Eden M. Kennedy's Blog, page 2
November 2, 2013
Re-do
Apparently I needed to nap most of the afternoon, after a morning of watching an X-Men movie and forcing Jackson to overcome his fear of Beetlejuice (“Who is Michael Keaton again? But which janitor on 30 Rock?”). Consequently, I have not finished the drawing for today, which was supposed to be something yoga related. I chose the shortest yoga sutra I could find, did a terrible job lettering it, and then took an out-of-focus photo of it. Yeah, I’m calling a re-do for tomorrow, I’m taking that extra hour of tomorrow and calling it today.
November 1, 2013
Oh, why not
National Blog Posting Month, you got me. I’m yours. What do you want? Oh, you want me to finish all the drawings I promised to people who donated to my Red Cross and Charity Water campaign one year ago, and who haven’t made a peep of complaint yet? That’s fair.
This one was for someone who requested a drawing that would make two preschool-age boys laugh. I hope it worked.
October 21, 2013
A progression of healing thoughts
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October 3, 2013
I love you enough to keep waiting like this
Some time ago a friend told me about a birthday or Mother’s Day card her now-adult son had made her when he was a kid. Not one for Hallmarkian displays of sentiment, inside it he wrote, “I love you more than five hundred bucks.” I always thought that was a pretty good approximation of how much love you can have for some people. Five hundred bucks is a lot of money whether you’re a kid or not; I don’t have anywhere near that in my wallet right now. I briefly had more than that in my bag a couple of weeks ago, after we’d sold a bunch of my deceased mother-in-law’s jewelry to a local guy who only paid in cash, but I only had to worry about it for about fifteen minutes or so.
I love you more than how anxiously I drove to the bank to deposit that cash before someone realized they should rob me
I love you more than the relief I had afterward (and the spinach and goat cheese crepe you bought me for lunch at Le Petit Valentien)
I love you more than 7.5 hours of sleep per night, which I keep not getting because of you (JACKSON)
I love you enough to spend two years knitting a sweater even though I’m worried it won’t fit you very well when it’s done
I love you enough to watch three seasons of a show you adore even though I have to concentrate more than I’d prefer to follow the plot
I love you enough to wash, dry, and fold your laundry, but I will not put it away because I am not your maid
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I finished the first draft of my novel on Monday, 49,000 words, all of them mine, every stupid last one of them. The manuscript is a mess and the ending is awkward and the number one thing that feels great about it, apart from the sense of achievement (I wrote a novel! No, you can’t read it yet!), is the fact that I went to bed on Monday night going, Hmm, well, now what? and I woke up Tuesday morning finally understanding the whole purpose of the thing and knowing everything I had to do next to get it into shape. I was just lying there and it came to me. Because I am magical.
And then I forced myself to take the day off and not think about it. (I have a lot of blogging, drawing, and knitting to catch up on.)(Oh, god, so much drawing!)
My blind hope when I started working on this book last September was that if I just trusted and typed out words that made English sentences, maybe something deeper would activate while I worked. I recommend this process if you’re interested in becoming more comfortable with uncertainty and don’t mind running around in circles for a year. It’s totally demoralizing, but in the end it kind of works. I also recommend Alan Watt‘s The 90-Day Novel, which totally spoke to me on the woo-woo level where I spend half my time anyway (though in my hands it became The 385-Day Novel).
When I started I didn’t have a plot, all I had was an interesting situation for two people to be in, a husband and a wife, with some sort of offspring (male? female? toddler? high school sophomore?) to be determined later. Almost as soon as I began writing I realized that the husband needed to be the wife’s character and the wife needed to be the husband. When that finally felt right, then the age (fifteen) of their child (daughter) suddenly became clear. Next, other characters began popping up and doing what they needed to do, situations began suggesting themselves and were duly explored, paragraphs were written and either kept or shelved, and third-person omniscient changed into first person halfway through and then back to third and I’m really not looking forward to sorting that out.
Some days I’d write 90 words, some days I’d write 2,000. Sometimes it felt like I was trying to build an air-conditioned birdhouse with no blueprints, or put together a jigsaw puzzle of the sky, or flex a muscle in my head that I wasn’t sure even existed. One day about six months ago I felt the barest glimmer of something new inside coming to life, and (I don’t know how to describe it without sounding like I’ve lost my mind) what I was doing suddenly felt so precious, felt so sacred, that I didn’t want to move or think or breathe for fear of scaring it away. I sat so carefully and gently, building my birdhouse so respectfully — because suddenly a bird that was supposed to be extinct was on my windowsill looking at me.
Along with that bird came a feeling that I thought was extinct. It felt like being in a kind of love. And I apologize for all of this if the book ends up being total horse shit, but it felt like finding the thing or the one who (perhaps? maybe? if I don’t push or get clingy and ruin it?) was going to fall for me, too, all the way. The feeling was completely mutual. It’s something that I haven’t felt for a very long time, not since I used to write poetry. It seems particular to writing, for me? It didn’t last for very long, maybe a day or two, but it was the luckiest, scariest feeling in the world while it was in bloom.
It faded a bit after that, but everything fell into a nice routine. I began to really trust myself now. It felt like I/we were building something with a lot of potential. Of course, there were times when I felt like picking a fight, or ignored it for days on end, but that all felt like part of the process. On bad days I was bored and just went through the motions. But I didn’t want to throw in the towel so I talked it through with a third party until I reached a new understanding. I apologized for being so distant, I resolved to try a different approach, to be attentive and adjust my pace, to take breaks when I needed them, but to keep showing up. And that’s how we made it work.
The Rules of Writing an Interesting Story say that you’re supposed to be throwing bombs at your characters all the way through so they can battle their way past every obstacle in search of their goal, their grail, their Rosebud, their Revolution, their Happily Ever After, and through this journey they refine their fondest wishes and grow and change and become worth following for 300 pages or so. Maybe that’s old fashioned, to tell a story like that, and that’s fine. I’m interested in seeing what happens when you follow those rules, and then maybe to see how far they’ll bend. As we all know, you need to learn the rules before you can throw them away, if you’re going to say anything new.
Now onto draft two! This post is too long! Here’s a photo from my dog’s Instagram account. Peewee always has something new to say.
September 7, 2013
More Things I Have Learned
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July 17, 2013
My Weird Little Trip to CVS
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June 28, 2013
12 Years Ago Today
Twelve years ago this morning I woke up, tried to roll over, and burst into tears. I weighed almost 200 pounds and could not fathom how I’d make it through another day of pregnancy. Fortunately, by 11:20 p.m. that night I had one of these:
(It actually took two months for him to look like this.
When he first came out he looked a lot angrier.)
This morning Jackson woke up and asked for Cheetos and a Mexican Coke for breakfast, and reader, I sang Happy Birthday To You and gave it to him. It was a lot easier than to try to start lactating again.
Today he looks more like this:
I did not draw this, a tired caricature artist at Legoland did it for $15.
Jack, watching Jackson getting dressed for day camp in a black t-shirt: “A black t-shirt? Seriously? It’s going to be 90 degrees out there today.”
Jackson: “I like this t-shirt.”
Jack: “Good, then you’re going to die wearing it.”
Jackson: *puts on long pants, knee-high socks, and high-top Converse*
Jack: “You can’t be serious.”
Jackson: *puts on wool beanie*
Jack (to me): “Are you going to weigh in on this?”
Me: “I think he looks cute.”
Jackson: “Thanks, Mom.”
Me: “You’re welcome.”
Jack (taking off white t-shirt, going to closet): “Fine.”
Me: “Peewee, you need to take off your coat, it’s going to be 90 degrees out there today.”
Peewee: *wags because he heard his name*
Jack (comes back from closet wearing black t-shirt): “Then I, too, shall wear a black t-shirt.”
Me: “You look cute, too.”
Jack: “I’ve waited all week to hear you to say that.”
Me: “Does this mean we’re going to have sex today?”
Jackson: “IS THAT WHAT YOU GUYS DO WHEN I’M AT CAMP?!”
June 21, 2013
I got the swag and it’s pumping out my ovaries
Yesterday, for the first time in all my days, I cracked open a chicken’s egg from the grocery store (a non-organic, factory farmed, 18-to-a-carton, supposedly non-fertilized egg) and out came a yellow yolk swirling in blood. Blood, my friends.
The first thing I thought was, “Oh, it’s fertilized, hm.” The second thing I thought was, “Wait, what would a rooster be doing in an egg-laying situation?” Commercially, chickens are either bred for meat or bred to lay eggs and there isn’t much use for a male from the egg-layer breed so they’re usually culled (euphemism for gassed or macerated! Let’s all be vegans now). My third thought was, “Oh, maybe this is a cancer egg.” Like, Oh there’s a bloody tumor in my egg, I guess I will wash it down the drain and get a new one so I don’t catch the cancer.
NOT COOL, MAN
Let me tell you a story about the healing power that resides in the common ice cube. Over the weekend I was pulling a sheet of sweet potato fries out of the oven and the dish towel I was using to protect my hand slipped. It just fell onto the oven door and I had that weird moment of unprotected forward momentum vs. OH SHIT. Unfortunately, it was too late for the pad of my left middle finger which, after getting a nice, firm handshake from the 450°F baking sheet, became red and oddly wrinkly, like it had spent too long in a hot bath. I ran some cold water over it right away but yeah, no. So I put an ice cube in our last remaining unbroken espresso cup and I pressed down on the ice and watched the heat from my finger melt it into a U-shape. Then I got another cube and did it again. Jack, who got his Ph.D. from Suck It Up University, was all, Yeah, but I’ve got a lot happening on the grill at the moment and I still need you to make a salad. So I set the table and made a salad with one hand in an espresso cup, and spent the rest of the night taking my finger out of the cup and then going, Nope, it’s still on fire. After four hours of ice it was okay again, but I despair for those who burnt themselves in the days before refrigeration and who got their parts slathered in butter or lard or some such. And for people whose grandmothers still haunt them into handling small burns that way and infecting the shit out of themselves.
ICE ICE BABY
Then! I had an incident yesterday where I was carrying a three-gallon glass bottle full of water — so, 25 pounds of water, plus around 8 for the bottle — and my ankle turned. I was wearing an old pair of Dansko clogs on badly patched asphalt. (Although, believe me, I can fall off of a flip flop. It’s a gift.) My ankle was fine but I completely lost my balance and I had to make one of those split-second decisions: drop the bottle, or not? A girl in my co-op in college once dropped a glass water pitcher and a huge shard of it ended up wedged in the top of her foot. I wasn’t thinking of her at that very second, but I guess I had thought enough about her in the past to have processed Big Chunk Of Glass In Foot. It wasn’t one of those times where everything goes in slow motion — if anything, time sped up, because the next instant I had brought my full weight plus the 33 pounds I was carrying bang! down on my knees on the crumbly asphalt.
I put the bottle down and tried to stand up, but since I was just about to pass out I decided to sit on the hood of my car while two guys who saw the whole thing happen came up and asked me if I was okay. I reassured them that I was fine, and then I seriously forgot who I was for a minute. One guy offered to put the bottle in my car, and I was all, “Sure! Just ignore the bulldog in the back who is losing his mind barking.” Then I was all, “Well this is a great time to operate heavy machinery,” because I still had to drive a few more miles to pick up Jackson from his day camp. I felt around my knees with my hands — they were a little sore, but I’d managed to come straight down on them equally and hadn’t heard anything crack or pop — so I started my car and drove away, like an insane person. The moral of this story is that I got us all home just fine and then I sat with my feet up and two Ziploc bags of ice on my knees and played Angry Birds Star Wars like it was my job for the next hour, and then I drank five glasses of wine.
WHAT WERE WE TALKING ABOUT?
I took Jackson and one of his good friends to Legoland and the San Diego Zoo last week as an early birthday present. The second night at the Legoland Hotel (which has the nicest staff on earth, there just aren’t enough of them. Valet parking was free, but then it took them an hour to get my car. I could see it from the lobby, so eventually I was all, “Can you just give me the keys and I’ll get it myself?” and the cute, sweaty valet staff was all, “Sure! We’re so sorry,” and I was all, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” and they were all, “Is there anything else we can do for you?” and I was all, “I’m in room 1044. I’ll send the kids to the pool.”)
Right, so the second night they were showing some Bionicle movie on a screen by the pool. The pool was pretty shallow, and Jackson misjudged the depth and jumped in and banged his heel on the bottom. There were tears. The lifeguard got him an ice pack and felt for broken bones, swelling, etc. (all clear), and I cuddled him up on a day bed and we watched the movie (which, thanks, Lego, for writing one of the four Bionicle warriors as a girl who kicked ass, made jokes, and didn’t need to be saved). Afterward, he limped over to thank the lifeguard (heart: melted) and then he said to me, “I’m not cold but I can’t stop shaking.” I’d read something recently about how the body will process trauma by trembling, and how it’s useful and not something to suppress, so I didn’t worry too much, I just bundled him up and kept an eye on him and he stopped after a minute or two.
Foot injury is not optimal the day before you planned to walk 5.8 million miles through the San Diego Zoo, but he said he said he could do it so off we went. He was limping after lunch, though, so I said fuck it and rented a wheelchair for $12. He loved it until he was confronted with his first curb. It was a good lesson in not taking your mobility for granted.
This post is way too long so I will wrap it up with KOALAS AND WOMBATS, HELP ME I AM DEAD FROM UNREQUITED CUDDLE SYNDROME.
Koala Yoda!
The one on the right had a baby clinging to her in its sleep.
It’s hell being nocturnal, isn’t it Mr. Cuddles.
May 29, 2013
I hate shopping more than life itself
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May 12, 2013
Cats playing it straight
This week’s challenge was to draw a cat wearing a wig that looked even half as good as a cat wearing a wig.
And what if it’s a male cat. What then?
What if it’s deaf?
Yes, it’s all good fun when you’re only using Photoshop and can command-Z away all of your criminal instincts. When your weapons are colored pencils, however, you end up with I don’t even know what this is.
Some things are best left untinted:
