I didn’t make this image, so credit to whoever did, but I loved it and the idea behind it. It’s such a straightforward way to actually put a drop into the bucket of Striving For Change.

But I also found these two articles relevant:

When Black people are in pain, White people just join book clubs

I read a lot. Like, a lot. But my reading is probably 80% entertainment & relaxation, 18% useful non-fiction, and 2% “worthy.” (I’m now seriously tempted to go back through all the books I’ve read this year and see how close those percentages are to accurate, but that would take a lot of time, so assume that they’re approximations.)

And what defines “worthy?” Well, the commodification of Black pain, definitely. They’re, you know, medicinal books. The ones that are good for you, that you read because it’s somehow virtuous to read them, not necessarily fun to read them. Book club books. Books like “How to be an Antiracist,” which I am currently in the middle of.

But Black authors should not only be able to make a living when they’re educating White people about things we should already know.* If blackout publishing works, and I hope it does, the bestsellers next week will be those worthy books. I wanted my purchases to support authors with books that fell into my other two categories of reading: useful and entertaining.

So, first up, (hopefully both useful and entertaining): Banish Your Inner Critic, by Denise Jacobs. Would I write faster if I banished my inner critic? Probably, yes. Am I going to be able to do so? Well… we’ll see, I guess. But back when I was an editor, I worked with Denise on her first book, (now long out of date), so I know she’s got a great voice and I’m looking forward to reading this one soon.

And second, Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson, currently #1 in the category of African American Science Fiction on Amazon. I find that a little ironic, since the book is set in Toronto — but I guess African Canadian would be a seriously niche category.

I hope you will join me in supporting black authors this week. If you do or if you have recommendations for books, share them in the comments, please!

*I am capitalizing both Black and White, because of these articles: Recognizing Race in Language and The Case for Capitalizing the B in Black. I’m not exactly comfortable with it, so I expect that I will make errors, but it feels like the right choice.

As part of the ongoing work-in-progress of cleaning out Greg’s office and the shed, Suzanne had over a dozen boxes of books to donate to a research library down in the Bay Area. In better times, it would have made an excellent excuse to spend a weekend having fun in San Francisco or Oakland.

Alas, pandemic.

But we did want to deliver the books and Suzanne’s job means that her opportunities to do so are limited. (Postal workers deliver mail on Saturdays, so most of her weeks don’t include two days off in a row.)

Unfortunately, most campgrounds in the counties near the Bay are still closed. State parks are closed. County parks are closed. Army Corps of Engineer campgrounds are closed. Everything is closed. Except maybe the Bureau of Land Management sites?

The closest campground I could find to the city that might be open was a BLM campground with no online reviews near Ukiah. The no online reviews was a little worrying, but on Saturday S & I headed south, planning to check out the campground, maybe set up my tent to hold our site, then drive to Albany and drop off the books, then drive back to the campground.

Ha.

In almost four years of traveling, the road to Buckhorn Campground is the first road I’ve taken that I will declare officially impassable for a 20-foot van. I’m not sure how close we got — maybe halfway, so three miles? — but it was a dirt track up the mountains, one lane, hairpin turns, deep ruts, steep sides. Probably fun for those with off-road vehicles and maybe drivable for a truck with 4-wheel drive. But by the time I’d decided it was not possible, gotten Serenity out of trouble, found a place to safely turn around, and gotten back to the gravel expanse at the bottom of the mountain (see picture above), I believe my hair was grayer. Maybe literally, as I actually did notice the next day that I’ve finally started to go perceptibly gray.

With no campground, we stayed focused on immediate goals: a stop at Big John’s Market in Healdsburg for essentially needed treats and some lunch. We wound up spending an hour in the parking lot, eating grocery store sushi and sugar, while calling campgrounds. I’d already tried a bunch earlier in the week, but we called farther and farther away from the city and finally wound up with — maybe — a spot at a KOA in Willits. Then we drove into the city, found an excellent parking spot, unloaded the books, and got back on the road.

We didn’t get to the KOA until after 8PM. It’s a classic parking lot style KOA with loads of fun stuff to do if you had kids with you — swimming pool, petting zoo, water spray zone, train depot — but sites lined up in rows with bare patches of grass between gravel that Z hated walking on. Since for us it was just a way to avoid driving until midnight, it was fine.

On Sunday, we drove back to Arcata. Along the way, we stopped at a rest stop and had lunch, and it’s weird to say that was a highlight of the trip — woo-hoo, rest stop! — but Zelda was very interested in all the smells and actually wanted to wander around. She hasn’t been eating much lately, nor has she cared about going for walks, so I was happy that she was still interested in the rest stop. Art galleries for dogs, I swear.

Back in Arcata, we took it easy. But I wanted to save the below picture: potato chip nachos. We’d bought store brand potato chips at Big John’s Market to go with our roast beef, horseradish cheddar & angula roll-ups for dinner Saturday night, but the chips were so thick that I said they ought to be potato skins instead. When we got back to Arcata, I put that thought into practice, and topped the chips with melted cheddar (or possibly gruyere, I’m not sure which), bacon bits and green onion. I’d call it peak junk food — the unhealthiest thing I’ve eaten in months, possibly years — but it was delicious. Inspired, IMO.

I know I haven’t been posting much. Ten days, I think, since my last post, which is a long time for me. But the world feels like such a mess that posting about potato chip nachos and rest stops seems simultaneously like an absolute waste of anyone’s time, including my own, and yet also like exactly what I want to hold on to. I can read books and share insightful Facebook posts and do my personal best, but I can’t change the world or fix anyone’s problems, including my own. But if you can’t appreciate potato chip nachos, than really, what’s the point? So potato chip nachos it is.

Yesterday, Buddy Best Dog got to lick his person’s face for as long as he wanted to. No hands pushing his mouth away and only the mildest of complaints about liver-treat breath.

And then we said good-bye.

Buddy Best Dog was indomitable. Somewhere around the middle of his life, he lost his original home and a leg, maybe from a fall out of a moving pickup truck. He was rescued but the leg couldn’t be saved.

But losing a leg didn’t stop Buddy, and it didn’t change his spirit either. He was a typical Lab, all happy goof. He loved the beach, he loved hiking, he loved Frisbee. He loved other dogs — he was the most sociable dog I’ve ever met, always needing to say a friendly hello to any passing dog on the beach and willing to bounce as far as he had to to make that possible. Long after the point where walking was a challenge, he’d make the effort if there was another dog to sniff.

And he loved his people. Yesterday, as it became painfully clear that his failing body was becoming a prison for that indomitable spirit, we promised him that Greg was waiting for him and would be so, so happy to see him. I believe that with all my heart.

But, oh, he will be missed here.

Good-bye, Buddy Best Dog. May your next life be filled with treats and toys and all the love.

Yesterday, Suzanne and I were sitting in our rocking chairs, looking out at the abundantly glorious garden, eating a truly delicious dinner*, when Suzanne said, thoughtfully, “I think it’s going to be aliens next.”**

I glanced in her direction and she clarified, “Big spaceships, hovering over major cities. Or maybe an asteroid.”

I chuckled, as seemed appropriate, and then said, also thoughtfully (although nowhere near this coherently), “You know, stories — fiction, non-fiction — always take place in the center of the action. There’s never a story where the protagonists are sitting on the sidelines, watching in dismay, with nothing much to do, except…” I shook my head and shrugged. “…appreciate their rocking chairs, I guess?”

Humboldt County, where we are located, has had three deaths from Covid, at least two of which were at a nursing home. You can buy toilet paper in stores, and also meat, although prices are going up. And to the best of my knowledge, the police aren’t murdering people, or spraying tear gas on peaceful protestors so our elected officials can stage photo ops.

The other day I wrote to my aunt and said, “I feel so torn these days between the choices of living in contented oblivion or informed misery. It feels like there is some inherent virtue in informed misery, like knowing the terrible things going on in the world is bearing witness and that bearing witness is an action. But really it’s just passively sitting around being depressed. Bearing witness is a useless action (unless, of course, one is physically present while the cops are killing people with a camera phone running).”

I am very grateful that I have not been physically present while the police are killing people. I’m hoping to continue to avoid that. But I am firmly on the side of this Facebook post:

I’ve got two books on hold at the library: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism and How to Be an Antiracist. That doesn’t feel like it’s doing much, but it’s better than sitting in my rocking chair and completely closing my eyes to the world, tempting though that is.

* Dinner was so good that when contemplating two delicious dessert choices — ice cream or GF ginger cookies — I wished I could have seconds of our meal instead. So for future reference: In a cast iron frying pan, I sautéed an onion in a little butter, then added chopped up chicken apple sausage. I cooked it for long enough that everything was thoroughly browned and the pan needed deglazing, meanwhile also cooking GF pasta. I removed the onions and sausages, deglazed the pan with a little red wine, added halved cherry tomatoes and a generous dash of chili garlic sauce, sautéed them briefly until the tomatoes were softened but still cohesive, returned the onion and sausage to the pan, added the pasta, a generous scoop of goat cheese, & some finely chopped fresh parsley and cilantro, then mixed it all until the goat cheese was entirely melted into the pasta.

**I’m not quoting word for word, because my memory is not that perfect.

Edited to add: Actually, we could delete the word “innocent” from that graphic, too. I think the police should stop killing people entirely, innocent or not.

Long before I read my first romance — literally, years before I read my first romance — I’d read my first, second, third, and probably five hundredth fantasy or science fiction novel. My dad gave me Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight (Dragonriders of Pern – Volume 1) when I was maybe seven or eight, and I never looked back. So when RWA (the Romance Writers of America) was going up in flames during the holidays, and Mary Robinette Kowal, the current president of SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America), tweeted:

I was honestly thrilled. Joining RWA was practical, an attempt to get better at the business side of writing, and I didn’t bother to renew my membership after a year. Joining SFWA, on the other hand, was a dream come true for my twelve-year-old self.

Of course, once I’d joined, I didn’t exactly know what to do with my membership. I thought maybe I’d be active on their forums, but I actually felt too shy to comment there. I wanted to vote in the Nebula awards, but between the pandemic and my cross-country trip, I didn’t have time to read all the nominees. I thought about attending the annual conference, hoping to meet some fellow writers, but it moved online because of the pandemic and so… yeah, not gonna happen. But I read the newsletter when it arrives in my inbox, and when one of them mentioned that they were accepting submissions for a story bundle on fantastic beasts, I thought, “Well, Cici?”

I clicked the link, submitted Cici and the Curator, and then promptly forgot about it, because pandemic, heartbreak, life in turmoil, the usual. (Ha.) But I was delighted — really, so thrilled! — when I got an email a while later saying Cici had been accepted.

If you’re unfamiliar with Story Bundles, they’re collections of books, available for a limited time, at a somewhat set-your-own price. I say “somewhat” because the minimum price is $5 for five books, or $15 for 15 books, but that’s a great deal. If you’d like to support authors or the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, you’re invited to contribute more, but that’s up to you. The SFWA Fantastic Beasts bundle is a curated bundle, with titles selected by members of the SFWA, and I’m incredibly flattered that Cici is in the collection, along with titles by best-selling authors like Thea Harrison and Lindsay Buroker, award-winning authors like Susan Forest and Douglas Smith, and a whole bunch more.

I know if you’re reading this blog post, you’ve probably read Cici already — or at least decided that you’re completely uninterested in reading it. But if you like science fiction or fantasy at all, I hope you’ll consider giving the bundle a try. $15 is a really good price for fifteen books and now is a really fine time to support authors.

Still very much a work in progress, but it’s a start.

Also done today: laundry; home-made French onion soup with Gruyere on gluten-free bread; and taking the dogs to the beach.

Not done: all the things on my morning to-do list, sigh. I’ve been trying to write an email to my mailing list for the past hour and my brain just isn’t in it. It might have to wait for tomorrow, but if so, I’m not leaving Serendipity until it’s done. There, a resolution.

I’m a little sad that I neglected to take a true Before photo, but on Sunday morning, Suzanne’s storage shed (known as Dale’s house) was so stuffed with boxes and crates and buckets and miscellany that not only was there no way to get inside to find anything, there was no way to put anything more inside. Objects were piled on top of one another, and when we needed to stow some painting gear inside because it was going to rain, we had to lean against the door to close it. There’s still one box stored under the bed in Serendipity (aka my tiny house) because it was simply not possible to make room for it in the shed.

By Sunday afternoon, Dale’s house was empty, swept, and the wasp nest discovered in the corner was dead and gone.

By Monday afternoon, it was organized. In this case, a picture or two is worth a thousand words, I suspect.

All of the objects in the front of both images (that big open gray bin and the crates next to it) are going to eventually get listed on eBay and sent off to live in someone else’s storage area or closet. Meanwhile, I’m pretty darn satisfied with our work. I had the impulse this morning to go take another picture, just because those organized shelves are so gratifying to me. I didn’t quite alphabetize the paint cans, but I was tempted. In the crate of comics, all items are organized by name and number. Every remaining box could have a single label on it specifying exactly what it contains — no “miscellaneous desk” or “junk drawer” boxes left. Satisfaction!

Meanwhile Suzanne is resolved that today — which is her official day off — is going to include only fun things, so I’m also looking forward to a fun, and rather more relaxing day. Time to get started with it!

Sorry for the empty emails this morning, oh-email-readers! I was trying to post to the blog from my phone & the Kindle app: it’s one of those things that I’ve meant to learn how to do for a long time and was always too busy to get around to when I was traveling. Unfortunately, I obviously didn’t figure it out — as far as I could tell, I just managed to create some blank posts. One of them was supposed to be the above photo and the other was going to be a quote from a book I’m currently reading at a friend’s recommendation. So it goes. I will try to avoid sending out future experiments via email!

But the above photo is from yesterday’s morning walk. I woke up around 5:45 to a beautiful clear sky — an uncommon sight in the home of one of the world’s foggiest airports. (According to Wikipedia, the Army Corps of Engineers built the airport specifically to test fog dispersal techniques, none of which worked. I like the thought of the optimists saying, “Sure, we can figure out how to get rid of fog,” though. What do you suppose they had in mind?) But since it was such a gorgeous morning, I promptly hopped out of bed and took Zelda and Riley on a good walk, the mile to the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Center.

I should probably be walking them there every day. It’s certainly close enough. But there are actually enough good walks around here that I haven’t settled into a routine at all. Sometimes I do the short walk to the yoga studio and think wistfully of some future when people can exercise together again. Sometimes I do the uphill walk to the park and playground. Sometimes I walk along the abandoned railroad tracks, now turned into a bike path. I like having lots of options.

I also like Zelda’s enthusiasm, although I have to keep reminding myself not to yell at the senile dog who seems to be forgetting how leashes work. She keeps running ahead, then hitting the end of her leash with a jerk. I should dig out Bartleby’s harness, which is somewhere in the van, and start using it with her. Neither of us like it when she gets choked. But it is, of course, delightful to have her running with enthusiasm.

As for the quote, I posted it to Instagram. I am mentally arguing quite a bit with this book (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)) — it reminds me of the parenting books that never took hunger, tiredness, discomfort or overstimulation into account when considering behavior — but at the same time, I’ve highlighted a number of quotes. I never read Kindle books with the feature that shows other people’s highlights turned on, but I might reread this book when I’m done with highlights on. It would be interesting to see what other people took away from it. I don’t know whether what I’m taking away from it is what my friend thought I would, but I also highlighted:

Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them. If we try to change them, this means we don’t really like them.

The Four Agreements

It made me want to say, “Yes, exactly! Ha! Take that!” in my ongoing imaginary arguments, which somehow made me laugh. It’s so satisfying to thoroughly win an imaginary argument.

I was chatting with my dad this weekend and he was asking me questions about Arcata, none of which I knew the answers to. Population? Um… College enrollment numbers? Um… Industries? Um…

After I hung up, I went to wikipedia and read about Arcata for a little while, so I now know the population is somewhere around 17,000, about half of which is related to the university in one way or another, and that the “industry” is, in fact, the university. I also know that the average high temperature — all year long! — is in the 50s or 60s. All year long!

In September, which is the hottest month of the year here, the high temperature will be 62. And in January, the coldest month of the year, it will be 53. Ironically, that’s almost perfect weather for living in a van. On the other hand, with the low of 42 in January, I’d probably be quite happy to be in my cozy tiny house. (Except that I’m still planning on being back in Florida by then.)

Tank would be quite happy to be in my cozy tiny house, too, but he is slowly adapting to his own house. Okay, so the picture doesn’t show that, but I’ve caught him curled up in his own house at least a few times. And I’ve relented and let him into my house only when the rain was really pouring down. I’m not sure he’s figured out what the secret is, but at least he’s not trying to run in every time I open the door.

Now that I’m finally mostly done with house projects, I’m trying to get back to my writing projects. It hasn’t been easy. I want to write fun and joyful books, the kind of thing that you finish with a happy sigh, with maybe a chuckle of two of delight along the way, but every time I try to give my brain room to create, it falls into terrible spirals of self-loathing. In our culture’s stories, if your child rejects you, you must be a really horrible person. Even if you can turn it around and say, well, a child who rejects the mother who loved him is probably a horrible person, then you’ve raised a horrible person and that’s just as bad. Either way, horrible all around.

It’s not very conducive to writing joy, so I’m thinking I should probably write horror for a while. Something with lots of very gruesome murders, innocent people suffering but the bad guys getting theirs in the end. It feels like it might be very satisfying to commit lots of virtual murders. I suppose the alternative might be to play lots of video games for a while, but writing out my hurt and anger would be cheaper. And possibly more productive. Not emotionally productive — I told a friend yesterday that I didn’t see the point in therapy right now, because I saw no hope for change: my sense of betrayal is so deep that I don’t see how I ever recover from it. But there’s obviously a market for books with gruesome murders — a much bigger market, in fact, than that for books that try to delight. That said, I’m really tired of living in my head. I might need to look for more house projects to do instead.

Although Suzanne’s stepson, J, moved out of the Tiniest House months ago, it was not entirely uninhabited when I decided to move in. It had a resident cat, Tank. As I understand it, some years previously, the then-feral Tank started showing up for dinner and decided to stay. As far as the inside cats were concerned, he was very much Not Welcome, but eventually he became J’s cat. Not though — never! — the kind of cat that you can easily stick into a cat carrier and bring cross-country with you. So when J left, Tank stayed, and continued living in the Tiniest House. During the cold of winter, Suzanne set up a heating pad for him and the door was permanently ajar, so he could come and go as he pleased.

Unfortunately, I’m allergic to cats. Enter the New Tiniest House. I ordered it on Amazon, it came last week, and we promptly put it together for him. I’m not sure Tank likes it much so far, but eventually, we’re hoping to make an awning for it that will keep off/out the rain (that blue tarp was an attempt that didn’t work — the tarp is not waterproof) and when it gets cold, we’ll put the heating pad inside. On the one night of serious rain since I moved into the former Tiniest House, I wound up with a wet cat snoring on my bed, but that’s not a great long-term solution. Neither is me moving out for the winter so Tank can move back in, mostly because my house is much too nice now to be left entirely open to the elements.

Speaking of which, my countertop solution was to cover the counter with contact paper. It’s not a long term solution, because the contact paper’s not going to last, but it was a way to make it bearable for a few months until I feel like I can afford some nice tile. My cabinet door solution was to take one of J’s old curtains and tack it up across the open space. I still haven’t painted the cabinets, and I need to touch up some paint on the shelves, including one bracket that had to be replaced, but my tiny kitchen is looking quite kitchen-like.

I cooked my first meal in said kitchen this morning. After I walked the dogs, I was making myself a cup of coffee and decided it was time to dump my compost (mostly old coffee grounds & some dog food) into the chicken coop. The chickens were happy to see me for the sake of the dog food, but while I was there, I found an egg in one of the nests. Freshly-laid, still warm from the chicken.

One part of me thought, “Wow, the whole concept of eggs is really gross when you think about it.” The other part of me thought, “Okay, that’s really cool, I could eat the freshest egg ever.” And so I did. Totally simple egg scramble – just egg, butter, salt and pepper — and it was, in fact, delicious. Not so head-and-shoulders above any other eggs that it would have been notable, but as I sat in my camp chair, sun shining, breeze blowing through my open window, I very much appreciated my breakfast and my life.

That side of the house is also looking nice, IMO, although it’s all about the outside. I found a $10 shoe rack at Target that seemed perfect for my needs, and a wooden coat rack at the hardware store. I borrowed a drill and a level to put the coat rack up and am quite pleased with my endeavors. And with my coats!

Funny story with the coats: J left behind a large screen television which didn’t fit in the Tiniest House at all — there was just no room for it. I kept putting it outside and then moving it back in when rain threatened, but it was very much in the way, so Suzanne posted on Facebook offering it in trade. The very first person to respond offered raincoats and home-brew. We never investigated the Why of the raincoats — I just said, “Yes, raincoats!” because my notorious eggplant coat, while quite nice, is not actually waterproof and Arcata is a place where a waterproof coat comes in handy. I didn’t worry about whether the raincoats would fit or whether I would like them, because anything other than a bright yellow plastic poncho would have been fine with me. As it happened, though, the raincoats were basically what I would have picked if someone invited me to walk into a store and take what I wanted: three of them, one lightweight, one medium, one heavy, all in shades of purple/blue, all that fit perfectly. How nice is that?

I posted the above picture, though, mostly to show off my door. I painted the design in the sky blue of the ceiling (Harbor Fog), because I thought it would look nice and it does. I wish I’d painted in the sand color instead, because I think it would look even better if I had, but I might do that when I paint the cabinets. Which is still going to happen someday, although I’m enjoying not being covered in paint. (I’m an appallingly messy painter — I was wearing as much paint as the walls last week.)

Circling all the way back to the point of this post, Suzanne and I were talking about the house no longer being the Tiniest House, since Tank now has the True Tiniest House. Almost-Tiniest House just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Former-Tiniest House? Once-Tiniest House? She was suggesting alternate names — the beach house? the Wendy House? (<–a joke that means less if you don’t know that my real name is Wendy, I suppose). I think, though, that my house ought to be named Serendipity. In fact, as I look at my new raincoats hanging on the wall, I’m very, very sure of it.