i'm on kind of an enforced break. what i've been doing is somewhat fanatic reading - reading of almost every indie work available, in return for people reading mine, which they've done dutifully, making my ratings pretty good for the new year. i look now at a ratings sheet in which i can tell that people are reading my work.

meanwhile all kinds of family things happening - sons coming and going, people busy with presents and food and getting ready for the new year, washing machine breaking, a little house deco going on, that kind of thing. it all wears me out and makes me want to sit down and just read more indie work.

we are down to three puppies now, one of them having died in the last month, and i'm a little torn about what to do. one possibility is to remember him by campaigning (in my own style) against lawn chemicals, since he died of cancer at a young age and there's virtually nothing else that could have been responsible. another would be to just let it go, let him rest in peace, assume that whatever it was, was part of the natural world and there was nothing we or the vet or anyone else could do about it. it was one of the major tragedies of the year, but it's not the first time dogs have died, since dogs generally don't last as long as we do and find it very hard to keep up with our dramatic environmental changes.

we've had a cloudy spell - a big pile of clouds just came upon us, and pretty much sat here, and didn't let the sun come through at all for several days. this is actually not bad for us - unheard of in new mexico of course so somewhat novel to us these days - and we get ready for the new year, probably going to bed early, probably not doing a whole lot tonight or tomorrow - but having this enormous cloud blocking out the sun the whole time.

and meanwhile our washer went out, which means out i go into the town to do the laundry at a laundromat, and that's an adventure, not really a great one but usually full of surprises. watching the hawkeyes on television was a feature of it today but the other day i also got to see the world cup. this is literally the only television i'll watch in the entire year. and i've got a kind of ban on my fanatic indie reading and want to concentrate on doing a few of the other things there are out there in life, most notably restarting my quilt, but also making quaker pamphlets and going for long walks out into the countryside. i can get to the woods from here in about a mile so why don't i do it - well, for one thing, because it's cold and very cloudy. but for another, because i'm always working the puppies, and have generally had plenty of exercise. exercise is not the problem.

one of the problems is in general a bottleneck on the writing. i am finishing three projects on the big computer, and trying to write a novel as well, but the novel is somewhat bottled up causing me to brood and try to work out the plot twists that aren't quite resolved yet. so basically what i have is three or four projects up on the table and a hesitance to even open the thing up. i started writing haiku about my ear condition - steadily more difficult - and i'm still writing haiku about 9-11 - but the haiku at times doesn't make it from the little scraps of paper in my shirt pocket, to the big computer itself because i don't open up the big computer. instead i stay on my little one where i can do compulsive indie-reading and marketing, and i can fly around from one e-mail account to the other, doing business, having fun, checking facebook, etc. the small one is so efficient and easy that it makes me avoid the big one, which of course has word and has almost all the creative works i'm struggling with.

so, as it goes, i stumble into the new year, wishing i could spend a few hours pulling family pictures off the web, but yet, just a little too lazy to pull it off. there are lots of things like that, on my to-do list, not getting done, and i'm thinking of just prohibiting compulsion until i get my act together.

it's christmas night, not christmas eve, but the night after the day itself. we of course had the obligatory family circle, opening presents and then finally retreating to our own spaces. there was some disappointment afoot. it's painful to see your kids disappointed. they will survive, though. one, the youngest, was overjoyed.

they tend to be very materialistic, and they tend to get everything they want anyway. so, when the time comes, i feel totally over my head in trying to conjure up something they might want or need. often i'll get them something only to find out they already had it, or they moved through that phase years ago. these days, if they want something, they start well before christmas and usually get it.

i hate going straight to the materialistic aspects of the holiday, but there you have it - to most of us, it's all about the stuff. to me, it was partly about the weather, and whether i could make it forty miles to the airport and back in subzero temps. that i did though, no problem. i survived all the transpo issues brought on by the sub-zero, high-wind, fiasco snow, bad here but even worse some places where the snow was more unrelenting.

but my late arrival last night, stocking duties, and the stress from the weather have combined to meke me too tired. so, more later...

i heard a guy say the other day that people used to walk three miles to school, in three feet of snow, uphill each way. i think there was a tongue-in-cheek making fun of my generation there, because we did walk three miles, but there was very rarely three feet of snow, and it couldn't have been uphill each way, though it was very hilly, and there was lots of embankments and a trolley bridge to cross.

he was probably in a generation below mine, certainly younger than me, and had heard similar stories. it was common in my generation to walk to school. and one reason we look wistfully at the younger generation is that they don't, and seem to have lost a bit in the process. one thing they lost is that they have to go to a gym to get the exercise they would have got if they'd walked that five or six miles. another is that they don't value school as much, it seems.

it's ten below here, wind chill of maybe twenty below, as it's very windy and though we only have a couple of inches of snow, it's blowing around like crazy and even making walking from the car to the store a big burden. i have medicine to get and can't even imagine rolling down my window and sitting in an open car while i wait for it. at least when i get out of the car to walk to the store, i keep warm by virtue of moving. it goes against my grain to not be moving when it's ten below, and that's even if the car is running and the seat-warmer is on. i finally got all the shopping done - that was when it was only about two below, but i have more running around to do today; i have to get cadillac water anyway.

school for my kids is about a mile and a half, flat roads, busy streets, but i see lots of kids doing it. well, not lots, maybe a few. some probably come from way farther away, like two or three miles, but the vast majority are getting rides, like mine. one is in a wheelchair at the moment; i wouldn't ask him to walk. but i can't ask either to walk. they simply wouldn't consider it. i don't have that kind of leverage to ask for better health and a better attitude, if that would even be the result.

i walk the dogs though, and that means that every day that it's tolerable, which doesn't include today obviously, i get out there and get two or three miles. we lost one dog, so it's actually down to about two or less, but i'm slowly increasing it so that even the smallest dog gets a good romp out in the neighborhood. a neighbor pointed out that i didn't really need to, since they have a yard to tear around in, and that's true to some degree, but the yard has limited smells, and they love the smells of other neighbor dogs who occasionally get walked on the same route.

in a small town that means peering from the sidewalk at front porches, victorian bay windows, interesting paint jobs, care or lack of care afforded the exterior of the house and its lawn. if people are friendly, we greet each other; sometimes i just see people coming or going.

i suspect the lawn chemicals of causing one dog's cancer. the world is full of toxins these days.

i'm a little agitated this afternoon. my son is coming in on a flight from dallas to peoria, landing at ten thirty tonight. meanwhile all hell has broken loose on the weather front - bomb cyclone, heavy winds, snow blowing around, that kind of thing. things are much worse in the north where it's like eighty below; here, it's about five below with a much worse wind-chill. still that's pretty serious. not the kind of weather you want to get stranded in.

the roads are messy but not too icy. the wind is blowing so badly that visibility is limited, but i find that as long as my brakes work i can drive with confidence; the roads are, after all, pretty straight. out driving around town there were a few steep hills where the road goes either over or under railroad tracks; those steep hills were manageable, not too much ice. not any, really, except in the parking lots. but it's soooooo cold that you don't even want to think about getting out of the car. drive-through? i couldn't consider it, i didn't want to open the window. i actually went into two mcdonald's looking for a smoothing (they weren't making them) because it was easier to me to walk a short ways, than to open a window and try to talk to someone through it.

my son, on his end, is nervous. he has to go to el paso first, then dallas; that flight should be no problem. it's the dallas-to-peoria leg that has us worried. how are they going to land in seven below temps? well, they do, i guess, and they've found no reason to cancel yet. nothing for it but to go through with it.

frantic christmas shopping going on here all through the cold and even in spite of the cold. i went out several times to do battle; found all kinds of things. parking lots were wind=swept, blizzardy, frozen, but life was going on as usual. this has to be one of the most extreme "weather events" of the last several years and that's what the news is saying. i think it's really extreme, if you happen to live in the dakotas or minneapolis. but even here, it's pretty bad.

they have snow and extreme cold down in the mountains of new mexico, of course; it's my friends in texas that are getting out of the worst of it, as usual. in texas, it just doesn't get this cold, ever. they have winter, in some places, in some parts of texas, and they have wind - in some cases a lot of it. but they don't really have "bomb cyclone" experiences. we moved right back up into the thick of it, i'm afraid. and it's not even january yet.

a little nervous about my trip to p-i-a. but i'll survive; i always do. and i will give a full report.

we took our dog ballou in to have him put down the other day. i think he knew it. he was in pain, i could tell, as the cancerous lump in his head had grown so large he could hardly breathe or see. for a few days he had trouble even resting. there was nothing to be done about the cancer. it had to be done.

we all have been in tears for about a day. i used to go on long walks with him and he was a good customer. he'd smell all the smells and leave big poops around the neighborhood, and he was generally friendly to people that we encountered, although he looked like he had some pitbull in him and they were generally afraid of him. he was also gracious with the other dogs in the house, although one was mean to him and often just snapped at him for no reason. he was a faithful guard dog and took good care of his girls. we had rescued him in new mexico where he won my wife's heart by actually being quiet when all the other dogs were yelping. he sojourned with us all the way up to illinois and it's up here where he met his end.

the other dogs are mostly napping around the house, as his passing wore us all out left us exhausted today. well, i should say, they spend most days napping, since i think they take their guarding responsibilities very seriously and don't get much rest in the middle of the night. in addition, ballou's passing means we now can let our cats upstairs, to take in the whole house - it's ballou that would have killed them in a minute, as he did various squirrels who had the audaicity to come out of a tree and into the yard. we talk about ballou being a gracious, gentlemanly dog, which he was, to us, but the squirrels hated him, and let him know that, as he killed at least two and caught a third who got away with just some damage to his tail, as the rest of him had made it through the fence.

at the end, when we were giving ballou lots of steroids to fight the pain in his head, he was getting into the garbage at night and tearing out virtually anything he could eat. he'd get up on counters and get into whatever food he could reach. he was almost going crazy from the drugs we were giving him, yet he couldn't really tell us about the pain. we knew about the pain, though.

i remember the last time i walked him around the neighborhood; this was not the time i took him outside just so he could pee right before he died, but about a week before that, when i was still giving him full walks. he'd do a long route, about a mile probably, and he'd do a lot of sniffing and stopping along the way. when we got to the busy street he'd stay close by my side and we'd cross together; he was good at that. he walked with confidence and grace but he always had an eye for those squirrels which he could see from a long ways away. there was a time i think when he actually pulled one of my rib muscles from lunging after a squirrel too quickly, but he learned that i didn't really like that and resigned himself to lunging only when he was in our yard guarding the yard from squirrels who came down out of the tree. on the walks, he would stick pretty close to what i wanted, and we did pretty well that way. we saw a lot of the neighborhood.

i am wondering if dog heaven has any squirrels.

it's a cold, rainy night in december, and every time we let the dogs out, they come in tracking in mud, so now we have to clean off their pads on their way in. this i find a little difficult. if it were just me, i'd let them track in some mud, and then try to mop it off once in a while.

my reading has gotten very intense. i take on more than i can handle and wake up on a morning like this with two huge books and a smaller book to finish, and, well, no way i can finish them all. i get deep into them and they're intense. i keep track of the world cup on the side. i run errands for the family. i run stuff upstairs for the boy with the broken leg. i will eventually walk all the dogs, just to get on my feet and get out of here.

what's missing in this picture? i am actually in the middle of a novel, but once again it's somewhat mired in the fact that i don't have a real solid plan. i want it to have inter-mixing plots - the best novels always do - and one or two of them are ok, the others, still being developed. all this has gathered to make me somewhat paralyzed. rather than waking up and writing, which would be ideal, i start reading other stuff almost from the beginning. it's easier, it's gentle, it's like curling up with a good book. only i never put it aside and do my work.

in terms of marketing i'm doing ok. i can only read 60-100 pages a day, but i'm getting well more than that on my overall average. today, only one so far. one page read, which is maybe four tenths of a cent. the whole thing doesn't amount to more than a trip or two to mcdonalds. but with every page read someone else knows some more about what i write. slowly the word gets around. last year after six months of marketing i went through the whole christmas season without a sale. this year i've had a few and don't even know who bought them. there are many ways word got around and slowly it will pick up.

got christmas lights out on the front porch of this old historic house in galesburg. it's simple, but it's lit. that too is an improvement. i think one makes a statement with one's deco and in general the town is somewhat loud that way. one house has over-done balloon decorations: dinosaur, various disney characters, etc. and then also a creche. is the statement that they go together? you see various combinations and wonder. houses that were overdone in gory halloween deco are also overdone in christmas. go figure. the whole town is a little overdone. we on the other hand are basic, underdone.

but our dogs provide the nourishment for the soil, at least when i can't get at it to pick it up, like when it's in a leafy pile of brush. i let a few of them go. let it all return to the earth, from whence it came.

i've got four books on the table, five really, i like to read the local authors but if they don't even respond to my emails, i kind of lose interest after a while. that's how my reading goes. i am actively involved with those who are actively involved in increasing their readership and network among authors. i am fast fading away on those who just turn aside or don't really want to exchange that with me.

i have a plan to make a best of indie post on my best of indie site. That's where it belongs. It would be once-a-year collection of the best I've read. I've read tons. I've read some really fantastic ones.

it's cold here, cold and wet, and the seventeen-year-old, crutches and all, is having trouble getting to school. his mom has taken over. when i get anywhere near him i yell at him, brimming over at anger that he can roll over mornings, unable to get out of bed. but i know that it's deep psychological pain. i do think she has to be on the front line here as she can counsel him on the way through the front door which he has to enter. once he's in school, he has friends, they take care of him, the nurse and secretaries are all over him. we have trouble getting him to that front door, though. it's all very painful.

sons coming for the holidays, daughter coming too, and we're all getting excited about the upcoming festive times. things are not great in any of our various places. but we are at least a family that support each other.

i wear my galesburg hat everywhere. at first i was saying that the school saved our lives, taking in both of our kids so easily. one of them is not so easy. i wear the hat to keep my prayers going upward, and pray for the school to be able to pull this off as well as us.

at the traffic lights, which are interminable, i pray the traffic light prayer. may the cars going all the four directions, north, east, south, and west, follow the cultural conventions and behave predictably, to the safety of all and the infinite order of the universe, that we may all get home safely one more night.

amen.

a long day - i went to a local author's fair at the galesburg public library, and i probably talked to people the entire four hours. i couldn't help it. it's been a long pandemic. and these were authors i wanted to impress. i ended up selling two books, and trading several others, and giving a couple to the library. in short, i came home a little depleted, but happy.

i've begun to think of print marketing as its own sphere, entirely unrelated to kindle marketing. as i look down at my kindle ratings, i can say that i've done pretty well to get some books down below certain threshold rating numbers, like below two mil or below three mil. i can't say the same for my print ratings, as i'm not known well in the print world, and have to get my book out there considerably more before i can do the same for my paperback ratings. the ratings have entirely become an obsession. i pick up my little log book (where i write down major changes and keep track once a week) almost constantly sometimes. success means that the thing will be quite messy, and i look forward to writing down the weekly ratings once agian tomorrow morning.

i'm checking the world cup a lot - reminds me of my old days teaching esl when i'd lose whole teaching days to a big game like france or netherlands. those european countries are the big ones - they take it very seriously and always have an excellent team - but argentina and brazil are right in there with them, and it always ends up pretty exciting in my opinion. it's nationalism as it should be - a purely sports-oriented wish that your kids are hotter than theirs for an hour or two.

it's a bit cold out there, and i'm tired. will update you on the author fair - i met a bunch of cool local authors. i'll put it all on either the authors' blog or the galesburg blog, hoping of course that i have time. chou.