A: This blog post.
B: This photo.
C: This photo.
D: This 30-second movie clip from ADAPTATION:
“Maybe banana nut. That’s a good muffin.”
Uncategorized
Birdwatching With a Cat
Western Scrub Jays are very smart birds. Today they found our newly-filled peanut feeder and quickly spread the word. Many jays have flown in to grab a peanut and then taken off again to hide the peanuts (my neighbors across the street might discover a nutty motherlode in their yard next spring). I ate lunch while watching all the activity outside the living room window.
Marcel watched, too.
For the most part he’s remained calm, tail still. That all changes when one specific jay arrives and then Marcel makes clucking sounds and lashes his tail while climbing the window. I’m guessing there’s some trash-talk going on between the two of them.
Running Fashionista
Zippy and I went for a run this morning and it wasn’t until our cool-down walk that I noticed this:
A spit trail down my thigh. Apparently the wind caught my saliva rocket and returned it to me.
When I got home and started my stretches, I realized I’m basically an all-around rag-tag runner gal wearing holey socks and a ripped 20+-year-old polypro long underwear shirt:
I do, however, have a fairly new Garmin watch in fashionista chartreuse:
Look for me on the nearest runway. I’ll be the one rockin’ the groovy watch and sweat-stained togs. I promise not to spit.
My Here and Now
I’m trying hard to practice mindfulness, and am getting better at staying tuned in to the moment rather than doing the past-future mind-twirl (not to be confused with doing the Time Warp). However, today has been more of a shit storm than sunshine kinda day, so I’m going back to the basics to help me be mindful.
Wildebeest and Susie Sweet Rack
Wildebeest and friends drove across the country in Wildebeest’s old Subaru (aka Susie Sweet Rack) to attend a music festival. They were in Missouri on their way back to Colorado when Wildebeest’s friend drove off the newly paved, unmarked road into the dirt and then immediately overcorrected. The car spun one and a half times as a semi’s headlights approached, and then went up into the median strip where it slammed to a stop against a post. The semi, horn blaring, whooshed past them.
No one was hurt. All were shaken up, especially when they realized that the back window had shattered on impact and none of them even heard it.
It took a while, but Zippy and I actually fell back asleep after that phone call. I’m actually pretty proud of that. Progress!
The Opposite of Writer’s Block
You know that expression “So many books, so little time”?
Right now my main issue is “So many ideas, so little time.”
The bulb in my head keeps flashing with new ideas for
non-fiction, fiction, picture book ideas, young adult novels,
magazine articles . . .
I’m also participating in Tara Lazar’s Picture Book Idea Month
in which I hope to generate at least 30 picture book ideas,
and am having great fun letting my imagination run wild.
I’ve come up with some truly horrendous ideas but have also
jotted down several promising concepts. Someday soon I hope
to pick one of those ideas and see where it takes me.
In the meanwhile, I’m still working on my middle-grade revisions.
Still?
Yeah, still. (You got a problem with that?)
So this is me putting that light bulb on notice. Flash all you want,
but I can only commit to jotting down ideas before getting back
to my manuscript. That middle-grade novel is my priority right now.
Capiche?
A Little Pema for a Windy Day
I believe I’ve mentioned my aversion to wind. If not, suffice to say I do not like the blowy.
The blowy sets me on edge. I don’t enjoy listening to wind when I’m tucked into bed, I don’t like wind pushing me around when I’m running outside, and I don’t appreciate wind sucking (blowing) the life out of everything.
Today is a very windy day.
Enter Pema Chodron from When Things Fall Apart:
The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face. When we feel resentment because the room is too hot, we could meet the heat and feel its fieriness and its heaviness. When we feel resentment because the room is too cold, we could meet the cold and feel its iciness and its bite. When we want to complain about the rain, we could feel its wetness instead. When we worry because the wind is shaking our windows, we could meet the wind and hear its sound. Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can give ourselves. There is no cure for hot and cold. They will go on forever.
Okay, Pema. I have met the wind and I hear its sound.
Boo!
Writing, Running, & Ruminating
Yesterday I sent off the manuscript for the first book of mine that will be published. It’s a short work-for-hire book about composting and how to build a compost tumbler. (One of my critique partners (yo, LP!) is a nonfiction goddess who guided me every step of the way as I applied to the editorial company. Thank you, friend!)
One of the hardest parts of that writing process was switching from my fiction brain to my nonfiction brain. Plus there was the research that triggered my ADD tendencies, writing to a lower reading level, explaining complex concepts in a simplified format, footnoting and formatting, glossary terms and pronunciation keys . . . Suffice to say there was a steep learning curve and a few tears of frustration.
But I put my head down to push through the doubts and nasty voices, and I prevailed. Plus, I (mostly) kept to my promise to myself and worked on my middle-grade novel revisions every day. I learned to bounce from fiction to nonfiction and back again. And it felt like a real accomplishment to hit SEND when I emailed my manuscript yesterday.
This morning Zippy and I went out for our run on the trails. As we took off, I mentioned how I wished we could take a different route out there in the open space. I love the trails and they’re kinder to my body than pavement as I pound out the miles, but lately I’ve noticed my mind wanders when I run. And my mind shouldn’t wander when there are rocks and knapweed and eroded trail segments to navigate. But it wanders because I’m comfortable with my route; I’ve run it so often I can close my eyes and visualize exactly where the rabbit brush stalk sticks out onto the trail and how far up the trail past the turn-off it is that I need to side-step a cluster of partially submerged rocks.
So today Zippy took the lead and he mixed it up. He took us on side trails and detours, but the biggest change was we ran parts of the route in reverse. Which meant I was running downhill where I’m usually straining to run uphill, and struggling up the steep inclines where I’m used to flying down the trail.
Talk about a learning curve. I thought my brain was going to explode! (Not to mention the other very real concern that I was about to barf up a lung).
Well, I eventually made it home and recovered enough to have today’s deep thought:
It’s good to step outside my comfort zone because doing so allows me to learn new skills and expand my muscles (whether brain or brawn). Becoming more flexible ain’t always pretty, but it’s necessary.
Tough Love
A couple weeks ago Zippy and I had a bunch of people over. As is true of many things in our house, the front door doesn’t work as well as it should. In this case, it doesn’t close all the way unless you force the issue. Guests aren’t expected to know this and we weren’t paying attention.
Our two cat brothers, Loki and Marcel, are indoor cats. They’ve seemed quite content with that status. Until a couple weeks ago when that front door was left open and Loki escaped to the front yard (that is bordered by a pretty busy street, yikes!)
Following that grand adventure, Loki has taken to fits of crying at the door.
His looks of yearning, frustration, and disgust won’t sway me. The squeaking cries won’t break me. I love him too much to let him go. I only wish he understood.
When Things Fall Apart
I haven’t been around these parts in quite some time.
Part of me feels badly about that, but another part knows it was necessary.
I needed that time to hunker down and conserve strength.
And the good news is that I am feeling stronger and more resilient these days.
Yay, me!
Stuff has fallen apart.
But I’ve come to understand on a whole new level that stuff falls apart for everyone.
Every day.
Life as we know it is an ongoing series of sunshine and shit-storms,
and I’m learning not to fight that truth.
As Pema Chodron writes in WHEN THINGS FALL APART:
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
I’m grateful for that tiny Buddhist nun and the wisdom she shares, and I’m grateful for friends who reached out during my hunkering-down. I apologize for the silence and will be in touch.
Tracy in search of Owls
Wordless Wednesday: The Great Blue Heron Edition
Wordless Wednesday: The Prairie Dog Edition
Photo by Zippy on Stone House Trail 5.25.15
Thankful Thursday: The Doppelganger Edition
Sometimes when I’m in front of the mirror, slicking down my short-short hair in an attempt to tame The Bed Head, I’m reminded of Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. And I laugh. Then I break into warbly song to woo Darla . . .
Friday Five: The Random Edition
(1) I used to be kinda indifferent about Led Zeppelin, but for the past couple months have been mainlining it at a LOUD volume.
(2) I’m still having to run back and forth on the one flat street in my neighborhood due to glute issues and yesterday did three miles with the help of Sly & the Family Stone.
(3) I’ve started working part time as a substitute library page which means I shelve books at various local libraries, and have developed a love-hate relationship with the Dewey Decimal System.
(4) I’m revising a manuscript and enjoying the process which I call a WIN.
(5) If this rain doesn’t let up soon, I’m gonna scream loud enough to be heard over the Led Zeppelin.
Good News / Bad News
Good news: Spring is here!
Bad news: That 11-degree-below-zero freeze we had last November killed a bunch of spireas, sumacs, and possibly the cherry tree.
Good news: Spring is here!
Bad news: The bind weed is back with a vengeance.
Good news: Spring is here!
Bad news: It’s been so rainy the past week it feels more like Alaska than Colorado.
GOOD NEWS: SPRING IS HERE!
Trivial Tuesday: Writer-in-Action Edition
I’m reworking one of my middle-grade manuscripts and decided to change a character’s name. The girl is named after her grandmother so I wanted to use Little + Name, but when I did an online search to make sure it wasn’t already a common name in children’s literature I discovered it was, indeed, common. In the porn world. (Fortunately, the girl’s name is Spanish so I can use the -ita diminutive and drop the Little.)
Then I went to make my morning smoothie and the vibrating Ninja blender caused a wine glass to tip in the dish rack and smash against the counter top.
Wonder if Judy Blume faces these types of challenges?
The Cover of Rolling Stone!
Okay, I didn’t make the cover.***
Or even the Random Notes page.***
And I didn’t pull a Matt Taibbi and publish a muckraking Wall Street piece.***
However, I made it to the Correspondence page. That’s right, I have a letter to the editor in Issue 1233 of Rolling Stone. Woot!
Think I can use it in my clips file?
***Looking waay back to 1972 and those Shel Silverstein lyrics sung by Dr. Hook
*** Loudon Wainwright III references the Random Notes page in “The Grammy Song”
*** Go read this article that starts with “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
Friday Five: The Literary Travel Edition
I’m still (mostly) adhering to my read-what’s-already-on-my-shelves policy and here’s where the latest five books have taken me:
(1) Japan via KITCHEN by Banana Yoshimoto.
(2) England via JEEVES AND THE FEUDAL SPIRIT by P.G. Wodehouse
(3) New York City via THE BURGLAR WHO TRADED TED WILLIAMS by Lawrence Block
(4) Haiti via THE COMEDIANS by Graham Greene
(5) And I’m currently in Georgia with a young Japanese seaman (Hiro Tanaka) via EAST IS EAST by T. Coraghessan Boyle
All over the place without spending a dime. Ah, books.
Thankful Thursday: The Guys Edition
It’s All Subjective
For a long time I mostly resisted watching those “Inside the Episode” segments that seem to be all the rage in cable shows. They come on after the episode to supposedly give you a behind-the-scenes glimpse into that creative world. But one “insider” bit I’d watched had the show’s creator saying stuff about the characters that was so obvious, it felt like talking for the sake of talking. (I’m looking at you, Lena Dunham.)
Zippy and I have recently started watching a show we really like, and thought we’d give the “insider” thing another try. We watched a few of those segments and enjoyed getting the creators’ take on what they were trying to accomplish. However, the last one I watched was especially valuable for me as a writer.
The creators/writers talked about an interaction between two of the characters and said the one character acted selfishly and purposely put down the other character. That wasn’t my take. I’d interpreted the first character as being a bit clueless, but also truly coming from a good place. I’d still liked and rooted for her until I got the insider treatment which has now warped my sense of that character.
My two takeaways:
1) Stop watching “Inside the Episode” segments
2) I can’t control how readers will react to what I’ve written.
There’s intent and then there’s interpretation.
Friday Five: The Swimming Edition
1) I used to swim and I loved to swim and I swam a lot. A mile per session. But then I got tired of smelling like chlorine and I stopped swimming and focused on running. For the record, I also love running. But right now my body isn’t doing as well with the running.
2) For quite some time after I quit swimming, I had dreams of swimming. Strong, efficient strokes and flip turns and the black line on the floor of the pool showing me the way. It made me sad to quit, but I couldn’t take the chlorine. Well, this week I dove back in the pool.
3) Wednesday was my first time swimming laps in YEARS and I was so happy to be back that I took off too fast and went into oxygen debt which meant I never quite caught my breath. And so I started to chastise myself for being out of shape and such a mess before remembering that, hey, I’d been away from swimming for a long time and still banged out a pretty fast mile. So there, Nasty Voice.
4) Today I swam again and it was so much easier because I didn’t take off like a crazy woman delirious with happiness about being back in the water. I was still very happy, but I was a smarter happy and kept my breathing regular.
5) Downside? Despite my best efforts in the shower afterward, I’m now getting whiffs of chlorine PLUS it seems that I should’ve taken the time to adjust the goggles I wore because they were definitely too tight and I kinda, sorta gave myself two black eyes.
Missing You, Michelle
When someone is abruptly gone it doesn’t matter how long you stare down the road, waiting for her to reappear. She’s never coming back. And no matter how many times a day you’re hit with that reality, the pain is knife-sharp. Every single time.
There’s Clutter and Then There’s This
Earlier this week I took a Decluttering class. It was a two-part class and for the second session we were supposed to bring a cluttered drawer, box, or bin to work on during class. It was so very hard to choose just one clutter-filled receptacle from my home, but I ended up taking a drawer that’d been underneath our air hockey table for the past five (at least) years. I ended up dumping/donating 90% of the clutter, and also found this (click to enlarge):
I’m not entirely sure what it’s called, but this is a game Wildebeest and Zebu created many years ago. Complete with Maps
Tokens
Currency
and Power Cards
I’m holding onto this game. I know, I know. But would you be able to part with The God of All Ninjas? I thought not.
Bartleby, the Scrivener
I’m using Scrivener for the YA I’m revising and even with all its bells and whistles, sometimes I feel a bit like Bartleby. Obviously, that’s a stretch since that poor dude had to laboriously hand copy legal documents while I’m using writing software and a printer. Still, it feels like forever that I’ve been hunched over this novel, painstakingly revising each chapter.
The good news: I’m (mostly) enjoying the process and have not yet proclaimed “I would prefer not to.” Also? I haven’t alienated everyone around me and am not sleeping in a doorway.
Around these parts, we call that a WIN.
Tracy Abell 