Sunday, December 24, 2023: Ta Da! List
Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
Daily Diary, Day 1209:
Again, lots of gratitude for how you all have responded to the new Ta Da! posts. As a reminder, everything I post on my daily diary will continue to be free for everyone, but those who upgrade to paid subscriber are helping me pay for some of the marketing, which in turn frees up writing time for my fiction.
So what am I celebrating today?
Rain. As usual, we didn’t have nearly as much rain as promised, and it all happened overnight, so I didn’t get the pleasure of actually seeing it. But we did get some incredible clouds and a spell of thunder and lightning in the middle of the night. I enjoyed staying awake, counting down between the flash and the rumble and boom (my parents taught me to count “one potato, two potato…” saying that the number of potatoes told me how many miles away the lightning strike was so I didn’t need to be afraid. I have no idea if this was based on reality, but it worked, and I still do it.
I also recalled fondly the first time my husband and I heard thunder and lightning in San Diego. He grew up in Atlanta Georgia, and I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and we met and lived for a number of years in Oberlin, Ohio. All three were places where there were seasons and rain was common, often accompanied by thunder and lightning.
Then in 1974 we moved to southern California, first to Claremont in eastern LA, and then to San Diego the next year. We were, of course struck by the lack of clear seasons, and we hated the smog of LA, which was terrible in the 70s. For example, we had been in Claremont for weeks before the first clear day (probably our first Santa Ana) when we discovered that Mt. Baldy was just a few miles away and dominated the skyline. Before then it had been obscured by smog.
San Diego was less smoggy, and we enjoyed living close enough to the ocean to watch the fog roll in and out (which we still enjoy today.) But we really missed the rain. As a result, the first time there was a good old-fashioned thunderstorm, we were in a restaurant, and we were so excited we ran outside in the rain to watch! I suspect that the rest of the restaurant patrons thought we had gone bonkers. In short, the first thing I am celebratoing today is that we actually did have rain, and an exciting few minutes of thunder and lightning.
Toilet lid Cover: Ok, I know this is an odd reason to celebrate, but here is the context. All my life I have associated houses with toilet lid covers with little old fussy ladies (like my grandmother), and I never understood the need for them. In fact, I think I saw them as a needless decoration on a par with doilies on couch chairs and miscellaneous ornaments scattered on every surface. If you read my Favorite Thing #11 , you will realize the irony of this.
However, at the beginning of covid, my husband went to Washington state to stay with our daughter and grandsons to help out. Those five months were the first time my husband and I had been apart for more than a week in over fifty years, and the first time I had lived by myself…in forever…since I went right from home to college dorm living, to living with my boyfriend and then husband.
And one day during that time apart, after a shower when I was drying one of my feet (while standing on one leg) I fell. All I did was get a large bruise, but this really scared me. You know the nightmare…I could have broken something, and even if I could crawl to get to a phone, there I would be, naked, when whoever came to rescue me arrived. So, from that point on I have put a small towel on the toilet lid so I can sit down after every shower to dry my feet.
But the design for the remodel for that bathroom leaves us with not enough towel racks for that small towel. So, what to do? I suddenly thought about those old ladies and their toilet lid covers, went online and ordered a nice dark navy one (to match my towels). It came this week, and it works perfectly! Nice and soft, and I don’t have to worry about remembering to put a towel down and being shocked by the cold plastic lid! So, a lot of gratitude for such a simple solution and I’m celebrating that I didn’t let my bias against the image of a fussy old lady (which could never be me!) keep me from this solution.
Progress on the novel: Today I am celebrating that this week I moved into writing the last section of the novel I am working on. I am just short of 60,000 words, and I have been averaging 500 words a day. If I can sustain that pace, I might actually have a draft done by the end of January. Certainly a reason to celebrate!
Next week’s Ta Da List post comes on December 31, and I am looking forward to doing a nice long piece on my reasons to celebrate 2023 as we move into 2024.
I will love hearing from you all what large and small triumphs you had during 2023 that you would like to celebrate with me
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Louisa -- Point of Fact. Sound at sea level air pressure and at 60°F travels ~~760 miles per hour or about .21 miles per second. I also use your count method to estimate -- but it takes to the count of five to guess the distance. Sound also transmits better through humid air; the freight train that I can barely hear in drier summer months becomes a monster when our atmosphere is saturated to the dew point.
I learned to count it as one thousand and one, one thousand and two, and so on. We lived 1 mile from a bay on the west coast, so I wonder how that affected the accuracy of our counting. Although, it was very clear when the lightning was upon us and the thunder clap shook the houses! We used to get summer lightning that they called electrical storms. It usually came with warm rain and it was a lot of fun to watch.
I think the biggest achievement of my year was personal growth - my confidence and sense of self grew tremendously. It is amazing to me that we can still grow so much in our later years.