Category Archives: Swimming

To-do lists

02 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Bartleby, House, Swimming, Zelda

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I looked at my to-do list and with the exception of one ridiculous item — finish writing this damn book — it is very close to being completed. Most of the items on it are either things that I am waiting on someone else to do or things that are optional. For example, wash all the windows. Well, that’s a nice idea, because clean windows look good. But if I don’t get around to washing all the windows and someone doesn’t buy the house because the windows weren’t clean, they probably weren’t someone who needed a thirty-year old house anyway.

Yesterday’s chores included buying six bags of mulch and spreading it on my front garden; organizing books and items in the garage and taking a load of books to the library donation spot; going to Lowe’s and buying lightbulbs for the overhead kitchen lights, then dragging out the big ladder to change the two that were burned out; scrubbing my bathtub to within an inch of its life (it’s still doesn’t look spotless, but it never will); and much playing and splashing with the dogs.

The last part was fun. It was a beautiful first day of May and the water was perfect. B, I think, finally really likes swimming as long as I’m close to him. He’s like a toddler in the water, running around all excited on the edge, then super-cautious about how he puts his paws in, then always checking back to make sure he hasn’t gotten too far away from safety. And Z, of course, loves the pool and playing with her basketball.

2016-04-26 13.06.13

It definitely gave me pangs about giving it up. I had the gloomy thought of “I will never find another house that I love as much as this one.” French doors to the patio, high ceilings, my window seat, my kitchen cabinets… and then I thought, yes, this is true, I will never again have to be responsible for yard work or worry about termites. Leaks I will have to worry about — apparently, water is the big problem for RVs and getting a leak is both eventually inevitable and the problem that you have to watch out for. Yes, I’ve been doing lots of reading about RVs.

Today’s goals: finish the damn book. But that brings me back to my original thoughts on writing — that goal never moves, because I’ve made it too overwhelming. I need to make it a series of smaller goals. So today’s goal: finish the scene I’m in, write the next one, figure out what happens in the one after that. And, at least temporarily, let go of worrying about the house and the RV and the future and all the things that are driving me away from the story, and concentrate on Grace.

Ironically, I thought my trip to Sarasota on Friday would be really great plotting time to finalize the order of these last scenes and maybe get some real words imagined but I spent most of it daydreaming about Fen. She’s having such great adventures in my head. I seriously am so looking forward to getting back to writing about her. First, though, Grace. And even before that, a Monday morning, a dog walk, some healthy breakfast, and so on. The fingers are warmed up and ready to go!

Swimming and yoga

31 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in Grief, Mom, Randomness, Swimming, Yoga

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It’s probably global warming and I should probably feel bad about the damage we’re doing to the planet and how we’re all going to die in droughts and super-storms in the next hundred years — actually I do feel bad about that — but it doesn’t prevent me from appreciating the fact that yesterday was such a lovely day that I stuck my feet in the pool. And the water was cool, but not so cold I couldn’t at least put my bathing suit on and maybe go in a little deeper. And once partway in, it was so nice to have the sun on my shoulders and so fun to have the dogs running around happily, that yeah, I really went swimming. Head under, laps back and forth, aimless floating, the whole thing. It was amazingly nice and not really cold at all. October 30th — it’s the latest I’ve gone swimming by probably at least a month. And so worth it. A couple times I’ve tried off-season swimming and it’s been a brisk dip, a refreshing chill, scurry to dry off, kind of thing, but this was not that. This was glorious appreciation of golden warmth and luxurious floating.

In the evening, I was out and — long story short, because I don’t have a lot of time — I was upset and sad, and I realized that I was wearing yoga-appropriate clothes and that 7PM yoga would start in about twenty minutes. So I went to evening yoga.

I cried. I cried so much that I had to get up and get a cloth to wipe my face because I was going to start choking on my snot. Many tears. It felt so incredibly healthy. Lisa, the yoga teacher that I personally think has a direct and two-way line to God in her head (or maybe her heart?), warned us at the beginning of class that it was Friday and sometimes the music on Friday was a little freaky, and then class started. The first song in reminded me of something from the Internet, specifically one of the “Where the Hell is Matt?” videos. I think it might have been Trip the Light, but I could be wrong about that. But I was not really listening, it was background music, and I was stretching and trying to be in the moment.

But the next song was one that slowly made me think of my mom. I didn’t recognize it at first, but it started getting more and more of my attention, until I realized that it was Judy Collins and that my mom used to play it on the piano. I probably hadn’t heard it since then. And then I heard a few more of the words and realized it was Rainbow Connection. My mom and rainbows have a profound connection to me and to have that song, playing at that moment, when I was that mood, after that week… the tears started gushing.

Stretch, stretch, more yoga, and then the song was John Mayer with “Daughters” and eventually Led Zeppelin and “Stairway to Heaven.” I swear it felt my mother wrote the playlist to tell me she was with me and that I wasn’t alone. And yes, I’m all weepy again, but it isn’t bad crying. It was music that made me feel not just less alone, but loved.

Writing yesterday — well, I broke 1K in total words, but story words was probably closer to 900 total. But it was good work and a good day, and today will be even better. Much fun stuff is happening in my story. I have a character, Sophia, who is just taking over in really unexpected ways. She was supposed to be just a crying girl, but apparently she’s quite stubborn now that she’s stopped crying.

Goal for today: words. Lots of them!

Crazy cat dream

27 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by in Pets, Swimming, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

I dreamed last night that I owned a van and a big orange cat. I think maybe I was homeless and living in the van with the cat, but for some reason I needed to leave it alone temporarily. I was worried about it but a mysterious friend said that she’d have her cat take care of it. In the dream, that made perfect sense.

It also made sense that I owned a cat despite being seriously allergic. There is no way that a cat and I could share a van as living space. I would literally die when my airways closed off in my sleep. Dreams are weird.

Back to the dream, I returned to the van to find a tiger guarding my cat, defending it from a cougar. The tiger stood in front of the open van door, huge and orange and sleek, the way that tigers are, and when the cougar — beige and muscular — crouched as if to jump in the van, the tiger did that nonchalant tiger thwack with its front paw, sending the cougar scurrying away.

I was so grateful to the tiger. I was also afraid of it. It was a tiger. In my van! It was huge!! I couldn’t bring myself to get any closer and then all of a sudden, I was standing in the road, and big cats — the tiger, a snow leopard, a lioness, maybe a couple of others (but not the cougar) were all gamboling around with a bunch of little cats, including mine. I was horribly worried that they would get hit by cars and killed and I knew we had to gather them up and get them to safety. But I was also worried that they would kill me. How do you gather up gigantic predators?

And then I woke up.

I had a couple other weird dreams that I wanted to remember, but they’re gone now, lost to the morning routine and the dog walking thoughts and the stupid ruminations that I haven’t quite let go of (even though I’m now reminding myself that I’m having a thought when I catch myself drifting in that direction.) But I didn’t want to forget the tiger. It felt so symbolic, so significant. Definitely one of those dreams where you think “this means something important” but then you’re forced to admit that you have no idea what your subconscious is trying to tell you.

Ooh, another weird dream remembered, or at least a bit of it. Some kind of adventure, Agents of SHIELD style, but it ended when one of the people in the adventure, possibly a Simmons like character, was shot and fell to the ground. Two of the team chased after the shooters, but three of us stopped by the girl. I put my hands over the injury, pressing as hard as I could, knowing how much it must hurt her, but the blood just kept pouring forth. I was calling for help, 911, a doctor, something to stop the bleeding, anything, but the blood just kept coming. It was surprisingly warm, which I suppose is logical but had never really struck me as an idea before (and makes me want to go find a thermometer and see what 98 degree water feels like) and it felt clingy, like it would never come off of what it touched. And I couldn’t stop it. It was no time and endless time and then the blood stopped because it was all out of her. I felt like I had failed and I also felt really angry, like this is not how the story is supposed to go. This character cannot die. This is the wrong direction. These writers suck.

I guess those writers are my subconscious. My subconscious sucks.

It was not a particularly restful night.

***
For future reference for myself, it’s looking very much like the last swimming day of 2015 was October 15. That’s the latest it’s ever been, which is nice after the horribly rainy summer where it was always thundering. But the dogs and I miss it already. Zelda keeps trying to convince me that I want to go in the water and you know, I really don’t, but Bartleby is almost worse. He can’t seem to understand why I only want to sit on the porch instead of taking him swimming. And he is completely opposed to me sitting and writing on the porch. He seems to think that if I’m going to sit there, it is my job to provide him with a lap to sit in and hands to pet him.

Word count yesterday existed. Word count today is definitely going to do the same. NaNoWriMo starts in five days and this year, I’m making it to 50K words. I just wasted twenty minutes looking for a good quote about determination and failing to find one, so here’s my own: one word at a time, one minute at a time, one day at a time, that’s all it takes.

Autumn arriving

02 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in Boring, Editing, Food, Swimming

≈ 2 Comments

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It felt like fall today, so I made myself winter food for breakfast: veggie hash, which is basically just whatever veggies I have available, chopped up reasonably small (for fast cooking) and sauteed, with some protein source mixed in. Today, it was acorn squash, sweet potato, carrot, parsnip, bok choy, and red onion with bacon. Some spices — garlic-salt and ginger — while cooking. At the last minute, I added half an avocado because I had two that are ripe. Wow, the avocado just made it. It added a touch of cool creaminess, but the heat of the veggies was enough to soften it, so all the veggies became lightly avocado-flavored. That sounds weird, but it was delicious.

In the last four days, I have edited 150,000 words. (Mostly not my own words.) I am seriously wiped out. Editing is such focused work. But I enjoyed it. Most of all, I enjoyed going over to a friend’s last night for our weekly writing get-together and getting to be back in my own world again. Spending my day hours editing made my evening hours of writing all the better.

I haven’t thought much about editing as what I should be doing to make money while I write for fun, but now I’m considering the idea. I thought I was so burned out on editing that I would never go back, but… well, I don’t know. Maybe.

Yesterday, first day of October, I stretched my lunch break to two hours so that I could spend one of them floating in the pool and reading a book. I think this is the first time that I’ve still been swimming regularly as October begins. This year I saw maybe two love bugs, that was it. Usually by now we’re infested with them. Maybe the summer was too wet? But I’m grateful for the last lingering days of enjoying the water.

This feels like a very boring blog post, but I’ve got a bunch of businesslike things to do — making a new box set, pulling The Spirits of Christmas from non-Amazon sites, downloading a translation, writing a book description and a forward — and I’m feeling so fried from the editing that I’m avoiding all those things. Plus, avocado in veggie hash & swimming in October are things I want to remember, and blogging works that way for me. But back to work I go…