Getting set up

Starting at 0730, it took three trips to get the writing machine and ancillary items from the house to the lanai, with my VA-supplied walker as transport. The lap top and power cord made the first trip without incident. Moving from the living room and onto the lanai paving stones is a four-inch drop and requires manipulation of four wheels, careful not to exceed a certain angle, lest everything on the walker slide off and impact the stones. I have a small glass-topped table to set the computer on while getting other items. (My generic Lasix just kicked in, so I must hie to the bathroom. … Now I am back. Time and Lasix, whether generic or brand name, wait for no man. Discovery: The onboard spell check does not recognize “hie.”)

With computer and power cord set on the table, I take a long extension cord from another table and plug it into an inside access. There is an access on a lanai wall, but it is very low and behind a couch. To use that access requires that I move the rattan couch, get on my knees, bend over, open the access cover and somehow match three-prong male cord to the three-access female receptacle, struggle to my feet and reset the couch.  Using the indoor receptacle is easier. My knees no longer have any padding, nor my legs the strength of 15 years ago. I don’t know that we are “supposed” to avoid using male and female terms, but of a certainty surely there are a few thousands of people who believe (or “feel”) that use of those terms in describing an electrical cord is continuation of colonialism and the patriarchy and denotes the highest form of white privilege. Gender-free electrical cords matter.

I do not yet plug in the computer power cord because I will be moving around and do not want to entangle my feet. Back in the kitchen, I pour a cup of coffee into a NASA mug and fill my thermos. The mug also contains a lid full of Miralax. The thermos I transport on my walker; I carry the mug. I have a tray for moving plates of food, but dumped a former tray onto the lanai, breaking the tray and a bowl of cereal, therefore, no taking the replacement tray on downhill voyages. With mug and thermos properly and firmly set in place on the table, I return to the kitchen and retrieve my previously-fixed breakfast – cottage cheese and blueberries, and about 10 or 12 M&Ms with peanuts. The M&Ms represent an extravagance, but since the end of January I have lost 25 pounds (230 v 255) and occasionally break my self-induced diet rules.

Computer plugged in and fired up, coffee sipped, now what should I work on? I have four manuscripts sort of complete – three Vietnam novels and a 90,000-word novel on parallel universes – An Incident in Luna County. I do not know how to prepare a work for electronic publishing. I also have Time Travel Ad and several Life after Life novellas, none with a title, each concerning good people who die and are transported elsewhere, in accordance with Stormy Llewelyn’s belief that this world is boot camp, and those who do not succumb to evil here are graced with fighting evil on other worlds. It is a likelihood I find comforting.