Guest Blogger - Alice Duncan

Okay, so February has been slightly more full of mayhem than magic, but at least it turned out all right. For one thing my great-granddaughter, Kasumi Oshita, turned two on February 27. Yay! You can see pics of her and her brother Andrew on my website. Both children are ever so worth looking at: www.aliceduncan.net

Second, I called my brother, Elbert H. (for Homstead, which is the most important part of his name, as you’ll see if you keep reading) Duncan, Jr., in Washington, DC, to see how he and his wife Connie were surviving the ghastly snowstorms. He told me they were fine, and then he told me something I never knew about my dad’s side of the family, but which makes at least part of my writing life easier to comprehend. Evidently the Homsteads were very heavily into spiritualism. Therefore, when he read my last month’s blog about how Daisy Gumm Majesty (HUNGRY SPIRITS, June 2010) ended up with my personal soul mate, Rolly, he told me all about the spiritualistic side of the family. El said he went to séances all the time when he was a kid, and I never would have known that if I hadn’t confessed to Rolly’s birth. Or rebirth. Whatever. Evidently, when El was growing up, any time they heard a bump in the house, our grandmother would tell him, “Oh, that’s just Edna.” Edna, by the way, was our mutual Grammy Afton’s late sister. So there you go. You learn something every day, and that day I learned that I come by my spiritualistic bent naturally!

What I didn’t mention last month was that my very first experience with the Ouija board occurred when I was a secretary at Avon Cosmetics in Pasadena, CA. The Big Boss’s secretary brought her Ouija board to work one day, and we played around with it. At that time the board told me I was going to be married three times, the third marriage would last for fifty years, and that I’d die when I’m 94 by strangling on a clothesline. I’ve since learned that Ouija boards can be great jokers. I guess so 

Anyhow, that was the fun part of February, which lasted maybe three days. Then came the chaos. My cousin, Jerry Wilson, offered to refinish the totally icky floors in my house (I use the term “my” advisedly, since I’m probably going to have to sue my sister in order to get her to let me buy out her half of the place. Sigh). However, because of Jerry’s kind offer, I hauled everything out of the house and moved my five wiener dogs and one ringer (Scrappy, the miniature pinscher/Chihuahua mix; I call him a minchihuahua) to the little room off the garage. We were there all. month. long. Through snowstorms and decent weather. So, okay, we live in Roswell, New Mexico, and our snowstorms aren’t the big deals they are in, say, Washington, DC, where my poor brother lives.

Then my computer crashed. Actually, it was the CPU fan (whatever that is) that was damaged. Naturally, I didn’t have any of my editing work backed up, although I did back up the book I was writing. Writing books, however, doesn’t pay the kibble bill. Editing does. Bless the man who fixed the computer, he managed to e-mail the relevant files to me so I could continue earning a living. In the little room off the garage.

And then my glasses broke! I can’t even find my glasses when I take them off to shower, so this was another terrible catastrophe. Fortunately, I took them to a glasses place, they replaced the stem (or the eyepiece, or whatever you call it). The new stem doesn’t match the old one, but I have glasses again!

Not only that, but I got to move back into the house last week, and it’s perfectly gorgeous! And it no longer spells of 40-year-old doggie piddle! Now, if I could only find the cord to my digital camera, which I know is around here somewhere (or in the garage or the room off the garage), I’ll ever be able to take pictures!