The Danger Bunny

Holy Shit

2012-01-01T19:14:00.010-06:00

2011, you certainly left us wiser.

It's funny looking back at my new year's post from 2010, wishing that 2011 would be a good year. I was thinking "good" merely in terms of fewer hassles. But here I am posting a year later with a photo of my baby. How can that be? How can I have a baby? And yet...here he is, growing more adorable with each passing day and making us wonder how there could ever be a time when he wasn't here. "Good" indeed! My favorite memories of 2011 were the surprise of discovering we were having a baby, my mostly-wonderful pregnancy, and meeting Caleb and discovering what it's like to be parents. I'd love to be eloquent and poignant here, but what really sums this up for me is "holy shit!"

That's actually a good summing up of this whole year. Aside from having a baby, which is quite enough to rock our worlds, we both had surgery (Dave on his nose, me a c-section), we both have new jobs and not by choice (Dave's school closed and my department restructured), and we found ourselves enmeshed in a lengthy and very costly court case about Dave's mother's estate that is still unresolved. Related to that, we had multiple estate emergencies to deal with (burst pipe, dropped home insurance, finding new insurance, threatened foreclosure). We got a new fence put up in our yard. The summer government shut down almost cost Dave his new job. I went to New Orleans. We both went to Boston. Dave had to move to our house everything of his from his mother's house (a considerable amount of stuff), and do so right in the middle of our reconfiguring our own house to accomodate a nursery. Oh, yeah, and I got another Master's Degree. I can't stop looking back on all this like one might stare at a multi-car pile up. 2011, you were ridiculous! Seriously, what the hell?

And the craziness of our lives is nothing compared to what others' are going through right now. So many people had life-changing developments in 2011. And even looking at the Year-End magainzes, the level of change in the world is absurd.

But while 2011 really did beat us senseless, it's hard to rail against the injustices of the world when simultaneously creating and caring for a beautiful new life. 2011 is the marking point for us of "before" and "after." And for that, 2011, you will always be the most beautiful of years even though on the outside you appeared quite ugly.

You left us wiser. You left us stronger. You blew our minds. I salute you one final time. Now I'm off to hold my baby boy and feel some peace amid the chaos.

Caleb Edward Topness Witkowski

2011-10-29T16:43:00.004-05:00

There is not the leisurely time to blog I thought I'd have during my maternity leave, so I will make this one quick and shortish.

Things to know about Caleb:

1. He was born on September 23, the autumnal equinox
2. He's a Virgo/Libra cusp baby
3. He's a big 'un. Born just under 10 lbs.
4. He looks kind of like me, kind of like Dave, but mostly like a brand a new person
5. It is very cute when he's angry or frustrated (he waves his arms in the air and shakes his head back and forth like a puppy playing tug with a rope toy)
6. The kid can suck like nobody's business
7. He's very good at eye contact and has a firm handshake
8. He's got the cutest toes in the history of toes
9. He is happiest when cuddling
10. He's got his mom and dad smitten beyond words

As for me, I've already broken all of the promises I made in my last blog post, but have since reigned myself back in. The first few weeks home with Caleb were perhaps the most vulnerable of my life, so it was easy to constantly feel guilty and to feel like my life as an independent person was over forever. I knew that's how it would be...certainly heard plenty about the "baby blues," knew my horomones would be readjusting and making me a little crazy, knew that it would be a hard transition, and realized that recovering from an unexpected C-section would only add to those complexities. But knowing something and actually going through something are different. Dave, for his part, was calm, capable, and very happy right from the beginning...making me feel even more like an out-of-control mess. But he also kept me sane until my horomones settled back into their assigned seats. And he continues to keep me sane. I never thought I could love Dave more than I did before. Shows what I know!

And for myself, I've given up mourning my "real" life. I've decided to exhale and appreciate this new pace of life, where there is no boundary between day and night, where my time is spent in zen-like repetition of feeding, cleaning, bathing, dressing, and holding this little person who I so love but hardly know. I've decided to treasure this time when Caleb belongs to me more than he ever will again...before I need to share him with the rest of the world, before daycare, before school, before friends, before dates, before he has a whole life of his own in which I just play a part. This time is short, where he and I are our own world. And this time is going far too fast. So I hold him now without glancing at the clock. Just hold him. This warm little bundle is mine, and I think that's where my "real" life is really beginning.

Dear Future Self...

2011-09-16T09:21:00.002-05:00

Being on the eve of parenthood is an odd feeling. There's Current Me...very pregnant, yes, but childless in the sense that for now my world pretty much revolves around me. When I want to do something or go somewhere, I do it. When I'm tired I sleep. When I'm hungry I eat. When I want a bubble bath, I take one. For as long as I want! My world also circles around the needs of my husband and my much-adored cat, but their worlds mesh with mine and we exist in harmony.

Then there's Future Me. Future Me's world, I believe, will be ruled by a sweet-cheeked newborn who cannot harmonize his world with ours. He's little and helpless! When he needs to eat, that needs to happen. When he needs to sleep, that needs to happen. He can't really do anything on his own, and to extend the metaphor of worlds...he will be like a meteor hitting our solar system, throwing everything off balance. We welcome the meteor, we love the meteor, we are delighted to accomodate the meteor into our solar system...but it will be a big bang.

Current Me can only imagine the needs and frustrations of Future Me, but I feel like reaching out to my future self with comfort and a few promises based on what I think Future Me will most need.

Promise One: I will never burden you with guilt. I may feel bad about choices that need to be made, knowing that those choices are not easy, clear-cut, or even the right choices. But I give you leave to be human, to not be right all the time, and to sometimes just plain f-up. I will allow you to move on and do better, rather than mentally punish you for what you do wrong.

Promise Two: I will not make you feel bad about going back to work. You cannot be with your child all day. That is sad for you, but sadder is not being able to feed or shelter your child. I will not allow you to spend time questioning a decision that, really, isn't a decision at all but a bland necessity. I will allow you to feel sad and anxious, but I will also help you move on and do what you need to do.

Promise Three: You can put yourself first. You can put your marriage first. Sometimes you can put your job first (see Promise Two). I will remind you that in your philosophy to be a good parent you need to be a happy, healthy person with a happy, healthy marriage. Everyone...not just baby...needs to be cared for. I will help you do this without feeling guilty (see Promise One).

Promise Four: I will trust you. You know what you're doing, usually. You know how to keep balance, to call something BS when it's BS, you know who you are and what you need, and you know what's important to you in raising a child. I won't second guess you, but understand that you will do what's best for your family in all circumstances.

Promise Five: You can still be yourself. You will be a mother...a new role. That role will change you in ways Current Me can't predict. But you also still remain you. The things you loved before children are things you will continue to love, and things that I will ensure are still a part of your life in some way. You can still write (in fact, Future Me, motherhood may compell you to write more!), you can still create art, you can still see your friends and have deep and compelling conversations, you can still read for pleasure, and yes you can still travel. I promise you motherhood will not make you someone you are not. Rather, I promise to ensure motherhood enhances who you already are.

There. Now I can go forward and leave the time in my life that will forever be known as "before." I'm ready for the big bang...and the beautiful new world it will create.

I'm Still Here

2011-08-02T10:51:00.004-05:00

Poor blog. Sacrificed in the name of "all other things that are going on." I shall attempt to revive you, however. Now seems like a good time to slap you across each cheek, check your pulse, and offer some food and water.

So, what's new? People who ask me that question are faced with a litany of things that -- to one not living it -- sounds if not like fiction at least like a vast exaggeration. And it's kind of sad when one's life starts sounding unbelievable to others. Most of "what's new" is good, at least. Some is stressful beyond words. And some are just regular issues, but heightened by their unfortunate proximity to "all other things that are going on."

The big news is that we've got a baby coming. Which isn't something either of us thought would happen, but did anyway. After Dave's mother died I think we both -- privately and instinctually -- realized the brevity of life and felt open to having a child in ways we didn't before. We never discussed this, but we became purposefully lax about preventing pregnancy. Still...we're in our 40s. "Leaving it in God's hands" to me really kind of meant "I probably won't get pregnant anyway." But I did. And really quickly. It's taken some time, but now we're both very excited albeit feeling overwhelmed like any first-time parents.

At about the same time we found we'd be parents (actually, only the day after!) we also found that Dave's estranged brother decided to contest their mother's will (which leaves everything to Dave). Evil brother has an opening because her will, unfortunately, is not signed. I can't go into this too much...it's a very painful betrayal coming right on the heels of Dave's grieving for his mother. It's also caused more chaos and expense in our lives than I can detail...it's cost us a great deal to maintain his mother's house in winter, there was a burst pipe that created an emergency situation, as well as endless frustration and time spent trying to maintain and insure property one doesn't technically own and for which nobody is yet named executor (due to conflicts around the will). So far estate issues have taken at least as much out of our lives as a part-time job and cost us about half of our savings, at a time when we're trying to emotionally and financially prepare to raise a child.

At about the same time Dave had surgery on his nose. In fact, right after his surgery -- despite doctor's orders that he rest -- he had to be at his mom's house moving boxes from the basement because of the frozen pipe incident.

At about the same time I was also working full-time, taking two graduate courses, and working part-time on my internship. As well as dealing with morning sickness and potential genetic problems in our unborn child (those tests and procedures turned out ok, by the way!).

At about the same time, Dave found out his school would be closing at the end of the year and he'd be out of a job in a matter of months.

And at about the same time, I found out my office was being reorganized and that we'd have additional job responsibilities and a new supervisor.

And yet...like Weebles of yore...after each push we've managed to right ourselves again.

Thankfully, baby is doing well. He'll be here in less than 2 months. His nursery is cute and we're very excited to meet him (yes...it's a boy). Moxie, for her part, is finding pacifiers the perfect kitty toy. And after a miserable and frightening first trimester, the rest of my pregnancy has been happy and healthy. I graduated with my second MA this May, which (finally) freed up some time for me to focus on preparing for parenthood. Dave's school closed but he found another (even better) job right away. And the upheaval at my job has turned out to be a positive change for me. So really...I need to be done with the complaining.

With the end of winter things have settled down a bit with estate issues, but a big court date is still on its way in October and the result of that could impact our financial future and make things even more difficult if Dave's brother wins his case. Either way, we'll be faced with an estate to manage and a house to sell or rent. The end to that ordeal is not in sight, but hopefully after a long fight even that will eventually right itself.

So, poor blog, that's why you've been left to languish. But I'm back, and ready to hopefully fill you with happy tales of parenthood and far fewer tales of woe.

1/1/11

2011-01-03T16:10:00.003-06:00

It's not really 1/1/11 anymore, but this is the post I would have written on 1/1/11 had I been able to muster enough energy to hop onto the computer rather than laying around in bed with Mr. Charles Dickens (I'm just about done with Great Expectations, just to clarify).

Speaking of great expectations, what up 2010? What did I ever do to you? I did have some expectations of you...in fact early in the year I dared you to avoid sucking. I recall suggesting that a 2010 lottery win might be a welcome reward for enduring the nonsense of 2009. And I suppose that jinxed things because I'm pretty glad to see the back of you, 2010. I'm putting my money on 2011.

On the other hand, 2010 did bring some blessings...mainly in the form of keeping our foundation fairly stable. Dave and I are healthy (mostly), both managed to keep our jobs (this was, in fact, the first summer since we married that did not involve a job search), we made many improvements to our home, and endeavored to have fun together no matter what we were doing. I struggled quite a bit but did in the end manage to pull off the "full-time work, full-time grad school, part-time teaching" insanity, and admit I impressed myself by doing so. It's not a small blessing to realize you can do more than you think. And Dave received accolades on his committment to his school, and that, too, is no small thing. Furthermore this was a great year for books! I can't think of anything I read this year that I didn't love. And I got a cute haircut. And Moxie contributed cuddles and kept our home free from the destructive evil of her nemesis "laser bug." But probably the best thing to happen in 2010 was the show of love and support Dave received after his mother's death. Nothing makes me quite as happy as seeing those I love being treated with love. In fact, I think that was our lottery win this year...just realizing how blessed we are in our friends and family.

So perhaps you did come through after all, 2010. And I can bid you a fonder farewell.

But the pressures not off you, 2011...let's make this a good one.

Gosh...

2010-11-05T07:46:00.003-05:00

It has has been awhile, hasn't it? I won't even bother with excuses, since it's my blog and I can come and go as I please, and I hardly have thousands of readers awaiting my every posting (although I do think of you, Cory, my most loyal reader!).

I'm starting to understand that drama may never leave our lives. At least I've reached a place where drama no longer undoes me as it used to. Especially after the last couple years, I'm kinda like "yawn....oh, ho hum, here are more unexpected hurdles to leap...yawn...well, le's do this thing and get it over with." Old hat, man. For instance, I remember when I first started graduate school and every class was chock-full of presentations and it REALLY freaked me out (as public speaking does for many). I recall once driving to class and wishing my car would careen off a bridge so I wouldn't have to give a 30-minute presentation on Russian Formalism. But by the time I was finishing my program you simply could NOT shut me up. Presentations? I'm all over that! Speaking at conferences? Let's go! And, of course, teaching. No problem. Sure, I still get anxious but after so much exposure I'm no longer afraid of public speaking. And I'm sure it's the same for everything in life. The more you do, the more you can handle. And that's where I'm at with the latest life drama.

Dave's mom died unexpectedly in early September. Her health had been suffering for a long time (she was in and out of the hospital and nursing homes since early January), but nothing that seemed life-threatening. We thought that she may need to move out of her house and into a senior citizen apartment complex, but that alone was the big "worst case scenario". I won't go into details, except to say that her death was the result of a number of freak occurances and was entirely preventable had she been taking better care of herself, following her doctor's instructions, and had any number of things not happened in exactly the manner they did. Dave was his mother's only close family, so the burden has largely fallen on him to deal with this. He's been doing well, but as anyone whose lost someone knows it's only after the immediate numbness goes away that the real pain begins. I know it will be hard. And after dealing with her death and funeral, we're now working with our lawyer to sort out her estate, which seems like it should be easy but is not because the person named as executor has died and for a number of reasons that's causing complications. And eventually there will be another trauma once we have to deal with the house; it's the house in which Dave grew up and selling or renting it will signal another big loss for him.

My advice to the world? Make sure you have a signed living will and you make sure everyone who may need it has a copy or knows where it's kept. If you have any kind of surgery, make sure that your loved ones know where all your important records are, and if possible have your closest loved one listed as a joint account holder so they can take care of your business if you cannot. If you have an old will, update it so your executor is a living person. Don't neglect your health. And end each conversation with the words "I love you," because you never know when you'll be speaking to someone for the very last time.

Aside from all that, we have had some fun. We were able to host a couple Halloween Parties at our house. Dave started a book club at his school. My graduate classes have been going swell. We've been getting together with friends and continuing with all our house-related projects. I hope it's been a lovely fall for you!

Staycation

2010-08-02T14:06:00.022-05:00

Dave at MN Landscape Arboretum

Me at the Arboretum

Dave at Franconia Sculpture Park

along Gooseberry Falls hiking trail

Celebrating Independence Day

****

So, it was a staycation this summer. Which at first sounded really fun, but turns out it's not quite as fun as going away for vacation. Nevertheless, since there are a few expensive things we needed to buy now and in the near future, we decided to lay low this year.

The good:

* Hosted a couple wonderful gatherings

* Visited some fun places (Duluth/Gooseberry Falls, Franconia Sculpture Park, Walker Art Museum, Landscape Arboretum, Science Museum, Camp Ripley)

* Tried some new restaurants (favorite was Burger Moe's on W. 7th)

* Got halfway through the revisions on my novel

* Created a paved off-street parking lot next to our garage, in an area previously occupied by an unsightly passage tomb (or, rather, a 5 foot tall dirt-mound of mysterious rotting items that certainly resembled a passage tomb)

* Read Lud-in-the-Mist

* Saw a couple good movies (Winter's Bone and I Am Love)

* Did some painting (watercolor)

* Watched the first season of Lost (yes, we're that behind the times...and are ok with that)

* I had a lovely birthday

The bad:

* A staycation meant (at least for me) a constant internal war betweeen "I should be doing fun things" and "I should be getting something useful done," and no amount of compromise is going to make one feel good about however that precious vacation time is being spent.

* The portmanteau "staycation" is irritating...and yet I continue to use it.

-
* For the amount of money we spent on eating out and doing things, we probably could have just gone somewhere. Lesson Learned: even a staycation needs a budget.

* Developed an even deeper hatred for those who reside in the duplex next to us. Why are they always home? Why are there so many children over there constantly? Why are children who don't even live there always hanging out there? Why is there never an adult to be seen?

* It seemed to be 100 degrees and humid every freaking day.

* Too much Menards.

Overall, the good outweighed the bad. And of course the best is yet to come....the State Fair! Oh, State Fair, you bittersweet seductress you! And I continue to plug away at the novel, inspired by the big chunk of work I did get done over vacation. And one of our staycation consolation prizes is a new computer, which will be delivered shortly and will make our lives so much more efficient! Yay!

Hope your summer is going swimmingly!

80% Fun

2010-06-17T08:03:00.008-05:00

Awhile back, I kvetched that I was only having 1% fun, due to a punishing schedule of full-time job, full-time grad school, and teaching college two afternoons a week. Now 2/3rds of that is over. So now what?

If I feel like watching TV or a movie, or reading a book, I can! Just because I want to! I don't need to plan book reading or movie watching around the Byzantine complications of my weekly schedule!

Speaking of which, I can read for pleasure! I've whipped through 5 books already since the end of May, and am reading Lud-in-the Mist right now.

If friends want to meet for drinks or dinner, well....I'm free! We don't need to schedule it two months in advance.

I'm reaching 80% fun right now. I'm worried that I may engorge myself with so much fun that it will make me sick, like a dehydrated person who needs to be fed water very slowly so as not to overwhelm the system.

But I'm not quite done with my adamant "let's do this" productivity, either. We have a house that's been patiently waiting since Thanksgiving to be fully unpacked and organized. There's a yard we're still scratching our heads over. Plumbing issues that can't be ignored (despite our best attempts). Piles of unwanted stuff that must be sorted and distributed to appropriate recycling/refuse facilities. Piles of wanted stuff that must be organized and tucked away. At least a half dozen technical/electronic items are knock-knock-knocking on heaven's door, so replacements must be found. And, frankly, there is a novel that must be completed. Remember my poor novel sitting there in the corner, barely surviving on a few crusts of attention? Yeah. I'm finishing it. Starting in July.

So while the fun is ballooning, I'm not quite at a place where I just wake up in the morning, stretch my arms to the sky, sigh with warm content and think "now, whatever should I do today?" There are lists. Kind of elaborate multi-functional to-do lists. But the difference is that this summer the deadlines are our own and not dictated by class schedules. And that's a sweet difference indeed.

Back to fun things. This past weekend was David Day! Nothing pleases Dave more than tank-viewing, so we went to the military museum at Fort Ripley where they have a supposedly rare Jumbo Sherman Tank. Now, to me a tank is a tank and I don't see much difference, much like to Dave one pair of black pumps is the same as any other pair of black pumps. But apparently this Jumbo Sherman is unlike other tanks in a variety of significant ways I can't remember, except that it's heavier. Whatever the case, he sure liked it...which is the goal of David Day.

After spending a couple hours at the museum, we came home and I made Welsh rarebit macaroni and cheese and a homemade banana cream pie for my man. I've never made a custard pie from scratch before (I'm used to making the kind that involves pre-made crust and jello pudding), and really...there's no going back now, even if it does take a couple hours and involves de-seeding vanilla pods. All banana cream pies must now meet this standard. I messed up the recipe in three different ways, and the thing still tasted so good that I couldn't even resist eating part of it before taking this photo. Didn't even need whipped cream. So yum.

Tomorrow is Terri Day, so I shall see what surprises await me.

Thanks, Former Owners!

2010-04-19T13:40:00.005-05:00

When we closed on our house in late October, the former owners had a conversation that went like this:

"Should we tell them?"
"No, let it be a surprise!"
"Come on....tell them!"
"Do you think so?"
"They really should know"

I'm thinking....tell us what? About the poltergeist? The neighbor who practices their tuba at 5am Saturday mornings? The snake infestation? And yet...they seemed delighted by whatever this surprise was. Finally they revealed the secret: come spring, there would be a plethora of red tulips poking their fancy little heads out of the ground. And, in the photo above, you can see the result. They line the boarders of the garden, the sides of the house, and there are a few strongholds elsewhere as well, along with one non-conformist yellow tulip. Yay! Beautiful tulips our first spring there...and all we had to do to enjoy the bounty was a whole lotta nothin'. Well, except buy the house. But, anyway, thanks former owners! We'll forgive you for leaving piles of rotting wood in the garage and half-empty paint cans. We're even now.

Finally I have fresh flowers from my own garden to arrange in carefully-saved clotted cream containers:

And a perfect place to settle my Alice in Wonderland garden statuary:

Now we just have to figure out what else is in the garden. We've got a raspberry bush, and I discovered some mint. The rest of it...well, I guess more surprises to come.

I have a little speech prepared...

2010-03-16T11:56:00.005-05:00

Thanks to my good friend and fellow blogger, Michelle (JoJo) at A Mid-Atlantic English (http://michelloui.blogspot.com/), for giving me a Happiness Award! Yay! An award! Her blog is subtitled "long term expat lifestyle" but it's a fabulous blog for anyone interested in travel, family dynamics, the ambiguities of our life choices, or basically anyone keen on beautiful, thought-provoking essays. I certainly enjoy it very much. Thanks, JoJo!

A responsibility that comes with this award is a list of 10 things that make me happy. I'm going to amend that, and rather list 10 things that made me (or will make me) happy TODAY.

1. The morning e-mail from my husband, checking in and telling me how he can't wait to see me later. It's so nice starting each day feeling like a newlywed.

2. Tide To-Go Stain Remover pens.

3. Someone brought in shamrock-shaped sugar cookies.

4. The alliteration of "shamrock-shaped sugar cookies" pleases me as well.

5. The anticipation of taking a quick walk by the Mississippi during my lunch break (for the first time after a long winter).

6. There are no meetings today!

7. This is a happy thing yet-to-come, but it will make me very happy when I get home from work and my new cat Moxie cuddles with such intensity that you'd think I just rescued her from a well.

8. I also like that when Moxie is done cuddling, she meows and taps me on the shoulder to get down so we can move onto the "treat" portion of our reunion.

9. Another yet-to-come, but it makes me happy that my heart still leaps with excitement when I hear my husband's key in the door when he's arrived home from work.

10. I am very happy that I ended up buying the Libery for Target comforter that I almost passed over.

1% Fun

2010-03-10T07:03:00.010-06:00

My life right now is 95% work, 2% cleaning, 2% being sick, and 1% fun. The working full-time + going to graduate school full-time + teaching a college English course plan was STUPID. What was I thinking? I only have 1% fun now!! That's not right. I keep telling myself that once it's over I'll be glad I did it. And I only have about 11 weeks of this left...except now that I type it out, that still sounds like a really long time. Anyway, I don't like this at all.

But, that 1% fun is there at least. Thankfully I have a fun husband and a fun kitty and fun friends. I did manage to decorate and make an icebox cake for Dave's birthday, I watched some of the Olympics (see photo below of me and Moxie watching together), and Moxie's cuteness makes unfun things (like being sick) seem just a little more fun.

Et Tu, 2010?

2010-01-21T14:56:00.002-06:00

So...2009. I can't kvetch too much, since it ended with a job for Dave and a house for us and even a darling little cat. Plus there were two "outside of Minnesota" vacations in there as well, and just the fact that we traveled regardless of our lives' chaos made me very happy indeed! But there was also more stress than I think I've ever had to deal with in my adult life so far. My hair was actually coming out. It was making Dave physically ill. Looking back I can see the positive. We learned that we can handle things, really bad stressful things, and rather than harming us they made us and our marriage stronger. I'm still amazed at how last year my marriage seemed a kind of difficult but graceful dance, me naturally taking a strong lead when Dave was spinning and Dave picking up the lead once my own legs gave out. I witnessed with pride how Dave handled with dignity a situation that would break most people, including myself. And I saw how after a week of tears and fist-raised-to-the-heavens I managed to spit polish my situation and smile again, back to planning a better future with a kind of optimisim I never realized I had. And yeah...things worked out "for the best" as they say. And yet I still feel the trauma, and figuratively continue to look behind me as if trouble is about it leap from the shadows once again lest I get too comfortable and happy.

So facing 2010 I feel kind of sick to my stomach. This is the first year I remember starting a year with negative expectations, a kind of "what fresh hell?" attitude. So far it hasn't disappointed. In the few weeks of 2010, Dave's mother has been hospitalized and is having a difficult time of it (creating a great deal of stress, worry and extra work for Dave), I've fallen and factured my tail bone (again, causing stress and worry for Dave), my mother's cat died quite unexpectedly and at a young age, and our car seems to be refusing to make it through the winter like it promised (or rather, like the mechanic promised this fall after its last repair). And there are ill omens of Dave's school possibly closing after this year and another difficult job search on the horizon...this time, with us having the additional responsibility of a mortgage to keep us awake at night. Additionally, I have saddled myself with perhaps the most insane schedule I've ever kept: full-time graduate classes, teaching an English course, and continuing my regular full-time job. Back when I made those decision I thought I could do it all. Now that the new semester is about to knock on my door, I'm so mad at myself I'd kick my own ass if it weren't for the sore tailbone. And the general state-of-the-world problems that weigh heavily even though they happen far away, like in Haiti.

So, 2010, let's hope that you're just getting all the really bad stuff out of the way early and will surprise me. Let's hope next year I'm looking back on you thinking, "that wasn't bad at all!" Or better yet, "thank god we won the lottery!" Surprise everyone with good things, 2010. I dare you.

A Very Moxie Christmas

2010-01-06T11:55:00.003-06:00

I'll start right off with a picture of my little kitty-buddy and nap partner, Moxie! We adopted her over Christmas break, and now after only a week or so it's hard to imagine being without her. She makes little chirps and murmurs that sound (according to Dave) like R2D2. She's awfully pushy about the distribution of treats, but seems to have learned my treat-giving patterns and is adapting. She absolutely loses her MIND over her laser toy...frankly, I'm getting a little concerned about the intensity with which she pursues "laser bug." She likes to supervise whatever I'm doing, and much of what I do apparently causes her concern; I think I've received at least four scoldings from her in cat language. More and more she likes to be held and cuddled, as long as her hind feet are left alone. And perhaps cutest of all, she kneads her paws even when she's standing. How? She lifts one paw, then the other, and back and forth as if she were standing on hot coals. At first I thought there was something wrong with her paws, but no. She's just kneading in her own intense way. Love her!

Overall, Christmas break was sleepy and dreamy and sparkling and stuffed full of really-bad-for-you food. Hung out with great friends, finally finished War and Peace, watched numerous movies, bought kind of an absurd number of books, and finally finished unpacking and organizing my office! Did you know? I have my own office now. Not just a bed and a laptop, but a ROOM with a DESK and a CHAIR. There's even a nice RUG in there. And all my teaching and writing stuff in one place. Oh, and look! Moxie is in there as well, supervising as usual.

Some Houses Wear Christmas Well

2009-12-02T16:04:00.008-06:00

Above are a few photos of Thomasina in festive mood. I like that our house is turning out to be particularly Christmas-suited. Perhaps because it's Victorian and angle-y and cozy in size, it's been happily fulfilling my ideal of cottage living, despite all the boxes and unpacked items that continue to clutter the floor.

Ummm....hi

2009-11-30T11:36:00.002-06:00

So, what's going on? Just a little too much. There's the new house that needs a bottomless amount of attention. Still unpacking, still finding places for stuff, still fixing things, still needing to buy furniture and rugs and a 3-page list of other items. It seems like every little thing needs to be thought through, just like when one starts a new job and every task that in a year's time will be second nature is for the moment a frustrating process of looking up information, asking for help, sorting through documents, and making mistakes. What do we do about recycling? How do we change the filter on the furnace? Should we keep the mops here, or here, or here? What happens if I push this button on the oven? I know we have lightbulbs somewhere, where are they? How would it look if we moved the phone stand over there? What color rug should we get in here? Just, so many discussions and decisions and things to be "looked into" or "figured out". On top of that, there has been drama at Dave's workplace that's set askew our still-shaky sense of security. And I'm learning that BIG things are sometimes too big for blog topics. But here are some little things I can share!

We set up our first Christmas tree this weekend. And I had a sublime moment on Sunday night as I curled up in our recliner, cozy under a thick green fleece blanket, in full view of the lit tree, drinking a glass of egg nog and reading Nigella Lawson's new Christmas cookbook. Very nice indeed!

Over the weekend I seem to have forgotten ALL my various work and Internet passwords. In fact, I had to reset my password just to post to this blog.

I washed dishes in our dishwasher this weekend! And as a result felt somewhat left out. Cheated. There's something satisfying and zen-peaceful about washing dishes, and I think I'll probably continue washing dishes by hand except when there's quite a lot of them or they're particularly icky.

Shopping the sales of Black Friday was a terrifying experience, and I won't be making that mistake again. Except that I did get a number of things we needed for pretty decent prices. But still. Not again. $10 off a blender just isn't worth it.

I find it odd that I'm not afraid of my basement. It's a scary 116-year old basement, with dangerous and uneven stairs, low ceiling, multiple doors behind which anyone could be waiting to attack, and going down into it feels remarkably like walking into an open grave (seriously...it's exactly grave-shaped), and yet this is the only basement I've ever been in that hasn't made me want to finish my business and hurry upstairs with borderline panic. Curious. I just realized that this weekend when I was humming and puttering around the basement -- at night, no less!

Our house looks awfully cute with a wreath on the door!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving and can enjoy pre-Christmas!

Nesting

2009-11-05T11:00:00.014-06:00

Things are heating up, as we endeavor to make Thomasina (our new house) a home.

She got a fresh coat of paint, turning her (in just one sunny Saturday) from a frousy, fussy stripe-wearing matron into a witty attention-grabbing sophisticate. Or, at least I like to think so. Judge for yourself:

And now there's also furniture, finally purchased after a full-month of measuring and comparison shopping. The furniture is assembled and fits Thomasina's new look. We seem to be going for a slightly bohemian look but with the organic symmetry of Arts and Crafts style. A place where perhaps Christina Rossetti might have felt at home, except in this case with television and multiple bathrooms.

And now Saturday we usher in the remainder of our dusty and confused belongings. They're not exactly being as thoughtfully packed as I hoped, and are instead being dragged out unprotected by tissue paper or bubble wrap, heaped together in laundry bins and trash bags, a confusion of things we forgot we even owned. The impending move apparently freaked our DVD player so much it simply quit working, choosing death over the chaos of a new home. The TV is threatening to follow suit. However it happens, we're moving as much as we can on Saturday.

It has been nice living with less at the house. There are a few things I'm learning we can do without...quite easily. For instance, since we don't yet have a TV at the new house, we've now gone without it for about 2 weeks. Actually, I do miss that a little. Especially watching movies. But we don't really need it. Same with the Internet and our land-line phone. I only have maybe 1/4 of my clothes and shoes at the house, and turns out that's actually about all I need. It gets boring after a while, but that's it.

On the flip side, we already managed to bring all our books to the house...and while unpacking them yesterday I discovered that Thomasina hasn't really felt like a home until that moment. Could we do without our books? Of course. But what, really, is a home without them? I unpacked those books with a contented sigh, just as I would after a feast of comfort food.

And one of the strangest aspects of all this is the ambiguity with which I've been viewing the home we're leaving. For so long all I could focus on is getting out of that little apartment, away from the rude neigbors, the sound of other peoples' stereos and arguments, the smell of other peoples' dinners, the space that never could contain all we needed and wanted to do with our lives. But now that I'm packing it all up I feel a real sense of loss. I miss always being so close to Dave. In the apartment, physically we could never be further than a room away; now, an entire floor can separate us. I remember not just the bad times we've had while in the apartment, but the many, many good times...reading Rebecca on the couch, glancing out the window while the snow falls quietly over the trees and electrical wires of the alley. How our little space shone at Christmas because our decorations filled it to the brim. They won't make much of a dent at the new house. I even kind of miss the noises and smells and the buzzing of lives going on just outside our walls. I suppose it's because we were caretakers for the building. I knew the place like most tenants wouldn't, and feel a sense of responsibility connected to it. While it was a hard place in which to live, it also served as a cradle for our goals and dreams. I owe it my thanks, and it deserves the dignity of a proper good-bye. After removing the last of our belongings and cleaning it for the last time, I plan to spend a private moment there before turning over the keys. I hope it's refinished and polished to a gleam...and eventually filled with another newlywed couple excited about their future.

The Mysteries of October

2009-10-19T12:16:00.002-05:00

This has been the weirdest month.

First, the snow. Not even sleet, but real tree-padding snow. I'm out there at 6am, trying to leave for work, still wearing my spring jacket, desperately searching for an ice scraper, but at the same time distracted from my swearing and car-scraping task by the breathtaking, sparkling, otherworldliness of the first snowfall. And this year it turned out to be even more otherworldy because of the leaves still on trees, making it appear as if we lived in a world of giant cauliflower. For awhile, I felt awfully happy to live in Minnesota.

Then, Dave and I close on our house this Thursday. Which is also weird, because just a little over 2 months ago Dave didn't even have a job and a little black cloud constantly hovered over our heads. So how WEIRD it is that all of a sudden now we're going to have a house? How did that happen? It has a "poof!" wish fulfillment quality to it, even though clearly we put in a lot of work to make this happen.

Also weird: being a student again. The reading, the group work, the awkward ice breakers and small talk during breaks, the research papers, the funny little cliques and battling egos. It's pulling me back to the late 90s-early 00s when I was last a graduate student, feeling those insecurities and ambitions once more. But this time it's more complicated because I'm used to being in charge of the classroom now, and it's hard for me to not jump in and take the lead. After the first day I thankfully realized that I needed to tone down the Hermione Granger stuff, and allowed myself to be appropriately passive...which in the end made things nicer for all, myself included. But it only adds to the mysteriousness of this October...me sitting there in class thinking "what am I doing sitting here in a class?" as if just waking up from a fitful dream.

Hope your October is full of happy and mysterious surprises as well!

Neglectful

2009-09-24T10:41:00.002-05:00

As it's been pointed out to me, I've been rather neglecting the blog. Not so long ago I was thinking of doing two blogs...and yet now I can barely maintain the one. Shows what I know.

But here comes the excuses.

Since Dave is now once again employed. And while neither of us make great money (that's what you get for going into social services), together we do ok. So we decided to gather all our resources, time and energy together and make the Big Move. Turns out buying a house is kind of an involved thing.

On top of the Big Move, I started my graduate program. And Dave, of course, is getting used to his new job.

Anyway, we found our "dream" house! Thank goodness, because for awhile there I was thinking we'd be stuck with "frustrating compromise" house. This afternoon we have the inspection, which is causing me some anxiety. I mean...it's become pretty obvious by now that things in my life do NOT often travel a smooth road. So I'm holding my breath, waiting for the next crisis to occur. Hopefully I'm wrong and those "wait...you CAN'T have what you want after all!" days are behind us. But I've thought that before, too, and have been proven wrong. Which is why I'm wringing my hands over the inspection.

I'll continue to post updates, and after today I should have some photos to share as well.

Oh Deary Me...

2009-08-13T14:18:00.002-05:00

This has been a roller coaster summer. No lazy, carefree days...just arms-out screaming as life plunges us to the depths and then just as fast raises us to the heights, and nobody can see anything because everything is just moving too fast. Hair in our faces. Whiplash necks. Hoarse throats.

But at least we're on the upswing of the roller coaster now. Dave got a new teaching position, after a summer of much anxiety and dark imaginings. Which means we'll once again push forward on the house-hunting. It's funny how Good Things tend to come on their own terms. We wanted to buy a house in June/July because we knew that period offerred the rare window of time when we wouldn't be swamped by the "education calendar" ~ if you work in education, you understand the importance of timing everything out just so. So it's kind of another little test that we'll be (hopefully) buying a home/moving right at the beginning of a school year, while Dave is adjusting to a new school and while I'm adjusting to balancing full-time work with full-time graduate school. Literally, the timing probably couldn't be worse. But we really need to make this happen before the snow flies and (perhaps more importantly) before certain tax incenstives expire.

So I won't complain! Not complaining! We're very happy with this development. Perhaps it's just that the universe really, really wants to make sure we want this house...I mean, short of an avalanche or falling trees, it seems every obstacle has been thrown at us. Actually, I take that back. I better not tempt fate by saying more ~ I can already hear it mocking "I'll give you something to complain about!" All the best things in my life have come on their own tardy schedule, so I'll just be content that we're able to move forward now. But do know this. If we've ever done favors for people, we'll be calling in those favors over the next few months (I feel like the Godfather when I say that..."there may come a time when I call upon you to perform a service"). And I also suspect I'll be using my full allotment of vacation time by the end of December, which will make for a very grumpy spring.

Other than that great news, we've been getting healthier. I've been happily losing the weight I gained over this summer (at some point, both Dave and I decided that since life had become particularly hard, it meant that calories suddenly wouldn't count...like a free pass or compensation).

And for being such an axious summer, we have had a particularly good summer in terms of getting together with friends. Our friends are such a blessing! Never has that been more apparent.

Funny how all toppled things end up righting themselves in due time.

And now, I'm taking tomorrow off! We're meeting with a mortgage broker and enjoying one last splash of free time before Dave officially starts his new position on Monday. Yay!

HP Update

2009-07-28T07:25:00.002-05:00

I've had some questions on where HP is at. How lovely! Thanks for asking.

This blog was meant to chart HP's progress, along with my thoughts on the struggles and victories found in writing my first novel. But it's turned into a more general "what's going on in mylife" blog. Especially because this has been such a frustrating and tumultuous year, it's been quite therapeutic blogging. Thank you blog! And thank you commentors! And more often than not, I find it difficult to talk about my progress on HP. I mean...I'm at the revising stage, so it's really the writing equivalent of cleaning out and organizing a closet, which is very time-consuming and involving for me but maybe not so interesting to other people. Earlier in the writing process would have been a better time to blog ~ that's when all the exciting stuff happens! But at that point blogging would also have been an unwanted distraction. So I've just been updating about HP when something interesting happens, rather than sharing what's been going on for the last month or two...which includes weeding out excessive "to be" construction, clarifying time shifts, questioning my overuse of adjectives, and other "house-keeping" (boring but necessary) tasks.

As for the blog itself, I'm finding that I'm not sure where I want to keep its focus. If I'll return to focusing primarily on writing/teaching/etc., or if I'll keep it focused on the general doings of my life. I need to think about that. The blog is 1-year old now, so perhaps it's a good time to decide what I really want it to be.

But to answer the questions about HP...I am working on it. Every week. In some cases every day. Never fear! Progress is being made. It won't be long before I'm trying to pawn copies off on people and begging for feedback. So, what IS happening?

Well, I thought the first 100 pages were totally finished. But then I read a printed version of those first 100 pages...and for some reason reading something in print is a very different experience than reading something from a computer screen. I tell my students that all the time. In fact, I go so for as forcing my students to bring actual printed copies of their drafts to their writing groups, and then read those drafts out loud to each other. And when meeting with students, we always start by reading part of their work out loud. The flaws usually become immediately apparent. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps when seeing something on a computer, your mind goes on auto-pilot and compensates for problems...or at least makes them easier to deny ("hmm, that doesn't seem right but nobody will notice"). But on paper it's far easier to read something the way other people will read it. It's kind of like the difference between purposely looking at yourself in a mirror versus accidentally catching a glimpse of yourself in a mirror. Know what I mean? So when revising this section on the computer, I was like "sure, that's good enough" and felt ready to move on. But by the time I finished reading it on paper, each page was covered with red ink, question marks, and frownie-faces.

Anyway. It needed some clean-up. Nothing creative or fun. Just proofreading. So that's what I'm doing now, and hope to finish today so I can finally move onto the middle part of the novel... which I've been talking about doing since last fall.

All this trouble will serve me well as an example next time I teach, when students suggest you can just read a paper over once and call it "revision."

Tall buildings, Impressionism, and Buddy Guy

2009-07-22T14:05:00.011-05:00

Dave and I have returned from our escape to Chicago! What a swell way to celebrate my birthday. I'm going to be a lazy blogger and just list some of the fun things we did on our jaunt.

~ Took Amtrak down and passed the time listening to Devil in the White City on my iPod

~ Ate macaroni and cheese in the dining car (I've always wanted to dine on a train)

~ Deftly avoided most beggars

~ Had popcorn at Garrett's

~ Enjoyed brunch at the Signature Lounge on the 96th floor of the Hancock Building

~ Explored the Rookery and its Frank Lloyd Wright designed lobby

~ Ate hot dogs and chocolate cake at Portillo's

~ Saw authentic pirate ship treasure, dinosaur skeletons, almost every conceivable animal (in stuffed form), Egyptian sarcophogi (sp?), and took a stroll through the Earth's evolutionary history in the Field Museum of Natural History. Oh! They also had those cool plastic-molding machines that they used to have at Como Zoo!

~ Splashed around the fountains at Millenium Park

~ Saw French Impressionist, modern American, and modern European paintings at the Chicago Institute of Art (and yes, we did pose fittingly in front of American Gothic = see photo)

~ Saw these weird minature rooms at the Chicago Institute of Art...I can't describe them, nor did we think to take photos. They're like dollhouse rooms, except made with obsessive authenticity and craftsmanship, each room representing a specific country and time period

~ Saw Buddy Guy perform at his own blues club, and got his autograph

~ Successfully avoided shopping on Mag Mile (ok, I did stop in Macy's and Nordstrom's for somethings in particular but that was it)

~ Took tea at The Drake's Palm Room, and then spent the night (my birthday night) in one of their fancy-shmancy executive suites

~ Received a gorgeous (albeit cumbersome) bouquet of birthday flowers from wonderful Dave

~ At Oak Street Beach we fed a seagull some Garrett's Popcorn. He liked it.

~ On a blustery evening we walked along the lake to Navy Pier

~ Visited Navy Pier's stained glass museum

~ Took a skyline boat tour

Things we wish we had time for, but will have to wait until next trip:

~ Ride the El (didn't do it on this trip...we were within walking distance to just about everything and our hop on/hop off tour did the driving for us)

~ See more of Chicago's neighborhoods

~ Visit the Shedd Aquarium

~ Dave wants to see the submarine at the Museum of Science and Industry

~ Hit more nightlife (I was being kind of Old Lady on this trip; except for the blues club we took it easy at our hotel most nights)

~ Get some deep dish pizza (we did have stuffed pizza on this trip, but didn't make it to Pizzeria Uno or Gino's)

~ Do the architecture boat tour (and a history tour to boot)

~ Get on Oprah

David Day and Terri Day

2009-06-24T06:53:00.013-05:00

Every summer Dave and I indulge ourselves with special days meant to celebrate all we've each accomplished over the year...and to counteract any tendencies toward taking each other for granted. And plus, don't you think we all deserve more attention? Adults barely even celebrate their own birthdays! That's crazy! There should be multiple days every year where each of us holds the world back and devotes some focused time to celebrating our own unique brand of amazingness. Or, even better, allows someone else to shine the spotlight on us. So I host "David Day" and Dave hosts "Terri Day" and it's chock full o' fun! Frankly, I think I enjoy planning "David Day" even more than having my own "Terri Day." It's so fun planning a whole day around a single goal: showing someone you love how much you love them.

This year's round of "days" turned out to be more low-key than previous years...but more relaxing.

Dave woke up and was given a printed "David Day Agenda"along with a gift (books). I also made a huge breakfast for him, including eggs, sausage, butter-fried mushrooms, and homemade lemon/raspberry muffins (I got the recipe from SmittenKitchen.com, and I tell you it's freaking amazing!):

Those of you who follow this blog know that sometimes I force spa treatments on my long-suffering husband. Well....we has some left-over cuces, so I thought he might enjoy a cooling eye treatment to relax him before our day o' fun.

Then we went for a long walk at Hidden Falls and eventually enjoyed a picnic lunch (you can see some of the left-over lemon/raspberry muffins there...I wish I had one right now).

Then it was off to the MN History Center to see The Greatest Generation exhibition, the main attraction for Dave being this here armoured car. Dave sure loves armoured vehicles.

Since he loves armoured vehicles so much, I bought him this little souvenir.

Then we had a relaxing evening at home, where I made fresh salsa:

The next weekend was Terri Day, and since Dave is not as much into taking photos of every detail as I am, we don't have many photos to share of Terri Day. But Dave made breakfast in bed for me...quiche, scones, clotted cream, fresh pineapple, yogurt, and something called "wine soda." All things I love. He also bought me this beautiful bouquet:

Then we went to the Titanic exhibit at the Science Museum, had lunch on the terrace of The Liffey, and spent a relaxing evening watching a travel DVD about English villages that Dave surprised me with.

The video was hilarious (not intentionally). In one village by the sea, the tide would come and flood what looked to outsiders like a parking lot (or "car park" as they'd say). Rather than putting a sign up for visitors alerting them that it wasn't a car park, they instead just let people park there then gathered to laugh at them once the tide came in and visitors returned to find their cars underwater. They even took photos of the distressed car-owners as they struggled to move their cars, and then posted all the photos in the local pub....like a "wall of mockery." They interviewed one toothless nasty person from this village, who was like "ahh...we sympathize with the visitors, it's a tough thing..." Well, then how bout this. PUT UP A SIGN! How about doing something to stop it from happening, rather than just taking photos and laughing? Answer: it's more fun to mock. Dave called it Schadenfreude Village. In fact, every village they featured had a subtle (or not so subtle) "damn tourists" subtext. And while it was all obviously scripted, the villagers couldn't even pretend they were speaking extemporaneously...they'd insert pauses where they shouldn't be, stumble over their words, or speak all their lines in one breath: "You (pause) should-go-see-Aunt-Madge-she (very quickly, then followed by awkward pause) will set you up with a nice (long pause) pint." Anyway, it was very funny.

So, that's the story of David and Terri Days.

Since Last Time...

2009-06-09T07:21:00.014-05:00

We've been busy, and so have had little time to blog. One of the fun things we had going on was bringing our nephew, Nick, to the slotcar track at Dave's favorite hobby store. Nick had a great time racing his slotcar, and we had a great time too. Nick is some kind of slotcar wizard. Neither Dave nor I were able to beat him in a race (and believe me, we tried...none of this "oh, let the kid win" stuff), and eventually the guy running the place gave Nick a more difficult track because Nick had so clearly mastered the track on which he started. And even with the more difficult track he figured that out pretty quickly too. There's skill to the slotcars...you have to ease up on the handle things (you can see this in the bottom photo) around the corners or else your car will go shooting off the track like a freaking bullet. So the trick is to keep the car going as fast as it can, but also to stay on the track. The cars we were using go about 80 miles per hour, but there are specialty-built ones that go well over 100...which is insane. After slotcars we went to the military museum...somewhere. I don't really know where it is ~ I'm a girl. That's Dave's kind of stuff, and I basically just went along to take photos. And finally we went on the trolley over by Lake Harriet. A really full day of various vehicle-oriented fun! We love spending time with Nick. He is such a sweet, smart, patient, and pleasant young man.

Other than that, there's been Dave's job search. He has an interview on Wednesday, but not for a teaching job. I don't know how I feel about that. Maybe that's a good thing? I mean, perhaps being a teacher is just more hassle than it's worth, especiallys since one could do many other (far easier) things and get paid more money...and not have teenagers swearing at you, parents blaming you because their student doesn't do their homework (yes...some parents do believe that teachers are merely hired parent-surrogates), and dealing with almost criminally insane administrators. Maybe THAT'S why the average career-span of a teacher is a mere 5 years ~ work constantly, little pay, and treated like poo. But on the other hand, Dave went through considerable time, sacrifice and money to switch careers and pursue teaching, and I'd hate for him to give it up so soon. He does have the "calling." And maybe there IS some magical school where he'll be treated as the well-educated, dedicated professional he is. Maybe he can find that school and be happy there. It could be just around the corner. So I have mixed feelings about him interviewing for non-teaching positions. But, goldangnabit, I also want to move...NOW! So I guess wherever the money is coming from, maybe that's ok for now.

As for me, I have been writing. I'm stuck in the revision whirlpool, however. I keep revising the same things over and over and over. Then I say "I promise next session I'll move forward" but then the next session I read over what I revised the previous day and see all kinds of little things that could be improved. The other day I spent 2 hours revising a single paragraph. At that point, it's not even "revising" anymore. Does this kind of nit-picking make the novel better? Well...yes, I do believe it does! A novel is nothing more than the sum of its parts, so each sentence needs to be improved if it can be. But it's also making it nearly impossible for me to actually finish the BIG revisions that are still awaiting my attention. They're like "hello! Over here in chapter 21! We've got faulty character development going on, so maybe you want to stop fretting over subject-verb agreement in that single chapter 3 sentence. We've got plot holes to fill! How about spending a little time on that, lady?" I need to pull myself away from this charybdis and move forward toward bigger revisions.

Finally, we decided to head to Chicago for a week this summer. Yay! Even though suddenly one of us is without a job, we're STILL going to take a vacation. Take that! Take that, unemployment! We're going on vacation anyway. Neener, neener, neener! So what if you suddenly tanked our new home-buying and new car-buying plans. You can't keep us down! Maybe we'll get on Oprah and that will be the day she doles out both new homes and new cars to everyone in the audience! Maybe if we spend some time around her studio, telling passers-by our story, one of her producers will go "they're the face of this horrible economy!" and have us come on her show...which will somehow result in our own reality TV show! Ok, that would be pretty boring...pretty much just us going to Target, working at computers, and periodically getting up to go look in the fridge. So maybe we'll have our own talk show instead ~ I have ideas for that! And then while I'm on her show, I can slip her the MS of my novel and she'll LOVE it and make it the first in her "Unpublished Book Club" series, and then it will be made into a movie starting Toni Colette and Conan O'Brien in his first film role. And even if none of that happens, I hear Chicago has good pizza and a couple museums, so we're bound to at least have fun.

The Creativity of Sadness

2009-05-12T06:56:00.003-05:00

As fate would have it, the same day as my "the bad times are behind us!" anniversary post, my husband was laid off. This was his first full-time teaching job after getting his licensure, and we hoped he would be there long-term ~ it was close, paid pretty well, and he was finally getting into the swing of things. Plus, we were planning to invest in a new home this summer. After years of struggle and uncertainty, we finally thought things were calming down and we could move forward on all the plans we'd put on hold. But fate has not finished with us, it seems. Apparently the universe keeps thinking "hmmm...they are STILL not toughened up enough yet! Let's keep messing with these folks."

Certainly, we aren't the only people experiencing tough times now, and luckily we're not in danger of losing our home or in financial straights...we really did make hay while the sun shone, so we have a nice safety net for the time being. But the "thwarted hopes and dreams" quality of this loss is really slapping us around and making life seem, well, for lack of a better word: mean. And being this sad when it's spring and birds are busy and lilacs are about to bloom...well, that makes the whole situation even more taunting.

But, hell, I'm a writer. And it occurred to me that, hey! The novel I'm writing is about "thwarted hopes and dreams," and how a major loss can end up putting someone on a better path in the long run. It's about struggling with "should have beens" as opposed to realities. It's about grief, madness, and fears so deep they're supernatural. I mean...yeah, things really suck right now, but holy moly am I in the right place to start tearing through the novel revisions. What better time could there be to dig into my ghost story. So this coming weekend, instead of feeling sorry for myself and walking around crying and eating nothing but toast, I'm going to put all that foul energy into Haunted People and make it come alive like never before. There are advantages right now to being in the middle of final revisions to a gothic novel, and I better make use of my melodramatic mood before things start getting all happy again.

Silverware Anniversary

2009-05-04T11:01:00.003-05:00

Apparently the modern 5th anniversary gift is silverware. So Dave and I went out to dinner and USED silverware to, you know, eat our fancy food. Because who buys each other silverware for an anniversary? Although...in the midst of my mocking I realize that we could use a nice set of casual flatware. And I wouldn't turn down a silver tea set.

Anyway, Dave and I celebrated our 5th anniversary on May 1. So I want to ignore novel-writing updates for the moment and devote a few words to this anniversary. Life has been far from easy for us over these five years. Probably more difficult than either Dave or I have ever admitted to each other, in our efforts to protect each other from our darkest feelings and fears. Marriage for us did not initiate the typical future of a nice home, children, or even a comforting ritual of domesticity. The first 5 years of our marriage have been typified by flux and struggle, but also a brilliant awakening to what marriage really is.

In that way, I think the first five years of our marriage changed who we are. And it is that I celebrate on our anniversary, and it's for that I thank Dave. My idea of marriage has grown from a pretty thing to celebrate with gifts and flowers and simple words of love, to something boundless, bold, alive, and selfless in ways previously unimaginable. As we look toward the next five years I pause to appreciate the many blessings of the first five, when the bond of our marriage was forged to such strength and "love" stood to its full -- astounding -- height. I am so damn happy.

So happy anniversary, Dave. Like the little comic book I made for you concludes, "I'm more in love with you than ever."

Dating Again

2009-04-15T12:09:00.002-05:00

This Saturday I attended a class at The Loft on publishing, and learned that getting published is pretty much like dating.

1. The more you get your stuff out there, the more likely you'll find someone who is interested.
2. You can't be shy...force yourself to approach as many publications as possible.
3. Contact publications in as many ways as you can (email, snail mail, websites, social networks).
4. Ignore what publications say they want (formatting/style): just send them your stuff anyway.
5. Don't let rejection get you down.
6. Aim low at first ~ certain, less-desirable, publications are more likely to say yes.
7. Once you've conquered the less-desirable publications, ditch them to aim higher.
8. In finding "the one," remember you just need one yes out of hundreds.
9. If two publications are interested in you, play one off the other to get what you want.
10. View "the one" as a partner ~ neither you nor your publisher is more or less important.

Now, that's not really how I, personally, dated. My dating strategy was to just go out with whoever asked me out, keep going out with them if I liked them but not if I didn't want to anymore, and if nobody asked me out just keep doing my own stuff. So, I may be in trouble with the publishing thing. I'm not too lazy to write a frickin' novel, but I may be too lazy to bother with the publishing game.

So here's my plan, if publishing is like finding "the one". I met my husband simply because he was seated next to me at our graduate school commencement ceremony, so perhaps that's also how I'll meet my publisher. From now on, wherever I am, I'll ask the person sitting or standing to my left if they want to publish my novel. Problem solved.

That Ben Franklin Sure Liked to Keep Busy

2009-03-31T12:43:00.005-05:00

So, Philadelphia was flag-freakin'-tastic! The conference was great. Not only was the convention center itself aesthetically appealing, but the sessions were informative, well-organized, and practical. Maya Angelou rocked the house as keynote speaker, by the way. She's saucy + wise, which is a winning combination. I can't even explain how great she was. The word "profound" will have to suffice. And the session that my colleague Wood and I presented went perfectly well. 200 people signed up to attend, which had me a bit worried, but of course thinking about it is far more stressful than acutally doing it. We put a lot of work into our presentation, so are happy with its success. And that it's over.

Dave joined me in Philly so we could twist a mini vacation out of my free time, and we tacked on a couple extra days after the conference as well. We're so glad we did! I'm not sure if it's because Philly is that amazing, or merely because we've been starved for fun, but we had a bu-last! A BLAST! Even walking around the olden graveyards, we were like "this is the best old graveyard EVER! This is so FUN!" I felt like we'd been living on gruel for a year and were finally given a cookie or something. Not even an especially nasty bout of food poisoning tainted our experience. I think someone could have shot me in the leg and I'd still have hobbled my way over to the Liberty Bell, exclaiming "This is the best bell EVER! I love it here!" So regurgitation be damned...we were gonna enjoy Philly! We ate cheese steaks (more delicious than expected), saw a crazy number of "first American" things, like the first bank, first post office, first fire department, etc., visited Independence Hall, and even passed Danny Bonaduce (and his posse) on the street. Dave also got to visit the Ordinance Musem at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland. In case you're wondering, his favorite tank there is the Grizzly.

Meanwhile, I'm left to ponder Ben Franklin. I suspect people secretly hated him and all his "I'm going to start this up, I'm going to do that, I'm in charge of all this here!" I thank him and everything, but I also think if I knew him in person I might want to slap his glasses off and yell "calm down, already!" Nevertheless, here's to you BF.

Strategic Procrastination

2009-03-11T07:25:00.005-05:00

So, how's HP going? I was progressing pretty well, but then decided to start at the beginning again. I'm just not happy enough about those earlier chapters. They need further refining. Part of me thinks I'm procrastinating about moving forward to the really difficult chapters...the chapters that really need work. It's like someone who maybe has an entire garage to clean, but instead spends their time polishing the already-shiny silver. But the other part of me thinks I'm being strategic. The first chapters set the stage for everything that follows, and if the first third of the novel isn't really tight nothing else will work. Adding to the "smart" category is the fact that whenever I change something in the beginning of the book, it has to be followed through during the rest of the book. So if I'm really happy with the first third, then revision in the rest of the novel will go that much smoother because I won't have to re-tie all my literary knots. Whatever it is, I'll be patient with myself. As long as I'm writing, and as long as the novel is improving, then why worry.

Also, quite a while back my super-smart writer friend -- known as JoJo -- read and critiqued my earlier revisions. I read and printed her critique, but then put it aside...thinking I would finish the entire revision first, and then go back and make updates based on her wise critiques. I recently re-read her critiques and decided I should make some of those revisions right now. I'm going to take most of her advice because she's so perceptive, creative, and also because in my mind she kind of represents my ideal audience.

Anyway. Part of me feels I'm spinning my wheels, part of me thinks it's important I take my time with the all-important first third of the novel. No matter what happens or how far I get, soon I will need to start learning about publishing. I don't need to have the whole novel totally revised to start trying to gauge interest. This April I'm attending a class at The Loft on publishing, since I really am clueless about selling my work. I hate selling things! I've been published before, but I'm so lazy about the whole process. That's one thing I will for sure need to correct this summer.

Nothing else going on. This weekend I was sick, Dave spent the ENTIRE weekend hunched over close to 100 student papers, and we watched my parents' cat...whose favorite passtime is watching water drip out of a faucet.

No More Crazy Lady

2009-02-26T06:53:00.002-06:00

Dave and I have officially resigned our caretaking position, effective March 1. We'll still, obviously, live in our current place until we buy a house. But now we no longer have to clean up after our rude and careless neighbors (honestly most of the neighbors are nice, but three of them cause at least 90% of the work). And we no longer have to "work" where we live, which means no more dealing with unexpected emergencies, no more knocks on our door at 2am, no more dealing with tenant complaints/issues, no more being on call, and -- best of all -- no more of us having any contact with the screaming, verbally-abusive crazy lady who has been the bane of our existence since we moved in. I could go into all the various ways and reasons we hate this woman, but I'm just letting it go. As of March 1 she simply no longer exists to us.

The caretaking has saved us about $40,000 over the length of our service, and it was a great deal. Despite all my complaints above, it usually was not that much work compared to the money we saved. It allowed us to pay for our wedding and honeymoon out of pocket, go on a few trips, pay off all our debt, live on a single income after Dave quit his job to go back to school full-time, and has now allowed us to save a nice chunk for a house. The demands and frustrations of the caretaking was definitely worth it, considering what the savings allowed us to accomplish. But with both of us working now and with our goals for the most part met, we don't really need the extra savings. At least, we don't need the extra money as much as we need the extra time. As early as September we were talking about quitting, but decided to hold out as long as we could. Now with spring coming up -- and all the annoying duties that comes with that -- we decided now was the time to pull out.

It will seem a luxury to just come home from work and not need to even think about when/if the building needs to be cleaned. I can't remember a weekend where we didn't spend our Saturday doing some kind of caretaking. And how nice it will be to enter our unit and know for certain there will not be a little note under our door alerting us to some new problem or issue that needs dealing with. How amazing it will be to actually feel comfortable spending an evening at home, knowing that our movie or dinner will not be interrupted by a knock on the door. And it will seem blessedly odd to not have to shovel snow or mow the lawn...and to be able to go out of town without making complicated arrangements to cover our duties while we're away. We won't have to police the landlord's policies and deal with the consequent arguments, complaints and (in case of the crazy lady) threats. It's been about 6 years since our home has just been a home, and not merely another place where we work.

So, financially this means less eating out, less spending money, and more strict adherence to our budget. But personally this is a big step toward us taking better care of ourselves and focusing on what's really meaningful right now. So goodbye caretaking! Thanks for everything you've done for us. Goodbye tenants! We'll see you in the hallways, but we no longer care if your toilet doesn't flush or if your neighbor is being loud. And goodbye crazy lady! We never have to speak to you -- or your case worker -- again!

Dave's birthday is Monday and he said quitting the caretaking is the best gift he could receive. Which is good, because now we'll have a lot less money for gifts :)

That said, we're still caretakers through Saturday, and we promised we would clean the building one final time, and sounds like the giant snowfall is not going to wait until our duties are done. Why can't it just wait until next week? So looks like there'll still be shoveling to do. But it will be much sweeter knowing the next time we're shoveling it will be at our own house, and not for people who don't even wipe their feet when they come into the building. And how nice it will be when Dave and I can be the people who don't wipe their feet!!

Valentine Spa

2009-02-17T07:21:00.005-06:00

Dave is so patient with me. So, for Valentine's Day we didn't really have specific, directed Valentine's Day plans. But I thought..."hey, wouldn't it be FUN to give each other facials?" All my girlfriends are thinking "totally!" and all my guyfriends are thinking "I could come up with a million things that would be much more fun." But Dave wants me to be happy and is willing to put up with just about anything if it puts a smile on my face. So I gave him a Lush blueberry facial:

During facial (skin tired and worn out, plus general unhappiness about having blue stuff on his face, despite my attempt to convince him he looks like a warrior from Braveheart):

After facial (skin refreshed and renewed, plus general delight that the facial is over and he can get on with his life!):

I had one too, of course. We also had brunch at W.A. Frost's on Sunday, exchanged gifts (I made a small book for Dave, and he gave me unnecessarily expensive diamond earrings even though I particularly asked him not to spend too much money on me), and we watched the movie Sweet Land. Overall it was nice, although we do need to do something to cease the "unending-chore" quality of our weekends. Maybe we need to stop with the caretaking finally.

I also did some work on HP. I'm very happy with the changes I've made. Slow-going as usual, but as long as it's going in the right direction I'm happy.

OMG...I'm NOT Writing!

2009-02-12T08:53:00.004-06:00

I was doing so well....and now, not so much. Things get busy. People need one's help. American Idol starts sucking one in to its evil maw. One falls prey to seasonal affective disorder and decides to sleep for an entire month. You know, the usual things. No more excuses, though. This weekend I'll revise and conquer another chapter...and one that requires extensive rewrites at that! Take that, Book! Ha!

I'm looking into all the various methods for self-publishing. Self-publishing is quite the business, I'm learning. Now Amazon has something called BookSurge, which sounds interesting. It would be nice to avoid the whole "trying to sell myself and being repeatedly rejected" thing I would naturally face with traditional publishing...but then again, if I self-publish nobody will ever read my book because I am the worst networker ever and would never sell any copies because I hate selling things in general. Even things I like. But it would be on Amazon.com, and I could publish under a psuedonym and just email people and say "oh, hey, look at this random cool book!" and then it wouldn't be like I was pushing my own book on people. I'm not writing this to make money, but it has taken a big chunk out of my life and it would be nice for something to come of it beyond just being able to smugly say at parties "oh, yeah, I wrote a novel".

That's all I have to say about HP.

Hope everyone has a happy Valentine's Day. Dave and I are celebrating on Sunday with brunch at W.A. Frosts, gifts, and a romantic afternoon of dusting and vacuuming our building. We may also watch Amelie, which is our official Valentine's Day movie.

And happy birthday to my brother Andrew, who doesn't read this blog but deserves a blog-mention nonetheless.

And happy birthday to Abraham Lincoln, too. What a cool guy he was.

And hey....remember summer? That was cool too.

Extra Spooky

2009-01-30T07:45:00.003-06:00

In case you didn't realize it by all your electronics turning demonic, people acting unusually brittle, and simple tasks becoming monumentally difficult, we are again in a Mercury retrograde. It's almost over now, though. This one was especially tough on us; even Dave (normally critical of my "retrograde rantings") asked me "when is this retrograde over?" (answer: Feb. 1). He's had a plethora of problems at school...oddly enough, they've so far been isolated to the retrograde period, which is I suppose why he's becoming a believer.

Retrogrades are, however, VERY good for working on existing projects, rethinking plans, and looking ahead. So the retrograde has proven quite useful for HP. I've gotten a lot done, although revising always seem to take three times longer than expected. Last weekend I got through my first "ghost" chapter, which has been haunting me (see what I did there?). I initially meant this novel to be rather serious and dark, but over time it has become much lighter and funnier...more of a parody than an actual gothic novel. That's fine, but the question becomes how to balance that tone with the ghost story? I don't want the ghost to be a joke. So I'm very happy to have tightrope-walked my way through this chapter, where I establish the haunting. On top of that, it's also a chapter where I try to establish a connection between Ana and her love interest....this is tricky because there initially wasn't a love triangle in the novel. Now, suddenly, I decided there is. Yes, it's a bit conventional, but I'm trying to find ways to spice it up or make it unusual. The point is, I'm happy to have improved this dasterdly chapter. As with my other revisions, I ended up cutting quite a bit out...but in the end, I think I've made this chapter Extra Spooky!

Other things:

Dave surprised me with gorgeous roses for no reason whatsoever, other than my being awesome (see photo)! He also bought for me a sweet little 1918 hardcover edition of Through the Looking-Glass.

We still haven't packed up our Christmas decorations, resulting in me being for the first time in my life sick of glitter.

I joined Facebook, which I have mixed feelings about.

I'm halfway through War and Peace, which is beyond-amazing.

This morning my friend Cory and his wife had their first child, who wins the "best baby name I've heard in a long time" award: Robinson Gary Funk. Congratualations Robinson! He also happens to be extra extra cute.

OMG...I'm Writing!

2009-01-16T07:08:00.003-06:00

I surprised myself. I thought I would continue to procrastinate and hem and haw (whatever that is, but I've heard that people do it when they procrastinate). But I actually have a whole other chapter under my belt! Better yet, I feel wiser approaching the revision this time.

Last spring I remember looking at my novel again after a long break and thinking "wow...this is way better than I remember it being." This time, picking up my novel again after a break, I thought "wow...this is way worse than I remember it being." It doesn't help that I'm reading War and Peace right now. Compared to that my novel seems like a magazine article and barely worth the effort.

My improvements this week have almost exclusively involved taking things OUT, whereas last year it was about putting scenes IN. I'm taking out every sentence that is repetitive or that "tells" rather than "shows." The whole "show, don't tell" cliche is one of those cliches that deserves to be repeated by everyone because it's pretty darn good advice. For instance, I have one scene where my main character Ana stays up all night baking hundreds of cookies for her office. After describing her actions, I have her say (this is all in first person) how she feels obsessed and can't sleep. Do we really need to be told that? Wouldn't it be better to just see her doing something obsessive and staying up all night to do it? Do we need someone who is doing something crazy to turn to us and say "look, I'm doing something crazy"? Anyway. I fired a lot of sentences this week. Sentence unemployment is on the rise.

I'm not happy with my description. It's unsurprising and filled with adjectives and adverbs, rather than a magical combinations of words that convey experience or emotion with strength, efficiency, and freshness. The key is not finding more words, but finding the right words. I have worked on plenty of creative projects in my life, and so far nothing has been more difficult than this. So perhaps reading Tolstoy right now is serendipitous.

I'm also removing or limiting long stretches of Ana talking about her feelings, and moving more toward action...having her do things, talk about the things she did or what other people did, and basically interact with the world more. There's still reflection, but I want the novel to do more, not think more.

Dave asked me if it was hard to cut out so much. It kind of is. I'm cutting some parts that are well-written, funny, and in other ways wonderful....they just don't contribute to the novel and each sentence needs to move it forward or contribute. It can't just be there because I like it. Otherwise it's like that person we've all worked with who is nice enough and makes us laugh, but after awhile you notice they never really contribute and you wonder "what IS it they do all day?" So it is a little bittersweet to hit that delete key, but at the same time it feels good...like cleaning a closet of things you no longer need or wear. It makes room for something better, even though it's hard to let go of what you have.

I'm hoping this weekend to finish the VERY difficult chapter I'm working on right now...it needs a lot of work. This is the chapter where "everything changes". Hope you have a nice weekend and MLK Day!

HP Update!

2009-01-09T14:45:00.002-06:00

It's no secret that I haven't made a ton of progress on HP since my fall semester class started. I had time for a few pokes, prods, and fluffing up, but nothing that I would call "real" writing. However HP is never far from my thoughts and this fall was particularly glistening with ideas! So now that I am ready to start work again, I have a messy series of notebook pages filled with possibilities and am excited to see what comes from them.

I took the holidays off to recover from a trying semester of teaching, enjoy time with Dave, and build strength for the hard-core writing schedule I'll be kicking off this weekend. I'm planning to write after work on Tuesdays and Thursdays and for 8-10 hours each weekend. Let's see how that goes. It doesn't hurt that Dave is also spending his weekends on his class stuff, so I don't feel like I'm ruining any potential "couple time" we'd otherwise have. And I think a limit of 8-10 hours will still give me some time to do other chores, caretaking, and still have a piece of Sunday night for myself. My goal is to totally complete this revision by the end of the month, and then in February write and revise the final 3 chaptes...which as of now do not exist, not even in my head.

I'll keep you posted. I'm still now sure how/when/if I'll be sharing chapters of the novel. I'll think on that....

In the meantime, raise a glass and wish me good luck!

Get-Away Foibles

2009-01-05T08:25:00.006-06:00

Oh, hi there!

Ok, I promised you details on our semi-botched attempt at a romantic get-away. I say "semi-botched" because even though so much was sub par, any time with my husband (especially away from our normal routine) is prized above all else. We can manage to have fun in any overtly un-fun situation (see earlier post on camping). Nothing can ruin the inner core of our fun...not even the Hyatt or a Minnesota deep freeze. Keep that in mind as I proceed on to my complaints.

First, the freaking frigid frozen weather (the alliteration, there, is meant to give effect of shivering). Keep in mind...our get-away was in Minneapolis. Seriously. This should be the easiest get-away ever. It's even pushing the boundaries of the term "get-away", since we're maybe 15 minutes from our destination. But because of the snow, we had to prepare as if we were getting on a plane to Hawaii. For instance, we can't just leave and not shovel, since we're caretakers. So we arranged for a friend of Dave's to shovel while we're gone. Ultimately, there was only one day we needed covered...but the forecast for that one day called for massive amounts of snow. So I asked Dave to confirm with his friend....I mean, people may agree to do things, but actually doing them (in blizzard-like conditions) is a whole other story. Dave cannot reach the friend, and furthermore we do not know if the friend has a key or needs a key, etc. Also, we only have on-street parking so we need to find a place to bring our second car in case there's a snow emergency on the single day we'd be unable to move the car. This involves another long complicated story, the result being that we drive to South St. Paul in the before-mentioned blizzard conditions to drop the car off at my parents' house. This ends up taking about 40 freaking frigid frozen weather minutes because the roads were so bad. The experience was terrifying. There were tears. After that, we still had to drive back to our place, gather our stuff, shovel the snow that has already fallen and hope that Dave's friend will in the end keep his promise to shovel the next day, and then make our treacherous way to Minneapolis...passing at least one major accident on our 20-miles-per-hour way.

Yay! You'd think since we arrived safely at the hotel we could finally relax and enjoy. Except there's a high school debate conference going on at the hotel. The weekend before Christmas, and there's a high school debate conference?? Seriously? We ignore the implications of this and simply check in to our room, relax, and then dress to go down to dinner in the hotel's restaurant...which I checkout out on the hotel's lying-though-its-digital-teeth website. The hotel's restaurant is mysteriously closed for dinner. Which, you know, makes sense. Why would a restaurant be open for something like dinner? Especially when on the deceptive website it says they're open until 11pm? I know. Stupid of us, right? Nobody can give an explanation, making it seem all the more part of a nefarious plot. So we're stuck eating at their lame "sports bar" (I guess we could have eaten somewhere else downtown, except it was 100 degrees below zero and we'd rather face a sports bar than go outside again).

The sports bar is even more annoying than most. There are TVs everywhere; we even have a TV at the table. We can't turn this TV off. Plus, there is apparently a single waiter responsible for the entire place...and the place is packed, since there is nowhere else to eat in the hotel (except fancy-schmancy Oceanaire...for which us, the high school debaters, and all the fat people wearing Vikings jerseys neglected to bring appropriate attire). Also, the food is crazy expensive. It's like extortion. They remove all other food-sources, they know a certain number of us did not bring appropriate attire/funds for Oceanaire, and they know most of us won't venture into 100 degrees below zero weather. So why not charge $15 for a cheeseburger! Bastard people.

That's not the worst, though. Remember the place is packed, so we took one of the few remaining places to sit...which was directly across from a young debater and her elderly coach (or something). They were both crazy-loud...in that really loud way drunk people talk, especially when they think they're being clever or funny. The girl in particular was not only loud, but talking at hyper-speed and interspercing every other word with "like." It went: "IwassolikeupsetlikebecauselikeI'mtheonlypersonIevenlikeknowwholikereadsanythinglikeseriousor importantyouknowandliketheresnobodylikeIcanevenliketalktolikewhoislikeevenatmylikelevel." And the old man was drinking, nodding, staring at her chest and saying "totally, man, I totally know what it's like!" For a moment, I thought they must be fake people. You know? Maybe these were theater people rehearsing for a comedy; maybe its improv. Maybe parody. But they were so loud that Dave and I couldn't hold our real-person conversation. Then the worst thing happened. The "like" girl started talking about James Joyce, and making incorrect (yet arrogant) assertions about Ulysses. Now, I imagine James Joyce might be a topic that...if you're an insufferable teenager trying to impress a drunken older man with how well-read you are...you may feel is safe enough to tackle. The chances that you would be seated next to a couple people who know quite a BIT about James Joyce and Ulysses, and who could totally get up in your face and correct you on every point, probably wouldn't occur to that insufferable teenager. This was causing a painful physical reaction in Dave. I mean, imagine the MOST annoying people you have ever been around, and they start talking about a semi-arcane subject that you just happen to have studied in graduate school, and they're making tons of huge errors but nonetheless remain quite openly and loudly impressed with their "knowledge". Dave wants to go over and have a Joyce-knowledge slamdown; he's squirming and can't concentrate on anything except all the misinformation about Joyce that's being bantered back and forth at the table across from us. But I think that perhaps the one thing more annoying than these people would be us, in a sports bar, getting into a fight with drunken people about James Joyce. We desparately start looking for a different place to sit but it's packed. So we try to ignore them ("tune it out, Dave....seriously, look at me...look into my eyes....ignore them!"). Our lukewarm food arrives. We try to refocus our annoyance on that. Finally, they switch subjects (at least) and eventually they finally leave altogether. Soon we leave as well, after grudgingly shelling out $50 for two burgers and two beers.

Things go pretty well after that, until about midnight...at which point, we hear lots of doors banging, arguments in the hall, raised voices. After about 30 minutes of that, Dave calls the front desk and asks for the manager on duty. He's on hold for a long time, then finally talks to the manager and says there seems to be an argument in the hall that's been going on for some time, and could they send someone up. He's told (seriously) that unless they get more complaints, they're not going to do anything. It goes on for 30 more minutes and Dave calls again and this time his call is "disconnected". Around 1:30 it's still going on, plus there's loud noise coming from the room next to us as well. Dave calls again and basically says if they won't do anything about the noise they better move us. They send someone up right away, while we're packing up all our belongings at 1:30am. We now hear security banging on doors and telling people to be quiet. When security comes to our room with a new room key, there are four guards in the hall. Our guard escorts us to the executive floor, and he's super apologetic...but we learn from him that they've gotten a LOT of complaints and have moved quite a number of couples. Dave tells him what we were told the first time he called, and the guard seems disgusted that nothing was done with the first call (note: I have since wrote a letter of complaint about all this).

The good thing is that we have a fabulous view from our new room, overlooking Nicollet Mall. They also comped us a breakfast buffet (not really adequate compensation, but especially considering how expensive their food is we happily took what we could get and ate enough for five people -- take that Hyatt!). So, we're trying to make the best of things. We decide to go to Macy's to see their 8th floor display, and we take the skyway since it's still 100 below zero. That's all well and good, but about halfway there, the skyway is closed. Us and a young family are forced out into the cold, even further from our destination then if we had just walked right from our hotel in the first place. Futhermore, it's seriously icy and I can barely walk...both Dave and I came close to falling a number of times. Additionally, we're not really dressed for the cold because, well, we thought we'd be in the skyway!

nyway, we do make it to Macy's....shaken up but ok. I overhear a family talking about the Holidazzle Parade and it occurs to me that we'll be able to actually watch the parade from our new hotel room! Things turn around a bit....we have a fun day, we buy hats and scarves for our trek back to the hotel, we have a lovely lunch at the Oak Room.

We get back to our room around 4:30...the room is not made up yet, but compared to everything else that doesn't seem like such a big deal. We decide to go hang out in the hot tub...which, I guess, now is part of their big fitness area that you have to pay extra to enter. So. Thwarted again by the nefarious plot. We decide to order room service for dinner, which is still expensive but at least tastes better than the sports bar food. Plus...they charge a $5 delivery fee, a $2.50 service fee, and automatically add on 18% gratutity. So...seriously? Aren't we paying for the same thing, basically, in three different ways? Then on the bill there's a place for "tip". Oh, those crazy hotels! Whatever. That's the way of the world, I guess. We had our dinner and got our chairs positioned to watch the Holidazzle Parade....only to find out the parade was cancelled due to it being 100 below zero.

The next morning we check out and our stay was topped off by problems with the "automatic" parking payment machines (yes, on top of all this we had to pay $17/day for parking). We followed the directions on the machine, paid via credit card, but did not get the receipt we supposedly needed to show on our way out of the ramp that we paid. Dave had to call someone on the "help" button, and that didn't really get anywhere because of the language barrier and also because it was clear the guy didn't know what to do about it. In the meantime, a group of people had gathered around and were watching this interaction, making comments to each other ("What...he didn't get a receipt?" "I guess not, they're calling for help." "Is the guy going to come up?" "Let's see what happens!"). I finally snapped at these people and then felt bad about it later. Finally we just said forget it and left...only to realize we neglected to note where we parked (I suppose we were just so stressed out about the getting-there, that once we arrived our brains shut down). Finally we found the car, but upon attempting to leave were told we owed $2 to account for all the time we took after initially paying for parking (basically, paying for the additional time it took for us to attempt to get a receipt in order to prove we paid). Frustrating conversation ensued, the result of which was that they "waived" the $2 so we could exist this hell.

Things were much nicer once we got home. Dave's awesome friend shoveled, it was quieter, we had better food, and I finally was able to catch up on my sleep. Like I said, we did have fun just being together. But I think we'll do a B&B for our next get-away.

Unveiling

2008-12-31T08:20:00.012-06:00

Well, I can finally share a few of the homemade items from this Christmas. Above are two of the four pairs of earrings I made (as you can see, I made them way back when there was still grass to be seen).

Above is a watercolor paining I made of Kurt Vonnegut, as a gift for my Vonnegut-obsessed husband.

And I baked and batched up a number of cookie tins (with homemade tags) as gifts this year, featuring chocolate/hazelnut shortbread, Russian tea cakes, mini chocolate-covered nut cups, and of course cornflake wreaths (the very last of which I will devour today with my lunch).

I also made a few other little things here and there...mix CDs, homemade gift certificates, cards, scrapbook page, etc. I think I'll expand the homemade gift-giving even more next year. Yes...it takes more time and it's far easier to just go buy something. But I had a lot of fun making things, and one can't deny it saves money. And really nothing took very long. All four earrings took maybe 30 minutes total, and even the watercolor was only about an hour's worth of work. Probably the biggest hassle was baking cookies, but my plan for making the dough ahead of time and freezing it receives two giant thumbs-up.

Sorry the photos aren't so great...I have yet to master low light close-ups. I think I need to use a tripod.

Hope you had a great Christmas! In my next post I'll share the absurdities of our romantic get-away in Minneapolis. And hopefully I'll have updates on HP. But for now, I'll leave you with this heartwarming Christmas tableau, where my various office desk totems (loch ness monster, three-legged pig, and green sweater bunny) gather around the roaring fireplace and decorate their Christmas tree.

Ready for Christmas

2008-12-15T10:52:00.005-06:00

Just a couple photos of our tiny apartment all dressed up for Christmas. Actually, the bathroom is the most Christmas-y area of our home, but it was impossible for me to get a decent angle for picture-taking. Just imagine what the bathroom in little Cindy Lou Who's house must be like...ours has that kind of stripey, sequiny, Suessian thing going on, only perhaps a bit more downmarket. Anyway, our little cave is glittery and cheerful.

I've been done with shopping/wrapping for a little over three weeks now! Internet shopping is my favorite invention EVER! Like a million times better than sliced bread and the cotton gin and pasteruization. Kind of. Anyway, I needed to finish early because the confluence of busy end-of-term Registrar's Office duties, plus end of semester grading, would otherwise make the shoehorning in of Christmas tasks an overwhelming nightmare. Which means all I'm left with is baking.

As for baking, this year I decided to make the cookie dough early and freeze it! This Christmas the code word is "efficiency." I don't know how that will work, though. I've got the dough protected by literally four different layers of various kinds of wrapping material (wax paper, cling wrap, foil, and freezer bags). If that works out fine, then on baking day (Wednesday night) I just have to form the cookies and bake. Who knows how they'll turn out, but I can at least confirm that the dough tastes amazing!

Once I make it through this week's nastiness...final grading and Friday's 14-hour day (commencement)....Dave and I are rewarding ourselves with a weekend get-away booked at a swanky hotel in downtown Minneapolis! That's our Christmas gift to each other this year ~ time together. With cocktails, room service, and a hot tub! Hope you have relaxing rewards planned for yourself as well over the coming week.

Have a merry Christmas!

Thanksgivingness

2008-12-01T13:02:00.002-06:00

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. Ours was "ok," as Thanksgiving is for me usually (sad to say) kind of a hassle...not that I ever really have to DO anything, but my memories seem to center on women doing all the work while men sit on their asses and watch football. It's not that way anymore, certainly, but I still persist in thinking of Thanksgiving as a gender-unfriendly obligation and an annoying pebble in a perfectly-good stretch of time off. That sounds very ungracious about a holiday meant to celebrate gratitude, I know. I did enjoy watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, though, as I do every year -- the only show that is more fun to mock is the Miss America Pagent. I like to watch closely and rate performers on their lip-synching abilities. Rick Astley was the big lip-synching loser this year. And the long weekend was notable, also, for the almost absurd number of chores we managed to cross off our list. I realize now that me + Dave + joint weekday off = superpower efficiency (E=dtw).

As for what I'm grateful for....there are some big ones this year. But I also like to appreciate the little things. Below are some smaller, rather random, things I'm grateful for at this precise moment:

- Sinclair Lewis (I'm reading...and very much enjoying...Main Street right now)

- Burt's Bees lip balm

- Glittery Christmas ornaments

- Yardsticks

- The adorable bunny that lives in the bush outside our apartment building

- Dave's warm, strong hands

- Emory boards

- Grilled cheese sandwiches

- Swifter wet jet

- Strangers who say "hi" when they walk past you

- Rain, the neighbor's dog

- Ice cold milk

- The organ in "Autumn Sweater" by Yo La Tengo

- A fresh box of Kleenex

- Having a student ask me what my favorite book is...and actually seem to be interested

- Warming my hands on a mug of tea

- Periwinkle

- The amazing dream I had last night (Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Jude Law were playing
Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, only Byron and Shelley in this case were also members of a vampire cult led by Oscar Wilde and they had to solve a series of crimes taking place amongst a consortium of Cure fans residing in a spooky mansion isolated in the prairie wilderness...and themselves falling prey to the vampiric poets). So grateful for that fantastic blending of the cultural debris in my life....historical research of Frankenstein, commercials for Twilight, my circling of The Tudors DVD set in the latest Acorn catalog, my husband's citing of The Cure as a favorite band in an interview he did for the Hill-Murray student paper, the setting of Main Street, and I'm not sure how Oscar Wilde made his way in there except I do own an Oscar Wilde action figure that was recently dusted.

- A lunch hour where I'm momentarily so carefree that I can spend my time blogging and worrying about which particular cookies to bake this Christmas!

I hope you also take time to appreciate all the little things that contribute in their own wee way to your happiness, comfort, and satisfaction.

Want noodles? I'll show ya noodles.

2008-11-14T09:00:00.011-06:00

So. Monday Dave and I were at Noodles, and I can tell you Dave was all over that mac and cheese. It occurred to me that homemade mac and cheese would be super easy to make. Plus I could make a pound of the stuff for what we just paid for a single semi-warm serving. And (I suspected) I could make it even more delicious and decandent...which is what all comfort food should be, after all.

So. Last night I cooked up some fancy-schmancy pasta and some fancy-schmancy thick-cut bacon. I mixed together milk, flour, butter, cream cheese, sharp cheddar, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and a dash of chayenne. I didn't measure anything...just kind of melted it all together in a saute pan until it metamorphasized into a tasty sauce. Finally throw noodles, bacon and sauce all together and you get COMFORT FOOD NIRVANA! Seriously. Exclamation points all over the place. I can't say that this is quick or that it's easy-clean-up. It was time-consuming and messy. But I can say that the trouble is worth it if you're feeling under the weather or blue and need a little cheesy comfort....or -- like me -- just have it in mind to rebel against fast food. Up yours, Noodles! In your face!

Wintery Tuesday

2008-11-11T13:15:00.004-06:00

The view outside my window looks awful wintery! I like this weather, though, with the naked trees against a backdrop of grey, blustery sky. I could do without the cold, but aesthetically November pleases me. I'm one of those people who should have been born in a cottage on a moor and kept a tame crow as a pet or something. Flocks of sheep would somehow be involved as well, and violent thunderstorms. Might as well throw an evil landlord in there too. Perhaps I have the start of my next novel...

I've been busy with all sorts of creative projects, which has been very satisfying! Unfortunately I can't share pictures or even details yet as most of these projects will be given as gifts. That reminds me though...I should take photos to share once it's past the time of spoiled surprises.

HP has been pushed aside for most the semester (each year I underestimate the time/energy teaching takes...plus the election has consumed a lot of my attention!), but I've scheduled the weekend after Thanksgiving as my own mini writing retreat! Goal: finish revising horrible middle section. Prediction: Success. Dave has made a pledge to keep me focused, no matter what excuses for procrastination I may invent.

Have a good week....eat some soup or something!

Long Time Gone

2008-10-27T07:01:00.014-05:00

Wow! I guess it has been awhile since I last posted. What exciting things have I been up to? Just trying to keep on top of class, caretaking, and general chores. October is my busiest month of the semester, with special English Department events, student conferences, midterms, and many papers to grade. In a couple weeks I'll be able to coast a bit more. Whew!

So not much time for writing, painting, or much of anything outside work-related duties. This weekend I did, however, host my annual Halloween Party for my niece and nephews. This year my mom co-hosted so it wouldn't be as much work for me. That made it more fun and overall more reasonable in terms of time and work. Desite snow and cold, we had a great time. And I was able to make handmade gifts for the kids, which is something I love to do. Normally I write ghost stories for them, but this year I gave them ghosts-in-a-bottle!

It was pretty easy. I just got some bottles from Michaels, and to make them look older I brushed on a mixture of silver paint and an acrylic thickening agent. Stuffed some polyfill inside, along with a watercolor ghost, and then covered the cork with glitter glue. All in all I think the materials cost $4. Then I tea-dyed some old ribbon and scraps of paper, onto which I wrote a little poem to go with each ghost. Voila!

I also made some Halloween "crackers," which basically were just the cardboard roll of toilet paper stuffed with goodies and wrapped so they don't look like...you know...toilet paper rolls. But hey! It's just cardboard, and using trash for craft-making is a very green thing to do.

As for costumes, everyone looked great. I was kind of lame this year...I pretty much just wore a dress and a flower thing on my head and called myself a "wood nymph." Dave, as usual, had the best costume. He wore a suit, a long black coat, a top hat, carried a fancy walking stick and wore a pig nose ~ his costume for a Captialist Pig. Emily was a zombie rock star (she won the costume contest, by the way), Nick was some kind of a scary guy, and Matt was a storm trooper. We had lots of great food, games, and entertainment.

I think the above is my all-time favorite photo of Matt!

Clara and Hannibal

2008-10-03T07:15:00.010-05:00

As promised, here's Clara ~ my latest watercolor in the "creepy Edwardian kids" series. I love her. She looks partly worried, partly sulky, and partly dreamy...like she's just figured out where the treasure is buried. I finished her awhile ago, but only now have gotten around to photographing. She was done far more quickly than Daniel, and I think the writing on this one is a little wonky and less restrained. I'm not sure how I feel about that. But as for Clara herself, I couldn't be happier.

Since I was photographing, I also include my very first watercolor! This was done 2-3 years ago (?). Recently I outlined it with ink for more crisp lines (I'm liking the ink + watercolor effect). Anyway, as you can see this is Hannibal my husband's beloved but deceased dog. I based it on a photo and even though it's not an exact likeness Dave was pleased with the result. To me, he looks grumpy after having been woken from a nap.

Well, not much new to report. I have not had time to progress much with writing, although I'm currently teaching Beloved and that's giving me lots of good ideas about writing on ghosts. So even when I'm not writing, I'm soaking up ideas; once I'm full of ideas I can wring them out onto the page and see if they work or not.

It's still Mercury retrograde, and I read on my sister's blog that her car battery died at a particularly inconvenient time. See! Beware.

Today is my niece Emily's 11th birthday. At 11 she's more mature, confident, kind, thoughtful, and giving than most adults I know. She's interested in everything, and is so fun to be around. She's very special to me. Happy birthday Emily!

Finally, it was a tie for your favorite "cool sounding" word. Persnickety, Quantum, Indubitably, and Snorkel each got one vote. In the meantime, I've heard that Cattywhompus is another cool-sounding word to consider, and others have offerred up Hobgoblin, Balderdash, and Discobobuated. "That persnickety hobgoblin is full of discombobulated balderdash and is indubitably cattywhompus." I'm going to try to finagle an opportunity to use that sentence today.

Mercury Retrograde

2008-09-24T11:53:00.005-05:00

You guys aren't really into apples and football, according to my last poll. So there goes my "Vikings and apple sauce!" theme party idea.

Honestly I have little to report, since it feels like I do nothing but grade, eat and sleep. But I did want to you warn you...Mercury is retrograde. I'm not one of those astrology freaks, but I read the wonderful Astrologyzone website (http://www.astrologyzone.com/) and have noticed that things get messed up about a week before Mercury is retrograde and until about a week after it's done (should end Oct. 18). Things just go WRONG, man. Every car problem we've had has been during a stupid Mercury retrograde. Mercury is supposed to be in charge of electronics, mechanics, communication, travel and so when it retrogrades, all those things are in the hands of demons! Again, I'm not saying I totally buy into all this, but I can't deny that things get freaky during these times. Even when I don't know it's retrograde (otherwise I'd just chalk it up to self-fulfilling prophesy). It will seem like there are endless problems and eventually I'll go "hmmm...could it be?" and look it up to find that yes! That horrible planet Mercury is messing with my cell phone. Or whatever.

So, be wary. I've had laptop issues, a package I ordered is missing, my printer at work is on strike, our smoke detector died, and (worst of all) I witnessed a squirrel fall to its death from the top of a tree! Actually, it may have lived. I went up to see if I could help and the squirrel was still breathing but not moving. Then later that day I walked past where it had fallen and the squirrel was gone. I'm hoping it took a little rest, stood up, brushed its fur off, said "whew!" in chirp-language, and then went into the hollowed-out trunk of a nearby tree where it could receive the squirrel equivalent of an x-ray. But that was a hard fall. It went "thump" and everything. I'll have to find out how to help a damaged squirrel in case of future emergencies. As for other Mercury retrograde issues, Dave uses 4 different computers at his work (he has 4 different classrooms, in case you're wondering), and 3 of the 4 computers aren't functioning properly right now. Not even their tech people can figure it out.

Next post will feature a photo of my newest watercolor.

We Don't Need No Education

2008-09-16T07:21:00.002-05:00

Good morning!

Not much new to report with HP. I did work on it this weekend and almost finished the first chapter of the "dreaded middle bit" and then my computer kind of shut itself down for no reason and refused to start. Which is almost the exact same scenario that occurs in one of my anxiety nightmares. That said, I'm amazed at how I didn't even come close to freaking out. It was like "ho, hum, I guess that gives me some time to make rice krispie treats." My calm attitude was justified by the fact that I was able to get back into the laptop later, and I carefully saved my most recent HP version. But I suppose I should figure out what's going on. I think perhaps a new battery is in order? I've had the laptop for 4 years, which I know is a long time in our twisted world of disposable electronics, but I personally don't think that's a very long time to expect a laptop to work. I have no intention of replacing it any time soon.

In one of my previous posts I complained about how little time I allow myself to actually focus on finishing HP. Well, I did take one step recently toward better balancing all that I have going on. I dropped out of my E-Learning Certificate program (for the time being). There are all kinds of reasons I did this. One reason was the nagging panic I had been ignoring. Even though my alert, ambitious self had been saying "of course you can handle working full-time, teaching college, and being a full-time graduate student! You just need to be organized and diligent," my subconscious, realistic self had tripped the emergency sirens. Plus last week I was finally able to see the syllabus for my first graduate class, and seeing the details of this class is what finally helped me realize that this was not the time to start a graduate program. Nothing looked particularly difficult, but it did involve a lot of little details and one big group paper/presentation. And I know how those horrid group projects usually go. Especially if one member of the group is an English teacher. Other considerations played into my decision as well: the strict cohort structure of the program, the fact that my husband has just started his new job and that's meant a lot of changes, the fact that we're also both still property managers and need to stay on top of all that, and the knowledge that we'll be buying a house in spring and moving. Plus, yes. There's the novel to be finished. With so much going on, it became clear to me that now was not the time to throw yet another goal onto the huge bonfire of my time. Doing the graduate program next year makes more sense.

So, that does free up more time for HP (I hope to use the time I would have been in class to work on the novel instead). And that's why I had time to work on the novel this weekend. And make rice krispie treats! Which were, by the way, delicious.

Hope you had a great weekend!

September Weekend

2008-09-08T11:26:00.004-05:00

I'm just popping in for a quick post, knowing I won't be able to again for another week. Hope your weekend was lovely! Mine was ok. I had a lot of little chores to get through and felt really tired all weekend, so it wasn't the best weekend ever. But it's probably the last weekend I'll have until Christmas that doesn't involve some kind of grading, so I tried to fit in some relaxation and thankfully there were some wonderful moments. Here are the highlights:

* Found some magical beads at Michael's Crafts; under normal light they're a pale amethyst color, but under fluorescent lights they're robin's egg blue! They make me think of fairies. No specific plans yet, but they're bound for something special.

* Enjoyed the perfect "autumn weather moment" on Sunday. While I love fall's crisp sunshine and apple orchards just as much as anyone, even more I love the introspective melancholy of a wet autumnal Sunday, complete with church bells, the sounds of a distant train and someone chopping wood, yellow leaves sticking to your shoes, and the comfort found in returning to a warm home and making yourself a hot cup of sweet tea just as the rain begins to really pour.

* Dave and I shared some ginger cookies I picked up at the bakery at Kowalski's. Normally I'm underwhelmed by their bakery, but these cookies were amazing! They were the culinary equivalent to my perfect fall day, only smeared with frosting!

* Did some writing...still working on the same chapter as before, feeling frustrated because my descriptive abilities pale in comparison to Joyce Carol Oates and all her annoying, disconcerting talent (On my lunch breaks I've been working my way through her famous short story collection The Wheel of Love).

* Made some progress on the unending, soul-sucking filing project. To make this project less like torture, while sorting my piles I watched the Masterpiece Theater production of Elizabeth: The Virgin Queen (the one with Anne-Marie Duff). Definitely made my task a little less hateful. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/virginqueen/

* Had brunch at Mickey's with a couple friends and had great coversation about books, movies, travel, and teaching! And as much as I wanted to order the buttery decadence of Mickey's bacon omlette, I ordered the chaste and demure oatmeal instead. That makes me pretty awesome.

Hope your weekend had plenty of highlights as well!

Daniel

2008-09-03T06:58:00.003-05:00

This is another watercolor I thought I'd share. I started this one over July 4th weekend. I actually did most of it while lounging around at Gooseberry Falls, but only finished it up last weekend. I'm hoping to do a whole series of these mysterious, slightly sinister Edwardian children. Whenever I'm in an antique store I snatch up some of the sad discarded photos they usually have in stacks somewhere near the counter. I always wonder about those. Where do they come from? I assume the photos come from estate sales, where someone has died and photos are left behind and they figure why not sell the photos to people like me, who buy them for their own weird purposes. But why wouldn't relatives want them? Everyone must be dead who knew the people in those photographs, and now they're just being sold to strangers in some store. Sad. Anyway, I modeled this intense little boy on a child in one of those antique store photos. I have plenty more to work with. Next will be a scary little girl named Clara, who I suspect likes the seaside, caramel apples, and dead trees.

Tomorrow is my first class of the semester. I'm as prepared as I can be (without going overboard), so tonight I hope to relax and get some sleep.

Oh, and you've voted and Jay Gatsy wins the presidency! Great choice, old sport! And seeing animals is your favorite thing to do at the State Fair.

Alice Artwork

2008-08-29T09:31:00.013-05:00

In honor of the winners of my "Favorite Character from Alice in Wonderland" survey, here are my watercolor tributes.

It was a three-way tie between Red Queen, Alice, and the Cheshire Cat!

Below are the finished paintings...sorry that they're a little blurry. One of these days I'll get a scanner, which would be much better than trying to photograph the pieces. I'm really enjoying doing watercolors lately. I use the watercolor pencils, which is a really easy way to start watercoloring...espeically if, like me, you're mainly a sketcher.

Hope you enjoy these!

Red Queen

Mmmmm...Corn-Dog-a-Licious!

2008-08-27T16:03:00.011-05:00

I forgot to mention that Dave and I went to the Fair on Friday, as a reward for making progress on the unending soul-sucking filing project.

I met this cute bunny who was about to be judged by the 4-H people. I told him (her?) that no matter what, he was a WINNER! But, being a bunny, it had no idea what I was talking about. I tried to convey my appreciation for its cuteness by touching his little foot through the cage. He didn't really like that, though, so I finally just stopped harrassing him...but not until after we took this photo together.

Otherwise we did everything we always do at the Fair. I suppose that's the joy of the Fair...the joy of repetition and familiarity. The International Bazaar changed, which was new! But despite the big changes...it still somehow seemed exactly the same. Same vendors. Same layout. The Fair can't change for real. It can only kinda change. It may change some on the outside once in a great while, but its kitschy heart will always be full of art glass, tractors, sheep shearing, misshapen people, and the smell of things frying. May it always remain so.

Favorite moment? We saw a chick hatch at the Miracle of Birth barn. There was a little boy in front of us with his very-pregnant mother. When he saw the chick push its way out of the egg he was enraptured...but then a cloud passed over his face and he looked over at his mom's belly with an expression of alarm.

What was your favorite Fair moment?

Why is There so Much to Do?

2008-08-26T08:20:00.004-05:00

Oh, hi again!

First of all, I have not been writing. I've been thinking about writing, and I did that partial-chapter revision I already wrote about in my last post. But right now time is not on my side. The new school year is standing at the front door clearing its throat and getting ready to knock, which means I'm spending all my time doing the dozens of last-minute tasks I need to feel prepared for the long plunge. It's like getting ready to die. That sounds like a horrible way to describe things, but I think it's pretty true. It's the "death of free time." Especially this coming semester, with my crazy life as a combination of staff-faculty-graduate student. Goodbye, friends! Goodbye, social life! Luckily, all the things I'm busy with are important to me, so I won't complain anymore.

So, where does that leave HP? Poor little HP, always pushed to the sidelines. If only I could take a few months off from all my obligations and just focus on finishing the novel. I've been writing it for three years....and yet, that's not three solid years. I've only been able to write it for a few months at a time, during semesters when I'm not teaching. So when just counting the months I've had to devote to it, it hasn't even quite had a full year of attention. And even during those limited "writing months," it still only gets my time every other weekend or so, since the full-time job and normal chores fill up much of my time. All told, I think I've only been able to spend about 500 hours on the book...which sounds like a lot, but is only equivalent to about three months of full-time work. If I'd had 3-4 solid months of just writing 40 hours a week, I would be where I am now, after 3 years of trying to fit this in during my sparse free time. That's sad to me. I mean, I'm glad I continue to work on it despite these obstacles...and I guess I'm not willing to quit teaching...and I need to work...so this is how it has to be. But I feel bad that HP has such a tenuous claim to my time. Therefore, I'm going to try to fit in some writing each week...even if only for an hour or two. That's the plan ~ to at least keep stirring the pot, regardless of what else I have going on. Then hopefully when January arrives I'll be able to spend a great deal more time on it again. And once I look into the copywrite issues, I'll perhaps start posting the revised chapters here in case people want to start reading it.

Next post will feature my watercolor tribute to the winners of the Favorite Alice in Wonderland Character contest. I have Alice and the Cheshire Cat done, but then The Queen of Hearts snuck up to make it a three-way tie. So to be fair I'll need to do her watercolor as well.

Busy Times

2008-08-18T08:23:00.004-05:00

Hi Reader,

It's been a busy few weeks. I've been spending almost all my free time (including my lunch hours at work) preparing for the fall semester. My first class starts September 4, and I do all the prep work I possibly can prior to that first day. I plan each class period, write all my assignments for the whole semester, do all my research, proof everything a number of times (I can't be expecting my students to do this if I don't!), and this Thursday after work I'll makes copies of everything I need for the whole semester. I then organize all this into folders, each folder representing a different unit. It's a lot of work...probably about 15-20 hours a week for the last three weeks. But the good thing is that when the semester finally starts, I only need to focus on teaching and grading. I won't have to do all the other class prep that fills the "free" time of teachers. That's important to me, since I also work full-time during the semester and will additionally be a student mysef...I'm taking a graduate class on e-learning. The good news is that after this week I should be finished with all my prep work, and can hopefully relax a little before the new school year starts up.

Oddly enough, I did manage to fit in some writing time this weekend. I almost finished my revisions for the first chapter in the "scary middle part" of HP. I made more changes than initially intended. I changed some of the prose into dialogue and added a scene between my main character Ana and her soon-to-be antagonist Elly. But right now they're kind of friends. All the better to pit them against each other later on! I ended my revision right at the moment when Ana first realizes that something is very wrong with her cubicle. Nothing major...she just notices the window in her cube open when it shouldn't be and has a weird feeling of being watched.

Other things that happened this weekend: my husband spent some time preparing for his new job, which starts today; had dinner with our delightful friend Joanna and her magical cats; saw this crazy documentary called Man On Wire about the Frenchman who in the early '70s tightrope walked between the World Trade Center towers (in a weird coincidence, this tightrope-walker's name is Phillipe...just like our cement mime!); went to the Joke Joint to see my brother's girfriend perform her comedy routine. We also worked on our enormous unending soul-sucking filing project. I finished a thoroughly-satisfying vampire novel called The Companion (sent to me from England by my friend April). We watched a bizarre documentary on Mary Shelley that was part biography, part travelogue, and part nature program. And, finally, we got our lifetime fill of Michael Phelps.

So, a little bit of writing and a lot of other stuff. Sounds like a lot to cram into a weekend, but I ended up taking a vacation day from work in order to do it all. And now if I finish everything this week I can celebrate by going to the fair on Friday!

Bunny Wins the Day!

2008-08-07T08:23:00.003-05:00

In the "What is your favorite woodlands animal" poll, the BUNNY wins...followed closely by owl. Deer and Chipmunk each got 1 vote.

Congratulations, Bunny! You win a trip to the beautiful island of Jamaica for you and all twelve members of your family. You will enjoy luxury all-inclusive accomodations at Sandals Resort, where you may participate in a wide variety of watersports, snorkeling, horseback riding, or just hopping along the beach. Sandals resort has two 4-star restaurants, featuring fresh seafood and (perhaps more up your road) an extensive salad bar. Enjoy this well-deserved award, Bunny! I'll leave your plane tickets and itinerary right under that big chrysanthemum in the garden.

Happy Days

2008-08-04T10:50:00.004-05:00

All kinds of good things have happened since my last post. Here are the highlights:

1. Husband signed a contract for an AWES-OME teaching position, which starts in a matter of weeks and pays pretty-dern-well, considering he's a relatively new teacher. Now he can stop wearing that pickle-barrel and begging for food on the street corner!

2. I got two raises...one for my own teaching position and one in my normal job. Not huge raises, but still.

3. I finished revising/rewriting all my chapter cards for the "middle passage" of HP...now I can move forward on the nuts-n-bolts revising.

4. My lovely friend JoJo and her equally lovely family were in town this weekend from their hometown in Chelmsford, England. We delighted over the marvels of Grand Avenue, Como Park, and Porky's drive-in. They also got to visit with Phillipe, the cement mime (pictures will surely follow at some point).

5. I went to the dentist for my cleaning/check-up and for the first time in something like 4 years I do not need any crowns, fillings, fillings replaced, or wisdom teeth pulled. They simply said "try to floss more" and let me go my own way without further harassment.

6. Husband got me another birthday gift, which is a small (very small) piece of land on the Kincavel estate in Scotland. It's only about enough land to stand on, but it's enough to effectively make me a Laird. Or, rather, a Lady. So now everyone should call me Lady of Kincavel. Now I have to go to Scotland, find my square foot of land, and build a fence around it.

Now the next phase of work begins...preparing for new jobs, new school years, more writing, and of course flossing.

Blowing though the Jasmine of my Mind

2008-07-25T11:16:00.003-05:00

This has nothing to do with anything, but I'm listening to a reggae remix of the song "Summer Breeze" and thinking what a perfect summer song it is and trying to come up with other perfect summer songs.

Here's my list of summer songs...at least the first 20 I can think of. Some are obvious, some maybe more personal. Most are pretty old school. And of course there are summer-themed songs not on this list because I simply don't like them (I despise "Summertime Blues").

What songs would you add to this list?

"Summer Breeze" by Seals and Croft

"Here Comes the Sun" by The Beatles (but this is also an autumnal song to me, for some reason)

"I Can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash

"Dancing in the Moonlight" by King Harvest

"Summer in the City" by Lovin' Spoonful

"The Summer" by Yo La Tengo

"Summer Teeth" by Wilco

"Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and those Shondells

"Hot Fun in the Summertime" by Sly and the Family Stone

"Stir it Up" by Bob Marley

"Raspberry Beret" by Prince

"Good Vibrations" by The Beach Boys

"A Summer Wasting" by Belle & Sebastian

"July! July!" by The Decemberists

"In the Summertime" by Mungo Jerry

Pretty much anything Motown

"BBQ USA" by Mojo Nixon

"Sweet City Woman" by...that guy and his banjo

And the song that represents the summer of 2008 for me? "Mercy" by Duffy

Love and the Mississippi

2008-07-21T13:56:00.026-05:00

Dave and I have safely returned from my birthday camping extravaganza! Here are the Top 10 things we learned:

* We're too old to be camping in tents

* I'm awfully fond of being clean and dry

* Dave has great taste in jewelry

* Turkey Spam isn't that bad

* Marmite flavored chips, on the other hand, are ish

* I probably wouldn't have resorted to cannibalism if I'd been in the Donner Party

* Solid shampoo is a wonderful invention

* It's good to have an extra sleeping bag in the trunk of your car

* Use fresh (not year-old) marshmallows for s'mores

* A cement mime can come in handy

So, yeah. We were at Itasca State Park, and we did our Minnesotan duty by walking across the Mississippi River at its "creek" stage. It sure is cute when it's little! There were baby ducks and little fish and pretty rocks. We also saw Indian burial mounds, which was spooky...and just as we were saying "wow, this is spooky!" a tree actually fell down near us. It's like the Indian ghosts were saying "run, white land-stealers!" We bought lots of gift-store trinkets, especially since it was my birthday. Dave gave me a lovely necklace for my birthday too. We had a lot of nice quiet time, which I spent reading a book on the Donner Party...kind of weird to read about people freezing and starving to death while I lounge under the sun eating yogurt-covered peanuts. And probably not best to be eating turkey Spam while reading the gritty parts. Finally, most of our weather was lovely and we had a lot of fun.

On the negative side, we ate pretty poorly, I would say. I don't what the deal was, but we never really managed to get a roaring fire going. My friend April sent me an awesome box of goodies from her home in England, and I brought along a couple selections: Trendy Seaweed Snack (delicious!) and Marmite Chips (horrid!).

Also, it rained...rained hard!...our first night and got everything in our tent pretty wet, resulting in the Tent Relocation Project. Finally, I threw out my back. See! Too old for this.

As for Phillipe, our cement mime...perhaps the less said the better. He did, however, seem to scare off most of the animals and a few irritating children on bikes.

Did no writing. Didn't even think about it.

I win!

2008-07-14T09:33:00.002-05:00

Ok, I don't win anything...except a Dairy Queen (courtesy of my husband)! That's right, I finished the first third of HP this weekend. Cut out a bunch of adjectives, tightened things up, toned down a few scenes that were maybe a bit...um...over-the-top, and am all ready to start the "Dreaded Middle Bit". I can't think of that too much right now, though. I'll think about that tomorrow.

Tomorrow we're going to Itasca State Park for some good old-fashioned tent camping. I'm bringing along my chapter cards for the "Dreaded Middle Bit" so I can really start confronting the ghost. My main purpose for this final revision is to increase the tension. When I first started HP I wanted it to be very literary and serious. Now I just want a page-turner, and I realize that's not so easy to come by. I'm thinking back to all the books I could not put down and borrowing their tricks.

In the meantime...if a ghost were haunting you at work, what would most freak you out? What would really scare you? The ghost meddles some with the computer and email, plus does the usual moving things around and making things "spooky." Any other ideas?

Thanks go out to JoJo for her feedback on the revised "Part 1" of HP. JoJo could be a book editor, but she also happens to be a very talented writer. I'm very lucky to have her help!

Finally, I watched two movies this weekend. Bathing Beauty, an Esther Williams movie that had almost nothing to do with swimming until the end, when for no reason whatsoever Esther Williams puts on a big water show while Xavier Cugat and his band of ethnic stereotypes play bongos in the background. Plus, there's fire IN the water! Pretty awesome! I also saw Gothic, an insane movie directed by Ken Russell. I rented this because I'm teaching Frankenstein in the fall, and the movie is loosely based on the genesis of that book. If you want to feel like a slightly Goth freshman English major in the '80s, who has just drank both tequila and absinthe at a friend's cabin while reading Cliff's Notes on Frankenstein, then this is the movie for you!

I'll post again after camping!

Procrastinations and Pie

2008-07-11T10:08:00.000-05:00

Lovely Readers,

I spent an hour and a half working on one paragraph last night. That was one messed up paragraph! Granted, I was also distracted by Entertainment Tonight (yes, I have the TV on while I write...don't judge). But still, regardless of the paragraph's faults and Madonna's supposed divorce, I think and hour and a half pushes this beyond "polishing" and more in the realm of "procrastination." I also procrastinated a few other ways last night: insisted on making a Jell-O Dream Pie that neither Dave nor I ended up eating, reorganized my mixing bowls, and spent some frustrated time searching for my pie iron cookbook. Despite all these unnecessary distractions, after the paragraph hump I did manage to polish three chapters. Go me!

A little about my self-imposed timeline. HP is divided into thirds. I have been revising, polishing, and repolishing the first third for about 5 months now. Why? It's hard. Some big-time revising needed to take place, including reordering chapters, rewriting the entire first chapter, adding scenes, deleting other scenes, and changing some significant details (all based on the feedback I received on the first draft -- thank you readers!). The first third of the book simply bears the brunt of these major revisions. That's my official line. But the real reason is the middle section of the novel...well, it scares me. There's a ghost. I thought I knew how to write about ghosts. But I kind of don't. So now that the first third is almost finished (only one more chapter and I'm done!), that means I have to confront this ghost, who points her finger at me and laughs: "you have no idea how to write about me, do you?" I look away and nod, sheepishly. Certainly delaying this confrontation makes some sense now. And if anyone wants some Jell-O Dream Pie....you know where to find me.

Introduction

2008-07-10T14:07:00.000-05:00

Hi sweet readers,

I'm starting this blog on the eve of my birthday, as sort of a gift to myself. Kind of a cheap gift, but a very nice one. You will see by the blog's description that it's meant to detail the trials and victories encountered during the completion of my first novel. But hopefully it will be more than that as well.

But let's start with the novel, shall we? It does not have a title, poor thing. Perhaps I'll end up having you vote for one. Its working title for now is Haunted People, but other options are rumbling around in my head. I won't know the real title until it's complete. At that point I'm hoping I'll look at it and, like a newborn, immediately know which name fits...if it's a Henry or a Ralph. But for now, I'm calling it HP.

Right now it's 308 pages and doesn't quite have an ending yet. I know the basics of the ending, but (without trying to sound spooky or cheesy) the characters kind of need to lead me to it. The first lesson I learned in writing this novel is: by page 100 characters become people and, like real people, they surprise you. So far in this book, intended villains have become sympathetic characters, a "good" character revealed a malicious core, and my heroine turned out to be someone I'm not sure I totally trust. I've learned to be flexible and let the characters do what their personality and the situation most calls for...which means the ending is still a cloud in the sky.

Rather than going into plot, I'll tell you my intentions for the novel. I wanted to write a good old-fashioned gothic novel, but place it in a contemporary setting. Without knowing more than that, a wonderful thing happened. I work in a 150-year old building. It used to house priests, and is the kind of place nobody wants to be after dark or alone. One day I needed to fetch something from my office during the weekend. Even though I avoided it as much as possible, circumstances have in the past forced me to sometimes be in the building during the "scary times", and my usual plan was to walk to my office as calmly but quickly as possible, then once in my office lock the door immediately. I did the same thing on this particualr day. Everything seemed fine, but as soon as I locked the door, someone (something!) was turning the knob and pulling it back and forth, as if either trying to get in or get my attention. For argument's sake, let's say it was a person; they would've had to be right behind me to start pulling the knob that soon after I locked the door. And yet nobody was anywhere near me. Furthermore, the door has a window so I'd naturally be able to see anyone standing on the other side. It was either The Invisible Man or... the ghost of the priest that supposedly DIED IN THE OFFICE NEXT TO MINE!! AGH! Sounds like the makings of a great book, right? Ah ha! I thought so too. So after recovering from the incident, I decided that the perfect setting for a contemporary gothic tale was in an office. What if a woman takes a new job and finds her cubicle haunted by her dead predecessor? The answer to that is the premise of my novel.

Ok, enough for now. Thanks for reading!