1) Saturday night, our neighbor who recently published a book about the first Olympic games in Greece had a book-signing and author event at Borders, and I went to it. The whole thing made me uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong -- they had a nice-sized crowd and they handled everything very nicely -- I was pleased for them that there was a good turn-out and I hope they sold some books. But that's the kind of thing I know I would have to do if I published a novel, and the idea of having that kind of event terrifies me. Seriously -- I'm too chicken to have a garage sale because I worry no one will come. I can't imagine sitting in a bookstore to do a reading and worrying that no one will show up. I find that kind of thing just mortifying.
2) There is a website I occasionally read where a group of writers provide detailed recaps of select TV shows. I don't read it as often as I used to just because the recaps are pretty long, and I never really participated in the forums there because for one thing, they seem to have a lot of rules about posting and I didn't want to get in trouble for making the wrong kind of comment about "Six Feet Under" or something, and second, I've gotten involved in online communities before, and you know, I waste too much time online as it is without that, you know? (Speaking of wasting time, I did my first Sudoku puzzle today. Like I need another time-sucking addiction in my life!) So yeah -- maybe the people who produce this particular website are a little overly pleased with themselves, and maybe they are kinda over the top about their moderating duties on the forums, but you know what? It's a big wide web out there, and if some website is harshing your mellow? Don't go there anymore. I mean give me a break.
So I was chagrined but unsurprised to discover today that there exists out there a (name of aforementioned website)sucks.com that consists entirely of forums where you can shred the recappers at this TV-show-recapping website and the people who post on the forums. Two of the recapppers whom I've read most frequently seem to the most popular targets. The main descriptor I saw on the threads about each of them seemed to be "bitch."
Now, both of these women are probably pretty thick-skinned, and if you're going to put yourself out there, I guess you're leaving yourself open that kind of thing, but you know what? If I was to discover that there were entire threads of discussion out there online consisting of nothing but nasty, mean-spirited comments about what a bitch I was, written by people who only know me by what I wrote online, I would probably drown in an ocean of my own tears. Seriously. Who needs that? If that's the price of online fame, I'd just as soon stay relatively anonymous.
So anyway. Do I sound like a wimp? So be it. I am a highly sensitive person -- deal with it.
Monday, November 21, 2005
Adventures in Parenting #926
Today, I explained the birds and the bees to Enthusio. To be more precise, I read him a book called Where Did I Come From? that has been around for quite a while -- in fact, I remember my 5th grade teacher reading it to us when we did our Family Life unit, which is why I bought it for my kids. It's full of cartoon drawings, and it makes me happy that illustrated mom and dad in it are far less attractive than Reasonable Man and myself, naked or clothed. I don't need to see some woman with Barbie-doll proportions when I'm already tackling something stressful.
Anyway, the reason this came up today was that we dropped some stuff off at the SPCA Thrift Shop downtown, and I was explaining why I like to donate our extra stuff there and a little bit about how animal shelters work, and this led to a discussion of things responsible pet owners do, like spaying and neutering their pets. Enthusio didn't understand why the boy dogs and cats would need to have an operation to help prevent babies too, and since we've had a number of these kinds of questions over the past few months, I decided the time was right and we sat down and read the book.
I don't know what I was expecting, but Enthusio was completely undaunted by the facts of conception. He was interested enough, but none of it seemed to gross him out or embarrass him, so that was good. I was a little nervous when we got started, but managed to read the whole book in a pretty matter-of-fact way, and he sat there and looked at the pictures and asked the occasional question. After we were done, I asked him if he had anymore questions, and he said he didn't and then announced that he wanted to take the book to school. I explained why that probably wasn't a good idea but said that if he if wanted to talk about any of it again, he could talk to me or his dad, and then he went to play on the computer, and that was that.
So yeah. I've now explained the facts of puberty to one very bored daughter and how babies are made to one very earnest son, and no one has died of embarrassament or, if I'm reading things right, even realized there is anything to be embarrassed about. I guess I'm doing okay.
Anyway, the reason this came up today was that we dropped some stuff off at the SPCA Thrift Shop downtown, and I was explaining why I like to donate our extra stuff there and a little bit about how animal shelters work, and this led to a discussion of things responsible pet owners do, like spaying and neutering their pets. Enthusio didn't understand why the boy dogs and cats would need to have an operation to help prevent babies too, and since we've had a number of these kinds of questions over the past few months, I decided the time was right and we sat down and read the book.
I don't know what I was expecting, but Enthusio was completely undaunted by the facts of conception. He was interested enough, but none of it seemed to gross him out or embarrass him, so that was good. I was a little nervous when we got started, but managed to read the whole book in a pretty matter-of-fact way, and he sat there and looked at the pictures and asked the occasional question. After we were done, I asked him if he had anymore questions, and he said he didn't and then announced that he wanted to take the book to school. I explained why that probably wasn't a good idea but said that if he if wanted to talk about any of it again, he could talk to me or his dad, and then he went to play on the computer, and that was that.
So yeah. I've now explained the facts of puberty to one very bored daughter and how babies are made to one very earnest son, and no one has died of embarrassament or, if I'm reading things right, even realized there is anything to be embarrassed about. I guess I'm doing okay.
Movies
I don't know if I've detailed my patented Tracie Bezerra Film-Movie-Flick Scale of Excellence or Lack Thereof in Cinema in this space. It's pretty simple, really -- if it's great, it's a Film; if it's okay to pretty good, it's a movie, and if it's leaning toward utter suckitude, it's a Flick. Pluses or minuses can be applied as warranted. These ratings are based entirely on my personal enjoyment of the work in question, which usually takes the quality of the writing and freqently the acting as well into consideration, but not the amount of money spent to make it, the number of Oscar nominations it might have received, the awesomeness of the special effects, or how much the general public might have liked it. For instance, I don't give a rat's rear that "Titanic" is expensive, beautiful to look at, or adored by millions. That bloated piece of crap is a Flick in my book.
Yeah, I'm a total snob when it comes to the movies, and I have no problem admitting that.
Anyway, I've taken in a lot of cinema in the last few weeks, and I've been meaning to post about what I've watched, so it seems like a dust off the old system and give her a whirl...
"Garden State" - I watched this on DVD last weekend in a desperate attempt to not work on my novel, and I loved it. It was funny, and Zach Braff and Natalie Portman were both wonderful -- I'd seen him in "Scrubs" and her in several movies, but I would never have suspected that he was capable of such a strong dramatic performance, or that she could be so adorably goofy. I laughed the entire way through her first scene. I had heard that Zach Braff's performance was flat due to his character being on medication, but that it hurt the movie -- I disagree, and thought he portrayed someone who was slowly coming out of the fog of everything he'd been taking for years and years really well. The chemistry between the two characters was also very well done, and Peter Sarsgaard, as the stoner friend they hang out with, was great too. Rating: Film -
"Pride & Prejudice" - Well, I knew I'd go see this one, being kind of a Jane Austen junkie. The first time I saw the trailer, I had mixed feelings about it, since it appeared to be a very movie-fied version, in contrast with the 1995 six-hour A&E version with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy that I absolutely loved. But this new one surprised me by being, in many ways, better than the 1995 one. I think that the older one was probably more what Jane Austen pictured when she wrote the novel -- very prim and proper and elegant, with all the grime of 18th century life edited out. In the new version, though the story is obviously condensed to fit in a shorter running time and some of the scenes are staged more dramatically (Mr. Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet happens outside, where they are sheltered from a huge rainstorm by some sort of stone monument, rather than in a small, quiet drawing room), there is also a warts-and-all quality that lends it more authenticity. Hair is messy, skin is greasy, pigs and geese roam the Bennet estate, and their house is filled with the clutter that you would find in a real house where a family with five daughters lived. Keira Knightley plays a different kind of Elizabeth, who really seems like a 20-year-old girl who hasn't quite figured out what she wants, and the new Mr. Darcy, who doesn't seem like much to look at in the beginning, actually seems kind of hot by the end. Loved it. Rating: Film
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" - This was one of my favorite books of the series, and the previews for the movie looked awesome, but I didn't think it would probably be as good as the third HP movie, and I was right. I enjoyed it a lot -- everything in it was very well done, and the way the ginormously long story was whittled down to fit into the 2+-hour running time without cutting essential plot points from the book (which was my only quibble with HP3) was admirable to say the least. There is never a dull moment in "Goblet of Fire" -- it moves from event to event at a breathtaking pace just because it has to in order to fit all of the action in. As a fan of the books, I wasn't disappointed, but maintaining that breakneck pace does come at the expense of things like character development, and think I would have felt a lot was missing if I wasn't well-versed in the HP universe already. Then again, how many people will go see this movie without having read any of the books or seen any of the previous movies? "Goblet of Fire" has a more humor than the three previous HP movies, due largely to the increased presence of twins Fred and George Weasley, who are homely but awfully amusing, and the whole Yule Ball subplot. Rating: Movie +
"Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" - Our copy of the DVD arrived from Netflix the other day. I realize I probably missed a lot by not seeing it in a theater with hundreds of SW fanatics -- in fact, I probably should have watched it when Reasonable Man was home -- a lot of my enjoyment of the series comes from his worship of it. Anyway, I didn't like this one. I could see how it was better than "Attack of the Clones" (never saw "Phantom Menace"), but the script was still awful, and the only good acting was done by Ewan McGregor. The special effects were good, but I couldn't care less about the storyline. The Jedis totally lost me with that whole "caring about someone enough to be afraid to lose them makes you weak" thing, and the Anakin-Padme relationship always made me want to barf, so it was pretty hard to root for any of the characters to win the battle for Anakin's soul or whatever that crap was about. I do like the CGI Yoda a lot, and did I mention Ewan McGregor? I didn't even mind his facial hair so much in this one. Still, overall it was a disappointment. They should have stopped making these movies after they finished the first twenty minutes of "Return of the Jedi." Rating: Flick +
"The Wiz" - I suspect this is one of those movies, not unlike "The Wizard of Oz," that it helps to have seen for the first time when you were a little kid. I can totally appreciate that a lot of people think it was just a big mess. It's too long by probably an hour, a lot of the acting, especially that of Diana Ross as Dorothy, is shrill and weirdly overwrought, and there is no excuse for the amount of Nipsey Russell in this movie. Still, having seen it the first time when I was around 10 years old, and having watched it often enough growing up to know learn the words to a lot of the songs and that kind of thing, I have to say, this one is a favorite. Here are the things I like about it:
1) Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow is fabulous. His singing, dancing and, surprisingly, acting are all first rate. I have the song he sings in his first scene, "You Can't Win," on my iPod. His performance in "The Wiz" is a huge part of the reason I was a big fan of his once upon a time.
2) Ted Ross as the Cowardly Lion and his song "I'm a Mean Old Lion."
3) The dancing
4) The songs (except the two Nipsey Russell sings)
5) The gritty urban sets
6) The scary scene in the subway where all kinds of weird stuff chases the main characters
I found this movie on DVD for $5.50 at Target last week. A bargain at twice the price! Rating: Film -
"Spanglish" - I'd heard mixed reviews of this movie when it came out , but was intrigued by the previews, and I'd heard good things about it from several people I knew. So I was excited to come across it on HBO last night. I really enjoyed it. I always appreciate it when a film has that quality where you're not sure where the story is going or what kind of resolution is going to be satisfying, and this one was so full of unique characters and situations that I felt that way throughout. Paz Vega, Tea Leoni and Adam Sandler all give their characters complexity, and I liked how none of them came off as purely saintly or villainous. I remember reading in reviews that Leoni's character, Deb was such a monster that she ruined the whole movie, but I disagree with that. Deb is a monster for sure, but I found her both believable and very, very human, and while I could certainly sympathize deeply with Adam Sandler's John for being married to her, I liked Deb enough to want John to stay with her. Sandler's performance as John has both the quick you expect from him as well as a sweetness and real likeability. He's is really transcending the whole goofball comedy guy thing and becoming an interesting actor. Both of the young actresses who played teen daughters Bernie and Christina were excellent. My only quibble about with movie is that Flor learns English much too quickly and easily. Rating: Movie +
Yeah, I'm a total snob when it comes to the movies, and I have no problem admitting that.
Anyway, I've taken in a lot of cinema in the last few weeks, and I've been meaning to post about what I've watched, so it seems like a dust off the old system and give her a whirl...
"Garden State" - I watched this on DVD last weekend in a desperate attempt to not work on my novel, and I loved it. It was funny, and Zach Braff and Natalie Portman were both wonderful -- I'd seen him in "Scrubs" and her in several movies, but I would never have suspected that he was capable of such a strong dramatic performance, or that she could be so adorably goofy. I laughed the entire way through her first scene. I had heard that Zach Braff's performance was flat due to his character being on medication, but that it hurt the movie -- I disagree, and thought he portrayed someone who was slowly coming out of the fog of everything he'd been taking for years and years really well. The chemistry between the two characters was also very well done, and Peter Sarsgaard, as the stoner friend they hang out with, was great too. Rating: Film -
"Pride & Prejudice" - Well, I knew I'd go see this one, being kind of a Jane Austen junkie. The first time I saw the trailer, I had mixed feelings about it, since it appeared to be a very movie-fied version, in contrast with the 1995 six-hour A&E version with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy that I absolutely loved. But this new one surprised me by being, in many ways, better than the 1995 one. I think that the older one was probably more what Jane Austen pictured when she wrote the novel -- very prim and proper and elegant, with all the grime of 18th century life edited out. In the new version, though the story is obviously condensed to fit in a shorter running time and some of the scenes are staged more dramatically (Mr. Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet happens outside, where they are sheltered from a huge rainstorm by some sort of stone monument, rather than in a small, quiet drawing room), there is also a warts-and-all quality that lends it more authenticity. Hair is messy, skin is greasy, pigs and geese roam the Bennet estate, and their house is filled with the clutter that you would find in a real house where a family with five daughters lived. Keira Knightley plays a different kind of Elizabeth, who really seems like a 20-year-old girl who hasn't quite figured out what she wants, and the new Mr. Darcy, who doesn't seem like much to look at in the beginning, actually seems kind of hot by the end. Loved it. Rating: Film
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" - This was one of my favorite books of the series, and the previews for the movie looked awesome, but I didn't think it would probably be as good as the third HP movie, and I was right. I enjoyed it a lot -- everything in it was very well done, and the way the ginormously long story was whittled down to fit into the 2+-hour running time without cutting essential plot points from the book (which was my only quibble with HP3) was admirable to say the least. There is never a dull moment in "Goblet of Fire" -- it moves from event to event at a breathtaking pace just because it has to in order to fit all of the action in. As a fan of the books, I wasn't disappointed, but maintaining that breakneck pace does come at the expense of things like character development, and think I would have felt a lot was missing if I wasn't well-versed in the HP universe already. Then again, how many people will go see this movie without having read any of the books or seen any of the previous movies? "Goblet of Fire" has a more humor than the three previous HP movies, due largely to the increased presence of twins Fred and George Weasley, who are homely but awfully amusing, and the whole Yule Ball subplot. Rating: Movie +
"Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" - Our copy of the DVD arrived from Netflix the other day. I realize I probably missed a lot by not seeing it in a theater with hundreds of SW fanatics -- in fact, I probably should have watched it when Reasonable Man was home -- a lot of my enjoyment of the series comes from his worship of it. Anyway, I didn't like this one. I could see how it was better than "Attack of the Clones" (never saw "Phantom Menace"), but the script was still awful, and the only good acting was done by Ewan McGregor. The special effects were good, but I couldn't care less about the storyline. The Jedis totally lost me with that whole "caring about someone enough to be afraid to lose them makes you weak" thing, and the Anakin-Padme relationship always made me want to barf, so it was pretty hard to root for any of the characters to win the battle for Anakin's soul or whatever that crap was about. I do like the CGI Yoda a lot, and did I mention Ewan McGregor? I didn't even mind his facial hair so much in this one. Still, overall it was a disappointment. They should have stopped making these movies after they finished the first twenty minutes of "Return of the Jedi." Rating: Flick +
"The Wiz" - I suspect this is one of those movies, not unlike "The Wizard of Oz," that it helps to have seen for the first time when you were a little kid. I can totally appreciate that a lot of people think it was just a big mess. It's too long by probably an hour, a lot of the acting, especially that of Diana Ross as Dorothy, is shrill and weirdly overwrought, and there is no excuse for the amount of Nipsey Russell in this movie. Still, having seen it the first time when I was around 10 years old, and having watched it often enough growing up to know learn the words to a lot of the songs and that kind of thing, I have to say, this one is a favorite. Here are the things I like about it:
1) Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow is fabulous. His singing, dancing and, surprisingly, acting are all first rate. I have the song he sings in his first scene, "You Can't Win," on my iPod. His performance in "The Wiz" is a huge part of the reason I was a big fan of his once upon a time.
2) Ted Ross as the Cowardly Lion and his song "I'm a Mean Old Lion."
3) The dancing
4) The songs (except the two Nipsey Russell sings)
5) The gritty urban sets
6) The scary scene in the subway where all kinds of weird stuff chases the main characters
I found this movie on DVD for $5.50 at Target last week. A bargain at twice the price! Rating: Film -
"Spanglish" - I'd heard mixed reviews of this movie when it came out , but was intrigued by the previews, and I'd heard good things about it from several people I knew. So I was excited to come across it on HBO last night. I really enjoyed it. I always appreciate it when a film has that quality where you're not sure where the story is going or what kind of resolution is going to be satisfying, and this one was so full of unique characters and situations that I felt that way throughout. Paz Vega, Tea Leoni and Adam Sandler all give their characters complexity, and I liked how none of them came off as purely saintly or villainous. I remember reading in reviews that Leoni's character, Deb was such a monster that she ruined the whole movie, but I disagree with that. Deb is a monster for sure, but I found her both believable and very, very human, and while I could certainly sympathize deeply with Adam Sandler's John for being married to her, I liked Deb enough to want John to stay with her. Sandler's performance as John has both the quick you expect from him as well as a sweetness and real likeability. He's is really transcending the whole goofball comedy guy thing and becoming an interesting actor. Both of the young actresses who played teen daughters Bernie and Christina were excellent. My only quibble about with movie is that Flor learns English much too quickly and easily. Rating: Movie +
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
The Halfway Point
Every day I sit down to write, think about where I am in my story, and go "I can't do this." Then I put my fingers on the keyboard and crank out a one or two thousand words. Sunday afternoon I knew I was behind and that I had a couple of hours and that I really needed to get to work, and I ended up writing almost 2,500 words.
Today is the 15th, which means I'm halfway through the month of November. Usually by now I'm cruising along, far ahead of the 25K point where I need to be. Usually my story is popping along by now. But there's not much that's usual about this year.
This year I feel like I'm doing well to hit my this-is-where-I-need-to-be-if-I'm-averaging-1700-words-a-day mark each day and playing catch-up on the days I don't make it. The story is still moving along, although I'm afraid to read through it for fear of discovering what a mess it is and not having the will to go on from there. In all likelihood, when I do sit down to read it from beginning to end, I'll discover it isn't as bad as I thought. But that's for December. For now, I'm just taking it one day at a time and trying not to worry about how quickly November 30 approaches.
I'm on target to hit 50,000 words by the end of the month.
I am following my usual pattern of charting out a summary of what will happen in the first half of the novel, writing that first half, and then needing to lay out the remainder of the story as I head into the second half.
And most important, every day I ignore that voice that say "I can't do this," put my fingers on the keyboard, and begin to type.
Today is the 15th, which means I'm halfway through the month of November. Usually by now I'm cruising along, far ahead of the 25K point where I need to be. Usually my story is popping along by now. But there's not much that's usual about this year.
This year I feel like I'm doing well to hit my this-is-where-I-need-to-be-if-I'm-averaging-1700-words-a-day mark each day and playing catch-up on the days I don't make it. The story is still moving along, although I'm afraid to read through it for fear of discovering what a mess it is and not having the will to go on from there. In all likelihood, when I do sit down to read it from beginning to end, I'll discover it isn't as bad as I thought. But that's for December. For now, I'm just taking it one day at a time and trying not to worry about how quickly November 30 approaches.
I'm on target to hit 50,000 words by the end of the month.
I am following my usual pattern of charting out a summary of what will happen in the first half of the novel, writing that first half, and then needing to lay out the remainder of the story as I head into the second half.
And most important, every day I ignore that voice that say "I can't do this," put my fingers on the keyboard, and begin to type.
Monday, November 14, 2005
I am having the weirdest cold. Saturday afternoon I knew I was starting to come down with it -- I was snuffling and sneezing and I had a sinus headache, and I was blowing my nose till it felt kind of raw and I was just thinking, damn, this is going to be ugly. We went out to dinner with friends that evening (lucky them!) and by the time we left the restaurant, I had that whole brain-floating-above-your-head feeling that that one cold medicine commercial illustrated so well a few years ago, and I was talking with that by-dose-is-stuffed-ub voice and everything. It turned out we only had half a dose or so of Nyquil at home, but I slammed it, and went to bed expecting to have a miserable night.
At some point during the night, I woke up and realized I wasn't really miserable, and that in fact I'd been sleeping peacefully for several hours. In the morning I awoke feeling... just fine. Not 100% or anything, mind you -- I didn't feel like going for a jog, and my sinus cavities had that dried up-scooped out kind of feeling you get when you take a heavy antihistamine. But I was well rest and feeling healthy enough to go about my day, which included going to the movies, writing 2,400 words, and going out to dinner with some different friends from the night before.
Toward the end of last night, once again, I was feeling snuffly and sneezy and headachey and just generally crappy. We didn't have any Nyquil in the house and I hadn't bothered to buy anymore because I thought I was well, so I drank some lemonade with a shot of vodka and later I took some Sudafed and some Tylenol, and then I went to bed. And it was the same story as the night before. Soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell into a pleasant, restful sleep, and I woke up this morning feeling well rested and ready to start the day. I even went to the gym.
So, I don't know. It's 7:30 and maybe that snuffly feeling will be hitting me soon. I should probably go fix myself some lemonade and vodka just in case.
At some point during the night, I woke up and realized I wasn't really miserable, and that in fact I'd been sleeping peacefully for several hours. In the morning I awoke feeling... just fine. Not 100% or anything, mind you -- I didn't feel like going for a jog, and my sinus cavities had that dried up-scooped out kind of feeling you get when you take a heavy antihistamine. But I was well rest and feeling healthy enough to go about my day, which included going to the movies, writing 2,400 words, and going out to dinner with some different friends from the night before.
Toward the end of last night, once again, I was feeling snuffly and sneezy and headachey and just generally crappy. We didn't have any Nyquil in the house and I hadn't bothered to buy anymore because I thought I was well, so I drank some lemonade with a shot of vodka and later I took some Sudafed and some Tylenol, and then I went to bed. And it was the same story as the night before. Soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell into a pleasant, restful sleep, and I woke up this morning feeling well rested and ready to start the day. I even went to the gym.
So, I don't know. It's 7:30 and maybe that snuffly feeling will be hitting me soon. I should probably go fix myself some lemonade and vodka just in case.
Friday, November 11, 2005
At Last: Photos!
Yeah, I know you were waiting with baited breath and all that...
The kids on Halloween:
I think this is one of my favorite costumes Mermaid has ever worn. The ruby slippers were too big and gave her some trouble, but that hasn't stopped her from wearing them out to play every day after school since then. I like Enthusio's costume too, of course, but I loved his Harry Potter costume last year so much that it was hard to top that. In any case, they both had a blast, and you should have seen how much candy they got!
Enthusio's school picture:
This will probably be one of his nicest school photos. I love it!
Mermaid's school picture:
Well, you can't win 'em all, right? She looks like she's being coerced to put on a happy face. I wanted her to do retakes -- she insisted her picture was beautiful and replaced last year's photo with the new one in the frame on the mantle when I wasn't looking. She obviously felt strongly about it, so I backed off. Please note the extremely cool tee shirt!
The kids on Halloween:
I think this is one of my favorite costumes Mermaid has ever worn. The ruby slippers were too big and gave her some trouble, but that hasn't stopped her from wearing them out to play every day after school since then. I like Enthusio's costume too, of course, but I loved his Harry Potter costume last year so much that it was hard to top that. In any case, they both had a blast, and you should have seen how much candy they got!
Enthusio's school picture:
This will probably be one of his nicest school photos. I love it!
Mermaid's school picture:
Well, you can't win 'em all, right? She looks like she's being coerced to put on a happy face. I wanted her to do retakes -- she insisted her picture was beautiful and replaced last year's photo with the new one in the frame on the mantle when I wasn't looking. She obviously felt strongly about it, so I backed off. Please note the extremely cool tee shirt!
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Not Dead
Yep, I'm back. I was way busy last week, and this week I've actually had plenty of time to post, but I couldn't out of guilt, because I was supposed to be writing my novel but I wasn't doing that. All I can tell you is that this blogging thing is sick thing if it's both something I end up feeling guilty for doing and for not doing. Anyway, so much has gone on lately and I"m going to attempt to just condense and write short bits about lots of different things.
1) I'm having a hell of a time writing this novel, and I don't mean that in a good way. My main character is someone I can't really relate to in any way. She was a blast to write about as a supporting character -- she'd basically enter a room, say a few bitchy things, and then flounce off. I believe I actually used that word -- "flounce" -- to describe how she left the room a number of time. Now I have to get inside her head. Okay: think of the person you went to high school with with whom you had the least possible amount of life experience in common. Then imagine sitting down and trying to write 50,000 words from that person's perspective. I'm writing it all right -- I passed 18,000 words earlier this afternoon -- but I have no idea if I'm getting it right. But that's a problem for December. For now -- don't get it right, get it written!
2) Last week was my week from hell. I spent so much time thinking about how busy I was that I started to bore myself with it. Suffice it to say that I: co-chaired the book fair at our school with 4 other moms, did all the paperwork for the school pasta feed happening the same week, did the whole Halloween thing solo, as Reasonable Man was on a much deserved fun trip to Washington DC for 4 days, hosted my Bunko group at my house, started my novel, and flew back east for a 3-day writing weekend. It was a lot of stuff, and some of it was more fun than stress, but I'm still glad it's over.
3) Chairing the book fair was fun, and it made a buttload of money for the school library. I hadn't been a chair before, but I've taken a shift as a cashier almost every book fair since Montgomery opened, and one thing that always drives me crazy is how all the kids come in with their wadded up dollars and greasy change, and instead of buying books, many of which are, admittedly, outside their price range, they waste their precious pennies on all kinds of plastic crap disguised as "school supplies." There's always one hot item in particular --usually these little space-age looking highlighters that come in all different colors. All the girls come in and buy them in every possible color -- first, the pink and purple ones disappear, then the blue and the green, and eventually, there's only orange left. And I just think, what the hell do second graders have to highlight. Well, I'm happy to say that a) the other chairs and I were so disgusted with some of the crap we were supposed to put out for these kids to buy that we just took a bunch of it and hid it. I mean, terry cloth wrist bands and rock and roll necklaces? Give me a break -- it's a book fair!); and b) the hot items this year were fuzzy animal print pencils and eraser. In other words, things that elementary school kids actually use in school.
4) Reasonable Man did something that was awesome while I was gone over the weekend. He bought tickets for opening night of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," and he got a babysitter! In the past, he and I have usually ended up going to see the HP movies seperately. I guess they always used to come out near the end of the quarter when we'd used up most or all of our respite hours or something. Anyhoo, this year we're both going on opening night! And I'll take Enthusio sometime after that, once we've previewed it. We watched a little 15-minute "making of"-type preview for it the other night and it looks like it's going to be awesome :-)
5) Tonight I'm saying the hell with the last two weeks' worth of "Survivor" I have taped and just watching the one that's on. I pretty much hate everyone on it and can't remember who's allied with who anyway. I don't even know if they merged yet or not. Whatever.
6) One show I find time to watch every episode of, even though it's on five days a week, is "Starting Over," which is this reality show where six women going through difficult times come to live in a house and work with a psychologist and two life coaches to break their negative patterns, heal themselves, and basically fix themselves so they can go back out into the world happier and healthier. I know, it sounds kind of lame. Trust me, it's riveting. Right now, in addition to the girl who is former stripper and escort, there's a woman with ADHD, dyslexia, etc. who is learning how to connect with other people (as opposed to just being completely obnoxious), a 40-year-old who is still supported by her parents who is learning to grow up, a woman learning to live after breast cancer and a complete hysterectomy, a very large woman who is there to lose weight and also "eliminate chaos" who just learned that she has a fibroid tumor that weighs about 40 lbs and has to be removed very soon even though she has no health insurance, and finally, a girl who is there to finally grieve her mother, who died in the attacks on 9/11. Naturally, they don't all get along all the time; naturally, they screw up their assignments and their life coaches read them the riot act; naturally there's tears and drama and I can't stop watching. Check it out.
7) Last but not least -- my kids are AWESOME. There's been so much going on lately and they've really just rolled with all of it. The night I had Bunko at my house, Reasonable Man was still out of town, so I let them play on the computer till everyone arrived and then I sent them upstairs to watch a movie. We barely heard a peep out of them the rest of the evening, but my favorite part was when they trotted downstairs at 9 pm in their pajamas, got themselves their vitamins, gave me a kiss, and went on up to bed. I was so proud that I made them pancakes the next morning. I love those guys! (I have school and Halloween pictures that I will post as soon as I can figure out a way around the problems I'm having with my photo-editing software.)
1) I'm having a hell of a time writing this novel, and I don't mean that in a good way. My main character is someone I can't really relate to in any way. She was a blast to write about as a supporting character -- she'd basically enter a room, say a few bitchy things, and then flounce off. I believe I actually used that word -- "flounce" -- to describe how she left the room a number of time. Now I have to get inside her head. Okay: think of the person you went to high school with with whom you had the least possible amount of life experience in common. Then imagine sitting down and trying to write 50,000 words from that person's perspective. I'm writing it all right -- I passed 18,000 words earlier this afternoon -- but I have no idea if I'm getting it right. But that's a problem for December. For now -- don't get it right, get it written!
2) Last week was my week from hell. I spent so much time thinking about how busy I was that I started to bore myself with it. Suffice it to say that I: co-chaired the book fair at our school with 4 other moms, did all the paperwork for the school pasta feed happening the same week, did the whole Halloween thing solo, as Reasonable Man was on a much deserved fun trip to Washington DC for 4 days, hosted my Bunko group at my house, started my novel, and flew back east for a 3-day writing weekend. It was a lot of stuff, and some of it was more fun than stress, but I'm still glad it's over.
3) Chairing the book fair was fun, and it made a buttload of money for the school library. I hadn't been a chair before, but I've taken a shift as a cashier almost every book fair since Montgomery opened, and one thing that always drives me crazy is how all the kids come in with their wadded up dollars and greasy change, and instead of buying books, many of which are, admittedly, outside their price range, they waste their precious pennies on all kinds of plastic crap disguised as "school supplies." There's always one hot item in particular --usually these little space-age looking highlighters that come in all different colors. All the girls come in and buy them in every possible color -- first, the pink and purple ones disappear, then the blue and the green, and eventually, there's only orange left. And I just think, what the hell do second graders have to highlight. Well, I'm happy to say that a) the other chairs and I were so disgusted with some of the crap we were supposed to put out for these kids to buy that we just took a bunch of it and hid it. I mean, terry cloth wrist bands and rock and roll necklaces? Give me a break -- it's a book fair!); and b) the hot items this year were fuzzy animal print pencils and eraser. In other words, things that elementary school kids actually use in school.
4) Reasonable Man did something that was awesome while I was gone over the weekend. He bought tickets for opening night of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," and he got a babysitter! In the past, he and I have usually ended up going to see the HP movies seperately. I guess they always used to come out near the end of the quarter when we'd used up most or all of our respite hours or something. Anyhoo, this year we're both going on opening night! And I'll take Enthusio sometime after that, once we've previewed it. We watched a little 15-minute "making of"-type preview for it the other night and it looks like it's going to be awesome :-)
5) Tonight I'm saying the hell with the last two weeks' worth of "Survivor" I have taped and just watching the one that's on. I pretty much hate everyone on it and can't remember who's allied with who anyway. I don't even know if they merged yet or not. Whatever.
6) One show I find time to watch every episode of, even though it's on five days a week, is "Starting Over," which is this reality show where six women going through difficult times come to live in a house and work with a psychologist and two life coaches to break their negative patterns, heal themselves, and basically fix themselves so they can go back out into the world happier and healthier. I know, it sounds kind of lame. Trust me, it's riveting. Right now, in addition to the girl who is former stripper and escort, there's a woman with ADHD, dyslexia, etc. who is learning how to connect with other people (as opposed to just being completely obnoxious), a 40-year-old who is still supported by her parents who is learning to grow up, a woman learning to live after breast cancer and a complete hysterectomy, a very large woman who is there to lose weight and also "eliminate chaos" who just learned that she has a fibroid tumor that weighs about 40 lbs and has to be removed very soon even though she has no health insurance, and finally, a girl who is there to finally grieve her mother, who died in the attacks on 9/11. Naturally, they don't all get along all the time; naturally, they screw up their assignments and their life coaches read them the riot act; naturally there's tears and drama and I can't stop watching. Check it out.
7) Last but not least -- my kids are AWESOME. There's been so much going on lately and they've really just rolled with all of it. The night I had Bunko at my house, Reasonable Man was still out of town, so I let them play on the computer till everyone arrived and then I sent them upstairs to watch a movie. We barely heard a peep out of them the rest of the evening, but my favorite part was when they trotted downstairs at 9 pm in their pajamas, got themselves their vitamins, gave me a kiss, and went on up to bed. I was so proud that I made them pancakes the next morning. I love those guys! (I have school and Halloween pictures that I will post as soon as I can figure out a way around the problems I'm having with my photo-editing software.)
Monday, October 24, 2005
Holland Schmolland
A friend of mind who has an autistic child sent me this essay several months ago. I love it.
If you have a child with autism, which I do, and if you troll the Internet for information, which I have done, you will come across a certain inspirational analogy. It goes like this: Imagine that you are planning a trip to Italy. You read all the latest travel books, you consult with friends about what to pack, and you develop an elaborate itinerary for your glorious trip. The day arrives. You board the plane and settle in with your in-flight magazine, dreaming of trattorias, gondola rides and gelato. However, when the plane lands you discover, much to your surprise, you are not in Italy -- you are in Holland. You are greatly dismayed at this abrupt and unexpected change in plans. You rant and rave to the travel agency, but it does no good. You are stuck. After a while, you tire of fighting and begin to look at what Holland has to offer. You notice the beautiful tulips, the kindly people in wooden shoes, the French fries and mayonnaise, and you think, “This isn’t exactly what I planned, but it’s not so bad. It’s just different.” Having a child with autism is supposed to be like this -- not any worse than having a typical child -- just different.
When I read that, my son was almost three, completely non-verbal and was hitting me over a hundred times a day. While I appreciated the intention of the story, I couldn’t help but think, “Are they kidding? We are not in some peaceful countryside dotted with windmills. We are in a country under siege -- dodging bombs, trying to board overloaded helicopters, bribing officials -- all the while thinking, “What happened to our beautiful life?”
That was 5 years ago. My son is now 8 and though we have come to accept that he will always have autism, we no longer feel like citizens of a battle torn nation. With the help of countless dedicated therapists and teachers, biological interventions, and an enormously supportive family, my son has become a fun-loving, affectionate boy with many endearing qualities and skills. In the process we’ve created… well… our own country, with its own unique traditions and customs.
It’s not a war zone, but it’s still not Holland. Let’s call it Schmolland.
In Schmolland, it is perfectly customary to lick walls, rub cold pieces of metal across your mouth and line up all your toys end to end. You can show affection by giving a “pointy chin.” A “pointy chin” is when you act like you are going to hug someone and just when you are really close, you jam your chin into the other person’s shoulder. For the person giving the “pointy chin” this feels really good, for the receiver not so much – but you get used to it. For citizens of Schmolland, it is quite normal to repeat lines from videos to express emotion. If you are sad, you can look downcast and say “Oh Pongo.” When mad or anxious, you might shout, “Snow can’t stop me!” or “Duchess, kittens, come on!” Sometimes, “And now our feature presentation” says it all. In Schmolland, there’s not a lot to do, so our citizens find amusement wherever they can. Bouncing on the couch for hours, methodically pulling feathers out of down pillows, and laughing hysterically in bed at 4:00am, are all traditional Schmutch pastimes.
The hard part about living in our country is dealing with people from other countries. We try to assimilate ourselves and mimic their customs, but we aren’t always successful. It’s perfectly understandable that an 8-year-old boy from Schmolland would steal a train from a toddler at the Thomas the Tank Engine Train Table at Barnes and Noble. But this is clearly not understandable or acceptable in other countries, and so we must drag our 8 year old out of the store kicking and screaming while all the customers look on with stark, pitying stares. But we ignore these looks and focus on the exit sign because we are a proud people. Where we live, it is not surprising when an 8-year-old boy reaches for the fleshy part of a woman’s upper torso and says, “Do we touch boodoo?” We simply say, “No we don’t touch boodoo” and go on about our business. It’s a bit more startling in other countries, however, and can cause all sorts of cross-cultural misunderstandings. And, though most foreigners can get a drop of water on their pants and still carry on, this is intolerable to certain citizens in Schmolland who insist that the pants must come off no matter where they are, and regardless of whether another pair of pants are present.
Other families who are affected by autism are familiar and comforting to us, yet are still separate entities. Together we make up a federation of countries, kind of like Scandinavia. Like a person from Denmark talking with a person from Norway, (or in our case someone from Schmenmark talking with someone from Schmorway), we share enough similarities in our language and customs to understand each other, but conversations inevitably highlight the diversity of our traditions. “Oh your child is a runner? Mine won’t go to the bathroom without asking permission.” “My child eats paper. Yesterday he ate a whole video box.” “My daughter only eats 4 foods, all of them white.” “My son wants to blow on everyone.” “My son can’t stand to hear the word no. We can’t use any negatives at all in our house.” “We finally had to lock up the VCR because my son was obsessed with the rewind button.”
There is one thing we all agree on: we are a growing population.
10 years ago, 1 in 10,000 children had autism.
Today the rate is approximately 1 in 250.
Something is dreadfully wrong. Though the causes of the increase are still being hotly debated, a number of parents and professionals believe genetic pre-disposition has collided with too many environment insults -- toxins, chemicals, anti-biotics, vaccines -- to create immunological chaos in the nervous systems of developing children. One medical journalist speculated that these children are like the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” here to alert us to the growing dangers in our environment. While this is certainly not a view shared by all in the autism community, it feels true to me.
I hope that researchers discover the magic bullet we all so desperately crave. And I will never stop investigating new treatments and therapies that might help my son. But more and more my priorities are shifting from what “could be” to “what is.” I look around at this country my family has created, with all its unique customs, and it feels like home. For us, any time spent “nation-building” is time well spent.
Holland Schmolland
By Laura Krueger Crawford
By Laura Krueger Crawford
If you have a child with autism, which I do, and if you troll the Internet for information, which I have done, you will come across a certain inspirational analogy. It goes like this: Imagine that you are planning a trip to Italy. You read all the latest travel books, you consult with friends about what to pack, and you develop an elaborate itinerary for your glorious trip. The day arrives. You board the plane and settle in with your in-flight magazine, dreaming of trattorias, gondola rides and gelato. However, when the plane lands you discover, much to your surprise, you are not in Italy -- you are in Holland. You are greatly dismayed at this abrupt and unexpected change in plans. You rant and rave to the travel agency, but it does no good. You are stuck. After a while, you tire of fighting and begin to look at what Holland has to offer. You notice the beautiful tulips, the kindly people in wooden shoes, the French fries and mayonnaise, and you think, “This isn’t exactly what I planned, but it’s not so bad. It’s just different.” Having a child with autism is supposed to be like this -- not any worse than having a typical child -- just different.
When I read that, my son was almost three, completely non-verbal and was hitting me over a hundred times a day. While I appreciated the intention of the story, I couldn’t help but think, “Are they kidding? We are not in some peaceful countryside dotted with windmills. We are in a country under siege -- dodging bombs, trying to board overloaded helicopters, bribing officials -- all the while thinking, “What happened to our beautiful life?”
That was 5 years ago. My son is now 8 and though we have come to accept that he will always have autism, we no longer feel like citizens of a battle torn nation. With the help of countless dedicated therapists and teachers, biological interventions, and an enormously supportive family, my son has become a fun-loving, affectionate boy with many endearing qualities and skills. In the process we’ve created… well… our own country, with its own unique traditions and customs.
It’s not a war zone, but it’s still not Holland. Let’s call it Schmolland.
In Schmolland, it is perfectly customary to lick walls, rub cold pieces of metal across your mouth and line up all your toys end to end. You can show affection by giving a “pointy chin.” A “pointy chin” is when you act like you are going to hug someone and just when you are really close, you jam your chin into the other person’s shoulder. For the person giving the “pointy chin” this feels really good, for the receiver not so much – but you get used to it. For citizens of Schmolland, it is quite normal to repeat lines from videos to express emotion. If you are sad, you can look downcast and say “Oh Pongo.” When mad or anxious, you might shout, “Snow can’t stop me!” or “Duchess, kittens, come on!” Sometimes, “And now our feature presentation” says it all. In Schmolland, there’s not a lot to do, so our citizens find amusement wherever they can. Bouncing on the couch for hours, methodically pulling feathers out of down pillows, and laughing hysterically in bed at 4:00am, are all traditional Schmutch pastimes.
The hard part about living in our country is dealing with people from other countries. We try to assimilate ourselves and mimic their customs, but we aren’t always successful. It’s perfectly understandable that an 8-year-old boy from Schmolland would steal a train from a toddler at the Thomas the Tank Engine Train Table at Barnes and Noble. But this is clearly not understandable or acceptable in other countries, and so we must drag our 8 year old out of the store kicking and screaming while all the customers look on with stark, pitying stares. But we ignore these looks and focus on the exit sign because we are a proud people. Where we live, it is not surprising when an 8-year-old boy reaches for the fleshy part of a woman’s upper torso and says, “Do we touch boodoo?” We simply say, “No we don’t touch boodoo” and go on about our business. It’s a bit more startling in other countries, however, and can cause all sorts of cross-cultural misunderstandings. And, though most foreigners can get a drop of water on their pants and still carry on, this is intolerable to certain citizens in Schmolland who insist that the pants must come off no matter where they are, and regardless of whether another pair of pants are present.
Other families who are affected by autism are familiar and comforting to us, yet are still separate entities. Together we make up a federation of countries, kind of like Scandinavia. Like a person from Denmark talking with a person from Norway, (or in our case someone from Schmenmark talking with someone from Schmorway), we share enough similarities in our language and customs to understand each other, but conversations inevitably highlight the diversity of our traditions. “Oh your child is a runner? Mine won’t go to the bathroom without asking permission.” “My child eats paper. Yesterday he ate a whole video box.” “My daughter only eats 4 foods, all of them white.” “My son wants to blow on everyone.” “My son can’t stand to hear the word no. We can’t use any negatives at all in our house.” “We finally had to lock up the VCR because my son was obsessed with the rewind button.”
There is one thing we all agree on: we are a growing population.
10 years ago, 1 in 10,000 children had autism.
Today the rate is approximately 1 in 250.
Something is dreadfully wrong. Though the causes of the increase are still being hotly debated, a number of parents and professionals believe genetic pre-disposition has collided with too many environment insults -- toxins, chemicals, anti-biotics, vaccines -- to create immunological chaos in the nervous systems of developing children. One medical journalist speculated that these children are like the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” here to alert us to the growing dangers in our environment. While this is certainly not a view shared by all in the autism community, it feels true to me.
I hope that researchers discover the magic bullet we all so desperately crave. And I will never stop investigating new treatments and therapies that might help my son. But more and more my priorities are shifting from what “could be” to “what is.” I look around at this country my family has created, with all its unique customs, and it feels like home. For us, any time spent “nation-building” is time well spent.
No Energy
Today is a day I should go running. There was some question about this at one point when I was thinking I needed to go to the gym because my gym-buddy Sue would be wanting to go and have the coffee and all. Sometimes I run to the gym and we go and have the coffee and then she drives me home. But then she called me and reminded me that on Saturday night, she couldn't bend her leg. I guess it's not any better today. That meant there was no good reason for me to go to the gym and I no longer had that excuse to get out of running. So running it is. I guess.
The thing is, I've been having some trouble getting going this morning. Here's what happened. Last night Reasonable Man was watching a Kings game downstairs, so I started watching my Sunday/9 pm selection of the week, which was "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," aka my favorite of the three "L&O" shows. For the past year and a little more I have forsaken this show in favor of a little show you may have heard of about these crazy chicks who live on Wisteria Lane (ever notice that "Wisteria" rhymes with "hysteria?" I don't think this is so much a coincidence.) Anyway, guess what, folks? My patience with these ladies has officially run out, and I am back with "L&O:CI," even though pscycho-cop Detective Goren got a little over-tired and now he's going to be sharing his show with Mr. Big.
What's that? You have no idea WTF I'm talking about? That's okay. Neither do I half the time.
The important thing is, I was upstairs watching TV, and when my show was over, I kept lying there on the bed reading my book, and then Reasonable Man came upstairs and got ready to for bed, and then I did the same, and then I read some more, and at some point during all this mundane crap I made a very conscious decision not to go downstairs and take my pills. I'm not going to try to argue that this makes any sense, because sometimes I end up going up and down the stair several times before I go to bed, but last night? The idea of one trip down to the kitchen and back was just too much. Don't ask me. I knew there might be consequences, but I didn't care. I wasn't going down there and that was that.
The result was that, although I slept quite well and I don't remember waking during the night at all, I had this dream. There was all kinds of alternately weird and boring stuff leading up to the denoument of this dream, as there always is, but the vivid part near the end that I remember clearly is that I was away some place but I was about to leave, and some older male who may or may not have been my Uncle Clark told me he was going to drive me to the airport in about 15 minutes, and I was trying to pack my suitcase and all my stuff was wildly strewn around a room with the stuff of about 5 other girls (don't ask me who they were), even though I had just spent a rather sizable amount of time lovingly gathering my things and folding them and organizing them to bring back to this hellhole where my suitcase was located. How my stuff got mixed in with all these other people's stuff is beyond me and it's a question I didn't even ask until I woke up, but here I was, trying to pack my stuff, with numerous people trying to help me (including one highly annoyed, possibly gay man who was demanding to know where my make-up was) and I was in a complete freaking panic. In my dream I could feel myself having a full-out anxiety rush and it was terrible and I was sure I was going to miss my plane. And then I did the thing I can do sometimes when I'm having a really unpleasant dream, which is go "maybe I'll try opening my eyes and waking up" and then I do. I woke myself up and it was dark in the room and I looked at my clock and DAMMMIT!!! it was 7:03, which meant my alarm was going off in, like, 12 minutes...
When I go from a dream to waking up like that, it feels all wrong and so when the alarm went off and I had to get up, I felt like I could barely stand up, and at the same time, I was still experiencing some residual anxiety from my dream, which immediately made me think "see? you should have taken your pills last night!" Because guess what one of them is for? That's right -- anxiety. So here I sit, two hours later, and I know I'm going to feel better once I get going with the running, but there's a part of me that's still trying to convince me that I'm just messed up for the day and I should go back to bed. It probably won't win but right now it's making some headway because seriously, right now I just feel like total crap.
The thing is, I've been having some trouble getting going this morning. Here's what happened. Last night Reasonable Man was watching a Kings game downstairs, so I started watching my Sunday/9 pm selection of the week, which was "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," aka my favorite of the three "L&O" shows. For the past year and a little more I have forsaken this show in favor of a little show you may have heard of about these crazy chicks who live on Wisteria Lane (ever notice that "Wisteria" rhymes with "hysteria?" I don't think this is so much a coincidence.) Anyway, guess what, folks? My patience with these ladies has officially run out, and I am back with "L&O:CI," even though pscycho-cop Detective Goren got a little over-tired and now he's going to be sharing his show with Mr. Big.
What's that? You have no idea WTF I'm talking about? That's okay. Neither do I half the time.
The important thing is, I was upstairs watching TV, and when my show was over, I kept lying there on the bed reading my book, and then Reasonable Man came upstairs and got ready to for bed, and then I did the same, and then I read some more, and at some point during all this mundane crap I made a very conscious decision not to go downstairs and take my pills. I'm not going to try to argue that this makes any sense, because sometimes I end up going up and down the stair several times before I go to bed, but last night? The idea of one trip down to the kitchen and back was just too much. Don't ask me. I knew there might be consequences, but I didn't care. I wasn't going down there and that was that.
The result was that, although I slept quite well and I don't remember waking during the night at all, I had this dream. There was all kinds of alternately weird and boring stuff leading up to the denoument of this dream, as there always is, but the vivid part near the end that I remember clearly is that I was away some place but I was about to leave, and some older male who may or may not have been my Uncle Clark told me he was going to drive me to the airport in about 15 minutes, and I was trying to pack my suitcase and all my stuff was wildly strewn around a room with the stuff of about 5 other girls (don't ask me who they were), even though I had just spent a rather sizable amount of time lovingly gathering my things and folding them and organizing them to bring back to this hellhole where my suitcase was located. How my stuff got mixed in with all these other people's stuff is beyond me and it's a question I didn't even ask until I woke up, but here I was, trying to pack my stuff, with numerous people trying to help me (including one highly annoyed, possibly gay man who was demanding to know where my make-up was) and I was in a complete freaking panic. In my dream I could feel myself having a full-out anxiety rush and it was terrible and I was sure I was going to miss my plane. And then I did the thing I can do sometimes when I'm having a really unpleasant dream, which is go "maybe I'll try opening my eyes and waking up" and then I do. I woke myself up and it was dark in the room and I looked at my clock and DAMMMIT!!! it was 7:03, which meant my alarm was going off in, like, 12 minutes...
When I go from a dream to waking up like that, it feels all wrong and so when the alarm went off and I had to get up, I felt like I could barely stand up, and at the same time, I was still experiencing some residual anxiety from my dream, which immediately made me think "see? you should have taken your pills last night!" Because guess what one of them is for? That's right -- anxiety. So here I sit, two hours later, and I know I'm going to feel better once I get going with the running, but there's a part of me that's still trying to convince me that I'm just messed up for the day and I should go back to bed. It probably won't win but right now it's making some headway because seriously, right now I just feel like total crap.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
50 Book Challenge: True Crime
I just finished a pretty lengthy account of the Green River killer case in Seattle. I don't usually read about serial killers -- as with books about husbands killing wives, there are just so many of them. Also, I prefer to read the stories about things going wrong in one family or whatever. Anyway, I do make exceptions if the author is one I like, and that was the case this time -- Green River, Running Red was written by Ann Rule, my very favorite true crime author. That said, I didn't really care for this book -- there were too many victims to keep straight and the meat of the story became more about the investigators. It wasn't badly done or anything like that, but I could recommend a number of Ann Rule books that were pretty amazing (If You Really Loved Me, Dead Before Sunset, And Never Let Her Go, Every Breath You Take, and, not for the meek, Small Sacrifices) and this wasn't one of them. I also found it pretty bizarre when, in the afterword, Rule referred to Scott Peterson being on Death Row at Alcatraz. Death Row in California is at San Quentin, and Alcatraz hasn't been used as a prison in many, many years -- and this was in the paperback version. Surely someone should have noticed that kind of an error at some point between printings.
Incidentally, I learned a facinating true crime fact recently, compliments of The Vine column at Tomato Nation. There is a excellent true crime book that I've actually read more than once called Evidence of Love, detailing the case of one Texas housewife who, in the early 80s, killed another Texas housewife with an ax. The author of this scintillating account is a guy named John Bloom, whose alter-ego is none other than Joe Bob Briggs, drive-in movie critic extraordinaire. How cool is that? BTW, if you click on that link, you will see that, guess what? Joe Bob Briggs in HOT. Who knew?
But I digress. Something I've been thinking about a lot lately, compliments of the Green River Killer book and a couple of other sources, is prostitution. Most of the GRK's victims were prostitutes, and when I was about a third of the way throught that book, I had to set it aside for a few days to read a book club book, Sleep Into Heaven, in which one of the main characters is a prositute-turned-killer (clearly modelled after real-life killer Aileen Wuornos, portrayed by Charlize Theron in the movie "Monster"). There is also a real-live woman on the reality TV show "Starting Over" (my latest addiction) trying to rebuild her life after a failed teen marriage and a need to support her son caused her to turn to stripping, scamming and prostituting herself in Las Vegas. I know this isn't any kind of a newsflash, but it kills me to think about how we have demonized prostitutes throughout history, insisting that their plight is the result of their own loose morals. In Sleep Into Heaven, the many stories of the victims of the GRK, and the story of this girl on "Starting Over," it's clear these women and girls resorted to turning tricks because they had no other options -- in many cases they were the daughters of prostitutes or desperate to leave terrible home situations, and often they were just trying to support themselves, children, drug habits, or "boyfriends" who were willing to pimp them out. The tragedy lies in their having to do such degrading and dangerous work to get by, but our focus as a society has always been on putting them in jail and blaming them for their negative effect on society. How sad.
With that, on to book #40, my second reading of the excellent The Eyre Affair, a sci-fi yarn set in a world where characters can be kidnapped out of their books. Fun stuff, and with only two days before book club, I'm feeling quite lucky that this month's selection is one I've read -- and enjoyed -- before.
Incidentally, I learned a facinating true crime fact recently, compliments of The Vine column at Tomato Nation. There is a excellent true crime book that I've actually read more than once called Evidence of Love, detailing the case of one Texas housewife who, in the early 80s, killed another Texas housewife with an ax. The author of this scintillating account is a guy named John Bloom, whose alter-ego is none other than Joe Bob Briggs, drive-in movie critic extraordinaire. How cool is that? BTW, if you click on that link, you will see that, guess what? Joe Bob Briggs in HOT. Who knew?
But I digress. Something I've been thinking about a lot lately, compliments of the Green River Killer book and a couple of other sources, is prostitution. Most of the GRK's victims were prostitutes, and when I was about a third of the way throught that book, I had to set it aside for a few days to read a book club book, Sleep Into Heaven, in which one of the main characters is a prositute-turned-killer (clearly modelled after real-life killer Aileen Wuornos, portrayed by Charlize Theron in the movie "Monster"). There is also a real-live woman on the reality TV show "Starting Over" (my latest addiction) trying to rebuild her life after a failed teen marriage and a need to support her son caused her to turn to stripping, scamming and prostituting herself in Las Vegas. I know this isn't any kind of a newsflash, but it kills me to think about how we have demonized prostitutes throughout history, insisting that their plight is the result of their own loose morals. In Sleep Into Heaven, the many stories of the victims of the GRK, and the story of this girl on "Starting Over," it's clear these women and girls resorted to turning tricks because they had no other options -- in many cases they were the daughters of prostitutes or desperate to leave terrible home situations, and often they were just trying to support themselves, children, drug habits, or "boyfriends" who were willing to pimp them out. The tragedy lies in their having to do such degrading and dangerous work to get by, but our focus as a society has always been on putting them in jail and blaming them for their negative effect on society. How sad.
With that, on to book #40, my second reading of the excellent The Eyre Affair, a sci-fi yarn set in a world where characters can be kidnapped out of their books. Fun stuff, and with only two days before book club, I'm feeling quite lucky that this month's selection is one I've read -- and enjoyed -- before.
Monday, October 17, 2005
NaNoWriMo!
Of course I've been planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month all along, but today I get to officially declare myself a participant by way of the handy-dandy NaNoWriMo icon you see there on the right, underneath my profile and photo.
I love that it's a runner! As anyone who has read this blog at all knows, I hate the heat, which makes the crisp days of fall my very favorite time of the year, and two of the things I love the most about it that I start running again and that I get to write a novel in November. So this logo really sums it all up for me. I can't wait till my tee shirt arrives, but until then, having this up on my blog will just have to do, I guess :-)
Even though, as I mentioned before, I think the novel I'll be writing this year could be a tough one, I'm looking forward to writing it. And I'm looking forward to replacing this "Participant" icon with one that says "Winner" even more!
I love that it's a runner! As anyone who has read this blog at all knows, I hate the heat, which makes the crisp days of fall my very favorite time of the year, and two of the things I love the most about it that I start running again and that I get to write a novel in November. So this logo really sums it all up for me. I can't wait till my tee shirt arrives, but until then, having this up on my blog will just have to do, I guess :-)
Even though, as I mentioned before, I think the novel I'll be writing this year could be a tough one, I'm looking forward to writing it. And I'm looking forward to replacing this "Participant" icon with one that says "Winner" even more!
Conversation between my body and my mind while out on a run:
Taking off down Farragut Circle:
Body: Hey, it's hot out here! You said it would be nice and cool!
Mind: No, I didn't, I said it looked windy. Anyway, we're out here and all, so we're going.
Body: But it's hot!
Mind: It's fine. There's a breeze. You'll be fine.
Body: Waaah! I hate you!
Going through Walnut Park:
Body: I can't believe this. I'm sweating like a pig. This is miserable. How can you make me do this?
Mind: Oh please, you sweat like a pig packing lunches before school in the morning. And you definitely sweat like a pig when you're running even when it's cooler. Even when it's 40 degrees out and raining. So shut up.
Body: Make me.
Mind: Grrr....
Travelling down Montgomery Avenue:
Body: Oh my God, you're not serious! We're not really doing this, right? It's HOT! We are NOT going the long way in this heat!
Mind: God, you're a wuss.
Body: You're so mean!
Mind: Fine. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to let you move us over to the other side of the street where there's more shade. Sure, that's not facing traffic, like you're supposed to do to be safe, but if it's going to reduce the amount of your whining baby bullshit I have to listen to, then fine. Get us run over by a truck.
Body: Thanks a heap.
Mind: You have to admit, it's cooler over here.
Body: I guess so.
Turning left on to Rosario:
Body: Where's that breeze you promised? You said when we turned north, there would be this cool wind blowing in my face. Where the hell is it? Where's my freaking breeze?
Mind: Oh, calm down, it'll be coming along any second.
Body: I'm out of breath. I need to stop.
Mind: Do not even start that crap. You are not out of breath. And before you even say it, your knees don't hurt either.
Body: I wasn't going to say that. But I AM out of breath.
Mind: No, you're not.
Body: Yes, I am.
Mind: Look, if you want to stop and walk, you have a much better shot at it if you do that thing where you stop complaining long enough for me to get distracted thinking about something else and then you just sort of casually slow to a run without consulting me. Because the more you complain at me, the more I'm just going to make you keep running. Just to be stubborn.
Body: You suck!
Mind: Geez, give me a break, will you? Last night I let you eat until you were beyond stuffed. Then this morning I let you sleep in till 9:38 am, and then we spent the last three hours sitting on the couch playing on the computer. Also, I let you eat cookies for breakfast. Seems to me like you've actually had a pretty sweet deal for the last day or two. So now we're going for a run.
Body: But you promised it wouldn't be hot!
Mind: I didn't promise anything. I don't control the weather. I only control YOU.
Body: I can't breathe! I can't breathe!
Mind: Give me a break.
Body: It's true! I think I'm going to start hyperventilating...
Mind: Listen up! You are not going to do this to me. You are not going to make me think about breathing. That just screws us both up, you know that. I won't do it. So just shut up.
Body: I'm suffocating!!!
Mind: *sigh*
Heading down the wooded, shady bike path:
Mind: See, we're like two-thirds of the way there, and you're fine.
Body: Yeah, except I can't breathe. And all the sweat running down my face is making my eyes sting. Also, I'm really tired. I'm just running out of gas, you know? I'm exhausted.
Mind: You're tired because you've been running for 40 minutes. That's normal. It doesn't mean you need to stop.
Body: Oh my God, I still can't believe we're doing this in the middle of the afternoon when it's so hot. I can't believe it.
Mind: For the last time, it's NOT that hot.
Body: My lips are drying up because I'm getting dehydrated.
Mind: Your lips are drying up because you keep rubbing them together. Stop it.
Body: Hey, I'm not in control here -- you are. YOU stop it.
Mind: That's right, I AM in control. And right now we're running. So shut up.
Passing along behind the school and into the home stretch:
Mind: See what you can do when you just do it? Was it really that bad?
Body: Yes! I've never been so miserable in my life. That's how bad it's been!
Mind: You're such a pain.
Body: I think what you mean is that I'm IN such pain. My lips and mouth and throat are so dry! My whole body aches! I can barely catch my breath. And also -- it's hot!
Mind: After we're done, you're going to be thanking me.
Body: For torturing me? Fat chance! Hey, look, there's a drinking fountain over there by the tennis courts! Let's just head over there and --
Mind: Absolutely not. We're not going by the tennis courts. We're going back through the tunnel the way we came.
Body: No, I won't! I won't do it! You can't make me!
Mind: Of course I can make you...
Body: Argh! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!
Mind: Oh, shut up, we're running downhill. And you're going about twice as fast as you were when we left.
Body: I won't be when we're coming up out of the tunnel. Here it comes -- this hill takes forever -- okay, NOW I hate you. I hate you!!!
Mind: Yeah yeah yeah.
Body: *panting* .... bitch! I hate you!
Mind: Heh heh...
Body: Oh my God, you sadistic piece of crap! You're making me take longer strides up the hill? What is WRONG with you?
Mind: Oh shut up, I'm just making you get it over with faster.
Body: You are EVIL.
Mind: I'm a saint for putting up with YOU.
Body: Okay, there where we turn, there's some shade. I'm going to slow to a walk when I get there.
Mind: No, you're not. You're running all the way to the posts by the street. You know that's the deal. I don't know why you're even bothering to argue at this point. It's an extra, what? Fifty feet? You'll make it.
Body: I can't believe what a hardass you are.
Reaching the posts:
Body: There. Are you happy? I ran the whole way, even though I'm gushing with sweat and my lips dried up and fell off and my lungs are about to explode. Also, I'm probably sunburned. I hope you're happy.
Mind: Enough all ready. Once you cool off, you'll be fine.
In the shower, after drinking a bottle of cold water and sitting in front of a fan for 15 minutes:
Body: Hey, I rule! I ran that whole way. Boy, I'm really something, huh?
Mind: See? Aren't you glad I made you go?
Body: You? You didn't do anything! Don't try to take credit for it -- I'm the one who did all the work!
Mind: *sigh*
Body: Hey, it's hot out here! You said it would be nice and cool!
Mind: No, I didn't, I said it looked windy. Anyway, we're out here and all, so we're going.
Body: But it's hot!
Mind: It's fine. There's a breeze. You'll be fine.
Body: Waaah! I hate you!
Going through Walnut Park:
Body: I can't believe this. I'm sweating like a pig. This is miserable. How can you make me do this?
Mind: Oh please, you sweat like a pig packing lunches before school in the morning. And you definitely sweat like a pig when you're running even when it's cooler. Even when it's 40 degrees out and raining. So shut up.
Body: Make me.
Mind: Grrr....
Travelling down Montgomery Avenue:
Body: Oh my God, you're not serious! We're not really doing this, right? It's HOT! We are NOT going the long way in this heat!
Mind: God, you're a wuss.
Body: You're so mean!
Mind: Fine. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to let you move us over to the other side of the street where there's more shade. Sure, that's not facing traffic, like you're supposed to do to be safe, but if it's going to reduce the amount of your whining baby bullshit I have to listen to, then fine. Get us run over by a truck.
Body: Thanks a heap.
Mind: You have to admit, it's cooler over here.
Body: I guess so.
Turning left on to Rosario:
Body: Where's that breeze you promised? You said when we turned north, there would be this cool wind blowing in my face. Where the hell is it? Where's my freaking breeze?
Mind: Oh, calm down, it'll be coming along any second.
Body: I'm out of breath. I need to stop.
Mind: Do not even start that crap. You are not out of breath. And before you even say it, your knees don't hurt either.
Body: I wasn't going to say that. But I AM out of breath.
Mind: No, you're not.
Body: Yes, I am.
Mind: Look, if you want to stop and walk, you have a much better shot at it if you do that thing where you stop complaining long enough for me to get distracted thinking about something else and then you just sort of casually slow to a run without consulting me. Because the more you complain at me, the more I'm just going to make you keep running. Just to be stubborn.
Body: You suck!
Mind: Geez, give me a break, will you? Last night I let you eat until you were beyond stuffed. Then this morning I let you sleep in till 9:38 am, and then we spent the last three hours sitting on the couch playing on the computer. Also, I let you eat cookies for breakfast. Seems to me like you've actually had a pretty sweet deal for the last day or two. So now we're going for a run.
Body: But you promised it wouldn't be hot!
Mind: I didn't promise anything. I don't control the weather. I only control YOU.
Body: I can't breathe! I can't breathe!
Mind: Give me a break.
Body: It's true! I think I'm going to start hyperventilating...
Mind: Listen up! You are not going to do this to me. You are not going to make me think about breathing. That just screws us both up, you know that. I won't do it. So just shut up.
Body: I'm suffocating!!!
Mind: *sigh*
Heading down the wooded, shady bike path:
Mind: See, we're like two-thirds of the way there, and you're fine.
Body: Yeah, except I can't breathe. And all the sweat running down my face is making my eyes sting. Also, I'm really tired. I'm just running out of gas, you know? I'm exhausted.
Mind: You're tired because you've been running for 40 minutes. That's normal. It doesn't mean you need to stop.
Body: Oh my God, I still can't believe we're doing this in the middle of the afternoon when it's so hot. I can't believe it.
Mind: For the last time, it's NOT that hot.
Body: My lips are drying up because I'm getting dehydrated.
Mind: Your lips are drying up because you keep rubbing them together. Stop it.
Body: Hey, I'm not in control here -- you are. YOU stop it.
Mind: That's right, I AM in control. And right now we're running. So shut up.
Passing along behind the school and into the home stretch:
Mind: See what you can do when you just do it? Was it really that bad?
Body: Yes! I've never been so miserable in my life. That's how bad it's been!
Mind: You're such a pain.
Body: I think what you mean is that I'm IN such pain. My lips and mouth and throat are so dry! My whole body aches! I can barely catch my breath. And also -- it's hot!
Mind: After we're done, you're going to be thanking me.
Body: For torturing me? Fat chance! Hey, look, there's a drinking fountain over there by the tennis courts! Let's just head over there and --
Mind: Absolutely not. We're not going by the tennis courts. We're going back through the tunnel the way we came.
Body: No, I won't! I won't do it! You can't make me!
Mind: Of course I can make you...
Body: Argh! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!
Mind: Oh, shut up, we're running downhill. And you're going about twice as fast as you were when we left.
Body: I won't be when we're coming up out of the tunnel. Here it comes -- this hill takes forever -- okay, NOW I hate you. I hate you!!!
Mind: Yeah yeah yeah.
Body: *panting* .... bitch! I hate you!
Mind: Heh heh...
Body: Oh my God, you sadistic piece of crap! You're making me take longer strides up the hill? What is WRONG with you?
Mind: Oh shut up, I'm just making you get it over with faster.
Body: You are EVIL.
Mind: I'm a saint for putting up with YOU.
Body: Okay, there where we turn, there's some shade. I'm going to slow to a walk when I get there.
Mind: No, you're not. You're running all the way to the posts by the street. You know that's the deal. I don't know why you're even bothering to argue at this point. It's an extra, what? Fifty feet? You'll make it.
Body: I can't believe what a hardass you are.
Reaching the posts:
Body: There. Are you happy? I ran the whole way, even though I'm gushing with sweat and my lips dried up and fell off and my lungs are about to explode. Also, I'm probably sunburned. I hope you're happy.
Mind: Enough all ready. Once you cool off, you'll be fine.
In the shower, after drinking a bottle of cold water and sitting in front of a fan for 15 minutes:
Body: Hey, I rule! I ran that whole way. Boy, I'm really something, huh?
Mind: See? Aren't you glad I made you go?
Body: You? You didn't do anything! Don't try to take credit for it -- I'm the one who did all the work!
Mind: *sigh*
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Trees
We didn't go to the movies yesterday -- there wasn't anything we really wanted to see. That's part of the problem with almost never going to the movies -- when you do get the opportunity, you want to see something that's really worthwhile -- as in, I've only been to see a grown-up movie x times in the past year, but the movies we saw were a, b, and c, so it was worth it. Or something like that. I had been kind of interested in seeing "Elizabethtown," but it's gotten bad reviews, and while I've loved two of Cameron Crowe's movies ("Say Anything," "Singles"), I disliked and loathed two of his movies too ("Almost Famous" and "Jerry Maguire," respectively). So that one seemed like kind of a crapshoot, and one I didn't especially feel like paying $6.50 a person for.
What we did instead was something we've been meaning to do for the entire almost 6 years we've lived in this house, which is buy a tree for the front yard. Our tree faces due west. All the houses on our street have one nice tree each planted in the front yard, and for most of them, this tree provides some shade from the afternoon sun. We have a beautiful sycamore tree in our front yard, centered almost perfectly between our house and our garage so that it provides shade to neither in the heat of the afternoon. The solution -- to plant a tree in front of the house -- has been obvious the whole time we've lived here, but somehow we've managed to put it off again and again. Don't ask me why. I hate the summer heat, and the fact that the front half of our house is pretty much unliveable on summer afternoons, even with the air conditioner blasting, should have been enough to motivate me to do something about it. Of course, the time do this is fall once the heat has ended and you're just relieved to have endured another scorching summer, so that's probably been part of the problem.
In any case, after determining there were no cinemtatic works worthy of our hard-earned dollars yesterday, I called my friend Sharon, who gardens like there's no tomorrow, to ask her where to buy a tree, and then we headed out to the wilds of Dixon, where there is a large, muddy and pretty much amazing kind of wholesale nursery with every kind of flora and/or fauna you could ever want. After wandering a bit on our own and getting nowhere, we asked nice man at the counter for some advice and ended up purchasing an Autumn Fantasy, which is a kind of red maple that turns beautiful colors in the fall. It will be delivered here tomorrow, and Reasonable Man has already dug a big hole for it in the middle of our front lawn. I'm more excited about it than I thought I'd be, especially since this experience has taught me that not only do I know nothing about trees, but I've never even really looked much at trees before.
Last night I was walking down the greenbelt to have dinner with some friends. I've walked this same way hundreds of times, but this was the first time I'd ever bothered to really look at the different trees along the way and try to figure out if I knew what kind any of them were. Turns out there are a lot of sycamore trees out there, which I only know because as I mentioned, there is a sycamore tree in our front yard.
I guess it shouldn't surprise me to realize how little I pay attention to these things though. We moved into our house at the end of January 2000, when our front yard tree would have been completely bare. Sometime between then and when it began to grow leaves in the spring, we were out and about one day and Reasonable Man said something about what a nice tree we had in the front yard. My response was "we have a tree in the front yard?" I also occasionally forget the name of the kind of tree it is and have to rack my brain for it. I guess my brain just isn't made to hold on to information about the flora and fauna of the world. And I'd really rather think about celebrity gossip anyway, quite frankly.
What we did instead was something we've been meaning to do for the entire almost 6 years we've lived in this house, which is buy a tree for the front yard. Our tree faces due west. All the houses on our street have one nice tree each planted in the front yard, and for most of them, this tree provides some shade from the afternoon sun. We have a beautiful sycamore tree in our front yard, centered almost perfectly between our house and our garage so that it provides shade to neither in the heat of the afternoon. The solution -- to plant a tree in front of the house -- has been obvious the whole time we've lived here, but somehow we've managed to put it off again and again. Don't ask me why. I hate the summer heat, and the fact that the front half of our house is pretty much unliveable on summer afternoons, even with the air conditioner blasting, should have been enough to motivate me to do something about it. Of course, the time do this is fall once the heat has ended and you're just relieved to have endured another scorching summer, so that's probably been part of the problem.
In any case, after determining there were no cinemtatic works worthy of our hard-earned dollars yesterday, I called my friend Sharon, who gardens like there's no tomorrow, to ask her where to buy a tree, and then we headed out to the wilds of Dixon, where there is a large, muddy and pretty much amazing kind of wholesale nursery with every kind of flora and/or fauna you could ever want. After wandering a bit on our own and getting nowhere, we asked nice man at the counter for some advice and ended up purchasing an Autumn Fantasy, which is a kind of red maple that turns beautiful colors in the fall. It will be delivered here tomorrow, and Reasonable Man has already dug a big hole for it in the middle of our front lawn. I'm more excited about it than I thought I'd be, especially since this experience has taught me that not only do I know nothing about trees, but I've never even really looked much at trees before.
Last night I was walking down the greenbelt to have dinner with some friends. I've walked this same way hundreds of times, but this was the first time I'd ever bothered to really look at the different trees along the way and try to figure out if I knew what kind any of them were. Turns out there are a lot of sycamore trees out there, which I only know because as I mentioned, there is a sycamore tree in our front yard.
I guess it shouldn't surprise me to realize how little I pay attention to these things though. We moved into our house at the end of January 2000, when our front yard tree would have been completely bare. Sometime between then and when it began to grow leaves in the spring, we were out and about one day and Reasonable Man said something about what a nice tree we had in the front yard. My response was "we have a tree in the front yard?" I also occasionally forget the name of the kind of tree it is and have to rack my brain for it. I guess my brain just isn't made to hold on to information about the flora and fauna of the world. And I'd really rather think about celebrity gossip anyway, quite frankly.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Ahhhhhhh...
My parents just came picked up the kids to take them out for the day. Reasonable Man and I may go to the movies. Or we may not. We may just hang around here and be slugs all day -- which is only different from our usual weekend in that we can do it guilt-free, without the kids bouncing off the walls and needing to be taken out. Which doesn't happen quite as often since the kids they like to play with moved in across the street. In any case, I'm sitting here on my couch, writing in my blog and eating oatmeal and playing Chuzzle in my pajamas and it's 10:30 and I have no current plans to change any of this any time soon, other than the fact that I'll be done eating the oatmeal pretty soon.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Up and Running!
I did what I said I was going to do and bought the cheapest laptop at Costco. It was $900, and I could have gotten one $300 cheaper at Best Buy, but without the sweet return policy that will allow me to get a new one when this one dies :-)
The one I got is a Compaq. I have mixed feelings about this, as we once had a Compaq desktop machine that didn't live very long and had a number of problems along the way. On the other hand, Compaq is merely a subsidiary of HP these days. We love HP. Our current desktop is an HP and has been going strong for a number of years, not to mention that I don't even bother with non-HP printers. In any case, I think this laptop will do me just fine for the next few years. Getting all my crap off the old one and on to the new one hasn't been as much of a pain as I would have thought either. There are only a few items left to transfer at this point.
The one I got is a Compaq. I have mixed feelings about this, as we once had a Compaq desktop machine that didn't live very long and had a number of problems along the way. On the other hand, Compaq is merely a subsidiary of HP these days. We love HP. Our current desktop is an HP and has been going strong for a number of years, not to mention that I don't even bother with non-HP printers. In any case, I think this laptop will do me just fine for the next few years. Getting all my crap off the old one and on to the new one hasn't been as much of a pain as I would have thought either. There are only a few items left to transfer at this point.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
My Laptop: The Continuing Saga
Evidently, this is my week for destroying things around the house. Or perhaps month? I hope not. Anyway, if you've got something around your house that needs busting, I'm your gal. Give me a jingle and I'll come right over.
The ceiling is all dry and just fine. I'm giving it time to get extra dried out, and then I'll paint over the stained areas. As for the actual matter under the sink that caused all the leakage, I need to assess that at some point, but in the meantime, I can deal with only having cold water coming out of my fauct. And I did replace the faucet in the other upstairs bathroom. I'm not going to let a little dripping plaster and flooding of the kitchen stop my budding career as a plumber.
Yesterday morning I was killing flies. For whatever reason, there are a ridiculous number of flies this year, and no matter what you do, lots of them end up in the house -- I've been killing at least 10 or 15 every day for the last week or so. There was one on my computer screen, so I swatted at it. I missed.
Regular readers of this space know that my computer already has what you might call structural problems. I don't know if those problems contributed to how very much the screen of my laptop did not like being hit with a flyswatter, but the bottom line was, that sucker ceased to function pretty much immediately. The screen developed a jagged line from the lower left-hand corner to the upper right-hand corner. Above the line, the screen was normal and legible; below it, it was a mass of colored vertical and horizontal lines. I knew it was a fatal problem pretty much as soon as I saw it, but I restarted the computer anyway, as you do. It didn't work.
My first thought (after "oh, shit, am I a moron or what?") was "that's it, I'm spending the money on an iBook, switching back to Mac, and not looking back."
We were dedicated Apple computer folks for many years, before my parents were generous enough to buy us a PC back around 1998, and there is a part of us that has always longed to go back, but let's face it: we're cheap and lazy. Switching back to Mac-compatible software and such is a lot of work, and Apple computers don't come cheap. So we've had a series of PCs that live fast and die young, and I was pissed off enough yesterday when my laptop screen died that my immediate plan was to invest in what I believe to be the relative quality/reliability offered by Apple products.
My second thought was to go out and buy the cheapest PC laptop I could find with the things I needed in it and just assume that I'd probably have to replace it in about two years anyway.
My third thought is to go and buy a laptop at Costco. Know what's great about Costco, besides all that potential for disaster relief I was talking about a few weeks ago? When something you bought there breaks, you can take it (with receipt) back to Costco and they'll give you a refund. With computer equipment, this works especially well because two years from the time you bought something? A replacement usually costs about half as much.
Guess which plan I'm going with?
Anyway -- yes, it's true. As soon as I get all my files and shit off my good old Toshiba laptop with the busted screen and velcro-instead-of-functional-hinge arrangement, it will be no more. Oh well. I hate treating things like laptops as disposable, but what can you do?
The ceiling is all dry and just fine. I'm giving it time to get extra dried out, and then I'll paint over the stained areas. As for the actual matter under the sink that caused all the leakage, I need to assess that at some point, but in the meantime, I can deal with only having cold water coming out of my fauct. And I did replace the faucet in the other upstairs bathroom. I'm not going to let a little dripping plaster and flooding of the kitchen stop my budding career as a plumber.
Yesterday morning I was killing flies. For whatever reason, there are a ridiculous number of flies this year, and no matter what you do, lots of them end up in the house -- I've been killing at least 10 or 15 every day for the last week or so. There was one on my computer screen, so I swatted at it. I missed.
Regular readers of this space know that my computer already has what you might call structural problems. I don't know if those problems contributed to how very much the screen of my laptop did not like being hit with a flyswatter, but the bottom line was, that sucker ceased to function pretty much immediately. The screen developed a jagged line from the lower left-hand corner to the upper right-hand corner. Above the line, the screen was normal and legible; below it, it was a mass of colored vertical and horizontal lines. I knew it was a fatal problem pretty much as soon as I saw it, but I restarted the computer anyway, as you do. It didn't work.
My first thought (after "oh, shit, am I a moron or what?") was "that's it, I'm spending the money on an iBook, switching back to Mac, and not looking back."
We were dedicated Apple computer folks for many years, before my parents were generous enough to buy us a PC back around 1998, and there is a part of us that has always longed to go back, but let's face it: we're cheap and lazy. Switching back to Mac-compatible software and such is a lot of work, and Apple computers don't come cheap. So we've had a series of PCs that live fast and die young, and I was pissed off enough yesterday when my laptop screen died that my immediate plan was to invest in what I believe to be the relative quality/reliability offered by Apple products.
My second thought was to go out and buy the cheapest PC laptop I could find with the things I needed in it and just assume that I'd probably have to replace it in about two years anyway.
My third thought is to go and buy a laptop at Costco. Know what's great about Costco, besides all that potential for disaster relief I was talking about a few weeks ago? When something you bought there breaks, you can take it (with receipt) back to Costco and they'll give you a refund. With computer equipment, this works especially well because two years from the time you bought something? A replacement usually costs about half as much.
Guess which plan I'm going with?
Anyway -- yes, it's true. As soon as I get all my files and shit off my good old Toshiba laptop with the busted screen and velcro-instead-of-functional-hinge arrangement, it will be no more. Oh well. I hate treating things like laptops as disposable, but what can you do?
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Ew, Gross!
God, I hate blog-comment spam. I just deleted this one:
Anonymous said...
Hello, Just wanted you to know that someone saw your Blog. My anorexia site that deals with pro bulimia websites gets only a few visitors some days...good job on your site.
And there was a link. OMG, who are these freaks?
Anonymous said...
Hello, Just wanted you to know that someone saw your Blog. My anorexia site that deals with pro bulimia websites gets only a few visitors some days...good job on your site.
And there was a link. OMG, who are these freaks?
Triumph & Defeat
Last night when I went to bed, I was feeling pretty good about myself. Why? Well, we live in a nice neighborhood of tract houses built from all the cheap-assest materials money can buy. And that means terrible faucets. My dad changed out the kitchen faucet and downstairs bathroom faucet for us a while back, but we still had the crappy faucets in the bathrooms upstairrs. I've been wanting new faucets up there for a long time. So the other day I actually went to Home Depot, purchased new faucets and a basin wrench and some teflon tape, and yesterday I got down under the sinks in our master bathroom and changed those suckers out. Sure, I scraped a couple of my knuckles to the point of bleeding. Sure, on the second sink I got a little cocky and got under there with my tools and started unhooking and detaching here and there and it wasn't till a lot of water suddenly rained down on my face that I realized I'd forgotten what I think must be the very first rule of plumbing, which is "always turn the water off at the source before you start messing around down there." I had myself all geared up to write an amusing blog post about that little mishap and how as a result of getting drenched, I awoke with Bride of Frankenstein hair this morning, but still, I am woman, hear me roar, women can replace faucets, girl power, yada yada yada. I went to bed in triumph, aware that two brand new faucets were gleaming in my bathoom -- faucets I had installed my very own self.
So you can imagine how happy I was to wake up to Reasonable Man telling me one of my faucets was leaking.
I groggily told him I'd take care of it. He told me it was "quite a bit" and that it was my sink, and then he left me alone. I was lying there in bed acting like I was actually going to go back to sleep for a while, but then I got up and went into the bathroom to survey the damage. Reasonable Man had turned off the leaky side of my sink at the source, and I got all my stuff out of there, but decided the inside of the cupboard needed to dry out before I could do anything with it and went downstairs.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Reasonable Man was dealing with the aftermath of a flood.
The water had leaked from upstairs down through the cannister light fixtures. One them is conveniently located above the sink, but the other is over the kitchen table -- so the kitchen eating area was drenched. As was the kitchen floor, due to the ceiling being lowered to accomodate our ugly fluorescent lighting fixture, kind of down the side of which the water was still dripping when I came downstairs. Reasonable Man said there'd been a "bubble" there but he'd already popped it. He'd moved all the chairs out of the way and mopped up most of the water by the time I arrived downstairs, so really all there was for me to do at that point was flop down on the couch and say some bad words and, you know, contemplate the folly of my hubris and all.
All I wanted was to replace the faucets. They really sucked -- you have to believe me.
And you know, they had kind of screwed when they hooked up the plumbing under that sink in the first place -- the hot and cold are on the wrong sides from where they should be, which means the tubing whatever thingies have to stretch farther than they want to and, you know, of the 4 water connections I attached, that one was the toughest because it didn't want to stretch. I thought I'd gotten it right but evidently -- no. So that's my morning so far. I'll get under the sink and see if I can fix the connection, and we'll wait for the ceiling downstairs to dry out so I can paint over the water damage. And I'm still going to replace the faucet in the kids' bathroom myself.
I'm just not going to enjoy it very much.
So you can imagine how happy I was to wake up to Reasonable Man telling me one of my faucets was leaking.
I groggily told him I'd take care of it. He told me it was "quite a bit" and that it was my sink, and then he left me alone. I was lying there in bed acting like I was actually going to go back to sleep for a while, but then I got up and went into the bathroom to survey the damage. Reasonable Man had turned off the leaky side of my sink at the source, and I got all my stuff out of there, but decided the inside of the cupboard needed to dry out before I could do anything with it and went downstairs.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Reasonable Man was dealing with the aftermath of a flood.
The water had leaked from upstairs down through the cannister light fixtures. One them is conveniently located above the sink, but the other is over the kitchen table -- so the kitchen eating area was drenched. As was the kitchen floor, due to the ceiling being lowered to accomodate our ugly fluorescent lighting fixture, kind of down the side of which the water was still dripping when I came downstairs. Reasonable Man said there'd been a "bubble" there but he'd already popped it. He'd moved all the chairs out of the way and mopped up most of the water by the time I arrived downstairs, so really all there was for me to do at that point was flop down on the couch and say some bad words and, you know, contemplate the folly of my hubris and all.
All I wanted was to replace the faucets. They really sucked -- you have to believe me.
And you know, they had kind of screwed when they hooked up the plumbing under that sink in the first place -- the hot and cold are on the wrong sides from where they should be, which means the tubing whatever thingies have to stretch farther than they want to and, you know, of the 4 water connections I attached, that one was the toughest because it didn't want to stretch. I thought I'd gotten it right but evidently -- no. So that's my morning so far. I'll get under the sink and see if I can fix the connection, and we'll wait for the ceiling downstairs to dry out so I can paint over the water damage. And I'm still going to replace the faucet in the kids' bathroom myself.
I'm just not going to enjoy it very much.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Great, Now I Have Blog Guilt
Like it wasn't bad enough that I feel like crap when I don't return emails to people in a timely manner. Now every time I get on my computer, I think of my blog sitting there looking withered and neglected, like the plant I've stopped watering because I forgot and because I was busy and because every time I looked outside and noticed it looking dry, it was also really hot and I didn't want to go out there and get sweaty taking care of it. I wish there was a such thing as an automatic drip system for my blog -- like somehow all the times every day that I'm away from the computer but my thoughts start to organize themselves into a blog post, they could send themselves directly here instead of me having to actually sit down and type them. That would alleviate some of this guilt I'm feeling.
There is a lot going on in my world lately. The first month of school has raced by, and a lot of my time and brain power has been occupied with figuring out Enthusio's situation. Things have been much better that last week or so. He has seen his therapist twice, and he really likes her. He has also been managing things better at school, at least in terms of staying out of trouble. I think he is still playing by himself at recess most of the time, though -- he doesn't really answer my questions about friends (so I'm trying not to ask) and one time he told me he spent recess picking up trash. That's something he did a lot of last year and got little awards for it, which is great -- I certainly don't have a problem with him being a good citizen -- but if he's doing that because it's easier than finding kids to play with, that's not good either. So he's staying away from the wrong kids, but he's still not finding the right kids -- it's progress, but there's still some ground to cover.
On the other hand, during non-school daylight hours, Enthusio, and often Mermaid as well, can be found out front playing with the kids on the street. About 6 weeks ago, a family with three kids (9YO girl, 7YO & 5YO boys) moved in directly across the street from us, and suddenly there are boys to play with, and the girls who already lived on our street are out more and there's this whole gang of kids outside playing all the time. It's great, and Enthusio has friends who are boys that he plays with all the time, so that's huge :-)
Complete change of subject: on our street, there is a couple who are in the process of starting a publishing house, and they have already published one book, written by the male half of the couple, Jonathan, and have a few projects by other authors in the works. I've talked to them about writing and the publishing business before, and I'd been vaguely encouraged to show them some of my work, but I hadn't pursued it at all. Last week, I ran into Jonathan at a coffee place and got to talking to him again, and told him a little more about what I have finished, which is two books in what I'm thinking will be a three-book Young Adult Series -- I've written one novel from the perspective of a 17YO boy (Danny), a second from his 15YO sister's point-of-view(Mollie), and there is a second sister (Susan), so logically she would have a novel as well. Since Danny was told in the third-person, and Mollie was in the first person, I was all ready in the process of converting Danny to the first-person because I thought they should all be the same. Jonathan sounded pretty interested and gave me specific instructions to a) write the third novel in November, when I'll be participating in National Novel Writing Month for the 4th year anyway, and b) get the two completed novels into the best possible shape, and then I'll take what I've got to show them around the first of the year.
Jonathan said even if they aren't interested in taking on the project (which I think is a distinct possibility, since I doubt they were thinking of moving into the Young Adult market), they have learned a lot about the publishing business in the last few years and made contacts, and they can advise me about what to do next. Naturally, this has given me a huge shot in the arm as far as working on these novels and hopefully moving them toward publication. Particular issues:
I've put in about 20 hours converting Danny to first-person, with all that entails, and I'm very happy with that. One problem with the Danny novel was that he's kind of closed off, and my narrator-voice tends to be a bit on the formal side anyway, so some of the people who read the novel had trouble relating to/sympathizing with the main character, which is obviously a problem. This first time through has mostly been converting all the "Danny"s and "he"s to "I"s and "me"s, but there was a lot of language that very obviously had to be changed just to make it sound like something a 17YO boy would really say. I will have a lot more of that kind of thing to do on the second time around, as well as working a little more detail in a few areas that were neglected the when I originally wrote the novel. The good news is that, just in changing it to first-person, I feel like Danny has become a warmer and more relatable character.
Next I'll be taking on the major issue with Mollie, which is the fact that the first quarter or so of the novel is rushed. Get this: last year, about 4 days into November, I somehow managed to erase the approximately 6,000 words I'd written and had to start all over. This obviously sucked, but I didn't dwell on it -- I just started over. I'd been feeling like those 6,000 words had been dragging anyway. So I wrote a condensed version of what I'd lost, which was good in that I was able to get going again, and get to the meat of the story like I'd been wanting to do in short form. But when I read the novel after it was done, I felt like a lot of what was in my head in terms of establishing the characters and setting up the plot didn't come out, and a couple of people who read it had a questions and concerns along those lines. So my main job with the Mollie novel is to plump up the first several chapters with richness and details that will set up the story in a more satisfying way.
My biggest challenge will be writing the Susan novel in November. Danny and Mollie are characters who have large chunks of me in them. Susan has always been more of larger-than-life supporting character who is a lot of fun to write, but I've never tried to get inside her head very much. Truthfully -- I created these characters back when I was a teenager myself, and they started out very much as types: Danny was the brain, Mollie was the athlete, and Susan was the blonde, pretty, popular Mean Girl. Danny and Mollie were easy to flesh out over the years because they were characters I could relate to. Danny became less of a geek and more of a regular guy -- he's still skinny and wears glasses, but he's developed a harder edge and can be more of a real guy than when I first envisioned him. Mollie is still an athlete as well as an excellent student, but her motivation to be so driven and such an over-achiever is rooted as much in her insecurity as they are in her confidence in herself. I always felt like there were pieces of my teen-age self I could put into these characters. At this point, I'm not sure how to do that with Susan. Her story will take place the year after she graduates from high school, when she's kind of stumbling along, trying to figure out where her life is going, and I certainly went through a certain amount of that when I was that age, but the difference is that I was a freshman in college, living in a dorm, and my lack of direction was mostly going on in my head while I followed a prescribed path that I'd been working toward all through high school. Susan isn't a student and won't be going away to college, and so far I haven't really made up my mind if her story will be rooted in a job, junior college, technical school, or what, much less how things will play out. The Danny and Mollie stories focused on romantic plotlines (that's probably the wrong word -- not much about the teenager years is very romantic) and Susan's will as well, but the story won't be authentic unless it also addresses the direction her life is taking, moving away from being the high school queen bee and into the real world, so what she's doing every day is important. And one month from today, I'm going to need to have a pretty good idea how this is going to play out.
(Just a quick note: normally, I hate talking about what I'm writing about. I'm happy to talk about the fact that I'm writing, how much I'm writing, why I'm writing, the genre in which I'm writing -- but details like plot and character names and so on and so forth -- it seems as soon as I start saying it all out loud, it usually sounds so stupid! Spelling out what I have in the previous few paragraphs is huge for me -- I've basically forced myself to do it, because normally, I'd honestly rather hand someone my novels to read than to summerise them. But part of moving toward the business end of things is going to be talking about what and who I'm writing about, so there you go. I've just got to do it.)
Very-long-story-short, the writing is taking up lots of my time, and it's not even my day gig. Yes, the kids are in school 8:30-3 everyday, and that leaves me lots of time to write as well as work out, keep the house and finances more or less in order, go shopping and other things I do to keep myself sane, but once they get home, forget it. Mondays, the kids get home about 3:15, Mermaid has swim practice 3:45-4:45, and then there's around 90 minutes of homework plus saxophone practice for her and 20 minutes of homework for Enthusio and dinner to get ready, and basically it's a sprint to get it all done by 8 pm so we can all have some time to relax before bed. Wednesday they get out at 1:30, but Enthusio has play practice 2-2:45 and then we spend an hour at the library doing homework -- that's if I've remembered Mermaid's swim gear so we can go straight from the library to swim practice. Tuesdays there's no swim practice but I often have something to go to that night so it's extra important to get Mermaid's homework done by 6 so Reasonable Man doesn't have to deal with it after dinner, since he often has work of his own to do then, and Thursdays there's no swim practice but right now Enthusio's therapy appointment is right after school so I pick him up, get him over there and then come home to get Mermaid, who arrives home from in the meantime. The only thing I can tell you about how much I hate Mermaid's homework is that it's more than I hated actually doing my own when I was in school, and she's only in 5th grade! And I swore I was never going to be one of these moms who was racing around getting multiple children to multiple activities each day, but the fact is that this is only two kids with one activity a piece (I refuse to count psychotherapy as an activity). And Enthusio still wants to try Taekwondo and Mermaid hasn't even started Girl Scouts for the year, if you can believe that.
On top of all that, my school-related duties this year seem to have tripled. In addition to the administrative duties I took on last year for the parents' night out fundraiser, I am also one of 5 people chairpeople running the two Scholastic Book Fairs we'll be having this year, and I'll be running my own event, the used book sale, at our end-of-the-year carnival. Can I just say, I vowed to never be one of those moms either? I swear I haven't set one toe inside a PTA meeting after the first and only one I attende when our school opened 4 years ago, but I keep getting recruited for this stuff anyway, and I don't mean to complain because I really do enjoy it (no one could be more surprised than I am about that), but, you know, it's a lot of stuff.
So that's my life, people. And it's all good stuff, but there's a shitload of it, that's why, you know, the old Green House is not updated too often these days. Writing here in this space is a pleasure and I'll get to it as often as I can, but I can't make any promises about the next few months, especially during November. I hope you all will hang in there and keep reading though, because I really do appreciate it! And now I'll bid you adieu, because there are Halloween decorations to get up, bills to be paid, showers to be taken, and so on and so forth. Here's wishing you all a relaxing weekend!
There is a lot going on in my world lately. The first month of school has raced by, and a lot of my time and brain power has been occupied with figuring out Enthusio's situation. Things have been much better that last week or so. He has seen his therapist twice, and he really likes her. He has also been managing things better at school, at least in terms of staying out of trouble. I think he is still playing by himself at recess most of the time, though -- he doesn't really answer my questions about friends (so I'm trying not to ask) and one time he told me he spent recess picking up trash. That's something he did a lot of last year and got little awards for it, which is great -- I certainly don't have a problem with him being a good citizen -- but if he's doing that because it's easier than finding kids to play with, that's not good either. So he's staying away from the wrong kids, but he's still not finding the right kids -- it's progress, but there's still some ground to cover.
On the other hand, during non-school daylight hours, Enthusio, and often Mermaid as well, can be found out front playing with the kids on the street. About 6 weeks ago, a family with three kids (9YO girl, 7YO & 5YO boys) moved in directly across the street from us, and suddenly there are boys to play with, and the girls who already lived on our street are out more and there's this whole gang of kids outside playing all the time. It's great, and Enthusio has friends who are boys that he plays with all the time, so that's huge :-)
Complete change of subject: on our street, there is a couple who are in the process of starting a publishing house, and they have already published one book, written by the male half of the couple, Jonathan, and have a few projects by other authors in the works. I've talked to them about writing and the publishing business before, and I'd been vaguely encouraged to show them some of my work, but I hadn't pursued it at all. Last week, I ran into Jonathan at a coffee place and got to talking to him again, and told him a little more about what I have finished, which is two books in what I'm thinking will be a three-book Young Adult Series -- I've written one novel from the perspective of a 17YO boy (Danny), a second from his 15YO sister's point-of-view(Mollie), and there is a second sister (Susan), so logically she would have a novel as well. Since Danny was told in the third-person, and Mollie was in the first person, I was all ready in the process of converting Danny to the first-person because I thought they should all be the same. Jonathan sounded pretty interested and gave me specific instructions to a) write the third novel in November, when I'll be participating in National Novel Writing Month for the 4th year anyway, and b) get the two completed novels into the best possible shape, and then I'll take what I've got to show them around the first of the year.
Jonathan said even if they aren't interested in taking on the project (which I think is a distinct possibility, since I doubt they were thinking of moving into the Young Adult market), they have learned a lot about the publishing business in the last few years and made contacts, and they can advise me about what to do next. Naturally, this has given me a huge shot in the arm as far as working on these novels and hopefully moving them toward publication. Particular issues:
I've put in about 20 hours converting Danny to first-person, with all that entails, and I'm very happy with that. One problem with the Danny novel was that he's kind of closed off, and my narrator-voice tends to be a bit on the formal side anyway, so some of the people who read the novel had trouble relating to/sympathizing with the main character, which is obviously a problem. This first time through has mostly been converting all the "Danny"s and "he"s to "I"s and "me"s, but there was a lot of language that very obviously had to be changed just to make it sound like something a 17YO boy would really say. I will have a lot more of that kind of thing to do on the second time around, as well as working a little more detail in a few areas that were neglected the when I originally wrote the novel. The good news is that, just in changing it to first-person, I feel like Danny has become a warmer and more relatable character.
Next I'll be taking on the major issue with Mollie, which is the fact that the first quarter or so of the novel is rushed. Get this: last year, about 4 days into November, I somehow managed to erase the approximately 6,000 words I'd written and had to start all over. This obviously sucked, but I didn't dwell on it -- I just started over. I'd been feeling like those 6,000 words had been dragging anyway. So I wrote a condensed version of what I'd lost, which was good in that I was able to get going again, and get to the meat of the story like I'd been wanting to do in short form. But when I read the novel after it was done, I felt like a lot of what was in my head in terms of establishing the characters and setting up the plot didn't come out, and a couple of people who read it had a questions and concerns along those lines. So my main job with the Mollie novel is to plump up the first several chapters with richness and details that will set up the story in a more satisfying way.
My biggest challenge will be writing the Susan novel in November. Danny and Mollie are characters who have large chunks of me in them. Susan has always been more of larger-than-life supporting character who is a lot of fun to write, but I've never tried to get inside her head very much. Truthfully -- I created these characters back when I was a teenager myself, and they started out very much as types: Danny was the brain, Mollie was the athlete, and Susan was the blonde, pretty, popular Mean Girl. Danny and Mollie were easy to flesh out over the years because they were characters I could relate to. Danny became less of a geek and more of a regular guy -- he's still skinny and wears glasses, but he's developed a harder edge and can be more of a real guy than when I first envisioned him. Mollie is still an athlete as well as an excellent student, but her motivation to be so driven and such an over-achiever is rooted as much in her insecurity as they are in her confidence in herself. I always felt like there were pieces of my teen-age self I could put into these characters. At this point, I'm not sure how to do that with Susan. Her story will take place the year after she graduates from high school, when she's kind of stumbling along, trying to figure out where her life is going, and I certainly went through a certain amount of that when I was that age, but the difference is that I was a freshman in college, living in a dorm, and my lack of direction was mostly going on in my head while I followed a prescribed path that I'd been working toward all through high school. Susan isn't a student and won't be going away to college, and so far I haven't really made up my mind if her story will be rooted in a job, junior college, technical school, or what, much less how things will play out. The Danny and Mollie stories focused on romantic plotlines (that's probably the wrong word -- not much about the teenager years is very romantic) and Susan's will as well, but the story won't be authentic unless it also addresses the direction her life is taking, moving away from being the high school queen bee and into the real world, so what she's doing every day is important. And one month from today, I'm going to need to have a pretty good idea how this is going to play out.
(Just a quick note: normally, I hate talking about what I'm writing about. I'm happy to talk about the fact that I'm writing, how much I'm writing, why I'm writing, the genre in which I'm writing -- but details like plot and character names and so on and so forth -- it seems as soon as I start saying it all out loud, it usually sounds so stupid! Spelling out what I have in the previous few paragraphs is huge for me -- I've basically forced myself to do it, because normally, I'd honestly rather hand someone my novels to read than to summerise them. But part of moving toward the business end of things is going to be talking about what and who I'm writing about, so there you go. I've just got to do it.)
Very-long-story-short, the writing is taking up lots of my time, and it's not even my day gig. Yes, the kids are in school 8:30-3 everyday, and that leaves me lots of time to write as well as work out, keep the house and finances more or less in order, go shopping and other things I do to keep myself sane, but once they get home, forget it. Mondays, the kids get home about 3:15, Mermaid has swim practice 3:45-4:45, and then there's around 90 minutes of homework plus saxophone practice for her and 20 minutes of homework for Enthusio and dinner to get ready, and basically it's a sprint to get it all done by 8 pm so we can all have some time to relax before bed. Wednesday they get out at 1:30, but Enthusio has play practice 2-2:45 and then we spend an hour at the library doing homework -- that's if I've remembered Mermaid's swim gear so we can go straight from the library to swim practice. Tuesdays there's no swim practice but I often have something to go to that night so it's extra important to get Mermaid's homework done by 6 so Reasonable Man doesn't have to deal with it after dinner, since he often has work of his own to do then, and Thursdays there's no swim practice but right now Enthusio's therapy appointment is right after school so I pick him up, get him over there and then come home to get Mermaid, who arrives home from in the meantime. The only thing I can tell you about how much I hate Mermaid's homework is that it's more than I hated actually doing my own when I was in school, and she's only in 5th grade! And I swore I was never going to be one of these moms who was racing around getting multiple children to multiple activities each day, but the fact is that this is only two kids with one activity a piece (I refuse to count psychotherapy as an activity). And Enthusio still wants to try Taekwondo and Mermaid hasn't even started Girl Scouts for the year, if you can believe that.
On top of all that, my school-related duties this year seem to have tripled. In addition to the administrative duties I took on last year for the parents' night out fundraiser, I am also one of 5 people chairpeople running the two Scholastic Book Fairs we'll be having this year, and I'll be running my own event, the used book sale, at our end-of-the-year carnival. Can I just say, I vowed to never be one of those moms either? I swear I haven't set one toe inside a PTA meeting after the first and only one I attende when our school opened 4 years ago, but I keep getting recruited for this stuff anyway, and I don't mean to complain because I really do enjoy it (no one could be more surprised than I am about that), but, you know, it's a lot of stuff.
So that's my life, people. And it's all good stuff, but there's a shitload of it, that's why, you know, the old Green House is not updated too often these days. Writing here in this space is a pleasure and I'll get to it as often as I can, but I can't make any promises about the next few months, especially during November. I hope you all will hang in there and keep reading though, because I really do appreciate it! And now I'll bid you adieu, because there are Halloween decorations to get up, bills to be paid, showers to be taken, and so on and so forth. Here's wishing you all a relaxing weekend!
Monday, September 26, 2005
Ups and Downs, Good News and Bad
Last Monday was the first day of Enthusio's after-school Spanish, which means he gets out of school at the same time Mermaid does. I sent them off to school by themselves that morning, and counted on them to meet and get themselves home together as well. They did great! That afternoon, Enthusio and I dropped Mermaid off at the pool for swim practice and then drove to the library. As we were walking inside, my cell phone rang: "Hi, this is Jennifer over at City of Davis Gymnastics. I have (Mermaid) here -- swim practice got cancelled -- can you come pick her up?" I said yes and we headed right back over there. When we arrived, Mermaid was a little teary: "I'm sorry, Mom! I forgot to tell you!" They are renovating the pool where she's had practice since the beginning of the summer, so practice was moved to a different pool. I knew that was coming soon, but I didn't realize Monday was the day. Once I assured her that it was okay, that I wasn't angry and we'd just go over to the other pool, she was fine.
To recap: I dropped my autistic 10-year-old daughter off downtown at a pool where there was no swim practice, and instead of freaking the hell out, she calmly walked next door to the gymnastics gym, asked an adult for help, and gave the adult both our home and my cell phone numbers. Then she waited for me to pick her up, and the only part of it that was upsetting for her was thinking I would be mad that she forgot to tell me practice was moved. I think she was pretty taken aback that I hugged her and told her over and over how proud of her I was instead :-)
That evening, after we'd waded through two hours of homework and had dinner, we got out her saxophone and practiced putting it together and blowing into it the right way for a little while, in anticipation of her first lesson the next day. She had a much better experience getting the right sound out of it than she had at the orientation meetting when, in a room full of other kids and a lot of noise and confusion, she'd ended up in tears and unable to get anything other than a squeak out of it. Tuesday I attended her first lesson with her, since she wasn't going to have an aide with her at that time and I wanted to make sure she could follow what was going on. Great news: there are only two beginning saxophone students at her school this year! So she actually didn't really need me there all that much and I think I'll probably only go once or twice more, until I'm confident she knows how to put the sax together and take it apart and clean it herself really well. What's more, she totally got what was going on and did really well and seemed to have fun. I'm so thrilled! I think she's going to learn to read music really well, because that's decoding skills and hers are really good. She had good practices for the rest of the week, and I'm just really excited and happy this is going well for her. It's something she's wanted to do for a long time.
It's good to have a some happy stuff going on, because Enthusio has been having a really hard time lately. I know I've written about his trials and tribulations a lot in the last few months. Well, the week before last, after talking to one of his teachers at Back To School night and hearing about the issues he's been having in the classroom (falling apart when it's time to stop one activity and move on to another because he hasn't finished his work yet and that sort of thing), we decided to finally take the step of finding him a therapist. We spoke to our pediatrician, who agreed that it was a good idea to start him seeing someone -- she said that in her experience, this kind of anxiety goes up and down throughout childhood and the peak ages for boys are 9-11. That afternoon I made contact with a psychologist who practices here in town, and was able to go in to talk to her for a while and set up an appointment for Enthusio to see her.
I filled out numerous forms and questionaires, including one that, when I handed it back to her, caused her to say something like "oh yeah, there are some issues here" just based on the way I'd filled in the boxes. On the one hand, it makes me sad to have it confirmed by professionals that he is in need of professional help. But on the other hand, it's a relief -- it's not like, if his pediatrician or this psychologist had told me "don't worry, he's fine" I would have felt better, because at this point, I know there's something wrong, and Reasonable Man and I have dealt with it as best we can, but it's not getting better, and we know Enthusio needs help we can't give him ourselves. In that way it's very much like what we went through getting Mermaid some help all those years ago when we first became concerned about her development, only much less terrifying, of course, because this stuff he's going through? A lot of it is stuff Reasonable Man and I went through ourselves growing up. I can remember panicking in class back in first and second grade because everyone was doing their math faster than I was, and the more panicky I got, the slower I went. I hate it that my son is going through this, and I will do anything to help make it easier on him.
Unfortunately, that's not all. A couple of weeks ago, he told me some boys had teased him on the playground, saying he was a first grader. They'd had an assembly about bullying and teasing at school the week before, where they learned about how when kids tease you, you don't have to "take the bait" -- you can stay "off the hook" by ignoring them, walking away, making a joke, etc. Enthusio really took this to heart and told me all about it -- when he first told me about these boys teasing him, he started out by saying "Mom, I was kind of on the hook today." Then, this past Monday, he told me it hadn't stopped -- these same three boys from third grade had been seeking him out on the playground every day, usually during afternoon recess, and hassling him. He hadn't told a grown-up or done anything else to get help with the problem. We talked about what to do and I encouraged him to go to the yard duty immediately when this happened on the following day. The next day after school I asked him about it and he first said he "forgot" to go to the yard duty, then said he didn't go ask her for help because he was afraid he wouldn't get any.
Because I needed to be at school to work in Mermaid's classroom Wednesday right after Enthusio's recess time, I went early to help him go to talk with the yard duty. When I found him, he told me we couldn't talk to the yard duty because she'd benched him for kicking a kid this morning before school started. This kid is well known to us here in the neighborhood and Enthusio has had problems with him before. So the kid harrassed Enthusio, Enthusio kicked him, and the kid ran to the yard duty and told on him. After hearing this I went directly to Enthusio's teacher, who told me the kicking incident was actually Enthusio's second "referral" -- last week, he punched the same kid. Three referrals and it's a phone call home (big deal there -- I already know about the first two and I welcome the opportunity to chat about what's going on with whomever is brave enough to call me). She acknowledged that she knows about Enthusio's situation, and was quite concerned to hear about what was going on with the 3rd grade boys, which she hadn't known about before -- she said she would get right on taking care of that.
After the kids got home and we went to activities and Mermaid was at swim practice (at the right pool!) and I finally had Enthusio alone, we had a long talk. And what I got out of him was very interesting. For one thing, he hadn't gone to a yard duty about the kid from our neighborhood bothering him before school or the three 3rd grade boys bothering him at recess because he says he never thinks of that. The kid from the neighborhood comes up and says "Try to get me! Try to get me!" and he just reacts -- by punching or kicking -- and the kid immediately runs over to the yard duty and tells, and Enthusio gets in trouble. The 3rd grade boys run up and say "ah! It's the first grader!" (this is how they taunt him) and he just reacts by running after them and getting upset. The only time a yard duty has taken any notice of this was one time that he actually caught up to two of them and grabbed the backs of their shirts, and Enthusio was told to stop and leave them alone.
In other words, they come and provoke him, he lashes out, and he's the one who ends up in trouble. When I pointed out the similarity between the two situations to him, it was obvious he'd never thought about it before. I, on the other hand, had never realized exactly what was going on with him. He's simply not thinking, but reacting in a completely emotional way every time he's presented with any kind of stressful, frustrating or upsetting situation. Given the tools to deal with those situations, he can step back a bit and react more thoughtfully, but he needs guidance in that area -- he can't come up with those tools on his own.
So we talked, and he agreed to stay away from the kid who was bothering him before school, to resist chasing after the 3rd grade boys who call him a 1st grader, and most importantly to go to a grown-up for help if these kids or anyone else persists in teasing or provoking him in any way, and as far as I know, there have been no further incidents. I will still be checking in with him and with his teacher to make sure things stay on the right track, of course. And of course, I have high hopes for him making strides in therapy. He had his first session this past Friday, and although I wasn't allowed to come in and listen, I could hear him talking animatedly inside her office and he seemed quite happy when he came out at the end of the session. He says she has cool toys to play with and he really liked talking to her. So that's all good.
This parenting stuff is harder than it looks!
To recap: I dropped my autistic 10-year-old daughter off downtown at a pool where there was no swim practice, and instead of freaking the hell out, she calmly walked next door to the gymnastics gym, asked an adult for help, and gave the adult both our home and my cell phone numbers. Then she waited for me to pick her up, and the only part of it that was upsetting for her was thinking I would be mad that she forgot to tell me practice was moved. I think she was pretty taken aback that I hugged her and told her over and over how proud of her I was instead :-)
That evening, after we'd waded through two hours of homework and had dinner, we got out her saxophone and practiced putting it together and blowing into it the right way for a little while, in anticipation of her first lesson the next day. She had a much better experience getting the right sound out of it than she had at the orientation meetting when, in a room full of other kids and a lot of noise and confusion, she'd ended up in tears and unable to get anything other than a squeak out of it. Tuesday I attended her first lesson with her, since she wasn't going to have an aide with her at that time and I wanted to make sure she could follow what was going on. Great news: there are only two beginning saxophone students at her school this year! So she actually didn't really need me there all that much and I think I'll probably only go once or twice more, until I'm confident she knows how to put the sax together and take it apart and clean it herself really well. What's more, she totally got what was going on and did really well and seemed to have fun. I'm so thrilled! I think she's going to learn to read music really well, because that's decoding skills and hers are really good. She had good practices for the rest of the week, and I'm just really excited and happy this is going well for her. It's something she's wanted to do for a long time.
It's good to have a some happy stuff going on, because Enthusio has been having a really hard time lately. I know I've written about his trials and tribulations a lot in the last few months. Well, the week before last, after talking to one of his teachers at Back To School night and hearing about the issues he's been having in the classroom (falling apart when it's time to stop one activity and move on to another because he hasn't finished his work yet and that sort of thing), we decided to finally take the step of finding him a therapist. We spoke to our pediatrician, who agreed that it was a good idea to start him seeing someone -- she said that in her experience, this kind of anxiety goes up and down throughout childhood and the peak ages for boys are 9-11. That afternoon I made contact with a psychologist who practices here in town, and was able to go in to talk to her for a while and set up an appointment for Enthusio to see her.
I filled out numerous forms and questionaires, including one that, when I handed it back to her, caused her to say something like "oh yeah, there are some issues here" just based on the way I'd filled in the boxes. On the one hand, it makes me sad to have it confirmed by professionals that he is in need of professional help. But on the other hand, it's a relief -- it's not like, if his pediatrician or this psychologist had told me "don't worry, he's fine" I would have felt better, because at this point, I know there's something wrong, and Reasonable Man and I have dealt with it as best we can, but it's not getting better, and we know Enthusio needs help we can't give him ourselves. In that way it's very much like what we went through getting Mermaid some help all those years ago when we first became concerned about her development, only much less terrifying, of course, because this stuff he's going through? A lot of it is stuff Reasonable Man and I went through ourselves growing up. I can remember panicking in class back in first and second grade because everyone was doing their math faster than I was, and the more panicky I got, the slower I went. I hate it that my son is going through this, and I will do anything to help make it easier on him.
Unfortunately, that's not all. A couple of weeks ago, he told me some boys had teased him on the playground, saying he was a first grader. They'd had an assembly about bullying and teasing at school the week before, where they learned about how when kids tease you, you don't have to "take the bait" -- you can stay "off the hook" by ignoring them, walking away, making a joke, etc. Enthusio really took this to heart and told me all about it -- when he first told me about these boys teasing him, he started out by saying "Mom, I was kind of on the hook today." Then, this past Monday, he told me it hadn't stopped -- these same three boys from third grade had been seeking him out on the playground every day, usually during afternoon recess, and hassling him. He hadn't told a grown-up or done anything else to get help with the problem. We talked about what to do and I encouraged him to go to the yard duty immediately when this happened on the following day. The next day after school I asked him about it and he first said he "forgot" to go to the yard duty, then said he didn't go ask her for help because he was afraid he wouldn't get any.
Because I needed to be at school to work in Mermaid's classroom Wednesday right after Enthusio's recess time, I went early to help him go to talk with the yard duty. When I found him, he told me we couldn't talk to the yard duty because she'd benched him for kicking a kid this morning before school started. This kid is well known to us here in the neighborhood and Enthusio has had problems with him before. So the kid harrassed Enthusio, Enthusio kicked him, and the kid ran to the yard duty and told on him. After hearing this I went directly to Enthusio's teacher, who told me the kicking incident was actually Enthusio's second "referral" -- last week, he punched the same kid. Three referrals and it's a phone call home (big deal there -- I already know about the first two and I welcome the opportunity to chat about what's going on with whomever is brave enough to call me). She acknowledged that she knows about Enthusio's situation, and was quite concerned to hear about what was going on with the 3rd grade boys, which she hadn't known about before -- she said she would get right on taking care of that.
After the kids got home and we went to activities and Mermaid was at swim practice (at the right pool!) and I finally had Enthusio alone, we had a long talk. And what I got out of him was very interesting. For one thing, he hadn't gone to a yard duty about the kid from our neighborhood bothering him before school or the three 3rd grade boys bothering him at recess because he says he never thinks of that. The kid from the neighborhood comes up and says "Try to get me! Try to get me!" and he just reacts -- by punching or kicking -- and the kid immediately runs over to the yard duty and tells, and Enthusio gets in trouble. The 3rd grade boys run up and say "ah! It's the first grader!" (this is how they taunt him) and he just reacts by running after them and getting upset. The only time a yard duty has taken any notice of this was one time that he actually caught up to two of them and grabbed the backs of their shirts, and Enthusio was told to stop and leave them alone.
In other words, they come and provoke him, he lashes out, and he's the one who ends up in trouble. When I pointed out the similarity between the two situations to him, it was obvious he'd never thought about it before. I, on the other hand, had never realized exactly what was going on with him. He's simply not thinking, but reacting in a completely emotional way every time he's presented with any kind of stressful, frustrating or upsetting situation. Given the tools to deal with those situations, he can step back a bit and react more thoughtfully, but he needs guidance in that area -- he can't come up with those tools on his own.
So we talked, and he agreed to stay away from the kid who was bothering him before school, to resist chasing after the 3rd grade boys who call him a 1st grader, and most importantly to go to a grown-up for help if these kids or anyone else persists in teasing or provoking him in any way, and as far as I know, there have been no further incidents. I will still be checking in with him and with his teacher to make sure things stay on the right track, of course. And of course, I have high hopes for him making strides in therapy. He had his first session this past Friday, and although I wasn't allowed to come in and listen, I could hear him talking animatedly inside her office and he seemed quite happy when he came out at the end of the session. He says she has cool toys to play with and he really liked talking to her. So that's all good.
This parenting stuff is harder than it looks!
Check Out My Article...
... on TeeVee.com! Yes, all the brain power I waste on entertainment/celebrity issues and events does pay off once in a while...
A Real Housewife Takes On Housewives
A Real Housewife Takes On Housewives
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Alone
Reasonable Man and the kids left to go visit my in-laws yesterday, and I've been mightily enjoying having them gone. Folks will probably think it sounds terrible for me to say that, but I don't care. I don't really feel the need to defend the amount of devotion I feel for these people who live in the house with me. Also, I expect all three of them occasionally relish times when I'm not around as well. Besides -- show me a married mother of living-at-home-age kids who doesn't enjoy a little solitude once in a while, and I'll show you a woman who needs to get herself a LIFE already. In case I haven't already demonstrated my feelings on this subject clearly enough as of yet, being a wife and mother does not equal putting the needs of everyone else ahead of your own 24/7. Everyone needs a little alone time once in a while.
I should clarify to say that I spent the first ten hours my family was gone anything but alone -- I spent it in the company of my good friend Sue, her eight siblings, and a few of their assorted spouses and children. Sue's sister Loretta, her only sibling living in California, who was until two days ago the only sibling of Sue's I had met, is getting married today, so the whole clan is here for the big day. I met two of Sue's sisters (and one brother-in-law) Friday night, and the rest of the out-of-town sisters were there at Sue's by the time I joined them yesterday, and we all packed up headed down to the Bay Area for the Lafayette Art & Wine Festival.
I'll just say this. My dad is one of seven kids, so I'm no stranger to enormous gatherings of related people, but it's different when it's not your own family, and it can be highly entertaining to be there observing the dynamics in kind of the same way it was two years ago when I went to Reasonable Man's 15-year high school reunion. Don't get me wrong -- I had a blast hanging out with Sue and her family yesterday, and they couldn't have made me feel more welcome and a part of things if they'd tried. But I was still able to step back from it all for a few moments here and there and just see the different relationships between various siblings. Sue, who is always trying to take care of everyone, including me, is exactly the same way with all her siblings, which I find curious because she is one of the younger ones, the seventh of nine. Funny how that stuff comes out.
I enjoyed the Art & Wine Festival. I bought a wine glass and tickets for 4 glasses of wine (one of which I ended up giving to Sue's brother John, since it felt like a good idea to stop at 3), and I then I went on a quest for cute dangly earrings, which are a rediscovered treat since I got my contact lenses and a new short haircut. I also got a fitted gold toe ring, which was exciting since a) seems like everything you find is silver, and b) instead of being adjustable, it actually fits my toe and doesn't bend open, if you know what I mean. I hate the ones that open and then they get mishapen from being taken on and off and they get caught on your socks and all that. This is just a gold band with flower and leaf pattern on it and I can leave it on my toe forever and ever if I want. I probably went a little crazy with the earrings since none of them were exactly cheap, and two pairs have green, but that's okay. I also got some comfy lounging pants and a little bit of Christmas shopping done. So it was good.
I was home by 10:30, in bed reading by 11, and down for the count by 12, so that was nice. Slept in till about 8:30 this morning, then got up and had coffee and messed around on the computer for a while. Since I didn't go to the gym yesterday or Friday, I felt like I really should go today, but appeased my inner critic by riding my bike downtown instead. I got a couple of household necessities at the hardware store (why oh why are they finding lead in vinyl lunch boxes? more on this in another post), picked up a frappucino at Starbucks, and then spent a while messing around at Borders. I can kill a lot of time there, accompanied or not. Today I lingered in the "stationery, wrapping paper and other over-priced crap you don't really need" section, picking up some cute notebooks and a photo box that were 50% off and some scrapbooking stickers that were not. Then I dawdled for a while over baby name books. No, I am not planning to have anymore babies that need names, but I love baby name books anyway, and I do use them in my writing. Finally, I headed over to the True Crime section, where I was prepared to loiter for quite a while, but unfortunately, there was this dude there standing front-and-center by the shelf I wanted to look at, and he and his PowerAde or whatever his red beverage was were not moving. Fortunately I found a book I wanted on the shelf next to that one anyway. After that I went home, showered, and spent the rest of the afternoon screwing around on the computer some more and doing a few things around the house.
So anyway, that's how I wasted away my free time yesterday and today. All in all, a nice bit a peace, and now I feel refreshed and ready to go again...
I should clarify to say that I spent the first ten hours my family was gone anything but alone -- I spent it in the company of my good friend Sue, her eight siblings, and a few of their assorted spouses and children. Sue's sister Loretta, her only sibling living in California, who was until two days ago the only sibling of Sue's I had met, is getting married today, so the whole clan is here for the big day. I met two of Sue's sisters (and one brother-in-law) Friday night, and the rest of the out-of-town sisters were there at Sue's by the time I joined them yesterday, and we all packed up headed down to the Bay Area for the Lafayette Art & Wine Festival.
I'll just say this. My dad is one of seven kids, so I'm no stranger to enormous gatherings of related people, but it's different when it's not your own family, and it can be highly entertaining to be there observing the dynamics in kind of the same way it was two years ago when I went to Reasonable Man's 15-year high school reunion. Don't get me wrong -- I had a blast hanging out with Sue and her family yesterday, and they couldn't have made me feel more welcome and a part of things if they'd tried. But I was still able to step back from it all for a few moments here and there and just see the different relationships between various siblings. Sue, who is always trying to take care of everyone, including me, is exactly the same way with all her siblings, which I find curious because she is one of the younger ones, the seventh of nine. Funny how that stuff comes out.
I enjoyed the Art & Wine Festival. I bought a wine glass and tickets for 4 glasses of wine (one of which I ended up giving to Sue's brother John, since it felt like a good idea to stop at 3), and I then I went on a quest for cute dangly earrings, which are a rediscovered treat since I got my contact lenses and a new short haircut. I also got a fitted gold toe ring, which was exciting since a) seems like everything you find is silver, and b) instead of being adjustable, it actually fits my toe and doesn't bend open, if you know what I mean. I hate the ones that open and then they get mishapen from being taken on and off and they get caught on your socks and all that. This is just a gold band with flower and leaf pattern on it and I can leave it on my toe forever and ever if I want. I probably went a little crazy with the earrings since none of them were exactly cheap, and two pairs have green, but that's okay. I also got some comfy lounging pants and a little bit of Christmas shopping done. So it was good.
I was home by 10:30, in bed reading by 11, and down for the count by 12, so that was nice. Slept in till about 8:30 this morning, then got up and had coffee and messed around on the computer for a while. Since I didn't go to the gym yesterday or Friday, I felt like I really should go today, but appeased my inner critic by riding my bike downtown instead. I got a couple of household necessities at the hardware store (why oh why are they finding lead in vinyl lunch boxes? more on this in another post), picked up a frappucino at Starbucks, and then spent a while messing around at Borders. I can kill a lot of time there, accompanied or not. Today I lingered in the "stationery, wrapping paper and other over-priced crap you don't really need" section, picking up some cute notebooks and a photo box that were 50% off and some scrapbooking stickers that were not. Then I dawdled for a while over baby name books. No, I am not planning to have anymore babies that need names, but I love baby name books anyway, and I do use them in my writing. Finally, I headed over to the True Crime section, where I was prepared to loiter for quite a while, but unfortunately, there was this dude there standing front-and-center by the shelf I wanted to look at, and he and his PowerAde or whatever his red beverage was were not moving. Fortunately I found a book I wanted on the shelf next to that one anyway. After that I went home, showered, and spent the rest of the afternoon screwing around on the computer some more and doing a few things around the house.
So anyway, that's how I wasted away my free time yesterday and today. All in all, a nice bit a peace, and now I feel refreshed and ready to go again...
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Running Errands
The other day I headed out to Vacaville to run some errands and I was thinking about the recent disaster on the Gulf Coast. Actually, I started out thinking about gas prices, since it was the first time I'd had to put gas in my car since the price went up over $3/gallon. I knew I was close to needing a fill-up as I was leaving Davis, but I figured I could probably do better than $3.09/gallon for regular unleaded, so I headed down the road and ended up stopping at a place in Dixon where it was $2.98/gallon. So it was about $45 to fill up the minivan, and it was then that I realized that I didn't really care how much it cost me -- I'd been thinking more about how much gas I was using to drive around town mostly because I'm thinking more about conserving lately, not becuase it's gotten expensive.
Yep, I'm still a liberal
Besides, any time I think about how much gas costs, I remind myself how lucky I am if that's my biggest problem. After all, there are so many people who lost their homes or even their lives down on the Gulf Coast.
I enjoyed my shopping trip, even though I couldn't stop thinking about all of that. I went to the Adidas outlet because I needed new running shoes, and found two pairs of work-out pants there on clearance. Since I am what you might call pear-shaped, finding pants that fit me can be a bit of a challenge, so this was a big deal. That they were ridiculously cheap for quality, brand-name work-out clothes (a year ago I paid about $40 for a pair of running pants there -- this time I paid $11 for a pair of cropped work-out pants and $14 for a pair of long ones) was an added bonus. Shoes were a good deal too. If they'd had my size, I would have been able to buy a new pair of the same running shoes I already had for $25, less than half what I paid at the store in Davis last time. But I wasn't even bummed out that they didn't have my size, because they also had another pair that were a) still a bargain at $40, b) deliciously comfortable, and c) not even ugly! I mean, they're still running shoes, so they're not attractive, but they are white with grey and teal green accents, and they are not-hideous enough that I commented to the guy who rang me up that I suspicious of whether they were actually real running shoes or not. For a guy who works at a sports attire outlet, he seemed awfully clueless about the joke I was trying to make.
After that, I headed over to Costco. I couldn't help thinking that if we could just airlift the entire contents of a few Costco stores over to the hurricane victims down on the Gulf Coast, we could go a long way toward replacing a lot of what they are needing. Food, clothing, appliances, luggage, furniture, books and DVDs, tents and sleeping bags, basic hygeine items -- Costco has it all, and in huge quantities. I'll tell you what -- if there's ever a natural disaster nearby and we need to evacuate our home, the nearest Costco would be my first choice to take my family. The one we shop at in Vacaville is built kind of up on a hill, which would be great in the event of a flood.
Knowing I was going to Costco, I hadn't eaten lunch before I left home. I knew that even if I didn't stuff myself with free samples of microwaved delicacies, I could grab a yummy, cheap hot dog or frozen yogurt on the way out. So I made my way to the back of the store, starting in the bakery area, and starting snagging samples as I approached my main objective: a roast chicken. Sure, they have them at Safeway across the street from my house, but the ones at Costco are twice as big and cost $2 less each. We had a Safeway chicken last week and found it sorely lacking. So I picked up a chicken, and as I travelled on in search of more culinary delights, I passed a sign above a little dispenser that said "Hairnets and Beardnets." Beardnets? Well, yeah, I guess that makes sense -- I don't want some guy's nasty little beard hairs falling in my free pasta sample anymore more than I want some woman's head hairs in there -- but just the idea of a guy with a hairnet over his beard kind of grossed me out. "I hope I never see that," I told myself. Naturally, not two minutes later, I did see that, on the guy handing out samples of french bread pepperoni pizza. All I can say is, bleah! Someone should tell that guy that his yucky beard is not worth that kind of humiliation.
Anyway, this post does have a point, and it is not to make light of the Katrina situation. It's more that I don't know what to feel when I am able to just go about my regular, normal business -- sending the kids off to school, going to the gym, going off to Vacaville to run not-unpleasant errands -- while huge numbers of my fellow citizens are suffering a couple thousand miles away. This is very similar to how I felt 4 years ago, when terrorists attacked the East coast -- it's already unfathomable that these kinds of things can happen, and that much more so when you are so far away that your daily life is more or less untouched by the tragedy. The 9/11 attacks had a California component in that the plane that went down in Pennsylvania was headed to Los Angeles and carried a number of Californians -- similarly, I'm sure there must be lots of people here in California who have friends or relatives who have been severely affected by the hurricane and flooding, but just like 4 years ago, I'm not one of them this time either. And so all I can really do is be sad and angry and terrified for all the victims, but in a vague kind of way, and there's no point in doing anything other than contributing to the relief efforts and going on with my business.
Another similarity between this disaster and the terrorist attacks is that it occurred at almost exactly the same point in President Bush's second term as 9/11 happened in his first term. If pre-9/11 intelligence reports are to be believed, there were a number of clues that those attacks were coming -- similarly, all indications are that this kind of flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi in the event of a big hurricane was well anticipated but not prepared for. Yet somehow, the Bush administration turned the 9/11 attacks to their advantage, using them as a reason to attack Iraq, even though no Iraqis were involved in 9/11, and probably exposing the U.S. to even more anger-fueled terrorist attacks in the future. It makes me wonder if they can also manage to turn the devastation of Katrina to their paradoxical advantage again, as a means of cutting back disaster relief or services to poor people, or stripping away at environmental protections.
Finally-- last winter when the tsunami hit island nations in southeast Asia, there was a lot of talk about why should those nations automatically expect help from the United States? Wasn't it their own problem that their governments weren't able to provide them with disaster relief? Now that our great, powerful federal government has managed to bungle providing that same kind of relief to its very own citizens in almost every possible way, one would hope the people who complained about us sending help to the tsunami victims would be a little more humble. But I doubt that will happen. Unfortunately, one thing I think people will remember is that a tiny percentage of the victims were angry and misguided enough to take up arms and shoot at their would-be rescuers. The Bush administration has already done some blame-the-victim-style damage control, so it stands to reason that we can expect plenty of "they didn't want our help!"-type spin from our less charitable citizens in the years to come.
And probably lots of bitching about the high cost of gasoline as well.
Yep, I'm still a liberal
Besides, any time I think about how much gas costs, I remind myself how lucky I am if that's my biggest problem. After all, there are so many people who lost their homes or even their lives down on the Gulf Coast.
I enjoyed my shopping trip, even though I couldn't stop thinking about all of that. I went to the Adidas outlet because I needed new running shoes, and found two pairs of work-out pants there on clearance. Since I am what you might call pear-shaped, finding pants that fit me can be a bit of a challenge, so this was a big deal. That they were ridiculously cheap for quality, brand-name work-out clothes (a year ago I paid about $40 for a pair of running pants there -- this time I paid $11 for a pair of cropped work-out pants and $14 for a pair of long ones) was an added bonus. Shoes were a good deal too. If they'd had my size, I would have been able to buy a new pair of the same running shoes I already had for $25, less than half what I paid at the store in Davis last time. But I wasn't even bummed out that they didn't have my size, because they also had another pair that were a) still a bargain at $40, b) deliciously comfortable, and c) not even ugly! I mean, they're still running shoes, so they're not attractive, but they are white with grey and teal green accents, and they are not-hideous enough that I commented to the guy who rang me up that I suspicious of whether they were actually real running shoes or not. For a guy who works at a sports attire outlet, he seemed awfully clueless about the joke I was trying to make.
After that, I headed over to Costco. I couldn't help thinking that if we could just airlift the entire contents of a few Costco stores over to the hurricane victims down on the Gulf Coast, we could go a long way toward replacing a lot of what they are needing. Food, clothing, appliances, luggage, furniture, books and DVDs, tents and sleeping bags, basic hygeine items -- Costco has it all, and in huge quantities. I'll tell you what -- if there's ever a natural disaster nearby and we need to evacuate our home, the nearest Costco would be my first choice to take my family. The one we shop at in Vacaville is built kind of up on a hill, which would be great in the event of a flood.
Knowing I was going to Costco, I hadn't eaten lunch before I left home. I knew that even if I didn't stuff myself with free samples of microwaved delicacies, I could grab a yummy, cheap hot dog or frozen yogurt on the way out. So I made my way to the back of the store, starting in the bakery area, and starting snagging samples as I approached my main objective: a roast chicken. Sure, they have them at Safeway across the street from my house, but the ones at Costco are twice as big and cost $2 less each. We had a Safeway chicken last week and found it sorely lacking. So I picked up a chicken, and as I travelled on in search of more culinary delights, I passed a sign above a little dispenser that said "Hairnets and Beardnets." Beardnets? Well, yeah, I guess that makes sense -- I don't want some guy's nasty little beard hairs falling in my free pasta sample anymore more than I want some woman's head hairs in there -- but just the idea of a guy with a hairnet over his beard kind of grossed me out. "I hope I never see that," I told myself. Naturally, not two minutes later, I did see that, on the guy handing out samples of french bread pepperoni pizza. All I can say is, bleah! Someone should tell that guy that his yucky beard is not worth that kind of humiliation.
Anyway, this post does have a point, and it is not to make light of the Katrina situation. It's more that I don't know what to feel when I am able to just go about my regular, normal business -- sending the kids off to school, going to the gym, going off to Vacaville to run not-unpleasant errands -- while huge numbers of my fellow citizens are suffering a couple thousand miles away. This is very similar to how I felt 4 years ago, when terrorists attacked the East coast -- it's already unfathomable that these kinds of things can happen, and that much more so when you are so far away that your daily life is more or less untouched by the tragedy. The 9/11 attacks had a California component in that the plane that went down in Pennsylvania was headed to Los Angeles and carried a number of Californians -- similarly, I'm sure there must be lots of people here in California who have friends or relatives who have been severely affected by the hurricane and flooding, but just like 4 years ago, I'm not one of them this time either. And so all I can really do is be sad and angry and terrified for all the victims, but in a vague kind of way, and there's no point in doing anything other than contributing to the relief efforts and going on with my business.
Another similarity between this disaster and the terrorist attacks is that it occurred at almost exactly the same point in President Bush's second term as 9/11 happened in his first term. If pre-9/11 intelligence reports are to be believed, there were a number of clues that those attacks were coming -- similarly, all indications are that this kind of flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi in the event of a big hurricane was well anticipated but not prepared for. Yet somehow, the Bush administration turned the 9/11 attacks to their advantage, using them as a reason to attack Iraq, even though no Iraqis were involved in 9/11, and probably exposing the U.S. to even more anger-fueled terrorist attacks in the future. It makes me wonder if they can also manage to turn the devastation of Katrina to their paradoxical advantage again, as a means of cutting back disaster relief or services to poor people, or stripping away at environmental protections.
Finally-- last winter when the tsunami hit island nations in southeast Asia, there was a lot of talk about why should those nations automatically expect help from the United States? Wasn't it their own problem that their governments weren't able to provide them with disaster relief? Now that our great, powerful federal government has managed to bungle providing that same kind of relief to its very own citizens in almost every possible way, one would hope the people who complained about us sending help to the tsunami victims would be a little more humble. But I doubt that will happen. Unfortunately, one thing I think people will remember is that a tiny percentage of the victims were angry and misguided enough to take up arms and shoot at their would-be rescuers. The Bush administration has already done some blame-the-victim-style damage control, so it stands to reason that we can expect plenty of "they didn't want our help!"-type spin from our less charitable citizens in the years to come.
And probably lots of bitching about the high cost of gasoline as well.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Summer's Over
I always meant to write a kind of general wrapping-up-the-summer post about the kids and Reasonable Man beat me to it. He is so handy sometimes!
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