My favorite aspects of these holidays are the lights. We don’t have a tree this year (Wildebeest borrowed it for the house he shares with five others) but we do have two strings of lights artistically draped across our mantel. We also have a bunch of lights outside. This year, Zippy and I wrapped our locust tree in lights.
As you can see by this accidentally reflected photo, I smile every time I look at it.
So here’s something from 2014 that I feel good about: I finally went ahead and made some changes to our bathroom. For years I’ve wanted to get rid of the white plastic tub surround that was installed poorly and, therefore, buckled and pulled away from the wall along the top of the tub. It was impossible to keep clean and I couldn’t take baths because it’s difficult to relax when everything at eye level = YUCK. (When showering, I was actually grateful for my poor vision because then I could kinda, sorta pretend the bathroom looked all right.)
I knew I wanted something new but couldn’t decide what that something new would be, and decisions are not my friends. At least, decisions didn’t used to be my friends. We’re still not BFFs, but we’re doing better. Once I put in the call to the general contractor a friend had recommended waaay back in May, I made decisions Bing-Bang-Boom. Tile? Got it. Accent tile? Found it. New vanity top and sink? Check. Paint? Check again. Window treatment? Okay, that took a couple tries but not for lack of decision-making, but because of dimensions. Shower curtain? Done.
My bathroom went from feeling cold and dreary to being one of my favorite places in the house. In fact, I’m sitting on the edge of the tub right now.
I tend to withdraw when things get rough, which explains why this has probably been the year I’ve blogged least frequently. 2014 has been a non-stop year of challenges for me and the people closest to me (and a whole lot of people I only know via the news). More than once I’ve threatened to stab 2014 between the eyes. And way more than that, I’ve screamed at 2014 to go fuck itself.
Did 2014 care? Not in the least. Were my threats of violence and profanity healthy responses to a year that closed out by kicking my family squarely in the ‘nads? I’d say that’s an affirmative, but your mileage may vary.
Looking back on the past year, I’m struck by how I kept expecting things to improve. Starting in January with my glute/hip/lower back issues that kept me from running and lifting weights and yoga and hooping and all the other stuff that helps keep me sane, I was positive that in the next week or so I’d regain my physical self and, therefore, also my emotional equilibrium. But it never happened, at least, not 100 percent. However, the shit kept coming and I had to make-do with what my body could handle. And when that wasn’t enough to raise my endorphin levels, my thoughts turned stabby. So maybe that’s why I’m feeling especially worn down right now: in hindsight, that optimism feels so naive and pathetic. I didn’t get all better and it never got easier.
Which is why I’m torn about welcoming a new year. This last one sucked sucked sucked and the next might, too. On the other hand, 2015 is still shiny and full of hope and no one’s had a chance yet to stab it between the eyes. I’d call dibs, but maybe me and mine will catch a break this time around and there won’t be any need.
Happy New Year.
I’m a writer and I’m supposed to be able to express myself.
But for the past two days I’ve struggled to put down words about the stark contrast between my experience as a white female in this society and all the black women who can never, ever take for granted that any of the males in their lives–sons, husbands, fathers, brothers, nephews–will walk back through the door at the end of the day.
I’m heartbroken. For all of us.
It’s felt like one challenge after another this year, and I’m starting to think I should’ve busted out the protective gear months ago. Something like this or this:
I like the idea of being able to lunge and parry with something sharp and stabby, but that heavier sword looks pretty good right now, too. Whack.
On the other hand, it’s probably a major hassle to go pee when wearing all that stuff. Maybe I should settle for this in 2015:
It’s been soul-crushingly cold this past week, but today the temperature in the shade is hovering at the freezing mark and is almost tolerable in the sun. My feathered friends have been here throughout the week, eating seeds and drinking from the heated bath. I’m grateful for their company.
Stay warm, friends!
Feeling a bit like this:
Working on it, though.
On this election night, I’m taking steps to avoid a full-on freak-out:
“Know Your Rights” felt particularly timely and I pumped that iron with a fierce determination.
(And you know what else? In the spirit of self-preservation I’m also gonna quit wasting my time trying to get that effing bullet point to line up where it should line up!)
When I woke up this morning it was cold and wet, the streets covered in an icy, slushy mess. My plan had been to run outside, but the moisture plus 40 degree temperature convinced me to have a “boring” run on the treadmill.
HA! It was anything but boring. And no, I didn’t fall overboard or go flying off the back.
My treadmill looks out onto my backyard that is planted with native shrubs and covered in mulch. There are bird feeders and bath, squirrel nut munch, and an ear of corn that yesterday I harvested from the volunteer corn stalk growing against the house. In the 35 minutes I was on the treadmill, going nowhere fast(ish), I saw:
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have seen a fraction of this activity on the street, so I wanted to document this treadmill workout for later in the season when I’m longing to be outside. I need to remember that, sometimes, running in place is where it’s at.
View from my treadmill.
John Irving wrote in the opening to Trying to Save Piggy Sneed,
“Half my life is an act of revision.”
Ain’t that the truth.
I share Mr. Irving’s love of revision. I enjoy blue ink on paper, deleting the fat and plumping up the skinny parts. I love drilling down to find the essence of what I want to convey.
Right now I’m revising the first several chapters of my YA. Again. I recently received stellar editorial input on my opening pages that has allowed a minor miracle: I am reading the pages with new eyes. I’ve already worked and worked and worked some more on those chapters, yet this editor’s input changed my perception of what was there on the page. It’s as if her reaction to what she read is forcing me to “defend” each and every word, every motivation. I’m no longer reading the pages with the mindset of someone who knows the entire story and all the backstory, but as a brand new reader! I didn’t think it was possible to read stuff I’d already read gazillions of times with fresh eyes, but it is. It really is.
Wow. Amazing stuff. Yet I’m alternating between thinking, “This is so cool that I have this new heightened awareness!” and “What is wrong with me that it’s taken so long to achieve this awareness that any writer worth her laser printer should already have?!”
So, in an effort to be kinder to myself, I’m focusing on this quote from Ernest Hemingway:
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
Take that, nasty voice! I will prevail.
AGNES by Tony Cochran
Yo, let’s have a better day tomorrow.
Saw this beauty sunning itself on deck rail and captured with telephoto lens:
The maple leaves are turning and I leaned over deck rail for a close-up look:
The Christmas cactus sits next to the window so I zoomed in on its delicate beauty:
Haven’t only been looking at lovely stuff, but am keeping my oath and making great progress on the final scenes of my YA. The End is in sight!
I’ve been creeping toward The End on this YA project for FOREVER. (Okay, it obviously hasn’t been forever because that would indicate a major hiccup in the time-space continuum. Not to mention that “forever” would mean I’d have even more wrinkles than I already have.) So let’s just say it feels like a mighty long time I’ve been working on this book, yo.
One of the reasons I’ve been taking it slow is that I don’t like to write myself into a ditch. I’ve learned that if I allow the words to gush willy-effin’-nilly, I often live to regret that output because it can take an awful long time to get the literary wheels back on the road. However, it just occurred to me that because I am only scenes away from The End, that I can’t possibly do great damage. Even if I write myself in a wrong direction, it won’t be any big woop. I KNOW the big picture and I KNOW how this story ends and I KNOW what needs to be written. If something doesn’t feel right, I’ll delete. No big woop.
So here’s my public announcement: I am going to finish those scenes this week!
Sometimes as an act of self-preservation I have to turn my back on all the craziness in the world and focus solely on my needs. I block out most everything going on around me in order to nourish my body and spirit.
And then when I’m ready to re-enter the fray, I try to hold onto this kind of mindset:
Okay, going forth now . . .
Finally, someone who’s worse than me at setting up a joke.
AGNES by Tony Cochran
Maybe Trout’s just biased against fast typists. I know I am.
This has been a bad day for a variety of reasons I don’t need to list here. However, I wanted to document it because it’s important to acknowledge the less-than-stellar days. Less-than-stellar days can, by comparison, make the coming days seem almost shiny.
So in order to document this day, I needed a representational image so I went to MorgueFile.com where I typed CRAP into the search box (and yes, I realize I was opening the door to all sorts of eww). This is what I got:
Hmm. Almost looks edible, kinda like gummy dice.
So then I typed in SUCK (again, very much aware of eww potential) and found this:
Man, all that cute has drained my energy for this documentation shite. Let the record show it’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
“Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
“The age I’m at now, you go from being a young girl to suddenly you blossom into a woman. You ripen, you know? And then you start to rot.” ~ Liv Tyler
“People think that their world will get smaller as they get older. My experience is just the opposite. Your senses become more acute. You start to blossom.” ~Yoko Ono
Today it’s Monday, gray and gloomy.
My antidote? Photos Zippy took a month ago.
“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~Pablo Picasso
(1) Zippy and Zebu were at the tail-ends of their colds when I got sick two days before we had to start our drive to Washington. Of course. We left on Thursday morning with a big box of ultra-soft tissue and the rental car trunk loaded with Zebu’s stuff. We’d chosen a 
Chevy Impala for its impressive trunk capacity and ended up getting one equipped with satellite radio. We drove many of our 1600 miles laughing at comedy routines and only once did I fear for our safety when Lewis Black had Zebu and me (behind the wheel) in tears. I highly recommend comedy for road trips.
(2) Zippy and I are now officially empty nesters (if you discount the two dogs and two cats), and I’m handling the transition pretty well. We arrived back home late Sunday night and while I did wash my face and brush my teeth on Monday, I spent the day in my jammies on the couch, watching 
movies (Party Girl with Parker Posey and Flawless with Philip Seymour Hoffman, pictured here with Robert DeNiro), some television (The Mindy Project and Californication), and staring into space. I’ve since roused myself, put on real clothes, and rejoined society.
(3) Now that we have Zebu settled at college, I can no longer put off finishing my YA. I thought my slow progress was solely due to feelings of trepidation regarding what happens when a manuscript is polished 
and ready to go (something that feels like the equivalent of putting my heart on a platter so that others can stab it over and over again), but a couple days ago I had an epiphany about my slow progress. I haven’t just been procrastinating in an act of self-preservation, but have been writing slowly because I was headed in the wrong direction. I thought I knew the ending, but I did not. Rather, I knew the final scene but had a few key details wrong. I believe my middle-office mind knew that and was patiently waiting for me to wake up to the truth of the story.
(4) I applied to and was accepted into the Rutgers One-On-One Plus Conference held next month, which is another motivator for finishing my manuscript. Yikes.
(5) I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing, but as a result of all the preparations and then the emotional aftermath of getting Zebu off to school, I’ve largely ignored the fear-mongering and bloodlust dominating the airwaves. May I just say, for the record, that I am so very tired of the U.S. government thinking it can end fundamentalist ideology by bombing it out of existence? It hasn’t worked before and it won’t work now. Also? Not only is it stupid, this latest bombing is illegal. But, hey, we’re Team USA! However, . . .
I knew from the moment I read about Richard Linklater‘s latest film, Boyhood, that I had to watch it on the big screen. I was intrigued by the fact that he made the film with the same people over a 12-year span, and I couldn’t wait to see it. One of the reviews said it was a movie composed of universal childhood moments and emotions, moments and emotions recognizable to anyone in the world who’d experienced childhood. Hey, that’s me! I’m a former child.
Yesterday as Zebu, Zippy, and I walked into the theater, I was prepared for what I was about to see. Or so I thought. In reality, I’d overlooked some pertinent facts:
No, I didn’t bawl throughout the movie. Yes, I did tear up near the end with Zebu sitting between his father and me. Mostly, I was gobsmacked by how it felt as if our lives were playing out on the big screen. And that’s where those universal moments and emotions come into play. Because while our family dynamics have not followed anything like the film family’s trajectory, it all rang true because every single one of us on this planet is either a child or a former child. And if you’ve had parents and/or are a parent yourself, the film conjures up an additional whammy of recognition.
I’m grateful to ‘Boyhood’ for capturing the moments my family experienced over the past twelve years. While the faces and haircuts aren’t exactly the same, the feelings are spot-on.
Ellar Coltrane as Mason Evans, Jr.
I didn’t used to listen to music while running because I didn’t like how the earbuds force-fed my brain the music. The sound felt too close and too loud. Too much.
Then in January I began what turned out to be six months of PT that, for most of that time, kept me from running. And then once I could start running again, I ran on the one “flat” street in my entire neighborhood, the same street I’d walked twice a day for the past six months. Up and back and up and back and oh-my-goddess-am-I-really-traveling-this-same-stretch-of-street-AGAIN?
So I started listening to music while I ran. Fortunately, it didn’t feel as close and loud as before, probably because I knew the music was the only thing that could keep me motivated.
This morning it was Sly & the Family Stone. Even while slogging up a half-mile hill (today was my first day all year that I attempted running from the bottom of my neighborhood to the top!), I had a big ol’ smile on my face. That’s pretty damned impressive.
If you don’t own any Sly Stone, I highly recommend it. Smiles at no additional charge.
As I perused my photos, hoping to pluck an image or two from the obscurity of my hard drive, I came across a couple unsettling pics.
Years after this ash tree was photographed, it was attacked by an unidentified blight and is no longer in our garden.
(Just realized that the neighbor’s crab apple tree in the background was also cut down. Not to mention that the snow is also long-gone. HAHAHA! Ahem.) Then there’s this selfie for a passport photo from a “few” years back:
Those glasses, the dangling jewelry, the barely-gray hair . . . no longer. The only constant is my deer-in-the-headlights expression whenever a camera’s aimed at me.
READING: After giving up on The Portrait of a Lady, I went back to my shelves and selected Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. I’m happy to report I read the entire novel and, when I was able to push aside my prejudice against authors who explain-explain-explain their characters’ emotional landscapes, found myself pulled into the story. Hooray!
However, I then started another book (this one published in 1998) and read 90 pages 
before I’d had enough. I absolutely loved this author’s debut novel, but now wonder if it was equally bad and that I didn’t realize it because I wasn’t reading as critically at that point in my writing life. The one I quit today is nearly 900 pages (!) and narrated by someone I find unlikable and whose dialogue is not-at-all believable. Reading it made me angry on several levels (for one, knowing many trees died for this New York Times bestselling book), and when I get angry at the writing, it’s time to look for another book.
WRITING: I’m plugging away at my YA and have, at least momentarily, quit beating myself up for working at such a slow pace. 
I’m essentially now writing the first draft because these later scenes are all new to the story, but because I’m being thoughtful and deliberate in my writing I’m confident I’m not driving the story into the ditch (or cornfield).
Also? Thoughtful + deliberate = doesn’t read like a first draft.
RUNNING: Per my PT/rehab instructions, I’m easing back into my running. The rules are (1) that runs must always have at least one day in between and (2) I can add 5 minutes to the run after having at least two solidly good runs at the previous time length. “Good runs” translates to reasonable pain (that can be addressed via stretching, massage, rest) and feeling halfway decent energy-wise. For my last three runs, I ran for 35 minutes each time. This whole thing has been such an adjustment for me, not just physically but also psychologically. I’m learning to cut myself some slack, to celebrate the gains and to not beat myself up when I don’t perform as well as the previous run. The key word here is “learning.” This is all very much a work in progress. Zippy encouraged me to run a 5k with him this past weekend, but because I knew I wouldn’t run nearly as well as I had last year, I declined.
Running hard as I can, but not yet flying . . .
Tracy Abell 