Can’t you smell that smell?
I gave this dog three baths today.
Coco’s apparently the kind of dog who doesn’t just like skunk-stink on her face.
She likes the full-body experience.
She found leftover skunk-stench in the yard and rolled in it. Twice.
Coco is Wildebeest’s dog.
Doesn’t that make perfect sense?
Anyway, he helped with this last bath.
When we finished he said, "That was no fun at all. Not even a good bonding moment."
I didn’t say anything but between you and me, I felt a bond.
Guess who went outside last night for a final romp before bedtime?
Guess who encountered a skunk?
Guess who got to bathe the skunkified dogs?
Guess whose house still stinks?
Guess who’s now thinking, in retrospect, those parent-teacher conferences weren’t all that bad?
This evening Zippy and I go to the high school for Wildebeest’s parent-teacher conferences.
I’m not looking forward to it.
In fact, my neck and shoulder muscles and the top of my scalp are tight. Very tight.
I could sure use some laughs about now.
So if you’ve got anything funny you’ve been waiting to share, now’s the time.
I’ve discovered something wonderful:
When I write a synopsis just for me, it’s fun.
Enjoyable. Downright liberating.
I have a complete poo-riddled first draft of a middle-grade novel
and am now writing a synopsis to help iron out some issues.
As long as you don’t have to worry about someone else reading it,
synopsis is a relaxing way to map your way out of the wilderness.
Who woulda thunk?
I just finished reading over a first draft I completed during jonowrimo . Let’s just say I was underwhelmed for the first twenty pages or so. But then it kicked into gear and by the time I was done, there was lots to like. It’s most definitely a shitty first draft but there’s room to move. I’m excited about digging in and making the next draft less crappy. (Hey, it’s all about setting attainable goals, right?)
So my plan is to work on this MG project while continuing to draft the somewhat dark YA. The voices are completely different so I’m hoping I can continue to make progress on both.
Let’s see, that makes my goals:
MG = less sucky
YA = get ‘er done.
I can do this.
This year rather than a running goal,
I have a flexibility goal: By the end of the year,
I’d like to touch my head to my knees.
You can see I have a ways to go.
Yoga, do your stuff.
Thank you again for all the good wishes regarding Zippy’s heart. Yesterday he went to work and felt fine, even as he took a nearly two-mile walk on the mall. He walked slowly and with a friend, and enjoyed being out in the fresh air.
Since many, many people are suffering in this poor economy and job market, I wanted to share something that might help someone:
We thought Zippy’s feelings of low-energy and breathlessness (and eventual tightening in chest) were a result of stress since the company he works for filed for bankruptcy in November and his job terminates at the end of March.
But Zippy now realizes there was a major difference between how stress affected his body and how the blocked artery affected him.
In the past, whenever he was under stress exercise always made him feel better.
When his artery was blocked, exercise did NOT make him feel better (physically or emotionally).
(My siblings found this info helpful since they’ve been walking around clutching their chests, wondering if they’re also on the verge of heart attacks. My family has a history of heart disease, as does Zippy’s. And yes, I realize Zippy and I had no business having kids since we’re both practically blind and have family trees filled with clogged arteries. But that genetic ship has sailed).
Yesterday was Friday the 13th.
The day for Zippy’s appointment with a cardiologist because of chest pains that started eight days earlier.
Chest pains that progressed from only during exercise (running) to walking to the bus to pains felt while driving to the cardiologist and then again while filling out paperwork in the cardiologist’s office.
Yesterday was Friday the 13th.
The day when Zippy’s body screamed out for attention so that rather than a meet-and-greet, gathering of medical history kind of appointment, Zippy was sent to the hospital for an angiogram.
Yesterday was Friday the 13th.
The day doctors detected Zippy’s severely blocked artery and fixed it with two stents.
Yesterday was Friday the 13th.
The day we learned Zippy hadn’t suffered any heart attacks, that his heart wasn’t damaged,
and that his heart muscle is strong.
The day we averted medical disaster.
Today is February 14.
Valentine’s Day.
The day the love of my life is home with us again, feeling so much better than he has in the past two months.
Today is February 14.
Valentine’s Day.
I’m so very grateful.
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Last night at dinner Zebu told us about his Language Arts assignment: choose a song you feel represents who you are and what you are about.
We all started thinking about the songs we’d choose and discovered this is a pretty tough assignment.
One song that represents who you are and what you are about. One freakin’ song.
Should it be a song that makes you smile every time you hear it? The eight-and-a-half-minute song you listened to again and again when you were thirteen so you could transcribe the lyrics just right? Any song from the album your family listened to over and over on the Wisconsin to Florida and back again drive, an album you could sing in your sleep? The song that reminds you why you want to keep fighting the good fight? A song so beautiful you get lost in the words and feel a lump in your throat?
It’s hard to choose. But this afternoon I figured out my song:
LET THE MYSTERY BE by Iris DeMent
Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
Some say once you’re gone you’re gone forever, and some say you’re gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour if in sinful ways you lack.
Some say that they’re comin’ back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
Some say they’re goin’ to a place called Glory and I ain’t saying it ain’t a fact.
But I’ve heard that I’m on the road to purgatory and I don’t like the sound of that.
Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly.
But I choose to let the mystery be.
Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
(Video here)
Your assignment, if you choose to accept: select the one song you feel represents you and what you are about.
John Updike had an essay in the Nov/Dec issue of the AARP magazine. It was entitled The Writer in Winter, and addressed the challenges specific to aging writers. It’s a very nice essay and I recommend reading it in its entirety. But in the meanwhile, here’s my favorite line:
"Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling into your ear."
Isn’t that lovely?
Way back when I posted this about saving water when you flush.
Today I want to share what I learned from a very kind plumber yesterday:
If your toilets don’t flush with the oomph you’d like,
use a wire hanger to knock the calcium build-up out of the hole in the
base of the bowl AND the holes underneath the rim.
Your toilet will flush with renewed enthusiasm.
No more repeated flushings!
On November 5, I wrote this.
I believed it. Absolutely.
Last night I read this.
I cried.
This explains state secrets.
This is how Obama’s campaign website read during the campaign.
Glenn Greenwald was a constitutional law and civil rights litigator who now writes for Salon.
The man knows his stuff.
My heart doesn’t want to believe him but my head knows he speaks the ugly truth.
Even though the Bush administration set the bar so low, Obama won’t carry us above it.
I’m sick.
Tonight Zippy and I saw a man who is bald on top and has shoulder-length hair.
Since Zippy is headed toward bald on top, I pointed out he could wear his hair like that.
He said, "I like mine better."
I agreed.
He said, "Shorter hair is just easier, there’s no hassle."
I said, "I love short hair and if I looked like Natalie Portman, I’d shave my head."
He said, "If you looked like Natalie Portman, I’d shave my head."
We’re not quite sure what that meant. But we laughed a bunch.
Agnes by Tony Cochran
In a stunning display of misplaced priorities and energy, Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr) has filed a California legal brief to forcibly divorce the 18,000 same-sex couples married before the passage of Prop 8. Because, you know, we’ve got too much love and commitment going on in this world.
I’m so damned sick of this but one thing I can do is this.
You might not think this stuff has anything to do with you but it does. When one segment of society is singled out and told their love is meaningless and unworthy, we all become lesser people.
I cried watching this video filled with people asking to be allowed to live and love as their hearts dictate……
("Fidelity" by Regina Spektor)
Waiting for feedback on revisions of funny boy book.
Feeling good about the changes that make it a stronger book.
Rather than obsessively peeking at that ms again
I read my second middle grade. Again.
Decided I love that book too much to let it die.
Hear that, universe?
Close to Home deserves a publishing home
and I’m not giving up on it.
I have no idea what any of this means except that
it feels good to have positive feelings about one’s writing.
Now and again.
Because I know all too well how that pendulum swings the other way.
But as of this moment, the pendulum and I are on the upswing.
Just watched the Super Bowl halftime show.
I’ve got lots of great Bruce Springsteen and E. Street Band memories.
Wasn’t at this particular show but had the good fortune to be at shows like this
when they’d play for 3 1/2 hours and wear us all out.
(Capital Center, Largo, MD on the 24th of November 1980 )
Tracy Abell 