A stretch of days with ups and downs to impact my usual busy schedule. I have a situation with my sister that includes me spending at least a week, more likely twelve days in Houston to help with her post-rehab after surgery for a broken leg. That means scrambling to get a number of things either taken care of before I leave or figure a way to handle while gone.

On the “really, why now?”, front my high-speed printer went crazy and it wasn’t very old. Decided to swap from HP to Cannon and that’s all fine and good except after install, it isn’t working properly. No doubt some weird little thing that the Geeks can clear up once Hubby has a chance to get with them. I do have the other printer that can do for now.

The pool is finally finished and they cleared up the mess of the last two weeks. It definitely looks better and hopefully we won’t have to go through this again. My desire to have some sort of easier automated way to turn the hot tub on came at such a ridiculous price, I can’t justify it. Part of that is the lights we had replaced were far more expensive to replace than expected, but going with LED should also mean they last for a long time.

On the “up” side, Hubby’s presentation, “Photographing the Everglades”, on Friday went well despite the stupid mistake I made with getting a small projector. I completely misunderstood what this thing was and he was gracious about it. Now to figure out if there is anyone out there who can actually use this thing and maybe get another one. The issue is it can only be used in an almost completely darkened room and the images can’t be seen well from much of a distance. In other words, it’s great for a small conference room; not so much for anything else. It certainly is small and easy to carry.

Ah well, June won’t be a two times out on the water after all. It’s a combination of things with extra commitments and tricky weather. It is the rainy season and so we are getting frequent afternoon downpours; some of which are severe thunderstorms. Several days ago one was so bad the museum had significant water intrusion and disrupted operations. While most of what had to happen was taken care of by others, there was a lot of back-and-forth about what was going on and those things take time. There have also been some issues with scheduling different events and coordination that isn’t going as well as I had hoped. Nothing drastic, merely time-consuming.

On the writing front I am pushing to get the first draft of Shades of Remorse completed before my trip so I can maybe do some editing while traveling. Even though I will be relocating every day, I am likely to have some stretches of time in motel rooms, too. My process for writing is I leave gaps in the first go-round in order to get the main plot and subplots where they need to be. That puts me at what I refer to as the seventy percent mark. Filling in those gaps, working out any disconnects in sequencing, plot, or character behavior takes me to the eighty percent level and ready for what is called Beta Read. That’s bringing in a fresh pair of eyes. Some authors use multiple Betas, but I’m fortunate in having my wonderful Hubby. This is the only time I print the manuscript. I then read it aloud to him; a few chapters at a time. We do this during morning coffee and while prepping dinner instead of watching TV. After that go-round, I edit those changes in preparation of sending it to the professional editor. Speaking of which, I have to email the editor I use for these books to see if she is available. They travel a fair amount. I have two editors; one foe scuba-related books and one for everything else.

A conversation about working under extremely uncomfortable conditions reminded me of not only those times in the Army when weather conditions were terrible, but also my boot issues. To start with, while I was a bit of a tomboy, that did not extend into being athletic. Going into the Army and being as small as I was did cause a number of issues. Actually, my first boot-related injury was while in ROTC. The single field exercise I went on included tromping through some swampy water. They had no boots to come close to fitting my size 4.5, so extra socks in the smallest size they had might have worked if I hadn’t a) had to wear them as long as I did and b) maybe if we hadn’t gone through the water with God knows what kind of bacteria. Anyway, multiple blisters that burst, then became infected was not fun.

Moving forward when I was at Fort McClellan for initial WAC training, they did at least have size 5. What none of us knew was women’s boots were not designed with the same support as men’s. In all fairness, we were among the first group of women who were expected to do more running. So, not liking to run anyway, when I began to experience pain in my ankle, I ignored it. Then it was both ankles and when I literally couldn’t walk down the hall without leaning against a wall dragging my feet, I agreed I needed to go to the clinic. Achilles tendons strained in both ankles; common for women. Had I known, I would have gone in immediately. They did later do away with women’s boots in favor of better support. And a number of years later, medical people finally convinced the Army running in boots was a really bad idea and proper shoes were allowed for physical exercise. Oh, it was running three mornings a week and alternate exercise two days a week.

There was another time I won’t describe, but you get the idea.

I’ll be headed out soon to the local cemetery where the VFW leads the annual ceremony of speeches, firing of the 21 gun salute, playing of taps and then volunteers place small American flags on the graves of veterans. I cover the story each year for the paper and there are usually multiple Scout Troops as well as individuals and other organizations that participate. Hubby is teaching – as is usually the case – so I’ll do the best I can with photos. Okay, I managed to let the day slip away from me and didn’t finish this yesterday. The ceremony was nice as usual with a few new participants and some who weren’t able to attend this year.

Looking back though to many years ago – as in 33 – the Memorial Day of 1991 was very special to us and had nothing to do with official ceremonies. As I have mentioned in other posts, we were in Germany when Iraq invaded Kuwait August 1990. The immediate response units such as the 101st and 82d Divisions and associated Air Force, Marine, and Navy units began Operation Desert Shield as decisions were  planned, then made for Desert Storm, the offensive operation. Hubby had to leave first in November (actually on our anniversary) and I followed the first week of December. I’d sent ten-year-old-son back to the States where he stayed initially with his paternal grandparents for Christmas, on to Texas to be with my sister and her family, then back to Maine after school. Texas schools were out in May.

After the “Lightning Fast” war, there were refugee operations and a follow-on force to put together. As logisticians, we of course helped get tens of thousands of troops on their way home first. Therefore it was May before we were scheduled to leave, but didn’t know exactly what day it would be so couldn’t make firm plans to bring son back. We were also exhausted and needed a few days to semi-recover. Since even at that age, he was a seasoned traveler, we agreed he could make his first Transatlantic flight alone. Hubby’s parents lived not quite an hour from Atlanta, so he flew from Maine to Atlanta, stayed with them a couple of days, then we allowed him to pick one of three cities to fly into as they were all direct flights. He chose London. We drove over, spent the night, were reunited with him the following morning and spent another three days there. While it wasn’t an official ceremony, it was certainly a great one.