Erika Mitchell's Blog, page 21

Happy Boxing Day, From the World’s Laziest Blogger!

You might think I fell off a cliff or perished in some kind of freak child’s-toy-underfoot accident, but alas. No. I live. I don’t blog, but I live.

Christmas just kind of walloped me this year. Well, hold on. To be fair, it’s not all Christmas’s fault. It’s December’s fault. Between Wes’s surgery, our anniversary, Christmas, a second MRI (what? That’s right! Another MRI! Just one more until I get a free pair of scrubs to take home!), and some disappointing medical news, I’ve spent my free time trying to keep my head from exploding, rather than typing about trying to keep my head from exploding.

December is winding down, though, and I have faith things will slow back down to a manageable pace here for a little while. That is, until summer hits and suddenly I’m pitching my book at conferences and such and (hopefully) landing a fancy book agent.

As for the disappointing medical news, it’s nothing too exciting. My pesky knee is being pesky. I apparently have the most friable meniscus in the world. It’ll tear on a whim, even if I’m doing something as banal and tame as carrying a basket of laundry up the stairs. I know, I’m such a daredevil!

The bummer of it is, it’s not advisable to remove the meniscus that tore if it can possibly be prevented. It’s in a problematic place that will hopefully just leave me alone so long as I don’t do anything crazy like pivoting, changing directions quickly, dancing, wearing high heeled shoes, etc.

That’s right, you read that correctly: I’m a 28 year old woman who can never wear high heeled shoes again.

I’m 5′ 10″, mind you, so this isn’t exactly a death sentence. It is, however, a major bummer for lo, I do love to get all fancied up for dates sometimes. Oh, well. I’ll live. Not very nimbly, I suppose, but I’ll live.

Now I suppose I should stop feeling sorry for myself and get back to planning out what I’m going to say at the realistic fiction workshop I’m leading soon for a local youth writing club. I should probably make a point to not say the word “meniscus” a single time during that workshop. I think that’d be a GREAT start.

In Sickness and in Health

Wes and I have been married eight years now. Well, technically, seven years fifty one weeks. Our eighth wedding anniversary is next week and I’ve had much occasion to think about the vows we took that day in 2005.

You see, Wes had minor surgery last week. As I’ve learned from my own brushes with surgery, however, even surgery that’s preceded by the word “minor” means pain and limitations for a good long while.

It was difficult for me to watch Wes get prepped for surgery. Part of the reason, I think, is that there was a strange reversal of roles. Well, there tried to be. Rather, I tried to let there be but it didn’t work out. You see, Wes is the emotionally steady, unshakeable, indefatigable rock of our marriage. He’s confident, he’s calm, he’s rational. I’m a bit more excitable. You can measure my emotional highs and lows with a Richter scale, and because of my inexhaustible imagination I am quite good at conjuring worries where there needn’t be.

Prior to his surgery, I kept asking Wes how he was doing, prepared to comfort him if he needed it. He was fine and in no need of pep talks. Despite his stoic calm, I told myself it would not be permissible to worry. In no universe is it ok to make my husband comfort me before he goes in to surgery.

And then the nurse told him it was time to go back to the OR and my treasonous eyes cried a little, despite my sternest warnings that they were to remain steadfast and dry. Wes laughed at me.

During the surgery, I fretted. I gnawed my lip, I picked at my cuticles, I looked up every time someone walked by, I all but paced the tiny waiting room. When two hours had gone by on what was supposed to be a 60-90 minute surgery, I started feeling a bit frantic. I just wanted to see him with my own eyes to make sure he was ok.

The nurses took pity on me and let me come back to the recovery area a little early, and then something interesting happened.

Wes was in a lot of pain and extremely groggy, but I was fine. It wasn’t until I was bringing the car around to come get him that I started feeling rattled, but then as soon as he was in the car next to me I was a rock. I finally got the chance to be the steadfast one!

The next few days passed in a blur of the hundreds of menial little tasks you do when you’re taking care of someone post-op, and it seemed to me the perfect way to spend the weeks leading up to our anniversary. Because a relationship untested is a relationship unreliable.

It’s been nice to meditate on the “In sickness and in health” part of our marriage vows this last week, to be there for Wes the way he’s been there for me so many times before.

Of course, everything is almost back to normal now. Wes is still required to take it easy (ha!) and not allowed to lift anything heavier than ten pounds (so no kids), but he’s back to being Super Man and I’m back to being…Well, me.

Here’s hoping 2014 involves a lot fewer trips to the O.R.

Poor Library Patron Guy

At the recommendation of a well-read friend, I’m reading “On Killing.” It’s an examination of the psychological cost of learning to kill on people and society, how it affects soldiers and laymen alike. Very interesting stuff. I’m hoping it’ll give me insight into what happens when someone has to go through with something like that. That could make for some compelling reading, methinks.

Anyway, I was reading through the book the other night when I came across this footnote. It turns the last sentence (“It is interesting to note that spending months of continuous exposure to the stresses of combat is a phenomenon found only on the battlefields of this century.”) into something that reads:

“It is interesting to note that spending months of continuous exposure to the stresses of combat is a phenomenon found only on the battlefields of this century and in families.”

Isn’t that just so very sad?!?! Who knows what kind of horrible familial landscape this guy (it looks like a guy’s handwriting) comes from that would make him feel like this applied to his life?

I always find it a little jarring to see someone else’s handwriting in a book I’ve checked out from the library. It feels a little like looking out the windows of your house and being surprised to see someone standing out there staring at you.

So now I feel bad for this person, this mysterious person with the stressful home life. I want to tell him that life does get better, that eventually you get to create your own family where you’re able to set the rules for what acceptable behavior looks like. Maybe he’ll end up a psychology major, given his interest in psychology (as evidenced by his checking out a psychology book from the library). There’s a joke among psychology majors that they enter that field of study in a bid to figure themselves out.

Whatever he does, I sure hope thing got better for him.

The Illusion That It’s Up to Me

I have a lot of ambition. Big plans, big dreams, big goals. I’m almost always working on something and I have a difficult time being in the moment because I’m usually thinking through what comes next. It makes me kind of a pain to live with, I think. If anyone I live with is thinking of complaining, though, I’d like to note that I’m married to an entrepreneur so, you know, people in glass houses and all that.

Some of my goals for the next year are as follows: I’d like to write at least one more new manuscript (my current new manuscript, Bai Tide, is going through beta reader revisions. Hooray!), preferably two, all in the same series as Bai Tide. I have a really good story and character arc planned for the intrepid Bai Hsu from Blood Money and I think it’d be fun to try my hand at a series. So, there’s goal number one: One, but preferably two, new manuscripts next year.

Goal two: Pitch my new book(s) to an agent and get one to sign me.

Goal three: A really excellent book contract that’ll qualify me for the International Thriller Writers.

Goal four: Attend the PNWA Writers Conference, and maybe the International Thriller Writers Conference, both of which happen in July. Only one of which happens in New York City.

Goal Five: Win either the Nancy Pearl award for Blood Money or the PNWA Literary Fiction contest for Bai Tide. Preferably both. Not sure how realistic this is but sometimes an outlandish goal is invigorating.

As you can see, all of my goals revolve around writing. My goals for 2013 were to get published by an actual publisher (check!) and lose the baby weight I gained with my daughter (just five pounds left to go!). So those are done, and it feels great to have those in the rear view.

If I can get published before I’m thirty and lose forty five pounds in seven months, who’s to say I can’t land a book contract and a kick-butt agent who’s going to help me get my work out there? As for the conferences and the awards, we’ll see. They’re not in my realm of control as much. But I can sure as heck make sure I get lots of new writing done this next year, and I can definitely query and pitch my little heart out until an agent takes notice of me. Lord willing, of course.

This, I think, is the hardest thing for me to do with my walk with Christ. To hand over the things and people nearest and dearest to me and ask Him to do what He thinks is best with them. I mean, I KNOW He’s wise and knows best, but it’s difficult for me to hand over the deepest wishes of my heart (to be a successful author) and acknowledge that this might not be what He’s planned for me.

So, I pray. I pray for guidance, inspiration, help, and direction. That doors will either open or close as He sees fit, and that He’ll kick me through the right ones when the time comes.

I might accomplish some of those goals this next year, I might not. I might have a great year, or I’ll have a year that has me limping to the next holiday season desperate for a break. I don’t know.

All I know for sure is that it feels good to dream big, and know that at the very least, I’m doing what I love. Whether or not I’ll ever be a household name is a separate issue. So long as I’ve got stories to write, I reckon I’m right where I need to be. The rest is up to Him.

Eric Carle Set Me Up

I was trying to explain to my son the other night why it wasn’t possible to reach the moon for him, and for that I blame Eric Carle. You know who Eric Carle is, he’s the author who penned “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and “Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See?” among many other dozens of childrens books.

Eric Carle wrote a book called “Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me” and it’s about this father who uses a very tall ladder to reach the moon for his daughter, who plays with the moon until it gets smaller and smaller and finally disappears altogether.

I had no idea my son took the book so entirely to heart until his earnest little face was imploring me to please PLEASE get a tall ladder and reach the moon for him. I stood there perplexed, trying to figure out the exact best way to explain how far away the moon is, how large it is in comparison to our family room, and how woefully inadequate a ladder would be in the task of trying to reach it.

It felt like shuffling a giant Rolodex in my brain. What to explain first? How the moon orbits the Earth and is 27% its size? Should I illustrate this with a marble and a soccer ball? Is it possible to explain the endless vacuum of space to a preschool-aged child? What about astronauts, is now the time to discuss space shuttles and space suits? It seems like it might be a bit morbid to explain what would happen to me if I tried to climb a ladder into space, how I’d die, frozen to death, my body draped across the rungs of the ladder far short of ever even reaching the moon. Plus, how a ladder that long would break under its own weight.

When I’d stared at my child for a good long time, I finally arrived at an approach I deemed suitable for my child’s stage of mental development: I told him I couldn’t reach the moon because I didn’t have a spaceship. When he asked why, I explained how you need a vehicle appropriate for the terrain you’re traveling and used the example of how you wouldn’t try to fly with a dump truck. Likewise, you wouldn’t try to reach the moon without a space ship.

He seemed satisfied, we watched a few YouTube videos of space shuttle launches, and everyone was happy.

Still, his questions reminded me of why I never did as well on tests in school as I should have, given my intelligence (this isn’t boasting. I really am quite intelligent). I over-think almost everything. My child’s simple question exploded my head into a debate about whether it was too soon to explain Newtonian physics to him, when all I needed to do was show him a space shuttle and explain that I didn’t have one.

One of these days, my son is going to realize that I over-think and perhaps over-explain everything and he’s going to start shepherding my answers. He’ll roll his eyes and tell me, “Mom. Short answer” and have no idea the pretzels he’s twisting my brain into as I try to condense all the thoughts clattering through my head into small, cogent responses.

For now, though, I’ll just try to remember that the best answers for preschool-aged boys usually tend to contain trucks or vehicles of some sort.

Are Elephants Not Meat?

I normally try to stick to covering such substantive philosophical topics as, Does Your Nail Polish Color Signify Something? and Can a Poke Be Considered a Finger Punch?

I’m of course being frivolous. There’s nothing even remotely substantive about either of those topics, though they were fun to talk about with the people who read those posts. I suppose what I’m saying is I normally try to keep things light and leave the heavy mental lifting to people who are qualified.

There’s been a topic going around lately, however, that’s got me pondering: Big game hunting.

I’ve seen quite a lot of fuss made over pictures of people standing over dead elephants, calls to refuse to shop at the companies they work for, petitions to ban them from Africa, things like that.

I’ll admit, the thought of killing an elephant makes me sad. They’re intelligent creatures and magnificent and loyal and good swimmers and they already have enough problems to deal with without weekend warriors coming at them with high-powered rifles.

Still, here’s what’s got me wondering: Why are all the people who are upset about big game hunting not vegetarians?

I get that big game hunting is different from, say, deer hunting. All the deer hunters I know eat the deer they shoot, whereas I doubt very much that big game hunters go home with 10,000 pounds of elephant meat. So, easy, clear distinction there. Maybe some people don’t see it that way. I saw a picture on Twitter that said “Save a deer, hunt a hunter” and it showed a man posing over a dead guy with a bullet hole in his head. For what it’s worth, I see the difference between hunting for food and sport hunting.

What I wonder, though, is whether there’s enough of a difference between elephants and cows/chickens/sheep/goats/pigs/etc. to make it an outrageous offense against nature to kill an elephant and permissible to kill a farm animal in a slaughterhouse.

Is it the utility of the meat that makes a difference? Even though the humans who shoot the elephants don’t eat the meat, I have to imagine savannah scavengers have a field day every time an elephant goes down. I doubt that meat goes wasted.

Is it because elephants are endangered? If there are enough of them to make hunting legal, then should this be a concern? Am I naive for assuming the governments who take care of this sort of thing have done the math to ensure the hunting permits they grants don’t wipe out the species?

This is my question in its simplest form: Why is it abhorrent to hunt and kill an elephant, but permissible to eat meat? How are the two different?

{Please bear in mind, I’m not asking whether hunting elephants is wrong. What I’m asking is why it’s ok to kill chickens but not elephants.}

The Issaquah Schtick Realized

Some towns are known for their schticks. New York City has bagels, Seattle has apathy, Los Angeles has beautiful people, Houston has cowboy boots, etc. I’m not saying all citizens in those cities are like this, I’m saying these are these cities’ schticks. It’s what they emblazon on the tourist stuff they sell in their airports.

I’ve lived near a city named Issaquah for half my life. Issaquah is a nice little city whose schtick is that it plays host to salmon once a year. Salmon swim through Issaquah’s creeks once a year, upstream on their way to their spawning grounds. There’s even a salmon hatchery in Issaquah, where they help the salmon population get a leg up. Every year, Issaquah pulls out all the stops for their October festival called Salmon Days.

Salmon are a big deal in Issaquah.

Even though I’ve lived within spitting distance of Issaquah for fourteen years now, I’ve never seen a salmon in real life. Not in the wild, at least. I’ve seen a few in zoos. I never really expected to, either, since I don’t exactly seek them out. Still, I’ve always wanted to see one. They’re cool fish (they jump waterfalls!) and they taste delicious.

This isn’t the exact creek, but it’s close enough. You get the idea.

I was out and about with my kids today, tossing around the idea of taking them to a park, when I randomly decided to take them to a little creek. It was a sunny day and I left like letting them get their hands dirty for awhile.

As soon as we got there, we heard vigorous splashing and looked downstream to see a massive fish muscling itself over some rapids. It pushed itself over the rocks, coming out of the water a few times, and kept splashing the water everywhere until it made it back into the deeper water upstream. It was dark red and had a hooked mouth. Undeniably a salmon!

He was soon joined by a cohort of other salmon, all of them bigger than I would have guessed, all of them athletic and fast. They gathered in the little pool in front of us, catching their breaths, and then one by one started queuing up to jump up the waterfall upstream to our left. It was incredible to watch them beat their tails and fly up, into, and then over the waterfall.

So I guess I’m a native now. And my kids are too. The only thing that would’ve made it better is if I’d had my good camera on hand to document the experience. That’s the trouble with living life, though. Sometimes you’re too busy having fun to record how much fun you’re having.

That Particular Kind of Quiet

I’m perched on my couch, bills and to do lists splayed around me, and it occurs to me that there’s a very particular kind of quiet to a house filled with sleeping people. Have you ever noticed that? How the quality of silence in an empty house is different than when people are asleep? Why is that?

Wes and I have both noticed that. It’s weird. Before we had kids, we’d be home together and the house would feel full and happy. Now, though, if for some strange reason he and I are both home but the kids aren’t, the house feels empty. Giddy and free and happy, but still weirdly empty. Granted, the house we lived in before we had kids was about half the size of our current house, but still. Strange, no?

Maybe it’s holdover from clan/tribe/communal living (and I’m speaking here of deep genetic encoding. Wes and I have never, that we’ve known of, lived in a clan, tribe, or commune). That sense of being part of a cohesive unit that’s bereft in the absence of someone. Or maybe Wes and I have just been parents for so long that our capacity to sense mayhem is compromised by a lack of tiny people around to cause it.

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Thor says, “Stop crying or I’ll bash you with Mjolnir.”

I suppose that’s why Empty Nest Syndrome is a thing. In these days of sippy cups and diapers and preschool, the idea of my kids flying the coop someday is laughable. Then again, though, when I was holding my newborn son in my arms and wondering whether I’d ever sleep again, the idea of him carrying on a conversation with me and going to school was also laughable. Yet here we are.

I’m sure when that day comes and both my kids are out in the real world on their own and I’m looking around my (weirdly silent) house, I won’t be doing much laughing. Sobbing into the jammies they wore when they came home, most definitely. But probably only a very little bit of laughing.

Unless one of my kids leaves me a cardboard cut out of Thor or something. Then I’ll most certainly do some laughing.

Parenthood is so weird.

 

Honeymoon Red vs. Electric Blue

Not particularly relevant, just nifty.

Four months ago, I was gleefully preparing for my trip to the thriller writers conference in New York City. My bags were packed, my tickets printed, my kids prepared. All that was left was to pass the time before I left, and paint my nails.

Those of you who know me well know I don’t normally paint my fingernails. I find nail polish problematic when it scuffs things like book pages, counter tops, walls, etc. My nails also grow fast, which means a manicure looks ridiculous after a couple days. It’s just not worth all the extra work most days.

On special occasions, however, I’m all for it. I figured a trip to Manhattan definitely qualified as a special occasion and brought my nail polish selection to Wes to help me decide which color should go where.

He picked red for my fingernails and purple for my toes. Honeymoon Red, to be precise.

When I looked aghast, he asked me why Honeymoon Red was not an acceptable color for my fingernails. I explained that if I was a single lady heading to the city to meet people and potentially score a date, then sure. Honeymoon Red would be perfectly acceptable for my fingernails. As a married mother of two, however, wearing Honeymoon Red on my fingers while staying alone in a hotel would send the wrong message altogether.

He was perplexed. “No one pays attention to that kind of thing!” he responded. Still, just to be safe, I painted my fingernails electric blue. Electric blue says, “I’m a creative thriller writer and I’m interested in networking but don’t ask for my number.” Not like Honeymoon Red, which says, “I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue.”

The next day, I was getting in one last work out with my personal trainer before the trip and recounted the whole tale to her, ending with Wes’s color suggestion. She gasped and replied, “He wanted you to wear red nail polish on your fingers at a hotel by yourself?!”

From my survey of two women, it seems a fairly wide understanding that nail polish colors carry connotations. I’m curious, is this knowledge universal to women? Is this something we glean from years of watching TV and reading magazines, or is this an imaginary rule I just happened to corroborate?

Natural Childbirth From the Other Side

You may be wondering where I went. I’ve been on this great blogging two-three times a week kick lately and then last week I left you with a paltry one post. One is hardly enough to whet even half a whistle. My apologies.

I have a good excuse, though, trust me. Way better than a last minute doctor appointment, a dog eating my homework, or a flat tire on the way to work. Last week, my sister in law had a baby and I got to help her through her labor. She went into labor Tuesday night and had the baby Wednesday night, which means I was awake for thirty seven hours straight. By the time I got home, I was so tired I needed Wes’s help getting out of the car. It was warm and dark in the garage. Warm and dark and quiet and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Still, as exhausted as I was, it was worth it to be there. Natural childbirth is incredible in every way, though I will say it was a lot more fun being on this side of it. I got all the fun of the miracle of life and none of the sleepless nights with a newborn! Win!

It was interesting to watch the process, and different people’s reactions to what was going on. I was happy to see that, when the chips are down or something goes wrong or someone needs encouragement, I’m indefatigable (that means tireless, for those of you who don’t have a dictionary handy). When my sister in law needed me (or, on a few occasions, the other people in the birth party) I felt no fatigue at all and had a bottomless reserve of energy on which to draw.

If you were to ask me a week ago how I thought I was likely to fare after being awake for thirty seven hours, I would have told you I was likely to be a gibbering wreck. Now, though, I don’t know. I suspect years of writing thrillers has rubbed off on me and I’m now capable of Jack Bauer-esque feats of resilience.

Though, who knows? Maybe I just thought I was helping when in reality I was weeping softly in the corner and trying to take naps in hallways. I’ll allow that possibility.

Either way, I got to help my nephew into the world and I’m amazed by that. I’m amazed by the strength of his mother, the skill of her care providers, and the enchanting sound of a newborn baby voicing his first cry. I’ve heard it three times now and it astounds me every time. Truly, I’m humbled. If you ever want to hear what true love sounds like, listen to a new mother greet her just-born baby for the first time.

Incredible.