Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 132

Things I learned from a horse

1. What's the rush?
2. There's never too much food.
3. Talk with your hips.
4. If you're bored, try eating something new.
5. Everyone has a place.

If you are interested in doing a writing/riding camp, I cannot recommend highly enough the one run by Judith Tarr . Not only were the horses beautiful and intelligent Lipizzaners (all 8 of them), but Judith herself is one of the most interesting people to talk to, and one of the most kind. She carefully arranged meals so that everyone ate vegan, addin...

4 personas

I've spent this week at a writing/riding workshop in Arizona. We read five manuscripts and critiqued them together and talked about writing and visited horses and then had an instructor come out and teach us about how to ride a horse. I have a horse book I am working on, so this seemed a good idea.

As always for me, though, I was very nervous about meeting new people, especially writers whose work I know and love. I feel very small. Naked, really, all my weakness exposed. Worldbuilding. ...

saying no

I remember when my children were very young I read a parenting magazine article that pointed out how often two year olds are told "no." Over and over and over again. Go listen to the parents of any two year old. You will see what I mean.

And of course there are some important things a two year old needs to hear no about. Touching the stove. Crossing the street alone. Eating things out of the toilet. On the other hand, it can be more beneficial to a developing sense of a child's self t...

eating on TV

We were watching an episode of BONES last week and I noticed that despite the fact that the diner is a frequent location for scenes, no one actually eats anything there. Watch them carefully next time. They make chewing motions and swallowing motions, but follow the fork into the mouth. It is empty or obscured by a hand or something else.

Why is this important to me? I don't know. But on HOUSE, they really eat. You see HOUSE take big bites of Wilson's food. And every time they reshoot...

Pushing kids

15's cousin C joined in with the other teens in our family "adult" discussion last night. I talked about a friend whose son had shown no interest in any extracurricular activity at 9. She thinks that, if given a choice, he would play on the computer all day long. She has enrolled him in swim lessons instead. I wondered if parents need to push their kids, or if they should simply wait for the kids to tell them what they want to do.

12, for example, showed little interest in anything but c...

joining the digital age

A couple of weeks ago, I finally went and bought myself an iphone. I kept thinking that there was no way for me to justify such an expensive toy. I hate cellphones. I don't use them except in emergencies. I've never been a huge apple fan. But a couple of friends have iphones and just a couple of little peeks at them made my mouth start to water.

Sure enough, as soon as I got one, I was downloading books and reading them. I love that tiny screen. I really do. I may stop buying physical ...

skinny jeans and body issues

They are back in, thirty years later. I loved these jeans and it was only about five years ago that I got rid of all my old skinny jeans and was converted to the low rider, flared jeans. But now I look at the skinny jeans and wonder who in the world is flattered by the style? Perhaps only high school girls. I remember trying to wear Levis 501s in a size 26 waist, purely because I wanted to wear a smaller waist than another girl in my class. But she had a very different figure than mine, ...

Books Read in September 2009

The Patriot Witch by C.C. Finlay
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Telling Lies by Paul Ekman
Jakarta Missing by Jane Kurtz
Something Wicked by Alan Gratz
Crashed by Robin Wasserman
Pale Assassin by Patricia Elliott
Hotel on the Corner of Sweet and Bitter by Jamie Ford
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe
Realms of Fantasy October 2009
Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr
The Stone Child by Dan Poblocki
The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo
Sacred Scars by Kathleen Duey
IGMS # 13
IGMS # 14
Asimov'...

Do you remember your ACT score?

I was reminded by a conversation with one of my dear high school friends yesterday that in high school, there were a group of us "friends" who made each other crazy with a list of scores on tests that we allowed to define us. ACT, SAT, NMSQT, AP, State Math Test, Sterling Scholars, and so on. Why did we do this?

Well, for one thing, we weren't the popular kids. We weren't cheerleaders. We weren't sporty. We were the smart kids. We had a very small niche allowed to us, and it was the only...

Do or not do

In this month's Runner's World, US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan is interviewed on her running. One of the interesting things she said was that she never fails at running. When she goes out on a run, she always runs and therefore she is always successful. But a poem, according to her, is often a failure, no matter how hard she works on it. She doesn't have control over this.

I find this fascinating. Because I suspect that most of her poems, by my standards, are wild successes. Whereas her runni...