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Raw

There was no other title for this post, really.

Raw sums it up quite succinctly.

It's like I've been sitting on a windy beach, sand twirling around me in small, stinging tornados. My towel is turned up at the corners and half-buried. I huddle in my clothes, pulling a hat over my face, and digging my toes down to where it's cool and calm.

I've cut back a bit on my anti-depressant, just on certain days, to try to mitigate a certain side effect that I do not like at all. So maybe the wavering serotonin is to blame for my emotional sandstorm.

It started innocently enough, with a physical (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with my anti-depressant) and was only because I was due. I got the usual blood work and my platelets came back low. Much lower than they were a year and a half ago when I started to realize that I might be lupus-y. (God, I hate that word so much. Why can't it be named something more exotic like Sjogren's Syndrome or Hashimoto's thyroiditis?) Not quite get-thee-to-a-hematologist-right-this-second low. But low enough to be somewhat alarming. To need to go see the blood doctor sometime soon.

So, I'm waiting for my hematologist appointment in early August. And of course, am enjoying a constant mental ticker tape of Please don't let it be leukemia please don't let it be leukemia please don't let it be leukemia.

Worrying about cancer (or any other horrific disease) is a hobby of mine. Not as satisfying as, say, photography. But, my brain tends to go there when I don't keep it on a tight enough leash (Oh, it goes everywhere everywhere everywhere I don't want it to when I neglect to keep it in its spiked choke collar).

Lupus sucks, too, yeah. But isn't as ominous. At least not immediately. I suppose there are other options. Less sinister. More commonplace. Not as meaty, though, so my brain won't chew on those.

***

Max and Claire were both in camp this week. Separate camps for which neither was excited. To keep them away from the Screens and to give myself a chance to theoretically inhale, exhale, and think, I signed them up and ushered them back and forth anyway. Watching them depart at the beginning of the week kind of killed me.

I watched Max at drop off, sorting his lunch from his snacks and stooping over to work on the morning's craft project, his sweet, nine-year-old-boy vertebrate bumpling out his camp-issued t-shirt. He was so mature. Nervous, but willing. And even though I knew he was in a good, safe place, I wanted to cry.

Same with Claire. I brought her into a gathering of girls who sang songs and made food and painted things under the trees. She knew many of the others there from school, but she was uncomfortable at first, shifting from foot to foot, trying to be brave. I had absolutely no doubt this was good for her, but I broke every day as I walked away from her and back to the car.

***

We had an issue with Claire's ear lobe, which has only been pierced since March. Evidently, I let her leave a pair of earrings in too long. And, though she cleaned them daily, I wasn't checking her work. As it turns out, it is possible for flesh to swallow an earring back whole.

When we realized this last night, we were mortified. Claire wept because she knew she'd need a minor surgical procedure to have it removed. I wept because I felt like such a loser parent for not having taken better care of her.

I'm relieved, however, to report that after visiting two doctors, enduring six lidocaine shots, and suffering through lots of poking and prodding in a very sensitive and small pad of tissue, Claire's earring back is now in the garbage, she's wearing teensy 14k hoops with no backs and no dangle to catch on anything, and we are past this (barring MRSA or a flesh-eating infection, of course).

J. is wondering what this will all cost us. He was not for the 7th birthday piercing to begin with and that walloped me with another layer of guilt. As he said tonight, "There's so much." I agree fully. There's so much to spend money on. And I do most of the spending because, well, I'm here with the kids. I guess I should just stop this thread because there exists is a big, complicated financial dynamic that encompasses J.'s job and all that I hate about it and our separate and joint priorities and the guilt guilt guilt. Blogging about it will hurt us both.

Back to the windstorm. Eff the Celexa side effects right now, because I need that substance like a cat needs sunlight. I'm back to popping my daily 40 mgs.

If you have any to spare, please send positive energy to me in Seattle. I'm kind of a mess here, trying not to let sand cake my mouth and eyes and hair.

June is passing by

It's totally "summer" here in Seattle. Which means lots of things, none of which is sun or warmth. Most days we're still in sweaters and jeans. I might defiantly shove my feet into a pair of flip flops, but then I just end up with cold toes, so it's not really worth the optimism.

We're wrapping up our first week of the kid's vacation. And, I have to admit, it's gone well. I work about three hours a day, and that's a little hard to fit in, but is doable in bits and pieces. Max and Claire have accompanied me to the grocery store once, a group trip that I usually dread. Before we left I sat them down and told them I would buy one box of popsicles, but that they weren't allowed to ask for anything else. They tried really hard not to. And once we got to the produce section we went wild loading our cart with pineapple, cherries, raspberries, and kiwi and that seemed to make them happy enough. It was...dare I say...fun!

***

On Tuesday afternoon, J. and I went to an office to sign some Very Important Papers. I was able to secure a playdate for Max, but Claire had to come with us. This office had a basket of snacks in the lobby, from which they let Claire choose something. She picked cornuts, which, if you didn't know, are the loudest foodstuff on this earth. Think hominy, but crunchier.

So, we are in a very quiet conference room scribbling our signatures on things. I am attempting to whisper jokes while my whip-smart husband asks lawyerly questions that I wouldn't even think of. And Claire sits at the head of the table listening to a Judy Moody book on my iPod and devouring cornuts. It sounded like a small construction site in her mouth. Luckily the woman shuffling the papers around and explaining things was very kind and also the mom of a seven-year-old girl.

***

This happened and is kind of noteworthy:

I finally formatted and received a hard copy proof of Spectacle. This took hours and several clumps of missing hair to accomplish (not including years of writing the manuscript) and I'm kind of proud. I always swore up and down that I'd never go through a "vanity press" just to see my book in print. But Createspace, owned by Amazon, has a pretty good program and I needed a few review copies.

I'm hard at work, between kid care, actual employment, and moving shit in the house from one place to another, also known as "organizing", on my next manuscript. It's another YA. A novel in lists. Kind of strange, right? But I think we all like to read lists, find it easy and quick, and I hope, really hope this works. I think it does. Here's the quick synopsis I wrote on GoodReads:

>>I am currently working on a somewhat experimental YA novel (as yet untitled) about a girl named Nelly Platt who is an actor in L.A. with a role on a YouTube-based cop drama called True Blue.

She's falling for the wrong guys (narcissistic actor types), and panicking as her younger brother Graeme starts displaying symptoms of an aggressive disease.

When he gets really sick and Nelly loses her job on True Blue (which is the family's bread and butter), she has to figure out how to keep everything afloat.

The twist on this whole thing is that Nelly is an uber organized control freak who keeps continually updated lists on her iPhone. The novel is told in list format.<<

So, that's that.

***

Oh, and I finally bought my ticket to China for October! I'm going to be so out of my element, but I'm really, really excited.

It's crazy to think that a year ago J. and I were meeting in Detroit and jetting off to France for a week. How did I get so lucky to be able to travel far and wide?

Cat Video Friday - Henri

How have I never seen Henri before this week? Poor, tragic kitty.

 

Some things I've learned this Spring

Do not, no matter how unfairly you feel you've been treated, write a blog post about bad reviews you get on your self-published novel. You will be crucified. And it will hurt.

Don't sign your nine-year-old up for Little League unless you're cool with spending 3 to 5 cold evenings a week sitting on hard bleachers, eating beef jerky for dinner, and then having to wrangle a cranky family into bed way too late.

When it gets to the point that the bi-weekly arrival of your organic vegetable box starts to stress you out, just cancel it. You will feel immense relief.

If you see a relatively cheap ticket for a flight to Shanghai, buy it. It may be a long time before three figure fares come around again.

Don't fool yourself into thinking you can garden, because you can't. Nor do you really want to.

Going gluten free will overjoy your GI tract. All will be calm and quiet. But don't try to get away with eating fake bread and buns. They're gross. GF brownies, however, are your new best friends.

You probably would've been better off not buying those Insanity DVDs at the school auction.

Take your glasses to the grocery store. Your near vision is failing you terribly and ingredient labels look as legible as squashed spiders.

Laser hair removal in the bikini area hurts almost as much as a wax. The results are alarmingly neat, though, and it is worth it.

If you need a hug from your daughter on a school day, go ahead and stop in for one. She's thrilled when you show up, but she won't be forever.

No one says it better than Ira...

We are all made up of stardust

I ran across an NPR story earlier this week about a pastor who realized she was an athiest, but continued to "serve" as a minister. As each Sunday approached and she knew she'd have to give a sermon she didn't believe, she'd get stomachaches and headaches and endure all sorts of miserable physical manifestations.

Reading the story, I felt for her. I think we've all probably tried to pretend to be something we weren't and suffered as a result. (In my case, it was an brief engagement to an overbearing man that, after a few months, caused my gut to seize and pounds to slide away like melting wax.)

I also related to her doubts about her faith that morphed into full blown disbelief in any higher power.

Not that I've ever had faith in a God, per se. But I would say that, since college, when four family members died in a very short space of time, I've been on a sort of spiritual quest.

I don't believe there is any cause and effect in praying to an entity to save us money on car repairs or make a sick loved one healthy.

How can there be? Why would God save one privileged American while millions of others around the world starve? No, that's arrogance, in my opinion.

But I do believe in energy, positive and negative. The universe swirls with it, with us, and when we die, we become cosmic dust, are eventually incorporated into stars. Which is comforting in it's own way. Not as soothing, as, say, believing that we'll be enveloped into heaven where purring cats are everywhere and we can eat cake all day without getting fat. But, it helps.

My father-in-law was a methodist minister, and when he was alive, I asked him what he thought about God.

I never got a straight answer. When I questioned him about his beliefs regarding afterlife, this man educated at Yale seminary said, "How can heaven hold so many people?"

Even I know that, assuming heaven exists, there are no bodies there, only souls. Souls so slight they might shimmer like thin silver filaments. I found his answer odd. And could never get him to commit to saying that Yes, he believed in God.

His wife, my mother-in-law, was a little more forthcoming. Despite her overtly-religious Christmas cards and attendance of church every Sunday, she sent me a Word document outlining that she believes not in a white-bearded man, but that God equals Love.

Anyway, this pastor on NPR who has come out as an athiest, it struck me. That's all really. I feel badly for her that she felt she had to pretend for so long and now is unemployed. But I'm glad she's being true to herself.

Hopefully it'll cheer her a bit to know that someday she'll be part of a brightly burning celestial body.

 

Home

We just got back from Arizona yesterday, where we met up with my parents on the kids' spring break. There were idyllic moments. There were times when the tension between J. and me squealed like a too-tight violin string. Mostly there are sweet memories, though.

I know I'm lucky to have experienced such a trip. Such trips.

I married a traveler, you see. And my own (somewhat restrained) wanderlust had been latent until I met J. and we started to go places.

I'm planning a solo trip to China in October (perhaps I've mentioned that--I'm a little excited) to reconnect with my college roommate and best friend from those years. How fortunate! Such bounty of experience I'm accruing.

But it does take work. The planning and packing and childcare arranging.

Yesterday, after pulling into our driveway and dragging the suitcases inside, I fell catatonic and was barely able to lift clothes to hangers, toss laundry into machines. I was so tired I couldn't drink! Not even one glass of wine.

I sipped tea and went to bed. Though I stayed awake 'til midnight reading.

At 6:40, Claire called me and was shaken and teary. Another nightmare. I laid down next to her until she calmed. Then staggered back to bed where J. let me stay until 9:30(!)

Today, the kids played outside with neighbors all afternoon. Fabulous!

Meanwhile, I whipped in circles like a weathervane in a hurricane. Undone projects everywhere, most of them on my computer. Finish the photo book for Claire's class! Work on the posters for the school fundraiser! Send promised copies of Spectacle to readers on LibraryThing! Go over the manuscript again before uploading the next revision to Amazon! Format for hard copies even though the CreateSpace instructions are vexing and Lightning Source makes me want to shove my head in the coffeepot! Log onto work and catch up!

We live on a fairly quiet street, but cars do pass by, some of them not so slowly. Still, I let Max and Claire play there with the 11 and 13 year-old boys next door. They are watchful, but kids. I was uneasy. I was also trying to get things done.

I made corndogs for lunch and thought, None of this accomplishment will mean a damn thing if I hear the screech of brakes and the yell of kids and one of them is left broken on the asphalt. I think about how, in the 70s, I used to ride my bike all over the neighborhood without my parents knowing where I was.

I predict I will writhe around in bed tonight, worst-case scenarios flickering through my brain.

Poisoned

I come in through the sliding doors of the rambling retirement community and a woman I recognize from the dining room looks at me blandly. "Help. Help. She's trying to poison me," she says of a nurse who stands nearby.

The nurse rolls her eyes. "This is more than I can take," she snaps and storms away.

The paranoid old lady, hair violently thinning, grips her walker and stands. "I don't know what's going on here. This is a scary place."

She makes these dramatic accusations as calmly as if she's instructing her Yorkie to go outside and do his business. There are no exclamation points.

Cued by the nurse that this woman is not to be taken seriously, I am already a flight up the stairwell.

It is a little scary, if you consider old and impending death frightening.

Or maybe, more than perilous, it is lifeless, which is just as terrifying.

Despite the glorious San Diego sun, heavy drapes hang at every window like arms clad in fur pelts. The thickly carpeted hallways smell powdery and musty. They are utterly silent, with only the occasional tread of a pair of SAS shoes and oiled walker wheels passing by. 

Behind every apartment door a life ebbs, having been downsized from houses filled with furniture and children and pets with yards and gardens and fruit trees, to one-bedroom spaces fitted with basics – wall hugging chairs and loveseats instead of overstuffed recliners and sofas. A few pots of geraniums on a balcony replacing a sprawling vegetable patch and tractor barn.

Instead of garages bulging with tools and lawn mowers, there are barren carports. And Keurigs sit in the lobby where coffee and tea burbles into styrofoam cups rather than a glinting percolator in a bright yellow kitchen.

The food in the dining room floats in several inches of cream, with fruit-laden Jello and soggy prunes a staple in the salad bar. There are some good rolls, though, and a grill where you can order waffles and cheeseburgers.

Men come up to me in the dining room to measure their height against mine. "I used to be six-two!" they crow. I try not to curl my lip and snap, "This is more than I can take!"

Instead, because J.'s mom lives here and because these men are old, I try to humor them by idiotically nodding and smiling. Still, I can't help but think of Michigan State college boys and how, at parties, they stood on their tiptoes when I walked by.

These men are the same, just on the other side of life.

The staff is large and generally kind and everything is clean.

Max and Claire love it here: the two swimming pools and the fifth-floor Wii and the games and puzzles their grandma supplies them with.

They're not fazed by spotted 80 and 90-year-olds, not spooked like J. or overly contemplative and quiet like me. They're just kids with clear, glowing skin, inexhaustible energy, and acceptance of the different shapes and sizes and ages of the humans all around them.

And, though I'm very much sure the woman who feared she was being poisoned was not, I do wonder about her childhood and middle age and dementia that has her by its ragged claws.

J. and I reassure ourselves: we'll never live in a place like this that smells like cold cream and scrambled eggs, where our neighbors drop dead weekly. We'll be somewhere bright and airy, with a view of the ocean and private nurses (or children) to care for us.

But yeah, who knows? In the same situation, in a place that is overly-upholstered and silent, I might accuse someone of slipping arsenic into my orange juice if it will get me out.

Parallels

Lately, when Max decides (in a persnickety, cat-like way) that he's ready for a little affection, he'll come and hug me.

Delighted, because these moments are increasingly rare, I'll throw my arms around him and hold onto his hard, angular boy body.

It often ends with him shaking me off and snapping, "Get away from me, weirdo."

Author Meg Wolitzer totally gets what it's like to mother a boy. I'm reading The Ten-Year Nap right now, and the way she writes about boys around the ages of 9 or 10 is genius. Her narrative is filled with the nuances of raising a male creature with their growing remove and surging testosterone.

"I wonder if the boys learn a particular kind of maleness at school...A Lord of the Flies kind of thing. I know their aggression is held in check, but I feel like it's still there, like I can almost see it."

Max is not even the most boyish boy. He tends to be observant and scientific rather than rough. He is more the kid from Jerry Maguire who constantly quotes, "Did you know the human head weighs eight pounds?" than boys who stomp and squash and barrel.

Still, though, I'm sensing the impending distance. It lurks behind the trees like a hazy, pink sunrise.

***

So...Spectacle. In it, I write about a gym teacher who is despised by the two protagonists, Emily and Trix. Though, in the novel I changed the gym teacher's name and physical characteristics, she is, largely, based on my real middle school/high school gym teacher. A few of the scenes in the novel very much parallel my real life experiences.

Silly me, I never thought my ex-gym teacher would ever read my story aimed at 16-year-olds. Through the magic of Facebook, however, I learned that she has downloaded it.

Though I'd love for her to rethink some of the ways in which she "taught" us and favored certain students to the detriment of the rest of us, she's retired now and is, from what I have heard, a decent person and a constant in the community in which I grew up.

I'm an idiot. I hope I don't hurt her feelings too much and that she doesn't contact me.

In other Spectacle news, my little story hit the top 25 on Amazon's free Kindle books today! Mostly thanks to Pixel of Ink. Holla, P-O-I, and thank you for the shout out. It was a fun day watching the numbers go up.

Back to reality tomorrow when I hang the $2.99 price tag on Spectacle again.

***

Max and I have been watching the stats together, high-fiving a lot. Today I picked him up from unicycling club after school and could hardly wait to tell him: 4,500 downloads since I saw him last. He wore his hairnet still, the thing that protects him from catching lice from the community helmets, and had ballpoint pen scrawled across his smooth, soft forehead. "Wow," he said. "That's a lot."

He was caught there, between little boy and big boy, between looking ridiculous and not caring and grinning with me over Amazon rankings.

And I thought, God, I love this. I love this age and this moment and that I can appreciate it all.

My YA novel Spectacle is alive!

I've been so remiss in posting to my blog because I've been working my tail off trying to get Spectacle edited, proofread, edited some more, formatted, etc. But it's up now! I sort of feel like I've given birth. Except I'm not spiking a fever or vomiting and I actually feel good enough to pop a bottle of bubbly. Not that I have, mind you. But I could.

Anyway, it's here on Amazon and I'd so appreciate it if anyone wants to buy it and read it and review it. It's an e-book only, so it requires a Kindle or Kindle app on your computer, phone, or tablet. Someday soon I'll probably put it up on Barnes and Noble as well, so it'll be available for the Nook.

Another thing you should know, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time: the fiction I normally post here is adult fiction. Spectacle, however, is YA. Meant for girls 15 or 16 and older. It has some mature content. Swearing (though no Fucks anywhere), some kissing, groping, and implied sex. I think it's realistic without being over the top. But then, I wrote it.

If you do read it and think it's decent, please, pretty please with candy hearts on top, post a review on Amazon. It means so much and helps immensely with sales.

That is all. Thank you for your support! Beyond words...