Wordswoman

When It Rains, It Pours Cats and Dogs

2008-05-12T01:22:24Z

Sunshine

California was fabulous, and so was spending mother-daughter time with Eldest Daughter. The trip did nothing to dispel her Weetzie-Bat-inspired fantasies of California as a land of eternal sunshine, purple-flowering jacaranda trees, gently waving palms and endless blue ocean. In fact it lived up to her fantasies completely. The sun shone every day. The ocean sparkled. The breezes were balmy. The world was in bloom.

So yes, come fall 2009 I expect that she'll be a California college girl. I'll buy her a webcam so we can see each other when ~~she gets~~ I get lonesome. We'll visit her in the dead of winter, and remind her of snow.

Rain

Two days after we got back from the trip, Dad ended up in the hospital again (getting a shunt put in to relieve pressure on his brain from the hydrocephalus, i.e. excess cerebral fluid, that developed after his second brain surgery in March). And three days after that, my stepfather landed in the hospital too (bleeding ulcer, low hemoglobin, wildly out of whack blood sugar). I have now officially Had Quite Enough Of Hospitals, Thank You Very Much.

Quotes of the week:

Dad: "My prognosis is nine months to live. From now on, I'm right about everything."
Mom: "He [stepdad] kept asking what he'd done wrong to deserve this kind of suffering."
Me: "Did you give him a list?"
Mom, to my husband Theo: "I'm sorry you had to marry into such an unhealthy family."
Theo: "Well, the women all live."

California Bound

2008-04-30T17:01:18Z

Later today, Eldest Daughter and I catch a plane for California for a whirlwind tour of colleges. This is just an informal scouting trip, to let her get the feel of some places that looked good to her online and on paper, but we're both really geared up for it. Sunshine! Palm trees! Ocean! Liberal arts colleges!

Am I living vicariously? Yeah, a little. :) It's a beautiful thing to be young and bright with all the world opening up in front of you, and Kristen has options to explore that I never knew at her age. But I'm also just looking forward to this mother-daughter time together, the only big trip we've ever taken with just the two of us. Next year it'll be her sister's turn, although I suspect we'll be headed to the opposite coast with that one.

As a nice warmup for the trip, she just got her ACT scores and they're ridiculous. Her SAT scores were very good, but these are crazy good. Knocked it out of the ballpark into the next county good. I'm so proud of her--and all the more so because she doesn't seem to have a big head about it. She just looked pleased, and a little surprised.

"Oh," she said. "Do you think I should take the SAT again?"

No, dear girl, I think you should treat yourself to a chocolate truffle and celebrate!

Sing It, Sister

2008-04-25T23:47:17Z

A great post about giving yourself permission to write badly.

Writing Exercise: Misplaced Emotion

2008-04-25T11:20:47Z

The challenge: Write a scene in which a character releases pent-up emotions at the wrong place, or the wrong time, or directed at the wrong person. Or all of the above; that'd be lively.

(And yes, I am poking fun at myself, just a little...)

Note to self...

2008-04-25T10:54:56Z

Sometimes you just need a catalyst to cry, especially when you've been keeping it in too long.

However, a web site devoted to pictures of cute fuzzy animals is probably not the *best* place, 'kay?

Happy Paws

2008-04-21T12:18:14Z

The scared little pit bull--now identified as a boxer/pit cross--has become a happy, bouncing, playful pup in just two weeks. Eldest Daughter and I both walked her during our Saturday morning dogwalking session; her leaps and bounds were a joy to see.

After all the dogs had a turn outside, we took the newly christened "YaYa" into the MVHS playroom to chase tennis balls and savage some chewy toys. She was in heaven. Talk about the body language of glee! I'm not sure that human beings are capable of that kind of full-body happiness. Alas, we can neither wag nor purr, and I think we're the worse for it.

YaYa is still bony; two weeks of fostering weren't enough to put much weight on her. But her eyes were bright, her sores were almost healed, and I saw none of the cowering behavior that broke my heart when we first met. She is already a dog transformed.

She wasn't on the adoption floor yet, and that's probably for the best. I would've been tempted beyond all endurance if she were ready to go home with someone. The cats would NOT approve.

Pocketful of Poetry

2008-04-18T03:09:12Z

Alas, I forgot about Poem in Your Pocket Day. But if I had remembered, I would've carried around my pal Michael Merriam's "The Sixth Son",

Every meeting on my calendar today would've been improved by producing it from my pants pocket and reading it aloud.

It has a certain lovely kinship with Neil Gaiman's poem, "Instructions".

On (Not) Qutting Your Day Job

2008-04-16T11:23:14Z

James Van Pelt has a candid article over on The Fix, entitled The Day Job: Quitting It. But it's really about not quitting it.

On related note:

Scalzi on Why It's Good to Have a Day Job
Scalzi again with Unasked-For Advice to New Writers About Money
Justine Larbalestier, Getting paid, or don't quit your day job
Writing Unboxed blog on Don't Quit Your Day Job

Do we notice a trend here, class?

Even if I had a book contract (which would presuppose finishing a book, a somewhat large detail), I wouldn't be quitting my day job. For one thing, my day job takes place at a fine and lovely Midwestern college, where I am surrounded by intelligent, interesting people. All these people help make possible the education of 2000 or so of the smartest young people on the planet.

As day jobs go, this does not suck.

But even if it did, I wouldn't be quitting my day job. Because it also provides:

Health insurance
Retirement plan contributions
A predictable salary
College tuition benefits for my children

Selling a novel, for 99.9% of all writers, would not make possible any of the above.

And that is why I'm not quitting my day job.

That, and the fact that I haven't actually finished a novel, much less sold one.

Details, details.

In Honor of National Poetry Month...

2008-04-13T01:42:40Z

Notes From a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition

So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched in a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo—a white mute.
Quiet.

Yeti, down there we've got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.

Yeti, crime is not all
we're up to down there.
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.

We've inherited hope —
the gift of forgetting.
You'll see how we give
birth among the ruins.

Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At nightfall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.

Up here it's neither moon nor earth.
Tears freeze.
Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,
turn back, think again!

I called this to the Yeti
inside four walls of avalanche,
stomping my feet for warmth
on the everlasting
snow.

-Wislawa Szymborska, Poems New and Collected

Writing Exercise: A Feast for the Senses

2008-04-13T01:30:40Z

The challenge: Write a scene at a breakfast table that evokes all the senses.

The Man From Earth

2008-04-06T15:41:40Z

It's rare to find a science fiction movie with no special effects, no monsters, no aliens, no spaceships, no laboratories or mad scientists. Rarer still to find a movie--any movie--that features nothing but a group of people talking, yet manages to fascinate and captivate.

The Man From Earth is all of that, and despite its shoestring budget and flaws (poor lighting, wooden acting in places, certain plot/plausibility holes), I enjoyed it more than any big-budget production I've seen in years.

The premise is simple: A group of college professors gather in a rustic cabin to bid farewell to their friend, John Oldman, a popular tenured professor who abruptly resigned his position. When they press John for an explanation, he admits his great secret: He's a caveman. He's walked the Earth for 14,000 years, always forced to move on when people begin to notice that he's not aging.

Is he a madman, a liar, or a genetic freak? As the evening wears on his friends move through various stages of belief and disbelief, each drawing on his or her own specialty--biology, paleontology, religion, history--to try to challenge John's story. The script, the final work of the late, acclaimed science fiction writer/screenwriter Jerome Bixby, has a few groaner moments but overall it's intelligent, compelling, and thought-provoking.

Highly recommended. It's available on DVD or through Netflix's "Instant Watch" feature.

Writing Exercise: Random Prompt

2008-04-06T13:29:27Z

The challenge: Open a dictionary, close your eyes, and point to a word at random. Open it at another place and repeat. Use the two words to create a premise for a scene, poem, or short story.

Grrrrrrrr....

2008-04-06T02:33:56Z

Today, during my dog-walking stint at Minnesota Valley Humane Society, I held in my arms the trembling, abused, neglected proof of human evil.

She was a four-month-old pit bull puppy, so skinny her ribs stood out. There were sores on her little body, probably skin irritations caused by living in her own waste for God knows how long. She was abandoned in the MVHS parking lot at night, in a filthy crate, small and hungry and alone.

When I knelt down in her kennel to put the leash on her for a walk, she cowered, shaking, her tail between her legs but still trying to wag. I carried her outside to a picnic table, where she snuggled in my arms until the trembling passed.

She licked my face.

Tonight the pup is safe, clean, and warm. But somewhere out there is a waste of skin and breath, a soulless excuse for a human being who may still have other animals to abuse.

I wish him ill.

I'll never write it, but...

2008-04-05T21:44:44Z

I had this quirkly SF story idea, in which a time traveler brings Richard Thompson to a future where he's got billions of fans, while the talentless pretenders who eclipsed him in his own time are forgotten.

Only the time travel part is implausible.

Otherwise

2008-04-03T01:24:12Z

Jane Kenyon made me cry, dammit.

Dad's biopsy report is all bad news. The cancer is now level IV.

There isn't much to say, otherwise.

Milestones

2008-04-02T16:00:00Z

Eldest Daughter and I just made travel reservations for a California visit in early May, to make a whirlwind tour of colleges. Her interest in California schools began in the middle of a long Minnesota winter. Coincidence? I wouldn't bet on it.

There's no space in the baby book to record "Baby's First College Visit," but it still feels like a developmental milestone to me.

Writing Exercise: Personal Space

2008-03-30T23:36:36Z

The challenge: Describe a room that tells you something about the person who inhabits it.

Writing Exercise: The Politeness Game

2008-03-29T13:20:01Z

The challenge: Write a scene that portrays an emotional conflict between two characters even though they are being very polite to one another.

Random Writing Research Links

2008-03-28T22:01:48Z

Most Common U.S. Surnames (for those times when you suddenly realize all your characters have last names beginning with B). Also includes links to most common/popular boys' and girls' names, and the most popular names historically.
Parts of a Castle.
World History Timelines.
Timeline of Clothing History.
History of Clothing (including specific pieces of clothing, e.g. earmuffs, bikinis, etc.)
The Great Idea Finder (history of inventions, inventors, innovations).
List of Legendary Creatures.

Writing Exercise of the Day

2008-03-28T17:02:41Z

The challenge: Write a passage that reveals important and engaging details about a character's personality without any physical description of the person.

My own attempt is below. Put your own in the comments if you'd like to share.

If a man’s home could truly be his castle, Parker Sims’s castle would have hungry alligators in the moat and sharpened spikes atop the walls. The spikes would be decorated with the heads of neighborhood dogs that barked when Parker wanted to sleep, and neighborhood children who ran across Parker’s manicured lawn. The towers would have arrow slits for archers; the ramparts would have pots for the boiling oil.

But this was a suburbia, so Parker had to make do with a chain-link fence, a Keep Off The Grass sign, and the best Brinks security system money could buy.

Groggy and Bleary and Dazed, Oh My

2008-03-25T13:23:14Z

Yesterday Dad was in surgery prep at 5:30 a.m. and wheeled away for surgery right on schedule at 7:30 a.m., but the surgeon didn't emerge to talk to us until almost 2:00 p.m. That's significantly longer than his first surgery, so we were scared and anxious that something had gone wrong (and also ravenously hungry, since we hadn't dared to leave the surgical waiting room). But the doctor was calm--surreally calm, in fact. There was this aura of "ho hum, just another day in the human brain" about him. Everything had gone fine, he said. It was a clean resection.

(This does not mean all cancer has been removed; that's not really possible with these aggressive tumors that send invisible tendrils out into the surrounding functional brain tissue. It just means that all the obviously abnormal tissue they could remove was cleanly removed, without complications.)

Just closing up after surgery takes a long time. They never show that part in the medical shows on TV; it's not dramatic, and it's not usually the star neurosurgeon doing it. Dad wasn't closed up and moved to recovery until 3:15 p.m., and we couldn't see him for a couple of hours after that, when he was moved to the ICU. He looked dazed and exhausted, and who could blame him? Heck, I felt dazed and exhausted myself, and I didn't have anesthesia and a hole in my head. But however tired and pained, he sounded like himself when he spoke. He even tried to nag his wife into slipping him a couple of Extra-Strength Tylenol (she wouldn't) or a Tic-Tac (eventually she did) when the nurses weren't looking. Which is totally Dad, so it was oddly reassuring.

Around 8:00 p.m. we saw Dad's surgeon heading down the hall, interns trailing him like the tail of a comet. This would be the same neurosurgeon who talked to us at 7:00 a.m. and probably made his hospital rounds before that. He seemed pleased with Dad's condition.

My brother Perry and I stayed a couple of hours more, but since we'd gotten up at 4:00 a.m. we were fading fast. So around 8:30 p.m. we called it a night, went to dinner, and got home to bed. I barely remember lying down. I think my husband had to throw a blanket over me because I hadn't had the energy to do it myself.

We'll be heading back to the hospital soon, hoping to hear more of a report from the surgeon and/or pathology.

Brilliant!

2008-03-23T14:06:57Z

My daughter Kristen just aced her SATs, but she doesn't know it. She'll find out when she gets home from her band trip next Friday.

Shine on, sunshine girl. The whole big, bright, scary, wonderful world is waiting for you, and you don't even know it yet.

Between

2008-03-20T22:36:56Z

My daughters are flying high as I write this. Literally. They're on their way to Europe for a high school band trip, headed for Salzburg, Venice, Florence, Rome. I oversaw their packing, double- and triple-checked their itineraries, issued all the appropriate motherly warnings...then hugged them, kissed them, and watched them go. Bon voyage, my ducklings, my pups, my cubs!

I'm still a mother, but for the next 9 days I'm an off-duty one. How strange. How quiet. A sneak preview of things to come.

Monday my father undergoes his second brain surgery. But I'll think about that on Monday. These few days are the lull between, a space to breathe and think and appreciate the peace.

Bless the Beasts

2008-03-15T13:13:36Z

You know you've got an uncommonly patient cat when you balance the keyboard on his back...and not only doesn't he abandon your lap, he purrs.

The patient cat in question is our marmalade tom, Mr. Bounce. Here's some historical evidence of his accepting nature (and its limits).

Clouds and Shadow

2008-03-11T22:29:29Z

I call it a shadow, because that's what it casts over our lives--my father's, and the lives of people who love him. But when viewed on his MRI the mystery mass is white, not black. It looks almost like a cloud. You can see an example here:

http://www.38lemon.com/tumor_photo/diagnosis_mri

The MRI image in that link is not my father's; it's that of a courageous cancer warrior named David Welch, whose tumor is in the frontal lobe (Dad's is in the occipital lobe). But it gives you an accurate picture of how abnormal tissue in the brain appears on an MRI. It's bright white, and on Dad's MRI yesterday it looked..well, fluffy. Strange though it is to use such a light, frivolous word in such a context.

Is it malignant regrowth of the tumor? Unfortunately, there's only one sure way to answer that question: Go in and get some. No one can say just by looking. It could be tumor, it could be scarring/damage from the treatment. Realistically, the former is probably likelier than the latter, but the doctor didn't say so outright. The probability just hung there in the room, unspoken.

All we really know for certain is that the shadow, or cloud, is substantially larger than just two months ago. So surgery, a biopsy, and "debulking" (i.e. removing as much as possible) is recommended. That'll probably happen next week.

I'm feeling very calm at the moment. It's probably an artificial calm, or a weary one. Or a waiting calm, since there's nothing to be done just yet. I'm grateful for it. It's as close to serenity as I've felt in a good long while, and I don't expect it'll last. But while it does, it's soothing as a clear blue sky.

The kind without clouds.