Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 95
January 2, 2013
January 3rd--Books Free
It is an extremely weird and sort of surreal experience to be coasting through your RSS feed--which, in my case, is a very random conglomeration of science, politics, mommy blogs, writing, book reviews, friends, and World of Warcraft--and suddenly see your name in the title of a blog post.
It's like the internet just yelled at you.
Fortunately, for me, in this case, it was a nice yell. Mean Old Bat liked the characters, enjoyed the read, and gave it a C+, which from her is a solidly acceptable grade.
Anyway, I decided to use a free day so that any of her readers could pick them up if they felt so inclined, so tomorrow, January 3rd, both books and the short story will be free on Amazon. If you know anyone who might be interested, please feel free to spread the word. Thanks!
It's like the internet just yelled at you.
Fortunately, for me, in this case, it was a nice yell. Mean Old Bat liked the characters, enjoyed the read, and gave it a C+, which from her is a solidly acceptable grade.
Anyway, I decided to use a free day so that any of her readers could pick them up if they felt so inclined, so tomorrow, January 3rd, both books and the short story will be free on Amazon. If you know anyone who might be interested, please feel free to spread the word. Thanks!
Happy New Year!
My resolution of last year was pretty simple: be kinder to myself and others.
I'd say I didn't really do so well at it. Not that I was unkind to anyone else, but then I'm generally not--it was more of a mental change I was looking for rather than an actual behavioral change. And mentally, wow, was I hard on myself last year. C'est la vie. I should probably keep trying, but it's not going to be my resolution again.
No, this year, my mental goal is to try to appreciate the moment. I started with "remember to appreciate the moment," but that's very in-your-head. I don't want to be thinking, "Enjoy this, this day will never come again." Instead, I want to be enjoying it. So that's the goal. Appreciate where I am. (At the moment, the dog is licking my foot with deep concentration. It tickles.)
On a few more practical goals, I'm going to start tracking word count. I made myself a little Excel spreadsheet. I've never done this before: I've never liked the focus. What good is it write 1000 words if the words go nowhere and do nothing? But in the interests of seriously cultivating better writing habits, I'm going to give it a try. (Resolution failure waiting to happen is when you say you'll "give it a try!" So maybe I'll be a little more specific--for the next two months, I will track my word count and if it's helpful to me, I'll continue.)
I'm also going to try to do a 20/10 every day. (If you're not a #UFYH follower, that means 20 minutes of cleaning, followed by 10 minutes of rest.) Every single day. There's always plenty to do--there are some deep goals, like cleaning out closets and the spare room and the garage that I never get to because they seem so overwhelming. So this year, when things are in shape, I'm not going to say, "well, it looks pretty good, I think I'll skip today." That way lies the descent into "ugh, how did this place become such a disaster area?" Instead I'll use my 20 minutes to tackle one of those seemingly irretrievable areas and/or to drive to Goodwill and donate.
Last, but not least, I'm going to really teach myself how to format ebooks. I've trusted in the software process so far, but I'm tired of never really feeling certain what's going on behind the scenes. I want to feel safe that my books are as perfect as I can make them and--okay, it's a little obsessive of me--I'll feel that way not by paying someone else but by knowing how to do it myself.
Do I have writing goals? Probably. Finish A Gift of Time for March release, finish A Gift of Grace with less pain and suffering than Time has already caused. Maybe write a couple more Akira short stories for the fun of it. I have to think that their wedding ought to have some associated drama. But I'm not going to stress too hard on those.
This year might be the very last year that R lives at home (or it might not, life is long and strange) and I want to be sure that my focus is on having a healthy life/family/work balance. I don't get these days back again. If I've spent them all grinding away trying to become a successful writer...well, honestly, I still think it seems really unlikely. Most writers can't earn enough to live on by writing except by making the 18-hour day commitment that JA Konrath and Bella Andre talk about. And for me, making that kind of commitment now means giving up something that matters more to me. Maybe it's worth it if being a professional writer is the only job you've ever wanted, but I've had plenty of other jobs I've enjoyed. Every job has trade-offs. The writer trade-off tends to be that it has to be the only thing you care about and for me, right now, that's just not how it is. Maybe in 2014--especially if R is living elsewhere--it will be.
So! 2013, here we are! May it be a joyful and lucky year for all of us.
I'd say I didn't really do so well at it. Not that I was unkind to anyone else, but then I'm generally not--it was more of a mental change I was looking for rather than an actual behavioral change. And mentally, wow, was I hard on myself last year. C'est la vie. I should probably keep trying, but it's not going to be my resolution again.
No, this year, my mental goal is to try to appreciate the moment. I started with "remember to appreciate the moment," but that's very in-your-head. I don't want to be thinking, "Enjoy this, this day will never come again." Instead, I want to be enjoying it. So that's the goal. Appreciate where I am. (At the moment, the dog is licking my foot with deep concentration. It tickles.)
On a few more practical goals, I'm going to start tracking word count. I made myself a little Excel spreadsheet. I've never done this before: I've never liked the focus. What good is it write 1000 words if the words go nowhere and do nothing? But in the interests of seriously cultivating better writing habits, I'm going to give it a try. (Resolution failure waiting to happen is when you say you'll "give it a try!" So maybe I'll be a little more specific--for the next two months, I will track my word count and if it's helpful to me, I'll continue.)
I'm also going to try to do a 20/10 every day. (If you're not a #UFYH follower, that means 20 minutes of cleaning, followed by 10 minutes of rest.) Every single day. There's always plenty to do--there are some deep goals, like cleaning out closets and the spare room and the garage that I never get to because they seem so overwhelming. So this year, when things are in shape, I'm not going to say, "well, it looks pretty good, I think I'll skip today." That way lies the descent into "ugh, how did this place become such a disaster area?" Instead I'll use my 20 minutes to tackle one of those seemingly irretrievable areas and/or to drive to Goodwill and donate.
Last, but not least, I'm going to really teach myself how to format ebooks. I've trusted in the software process so far, but I'm tired of never really feeling certain what's going on behind the scenes. I want to feel safe that my books are as perfect as I can make them and--okay, it's a little obsessive of me--I'll feel that way not by paying someone else but by knowing how to do it myself.
Do I have writing goals? Probably. Finish A Gift of Time for March release, finish A Gift of Grace with less pain and suffering than Time has already caused. Maybe write a couple more Akira short stories for the fun of it. I have to think that their wedding ought to have some associated drama. But I'm not going to stress too hard on those.
This year might be the very last year that R lives at home (or it might not, life is long and strange) and I want to be sure that my focus is on having a healthy life/family/work balance. I don't get these days back again. If I've spent them all grinding away trying to become a successful writer...well, honestly, I still think it seems really unlikely. Most writers can't earn enough to live on by writing except by making the 18-hour day commitment that JA Konrath and Bella Andre talk about. And for me, making that kind of commitment now means giving up something that matters more to me. Maybe it's worth it if being a professional writer is the only job you've ever wanted, but I've had plenty of other jobs I've enjoyed. Every job has trade-offs. The writer trade-off tends to be that it has to be the only thing you care about and for me, right now, that's just not how it is. Maybe in 2014--especially if R is living elsewhere--it will be.
So! 2013, here we are! May it be a joyful and lucky year for all of us.
December 30, 2012
Depression
This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for a month now. I don't know why I'm so reluctant to simply let go of it, one way or another, but I am. I want to keep it, to remember it, and I also want to get rid of it, to erase it. But I'm tired of being indecisive and I'm tired of seeing it in my drafts, so I'm posting it today, to let it finish out 2012, and tomorrow or Tuesday, I will write some nice inspiring "2013 will be all better" post to start off the New Year with a little more optimism.
I left a comment on Anne Stuart's blog this morning and I've been thinking about it all day. I need to revisit it. And what better place to do that than here?
Blogging is public, obviously, but my blog is also personal. Posts on this blog go back six years or so, long before I started writing fiction again, and I'm willing to bet that I'm the only person who's read some of the older posts. That's fine by me. For a long time, I posted words here but I never mentioned them anywhere else. This was literally an online journal--my memories, stored in the cloud. When I self-published my books and linked the books to the blog, I accepted that people might find it but I also never really expected that people would. I'm saying all this because I'm torn between my desire to write with honesty--for myself, for what I need out of writing at the moment, for my own experience--and my awareness of the possibility of an audience. Personal versus professional, I guess. So, warning: this is intensely personal and if you're only reading because you're hoping to find out when A Gift of Time will be available, it is absolutely okay with me if you stop reading and go do something more fun with your time.
So here's how the story goes.
R was unbearable last Sunday. Completely annoying. I finally snapped at him, "I'm done. Go away. I can't handle this. I don't want to hear it."
He did the hurt look.
I felt guilty.
I said, "Wallow in your own room. In your space. But I am not up for this level of self-pity."
He exited. Gracefully. I felt guilty. More than guilty. Evil. Mean. Bad mom.
Eventually, probably at least an hour later, I wandered over to his bedroom doorway. He didn't glare at me. He gave me the stoic, "you have crushed my spirit and wounded my sensibilities" look. It's a good look and he does it well. All his life--or at least from the time he was eight months old, which is the first time I can remember this feeling--he's been a master at the expression that says, "you have failed me, but I forgive you anyway." It's a powerful look and someday I should write the story of the only time I spanked him and how quintessentially perfect it was for my parenting philosophy, but that's not today's story. Anyway...
I said to him, "You have a genetic predisposition to depression. It is an illness. It is a chemical imbalance in the brain, a shortage of dopamine and maybe serotonin. It can be helped with drugs. And if you think that is where you're at, we can go to the doctor and get you medication and that's okay."
He shook his head.
I said, "That's fine, too. But what I'm hearing you say is that you feel overwhelmed and if you're overwhelmed, you still have options. I sort of think they're obvious. If you can't finish your English project, you tell your teacher, I can't finish, I need to work over Christmas break. And she says, well, I'll have to downgrade you a letter grade and you'll get a B instead of an A. And so what? You'll live with a B."
He glared.
I repeated, "So what? You'll live with a B."
He glared more. Maybe added a nostril flare.
I shook my head. "You have choices. You have options. It is not the end of the world or anywhere close if you get a B. Or worse. Nothing that you're doing is going to affect the fate of the world."
The glare deepened.
"Dude," I tried, "When I was in 11th grade, everything was desperately important to me. I felt like screwing up would be..." I couldn't come up with the words for what it would have meant to screw up in 11th grade. I shrugged helplessly. "I knew that I couldn't screw up. But I was wrong. It wouldn't have mattered if I did. And it doesn't matter if you do. You'll be fine. We'll be fine."
"I'm not going to screw up." His words were tight and hostile.
I sighed. Being a mom just sucks sometimes. You want to show that you understand but it doesn't come across that way. "I was desperately worried about disappointing people when I was your age," I said, trying hard to keep my voice even. "But you know what? It's okay if you disappoint me. I will love you just the same."
His glare softened slightly. But only slightly.
And inwardly, I wanted to roll my eyes. Great, I'd told him he could disappoint me. That wasn't really where I wanted to go with this conversation. He is--okay, I'm a little biased--the most amazing kid ever. He's never going to disappoint me. Not because of anything he needs to do, but because he is who he is. He could fail every class, and he would still be the gentlest sixteen-year-old you have ever met. He would still be a charm magnet for six-year-olds. He would still be himself. There is nothing he has to achieve to be wonderful. He simply is.
So I persevered. "When I was your age, I felt like I had to be perfect. I thought I needed to be perfect. But that was an illness talking. That was the wrong amount of dopamine in my brain. You don't need to live that way."
He looked away.
"If everything is overwhelming and you can't handle the stress and what you need to do is stay home and play video games all day for a few months, that's fine. We can make that work. We'd figure it out."
"I don't," he grumbled, still not looking at me.
"Okay." I stood in his doorway feeling stupid. I'm not sure what I finished with. I don't know how I ended the conversation. But I walked away frustrated and worried and uncertain.
The next day, he was sick. Sore throat, flu-ish, so I told him to stay home from school. He did the same the next day. Wednesday, he was back to himself, cheerful and positive and offering up quirkily random bits of information, like the fact that golden eagles were used as hunting birds in Mongolia. And then he said to me,
"The opposite of depression isn't happiness, it's hope. You know you’re depressed when you’ve lost all hope, and you know you’re getting better when you find it again."*
I think I said something along the lines of "Feeling better?" to which he said, "Yeah," and the conversation ended.
But I've been stuck on the words ever since.
My friend Suzanne asked me if I wanted to go to Belize a few months ago. I said yes. Since 1999, Belize has been number one on my list of places I wanted to visit. I still remember sitting in our dreary apartment in Walnut Creek, on the hand-me-down-down-down couch, and hearing the name of a completely unfamiliar country on a television show, probably Zoboomafoo and thinking "Where's that?" It was a place I'd never heard of, despite three solid years of major Model United Nations activity in high school, and it sounded wonderful.
And now--I just don't care. I want to care. I think I ought to care. I keep reminding myself that I adore Suzanne and her husband and I love going to new places and I've wanted to visit Belize for over a decade. But I just can't find ... anticipation.
I told R the words that I had quoted him as saying, and he said that he wasn't nearly so poetic about it, and that he just meant that he felt like normal life included lots of looking forward to good stuff and depressed life didn't have any looking forward.
Yes. Exactly. Depressed life has no looking forward. I am living in the absence of hope. I am trapped in the inability to believe that the future matters.
I don't want to go to Belize. I feel as if I ought to want to. But I just don't. And it is that way for everything in my life right now. I simply can't make myself believe in the possibility of tomorrow. All there is, is now. And now isn't very interesting.
I stumbled across this post the other day. I know it's long. But the part where she talks about feeling like you're living life through a television screen? I went to my favorite event of the year a couple of months ago with one of my favorite people in the world and that is exactly how I felt. I wasn't really there. I am not really anywhere.
There's a saying, "Depression lies." Yes. It lies. But it also erases. Everything meaningful gets lost in a cloud of "so what?"
*This is the motivation post. It never really got to motivation. I am just not motivated these days.
I left a comment on Anne Stuart's blog this morning and I've been thinking about it all day. I need to revisit it. And what better place to do that than here?
Blogging is public, obviously, but my blog is also personal. Posts on this blog go back six years or so, long before I started writing fiction again, and I'm willing to bet that I'm the only person who's read some of the older posts. That's fine by me. For a long time, I posted words here but I never mentioned them anywhere else. This was literally an online journal--my memories, stored in the cloud. When I self-published my books and linked the books to the blog, I accepted that people might find it but I also never really expected that people would. I'm saying all this because I'm torn between my desire to write with honesty--for myself, for what I need out of writing at the moment, for my own experience--and my awareness of the possibility of an audience. Personal versus professional, I guess. So, warning: this is intensely personal and if you're only reading because you're hoping to find out when A Gift of Time will be available, it is absolutely okay with me if you stop reading and go do something more fun with your time.
So here's how the story goes.
R was unbearable last Sunday. Completely annoying. I finally snapped at him, "I'm done. Go away. I can't handle this. I don't want to hear it."
He did the hurt look.
I felt guilty.
I said, "Wallow in your own room. In your space. But I am not up for this level of self-pity."
He exited. Gracefully. I felt guilty. More than guilty. Evil. Mean. Bad mom.
Eventually, probably at least an hour later, I wandered over to his bedroom doorway. He didn't glare at me. He gave me the stoic, "you have crushed my spirit and wounded my sensibilities" look. It's a good look and he does it well. All his life--or at least from the time he was eight months old, which is the first time I can remember this feeling--he's been a master at the expression that says, "you have failed me, but I forgive you anyway." It's a powerful look and someday I should write the story of the only time I spanked him and how quintessentially perfect it was for my parenting philosophy, but that's not today's story. Anyway...
I said to him, "You have a genetic predisposition to depression. It is an illness. It is a chemical imbalance in the brain, a shortage of dopamine and maybe serotonin. It can be helped with drugs. And if you think that is where you're at, we can go to the doctor and get you medication and that's okay."
He shook his head.
I said, "That's fine, too. But what I'm hearing you say is that you feel overwhelmed and if you're overwhelmed, you still have options. I sort of think they're obvious. If you can't finish your English project, you tell your teacher, I can't finish, I need to work over Christmas break. And she says, well, I'll have to downgrade you a letter grade and you'll get a B instead of an A. And so what? You'll live with a B."
He glared.
I repeated, "So what? You'll live with a B."
He glared more. Maybe added a nostril flare.
I shook my head. "You have choices. You have options. It is not the end of the world or anywhere close if you get a B. Or worse. Nothing that you're doing is going to affect the fate of the world."
The glare deepened.
"Dude," I tried, "When I was in 11th grade, everything was desperately important to me. I felt like screwing up would be..." I couldn't come up with the words for what it would have meant to screw up in 11th grade. I shrugged helplessly. "I knew that I couldn't screw up. But I was wrong. It wouldn't have mattered if I did. And it doesn't matter if you do. You'll be fine. We'll be fine."
"I'm not going to screw up." His words were tight and hostile.
I sighed. Being a mom just sucks sometimes. You want to show that you understand but it doesn't come across that way. "I was desperately worried about disappointing people when I was your age," I said, trying hard to keep my voice even. "But you know what? It's okay if you disappoint me. I will love you just the same."
His glare softened slightly. But only slightly.
And inwardly, I wanted to roll my eyes. Great, I'd told him he could disappoint me. That wasn't really where I wanted to go with this conversation. He is--okay, I'm a little biased--the most amazing kid ever. He's never going to disappoint me. Not because of anything he needs to do, but because he is who he is. He could fail every class, and he would still be the gentlest sixteen-year-old you have ever met. He would still be a charm magnet for six-year-olds. He would still be himself. There is nothing he has to achieve to be wonderful. He simply is.
So I persevered. "When I was your age, I felt like I had to be perfect. I thought I needed to be perfect. But that was an illness talking. That was the wrong amount of dopamine in my brain. You don't need to live that way."
He looked away.
"If everything is overwhelming and you can't handle the stress and what you need to do is stay home and play video games all day for a few months, that's fine. We can make that work. We'd figure it out."
"I don't," he grumbled, still not looking at me.
"Okay." I stood in his doorway feeling stupid. I'm not sure what I finished with. I don't know how I ended the conversation. But I walked away frustrated and worried and uncertain.
The next day, he was sick. Sore throat, flu-ish, so I told him to stay home from school. He did the same the next day. Wednesday, he was back to himself, cheerful and positive and offering up quirkily random bits of information, like the fact that golden eagles were used as hunting birds in Mongolia. And then he said to me,
"The opposite of depression isn't happiness, it's hope. You know you’re depressed when you’ve lost all hope, and you know you’re getting better when you find it again."*
I think I said something along the lines of "Feeling better?" to which he said, "Yeah," and the conversation ended.
But I've been stuck on the words ever since.
My friend Suzanne asked me if I wanted to go to Belize a few months ago. I said yes. Since 1999, Belize has been number one on my list of places I wanted to visit. I still remember sitting in our dreary apartment in Walnut Creek, on the hand-me-down-down-down couch, and hearing the name of a completely unfamiliar country on a television show, probably Zoboomafoo and thinking "Where's that?" It was a place I'd never heard of, despite three solid years of major Model United Nations activity in high school, and it sounded wonderful.
And now--I just don't care. I want to care. I think I ought to care. I keep reminding myself that I adore Suzanne and her husband and I love going to new places and I've wanted to visit Belize for over a decade. But I just can't find ... anticipation.
I told R the words that I had quoted him as saying, and he said that he wasn't nearly so poetic about it, and that he just meant that he felt like normal life included lots of looking forward to good stuff and depressed life didn't have any looking forward.
Yes. Exactly. Depressed life has no looking forward. I am living in the absence of hope. I am trapped in the inability to believe that the future matters.
I don't want to go to Belize. I feel as if I ought to want to. But I just don't. And it is that way for everything in my life right now. I simply can't make myself believe in the possibility of tomorrow. All there is, is now. And now isn't very interesting.
I stumbled across this post the other day. I know it's long. But the part where she talks about feeling like you're living life through a television screen? I went to my favorite event of the year a couple of months ago with one of my favorite people in the world and that is exactly how I felt. I wasn't really there. I am not really anywhere.
There's a saying, "Depression lies." Yes. It lies. But it also erases. Everything meaningful gets lost in a cloud of "so what?"
*This is the motivation post. It never really got to motivation. I am just not motivated these days.
December 25, 2012
The Super Secret, Super Fun Project
Dear Carol and Judy,
After the two of you commented on my one-year-anniversary post, I decided that I wanted to make you something for Christmas.
If you lived near me, I would have baked you Christmas cookies. I make really good cookies. I've got a long list of holiday favorites -- thumbprint cookies, molasses cookies, nut roll, cupcake cookies -- but my specialty is sugar cookies, the kind where you roll out the dough and sprinkle the top with colored sugar. I've made them almost every year since I was twelve or so. Even in the days before I knew how to cook, when my sauces separated and my rice stuck together like flannel pjs in midwinter, my sugar cookies were lovely. But I don't think they'd make it to New Zealand intact and I don't have the faintest idea where you live, Judy, but I'm pretty sure it's not down the street.
So no cookies. Instead, I wrote you a story. (Or finished it anyway.) I thought I'd just post it here and that would be fun, but it got sort of long for that. Then I thought I'd make it a downloadable file, but that turns out to be complicated. You can't actually post a file to be downloaded at a blogger site, so I would have needed to get a real website. I was debating what to do--new website? email? dropbox?--when I remembered this summer, at my geekgirl presentation, describing Amazon as the biggest bake sale in the world.
Amazon. Bake sale. Sugar cookies. Christmas stories.
Voilá.
A Christmas present for the two of you. Free on Amazon for the next three days (December 26th through 28th), two days in reserve so in case you miss it, we can schedule a free day for when you can get it.
I hope it makes you smile.
December 24, 2012
I'm allowed...
R and I went out for dinner tonight. We had Korean food, as we did last Christmas day, and the restaurant was amazing. I had exactly the same experience that I did last Christmas, though, which is that the food was so good that I ate too much and then I was uncomfortable and by the time we got home, I felt vaguely hostile to the restaurant. But really, the food was terrific: we had their Korean version of sushi for an appetizer, which was yum, and then they do little dishes of vegetables, including a pickled radish, sesame seed green beans, spicy tofu, a sweet potato thing that R decided was too good to share with someone who doesn't like sweet potatoes, fish cake, kimchi...and I'm not sure what else. But yummy food, which I say to remind myself, and which is not my story.
So this is my story: when we got home, the dog -- the naughty, naughty, BAD dog -- had gotten into a bag of Lindt truffles. R saw the ripped up bag first and he was scolding her and upset before I even got into the house. The dog is, as per usual, completely insane with delight that we're home, madly excited, dashing between us, while R stomps around, mad as anything. It was his present to me, so he's upset that his present has been destroyed, but he's also upset because we've done this with Zelda before. This being the emergency vet visit, several hundred dollars, stomach pump thing.
I'm looking at the bag and trying to figure out the math. This will be the fifth time that Zelda has gotten into chocolate, which might say that we're really bad dog owners, except that Zelda is a Jack Russell terrier who can get into anything. Seriously, she opens closed doors by standing on her hind legs and using her paws, she opens cupboards with her nose. She can leave the backyard any time she wants, through multiple routes, and the only reason she doesn't (most of the time) is that she knows I don't want her to, even if she doesn't understand why. The only object in the house that she hasn't figured out how to open is the refrigerator, which is a good argument for keeping all chocolate in the fridge, but it was a present. Who keeps presents in the fridge?
So I'm working on the math. Six ounces, partially dark chocolate, and three ounces is the magically bad number for dark chocolate for a dog of her weight, but there's some left in the bag, and how many servings are there in the bag? Even as I'm trying to figure that out, I'm also trying to take her pulse. Racing heart beat is a symptom of chocolate poisoning for dogs -- that's how they die, really. But it doesn't feel that fast. It's fast, sure, but she's excited that we've just gotten home and bouncing around and...it's normal fast.
I lean in and take a big whiff of her breath. Her breath is not lovely. It never is. But it doesn't smell like chocolate. Or like vomit. It was the vomit that I was trying to smell. On one notable occasion, she had her stomach pumped and only a day later did I find the pile of chocolate vomit under the bed in the spare room that would have told me the stomach pumping was unnecessary. I found said vomit because she went back to it for a snack--gah, dogs--and I smelled it on her breath. So I'm smelling but there's nothing there, no chocolate smell, no vomit smell. And she's settling down. We're home, that's good, and maybe she'll just take a little nap now that she can relax.
But a dog in the midst of chocolate poisoning? Is not going to be taking a little nap.
I finish my math. Ten truffles are missing. Presumed eaten. I go into the spare room to look under the bed. I don't get there. In the back corner of an arm chair is a Lindt truffle, half under the cushion. She didn't eat it. She didn't even break the wrapping paper. I start searching. Over the course of the next hour, I find eight of the ten missing truffles. One in her window dog bed, one in the dog bed under my desk. One in the couch in the living room, another in the arm chair. One in my bed, one under a pillow in the guest room. And so on.
A 9th is, I am sure, in my closet. I can tell from how she's acting now. She keeps going into the closet but when I follow her in, she acts innocent and quickly leaves. She's figured out that I'm stealing her treats. I have no idea what that feels like from a doggie perspective. She did some perfectly good hunting, gathering, and storing for later, and her pack leader has screwed it all up. Does she think it's unfair?
Along the way I find a bag of pills -- Vitamin C maybe? -- that she has also stashed. The citrus smell reassures me that it's nothing too scary but some guest in my house, I don't know who, lost a lot of pills at some point. Oops!
By the end of the hour, I'm totally comforted that the dog hasn't eaten enough chocolate to be dangerous and the dog is sulking. And R is not happy. In fact, he's pissed at Zelda -- she ruined his present. Not cool.
I point out to him that it was actually kind of fun in a way -- like an easter egg hunt. Been a long time since I got to do that. I didn't mind it and was amused by her creative hiding with the last couple chocolates. He says, "Oh, I should view this an as an entertainment value addition to my present?"
I say, "well..." and then point out the real plus. When we got home from dinner, I thought the dog might die. I was faced with the real possibility that Zelda had eaten enough chocolate that we would lose her. On Christmas Eve. On CHRISTMAS EVE! The relief of knowing that no, that wasn't going to happen? Golden. The joy of realizing that the ridiculous dog had hidden chocolate all over the house? Priceless.
R listened to this and nodded. And then he said, "So the perfect Christmas gift is for me to threaten to kill the dog and then not carry through on the threat? Handy. And cheap. I'll remember that for next year."
I think he has not quite forgiven her.
But it made me laugh.
And I'm allowed to share it, because he told me just the other day that it was okay if I told stories about him online.
So this is my story: when we got home, the dog -- the naughty, naughty, BAD dog -- had gotten into a bag of Lindt truffles. R saw the ripped up bag first and he was scolding her and upset before I even got into the house. The dog is, as per usual, completely insane with delight that we're home, madly excited, dashing between us, while R stomps around, mad as anything. It was his present to me, so he's upset that his present has been destroyed, but he's also upset because we've done this with Zelda before. This being the emergency vet visit, several hundred dollars, stomach pump thing.
I'm looking at the bag and trying to figure out the math. This will be the fifth time that Zelda has gotten into chocolate, which might say that we're really bad dog owners, except that Zelda is a Jack Russell terrier who can get into anything. Seriously, she opens closed doors by standing on her hind legs and using her paws, she opens cupboards with her nose. She can leave the backyard any time she wants, through multiple routes, and the only reason she doesn't (most of the time) is that she knows I don't want her to, even if she doesn't understand why. The only object in the house that she hasn't figured out how to open is the refrigerator, which is a good argument for keeping all chocolate in the fridge, but it was a present. Who keeps presents in the fridge?
So I'm working on the math. Six ounces, partially dark chocolate, and three ounces is the magically bad number for dark chocolate for a dog of her weight, but there's some left in the bag, and how many servings are there in the bag? Even as I'm trying to figure that out, I'm also trying to take her pulse. Racing heart beat is a symptom of chocolate poisoning for dogs -- that's how they die, really. But it doesn't feel that fast. It's fast, sure, but she's excited that we've just gotten home and bouncing around and...it's normal fast.
I lean in and take a big whiff of her breath. Her breath is not lovely. It never is. But it doesn't smell like chocolate. Or like vomit. It was the vomit that I was trying to smell. On one notable occasion, she had her stomach pumped and only a day later did I find the pile of chocolate vomit under the bed in the spare room that would have told me the stomach pumping was unnecessary. I found said vomit because she went back to it for a snack--gah, dogs--and I smelled it on her breath. So I'm smelling but there's nothing there, no chocolate smell, no vomit smell. And she's settling down. We're home, that's good, and maybe she'll just take a little nap now that she can relax.
But a dog in the midst of chocolate poisoning? Is not going to be taking a little nap.
I finish my math. Ten truffles are missing. Presumed eaten. I go into the spare room to look under the bed. I don't get there. In the back corner of an arm chair is a Lindt truffle, half under the cushion. She didn't eat it. She didn't even break the wrapping paper. I start searching. Over the course of the next hour, I find eight of the ten missing truffles. One in her window dog bed, one in the dog bed under my desk. One in the couch in the living room, another in the arm chair. One in my bed, one under a pillow in the guest room. And so on.
A 9th is, I am sure, in my closet. I can tell from how she's acting now. She keeps going into the closet but when I follow her in, she acts innocent and quickly leaves. She's figured out that I'm stealing her treats. I have no idea what that feels like from a doggie perspective. She did some perfectly good hunting, gathering, and storing for later, and her pack leader has screwed it all up. Does she think it's unfair?
Along the way I find a bag of pills -- Vitamin C maybe? -- that she has also stashed. The citrus smell reassures me that it's nothing too scary but some guest in my house, I don't know who, lost a lot of pills at some point. Oops!
By the end of the hour, I'm totally comforted that the dog hasn't eaten enough chocolate to be dangerous and the dog is sulking. And R is not happy. In fact, he's pissed at Zelda -- she ruined his present. Not cool.
I point out to him that it was actually kind of fun in a way -- like an easter egg hunt. Been a long time since I got to do that. I didn't mind it and was amused by her creative hiding with the last couple chocolates. He says, "Oh, I should view this an as an entertainment value addition to my present?"
I say, "well..." and then point out the real plus. When we got home from dinner, I thought the dog might die. I was faced with the real possibility that Zelda had eaten enough chocolate that we would lose her. On Christmas Eve. On CHRISTMAS EVE! The relief of knowing that no, that wasn't going to happen? Golden. The joy of realizing that the ridiculous dog had hidden chocolate all over the house? Priceless.
R listened to this and nodded. And then he said, "So the perfect Christmas gift is for me to threaten to kill the dog and then not carry through on the threat? Handy. And cheap. I'll remember that for next year."
I think he has not quite forgiven her.
But it made me laugh.
And I'm allowed to share it, because he told me just the other day that it was okay if I told stories about him online.
Tomorrow's menu
Tomorrow's menu for four:
Scandinavian smoked salmon on butter crackers. Highly likely to come in two varieties, one with cream cheese, a little minced red onion and a couple of capers; the other on a horseradish cream sauce, sprinkled with dill.
Cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto, possibly drizzled with a balsamic glaze.
A winter fruit salad, composed of mixed greens, topped with orange, grapefruit, red onion, pomegranate seeds and toasted almonds, with a vinaigrette dressing. I know I had a recipe for that, but now I can't find it anywhere, so maybe it was my imagination. That makes me nervous about the vinaigrette, so I'll probably spend too much time looking for the recipe later today.
Break for opening presents, then I spend twenty more minutes in the kitchen while other people amuse themselves. It's my strategy for both enjoying the meal and still having hot food. We'll see how it works. Anyway, break followed by:
Roast beef with a horseradish glaze, served with a cranberry horseradish relish. Yep, I'm continuing my experiments in spicy cranberry sauce. I'm sure I'll find one I love someday.
Mashed potatoes. Per request, completely plain unvarnished mashed potatoes. No garlic, no blue cheese, not even a little feta or sour cream snuck in there. (It wasn't really a request, more of a mild statement of affection for traditional mashed potatoes, from the tolerant recipient of all of my food experiments, aka R.)
Roasted green beans with lemon and garlic from this recipe, which just totally sold me.
Break for watching some televised Christmas special, followed by:
Cherry fruit paste from New Zealand with two cheeses, a camembert and a brie, and more crackers.
A dessert to be provided by my dad's wife, maybe Christmas cookies, maybe fruit pie (because R likes fruit pie.)
I'm hoping I may have finally figured out how to make Christmas bearable. As a kid, the only food traditions I cared about were the cookies. Our traditions were presents and jokes and music and decorations and a schedule that had us moving from one relative's house to the next in the cold, snowy weather. Aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents; sharing a basement bedroom with my sister and brother, with our parents asleep in the room next door; whispered early morning conversations while waiting for Santa; and so much laughing. So much laughter.
But I think my grandfathers were the sources of the laughter. And when they died, the laughter stopped.
My paternal grandfather died first. He loved to tell jokes. He told jokes to strangers, made people in stores laugh, was just the warmest man imaginable. His humor had not the slightest speck of malice in it. You would never have known from his friendliness and compassion of the burdens he bore without complaint. His wife, my grandmother, was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic in her 40s. As she grew older, she lost more and more of her hearing until she was really entirely deaf. He was her link to the world. Endlessly patient with her. He was a devout Christian and the closest thing to a saint that I've ever met. Also, he just loved to make people laugh. If he hadn't made you laugh at least once in your interaction with him, well, he'd keep trying. And you would laugh, eventually, or at least roll your eyes with a resigned smile.
Anyway, after his death, Christmas changed. His wife, my grandmother, had to be institutionalized. Against her will and via the legal system. I think it was hard and painful for all of the relatives in my parents' generation, but I don't know that they had any other options.
We still tried. And for a couple of years, we sort of made it work.
If my paternal grandfather told jokes, my other grandfather played jokes. Nothing made him happier than to give you a joke present that had you frowning down in confusion while he roared with laughter across the room. Well, except maybe giving my grandmother something that made her tear up with appreciation.
We had one last good year, a Christmas in New York. The only bad note was that my grandfather had a back ache that wouldn't quit. It turned out to be bone cancer and he died that April.
After that...we tried. We really did. Different places, different houses, different activities. We went to Disney one year, North Carolina once. I spent a Christmas in Seattle, another in Canada, another in Santa Cruz. My grandmothers and great-grandmother suffered through slow declines in institutions of varying levels of unpleasantness. (In a stroke of unfair irony, my aware and present grandmother lived the longest in the worst of them, while my grandmother with Alzheimer's spent her years unconscious in a much more comfortable, even almost pleasant setting.)
But I guess I've never managed to recover from the idyllic childhood. Christmas has been making me sad for close to twenty years now, and losing my mom just made that worse.
We'll see if making it all about the food makes it better. And meanwhile, I have a super-secret, super-fun project that I'm working on that I'd really like to have done tomorrow, so I had best get back to it! Merry Christmas!
Scandinavian smoked salmon on butter crackers. Highly likely to come in two varieties, one with cream cheese, a little minced red onion and a couple of capers; the other on a horseradish cream sauce, sprinkled with dill.
Cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto, possibly drizzled with a balsamic glaze.
A winter fruit salad, composed of mixed greens, topped with orange, grapefruit, red onion, pomegranate seeds and toasted almonds, with a vinaigrette dressing. I know I had a recipe for that, but now I can't find it anywhere, so maybe it was my imagination. That makes me nervous about the vinaigrette, so I'll probably spend too much time looking for the recipe later today.
Break for opening presents, then I spend twenty more minutes in the kitchen while other people amuse themselves. It's my strategy for both enjoying the meal and still having hot food. We'll see how it works. Anyway, break followed by:
Roast beef with a horseradish glaze, served with a cranberry horseradish relish. Yep, I'm continuing my experiments in spicy cranberry sauce. I'm sure I'll find one I love someday.
Mashed potatoes. Per request, completely plain unvarnished mashed potatoes. No garlic, no blue cheese, not even a little feta or sour cream snuck in there. (It wasn't really a request, more of a mild statement of affection for traditional mashed potatoes, from the tolerant recipient of all of my food experiments, aka R.)
Roasted green beans with lemon and garlic from this recipe, which just totally sold me.
Break for watching some televised Christmas special, followed by:
Cherry fruit paste from New Zealand with two cheeses, a camembert and a brie, and more crackers.
A dessert to be provided by my dad's wife, maybe Christmas cookies, maybe fruit pie (because R likes fruit pie.)
I'm hoping I may have finally figured out how to make Christmas bearable. As a kid, the only food traditions I cared about were the cookies. Our traditions were presents and jokes and music and decorations and a schedule that had us moving from one relative's house to the next in the cold, snowy weather. Aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents; sharing a basement bedroom with my sister and brother, with our parents asleep in the room next door; whispered early morning conversations while waiting for Santa; and so much laughing. So much laughter.
But I think my grandfathers were the sources of the laughter. And when they died, the laughter stopped.
My paternal grandfather died first. He loved to tell jokes. He told jokes to strangers, made people in stores laugh, was just the warmest man imaginable. His humor had not the slightest speck of malice in it. You would never have known from his friendliness and compassion of the burdens he bore without complaint. His wife, my grandmother, was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic in her 40s. As she grew older, she lost more and more of her hearing until she was really entirely deaf. He was her link to the world. Endlessly patient with her. He was a devout Christian and the closest thing to a saint that I've ever met. Also, he just loved to make people laugh. If he hadn't made you laugh at least once in your interaction with him, well, he'd keep trying. And you would laugh, eventually, or at least roll your eyes with a resigned smile.
Anyway, after his death, Christmas changed. His wife, my grandmother, had to be institutionalized. Against her will and via the legal system. I think it was hard and painful for all of the relatives in my parents' generation, but I don't know that they had any other options.
We still tried. And for a couple of years, we sort of made it work.
If my paternal grandfather told jokes, my other grandfather played jokes. Nothing made him happier than to give you a joke present that had you frowning down in confusion while he roared with laughter across the room. Well, except maybe giving my grandmother something that made her tear up with appreciation.
We had one last good year, a Christmas in New York. The only bad note was that my grandfather had a back ache that wouldn't quit. It turned out to be bone cancer and he died that April.
After that...we tried. We really did. Different places, different houses, different activities. We went to Disney one year, North Carolina once. I spent a Christmas in Seattle, another in Canada, another in Santa Cruz. My grandmothers and great-grandmother suffered through slow declines in institutions of varying levels of unpleasantness. (In a stroke of unfair irony, my aware and present grandmother lived the longest in the worst of them, while my grandmother with Alzheimer's spent her years unconscious in a much more comfortable, even almost pleasant setting.)
But I guess I've never managed to recover from the idyllic childhood. Christmas has been making me sad for close to twenty years now, and losing my mom just made that worse.
We'll see if making it all about the food makes it better. And meanwhile, I have a super-secret, super-fun project that I'm working on that I'd really like to have done tomorrow, so I had best get back to it! Merry Christmas!
December 19, 2012
The looking-straight-ahead-awkward-conversations
R and I were in the car today. I'm not sure how often that will happen now, so I figured I needed to get my difficult conversations in while I had the chance. One that I had been thinking about was about his privacy, basically about how and when I talked about him online. This week, a mom's post about her child went viral and aroused a lot of controversy, including some harsh words on children's right to privacy. It made me think. It made me worry.
So I started carefully. I wanted to set the stage. I wrote a ton about him when he was little, all on a board on AOL, and alas, most of it lost to the mists of time. The board shut down, I didn't have archives, I don't know what I said. I wish I did! But I've been more careful as he grew older. I actually started this blog to write about learning disabilities, oh-so-many-years-ago, but I never wound up doing that. He worked so hard, but his struggles felt private to me.
Lately, though, I've been less careful than I used to be. I've used his real name a few times; my written-but-not-posted-post on depression features him heavily; I've quoted things he's said in comments on other people's blogs and here, too. I didn't feel as if I was being insensitive, but would I necessarily know?
So I started talking. You know how sometimes when you know what you want to say but you don't quite know how you want to get there, you sort of wander around the point? I did that a little bit. R made a couple comments. I talked some more.
Finally, he interrupted me and said, “Mom, I’ve read what you write about me. You make me sound smarter, funnier, and far more charming than I really am. Feel free to continue.”
I laughed and laughed.
Because you know what? I really don't.
So I started carefully. I wanted to set the stage. I wrote a ton about him when he was little, all on a board on AOL, and alas, most of it lost to the mists of time. The board shut down, I didn't have archives, I don't know what I said. I wish I did! But I've been more careful as he grew older. I actually started this blog to write about learning disabilities, oh-so-many-years-ago, but I never wound up doing that. He worked so hard, but his struggles felt private to me.
Lately, though, I've been less careful than I used to be. I've used his real name a few times; my written-but-not-posted-post on depression features him heavily; I've quoted things he's said in comments on other people's blogs and here, too. I didn't feel as if I was being insensitive, but would I necessarily know?
So I started talking. You know how sometimes when you know what you want to say but you don't quite know how you want to get there, you sort of wander around the point? I did that a little bit. R made a couple comments. I talked some more.
Finally, he interrupted me and said, “Mom, I’ve read what you write about me. You make me sound smarter, funnier, and far more charming than I really am. Feel free to continue.”
I laughed and laughed.
Because you know what? I really don't.
December 17, 2012
Driver's license
We are leaving the house in less than half an hour so R can take his driver's license exam and oddly enough, I am so anxious about it that I wish to throw up. But I'm not sure what I'm anxious about. If he fails, that'll be bad, but if he passes, he'll start driving my car. By himself.
If he fails, he'll be sad and mad and disappointed and that will all suck. If he succeeds, all of our car conversations -- which really are some of our best conversations these days, because it takes about twenty minutes to take him to his friends' houses -- will come to an end. No more racing to identify the pop music on the radio, no more debates about philosophy, no more looking-straight-ahead-let's-talk-about-something-awkward opportunities.
And having written it out, I feel much better.
I hope he passes. And when he does, I will simply have to make sure that we still go places together sometimes.
If he fails, he'll be sad and mad and disappointed and that will all suck. If he succeeds, all of our car conversations -- which really are some of our best conversations these days, because it takes about twenty minutes to take him to his friends' houses -- will come to an end. No more racing to identify the pop music on the radio, no more debates about philosophy, no more looking-straight-ahead-let's-talk-about-something-awkward opportunities.
And having written it out, I feel much better.
I hope he passes. And when he does, I will simply have to make sure that we still go places together sometimes.
December 16, 2012
Rewind
On 9/11, I was in California. By the time my alarm went off, the first tower had already collapsed. I heard at most ninety seconds of radio news before my five-year-old said, "What's a terrorist? What happened?" and I shut the radio off.
For most people, the next few days were non-stop televised tragedy. For me, it was the completely surreal attempt to shield my boy from the entire thing. My most vivid memory is of watching his kindergarten class play on the playground while adults stole away to listen to radio reports in the school director's office as furtively as if we were shooting up in the bathroom.
I asked him yesterday what he remembered. He thought about it then slowly shook his head. "Nothing. Not from when it happened. I remember a ceremony, some kind of memorial service, but I think that was later." Success!
I didn't realize this at the time, but by shielding him, I shielded me, too. It was years before I saw and heard the sights and sounds of that day. I wish I had done the same this weekend. I know that whether or not I put up the Christmas tree has nothing to do with anything that's happening in CT, but it feels so wrong.
Ironically, on Thursday, I was really happy. I'm working on a very fun secret project (not to be secret for long!), and I got my hot water heater fixed. It's been semi-broken for months, which is not that big a deal in Florida, really--cold showers are not usually a problem when it's 80 degrees--but oh, it was fun to have hot water again. I think I shall pretend to go backward in time to Thursday and work on being happy about hot water and being entertained by my secret project. Wouldn't it be nice if time could rewind like that?
For most people, the next few days were non-stop televised tragedy. For me, it was the completely surreal attempt to shield my boy from the entire thing. My most vivid memory is of watching his kindergarten class play on the playground while adults stole away to listen to radio reports in the school director's office as furtively as if we were shooting up in the bathroom.
I asked him yesterday what he remembered. He thought about it then slowly shook his head. "Nothing. Not from when it happened. I remember a ceremony, some kind of memorial service, but I think that was later." Success!
I didn't realize this at the time, but by shielding him, I shielded me, too. It was years before I saw and heard the sights and sounds of that day. I wish I had done the same this weekend. I know that whether or not I put up the Christmas tree has nothing to do with anything that's happening in CT, but it feels so wrong.
Ironically, on Thursday, I was really happy. I'm working on a very fun secret project (not to be secret for long!), and I got my hot water heater fixed. It's been semi-broken for months, which is not that big a deal in Florida, really--cold showers are not usually a problem when it's 80 degrees--but oh, it was fun to have hot water again. I think I shall pretend to go backward in time to Thursday and work on being happy about hot water and being entertained by my secret project. Wouldn't it be nice if time could rewind like that?
December 14, 2012
Honestly
I was in school to become a therapist before my mom died. You have to do a lot of self-analysis. In one course, we wrote papers about ourselves every week. My professor wrote a note on one of mine, almost at the end of the semester, that said, "Abused children can't." I think I stopped breathing when I read it.
A while later, I said to my mom, gently, carefully, in the car, "Did you hit us a lot when we were little?" I don't know what I thought the answer would be. Maybe, "sometimes," maybe, "once in a while," maybe, "oh, when you were bad."
She said, "Yes."
Long pause.
I wanted to know more and I didn't want to know more. I asked, "For what kinds of things?"
She said, "Anything. Everything." She was staring straight ahead, not looking at me, and I could tell how painful it was to her. So I didn't ask any more. Within the month she'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and five weeks later, she was dead.
Akira didn't come out of nowhere.
A while later, I said to my mom, gently, carefully, in the car, "Did you hit us a lot when we were little?" I don't know what I thought the answer would be. Maybe, "sometimes," maybe, "once in a while," maybe, "oh, when you were bad."
She said, "Yes."
Long pause.
I wanted to know more and I didn't want to know more. I asked, "For what kinds of things?"
She said, "Anything. Everything." She was staring straight ahead, not looking at me, and I could tell how painful it was to her. So I didn't ask any more. Within the month she'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and five weeks later, she was dead.
Akira didn't come out of nowhere.
