In Progress

Words, Sort of

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 8 Aug 05 17:42:00 UT

I decided to give in and be logical today, so I dragged "Sense of Smell" out of the unfinished file and worked on revising it. This was my first pass (in Crayola washable magic marker, of course), so I'll let it sit tonight and type in my revisions (probably adding more of them) tomorrow. Marguerite nudged me on that one; it does seem a little ridiculous how long I've avoided rewriting the damn thing, especially since I was rather embarassed to note today, reading through it, that it didn't require that much work (about an hour and a half, while providing for kiddos). I'm still not sure I covered everything mentioned in the wonderful crits I got on the story so long ago, but at least I made a start.

And I realized while lying in bed the other night that "Evergreen" actually has two more markets to go to at this length. It's just that one of them is a Black Hole.

I also managed to use my degree today -- drawing kinship diagrams to show Kate what "first cousin" meant. Yes, this is what 5 years of anthropology is good for.

Anyway. Made some progress in the unpacking area last night and today; Kate can at least walk through her room now, and we have made some inroads into switching her dresser and Ethan's (we're playing musical furniture because of the twins.) I worked for about 45 minutes last night, but then my back locked up and I had to hobble over to the recliner, where I spent the rest of the night.

And now I have apparently overstepped the limits of what is safe for me not to pay complete and total attention to children. The Legos have been dumped all over the floor, houses have been knocked down, plastic swords have been confiscated, names have been called, tears have been shed...

Catch-Up

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Wed, 3 Aug 05 16:52:00 UT

After a few weeks away from my computer, I am happy to be back. A couple of days ago the cable guy came and hooked me up with a cable modem; it took him almost 3 hours because the cable lines in this house are a)old and b)screwy. What we've found in the past couple weeks is that there aren't enough outlets or phone jacks in the house, and the ones that do exist are in highly inconvenient places. Also, for some reason the prior owners tried to cover up a few of the cable outlets with wooden blocks, which I thought odd. The cable outlets weren't in the right place for the computer and we only have one TV, but why not just put furniture in front of them?

To each their own, I guess.

Anyway, we are at least in the house now. I have most of the kids' books unpacked and enough of mine on the shelves that I no longer feel deprived. I am still surrounded by a wall of boxes as I type, though, and this is unlikely to change at any kind of quick pace. I am hot, very large, and having mild contractions which don't necessitate bed rest as of yet, but have gotten me the "when it's hot, don't do anything and drink plenty of water" speech. The babies, in spite of everything, are growing like weeds. (Except weeds don't move around this much -- oy!) We did manage to spend a few days on vacation in Rhode Island, though, which we all desparately needed. I like Rhode Island. Any state that has a city named "Woonsocket" has to be sort of interesting, doesn't it?

No writing, of course -- I don't know what I was thinking. (I also got to a place in the new project where I basically ground to a halt because I realized I know nothing about growing indigo. This would seem to be a minor point to anybody but me.) Instead I've been rereading a lot of my education/homeschooling books (those are the books I can find at this point, but also we are working through some "issues" and I need to try to wrap my mind around some concepts for the zillionth time. When I was in school I thought I ought to be able to read a book once and get most of what I needed from it, but what I am finding out the longer I'm out of school is that I really need to read books through several times before the information really sinks in. At least with concept/theory books, etc, and/or anything to do with kids. Because kids are hard.)

So that's me, in a nutshell. Hopefully life will begin inching toward "normal" -- for a few weeks anyway. I'm 27 weeks pregnant as of this week, so it's not far now, Papa Smurf. And have I mentioned that we have nothing ready in the babies' room???

When it Rains...

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Sat, 9 Jul 05 16:46:00 UT

Thought it would be nice to start cross-posting to livejournal (username: angelboord)when we'd closed on the new house and finally had our "new beginning" here in New York. Unfortunately, this new beginning seems to be a lot like the beginning of one of my novels. The characters get dumped on, and it's heavily in need of revision. Of course, none of our odd roadblocks would ever make it into print because they don't make any sense.

First there was the lack of attention to detail which resulted in our late closing date. Fortunately we have one now -- or at least a tentative one, considering the next development. The bank lost our money. This is the same check from the sale of the house in Missouri that was delivered to the farm across the street instead of to us, so we got it late. It was deposited Tuesday, apparently cleared, and then... *poof*. Into thin air.

They are working to resolve this issue.

Ahem.

Then last night right before bed Ethan spiked a fever of 103 in about 15 minutes flat. For a long time it didn't look as if the Motrin would bring it down, so we were both holding our breath in case he had another seizure. Fortunately the medicine did finally begin to work, there were no seizures, and he slept well all night while we hovered nervously over him like mother hens and got very little sleep.

It also looks as if Hurricane Dennis, in one form or another, may be parked over Memphis by the time Andy's mom is supposed to fly out to help us move this week.

Assuming, that is, that the bank discovers our money in time for us to close on Wednesday.

Recently I read Anne Lamott's book Traveling Mercies. In it she relates the story of a woman who was traveling to Russia. This woman was trying to be a trooper, but all sorts of weird and bad things kept happening to gum up her trip. Finally she could no longer maintain her good humor and she began unloading all her troubles to a man sitting next to her on the train. This man (coincidentally?) happened to work for the Dalai Lama (one wonders why I never run into these people.) The man who worked for the Dalai Lama told her that whenever something big and beautiful is trying to be born, all sorts of little bad things happen to distract us so that "something" can gestate.

I am not sure about this story. On one hand, it gives me hope. On the other hand... this seems like a crummy way of doing things on the part of the universe.

Anyway, I'm writing. The way my concentration has scattered over the past several months, and especially the last week, it is like trying to catch gnats in my teeth, but at least I'm mostly sticking to my marathon goals.

Argh

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Thu, 7 Jul 05 15:35:00 UT

Can I just say that if you are a lawyer involved in real estate, or a rest estate agent, or any of the many professionals involved in a real estate deal, and you live in New York state, that you really should look into how they organize real estate transactions in the rest of the country?

Because if a contract states that a deal is supposed to close on a certain date and you have ignored that and now it is 3:30 on the day before the deal is supposed to close and you don't know when the close is supposed to happen, you are not really doing your job, are you?

So excuse me while I go slam my head against a wall a few times, will you?

Caveman Grunts

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 3 Jul 05 19:33:00 UT

I just accidentally deleted the blog entry I was trying to write. Not that it was very witty or insightful, but dammit, it was words and now I don't feel like writing them over. This leaves me with the option of communicating to the world in the blog equivalent to caveman grunts:

Short story stalled -- started a flash about a new character -- flash got away from me -- is it embarassing to admit that you misjudged a story so completely that a flash is now a freaking novel???

So progress for the marathon has been good. I've gotten almost 2500 words in the past 3 days, just not on the story I thought I was going to be writing. And I now have exactly one chapter of 4400 words (because I started a couple days before the marathon technically began) and absolutely no real idea of where this thing is headed.

I am not usually quite this organic. But I like the characters. And there are swords and capes, which are also good things.

To add more caveman grunts -- we sold the house in St. Louis, finally, but Fed-Ex delivered our check across the street to the dairy farm. Nobody pays attention to addresses out here. It was a good thing our neighbor came by tonight, because if it didn't get here tomorrow, I was going to have a heart attack. I'm sure they didn't know at the dairy farm how flipping much money they sat on for 2 or 3 days.

Sheesh.

Closing on our new house in less than a week... we went to the Methodist church in town here today, because I am starved for contact with people who do not shove their carts into me at Wal-Mart, and the Catholics aren't friendly here and the Quakers, who are friendly, are also all over the age of 60 and have no kids. When we mentioned where our new house was to the friendly people at the Methodist church, they acted as if we would never be back. The two towns are about 20 minutes apart, but you'd think one was on Mars, the other on Jupiter.

I don't get it.

I'm also not sure I got the church service. They had Communion today -- bread and grape juice -- and so much of the ceremony seemed to be lifted straight from the Catholic liturgy. Except I don't think I ought to say this aloud. Plus, the whole grape juice thing... not sure I get that either.

This is a problem for me, because I want a community, which the Methodists have, and seeing as it's a fairly liberal church, it synchs with a lot of my own rather liberal beliefs. But -- I'm still a lot of Catholic deep down.

It's all very confusing.

Reading Material

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 26 Jun 05 17:08:00 UT

I have just finished reading Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies. Good book, but it leaves me wondering about myself. Specifically, I wonder why I am drawn to autobiographical books by people who grew up in the 60's who are either a)recovering alcoholics; b)recovering drug addicts; and/or c)products of seriously dysfunctional families. It also makes me wonder if any of us who grew up in the 80's will have anything to write about ourselves. Not that I wish I had a) or b) in my past, although I suppose I do have a fair bit of c)... not to the point of the people who write the books I read, though. And you can only say so much about the glittery blue leg warmers you had as a ten year old. Or how you secretly wanted to be a Solid Gold dancer, but settled for spending hours in your bedroom singing songs from Friday Night Videos into your crappy black tape recorder.

Maybe that was too much information.

(My daughter, who was just sent to her room for hitting her brother and then throwing a fit about the injustice of it all roughly on par with the performance of any Oscar actress, has now decided to sprawl over the chair beside me, weeping, because she has a split fingernail. I am being very callous.)

In any case, the next book on my agenda is The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong. Since she was a nun for 7 years, I don't think she has a lot of heavy drinking in her background, but the back of the book seems to indicate that it will be primarily about rising out of depression. So it still fits in the box. Then I have a book about Buddhism and coping with the ups and downs of everyday life.

The 3 for 2 table at Borders is a wonderful thing.

I hope to get back to work on my short story this week, too. We sign the closing papers on the house in St. Louis this Thursday, then the papers on our house here in two weeks (after having been taken for everything we have in order to get it -- which is why I need that Buddhism book), and then in another week and a half (don't ask) we'll move in. Still, I have signed up for E's Strong Man Writer's Marathon, in order to borrow some motivation. I have a piddly goal of 30 minutes a day, but if I can manage that, I will be happy, and I may even get a short story out of it.

Isn't It A-Peeling

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 20 Jun 05 16:20:00 UT

Yesterday my daughter got a book about feelings which prominently features pictures of fruits and vegetables with carved faces and black-eyed peas for eyes. Somehow she has talked me into trying this at home. Shouldn't these books come with a warning, Caution: Illustrator a professional, do not try this at home?

Anyway, here I am, off to help the kiddos carve cucumbers. Guess the new story (all 5 longhand pages of it thus far) will have to wait behind the vegetables which are now dancing on the table as I type.

Musical Names

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Fri, 17 Jun 05 20:27:00 UT

On the subject of boy names... Garrett is right now reading a graphic novelization of The Hobbit, Sarah, and I am sure that he would wholeheartedly endorse Bilbo as a good name for one of his new brothers ;-). Or maybe Gandalf, which he insists on pronouncing as "Grandalf."

We have also determined that "Smorgas" and "Bill" are probably out. My father-in-law suggested "Buck." (Everybody's a comedian.)

So far the actual names in the front-running are Noah Thomas and Jacob Russell. Noah's probably a firmer choice than Jacob, considering the fact that Jacob is the #2 boy name in the US right now, behind Michael. Of course, after we named Ethan we discovered that Ethan is the #7 boy name in the country, but I like the name, so I don't care.

Bilbo Grandalf Boord might have a ring to it...

Quick Summary

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 6 Jun 05 16:57:00 UT

In the past few weeks:

1. We made an offer on another house that was actually accepted, although I got kind of discouraged by the end of negotiations.

2. Fortunately, before we heard whether or not the offer was accepted, I got word that Ideomancer wanted my little flash story, and so I was immediately in a better mood. The story, All the Gold is Grass, is currently in Ideomancer's June issue on the website at ideomancer.com.

3. (No, I have not yet figured out how to link from inside a journal entry. Mostly because I haven't had the time to find out!)

4. My mom came up for a few days, which was nice. Then Ethan and I got a cold, which we are both almost over.

5. It finally got warm. Everyone here thinks it's too hot. But to us, low 80's with low humidity and a breeze in June (!) is wonderful.

6. We had a thunderstorm today (finally!), which pulled down a big oak across the neighbor's yard. I hadn't thought the wind was that bad, but I guess it was.

7. Of course, it took long enough to get warm. What was with that May Nor'Easter????

8. Both twins are reported to be boys. This poses a problem, because we are out of boy names. At least we have a few months...

Too Many Crises

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 16 May 05 15:55:00 UT

1.We did not get the log house. They wanted us to sign questionable paperwork, and then told us they couldn't accept our offer anyway as it was contigent on the sale of another property. So, as far as the house hunt goes, we are back to square 1.

2. Saturday Ethan took a ride in an ambulance. He spiked a fever of 105 and had a febrile seizure while eating a chocolate chip cookie. Perhaps he aspirated some of it; in any case, while he was limp and unresponsive with his jaw clenched so tight the finger Andy used to try and pry his mouth open was numb for hours afterward -- Ethan turned blue. Andy called 911 while I frantically pounded Ethan on the back the way you're supposed to do for choking toddlers and then pumped his chest. It was only seconds, but it felt like hours. The neighbors ran in from the farm and flagged the ambulance down. Later one the women from up the street came to the hospital to see if she could watch the two older kids for us. I have never been so grateful for the kindness of what was, for all intents and purposes, the kindness of strangers. Ethan, thank God, has suffered no ill effects and his fever finally broke this morning. But Andy and I are having a harder time recovering. I'm sure the whole experience cut about ten years off my life.

3. There are fleas (or something) in the carpet in my daughter's room, and they are biting the back of her head. (No, it doesn't compare to Saturday -- Nothing compares to Saturday -- but I am trying to get us all back to normal. And darn it, there always seem to be something lately.)

And that is all I'm going to say about that. Some day I want our family life to be boring again.

Writer Math

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Tue, 10 May 05 20:57:00 UT

I'm wondering how evil it is to use a word count from Word instead of applying the 250 words x number of pages formula. Because Microsoft tells me that Evergreen is now down to 9600 words, but in manuscript format, the story is still 44 pages long. And 44 x 250 isâ¦ 11,000. And a word count of 11,000 is a lot scarier than 9600.

Although both word counts would still keep me from being able to send the damn thing to Strange Horizons.

Anyway, I've cut (according to Microsoft) 2500 words from the story to this point, and I am not sure I can cut another 600 words (according to Microsoft) without sacrificing important bits of plot. I've already axed everything my critters agreed needed to go, because, well, it really did need to go, plus some. A lot of it went because I tightened the prose. My two most recent stories -- Evergreen and a little 400 word flash -- I've played slice and dice with to get their word counts down for market limits, and the process has really proved to be eye-opening for me. I wasn't aware how loose my prose really was. So at least I can comfort myself with the fact that, although I have not been writing much lately, at least I'm improving somewhat.

I hope.

Anyway, I've gotten a number of things done in the past few days. We made an offer on the log house, the one with the large pond full of monster koi and moose tracks through the yard. (And no, I am not lying, they really honest to God do look like moose tracks.) But the offer hasn't been accepted yet and one of their documents requires a legal opinion, so who knows what our odds are there. We had an offer on the house in St. Louis today, though, so maybe there's a ray of hope there. Mother's Day was cold and windy, but we went to the New York State Museum and Andy made chili for me and so it was a good day in spite of the weather. Using my rudimentary and newly acquired sewing skills, I finally managed to sew up the holes in Garrett's stuffed cat, and I also finished the paperwork necessary to homeschool in New York. I had a doctor's appointment and heard both babies' heartbeats. I did laundry and cut 2500 words from Evergreen and subbed a poem that was rejected and subbed it again. I listened to two squirrels scolding each other across the yard. I planted pansies and a couple pots of strawberries. I read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain and Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl. I found the Natural Foods store and bought a dozen free-range eggs from a farm near here, and I picked the dozen that included one with a pretty green shell. I tasted dried strawberries and cantaloupe for the first time, and let me tell you, they are better than candy.

So that was my week. And now, if I can just figure out how to work 130-150 grams of protein into my diet, and cut 500 more words from Evergreen, I'll be doing pretty good.

Literary Prozac

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Wed, 4 May 05 17:07:00 UT

I think that if I have anything else to worry about concerning the housing situation in relation to the countdown to the birth of my babies (I'm 14 weeks today, giving me approximately 14-16 weeks until the "age of viability", as my doctor says), I am going to go bonkers. Actually, I think I have already gone bonkers. Because of this (and because my back hurt), I let my kids smush playdough into most of the furniture and the carpet for a good hour and a half this afternoon.

Hey, it's not my carpet. And it kept them busy.

Perhaps a few small examples will demonstrate the state of things. The other day the kids and I saw a wild turkey in the woods. "A tur-tey! A tur-tey!" my two year-old called, jumping up and down in excitement. All day I had to draw turkeys, watch for turkeys -- everything was turkey, turkey, turkey. He giggled, laughed -- loving the turkey.

The next morning -- two guys walk out of the woods dressed in camouflage. They're each holding a dead turkey by the feet.

So how do you explain to a turkey-loving two year-old why his beloved turkeys are riding in the car now?

"Couldn't they just go to the grocery store?" my daughter asked, her eyes big and round.

Yeah, I know, it's part of living in the country. I ought to know that, because I grew up in the country. Still -- "Tur-tey! Tur-tey!", aiyee.

Then, a couple days later, we were admiring the wild strawberries blossoming along the rock wall in the back yard. I told the kids stories about how I had picked wild strawberries when I was a kid, and they had giggled in anticipation.

Next afternoon, we come back from the library to find that the owner and one of his hired men are ripping out every single strawberry from that rock wall -- because they're weeding, you know.

I have to get out of here.

Last night we discovered a home going up on a nice lot with great views. 4 bedrooms, too -- sounded perfect. The price is a little steep, though. We could afford it, but we'd be scraping.

Today, the log house with the goddamned pond showed up on the MLS with its price lowered, just to make our decisions even harder.

Of course none of it really matters because our real estate agent won't return our calls.

So I did what any sane person would do in the face of all this stress. (And back ache. Because my back hurt.) I let the kids smash playdough into the carpet, and I read a book.

In the past three days, I have read 3 Johanna Lindsey novels. It's probably healthier for the babies than Prozac would be at this point, I guess, but I am really feeling that prohibition against alcohol, let me tell you.

Because even better than a Prozac would be a beer.

Back to Work

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 1 May 05 19:20:00 UT

I have been thinking over the past couple days about something Karen Andreola, a homeschooling author, said in one of her articles I read a couple of months ago. I can't remember the name of the essay and I'll have to paraphrase the quote, but basically she said that every day children should have something to do, something to think about, and someone (or something) to love. I started thinking about this quote because yesterday afternoon, in spite of the fact that my dear husband had been out of town for two days and Kate had been running a fever for three and I was worn out from doing chores and keeping kids busy inside while it rained, I told myself to take fifteen minutes to sit down and write a poem. I got a fabulous amount of stuff done yesterday -- cleaned a bathroom, the kitchen, picked up a couple of rooms, wrote a poem and got the IHIP for our homeschooling written up -- and my mood, of course, lifted correspondingly. (It helped, of course, that I did not feel like puking the entire day.)

It was the poem that did it, of course. "Something to do, something to think about, and someone to love" are just as applicable to adults as they are to children, even if adults think they always have something -- too much -- to do. That "something to do" should probably be qualified, the way Andreola does in her essay, as something meaningful to do, not just busywork, which is what a lot of adult work amounts to. Laundry, dishwashing, scrubbing toilets... all those things need to be done, and I feel better for doing them. They're all meaningful in their own way, too, I guess, because if I didn't do them, my family would suffer. But they don't really feel like accomplishments in the sense that they aren't really that fulfilling. Housework is just staving off entropy. Writing a poem, building a shed, knitting a sweater, making something new out what was once nothing, or at least matter without form... Maybe those things, those acts of creation, are so fulfilling, so meaningful, because they don't just stave off entropy, they thumb our collective human nose at it. To create something -- art, a garden, a quilt -- is to bring new life into the world.

Today I worked on revising Evergreen. I don't know why I've been putting it off, because it wasn't as bad as I'd thought it was. I don't think I cut the 2 or 3000 words from it that would bring it down to short story length, but thanks to Mike and Charlie, I think I came close. I'll make another pass through tomorrow, since tonight I have to run out to the grocery store to beat back the entropy at work in our refrigerator. (I've made lunch and dinner the past few days -- not that I had a choice with Kate sick and Andy out of town -- so maybe I'm starting to ease into my second trimester now.) But I think I have had a good go at my three tasks for the day -- having accomplished something meaningful, in addition to the chores I perform for the good of my family; having bought a new magazine to read for something to think about; and having my kids and my husband all together again (and Katie without fever, finally) to love.

I feel like I have taken a deep breath and started to climb the big hill.

Literary Escapes

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Fri, 29 Apr 05 09:56:00 UT

Lately I have been walking the edge of a very narrow cliff. On one side -- the safe side -- lies hopefulness, optimism, and resilience. On the other side, yawns a dark abyss at the bottom of which lies the Pit of Despair. I have my good days and my bad days (usually my bad days are the ones I have spent fruitlessly searching the real estate listings online), but the stress of maintaining my footing on that crumbly edge is really getting to me. Wednesday we had some of our stress removed when the ultrasound of Katie's kidneys came back fine. Then yesterday morning she came down with a sore throat and a fever. The poor kid can't seem to catch a break. We've been here about three weeks and already she's had a cold, an ER-worthy kidney infection, and now yet another virus. The housing situation makes me glum and worried if I don't actively battle it, but adding worry about your kids into the equation is another thing entirely.

From my teenage years into my early twenties I suffered from the kind of depression you can come to think of as your normal state of affairs until it either kills you or you somehow dig out of it and realize how not normal depression really is, that life is not supposed to be that gray, painful, and â¦ lifeless. Since I have no desire to go back to that place, I have learned to be aware of my early warning signs and have developed a few guerilla tactics for improving my mood. One of those tactics, probably the oldest one and the one I use when I am most in need of a lift, is to read a meaningless novel.

I stayed up till 1:30 AM last night reading a Johanna Lindsay romance I picked up off the rack at Walmart. It certainly wasn't great literature, but then I didn't want great literature. I wanted a story I could read and not think about. One with no great "themes" or hidden meanings. Nothing edifying or classic. Nothing your English teacher would make you read because you were supposed to.

There is a lot of debate in the homeschooling community about what kids should and shouldn't read, and what the parents of these kids should or shouldn't read, too. There's a line of thought that says you should fill your mind only with the best, the purest, the highest quality. To some extent, I think that's true. Little House on the Prairie is definitely more enjoyable to read to your kids than one of those Berenstain Bears chapter books (not the picture books), and because it is so good, kids love to listen to it. And I refuse to buy my daughter Disney princess books. (Her grandmother takes care of that for me, unfortunately.) But sometimes you are just too tired for the good, the true, the best. Sometimes the good, the true, the best is a little depressing. Sometimes you want the fun, the so-so, the mediocre. Sometimes that's all you can handle.

Johanna Lindsay is actually one of the better writers in the romance genre, and I think, somewhat shackled by the conventions of the genre. (Maybe she wouldn't say that, it's just an outside observation about the norms of the genre.) Romance isn't about exciting action scenes, so she had to gloss some of the most exciting parts in the book -- parts I was actually reading toward -- to get to the romantic "after" scenes. I did attempt to shove my inner writer back into her corner while I was reading, though, because nothing ruins a literary escape more than a running internal critique.

The problem is, I read the whole thing last night as soon as I got it home. And now I'm left with nothing to read and a sick kid.

I may actually be forced to read it again.

Living in a Van Down by The River

aboord@sbcglobal.net — Thu, 28 Apr 05 16:23:00 UT

... is starting to seem like a real option. Maybe we should just buy an RV. Some of them cost as much as a house.