The Best Holiday Season
Topic: Daily Eruptions
Hans has three days left in the month to prove me wrong, but I really think this was our best December together. Hans heard me say that a couple times to relatives and friends over the Christmas weekend and commented that he thinks I feel that way because he was so distracted with work this year and wasn't paying attention to what I was doing in terms of cards, shopping, and baking. I think he's absolutely right, and if he's smart, he'll make a note to be either similarly distracted or nothing but supportive of my efforts again next year! We didn't argue once this month - about anything - and had a really relaxing and enjoyable holiday with my family. I have been walking around the house saying, "I'm a happy girl," which is a refreshing change for both of us.

On top of that, I felt like my last minute baking, cooking, and wrapping push went better this year than ever before. Instead of making each dish one at a time, I managed to find ways to make all the dishes simultaneously by figuring out which steps of various recipes were compatible with other steps. I'm sure this is how most cooks do it, but it's a new stage in my evolution! This is probably the fifth year I've made tamales for Hans, and they were definitely my best. I got the seasoning for the filling just right - spicy but not too hot - and I added more oil to the masa dough and they had the perfect texture. And, on top of that, when we left for the Christmas Eve party at Mom and Dad's, I left a clean kitchen - definitely a first! - and was the first to arrive instead of being an hour late and making everyone wait for me before they could start dinner. Finally!

I'm taking this week off from work to get my home office organized once and for all, to relax, and to get my life in order so that when I return to work I'm able to continue the meditation, exercise, and writing habits I'm putting in place this week without having to start from scratch. I hadn't been able to do the body scan meditation, which is the major meditation used in Full Catastrophe Living, on my own. I always fell asleep. So Hans gave me the complete series of mindfulness CDs for Christmas, and I think that's going to solve my problem. I'm starting the 8 week mindfulness program over from scratch now, and will be finishing it up about the same time Hans and I leave for L. A. in March to visit his family. I'm also using that trip as a dividing line for my exercise routine. I have a difficult time sticking to the same workout for very long because it gets boring. So I've made a new schedule for January and February that rotates in new exercise every two weeks over an 8 week period. I think that'll improve my base fitness level, restore some of the flexibility I've lost, and build my major muscle groups back up so that when I start road cycling in March, and hopefully swimming, too, I won't be starting from zero. Hans also gave me a dance fitness tape I asked for. It's fun and fast and more challenging than it looks. I'm hoping it will boost my confidence so that I feel ready to sign up for a dance class in the spring.

On Tuesday night, I also picked up the book The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger again. I had started it sometime in the fall and got 107 pages into it, but then got busy and never got back to it. I'm about half-way through it now and I am absolutely in love! The book makes me want to be a novelist. Audrey Niffenegger creates these people and their relationship and they're very strange world so convincingly, she makes me want to be the best writer I can be. I'm pretty sure this book is going on my list of all-time favorites, and that the author is going on my list of writers to always read.

I'm hoping to post again before then, but if I don't get back here in time, Happy New Year, everyone!

Blessed Winter Solstice
It is Yule, the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the day to celebrate the return, or rebirth, of the sun! In some calendars, it is the beginning of the new year. I will be celebrating Christmas and New Years with my family in the coming week (actually fortnight is a more accurate measure here), but this year, some part of me feels a deeper connection with today's pagan meanings. I have been moving through lots of changes in the past year, and my spirit tells me that today is a day for thankfulness, for reflection, for hope, and especially for renewal. I don't have any ritual planned, although it would be nice if I could carve out fifteen minutes for a quiet meditation this evening, aside from watching a rented copy of Miracles with Hans and making his GF vegan sugar cookies.

I just wanted to send a message of thanks out into the world for all of the friends and family who have given me inspiration and strength this year, for the friends who have reconnected with me (even by the thinnest thread) after a much too long absence, for the new home I inhabit, for Kaija, for Hans and the beginning of our work to rediscover each other and expand our relationship, for the wonderful opportunity to work with Sudie, for the creative impulse that is again beginning to find expression in my life, for the work I did with an amazing therapist that pulled me out of depression and helped me refocus my energy, for the Earth and all of the Life she sustains, for my own life, and for the love that surrounds me everywhere I turn.

I wish everyone a blessed day and a new year filled with love, inspiration, and wonder.

Peace!

Christmas Masochist
Mood:  happy
Well, I've done it to myself again. Dug myself into a holiday hole from which I may never emerge. I am still making my Christmas cards--at this point, it's pretty clear that they take me about 30 minutes each. It's hard to know whether they're worth the effort, especially since some people don't seem to realize that I made them myself. (Is this a compliment? Do people think they look good enough to have been bought from a store? Or, do people just think I have crummy taste in cards and bought the cheapest thing I could find?) I didn't sign and date them on the back this year, which gives people one less clue that the cards are my own personal elementary school-level craft project to them.

Last night I spent four hours making a double batch of Mom's pineapple drop cookies to give away to my "co-workers," and I realized, as I was struggling to fold the holiday print wax paper neatly around each square "Ho, Ho, Ho" themed plate of cookies and tape it in place, that every other woman in my family--living and dead--is a better woman than I. None of them fight with plastic wrap--which always seems to fold itself onto itself and stick together when I want it to remain one flat, single unstuck sheet and then refuses to stick to itself in the places I do intend--and wax paper. None of them take four hours to make one kind of cookie. (Last night, my friendly neighbor Beth brought over a container of totally amazing cookies--five kinds--that she said she whipped up over the weekend.) And, having watched Candy paint both a fruit bowl and a teapot in the time it took me to paint one fruit bowl that in the end cost me $170 in studio time, I'm pretty sure that none of them would spend 30 minutes measuring and scoring and folding and stenciling and inking and punching and stamping and pushing glitter paint around a single Christmas card. None of them are particularly neat or organized, which could be a relief except that I have to remember that all of them have children that they also have to contend with in the midst of all of their holiday preparations.

The house, which was beautifully decorated two weekends ago, is now buried under craft supplies from the card making project and wrapping paper and tape and bags of gifts that still need to be wrapped. The Christmas ornaments I bought in 1999 with the intention of painting them and using them as gift tags are still unpainted and taking up space on my home office floor.

And, I still have gluten-free, vegan sugar cookies to make for Hans, as well as Christmas tamales and fresh pineapple salsa for Christmas Eve dinner, and banana pudding, Rice Krispies treats, Jell-o Jigglers, and baked beans as my contributions to the family Christmas party.

The upside is that I'm loving it. I love pushing red glitter paint around on blue cardstock at 3:00 a.m. I love watching wrapped Christmas presents appear one at a time around the tree. I love tasting my first pineapple Christmas cookie of the season. And some part of me loves getting only 4 hours of sleep per night while I try to make all of this happen.

On Sunday night, while I finished 23 Christmas cards, I wrote a detailed outline of an essay I want to write about the joys of making your own Christmas cards. And there's probably an essay lurking in my notion that I, alone, am failing womanhood. So, yes, I am in my Christmas pit--which is a lonely place because, while other women are in similar situations, we are, in the end, each in our own solitary pit--and the house is a disaster and the perfection for which I strive remains forever elusive, but I am swirling in my own lovely, creative mess and this is where I thrive.

December's Mad Rush
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I must be living something closer to a normal adult life lately, because not only have I been too busy to post to this site, I've also been too busy to write blog posts in my head that never get posted. As a result, I've been extremely productive at work, although only mildly so at home.

I had hoped that, since I did more than half of my holiday shopping while I was on vacation in October, I would have a more relaxed season. So, so naive! Of course the shopping that I had remaining was more difficult--people for whom I don't know what to buy--and so I not only have spent time actually "shopping" in crowded stores where every box I pick up seems in some way crunched, or smushed, or just plain damaged, but also a considerable amount of time worrying about what to buy. Draining.

And, thinking I still had two weeks to get them in the mail, last week I decided I would make my own cards again this year. Of course, it took more than a week of thinking and stopping at craft stores every night after work looking for (and usually failing to find) the supplies I need before I finalized the design last night and actually started scoring and folding the paper! Even if I stayed up all night tonight, there's no way they will get in the mail tomorrow, so now I'm hoping for Friday. That will leave nine days for them to arrive in time for Christmas, which is a larger window than I've left myself some years, but is much shorter than I had hoped for. And I'm not really in love with this year's design. I have two versions of it: one that's time consuming and one that's super time consuming. I love the super time consuming one, but it involves making several precise cuts with an artist's knife in the face of each card--after it's hand stenciled and painted--and lacing a red shimmery ribbon through those small cuts to form the snowman's scarf. I love the three-dimensional effect and the extra shine the ribbon adds, but the knife is very sharp, I'm not that adept at using it, and I haven't had time to create the perfect tool that would help me shove the ribbon efficiently through all the cuts. In essence, it would add another twenty minutes to each card. Multiply that by forty-five cards and the cards then get mailed in time for next year's Christmas. So I'm going with the time consuming version which involves a stencil, hand filling in the design with metallic ink, painting over the ink with glitter paint on the snowman's scarf and hat band, paper punches in two different designs, a stamp pad and stamp, and a handwritten message that I can't quite make look as "professional" or "artistic" as I'd like. Essentially, I'm sending a second grade art project to all my friends and family and calling it a Christmas card. Somewhere in all of this, however, I'm trying to remember that making these cards (and losing sleep!) is fun.

I still have three people to buy presents for and I'm more than a little stressed about that, and on top of everything else, the allergist I was seeing before I moved promised to send in a prescription for all of my allergy and asthma medications and hasn't and I haven't done anything about that and so I've been off all my meds way too long and am now suffering with raging headaches and wheezing and nosebleeds. Not what I want to be dealing with right now, but since I feel like my head is three times its normal size this morning, I have no choice but to tackle this one more problem today.

And I know I owe phone calls and email messages to several friends, and I'm a huge disappointment to all of them...so, mass message to everyone still waiting to hear from me: "I promise I still love you, I'm thinking of you, and I'll get in touch very soon."

Okay, off to get my day started. I have three presents to wrap to get in the mail before work.

Marketer's Dream
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Daily Eruptions
It's a sad moment when you realize it's you for whom they write the little sayings on the hot sauce packets at Taco Bell. I got one tonight that I really liked: I'm in good hands now.

I also really appreciate the one that asks whether you put sauce on from right to left or left to right. I'm a left to right girl. All the way. No exceptions.

Hoping for the Best December Ever
Topic: Daily Eruptions
December is typically the month I wish I were single. Every year, Hans gets uspet about something that completely blindsides me and makes me crazy. I try to rotate the distress calls I make following the event and ensuing argument among my various friends and family so it's not the same person having to hear year after year about the monster I live with.

This year, however, Hans and I might be breaking the cycle. We started marriage counseling yesterday. I was very nervous going in because I wasn't sure what Hans was going to say. He doesn't "believe in" therapy and is only going because I made the appointment and gave him an ultimatum. But to his credit, he is going. And, to my amazement, he totally came through for me yesterday. He wasn't the least bit resistant to the process and really tried to answer the counselor's questions. Most surprising, he had some really wonderful things to say about me and about why we make such a great couple, because there are times when we truly are a great couple. At this point, on the commitment scale the counselor gave us, Hans came out significantly more committed to us staying married than I did, (which might increase my own commitment) and he is completely committed to our continuing therapy together and moving our relationship to a happier, more loving place. I cried several times in the session--suprise, surprise--and when it was over, Hans was very sweet and gentle with me. We've agreed that I will drive to the sessions, and that, for the safety of both of us and the car, he will drive us home after. Overall, it was a hugely positive experience and it reinforced my feeling that a few small changes in the way we interact may have an enormous, positive impact on the relationship.

The biggest thing I have to face is that if we are going to succeed as a couple, I have to be willing to take the relationship to the next level, too. That will take work and dedication on my part and will be a test of my ability to walk my talk. I have to be willing to be mature and make the hard choices, which I say I'm willing to do, but I won't know for sure until I actually arrive at that juncture. Finding out what you're made of is more than a little scary.

The Monster's In the Mail
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Writing
I can't believe it, but somehow I did make it through a complete line edit of the manuscript in time to meet the December 1 postmark deadline. I ended up pulling an all-nighter on Wednesday to make it--and I'm still trying to recover from that--but mostly I am just really, really happy. The new draft has to be better than what I started with, although I have something of a Picasso Cubist view of the manuscript right now. Some pieces stand out and jut up in my brain against each other in weird combinations. I didn't have an opportunity to read the whole manuscript again once I'd made the changes, so I really have no idea what I submitted. This is especially true of the acknowledgments page! I hadn't written this page before, thinking that would come last, once I had an actual publisher and knew the manuscript was going to materialize as a book. So the acknowledgments were written while I was trying to get dressed and out the door for work on Thursday morning, and I don't know what I said, only that it took me a page and a half to say it and I hope that's okay because the guidelines called for an "acknowledgments page." I know at one point I was using ________s to hold places for people's last names that I couldn't remember and needed to look up, and all I can hope is that I removed or filled in all of those blanks before I submitted it! I ended up having to take June from Maine off entirely because I couldn't find her name on the list of riders I had, and I listed the three main people at the American Lung Association of Washington by their first names only because Paul's was the only last name I could remember and Carolyn and Kathryn no longer work there, so I couldn't find them on the online directory.

It was amazing immersing myself in the manuscript again. There were things I couldn't believe I did--or didn't do--for instance, why didn't I just ask Richard if he knew anything about why Cynthia was missing from the Ride? Why did I feel the need to stay that far away from him? And I suddenly had insights into the feelings and actions of other riders that I hadn't had at the time or while writing the book the first time around. In places, I really seem to have regressed to an earlier time in my life, almost like high school. The only defense I have for some of my decisions is that the Ride brought emotions to the surface and made them more accessible, more immediate, much more intense than usual--much like being a teenager. I was swimming in hormones and endorphins and living in a world I was making up moment to moment.

The reimmersion also made me miss so many people. I would really like to see Janine, the Crisis Manager from Pallotta. She helped me when I was in the emergency room at the hospital in Idaho, and she helped me when Cynthia was missing, and I would really like to thank her again. There are a lot of people I would like to thank, and people I'd like to ride with. Maybe someday....

The other interesting thing is that between the line edits and the conversion from Microsoft Word (from my old Apple) to RTF (thanks to John) to Appleworks (because my new Apple with OS X doesn't have Word because I'm too cheap to buy it again), the manuscript went from 427 pages to 332, which sounds much less daunting, and much less like the sprawling work of a novice writer who can't manage her material!

Who Needs Positive Self-Esteem?
Mood:  rushed
Topic: Writing
Reading the manuscript that took three years to write three years ago has been an emotional roller coaster. A lot of the language feels forced and I use too many words, and I, the narrator, come off really bad--whiney, wimpy, naive, lazy, mean (really mean!). I wanted the manuscript to be honest, and I don't care how that makes me look, except if I'm too awful, no one's going to want to keep reading (provided anyone actually wants to start). So I not only get to berate myself for my poor writing, I also get to berate myself for all the bad choices and the bad character I displayed on the Ride itself. Woo hoo, a two-fer!

At first, I thought the whole thing sucked--like, as in the worst thing written, ever. (Hans, much to my surprise, insists it's not THAT bad.) But somewhere around page 100, I start to get the hang of the whole long distance cycling thing and things start to get interesting. (But, then, all the really interesting things were cut in the second draft to preserve other riders' privacy.) Then somewhere around page 300 it starts to get annoying. I get really annoying.

I was kidding myself when I said I would read the copy I have already printed from three years ago and then mail it off without changes. It needs a line by line edit, but it also needs a major overhaul.

With any luck, it will get the line by line edit--I'm taking half a day off from work tomorrow and have been operating on only about four hours sleep per night--in time for me to meet the December 1 postmark deadline. The overhaul will have to come after I submit it. (I'm not sure exactly why I'm submitting it, except that I said I was going to and having said that is giving me motivation to dig into the manuscript. Some small part of me is hoping for some kind of feedback as a result of submitting, but I know that is absolutely not going to happen. I'll be lucky if the first ten pages get read before all 427 pages meet the recycling bin.)

The one good thing is that, even though I still know the darn thing almost by heart--to the point that I know what has already been cut, and when I'm reading I automatically insert those things before realizing they're gone and remembering why they're gone--I do have some perspective. What I realized today is that with all of the drafts I have done, none of them really attacked the structure of the whole manuscript. I was so worried about recreating my experience accurately that I was scared to delete, rearrange, amplify. I knew that what I wrote would be how I ultimately would remember things, and I wanted to remember them honestly. What I have written is a very accurate account of the events of my life over the course of 48 days in the summer of 1998. That doesn't make it a memoir, just a really, really, long journal. There are some luminous moments, when I seem to just be starting to get at the poetry of it, but they don't happen often enough.

Once the line edit is done, I need to really shape the material. I have a structure in mind for that, one that builds on what's there already, but I will need to largely rewrite the last third of the book to really do the experience justice. To get to its meaning. To make other people understand why I'm still hung up on this thing that I didn't even do that well seven years ago. I need to find a good teacher who will work with me, or a good editor, but who can afford that?

Catch ya' on Thursday when the monster's in the mail....

Assessing the Amount of Suckage
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Writing
I have found a competition here in North Carolina to which I want to submit YMMV. Unlike a lot of competitions that cap the length of the manuscript at 300 pages, this one accepts manuscripts up to 500 pages, which is good for someone who managed to go on and on about herself for 427 pages. (And that's 427 edited pages - it used to be even longer before Hans go t his hands on it.) The deadline for submissions is December 1, so I have to get moving. I have a copy of it that I printed out before I came to North Carolina to "visit" almost four years ago now and I need to reread that this week before I print out a fresh copy and mail it off. The read-through is basically to reacquaint myself with the manuscript, and, hopefully, to reassure myself it's good, because there really isn't time to make any substantive changes. On Thursday night, however, I read the first page and the last page, and I'm pretty sure they both suck. Which probably means the 425 pages in between also suck. The language feels naive and embarrassing. Sometimes I will write something and read it years later and think, "Wow! I can't believe I wrote that. I was so smart then!" This does not feel like that. It is still incredibly fresh in my mind--like I wrote it just last week--and there is none of that distance that lets me just enjoy it as though it were someone else's story. It is painfully mine. There is a good chance I clear my throat twice before actually beginning the story. And I can't get Hans's voice out of my head from 2001 telling me how "whiney" I, as the narrator, am.

But, to counter, there is the voice of the one New York agent who actually took the time to call me to request the full manuscript who said it sounded like a "fresh" story and that I should publishing excerpts in women's magazines. And there's Kate who said she thought it should be required reading for every high school girl. There's Zoi who said she got so sucked along in the story and caught up in being back on the Big Ride that she read it one day (it takes me three days to read it and I wrote the damn thing!). And there's the voice in my head telling me just to get the thing back out into the world.

So I'll let you know in three days what the experience of rereading my first booklength manuscript four years after the fact feels like.

Invoking the 5-Minute Rule
Mood:  energetic
Topic: Body Awareness
I've been experimenting this month with exercise, trying to decide what feels good, what I want to do, what I will enjoy doing - at least for a little while. I started lifting upper body free weights two weeks ago, then this week converted that into a circuit training/fat burning routine by adding in intervals of step aerobics between muscle groups. Believe it or not, it's a fun workout and one that will challenge me longer than the Curves routine I looked into. Plus, it will grow with me because I can increase the weights, add more minutes of steps, and add in jumps and more dance moves. And I had decided that I wanted to go back to my Sunday morning running. I stopped eight weeks ago, and even though I wasn't doing all the workouts in my training schedule for the marathon, what I was doing was keeping my stomach flatter and my legs muscular. Eight weeks of doing nothing has brought back the sausage link look around my middle, and I don't like the way that feels. So this morning I went out for a three mile workout that started as a run/walk but I noticed that on the run portions I was leaving my left leg too early trying to protect my knee that didn't feel strong enough. For the last two miles I ended up just doing a fast walk carrying hand weights, and finishing with a ten minute cool down. The hand weights may not do that much for my arms (although I think they might make a slight difference in the workout my upper back gets), but they allow me to focus on pushing my hands away from my body, which keeps my feet moving faster than they normally would and helps me keep a regular rhythm.

It is a gorgeous morning and I enjoyed the workout. So I'm invoking the 5-minute rule every day from now on. I have a mental schedule of workouts that include the weight/step routine, yoga, and walking and I know that, once I get moving, I enjoy each of those workouts. The hard part is getting myself moving. So from now on, I have to get out of bed and do five minutes of that day's workout. If, after 5 minutes, I really want to stop, I can. I used to use this to get myself to the pool at 5:00 a.m. in Seattle. I would argue with myself getting out of bed, getting dressed, the whole time I was walking to the pool, and sometimes even after I was changing into my swimsuit in the locker room, but after going through all of that, I only left once after 5 minutes of warming up. The rest of the time I finished the workout.