The Gift

So, I realize that every day is a gift, but today feels like a real pre-birthday whiz-bang package all tied up with a big bow and a card with my name in fancy calligraphy.

I took the day off work even though I have pretty much NO personal time left because it's the girls' first day of school. R. is now in 6th grade, S. is in 1st. D. took the requisite First Day of School photo, which I will post as soon as I can borrow his camera to upload the shot.

And although I could have gone back to work for a few hours, I'm taking the entire day off instead. To do whatever, including (in no particular order):
jettison more paperwork
write (case in point)
go to the gym
garden
send my sister her late birthday present
balance my checkbook, pay the bills, fold the laundry, mow the lawn...

I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you are thinking that today should be about doing whatever I want, not about doing chores. Others of you already know that those "chores" are just what I do want to do.

I remember as a child that my friends would call me to come over and play whenever their mothers told them to clean their rooms. It was because they knew that I really liked organizing other people's stuff, turning chaos into cosmos, a disaster into some form of order. (And dear Suzy Woodward, wherever you are, I still remember that 4-year old Nilla Wafer we found in your Uncle Wiggly tree stump display.)

I'm not one to scrub the toilet daily. I'm not great about dusting and vacuuming. But I like things tidy, and although some mess is "good" for me, a lesson that the little things don't matter but relationships with people do - so have the guests over even if the house isn't clean, anyway - too much mess crosses the line into being just plain bad for my psyche.

So I'm going to pretend I'm visiting my friend's house, and that I have no weird (and unnecessary) attachments to the piles of papers everywhere, the travel guides from my grandmother's trips to Alaska and Greece in the '70s, the receipts from Christmas purchases ten years ago, the multiple drafts of the same short story. I'm going to have the recycle bin and a shredder and a good cup of coffee and I'm going to have some FUN, blast it all!

I'm also going to write down the goals I have before I reach the age of 40. I have until Monday to reach them, so I'll make them realistic.

Scratch off "marathon" but add "say no to babysitting someone else's child once a week for free for the third year in a row."

Omit "get a book of poetry published" but add "compile the manuscript and see where the holes are, and write one more poem to fill one of those holes."

Nevermind "weigh 150 pounds." Stick to "continue to eat healthily and exercise regularly, and be happy with the slow road to fit."

Instead of "finish remodel of bedroom" I'm putting down "find the bedroom floor."

I'm replacing "dig out adobe for path through front landscaping" with "water the vegetable garden."

Bird by bird, as Anne Lamott would say.

Meme thang

Ok, so I found this because I read Julie who discovered it through Josh.
If you'd like to see mine, it's here. Please feel free to contribute. I'll reciprocate.

R. is off at camp in the sierras until Saturday. We've received 2 postcards: one to the dog: "Bark Bark! I [heart] you all" and one to her sister, on the top of which she gives me instructions to have S. read: "I love you so much! Love, love R."

I guess we can see where parents rate in the whole ranking of correspondence. But I'm so glad to hear from her. I checked carefully, too, and there was no "I hate camp and you are cruel heartless parents for sending me here and you must come get me right now or consider the entirety of my childhood one long Oprah special in the making" anywhere to be found on the pre-stamped, pre-addressed card.

I've said it before. The world is rife with small mercies.

Gratuitous Celebrity Obsession Post

Some of you may already know this, but Jean Reno just re-married. And it wasn't to me.

Dang.

What was he thinking?

I mean, HELLO?
Pick me! Pick me!

Ahem.

Don't get me wrong.

If Jean Reno really showed up at my door and proposed to me on bended knee I'd refuse his offer, even if he had a diamond ring for me.

Because I don't like diamonds.

And. Okay, yes. And because I've already got someone better than he'll ever be. And I wouldn't trade my current, only, forever husband for ANYONE else.

But still. I wouldn't have minded the chance to turn down the proposal.

Let's see if I remember how this works...

So, I think the idea is that I get over the "it has to be perfect" or "it will take too long" whine and dawdle shuffle, and move straight to the "put your fingers to the keyboard and post a blog entry" sashay.

Like, before yet another month makes an appearance, already.

It's been hard to blog. It's been hard to do a lot of things, although I manage them well enough that I'm not sure I need to officially complain.

Except that I feel like I'm off my game, frankly. As though I just can't think straight.

I wonder if it's possible that I'm in some sort of perpetual fog because the death of a close family member does that to you. I'm hoping that's the case. I've certainly heard now from a number of people that the inability to concentrate, and general confusion, are very common symptoms of grief. And it's not like I'm talking about London pea-soup fog, or tule fog, exactly. Sometimes it's only a wispy haze. But I definitely feel impaired. More than usual, that is.

I think.

In fact, what's tricky about this fogginess is that I'm not at all sure that it isn't the way I've always been. Maybe I've been cloudy-brained for a long, long time, and I'm actually only clear enough now to recognize it. Maybe this is me better than I've been because I actually now recognize how bad off I am. Sound confusing? It is to me, too.

So I'm giving myself whatever time it takes, hoping (because I am by nature an optimist, in spite of being paranoid at the same time) that I will pull out of this into the clear sunlight and be able to count to ten again without stopping at six to wonder what I came into the kitchen to get.

And speaking of paranoid - thanks to Julia for the compliment. Tonight after our writers group meeting, when we couldn't set the alarm at first because of a fault with an unknown area in the building, I'd offered to scout out the dark, secluded warehouse section of the place in case someone had propped open a door or something - since we had, after all, seen cars drive through the otherwise empty parking lot earlier, and people could have been casing the joint. I had even suggested I could take of my boots so I would be in my socks, and better able to run if necessary. And Julia, bless her, said to me, "I like the way you think of everything."

That's just about the nicest way to call someone paranoid that I can imagine.

The rough outline of the last month (or at least the highlights):

S. turned 7 on Friday. The same day, my oldest brother turned 47, and D's father turned 76. And that's only 3/5ths of the Leos in our immediate family. Much royalty.

S. had a roller skating party. I never knew I had it in me to disco dance to The YMCA while skating.

I was in Las Vegas last week. My first real non-slots gambling experience. Perhaps worth a blog entry, but perhaps not as worthy to write about as my Road Warrior post-apocalyptic fantasies about what would happen to Vegas if the power failed.

I wrote a new poem. Or at least the first few drafts. (Not related to Vegas. Or the YMCA.)

D and I are remodeling our bedroom to look like a traditional Japanese room - complete with a new closet with custom shelves behind hand-made (D-made) shoji screens, a platform bed, tatami mats, and lots of space and light, sans clutter. It's full of clutter mid-process, of course, which is hard to live with, but it'll be a slice of Japan in Northern California when we're done.

Sound true?

So Josh tagged me to write 8 THINGS about myself, but it's easier to paste this little quiz engine response than to actually put thought and energy into prose. So the 8 THINGS will have to wait, and here's this for now. It might be a *little* tiny bit true, I suppose. Maybe.

Your Birthdate: August 28

You have a Type A personality so big it makes other Type A's shrink away in shame. You never shy away from adversity - and you love to tackle impossible problems. Failure is not an option for you, and more than a few people are put off by your ego. You tend to be controlling, and you hate leaving anything up to chance. Your strength: Your bold approach to life Your weakness: You don't accept help Your power color: Bronze Your power symbol: Pyramid Your power month: October

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

The only thing is, it appears that this quiz spits out the same blurb for whatever DAY of the month you enter, regardless of the month. A little disappointing. It's not the all-seeing Oracle I thought it was. (But it does confirm the fact that I don't really like leaving things up to chance...)

The Quick Recap

Consider this a post card scribbled on a bus between stops in a journey.

I've had a lot of proud-mama time lately. The girls have between them performed a gymnastics show, a school play, a ballet recital, and a horse show - and they did beautifully in all of them.

They're out of school for the summer, and are wrapping up their first two weeks of swim lessons.

I'm training a bit for another half marathon, which means I spend more of the week jogging & sweating.

I still write when I'm able (or am compelled by Writer's Group deadlines) to do so, and have a poem coming out in the next issue of The American Poetry Journal.

Tomorrow, my husband's sister is getting married. The girls are flower girls in the wedding. Tonight is the rehearsal dinner followed by a luau, complete with Polynesian dancers. The girls haven't even tried on the dresses that someone my sister-in-law knows has made for them, so if the fitting doesn't go well, there will be some night-before-the-wedding sewing, I'm afraid.

The day after the wedding, family from out of state (and out of country - an aunt and cousin from Montreal) will come to the house for a party. Is the house ready? No. Is the yard weeded? No. Has the menu been drawn up? Not really. Do I care? Well, I'm trying not to.

Also on my mind is that the party is on Sunday, and Monday I'm to be in Hemet to meet my oldest brother and sister to sort through Mom's things. I'm taking D's big truck down so I can bring back some furniture and boxes. My other brother, in Colorado, has a container that will be delivered to Mom's house for the few things he wants of what she'd left to him. The distribution of belongings has been very kind & gentle & civil. I just wish my siblings' schedules had enabled us to time it better, considering the frenzy of the next 3 days!

Yes, I'm Still Here

For what it's worth, I've thought about blogging.

That's all for now.

More later today.

Honest.

Mom

This is the post I didn't want to write, as though putting it off kept at bay the reality that has, in spite of it all, been sinking in.

I offer sincere apologies to anyone who is only now learning this news. My mom, Allison Fadeley Blauer, passed away April 23rd. An online obit can be found through Legacy.com's service for either the Denver Post or the Post Enterprise. (Search for last name Blauer.)

This is the first of what will be a forever of Mother's Days without Mom. A white carnation Mother's Day. And it's not just Mother's Day that will remind me of the loss of my mother and friend. It's those other days, those other moments, that I expect will sideswipe me with grief. I have tons of great memories of my mom to call up, but the tricky part, the part that will pang, will be all the future memories that I won't share with her.



There is plenty of writing that has already come out of this death. It's personal, it's my way of working through these early stages of mourning. It's not fit for public consumption.

But I couldn't put off updating my blog any longer. This is the first step of me moving away from the point of demarcation her death brings and into this next phase of my life.


So here's to the woman who raised me and my three siblings with a love that we're only now starting to fathom. To someone who was able to laugh even when times were extraordinarily hard. Mom was quiet and humble to a fault, and the one characteristic that those who knew her unanimously recall is that she was a "nice person" (which is, as my brother pointed out, a terribly undervalued virtue these days). She showed me what loving unconditionally means. She showed me the strength of finding humor in adversity. She spoiled my kids rotten. And I will miss her, every day, for a long, long time.


















Nothing was more important to Mom than her children.






She held each of us when we were small, and her death has brought us together as adults and held us again, in the space left by her leaving. We spent last weekend celebrating her life at her home with family, friends and neighbors. On Sunday, we gave her ashes to the Pacific Ocean according to her will. Her handwriting in the will shows that her first thought was to have her remains scattered "in the Colorado Mts" but she had scratched this out and modified it to read a Southern California beach. We dropped daises and roses in the waves. We saw sea lions sunning themselves on a buoy. A single dolphin splashed like a messenger in and out of the water as the boat returned to the harbor.







It was the first time the four of us children have been together for more than a day in nearly thirty years. Whatever differences we might have, we're united in this love, this loss.

Easter Eve

The single parent Easter bunny is hitting the hay.

After 4 hours in the car, and several more hours at the nursing home interrupted only by a very long walk in the neighborhood & dinner out (where they had to continue to behave), then grocery shopping and dying eggs after 9:30 pm, I think the girls were asleep ten seconds after their heads hit their pillows.

I'm going to follow suit.

Haven't worked on novel in days, owe emails to everyone & haven't even gone to look at my email account since yesterday mid-day. But I'm going to Scarlett O'Hara it, and leave it for tomorrow. Until then....

South for the holiday

The girls and I will leave shortly for Southern California, and as I don't expect to have internet access between now and tomorrow, I am posting something now.

SOMETHING.

There's been DRAMA! at work and DRAMA! at the girls' school. It will be nice to get away and spend time with family, and with the familial drama to which I have become accustomed.

In case you were wondering

"ACHTUNG!

Setdownthis may actually be a spider-human hybrid

Username:

From Go-Quiz.com


Thanks to Kate for the link to the above fun. I know a few Spidy fans who might appreciate the random results. And please note that the link on the sidebar to Kate's blog has been updated, and that I've added a link to Chris, Deneene & Wilder's blog. I am fortunate enough to know some truly amazing people who are living truly authentic lives. And although I am just not someone who has the habit (yet?) of spending much time in the blogosphere, let alone much time online (or even on the computer) once I'm home, I've got links to blogs that are great reads.

Enjoy!

And L, you're right. The importance of sushi for last year's work outweighs future sushi anyday.

Happy soggy April

April is National Poetry Month.

I'm thinking I should find a few words to rhyme with "deluge."
There's no end of the rain in sight.

National Poetry Month. Hmm. We mark days so that everyone will recognize them. But I think it's a little ironic that we should take something we honor, or something that looms large in our minds, and go to great lengths to have it officially recognized. I mean, If you have to remind people to remember it, how great can it be? I understand that we don't want future generations to forget what we know. I understand this personally, even. For example, we have daguerreotypes of relatives on my mother's father's side of the family whom I may never identify. They were surely important to someone while they lived, and probably for a generation or more after they lived. And they each have a story to tell. But it's lost because we did not honor or commemorate it. But I'm not suggesting we should have a National Day or Month to recognize my great-great-grand relatives.

Actually, this late at night, I'm not sure *what* I'm suggesting.

But a truly EVIL coworker double-dog dared me to blog daily for a year for another sushi dinner. This is not the same coworker who dared me into doing the same in 2005.

Will I give in to the pressure....?

It may be like child birth. Nature allows you to forget the agony so that you'll be SUCKERED into pushing another incongruously large, screaming animal out of your pain-wracked body. The hurt fades (for some mothers, anyway) and you find yourself ordering another round of the hair of the dog that bit you.

So I'm not exactly picking up the gauntlet (see, Julie, you're not the only person to mix metaphors with wild abandon) - but I am looking at it.

See the gauntlet.
"Pick me up!" say the gauntlet.
"I dare you!" says the gauntlet.
"I double dog dare you!" says the gauntlet.

I nudge the gauntlet with my toe.



Did I mention that my coworker was EVIL?

More progress

I returned yesterday morning from spending three full days with Mom. I got her moved from the hospital to a rehab center, aka a "skilled nursing facility" or "SNiF," a name which I personally think should be abandoned, as it's only one letter away from Snuf.

The nursing home is good, though, and the staff for the most part very good. In particular, the physical therapists are excellent. Within two days, mom went from being completely unable to assist us in transferring her from a wheelchair to the passenger seat of my rental car, to being able to walk about twenty feet with a walker - from her room to the dining room where I'd been waiting while she had her PT. After two weeks of inactivity, and weeks before that of declining health and lousy nutrition (she says only jello and orange slices tasted good), she is getting her strength back. The staff seems to know just how to encourage her to work, and just when to back off, when to allow for her weakness or the wound pain.

Much more significantly, she says she actually can imagine getting well now. To me, this is the most optimistic sign. She admitted that even when we'd visited her in February, she hadn't cared about anything. And while in the hospital, she'd felt so bad (and foggy from the drugs), that she had no real will to pull through.

We had some really good talks and lots of laughs while I was there, and Mom emphatically labeled it "such a nice visit."

There's still no saying how well things will continue to go, and I think everyone is "guardedly optimistic." She will always have congestive heart failure (35% functionality, the chart said), and fairly advanced kidney disease (IV), and right now, her wound is deep enough that it's like an anatomy lesson in itself (a whole chunk of muscle is just plain gone, and let me tell you, tendons are really white). But her spirits are so improved, and the time we've spent together was so good (for her, too - not just for me), that I feel like every day she's still around is a bright gift, instead of a roller coaster ride in the dark.

An update on Mom

Thanks to all of you who have offered support and get well wishes for my mother. She was in ICU for a few days last week because of an "incident" with her heart, then she was moved to a telemetry room where they could monitor her to see if she needed to have a defibrillator installed. In the meantime, though, she is not a candidate for surgery of any kind. Her blood pressure has occasionally been very low (80/33, for example), they've given her another 2 pints of blood, and her leg wound is no better (although it's also no worse, thank goodness). They're running more tests (biopsy on the leg, just in case, and the dreaded colonoscopy), and are trying to get her healthier in order to transfer her to a rehab center nursing home, and then later, to do a skin graft. I'm sure she's sick of being in the hospital, but her spirits are better, and her sense of humor is as healthy as ever. I fly down to see her early Thursday morning.

In the last week or so, I've had the great good fortune of a few heart-to-hearts with other women who are going through, or have just gone through, similar health crises with parents. We've talked about the importance of spending time with mom, of communicating with her as often as I can when I can't actually be there in person. We've discussed me talking to the kids about grandma's illness - and about mortality in general. These are obvious things, but I need to hear them. This is a moment in my life when I most need to be *present* but instead find myself using my standard defense mechanism against stress - distraction, distance, and denial. I'm detached, but not in any spiritually healthy way. This self-analysis is a prime example of my MO. Don't be fooled by it. I'm less a writer turning to the craft for comfort than I am a bundle of unfelt, unprocessed emotions. Hiding fluently behind prose.

I mean, I'm nearly 3 years divested from any spiritual system, feeling the need to talk to mom about the possibility of her death, but not knowing what I believe anymore. I wish she were willing to talk about it - about either death or faith. I don't know her current thoughts on either. I plan on broaching the subject when I see her, but for now, we're not missing an opportunity to tell each other how much we love each other. I know that she thinks I'm a wonderful daughter. She knows that I think she's the best mom and grandmother in the world, and the kindest person I have ever met, and that all sorts of people in my life are sharing their love and concern for her. For now, that will have to do, and for now, that's enough.

Unexpected travels

I spent last weekend in southern California, visiting my mother in the hospital. She's still there, and will probably be there for a few more days, but I am back home and going through the usual routines, while I wait to hear how she's doing. It's the waiting, 500 miles away, that is most difficult.

Mom has so many things going on with her, there's no short or simple way to explain why she's in the hospital. Her heart works at about 33%, but that's been the case for 7 years since her bypass surgery. Her kidney function is around 26%, but that's been true for about 2 years. As long as she stayed active - which she did, walking and swimming daily - and as long as she watched her diet, she was fine. A little slow-moving, but trim and happy and for the most part, really fine. What has brought her low is very minor surgery she had at the end of December for a squamous cell on her lower leg which has become a horrible, enormous wound that is excruciatingly painful. I'm told it looks and acts just like a diabetic ulcer (which may well never heal), with the exception that she can feel it, while a diabetic person might not. So she stopped being able to get around, and she was on pain meds that didn't exactly work, and she was too intimated by the pain to care for the wound correctly to begin with, and she had no appetite and didn't eat, and lost 10 pounds that she could ill afford to lose. Then she had another infection they had to locate, and blood loss they had to figure out, and the morphine they put her on for the pain and the 2 pints of blood they gave her helped, but not enough, etc. etc.

Her nurses have been excellent, as have most of the team of doctors (cardiology, nephrologist, wound care specialist, hospital drs). Yesterday, she was transferred to ICU for the first time because she had a cardiac "incident" - either a heart attack, or a response to all the meds she's been on, but she seems better in ICU than she did before. (She has been allowed to eat again, and snuck an "illegal" cell phone call to me from her bed.)

I'm glad I went to visit her, and I hope to go again soon, possibly with R., who really wants to see her. But it's a day-by-day, hour-by-hour wait, now, to see what happens next. This is hard for me, and harder for my sister, who, as primary care giver living near my mom has had to put her life, and the new career she's trying to start, on the back burner while she spends as much of her day as she can with Mom or making arrangements for what happens once she's out of the hospital.

As always, there is so much more to say here, so much more to write (which has always been my best tool for "processing" things), but limited time in which to compose.

So that's all the news, for now.

Dydd Dewi Sant

It is St. David's Day. St. David, the patron saint of Wales. I don't care much one way or another about saints (apart from the fact that we are all saints), but I do care about Wales.

The novel progresses slowly, all too often shoved aside while life gets big and hairy.

I've had about 50 minutes of sleep in the last 41 hours - a 10 minute nap at work this morning, a 40 minute nap this afternoon. I feel like I'm in an altered state, but one not entirely unwelcome. This is what drama queens and crisis junkies crave - the tilting priorities, the teeter-tottering significances, and emotional kaleidoscope. In a sense, you are left with nothing mattering because you really might actually already be dead. Everything is surreal in this way. In another sense, things have never mattered so much, or been so clear. And you want to remember this.
It's probably the exhaustion that makes you drop the baggage and just BE. It would be a great trick to master after a full night's sleep. Come to think of it.

The catalog for the girls' school auction is finished and was printed this afternoon. In case you were wondering why I pulled an all-nighter.

For the first time in seven years, I did not celebrate St. David's day by bringing pastries to work and forcing Welsh words on my colleagues.

My mother's surgery wound is now an ulcer that may take 2 years to heal.
My sister is fried from taking care of her.
My oldest brother is worried that this could turn into hospital bills that he can't afford to help pay for.

I think I will make a business card that states that I am a writer.
I think it will be square.

Vacation approacheth

The girls and I will head out of town in just over a week, with D. to follow later. Off to see family in Southern California and then go to the Magic Kingdom. (Really, what's the most magic about it is that I won't have to plan and cook a meal or answer a phone for 3 days.)

I did survive the half marathon Sunday, and in fact trimmed more minutes off my time. I can now officially run 13.1 miles in under 11 minutes per mile. A personal accomplishment, and best not compared with the runners who do the same distance at twice the speed. However, on the bright side, if I take 5 minutes off my time each of these runs, I figure, by the time I'm 80 or so, I'll be crossing the finish line before I cross the start line.

I have decided that I most likely will NOT try to run a marathon before I'm 40. Or ever. I think the half marathon distance is just about right for me.

What does that mean? That means time spent not training but hanging out with family and friends. Time spent in the garden. Time spent writing. Right? Write.

Culture

You know, it has taken me 5 days to write this tiny post, primarily because I want to give it a longer stretch of time and more depth, more detail. This is something I've seen other bloggers struggle with - one's desire to do something justice coming up hard against one's time constraints - resulting in no post at all rather than a partial or sketchy post.

But since web log silence is not something I want any longer, I'll just give you what I've got.





Last Sunday we had a spontaneous adventure - a trip to the deYoung Museum to see the Hatshepsut Exhibition. We brought one of R's riding buddies to make it more fun for all of us.

After having run 10 miles in the morning (my last long run before Sunday's Half), the walking from parking to the museum, and then all over the museum, and then back to the car, I felt like I'd had my exercise for the week. But the girls were real troopers, and I was gratified to see that S (who just officially turned six-and-a-half) really wanted to know all about all of the Egyptian artifacts.

The older girls' experience with museums had been fairly limited to hands-on childrens' museums like the Exploratorium, so they were a little frustrated by the lack of touchable, experimental exhibits. After we'd been there about 90 minutes and had left the Hatshepsut rooms, R's friend said to me, "You know, I didn't know there's be so much art here."

I pointed out it was, after all, an art museum, which she agreed explained the emphasis.

It was an educational experience, anyway. The older girls, examining the museum's map, insisted that we go to the African rooms. When we got there, and they saw the scores of dark wood carvings with, in many cases, prominent or exaggerated anatomy, there were cries of, "Oh! Don't look at that, S!" and "Don't look at that either!" until they beat a hasty and disillusioned retreat out of the area with hands to the sides of their eyes to avoid any other surprises. I would have happily strolled through slowly with them, reading about the art and discussing it, but they wouldn't hear of it. I explained that people in different parts of the world express themselves artistically in ways that are new to us, and that some other cultures just feel differently about the human body than people in our culture do. I pointed out that different doesn't mean bad - just different. They said they understood all that, and I think they did. But they were still clearly embarrassed as only pre-teen girls can be. Since they had been so hot to see the African art to begin with, I asked them what they thought the rooms would be like, and they admitted they'd been hoping for something that looked like Africa. I think they were expecting to step into a stage setting. Or maybe they were hoping the second floor of the deYoung had a Savannah tucked away in it.

We also made the mistake of starting to enter the photography exhibits, which were even more explicit than the African rooms had been, and weren't going to fly with my underage companions.

The girls were happier to see the 18th and 19th century paintings and portraits - especially because the rooms were more brightly lit. And of course, they really liked the little original Remington bucking bronco statue, although they had comments on the lack of realism (!) in the horse's build and pose.

Jeez. Everyone's a critic.

Well, hello again

I've been told by more than one person (thanks, both of you), that I've thrown off their morning routine in some way because I haven't been blogging. Flattery will get you everywhere.

The latest news from my life is not that riveting, but here it is for what it's worth.

I'm training for the Kaiser Half marathon in San Francisco, which means 3-5 mile runs during the week with interval training when I can, and about 6 miles Saturday and 8-10 miles Sunday. Why? Why, you ask? Because, I tell you. Because I really like food.

The girls are doing their thing in school. Parent teacher conferences were last week, and it's astonishing to learn that both kids, as different as they are in many ways, are described almost identically in terms of behavior by their teachers. Bright, but too talkative. Engaged and focused, but ONLY in what interests them. Thank goodness they're so sweet and lovable in general - I think it offsets the time the teachers have to spend getting them to stay on task. Honestly, I don't know where they get their susceptibility for distractio

Anyway. Where was I? Ah, yes.

D. has been working long days and will probably do so for a while, as the new employee in their 3 man shop spent too many days sick (here, the word "sick" means skiing in Tahoe until you look like a raccoon).

My mom is very, very slowly recovering from having surgery on her leg for a spot of skin cancer. My sister has been taking her to doctor's appointments and buying her groceries and generally trying to help her take care of herself so she can heal. I'd love to be there to help, but it's 500 miles away. I said to J., "I wish I lived closer," and she said wryly, "So do I."

The rain stopped long enough for us to remember that there's a sun out there after all, but today it is back. What a tease.

The novel is still being written.

Ahem. Let me rephrase that.

I am still writing the novel.

Where it took me 1 month to write 8 chapters, it may take me 8 months to write the last 2 chapters. But I still enjoy spending time with my characters, which is a relief.

There's more to say, but perhaps it's just as well that I'm out of time to say it right now. It gives me something for the next blog entry for those of you who have apparently become addicted to my compelling prose and amazing insights.

And speaking of intention...

At the end of the year, a coworker (you know who you are) mentioned that he appreciated some of my thoughts on living intentionally. I appreciate the comment. More than once, I thought about what was driving me to post blog entries in 2005. It looks like my motivation neatly sprang from most of the seven deadly sins.

There was rising to the challenge of the dare. (Pride)
And the promise of sushi (Gluttony)
There were the several positive comments I got (Vanity)
And my keen awareness of fellow bloggers' witty posts and the tons of positive comments they received (Envy)
I wanted the same kind of praise at the end of the day (Greed)

The only two that I didn't really cover were:
Sloth - although a number of posts were late in being written and bare-bones, and Lust.

That last one is pretty clearly absent. Try as I might, I just can't factor Lust into my raisons de posting last year. I mean, no one promised me any kind of pleasures of the body--and no, sushi doesn't count in this case--in exchange for my quotidian musings. It wasn't a case of "share your 2 bits every day and I'll share mine." Er. So to speak.

But I think that's just as well. I think the internet in general and the Blogosphere in particular has that one covered more than sufficiently without help from me.

But what about the seven deadly virtues? you ask. Did they play into the work at all? Let's see:
Faith. Well, it did take faith to believe the year would pass & I'd survive.
Hope. And I did hope that the habit of blogging daily helped me as a writer.
Charity. Hmm. My daily posts were free. Does that count?
Fortitude Okay, yes. There was some of this stuff involved. A lot, actually.
Justice Don't think so.
Temperance With the exception of the Evil Twin / Goth episode, I think, yes.
Prudence Not much of this, I'd say. Not much thoughtful, careful wisdom and consideration. Maybe that's what this year can be about.

Yeah. I'd say It's quality, not quantity, this year. While I redirect energy into poetry and finishing the novel & working on another draft of it, I expect I'll be writing just as much or more than I did in 2005. It just won't all be here.

A soggy New Year

So the North Bay is much in the news the last couple of days because of flooding. We've been fine, although we've seen some street closures near us, and the waters came close to reaching the front door of D's work three miles away.

We spent the afternoon at the restored Victorian home of D's mother & her husband, and then tonight after tucking the children in bed, have been up late watching The Thin Man movies. D's Christmas gift to me was the whole boxed DVD set - so much fun! (And so much alcohol consumed on screen!)

Tomorrow the girls are back in school but I have the day off - a rare event, indeed. I hope to make good use of the time, which might mean just sleeping for four hours while they're in class. Hey, wouldn't you?

The End. Or is it the Beginning?

My humble thanks are extended to those of you who encouraged (or dared) me to blog daily in 2005.

I'd thought about writing a post that was the Year in Review, a sort of summary of the high points. And I even came up with a few, including a couple half marathons, the work D did on the front yard & the new fences he put in the back yard, watching R's skill as a horsewoman develop, seeing S on stage after the Nutcracker, traveling to New York and Orlando, writing 50,000 words of a novel in a month, and blogging daily.

But in listing some things, I exclude others. And my feeling right now is that the year is over & there is no point in dwelling in the past.

So I thought about recording my hopes for 2006: more poetry published, a better (closer to final) draft of the novel written, a couple more half-marathons run, more time spent in quiet solitude.

But what's more important is the here and now.

It's 7 minutes to midnight. Time to wake up the girls (as I promised I would) and celebrate, briefly, this transition from arbitrary end to arbitrary beginning - which is really, after all, a celebration of being here, now.

Penultimate Post of the Year

The rain is coming down, and has been off and on for days, and will continue to do so for the weekend. It's perfect for pulling out a jigsaw puzzle, and lounging around in front of the toasty fire with a cup of something hot to drink.

We had new friends over for dinner, and their girls and our girls had a grand old time running around and being silly and putting on a little dance show to princess music. It was all fun and games right up until their oldest and our youngest bonked heads. (R thinks this would be an appropriate place in my post to insert a sad face).

Insert sad face here.

They were fine after ice and sympathy was applied, although I think their daughter has the imprint of one of S's teeth on her forehead.


Tomorrow, as the last post of the year, I hope to writing something more than "had tea with the Jones'." Maybe I'll include a description of the crumpets.

For now, I just wish everyone a safe and relaxing New Year's weekend.

Shuffle off...

One of the coolest gifts I received for Christmas was an iPod shuffle.

"Good stuff, Maynard!" (How many of you remember that reference? Yeah, that's right. It's from the '70's. When I still had TV.)

I've loaded a grand total of 1 CD to the iPod so far, thanks to that whole issue I have with needing to sleep at least a little each night. So now I can listen to Cry, Cry, Cry but that's it. Ah, well. It's a start.

Off to jog. Or nap. Or possibly both. Now, that would be a spiffy yet completely counterproductive form of multi-tasking, wouldn't it? REM while you RUN! Race the breeze while catching Z's! Clearly, the sleep deprivation thing is taking its toll once again.

How many halves make a whole?

After too many days of too many sweets, I'm officially starting to train up for the San Francisco Half Marathon that takes place on Superbowl Sunday. Only 5.5 weeks to go - yikes!

This Week

My favorite week of the year, I think: between Christmas and New Year's, a of limbo or maybe even redemption, where you have been blessed with gifts, the holiday craziness is over and there's the anticipation of a fresh start just ahead. Resolutions are being made but have yet to be cemented into place let alone broken.

This is the week of jigsaw puzzles and cleaning up the wrapping paper and - this year, anyway - hanging down in front of a warm fire while the rain pelts the outside world. Our living room is a showcase for the four elements, I realized today: earth (an enormous ficus), air (hard to get away from that one), fire in the wood burning stove, and the 400 gallon fish tank. It's a good place to hang.

Offerings

On 12/22, I challenged my fellow poets on a yahoo group I belong to to post a new seasonal poem. I said I'd get one together & post it within two days. Here's what I wrote Christmas Eve, while the kids and D watched "A Child's Christmas in Wales." It's a family tradition to watch that film, and I hated missing it, but even this rough, rough draft of the poem was worth it, just for the spell that I felt while figuring it out, and the satisfaction of having written something new.


Offerings

This dark and tangled time of year calls
for the quick low flight of a swallow,
sweeping over the yellowed grass, over the briny
frost and mud. It calls for a swift thing racing
its long shadow along the earth, each wing-beat
a whisper that defies the dusk; a small body, warm
as a bullet in spite of the coming night. A song.

And I wish my heart were a swift thing, sweeping
godspeed below it in the frozen fields. I wish it were
heedless in its mission of the edges of the world;
reckless and singing through the cold air. I would be
abundant with alms, a benefactor to the chilled hills.
I would be the wind that wakes crocuses
and paper whites from the snow.

But no.
I am slow.
Plodding and carapaced. A creature of the sea.
I pick the longest night of winter to emerge on dry land.
I drag myself through the sand, handicapped
by the element of earth. I dig a simple chamber
for the evidence of what can't be called love,
and leave my offerings lightly covered.
This one act takes all I have.

And when it is done, I turn and haul
myself away again, crawl from the shore,
don't look behind me, nor wonder
if my gifts will thrive or fail.
Instead, I abandon them almost at once,
in exchange for nothing more
than the slow, slow pulse
of the deep and thoughtless sea.

RBP, c12/24/2005

Ho, ho, *yawn*

Christmas has come and gone in a fog of cooking and discovering what was in all those odd-shaped packages under the tree. The meal was good, although served four hours after the guests had arrived. I was in the kitchen the whole time, with just the right amount of company and chit-chat with my in-laws while prepping the food.

We ate at 3pm, but I am so full I don't expect to need to eat until tomorrow's feast. Between now and then, there's cleaning and prepping and a writer's group meeting (Boxing Day at the Apple Box) and cooking, and somewhere in there, I hope, a quick jog to make up for all the cookies and fudge I had today!

Julia Childs, look out!

So even though I am a poor cook with a VERY limited repertoire, for some reason, I really enjoy making fancy Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. Tomorrow, I'll be serving:

Prime rib
Yorkshire pudding
Green beans with walnuts and walnut oil
Potato and celery root gratin with fontina cheese
Glazed pearl onions with raisins and almonds
[D's mom will provide a Yule log from a French bakery.]

On Boxing Day, we're having:
Apricot-glazed turkey with roasted onion and shallot gravy
Herb Stuffing
Broccoli and cheese casserole
Green beans with walnuts and walnut oil (a fresh batch)
Pickled baby carrots with mustard seeds, honey and dill
[D's sister will bring mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie.]

I also have some nice loaves of wheat and nut bread for each meal.
Thank goodness for the November, 1994 issue of Bon Appetit, is all I can say.

Now to wrap the last of the presents!

Merry Christmas Eve to all.

World enough and time

One of the main things I learned from Nanowrimo is that one has time. It's focus and a sense of priorities that really makes the difference.

This is the thought that is simmering in the back of my mind while I start to look at what I want 2006 to look like. One of the scientists in "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" said that when he wakes up, he decides how he's going to make his day. And then he makes his day.

A lot of the spirituality and philosophy that appeals to me most has this intentionality in common. Living scattered with a completely unfocused mind has done me little good so far. I'm trying to pull together the nano-seconds of intentionality I experience until they happen more and more frequently. I admire those of you who are already doing this. You set a good example for me. Thanks.

How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

Have you seen "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"

If you have not, you must.
Really. I insist.

When I grow up, I want to study quantum theory. Full-time.

No. Strike that part about growing up; I want to study it starting now.
(But I'm going to keep my day job. It comes in handy.)

Happy Winter Solstice

A few of the families from R's 5th grade class met with her teacher in a candle-lit room tonight to celebrate solstice. The children, being children, were wound up by the rain and excitement of the holiday and candlelight. They ran around and jumped up and down and giggled and shouted, and so in spite of the fact that I so wanted to soak into shadowy silence and just breathe, I found myself in the familiar role of trying to Referee Chaos.

It wasn't until much later, after they were in bed, that a caught my breath. But I'm still looking forward to four days off work!



Here's a poem by one of my favorite authors, Susan Cooper, that I read once we'd finally had our potluck and started telling stories sharing Solstice thoughts:


The Shortest Day

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

The sound of me not hand-writing those cards...

That's what the little two-note, back and forth, windshield-wiper beat and humm of the printer heads is.

Thanks to D for making it possible for us to have somewhat personalized messages while I retain the small scrap of my sanity that is left after seven hours (give or take) of simultaneously wrapping and boxing and parenting. Not that I wrapped or boxed any children. That I remember.

Did I say I wouldn't do this again? Last year, did I say that? I just checked my blog posts from last December and no, I didn't officially announce to the world that I would not wait until the last minute to wrap and send things out. But I can say it now. About next year. This year, it's sadly, pathetically, too late to make any such declarations.

"Toujours en retard," that's me.

Placeholder post

until I can write more...!

Once more into the breach!

Still trying to finish the shopping, although I'm liking Clare's advice about keeping it simple better every passing hour.

At least this year, I managed to make some of gifts I'm giving - painted ceramics that the girls & I had a lot of fun doing.

Now it's wrap & ship & get the cards out & take a breath before the visitations begin over the weekend!

Proselytizing by the Best Sellers

The girls hung out at Gymnastics for yet another Parents' Night Out (this time of the year, aka "Dump Your Kids and Shop Night").

I had already gone to a couple of large stores and was at my third for the night, Borders, when my dazed consumer stupor was interrupted by a tall well-groomed man, perfectly disguised as a Christmas shopper, who suddenly started to shout to everyone in the store, "Well, he knows if you've been bad or good! Yes, he does! But who is it who knows? It's not Santa Claus! It's our one and only Lord and Savior, who came to redeem and save the world. What are you doing here? You're buying more and more things for people who already have all that they need. We live in a country that has more storage buildings than it does housing for the poor, and there are people who are cold and hungry, and people who are dying of AIDS, and hookers, but you'd rather forget about them and be good consumers instead!"

There was a more, but by then, store security was already escorting him out.

For someone calling out a sermon in a bookstore, he was pretty lucid. And I stood there, just after he had gone quiet, holding a basket in one hand and a calendar in another, and I thought about his message.

I deliver food to poor families. I donate clothing to Hospice and money to a half-dozen other organizations, including The Heifer Project. I try to treat everyone who begs from me on the street with the respect that one human deserves from another. I give them food when I can, water when I can, money when I can be fairly sure that it won't go to drugs or alcohol. But if I took what I spend on Christmas each year and instead donated it directly to people who could use it, wouldn't that be better than contributing to the excess of the fortunate?

Those who are more cynical might think that the bald truth is that I'm too tired or lazy to finish my Christmas shopping, and I'm getting creative with my excuses for getting out of it.

But really, it's something to think on, isn't it? I mean, you never hear about Jesus dashing around the marketplace trying to find the right sandals for Thomas Didymus, or the perfect belt for Bartholomew for Hanukkah. That just isn't what it's all about.

But being mindful of what it is all about - that's the challenge.
It shouldn't take a man with a message in Borders to remind one of priorities, but if it does, it does. And here and now, still thinking about that man, I remember where the word for "angel" comes from: it's from the Greek word "angelos," which means "messenger."

Still recovering...

So two of my coworkers whose birthdays are in late December had an "Evil Twin" birthday party where you come as your own bad self - with a full costume, a prop, or just an attitude.

I don't like to go to parties, in general.
Especially ones where there's the potential that people will really be, you know, partying.

But an excuse to dress in a costume and go to an event as a character is a whole other story. Must be a carryover from the Science Fiction Convention Days. I must be somehow pining for the evenings when I would be applying nail polish in a panic while sewing up the last few stitches and looking for my other suede boot.

My choices, as I saw it, were some kind of dominatrix librarian, or a tragic poet, or (what I landed on), something rather Goth.

As in: fishnets, 4" vinyl black heels, a black velvet skirt, and a black corset. I also dyed my hair black, put on black nail polish and jewelry that consisted of black beads and crosses, and I added a length of long black hair (as an extension). Add the makeup, and I had the desired look. I have to wait for Monday's blackmail photos to make it to me so I can post one here.

I had a lot of fun at the party. There was wonderful live music and singing, and I had great conversations with folks and surprised one or two people with my costume. D had agreed to come with me (in no costume, since he is his own evil twin), so I could have a drink if I chose to.

I did choose to. I had a couple of vodka and cranberries.

I've learned some interesting things about alcohol:

1. It is unwise to make a vodka and cranberry with 4 ounces of vodka and a splash of cranberry juice for color.

2. It is equally unwise to drink said drinks on an empty stomach.

3. Within an hour

4. One is not given warnings when one has had too much. I didn't know this was true. I honestly didn't know, having never (I SWEAR) gone to a party where I had more than one small drink, that one can go from feeling really really great (if a little unsteady and blurry around the edges) to wishing one could just die, because six feet underground would be a better place to be.

I won't go into details (unless you pay me or need me to scare your pre-teen child), but suffice it to say we left the party none to soon, and I owe my husband a debt I hope I'm never in a position to have to repay, and I won't be drinking alcohol for a very long time. Say thirty or forty years.

I realize that this particular lesson is one that most people learn, if they must learn it at all, when they are in High School or college. How I got to be nearly forty before I learned it is just the result of having underdeveloped social skills, I guess. But if this is a new level of party-going sophistication, I'm going back to my asocial ways. And I DO NOT understand how people can drink to excess, experience anything near what I experienced, and do it again. But I know they do.

I distinctly remember thinking that childbirth, my benchmark of emotionally and physically challenging experiences, was a friggin' cake walk next to my post-party night. I mean, really. A cake walk.

Tell me: has this kind of thing ever happened to you? If it hasn't yet, take my advice: ignorance is bliss.

Brrr!

I spoke to my brother A. in Denver tonight (because it's my sister-in-law's birthday today), and he told me how cold it's been there.

And I thought we had it bad with the temps dipping down into the 30s. We Californians don't understand REAL cold. I think if I lived somewhere where it dropped into the sub-zero temps (like Denver. Or Boston, for example, Kate, right?) I'd just stay inside. In bed. With lots of quilts over me and a bedwarmer at my feet and lots of hot tea and good books. If that took all winter, so be it.

Kachina, Kachina

R is studying the Pueblo Indians, and made this to go with her report:



It loses something in the photo, so you have to trust me - it's enough to make her parents proud of her hard work.









The Artist
Pismo, after Thanksgiving
(Uncle B had spiked her hair)

Quantity vs Quality

If you've seen I Heart Huckabees, you may remember the riff about "quantity" and "quality."

And even though the discipline of blogging daily (which has admittedly fallen apart a lot of late) has been good for me, I'm looking forward to a time where I'm not compelled to write short relatively meaningless things for raw fish.

I'm looking forward to some DEPTH, man. Something with more thought behind it than "had tea with the smiths."

Still not quite the Gory Details, actually

So I've weighed out feeling SHAME for not providing the details I said I would and the NEED to sleep, and guess which won?

I will say that dinner was in a private dining room on the 4th floor of the Farallon restaurant in San Francisco. I just tried to find pics online and couldn't, but let me assure you that the paintings on the wall made me feel like I was in Jules Verne while he was on an acid trip. I will find and post a photo.

And my colleagues were really very well behaved. It was a moderately loud, moderately rowdy crowd - what you might expect from your average company party. Everyone stayed dressed, even.

The Gory Details

Actually, I'm sorry/pleased to report that the company holiday party was really quite tame this year - at least from our point of view.

I will provide more details, however - real or fabricated, in my next post.

Sorry about the tease, but this entry is already late and duty calls...

Decadence

Off to the company holiday party. I really like the company I work for; my coworkers are lively, interesting people. They work hard, and they play hard. Very hard. Company parties provide a history lesson. It's my annual reminder that there was a reason that Rome fell.

But I'm sure we'll manage to have a bit of quieter fun anyway. Will report back in more detail tomorrow, although I may have to hold back a bit, since some colleagues have this url and actually use it.

Step One: Present Flowers to the Principals

Just a quick note to qualify the daily post, and to say that S has completed the first step toward performing in the local Nutcracker - that of tiptoeing onstage at the curtain call, standing in first position and presenting flowers to a principal dancer, then tiptoeing off the stage.

In her case, she presented red roses to the dancer who played the Sugar Plum Fairy, who also happened to be S's "mentor" when the ballet school had a "mentor day" a few months ago.

Next year, she expects to graduate to performing, which represents a significant commitment of time and work, but would be worth it. There may well be a Gingerbread Boy costume with her name on it!

A sense of humor will save you

Ever have one of those moments - or days - when you or your loved ones are just on the brink of a horrific ugly meltdown, and someone says something funny that lightens up the whole situation and dispells the tension?

That happened several times today. One minute, I was sure there was going to be bloodshed, or at the very least raised voices and a scuffle - between R & S, or R and me, or S and me, or the rest of creation and me - and then, one tap-dancing comedic moment later, all was right with the world.

Thank God for the Intervention of Humor, is all I have to say.

Another day in the life

Work (with associated drama and juggling), home, lunch for S, a trip downtown to pick up a surprise Christmas present for R (a ceramic horse her sister painted for her), pick up R from school, to the library, to the gym, stop to get dinner on the way home, dinner, to the local university theater for a rehearsal for S for the Nutcracker (she's not dancing, but she's presenting flowers to the Sugar Plum Fairy at the curtain call), then back home for the bedtime routine, three phone calls re: coordinating Christmas, make cookie dough for a fund raiser tomorrow, and then, somehow, because I stupidly still have energy, watch a movie. While folding laundry.

Boor-ring. I know. But reality. And as such, I guess there's no harm in documenting it.

See what I mean?

You see what I mean about time being funny? How it contracts, hiccups, stretches? It's all relative. As they say.

Time is a funny thing

For example, it may feel like a WHOLE DAY has passed within which you did not blog, and yet, somehow, it HASN'T.

The quietest weekend in December

...at least, that's what I suspect this last weekend will be. The next 10 days, anyway, are looking to be mighty busy. I'm glad that I'm only plugging away at finishing my novel, now, and have a little breathing space within which to take on all the other challenges that present themselves daily.

You may note that I've added Michael's blog to my links. I think he's actually had mine listed on his page for a while, so the reciprocity is belated. (Thanks to Michael for the NaNo kudos and interest in actually reading the novel when it's ready for critiquing.) Check out the count-down on his home page, and the gorgeous photographic work he does. Makes me wish I could get married again just to have him photograph the event. Hmmm...maybe in ten more years, when D & I celebrate our 25th...?

I'm trying to get to bed before 10pm and I do actually want to work for a few more minutes on the novel, so that's all for now, folks.

The things that start with one loose rock

like avalanches,
or your husband taking apart the fireplace:
Howard Carter excavating the livingroom,
finding the dust and concrete trash
that the men who made this place stashed
there, forty-one years ago.

And you know he will put it all back together,
the rocks and bricks and mortar.
And he'll make it even better
with intake fan and register,
so the wood-burning stove will have lungs
to breath out its domestic fire.

But while the bricks and rocks lay
on the carpet, wait to be put back in place,
you think of the one loose rock
that led to this, and the loose rocks that have led
to avalanches, to falling cathedrals and towers,
to tumbling unstoppable ruin.

Look out, Terry

Something marvelous happened to me last week which, in the flurry of novel writing, I was unable to record, but have been thinking about ever since.

I was giving a quote for data recovery--something I do, as I've mentioned, several times at day, five days a week. And the potential customer on the phone was a man who has spent a couple of decades working in Television, whose cousin is an Executive Producer in Hollywood (of the Ellen DeGeneres Show, at the moment). I say this just to explain that he and his family are deeply involved in Show Business.

We'd had a good chat about the service my company offers, and about his situation. And even though he wasn't sure that the data he'd lost warranted the expense of professional recovery, toward the end of the conversation, he said something that stopped me dead.

He said, "You know, you remind me of that woman...she's on WHYY...um..."

"Terry Gross??!!!" I asked.

Ok. Maybe not "asked." I kind of yelled.

And he quickly backed off--afraid, it turns out, that he might have offended me somehow.

"Yes," he said timidly. "From Fresh Air..."

"Terry Gross??!!!" I asked again. "You think I sound like Terry Gross?!"

When I assured him that this was a good thing, a really good thing, the best thing that had happened to me all week, he clarified: "Not so much your voice, but just your style of speaking and asking questions."

He'd found me out.

I mean, I'm a Fresh Air fan. I listen to the show whenever I can catch it. My writer group friends and I dream about being on that show. And the funny thing is, about a week or two ago, I'd realized - on my own, very suddenly in the middle of a giving a quote - that I sounded an awful like the interviewer I so admire. Inadvertently, I'd started to question callers like she questions guests. But I'd figured my secret was safe with me.

And this man, in turn, was astounded that someone on the West Coast, at random, would have ever heard of Terry Gross. It's a small world. And a world in which, apparently, we can emulate our heroes. Even if we end up being transparent while we do it.

I just have to be a little careful. I don't want to find myself finishing all my data recovery phone quotes with, "Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with me today."

Paying off the sleep debt

So I did get myself to work yesterday, but only stayed an hour because it was pretty clear that four-hours of sleep a night that many nights in a row (with no prospect of sleep again until 7pm) had finally taken its toll.

I went home.
I slept nearly 6 hours straight. (Ah! how nice!)
And am still ready to sleep more.

But that's what weekends are for, right? zzzzzzz....

Thanks again to all for your fantastic support of my writerly pursuits.

Well, that takes care of *that*

Kinda says it all, huh?

50,000+ words as of 22:15 PST, but it's taken me an hour to upload a text version to the NaNoWriMo site for word count verification and to make it official.

I'm on Chapter 8 of a 10 Chapter novel.
I'm in love with all my characters, including the horrible ones. Because I created them. (Mwah ha ha.)
And I'm sleep deprived in a newborn-baby-in-the-house way. Which I suppose is appropriate.

Next step? Sleep.
After that? Finish the novel, clean up the novel, have the thing critiqued, and then maybe find a home for it. It's easy to have lofty ambitions when one is giddy with lack of sleep and fulfillment of crazy goals.

Not to mention having faced a double-dog dare with honor.

And speaking of which, please note that whatever twisted mechanism in my psyche it is that has caused me to be so susceptible to dares of this nature has been shut off for the foreseeable future. So nyah nyah to you potential darers out there. Yes, you. You know who you are.

Although I do owe a boatload of thanks to the people who challenged, supported, encouraged and tolerated me and this crazy project for the last 30 days. Thank you SO MUCH. I couldn't have done it without you. Really.

And if you're lucky, I'll never do it with (to) you again.

46,023

...but who's counting?

43,311 words

At this rate, I hope to finish 50,000 words toward the novel by the end of the day Wednesday.

It's all so friggin' melodramatic, this story. I didn't expect it to be. But it is. There's no literary genius here, folks. I guess that'll have to come later ("in my later novels"?? !). This is just practice telling a longer, more involved story that spans several days, two continents, and characters from four countries. It's me praciticing not making it perfect but making it done.

Fun.

Really, just a hair before midnight...

And I'm posting to say that I'm at 39,000+ words. And I'll write the remaining 1000 to reach my 40k goal momentarily, then go to bed until 4am (having slept 8-11pm already). Such strange hours I keep, I know. But it works. Short term.

Back to it...

Home, and happy

Returned from a great weekend with relatives, and am now spending catching up time with Beatrice the rat, who was obviously bored stiff while left alone for a few days.

The writing is coming along. It'll be some crazy push to make 50,000 words happen by midnight Wednesday, but I am still being stubbornly optimistic and hope to get there.

I can see, now, however, that 50,000 words won't be the end of this particular novel at the pace its going - in its "fat draft" incarnation. However, I also know it will be reduced down like a good sauce by about 1/3rd before I'm really finished, so the end product will be closer to 50K when all is said and done.

Ahhh...vacation

A nice, long day. Went for a run, went to downtown Pismo with Mom to get a coffee, watched the kids play in the hotel pool (while I wrote a bit), went down to the beach to make sandcastles, get wet and gritty, and take lots of pics, had lunch out, shopped, and then hung out at my brother's family's home, playing games and writing some more.)

Nearly at 33,000 words but the night is young.

While the girls, exhausted from the day, are sacked out, and D. sleeps too (with earplugs in), I'll stay up and write some more.


The meme that Josh found and Suzanne beat me to:

What Kind of Princess are You?
brought to you by Quizilla



The Traditional Princess

You are generous, graceful, and practical with both
feet planted firmly on the ground. You tend to
be a little on the old-fashioned side. You
value home, hearth, and family life and love to
be of service to others.

Role Models: Snow White, Maid Marian

You are most likely to: Discover a hidden talent
for spinning straw into gold.




Okay. Yeah. That works for me.

Thanks

Among the things for which I am thankful?
Thank. You.


It has been a good day, although there was precious little time to work on the novel until nearly 10pm.
I am starting to think this thing will have to be written in whatever nonsense, non-English form it is I have come up with while sleep-typing, and then translated by a professional gobbledygook-to-English translator later. That's what I think.

31,000+ words .Must stay up sleep-typing until things get more interesting. One of the story's main characters is about to run into a spot of trouble that will galvanize the protagonist and other characters. I should at least try to get that far. At least.

Pismo

The beauty of staying at a nice resort is free wireless access.

So I'm going to have to be trickier with my fake ETD's for trips. We left at 12:30, two hours after the time I'd figured we'd really leave. Spent the afternoon driving, got to Pismo in time for dinner. My mom and sister arrived only a few minutes later (coming the same distance, but from the south instead of the north).

We had dinner at The Splash Cafe, which looks like a bit of a dive, but served the best clam chowder I've ever had. I'm not surprised by their claim that Gourmet & Bon Appetit have requested their recipe.

Tomorrow, we'll get together with my oldest brother and his family for Thanksgiving. There have been hints that my nephews might teach the girls to surf, and R & S are very excited by the prospect.

Now to write.
(I did manage to scribble a page or two in the car on the trip south today, so I'll have a bit to transcribe as a start.)

Doing the Math

29,500 words.

It looks like I'll need to write between 2800 and 3000 words a day to make the NaNo goal. Well, alrighty then. I guess that's what I'll do.

We're leaving tomorrow for a short Thanksgiving trip (but all evil blog-reading house burglars please note that our home has nothing worth stealing and even if it did, we have vicious attack parakeets guarding the place).

Our goal is to depart at a decent hour. Familiar as I am with our two-hours-late-for-any-vacation pattern, I'm telling myself we'll leave at 8:30 so that there will be a chance that we can leave by 10:30.

Apparently, while I was at a Writer's Group meeting / writing session tonight, D and R had a conversation about our ETD.

R: "Papa, we're leaving at nine tomorrow morning."

D: "Ha. If we leave at nine, I'll do a dance in my underwear on the hood of my truck."

pause

R: "I hope we leave at ten."

Not surprisingly...

I am fighting off a cold. It doesn't quite have me in its grip, yet. But there's this nasal-drip and congestion that made me feel all day as though I'd just had a good cry. Chose an early bedtime (and getting up just to write this) instead of staying up late for the novel (apart from 1 new paragraph).

But I do not feel at all worried, somehow. I feel completely sure that I'll be able to make the goal. Hope springs eternal. Stubborn determination in the face of adversity springs eternal, too. But that doesn't have the same ring to it.

27,216

Pre-Monday

I think that in the same way I try now to start being in Weekend Mode (at least mentally) as early as possible on Friday, the Sunday blues are a way of preparing for Monday.

When coworkers ask me on Monday mornings how my weekend was, it's very common for me to have to really scour my brain to recall what happened the previous two days. Part of this may be because I typically stay up too late Sunday nights (case in point), but I think it's also because of some psychological dividing line I lay down between the weekend and the workweek. Sometime Sunday night, I put the weekend behind me. After that, it's in the Past, as distant and fuzzy as Christmas of 1974 or that trip to Hawaii when I was four.

A three-day weekend, however, is a different matter. Three days or more off work, and I really have a hard time going back. It's as though I want to keep a foot, or at least a toe or two, in the water of the Days Away. And I really enjoy my job, too. If I hated my job, I think a 3-day weekend would be enough to make me never go back. One Monday holiday, and I'd be pouring gasoline on the Bridge of Current Employment and looking for somewhere else to be.

27,050 words.

The night is young

Actually, the morning is almost young, but I still wanted to get quite a bit more written tonight.

The problem is, I keep falling asleep at the keys. That's what I get for dealing with the girls' activities until 2pm and then spending until 7pm helping them reorganize and clean their rooms. My choice, so I can't complain. And on the surface, as far as I can tell, it was not because I had any desire not to write.

Maybe it's that I don't fully believe I can do this, at some level. So the choice I have to make in that case is whether to feel like I deserve to succeed, or give in to the old voices inside saying that if I succeed, someone else will end up paying for it and I'll get a heaping helping of Guilt instead of true Satisfaction. (To explain the history behind *that* pattern would take more time and energy than I have tonight, but maybe I'll spell it out it some day.)

Back to work, though. I'd like to be at 30,000 by Monday. I'm only at 24530. If I can get to 26000 tonight, that would be very good.

You've heard of ghost writing? Well, this is like ghost writing, except that it's sleep writing. In the middle of a perfectly normal narrative sentence, I find I'm writing about something bizarre out of my personal life and/or things that make no sense. You know, sentences like, "The next day, she bought a bicycle. It was an older the laundry is probably dry and I should would work in town to run errands like take out the trash farmer's market bread for R's homework tomorrow in math down the street." That's not an actual set of sentences from the doc, but it might as well have been! And I don't possess the talent that Joyce had to get away with truly bizarre stuff, you know?

"Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pahrce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish." -Finnegans Wake, (4.15-17, quote found here.) Scary, huh?

A NaNo NoWrite day

So, I've had a one day sabbatical from actually writing any part of the novel. This has been a matter of survival, since I was completely on duty with other things and not able to sit down in front of a keyboard or paper until 9:30, and at that time, I just crashed.

It would have been a hard workweek even if it hadn't lasted 6 days. Throw in an event for the school every night Tues-Friday, a sick kid, a Top Secret High Security recovery job for a Hollywood Studio that consumed one of my days at work, a birthday party, and a half-dozen errands and the usual housekeeping and trying to write and job in between the teensy-tiny cracks. Okay. I am SO ready for this weekend. Even though there's a school committee meeting Sat. & a school parent/teacher retreat Sunday, ballet, riding lessons, and company over Sunday. That feels like nothing compared to last week.

I'm even more ready to write this weekend. Somehow. Anyhow.
And next week, when I will work only one full day and two very short days before we are on Thanksgiving vacation - well, next week may well be very good indeed.

23,212 words

..the last 20 of which were written while asleep. It's probably akin to what many great legendary alcoholic or drug-addled authors have done in the past: write while stoned out of their minds and read it over a day or week later, when they are a bit more sober, to see if it's really the brilliant genius work the thought it was when they were wildly composing things influenced by them being under the influence.

Except in this case, I think there might be at most one beautiful or really good line out of the thousands of lines I'll write. And I don't know which one it is. Have no idea. Maybe it's still to come.

Fighting off that I'm-so-tired-I-might-vomit-on-the-keyboard feeling the best way I know how to, now. No - not more coffee! Ha! I fooled you!

It's sleep. I love sleep. So very much. I want to marry sleep. Sleep and my bed. I want to marry them both. It will be a mixed marriage, but hey! in this day and age, that should be ok, right?

Right.

22,576 words - so many, but too few!

I feel like Captain Kirk, gesturing in high drama with a grimace on my face:

"Must...keep...writing..."

Or McCoy:

"Dammit, Jim! I'm a poet, not a novelist!"


But these are just the weird geeky thoughts of a middle-aged working mom who has stayed up past her bedtime. Now that the soy latte and espresso beans have worn off, I hear the big horizontal piece of furniture calling my name.

Proceeding Apace

21076 words. Interesting how dialog just doesn't fill out the word count as quickly as long, boring, expository babbling. Oh well. My characters need to have conversations.

R was home sick today with a very unhappy stomach, and I worked 5-8 then came home to take care of her; so I had time (in theory) but I wrote for less than an hour or so; busied myself instead with other chores and with napping to make up for the hours of sleep lost (from R's sick stomach).

I think she'll be back in school tomorrow. And I'll be back in work. And the novel writing will proceed apace after that. Apparently, the 20,000's are to be gotten out of as quickly as possible. So I'm going to try to de-quagmire myself as soon as possible, given Life etc.










A view from Aberystwyth, Wales, the town where much of the novel takes place.

sleep wins out

Chose sleep tonight over staying up late to write, but did get some writing done in the afternoon. At around 21,000 words - behind, considering, but not so bad if I really am able to get some extra writing in over the Thanksgiving break. (Plus, I have managed to exercise for at least 35 minutes 3 times in the last 4 days.)

As incentive for the novel, I'm telling myself I can't read anymore of the delicious sci-fi candy Dangerous Notes until I write to the climax of my own story. I'm just prior to that in Gillian Bradshaw's book, and am afraid I'll lose some of my own energy in the wind down of her plot.

But allow me to plug her work while I'm at it.

I realize that yesterday's snippy sassy post was not only tardy, it was rude. I'm officially sending it to the back of the class, and am apologizing for my behavior. I (aHEM) can see that I'm having a hard time owning up to it when I completely and utterly forget to pre-date and post-post.

Tonight, however, (and I find this ironic), it truly was 11:59pm when I started this post. But who would believe that of the wolf-crying blogger?

What are you smoking?

If you think there was no post from Sunday 11/13/05, you must be smoking something.

See?

There's this post! Here it is. See?

I'm at 20,000 by the way.

Motivation

However one can get it.

The novel takes place in Wales, and although I used to say I could never write while listening to music, I've found myself listening to Welsh tunes - from traditional to contemporary rock - and writing whatever scenes in the novel are inspired by them.

I've also been listening to quite a bit of spoken Welsh. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that listening to Welsh can't be all that enjoyable, even if you understand one word in ten, and even if it's not in the same room as an actual Welsh person (which would require a mask for protection against the spit produced when a native speaker says, "Machynlleth" for example).

But admitting that I've been listening to Welsh is like admitting I've been eating two pounds of chocolate at day. I'm owning up to the height of self-indulgence, here. If I'd realized that writing a novel was a good excuse to immerse myself again in Wales and all things Welsh, I would have done this years ago.

And no, I haven't been eating two pounds of chocolate a day. Because of course, writing a novel in a month does not produce enough stress in my life. So I'm also concurrently trying to lose weight before seeing relatives at Thanksgiving - watching the calories and exercising a bit more.


18,000+ words. 32,000 to go. Yikes!

What alarm?

So have you ever gone to sleep earlier than you expected to and slept later than you'd planned?

Me too.

Lightly carried

Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim.

The translation is "Have patience and endure; this unhappiness will one day be beneficial," but I like to think that if Ovid were alive today, he'd be saying, "Hang in there, kid. It'll pay off."

This is the kind of pearl of wisdom and encouragement one runs into when researching Welsh proverbs at the World of Quotes site, I guess. When one is really writing a novel and not surfing the net, of course. Or wasting time talking about going to the gym but not really going. You know, when one is busy writing, one just happens to stumble across such quotes. Quickly, and with one click, and not after an hour of browsing the web or any such nonsense. Of course.

(Just shy of 13,500 words.)

Catching up

...on sleep, that is. I've worked only a few minutes on the story tonight, but I've chosen to skip the early evening coffee, and so I'm falling asleep as I type each sentence, and I have to admit that more than 3 nights in a row of fivish hours of sleep is my limit at present. I do not want to push myself too hard and get sick.

Tomorrow I *may* be able to catch up a bit, I hope. Otherwise, I'm starting to think weekends are the best chance I have to write bigger chunks. Too bad I'm working Sunday.

Anyway, I've fallen asleep three times just writing this! So I'm giving myself a break and going to visit that nice friendly big horizontal piece of furniture in the other room for 6 or 7 hours.

12,000 and change

...still chapter 2, though!

pre-writing blog

Just to be different, I'm blogging first then working on The Novel tonight. If I get some super-duper word count before my eyes fall out of my head and start bouncing around between my keyboard and my wrist pad, I'll post it here. Then I'll pick up my eyeballs and go to bed.



(Another shot from after the Run With The Giraffes event last month.)

Just over 10,000

So it feels like I'm finally getting to know my characters better. It's like we've all had a drink or two at the party and are starting to loosen up a bit. A few more Gin & Tonics and the skeletons might start rolling out of the closets. The plot is becoming more solid as well. It gives me hope. No sleep, but hope.

Working on Chapter 2

Of I don't know how many chapters.
The luxury of writing a novel instead of a poem or story is that not only can I let my characters ramble on, but for the sake of this crazy word count, it's to my advantage if it takes pages for not much to happen.

Except, of course, that when I do a new draft, it'll be half the size of whatever this ends up being.

And in spite of that luxury, I'm only at 9,000 words. Ah, well. That's what happens when one is still trying to do other things like go to the gym and then spend 4 hours at children's birthday parties.

I think I'll have a couple of hours free tomorrow, though.
For now, it's nearly midnight, and I'm turning into a pumpkin...

8058 if you must know

Dear Small But Beloved Reading Audience (all 6 of you!),
For those of you who are asking, I've reach 8,058 words. I hope to be much closer to 13,000 by tomorrow morning, though, so I won't be spending much time blogging.

Get-well-soon wishes to Suzanne's M, and condolences to Suzanne on the demise of her beloved car. (But we're so glad you're all right!)

Can't Blog...sleeping...

...but I'm toasty warm from being under a blanket on the couch and from a blazing fire D made in the wood-burning stove, so it's a very happy kind of sleepy that I'm feeling.

Update on novel when I have something more positive to report. Today was more of a stare-out-the-window-and-figure-out-the-plot kinda day than a pound-it-out-on-the-keyboard kinda day. Also, (not that I'm complaining), I was only home for 30 minutes between 4:45am and 8:30pm, and once I got home, I did nothing more than get the kids to bed and fall asleep on the couch. C'était la vie aujourd'hui.

Another added benefit

Because I have to write this novel during whatever slivers of free time I have in my schedule, I found myself writing for about an hour while the girls had gymnastics lessons today. Imagine working on a novel while in a huge gym full of kids running around and coaches yelling instructions and parents gossiping over coffee. Throw in the siblings of the kids in class, bored and restless and underfoot.

Not conducive. Not exactly a room of one's bloody own.

But I managed to crank out a page or so in between helping with homework (my kid's and that of another random 5th grader there) and supervising my other child (and the other 5th grader's little sister) so that they were somewhere between entertaining each other and setting the place on fire. (It's a fine line, but if you're a parent, you've already had to walk it.)

So what I'm saying is that somehow, I've developed a way to concentrate in the midst of total chaos. Say it with me, now: "Whoo-hoo!"

Lisa suggested I keep a word count of the novel-in-progress on my blog. Not a bad idea. But which word count to use? The one automated by Word itself is probably more generous than an editor would consider. The method I'd learned about 15 years ago is to count words per line and lines per page and work out the average. And then there's the standard "about 250 words per (doublespaced) page." But for the sake of simplicity, I'll go with Word's calculation and then add some extra words (if possible) for insurance.

And drat. I found this note in a NaNoWriMo forum that addresses what one can include and what one can't include towards the final word count: "The only real limits are that it has to be written in November, and not beforehand." So ridiculously long (but new) chapter titles would count, but not the pages I'd written toward another novel and am incorporating into this novel - not, that is, until I have completed the necessary modifications to move them from 1st person to 3rd and from near-past to distant past. That is to say, I'll be re-writing and putting little bits and pieces from previous-year's notes in this new work, but until I actually put them there, I should not count them. This dramatically decreases my count. By like 5,000 words. Blast.


At any rate, kudos (read: are you insane?) to Josh for picking up the same gauntlet he threw down for me. We're on our way!

Day Two Observations

1. Much of writing a novel consists of staring into space thinking about the characters and plot. This is critical for my process, anyway. Driving and showering seem to be great times to hash things out mentally before I waste time wandering around on a page headed in the wrong direction. It means missing Morning Edition and potentially forgetting to use conditioner, but one must make sacrifices.

2. I am only deluding myself if I think I really will go to bed on time but then get up two or three hours later to write for an hour or two. It's a lie! A big fat lie! And also not good for my health--mental or otherwise. I'd learned this lesson earlier with my blogging but apparently seem to think that because I AM WRITING A NOVEL the laws of physics and such go out the window. And float. (Get it? Laws of physics...float? Ha!) Anyway, I can manage the going to bed on time or the staying up to write, but doing both means neither has any quality to it. Note to self: remember One Needed Thing. At a time.

3. Taking the girls to the library while I write is a great idea, and should give me another 2-3 hours a week of production time, but it works even better if I don't spend the time balancing my checkbook.

4. My house is likely to stay much cleaner than usual during NaNoWriMo. True, any time spent not writing is spent not writing, but see #1 above. The fact is, I can and do decide on things like the hair color, eye color, names and history of my characters, as well as plot points, while washing dishes or folding laundry. This cuts down on time spent staring into space while a Word doc is sitting on the screen in front of me, mocking me.

5. The support that friends and spouses show during this time is very helpful. Thanks to all. Um. I mean spouse, of course. Mine, that is. Not that my friends aren't spouses, some of them. But they're not my spouses. Except that one. Of course.

Proof in the Pudding

So the first day of NaNoWriMo is done, and what have I learned?

That I am already too dependent on making this happen through the use of lots of caffeine.

That since I will be single-parenting at night for at least a week while D works a late shift, I'll have to be even more creative and disciplined than I thought I'd have to be.

That if I'm not willing to cut out all social activities for the month to do this (I've talked about my stoopid pride before, haven't I?), I will have to expect to pay the price.

That one of the compromises I make might could be educational videos (like the French language instruction one we currently have from the library) to keep the kids entertained while I write.

But so far, I'm on target. Lots of words written (over 3,000 so far, but that includes a section written 2 years ago that will have to be pared down and re-incorporated correctly).

A fat, horrible, first part of a first chapter of the first draft. An outline. A voice starting to emerge.