was an adult. That's when the story was supposed to get exciting. As I wrote the next 20 pages, I realized that the first seventy-five were useful as backstory, but they wouldn't be part of what was published. Then Jerry Jenkins read the first chapter and said it was boring. Further correspondence reduced that twenty pages to 1. One hundred pages of writing, gone before the story even started.

                When I returned to Erie in April, I had several ideas. I wanted to add ten birds to my lifetime list, and I knew which birds I wanted to see. For the most part, I didn't see any of them, but I did add ten birds to my list. I also wanted to write letters to the editor about being a Nobody and making Erie a better place, and to write Readers' Reflections letters. I did that from April through September. I got distracted once I came south again. I need to get back to that. I wanted to plant a garden again.

                I also decided I wanted to do something about a toe that overlapped another toe. In early May, I endured my first surgery, and had to wear a "storm trooper" boot for several weeks. The boot kept me from mowing the lawn for about 2 weeks. Someone should have made videos. I wouldn't have liked it, but someone should have made videos.

                Toward the end of May, I was scheduled to get my car inspected. The night before the inspection, Dad had me take him to the hospital because of chest pains. They admitted him around 6 am. I took the car up and after a long moment of panic because I couldn't find the paperwork, I got it inspected. As I was trying to park back at the hospital, I backed into a telephone pole. Mind you, this was in May, so I was using crutches to walk about a block to the hospital and then about a block through the hospital to Dad's room. Somehow, the gardens got planted.

                I don't remember much happening in June. I think we just dealt with doctor visits and car repairs. At some point during the month, I got permission to take the boot off. I warned the doctor, when the boot comes off, that means I'm free to do. On July 4, I took a 4 mile walk. It seemed a fitting way to spend part of Independence Day.

                Once I was free to use my foot, I started working on the bird list. I went to Pymatuming, and did see Bald Eagles and Tree Swifts and two dark shadows winging by that I'm assured were Ospreys. I started going to the Peninsula, sometimes with a friend, sometimes on my own. Then Dad started inviting himself along. We spent more time at the Peninsula together watching sunsets than either of us has spent at the Peninsula for the last thirty years combined. On one of our outings, we saw a coyote, and I parked the car and went back to get pictures. I learned a lesson that day: do not lean on running vehicles to take pictures.

                On another occasion, we watched the sun set, got in the car, drove to the Bay side of the Peninsula and watched the moon rise. You have never seen a moon so big. Afterwards, Dad told me several times that he had never seen anything like it. It's an achievement when he's impressed.

                At some point after July 4, I got a phone call from someone at the library. Apparently I had volunteered to give a talk. I met with her assistant and I agreed to talk about making Erie a better place using ideas like the ones I'd been sending to the newspaper. I gave the talk toward the end of July to about 12 senior citizens. I don't think they were impressed, but preparing for that required that I pull together some ideas and some research. It brought about the birth of the Nobodies. The idea didn't take off the way I hoped, but I still post to the group now and again and people seem to like what I post.

                Work continued on my story through August and September, along with trips to the Peninsula. Midway through September, I went to the East Pier to watch the tall ships Parade of Sail. As the ships were leaving their docks, a thunderstorm rolled in. They continued into the lake, but rode out that storm, and a second storm, and a third. The third was a severe storm. I moved back off the pier slowly as driving wind destroyed my umbrella and rain pelted seeming from every side. When the storms finally ended, the ships filed back in, some of them with no sails up. I discovered that my point and shoot camera would not zoom, not allow me to review the pictures I'd taken... basically not do anything my old Kodak Instamatic (non-digital) camera did.

                I took it to VanTuil's, and they told the cost of buying a new camera would be less than the cost of sending it out for repairs. After an intense but brief internal debate, I purchased a DSLR - a "real" camera. I've been taking pictures of anything that doesn't move and quite a bit that does to try to learn how to use it.

                This is also when the election heated up for me. I argued against Mrs. Clinton. I argued against Mr. Trump. I arranged to have an absentee ballot sent to me so that I could vote, and I argued some more, trying to figure out for who to vote. As I have said to others, I am not happy that Mr. Trump won. I am delighted that Mrs. Clinton lost. I spent several Monday nights praying with a group of people who were a breath of sanity - not praying for any specific candidate to win, but praying about the issues involved.

                As September ended, we packed up, closed down the house and headed back south in Dad's car. Last year when we came, I left my guitar and had to have a friend rescue it before it was damaged in the cold house. This year, I told Dad that I would either have to do that, or bring it with me. He gave me permission to bring it. Somehow, it and everything else we wanted to bring fit, and Dad's mind was clear enough that he participated in the packing.

                Outside of Beckley, WV, I heard a strange noise. I looked around trying to figure out which car was making it. After a short distance, I decided it was our car. We'd blown a tire. I've never changed a tire before. Dad tried to help. A knight in shining armor stood by because Dad was trying to do it, and a storm moved in. Rain, hail, and the tire got changed. We took the exit at Beckley and found a Sears whose auto center was open, and they had a tire that would fit and they could take us right away.

                For the months of October and November, the resort is still pretty empty. The power cord for my computer died and I ordered a new one, without realizing that I was having it sent to the house. I contacted the vendor and they were able to catch it and send it here. We found out our air conditioner is fine, we were using it wrong. Something blew a circuit so we had no electricity in the outlets in the back of the motorhome for a couple weeks. Something happened to our water system that we sometimes had a little water and sometimes not. We got the lawn mower repaired. The repairman who came to deal with the motorhome's issues reset the circuit that Dad thought he had reset, and we had electricity again. We got the intake for our water, and the bathroom faucet repaired. The wifi in the resort is still not working well and it's sounding like their solution is going to be expensive for me.

                I have been practicing guitar, starting with Book I, purchased a few years ago when I took a stab at it before. By the end of October, I had worked my way through most of Book I, and ordered Book 2. I have learned more in the past 10 weeks about music and playing guitar than I learned in the 3 years I played in college. Of course, this means that my choir director here has another instrument at her disposal. I'm practicing to play and sing Silent Night. Since I'm playing it once, I'm going to probably play it another time, and it looks like I'll be doing Joy To The World for our Christmas church service.  

          Since I've been taking so many pictures, I suggested to the administrator of the Resort Association's Facebook page that I could add pictures to the site. The idea being that others could enjoy what I'm seeing, and maybe it would bring more people to the site. My idea was that it would be a shame to take pictures and have them "rot" on a flash drive. That resulted in my being added as an administrator so I'm not only adding pictures, but trying to add events as well, so people know what's going on. As I discussed the photos with the resort manager, one comment was, "Oh, you have to take pictures of the dance." So, now I'm attending functions that I'd never thought I'd attend, to take pictures of people. Yes, people.

                  I  continued working on my story. I made a change to the story that turned what I thought would be the climax into a plot twist, and the story is developing complexities that I never imagined. I've even had characters inform me that they're not going to do what I thought they were going to do. What I thought was going to be the climax turned into a plot twist. What I thought would be the climax after that turned into the events leading up to what may be a series of adventures with 5 enemies to be defeated. I'm not sure how that is going to all work out yet. I have to write it to find out.

                So, as I sat down to write Dad's Christmas letter that never got sent, I reassuringly wrote, "It's been an uneventful year." Yes, in between the events, it's been an uneventful year.