When you say stupid shit and read it back almost 2 decades later when you’re cleaning up your blog
Part 1 of a series
family
The Proviso, 3rd edition: A confession
It’s been seventeen years since I first published The Proviso, and a very hard ten since I put out the second edition. I can’t stop fiddling with these characters and I can’t stop feeling like I’ve missed something that will make the story richer.
My kids are grown and gone now, but not without a rough few years. Menopause has changed me in ways that have made me a stranger to myself—one I don’t like. My mother went through a medical scare that introduced a great deal of drama into my very large, previously drama-free family, which I never thought could happen. It’s not as intriguing in real life. I’m long past the pack’s age, and they are forever frozen in time. Read more
The Bunny
Since I am sharing old ads I’ve written, here’s one that got me a lot of sweet emails saying they didn’t want a bunny, but my ad had made their day. It is very nice to know that one’s writing is uplifting.
A hot new writer
One day, on a school bus, the bus driver was driving a load of kids to school. They were at an intersection when the bus driver made a right turn on red. A kindergartner who just so happened to be sitting in the front said, “Hey! You can’t make a right turn on red!”
The bus driver then turned around, not focusing on the road, yelled, “I CAN MAKE A RIGHT TURN ON RED!”
So since he wasn’t looking, a city bus came speeding and hit the school bus. Everybody died. The end.
This is why busses don’t turn right on red.
La Bodega
I’ve been thinking about the way I eat (for various reasons) and how/why my eating habits are so bad, why I fall back on banal comfort food, why I’m not adventurous in the least.
As I was writing Paso Doble, I kept finding myself associating my characters’ meals at tapas bars with romance. Small bites in small dishes. Tasting. A meal of hors d’oeuvres, eaten slowly, from a lover’s hand. I wanted to be able to do that.
Paint the corners
My 10-year-old XY TD can’t wait to see Pitch. He wants to watch it because it’s something that’s never been done before, a woman pitching in MLB.1 He doesn’t see a girl. He sees himself. In her. The underdog2 3 misunderstood, not wanted or liked, basically alone with too few allies, too different to have as smooth a ride through malehood as his peers.
______________________________
1. Or, as Dude pointed out to me last night because we’re both kind of fascinated with XY’s reaction to the series (whereas 13-year-old XX is so not) (she already knows she’s a badass), a 17-year-old girl struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game and a woman hasn’t been in the MLB since.
2. “A girl will never be able to throw hard enough to compete with boys. It’s biology and we can’t change that.” My dad told me a girl would never be able to throw a curve ball because their elbows are constructed differently from a boy’s. I don’t know if that’s true. I’m not interested enough to find out. But I was kind of shocked to hear it from someone else.
3. I introduced him to Rocky last year. He’s now a devoted disciple of underdog movies. He gets it from his mom.
What is it about this game
… that compels people to reflect and grants epiphanies like a fairy godmother?
Thirty years ago, I was at the KC Royals parade after they won the World Series. You know, George Brett. Bret Saberhagen. Those guys.
I didn’t care about baseball much before or after that, not that I was ever anything but a fan-in-name-only because I didn’t understand the game. A childhood watching Little League and trying to figure out radio announcers’ jargon tends to blunt one’s enthusiasm.
And then there was college and life and the strikes and the juicing and the Congressional hearings and who wants to get into baseball when they threw a big temper tantrum for a game that’s all fake anyway? You want more money for your steroid injections? Fuck you.
Bas relief
Yesterday I threw out karate belts I earned between the ages of 18 and 20. They were musty. Hidden away, like all the stuff I haven’t found places to display yet. I like space. I value space. Open, empty space and shelves that say, “We don’t need to be filled to feel important.” What they need to be filled with is essentials for survival, but that’s another story.
A friend on Facebook asked me how I could bear to throw them away because I earned them. I see her point; they are a trophy and I did earn them. All these years I have not wanted to throw them out (if I thought about it), but something’s been changing in me for a while now, about carrying baggage and grudges.
Raspberry
She wasn’t the worst cat I ever had, but the worst one was the one I hand-raised, and apparently human hand-raised cats are psychopaths.
Razzy peed everywhere. She sprayed me once. Maybe twice. On purpose, looking at us, she’d squat and pee on the carpet if she knew we couldn’t catch her.
Anyway, I knew something was wrong with her. Read more
Decluttering my mind
1. Vomit blue ink all over the agenda book with how cluttered and chaotic the mind is until clarity ensues. It may or may not take 14 pages, front and back.
2. Take the Female Tax Deduction to her art class. Walk through the park barefoot in the grass (for the first time in years) to get to the art gallery. Think about taking a yoga class. Finish a cross stitch. When XX TD is finished with her art class, solve a glass labyrinth with her. Walk (in the grass) (barefoot) (this is crucial) up the terraces to the gallery. Traverse the glass labyrinth. Talk to tourists and answer questions about the new exhibit (the Green Man-ish sculptures) and good barbecue. Stroll through the art gallery after having responded to nature’s call. Sit and let XX TD sketch a medieval knight on a horse.
3. Share pictures that don’t even come close to capturing the magic that was yesterday.
Things to carry. No shoes today.
Just sitting here cross stitching.
I do my best work at the Nelson.
SHUTTLECOCKS
Claes Oldenburg, Coosje van Bruggen
1994
aluminum, fiberglass
At the entry of the glass labyrinth by Robert Morris, installed 2013. The sign didn’t lie. It was hot in there.
GLASS LABYRINTH
Robert Morris
2013
FERMENT
Roxy Paine
2011,
stainless steel
SHEEP PIECE
Henry Moore
1971-1972
bronze
RECLINING FIGURE, HAND
Henry Moore
1979
bronze
THE FOUR SEASONS
Philip Haas
THE FOUR SEASONS
Philip Haas
THE FOUR SEASONS
Philip Haas
Not that I blame them …
After hours and hours of XY Tax Deduction running his mouth and being told repeatedly to be quiet:
Me: “Look. You need to get some imaginary friends and talk to them.”
XY: “I don’t have any.”
Me: “Make some.”
XY: “Well, I did have some, but they ran away.”
Me: “Why?”
XY: “I talked too much.”
Mommy, why don’t you smile anymore?
My son said this to me a couple of months ago and I’ve been guilting over it ever since.
Well, it’s because I’m stressed. My work life kind of exploded some time last summer when I decided to escape the (dying) industry I’d been in for the previous seven years in favor of the formatting work that was falling on top of me. I kept thinking I could do less work for more money and spend time with my kids, but … That’s not the way it worked out.
Is it ever?
In January, my career took a sharp upward turn when I was presented with an offer it’s taken me four months to stop resisting. (Details later, when it’s all finalized.) The deciding factor was time, because, in a totally unrelated twist, I was suddenly presented with a project I won’t be able to resist at all.
On the formatting front, I’ve got a backlog of work and I’m behind. I’m stressed. My house, until two days ago, was a complete wreck (thank you GroupBuy for that cheap house deep-clean). I have to do my taxes. My kids are after me for attention (as is their right), but they’re somehow easier to put off. I was sick most of December and February. Dude’s been sick for the last two months. I have a book coming out on Easter (in case you hadn’t heard). I’m publishing a book for someone else this month. I have another huge project for another client. I’m in charge of producing an important work from Peculiar Pages coming out June 30 and working on edits for the Monsters & Mormons anthology coming out in October. And we come around again to people who come to me for formatting their ebooks.
It’s exciting and nerve-wracking and stress-inducing and I haven’t been able to sleep without some serious medication, which happens to give me a hangover. I like it. I like helping people self-publish. I feel … important. Like I’m accomplishing something with my meager little life. I love it.
But …
“Mommy, why don’t you smile anymore?”
So today I went to get the final item for the Magdalene Easter swag basket (spirit gum, if you must know) and it’s just down the street from Crown Center, across from which is a fountain.
(Well, in Kansas City, you can’t take two steps without falling into a fountain, so that’s not saying anything.) It’s 88F today, but the trees are still bare, which should give you an idea about how bizarre our weather has been.
I decided that, in spite of my backlog of late projects, I’d take the kids to lunch at Crown Center and then let them play in the fountain with about 40 other children. They didn’t have bathing suits on, but who cares? This is an issue of being spawntaneous.
They were happy. I was happy.
And I smiled.
We’re gonna do stuff like this more often.
I wanna fall in love.
From Mrs. Giggles’s post today, this caught my eye and helped me define something for myself:
I know, some folks view “escapism” as a dirty word, because we get defensive when people portray romance readers as silly women who want to escape their real lives by indulging in romantic fantasies. But there is some truth to the insulting stereotype no matter how we try to prettify things – we read romance novels for the vicarious entertainment. Nobody reads romance novels to become a better person – those who claim to do so are either people trying too hard to defend their hobby to critics or academics forced to read those things as part of a research and not as a hobby.
I read romance novels because I get to fall in love over and over and over and over again, that rush of feeling you get when you first meet somebody and there’s this strange and wonderful and glorious attraction and it’s emotional and sexual and spiritual and intellectual (if you’re doing it right) and you happily-ever-after yourself with this person and have a wedding-and-babies epilogue.
But then, real life settles in.
The babies really do come.
But so do the bills.
And the doctor visits for this and that and some other thing, reminding you you’re not twenty-five anymore.
The 7-year-old XX TD won’t stop telling you what she expects to get for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, her next birthday (almost a year away), and Arbor Day, preferably an XBox, a Wii, an iPhone …
The honey-do list gets added to faster than both of you together can keep up with it because you have a 4.5-year-old XY TD that breaks everything he touches—because he can—and you’re stepping on random screws that … you don’t know where they came from.
I love my family, but love is built on history and defeat and triumph and hardship; it’s made for the long haul. Falling in love is the glamour that tricks you into thinking you want to spend enough time with this person and these babies you make together to build that kind of love.
It wears off all too soon.
I’ve had a hell of a day today. Dude doesn’t get off work until late. I have no Calgon in the house. TV doesn’t satisfy. I’ve no interest in immersing myself in one of my craft/sewing/refinishing/decorating projects. I’ve been coding all day and have worn myself out.
But what will help, what I can do, is go fall in love for three or four hours once the kids go to bed and I’m waiting for Dude to get home from work.
That’ll hold me over until tomorrow morning, when I awake and pick up where I leave off tonight.
Because I love my family.
Do not go gentle
My Dragon Lady died yesterday.
Ta ta for now, Rosella. See you in a bit.
The unsung hero
So in light of today’s confessional, I need to talk about something that occurred to me Saturday and has been percolating ever since.
One reason I despise sitcoms is because so often the dad is made out to be an idiot. Yeah. He is. He goes to work (usually at a job he hates), provides for his family, and gets slammed at every turn. Why is he putting up with this?
A mobile phone commercial from a couple of years ago (I forget the provider) has stuck in my head. A middle-class black family, with the kids completely disrespecting the father for some reason, and I thought, “Yeah, that Stupid Dad thing transcends race. All dads are stupid according to Hollywood and Madison Avenue.” The only dad I can recall on TV who wasn’t portrayed as terminally stupid was Bill Cosby, but as everybody knows, he’s got very definite opinions about what is and is not acceptable behavior in parent-child relationships.
Anyway …
Saturday I went out (outside!) to blow leaves. Manual labor gives me the opportunity to let my mind wander, and I was thinking about my husband, who was at work, a typically structured corporate-type job (albeit with hours that are a bit out of the norm), one he sometimes doesn’t care for very much. But it’s secure and we have good health insurance.
I’d been spending my day fiddle-farting around. Did a couple of ebook jobs, did a little DDJ, did some cleaning, some reading … Yelled at my kids (that’s normal). I decided to go do this little chore and it occurred to me about an hour into the job that my husband is the reason I have the freedom to fiddle-fart around, arrange my day any way I want it, and …
… self-publish.
I would never have done this without him behind me. He believed in my talent when I didn’t and spent years pounding his faith into my head. He sacrifices endlessly for me financially and with his time, and this venture that would not exist without him.
No, I would never have done this on my own. It was him, his faith in me, his willingness to sacrifice everything for me. He bears my temper tantrums and my moodiness and my not-very-niceness (read: bitch-on-wheels-ness) with grace and equanimity. He comforts me and dries my tears and helps me solve my problems. He gave me children and supports them and me, helps corral them to let me work.
I’d have nothing were it not for him.
The first movie I ever took my kids to:
Where the Wild Things Are.
Why?
This article and this quote:
Q: What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?
Maurice Sendak: I would tell them to go to hell. That’s a question I will not tolerate.
My new author hero.
Then a commenter (on whichever blog linked it; I can’t remember) said, “Thank you for not contributing to the pussification of America.”
So … I took my kids.
3-almost-4-year-old XY TD was interested until his popcorn ran out and then it might as well have been church with better seats, for all the attention he paid. Besides, he is unscareable.
6-year-old XX TD seemed more engaged with the movie … until she lost one of her quarters. Oh the weeping. Over which I was unmoved because I TOLD her to put it in her pocket or she’d lose it. Ta da! Mama’s right again.
Me? I cried in spots. It’s a mom’s movie. Yeah, I’ve been that torn, that tired, that struggling, that scattered, that out of control. So has my kid.
I got it.
I mean, I got what I could between trying to corral my own little Max and telling the Drama Princess to suck it up.
The internet before Al Gore
Yeah, the joke’s tired. Sue me.
Anyway, 3-almost-4-year-old XY Tax Deduction and I went to Hy-Vee for lunch to kill some time. I love Hy-Vee’s salad bar (best grilled chicken EVER!) and XY TD loves their pizza. And cantaloupe. On the same plate.
It has been my observation that on weekday mornings at Hy-Vee, there is a large number of post-retirement gentlemen sitting around, eating their farmer’s breakfasts and gossiping shooting the breeze, cussing and discussing. They seem to be mostly together, but because of tables and space, they self-select their table companions.
It has been my observation that on weekends when we go see my in-laws in southern Missouri, and we go to the local cafe for breakfast, there is a gathering of four to 10 post-retirement gentlemen sitting around, eating their farmer’s breakfasts and gossiping shooting the breeze, cussing and discussing.
It has been my observation in re-reading the Little House books for the purpose of writing Stay, Pa Ingalls, in the winter, would head out of the house and across the street to the grocery where he would watch off-season farmers play checkers and, I assume, gossip shoot the breeze, cuss and discuss.
Women have these little conclaves, too, but other than in a church-and-crafts context, I can’t think of anything comparable to men-and-their-morning-cafe-routine.
Every time I witness this, I think, “This is the internet before there was the internet.” And it still seems to be going strong. I love it. I think it’s profound in a lot of different ways, most of which I can’t articulate.
Too bad you have to be retired (or in the off season) to have it and enjoy it.
Seven years, no itching
Here’s to me and Dude, who got married 7 years ago in the LDS Nauvoo, Illinois temple (very soon after it re-opened). Yeah, we got married on a Friday. The 13th. On purpose.
And in case you think you’re seeing things, yes, this is what I posted last year. Because it’s been over a year blogging and I love him more now than I did last year.
Throwing cats at your brother isn’t nice.
Why does my child have to be told this?
Tales from the cryptergarten
The 5-year-old Tax Deduction has just informed me that [insert Trendy white-bread Suburban Male Name here]’s mom and dad are always fighting.
Me: So do they fight at school in front of the children?
TD1: No. At home.
Me: Is [TSMN] upset about this?
TD1: No. They don’t want to be together anymore.
Me: Oh, really? How do you know this?
TD1: [TSMN] told me.
Me: Hmm. Do YOUR mommy and daddy fight?
TD1: No. [beat] Do you?
Me: No … We discuss things.
TD1: Is that like fighting?
Me: Only if we have loud voices and yelling. Have you heard us do that?
TD1: No. And [insert Trendy white-bread Suburban Female Name here]’s mom and dad, too.
Me: [TSFN]’s too?
TD1: Yeah. They don’t want to be together, either.
Me [aside to self]: Two meanest kids in the class.