Marian Allen's Blog, page 436

Stone Monkey Stone

It was Jane’s birthday, but SHE gave ME a present. That’s just the kind of hairpin she is.

She knows, as do all my regular readers (hi, Mom!), that I am all about The Stone Monkey, Sun Wu-kung, The Handsome Monkey King, The Great Sage Equal To Heaven. Click that link to read up on him at Godchecker.com. So, when she saw this stone, she bought it for me. I’ve messed with the contrast/brightness to try to make the image clear in the photo; it’s quite clear in Real Life.

It’s a depiction of The Great Sage on the job in Heaven. He was given the job of guarding the Peaches of Immortality so, being Monkey, he ate them.

Oh, Monkey! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?

No. No, he isn’t. And that’s why we love him.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character is given the job of guarding something valuable.

MA

Walsh Salad

You never heard of Walsh Salad? That’s because “Walsh” is a family code word. We have these wonderful friends named Walsh, who were growing their own produce in their back [space] yard (I hate backyard — HATE it) before it was cool. So, if we have a salad made entirely or mostly from our own produce, it’s a Walsh Salad.

Here’s a picture of this one. It’s mostly lettuces and baby spinach and green onions and asparagus from our garden, so it qualifies. It also has organic red peppers from the store, black olives and artichokes from cans, all slightly wilted with vinegar, sugar, and hot bacon grease from local organic bacon.

Not bad, children. Not too shabby.

Other beloved acquaintances and their eponyms (words derived from their names):

Ora Mae: To wash dishes inadequately. Example: I sure Ora Maed that spoon; put it back in the sink and get another one.

Mary Ann: To clean something and put it back in the box after every use. Example: I Mary Ann the waffle maker and rice cooker because I don’t have room for them on the counter.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Is there something you do or say or eat that reminds you of a particular friend?

MA

Johnny Depp, William Blake, and a Rose Walk Into A Bar

Couldn’t resist.

I loves me some interwebs, children! I wanted to post this picture of a rose in our back yard, and I thought, “What is WRONG with that rose? It doesn’t look at all well.” So that made me think of William Blake’s poem “The Sick Rose” and I went browsering. That’s my new word for browsing the internet. I know, I know: they call the program a browser because you use it to browse the internet. But browsering amuses me.

ANYWAY, I did find the Blake poem at The Poetry Foundation:

The Sick Rose
BY WILLIAM BLAKE

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

Pretty hot, eh? Speaking of which, I also found out that Johnny Depp played a character named William Blake (no relation to the metaphysical poet) in a movie named DEAD MAN. You’re welcome.

Meanwhile, I’m over at Fatal Foodies posting about a word that’s fun to say.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: What’s in your back yard? Or out your back window? Or on the street parallel to yours?

MA

Floyd Hyatt Languishes

We haven’t had a post from Mr. Hyatt because I was doing the April A-to-Z Challenge, but that’s over and he’s baaa-aaack.

Space, the Languishing Frontier

By F.A.Hyatt

Are you a disaffected Science Fiction buff? A true-believer, losing faith in the trek? Perhaps you are just awaiting something. Something like:

Advances in the science of Avarice.

Some professional commentary is now directed to the disappearance of ongoing manned space programs. As if hitting a wall, Government programs are being retired at an accelerating rate. While the retirement of the space shuttle system was more directed at its failure to deliver a less expensive system for orbital insertion, other efforts looking towards planetary missions or outpost engineering have also suffered cuts, including basic planning.

Part of this is for budgetary reasons, part because bio-research has uncovered greater challenges facing manned exploration. There is no denying our peeks into the cosmos have uncovered more issues than a need to engineer for more thrust and lower mass. That said, I feel the real issue lies in our progress towards less obvious developmental sciences. I group these together as an alternate taxonomy, The Science of Avarice. The issue being not how to get there, but what can be done profitably when we arrive.

Frontiers have always been explored in minor ways driven by a wish to advance pure science, but the major thrust has always been profit: the search for gold, trade routes, ranching opportunities, and other plunder. Travel has, throughout history, always been expected to yield significant, relatively immediate, return. There is a moon of Jupiter that hoards more liquid fuel than exists, or ever did, on Earth. We are talking here lakes, oceans, of combustible fuel. A place that literally rains the equivalent of liquid Butane. Some small asteroids floating beyond Mars contain more platinum than the Earths entire reserves.

These resources are almost uniformly at the bottom of relatively minor, compared to Earth, gravity wells. The sciences needed are the sciences of Avarice. How to get at them and retrieve them profitably and in reasonable time. If not retrieve them, get at them and do profitable on-site manufacturing with them, that makes other endeavors less expensive and more profitable. The realms are material, energy, robotics, AI, and power-based science. The advances needed are dispersed throughout the scientific system of inquiry, and comprise “the first steps” that need to be taken for a new explosion in development and exploration to begin.

Science fiction has always spurred the imagination, even driven entrepreneurs and scientists to follow the life paths they chose. Well, folks, here is a clear and needed vision to write about.

After having sent me this post, Mr. Hyatt immediately followed it with a link to this post called Is James Cameron launching an asteroid mining company? Food for thought.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write a paragraph from the point of view of someone who thinks the exploitation of extra-terrestrial resources is a great idea. Write a paragraph from the point of view of someone who thinks it’s a terrible idea. Just for fun, feel free to make one or both of these narrative points of view belong to an extra-terrestrial being.

MA

#SampleSunday – Rusalka – #amwriting

My 11-year-old grandson read this and said, “That’s a good story! Creepy!” Mission accomplished. I took some liberties with the lore. Hire a lawyer and sue me. (turnip – blood = 0)

Rusalka 

by Marian Allen

I take up my pen with, if not tranquility, at least with composure — surprising, perhaps, in light of the past night’s events, if surprise were not by now beyond me.

Perhaps you will discount this as fictional. I would not blame you. I would envy your unbelief, the complacency which is so much more comfortable than the unnatural calm now left to me.

An opalescent moon shone like a precious stone on deep blue velvet. So bright it was, the stars, which ordinarily sparked across the seaside country sky, paled. I have seen days that were dimmer than that night. Dear heaven, was it only last night?

So bright it was at midnight, when I dimmed the study lamp, I scorned my bedroom and went, instead, out into the dewy quietude, down to the inlet where my people came to catch fish for my dinner. The full moon’s reflection floated upon its mirror surface, almost too lambent to look upon.

As I neared the water, the brilliant disk wavered, though there was no wind. The white circle rippled and rose, and resolved into a woman standing upon the surface. Was she dressed in white linen, which clung to her shape with the weight of its liquidity, or was she bare, wearing only inhumanly featureless flesh?

I could not say, but she was suddenly at the marshy edge, not illuminated by the moon above, but luminescent in herself. She held out her arms to me. She smiled, her lips red as coral.

“Who are you?” I thought, or perhaps I whispered it, for she smiled more broadly, showing teeth like pearls.

“Rusalka,” she whispered back, or perhaps she only thought it, for I did not see her mouth form the word, and yet I heard it.

I stepped into the mud, into the water, into her arms, and she drew me close. The chill damp crept up my body as we glided out and down, until the sea burned my eyes and I lost sight of her empty gaze.

With that, I came to myself. I gasped and thrashed, raising my mouth above the surface long enough to fill my lungs with precious air before my succubus, with infernal strength, pulled me back into her domain, down, down to the very floor of the inlet.

There, I saw unspeakable things: the corpses of men — yes, and of children — lured to deaths by this creature’s mesmerizing beauty. And, as I looked upon the hideous remains, I saw salvation. It was a blade: a fisherman’s knife, still sheathed at a dead man’s side.

I snatched it, drew it, held it, shoved it at the phantom’s face, pommel upwards, thrusting the shape of the Cross between damnation and myself.

Rusalka shoved herself away, the force sending me backward and upward. I broke the surface again, bellowing for air, weeping and praying as I flailed the eternal distance back to land.

I reached the fen that bordered the inlet and struggled toward solid ground. A cold hand clutched my shoulder and spun me around.

Again I raised my makeshift Cross and again the thing shrank back. Then the blood froze within my veins, for the monster lifted her head and laughed.

Laughter, I call it, for want of a better word, but no earthly laughter ever came so shrill and savage. The very beating of my heart slowed; my lungs refused to breathe, and I grew faint .

To save my life — to save my soul — I took a different grip upon my weapon. With the words, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” on my lips, I spent my final strength in an arcing blow, slicing the shining throat with tempered steel.

Without a sound, she vanished. I dropped my weapon and collapsed.

And so I lay, alone and senseless, until my people, missing me in the morning, found me and carried me to my bed.

I told them I slipped and fell, having taken a foolish moonlight stroll. How could I tell them the truth? They would have thought me mad. Indeed, my only hope for sanity is that I, myself, may come to believe the events of the night just past only happened in a dreadful dream.

To that purpose, I have penned this account and, when I have written THE END, will consign it to the flames of my bedroom fire.

THE END

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write the above story from the point of view of the rusalka (Russian water spirit).

MA

A Very Special Day

Not because it’s Cinco de Mayo, although that’s widely celebrated in the United States. Like St. Patrick’s Day, the holiday has a limited popularity in its country of origin, but Americans are like, “Any excuse for a drunken spectacle” — um, I mean celebration. Since I’m already sidetracked, allow me to point out that Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day, nor is it a day on which you get five jars of mayonnaise for the price of one. It commemorates a victory of the Mexican militia over the French in 1862. Here, see for yourself.

Not because it’s the 138th running of The Kentucky Derby, although, speaking of drunken spectacles….

No, the day is much more important than that. For, upon this day mumbledy-mumbledy years ago, my dear friend, former college roommate, pal since the summer between junior high and high school, fellow fanfic freewriter, artist and author, lunch companion, creator of Tetra Petrie and so on and so forth JANE PEYTON was born! Yes, on this very day as ever was!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JANE!

And now, because we both love it, and because it rhymes with Jane, here’s a present to watch:

Wasn’t that fun? I love the interwebz! It is full of cats and cute boys.

I Am A Novel Person

[image error]By that I mean: I was interviewed yesterday at Novel Reads, a wonderful web site where readers and writers can meet and converse. Like a convention, only cheaper.

Sofia Essen, who interviewed me, does a great job with all her guests. If you’re a reader, go browse around and maybe you’ll find a new favorite writer. If you’re a writer AND a reader, go look for new favorite writers and see about getting your books on the site for others to find.

Meanwhile, I’ve been writing up a storm. I wrote and posted a romance (yes, I do sometimes write sweet and tender stories) involving an aardvark, though not as one of the principals. It’s at #amwriting, and it’s called “Aardvark With An Arrow”.

I finished the mermayd story I’ve been working on for the June Summer Reading Trail, so look for “Blood of Mermayds” here on June 1, 2012. Then I’ll probably take it down and put it up at Amazon for 90 days in KDP Select, then price it at 99 cents and put it up at Smashwords, as well, and from there to iTunes and Nook.

I’m almost finished with “Surviving the Book”, my new Holly Jahangiri and Pel Darzin story for Race to the Hugo Award.

I’m editing a flash fiction horror story for this month’s Quills and Quibbles assignment, and will probably put that here on Sunday for my Sunday Sample.

Did you know there a bazillion sites out there for emergency preparedness? I mean, relative to everything from In case of a natural disaster through When the government breaks down to ZOMBIEPOCALYPSE!!1! Yesterday, I learned how to make a heater and/or stove from a tin can, a roll of toilet paper, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Personally, in any of those situations, I’d just as soon use the toilet paper in the way God created it to be used, cook and heat with wood, drink the alcohol, and croak. But that’s just me.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write about someone facing a survival situation.

MA

I Visit A Cat House

Awright, calm down, you know what I mean.

Charlie and I went over to visit our #2 daughter and her husband and our granddaughter and our grandkitties. #2 Daughter loves cats, but she also loves rabbits, birds, chipmunks and squirrels, and she lives all too close to a busy road. Still, she hates to keep the cats cooped up indoors when they love nature so much.

Her solution: a wire mesh cat house. She’s very handy with a hammer, and she, her husband, and Charlie constructed this palace.

It has a door with a latch, so she can take food and water to them, even though they have food and water in the house. But they might want some food and water outside. It totally makes sense to me.

It has mesh across the top, because the hawks grow BIG around here. It has a tile floor, because obviously.

And here’s the cool part: It has a passageway connecting it to the house with a cat flap on one end and a ramp down from the passageway to the ground at the other end. It’s like a Chuck E. Cheese for kittehs.

The tiles don’t have grout between them, the better to drain when it rains, and plants are sprouting in the cracks, which gives the kitties something to eat and barf back up in the house, which is always such a treat for them.

It’s ingenious! The cats have all the joy of watching birds and other critters, but they’re safe from traffic, dogs, other cats, and all the various dangers attendant to being a cat.

Do they like it? What do you think?

Meanwhile, I finished writing “Blood of Mermayds” and I’m letting it cool for a bit before rewriting, and I pretty well finished a horror flash fiction story today. Our 11-year-old grandson, who is also a writer, read it and said, “That was really good! Creepy!” So that’s two thumbs-up for me.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character does something for his or her pets that someone else considers extravagant.

MA

Bodie Parkhurst Asks: What Shall We Feed The Baby?

I usually keep my posts short — NO, NOT because I’m lazy, shut up!

ANYWAY, although I usually keep my posts short, Bodie Parkhurst sent me this long one that’s just too good to prune. Bodie is coming out with a new book, BENCHMARKS: A SINGLE MOTHER’S ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL. It’s an absolutely beautiful book of Bodie’s words and Bodie’s pictures, and I can’t recommend it highly enough!

Now, here’s Bodie:

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Back in the early days of proto-mom-hood, food was a huge issue for me, largely because nothing would stay down. I heard a great deal about the need to eat healthy stuff “for the baby.” Unfortunately, no one had brought my baby in on this particular loop, so while I was trying to eat healthfully for him, he was merrily rejecting everything I sent down.

I’d send a salad down. “Do you want this?” I’d ask.

“Nope.” he would say, and throw the salad back at me, after first having rendered it inedible by anyone or anything except possibly one of the dogs that roam my neighborhood rolling in dead animals and consuming…but perhaps we should draw a tasteful veil here. Back to my stomach.

“Would you like this?” I would inquire anxiously, sending down a nice, bland, warm bowl of potato soup.

“Uh uh,” said my proto-son.

“How about this?” And down would go a few dry crackers.

“You kidding?” And back would come the crackers.

And then one happy day I discovered what it was my baby wanted. He wanted V-8 juice. Heavily laced with red peppers. With a floating island of cottage cheese on top.

So that was what I ate. For months. And then one day I woke up, fixed my morning V-8 Juice and cottage cheese–and discovered that if I never saw either again, it would be too soon. Fortunately my baby arrived shortly afterward.

That experience should have taught me an important fact about the baby who would grow up to be my son–he would be one of those children who can happily eat the same thing. For every meal. For months at a time.

When he was little I nursed him. When he got to be a few months old people began saying, “When are you going to be starting him on hard food?”

I looked at my son. He looked at me. He looked at the bowl of hard food. He tried a bite. And then he reached for my boob. At first I felt like we were somehow defective. I mean, here was this baby, five months old, who didn’t care at all about having a varied, interesting diet, attractively presented on a Beatrix Potter plate. What he wanted was milk, and lots of it. Fortunately, that was precisely what I had.

It took me several more months to realize that my son’s devotion to mom juice was actually a good thing, for a number of reasons.

First, it was easy. My boobs went with me everywhere. Though I always carried a can of formula and a bottle with me, I seldom had to use it.

Second, it kept my baby healthier. Babies absorb antibodies from breast milk. When I caught a cold, I encouraged my baby to nurse as often as he could–and while he sometimes caught colds, they were seldom very severe.

Third, it made flying more comfortable not only for my baby, but for whole planesful of people. Anybody who has listened to a baby’s agonized screaming during take-off and landing knows that babies and planes are not natural companions. However, nursing the baby during take-off and landing helps babies’ ears to equalize pressure easily and naturally. And it often puts them to sleep. My son snoozed his way to Hawaii and back (twice), from LA to Seattle (once) and from LA to Southern Oregon (once) in the first few months of his life.

Fourth, it made night-time feedings simple. Pity the poor woman who must stumble from her bed, prepare a bottle, give it to her baby, put the baby back to bed, and then stumble back to bed herself. Breastfeeding means that “prep” involves inserting one nipple into one baby’s mouth. If you go the “family bed” route, and let your little one snuggle down with you in bed (and I highly recommend it) mother and baby can handle nighttime feedings without anybody even having to wake all the way up. Not only are night time feedings simple, but bedtime becomes not a time of tension and screaming, but a time of warmth, comfort, and slow relaxation. Many babies like to sleep with their parents. Mine did.

Fifth, if the mother is clean and healthy, breast-feeding is just plain healthier for the baby. Bottles, milk-based formula, and heat–three constant factors in bottle-feeding a baby–can be veritable petri dishes of infection. Breast milk is calibrated for the human infant’s needs. If the mother is careful what she eats, it generally always sits well on the baby’s stomach.

Finally, and perhaps most important, breast-feeding your baby is an excellent way to establish one of the cornerstones of a happy family–spending time together and sharing a pleasurable activity. Babies love to be held. They love the warmth and comfort of nursing. As a mother, I can say that, once my body had adjusted to the process, nursing was soothing for me, too. Because I nursed my baby I could count on being able to sit down several times a day, hold my son, talk to him, touch his cheek, and know that in this one area, at least, I was giving my child exactly what he needed to grow both physically and emotionally.

Art by Bodie Parkhurst

So, what’s the point? Very much the same point that I found myself making over and over in writing Benchmarks, A Single Mother’s Journal. At its core, feeding a baby–like mothering a child–doesn’t have to be a complex, daunting process. Keep it simple. Stick with the basics. Don’t get fancy. You’ll do just fine.

The days when your baby is happy to subsist on boob-juice will eventually end. When that day arrives, you will find yourself in the Valley of the Shadow of the Baby Food Aisle. Here are a few tips for surviving your passage through this trying time more or less intact and nausea free.

1. Make peace with mess. Believe it or not, your baby is learning Important Things when he throws that handful of glop at the wall. When he pours that grape juice onto the carpet he is learning about Gravity. When he smears pureed peaches on the table he is learning about Art. And when he blows that mouthful of oatmeal and applesauce at your face he is quite likely forming the basis for what we all hope will be a varied and extensive Cursing Vocabulary. Feed your baby in a high chair with a wide table. Set the high chair on a hard, easily-cleaned surface, surrounded by other hard, easily-cleaned surfaces. Then stay out of the way. Let him eat with his hands–it’s good for hand-eye coordination. Learn to laugh at the mess. You like spaghetti on your cheeks. You love oatmeal in your hair. You are at peace with peas smooshed into flat green little pancakes. Life is good.

2. Don’t buy baby food vegetables and meat. While fruits tend to survive the transition to baby food jars reasonably well, meats and vegetables do not. I didn’t feed my baby meat until he was well past two–too much of a choking hazard for one thing. If you want a healthy, appetizing, baby-friendly first food try this:

Cook mixed vegetables thoroughly. Boil an egg. Put both through a fine chop food processor. Don’t be afraid to let it run a bit–you want this to be in tiny, tiny pieces. Add a little water, and a little butter or margarine, to make a soft, thick paste. Don’t add salt (or, sugar, obviously). Your baby will love it. You might, too. You’ll certainly like it better than the pureed peas and beef stew from the baby aisle.

Speaking of which, that food grinder will become your best friend. With a few notable exceptions (honey, for one, check with your doctor or doula for others) babies can eat very much what grown-ups eat once they’re beyond the “breast is best” stage. The important thing is to make sure that the food is pureed, that it’s not heavily spiced, and that it’s not too strongly flavored.

To avoid unnecessary stomach upset, introduce one new food at a time. If it doesn’t sit well, try something else.

3. Add a little formula powder or baby cereal to fruit sauces. Your baby will love it. Try pear sauce (cook the pears and run them through the food processor), applesauce (use as is), and mashed bananas, each mixed with baby cereal. They all work well. (One extra note about bananas, my dietitian aunt suggested using a mixture of baby rice cereal mixed with mashed bananas to help regulate your baby’s digestive system. She says it equalizes things both ways. I don’t know because that was never an issue we dealt with. You might check with your doctor, and give it a try.)

It would be wrong to end this without offering the one best piece of advice I got from the lovely woman who ran my childbirth class. It’s so good I pass it on to every proto-mom and new mom I see. Here it is:

There’s something about a burgeoning belly and a new baby that inspires people to walk up to you and offer you all sorts of advice. Listen politely, smile, say, “I had never thought of that,” and let them walk away. Later, if you like, you can try the things that sound good to you. But do so only if it feels like a natural, comfortable thing. If doing things the way your mom/aunt/grandma tells to you is making you and your baby unhappy, stop. Find the way that works for you, your baby, and your family. Every baby and every mom have to work out their own system. Love your baby. Hold it. Keep it safe. Those are the basics. You’ll work the rest out.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Bodie also has a CafePress store, where she sells precious items using illustrations from BENCHMARKS.

Like this one.

.

And this one.

So buy her book and some baby stuff to go with it. Perfect gift!

Benchmarks/amazon (for both hard copy and Kindle)

Benchmarks Baby Stuff

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write a baby or small child with odd tastes in food. REALLY odd.

MA

Monthly Update – May Day! May Day!

Yes, it’s the first of the month already! The April A-to-Z Challenge is over, and I can stop blogging every day and go back to my regular schedule of … blogging every day. What a relief.

ANYWAY, this being the first of the month, I have a new Hot Flash up.

I’ll keep this post short, since tomorrow’s is going to be long: a wonderful essay by Bodie Parkhurst on her food adventures with carrying and raising a son. It’s a treat!

Bodie is my guest today at Fatal Foodies, with a recipe she cobbled together out of insufficient ingredients but turned out great. It’s an inspiration to us all, I tell ya!

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character has one thing he or she does without fail the first of every month. Now make that difficult.

MA