Today, I saw this quote from John Updike on Caroline Leavitt‘s Facebook page:
“If you don’t feel you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then what you’re doing probably isn’t very vital. If you don’t feel that you are writing somewhat over your head, why do it? If you don’t have some doubt of your authority to tell this story, then you’re not trying to tell enough.”
I really needed to hear this today.
I have been largely absent from the blog because I am writing. When I write, I am not too good at blogging. Generally, these posts don’t take me just a few minutes (though it might seem that way, after I re-read them). So I tend to focus on the fiction.
Right now, I’m working on a story about Tomoe Gozen, a Japanese samurai woman (correct term is onnamusha, because a samurai can’t be a woman, but most people are confused by that, so I call her a samurai woman to keep it simple). Tomoe was associated with the Minamoto clan, who overthrew the Taira in the late 12th century. She was the concubine of a general, Yoshinaka. Actually, what she was and what she did, indeed whether she even existed, is subject to debate.
I was looking up my mom’s family tree last summer, and it says that her family came out of the Minamoto family in the 15th century. Thus, theoretically, Tomoe could be in my family tree someplace. How cool is that? Tomoe sounds sort of like a Batman-type superhero. She doesn’t have supernatural powers, but she is nearly unbeatable in combat and totally kick-ass.
After I found that out, every time I got discouraged, I’d remind myself, “You’re from freaking samurai stock! You can do it!” You know. “Don’t cross me or my inner Tomoe’s going to come out and get you!”
When I talked about Tomoe, my agent, Dan Lazar, encouraged me to write her story. I did, mind you, have several other story ideas, all of which would have been way, way easier. But Tomoe’s was the most important and the most difficult.
The novel is about two contemporary sisters whose Japanese mother has passed away. The sisters, close as children, are now distant, and each is struggling with her own issues. While going through their mother’s things, they find a Japanese story and some prints of a warrior woman, Tomoe Gozen. Wondering what on earth their meek mother found in Tomoe, they get the story translated and find inspiration in the story.
But I was scared.
The story seemed like it’d be too hard for me to whip into shape.
I have been freaked out and anxious the whole time I’ve been working on this, since last fall, when I thought of it. Could I actually write some historical fiction? How was I going to research Tomoe? (I don’t read Japanese, and there’s not too much available in English). How would I get all the minor details right? How was I going to work the historical story in with my contemporary story? How was I going to write about a woman who could behead people and was a concubine, and make her sympathetic to contemporary female readers who would likely find both kind of abhorrent? What if the samurai story was more intriguing than the contemporary? How could a contemporary story compete emotionally with a life-and-death almost Shakespearean epic war tale complete with familial betrayals, political double-crossings, and old Japan? How was I going to manage my main plot threads and all my subplots and make them all relevant to each other?
I remember thinking some of this when I started writing ROSES. I didn’t know anything about rose breeding or science; was it going to sound stupid? Would I get the kidney stuff right? Would the character be likable enough?
And before that, with HOUSEWIFE. How was I going to depict Japan when I hadn’t visited there since I was three? Would I get the mother’s voice right? How was the story structure going to work?
But this one is harder.
I guess every book should be a little bit more challenging in some way. I would hope I get better as I continue.
Anyway, I finally have a full first draft and this is my week to re-read it, full of dread. Were all these disparate elements going to hang together?
And, to my surprise (I’m always surprised), it is not sucking. I have let it sit for a couple of weeks, enough time to say,”Hmm, I wonder what happens next? I totally forgot.” And yeah, there are some scenes I need to fix, some I need to throw out, but so far (halfway through the read) I am kind of pleased. Relieved, would be more correct.
So I think Updike is right. You need to write over your head. You need to feel nervous and overwhelmed when you write.
I am staring at a big basket of unfolded towels that’s been sitting here for two days and thinking about whether or not I should fold them.
In the early days of our relationship, Cadillac would refold all the towels after I folded them. The way I fold them, he said, they didn’t fit as well into the cupboard. Also, he is pretty OCD about the towels.
He tried to show me how to fold towels properly. You fold them in half, then in half again, then into thirds. I don’t think I ever folded a towel until I was in my 20s because my mom folded all the towels, as perfectly as Cadillac does, and she probably didn’t want us kids messing them up.
No matter how hard I try, I don’t get the edges perfectly lined up, and the folds are all floppy like bunny ears instead of creases like he gets (and how does he get those creases?)
Now, because he is gone for many hours of the day and is less OCD about everything in general, he bites his tongue when he sees my poorly folded towels. Generally he doesn’t refold them, though when he does, he doesn’t say anything about it. (And yeah, there are ways I like to do things that I think he’s doing wrong, like how he uses a tiny paring knife to chop stuff when we have a chef’s knife. It’s just not right!)
The towels were smelling mildewy and were kind of crackly. Stinky towels. Yuck. We never use softener, but apparently towels start absorbing detergent, which makes them hard, and also start to smell.
I saw a Lifehacker post suggesting this:
Wash the towels on hot with 1 cup of vinegar, no detergent.
Wash the towels again with 1/2 cup of baking soda, no detergent.
The vinegar smells strong, but the baking soda gets out all the rest of the smell.
Result: It totally worked! The towels are soft and don’t stink.
One thing I was curious about was whether vinegar kills germs, because you’re not using detergent in these loads. Does it kill mold? Mildew? Bacteria?
Baking soda will help neutralize odor and may also help kill off or destabilize organisms. I was looking for articles on how this works, but found a bunch of conflicting articles. You can use baking soda to brush your teeth and rinse your mouth. I think it works because it gives off CO2, which cuts down on the oxygen stinky organisms need to flourish. So it might not kill things directly, but indirectly. If someone knows, please leave it in the comments.
Anyway, it’s doubtful that germs could survive two hot water load cycles plus the vinegar and then baking soda.
Cadillac did not fold these, but they look neat enough that he might have. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am afraid that this does not adequately express the panic in my voice.
It is MAY, people!
May means the last full month of school.
May means JUNE is coming very very soon, which means school will be OUT.
Phineas and Ferb say: There’s 104 Days of Summer Vacation, And school comes along just to end it. So the annual problem for our generation, Is finding a good way to spend it.
I find this song ironic. I mean, you’re WATCHING Phineas and Ferb have a blast on Summer Vacation, having all kinds of real-world adventures. The one thing they are NOT doing during break is watching a show about kids having fun on their summer vacation.
So, ACTION, Jackson.
My kids are school-age, which means they theoretically can pour themselves a bowl of cereal and operate the remote without awakening the sleeping family members, so this summer should mean we get to sleep in a little bit.
Day camps around here range from $135 a week for a bare-bones elementary school-ground camp, to $300 or so for educational camps. Because I don’t work outside the house and I am not yet a millionaire superrich novelist, I keep the kids with me.
When I was a kid, we just went out to play. But we no longer live in a society where you can shoo your kids out the door and tell them to come back at sunset. Personally I have no problem doing exactly that; but everybody else is paranoid, so my kids would be on their own.
Thus I got to thinking– the kids need something to keep them occupied sometimes. I can design my own camp activities for less than $100 a week. However, this means I have to act like I’m somewhat organized. Otherwise, the kids WILL end up doing nothing except watching Phineas and Ferb, and bugging me.
I’m doing my summer guide for free activities planning right here, and hopefully your kids will benefit, too.
Use my suggestions to brainstorm your own, or just use them.
Chores
Yes, not the most fun thing ever, but hear me out. There’s no schoolwork or activities getting in the way, so let this be the summer when your kids learn some life skills. How to clean the bathroom, work the vacuum, and do laundry are all necessary to being self-sufficient young people.
If they already know how to do those things, how about slightly more advanced chores?
Meal planning
Grocery store budgeting, list making, and coupon clipping
Learning how to change the oil and tires on the car
Mowing the lawn or other garden care
Other suggestions:
Attach a dollar value to some of the chores if you want. I’d pay my kids to wash the windows because it’s outside the normal chore system, and I don’t like to do it.
Draw up a daily chore list and have the kids attend to it first thing before they can do anything else. Unless they get up at 5.
Build in some treats. For example, when drawing up the grocery list, the kids will get to select their treats themselves, and will learn to budget. If you buy the ice cream ON SALE, then you will also have money for cookies. That kind of thing.
Cost: FREE, unless you are chore-paying.
2. Geocaching
Geocaching, for those of you who don’t know what it is, involves people hiding various items, then plugging the coordinates into a GPS system.
Basically, it’s a treasure hunt for smart phones. Who doesn’t love finding treasure with a map?
For about $10, you can get a high-quality Geocaching app. The app has a map, describes where the geocaches are and tells you how close you’re getting. It also describes the terrain and the difficulty of getting to the cache.
There are geocaches everywhere. People hide them in public parking areas, in parks, off hiking trails. People use magnetized containers to stick them behind Dumpsters and parking signs; hang items from trees; even use fake rocks.
What do you do when you find it? Sometimes people simply put a small piece of paper into some kind of weather-proof container, and when you find the container, you add your name to the list of who found it, then re-hide it.
For fun, sometimes there will be small objects in there, like outdated European coins or pennies or plastic toys; in that case, ,you are supposed to replace the item so the next person can have fun finding it.
I have only found a couple, with the help of my experienced geocaching friend Alex. The items are usually camouflaged very well. Sometimes, people stumble across them and move them. For example, my family and I went looking for a Boy Scout tin filled with lollipops hanging from a tree off a popular hiking path– I’m pretty sure some random person happened along and took it.
Cost: $10 for the app, plus gas, of course
3. Food Reviewing
My kids love eating, so I was thinking about what sort of food-based activity we could do that would get us out of the house a little bit. Doing food reviews gives us a solid sense of purpose, and it will be fun to mark off where we’ve been on a map.
However, I wanted something that wouldn’t be too expensive, so visiting every sushi place around here was out.
Thus I came up with The Great Donut Review Project.
My son loves doughnuts. Really, who doesn’t? Donuts (I’m spelling it both ways, yes) are cheap, 50 cents to $1 or so. Also, I don’t like doughnuts that much– they are too sweet for me, so I am happy with one bite. If we reviewed, say, chocolate shops, then I’d be in really big trouble.
I’m using Yelp to find doughnut shops in San Diego. Then we are going to visit a couple each week. Each kid gets one doughnut and has to create a review, citing what they like, what they didn’t like, and assigning a star rating.
I will get one bite of donut each time as my fee.
Estimated Cost: .50 cents to $1.50 per donut, average $2.25 per visit
4. Book Reading
The local libraries always have a summer reading project. Around here, they give out prizes when you reach a certain number of books every week.
If you need suggestions, ask your school or library for summer reading lists.
Or check out some of these lists, divided into different categories, like books for boys or books for pre-teens.
Cost: FREE
5. Fishing
My kids are always clamoring to go fishing. I have no idea why they say they like it so much because they sure seem miserable while they do it. They are bitter when the fish don’t bite (which is the case about 90% of the time for us).
Check with your local fish and game department for your state’s regulations and fees. In California, you don’t need a license if you’re under age 16, but you do need a license if you’re an adult and you’re going to be helping your kids fish. Which you definitely will.
Thus, fishing can be a somewhat expensive start-up; not only do you need poles, you need a fishing license in CA. Fishing was easier in Hawaii; you didn’t need a license, and you could fish anywhere.
COST: FREE DAYS only on July 7 or Sept 8 in California; or FREE if you stick to pier-fishing.
Reduced License Fees: Reduced for those 65 years or older (with income limits) or veterans with a service-connected disability of 50% or more. FREE for those with impaired eyesight, the disabled, and the developmentally disabled.
Annual License in CA: $44.85
One Day License: $14.85
Poles: Approximately $16 for a kit with the line and reel and tackle
Bait and hooks: $4 total, depending on what you need
Day-Use Fees: On top of the fishing license, most places charge you to fish in their lakes. Look this up ahead of time and plan on spending up to another $15 for a day-use fee. Some places are free. You can also fish off the piers in San Diego for free.
The annual Grunion Run might be a good bet for older kids; they spawn at night on the beach. You DO need a license if you’re 16 or older, so unless you plan on being 100% hands-off in your supervision, you will need to get a license, too.
COST: FREE for kids under age 16
6. Free or Low-Cost Camps
Want to get your kids out of the house and your supervision entirely?
In this city, there are a few types of free camps. I only mention this because I didn’t know they existed and found out accidentally. The local middle school holds two free ones, an Engineering Camp, which my oldest attended; and a general camp. They were not income-based, so any student in the appropriate grades could go, as space allowed.
Do some sleuthing in your area. Eldest claimed the engineering camp was kind of boring, but she in fact had a great time, because there were rockets involved, and you can never not have a good time when you’re building a rocket.
Local religious organizations also have Bible school or other religious half-day camps. Our church’s Bible school session is free to parishioners.
Many regular programs also have need-based financial assistance available.
7. Childcare Sharing
Find a couple of friends with similarly aged kids and rotate hosting them throughout the week. In this age when most kids don’t roam neighborhoods, they love having built-in play buddies. As long as they get along all right. Hopefully one or two of those friends will have a pool and different video game systems.
I’d also establish a few ground rules, i.e. have the parents tell the kid, “When you’re at Mrs. Dilloway’s house, you will follow Mrs. Dilloway’s rules, or she will break my thumbs.” That kind of thing.
Cost: FREE, plus the cost of a bit of extra food
8. Crafts
Get your weekly craft store coupon and go get some craft supplies. Get some general supplies or specific ones for specific projects; ideas here. The craft store Michael’s also had free weekly kids’ crafting classes all last summer.
A kid with a big box of Popsicle sticks, craft glue, paint, felt, and googly eyes will be kept entertained for some time.
Cost: $20 or so for the basics
FREE if you have a store that does them.
9. Cooking School
Focus on summery treats, like Popsicles or no-ice-cream-machine ice cream.
Personally, I got a big cookie recipe book for my birthday, so I’m going to let the kids make a few different cookie recipes every week (this summer sounds kind of fattening!).
It’s also a good time, with less rush in the days, to make the kids, er, I mean HELP the kids learn how to cook. How to slice and dice without chopping off their fingers.
I’m always worried I’ll send my kids off to college and they won’t know how to slice an onion because I’ve been too WORRIED to show them how. Nope.
Remember to make them clean up after themselves; it’s an important life skill to learn and will prevent them from growing up into the kind of jerks the other roommates hate.
COST: Varies; build it into the grocery budget
10. Art
I used a 40% off coupon and a sale, and bought a set of six canvases, brushes, and a set of acrylic paints at my local craft store. Now, I could let my kids paint whatever, but I could also be like the school art teacher (example here, our school also did Blue Dog) and give them a specific palette and make them all paint the same subject.
They are all going to paint the cat (cat as subject, not paint on his fur) in a specific set of hues that I’m going to let Eldest select. That way, the paintings will all look really nice on a wall hung together.
Cost: Approximately $45 to get started, depending on what you need.
11. Beach Going
I actually HATE going to the beach in San Diego in the summer, because EVERYBODY is there. We have the best beaches. Beaches weren’t this crowded in freaking Waikiki (but sometimes in Kailua, which really, sigh, was the Best Beach Ever. I digress).
There are a couple of ways to beat the crowd:
Go early. The lots are not too crowded before 10 am.
Wait and get to the beach at 4:30 or so. It will still be warm, the rays won’t be harsh. My husband goes to work early and comes home early during the summer, so he can take the kids to the beach. I usually go too, because it’s so darn hot.
Go to tidepools instead. Beforehand, look up the animals that you might find and plan some activities. Then check the newspaper or online for the low tide time, then hit Point Loma (by Cabrillo, which has a car fee, is my favorite).
COST: FREE
12. Hiking
Hiking is also done best in the early part of the day or later in the day. Check out Local Hikes for some kid-friendly suggestions in your area.
While you hike, do some other activities. I like to bring (actually, the kids like to bring) WHO POOPED IN THE PARK? along. (Words I never thought would come out of my mouth, ‘Maybe today we’ll get lucky and there will be NEW POOP!’)
We look for poop and ID it. We also ID footprints and watch out for rattle snakes.
Other ideas:
Collect leaves and wildflowers to make a scrapbook.
Collect interesting rocks.
Capture bugs in a jar to observe, then re-release. My son just found a chrysalis and is keeping it in a jar to watch it hatch. He did this last year (it was a moth).
COST: FREE
13. Planting
Summer’s the perfect time to do some plant-growing. My kids and I are currently growing tomatoes in a pot, a cactus, some succulents, Swiss chard, oregano, and roses.
Have them water the plants and look for evidence of bugs. My kids adore going out to search for the predators leaving holes in the plants. Then they can try to identify what kind of pest it is, or mold, or what have you.
COST: $5 for soil
$2.50 per plant
I used recycled containers for the veggies, and a lightweight foam planter that cost about $10 for the roses.
14. Science Experiments
My dear late sister-in-law got my son a group of the worst books ever, Grossology. They’re not really the worst, except that they involve really stinky, slimy, gross experiments. Like attracting cockroaches, or growing slime mold on a log. That kind of thing. The kids LOVE these books, so this summer, I’m going to let them go ahead and do all these experiments. There’s also a short PDF version here.
Cost: FREE, or $6 to $15 per book. Generally, experiments use stuff you have around the house.
15. Drama
Choose a short play, or a scene from a play, and make copies of the dialogue for everyone. Who DOESN’T want to see a 6 year old girl play Hamlet? That’s right. You can even do “selections” from a scene to make it more manageable for the kid. Who’s going to get you, the Shakespeare police?
Paint backdrops onto old cardboard, make costumes out of found items, do up makeup. Make it a whole production, invite your family to come out and see the final product.
16. Film
Give the kids a camcorder or digital camera to use. Check out these free movie scripts and let the kids make a scene from their favorite movie.
Or, suggest they do something different, like pretend to be an interviewer grilling a rock star.
Actually, my experience has been if you give a kid a video camera, they will come up with plenty of things to do. We have Barbie movies, a Twilight spoof, and some plays on film.
If you’re worried about the equipment, you’ll have to be the one to film it. Or maybe try out a tripod so the work won’t be shaky.
Cost: FREE
17. Kids Bowl Free
Sign up your kids for this free bowling program, and they get to bowl for free at participating areas. You still have to pay for your portion at the regular rate.
The program also lets you pay a one-time $24.95 for a family pass, letting you get 2 games of bowling per day, per up to 4 adult family members.
COST: $24.95 for the whole summer for your adult fee; or whatever the fee is at your bowling alley.
18. Gaze at Stars
The local astronomy club hosts nights where members bring along their huge telescopes to campgrounds, and you can see Mars and the moon and Venus and all kinds of cool things. Check with your local astronomy club.
COST: FREE
19. Go Backyard Camping
I always did this when I was growing up, and I thought it was the funnest thing ever. You feel so independent. Let your kids invite a couple of friends over and do a backyard sleepover. I think my 10-and-ups are fine alone; the youngest one would need an adult nearby. Bonus: All the noise is outside.
COST: FREE
20. Free Movies
Regal Cinemas, in our area, usually offers free summertime movies on somewhat older-run movies, on certain mornings. They haven’t posted this summer’s offerings yet, if they exist. Check your area to see if this is going on. The drawback is EVERYONE IN THE WORLD shows up.
The park near us also has several Summer Night festivals, which invariably I find out about AFTER they happen. They always get a local high school band to come do a concert or show a free movie, and the local Kiwanis sells food, and everyone brings their lawn chairs and blankets. It was a lot of fun, on those two occasions when I knew about it ahead of time.
This “These Are Your Kids on Books” poster has gone viral in the past couple of days, and it reminded me of some conversations I’ve had about kids, imagination, and reading.
When my daughter was in third grade, she was on the playground at her school. It was a private school, with mostly well-to-do families. She picked up an empty acorn shell, filled it with sand, and showed it to a little girl. “Look,” she said. “Ice cream cone!” Imaginative play; pretty basic, right?
“That’s just an acorn,” said the little girl, and walked off.
My daughter looked crushed. She dropped the acorn.
I spoke about the incident with her teacher later. This wasn’t the first time other kids had regarded my daughter as an outsider at her display of imagination. The teacher said that she thought that was typical today; many kids lack imagination because they:
Spend too much time in structured activities
Have too much screen time
How does this relate to reading?
To be a good reader, you need to have imagination. Your imagination conjures words into pictures and scenes in your head.
As you read more, your imagination develops. One feeds the other.
Later, when my kids went to a different school where there were lower income families, many of whom were bussed in, I discussed this with one of the teachers there. She saw this in her classroom:
Too little playtime=Underdeveloped imagination=Trouble with reading, or Disinterest in Reading.
What’s cut out of school these days? Things like recess and creative subjects, like art, are always the first to go.
I thought it was interesting that the lack of imaginative play is found on both ends of the socio-economic spectrum. I guess imagination is a casualty of our modern society.
The New York Times reported that the offspring of many Silicon Valley-heavyweights, like eBay, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, and Apple all send their kids to a computer-free Waldorf school.
Yep. These super-smart, super-successful, high-tech folks recognize the value of imagination fueling creativity, not external devices.
In other news, a bunch of schools here have gotten iPads in their classrooms. And in the Sweetwater High School district, just south of San Diego proper, literature is no longer taught because the students weren’t doing well on the SDSU entrance writing tests (they started doing this in 2010 and are continuing because these basic test scores went up). I’m not going to get into how sick that makes me, but it’s a symptom of something larger, don’t you think?
Maybe to become a hard-working, innovative world power again, the US needs to cut its children off of technology a bit more. Just a thought.
“The doctor would like you to come in for another test.”
Shit.
A few weeks ago, I went in to the gynecologist and had my lady-tests, including a breast exam. The nurse gave me a form to get a baseline mammogram.
Thursday night, the night before the mammogram, I felt a small lump in my left breast. It felt harder than the rest of everything. So when I went in, I told the techs about it. They gave me a sticker to put over the spot.
I viewed the mammogram slides, vainly trying to decipher the images. All I saw was the arrow.
In the mammogram room, a sign reads something like, “You may be asked to come in for more tests. Please know that the vast majority of these tests reveal nothing significant. We understand this is nerve-wracking. Blah blah blah.”
I’d forgotten about the mammogram over the weekend.
Monday morning, I got a call from telling me the doctor wants me to get an ultrasound. I took the first available, which was today.
“It looks okay to us,” the tech said, “but if you feel something, we’ll look.”
Luckily, all is well. Phew.
It’s also good to know that if you feel something, the docs will check it out for you. She told me if it did change or got bigger or if I felt any other changes, or saw skin changes, to come in, but right now it looks like normal tissue. Just a weird thing, apparently part of normal for me. I have fibrocystic breast disease, which is not really a disease as in it causes you to be sick, but rather just a condition.
This morning it was cold and cloudy, and I thought it would rain. It didn’t. It got sunny and hotter and humid.
This afternoon, my Pink Lemonade Hulthemia bloomed for the first time!
These are the roses that Jim Sproul (the guy who helped me with the Roses book, if I haven’t told you two million times) developed.
I have never seen one in person. They are very striking. The kids and I all oohed and ahhhed over them. And they smell really good, too.
I also keep finding holes, sometimes not eaten all the way through. I didn’t know what was causing them, but then I saw these black things, which I think are caterpillar droppings.
Ah-ha!
I go out in the evening and morning and even the afternoon, searching for the caterpillars, but I haven’t found them yet. They are not bothering the tomato plant nearby. I just looked it up; I guess some are nocturnal. I’ll have to go out with a flashlight tonight and catch them in the act.
Breaking the hearts of English and Lit teachers everywhere, I have to admit a secret.
Book clubs often ask me this question, or a variation on this question: “We noticed the theme of XYZ in your book. Did you include ABC to support that theme?”
Usually, it’s an incredibly perceptive observation, and I always want to say, “Yes, of course! It was entirely planned out and not at all a happy accident that my subconscious somehow dreamed up!”
Really, the answer is usually no. Not on purpose. But I think it still counts.
My friend, the editor Jane Cavolina (formerly at Penguin, now freelance, helped me with Housewife), once told me that if a scene is in the novel, she thinks it’s there for a reason; and it’s up to us to figure out why and make it work.
I think it has to do with associative thinking, even if you don’t realize what you’re doing is associative thinking because you’re just typing out what’s popping into your head, not analyzing it. That comes later.
Some things I do include on purpose. In Housewife, I was researching Japan and came across an item about the untouchables, or burakumin. I thought, It’d be interesting to include an untouchable character, and then, before I knew it, that rascally character took on a much bigger role than I’d intended.
With Roses, I came up with the idea for a person with kidney dialysis who was a rose breeder. Why? ‘Cause my sister in law had three kidney transplants. No other reason. I didn’t know why it was important she should be on dialysis, except that this was an interesting obstacle for a character to overcome. One where her irascible nature could perhaps be forgiven.
Later, I realized perhaps I picked rose-growing to mirror the character’s life. In rose growing, there are different seasons. There is dormancy and pruning, when the rose looks dead; seasons of growth; seasons of bloom. It’s that sense of faith in the natural progression of things that keeps her going.
I’m finding that happening now in my WIP, which is about a samurai woman, Tomoe Gozen, who might be in my family tree and a contemporary story about two biracial sisters. The difficulty in this story is the historical part is basically sticking to how things were. Tomoe was a concubine; I didn’t make her the legal wife.
But my contemporary fiction thread is mirroring the Tomoe story in subtle ways I hadn’t planned out beforehand. Of course, this is what I had HOPED would happen (and was wracked with anxiety that it wouldn’t) so I’m really happy. I can’t tell you much more about it.
Tomoe Gozen with Uchida Ieyoshi and Hatakeyama no Shigetada. :Context: Tomoe Gozen was a rare female samurai. At Battle of Awazu in 1184, she is known for killing Uchida Ieyoshi and for escaping capture by Hatakeyama Shigetada -- Henri L. Joly. (1967). Legend in Japanese Art, p. 540. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I don’t buy soda myself. My in-laws, the kids’ grandparents, buy soda. They used to get diet, and then my MIL decided that diet was worse for you than sugary soda, so she started getting the regular kind.
(I think the dentist would beg to differ.)
Anyway, soda (and ice cream, also a big item there) are occasional treats for my kids.
The other day Eldest took a can of root beer home with her without my knowledge.
Last night, at 11 pm, I got a notice on my phone that Eldest had played her turn in Draw Something. “Go see if she’s up!” I said to Cadillac. She had just been up to use the bathroom, and lately she’s been staying up too late, reading or just staying up.
He told her to go straight to sleep and to quit playing Draw Something on her iPod.
This morning, she was feeling ill, sick to her stomach. But then she said she felt better and went to school.
I was concerned until she confessed to her dad, en route, that last night she was really thirsty. “She thought she’d get yelled at if she left her room again, and she had no water in her room, so in her great wisdom she chugged the can of root beer before she went to sleep,” Cadillac reported.
Ah, yes. So good for the teeth, that!
No more soda.
My kids seem to require military-like regulation. It seems like if we let them have a little bit of a treat, they get really piggy about it. Same thing happened with Cracker Jacks. We bought small bags for them to take to school. After school, Son was hiding them in his shirt to eat them out of our sight. Let them play one video game, they have to play it for a hundred hours and get cranky.
I finally went on a field trip with Little Girl. The schools here don’t mess around about volunteering. To volunteer, you have to fill out an application and the office has to do a background check; you also need a TB test. If you’re going to drive, you have to provide a copy of your insurance.
I never got around to filling out all the paperwork until February.
Little Girl had a field trip to the Birch Aquarium, which has always held an especial place in my heart because that’s where Cadillac and I got married (actually, number 2 out of 3 ceremonies). They wouldn’t let us have a deejay; they said it stresses out the fish, so we had piped in music over the sound systems.
Little Girl was so excited, she asked me every day for the past week, “Are you REALLY going?”
Yesterday: “Are you going to just drop us off?”
“Of course not. I’m coming in.”
“Will you stay with us when you come in, or go do something else?”
“Stay with you, of course.” I have no idea why she was so worried.
As you arrive on the grounds, you see a sculpture of blue whales (I think) outside, where we congregated and waited for the aquarium to let us in. I had three kids: my daughter, another girl, and a little boy. All were easy and quiet. But the actual trip was with all the first grade classes.
It was not quiet. I should think the fish would be just as stressed by schoolkids as by music.
Inside, there are a bunch of exhibits. This is a smaller tank.
At one point, while we waited in line for the class to start, the other little girl asked, “What are we going to do next? I’m so bored.”
“They are going to have us put on wetsuits, dive off the pier, and collect seahorses,”I said. “Won’t it be fun?”
She got an uncertain look on her face. But the little boy was giddy. “Oh boy!” he said. I had to quickly tell them I was joking. (I had been joking about other stuff too– she’d also asked why I’d parked SOO FAR AWAY, and I told her it was only another 20 miles; couldn’t she make it?)
Here’s the weather outside today. I thought a cold ocean breeze would be blowing through, but it was very very mild. It was actually colder inland today. Below the aquarium is the Scripps Institute pier for ocean research. (Fun fact: when I told people I went to Scripps College, many thought I was somehow attending college here. The Scripps family lived in San Diego and Southern California, and lots of things are named after them).
So, I was standing here minding my own business, breaking up a fight between Squidward and Patrick the Starfish (two plastic things which were not meant to represent cartoon characters) and watching my three charges besides, when an older couple with two young kids (ages 2 and maybe 10 months) accosted me.
Note: I had seen them minutes before at the tide pools, where an employee repeated said, “Touch with one finger! Do not remove anything from the pool!” which they ignored or didn’t hear, until the employee went over and tapped the grandpa on the shoulder and told them to put the sea star back. This isn’t Sea World, where you can take sea stars (which they said was the real name for starfish) out and poke their tender undersides.
“Will you take our picture?” the woman asked.
“Sure,” I said.
She put it on panoramic view and handed me the camera. Instead of a wrist strap, something like string or dental floss was threaded through.
I waved and made funny noises at the baby, which got her to look at me; the toddler boy looked at me, too. I took one, which was good; then another, for good measure– but the Grandpa was pointing because the kids had stopped looking.
I gave them the camera back. “The second one’s not good, but the first one is.”
Grandpa fumbled with the controls. “That one’s no good,” Grandpa said.
“The first one was good,” I said. I don’t think he knew how to view the first.
“Take another one and get closer this time,” he said. I am not kidding. It was not phrased as a request.
I considered chucking the camera into the ocean. “I hope the kids I’m watching don’t run away,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the lady.
Her apology mollified me just enough to get me to help out. Plus, I am a good-natured person. Let my actions herewith prove it forevermore! I took one more photo and zoomed in. Probably too much for their liking. Then I handed them the camera and turned away.
You know, I don’t know if they thanked me.
Anyway, Little Girl had a grand time. So it was worth it.
(Prints out this blog to show her when she’s, oh, 30. I think that’s when she might appreciate it.)
This is going around the ‘nets and I’ve been tagged a few times.
1. Go to the 77th page of your WIP or latest book.
2. Count down 7 lines.
3. Copy the 7 sentences that follow, and post them.
4. Tag 7 other authors.
I’m pretty sure all my author buds have been tagged someplace, so, here you go. In this scene, Gal is trying to convince her doctor to forgo some painful and what she considers unnecessary testing in order for her to get a kidney transplant. (This is 7 lines on my screen but the formatting’s all funny).
***
“I don’t know about ‘we,’ but I’m fine, thank you,” I say through a clenched jaw.
He walks on.
Dr. Blankenship turns back to me. This time, she actually finds it in her to meet my eyes. Hers are a watered-down green, the charcoal circles underneath not quite covered by her concealer. “Gal, please. I want to get you a kidney as badly as you do. But I have to abide by the rules. If you’re in danger of rejecting it, I can’t give it to you.”
“What about him?” I nod toward Walters’s retreating back. “He could drink it to death. Stop taking his blood pressure meds. He did it before. Seems like I’m a better bet.”
This weekend felt like it was really long. That’s probably because the kids had a week off for spring break and because the week before that was all half-days.
Cadillac took Thursday off and had Good Friday off, so he got a 4 day weekend. That probably made it feel longer! I kept thinking Thursday was Friday and then Friday was Saturday.
On Saturday, we left the kids with his folks and had a little date afternoon in Solana Beach. Cedros Avenue has a bunch of stores, some antiques, some not, mostly kind of on the expensive side. We went into one warehouse where they were selling fabulous made-to-order wooden furniture. As we walked through, the employee told us we could go upstairs and downstairs and downstairs was their wood shop and their…
INDIANA JONES FLOOR!
So we scuttled downstairs.
It wasn’t as spooky as I’d thought; they’d painted the stairwell a bright aqua. What bad thing could happen to you in an aqua room?
Then we got down there. This is the first guy I saw:
The eyes are totally freaking me out. It’s from Africa and it was about $1500. They also had lots of Chinese dragons and various gargoyles. I think (I hope) most are to keep out bad spirits, but I’m not sure; and frankly, I wondered about the sort of morality of taking other cultures’ artifacts, possibly religious ones, and using them as art. Where did these objects come from? How were they acquired? Were there spikes involved? Double-crossing archeologists?
Then we headed upstairs, where we saw this keris.
Which reminded me of Therese Walsh’s wonderful novel, THE LAST WILL OF MOIRA LEAHY, which prominently features a keris. Some of these knives are said to possess magical powers, good or bad. If I were superstitious (which I pretend I am not but actually kind of am) I don’t know if I’d want to randomly buy a keris for display. But since I had no extra $950, I was spared this dilemma.
On the eve of Easter, Holy Saturday, I guess, we planned to go to bed early so we could go to 7 am mass. Sometime that afternoon, Cadillac said he’d dig the Easter baskets out of the garage and wash them. At 630 pm, I asked him if he was going to do it, and he said LATER! CALM DOWN! and said we’d– er, the Easter Bunny– would do baskets EARLY for a change from every other holiday where we have to prepare. Then we started watching THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, a movie that somehow was nearly 5 hours long with commercials, and got caught up in all the side-pony action.
After Moses saw God, he came down from the mountain with a magnificent perm.
Anyway, we got totally sucked into the movie. I thought the way they made it was interesting in what they focused on and what they skipped. For example, they spent several scenes on the shepherd girls who all wanted a piece of Moses because they had no man in the desert. But then they skipped over the locusts and frogs and everything with the narrator saying, “And then God sent frogs and locusts…” and that was that. Maybe they didn’t have the special effects.
Our kids watched some of it, which surprised me because I remember my parents watching it and me thinking it was absolutely the most boring movie ever created. But they seemed to enjoy it. I think they pretended because they didn’t want to go to bed. But we made them go at 830.
At 10:45 I finally said we ought to go to bed. It’s not like we didn’t know how the story ended (it kind of wrapped up too quick for all the build-up, I think). I asked Cadillac if he’d gotten the baskets out.
No, we were watching this movie, he said.
So I dug everything out and put the baskets together.
Then, because I’ve been having terrible insomnia, I took some sleeping pills and we went to bed.
The Easter bunny came early, and Cadillac said the kids should find eggs before church though I will have it Be on Record that I said AFTER. So you have something to look forward to. But whatever. He let me sleep through that part, not that he could wake me– the pills hadn’t worn off by church time. But I staggered up anyway, Cadillac complimenting my toughness so I felt better, and got dressed and put on make-up. Slacks, a blouse, a jacket. Then I went out to the living room.
My Eldest looks at me and says, “So, you’re not coming to church with us, huh?”
Then I wondered if I in fact looked totally hideous, so she assumed I was staying home. “Why else would I be dressed up and put makeup on this early?” I said.
“I don’t know. Calm down!” she said. (Oh, I see where she gets that CALM DOWN from now).
We all sucked up our tiredness and went to mass. Unfortunately, halfway through, my son started sneezing (too much perfume!) and I had to send him out to blow his nose because I had no tissue. What an Amateur Mom move! Then my oldest grabbed my hand. Her palm was cold and sweaty. She said she didn’t feel good. She didn’t look too good, either. I told her to get some air in the garden. Then I went out to find her and couldn’t, so I went back in and got the rest of my family and said we ought to take her home, so we left after the Eucharist. Score! I mean, darn! I mean, I suspected she was okay but I couldn’t really make that call, because that would be the One Time she’d get sick all over the pew.
So we found her outside. She said she felt better, she was just in the restroom. Totally normal. By then the mass was ending for real, so we went home.
It turns out having a bunch of candy at 6:30 in the morning is not good for someone with wacky blood sugar, as runs in our family. Who knew? (Answer: EVERYONE. ‘Cause I told them). But if no one listens and I can’t monitor people all the time (especially those who are nearly teenagers) then what can I do?
It was a good Easter. The bunny had the foresight to get my oldest the Hunger Games trilogy. Oddly, I’d only read the first one. Funny how convenient that was. Very convenient. And Cadillac and the kids actually LET ME READ so I read the entire second book that afternoon. Boo-yah! See, all’s well that ends well, or whatever.
