Musings & Thoughts for Tuesday, November 7, 2023, or: A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That

Late Morning, Tuesday, November 7, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Hi, there, folks. Well, it’s another mild late autumn morning here in the Tampa Bay area. Outside, the temperature is 71°F/21°C under sunny skies. The forecast for today calls for mostly sunny skies and a high of 84°F/29°C.

In sharp contrast, the place that I’m moving to in a little over a month, Madison, NH, is a bit chillier: the current temperature is 49°F/9°C under cloudy conditions. It looks like I’m going to need shoes, boots, boots, and other items that are suitable for winter conditions. And cocoa mix! Lots of cocoa mix!

Movin’ Out: The Saga Continues

Regarding the move: The packing process resumed last night with some rejiggering of the already packed stuff (books) because the bigger boxes that were already “ready” proved to be too heavy to carry, so the person who is doing the actual packing decided to repack the books (mostly history non-fiction ones) into smaller moving boxes.

This morning I emptied another shelf in my IKEA Billy bookshelf and took 15 or so books to the kitchenette, which is the depository for stuff that needs to be packed in moving boxes. I, of course, felt a pang of sadness while I was taking books such as At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor and Battle: The Story of the Bulge down from where they’ve been for nearly seven years. This house has been my home, you know, for that long a time, and even though I have often been sad – mostly since mid-2020 – here, I will miss it – and my fellow housemates.

Sad Anniversary Week

Today marks the 51^st anniversary of the beginning of my first – and briefest – childhood romance, the one I kept bottled up inside for half a century until I wrote the Remembering Cheryl T series last November. It’s one of those quirks of the calendar, but the 2023 calendar for November has the same days of the week as in November 1972.

Then, as now, November 7 was Election Day, and it was on that day that my third-grade class (Ms. Cynthia Turtletaub presiding) held a mock Presidential election. I was nine (going on 10), and I didn’t know how shady President Nixon was at the time, so I cast my “vote” for him. I also was in love – or what I thought was love – with a cute auburn-haired girl, Cheryl Thigpen, who sat a few desks away from mine on the next-to-last row in Ms. Turtletaub’s classroom (Room E-13) at Coral Park Elementary.

If you want to read the story – as I remember it, anyway – of my first experience of love and loss, you can start with Tempus Fugit: Remembering Cheryl T, then read the rest of the posts tagged under the category Remembering Cheryl T.  I wrote this long series (which also includes haikus and a “temp track” for an Original Soundtrack for the Blog) last November after I was first told that I would have to move out (I’ve been on “Movin’ Out mode for a while now, it seems), and it was the first time that I told the story in full in the 50 years between 1972 and 2022. No one – not even the girl that I fell in love with after I was transferred from Coral Park to Tropical Elementary School – knew the true story about Cheryl and me cos I suppressed it even when I was nine going on 10.

On Writing & Storytelling: Action This Day

As if sad anniversary dates and packing for an interstate move weren’t enough, yesterday was marred by a minor glitch with my online banking account. I could access my account and see how much was in it, but I could not access the payments function. I tried to call my bank with my phone, but the battery is over seven years old and the phone itself is designed to prevent swapping out old batteries for new ones, so even though I started the call to see what the heck was going on with my account, the battery went from 85% charged to 0% in less than three minutes.

Luckily, my bank is headquartered in a state in the Central Time zone, and I could still use the online banking chat option, so I told a service representative that I was having trouble accessing the Payments option but could otherwise see my current balance and activity log. After a few minutes, the service rep said, “Oh, I can see your account and access your payments function; all you need to do is clear your browser’s cache and you’re good to go.”

Of course, that was a bit after 5 PM my time, and I had been fretting over the “bug” with the Payments option because my rent is due on the 10^th, and I wanted to make sure I made the payment on time. The stress over that, compounded by the already existing angst over moving and trying to drum up sales for Reunion: A Story, made me nervous and unable to work on the manuscript for Reunion: Coda.

So, naturally today I will be doing my best to clear my mind so I can focus on the novel. I am now less confident that Reunion: Coda will be ready before M-Day (December 12) or the winter holidays, but I still need to work on writing, editing, and revising it so I can publish it as soon as possible. If I can somehow meet my original “in time for Christmas” deadline, I will be thrilled, of course. If not…well, remember that until a few weeks ago I was still hoping to move somewhere close to where I am, and at a later date than just before the aforementioned December holidays.

Well, I don’t have anything to add to this narrative, so I’ll close for now. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.