I’m very late with this newsletter, and for that you’ll get a glimpse into the life of a working publishing house.
January was a calm month. February is proving to be a challenge. Even the weather isn’t cooperative. On the second day of the month we had a major snowfall, and Mark decided to make smores in the firepit. That was fun and delicious.
On the down side, that darned groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, got it wrong; I’m not seeing an early spring. Well, that’s not true. Punxsutawney Phil is never wrong but his top-hatted handlers frequently misinterpret what he forecasts.
The weather, naturally, plays a role in our lives as this month is demonstrating. It cannot be ignored. Ready?
My elderly parents live in a far-too-big house, just the two of them. They’ve got a variety of health issues. Longtime newsletter readers will recall my dad’s dramatic bladder issues from a few years back. His bladder never recovered and he must use a catheter and Foley bag for urine.
Home health tip: if you have any kind of urinary issues — or a family member does — don’t just assume it’s another indignity brought on by old age and buy the Depends. Go see a urologist at once.
My parents have been stubbornly resisting the concepts of guardrails and grab-bars as those are for decrepit old people. February’s weather being what it is, my mother slipped on the ice on the front steps (no railing because she wouldn’t hear of it) and broke her left wrist in two places. What a great Valentine’s day gift! She’ll be 83 this June. My dad, sinking into Alzheimer’s and wasting away, cannot do much of anything.
She was able to summon the ambulance. He was able to call us.
So on Valentine’s day, after the dramatic 9 a.m. phone call, Mark and I drove down to Delaware. My mother can’t do anything with a broken wrist. It’s agonizingly painful. They can’t be left alone. As I write this, my mother is in surgery to repair her broken wrist. Astonishingly, it’s outpatient surgery. She’ll come back with a much smaller cast and — we hope — get back a better range of motion than she would otherwise. I pray it will hurt less than what she’s enduring now. If she didn’t have the surgery, the outcome was worse, including bones constantly rubbing up against each other in her wrist. Her wrist would never heal correctly.
So surgery it was. And we wait.
Thank God for small mercies: it wasn’t her right wrist.
The other mercy: my mother can no longer pretend that she and my dad do not need or want any help of any kind because they can manage just fine, thank you very much.
Thus, various family members are now able to step in and look into home health aides and perhaps even assisted living. If my mother is able to give up control to anyone at all, assisted living might be better simply because this big, old multi-story house would need so much work to make it universally accessible, that it would be easier and faster to move someplace else.
It won’t be that difficult to install guardrails and grab-bars now that my mother can no longer object because only decrepit old people need grab-bars. And they are on the project list.
A bigger difficulty is moving a bedroom to the first floor along with a full bathroom. There is a half-bath (very narrow) on the first floor but it cannot be expanded. The washer/dryer would have to be moved out of the dungeon-like basement.
Whatever the family does is going to be difficult and resisted strenuously. Many of the improvements, such as guardrails and hand-held showers and bath seats could have been done years ago. But no. Those are too much trouble and we don’t need them and anyway, those things don’t work and are only for decrepit old people who can’t take care of themselves.
Perhaps you sense my frustration.
So here we are. Mark and I are in Delaware. I hope to come home after the forecast ice storm passes by. Or six to eight inches of snow. Or sleet. Or freezing rain. Or some mix of all of the above. February weather isn’t cooperating.
Mark will remain in Delaware. He insists that his grandparents need him and he’s got the time. His job at Hershey Park doesn’t start up until the end of March so he’s available and can remain here to act as chauffer, cook, housekeeper, and general dogsbody.
Having Mark here, in-house, will also help my parents weather the transition to having strangers enter their home. That’s another bone of contention. My mother cannot stand having anyone other than family inside the house. Not because she’s a hoarder, by the way. She’s intensely private.
Meanwhile, We Have Books to Make
While I’m here, waiting, Bill is finishing up Career Indie Author Quote Book. We hope to press [Publish] by the end of February. I still have to review the entire manuscript and read every one of those 2,700 quotes a second time.
[Bill here] Here’s a sneak preview of what you can expect.
I’ve been collecting quotes for several decades. Many came from newspaper interviews, books, speeches, and, yes, other quote books. I chose them for various reasons: they provided sound nuts-and-bolts advice; they made me laugh or think; they seemed to make sense but since I couldn’t tell for sure I’ll pass them along; and they struck me as something important to hear.
These nuggets of advice didn’t come only from authors and writers. Penn and Teller show up several times. So did Steve Martin, Thomas Jefferson, Barbara Tuchman, Max Perkins, Lorne Michaels, Alfred Hitchcock, literary agents, mathematicians, philosophers, priests, and gods. If you want a better idea, I’ve already published the bibliography on the Peschel Press website.
I’m very proud of this book, and I hope you’ll find it useful as well.
[Teresa here] Next will come the James Thurber The Cases of Blue Ploermell. Bill’s working on revising the essays that will go with the story. Since Blue has a Chinese manservant, he decided to write one on the Chinese presence in America, a.k.a., the Yellow Peril. Yes, folks, they really called it that back in ye olden days.
I can’t forecast anything else at this moment, not even if I’ll be able to keep posting my chapters of Escape to HighTower regularly on Wattpad and AO3. Half of my IT department is staying in Delaware. I’m not sure how the writing will go since I’ve now got my mind on other things.
So, dear readers, install those guardrails and grab-bars and lever doorknobs. Look out for those safety hazards and remove them, even if you get pushback (I love my throw rugs despite them being a tripping hazard!). Save yourself and your family the aggravation.
We’ll meet again in March and discover if Phil was right after all and we’ll get an early spring.