Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice.

Yeah, I know. It’s October, why is Liz being cheerful? I’m trying to be upbeat about it, because the only way out is through.

I can’t think when the last time I was in a Starbucks was, but their Pumpkin Spice Latte creamer that you can get in the supermarket is surprisingly tasty. And, since I don’t LIKE the PSL you get in Starbucks, this is saying something!

I used to like a PSL. Then they started putting pumpkin in it, and now… the only time I get one is when I’ve forgotten that I don’t like it. Then I take a sip and go, “Oh, yeah. Right.”

(I mean, come on! It’s not Pumpkin, it’s PUMPKIN SPICE — you know, the classic sweet spice mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Maybe if they’d just called it Sweet Spice, then no one would have fussed over there not being pumpkin in it, and they wouldn’t have changed it.)

I digress, but I’m sipping my ACTUAL PUMPKIN SPICE COFFEE while writing this.

Things are slow on the writing front, because I’ve spent a lot of time doing things that I needed to do for the RWA, and things that I probably shouldn’t be doing while I’m on deadline.

The things that I needed to do for the RWA involve the task force i’m running, and which I really can’t talk about here But there’ been a LOT of good discussion on the RWA forums, and we have a lot of good ideas, and our first proposal will go live next week. (eep!)

The things I shouldn’t be doing when I’m on deadline are all related to genealogy. I’ve been working on my family tree for years now. On my mother’s side, I can trace things back to Italy and to the mid-1700s, which is amazing.  And we have documentation, thanks to the branch of the family that I never knew existed, but whom I discovered while doing this (I have cousins in ARGENTINA! How cool is that?)

My father’s side? I’ve discovered two uncles and an aunt I didn’t know about, and I know my great-grandmother’s name. That’s it.

Cemetery records? Non-existent. I know where the cemetery is, and I’ve been to my grandmother’s grave. But there’s nothing online on any of the ridiculous morbid databases of gravestones under any permutations of the names I know.

Birth records? Done by hand (that’s how I know my great-grandmother’s name — she was listed as a witness on my father’s record of birth.) The only trouble is that what I thought was an incredibly unique name (Maximina) was apparently the late 1800s equivalent of Olivia (the number one name for a girl in 2019). And my grandmother? Her name was Maria. You try to single out one particular Maria in Puerto Rico in the early 1900s! Surname? Even more common!

Military records? Did you know that there was a massive fire in the military archives in 1973, and that some ridiculous number of military records prior to that date were lost completely? Yeah, me either, until I hit the National Archives for Korean War records.

I’ll crack this someday. But for now, it’s a rabbit hole that occasionally sucks up all time time and leaves none for writing.

Need to stop that. For now, anyway. I can always go back to it later.