My library writing group had their first meeting of the season. We had an order of business that was different than usual. This past January we lost one of our members unexpectedly. By spring, it was decided that we wanted to self publish a book of her writing for donation to our library. After getting permission from the family and a nod of okay from the library, two of us spent the summer on the project. I brought the finished product with me to the meeting. When I had received the book I was surprised at how many typos were overlooked because four people had proof read it. I suggested that maybe a volunteer from the group could read through it again and flag the errors and I could redo the book using this one as a proof for the finished product. The group voted and decided that we would donate the book as it had been done. It was their feeling that our friend would have loved it just the way it was. Everyone was appreciative of all the hard work already invested and after the meeting we went upstairs together and gave the librarian the book. The book we created can be ordered on demand from lulu.com
HERE. If you choose to buy it be aware typos are present. I learned a lot from doing the project and will try another self publishing undertaking in the future. It was not as difficult to navigate the actual process as I thought. I had never used google docs before and that is where we worked all summer. Some of the writings the family had provided had been typed into a word document and were easily copied and pasted, some was hard copy and had to be typed into google docs, and some was scanned. I learned how to take a jpeg and convert it into a word file. After we had what we believed to be a document that was ready we converted it to pdf and then uploaded it to lulu.com. It was a bit tricky to design the cover but between the two of us we figured it out. We did not choose to spend the money on the many tools that lulu offers or to try to obtain a bar code number for the book. The metadata step for obtaining the bar code can be a bit tricky. I encourage anyone who wanted to print a document or calendar to check out their user friendly website. We only paid for our finished product at the cost that you see if you follow the link. In fact we paid a bit less because I had a coupon. The only thing I would caution anyone trying to self publish is to have someone who is really good at finding mistakes read it IN PRINT before ordering the book. It would have been easy enough to print the word doc or the pdf and hand it out for proof reading prior to going to press. If I had it to do over I would have followed that procedure.
Our topic for the month of what to write on was a bit confused. We had said at the spring luncheon to write something funny but that was laid aside at some point and our topic was changed to what we did over the summer. Myself and one other person had missed the memo and prepared an amusing story. Others wrote about their summer. What follows is what I offered to library writing group during the September meeting.
Library Writing Group
September 2018
Something comical
Slipper Skating At Six AM
It was the winter of 1983-84. Ice crusted the outside of the windows of my rental. My three children and I lived in the lower level and a single gentleman from Germany had the upstairs apartment. Still being married, but separated for the past nine months, had created an interesting reality for us. My eldest son and daughter were twins named Nicholas and Nicole. They would not be three for a couple more months, and my youngest son, Scott, was two months old. Our rental was nice enough and we had plenty of food, plenty of warmth, and my children had plenty of clothes and plenty of toys to play with. Family and friends had been very kind indeed to me as I had not been able to work with Scott’s pregnancy due to anemia and after he was born the doctor forbid my going back to work for twelve months. I had spent the summer before garage sale shopping for items to wrap and put under the tree and as Christmas neared, Toys For Tots had surprised us with many packages to add to my efforts. The apartment included a basement for storage. It had a large living room and a large eat in kitchen, a dining room, a laundry room and three bedrooms. It was nestled in a small Indiana town. The windows were low to the ground and it had a wrap around front porch and a large back yard. My furnishings and decorating style were “early attic”. I was looking forward to a garden in the coming season. My estranged husband and I had parted ways after I became pregnant with Scott, but the United States Air Force saw to it that I was sent his housing money and that there was health insurance for myself and the children. My father paid my rent so the child support was used for utilities and clothing for the kids. Groceries were covered by public assistance. I was in my late twenties. It was a hard time for me in some ways but in many ways it was also a time that I look back at as one of the happiest times of my life. It was just me and the kids and we were a pretty good team. I do remember being very tired a good deal of the time.
I tended to put the twins to bed early. Their bedtime routine included a bath and having a story book read to them and by then I was ready to turn off the chatter of the television and stretch out on the couch and read. Scott was a breast fed baby. So he received my attention every three to five hours as needed. Midnight came and after feeding him, he fell asleep and I settled down to get some rest. At five am I was up again as Scott was ready to eat. But in short order we were both asleep. The house was quiet. The world outside was still. Snow was falling and all was at peace with the world.
Peaceful that is until a loud noise woke me up. As I fought the way to the surface from my sleep I finally realized that the awful sound was the smoke alarm. I found my glasses and leapt out of bed and followed the smoke to the kitchen. For some reason something was on the stove smoldering and creating a great deal of smoke. As I rushed with the intent to put out the fire, I slid across the floor in something wet and slimy that was all over the tile, eventually landing on my butt. I got back up, thankfully unhurt, and was able to extinguish the fire on the burner. I sunk down in a kitchen chair and quietly looked around and took in the mess in my kitchen. What had been on fire was a plastic bowl on the burner which had been turned on. Cupboards were open and things were in disarray. I did not understand how such a big mess could be made by two, two year olds and it did not wake me up. A tear slid down my cheek and I laid my head down on the kitchen table and began to cry.
It wasn’t long when a little hand patted my shoulder and soon four arms were hugging me. “Mommy are you hurt?” I was asked by my two year olds. I answered no and quickly checked them out to make sure they too were unharmed. Taking a deep breath I asked them what exactly it was that they were doing that caused this situation. They explained to me what was to them very obvious. They were going to surprise me by having made breakfast for me when I woke up. I pulled them to me and was so very grateful to have them safe.
Then looking over their heads as I held them close I saw something on the table. A giggle started up from my toes and soon filled my belly until I was indeed laughing very hard. There on my kitchen table, amidst salt and pepper spilled every where, amidst broken egg shells and slimy egg white and egg yolk running all over and down off the table edge onto the floor, was the type of bottle opener known as a church key. My bright and beautiful children had “opened” the eggs with a bottle opener. As I cleaned up the mess and contemplated how my kids were not only thoughtful but innovative, I counted my blessings. No one was hurt. Life was good.
