Becoming a writer, again

I am trying to sell my house again, and so I took a huge stack of books to the library to give away, trying to get rid of stuff. They have this bookshelf downstairs where people give away free books, and many in my stack came from this very place. I am a book addict and I do love to collect them but something just had to go, so I parted with these, promising myself to not take any more home...but then...it called to me.

"Becoming a Writer," by Dorothea Brande, came home with me that day. First published in 1934, her words of wisdom are still relevant today. The most important bit of advice she gives is that, in order to be a writer, one must put the time in and actually WRITE.

Well in the last couple of years I have thrown myself so whole-heartedly into another passion of mine, yoga, that I have neglected to write much at all, except of course about yoga. I have gone through two yoga teacher trainings, and now spend most of my time practicing, teaching, studying, reading about, or talking about yoga.

The other day, while having lunch with a fellow teacher who I went through training with, an aquaintance of ours joined us. We learned that she teaches creative writing classes, for free at the library, just for fun. So naturally I started discussing writing with her, and my other friend, who I have spent a great deal of time with over the past two years said, "I didn't know you were a writer." And then I knew, I have a serious writing deficit in my life.

The definition of a writer is someone who writes. And I have gotten too far away from a regular writing practice to really call myself a writer. This needs to change. I always make time for my daily yoga practice. I need to make time for my daily writing practice.

I also met a new friend (at a yoga workshop, of course!) who had recently written a book and I offered to help her with editing. She gave me her sister's book too - her sister had just written a memoir. Both were interesting but needed quite a bit of editing. And again I remembered, as if waking up from my long strange yoga sleep-dream, that editing is something I am really good at. I am probably much better at editing than I am at teaching yoga, to be honest.

I have gone through many changes and learned a great deal about myself. But I keep coming back to these core parts of my being, these things that call me back again and again. Whether I am scrawling out something in my journal with my favorite pen or clicking away on my keyboard, this is where I feel most at home. This is where I always come back to. This is who I am. I am a writer. Or at least, becoming one, again.

It's Been A While...

Years.  It's been years, hasn't it?  Years and pages upon pages of a still unfinished book, three animals gone, two new cats, a girl growing up entirely too fast, an alcoholic father-in-law who gives curmudgeons a bad name, and a new obsession - weaving.

In terms of fictional time, I'm on the last twelve hours of the main plot.  Really, it's time to just write this bitch and be done with her, right?  I'm thinking probably so.

Tinker's gone, from God only knows how many things, but the pneumonia - and the underlying cancer that caused it - was the last straw.  After three days of feeding him with a syringe and sitting with him in the middle of the hall where he refused to move, I took him to the vet for one last visit.  We buried him in the backyard.

Sheba's gone.  She was blind and mostly deaf, and after Tinker died, I think she lost a sense of familiarity that made an enormous difference in the quality of her life.  She would still come up to the car when I came home every day - every single fucking day - stinky and adoring as always, but when I saw that she wasn't able to lay down to sleep anymore - and sleeping was one of her all-time favorite activities - I knew it was time.  So I gave her half of my dinner, which she scarfed down in her typically greedy fashion, and took her to the vet for one last visit.  We buried her in the backyard, next to Tinker.

Chloe's gone.  Her passing was the hardest.  Still is.  She's - had -  always been plagued by one health problem or another - gas (oh God, the flatulence was beyond toxic), skin problems, allergies, arthritis, spay incontinence.  We had her on I forget how many medications to manage all this craziness.  We really aren't sure what happened to her at the end.  We didn't get her to the vet in time to find out.  The night she died, she was listless and bloated, and wouldn't eat.  She was a hound dog with gas problems - lazy and bloated by nature - but the refusal to snap a piece of ham out of my hand was serious.  So we threatened her with the doctor the next morning, only she didn't wake up the next morning.  I don't know if the vet would have been able to do anything.  A stomach infection from something she ate?  Bloat?  I don't know.  We won't ever know.  We buried her in the backyard, next to Tinker and Sheba.

 

Aeryn, who is nine now, is understandably traumatized.  (I am, too, but I'm supposed to be the adult.)  Losing a pet is never easy - losing three in three years is horrible.  Now the fish - a magenta-colored male betta called Blueberry (it was blueberry season when she got him) -  is almost four years old, and every day I'm surprised to see he's not belly-up in the tank.  Aeryn's anxiety about his impending death is compounded by a flood of unwelcome growing-up mood swing hormones that are wreaking havoc on her emotions.

The new cats help, sometimes.  For Aeryn, most of it is knowing that they'll be around for a while, since we got them both before they were a year old.  They're getting friendlier, and they're certainly happier now that I'm playing with yarn.  Most times I let them play, too.

Speaking of yarn, weaving takes a lot of it, and quite a bit of setup time.  Once the loom is warped, though, the actual weaving itself goes fairly quickly.  I'll post some pictures later (once I can find the damned camera; I think Nicodemus may have eaten it).  It's ironic that I've worked in a textile mill for fifteen years and never shown the slightest interest in thread outside the plant until now.  An unexpected windfall made it possible for me to get my hands on a small lap loom, and a friend sent a ton of discontinued yarn my way - so much that it's hard for me to figure out what project to start first.

 

I am beginning to understand why the ideas and images of textile crafting - spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing, et cetera - are so universal.  People have been playing around with fiber of one sort or another for quite some time - what strikes me particularly is the transformative aspect of the process.  A sheep grows a lot of wool, we shear it and harvest the wool.  The wool's just fluffy bits until you put a little spin on it and a very slight tug to straighten it out and then - what the fuck? - you've got YARN.  One of my friends spins, and the trick never fails to amaze me.

Of course it doesn't stop there.  You can spin other sorts of fibers and twist it together with the wool using any number of techniques.  You can dye the fiber or the yarn.  Or you can just pound the shit out of the wool and make felt out of it.  Or you... well.  I digress.

I can crochet.  A chain.  That's all.  I've never successfully made a hat or a scarf or anything worth gifting, and knitting is frankly beyond me.  Weaving, though, appeals to me on a number of levels, especially the one I've most recently discovered.

Any experienced weaver will tell you this, but I'm not an experienced weaver.  So two weeks ago when I put a lovely variegated yarn on my loom and paired it with a solid color, I expected to see something like a beachy sunset come off the loom, in a more or less placemat-shape.

It looks like Easter, actually, and it's way too big to be a placemat, and besides I don't decorate for Easter.  But it will become a tote bag for Aeryn to use gathering eggs this weekend, so it's not a total waste.  And I learned quite a few things, which allows me to impress my husband by throwing around words like "warp" and "weft" and "dropped ends" and "picks per inch" and stuff.

And there's one other thing I've learned about weaving, and I think it might apply to other things, too - you absolutely CANNOT RUSH the process.  You can take shortcuts, sometimes, and use whatever ingenious methods you can come up with to fabricate looms, splice ends, pull yarn ends through, but trying to do any of this when you're in a hurry is just not going to work.

So while I can weave without a beer in my hand, trying to set up and warp the loom sober is impossible.  Maybe I'll get there somewhere.  Until then, I've discovered a bad-ass hard cider that is just about perfect for warping.  Pictures later, provided I can extract the camera from the fat-ass's stomach.

 

~andi

Holiday Horror

Some people like flowers and cards and Christmas trees and boxes of candy.  Some...don't.  My friend Dave from Chicago and I are among the latter.  This could be because we're pragmatic and anti-romantic and just all-around callous, or because we share a twisted sense of humor.  Whatever the cause, over the years we created a Christmas holiday tradition: watching the heinous 2005 flick "House of Wax."  After all, who doesn't want to spend the holidays watching Chad Michael Murray's hot yet skin-crawlingly inappropriate chemistry with anything that moves in one of the grossest movies ever?

In that same spirit, Dave and I just spent St. Patrick's Day together.  He's half-Irish and I am maybe a quarter (my grandfather is spinning in his grave with the horrific Ancestry.com-sourced information that his Hayes forebears were actually Scottish), so we decided to celebrate by watching 1993's "Leprechaun."  What other film would give you the opportunity to watch death by pogo stick?  Yeah, we loved it.  Of course.

Anyway, watching this early-Jennifer Aniston piece of shit made us think about our other favorite holiday films.  Holidays are about families, right?  And families are about horror, on some level (come on, admit it).  So here is what we recommend:

Christmas: House of Wax and Tales From the Crypt
Joan Collins in the latter!  Enough said.

New Year: Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
For no reason other than the very fine music in one segment.  Check it!

Valentine's Day: My Bloody Valentine
 Romance kills.

St. Patrick's Day: Leprechaun (alternative: Rawhead Rex)
Consume with some very fine Irish whiskey.

April Fool's Day: April Fool's Day
Fool me once...

Father's Day: Creepshow
Patriarchy calls..."Where's my cake?"

4th of July: Godzilla
The original can teach us all about hubris.

Thanksgiving: Home For the Holidays
Family is the worst horror of all...

So what did I miss?  Let me know!  And happy holidays!  Bwahahahaha...



-kiki

Ramblin'

2012 was a ramblin' year.  I spent time in or at least passed through 24 states.  Yeah, you read that right. New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine (thanks, Amtrak!  I love you!). Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut (and points north) on a winter holiday jaunt to New England.

It's been a dog's age since I took a road trip, and the journey to the northeast was almost too amazing for words -- the sheer, unrelenting flatness of the Delta; the gradual changes in population and flora and architecture; the Christmas lights sparkling up and down Virginia Beach; the sorrow-tinged nostalgia of going home.  The best part of the experience, though, was travelling the Blues Trail in Mississippi.

The poverty of the state shocked me; I had forgotten that such places exist in this country, and I felt great shame.  But there was also the stunning richness of the musical culture.  I love old, deep, acoustic Delta blues, and the opportunity to visit so much  hallowed ground blew my mind.  I stood in Moorhead, where the Southern cross the Dog, and could almost hear the whistle of a long-gone train.  I crouched by Robert Johnson's grave outside Greenwood and left a cigarette butt next to myriad half-empty bottles of whiskey.  Dusk came and I shivered in the shadows of old buildings at Dockery Farms while the moans of Charley Patton filled the heavy air.  When I crossed over into Tennessee several hours later, I felt bereft.  Spending time in Mississippi had made the blues feel more alive than ever, 75 years after Robert Johnson died.

Maybe the blues aren't your thing...but whatever inspires you is somewhere in this vast and varied country.  Get on the road and find it!

"I laid down last night
Tried to take my rest
My mind got to ramblin'
Like wild geese from the west
From the west."

--Skip James

-kiki

Camilla & Kelly's SW NM Roadtrip Haikus

Presented without further comment...


The sexy red books
drew us in. They were for sale.
What does it all mean?


At Faywood Hot Springs:
Holy shit! It's a third cat!
"Where's the steak, bitches?"


In Catron County
the fuckin' yucca army
beat the cows hands down.


Camilla's lament:
The road is a fucked up place.
But hot springs are nice.


We watered the grass
at Akela's Baptist church.
Road trip pee stories.


Clooney in the trunk --
don't tell the Border Patrol.
Did we cut air holes?

Generation Sasquatch

So the other day I was watching a baseball game (what a fucking end to the season it is!) and saw another one of the "Messin' with Sasquatch" commercials. I'm not going to name the product because I feel no need to shill for them, but I do really enjoy the commercials. They make me laugh. Poor goddamn beast.

But then something strange and wonderful happened. I had an epiphany. A fucking commercial gave me an epiphany! I turned to my BF and blurted, "We're not Generation X! We're Generation Sasquatch!"

It's true. Anyone who was a child in the 1970s (yes, I'm old) knows this. The heyday of Bigfoot, D.B. Cooper, the Loch Ness Monster, "In Search Of..."

I feel so nostalgic right now.

By the way -- there's a Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. Yes, really.

Hungry Zombies

There's a new study out that shows people who more often use intuition, rather than "reflective" thinking (logic?), are more likely to be religious. Who's surprised?

On a related note, if the United States were taken over by zombies today, I think the zombies would starve.

That is all.

Carrot Soup

Apparently I am destined to be a food blogger, whether that was my original intention or not. It is what it is, as I am fond of saying. So...cold carrot soup.

I really wish I could find the recipe that inspired this soup, but it's mine now, so fuck it. So here's what I do. I sautee a couple chopped leeks in olive oil, with a bit of fresh-ground pepper and some curry powder. Meantime I prepare two-plus pounds of carrots and a few jalapenos. I throw these into the sautee with just enough water to cover all the veggies. After roughly twenty minutes of simmering (are the carrots soft enough?), I puree the soup, add a cup of orange juice (grapefruit juice might make an interesting alternative), and put the mix in the fridge. Hours later, I will put together some vegan sour cream (soft tofu, rice vinegar, canola oil, and jalapeno peppers) and serve this with the soup and fresh cilantro.

Carrots, curry, and orange juice? I thought it was bizarre too, when I read the recipe. It fucking rocks.

Perspective

Waaay back when we started this blog, I remember thinking that since I have such an active, fertile imagination, I could - if I wanted to - imagine how awful it must be for someone to go through a natural disaster and lose the people they love. Like my hero Bartleby, I preferred not to.

I'd really like my imagination to just take a little break now and again. A couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law, a brash, obnoxious, totally lovable New Yorker hailing from Brooklyn, had surgery to remove a malignant tumor the size of an orange from his lower intestine, and about two feet of colon along with it. You ought to see the scar; it's insane. It starts in the center of his chest, just under the solar plexus, and goes down like a zipper sewn in by a drunken tailor, to just above the happy trail, which is, I gather, not so happy at the moment.

So he had the surgery and the margins were clean and we were all happy and hell, Jimmy's going back to work in two weeks! Everything's back to normal.

Except it's not. Nowhere close.

He has two spots on his liver. At first They couldn't identify them - then decided it was cancer, and started him on either radiation or chemo immediately. Don't know which - this is all being filtered through my husband, who is less concerned with details and more concerned about his sister, who was, as of last night, officially freaking out.

Once They saw the two spots, the next question became whether it was liver cancer, or colon cancer that had spread to the liver. And then They had to figure out how far it had spread.

So off my brother- and sister-in-law went to the oncologist yesterday, to have a look at the results.

I don't know what they were, specifically. My father-in-law's text last night was highly melodramatic and I won't repeat it because it doesn't do any good to say something like that about a fifty-year-old man with two young daughters and a family history of fast-growing terminal cancer.

What I do know is that they're putting him on hard-core chemo for two weeks, then operating again. On his liver.

Goddamn it.

I understand how people turn to God in times like these - really, I do. Because that way, you at least feel like you can do something useful - you can pray. At the moment, I don't feel like I can do anything at all. Not for Jimmy, not for Christie, not for their daughters Addison and Cadyn. And I don't know what to do for Brian, who has known Jimmy since adolescence and is spending a lot of time in the backyard in the evenings, talking on the phone with his father, and drinking.

Maybe we can get an increase on our credit limit. That way, if we need to get there quickly, we can. I can't think of anything else to do. Tearing my hair out and screaming at the top of my lungs at this brutal injustice will do nothing but wreck my vocal cords.

See, when Brian and I are faced with something bad - like surgery on the cat or the dog, like impending foreclosure, like being too broke to afford child care - one of us is always able to say, "It's okay, honey. Everything's going to be all right."

But that's in the blue sky period, when nothing's certain, when the vet can still save a leg or a paw, when the fight with the mortgage company isn't over quite yet, when the biopsy hasn't come back from the doctor and it's probably nothing to worry about anyway. It's scary to think that compared to what my sister-in-law and her husband are going through right now, at this very moment, those things are a walk in the fucking park.

I came into work this morning and one of my co-workers was bitching as he usually does about something or other, it was all I could do not to offer him a big, heaping plate of Shut The Fuck Up. "Harry," I wanted to say, "you're reasonably healthy, although God knows you could drop dead of a heart attack at any second. Any of us could. Your daughter is grown up and healthy. You have a job, and you're fit enough to do it. You own your own goddamned house. So get some perspective and shut the fuck up."

I wish I could say to my husband that everything's going to be all right. But I can't. I wouldn't believe it, and neither would he.

Morning Sun

I've been seeing a lot of sunrises over the past few months. Okay, not sunrises exactly, but early morning sun. For those who know me, that probably comes as a surprise. It goes like this...

Every year when I Amtrak back to New England, I have to readjust my schedule to that of a house with two small children -- no quiet late nights, and luxuriating in bed till ten a.m. I don't mind; I get to spend all the hours of the day with my sister and her family. Quiet reading time is still a must, so I snuggle in "Kiki's Room" with a book at night, switching off the light at midnight or so, and then my basic-five-years-ago cell phone rings annoyingly around seven, reminding me to get up, shove contacts into my swollen eyes, grab some coffee, and settle down on the couch with J and V and R for "Curious George" while we let my sister sleep in.

Early summer mornings have been the rule for seven years now, and I've discovered a small -- very small -- taste for the weak lemon light at the start of the day, and the odd feeling that I might actually get multiple things done before it's even noon. (A trip to the beach! Or maybe just the local market, library, and sundry errands, but still!)

And then every year when I return to New Mexico, it takes me a few weeks to get back to my normal schedule -- a few bizarre weeks of snapping awake in the dark at five a.m., perhaps even wondering where I am (and who the fuck is that naked man beside me?). A funny thing happened this year after my return, though. I kept getting up early.

I don't know why. I mean, it's partly on purpose; a job hovers in the near-future. But despite having been a night owl my whole life, I'm actually enjoying the mornings. The New Mexico summer sun isn't like New England's, obviously -- it's white-hot and bright from the second it rises over the Organ Mountains. But early morning has a quiet and peace that's not unlike late nights.

I miss the silent vampire dark. But sitting here with my coffee, listening to the chatter of birds, watching my cats prowl around the east-facing porch, I feel almost as if my sister is inside, in the kitchen, pouring her own coffee and getting ready to share another beautiful New England day with me. So close even though she's so far...that makes it totally worthwhile.

Triple Thai Hot

I feel kind of silly, posting about food again -- this isn't a food blog -- but so be it. It's a funny story, anyway.

So my totally fab friend Kate was in town for the weekend, and we decided to have an early Saturday lunch at one of our local Thai restaurants. I ordered the vegetarian version of Thai Basil and (not for the first time) had to reassure the waitress that yes, I really really really wanted it Thai hot. As a very fair-skinned person, I'm not unfamiliar with having to convince waitstaff that I'm certain about wanting a high spice level, but that almost never happens in southern New Mexico. Out here, spice is a given. But anyway, this lady wanted reassurance; I gave it; I thought that was it.

But no. Kate piped up. "She wants it crazy hot! That's what she likes! Trust me!"

The waitress paused. "You want double Thai hot? Triple?"

I was in ecstasy at the very concept. "You do triple? Yes, please! That!"

And so it went, and eventually they wanted me to go to the kitchen to reassure the chef himself. Which I did, and then they took a picture of me eating (heavenly -- the food, not the picture), and another picture of me and the chef.

Is there a moral to this story? Wait -- you thought I dealt in fucking morals? No. The point is -- you never know you can get triple Thai hot unless you ask. Thank you, Kate. Thank you, Thai Delight. Bring on the chiles!

Kale Crisps

While we're sharing recipes, here's one I just tried that is really surprisingly good. It requires kale, olive oil, and salt. Break up kale into bite sized pieces. Wash, dry. On a cookie sheet, drizzle kale with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Bake in oven at 350 degrees for 10 - 15 minutes. Super crispy yummy yum yum!! And of course super healthy, vegan, gluten free too!

Crazy Soup

No, not my brain, silly. It's another scorching summer day in southern New Mexico, so I decided to get cooking out of the way early, before my kitchen hits ninety degrees (one of the swamp coolers is out, but the pool is finally up and running, WOO HOO). I made a variation of one of my favorite soups. I'm a soup goddess -- I cook a lot, mostly vegan, but soups are where my creativity really comes out, and most of what I make is wholly invented from my own perfervid brain.

For this soup, which is kind of Asian and kind of southern and has no name, I start by cubing a block of extra firm tofu and stir-frying it in canola oil, Sriracha, and soy sauce. When the tofu starts to brown, I add a chopped white onion, the chopped stalks of a bunch of red Swiss chard, and some crushed red pepper. When this mixture starts to smell really good, I add water, the torn Swiss chard leaves, a bunch of chopped carrots, some minced jalapeno, a couple vegetarian bouillon cubes, cover it, and let it simmer for fifteen or twenty minutes. I serve it over a mix of brown and wild rice, with lots of extra Sriracha.

According to an online recipe calculator, this soup is incredibly fucking healthy. More importantly, it tastes great. I like to blow my mind with hot sauce, but I also appreciate the deep flavor of the Swiss chard, or any other type of greens. People tend to think of greens as a southern food, but I grew up with all types of greens in the northeast, and I crave them. It pisses me off that you rarely see a greens recipe that calls for any use of the stalks; they're usually discarded. I love their texture and flavor, and never throw them away.

So try my soup. And don't leave out the Sriracha and jalapenos, you pussies.

New Zealand Sangria

Yeah, I haven't posted in forever. Expecting any commentary on that? Fuck you.

Haha.

Last night was the MLB All Star Game. I watched with the BF and a good friend. We drank New Zealand Sangria with some added vodka (does that explain my fuzzy head this morning? Why yes, it does). It wasn't a great game, and the AL lost, but it was a really fun night. New Mexico, like much of the southwest and deep south, has been in terrible drought conditions for a while now, and we all cheered as the thunderstorms moved in. Terrifying, persistent lightning rent the sky and lit the thirsty desert; rain fell off and on for several hours. My hair curled up a couple inches shorter and got correspondingly wider and higher. It was fucking awesome.

I just got back from Maine, an earlier trip than usual, and while I'm happy to have gone, I'm also glad to be here during monsoon season for a change. There is nothing like rain in the desert, the cool wet wind when days have been over a hundred degrees and heated like an oven, the scent of creosote suddenly permeating everything. I scream with pleasure for nights like that.

So. Scattered. But I'm back.

Nothing really

When my computer hard drive crashed AGAIN (yes, the new one that I got last summer), I kind of gave up. Without my computer, my whole organizational system was thrown off. I must say that I think it was good for me in a way, to look at things differently. I started writing things out BY HAND, like journaling in the morning with coffee and actually writing letters to my mother and sending them by snail-mail. I think it is good to get this different perspective every once in a while, and to have that connection between your mind and your writing hand and the pen and paper.

Since I got my latest hard drive, my computer has been slower than ever. I have been very unmotivated to use it for much of anything. But, I am still here. I just feel like I don't really have anything to say.

I have had to focus on basic survival issues so much lately that I have not done a scrap of fictional writing. A great deal of my time goes toward keeping myself and my children healthy, especially my son with Cystic Fibrosis, who has had to do extra breathing treatments lately due to a scary bacterial infection that we are having trouble getting rid of (you'd never know it to look at him, he seems the picture of health, a very active and rambunctious 5 year-old boy). Then there is my persistent anemia, that I thought I had taken care of, but now seems to be resurfacing.

We've been trying to survive winter again, in this crappy economy where my husband's job is pretty much seasonal and I have been having a really difficult time finding work. Then it got really cold, below zero, and our pipes froze. It's my least favorite time of year, contrary to the popular song lyrics, "it's the most wonderful time of the year." Bullshit.

I don't mean to complain, just to explain where I've been. Things are looking up. I got a part-time job, working with some friends who have their own business in their home. It's a great situation. And I've got another job interview coming up. And I've decided to go back to school in the spring, to work toward finishing my masters degree (taking one class).

So where I am at right now is very grounded in survival and reality - heck, I'm not even reading any fiction, just non-fiction lately. And I've been thinking about getting my first tattoo ever. When I can eventually afford it. So, what's going on? Nothing really.

You & Your Heart

I haven't posted in a while -- partly because I'm lazy, partly because I'm in my usual horratious November funk. I'm getting awfully tired of feeling sorry for myself, though. That takes a lot of energy, suprisingly, and surely I should put that energy to better use. Nonetheless I was being my usual useless November self when I decided to fire up YouTube and listen to some Jack Johnson. If you have perchance lived under a rock for the last few years, Jack is a cool, laid-back ex-surfer who did the soundtrack to the "Curious George" movie, and has multiple other, wicked awesome albums. (Albums? How fucking old am I?)

Anyway, Jack totally set me on fire, especially the video for "You and Your Heart." In case you didn't know (and if you didn't know, you either don't know me or ignored everything I've said in the last five months), I learned to surf this summer with my fabulous sister and multiple fabulous East Coast friends. So this video really hit me. Sure, I'm in New Mexico now, with no real hope of surfing till my next East Coast trip. But just seeing the gorgeous waves and water sent my heart soaring. I felt like a modern, bizarre surf-version of the fucking "Sound of Music" or something.

I love surfing. What really makes it amazing to me is that when I'm standing up on a wave, nothing else exists. Nothing. I can't emphasize that enough. I can't even really explain it. It' s just me on the wave.

Surely I can take this pure feeling and find other ways to experience it. It's not like November is good for anything else.

Advice from my daughter

Whenever I tell people I’m writing a novel, they inevitably want to know when I will finish it; I hope this is because they’d like to read it, but I can’t speak for them, of course. Frankly, I’d like to know when I will finish it, too. I have 100 pages that are almost good enough, in my opinion, to send out for critiques. The first three chapters, in other words, although it may turn out to be four, depending on the story flow.

I am under the thumb of my own perfectionism. I can’t help but try to make it as readable and believable as I possibly can. I run across poor word choices, too many adverbs, repeated words, repeated phrases, continuity errors, et cetera et cetera ad fucking nauseam. I work almost every night after my family goes to bed, and I still don’t have the first three chapters.

However. Once I’ve sent those chapters out, I’ll take all the critiques I receive and put them in a separate file that I won’t even look at until much, much later. That will be a big help, I’m sure.

I’ve told one of my friends I’ll have the manuscript finished by the end of the year. The calendar, evil bastard that it is, tells me that this is eight weeks away. Yeah... no, don’t see it happening.

Given the time it takes for agents to read and reject or otherwise respond to queries, not to mention the lengthy process of publication if a house decides to buy the book, I suspect I’ll be working my day job for at least another two years. Which means that I have to deal with the causes of my procrastination there.

What it comes down to is that I’m not comfortable offering criticism to some of the managers here. Unfortunately one of those managers is my boss, whom, owing to circumstances beyond my control, I have to audit at least twice a year. Reporting nonconformances to her is a huge pain in the ass, and it makes me want to dig a very deep hole and hide away in it until the nonconformances go away.

This approach has not worked.

So I’ve been considering the feasibility of bringing up my discomfort with her and trying to improve our relationship. When I suggested this at the dinner table last night, I knew how absurd the idea was as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I'm going to change my boss or her attitude; that’s a fact. What I can change is my own approach to those uncomfortable situations.

Before I even began to articulate this line of reasoning out loud, my daughter piped up.

“Mom, you just have to remember three things. No, four. First, be polite. Second, talk slowly so they can understand you. Third, talk about important things, because that’s what people want to talk about when they’re at work. Fourth, be serious about it, because that’s how people act when they’re at work.”

Did I mention that she’s seven?

She had pegged my three main failings and told me how to correct them. When I’m talking to management about what they’ve fucked up, I tend to speak quickly to get it over with. I sometimes lump trivial stuff in with the important things. And I very often try to lighten the mood and come off as not-so-serious to avoid putting the other person on the defensive.

This takes a lot of time and energy. It’s a waste.

So I’m going to follow her advice. I’m going to be polite (I always am anyway, at least in these situations), I will speak slowly, I will focus on important things, and I will take them seriously. Because it’s my job, and as long as I’m here, I might as well do it right.

And if they don’t like it, they can kiss my ass.

Hei Matau

In the spirit of surfing, and of my interest in all things Polynesian, I recently bought a Maori (New Zealand Polynesian) fish hook necklace. It is made of bone ("Human?" someone asked in horror, which made me laugh, and also made me realize that, vegetarian though I am, I didn't actually give a shit if it were human). According to the seller, the carving

signifies abundance and plenty, strength and determination. A good luck charm for catching good luck and positive energy, and safe journey over water.

It just seemed like a really nice necklace for a chick who digs water, and surfing, and Polynesia. I might even have to come up with a haiku...

Sad, Sad, Sad...

The happiest day of the year is when I arrive in New England to see my sister, her husband, and my nephew and niece. The second happiest day of the year is when I fill my pool.

The saddest day of the year is when I have to leave New England. The second saddest is when I empty my pool.

Today is the second saddest day of the year.

Other people's problems

People like to tell me things. I am not exaggerating when I say that perfect strangers have come up to me and started telling me intimate details of their lives. I've thought that maybe I should go into counseling, because I obviously look like I care. Sometimes I do, but mostly I don't. I do find other people and their problems interesting though. I guess that's why I got that useless degree in Psychology way back when, because I wanted to study people. When it came down to actually working with people and their problems, I found myself wishing that I could be a carpenter or something simple like that, where at the end of the day you could actually see some progress.

So when I start wallowing in my own self-pity (oh, I'm so tired because my son with CF kept me up coughing in the middle of the night...), I think of other people's problems, and I don't feel so bad. Because everyone I know has got them, and I wouldn't trade with any of them. Now, if I knew someone who had the problem of having too much money and not knowing what to do with it, I would be willing to trade problems with them.

One day, when I was feeling particularly tired, a friend of mine sent me a link to a blog, which I have since lost, by this young woman who works a full-time job, has an infant, AND she herself has CF (Cystic Fibrosis). I thought, damn, it's hard enough to take care of yourself when you have an infant, let alone working full-time, then top that with this life-threatening illness...argh. I really wished at that moment that I had the problem of too much money, I would have sent her a boatload.

Then there are the people who you think have it made, but when you really get to know them, you see that they too have problems that you would not want. So what the hell am I getting at? Not really sure. Just wanted to share a thought, since I have been so busy lately and haven't contributed much to our ongoing online conversation.

I have been soooo busy, and soooo tired, but I've been having a great time too. Sure, I've got some serious problems. My son has this serious life-threatening illness. My husband works two random part-time jobs and we never know when or how much money we will have. I don't have a job at all. So I work full-time at being the best mother, wife, and household manager that I can be, and sometimes I still come up short. But I also get to go for long runs in the mountains with my incredibly fit husband with whom I am still in love after 14 years.

So, that's life. We all have problems. We need to be compassionate with others because you never know what kind of shit they are dealing with. And be thankful for those days when the problems are small, or at least manageable, and you get a quiet moment to sit and write or walk outside on a beautiful day. Which is what I plan to do today.