Author: Kiki Writes

Rumored to be a writer. Never hip. Land of Lincoln Cleavage Queen three years running.

Let’s Blow Snow

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Big green evergreen bush with a small red cardinal sitting in it. It's snowing hard and there's a blue car in the background.No, this isn’t about cocaine. I’m not that fun. But I do want my last post of the year to be upbeat.

So, I live in the Midwest. It snows here. Last winter when it snowed, it was inconvenient because our snowblower was out of commission. We had two decent sized snows back-to-back, within days of each other, and I didn’t have time between snows to shovel out our driveway. Having four-wheel drive makes that less of an issue, but after that second snow, it really needed to be done. Because our garage is set behind our house, our driveway is pretty long. It took me over an hour to make it from the garage to the sidewalk and by that point, I was sore and exhausted. I ended up finishing the drive the next day, which took about half an hour.

My body was pissed.

I’d hurt my shoulder the month before, so it was really unhappy with me. And my back was livid that I was doing manual labor. I was not cut out for this. I swore that I was going to improve my physical condition so next time, I’d be more prepared and less sore.

I didn’t do that.

But, my dad did have the foresight to attempt to fix the snowblower before winter decided to arrive early this year. The carburetor has an issue and Dad thought he’d fixed it enough that it would work for the snow we got right after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, the sort-of-fixed snowblower was no match for that heavy, wet snow. I managed two get two passes of the driveway done, but after the snowblower died for the third time, I called it quits.

The snowblower and I were not going to be friends.

I got out the shovel and started working my way down the driveway. Fortunately, the neighbor across the street, Susan, and her son Adam, were also snowblowing and shoveling and once they were finished on their side of the street, they came over and helped me and our other neighbor, as she’d just had knee surgery. I am eternally grateful for their help and I owe them a bundle of Christmas treats.

I didn’t bother shoveling after the second snow we got a few days later. I let the four-wheel drive do its thing.

Instead of trying again to fix the snowblower’s carburetor, Dad just bought a new one for twenty bucks. He put on the new carburetor and he’ll eventually fix the old one so we’ll have a back-up. That’s how we roll.

So when the next significant snow came clipping on through, we were prepared. In theory. I was reluctant to bother with the snowblower after my first disastrous attempt to bond because I thought it might hold a grudge. However, there was only a few inches of snow and it was light and powdery, so after doing a little shoveling, I decided to give it another try.

My friends, the snowblower and I had a good time.

After a few test runs near the garage, I cranked up the speed, and we went flying, getting the driveway to the sidewalk done in no time. The bottom part of the driveway is a trickier beast. It’s an incline. The city plows pile the snow up at the end of the driveway and there was still a mound of it from the last snow that I never bothered with. But I just turned down the speed and me and that snowblower got it done. Whole thing took me about 35-40 minutes and the snowblower had the good grace not to run out of gas until I was on my way back to the garage because I was finished.

We’re besties now.

This is important because my dad used to be the one to clear the sidewalks and driveways on our side of the block. He’s not able to do that anymore.

Maybe now I can pick up where he left off.

A Chapbook of Grief

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A light brown and light red pen lying on a sheet of lined notebook paper.Instead of torturing you with yet another poem this month, I’m going to tell you about a chapbook I’ve been working on with the goal of having the first draft done by the end of the year.

First of all, a poetry chapbook is about 20-40 pages long. The number of poems depends on how long the poems are. I’m a short poem writer. Most of my poems can be contained on one page. So, in my chapbook writing endeavor, I’m looking at about twenty poems just to be safe.

After my friend and roommate Carrie unexpectedly passed away last December, I ended up using poetry to channel a lot of my grief. In the immediate aftermath, scribbling my feelings down let me keep functioning. It was like a release valve. It kept me from exploding into a useless ball of guilt, tears, and snotty Kleenex (but trust me, there was still a lot of all three).

Early in 2025, I decided it would be a good idea to focus this grief and poetry into a chapbook. Purposely write my pain as a way to process and cope. In a way, somewhere in my grief-addled brain, I thought it would be a good way to honor and memorialize Carrie. She always thought she’d be discarded and forgotten, and I didn’t want that to happen. In retrospect, maybe centering an entire chapbook on my own grief wasn’t the best way to do that, but it gave me something to do.

I do believe that it helped quite a bit. I do think I ended up processing more of my grief than I thought I would. However, I also reached a point where I didn’t want to write about it anymore. I was tired of poking at that wound. I didn’t want to pick at that scab anymore. I wanted it to heal. I was afraid to touch it. I could lie and say that I was worried that repeatedly touching it might cause it to get infected, but the truth was that I was tired of the sting and I was afraid it might hurt as badly as it first did if I prodded hard enough. Honestly, it probably would.

So, I stopped thinking about it, stopped writing about it, and kind of ignored it.

I didn’t look at the poems I had written for months. I flinched just thinking about it. And I put off finishing the chapbook so I wouldn’t have to deal with the discomfort of revisiting that intense grief.

So here I am at the end of the year and the first draft of that chapbook is still unfinished. It’s looming on my To Do List and I’m more uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the chapbook unfinished than I am with making myself finish it. Because by not finishing this first draft -even if I never revise it, even if nothing comes of it- feels like I’m letting Carrie down once again.

I’ve got a few weeks until 2026 and I’m going to finish it. I’ve only got a couple more poems left to write. I can do it.

For Carrie, I’ll get it done.

The Family Word

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An open dictionary with white pages and black text. The entry shown is for dictionary. A yellow tasseled bookmark marks the page. Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay.The holidays are a family time, so this is a great time for me to talk about my family’s favorite word, possibly the most versatile word in the family lexicon.

Booger.

I know what you’re thinking. What the absolute fuck? And that’s fair. Nobody is going to think of booger being versatile, yet alone a great word. Stay with me, though. I might change your mind.

First thing’s first: Yes, booger has the traditional meaning of the mucus clumps that hang out in your nose. Booger is also a character in Revenge of the Nerds. Both sides of my family acknowledge these truths. We’re not rewriting the entire dictionary here.

However, on my dad’s side of the family, booger also means an imaginary creature -usually not seen by anyone- that’s scary. For example, when one of the cats gets spooked by something -a noise no one else heard, something only they saw- we’ll say that the cat saw or heard a booger.

This use of the word is also frequently used to describe drug-induced paranoia. “The coke boogers were after him.” “He’s been seeing meth boogers.”

On the flip side, you can also be a booger. Someone who’s a booger is someone who’s easily scared. For example, one of ours cat was scared of everything when she was younger. She was a booger. Boogers have a tendency to see or hear a lot of boogers.

I realize that can be kind of confusing. “She saw a booger because she’s a booger.” Context is very helpful. Also, practice. It’s just something you know.

On my mom’s side of the family, however, booger’s alternate meaning has to do with an injury. You booger yourself up. If you fall and skin your knee, you’ve boogered up your knee. It’s almost always used (at least that I’ve heard) in relation to the skin being bruised or broken. You didn’t booger yourself up if you hurt your back or broke a bone. But if that bone is poking through the skin, then you boogered up your shin when you broke your leg.

Booger can also relate to messing things up. If I’m doing some tiny terrible art and mess up the branches on a tree, then I’ve boogered up that tree. Get into a fender bender? Boogered up the bumper. Mess up your crocheted blanket? You boogered up the stitches.

The interesting thing about this amazingly versatile word is that though my sister and I have been known to use it in every definition, our parents don’t. The years they spent together pre-divorce did nothing to influence each other’s use of the word. I’ve never heard my dad say that he boogered something up and I’ve never heard my mom call someone a booger or be scared by a booger. I find it fascinating that never happened given how folks will pick up on slang and word usage from each other. You’d think after twenty years together, they’d be using booger to its full potential, too.

Maybe their booger resistance was just another reason their relationship didn’t work out.

Poem: “Maybe My Request Is Too Abstract”

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A piece of white blue lined notebook paper with a shimmer of rainbow crossing it.I’ve been participating in a poem-a-day challenge this month. The goal is to create a chapbook worthy of submission, but my personal goal is to do some healing via poetry. I picked a specific theme, a healing focus if you will, and I’ve been using the daily prompts to write to it.

Have I healed any? Probably not. But I have analyzed and examined the wound I’m working on and I’ve concluded that it’s made for some decent poetry. However, because this topic is so personal, it hasn’t been poetry that I’ve wanted to share. I’d feel too exposed to put it out there for other eyeballs.

However, there is one poem that’s figurative enough that it feels safe to share. It comes from the Day 19 prompt of Six Words. The words were submitted by folks and the guy running the poem-a-day challenge picked six of them -bubble, dandelion, gibberish, gnarled, roiling, and squint. The goal was to use at least three of them in a poem.

I’m an overachiever. I used all six. Utilizing my usual free verse style made it easy.

Maybe My Request Is Too Abstract

a dandelion fluff wish in a bubble
squint and the hope flashes iridescent
pop it and it sounds like gibberish
a gnarled love prayer
roiling into the ether
blown away and ignored

Patrons in the Wild

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A picture of a row of library books illuminated by several hanging bare bulbs. Image by StockSnap from Pixabay.Please note that the title of this post is IN the wild, not GONE wild. That’s a totally different topic.

If you’re just tuning in and are unfamiliar with my lore, I live in a small town and work at the library in said small town. It’s one of those towns that there’s a good chance you know someone’s name or face if you not both, especially if you grew up here, went to school here, and/or work with the public here.

So, the other day, I went to the grocery store and ended up in line in front of a regular patron at the library where I work. As soon as he got in line behind me, he spoke, we exchanged pleasantries, and bid each other a good day as soon as I was done putting my groceries in my cart. It was a perfectly cromulent interaction.

A few days later, I had to go back to the grocery store for the third time that week (it was an ORDEAL) and I ended up saying hello to a different regular patron as we passed each other.

After spending years hermiting, I’m still getting used to this sort of interaction. I’m used to traveling through my day without running into anyone I know well enough to say hello or being recognized out of context. The context in this case, of course, being the library. I do believe we’ve discussed before how I struggle with the object permanence of myself.

Anyway, I’ve had several of these interactions in the last year since I started leaving my house more and acquiring something of a social life. I ran into one regular patron while waiting to be seated with my friend for breakfast at a popular local joint and we ended up chatting about her husband (also a regular) and his latest shenanigans. On another occasion, I said hello to a patron I knew as my friend and I were finding our seats for a showing of Men in Black at the local theater.

The funny thing was that both of those times the bestie I was with, Haley, also said hello to people, which is the norm. Haley knows EVERYBODY in town (she’s related to a good chunk of them), so going anywhere in town with her (and sometimes out of town) is like going out with a celebrity. Expect to get stopped. Usually, I just stand there patiently and awkwardly while she chats for a minute. It’s all good. It’s been the usual for decades and I’m cool with it.

So, it was a real twist to be able to participate in this phenomenon because someone knew me. I was able to chat with my regular patron while she chatted with the lady she knew because they happened to be going to breakfast together, too. It was a wild experience that I hadn’t anticipated.

For someone with anxiety who prefers her social interactions to happen in their usual contexts -like talking to patrons in the library- because I otherwise feel unprepared to people, I’m pleasantly surprised with how well I’ve done encountering patrons in the wild.

There may be hope for me and my social life yet.

Untitled Tree

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Two trees in autumn. The bigger one has golden-orange leaves. The smaller one has red leaves and is more sparse. They stand out against a blue sky and the houses behind them.I realize the title of this post sounds arty, but it’s nothing of the sort. I just couldn’t come up with a clever title.

I try to blog here about once a week (though, let’s be honest, no one notices if I don’t), but there are times when topics are hard to come by. This is one of those times.

So, let’s talk about leaves.

This autumn has been a strange one because the leaves changed late this year. Really late. Like, if it were a woman, it would have taken ten pregnancy tests. We were less than two weeks out from Halloween and most of the trees were still green.

For context, let’s look at my neighbors’ trees.

My neighbor next door has a tree in her backyard that’s one of my favorites because it changes color from the top down, usually starting in late September or early October. In years past, it’s done almost an ombre kind of thing, where it sort of ripples down from orange to yellow. It’s so pretty. I’m in love with that tree in the autumn. It typically holds onto its leaves for the most part -it’s usually still pretty vibrant through Halloween- but in the first part of November, it drops its leaves in a hurry. It feels like it goes from full to naked in a day. I’m sure my neighbor feels that way, too. After all, she’s the one raking it.

This year, it was only a couple of weeks out from Halloween before it started to change. It went through that ombre ripple in record time and dropped its leaves on schedule, around the end of the second full week of November.

My neighbor across the street has a huge tree that I’ve loved since I was a kid. It’s even shown up in a few of my short stories. It’s been marked by the city for removal because it’s technically theirs and it’s unfortunately sick beyond saving. Until then, it continues to go through the motions of the seasons.

In autumn, it’s usually one of the first trees to turn in about mid-September, going a golden-orange, and typically sheds its leaves before Halloween, which has always been kind of a bummer. It’s made to celebrate Halloween in colorful splendor (it did get toilet papered a lot when I was younger, so in a way, it kind of did celebrate).

This year, it didn’t start changing until the middle of October. It was in full, gorgeous color for Halloween this year. I honestly can’t remember the last time that happened, or if it’s ever happened. Even better, the leaves held on after Halloween, too. It finally shed the majority of them in a couple of big winds earlier this week.

I am blessed to live in a place that has some gorgeous autumn colors painting my little town. And this year, I was able to enjoy them much later than I normally do.

Too bad it was probably because of climate change.

No Words November

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A light brown and light red pen lying on a sheet of lined notebook paper.I admit that the title is a bit of a lie. It’s not that I’m not going to write any words in November. I am participating in the November Poem-A-Day challenge and poems usually do require words. What I mean is that this year, this month, I’m not participating in a big word count endeavor.

2023 was my last official NaNo and last year, instead of participating officially, I used November to incarnate Stateline into a novel form. This will be my first November in a couple of decades that I’m not spending my days stressing about making word counts and trying to cross a finish line.

There’s a list of reasons why I decided to opt out this year. I think the number one reason, the main reason, the only reason that I really need is that this year, I’m all tapped out. I just don’t have the energy to sit down and write at least 1,700 words a day. I’m juggling too many things right now and having trouble keeping all of the balls in the air. I’ve taken on more at the library -namely the two new monthly programs that I started in October- which has required me to bring more of my work home until I get things into a rhythm. I’ve also got more podcast stuff going on this November than I have previous Novembers. And, of course, there’s my role as caregiver for my father, which has lessened in recent months because he’s been doing better (knock all of the wood), but still demands time and energy. (I’m actually writing this blogs post while waiting for him at his latest PET scan).

Last year, in the midst of my father’s rapidly worsening health, his hospitalizations and doctor appointments and ER visits, Carrie’s fall and her doctor appointments and ER visits, I managed to keep up with my daily word count. I managed to write my poem-a-day, too. It was a distraction, a little bit of normalcy in the midst of a swirling storm of chaos. Looking back, I realize that’s the only reason why I did it. Well, that and stubbornness, I suppose. Looking back, I can’t believe that I didn’t give myself a break.

This year, I’m giving myself that break, even if I am dealing with far less chaos and emotional turmoil.

Do I feel guilty about that? Oh yeah. Do I look at other people with busy lives and lists of obligations who still get their writing goals met and feel like an absolute failure? You better believe it. But this year, I’m giving myself permission to give less of a shit about it. Will I actually give less of a shit about it? Probably not. But I have permission.

Even if I did decide to add 50,000 words to my November, I’m not sure I have a story idea in my head that I’d want to spend the month and the words investing in right now. I’ve got one idea that I’ve been kicking around off and on for years now, but it’s still so uncertain of itself that I feel like I’d spend 30 days spewing words that ultimately wouldn’t do me any good. You could argue that writing 50,000 words of yuck could help me develop that story, and you’d have a good argument, but I’d just refer you back to the first point that I made. I don’t have the time or energy right now for that sort of endeavor.

Does that bum me out? Yes. I miss having the spark that would lead me to explore that idea. It reminds me of when writing was hard and I don’t want writing to be hard again. But honestly, it kind of is.

So, this November, I’m going to let writing be a little hard and I’m not going to worry about the number of words I write.

I’ll just let them rhyme.

Poem–“In Autumn We Don’t Walk Alone”

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A piece of white blue lined notebook paper with a shimmer of rainbow .I wanted to come up with a horror poem for the month, but then I thought, aren’t all of my poems terrifying in their own way? So, I settled for a more seasonal, slightly spooky poem instead.

This form is a catena rondo, which I can’t remember if I’ve done on the blog before, and I’m too lazy to look it up to see if I did. So, quick recap: the stanzas are quatrains with an AbbA rhyme scheme; first line and last line of each quatrain are the same; the second line of the quatrain is the first line of the next quatrain; the final quatrain in the poem is exactly the same as the first.

I actually love this form when I have an idea or a theme or maybe just one line and I want to write a poem. This gets the job done.

In Autumn We Don’t Walk Alone

In autumn we don’t walk alone.
Footsteps of leaves accompany us,
ghosts following with a fuss.
In autumn we don’t walk alone.

Footsteps of leaves accompany us,
haunting us through the season.
We’re never alone for this reason.
Footsteps of leaves accompany us,

haunting us through the season.
The echoes of phantoms chasing after.
Can’t you hear their raspy laughter
haunting us through the season?

The echoes of phantoms chasing after,
in autumn we don’t walk alone.
Shadows dash ahead, race us home,
the echoes of phantoms chasing after.

In autumn we don’t walk alone.
Footsteps of leaves accompany us,
ghosts following with a fuss.
In autumn we don’t walk alone.

Accidental Local Historian

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A picture of a row of library books illuminated by several hanging bare bulbs. Image by StockSnap from Pixabay.First of all, please understand that I am calling myself a local historian in the absolute loosest, mostly tongue-in-cheek way. It’s mainly for the purpose of illustrating that libraries and library workers do a lot more than folks realize.

My county doesn’t have a singular historical society.

We have the C.H. Moore Homestead and DeWitt Count Museum, which is a Victorian mansion that once belonged to prominent resident and attorney C.H. Moore, and features a gorgeous two-story library that still houses part of his vast private collection (the rest are housed at the library I work at). The museum features both permanent and temporary displays of county history.

We have the DeWitt County Genealogical Society, which occupies a room in the lower level of the library. With their help and resources, folks can find all sorts of records relating to family history in the area. They’re in the office, so to speak, every Thursday, and just an excellent source of knowledge and research.

And we have the library that I work at. The upper floor of the old building has been turned into our local history archives. We have a collection of all sorts of items that have been donated to the library that have historical significance to the city, county, and the people who’ve lived here. We also have a collection of local newspapers, which are available on microfilm. Many of the yearbooks, picture collections, and the newspapers up until I think 1965 have been digitized and put online.

Preserving local history is actually one of our core library values and part of our mission statement. It’s something that my director in particular is pretty passionate about because we don’t have one big local historical society. You can watch her and her fabulous dresses do Tales from the Archives videos on our YouTube page. Not everyone who works at the library ends up hips deep in local history, but we all end up learning the history of the library and we all know the value of local history.

I probably would have been content with knowing the history of the library and letting that be the extent of my involvement. Then my boss asked me to create the library’s podcast. When I finally came up with a concept, the plan was to cover all aspects of the library and its collection and services and archives, which included local history. The very first episode of the podcast I did was about the only public hanging to occur in my county, something I never knew about because, hey, it’s a small town. Nothing happens in a small town, right?

My director then came across something about a man being murdered in the county courthouse. Sure, it happened in 1855, but still! A murder in my little town? Well, as it turned out, it happened a lot back in the day and over the stupidest shit. Looking up one thing in the newspaper for one topic has led me down other rabbit holes when another article caught my eye. This was how I found a list of 22 murders committed in the county from 1855-1913. I spent months researching them, which turned into multiple podcast episodes, a program I had to do four times because it was so popular, and a video that’s on the library’s YouTube.

Not all of the local history I’ve researched has been about murder (though, admittedly, a lot of it has). I’ve researched the library building, the longest-tenured librarian, the third of the county’s four courthouses, our Friends of the Library volunteer group, tornadoes, floods, an arms bust, an infamous mayor, our first woman sheriff, a suffragette train, railroad accidents, a devastating fire, county ghost towns, a scandalous will dispute, and even C.H. Moore himself.

I now have a list of topics that I need to research for future podcast episodes.

This has also led to me hosting a couple of regular local history true crime programs, Crime Club for the teens, and Coffee and Crime for the adults. We’re going to get together, have some snacks, I’ll present a local history case, and we’ll chat about it. Crime Club starts this month and Coffee and Crime kicks off in November. It means more work and more research, but I’m excited to see how these programs go.

I never thought of myself as a history person, really. I never anticipated becoming one of the go-to people in the library for local history either.

But, if you need to know something about the history of the library or maybe a local murder, just ask.

If I don’t know, I’ll be happy to find out.

I’m Fine (Never Mind the Trauma)

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White figure bent over with pain dashes coming from its back on a green circle background. Image by 8thBox from Pixabay.A couple of weekends ago, I went to see Dad Shorts play at a bar in a town about 25-30 minutes away from where I live. I was dead set on going because I hadn’t missed one of their gigs and I wasn’t ready for this one to be the first. In order for me to do that, I needed to make sure I had my dad squared away.

As I’ve mentioned before, my dad has been having some health problems, namely lung cancer, COPD, and congestive heart failure. The lung cancer is under control. He’s finished his chemo and is on immunotherapy for maintenance. His COPD is controlled with medication and environmental manipulation. His congestive heart failure became an issue over the summer, but adjustments to his meds have it back under control. I’ve been his primary caregiver since this started, so I’ve gotten used to configuring my life around his health needs.

So, in my mind, if I was going to go to the Dad Shorts gig, I was going to need to get a sitter.

Okay, not a literal sitter. But, I wanted to make sure one of my neighbors or friends would be in town in case something happened. If he needed someone, I wanted him to be able to get a hold of someone who could get over to him in five or ten minutes rather than 25 or 30.

I explained this to my father and he instantly bristled at the idea. He then proceeded to point out that he hadn’t been having issues with his breathing lately. He’s been getting around better, not even using his cane in the house. My rebuttal was pointing out his penchant for doing yard work when I wasn’t home and how he’d fallen twice doing that. He understood my point about having someone closer by just in case and agreed not to do yard work while I was gone and agreed to take his cane, emergency inhaler, and phone with him if he did go outside for any reason. Just in case.

He also had a point, even if he didn’t directly articulate it.

It’s been a year as of the beginning of this month that my dad’s health problems began. It’s been a roller coaster of bad, badder, better, but I’m still acting like he’s at his worst. I’m still anticipating the shit to hit the fan at any moment. Going to this gig made me realize that even though I know things are grooving along pretty well, I’m still living in the moment of 3am wake ups for 911 calls, of ER visits and hospitalizations, of endless problem solving for pain and breathing problems. Things are better, but I haven’t stopped being ready.

I’ve said before that I didn’t think I’d fully processed everything that had been happening in my world since October 1st of 2024 and that weekend really slapped me in the face with it. I’ve been wading in the trauma for so long that I don’t even realize my shoes are wet anymore. It’s become my normal.

It’s not a good normal.

There’s nothing wrong with being prepared and being cautious, but being in a constant red alert is no way to live.

Think I better get around to processing and find a way to unclinch.

We both deserve better than this stress.