Moolar loss

The rat still doesn't have a name. We're working on it.

The Tooth Fairy, however, goes by the name "Gwen" in our house. This comes from a long series of letters back and forth between R. and said fairy. I may have blogged about this. Maybe it's a good sign that I can't remember if I've written about this in the blog - it means I've written enough that I can't keep track of it and don't really care to search the history to find out. Okay, so maybe it's just a sign that I'm lazy.

R. lost her first "moolar" (as she called it in her note to Gwen) yesterday, and the Tooth Fairy, witty correspondent that she is (Illustrator, French Script font) said she'd add it to her collection. She said other things too. The kind of inane things a fairy says when it's 1:30am and she is sleep deprived and annoyed by the buzz of an iMac. I get so cynical after 10pm. Sorry.

Current pre-trip goals:

* Learn Japanese. My most recently learned phrase is, "Big is the opposite of small." It's oh-so-handy what a CD can teach you!

* Finish the oral history transcription. I worked on it from 2:00am-2:45 am this morning and had to force myself to stop and go to bed and get that extra 2 hours before the alarm went off. But I'm only about a fourth of the way through it and don't have a dictation machine so it's slow slow going.

* Create or polish my best 5 poems ever & submit them to the James Hearst Poetry Prize competition. Deadline: October 31st. Judge: Billy Collins. I can't count on Japan to inspire me to write the perfect submissions, so I should try to finish this before I go.

Meanwhile, I'm very happy. Busy and happy. Thank God for coffee - among all the other real profound blessings in my life.

The Newest Addition

It was another good weekend of getting things done around the house. Saturday morning, I took the dog on a long early walk, got my hair done, took R. to riding lessons, took the girls to a birthday party, and then worked on the yard. I convinced the family that dinner out at a Chinese restaurant would be good, and it was. Sunday I worked on cleaning the house, ran to the store, and came home long enough to grab my things and go (late as usual!) to my writer's group BIC ("butt-in-chair") time at the Apple Box. Had about an hour of writing, got home to do more chores, R. had a friend over & I ended up staying up too late to squeeze every bit of the weekend out of the weekend that I could.

I've started again transcribing my maternal grandmother's oral history. Not sure how I'll finish in 2 weeks, but I'm going to try to mark the centennial of her birth by completing this project & sending the written work (approximately 120 estimated pages!) to my siblings and mother.

And the really big news - especially if you are my children - is that this evening, we added a new pet to our family. My husband has had understandable concerns about not contributing more chaos to our lives and so is adamant that another pet such as a cat or dog would be a bad, bad idea. However, some time ago, he agreed that if I were to get myself a small pet that could be contained in a cage, he would be okay with that.

So here's how it went down.

We were out of dog food.

I think I've mentioned before that a trip to the pet store with children is a dangerous thing. I prepared my kids by saying, "Now, we're going to the pet store, and we can look at the little pets, but we are NOT going to get anything."

We looked at the birds. Very nice. And then either because I was heeding the small quiet cry of Destiny or because I'm an idiot, I said, "Let's look at the rats!" And you know what? Neither of my kids said, "Gee, Mom, maybe we shouldn't. We're not going to get any new pets anyway, and looking at them will just make us want one."

Anyway, there was a little gate barricading us from the room with the rats in it, so either because I am intimately in tune with Fate or because I'm insane, I said to one of the sales clerks, "Could we please look at the rats?"

And the whole time, I'm telling myself, "You're just looking."

This is how people end up driving fully loaded Lincoln Towncars off the lot. I'm sure of it.

The little VOICE OF TEMPTATION AND THE CAPITALIST PIG AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE devil on my shoulder was whispering, "Well, maybe if they have a female and she's young, and not the curly hair variety, and if she looks like she has a good disposition... D. did say you could get a rat. And you haven't had one for about 15 years and you deserve to have a rat if you want to. You're a good human being. You're responsible. You'll take care of it. It can be a Writer's Rat and sit on your shoulder while you compose poems that Billy Collins will read! It will keep you company while you stay up late learning Japanese or transcribing those tapes!"

And at the same time, the VOICE OF REASON, ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND STRENGTH OF WILL was quietly saying, "But you can't anyway because it would be stupid and you told the kids you wouldn't and you shouldn't do anything to make you look like a liar or be inconsistent with them. Besides, it's bad timing to get a pet because you're going out of town so it would be one more thing to have to organize with the babysitter. And what if the dog wants to eat it? It'll cost a lot of money. And didn't you say you'd get a pet from a shelter? How can you get a baby rat from an overpriced pet store while meanwhile perfectly sweet adult rats are being put to sleep at shelters because no one will take them? What kind of message are you giving your daughters? What kind of impulsive person are you? Are you crazy? What if D. only says he doesn't care, but a month from now he moves to Tahiti with a cute little brunette named Bambi and in his parting note to you he says, "I would have stuck it out with you if it weren't for that rat." ?

There was one female in the litter. She was very sweet. She had been handled by people since her eyes opened, and you could tell she'd been handled gently.

We put her back. We bought our dog food. We left the store.

S. was saying, "I want a rat! Please can I have a rat? Please?" and R., bless her heart, said, "Maybe when Mom gets back from her trip, okay?" and then she did a silly pratfall to make S. laugh - even though I knew that R. wanted that rat as much as I did, and that I did as much as S. did. The devil on my shoulder was having the same tantrum S. was having, and the little voice of reason angel was being so damn self-righteous and smug it made me hate myself.

We drove home. The pet store closed in 25 minutes. I knew this because I'd asked what time they closed. I called D. He stayed neutral, but when I said it seemed like a silly expense, he pointed out that we already had containers to house the rat & that money shouldn't be the thing that decided it for me. But he let me decide. I paced, talking to him out of earshot of the kids, who had already let it go. I checked out the acrylic tank we had to put the rat in. I looked at where it might go in the office. Metaphorically speaking, a scuffle broke out on my shoulders between the warring factions. Then, 15 minutes before the store closed, I gagged the angel of reason and said to the girls, "Well, you'd better get your shoes on and get to the car if you want to get that rat!"

They didn't really need their shoes on. Their feet didn't touch the ground between when we left the house and when they went to bed.

Winey post

Brutal, brutal day at work, followed by a couple of hours with the kids and then a party for a coworker who just got married. I'm home and it's not yet 10pm but feels like midnight.

I have a couple of glasses of red wine in me, so I'm relaxed and a little dopey (but not, of course, too dopey to have driven home from the party). I should think of it as the weekend starting early, although I have plenty more on my to-do list to do before Saturday morning really comes. Danged to-do list.

It's probably dangerous to post anything that I think is important at the moment, because it's likely to be highly influenced by the wine.

I'm not a mean drunk. I am a garrulous gluttonous drunk. I have a very low tolerance for alcohol. One glass of wine gets me a little dizzy and unable to move my eyes fast enough to keep up with my head when I turn it. But I talk. And eat. Two glasses of wine makes me downright silly while I talk and eat more. (But I drove home okay. Really.) I don't drink often. Also, if I drink alone, I'm a very paranoid drunk. The world seems a hostile place; alcohol opens doors in the fences in my brain where I keep the demons at bay. I'm not talking about some sort of metaphoric guilty conscience or bad memories. Or wait. Maybe I am. But mostly, I'm talking about drinking wine or a hard cider alone at night and then having the conviction that there are local hooligans or drugged-out neighbors or kitchen knives possessed by the force of evil, and whatever goodness and light I harbor may not be enough to fight them off.

This is where I say that:
A) I'm part of that generation of 30-something who saw Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist and Amyteville Horror and The Omen at way, way too impressionable an age. It would have been better if I hadn't seen such things until I was older - somewhere around two or three years after NEVER.

and

B) Here are 10 things I would rather think about (and perhaps therefore give power to) than the above bad stuff:

1) finding what's been lost (two 8mm video tapes D. & I had torn up the house looking for, which showed up among my grandmother's oral history tapes, safe & sound)

2) my 10 year old wanting to wear a special hand-made frock from the Czech Republic tomorrow for a field trip to the local "Ag Day" because that's short for "Agricultural Day" and the dress if from another culture. (This after I've tried to trick her into wearing it for 3 family holidays to no avail). I'm glad she'll wear it. She'll probably get cow dung on the Eastern European cross stitch, but she'll be wearing it.

3) my 5 year old's conversations with all her toys in the bathtub

4) the lavender I planted in the front yard

5) red wine :)

6) mnemonics. Here are some of the many I've developed for learning Japanese:
-the word for "not yet" sounds like murder ("mada"), as in "I hope that murder is something that I will always be able to say I have not yet done."
-the word for "good night" ("Oyasumi nasai") starts with "Oh yeah!" as in "oh yeah, that's how it starts. Silly, but it works.
-one of the words for seven is "nana" and my Nana has passed away and is therefore somwhere that rhymes with seven
-"to leave behind" is "nokoshimasu" and when we go to Japan we will leave the kids behind. Kids in Japanese is "kodomo" (I just remember that one), and so I think "no" they're not with us "ko" short for "kodomo" and "shi" which is pronounced like the English "she." Our kids are girls ("she" not "he") so to leave behind is no-ko-shi with the usual "-masu" ending. Long and involved, but it works.

7) good poetry

8) good chemistry

9) Autumn will come every year whether I'm here to see it or not

10) I'm currently here to see it.

Sept. 18, 2004

My goal to write daily has been met so far. Thursday was the blog, of course. Friday I took the day off work in part to go to a workshop led by Ellen Bass. It was a inspiring workshop, and she is a good poet and a good person - gentle and thoughtful, but also with a sharp wit and keen ability as a teacher. She teaches creative writing in Santa Cruz, and apparently has done so since 1974. She spoke about "The Poem of the Moment," and she gave us some examples. She also had each of us try to start such a poem our own, at the end of the workshop. There were so many people in the room, about a dozen of us were sitting on the floor. I had a corner of a table to kneel at while I wrote.

I wrote a poem about telling R. about menstruation (the event itself is recorded in my 7/21/04 blog entry). And I was one of a few people who read their poems to the group. People laughed loudly at the right spots, which was gratifying. And Ellen said "Good work," among other nice things. But better than everyone's reaction was the fact that I wrote something new, and with some more work, I can add it to my collection of poems that are about life in general. (The other poems are about, or inspired by, role-playing games). And Ellen provided me with another look at what happens if you write poetry and send it out into the world and try to improve. I wouldn't mind having the awards and grants and recognition and publications under my belt that she has under hers. I have about twenty years to get there, I figure. "Lord willing and the creeks don't rise."

I also finished reading my neighbor's novel and wrote up a critique and got it all back to her (500+ pages of her double-space manuscript and 4 single-spaced pages of my comments and observations and suggestions). Phew! Glad to have fulfilled that obligation.

And I got a good start on cleaning out the house one corner at a time. Worked on our closet tonight. Threw out such things as the empty jacket for Heart's Little Queen LP and a slew of old AAA travel magazines. If we want to go somewhere, we'll look it up online.

I had thought I would go to bed but got a second wind. This after a day of running errands, horse-back riding lessons for R., a party for 3 hours and digging in the adobe for another 2 hours. I just feel energized. Or maybe the word I'm looking for is "manic."

(But at any rate, Clare, you'll be happy to know that I'm living more and more outside of my mind and in the present, where it's oh-so-nice to be.)

Here's a link to an Ellen Bass poem about praying in everything you do. K & B, please note the reference to riding the bus. You see how riding the bus really is very important in the whole scheme of things. It is not necessary to make fun of certain role-playing characters for liking to take public transportation. Public transportation is cool.

End of random thoughts for the day. I also worked on the new poem, earlier, and updated my "fitness" blog, so I met my goal again today.

Sept. 16, 2004

D's 40th birthday. We went out to dinner - sushi, of course. I just spent the last hour working on a poem. D. is playing Parasite Eve and having a birthday hot chocolate.

I believe 9pm - 10pm will have to be my set writing time, although again (working on the poem) I fell asleep with my fingers on the keyboard. Repeatedly.

Time for some zzzzz's. But here's the poem - rewritten for the 5th time, originally composed around June 1998, and maybe still not quite there!



McClure's Beach

We walked the length of it
until rocks checked our progress, and wind
had crusted our hair with salty grit.
Then we turned and trudged back,
once more past kelp that had been coughed up
in cold tangles by the waves.

Our daughter was tired but too tired to know it.
She kicked when I carried her, went limp
in the sand when I put her down to walk.
I thought the steep hill to the gravel lot
was all we had left to conquer.
But at a stream flowing thinly into the sea,
my husband stopped, announced:
"I've got to do it."

No sticks at hand, he used his boots
to crumble and crush the shallow banks
and smudge lines it had taken gravity and tide
uncounted hours to make. He found rocks,
lay them in the water to displace the hapless stream.
Our child whined and tugged at me;
both of us dismayed
by his need to redefine the land's borders
to change courses to the sea.

Slide

There’s been nothing huge in my life that has kept me from blogging. I just stopped making it a priority for a week. And look what happened. Slide, slide, slide. I’m not beating myself up. I’m making an observation. Writing is long-term important to me, and I don’t want to drop it for other things that are important for the moment. The damn laundry can wait another half hour. The kids’ dinner can’t, but the laundry can. For example.

About two years ago, I went to a sales training seminar through work. It was a frightening experience. It could have been worse, I suppose. But it was bad enough. There was much talk about MOTIVATION!! and SETTING GOALS!! and GETTING THE CUSTOMER TO SAY YES!! - that sort of thing.

What I took away from it – besides a renewed conviction that I’m not a sales person at heart – is the understanding that I could fake it if I have to, and the realization that what I learned could be applied to different areas in my life. So I have set goals and have seen them attained. Being a published poet. Running a marathon (I’ve run 2 half marathons – does that count?). Getting a new car. All have happened since I went to that seminar. I have also become closer to my family – another goal I set at the time.

So I’m going to make a new goal that I feel I can keep. The goal is this:

WRITE EVERY DAY.

Wow! What a unique idea! However, self-mockery aside, 9/15/2004 is as good a day as any to start. In fact, if every day I said, “I’m going to write every day!” and every day I did it, that would work, wouldn’t it? It works for recovering alcoholics to take it one day at a time.

Maybe my daily writing won't be a blog entry, but certainly it will be fiction or poetry or journaling in earnest. Not “today had tea with the Smiths” diary entries. Real journals, like the blog is able to be. I think I’ll add long and well-written letters (not email) to the list of qualifying writing, too.

I’m beating Julia to it and daring myself. And anyone reading this is my witness.

What this means, of course, is that I must honestly MAKE TIME to write. Ideally the same time every day, but I won’t worry too much about that right now.

I bought a beautiful little journal to write in when I’m in Japan next month. I can’t wait to fill it up.

Sept. 7th, 2004

A good, long weekend. The girls and I went to a "soup party" Friday night at a friend's house. She put on a pot of soup and the guests provided bread and wine. All the kids there played like sweaty rabid animals. At one point, another mom and I were watching the pack of them race around screaming, and she said with calm consideration, "You know, it's really like Lord of the Flies." And I nodded and said, "Yes. That's what it reminds me of."

Saturday R. had a riding lesson and then a slumber party and S. and D. and I did some shopping at a Macy's - a real department store - something I haven't done in years. I'm so used to going the cheaper route. But fortunately, no one was playing a piano by the escalator. I have a REAL problem with grand pianos in department stores. They make me laugh uncontrollably. Even though I'm sure it offends the pianist, I can't stop myself. It's just somehow so wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Am I the only one who feels this way?

I'll try to put into words what's wrong about this. Certainly, part of it is the seriousness with which the businesses take themselves. But beyond that, it's like Nordstroms (or whoever) is saying, "Here. Please spend lots of money at our store. We'll entertain you with classy live music so you can feel like it's a privilege or some kind of culturally enlightening experience to part with your paycheck for clothes that you don't need made for pennies by third-world workers under horrible conditions. You can listen to a little Chopin while you propagate inequality. And by the way, that color looks great on you."

Okay. I'm off that soapbox. Thanks for listening. As I was saying: we made it out of Macy's with the purchases we needed. I had a moderate case of consumerism. But I got better.

Sunday I went for a long run with the dog - well, as long as he could handle it - after 3 miles, the poor thing had to feign a lame back right leg to get me to just walk, for heaven's sake. I guess a fur coat in 120 degree temperature is a little bit of a challenge, even if you're part sled dog.

I got R. from the slumber party, stopped at the grocery store, and got home with just enough time to turn around again and get the babysitter so D. & I could go to a swanky wedding in the Rotunda at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. It was pretty magical: we were early. We found free parking. We were dressed appropriately. We found the reception just fine (at the Golden Gate Club at the Presidio) and the parking was also free there. The bride and groom were as happy as could be. The food was wonderful, the company was pleasant, and the weather was perfect. Scary.

Monday I slept late and spent some writing time downtown with the writer's group, then D. went off to game and the girls and I spent the rest of the afternoon into the night moving S. back to the room that used to be hers and had become the playroom. This meant moving large pieces of furniture in the 120 degree heat, and a thorough re-examination and R&D testing by the girls of every rediscovered toy under said furniture. I finished everything except the dishes, read half of my neighbor's novel copy, and slept.

Must now look at what I'll bring to our writer's group meeting tomorrow. Another very positive bit of news - just got an email from the editor of the American Poetry Journal asking if he could include another one of my poems in the next issue. Golly. This is a good thing. I said yes. I'm more pleased with this one than the last one he published, but I'm really tickled pink that the last one wasn't just a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Hooray!

Sept. 3, 2004

So I missed a couple of days of blogging and reading blogs. I'm still trying to shake strep, and have followed my traditional pattern of doing too much too soon and suffering the consequences. Plus, apparently the penicillin didn't do diddly against the tough little bacteria I'm hosting. Yesterday, I was put on another antibiotic. Should see results soonish. I hope! I look forward to the day when I can swallow without wincing or even noticing I'm swallowing. Once again, I'm in awe of people who go through life with chronic illnesses and maintain a positive attitude.

Please note that I have added a link to Clare's blog. I highly recommend a visit there. Clare is a deep thinker and a great friend – and she manages to write while mothering twin one-year-olds and 5 year old. True, she’s not home-schooling seven children but it’s close. (Thanks to Julia – another blogger you should read – for the link).