It happens even to the nerdiest geek at some point. Somehow a bot got into my WordPress account and sent out a stupid post about some sort of online betting.
DO NOT visit or engage with the sites listed in that post. I have no idea what cricket betting is, or whether it involves insects at all, but it really BUGS me!
And before I start posting more insect puns, I’ll keep this short. It’s been a rough coupla months here, so I don’t think even *I* would find bug puns funny at the moment. I mite end up winging it, which would not bee funny at all, though it mite cause a lot of buzz.
What say you, hive mind? (This post is not a bug; it’s a feature.)
Blog
And how was YOUR weekend?
Absolutely nothing in this blog post has been exaggerated or embellished. Not. One. Thing.
This weekend gave new meaning to “It’s the little things.” Only not a good meaning. It was all little things. All weekend.
About a week ago I bought a “gaming chair” for my office. It was on sale at Wayfair. They sent me a slightly better one than I had ordered, so I felt really lucky.
Here’s the chair. Don’t ask me why there’s a random Nintendo controller on the floor of their promo picture. I have no clue.
Anyway, I should have known better. There’s no such thing as luck.
Next, the evaporator fan in our fridge died. It had been making noises for a week, just as it did back in July when we had to replace the fan the first time. Wayne had bought an off-brand replacement fan from Amazon back then and, after losing an entire fridge worth of food before the fan arrived, we figured we were good to go. Note to self husband: Stop trying to save two dollars by buying a generic appliance part. May the two dead fans rest in peace.
So, all this week I had been asking Wayne to purchase another, better fan ASAP so we would have it here before the fridge fan truly died. Because die it would. And I was not wrong. The fan died on Friday. The new fan arrived on Saturday. You do the math. In the interim day, the fridge was registering as 51 degrees. A bit balmy for a refrigerator containing dairy products and raw pork.
In related news (which will seem more related by the time I finish this story), I use a 43” 4K TV as my computer monitor. On Friday, the TV’s 3 HDMI ports all failed, probably due to a recent brownout/power outage. After I tried every permutation of different cables and ports, with only a small amount of cussing, I conceded that all the HDMI ports were toast.
Undaunted (because the weekend was still young), I unplugged it, set it on the floor, and switched it out for a computer monitor on my other desk so I could get church work done for the weekend. Lots of cables were flying everywhere as I made this exchange. It seemed like an easy task till I got partway into it and couldn’t go back.
Then I figured I’d just switch two similar TVs—the one in the guest room and this “monitor” TV in my office. I put the computer monitor back on my second desk. More cables were flying everywhere. By now I was sweating. Where were those 40-degree temps from last week when I needed them?
Somewhere in the middle of all this chaos, I dragged my old office chair, which had been taking up space in the foyer, up to the third floor for storage. I’m a little too short to be hoisting heavy office chairs over my head while climbing steep stairs. I woke up yesterday morning with a wrenched back. Because, of course.
In more related news (don’t worry—it’ll all come together as one big cloud of yuck soon), I now I have a Nespresso machine in the kitchen. So I thought I’d move my old coffeemaker up to my office for fun. I set everything up on a low bookshelf, with more cords and trying to establish some good office feng shui, only to discover that it would not turn on. At all. The brownout/power outage had probably killed it. And it was not a cheap coffeemaker. May it rest in peace.
Amid all this fun, my Walmart grocery delivery order was supposed to arrive at 7 p.m. Saturday. At 7:40 p.m. I got an apologetic text that the order was delayed and they’d contact me when it was on the way. At 9:15 p.m., with no food in sight, I called the store. They forwarded my call to some other department. I’ve never heard anyone talk as slowly and listlessly as this person. He was either high or sleeping, or both, and he said they couldn’t do anything about it now because they close at 10:00. (The store closes at 11, and besides, it was only 9:15.) The order had food I was going to use for dinner. Because, of course. So I had to improvise.
On Wayne’s one night off this week, we had canned soup and grilled cheese for dinner. At 9:45 p.m.
Wayne spent that one night off changing the fridge fan. He did it overnight while I was sleeping. Picture him as a really large elf in the shoemaker’s shop overnight. No, wait, don’t. It’s not a pretty picture. He’d look silly in the little curly-toed shoes and the lederhosen.
Anyway, it took him hours to get rid of the ice buildup. He wasn’t sure which came first: the ice or the seized-up fan. By this point, of course, it didn’t really matter.
He very cleverly used my hair dryer to melt some of the ice, but it still took hours. While he was blasting the ice with my hair dryer, it just stopped working. Kaput. He failed to mention this to me. He just left the dead hair dryer on the back staircase for me to find this morning.
This morning I almost tripped over a dead hair dryer on the back staircase when I came down for my Nespresso. Because I don’t have a coffeemaker in my office.
Once I was back upstairs, Wayne texted me from the living room that he’d need clean scrubs for work. There was a clean set of scrubs in the dryer, two floors below me, but I forgot to bring that load upstairs in my haste to deal with the missing grocery order. Let’s just say four flights of stairs is mighty good exercise when you’re in a hurry. So that was more sweating because those 40-degree temps are still gone.
In still somehow-related news… (don’t get your panties in a bunch)… Despite having cancelled (9 days ago) a hotel reservation for a conference I could not attend this weekend, I received an email today with a PDF of the hotel bill attached. I had cancelled the reservation over the phone (because there was no link on their site to cancel online), and I was told that the confirmation “number” I was to jot down for the cancellation was “Todd, the front desk manager.” Seems legit.
Then I noticed the credit card number listed on the bill (a bunch of X’s and then four last digits that I did not recognize). In a panic, I started checking all my online credit card accounts to see if any of them had been charged, since I couldn’t remember which card I’d used to make the reservation last winter.
I tried logging in to my Amtrak Rewards Bank of America Mastercard account and was met with this message: “There is no registered user with this ID. We cannot process your request. Please call 800-XXX-XXXX.” Which I did. They had a “high volume of calls” so I was on hold for about ten minutes.
A very nice man tried everything he could and then admitted this was above his pay grade, so he gave me the phone number for the credit card department.
I called the credit card department and was greeted with an automated voice… in Spanish. I took 5 years of German in school. Not a speck of Spanish. No amount of pressing “1” or “0” or yelling “English!” got me anywhere. I tried the phone number again, hoping I had just missed an earlier menu where I could opt for English. I had not missed anything. It was still in Spanish.
I called the main 800 number again, was met with the same “high volume of calls” again, and remained on hold until someone picked up. I explained the situation again, added on the bit about being given a phone number that answers completely in Spanish, and waited while this new person looked up my account. Once she discovered it was an Amtrak Mastercard (since Bank of America carries many different kinds of cards), she told me that as of TODAY the Amtrak Rewards card was now being serviced by First National Bank of Omaha. Which explains why I could log in on Thursday to make my monthly payment, but could not log in today.
I created an online account with the new Amtrak/FNBO card info, only to discover that there is no record of the large payment I made on Thursday at the Bank of America site. So, I sent an online email to Customer Service, explaining the transfer of accounts and asking whether they received my payment for this month.
The fun part is that my bank has already deducted that large payment from my account to pay that credit card bill.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I tried emailing the hotel with my confirmation number and the dates—and my cancellation confirmation of “Todd, the front desk manager”—but ended up in an online-form loop that made me update my password, change my username, update my password again, and then did not give me the option to choose an appropriate category such as “Billing Question.” I had to make one up. I also had to fudge on the name of the hotel, since I had to choose from a drop-down menu and my hotel was not even listed there. So I chose the geographically closest one and then added in the comments box which hotel I really meant.
I will receive a response in “7 to 10 business days.” Let me tell you, a lot can happen in 7 to 10 business days. Around here, a lot can happen in 7 to 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, back at a different ranch, I called Walmart again and talked to the Pickup department. They found my order and said it was scheduled to arrive at 7 p.m. A full day late. Nobody had told me. I explained that my husband was leaving for work at 6 p.m. and that his dinner was in that order. So, they changed the delivery time to “ASAP.” Note to self: Call them back and explain what “ASAP” stands for.
By 8 p.m., a day later than scheduled, there was still no delivery order and no communication from the store or the app. Two hours earlier I had had to improvise for dinner again. In a fit of premonition and genius, I had put a pork loin in the Crock Pot so at least we’d have SOMETHING for dinner.
But in a fit of stupidity, I forgot to put the lid on the Crock Pot, so it cooked all day without the lid to seal in the juices. The pork loin tasted like eating a board that had been left in the desert for a week. But, you know, with bacon on top.
And I didn’t have eggs or milk for tomorrow morning, in addition to the missing grocery order, because Wayne had taken all the food out of the fridge for 3 or 4 hours last night while he fixed the fan. The eggs and milk were a little too sketchy for my liking at this point.
At 8:45 p.m. I called Walmart one more time, was transferred to the Pickup department (who put me on hold several times without talking to me), was transferred back to the main desk, who apologized, then was transferred to a manager, where I was again on hold with no one picking up, then was transferred back to the main desk, who apologized again, then was transferred back to Pickup. This time someone in Pickup picked up. (For a moment, I felt like I’d won the lottery.)
And she explained that my order HAD been marked as “ASAP” but that they now use third-party drivers and none of them picked up the delivery. I asked if I could just switch the order to Pickup. I then spent the next hour driving to Walmart and back to retrieve my “delivery” order. Note to self: Call them back again to explain what “delivery” means.
They’d told me that, since my order wasn’t listed as a regular Pickup order, when I arrived I should pull into one of the numbered spots, call the phone number on the sign, and then let them know I was there for the order. I sat in spot 7 and called their number. I got voicemail, only to be told that their mailbox was full and I should call back later.
I called 4 times before someone picked up.
I got home and discovered that I received the 3 Honeycrisp apples I ordered but was charged for 6. So it’ll likely be another phone call in the morning. I can’t wait.
As happens every week after I place an order, I just got an email from Walmart with a link to a “How Did We Do?” survey regarding my grocery order. Should I? You know, while I wait to hear back about the hotel bill, the credit card payment, and the two dollars I was overcharged for the apples?
Sure. Why not? What could go wrong?
Kindle Countdown this week only!
Books on sale! Babies on blankets!
See, this is what happens if you wait more than six months to write a blog post. Lots of crap adds up and then you don’t even know where to start. Then the summer hits and you’re busy. Then the autumn hits… and you’re even busier. Then you attend a big authors’ conference and go on a cruise and a few more Greek letters hit the streets. Then you remember you’re a disorganized procrastinator… and all hell breaks loose.
Welcome to my life.
For today, boys and girls, we’re simply going to throw out a quick list of Stuff That Happened that might still interest you. (Well, it interests ME, so that’s close enough for government work.)
Biggest News: Welcome to the World, Little Princess!
Last night we welcomed a granddaughter safely into the world. We’re delighted she’s here, and we suspect she will have the entire family wrapped around her delicate fingers before Christmas. Or, to be honest, before lunch.
Second Biggest News: Books on Sale!
If you like cozy mysteries (and who doesn’t, besides maybe Stephen King), there’s a big sale going on this weekend! One of ’em is my Red Ink Mystery book, The Tell-Tale Heart Attack. Grab it (and other books listed here) for under three bucks this weekend (today through Sunday)! Each book cover is a clickable link.
https://www.avamallory.com/mystery-promos
Third Biggest News: TWO new cozies coming in 2022!
I’ve got two more cozy mysteries in the Red Ink Mysteries series coming up in 2022: The Old Man and the Seat Belt and also A Farewell to Arms and Legs. I have the preliminary artwork for the first one, but I learned a valuable lesson: NEVER tell your cartoonist to “do what he wants” with your cover art. Then you end up with dead guys entangled in seat belts and you have to go back and work that into the plot. Plus, where did that cat come from?
Last Biggest News (is that a thing?): Silly Sci-Fi?
Would you like a little ridiculousness with your science fiction? Sure you would. I’m also working on this fun book, and I’m hoping it sees the light of day sometime in 2022. Keep busy, keep calm, and keep reading!
What time is it? Wait…what DAY is it?
Despite what happened last weekend to most of us here in the U.S., this is not a Daylight Saving post.
Sure, I’m a little fuzzy on what time it is lately, or even what day of the week (or month) it is, but I can’t blame that on Daylight Saving Time, or on spring, or on a Kardashian, much though I would love to shift the blame to any of those.
I blame the fuzziness on having transitioned completely into my true nature: as a night owl.
Due to a perfect storm of events, I’ve had almost no outside responsibilities for the past few weeks (and very few inside ones, either), and it’s starting to show.
Things started out well, and I was living like a normal person. On the first day, I put a large Perdue chicken in the Crock Pot, and after enjoying that first dinner of roast chicken and mashed potatoes, I used the rest of the chicken to make a big pot of homemade chicken noodle soup. I was pretty proud of myself for how responsibly domestic I was being.
Then I bought the first order of Chinese food.
Next came the box of Cap’n Crunch, closely followed by a few Oreos and some Combos (FYI: the pretzel/cheddar cheese ones are the best). All that stuff went so well with binge-watching episodes of Breaking Bad for the umpteenth time.
Once I was nibbling through the second batch of Chinese food a week later—followed by the mint chocolate chip ice cream that had somehow made its way into my Instacart order—I realized I was checking my phone for not just the time, but also the date and the day of the week. Just to be sure.
By this point I was staying up working till 4:00 a.m. most nights. And that’s the part of this situation I’m okay with. I may need to rein in my eating choices (okay, yes, I do need to rein in my eating choices), but my sleep schedule is starting to feel like it should have been like this all along.
This doesn’t surprise me. I’ve known I was a night owl since my teen years. It’s always been difficult to get to school on time or to hold down a typical nine-to-five job. I literally feel queasy when I’m forced to be up, showered, and out in the world in the morning. If you’re a morning person, imagine having to get up around 2 a.m. each day to start your day. That’s how I feel every morning until nearly noon.
For the past decade or two, I’ve been blessed with a freelance schedule, doing all my work from home. I arrange doctor appointments for the afternoon. I don’t agree to meetings with anyone before 2 p.m. I’ve even taught my parents not to stop by or call me until well past 11 a.m., although that took some effort. They’re retired and are required by law to be home before 3 p.m. so they can have dinner at 4 and be in bed by dark. At least that’s what I’ve heard.
On the days when I have to get up at 6 a.m. (a few hours after I’ve crawled into bed) to cook the hubby breakfast before he goes to work, I wave goodbye when he leaves and head back to bed until I get somewhere near seven hours of sleep.
But this freeform sleep/eat schedule will be ending soon. Some of my daily responsibilities will kick back in. I’ll go back to arranging most of my eating and some of my sleep to align with the people around me.
Until then, I’m enjoying letting my body decide when it wants to be awake or asleep, rather than letting society decide for me…
…until I need to go to the bank or the post office, or anywhere else that closes before sundown.
Hit the road, Linda!
It’s almost NaNoWriMo Eve, boys and girls! And what does that mean? It means Linda has to get ready to write another novel during November as part of the annual self-flagellation ritual known as National Novel Writing Month! Yay!
This year’s novel will be a romantic comedy called Hit the Road, Jack! I’ve been doing a lot of planning for this novel…
Let’s see…
Basic plot points logged in the Plottr software… check! 
Basic character sketches typed into Scrivener… check!
Book cover done and ready to use… check!
Scary horror movie reruns on repeat all through October… check!
Massive amounts of Halloween candy consumed until I want to throw up… che—WAIT! NO! I’m not ready! 
I knew I was forgetting something! The chocolate! But I can solve this dire situation in plenty of time for NaNoWriMo Eve, thanks to socially distanced grocery pickup and a little bit of will power (so I don’t eat all the candy before the little brats—I mean, the cute kids in adorable costumes—get here next week).
Sure, they’re kinda cute, and sure, I’m gonna have bowls of candy ready for them, even if their costumes are just unwashed pajama pants and dirty, used N-95 masks, but they’re not getting my stash of Fun Size Hershey’s Miniatures!
Everybody knows that—after cheap liquor and cigarettes—chocolate and coffee are both classic novelist fuel. (Kinda like rocket fuel, only better tasting.)
So, once I’ve got my rocket fuel here alongside me, and once the little brats—I mean, cute little trick-or-treaters—are done nibbling away at my candy stash, I’ll be ready for NaNoWriMo 2020.
Because, after the year we’ve all had, what could go wrong? I figure sitting at a typewriter, hooking myself up to a coffee drip I.V., and inhaling chocolate for a month is a sort of mirror of the past six months anyway.
A virtual board game!
What do you get when you cross the board game Clue with a Zoom meeting, a bunch of actors, a bunch of puzzles, and a bunch of strangers?
A whole bunch of fun for a Friday night.
It’s called The Secret Library.
I hesitate to post a review because I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun for anyone who decides to give it a try. I found out about the Secret Library through an ad on Facebook and purchased two event tickets—one for myself and one for my son and his wife for their anniversary. Chris, Courtney, and I have a long history of playing board games together—including the aforementioned Clue—but we’ve missed out on a lot of gaming sessions this year. Years ago I played Clue with all four of my kids, and we each used a spiralbound notebook to take notes. Chris’s notes were the scariest because of his insane level of detail… and he always won, so we stopped playing after a while because the rest of us had learned our lesson.
Chris could have used a spreadsheet with details like this!
Anyway, this Secret Library, this virtual live-action board game seemed like the perfect substitute in these weird times. So, at 8:00 tonight, we all went in, each from our own house. The game allows a bunch of people on one screen/ticket, but I paid for two screens because Chris and I live 50 miles apart.
Kudos to the bunch of writers and actors who pulled this event together. (There are a bunch more time slots available in the upcoming weeks… and I gotta stop using the word “bunch” or you’ll think I’m bananas. And yes, I did that on purpose just now. I have no social life to speak of.) The writers and actors had to find a way to make their story interactive, interesting, and difficult without being vexing, especially since they’d have no idea what sort of people would be showing up on their screens.
You know, people like my son, who’s a web coder and knows his stuff. And also people like me, who couldn’t get her microphone to work properly for half the game, which was a source of amusement to some of the actors. (I caught a lot of ribbing from the Gardener, in particular.) Honest, I’m not a tech idiot. I’m a geek wannabe—I’ve been online since 1987, pre-Windows—but my microphone just wouldn’t cooperate. No, seriously. Quit laughing.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the Secret Library. Here’s an instructional screenshot we got not long before the game began:
The whole experience was a delightful and clever use of the technology available to us, at a time when actors can’t perform live and stage writers can’t get their work performed anywhere. Factoring in the fact that this is a relatively new use of these forms of tech, I applaud everyone involved for thinking outside the box to provide more than 90 minutes of fun, distracting entertainment. If you buy a ticket, and read the materials provided, and show up early to test your tech (which I totally did—honest! It wasn’t my fault!), you’ll quickly move beyond the tech and find yourself immersed in the story and the ongoing interaction with everyone around you, both actors and fellow participants.
Now that someone’s starting to test the boundaries of how to use interactive tech and webcams, I look forward to more such stories from creative minds like these guys. I hope I can find more experiences like this in the near future.
If you’re curious about the Secret Library and want to know more, try the link, or contact me at linda@lindaau.com. They gave us a discount code we can pass along to our friends, even the ones who tease me about my inability to get my microphone to work for the first hour.
Honestly, it wasn’t my fault. I tried a bunch of things to fix it. A bunch…
The power of storytelling
My two-year-old grandson, affectionately known as King Arthur, came to stay with us this past weekend. He’s at that fun age where he can finally communicate his wants and needs verbally (instead of simply grunting or pointing), and in most cases I can now figure out what he’s saying.
The “toy bomb” detonated within five minutes of his showing up. I’m still not sure why I purchased a set of a bajillion wooden blocks and a set of a gazillion pieces of plastic food, but they were all dumped out and spread across the living room floor as soon as the weekend started. Walking around the house for the next two days was like walking through a minefield.
But King Arthur has always been a cheerful, delightful kid, so I spent a lot of time down on the floor with him playing with those blocks and all that plastic food (which looks better than most of my actual cooking). When my back and my knees announced that enough was enough, I quietly hoisted myself up and watched him continue to play from the safety and comfort of the couch or my little recliner.
What struck me this past weekend was that even a two-year-old with limited vocabulary and verbal skills is drawn to telling stories. I caught him recreating The Three Little Pigs, with the toy basket and the block basket as “houses” he blew over as the Big Bad Wolf. The story starts about halfway into this minute:
He also told himself completely unique stories, with characters he moved around, anthropomorphic trucks and trains, and lots of smashing and crashes along the way (with proper toddler sound effects).
At the time I didn’t think much of this, but I’ve been marveling at it all week since he left. If you’re a fiction writer who wonders if storytelling has any relevance anymore—in this world of anger, divisiveness, disease, and turmoil—let me assure you: YES, YOUR STORIES MATTER. And they’re NECESSARY.
How do I know this now? Because one of the first things a child learns as they come into language skills is HOW TO TELL A STORY. I realized this weekend that a lot of what a two-year-old does when left to his own devices is to tell himself stories. Not just ones he’s heard, such as The Three Little Pigs, but ones he makes up himself.
Let that sink in. This is a human being who has only been in the world for two years. He’s had to learn how to feed himself, how to move himself around, how to help Mommy and Daddy dress him and change him, how to understand and also speak words and sentences (thereby learning how to understand ideas). He’s had to learn the physics of almost every move he makes. He’s had to learn EVERYTHING.
And yet, within two years of his arrival in Life, he’s already spending a good amount of time making up fictional stories.
Nobody told him to do this. Nobody coached him that this might be a good use of his playtime. He decided on his own to sit in my living room and tell himself stories.
I’m convinced that stories are built into our DNA, that we need them. And frankly, if there was ever a year and a time when we need the comfort of storytelling, THIS is it.
So, tell your stories. You’ve probably been doing it since you were a toddler. And right about now, we could all use a few good stories to get us through.
Stay safe, my friends!
On a scale of 1 to 10…
We currently have three bathroom scales. In a related factoid, we have two bathrooms. Doing the math, you can see that we have a scale and a half for each bathroom. But since cutting one of the scales down the middle isn’t going to tell us we weigh any less, we’ve just decided to keep one scale (the old-fashioned mechanical one) in the half bath and then the other two (both digital) in the main upstairs bathroom.
The trouble with all three scales is that they work properly. You’d think we could have found at least one that would fib a little.
I bought a fairly basic digital scale two years ago, and I still don’t like it. Apparently I underestimated the power of a number I could fudge on because I was looking at a little metal needle that twitched back and forth as I stood on the mechanical scale. Now my weight is shown not only in actual numbers, but numbers with a decimal point. That’s just rude and unnecessary.
To make matters worse, apparently that wasn’t enough information for my husband, the engineer. A few weeks ago a newer, sleek, black digital scale showed up on the bathroom floor, right next to my already too-accurate white one. It’s from a company called Wyze... and it has an app.
Because, you know, it’s not bad enough you have to look at that digital number as you stand there naked and afraid each morning. Now you have to carry that number around with you on your smartphone. All day. Every day.
I haven’t stepped on that new scale yet, because I envision Wayne’s phone app stats being thrown off by someone about half his size standing on it. (“Wait, how did I lose that much weight just since this morning?”) Although… it seems as if the scale can accommodate more than one user, according to the photos that accompany the product’s Amazon page:
“Are you Chris? Because you weigh a LOT more than Chris! Just sayin’.”
“Are you Chris? If you’re not Chris, get the hell off my scale!”
“Are you Chris? Might wanna cut down on the Twinkies, Chris.”
And that “unlimited guest sharing” thing is just weird. What guest is gonna want you to carry around on your smartphone how much they weighed while they were visiting you?
I can’t even.
Then there’s this:
Heart rate tracking. Hmm. Pretty sure if I stand on that thing, my heart rate is gonna be clear off the charts. But whatever. Moving on…
But wait! There’s more!
Look at all the OTHER stuff this Wyze scale can tell you about yourself!
Honestly, that’s pretty much a list of all the stuff I don’t want to know about myself. I’d be more interested if it could tell me how nice I am, or how funny this blog post is, or how to sell a million copies of my latest book. I certainly don’t need to know my “visceral fat” number. And is that measured as a percentage or a flat number or some other way, like with a pie chart? Mmm, pie.
Where was I? Oh yeah.
At any rate, this scale seems to fill a deep inner need of my engineer husband: the need to have more numbers in his life. I can’t imagine needing most of those numbers… ever. When I stand on my own little digital scale, I’m already bombarded with a number higher than I can typically count without falling asleep. Add on the fact that my husband might then have access to all my numbers, and well, yeah… that ain’t happenin’.
I don’t care how sleek and shiny and beautiful that scale is, or how tempting phone apps can be. I’m never gonna Wyze up.
Fear… and Loathing Fear
I conquered a fear this past weekend. For me this is no small feat.
Despite having been raised in a household where my dad hunted regularly (we ate all sorts of game while I was growing up, from pheasants and rabbits to venison and fish), and despite being married to another hunter and gun enthusiast (there are two AK-47s in our house), I had never really touched a gun until Saturday evening. On purpose. Those things scare the crap outta me, and I was grateful that they were always locked up safe and sound, and away from me.
But it felt irresponsible to live in a house with guns and to have no idea how to use one. So, I signed up for a Pistol 101 class (not to be confused with Impressionist Painters 101 or English Literature 101).
This was a class for the total beginner, someone completely unfamiliar with guns. (I’m not sure, but I think the description said, “For the total gun-idiot who doesn’t even know which end to point where.”) That was definitely me. I registered, paid the deposit, and waited for the big day to arrive. Which it did.
We were given a list of things to do, things to bring, things to wear. I brought my husband’s 9mm Taurus pistol, 100 rounds of ammo, ear protection and goggles, and the balance of the class fee in probably-COVID-covered cash.
That day I wore a pretty flowered T-shirt, jeans, my tartan Chuck Taylors and my “Weird Al” socks, and the only ballcap I could find: an old Christian Writers Guild cap I bought many years ago. I must’ve looked like a total idiot. (You know, more than usual.)
With a little prayer and some deep, cleansing breaths, I walked into the class alone and, six hours later, walked out alive. (Let’s face it: in a class with 13 other total noobs brandishing weapons they didn’t understand, it wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility that one of us would yell “Oops!” at precisely the wrong moment.)
But the instructors and range safety officers were astounding and I never once felt unsafe. Not for a moment. And I pretty much walk around feeling nervous and unsafe all the time, even at home.
I came home a wiser person, and a less fearful one. Because knowledge is power. (Except for calculus and electrical engineering. For someone like me, that kind of knowledge is pointless.)
Conquering my many fears in recent years has become a challenge… mostly because my fears are legion: dentistry, rats, bats, spiders, public speaking, airplanes (well, being IN airplanes—I don’t mind when someone ELSE gets in an airplane), childbirth, and guns…
So many fears. So little time.
Over the years, some of these fears have been conquered out of necessity:
Dentistry: I found a loophole to conquer this fear: avoid going to the dentist as much as possible. No attendance, no fear.
Rats: I have friends and relatives who’ve had rats as pets, so I’ve learned to just be grateful that none of the untamed ones live in or near my house. (We have squirrels and moles and possums and groundhogs nearby instead.)
Bats: Two bats invaded our house weeks after we moved into it in 2012, so I simply embarrassed myself by shrieking and wearing a hoodie tied securely under my chin for three days till they figured out how to fly out the front door.
Spiders: This 140-year-old house has housed its share of spiders, and if I see one in the bedroom, I sleep in the guest room for a month or two until it has either moved on or died of old age.
Public Speaking: I haven’t conquered this one quite yet, but I can speak in public when I must… or when I get paid for it… or when people find me funny enough to buy a couple of my books after I shut up.
Airplanes: I beg my doctor to prescribe me exactly two Ativan pills before I go on vacations that include airline flights: one to get on the plane to get there, and one to get on the plane to come home. The Ativan just barely does the job, though: I still think we’re going to crash and die, but I just don’t care.
Childbirth: I had four 9-pound-plus babies at home (because I have a secondary fear: hospitals), so that fear fell by the wayside decades ago, back when I was too young and foolish to know better. Good thing you don’t really know how big the baby is until it’s over. And good thing they were all born before I was 33, because I’d never put myself through that now. (And not just because someone stole my uterus in 2014.)
So, the last big fear left on my list was GUNS. Hence the Pistol 101 class.
I can honestly say I’ve moved from a nearly panicky fear of seeing the guns outside their natural habitat (the gun cabinet) to a non-fearful, healthy respect for them (like I have for people who can ride unicycles or who do spring cleaning).
Next, I’m going to take my body-shot target from the class (20 out of 20! fear me!) and make it into a lovely wreath so I can hang it on the front door.
That ought to put the fear right where I want it.