I have absolutely nothing of interest to say, except that the Chinese have found me. I go through my unapproved comments anywhere from five to seven times a day, and there’s usually one to three comments written in Chinese waiting for my almighty hand to flush them down the spam hole.
Of course, now that I’ve linked a YouTube video here on The Story Folder (and yes, that’s a capital The), my spam folder should have a heyday with the sudden influx of bots. Ah well. It gives me something to do when I’m supposed to be working on my novel.
In other news, between privacy issues and echo-chamber shenanigans, I’m looking into Google substitutes. So far I’m
Trying out Brave Browser (which has a built-in adblocker)
Using duckduckgo as my search engine
But
With no real clue as to decent email alternatives.
As for YouTube, I’m not even go to try giving that up. Way too many cat videos to quit.
This afternoon I had just about the most fun a girl can have trying to create a marketing spiel for “The Bump Under the Bed,” and ended up with about twenty minutes of unusable footage documenting my increasing frustration. I trimmed it down to a thirty-two second video, which you can find by popping over to my Facebook business page:
The page is public and — therefore — accessible to the public, even if they don’t have Facebook (like the antisocial Schultzes that they are). FB is usually just my backup to thestoryfolder.com, where I repeat what I’ve said here but in fewer characters, but someone’s disk space usage is fast approaching capacity. Still haven’t cleaned up that back closet full of skeletons and stored images.
The proof copy of “The Bump Under the Bed” came in the mail today, and between the eight hundred takes of my advertisement video and a sudden realization that the title of my picture book is off center, this is the closest I have to new content for today’s update:
My dad, ladies and gentleman.
Here’s something else to keep you coming back here on my update days: a follow-up to the previous entry (Once Upon a Time I was a Nursing Student) from my nursing practicum journal.
Last week, my patient had his leg chopped off by a man with a soldering iron.
This week, my patient slept.
A lot.
I’m getting that vague “nursing isn’t all glamor and heroics” vibe that has me shuddering and bunkering down with a pathophysiology book. By Mosby, if there isn’t more going on in my medication handbook than there is in my patient’s room. Arlo and I kill an hour by looking up the hundred and one medications our patients are on and snickering over some of the more amusing symptoms. Which strikes me as vaguely inappropriate, but I’ve done quite a bit worse that giggle over the word “impotence.” I’m really far too old for that to be funny, but then I’ll probably never really grow up.
I lurk around my patient’s door waiting for her to blink, or shift even, prepared to swoop in and take advantage of the consciousness presented me. But she proves very nearly as stubborn as Mr. I’m-Sleeping-I-Swear from two weeks ago, but with the added obstacle that she’s not faking it. Curse her, because she’s friendly when I talk to her, which makes badgering her about her current sexual activity something I actually have to use tact on.
She’s fortunate enough to fall asleep before I get to that particular question. I’ve never been very delicate in wording, and my personal strategies tend to run along the lines of “umm…so…uh….you used to be married, yeah? But you’re not anymore? So, uh, are you…um…sexually active?”
I’ve only gotten one “yes” so far, and I’m pretty sure my patient was quite gleefully waiting for me to ask.
Though I may not be full of tact, I’m full of sympathy, and the keen ability to sense when it’s time to throw in the towel. She’s tired, struggling to keep her eyes open, and tomorrow is another day to keep trying. I’ll be successful. I’m determined to, which accounts for more in my life than I can say.
6:30am the next day I peak my head in the door, just to check in on her. I have to look twice, because the kind, fifty- year-old black woman from yesterday has somehow turned into a large white man who badly needs to readjust his hospital gown.
I flick through the chart as though it will explain how Renown has mastered transmogrification, then remember that my patient was hopefully going to be transferred to telemetry ASAP to monitor her heart. I remember, because I’d been counting on transfer to be their normally punctual selves.
The word I think in my head is not nice, nor appropriate, for my clinical instructor to read.
It evens out in the end. Amputation guy, for taking as long as another clinical day, has earned me a day off. I take it, pretending to sulk because my patient has left with few of my questions answered.
I’m whistling “Springtime for Hitler” by time I hit the elevators.
It’s good to see him again, rather contentedly holding his three balloons, as always. Turns out Boonder asked Mom if she could have him in time for my oldest nephew’s second birthday, beating out both me and my brother by reproducing early (and remembering the poor, neglected thing in the first place). I’m just happy to know the tradition will live to see another 18+ years. Even better, here you can see Mr. C holding a dollar in coins, in front of a cake baked and decorated in the circle shape and frosting color of his choice*.
One other bonus fact she shared with me during our phone call: Dad replaced the dimes with dollar bills because they needed the dimes for the next birthday.
And now you know…the rest of the story.
*Red. That’s supposed to be red, if the rumors are to be believed.
But seriously, my only excuse is that I spent the afternoon sorting pictures; a job I’ve been putting off for close on ten years now. Here’s a picture of me looking absolutely thrilled at my first birthday:
Sorting photographs sounds like a relatively easy job (toss the extras you don’t need, organize the ones you like), but of course it isn’t. There are so many stories attached to even the small details in these pictures. For example, that panda bear is still somewhere in this house, with a belly-full of dimes. My siblings and I added dimes to the porcelain bank at every birthday, one for every year of life. Mom would bake the cake-shape of our choice (as long as it was a circle or heart), we’d choose the frosting color, and every dime that went into the slot on the back of panda’s head got counted out loud by everyone. Sometimes we’d try to shove in two at a time, just to trick the rest of the family, but Dad always caught on and corrected the count. When I was little I thought this ritual meant that Mom and Dad were going to be massively rich by time all three of us had made it to our eighteenth birthdays; mostly because that was such an unimaginably high number, but partly because the bear was so terrifically heavy.
However, not only did the tradition not make it through to the end goal (our years in Thailand broke the habit, either because the bear disappeared into storage or the simple fact that we no longer had easy access to dimes; I can’t remember which now), Mom and Dad would have only earned a whopping $51.30, if my math is correct. “A really nice dinner out” they told us once, which was downgraded to a “a nice dinner out” and later “a dinner out” as inflation took its toll. That, and “belly-full of dimes” is hyperbole at this point. For some reason Dad needed the coins, which he replaced with the right amount of bills. After that, it was a little disappointing when the dimes would hit folded paper instead of fellow-coins on the way in. There’s nothing like the sound of coin-on-coin chinking against each other, like Scrooge McDuck going for a swim in his vault.
So there’s a very tiny piece of my life; and that from one picture. I’m keeping a number of unprofessionally captured shots of people with their eyes half-closed and their mouths wide open just because they remind me of the stories I had no idea were still in my head. What I should do — once I’ve finished sorting the photographs of yore — is actually write down a memory guide and put it with the album. Once I’m gone, no one will appreciate the pictures without it. They may not anyways (and such is the way of things), but I’d like to give my children and grandchildren a laugh someday, if I can.
But here’s the really depressing thing about this afternoon: I only managed to get through 1998. I haven’t even touched the Thailand years yet, let alone high school. Fortunately, I stopped taking pictures in college, so while there will be a massive gap in my visual history, I’m not going to be particularly sorry once I make it to graduation and get to stop.
But of course that’s a lie too. I may not have taken many pictures, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to feel morally obligated to scour Facebook and my family’s computer files to try and fill in the photographic mural of my life. Heaven knows why. In another generation no one will have even heard of photo albums any more.
I’m working on the logistics of moving, which is more mentally challenging than I was expecting. Real update tomorrow. And by “tomorrow,” there’s a good chance I mean “Monday.”
As often as I manage to talk about myself on this blog, I tend not to actually say much. I’m not shy about the minutiae of my life (small details are where all the best jokes hide), but today I’ll add a major development in my life to the mix: this morning I accepted a job offer to Fort Wayne, IN, to begin September 1st. The official title going on any business cards is “Marketing Specialist,” but what it means is that I get to write for the Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, which is a pretty fantastic way to use my skills for the Church.
But what does this mean?* As my four watchers know, I took off the summer to work on my writing projects. It’s allowed me to work on my second picture book, the novel that’s still barely started, and my website — but even better, it’s helped me establish some good writing habits. Jumping back into a forty hour work week will take a significant bite out of all that time I wasn’t making money, but I already know I’ll be able to keep up with my picture book schedule, though novel writing will continue to creep forward at a snail’s pace**.
The only change anyone around here should notice is a slowdown on blog updates. I’m going to drop from two posts a week down to one, with updates probably going up on Monday. As short as I keep some of these blog posts, they still take a significant amount of time. I can write an update in half an hour, but the length of time that goes into each of these is closer to two hours. I’d like to save that time for other projects.
The other train leaving the platform on September 1st is”The BUMP Under the Bed.” I’m actually ahead of schedule, as I should be putting in an order for my first proof copy tomorrow. It’ll take a couple of weeks to get here, which gives me time for one more proof copy if I need to make any changes.
There was a boy named Hardy Hugh
Who heard such sounds at night,
Loud thumps and BUMPS beneath the bed
Once Mom turned off the light.
Until the night he looked below
To see what it could be…
And do you know what Hardy found?
Well. Look inside and see.
I nearly managed to skip today’s post, but if you’re in Mountain Time I’m coming in right under the wire for my Thursday update. I blame meddling kids entirely, because my sister’s got three of them and they’re all here visiting. Add my brother’s daughter (they live here so we get to see them everyday too), and that’s four kids four and under. Yea, verily, that’s also four excuses not to get around to my blog post today. I decided to get around to it anyways.
Unfortunately, I have very little to say. Fortunately, a picture is worth a thousand words:
Marker coloring is officially done for “The Bump Under the Bed” (though you can actually see a tree I missed in the bottom right corner of one of the pages – though that’s officially rectified at this point). Since this picture was taken I’ve hunted down a paper cutter at the public library, chopped off the borders, cut these in half for easier scanning and editing, and scanned them into my computer. Next step is to use my art program to clean up any mistakes and fill in the grays of the background. Most of this book takes place in the dark, and I decided to try and save ink, money, and time by using Clip Studio to do the boring shades. I hope to have all the text placed by the end of the month as well, with the book ready to go to the printers for the first draft proof copy by the first week of August. But once more with feeling:
MEDDLING KIDS.
I say this with love, if in all capitals. The good news is that I’m a week ahead of schedule, which gives me a few extra days to fritter away. I may even skip Monday’s update and just wait until I have at least the title page ready to show off. Like zoinks.
Because I find complaining about airlines cathartic, I wrote the following Monday morning, twenty hours into what should have been a seven hour trip. Transcribed from my chicken-scratch and organized into bullet points for your viewing pleasure, here’s what the last two days looked like for me:
First flight left on time, 12:35 pm Mountain Time.
Diverted to Madison, WI when a thunderstorm shut down Chicago O’Hare.
Storm ends half an hour after we land in Madison. Still might make my connecting flight, as long as this refuel goes as quickly as they say.
An hour and forty minutes after landing in Madison, WI they let us off the plane. The maintenance guy called to come in and figure out what’s wrong with the refueling is forty-five minutes away.
Madison, WI runs out of food. Plenty of alcohol at the bar, however, though I stay in the line at the gate, hoping to speak with a gate agent about rescheduling.
Finally figure out that United has one gate agent on staff in this part of the airport in Madison on a Sunday night. She flees the scene to help board another flight (headed, rather insultingly, to Chicago), leaving us with the news that even if she was available, she isn’t authorized to reschedule any flights. That’s her supervisor’s job.
Supervisor possibly dead.
At the very least we never see this mythical creature.
Trade rumors with fellow passengers about what’s going on with our plane for the next two hours. These run about as accurately as a game of telephone. In the process, accidentally become friends with people who’s names I will never know:
The Australian/American couple trying to get back home to London.
A young father certain to miss his daughter’s 5th birthday.
A girl who had only two days to go and see her friend.
A man married to a pastor’s daughter, shaking his head because he should have stayed home rather than go on this suddenly pointless overnight vacation to Kansas City.
A guy on hold with United for over an hour, with enough leftover concentration to laugh at my dry remarks about top-ten customer service strategies — like leaving until the line of irritated passengers disperses.
The partially blind man (he has a white cane and something wrong with his eyes, but meets my gaze when we exchange unpleasantries about flying in general and United in specific) who uses the Americans with Disabilities Act as a bludgeon. He raises his voice when he says “fair access,” but the lone gate agent just picks up speed on her way to the other flight when he yells the acronym at her back.
Forty minutes after our pilot tells us the fueling issue has been resolved and we’re good to go, I start the rumor that the reason we haven’t boarded yet is because we don’t have a gate agent to let us on (with the caveat that I’m only guessing).
Caveat does not make it into the rumor mill. Fortunately, no harm no foul: turns out I’m right. Four hours after landing in the capital of Wisconsin, someone finds a gate agent from downstairs and a computer printout of all our names to check everybody in. (By airline logic: because we do not belong in Madison, we do not exist in Madison. None of the computers here will do anything for us.)
Finally taxiing away from the airport for the twenty-nine minute flight to Chicago.
Some twenty-nine minutes after that, spend two and a half hours in the Chicago O’Hare customer service line with hundreds of other victims of weather and/or mechanical issues. Psychologically prepping myself to argue that our problem was ultimately mechanical and they therefore need to comp both the flight and the overnight stay.
Find out before I even get within gate-distance of customer service (the line started out two gates long) that our flight failure has already been classified as mechanical. Both relieved and disappointed at being robbed of the chance to vent my spleen.
During the two+ hours spent winding back and forth in front of customer service — while exchanging news with passengers I recognize from my flight as we pass on each loop — find out that:
The young father will make it back to Savannah just after nap-time tomorrow, in time for his daughter’s birthday after all.
The Londoners are stuck in Chicago until next evening.
The guy on the phone has beaten United Airlines down from a 6:00 pm flight next day to the 8:00 am one. He’s in line for hotel accommodations and looks enormously pleased with himself. We are legitimately happy for him, partly because it gives us hope, partly because we’re all friends now.
See the disabled man on a courtesy transport, grinning as he zips by customer service with his cane in his lap.
Meet another couple from my flight and talk for awhile — they remind me of grandparents. Not mine specifically, but enough to make me feel like I’m almost with family. We talk river rock, of all things.
End up at the customer service desk next to the married man, who waits around until my flight’s been re-booked and I have a hotel for the night. “I have a wife and a sister,” he says. “I just wanted to make sure.”
Get to the hotel a little before 1:00 am. Request a 4:15 am wake-up call. My ticket for the 7:35 am flight tomorrow is on standby and the gal at customer service — a very nice lady who does her best for me and feels bad when she can’t do better — suggested I get to the airport by 5:00 am.
(Still worth it for the shower and the three hour nap. I once spent the night at the Las Vegas airport where every single one of their chairs has armrests, which cuts off any possibilities of using them as a makeshift bed. Never again.)
Turns out I’m #2 on the standby list. I spend two and a half hours watching the sunrise come a soft, sweet purple across the tarmac, sweating out the wait and praying that no one will check in at the last minute.
Bonus discovery: on small airplanes, United charges for the second carry-on bag if you already have a personal item. Shove that bad boy into my tote like a boss, still hoping something terrible has happened to anyone else planning to check in for the flight.
Five minutes before the gate agent can start assigning spare seats to the ten or so standbys hoping they make the cut, I receive a text from United reminding me to check in for my return flight tomorrow morning.
Will find the timing funny at 7:15, when I’m sitting on the plane and thanking God I made it.
Having thanked God for deliverance, naturally spend the next hour and a half sitting in the plane without it moving so much as off the jet bridge. There’s a discrepancy in the maintenance paperwork so we have to wait for maintenance to send a spare guy to sign off on the plane.
Maintenance takes two minutes to sign off.
10:37 am Eastern time zone we hit the tarmac at our destination. Only twenty and a half hours until boarding begins for my flight back to Bozeman.
There’s a good chance this is confusing at parts, but I’m operating on three hours of sleep and don’t feel like putting off this update for a more coherent time. Questions will earn you answers, so feel free to ask if something doesn’t make sense.
I never felt as though I had to learn it, same as I never felt I had to learn how to read. Reading was sitting in church with the bulletin in my hand, sure that I understood the indecipherable black print on the page because I knew exactly what was coming next. I’d heard the services so often I’d mouth the pastor’s part along with my father, sitting in my mother’s lap as she pointed at each line. I may not have known how to read, but I knew exactly what was written. It struck me as only natural that I would one day break the barrier between the two.
To learn to read was something I assumed I was already doing, and writing was a closely related family member. The two seemed to me inseparable partners – once you were familiar with one, you were inextricably familiar with the other. No one ever told me I was going to have to learn. Reading was a fact of life, like green grass, Church on Sundays, and dusting the dining room chairs on Saturday morning. Like my brother and sister before me, it would quite obviously come to me of its own accord. Kindergarten rolled around and I filled out dotted-line worksheet after worksheet, vaguely aware that I should try to learn the letters I was tracing.
By the end of the year, I didn’t know my alphabet.
The week before 1st grade started I panicked. Years later my parents explained in some amusement their exasperation at my kindergarten teacher for dropping the little remark oh-by-the-way-Andrea-still-doesn’t-know-her-alphabet at the very last parent-teacher conference of the year. They spent the summer catching me up on the lessons I’d apparently ignored. Some of that must have finally sunk in the few days before “real school” (as I thought of all-day school), and I was suddenly certainly and terribly afraid that I would never learn how to write. It was the first and last time Mom and Dad ever bought me a present for the new school year. The small stuffed animal soothed me into sleep that night before 1st grade started, and it only seems remarkable to me now how parents seem to intrinsically know how to read their children.
By 3pm, I was no longer afraid – having discovered that my teacher did not expect me to figure out how to read or write after one day in her class.
As soon as I learned how to string a sentence together, I wrote a short story simply titled “Andrea book,” with a picture of a cat on a mat crayoned across the front. Once opened, the book revealed the situation: cat and dog. dog is soft. dog slid. cat is ill. dog is sad. cat is glad. It was the first and least cohesive tale in the series of unrelated books I wrote and illustrated over the year.
But just like that, writing had revealed itself to me: a magical vehicle, a creature that can tell the stories in my head. Writing leads to reading, and reading is a window into adventure; into another’s heart and mind; into the kind of fantasies we dream about as children and quietly let go into adulthood. I will never save the world. I will likely never save someone’s life. The dangers I face will be both more dull and more heartbreaking – sickness, dementia, the petty arguments that can drive a wedge into what you had once thought was a rock-strong relationship, loneliness, the fear that your dreams (as little as they may seem) will never be realized. Reading is for the impossible. This is where I slay dragons.
Looking back, my parents were probably relieved when I brought “Andrea book” to them and showed them that the soft dog slid.
And Andrea? Well, once the cat got over her illness and the dog cheered up, Andrea was glad.
