9/15/2020: Up about 6 AM.
Prayers, Bible. Wrote another five pages on WGDDTW [What Grampa Did During the
War] and sent them to John. Before noon. Did FIVE posts on NOT, L. M. Boston,
John Bellairs, and Brad Strickland, and blimey if Blogger didn’t change the
formatting a bit on me again, this time with sizing the pictures. John wrote me back about ‘Grampa’, and I contacted
Amy about my trip to the doctor next week (one week exactly – must do that
paperwork) and she told me John would be off and take me. At 3:30 PM went in and
started supper (sausage and cabbage and taters) and fed pets. About 7:30 PM Kam
came out at last to work on his first homework assignment of the year, three
blasted pages with the unclearest instructions, that took us an hour and a half
to finish. Washed up at 9 PM, and now I’m twangling like an unstrung harp with
nerves. Getting Kam to settle down and apply himself is as hard as – well, as
hard as getting me to settle down and fill out SocSec forms. Now, must do
rosary. Then, bed.
9/16/2020: Up about 6 AM.
Prayers, Bible. Feeling VERY creaky and weak this morning, with rheumy eyes.
Settled down and wrote five pages on ‘Grampa’. When I went out at 9 AM I heard
the crows of autumn calling once more. Made my ramen and eggs, then gathered
material for NOT, and posted. Settled down to play some DQ8, when suddenly
about 11:44 AM I start hearing chimes. Cut the TV off, and I find out it’s the
old ‘phonograph’ Christmas music box, that’s been tucked away in the kitchen
cabinet since at least last December! Why now? It’s a little eerie and
inexplicable. That’s the last thing Mom ordered from Avon, and it arrived after
she’d passed away.
About 2 PM Kameron came in
and we began working on his homework. Then he was called in for a student
conference and I went in to start the rice, and we finished inside. I made the
chicken and rice and mushrooms and broccoli, finishing it up by 5 PM. Went it
and washed up at 8:45 PM, having spent time levelling up in DQ8 and chasing
that elusive Gold Nugget. Was surprised when Susan said the weather reminded
her of old Bilbo and Frodo’s Birthdays of the past, with the oatmeal Little
Debbies. Rosary, then read Kipling till about 11 PM, then bed.
9/17/2020: Up about 4:30 AM
and felt too awake (my approaching dr.’s appointment makes me jittery), so sat
catching up diary and starting prayers. May write a bit on ‘Grampa’ and see
where that goes; I feel in striking distance of finishing, and I want to give
Thron a good send-off. No-one won the TX
Lotto last night, so I lost nothing by not being able to play.
Spent quite a bit of the
first part of the morning gathering pictures for NOT (finishing off the Shelves
Behind the Lamp today, about 30 books, including the Wish List), and then
settled down and finished “Grampa”. It’s in a bit o’ dialect, not as dense as
Father Bentley in “The Old Boy”, though it does bring back the fun feel of the
early 80’s when we were writing Goldfire and such. I spent a bit of time
polishing it a bit, then sending it to John and Yen.
“Morgs do not have any pets,
and they cannot understand the races who do. They consider it very
condescending. This is not because they have any special reverence or respect
for animal life. Morgs do keep animals, but nothing that can’t be used or
harvested or slaughtered for practical purposes. It has more to do with what
they have called “The Battle of Earth”, or as it has been translated, “The Mud
Struggle”, the fight for existence in the physical world. It can be summed up
in their version of the Golden Rule, which is inscribed over every gate of Morg
City. It is much more elegant in the Morg language, but a rough vernacular
translation which is supplied to every new visitor who asks: “Try not to be
more of an asshole than necessary.” For that reason, they don’t hunt for sport
or tame or cage animals unnecessarily. Which is not to say they don’t develop
affections for some beasts, as a carpenter might have a favorite hammer. It's
not that "they don't have a feeling heart" as some human pet owners
have put it. It's that their understanding is that such emotion is misdirected
from its proper object of a fellow rational being. But they love
long words. Even the commonest of Morgs (like Grampa) have a love of long
words. They like to sprinkle them around, like Christmas tree ornaments, for
decoration, and to show that they're not as dumb as they look. Female Morgs
aren't quite as ornamental about them: they usually have the plainest and most
straightforward of speech, but when they throw a triple-jointed adjective at
you, watch out. Their dander is up, and their language can be as pointed and
wounding as a knife. Another thing I've discovered about Morgs is that they
have, I don't want to say 'tenses' in their language, but what you might call
'voices'. They temper how they phrase things depending on whom they're talking
to (male, female, young, or an elder, to a superior or somebody they look down
on), the mood they want to get across (formal or informal, jocular or
serious), and the level of their intimacy. Thus Grampa would say "We was
only pertending, like)" to his grandboy, but he'd probably say "There
was naught serious in it" if he was trying to make his excuses to
Granny.
I began writing the story
mainly to give the experience of a common Morg during the Goldfire War, and I
don't think if that if we ever completed the big tale there would be anything
contradictory in it, just a closer look at one aspect. As I went along it
occurred to me that this would be a good place to put a period on Thron's tale,
squeeze in a few old details (like Pounders), and in fact sum up what we more
or less expected to happen. It was fun, and flowed easily, and what a
batch of "Tales of the Morgs" there is getting to be! Thron and
Ferrus didn't use the precise words that Grampa reports, though the gist (as he
understands it) was fairly accurate. He was paraphrasing it for his grandson,
and probably had smoothed it through years of telling.” -from e-mails sent to
John.
Andy calls me up about
12:30PM and says I don't have to cook supper, they're bringing home plates.
About 2:30 PM Kam calls and we straighten out his homework. I feed the animals
about 4:30 PM. Susan brings me in a plate a little after 5 PM and we talk a bit;
she says she’s getting me some Little Debbie lembas for Bilbo’s Birthday! Ate
my plate, then played more DQ8, waiting to see if John or Yen will respond to
my story. Rosary at 8:30 PM, then checking at 9 PM I see I’ve got this from
John:
“It was cool indeed to
read about something that had been winding up to happen for almost forty years!
I think the firsthand account approach worked brilliantly, it really might
be worth investigating how the Goldfire story, or any other fantasy story for
that matter, might be dramatized in the manner of those books that use a series
of interview clips from various first hand players interwoven to tell the tale.
I remember a good Truman Capote biography done that way, and an SNL account -
an Oscar Wilde biography, too. All imminently interesting. That was a
lot of fun! Talked to Yen for a good spell yesterday, he seems to be back
in business and thriving, thank God. Well, to sleep now- I have a three-day run
of 12-hour days ahead of me...Yeesh!”
Which it is good to have the
feedback, and good to hear about Yen, but the upshot and implication seems to
be there’ll be no money forthcoming for these 20 pages either, at least for a
bit yet. Well, I can get through the weekend, somehow. I DO still have tea and
hard candy, but I was hoping for some more iced oatmeal cookies and a lotto
ticket. Sigh.
9/18/2020: Up about 6 AM.
Prayers and Bible. Creaking bad this morning and hard to get the machinery
wound up. Got the pictures together for the NOT postings (BIB and IftWL – Items
from the Wish List), one of each, and that was all. In at 9 AM for ramen, and
again at 10:30 AM for more. Kam was up by then. Spent most of the day grinding
at DQ8 and got everyone but Jessica up to Level 99. > What an
accomplishment! < There was a big gang of buzzards hanging out in the part
of the yard around the ticket booth, that made me wonder if something was dead
out there. I could even hear them landing in the tree outside the kitchen
window and maybe even on the roof. About 3 PM I go in the big house and prep
the corn and onions for the chili, and get Ginger settled in the guest house,
and Kameron comes out with me. I get him a soda and some chips. Andy gets here
around 4 PM to see the exterminator. While here, a roach crawls up onto the bed
with Kam! I squish it after the appropriate panic. We go back in at 5 PM as Andy
tells us and I start supper, get Ginger back in, feed animals, and so on. Susan
comes back home and is a little miffed that Kam drank one of Andy’s Dr. Pepper
Cream Sodas but takes it in stride. She’s a little mad at Andy for nudging
Ginger down the stairs. She lost her balance and landed on her head. I have seen
Ginger do that herself in her own eagerness to get out. I finish cooking a
little after 5:30 PM and take my food back to the guest house.
I go in about 8:30 PM to
wash up. I get the rest of the chili (and some of those vile garbanzo rotini)
and the rest of the broccoli salad. More DQ8. I am nervous and restless, but I
didn’t sleep all day, and at least got the form out and looked at it that I’ve
had a month to complete. Will I wait until the last moment again? Looks like
it. Rosary. Was drifting off to sleep when I felt another roach in bed, and I
sprang up and squashed it. After that little excitement, I settled down and was
asleep about 10:30 PM.
9/19/2020: Up about 6:15 AM
and wrote down a dream. I’ve been having quite a few, but the moment I wake up
the concerns of the day has been wiping them out pretty quickly, or they’ve
been just like a few others, so I ignore them. Caught up the diary (I’d written
nothing yesterday) and am now ready (7:30 AM) for prayers and Bible, I think,
though morning creakiness and numb legs persist. Dang. I used to be able to
move around a little while before they started really bothering me; now I seem
to wake up with pain.
So prayers and Bible, the
made ramen for breakfast. Gathered pictures for NOT and played DQ8, levelling
up Jessica to 99. About 10 AM or so I went out to get the leftover egg salad
and boiled eggs, and S&A were working on cleaning out their ‘garage’
(storehouse), strangely chiming in with my dream. I ended up, eventually, posting
about 5 times. Even later, about 4 PM, I went in for more ramen and eggs. About
9 PM I prayed a rosary, and at last did work on filling out my forms. They
really look like a piece of cake and I don’t know why I tormented myself
worrying about them for a month. Just as I was starting, Andy brought me over
two Jack in the box tacos. After I filled out about half the forms, I settled
down to do some more re-writes on “Grampa”, then sent the results to John and
Yen. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been all over everywhere since
yesterday. What a year! No one has won the TX Lotto yet, so there’s that. Maybe
I can get a ticket by Wednesday. Now 11:50 PM, and time to start settling. No
AC (by choice) and fan in the window all day.
9/20/2020: Up about 6 AM.
Prayers, a shower, and Bible, and opened the house up entirely. Facebook Mass.
Posted on NOT (4 posts), and once on Finder’s Keep (What Grampa Did), and once
on Power of Babel. On a little impulse I went and found that “Mickey the
Chickey” and “Casper the Candy Cowboy” had finally been uploaded on YouTube
since the last time I looked. I passed them on to John and Kenny. Watched some
Flintstones, played a tidge of DQ8 (only have the Ultimate Dragon to pass), and
read some Kipling. About 12:15 PM Susan comes in and brings me the old bananas
and a box of Little Debbie oatmeal cakes – for Bilbo’s Birthday on Tuesday. I
couldn’t help but eat a couple already, as I’d had nothing for breakfast, and
just the bananas wouldn’t do.
So I beat the Ultimate
Dragon with ease (I guess it helps for everyone to be at Level 99, have sage’s
stones, runestaffs, and magma staffs, and Dragon Soul available). Read Kipling,
napped, and had another ramen in the evening. Rosary, then bed about 10:30 PM,
fan in the window.
9/21/2020: Woke up about 5
AM and figured I was up. Prayers, Bible. Raining outside. Gathered pictures and
posted on NOT. Set down and finished those forms with ease in about 40 minutes;
I could have done it weeks ago. When will I ever learn? It must be some form of
anxiety disorder. Now the only thing to do is go to the doctor, then wait and
see. Prayed the rosary, started wash at 9 AM, then boiled eggs, made egg salad,
and cucumber salad right away as well. Made my ramen. I was basically done with
everything for the day by 9:45 AM. It’s now 10:10 AM and time to switch clothes
to the dryer. Darn rain. Complicates things. But maybe it also convinced me to
get a move on.
Went out about 11:05 AM to
get my laundry. It had pretty much stopped raining and I could see S&A just
pulling up into the driveway. Folded and put away clothes, then settled in to
beat Rhapthorne again, and did so in about five moves after breaking his Shield
of Darkness. Really quite simple using Fight Wisely and being at Level 99. Pool
guy came, and now it’s 12:10 PM. Not much to do until supper, unless Kam has
more homework, which I think he does.
Turns out no, he didn’t. At 4 PM attended the animals and baked salmon cakes and made couscous, then went in. A little after 6 PM John called, and we discussed the mission [seeing a doctor in San Antonio] tomorrow. Washed up about 7:30 PM. Kam came in and talked to me a while, probably a little nervous because I won’t be here in the morning tomorrow. Still reading Kipling short stories. Bed about 10:30 PM.
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