Here's a Reason Why I Like My Husband

Go: Oh man,  I had the weirdest thing happen last night.
Me: What?
Go: I was asleep but thinking about your book and then I woke up but only a little bit so I was still half asleep and this line came to me and in my head, I was like "Oh wow! This is genius! This is the best description ever. It works on so many different levels. It's so deep and so good! I have to tell her this so she can use it." But then I fell back asleep.
Me: Really?  Let's hear it.
Go: Well that's the funny thing. After I woke up, I realized how bad it was.
Me: What?  What was it?
Go: Are you ready for this?
Me: Yes!  Just tell me!
Go: "His face was freckled with indifference."

Yah, I'm glad he didn't wake me up for that.

Here's To Not Quite Being a Real Person Yet

Last Saturday I attended a writer's workshop/conference that was from 8:30 until 4:30.  That's, like, an entire day.  Do you realize what that means?  I was out of the house, without my children, interacting with other adults for 8 hours straight.  I love my kids, but man, it was so great to be out in the world, meeting interesting people and learning new things.  I can't decide if I loved it because it was focusing on a subject matter I totally into or because I actually got to go somewhere and do something for longer than just an hour.  This would have been unheard of during residency, it almost felt naughty.  I walked into the conference and as the facilitators looked for my name tag, my eyes started to water--I was so grateful just to be there, to have the opportunity.  I felt like I could give Maya Angelou a fist bump and be like "Yah, I know why the caged bird sings, but lady, that bird will sing so much louder once she's out."

I've been working on my book almost every day for about 2-4 hours, writing during nap time and sometimes at night and have been absolutely loving it. Even though I miss doing other things like artwork or other projects, I'm glad I've poured myself and my free time into this.   It's given me something to work on while I've been living here at my in-laws.  Projects and hobbies are hard to do while living in someone else's house, so writing is the perfect thing right now, especially during these last handful of months before the summer, when I'm getting really, really itchy to be in our own place.  So as hard as it is after 7 months, it's actually good that I'm still here.  It would have been harder to buckle down and write if I was in my own house for some reason.

This book I'm working on has given me something else to dwell on other than all the unknowns that are currently in our near future.  I love thinking about these characters throughout the day. I know them; they are my friends.  They are inspired and are conglomerations of people I've loved in my life.  So far I'm enjoying the process more than anything else I've put my energy into, ever.   I hope to be finished with a first draft at the end of May, right before we move out and I become a real person.  I've always wondered what being a real person would be like.

Opportunities

Right after Ruby was born, I had quite a bit of weight to lose, remember?  And remember how I finally started going to the gym and doing something besides sitting in the women's locker room, avoiding eye contact with the saggy breasts of old ladies and reading magazines?  I started attending spin because it was the one class that happened to fit in between Ruby's rigid nap schedule and fell in love with it.  Then the spin instructor moved away and the class was cancelled, so I would go spin by myself down in the gym basement, not knowing (or caring, if I'm really being honest) that it was strictly forbidden for a civilian to be spinning unsupervised.

Gym Worker: Uh, hey.  You aren't supposed to be in here right now.

Me:  Oh, no way.  Really?

Gym Worker: Yah, you can be in here during class but you have to be an instructor if you want to be down here alone.  

Me:  Be an instructor, huh?  How do I do that?

He invited me upstairs to the reception counter and gave me all the information I needed.  It turned out that a spin instructor certification class JUST HAPPENED to be starting at a neighboring gym that EXACT week and that the end certification, the half-day workshop at a fitness convention in Chicago JUST HAPPENED to be scheduled for the EXACT weekend I was going to be in Chicago any way.  It was at that moment, when I asked that half-ton polo shirt-clad gorilla how one becomes an instructor, that my life totally changed.  That sounds dramatic, I know.  But it's true.  Before then, fitness meant very little to me.  It was a source of contention between my fitness-loving husband and I.  It intimidated me.  But when I became an instructor that fall and for the 9 years that followed, teaching spin played a major role in my life. Not only did I love it, but it brought me a lot of confidence--discovering something I was good at that I wouldn't have ever dreamed I could do.  It sanded down a major bump that had developed between Go and I.  On some days, it was the only reason I got out of bed during the dark winters of the Midwest and East Coast.  It saved me from what most likely would have been the road to obesity.  It helped make ends meet for our family.  Teaching spin was a huge, huge blessing and it was just, like, handed to me.

Something similar has happened lately.  A couple of weeks ago, around the time I decided I was going to start writing again to try and finish this novel I've been working on forever, a new friend I have here asked if I wanted to be apart of a writing group.  Her timing was perfect!  The two of us met up, talked about our projects, our goals, etc. and it was exactly what I needed to help get me restarted.  Then we met up again, this time with two others, one of whom is a published author of several books.  I had a bajillion questions for her but tried to whittle them down to just a mere million. From that meeting, I learned a lot of things, one of them being that the Nevada chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (which I am now a member of) is JUST HAPPENING to be having its yearly writer's workshop this Saturday and it JUST HAPPENS to be located literally around the corner from where I'm currently living and I JUST HAPPENED to get registered just in the nick of time before the deadline.  Now, I'm not saying that my book will definitely end up being worth reading or publishing-worthy, all thanks to the hour I spent on my friend's couch, asking the question "How do I do that?", that I will grow and be stretched, discover things about myself, solve some problems and benefit my life a great deal, but...that would be really nice if it did.  You never know.  It's happened before.

Finishing the Novel I've Been Working on For the Past Five,Yes Count Them, FIVE Years

I am embarking on an exciting creative adventure. More to come.

This Is What Happens When I Try To Do Stuff

I am now just 2 degrees away from Kevin Bacon. Would you like to know how?

Let me start by making a long story short:

Today, due to two nights of only sleeping for 3 hours, was the first morning I felt alive enough to get up early-early and work on the 1/10 of a novel I have started.

That's the shortened part.

This morning my alarm was set for 5:30 but Olive woke up at 5:15 screaming. I got her settled down and was walking back to my room as my alarm was going off. "Well that wasn't that bad. Let's do this thing." I flip on my bed side lamp, set up my headrest, my two pillows, pull out my lap top and settle in, open up my Word doc and..."WAAAAAAAAH!" Olive again. I attempt to work but a crying baby isn't really conducive to creating compelling characters. So I get up, change her diaper, get her a drink, put socks on her feet, rock her and get her down again. Then back to work. I settle in again, stare at my screen, trying to get into the zone. I take a deep breath and lay my head back on my headrest and what to do I see?

My 2 degrees from Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon was in the movie Tremors with this fellow:



That fellow was up on my ceiling. I jump out of bed because this guy's going to fall on my face any moment, I just know it. I run to the closet, grab one of my husband's size 12 1/2 shoes, thinking "Bigger really is better!" and I jump onto my bed and smash the shoe against the ceiling, hopefully squashing this thing in the process. I twist and smash. There's no way this thing is getting out alive. Since the shoe is so big, I can't really see if he's dead or alive, so cautiously, I take the shoe off the ceiling and inspect the damage. There are no bug guts on the ceiling. I check the bottom of Go's shoe. Clean as a whistle. GAHK! I jump around on the bed, ripping away the layers of head rest, pillows, blankets but no creature is to be found. I feel a slight tickle on my scalp. I bend over my bed hyperventilating and manically rake through my hair. Nothing. I feel something on my back. I arch back and hop around, wiggling all over, scratching on top of my clothes, then underneath my clothes. THIS THING IS ON ME! Nope. False alarm. I look around everywhere, behind the bed, behind my nightstand, under the bed. I have no idea where this guy went. I stand there and listen for the scurrying of a million creepy tiny feet but the silence is deafening. I decide not to let this ruin my potentially productive morning. It's time to get to work. I pile on headrest and pillows again. I nestle down in my bed. Laptop on my lap. I stare at my screen. "WAAAAAAAH!" Hello Olive. Ugh. I let her cry and stare at my screen. She continues crying and I decide to reread what I've written already. I do this for a couple of minutes put she's building in intensity, making it impossible to think at all and putting her sister's slumber at risk. I go in again and rock her until she's just about asleep, something I normally don't do but desperate times, desperate measures, people. I sneak out of her room. Ok, ready to write. Get into bed, laptop at the ready. Cursor blinking. I stare at my screen, conjuring something to come. All of a sudden, there's a tickle on my toe. I fly out of bed, yelping and throwing off the blankets. Again, nothing. This thing's inside my head now and I feel like there are bugs crawling all over me. NO! I will not let a silly bug, that yes, may look like an alien, ruin my productivity. I am up! There's still time! I need to write, dang it! I put back my blankets, get into bed, place my lap top on my lap with determination, look at my screen and type one word. The wrong word. Delete, delete. What word should I use? I look up, deep in thought and hello Tremor Worm. You are on the opposite wall now. And now you must die. How did he get over there so fast? There must be two. Maybe even little baby Tremor Monsters. Fantastic. I jump up again, grabbing one of my smaller shoes this time so I can witness his slow and hopefully agonizing death and right as I'm approaching him, coming in for the kill, he senses my thirst for weird-alien blood and drops from the wall and down behind the dresser where I can't get to him. CURSES!!! I throw the shoe down on the floor in frustration. "WAAAAAAH!" This child is going to be the death of me. And so is this alien bug. I grab Go's sound-eliminating head phones, the ones he wears on the airplane while I wrestle our kids, the ones that make me want to reach over the aisle and strangle him while saying "YOU'RE NOT HELPING ME!", the ones that when I look over at him and give him the look that says "I'm going to strangle you if you don't start helping me," he says really loudly over his music "I CAN DO WHATEVER YOU NEED ME TO DO WHILE I LISTEN TO MUSIC" and I shake my head at him, like "No you can't" and he smiles and nods his head like "Yes, I can" and puts out his hands like "I'll prove it. Give one of them to me," and I shake my head again, then mouth the words: "Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon" and he yells "WHAT?" and I mouth "Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon" again and he looks so confused as he takes out the ear buds and says in a normal register "What?" and I say "Exactly." So I grab those, shove them in my ears, get in my bed, get my lap top, and stare at my screen. I look at the clock. It's almost 7. I write one freaking paragraph and Ruby comes in, hungry for breakfast and of course she does because for some unknown reason she wakes up with a blood sugar in the 400's, which is sky high and not good. Sigh. At this rate, this thing won't get published until they make Tremors 9: The Return of the Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandchild of the Original Tremors Monster. And in the meantime, I will be wiggling and scratching at myself all day long because I swear this thing is still on me.