Staying Busy

When I retired, I thought that things would slow a bit and in some ways it has. I feel I move slower, sometimes more cautiously in the snow and mud, I certainly don’t want to slip and fall in the driveway again. Once was enough. I do less laundry, cook smaller meals, and don’t vacuum and dust as often as I should, but lately, more things seem to have crowded in.

I am still writing, trying to pull together multiple plots and side stories to create a novel about my retired homicide detective, Tommy Two Shoes. I’ve been rereading his old escapades to keep people and facts to match.

I finished making the Easter crosses. Finished for this year; I don’t plan on making anymore, even though a friend has asked me to make two more. After she saw a proto, she begged for one. I made one for her and she plans to give it away to a sick friend. Constructing the crosses from straight sticks isn’t the problem, but weaving the crown from branches of crab apple thorns is. My hands and fingers are sore and scratched.

I’ve also been strengthening the stairway to my second floor. My house is nearly 50 years old and occasionally needs to be upgraded. Adding supports to each step takes a bit of time for someone who is mechanically dyslexic like me.

I was nominated by a friend as illustrator for her newest children’s book. She told me that she listed me as the illustrator in the acknowledgements before I agreed. I guess she relies on me as much as I rely on her to help with computer questions and to get my books ready for printing.

Her new book is about what can be found under a kid’s bed. I’ve been drawing and redrawing the child’s bed several times over, the child in the bed with different expressions. Some have a different creature at the bed: monsters of all shapes and sizes, dust bunnies, the normal flotsam and jetsam that collect on the floor under the bed. Another illustration is of a younger brother trying to scare him. One is of the mother clad in a “Ghostbuster” type coverall with the vacuum strapped to her back. We’re meeting today to decide if she needs something else of something more.