spring is like a perhaps deluge

I dropped a stitch! the terror of the ginormous revision...

I want to write about revision.  No, wait.  Maybe I just want to hide from revision?  Yeah, same thing.

So anyway, I've spent the past year revising--I'm pretty sure, when you break it all down, (*breaks it down*), I have spent more time this past year revising than sleeping.  And a lot of the time, even when I'm sleeping, the better part of my brain (AKA the part not otherwise engaged in drooling over pretty pictures and unlikely scenarios (not like, literally drooling, of course, ew! *flips pillow*)) keeps right on revising.

I struggle sometimes with blogging about writing.  I enjoy reading and commenting on other writers' blogs, but I don't really feel like I can write about "the craft" with any kind of authority.  What do I even know about writing except how much I don't know?  Still, I keep thinking about the revision process, and I keep coming to one big conclusion.  Ready?  Okay.  Revision is...hard.

Yeah.

Brilliant.  So as a writing teacher, I spend a lot of time trying to teach people how to make their writing better.  We do things like peer critiques, where readers ask each other questions about things they want to know more about, or identify language they really think "works"...that kind of thing.  And we do the kind of revision that is more about refining language--identify your lazy words and get more specific.  Read it out loud and find the sentence breaks.  Check your outline and make sure your paragraphs are organized with transitions and a strong thesis...that kind of thing.

Nobody can ever really teach you how to REVISE, you know?  Like, even when a reader (critique partner, agent, editor, your mom--whatever) tells you what's wrong with your novel--that the voice is awesome but everything that happens in it is slightly wrong, or that the whole thing really needs to begin 20,000 words in, or that the stakes aren't high enough or that your central focus seems to want to shift over about three inches to one side and maybe happen in a different state--even then, they can't tell you what to DO about it.

So far I've revised all of those problems and then some, and I still can't sit here on this blog and tell you what to do when you take apart a key scene about three-quarters of the way through and realize that it's like you've just gone to dig out a dropped stitch and suddenly there are all these loops and strings and holes and you're scared to move and your needles are shaking and more loops are sliding off of them every second and you've spent an entire year on getting this far so the thought of ripping it all out and starting over is paralyzing, and...

...well, I'm not sure how else to put it.  It's terrifying.  But you can't sit there all day holding perfectly still with your needles in the air. So...you start tugging at strings.  You pull a few loops.  Sometimes it works to cover the wall up above your desk with post-it notes, and sometimes it helps to make color-coded notes on dot matrix paper and spread it all over the floor, and sometimes it helps to cry and sometimes it helps to paint a deck with music stuffed in your ears and sometimes it helps to take a walk and sometimes it helps to take a bath and sometimes you have to write what's supposed to happen next ALL IN CAPS with things like "OMG THEY ARE FREAKED OUT" and "WHAT WE THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST A LITTLE MESSED UP BUT YOU ARE REALLY MESSED UP" and even "AND THEN HER PARENTS’ HEADS EXPLODE!" (All of these are either my own actual methods of revision or my own actual excerpts from my current document--I left out the somewhat controversial methods of snarling at my family and going on crazed cleaning rampages...)

Anyway, no matter how you cope with it, revising is freakin' HARD.  And what works for one person may not work for another.  What works for me today may not work tomorrow (assuming I eventually post this and get back to work), but the process of making serious, deep changes to a manuscript time and time again (I'm a slow learner) is daunting and difficult.

But.  Here's the good part.  As difficult as it is, and as many times as I feel like a big failure when I have to go back YET AGAIN and rework something I thought was as good as I could ever do in a million years, and as much as I despair with my huge pile of post-its and my fourteen open documents...every single time, something crazy happens.

The book gets better.

And that feels almost good enough to remember it all the way through until the next revision.  Almost.

*opens fifteenth document*

*sighs*

(for the record, because I'm afraid this post might be too short and might not contain enough parentheses, I can only knit in a straight line, like a never-ending scarf, and my options for dropped stitches are three: tear it all out and begin from the beginning (after I get someone to cast on for me because I always seem to forget how), live with a hole in the middle of my scarf, or bring it over to my mom's house and make her fix it...but so far, I have not yet made my mom do my revisions.)

on pretending, or I LOVE WRITING!

"I hate writing.  I love having written" --Dorothy Parker

Yesterday, during our afternoon quiet time, Jabber decided to sit beside me and write his own book.  For reasons that are long and a bit inane, I have been referring to his book by the title A MILLION FLEAS.  He calls it PEPOL TRAPT IN A CAR.  I mean, it's a working title.

So yesterday he wrote a chapter ("The Car Rase") which, although tending toward bathroom humor, seemed a pretty good start.  He even made his own cover (I'll break it to him later how little control he'll have over cover design...) and did some illustrations (mini-van with flames).

Today during quiet time, I asked him if he was going to write chapter two ("The Jet Pac") while I was working on my Cassandra WIP.  He shook his head.

"No, I hate writing," he said.

"What?  Yesterday you loved working on your book with me."

"No, Mom.  It wasn't really fun.  I was just pretending it was fun."  And then he just...abandoned his WIP.  Such a promising premise, too!  (All right, I'm not entirely clear on the premise, but I feel sure he could have made it into something wonderful.)

At first, I was kind of upset--not that he didn't want to finish some story he was working on, but because he has been claiming today that he hates reading and writing.  That kind of broke my heart a little bit.

But then I realized--yeah, sometimes we all hate writing.  And a lot of the time the actual act of writing...well, it's not all that enjoyable.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I love having written.  I love to reread it.  Sometimes I even like to revise it.  But writing isn't easy, and it isn't something that, for me, just flows like water, like breathing.  It isn't always fun.  But even so, I keep doing it, and in fact, I feel wrong if I'm not doing it, even though I will at times go to great lengths to avoid doing it.  At other times I'll do it, but only for the promise of rewards: if I write a thousand words, I get to shower.  If I write another thousand, I can eat.  Does that sound like fun?

So, I know there are writers for whom writing is always a source of pure joy.  I know there are others who always find it a struggle and have to drag themselves to the page.  And others have the sort of complicated relationship with writing that I do--I love it but I dread it.  When I'm not writing, I long to be, and when I'm supposed to be writing, I'll scrub the kitchen floor to get away from it.

How about you?  Is writing fun, or do you just pretend that it is?  And wherever you fall on that spectrum, what's your favorite part of the process?

a tangential slalom course of a post

I go through these jags where I listen almost exclusively to Minnesota Public Radio when I'm driving my car, and I'm in one right now. If you were to see me driving somewhere, you'd probably be able to tell. I might be chuckling. I might be nodding thoughtfully. Most likely, though, my car will be parked and inexplicably idling at my destination--the children straining at their seatbelts while I shush them.

So yesterday I hopped into the car (I keep calling it that, but it's really a mini-van, sighhhh) to pick up the boys from a morning at daycare while I was writing, and this Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, was speaking about happiness, or more specifically, why people mess up so much when trying to predict what will make them happy. A long time ago, I remembered watching this video of a shorter talk he did at some other...ideas thingy...because I remembered the interesting experiments he did with a photography course.

Short story is that he had college students take a bunch of meaningful pictures and create two beautiful prints, and then they had to choose one to keep and one to leave with the instructor. Half the students were told that they could change their minds in four days and switch pictures, and the other half were told that they had to choose and it was a final decision. In the end, the people who had an opportunity to change their minds were less happy with the pictures than the people without that chance. Like, a lot less happy.

Then he asked a new group of students which group they would rather be in, and over sixty percent of them chose to be in the group with the choice. They chose the class that would eventually make them unhappy with their photo.

This was interesting.

I started thinking about shopping, about the difference between the way I shop and the way D. shops. First, I make decisions and then I don't look back. Let's say I'm looking for a new pair of shoes to wear to work. I'll go to the shoe store, find my size, look around at all the options, try on a few pairs if I don't already have a tantrumming toddler, pick one, buy it, and I'm done. Those other shoes that I didn't buy? They aren't in my head anymore, unless I've made mental plans to come back for them after I've earned another pair of shoes or something.

David does pretty much the opposite. He will scour shoe stores for several weeks, repeatedly going in and trying on different pairs. He will research the finalists thoroughly on the internet. He'll read reviews of the shoes. He'll go back and try them on again. He'll pit the stores against each other to get a better price (seriously, he does this all the time, not necessarily with shoes, but I wouldn't put it past him). Finally, he'll make his selection, but much of the time it's a close decision, and he may waver a couple of times as he works through all the pros and cons of each.

The next thing is that I don't do returns. So let's just say I don't like shoes when I get home. They actually pinch a little. Wow, I didn't realize they made that weird little sighing sound every time I take a step. That will be awkward while I'm creeping around my classroom. I totally didn't notice that they made my feet look so boxy. Boxy doesn't really look good on my feet. I shrug and tuck them in my closet. Give them away to someone. Possibly I have slightly pinching, boxy, sighing feet for a while until I have a chance and the funds to try again. But it doesn't really occur to me to bring them back. I don't know why...I just feel like it's a lot of trouble. I made the choice, no big deal. I don't usually feel unhappy about the shoes. Shoes are great, but I'm not going to go crazy over a pair of shoes.

D. comes home from shopping and doesn't take the tags off of things until he's certain. Really certain. And then maybe he'll sleep on it. I guess I can't speak to his happiness with those final purchases, but from my point of view, it seems like if he realizes that there's a flaw in his purchase, he's more likely to wonder about that other option...maybe I should have bought that other one...I saw that one review about this on their website, but everyone else said it was fine...it seems a little like agonizing, to me.

Agonizing =/= Happiness.

So Gilbert talked about how choice--freedom--makes people less happy. Because you can wonder about whether you made the right choice? Because you also have the freedom of regretting the choices?

Oh, dear. This is not what this post was supposed to be about. Warning! Tangent! Where did it start? *traces back*

AHA!

Second paragraph. A likely place for a tangent to crop up.

What I meant to write about was the tiny snippet of the Aspen talk aired on MPR that was about CHILDREN. And how they make us less happy. I believe his three reasons that we still think of our children as sources of joy were Armani socks, Heroin, and Baseball. Maybe I'll blather on about that tomorrow. Or maybe there will be another tangent. What was I talking about?

In the Kitchen with Elissa

So last night I was standing in the kitchen, and I had a sort of introspective moment. Ordinarily, those moments are not so great because they involve me making a realization about myself, like that I’m essentially lazy, or self-centered, or that quite possibly that last time I lost my temper with Jabber was the time that will mess him up irrevocably.

But this realization was about cooking.

I always say that I can’t cook. It’s true, I don’t cook. I don't usually tell people that when David is going to be gone from the home during a mealtime, he sometimes leaves a meal ready for me to heat up. That sometimes means always. That he also gives me detailed instructions about the heating.

(To be fair, David likes giving detailed instructions. He’s very helpful like that.)

It’s also true that cooking meat is difficult for me. For one thing, I won’t eat or let the kids eat ground meat (ground beef primarily, but I really can’t eat too much of any kind of ground meat), so there goes the primary source of meat from my childhood. Hamburger in everything, you know? But I just can’t eat it, not thinking about how it’s all ground up and who knows what is in it. I cooked a pound of ground beef once, it must be ten years ago now, and I looked at it, cooking in the pan, and just knew I wasn’t going to eat that ever again. I dumped it out in the garbage, and I don’t think I’ve eaten it since, at least, not on purpose. I won’t get into the e.coli chapter in Fast Food Nation that made me vow to keep the kids away from it until they are older and more…I don’t know, durable.

But still, when we lived in Oregon, I often cooked. I had a vegetarian cookbook, and I made soups, side dishes, full meals. I often substituted ingredients because we were poor and only had a few staples in our kitchen most of the time, but I cooked a lot.

Then we had Jabber, and I went back to work, and there it began. I didn’t get home from work until 5:30, and before I could even get my coat off, the baby would be reaching for me hungrily, with his little baby bird mouth opened wide. We’d settle into our perch on the couch, and there we would stay…both of us exhausted and hungry and a bit cranky.

So David had to cook.

And essentially that’s the reason he continues to cook: I work late, and the kids are hungry much sooner.

But last night I realized what my real problem is. It’s not that I’m a bad cook; it’s that I’m a bad meal planner. I look at the cupboards, and I truly can’t figure out what to make out of it all. I can sometimes think of one part of the meal, but then I’m at a loss as to what to do for the rest of it, or how any of it would go together.

Like a couple nights ago, when I went grocery shopping, the store bakery had these enormous loaves of garlic bread on sale, so I bought a loaf and set it on the counter. While David was asking me what I we should have for dinner, all I could think was, “Well, we should eat the garlic bread because it was probably not fresh to begin with, so…garlic bread. Goes with spaghetti. But we only have alfredo sauce made. And Jabber won’t eat that. Because it’s cheese. And he’ll only eat orange cheese, that’s not melted. Unless it’s on pizza, when white cheese, melted is okay. And Monkey won’t eat noodles at all. What kind of a kid won’t eat noodles, for crying out loud. Why the hell do my kids have to eat the complete opposite, anyway?”

And at this point, I think I wandered out of the kitchen. It was just too much for me.

David, on the other hand, turned on the oven and stuck the garlic bread in, a plan forming around in the back of his mind. He threw some chicken into a pan, melted some cheese, steamed some broccoli, tossed some chickpeas, and made us grilled chicken sandwiches on garlic toast with two side dishes.

I’m not completely helpless, though. I mean, sooner or later I would have poured us each a bowl of cereal.

Everything in its Place

I’m organized, I swear!

This picture is proof for all the world that all of our new toys have a home.

Sadly, the home is in a corner of my dining room, taking up the space that, before children, was well-occupied by my own personal library. My books, and those of David, have been slowly but surely forced up onto higher shelves or even forced to move on to other accommodations entirely.

But here you can see: There is a bin for the Matchbox cars, a bin for non-Matchbox things with wheels, a bin for things without wheels, a bin for precious things that want to be kept separate, a bin for “Bad Guys,” a bin for art supplies.

There is a drawer for completed art projects, a drawer for eighteen different varieties of paper and forty-seven activity and/or coloring books. A drawer for Jabber’s treasures and a drawer for Monkey’s treasures.

There is a drawer set aside for playing cards.

There is another drawer which holds only purses, satchels, and other finery.

There are two bins of Little People. (Amy, I asked them if they would rather call their Little People “Chuckies,” as per your suggestion/plan for worldwide name change. They were enthusiastic about a name change; however, Jabber preferred the name “Robin Gobbins,” while Monkey was quite insistent that they should only be referred to as “Pee-Poo.”)

There is a toolbox for all tools and flashlights, including chainsaws, of which they have two.

There are bags, too, and hooks to hang them: for the train set, for the Legos, for the Knight Costume…

And of course, there are books.

So this moment, in this photo, there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. It will probably never happen again.

Dear Diary Blog-a-Rama

Ah, vacation. Where I get a little glimpse into just how much I can actually get done when I don’t have to spend like sixty hours of each week working. Speaking of which…the two bags full of papers that must be graded this week glare at me from the corner of the couch. “It’s Tuesday,” they say. They have a pretty menacing aura about them, to be honest.

Writing. TDBB is novel #2, and I just passed the 25 K mark yesterday evening. Or maybe it was early this morning. When I don’t have to get to work in the morning, I can stay up until my late night creative streak wanes. I’ve always been a night person. Anyway, in the loosest of senses, TDBB is about two girls who go on a road trip after graduating from high school, and at 23 K, I finally got them to leave for the road trip. I am enjoying my characters and their overall journey, but I was a little curious if they were ever going to actually go on this mythical road trip.

I still have no clue if what I’m writing is YA or adult fiction or what, but I think I’m aiming closer to the 90-100 K mark, so it’s all sort of slow and steady. They are in the Badlands right now, and one of my main characters just pulled a gun on some creepy guys. David had fun filling me in on all the details I might need for that scene.

Writing my secret santa story was a fun detour from the seriousness of TDBB. My prompt was that I had to write fantasy (I don’t think I’ve ever honestly finished a story that was fantasy, at least not since elementary school…although I’ve read a fair amount of fantasy, I haven’t really ever written it.) The other requirements were that it needed to have a strong male character, and there wasn’t supposed to be any romance. That’s sort of an anti-requirement, actually. I had no clue what to write about.

So I started writing about a seventh grade boy named Drew who was a faerie going through puberty. Except that he doesn’t know he’s a faerie. And he has zits that explode all over bullies, turning them into enormous green tadpoles. All in all, pretty silly. As usual, I have a terrible time writing an actual SHORT story. Everything I write seems to want to expand into its own book. I read the story, called “When Puberty Hits,” to my seventh grade homebase, and they laughed at it and asked me when I was going to write the next chapter. And so I have a middle-grade fantasy novel in the works.

And, as though I need more unfinished works-in-progress, I can’t stop working on another little idea, also fantasy, strangely enough. This one takes place in Duluth (or at least, one of the universes resembles Duluth) and has seagulls who can talk. Sort of.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I need to get my new iPod working, figure out my internet challenges, and find something to cook the kids for lunch. It sure would help if I had actually gone grocery shopping last night as I was supposed to, but I did have fun seeing M and L at the Irish Pub! I can’t help it that my car didn’t want to stop at the grocery store on the way home!

A moment ago.

Me: Hey guys, how about, before we pull out all the Little People shit, I mean stuff, how about if we pick up some more of this other shit, I mean stuff.

Jabber: Okay. (sits in same position, playing with other shit. I mean stuff.)

Me: Like this wooden knife. Where's the little pink basket of food that this goes with?

Jabber: I don't know. (sits there, playing. hasn't looked up from toy.)

Me: Well, is it in the fort? Is it in your ear? Is it up in your room? Someone had it out, and I'm just wondering where the rest of it is, so I can put it away.

Jabber: I DON'T KNOW where it is.

Me: I know. I don't either. Will you help me look for it, please?

Jabber: I can't look for it. I don't know where it is. (has not looked up yet from the toy.)

Me: Well, I don't know where it is, either. That's why it's called looking. Searching. Seeking. The basket of fake food is hiding. It is awaiting discovery. Make a treasure map. I don't care. But will you please help me look for it?

Jabber: But I wanted to take out the Little People! (collapses in a sullen heap of fake crying)

Holiday Down-Sizing

We’re having a discussion about taking down the Christmas tree so that we can roll up the old living room rug and replace it with the beautiful new living room rug David’s parents bought us.

“Jabber,” I say, trying out my latest tactic--playing up the “responsible big brother helper-type person” role, “would you like to use your new vacuum cleaner on the old rug before we roll it up?” My parents bought each of our children a small vacuum cleaner for Christmas, a sort of “for the love of God, will somebody clean something in that house?” move, I guess. So far I love it.

“Sure!” he says, full of enthusiasm for the job. “I will!”

Monkey very helpfully delivers “The Big Boss,” which is how we’re referring to the rug sweeper, versus “The Little Boss,” which is how we indicate the Dustbuster. I cringe as the handle very nearly misses several breakable entities around the house.

“Great! Now that Daddy took the Christmas tree down, we can get started."

“Wait.” Jabber fixes me with a serious look.

He stands up beside his spot at the table as though he is answering a question for an old-fashioned school-teacher. “What will you be doing to my Fort?” he asks.

The Fort has taken over the living room in the past few weeks. It started as the old play pen (that I’m not sure has ever, in the course of two boys, been successfully utilized in its intended manner) tipped on its side in front of the fireplace. In this capacity, it serves two purposes: with a couple of blankets draped over it and some pillows inside, it is a comfy little cubby for one or two boys to enjoy some quiet time, and also: it keeps the Monkey out of the fireplace.

Beneath the fort, an old yoga mat cut to fit covers the mess of the hearth, with the bricks that come loose under Monkey’s inquisitive fingers. A crate of books and a little table made out of a spool complete the little play area.

Except lately. It started with the addition of a sort of antechamber or perhaps just a mudroom. An old suitcase, tipped on its side, added a functional door. The rocking chair, along with the procuring of another old bed comforter, provided a separate wing for entertaining each other with feats of Monster Truck daring and other such amusements.

Two dining room chairs also occasionally sneak into the construction, forming "tunnels" with a private deck for each boy. On several occasions we have eaten dinner in shifts in order to preserve this fine architecture.

“You’re not going to take it apart, are you, Mom?” asks Jabber now, still standing earnestly beside his chair.

“Just a little down-sizing.”

“Down-sizing? What’s that?”

“Sizing down, basically,” offers David.

“It sounds like getting smaller!” says Jabber, his voice gaining volume. “I don’t like that sound! It sounds like you mean you’re going to take it apart! Are you taking my Fort apart???”

“Think of it as streamlining,” I say.

“WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?” he shouts.

“Narrowing down your Fort to the bulk of peak efficiency.”

“MY FORT DOESN’T HAVE A PEAK EFFICIENCY! YOU’RE GOING TO TAKE IT APART!!!!”

“Well, only temporarily. A little post-holiday down-sizing.”

“A-HA! So you ARE going to take it apart!”

And he storms off to throw his little body in front of the bulldozers.

Lameness

GAH. Only reason I'm posting this? Because my kiddo erupted like Mt. Vesuvius last night (five times) and forced me to concoct a sub plan at 11:30 p.m. in between dashes up the stairs to try to catch some of the mess in a plastic mixing bowl lined with a dish towel and then the alternating dashes down to the basement to shuffle our bedding, towels, and several sets of clothing from washer to dryer and then back upstairs to the bed, ready to take the next round. Then back downstairs with the new load of ick. Rinse and repeat. Until 2 AM.

So when I started this blog, my goal was to get writing again. I had finished my first novel, spent a couple months querying it to agents (with no positive responses, frustrating because the rejections aren't even based on someone reading the novel!) and then got sucked into the bog of motherhood and teacherdom and, well, real life. So mired was I that I didn't write a single thing other than stuff for work. Maybe an email or two, I'll admit. Oh, and okay, fine, maybe a post or a thousand on a certain natural family living forum. But writing on a regular basis--something that has been a part of me since I was in elementary school--had virtually disappeared from my life since having children.

This blog was my resolve to keep a journal, something I had tried eight thousand times since Jabber was born, with very sporadic results. I decided to write once a week about my kids and their shenanigans, my thoughts on being a parent in this crazy world, my process of becoming a writer/remaining a writer/succeeding as a writer, random bits of creative writing that I hoped might trickle out of me, and maintain some kind of regularity to the whole thing. All last spring and summer I had the most terrific routine, too. I had a gym membership, and I would go work out after the boys went to bed (David included, since he works suuuuuuper early in the morning and goes to bed, ideally, right around the time that Jabber and Monkey do), and while I jogged around the track or slogged along on the elliptical machine, I would think of things to write about. Then I came home and made them happen.

At the end of summer, my gym membership ran out. There was no money for a renewal, sadly, since we are all tightening our belts (haha, yeah, try loosening the drawstring on my sweatpants now!) and stuff since apparently the economoy is awful and times are tough. (This, so far, is not any different from my life before the economic crisis, but whatever. I have lost exactly zero dollars on the stock market. :P Still, it is nice that David and I are still both employed...knock on wood.) Oh, dear, I digress.

Since school started, I've been terrible about this blog, even though I'm doing a nice job at writing itself. The kids...what could I write about them? I feel like I barely see them, to be honest.

The holidays themselves are always sort of an invitation for my soul to freak out. We start with "Deer Camp," the three weekends in November that we all go to the in-laws' so David can hunt. We have a great time, although I think my children have just about worn out their welcome after two weekends. They are certainly energetic, to say the least. That's three weekends in a row that I don't get laundry done, groceries shopped, toys picked up, whatever needs to be done. Then we have Thanksgiving, a family get-together the weekend after that, and wow! That brings us to the boys' birthdays. Wow, it's so nice to have their birthdays only one day away from each other. And just two weeks from Christmas!

*Elissa dies of overwhelmedness*

I've done my complaining about all of this...to anyone who will listen, honestly. But I haven't really come to terms with exactly how lame of a person I really feel at the moment. My mom, trying to reassure me over the telephone, said something like, "Well, you know, you need to let things slide. Who cares if the house doesn't get dusted today."

Uh, Mom? I don't think it's been dusted since 2005. That's the least of my worries.

There are so many things I should be getting done at any given time; I get lost in all the little details. I should be doing a craft project with my children to make little gifts so that they can give something nice to everyone in the family. Instead, I can't even manage to find time to give Jabber a haircut and search through the winter gear in the basement to find Monkey some boots before there's actually snow on the ground. I should be baking cookies with them, writing out greeting cards, shopping for Santa, and I dunno...buying a turkey for Thanksgiving, since I am pretty sure we somehow agreed to having the in-laws over here for Turkey Day? I can't even manage to get the checkbook balanced or buy toothpaste for the baby or change all my clocks over from daylight savings time.

So I'm lame. And my blog is lame. And my house is messy. And my bedroom smells like sick baby. And I haven't said even a little hello to any of my friends in over a month. (Hello, friends! I really do love you, honest!) And...I complain too much. I promise, the next entry will be either witty or endearing or, at the very least, mildly interesting. :)

On Being Inept At Life

I like telling stories. I like teaching people things, and I love writing about things...thinking about things. I like hiking at my own pace down a quiet woodsy trail all alone, and I like tramping along a woodsy trail at a child's pace, answering questions about erosion and evaporation and why we cannot put ants in our mouths.

I like reading books that captivate me. I like painting on nice canvass.

I do not like paying bills.

I do not like making phone calls, setting up appointments, writing things on a calendar.

Also, I do not like spending too much time each day on cleaning. Some people get a kick out of cleaning because they like the results they see, but to me it is just a lesson in futility.

I know it's part of being a grown-up to do things you don't want to do simply because they need to be done, so I try to keep up on the checkbook, do the dishes and clean the kitchen most nights, and generally be a good, responsible human. With moderate success.

Still, I have the hardest time with keeping up on the little details of life. Like making a dentist appointment. Getting a haircut more than twice a year. Keeping the house clean. Fixing stuff, hanging pictures, filing semi-important things like my teaching license or maybe the deed to our car. You know, dumb stuff like that.

Oh, well. I think right now I'll just spend a little while singing and dancing around the living room with Monkey, and I'll worry about that stuff later. Much later.

Transitions

Moving from one thing to the next can be a bit tricky. Some of the hardest parts of writing--a novel, an essay, even a blog post--are the bits where you try to make one idea lead into the next, flow in smoothly with a minimum of fuss. My students learn transition words from a list, but you can't really just memorize a list of words and let them do all the work to move your writing from piece to piece.

Like a choppy paragraph break, we started school again today, and everything about the transition was crazy. I had to peel the boys off of their sheets this morning and stuff their floppy limbs into clothing while brushing my teeth hurriedly and making a grocery list for this morning's potluck, which I had forgotten. I stayed up well into the wee hours like usual last night, and by the middle of my leadership meeting this afternoon, I was all but comatose in my steamy classroom. It was a good thing the chairs are so uncomfortable.

After the children finally succumbed to sleep in their beds again this evening, David collapsed in his chair in the living room, looking like a refugee of war. His eyes darted and twitched; his hands shook.

"What's the matter?" I asked, from my slump on the couch. I sucked back a couple of aspirins with a whiskey shot.

"I...can...do...this...." His voice was thin and sounded a little deranged.

I thought about giving him a hug, but that would involve moving. So I just sent him telepathic thoughts of love instead. Upstairs, the alarm clocks ticked on, inexorably moving us toward tomorrow.

"Tomorrow," I whispered, "will be much easier."

"Tomorrow," he groaned, "we have to go grocery shopping."

Transitions are tough.

Road Trips and Renovations!

So this is Jabberwock at the beach, on our trip last week to see my friend M. You wouldn't necessarily think, from looking at this photo, that he was screaming hysterically like fifteen minutes earlier, would you?


So I know I've talked about Jabber's fears, his hesitancies. Dogs, heights, the sound of the coffee grinder, public singing and/or doing hand motions. Well, you can add swimming to that list. Before this picture was taken, he was clinging to me with all of his limbs, screaming at the top of his lungs as I carried him out into the water. No, I wasn't throwing him off the end of a dock, and I wasn't even carrying him out where he couldn't touch. No. I was ON MY KNEES in the water, holding him, with his legs wrapped around my neck and his little razor toes (did I mention he's also afraid of the toenail clippers?) clawing for a toehold to launch himself up onto my shoulders, even as I soothed him and whispered to him and eventually even yelled at him a bit.

"Relax, honey, you can put your feet right down on the ground, and the water is only going to come up to your tummy. I won't let you go, Jabber, I've got you, I've got you, I've got you..." Rinse and repeat. Still he screamed. Loudly.

Friend M. smiled and dove in, leaving us to our own devices, while a couple watching the sailboats sat on the bench and looked slightly worried. Jeez, this lady is forcing that poor child into the water when he is clearly terrified. It looks a little like she might be scarring him for life.

They weren't there last week, though, when we did the same song and dance, almost exactly, at the indoor waterpark pool. That was a little more embarrassing because there was a waayyy bigger audience, though. The thing is, it seems like no matter how many times I take him into the water, his first reaction is just pure panic. If I let him be, he will remain panicky, unable to relax for even one minute next to the water. If the water touches his shoes, he will be afraid that a wave is coming to sweep him off and carry him away. I don't know where this fear comes from, really; I just know that if I hold him long enough and soothe him and keep on trying to make a game out of it until he forgets to be afraid for a little while, eventually he gets comfortable enough to have a little fun!

Like this picture, where he and SuperGirl were making an inland sea or something like that. (Notice, E, there are no pictures of you in or almost out of your bikini top...)
Here is a moment of silliness with friend E and well, let's call him HeroBoy, because he is clearly Jabberwock's Hero!
M has this really awesome guest book that is really a slice of a tree trunk that you sign with a woodburner, and here are E and HeroBoy signing in. Even Jabber got to write his name on the book, although we did have him do it on the practice side, since he still writes it awfully HUGE!

And here's a cute one of SuperGirl, just looking so cute. I mean, I can totally see why Jabber clear forgot about his peanut allergy when this lovely one handed him a cookie. He was under her spell!

Jabber's mad photography skillz...apparently I am breaking up a pretty intense fight. Just for the record, when confronted with a situation in which punches are being thrown, I am not all that likely to be in the middle of it. Especially if the punchers/punchees are girls. Luckily, even in the middle school, I am not in this situation all that often.


OKAY. End of fun road trip pictures. However, NOT quite the end of this picture post extraordinaire! The next two shots are perhaps not quite as cute as kids frolicking at the beach and teachers throwing punches, but they make me just as happy. Probably happier.

See, about two years ago, actually a little more, my dad called from Topeka to ask me some questions about my fireplace, which at the time we had been using sporadically for the ambience. Nothing like sitting in front of a crackling fire in the middle of winter. Cozy stuff. Anyway, he was asking for things like measurements and I forget what else. A week or so later, he came to visit us and bought us this fireplace insert thing. Well, it was the middle of winter, and the roof was all covered in ice, and David didn't really know how to install the thing anyway, so we just set it on two 2x4's about five feet to the side of the fireplace.

And there it sat. There were a number of issues, one of them being the fact that we had a second child, and life got decidedly more full. Another was the fact that the insert itself didn't really FIT into the fireplace, without substantial alterations to the chimney or whatever. Everyone had their theories. Grind away at the inside of the firebox and take out such and such. No, just bend the sides of the stove in to match the dimensions. Well, and then there's the fact that the stovepipe thing was coming off at such a weird angle that the insert was going to have to stick out of the fireplace like ten or twelve inches. So then before we could do that, the hearth needed to be torn out and replaced. Did I mention we had another kid?

Okay. So basically we had this really heavy, really expensive, sharp-edged end table sitting about five feet to the right of our fireplace. Enough is enough. I almost put an ad in the paper last fall--"Come and get it and it's yours!" But life was too busy for me to even get around to that. And plus, it was a gift, a spendy gift, and I didn't want to hurt Dad's feelings, you know?

So, Father-in-law to the rescue! Here is David and his dad going over the plans for the project this afternoon.

And here, TA-DA!!! Is the fireplace insert ACTUALLY INSERTED! Hurray!!! Of course, it's still not connected to the chimney, but we've got a while before the roof is covered with ice. Maybe it will happen? I don't really care; I've got a little more room in my living room now!

(Room to dance with happiness, that is!)

Counting My Words

I've been writing a young adult novel for the last, hold on...seventeen days. I'm about 28,000 words into it, which I assume is a little over halfway, since I'm aiming at about 50,000 total. Of course, who can say, until the story is told, exactly how many words it will take? My goal is to finish this draft by the time summer vacation is over, which is just a little over a month from today. To meet that goal, I have been trying to write about 1000 words each day. Of course, the caveat is that some days the words are terrible, and I have to rewrite them the next day, but it's the writing them out the first time that's really hard for me. Sometimes.

Sometimes they flow out effortlessly, ecstatically, a ribbon of words streaming in the breeze of my sub-conscious. Other times it's pure labor; I often compare it to the process of laboring and giving birth, and it's true it is an act of creation, a sort of life-giving. Sometimes each word sqeeeeeeeezes out slowly and painfully, after much pacing and position-shifting, pleading and doubting. Just like with giving birth, there really is no way to turn back. It doesn't matter how painful it is, it has to come out, one way or another.

It's great to write on those evenings when I feel on top of the story, when my words just fly off the tips of my fingers, but I think it's almost more important for me to write on the nights that I balk at it, that I have to drag myself through each paragraph. Writing is an art, a product of inspiration, but it's also work. It's putting one word after another after another, mixing them together to create some kind of (hopeful) harmony.

Now I've procrastinated long enough; my 1000 words await.

I'm busy writing my novel...

...and I hope you're busy writing your teenage mayhem stories for the "what your mom didn't know didn't hurt her" comments confessional! Come on, pretty, pretty please?

*stomps foot* I wanna hear more stories!

(psst...I accept anonymous comments!)

It's not like your mom is reading this blog!

The Good, the Bad, and the...Ugh-ly

A mixed bag today.

On the good team: (ooh, I think this is my first time with the bullets!)

• I started a new novel yesterday, and I'm really in love with the concept and characters so far. The plot arc is slowly emerging from the depths of my subconscious or wherever the hell these things come from, and the first chapter is written. Genre is young adult realistic fiction, and my protagonist is a fifteen-year-old boy. If it's any good, it should be marketable. (At least, if it doesn't take me five years to finish like my first novel did!)
  
• I sent out five more queries for my first novel, so I'm just plugging away at the list, taking care of business.


• Jabber and I went to see his very first movie today, like at the movie theater. We went to see The Spiderwick Chronicles, which was fun and scary and even got me a little teary-eyed when the boy and his mother have their emotional breakthrough moment. Jabber got a little promotional book or two in his Lucky Charms, so we read it out loud as a family, and he loved it. He promised not to be scared, but I had to admit that I was a little nervous when the goblins started popping out all over the place, so he was nice enough to let me hold his hand. And then he was even more generous and allowed me to have him sit on my lap.
• After the initial bathroom sink-trap excavation session onTuesday night, David dredged up the medicine dropper (both parts) that Monkey had stuck down the drain. However, the drain was still a bit sluggish, and then this morning I turned my back for five seconds to set out Jabberwock's clean underwear, and Monkey "dropped" his toothbrush down the hole. So once again, we (and by we I mean David, with the help of any kids I couldn't keep contained) pulled out the trap and started fishing around with a variety of tools, some commercially prepared for the job and others fashioned out of a metal coat hanger. The prize was a plastic bolt from a toy toolbox, and of course one nasty ass race car toothbrush. And, a drain that flows freely. As Monkey would say, "Ta DA!" Until tomorrow.
  
• Last good for today would be these two pictures that show just how much fun a four-year-old can have in about five inches of water.

The Bad

• We're all a little disappointed this evening. David got an offer for this job he's been interviewing for and whatnot, and they didn't want to pay him more than he's making right now. With the change in hours, we would end up with the boys in daycare for about twenty-five more hours a week, and that's just impossible on the same salary. So, even though he really likes the place and the work, he can't accept the position, not for a whole lot more pay. We figured it out, and even without taking into consideration the cost of gas, he'd need about six dollars more per hour. There are still some negotiations on the table, so who knows. But still, it's disappointing.



• Here's a picture of Monkey NOT enjoying the swimming pool. I don't know if it's the hand-me-down swim vest from Jabber's pink and purple period that isn't doing it for him, or if he's just against the whole concept of swimming, but he is clearly not happy. OH, wait. It could have been the TWENTY MINUTE nap today. Yeah, we'll file that one under Bad.

And last, we have The Ugh-ly:

Balancing the checkbook and paying the bills. Excuse me while I have an anxiety attack. Or, I could just keep on blogging!

Summer!

Today was everything I love about summer as a mom, and only a little about what drives me crazy about summer as a mom. Jabberwock went to daycare for a couple of hours this morning so that Monkey and I could have some time to be a duo. We sat on the porch swing and read books together, fingerpainted on the front sidewalk, and then we actually followed through on my little plan to go to a gathering called Mothersong, a group of moms, dads, and kiddos who get together and sing fun songs, dance with Playsilks, play instruments, etc.

I am such an introvert that stepping into the completely unfamiliar like this is WAY outside of my comfort zone. I did not really know one thing that I could expect when walking into the room, except that people were going to be singing. I'm not a singer, really. I think my voice is actually okay, and I can stay on key, but my range is seriously like one octave. So any time the song goes up or down significantly, Elissa moves into stealth mode whispersong. But Monkey really likes music, likes to sing in this beautiful little croon, and likes to dance all the time. So we braved it. For the first forty-five minutes or so, Monkey sat on my lap all snuggled up, looking with awe and amazement at all of the kids dancing and shaking their maracas. Very uncharacteristically, he didn't even tap a toe until he decided to nurse a little bit; that seemed to fill him up with confidence and energy, and his little legs were bouncing so much it was difficult to keep him on my lap. Pretty soon he was investigating the room, and he even got a little rough with a couple of kids, pushing one down and snatching a couple of toys. Yeah, you thought this new kid was just a little introvert like his mama, but whoops! Looks like he's a little spitfire!

Jabber even got a chance to do his own fingerpainting and get his own one-on-one time with me, since Monkey fell asleep in the van, and we left him sleeping with the door open, right next to where we were painting.

Later on, went for a short walk with the kiddos, played some more catch in the backyard, even had a massive wrestling match with all four of us, and nobody got hurt. I'm like a Playful Parenting genius.

When we have a schedule, some creative plans, and I don't actually try to get a single thing done for myself or my house, being a stay-at-home-for-the-summer-mom works out okay for me. But I mean that part about not doing a single thing for me or the home. My house looks like an enormous puppy went through it and tugged and shook and knocked things over. At least I don't think there's any poop or pee to be discovered. Now that's something.

On the writing front, I am proud to say that yesterday I wrote a thousand words (pretty good ones, I think) on the short story I'm going to try to get published somewhere, somehow. I tried to work on my agent list, but something malfunctioned on my computer and I couldn't access any of my documents for a long enough time and through two restarts so that when it finally came up again I began to build my own computer over at the Dell website for a bit. I haven't ordered it yet, but then this evening all of a sudden the left mouse button on the laptop stopped working, and I went back over to my wish list and started adding things. We shall see.

I'll leave you this evening with one last image. A couple of evenings ago, the whole family was upstairs, and we noticed that we had lost the baby momentarily. We checked around the upstairs and came to the conclusion that he must have gone back downstairs. Here's what we found. I'm sure he was just getting one for Mama and Dad, right?

The Mom Bag

This evening Jabber and I went grocery shopping after attending a lovely graduation ceremony for our eighth graders, and since it was already past his bedtime when we left the graduation, we were in a bit of a hurry. We sped through the grocery store, chatting pleasantly about all manner of things (and less pleasantly about why, for the thousandth time, I was NOT going to buy him a toy car), and by the time we were finished, I felt pretty satisfied with our time. What could go wrong?

Imagine my panic when we got out to the van and I started checking my pockets for the keys, only to find nothing but a bit of lint and a used Kleenex. Ew. Alas, in my haste, it seemed I had actually committed the cardinal sin: dropping my keys into the Mom Bag.

I carry this bag with me most everywhere, and woe to me if I actually have to use anything in it. I did finally locate my keys (did I mention it was beginning to rain?), and the two of us loaded our groceries into the van and headed home. But when I got home, I decided to get to the bottom of the Mom Bag. What, exactly is in this thing, anyway?

And now, another photo:

A detailed listing of the contents, for anthropological interest, beginning at the lower left corner and moving to the right and up:
1. Four small notepads, in the shape of hearts with smiley faces on them.
2. An orange candy conversation heart, leftover from Valentines' Day (yup, I ate it after the photo!)
3. A small container of pink sparkly glitter stuff, that my maid of honor gave to me before my wedding seven years ago. Haven't used it in at least six years.
4. The button from one of my only pairs of jeans. It spontaneously fell off one day in the library parking lot, and I picked it up, thinking perhaps I would fix it somehow. Instead, I just wear the pants unbuttoned.
5. Above that, a purple baby spoon and
6. Three tubes of lipgloss/lipstick, none of which I use.
7. Pony tail holder
8. Flashing red light for walking at night
9. Two types of chapstick
10. A blue plastic coin purse that belongs to my son
11. A hemp coin purse that contains all of my cards and such.
(going back to the left, now the mid-ground of the photo)
12. A humungous pile of receipts that I should really subtract from my checking account to see if it still has a positive balance (crossing my fingers)
13. A diaper (clean, at least!)
14. Great Shakes hand cream (a birthday present from Shana...thanks!)
15. Cover Girl powder in a color that doesn't work for me (it apparently doesn't work for my mom, either, and that's why she gave it to me)
16. package of Trident White (which happens to be empty)
17. A bottle of ibuprofen (which happens to be empty)
18. A kick-ass flashlight that my husband got me for my birthday!
19. eye drops
20. A combination lock that I use at the gym, and if I try three or four times, I actually remember the combo for it!
21. cell phone
22. Two journals and six writing utensils (five pens, one mechanical pencil)
23. A black binder clip
24. cheap sunglasses
25. a baby comb (I'm fairly certain this actually WASN'T in my purse before this evening, 'cause I could swear I saw Monkey using it to comb his nonexistant hair)
26. Two day passes for the Children's Museum
27. A package of really cool stickers
28. purple nail polish
29. a blue truck with green wheels
30. a small baggie of cough drops
31. baby mittens
32. a coupon for contact lens solution
33. and possibly strangest of all, a pink hat containing a pair of purple long underwear pants (only in Minnesota!)
34. Oh, and I can't forget that also I had the digital camera in the bag, which I don't have a picture of because...it's the digital camera.

The worst part of the whole story? When I finished documenting this train wreck of a purse, I put everything right back in, including my keys. Except, with respect for the fact that it is June, I left the long johns out. I'm seriously hoping I don't regret that!

Ohhhmmmmmm

I would just like to say that in my world, there is precious little that cannot be made all better by a near-boiling soak in the old clawfoot. With bubbles. And a book, usually, although tonight I had to be semi-expedient so that I could attempt to balance the checkbook and pay a few bills before someone comes and repossesses my home, clawfoot and all.

I would have posted a photo of my own clawfoot tub instead of this one, which is much cleaner and has much more bathtub bling than mine, but since I am not Martha Stewart, a photo of my bathroom posted on the internet would greatly humiliate me. You may add to your mental image a tub caddy overflowing with half-empty (or half-full, dependent on your own personal disposition) personal care products and a smattering of squeaky tub toys and soggy reading material. Please refrain from adding me to your mental image, as I have enough issues around here with getting any privacy in my own bathroom.

I'm going to tell one more thing before I go pay those bills, about a sad, sad time before I had my wonderful clawfoot tub. I have always loved taking a bath, and a hot tub full of suds has always been one of my greatest solaces. When David and I lived in Oregon, I actually had a difficult time staying warm in the winter, which seems weird from a Minnesotan. For one thing, the winter there is wet and chilly, and the wet cold seems to sink right into your bones, even when it's not nearly as cold as it gets up here in the North. For another thing, whoever designed the heating systems on the West Coast was an idiot, because they put all of the heat in the ceiling. In the ceiling. And heat rises, as we have all learned in grade school science. Yeah, there was supposedly some fancy tiles or somesuch built into the floor that would radiate this fictional heat throughout the apartment, but the only way you were actually going to feel any of it was if you were to put thick wool socks on and stand on a tall chair. Then your ears might thaw out a bit.

Anyway, there were days upon end when I just could NOT get warm, and the only thing that would work was to take a bath. Unfortunately, our ghetto apartment had a hot water heater the size of a lap dog. There was only enough hot water in that sucker to just cover the very bottom of our tiny little bathtub. I remember having a very difficult day, and I was just longing, with all of my soul, for a nice hot bath to make it okay. I convinced myself that there really was enough hot water to at least get a few inches in the tub, but of course I ran out, and icy water poured in. I began to cry. Sob, really. And David did the sweetest thing ever. He began heating water on the stove, three or four pans full at a time, and steadily hauled them up the stairs and poured them into my bath, over and over, for at least an hour. I slipped down under the water until only my nose poked up over the surface, writing poetry in my head, and that's when I decided I must surely marry this wonderful man.

But seriously

I make jokes all the time about my inability to make my home cozy and clean, but I really do struggle with it. I'm cranky right now, and everything seems a little worse than it should (one reason for this might be that I just had to practically hire a forklift in order to clean up the toys in the dining room toy nook just so I could clean spaghetti sauce off of everything because Monkey dumped his entire full plate of it off the table with a dramatic shaking motion that resulted in pretty much everything we own being covered in red sauce. Yes, including my one clean T-shirt, which was white.)

But Seriously...my home is a wreck, and it is a very rare occasion when I actually let someone inside it. And I feel bad about that, 'cause I'd like to have a home that feels presentable, if not perfect. The house itself is so loveable; it's cute as a button. When we first bought it, I got to pick out all the colors I wanted and paint every room just so. It was beautiful. Then we brought in our stuff. Ugh. You've seen some of the furniture. Well, the rest is no better. And the good stuff we have, like the beautiful dining room set and matching antique buffet that my mother gave me, handed down from her great aunt? Well, my two children have managed to practically ruin those pieces. How can generations of children grow up with these heirlooms, and my sons turn them to crap in less than two years? I guess my kids are just talented that way.

I'm overwhelmed by the amount of home improvement that we really need to do but cannot afford. Just from my seat on this putridly patterned couch, I see: the fireplace insert that has been sitting beside the fireplace for over two years now because my husband can't figure out how to install it. It was a gift from my dad, and he has apologized for giving it to us, but we still don't really know what to do with this bulky, ugly, expensive end table. See, the damn thing doesn't fit into the fireplace without significant amounts of work on the firebox, and also tearing out the old hearth and completely replacing it. That costs much money. The cost of a professional installation (not counting the hearth replacement) is over a thousand dollars, which we do not have. OK, also from the couch here I can see two mis-matched end tables, one from my grandma's house and one from my husband's. Our TV sits on a table we got at Goodwill and repainted in the colors of our living room--actually kind of cute--but the stereo on top of it was given to us by a friend like twelve years ago and actually was made in the seventies. Obviously not gonna play my mp3's. The curtains in my living room window that faces the street consist of a string of prayer flags and an old green wallhanging from my college dorm room.

I'm struggling with all of this because it really does fit my life philosophy of minimal consumerism to live like this, but it doesn't look nice at all. It doesn't feel like a "grown-up" home somehow. A big part of my frustration is probably just the logistics of a small home and four people, with all their stuff. I frequently think, "Well, maybe if we had more shelves in here, or if I bought one of those hanging organizer thingies, maybe then it wouldn't be so cluttered all the time." And sometimes it works. And sometimes it's just more dusty shelves and junked-up organizers. Sigh. What a complain-fest this is.

Whether it was the cathartic act of just writing about my frustrations or the calming hormones from sitting here nursing Monkey to sleep, I'm feeling less and less antagonistic about my little home. Sure, we've established that I am no Martha Stewart, and also that raising two small hurricanes...er...children can result in a crapload of clutter that makes me fear the thought of a random "pop in" visit by just about anyone. The fireplace end table still just pisses me off. But the mismatched furniture? Well, what of it? I don't need to have a grown up home, I guess. My kids would just wreck it, anyway.