Category Archives: Personal

Monday mornings

13 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in Grace, Writing, Yoga

≈ 5 Comments

Walking the dogs this morning, my brain kept cycling obsessively around the question of whether I should sell the house. I’ve answered the question for myself so many times — not now, not yet. But apparently I haven’t convinced myself of the rightness of this answer because the debate keeps coming back. Finally, I forced myself away from the house question and started thinking about A Gift of Grace.

I have been so, so, so stuck for so long. I know that’s part of the reason for the endless house ruminations. Writing can’t just be an endurance contest for me. If it’s not fun, then I should be doing something that is. Life is too short to not spend as much of it as possible in flow states, but I haven’t had a writing flow state in… well, it feels like forever, but obviously, it’s not. At the very least, 2014 held an intense and lovely two months of flow while A Lonely Magic poured out of me. But I’m not there now.

And then, while forcing myself to think about Grace and Noah, I had a moment — a brief, fleeting, glimmering moment — where the pieces started to line up. This thing, followed by this thing, and then this angle to introduce this moment… It was so exciting. I tugged on the dog’s leash to hurry her along. I knew I had to get home and grab the words while they were tickling me.

But by the time we got home, and I fed the dogs and myself, the words had faded away. The tickle was gone. By the time I sat down to the computer — after washing the dishes and doing a little vacuuming, I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’ve been getting about writing lately. I think that feeling is dread.

But how can I dread writing? Why would I dread writing? I dread going to the dentist. It’s going to hurt. Writing, though — it’s not supposed to hurt. I’m trying to convince myself right now that the dread is worse than the reality — nothing to fear except fear itself, right? — but apparently the best I can do for the moment is to write a blog post. At least it’s words.

Talking B to the vet, then going to yoga. I’m going to spend my time at yoga filling myself up with as many “I” power statements as I can to see if I can meditate myself into loving writing again.

36 Hours in Key West

10 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in Florida, Food, Personal

≈ 6 Comments

I had a perfect vacation in June. Thirty-six hours where everything fell into place, parking spots opened up like magic, meals were delicious, and the stars aligned.

Okay, the stars part might be hyperbole. But the weather was ideal and the tourist gods were definitely on our side.

So it started when my friend S (mentioned previously in blogs of our Belize trip) flew out from CA. We spent a couple days playing tourist in Orlando. We went out for Korean food, wandered around downtown Winter Park, rode the Orlando Eye (a giant Ferris wheel which would have been a lot more interesting if Orlando during the daytime wasn’t just a sea of parking lots), Sea Life (an aquarium in the same complex), the Skeleton Museum (super-cool, with many, many bones) and Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. It was a veritable binge of touristing and really quite fun. And it set the tone for our trip within her trip. We were going to tourist and tourist hard.

We knew from the start that our little trip to Key West was going to be super quick — only two nights there, with a drive of about eight hours each way. Because of my food issues, I wanted a place to stay with a kitchen so we were booked for our two nights at Suite Dreams. We got there and it was perfect — small, cozy, tucked away, lush with flowers. But we dumped our stuff and started exploring immediately, discussing (ha, finally!) what we wanted to do on our island vacation.

All the things? Yep. Or at least all the things that could be packed into 36 hours. So we went straight to the Southernmost point of the continental US. Honestly, on the map, it really did not seem to be the farthest south spot and it turns out it’s not! But close enough. Then we wandered by Hemingway’s house before walking around Duval Street talking about dinner. In my preconceived notions, slight as they were, I had pictured Duval Street as being something like Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Maybe it is sometimes, but not, apparently, at 7PM on a Tuesday in June. It was very mellow and peaceful. Because of my food problems, I’d already spent a while looking at restaurant reviews on TripAdvisor and found one that sounded great, except we needed reservations which we didn’t have. But hey, Tuesday in June, worth a try, right? We tried, got three seats at the bar, and ate incredible tapas at Santiagos.

I took pictures of the menu to remind myself later of the best food, but the easy winner was dates stuffed with goat cheese, wrapped in prosciutto, and grilled. We got it on our first round and liked it so much we had it a second time as a dessert. On our way home on Thursday, we stopped and picked up some goat cheese, and at 9PM, before we’d been home twenty minutes, I was stuffing dates. I’ve made them three times so far and still haven’t mastered them, but I intend to. (And yes, I’m allergic to cheese, but I’m willing to pay the price for these–they’re sweet, tangy, salty perfection.)

Back to Key West — stuffed and replete with delicious food, we headed back to Suite Dreams and Suzanne and I got serious about planning out our one complete day in Key West. One day is not a lot of time. All the things is an awful lot of things. Plus transportation between things, plus appropriate meal breaks… and possibly we shouldn’t have left our planning to the day before? But by the time we turned the lights off, we had a detailed schedule planned, including meals.

Our morning started with a kayaking Eco Tour with Lazy Dog Adventures. Perfect weather for kayaking and a lovely place for it. We got to see a surprising number of sea creatures, from sea cucumbers to jellyfish, plus birds galore. The kayaking was my pick — the thing I most wanted to do — and I loved it. If that had been all we did, it still would have been an amazing trip. But we weren’t even close to done!

Next we headed to Half Shell Raw Bar. R’s thing was oysters so I asked the tour guide on our kayak trip which of the two places we’d found she’d recommend. Half Shell sold local oysters, so we went there. The menu didn’t have a lot to offer a gluten-free eater, but we got 2 dozen oysters on the half shell, shared between us, and then I ate a side of veggies and a side of coleslaw while R and S ate po’boys that looked delicious. The restaurant was right on the water, with a picnic tables & fish nets ambiance, so also a fun environment.

After lunch, we went grocery-shopping. Weird, right? But we’d decided to have dinner in, both because no restaurant was going to top our Santiago’s experience and because our evening plans meant we’d be looking for dinner around 9. At the recommendation of our morning tour guide, we stopped at the Eaton Street Seafood Market. Great people there, plus a gluten-free single serving cheesecake! We wound up buying porgy (a fish I’d never heard of, much less eaten), a bottle of sauvignon blanc, the cheesecake for me and the cutest little tray of cupcakes for the gluten-eaters.

We needed to get our fish back to the hotel fridge, which then gave us a short window of time before heading out for our evening adventure. R thought about trying to find the beach, but we didn’t really have enough time, so he hung out in the room and S and I relaxed in the small hotel pool.

Next up, we strolled across the island to Sebago Water Sports for a sunset sail and snorkel trip. I still couldn’t tell you whether the kayaking or the sailing was the highlight of my trip. Partly it was because it was such perfect weather. I love sailing, but you know, sometimes the sun beats down and you get a headache. Sometimes it’s windy and you spend the whole time eating your hair and wishing you’d remembered your sunglasses. Sometimes it’s just that hint of chilly where you’re not cold enough to complain but you’re not comfortable either. And sometimes, you’re out on the ocean, surrounded by blue and beauty and the expanse of sea and sky, and you remember that the world holds magic. This trip was the latter. At least for me. Poor S gets seasick with incredible discretion — she doesn’t even turn green, just leans over the side, pukes, turns back around and resumes the conversation. And the snorkeling and sunset were seriously so good that it could have been an ad for the experience — big fish, colorful fish, warm water, gorgeous sky, green flash. It was magic, really.

After the sun set and we returned to shore, we wandered back to the hotel. I cooked the fish — sauteed in butter rescued from our lunchtime bread plates and sprinkled with take-out salt & pepper that our lunch waitress had kindly found for me — while Suzanne made the salad. I think I’ll find the picture, because it was ridiculously gorgeous and beyond delicious.

salad

The salad includes mixed greens, mango, strawberries, radishes, and avocado.

The next day, we wandered around a little bit more, then hopped in the car and drove home, stopping at the Key Deer Nature Preserve and taking a short hike (although the only deer we saw was by the side of the road, not in the preserve), checking out one of the sandal outlets that were everywhere, and eating lunch in Key Largo, the highlight of which was grilled shrimp wrapped in basil and prosciutto. We got home around 9, so really it was a 60-hour vacation if you include the drive. But the 36 hours actually in Key West were wonderful. Really just the kind of magic that you always want a vacation to be and that it never, ever, ever is.

Once home, stuff happened, life got a wee bit exciting, and two days later, I hopped on a plane to Pennsylvania, but that’s another story.

House Satisfaction

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in House, Personal, Randomness

≈ 4 Comments

painting the house

Being a homeowner feels sort of overwhelming most of the time. There is always, always, always another thing. If the whole house is vacuumed and dusted, with clean bathrooms and clean sheets and a clean kitchen, then the insurmountable mess of the garage is always there to make me feel guilty. If the back porch is neatly swept and organized, everything in its proper place, plants trimmed back, then there’s weeding to be done and trees that need work and plants that should be treated for bugs or infection. Even when everything’s working, there’s always an appliance making me nervous — the dishwasher not draining, the dryer not drying, the air-conditioner making a funny noise.

And all of that doesn’t even touch the big stuff, like the fact that the paint is (was!) peeling away on the garage and fading so strongly on the sunny side that it looked patchwork. Or the spot on the front where one of the boards is rotting away.

For months, I’ve been wrestling with indecision. Sell the house or get a job that lets me take better care of the house? Those felt like the only two options. Somehow a couple of months ago, I decided to try a third option — at least for the moment — and deal with the big stuff as best I could. So this past week was the week of painting the house. I started working on it a week ago — scraping paint, pressure-washing, priming, and doing my best to patch the area of wood rot. On Saturday, my family and some friends came and helped me paint. We were done with three sides of the house by noon, at which time we had a barbecue — burgers, hot dogs, fruit salad, potato chips, tortilla chips, and three kinds of dip. And then the kids went swimming.

I’m still tired, with sore muscles that twinge every time I raise my arms, but oh, so satisfied. And yes, that picture is me, sitting on my roof (and making my father very nervous — it’s his hand on the ladder, and I can almost promise that there were worried words coming out of his mouth.) But every time I look up at that wall now — nicely blue, trim bright and white — I get to think, I did that. I took care of that.

It’s a good feeling.

Mother’s Day

09 Saturday May 2015

Posted by in Mom, Personal

≈ 1 Comment

I intend to have an absolutely lovely Mother’s Day tomorrow. I’ll be driving to Sarasota, where I will pick up R, and we will go out to some nice AIP-friendly lunch (which means it will probably be a lot more generic than our usual taste, but that’s okay for now) and then to the Avengers movie. If we have time, I’m hoping I can convince him to take a walk on the beach afterwards, but the time limit is the dogs, who will be wanting food at home. On my way home, I plan to stop at Trader Joe’s, where I will buy myself some gluten-free dark chocolate caramels, which are… oh, crack. They are the crack of chocolate. At least for me.

It’s going to be a really nice day.

Today, though, I’m thinking about my mom. About how much I miss her. About what a good mom she was and whether she ever knew that. About how my default position with good news is still that I want to tell her, first and always. When I realized how many copies of Ghosts had been downloaded, she was the only person I wanted to call. I worked my way around to realizing that there were other people who would be proud of me, celebrate with me, but it took a while. The only person I wanted was her. And I realized this week, for really the first time, that one of the very saddest things about losing her so soon, so much too soon, is that she never gets to know the person I turn out to be.

Because I’m not stagnant. I’m growing and changing still. The cook I am today is light years away from the cook I was five years ago. And my mom never gets to know the cook for whom Thanksgiving dinner is playful and daily dinner is absurd. Hell, dinner? My *breakfasts* are more gourmet than the fanciest meal I ever made while she was alive.

She never read anything I’ve written. At the time, it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I told her when she asked that I knew she would tell me it was wonderful, so I didn’t need her to say the words. But now… well, she might actually think it was wonderful. And I will never get to hear her say those words.

She didn’t know the person who dropped out of graduate school. She doesn’t know the me who is gluten-free and prioritizes yoga above work. She never met Bartleby. And the part of me that is spiritual says that’s okay, she knows. But the part of me that is practical and lives in the material world is so, so, so sad. I miss her so much. I want her to be here. And there aren’t any words, any comforting sayings, that make up for the fact that I can’t pick up the phone and call her and tell her that I am sad.

I am out of tissues.

Writing Strategies

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Personal, Randomness, Short Stories

≈ 2 Comments

Back in March, I decided I needed a new writing strategy. The one I was using was not working. I was writing a lot of words, but hardly any of them were on the stories I was trying to write. So I decided that I would write nothing else — no blogging, no journaling, no long emails to friends — until I finished writing the short story I was working on. I figured ten days.

Ten days went by. I was still writing. I thought maybe another four days. Four days went by. I was still writing. And on it went. (I cheated on the long emails to friends — that one was just impossible to continue not writing.)

Last week I finally finished the first draft and for the past week, I’ve wavered over whether my goal was to have a final version before I wrote anything else (it was) or whether I could start blogging again. The final version is not done. But eh, I missed blogging. And more than that, stuff has happened in my life that I don’t want to forget and blogging is my way of saving my memories, plus sometimes it’s how I make my thoughts coherent. So close enough, yes?

I am hard at work on the second draft and I will finish it, and moving forward, I’m aiming for balance. Some blogging, some story, all wrapped around with the realization that beginnings are hard and stories, for me, take a lot of thinking. Sure, a 15,000 word short story should only technically take me two weeks to write, but that’s after I’ve put all the thought into it. I can’t skip that step. And I don’t know why other authors get to speed through that step, but I just can’t. Even with characters I know well, it takes me a long time and a lot of daydreaming to find their authentic actions. Forcing it just means lots of time tangled up in a sense that something is wrong without being able to find the bruises.

Yes, I’m imagining an apple, rotten at the core, that looks all nice and shiny on the outside. I need my apples to be solid and sweet all the way through and it takes me a while. So it goes. Maybe I can get a job at … hmm, for some reason Home Depot was the place that came to mind. Possibly because there’s so much work to do around this house that I don’t know how to do? But maybe a job at Home Deport with writing for a fun hobby is the way to go. Not before Grace is finished, though.

And, in the realm of things I want to be reminded of someday in the future, R called in need of money last week, for a project for one of his classes. We discussed finances, a paper he’d been asked to submit to a conference, and a scholarship he’s applying for, and oh, I had a gigantic lump in my throat by the time I got off the phone. He is so mature, so independent, so self-motivated, and I am SO proud. Ironic that all that came out of a call asking for money, but it did.

During the high school years when I was being the academically incredibly hands-off parent — didn’t ask him if he’d done his homework, didn’t tell him he was going to be late for school, never visited a college with him, encouraged him to believe that it was okay if he didn’t go to college — I did sometimes worry. Academically, I was the opposite of a tiger mom. Well, with the exception of making sure that he was going to a school that valued learning, individuality, and challenge, which is sort of the dirt in which initiative grows, I think. But if he was a tree, I provided the dirt of the educational institution and the sun of love not conditioned on any parameter of “success” and got out of the way and … yay. It worked. It’s hard to parent in opposition to cultural norms. I feel like I spent all 19 years of his life trying to figure out a different way to be a parent than the models I saw around me and … yeah, yay. Yay, him, yay, me. And I hope his initiative gets rewarded.

Ooh, almost time for yoga. So a rambling personal blog post, but later this week, I’m going to be posting recipes on my cooking blog (I made a rub for grilled pork chops that is so good my mouth is watering at the thought of it) and something about writing — specifically adverbs — on the writing blog. But I’m still going to pretend that the professional publishing blog doesn’t exist.

Lost words

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Personal, Yoga

≈ 4 Comments

Why is it that the words we lose always feel like the best words? Those words that disappear into the mists of the ether were definitely great words, not the usual run of the mill mediocre words. *sigh*

I guess I’m getting over it already. But I am definitely including those now disappeared and almost forgotten words in my word count for the day.

Today marks the end of the second week of my Write Plan. It’s not gone so well. Oops, I guess I’m on the wrong blog for writing about writing. All right, I will not post that update here. Instead here, yoga thoughts!

A year ago, I was sure that I was never doing a side plank. (I promise, when I’m in a side plank, my expression is nothing like the one that woman is wearing. I’m probably not nearly that high off the ground either.) So, obviously, I was wrong about never doing a side plank otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it, but actually, two things interest me about the side plank.

The first is how a little change, a tiny piece of advice, can make a huge difference. C and I were talking about it, me still on the “ain’t never going to happen,” but with a recent try-and-fail to my name, when she said, “You have to lift your hips.” Hmm. Interesting thought. I tried again the next time it came up in my yoga podcast and bang, there I was. I can’t really explain the dynamics — I don’t have the vocabulary for kinesthetics or motion — but in all the different ways instructors described how to do side plank, the idea of lifting hips high was either never included or never sunk in. And what a change. The lower your hips go, the harder the pose is to hold. The energy of holding your body up like that is coming from your core and side, not your arm and feet. I’m not going to say that it’s made it easy, but today I held side plank on both sides for the full count (or almost) which would have been unthinkable a while ago.

Which brings me to the second thing that’s interesting to me about side plank — how quickly one can go from “impossible” to “routine.” School was always easy for me. I never had the moments of struggle with a problem I didn’t understand or a thing I couldn’t learn, but as a parent, watching R try to read, I had this faith that he could get it, would get it. It wasn’t irrational, but his learning disabilities looked so dramatic that I had been warned that it wasn’t likely. Well, he did get it, and now reading is routine for him. But that move, from impossible to routine, it’s awesome. I want to describe it with a miracle synonym that doesn’t have any religious connotations, but the ones the internet gives me aren’t right at all. But it’s like life achievement points, leveling up in the game of yoga or school or whatever your challenge goal is. I’m thinking about this because on the one hand, I think it’s ridiculous to find such a sense of satisfaction in my body being able to do something that it has never, ever, ever *needed* to do — it’s not like mastering brain surgery and saving a life! But on the other hand, leveling up is leveling up and it’s gratifying, even when the end goal is trivial.

I’m still feeling sad about my lost words. They were good words, so maybe I’ll start trying to retrieve them. But first I’m adding a category for yoga, because apparently doing yoga every day means a lot of thinking about yoga.

Monday morning randomness

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Boring, House, Personal, Randomness

≈ 1 Comment

I didn’t watch the Superbowl yesterday, because I don’t have anyone in my life who would make watching the Superbowl enough of a priority that we would have figured out how to make it happen. My television is only connected to the internet, so it would have meant caring enough to go somewhere to watch it. I don’t care enough (surprise!), but it is always sort of weird when most of America is having a certain kind of party, with the grocery store filled with the foods for the occasion, to just not do it. Instead, I turned on the butterfly lights in the backyard and lit the torches and ate steak and asparagus on my great-grandmother’s china.

The food choices were because I still don’t have a kitchen sink and so I’ve been grilling a lot. A steak can last me for three meals, so is more economical than it seems. The china was because I do have kitchen cabinets, ones with enough room that I unpacked all of the dishes that have been in boxes in my garage for the past five years. The lights and torches were because it still gets dark early and the kitchen table is packed with stuff that should be sitting on kitchen counters that I still don’t have. All practical reasons, but it amused me to be feeding myself a romantic fire-lit dinner on the patio. I should do that more often, because it really was lovely. Not having company shouldn’t mean not appreciating an enchanting evening.

Anyway, I’ve decided to use the china, because otherwise R is going to wind up needing to make the choice to get rid of it. (Or have a huge kitchen and maybe lots of kids.) Someone is going to be breaking this china, and it might as well be me. The very first use I made of it, somewhat accidentally, was as a temporary water bowl for the dogs. The story behind that is boring, but it was just a convenient thing to do. I had a moment of wondering if my great-grandmother would be horrified — and then I almost heard her laughing at me. She wouldn’t have minded. I only knew her really at the end of her life, when she was in her 80s and 90s. For the last decade, she never had any idea who I was, but she didn’t care. In a wheelchair, in a nursing home, memory shot to hell, she was cheerful and happy and joyful, always positive. I will probably not think of her every time I use her china, because eventually, it will just start to feel like dishes, but I hope it’ll serve as a reminder of her for a while.

I should post kitchen pictures. It’s… getting there. Kitchen cabinets are in and refilled with my kitchen stuff, but I have no counter-tops and no sink. It’ll be, at best, the end of this week before it’s done. More likely sometime next week. I have had moments of great uncertainty. Picking out cabinets, a color, hardware was remarkably stressful. There are so many different styles, so many colors, so many choices. So far with this house, I’ve bailed on even the most basic of choices. I thought when I moved in that I would paint everything colorfully, but nope, not so much. I’ve been too worried about making a bad choice to do anything more than the same off-white that most rentals have. But with the kitchen, not making choices was not an option. I’m sort of at a halfway point, where I can how my choices are turning out, and so far, so good. I went with this cabinet style with these handles. Simple but polished. My kitchen is small — not a galley type, but basically a one-person room, so I was worried that the cabinets would be overwhelming, but I think they work.

It does make me wish I’d had money for new appliances, though. It would look so good with black, instead of the mismatched white and off-white that are in place. Someday, maybe. It depends, I suppose, on my priorities. What do I want most in life?

Hmm, that’s getting very philosophical for a Monday morning, warm-up-the-fingers blog post, but I have been thinking about my goals lately. It’s the January new year’s thing in action — what do I want, where do I want to be, etc.? Last year, I should have started looking for a job in January. That was always the plan. Quitting my job, taking two years to finish grad school and internship, finding a job in 2014. Instead I quit my job, dropped out of grad school after a year, spent a year writing a book and then… eh, started my own business and wrote another book.

So I have deviated from my plan and there’s a new plan in process. And I know that would make a lot of sense, in this new plan, to minimize my expenses dramatically. Do I really need to own a house? Having a lawn and a pool and a spare bedroom — those are all expensive choices, not really suited for the start-up entrepreneurial mentality. And yet… I want to keep my house. So, yes, goal-thinking — how do my plans serve my goals and what are my priorities? Sadly, we’re into February and I still haven’t figured out my answers.

When I decided to go for it on the kitchen — my cabinet choice was not the most economical — it was with the knowledge that if I was going to sell the house, a good kitchen would add value. But now that I (almost) have my kitchen, I’m even more reluctant to give it up. On the other hand, do I really want to make job-life choices in order to have a nice kitchen? Maybe.

All right, my fingers are warmed up and it’s almost yoga time. Writing this afternoon will be all about Noah. For the first time in a while this morning, I actually had snippets of conversation happening while I walked the dog. A good sign!

Yoga and dogs

27 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Grief, Mom, Personal, Pets, Randomness, Yoga

≈ 2 Comments

Yesterday was a seriously tearful day. It’s been a while since I grieved so fiercely, but for the day — ugh, and now this morning, too — I missed my mother so intensely that the tears just kept flowing. It has gotten easier — I used to have days like that all the time and this was the first one in months — but the hole doesn’t go away.

That’s not what I wanted to write about, though. In yoga last week, when the wonderful yoga instructor was giving instructions for wild thing (camatkarasana), I … followed the instructions. And did the pose. A year ago, wild thing was one of those poses that I scoffed at. Ha, ha, yeah, no way. No way was my body ever getting into that position. Not going to happen. Not in a million years. Or, you know, as it happened, one year.

Yoga, for me, has been a little about the exercise but mostly about the mindfulness, trying to be in the present, trying to breathe and let myself feel. If it had just been exercise, I wouldn’t have lasted more than a few weeks, because I’ve never really cared that much. Most exercise has seemed pointless to me. Run three miles? Why would I want to? But I was so satisfied last week, so pleased with myself. I want to remember that feeling.

Last night, both dogs were being snuggly. Zelda hates it when I cry — well, or possibly she likes it, because she is passionate about trying to thoroughly clean my face if there are tears rolling down it — but Bartleby was, if anything, worse. For Z, once the tears are stopped, it’s over. She heaves a sigh of relief, and goes back to chewing on a toy or sleeping or doing one of those doggie investigations of the backyard. But Bartleby appears to think that tears mean he should put his entire body on top of me and stay there indefinitely. He’s like a cat. Well, except that I don’t think most cats care if their people cry. But he was not going away and he was not getting off and that made Zelda worried, too. I finally wound up lying in bed with a dog on each arm, completely cuddled up next to me, their heads by my shoulders. And then they went to sleep. And both of them started to snore! Not in the same rhythm. Crackle-wheeze, crackle-wheeze, crackle-wheeze. I felt, in that moment, supremely blessed and very lucky. Also, eventually, ridiculously stiff. I finally slid them off my arms and rolled over to sleep myself, where I dreamed that Christian Kane was my personal trainer and that running felt like flying. It was a good dream.

Sushi with rice, wasabi, soy sauce (gluten-free), and white wine yesterday — four things I am not allowed to eat. I feel okay today, though. Okay enough to go stare at my file and wish I remembered how to write.

Home for the holidays

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Bartleby, Marketing and promotion, Personal, Pets, Self-publishing, Zelda

≈ 2 Comments

R is home from school, which makes me happy, happy.

Except that because he’s 6’4″ and the daybed available for sleeping on is not, I’m sleeping in the living room on the small bed. This would be fine/is fine, except that Bartleby, who is the smallest creature in the house (well, bar any unknown creatures like spiders or beetles), is a bed hog. I cannot count how many times I woke up last night feeling like there was no room for me, only to discover that somehow the thirteen-pound chihuahua had angled his way into half the space and Zelda and I were curled up in what was left.

I would try to move him back but he sleeps like a log in the water. You push him and he rolls closer. Whenever I would finally give up and get up enough to lift him into a better position, it meant entirely re-arranging the bed. He finally wound up sprawled across the pillow like a cat, with Zelda and me in the remaining 3/4 of the bed.

R will be home for three weeks, which means B is going to have to get a little more reasonable about sharing the bed. I’d say I’d leave him on the ground, but past experience has taught him that if he makes a low rumble on the ground closest to my head for long enough, I will give in and pick him up. He’s trained me well. But we’ll figure it out, I’m sure.

Yesterday, Ghosts was included in a mailing from themidlist.com. The download numbers were great for a site that doesn’t change for advertising: 695 copies downloaded during the day. I spent money this summer to have Ghosts automatically posted to multiple sites ($15 for 32 sites) and didn’t get results from any of them that were noticeable, plus $30 on Digital Book Today for about 180 downloads, so the midlist results are pretty impressive, comparatively. (Probably I should be writing this on my business blog instead of here — c’est la vie.) Anyway, the weird thing was Amazon’s sales ranks. The sales rank didn’t rise during the day for hours. Instead it kept getting lower. My fascination meant a ton of wasted time while I looked at the sales rank and tried to calculate the math. If 300 downloads meant that my rank dropped 3000 numbers, how many free downloads was Amazon getting? I felt like I was discovering some fascinating business news–Amazon free downloads reaching an amazing peak–but when I came home from bringing C back to her mom (at 8 or so), Ghosts’ rank had skyrocketed to about #280 in the free store. It’s dropped back to 300+ now, so that was its peak, and the numbers were just a glitch or delay in Amazon’s reporting.

Next week I’m running my first ever promotion on A Lonely Magic. Now that it finally has a new cover, I’m doing the Kindle Countdown Deal and lowering the price to .99 for a week. I’ve paid for one ad, $20 on Booksends, so I’m not exactly going crazy with the promotion. But since I haven’t finished writing the sequel yet, there’s no hurry.

Speaking of writing, I should go do some. This feels like writing, but it’s not the kind that might ever let me stop feeling anxious about my mortgage payment, so it probably doesn’t count.

But R’s home. Yay!

Birthdays

24 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Grief, Mom

≈ 2 Comments

My mom would have been 72 today.

At yoga this morning, I was swept by such an intense wave of sadness that I had to fight not to burst into sobbing tears. A few little tears leaked out, but I brushed them away and kept going. But it made me realize that the sad is only a step away, not as far gone as I’ve been thinking as I prep for Thanksgiving.

A long, long time ago, I read The 5 Love Languages. The basic concept is that everyone has a way in which they best express and receive love, a love language. The five are 1) acts of service, 2) words of affirmation, 3) physical touch, 4) gifts, and 5) quality time. My mom’s love language was one or maybe all of the first four. I don’t know that she cared about receiving gifts all that much, but she loved giving gifts. She liked our Christmas tree to be piled high. In years past, this time of year would spin her into a cycle of doing — decorating the house from top to bottom, baking cookies and breads to share with family and neighbors, shopping and buying and wrapping, and the Christmas music on from morning to night.

I know that it wouldn’t be better if she was here now. The last couple years of her life were difficult. She hated what was happening to her and hating it didn’t make it any better. But I miss her. I want time to move backwards and just give me another day, another hour. Instead, I think I will make a shopping list that includes ingredients for Christmas cookies. I shouldn’t eat them, but this year, I think I’m finally ready to remember and celebrate my mother as she would have liked.