Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 3
July 19, 2022
Disney World, Disability, and Celiac
It’s been a month since we returned from Disney World, and for that entire time I’ve been intending to reflect about Disney with disability/celiac.
We are planners in our house, but oh! the heights of planning we have achieved since my daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease. Our first meal at a restaurant required a detailed conversation with the Culver’s manager the visit BEFORE we actually ordered food (as opposed to ice cream) for her.
Disney World is well known as a food allergy haven. At sit-down restaurants, the chef will come out and talk to you. At the quick service Commissary in Hollywood Studios, the food for Julianna came from a totally different part of the restaurant than everyone else’s. All their Quick-service places have a dedicated GF fryer. I mean, !!!!
Sit down dinner at Liberty Tree Inn on our first day cost $300 (it’s a prix fixe), but Julianna got a feast of her own—right down to rolls. She was giddy with the freedom.
However, $300 a meal is a quick path to bankruptcy, so we ordered from Instacart to stock the cabin. We ate all breakfasts “at home” and packed about half our lunches for park days, and cooked 3 dinners in the cabin. It worked really well… we didn’t abandon too much food. (I hope the cabin cleaners took that untouched broccoli home!)
But I also knew I couldn’t assume that every GF item I needed would be in stock at Publix. Like taco seasoning. Did you know a lot of taco seasonings have gluten in them?
So I started packing for Disney 8 weeks in advance, as I planned meals, knowing I would forget things if I didn’t. Most of us can forget to pack something and say, “Darn, now I have to spend a little more $$.” In our case, it actually had health and wellness implications. I couldn’t afford to forget anything.
So, beginning in March, I mixed up a batch of taco seasoning (easier than asking an anonymous Instacart shopper to find one that’s GF, trust me) and put the half cup I needed in a baggie and threw it in a crate… along with a bottle of of Italian seasoning. And the backpacks. And the water bottles. (Julianna’s water—she has her own dedicated water bottle now. It’s pink. It’s unmistakable.) I found GF instant mac & cheese (YOW, that stuff was HORRIBLE! No one would eat it) and GF instant oatmeal and packed dried fruit for yogurt. One of our suitcases was called “food, pool, and pharmacy.” (Acetaminophen, ibuprofen, nighttime cold meds…)
Our kitchen at Fort Wilderness was GF except for a box of Cheez Its. We skipped the bread—sandwiches get smashed and gross in a backpack anyway–and went with meat-and-cheese rolls and crackers (GF and non-GF.) You can dole all that out and save the gluten for last. Because in a theme park, you can’t wash your hands 10x while making a meal, which is what I have to do at home. (Not an exaggeration.)
Anyway, it was high maintenance in the planning phase but well worth it.
The other thing I wanted to share was about the DAS (Disability Access Service) pass. Procedures change all the time, but at least at the moment, Disney is doing “lightning lanes” that you pay for. The DAS pass is a free version of the same thing for people with disabilities and up to 5 family members. Disney is EXTREMELY disability friendly. So many scooters on the busses for people who have straightforward mobility issues. People with mobility issues get priority.
Anyway… because we had the DAS pass, the longest line we waited in was 25-30 minutes, and that was a) Space Mountain, because Julianna wasn’t in a thousand years going to ride that one so the DAS pass didn’t apply, and b) the brand new Guardians of the Galaxy coaster, which she did ride (and loved), but which you didn’t need a DAS pass for because they were only doing virtual queue and you signed up in advance for a boarding group.
We were seven days in parks, and we could have quit 1-2 sooner, because we’d done everything. Splash Mountain about 6 times… Thunder Mountain twice in quick succession… the Pandora “flight” ride (the one with a 2.5-hour “standby” line) twice, Rise of the Resistance 3x in one day, the Smuggler’s Run the same.
We told the boys, “You guys really don’t understand what Disney World is like. This is not how it usually is. Someday you’re going to want to take your kids to Disney and you’re going to be begging your sister to come along.” 
At the risk of sounding like a Disney ad, I just have to say: Disney earns its reputation as a family friendly company and vacation destination through hard work and attention to detail. We WERE able to find a single “hotel” room that accommodated six people—there aren’t as many as those that accommodate five, but they are there. And six is the perfect number in park, because every ride that is not an individual rider (like Space Mountain) or a group of 6 (like the Smuggler’s Run) is divided by 2s or 3s. You do the math. No matter how you split it, a family of 6 gets to be together, without being paired with strangers.
Also, after this trip it occurred to me that as much as we all grouse about the expense of a Disney trip, I am no longer convinced it’s overpriced. I mean, look at these sets. The sheer attention to detail—in the sets and in the lines, as well as in the rides themselves—is exquisite.
The last waiting area for Smuggler’s Run has everything–right down to the game board and, up on the shelf behind, the laser ball and helmet used to train Luke.
And inside the cockpit, it’s almost like being there for real.
Rise of the Resistance: a full-sized transport shuttle you go outside to board… and somehow, when that door opens again, it opens in the docking bay of a star destroyer.
Yes. That’s what that door opens to after “takeoff.”
The Imperial walkers are so big, you can’t even get them in a single frame.
And in another universe, this is the Pandora set at Animal Kingdom. Not part of the rides. Just the set around it.
July 7, 2022
Claiming Space
I spent the first 8 days of June preparing our family for a trip to Disney World, days 8-18 IN Disney World, days 19-26 unpacking, reorganizing, and shopping to keep our family fed in two different locations while I was in a third; and days 26-+1 presenting/playing at convention.
Since I returned, I have been in catchup mode. And by “catchup” I mean doing everything for the family that got stuck on the “later” shelf for the last 4+ weeks.
I had visions of blissfully returning to novel writing on July 5th while the kids continued their dad-instituted daily chore list.
But then I saw my 13-year-old’s infected toenail and my 15-year-old’s maladjusted glasses, and I found out I had been exposed to Covid last week, so I had to get a PCR test (negative!), and the kids had piano lessons and dental appointments…
Day One of “normal” summer saw very little housework done, because—gasp—I had the gall to reserve out ONE HOUR of concentrated writing time instead of supervising.
I quit working as a liturgy director in 2004 so I could be a full-time mom. Although I’ve long since relabeled myself as “work-from-home,” I still have hangups about the balance of work and motherhood. I quit all non-essential work at the beginning of June—essential defined as “facing an imminent deadline”—and put all my focus on a successful family vacation and then a successful convention.
So here we are, on the far side.
I don’t know about others, but for me it’s really hard to carve out time for at-home professional work when the kids are around—even when they’re older and (theoretically) self-sufficient. They still have to eat, and when they’re home there are more meals to plan and shop for, and with a celiac in the house I have to supervise lunch prep lest she get cross-contaminated. Since I started drafting this blog post, I’ve been interrupted to pull bread out of the oven and massage a muscle spasm out of a teenager’s back. And yes, they can do chores, but after week 1, most chores require a lot of “what do I do with___?” And if they have to keep interrupting to ask questions, that’s every bit as disruptive as just stopping work to do it myself. Writing is brain work. You can’t just bop in and out of it shallowly. It demands full attention.
All this underscores how much easier it would be to throw in the towel and be a genuine full-time mom. But if I did, I know I would be restless, irritable, and aware at all times of what pieces of myself would atrophy. Motherhood is vocation. But so is writing.
And so I claim space for myself, however small. Even when it’s hard.
No. ESPECIALLY when it’s hard.
July 5, 2022
Between Luddism and addiction
Last night I dreamed I had a smart phone and I was eating it.
Weird, I know. I’ll chalk it up to being in the process of writing this blog post. Because I had a moment this past week that shocked me, even though it was only a visceral confirmation of things I already knew.
Most of you know I don’t use a smart phone. It’s a choice I’ve made based partly because I’m cheap, but more so on observing how devices are used all around me and recognizing that I don’t want to live like that.
To be clear, when I’m at home, I’m as addicted to “just checking” fill-in-the-blank as anyone else. I’m like those dogs in the movie “Up”, going “Squirrel!”
I’ll sit there “working,” but actually fighting the compulsion to check Facebook or Instagram or email because that is easier than figuring out whatever plot or character or text phrasing problem is plaguing me.
But if I leave home, I can truly be offline. It’s incredibly restful.
However, I do own an iPad Pro that we bought for playing music. I don’t mean Apple music. I mean notes on a page, from which I play flute, sing, or conduct (that last if I can ever get my act together and get the scores loaded on it). This past week I was at NPM (the pastoral music convention), playing a concert, three showcases, and a breakout session and leading another breakout session, and I was able to go paperless. Woohoo!
The iPad also served as my camera and library for our family trip to Disney World. So for the ten days I was at Disney and the five at convention, my iPad Pro was in my backpack and connected to wifi at all times. It was, in fact, in front of my face most of the convention.
I did a lot of “checking.” A lot.
And one morning, as I was sitting with the device on my lap in a plenum talk that I was really interested in, I became aware that I was having trouble concentrating because I felt this deep, irresistible compulsion to unlock the iPad and “just check” something. Facebook, email, Insta… didn’t matter. SOMETHING.
It was a pretty stark moment of clarity. I detest typing on a flat screen, so I certainly wasn’t holding the device so I could take notes. I had no interest in taking a picture. I had just checked Facebook before she started talking, and to check again would distract me from the present moment–which was a moment I wanted to be fully immersed in.
Nope, it was nothing more complicated than the fact that the thing was sitting there on my lap in all its addictive glory, whining for my attention.
I put it on the floor, and it was astonishing how instantly my focus shifted, my heart and mind returning to the present instead of the meta-world. The rest of the week I left it in the backpack when I was in sessions, which was better still.
This experience reiterated why I run this complicated and difficult path between Luddism and caving to societal pressure. Life is definitely more complicated without a smart phone. More and more things can’t be done at all without one. Travel nearly depends on it now.
I check my assumptions all the time, but I keep returning to this truth: we need stillness and emptiness in our lives, and yet the structure of modern life is to fill every second with stimuli. Precious few of us are equipped with the emotional stamina to give ourselves emptiness and stillness when we have distraction at our fingertips at every moment. I am not one of them.
I have spent my entire adult life learning to safeguard my spiritual & emotional health through stillness and the ability to disconnect. To be unavailable. And that morning, it was crystal clear to me how precarious my hold on those tools really is.
June 8, 2022
Giveaway: Because it’s Women’s Fiction Day!
I have been writing stories since I was 8 years old. Seriously.
My second cousin and I used to sit in the back of the Catholic school bus (and yes, both the second cousin and the Catholic school bus reveal a heck of a lot about what kind of life I lived as a child!) when I was in the second grade and she was in the first grade, writing stories on notebook paper. I wrote about Annie. She wrote about E.T. (Which also tells you a lot… about my age, anyway.)
I wrote stories upon stories for fun. I loved standardized testing week, because I was a fast test taker, and I always had lots of time to read… and write. Princesses. Several princesses. Later, a 3-volume mashup of princesses + Lord of the Rings. An ice skating story. A story about people with telepathy. A bad takeoff on Young Riders, set on another planet. Eventually, after I got married, a story about wine country.
I was working full-time as a liturgy director when a friend of mine started taking a correspondence course to learn to write children’s books. That was in the first days of our infertility journey, and although I had never thought about writing children’s books, it was the first time it ever occurred to me that you could just take a class in creative writing. So I took their test, and they sent back an acceptance saying, “Thanks for choosing us; we know you have lots of alternatives…”
And I thought: I do?
Then I thought, “What am I writing, anyway? How long is a novel? Have I been writing novels all these years?”
Spoiler alert: I HAD!!!!
I found a class better suited to me.
And when we did start having kids, and I quit working to be the at-home mom, I started digging in. Early mornings… while nursing… at naptime.
I discovered a whole world online. I started blogging. Joining blog hops. Writing freelance. Making online friends that I still, to this day, haven’t met in person, but whose friendship I value incredibly deeply. Most of all: learning. Reading articles–about agents, querying, the need to “find your genre.”
I couldn’t figure out what mine was. I love a good love story, but romance is NOT my jam. I tried really hard to make myself fit in that genre–I even wrote an entire manuscript–but it simply would not follow the rules. I thought I was doomed, because where was there a spot on the shelf where my books would “live”?
And then, through Amy Sue Nathan, I discovered Women’s Fiction, and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.
WFWA is an amazing, diverse, all-volunteer organization of women AND MEN around the world, supporting each other and building a proud place for Women’s Fiction in the literary world. We define women’s fiction as fiction that centers on a character’s emotional journey. It can have elements of romance, suspense, sci-fi, fantasy, or magical realism, but at its heart, it is about a character finding–or growing into–his or her place in the world.
This is exactly what I have always written. And because of WFWA, I know where my place is on the bookstore shelves.
This Wednesday is Women’s Fiction Day. And guess what? I’m celebrating by taking part in a 4-book giveaway with WFWA authors!
Click here to enter!
June 3, 2022
A Weekend Hermitage
Well, not really, but it looks cool!Photo by Brady Knoll on Pexels.com
Last weekend, I was alone in my house for 48 hours.
This might seem like a non-event, but for the matriarch of a gang of 6 (did I really just refer to myself as a matriarch? Ugh!), it really is an event. I do not think I have been by myself in this house overnight in seventeen years. I have taken work trips, but that’s not quite the same.
How did this miracle occur? Well, we were planning to spend Memorial Day weekend at my in-laws’ lake house, but #3 was leaving on a science trip and his departure was on Saturday. First we thought we’d put him on the bus and go, but then we found out his bus didn’t leave until late afternoon. By that time it’s questionable whether it’s worth going down at all.
So I waved my husband and #s 1, 2, and 4 out of the driveway after breakfast on Saturday, and 6 hours later put #3 on the bus to the Tetons—and went home to an empty house.
Life has been ridiculous this year. You always think, “This is it, it’s as busy as it could possibly get.” And then the universe cackles, “O-ho-ho, is THAT what you think?” and rubs its hands together in glee.
I have felt like I could barely breathe for about… well, I was going to say since April, but then I backed it up to March, and then I remember how grouchy I was in March because I was too busy to get anything done, and I am forced to consider the possibility that it’s been this entire danged calendar year.
So I will admit that when I realized the implications of this new plan, my heart felt big and expansive, while simultaneously holding its breath.
My primary fear was that I wouldn’t make good use of it. How DO you make good use of such a weekend? Filling it with other social engagements is nothing but replacing one kind of chaos with another. I love my friends and I love my family, but if I have a weekend to be a hermit, by golly I want to HERMIT. (Yes. I did just make it into a verb.)
So Saturday evening, I had dinner and watched a movie and then took myself down to my beloved writing patio—a place where normally I am constantly checking the time—and I dove into writing a flashback scene for Book 3 (book 2 is awaiting 2nd round feedback at present). I thought I knew the characters’ history—a woman and her sister—but things were popping out in that scene that I did not know had happened to them! That’s where the magic is, people.
Some time later, my laptop went into battery saver mode, and I came up for air to find that it was totally dark outside—so dark, the world ended at my computer screen—and that it was bedtime.
I thought about watching some TV, but went to bed instead. So in the morning, I went down to the piano at 6:30… because there was no one to disturb! I practiced stuff I have to play at convention and revised a psalm setting before going outside to prune the spent peonies and the maple tree you can’t mow underneath and one of the forsythias. I mowed the entire lawn. Took a shower. Went and bought bite-sized gooey butter cakes from my friend at the artisans’ market. All before church! I ate lunch. Read about 50 pages of a book. Folded laundry.
And then back to the patio, to alternate writing with watching the sycamores sway.
Monday morning I got up early again so I could go kayaking before everyone else came out to the lake. And then more writing, and—when my brain finally shut down–I took a break and watched some Netflix until it came time to flip the switch and go back to being home and logistics coordinator… i.e. get dinner going so it would be ready when the traveling hordes returned.
It was an amazing weekend.
Now we’re right back in the chaos—such chaos, I didn’t even get this post finished until Friday afternoon! (Does Friday actually exist during summer break? There are no days of the week when kids are home from school, are there?)
Staying home meant I missed some great moments with the family.
But I got something precious in return.
May 13, 2022
Stream of Consciousness
I’m writing this on a Thursday night (though it won’t post until morning), sitting on my deck by myself on a lovely evening in May. If any of you have ever had four kids, three of them teenagers, you know what my May is like. Currently we have soccer, baseball, horseback, color guard, drumline auditions, 4H, scouts, recitals, concerts… have I missed something? Oh yes, I have. College research!
We had choir practice canceled for us this week because the parish needed the church. It was the first unscheduled night we’ve had in weeks—weekends included! And even at that, it was a little sketchy since #4 had soccer practice for an hour.
So, anyway, I’m exhausted. And I smell like horses, because I have been volunteering at the therapeutic riding farm—while Miss J rides, I “side walk” for a different rider.
But my exhaustion is not just because of busy-ness. And it’s not mere lack of sleep, either, although that problem continues to be, well, a problem. These days it is aggravated by chronic pain in my right upper back and my left elbow. I’ve done PT, I’ve done massage, I stretch, I use heat… during the day I’m mostly fine, but those nights are no fun, let me tell you.
And then there’s the exhaustion of feeling not up to the task of raising my kids. I was feeling pretty good about the celiac thing until last week I got called to bring her home again for GI issues—schools are pretty rigid with their rules around health matters!—and we couldn’t figure out if it was actually a bug or another gluten exposure. We were actually hoping for a bug, because we’d gone to Culver’s for lunch after multiple investigations of their GF procedures, and if it was a gluten exposure, then it calls into question ever eating out anywhere ever again.
And then, the last two days, more fun, not surrounding GI, but behavioral things that made the special ed team say, “She has to have been glutened.”
Except I traced backward. She and her brother were confirmed on Saturday, and the meal was very particularly planned to be 100% gluten free. Dessert was mixed, but the gluten-y treat was store-bought and we were ridiculously careful about how we served. There’s no way she got glutened by cross-contamination from donuts she didn’t have. Besides, that was 5 days ago.
Sunday was leftovers. Monday and Wednesday I cooked all-GF meals, and Tuesday I heated up her leftovers before I took her to guard. If she got glutened, it did not happen in this house. And the school, where she’s currently eating her other two meals, is treating her “like she’d go into anaphylactic shock if she got gluten,” her teacher said.
So then we start thinking, Could she be sneaking food somewhere? Could someone in choir, or in color guard, have given her something?
But she asks all.the.time if what she’s being offered is gluten free. So that makes no sense either.
So maybe this nothing more than hormones + senioritis (because she’s only got 2 weeks left of middle school), filtered through the lens of a cognitive disability?
You can’t get an answer out of my daughter when she doesn’t want to give one. You legitimately can’t tell if she doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to.
She perked up once I came to get her. Plenty of physical & mental acuity for horseback and color guard, apparently!
This parenthood thing can be intensely wearing, both physically and emotionally/mentally/spiritually.
I just needed that out there, while I had an hour where no one needs me.
Just a note: I most likely will not respond to questions and advice. Sometimes there really aren’t solutions, and you just have to get through the hard stuff.
April 11, 2022
Cuddled By God
Thank God for good friends.
Friends who bring wine to choir practice when they know you’ve had a crappy (series of) day(s). Friends who stand in your driveway and cry with you when you say, “Why does everything have to be so HARD?” Friends who send you links to articles and reflections that challenge you to be less SMALL than you want to be. Who gently push back, yet without judgment or loss of love or good opinion, when they see you not living up to who you want to be.
Friends who offer their back yard haven to you for a wifi-free, quiet place by running water to work for hours.
Last year I went to this friend’s gazebo once a week to work, and without exception, those days were incredibly productive days. And soul food, besides. It’s a dream come true, being able to sit in shelter and yet be outside, to have electricity to recharge the laptop and yet be in a place where there are no distractions and nature is all around.
Last week I returned to that favorite writing spot for the first time this year. I have always focused my gazebo time on fiction, but last week I was in between projects: one book awaiting agent feedback; the next book awaiting critique partners’ feedback.
So I spent my time cutting a freelance article down to size, and then I played with a text for a liturgical song.
And I soaked in the presence of God everywhere.
I discovered a little hollow in the gouged-out bank of the creek. Quite by accident, I laid down to ease my hurting back and discovered that the hollow perfectly fit my body size and shape, with last fall’s leaves tucking me in with the perfect mix of weight and give. It was like being cuddled by God.
No wonder this place allows me to do such good work.
March 28, 2022
Back to Basics
Photo by Phu NguyenShortly before the Covid shutdowns, I bought a new headjoint for my flute. A flute has three pieces, and although the material and the workmanship is important to all three, the headjoint is the one you upgrade if you aren’t upgrading the whole instrument.
This particular one is glorious, with a brilliant tone and an ease of motion between high and low registers. It also has a gold embouchure plate. I’ve always dreamed of playing a gold flute; in fact, at one point I saved $10K for it before I accepted that it would be a totally unjustified expense, given that I am not a full-time professional player. And with the many, many muscle & joint issues my body has gifted me with over the last twenty-odd years, I have no business holding an instrument that heavy, anyway. So a gold lip plate is a piece of that dream.
And yet, after the transition, I knew I was playing sharp in the upper range. But until quite recently I hadn’t taken the time to examine just how much so. Now I’ve developed a bit of a neurosis about it. I started asking questions online and playing around with suggestions from the pros.
But then one day I remembered a piece of the basic tone instruction that I spent my entire time in graduate school learning: raise the soft palate. I’ve said this to every flute student for twenty years. Until that moment, I would have said, “Of course I’m playing with a raised soft palate.”
But when I focused on it, I realized I kind of wasn’t. And when I did raise it, suddenly my pitch problems moved from “critical” to “manageable.”
“Duh,” I thought.
This weekend, I attended a vocal workshop. My singing voice feels less… let’s call it obedient… than it used to, so I was really looking forward to some new insights.
Guess what? Once again, I found myself re-learning lessons I already knew, but which had gotten buried under an avalanche of life. I asked about a catch that happens sometimes mid-phrase. The (totally amazing) presenter came over and pushed on my abdominal muscles the same way I have been known to do on flute students, and told me to use my muscles just as I do for flute.
Sunday morning in the car on the way to Jazzercise, I experimented with some of those basic, first-voice-lesson fundamentals. My daughter got a huge giggle out of it; I’d forgotten how silly they sound to others. But it reminded me that those ridiculous exercises are good because when you do them, you CAN’T sing wrong. Not “it’s easier to sing right.” It’s impossible NOT to.
And so later, at church, as my voice danced around the edge of what felt comfortable, I kicked in all my abs to a level I don’t ever in my life remember using for singing. I pulled my head back over my spine instead of thrusting forward, however minutely. All those basic lessons my vocal teacher gave me on day one.
And you know what? Magic happened.
If the non-musicians among you are still reading… which you may not be… here’s the point:
Sometimes we have to revisit the basics, because no matter how well we think we know them, our bodies get lazy and our brains get full, and we forget to put effort into the things that matter most.
I think this lesson probably applies to everyone reading this in some area of life. Hopefully it inspires you.
Happy Monday!
March 16, 2022
Lunchtime concert
I’m presenting a lunchtime concert today for the National Association of Pastoral Musicians. Enjoy!
March 14, 2022
#Things That Make You go, “Hmm.”
It’s one of those tropes in literature and TV and movies. At the height of their struggle, Hero does what must be done and then conks out, only to wake up three days later, in their bed at home.
With no sign of having had any bodily functions while they were asleep.
#thingsthatmakeyouwonder
+++It has been a heck of a few weeks, both personally and in the larger world. I have been trying to blog weekly, but my own life is more than I can handle now, let alone the news from Eastern Europe. Lord, have mercy. So I figured I’d take it easy on us all today and do something light and funny(ish).+++
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