Alice Duncan's Newsletter

The Joys of January

Oh, my, January was such a confuzzled month. My daughter Anni and her husband Razmik were here for Christmas and then to fix up my house, which needs it badly.

They started out with a bang. Unfortunately for me, both of my children are neat freaks. Since I was born without an organizational gene in my own personal DNA, I don’t know where this characteristic came from. I don’t think their father was particularly well organized. Nuts, maybe, but not well organized. However it came to pass, both Anni and Robin are tidy. Anni even made me clean up a bunch of stuff. Overall, this was a Very Good Thing, because I found some things I’d even forgotten I had, including two wiener-dog pictures by Tom Stoner, late husband of Monica Stoner, my very first critique partner, who now lives, writes, breeds and shows Salukis in Edgewood, New Mexico. We met in Southern California, and then everybody moved to New Mexico. Go figure. Anyway, I’m pleased to have found Tom’s wiener dogs pictures, and aim to have them framed as soon as I can afford to do so.

But that’s not all. Razmik put in new floors, painted the whole inside of the house, and I bought a new sofa and chair for the living room. He also re-hung pictures, so that they’re all now evenly spaced and stuff like that. I’ve never had evenly spaced pictures before. This is nice. Love the new floors. And I’ve taken precautions so the dogs can’t ruin my new furniture. I don’t mind a little dog hair, but a couple of my hounds actually pee on furniture. Not anymore. Heh, heh, heh.

 

                       

There are still dead stuffies all over the place, but I don't mind those. 

And then it snowed. It didn’t just snow. It snowzillaed. Mind you, we generally get a little bit of snow here in Roswell, but this snow pretty much brought the city to its knees. The newspaper lady couldn’t get through the snow to deliver the newspaper (no big loss there) and even the mail couldn’t get through. Roswell’s mail is sorted in Lubbock, Texas, and all the roads were blocked into and out of Roswell, which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There was no food on grocery shelves, and lots of streets remained impassible for a couple of weeks. We’re more or less back to normal now, but Razmik’s work on the house sort of had to grind to a stop. He’d intended to paint the outside, too, and put new outdoor carpeting on the front porch because the old stuff was coming apart and posed quite a falling risk. He took up the old stuff, but it was too wet to put the new stuff on. Oh, well. Maybe they’ll be able to come back again someday and finish making my house worth living in. He did find a huge problem regarding a leak between the bathroom and kitchen walls, which will have to be addressed at a later time, too, but not much later because the whole stupid house is apt to collapse if it’s not taken care of soon. Which, of course, requires money. Details, details.

 

Anyway, enough of that. I’ll get in touch with the winners of the audio edition of THANKSGIVING ANGELS. And at the end of February… I’ll be gone. Hmm. Just recalled that I’ll be in Phoenix at the Left Coast Crime conference, and then in Southern California to visit friends and family. I’ll mainly be staying at Robin and Gilbert’s home in the San Fernando Valley, because they need someone to dog-sit while they take a vacation. Hmm. Anni and Razmik seem to have usurped my few savings (although it was worth it) and now Robin and Gilbert are usurping my vacation time. But what the heck! I love visiting my friends and family in Southern California, and I can drive from West Hills to Pasadena, can’t I? The answer to that question is a resounding YES.

So no contest this month. I’ll figure out another one for March.

Please visit my web page at www.aliceduncan.net, and if you’d like to be Facebook friends, here’s my Facebook page info: https://www.facebook.com/alice.duncan.925

Thanks!