Just Me

  Before the new year rolled around, I decided to try completing a reading goal: Keep track of all the books I read this year. Not only this, but track them by number. I wasn’t going to once again try to read 100 books in one year, but since I have a penchant for counting things (I count the steps I take, the number of items in a box, etc.), I knew I would want to know how many books I DID manage to read by the end of the year. To save myself the arduous task of having to count them all on the list, I started keeping count of them with my list from the very beginning.   I am also not going to try to reach some kind of “magical number” of books read each month, but I was pleased to see that I did manage to read at least 10 books this month. What a nice even number of books read in one month! Then again, January is a pretty long month, so, yeah, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I managed to read so many books this month. Heh.   All of the books on this list a...

  This month, I wanted to learn how to tie knots. After a while, I decided that “tie knots” was just too vague of a goal, just like “learn how to sew clothes” for next month is too vague. I had to narrow it down to a type of knot to learn how to tie!   As I discovered as I read this book, there are A LOT of different knots to tie!   I became interested in tying knots while reading about mountaineering. And then my kids were both in a rock-climbing club at school and they also had to learn how to tie different kinds of knots! They often practiced at home, with my curious stare not far away.   So I tackled it this month. Once again, I tried using a book to learn how to do it. The book I chose was called The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Knots & Ropework by Geoffrey Budworth and it belonged to my husband.   Unfortunately, the book only got me confused! Yes, it had pictures and step-by-step instructions, but it was still hard to understand. ...

  I once wrote articles for a newspaper called SIGNews, which was published for the Deaf/HOH community. I wrote under the name of Dawn Colclasure. After a few years, they changed things up at the paper, which included changing staff. These changes were a little disruptive and created some problems in the flow of work for the writers. Not only this, but there was also the problem of paying the staff writers for their work. At one point, I got so frustrated with all of the delays that I sent an unpleasant email to my editor. She did not respond in kind; in fact, she blew up at me. I was lucky she didn’t let me go! All the same, I decided to take a break. I just figured that they needed space to get their shit together and so I went on hiatus and just focused on writing books. After I started writing for the paper again, however, the editor did not forget that little tiff we had, and I forever remained on her shit list. I didn’t get a very nice mention in the very last issue of the ...