Life in a New House by Nancy L. Eady

Life in a new house is fun, once you overlook the whole unpacking gig. Even so, I’ve had to make adjustments.  

Remotes that are more than a simple on/off switch with up and down arrows to move the channels on the TV defeat me. Worse than that, they conspire against me. I can hit a sequence of keys on any remote more complicated than the aforesaid on/off model and nothing happens. My husband hits the same sequence of keys on the same remote and the thing does somersaults to keep him happy.  The new TV’s remote has forty-two buttons. Even though Mark showed me what to do before he went to bed last night, it was a lost cause. I was trying to finish an episode of "New Tricks."  All the remote revealed was a show about a colonial ship buried in Manhattan.

The charge cord for the laptop is still missing.  I desperately need it for my writing.  We have managed to locate every other charge card for every electronic device any of us own, as well as a few extra. Those last will be placed with honor into the graveyard for lost cords, otherwise known as the second drawer in my nightstand. That’s probably where they came from in the first place when we packed up the old house. Some of those cords have been with us since the mid-90’s.  

Even after five years, I never was certain which light switch went with which light in the old house, so why I thought I’d learn them here in two weeks is anybody’s guess. At least in this house, every switch you touch turns something on or off. In the old house, the electrician put in a lot of three switch switchboxes, every one of which had at least one switch that did nothing. I never did learn why. 

The irrigation system is a great feature to have, but it has a learning curve too. I bumped something on it by mistake the other day, lost the program, and tried to reschedule it. Wonder of wonders, it came on at the time I programmed into it. It must have stopped listening to me after that.  When I stepped out of the house three hours later to run an errand, it was still running. 

What adjustments have you made when moving into a new home or apartment? 

Bibliophilic Friday: Life: An Intimate History of the First Four Billion Years by Richard Fortey, Review by Nancy L. Eady

Today on Bibliophilic Friday, we are going to detour from mysteries to science.  One of my  favorite non-fiction books on science is Life:  An Intimate History of the First Four Billion Years by Richard Fortey.  Nor am I alone in my admiration of this book; it was selected, along with another book by Richard Fortey, by the Folio Society.  The Folio Society publishes high-end editions of carefully selected books, and to have a book included as one of their offerings is an honor. 

The Folio Society Cover for Fortey's Book

I love to read about science, all aspects of it.  Richard Fortey is one of my favorite science writers because of the engaging way he discusses his topics and the trick he has of making complicated concepts comprehensible to non-scientists.  In Life, he covers the evolution of life from the first single-celled organisms through the present – and does so in a way that keeps you reading.

As you read Life, you pick up on Fortey's enthusiasm for his subject and learn about fascinating creatures - and not all of them are dinosaurs.  With Dr. Fortey’s words, even the simple algal mats that once populated the earth in enough abundance to transform our atmosphere from primarily carbon dioxide to primarily oxygen are interesting.  Remarkably, there are a few areas of the world where such algal mats still flourish.

A Trilobite - Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Dr. Fortey's academic specialty is the study of trilobites, animals that swarmed the oceans for over 270 million years but which became extinct about 250 million years ago.  Trilobites were arthropods, which means they are distantly related to insects, arachnids and crustaceans.  Their closest living relatives today appear to be the horseshoe crabs, which are often considered to be "living fossils".  The horseshoe crabs are arthropods, too. Dr. Fortey admits in one of his books that he has a secret wish/hope that maybe just a few trilobites are still swimming around in the ocean, may in some deep-sea canyon, that have yet to be discovered.  I think that would be spectacular.

Horseshoe Crabs from Wikimedia Commons

Sorry - I digressed. The point is that if you are looking for an informative, entertaining read that sets out a comprehensive history of life as currently understood by science, this is the book for you.

We're Moving (Again!) by Nancy L. Eady

So, I’ve done everything humanly possible to make sure this didn’t happen. I didn’t change the shelf paper in the kitchen cabinets (we don’t have shelf paper in the kitchen cabinets for exactly that reason. My dishes and glasses haven’t suffered for lack of it.) We made sure we weren’t traveling on New Year’s Day. (This superstition may be restricted to my family, where we firmly believe that if you travel on New Year’s Day, you will move during the next year. I can’t even tell you where it started.)

When we moved into this house in May 2021, I swore it would be my last move ever. I even made sure I got to that last box that never gets unpacked and unpacked it over a year ago. And yet here we are – about to go through the whole moving process one more time.

After a long search, my husband has taken a job in another city about two hours north of where we live now. I’m not fond of the moving process, but I don’t mind where we’ll end up, becasue my mother and one of my sisters and her family live there. But I dread putting the house on the market, waiting for it to sell, packing up and moving, then looking for another house and moving into it, and spending hours unpacking again.            

My husband had a good idea to help with unpacking – invite all of my family over for Christmas dinner and to open gifts. Once we’ve finished with the gifts, we’ll tell them since they’ve gotten so good at unwrapping things, we have a surprise—and hand out boxes for unpacking. We could even throw in a “Dirty Santa” twist, where people get to swap the boxes before opening them. (Okay, we’ll probably not do that, but it was fun to think about!)

Late this spring, I went to my mom’s house and dug up several irises descended from irises my grandmother used to grow in Massachusetts and planted them on one side of the house. I figured since they didn’t bloom this spring, they wouldn’t bloom this fall. But two days ago, I walked outside and Grandma Caulfield’s irises were blooming. I thought it was a sweet way for the old house to wish me and my family well as we start this journey yet again.

What is your least favorite part of moving? Do you have a good story about moving? Any advice? I'd love to hear it.

Why Did the Chicken or Writer Cross the Road?

Why Did the Chicken or Writer Cross the Road? by Debra H. Goldstein

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side.

Why must an author write?

To express and share the thoughts and ideas whirling in his/her head --- and to avoid becoming limited to crossing the road merely to get to the other side.

The spark of creativity isn’t linear. It goes in all directions as a writer tries to reach the eventual end goal. Sometimes, while the chicken makes it across the road, the author fails to reach the other side. Distractions, random thoughts, or simply fear stymie the writer’s progress. How many writers have been one-book wonders because of a perceived inability to meet the level of success of the first book?

Some might compare this kind of behavior to an ostrich burying its head in the sand; however, the reality is that ostriches don’t bury their heads. Unable to fly or build nests in trees, they bend and create a place in the ground for their eggs. What people don’t realize is the speed with which an ostrich can move. Strong legs allow them to propel themselves quickly across great distances. Ostriches may be the butt of numerous jokes; but they have the potential to get to the other side.

The question is simple – are you an ostrich, a chicken, or ???? in terms of writing or trying new things in life?

 

The Unexpected Turn by Nancy L. Eady

 For 30 years, I have lived various places between Alexander City, Alabama and Montgomery, Alabama. Unremarkable for some, but for a Navy brat who moved every two to three years until she was 16, miraculous. Also, for 30 years, I have worked at the same building at the same firm. And in spite of such a confined geographical area, we have found jobs in the area that allowed my husband’s career to grow as well. If you had asked me six months ago, I would have said that we would spend the rest of our lives somewhere along this 50-mile stretch of road. Heck, I would have said the same thing last week when I wrote my last post. And I have been actively helping my husband search for a new job since October and praying for new opportunities and vistas for my family. We’ve always found a job for him in this area.

There are drawbacks to certainty. The biggest one for me was eventually retiring in the small town where we live. It’s nice enough, but the hour to two-hour round trip to go to Publix or Home Depot wears you down. I’m not from here, which makes friendship-making harder, especially right now during COVID, especially when coupled with the fact that I drive 45 minutes each way to work, and my husband drives an hour and 20 minutes one way.

There are positives to certainty. I don’t ever expect to love a house the way I love the house we live in. While friendship-making is harder, it’s not impossible and I have good friends here. And the building and people I work with are my home, too.

But, out of the blue, an opportunity has opened in the Birmingham area for my husband, and we are taking it. When the job offer first came, we felt like a dog must feel when he finally catches a car he is chasing. We didn’t know quite what to do with it. I’m still a little shell-shocked, caught somewhere between “Holy crap! I have a lot of stuff to get done,” and “Hot Dog! We’ll finally live in a bigger place.”  Not to mention navigating all the “what-ifs”—what if the house takes months to sell? What if we can’t find a decent house in the new area we can afford? What if our daughter is miserable up there once we move?

There are drawbacks to uncertainty. Worries pop up daily, imagined and real. The sense of continuity you had, before the uncertainty, departs. Familiar things look different. I saw my 15-year-old house one way last week and differently this week. You don’t quite realize how much needs to be done around a house until you get it ready to sell.

There are positives to uncertainty. It galvanizes you into action and tantalizes you with possibilities. Your soul stretches to reach new, unforeseen places. You take the most familiar things around you less for granted.

As a writer, the shift from certainty to uncertainty gives me new insights into my characters. It helps me empathize with my characters as I place them (deliberately, with malice aforethought) in difficult situations. It helps me understand more ways to describe to you, the reader, the feelings my character experiences. It gives me ideas on how characters are going to deal with the situation(s) I have placed them in. And it shows me why I am a sucker for happy endings. I would like nothing better than to end this next (hopefully brief) season of uncertainty with the words,” And they all lived happily ever after!”