On Balance...
Mood:  happy
Topic: Daily Eruptions
Scott wrote me! Big, Big, Yay!! Apparently, I had been writing to him at an address he stopped checking six years ago. So he wasn't freezing me out, and, as long as he doesn't go searching for the messages I sent, I wasn't making a total fool of myself trying to get him to write back to me.

It was a blur of a great week overall. I had a fun phone interview with Stewart, in which he made it clear that I had misinterpreted his comments about not wanting a woman who was too smart, and a really wonderful conversation with James that finally started clearing away some of the breakup junk between us that we had been avoiding. I finished the pitching class, and actually managed to write drafts of six queries in six weeks! Totally amazing. I'm actually going to continue researching and editing them, and I plan to eventually send every one of them out in the mail. I managed to get off something of a course description for the children's summer class I want to facilitate on writing from nature. The only thing I let slip through the cracks was getting in touch with Billie about the PestEd curriculum. Will have to get on that first thing next week.

The only downside to the week is that today (Friday) is Hans's birthday and I managed to cause an argument (again, about baking for him in light of the three-page list of ingredients I am forced to avoid - you know, eggs, wheat flour, refined sugar, gluten, anything enriched) without meaning to. I think he heard what I said through a filter he's developed- he heard me say what I've said before, when in fact, I think I actually said something quite different. He thought I was complaining about how difficult it is to bake for him, when what I really said was I was disappointed that the system I set in place to make baking for him easier failed me tonight and I still didn't have the ingredients I needed. I seriously was just sad that, after stopping at one store to pick up lemons, I couldn't come home and find everything else I needed in the cupboard. That was the way it was supposed to work. But it didn't, and now I really do need to go to two more stores tomorrow, one of which is an hour away, to buy him the ingredients I need to make him what will most likely still be an inedible, gluten-free, vegan lemon cake. And I'm not mad, I'm just seriously sad that I didn't get it done for him tonight, on his actual birthday. He didn't hear that, though, and stormed off to bed, refused to open my present, and said he wanted to be left alone. So, now he's alone, and it's after 1 a.m. and I'm still sitting here writing to no one. Guess we shouldn't stop the marriage counseling any time soon. It's too bad, because we were doing so great, and I managed to ruin it. Takes talent, I'm tellin' ya'. Years of practice and loads of talent.

But I've been awake so long it's already a new day....

Love.

He Said, She Said
Topic: Books
I just saw this book by Ken and Jasmyn Klarfeld profiled in ForeWord Magazine. The authors are father and daughter, and the book recounts their separate experiences as smart, funny Jasmyn suddenly became an "out-of-control" teenager: smoking, drinking, doing drugs, running away from home, surviving rape.... The two wrote their parallel stories separately, allowing readers to experience the events through the mind of a parent and the mind of a teen.

I haven't read the book, and can't speak to its quality, but I admire the authors' goal of helping families navigate the treacherous teen years. The book was self-published through iUniverse (something else I, as someone who manages the day-to-day operation of a small press, admire) and is available through Barnes and Noble.

You can read a minimal description of the book and an excerpt at: www.buyhesaidshesaid.com

Or, you can read the ForeWord Magazine interview with the authors at: www.forewordmagazine.net

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 1:43 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, April 6, 2006 2:07 PM EDT

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A Donkey or a Wife??
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I'm interviewing never-married men from the class of '86, so I find this story particularly amusing right now. If you're a guy, you'll probably enjoy it, whether you're married or not! (And for anyone who wants to revoke my right to refer to myself as a feminist, get over yourself - the serious aspects of the story are being handled, and even feminists are allowed to laugh now and then.)

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/str?guid=20060404/4431ef40_3ca6_1552620060404-1916958450

BTW, today is the one year (plus one day) anniversary of this blog and my 155th post. My, that's a lot of navel gazing for one person to do in a year - even for me!!

Peace!

Sleepwalking
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I went to the doctor recently for a check up, and found I have an elevated white blood cell count. My assumption is that the cold I got back in February didn't become a lung infection per my usual, but stayed in my nose and became a sinus infection instead. So now I'm on antibiotics, which I generally try to avoid, and they are totally knocking me out. I have wanted to do nothing but sleep for three days. Unfortunately, this is not a good time for me and sleep. I have one more query for my pitching class due by tomorrow night at midnight (and more article ideas than I can possibly follow up on!), and I got the green light to develop a writing from nature class for kids through the Alamance County Arts Council. I need to be writing up a course description and get that and my bio off to the education coordinator ASAP. On top of that, I am going to go ahead and write the article for which Gantry was the inspiration and so have to schedule interviews with the guys I want to profile, and get that written and in the mail as quickly as possible, too. Because it has a tie-in to men of the class of '86, it is timely and therefore also perishable.... Thursday, I need to wrap up my preliminary research for the PestEd Integrated Pest Management project, and get to work actually creating the curriculum. And, I need to figure out how to make Hans a gluten-free, vegan birthday cake for Friday (possibly without the use of Egg Replacer since he hasn't yet decided whether he's allowing potato starch back into his diet). So, as has become the norm, yet another busy week on the horizon with no room allowed for sleep. Adrenaline will only carry me so far, and then what will I do?

Off Task, On Purpose?
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I took today off to make up for some of the overtime I worked getting Sudie's Artists in the Schools application completed. Despite the promise of spring, the temperature dipped and there's a cold rain going on right now. This afternoon Candy and the kids and I had made it to the center of the North Carolina Zoo, to the highest point of the park where the grizzlies live, when a mix of rain, snow, and sleet started. We ran through the park, alternating pushing the girls in the stroller with Brendan running and laughing or Candy carrying him on her back, back to the cars. We had seen all of the North America and Australian exhibits and were ready to turn back anyway, we just had to move a little faster than we might have liked.

Now, I should be writing a cover letter and tweaking one of my writing resumes to send to one of the local art councils looking for teachers. Or, if I'm not working on that, I should be rewriting my second query for my class - since I now know what I was really trying to get at with that one - or, probably more importantly, starting my fourth one which is due by midnight tomorrow night.

Unfortunately, all I feel is exhausted! I made the mistake of opening on online journal tonight, The Pedestal Magazine, and reading aloud every poem in the poetry section. If I'm going to write tonight, I want to be writing a poem, or slipping around in someone else's poetry - for Hans's birthday next month, I bought him a copy of Lucille Clifton's Mercy and I'm dying to read it. (Lucille was Hans's undergraduate poetry teacher and I know he loves her work, but he's cut himself off so far from poetry, I'm not sure the book will have the effect I'm hoping for.)

I think tonight is finally the crash I felt coming last Friday. Took a little longer getting here than I anticipated. But, discipline, so I've been told, is about doing now that which you don't want to do because doing it will serve you in the long run. So I better get to it. Chances are, I'll enjoy myself once I get started. Yeah, right!

Preparing for the Crash
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I'm speeding. That's my new term for the emotional state an M.D., an M.A., and I agreed in September we are not going to call a manic episode. It's a highly creative state - which we all agree is good for an artist- but instead of getting a nice, slow, steady burn, I dump all my fuel and light it up all at once. Very exciting, but also extremely draining, not to mention maybe a little dangerous. Today it feels like I'm slamming my brain at 120 miles an hour into a funnel. Energy - ideas for articles, an idea for a short essay, the need to tell Mary about the new research project we need to do right now because it is so friggin' timely, the desire to get the checkbook balanced and all the bills paid so I can stop worrying I'm missing something, questions about background research for the research project I want to propose to Mary, an urge to get to work on the curriculum research for PestEd combined with questions about a query I just read on pesticide-free methods of getting rid of lice, email messages I want to write - is going in dozens of directions, but my body and my time (as I experience it) can only go in one, hence the funnel that has to sort through and prioritize the flying energy. The worst part is that there is metacognition going on, and metaemotion, so there is an energy drain occurring as a result of all the primary thoughts and emotions, plus an additional drain caused by all the thinking and feeling I'm doing about what I'm thinking and feeling. I can sense the impending crash, and I'm not looking forward to it!

Today has been weird all around. I didn't get enough sleep last night since I was up late writing, and by the time I got to work I realized I had been scratching a place on the back of my leg repeatedly for quite some time. I started allergy shots at a new clinic yesterday. This is my third time getting shots in the last six years, but I haven't received any injections since September. Today both of the injection sites on my arms look fine, but when I finally checked out my leg, there was a red rash spreading down the back. The nurse insists that it couldn't have been caused by the injections, but with my body, anything is possible. I had to go out and buy Benadryl, and now it looks like I'm going to have to start carrying a purse. I am such a pack rat that I try to limit myself to carrying a wallet. In this round of allergy testing, however, we discovered that I am deathly allergic to shellfish and extremely allergic to just about everything that swims. I had an epipen that I started carrying on shot days because I was having softball-sized reactions to my injections in Seattle, but now I've been instructed to carry my inhaler, my epipen, and liquid Benadryl with me everywhere I go. It amazes me that I could be 37 years old before I found out about a life threatening food allergy, but I guess it helps that I grew up in Michigan far from fresh seafood, and that I've never liked the texture of things from the ocean. All I can say is it's a good thing I was too nervous to eat at the seafood buffet Ken took me to for prom!

Still Pitching
Mood:  energetic
Topic: Writing
I turned in drafts of my first three pitches for my query writing class at a little after midnight. They are still very much in the development stage, but I'm happy to still be playing along at the half-way point of the class. Trying to write a complete query a week is totally overwhelming right now, and I'm sure I'm not giving it as much time as it deserves. But, I've been up past midnight the last two nights, and I'm getting words down, and I'm thinking, and I'm slowly gaining confidence. All good things.

I really love my idea for my third pitch. I owe the idea to Gantry - although I haven't actually discussed it with him yet - who contacted me last week for the first time since high school as part of the 20th class reunion roundup. Reconnecting with him has been very cool - or maybe I should say connecting with him has been cool, since I can't really say I knew him in high school - and he got me thinking about quite a few things. He also gave me an email address for Scott, whom I have been wanting to check in with for some time, but who is currently ignoring the message I sent him. Maybe I sounded a little too excited to know where he is and freaked him out? There are more than 3,000 miles separating us - I can't be THAT scary! [Just to be safe, I probably shouldn't let him know that a single Google search brought him up at the company he works for. COO. Nice! Not a stalker, though. Really.]

I need to go to bed, but I'm still wired from the adrenaline of turning in class assignments. I have absolutely no idea what quality work I'm turning in. After I got depressed in the second week after reading everyone else's first query, I got a message from Christina that she thought my first query was ready to send out to the editor. (I haven't sent it yet because I'm waiting to do some interviews and because I changed my mind about the market I want to query.) I have no objectivity. I feel capable of writing every piece I'm pitching, but I have little confidence in my ability to convince an editor of my ability. It's time to get out of my own way....

I can breathe a little bit schedule-wise for the next few days, so I'll try to be better at answering email!

Love!!

Chaos vs. Order: A response for James
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Stain Yer Blood by Paul Westerberg
James wrote me this week to remind me that I am happiest when I am slammed with work and accomplishing more than I think I can. Good observation, and very true. He then went on to say how living like that would make him crazy. His conclusion: that he likes order while I like chaos.

On the surface, I'm sure my life in the last ten days did look like chaos, but, I think it was actually the exact opposite. When I cram my life full of deadlines and responsibilities, I take away all of my free will. The only way to survive in that mode - with survival meaning "succeed" and "meet my responsibilities" - is to impose discipline and take away my ability to choose for myself how to spend my time. When I don't have immediate deadlines that make me somehow responsible to someone else, I tend to sit on the couch and watch altogether too much t.v. This past week, the t.v. was unplugged because Hans had to dismantle it before he left for L. A. so I could paint the walls behind it. It was fabulous! The house was quiet and any breaks I took from writing or painting were breaks in which my brain remained active. In my "down time," I actually started writing a short story - I thought I was just writing down a first line, but the story just kept coming - and came up with a psychology research project I'm going to propose that Mary and I collaborate on (I don't have a great deal to her offer her because she's the university affiliated Ph.D, but it's my idea and I know she respects my brain - she has said before that she'd be happy to collaborate on research with little, old, non-credentialed but brilliant me). Working bi-coastally on a research project might be tricky, but I think it's a timely and very interesting idea. And, having the research idea led me to think of another series of articles I want to write....

Anyway, the past ten days renewed my confidence in myself that I do have, and can exercise, self-discipline when it's important that I do so. I needed that little reminder because so much of my recent experience has led me to believe that I have so little control over myself. As I go forward from here, there are still some organization projects I need to do around the house - luckily, Mercury is in retrograde making this a great time to revisit old, unfinished business (yes, I know, I shouldn't put stock in astrology, but I enjoy thinking about the synchronicities between my horoscopes and the events of my life some days) - and I have four more weeks of the article pitching practice class and the ongoing work on the Integrated Pest Management curricula for PestEd, but the rest of the priorities - meditation, exercise, mindful eating, writing - are going to be self-imposed. And I feel I have the strength and the momentum I need to respect those priorities, keep the t.v. turned off, and apply myself to the work I need to do to meet my personal goals.

Cramming my life full of responsibilities, I think, is my way of emulating motherhood. I have read accounts from several writer moms who say that having a baby only made them better writers. Because their writing time was so limited, they became more focused and better able to ignore their fears and insecurities about their writing. Worrying about whether or not they were any good became a luxury they simply couldn't afford if they were going to get any work done. As someone who has been playing with the idea of being a writer for more than ten years now but who gets paralyzed by "who cares what I have to say?" and "this has already been said better by someone else" and gets bogged down in details and technicalities and expectations that keep me from writing or submitting, I can use anything that helps me get out of my own head and into Flow.

The tricky part is imposing discipline on myself without it becoming a compulsive thing. I know I can succeed in super-structured mode. I four-pointed my last two years at Michigan while taking 16 to 20 credit hours a semester and balancing three part-time jobs because every minute had a purpose and was accounted for in a weekly schedule. Granted, after John and I broke up, I didn't date during that time and when I tried with Chad my last semester (20 credit hours) I found my schedule just didn't allow time for dealing with figuring out where another person was coming from. (It's amazing that we came through that and that he's now my best friend!) I didn't really have friends and a social life, either, aside from the living theater that came from sharing a house with Tad and Jim. So, with a husband and a dog and my need to make friends in North Carolina - which still really hasn't really happened outside of work contacts - I need to make sure that whatever schedule I impose now makes room for other people.

And, Barbara, my therapist from last summer, made it very clear that she thinks that in order to give up my compulsive eating behaviors I will have to give up all of my compulsive behaviors. Essentially, the only way I will achieve my goals healthfully is to learn to live in walking meditation and participate in activities I have chosen for myself because they bring me joy and to completely forget that I have goals. To me, this means bringing my Big Ride self home at last. But as everyone who knows me knows, I haven't figured out how to do that yet! She's still out on some highway with the purple Rodriquez Stellar pedaling away without expectations and enjoying the moment and her solitude or whatever companion with whom she's sharing the road.

Stayin' Alive!
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I lived through my week!! I know it's morbid, but I was getting so little sleep this week and spending so much time on the road, I was really worried I might get in the car one day and not make it to my destination. But, I have survived, and while life will not go back to what it was before I took on the class and the curriculum work for PestEd, I will be getting better sleep and not working overtime.

I managed to turn in Sudie's curricula and application to United Arts today two minutes before the deadline. Trying to drive into Raleigh at 5:00 on a Friday night is a total suicide mission, and then, once I finally got there (with traffic it took twice as long as it should have), Fayetteville Mall is not marked on street signs. Apparently, it refers to a walking promenade that is closed to traffic, but there is nothing there to tell you that. Anyway, I got all six curricula written out, updated her resume, secured confirmation from a few of her teacher contacts that it was okay to use them as references, managed to finally edit the hour-long digital video of her last workshop down to what I hope are 10 meaningful minutes that I transferred to VHS, reproduced one of her color photos with Savannah Blue as a glossy black and white, and finally hammered out fees with Sudie and got the camera-ready profile page typed up so that, if she is accepted into the program, they can scan the page into the directory and schools can begin contacting her for the workshops. If I do say so myself, I think the workshops are going to be great. I tied them in very closely to the writing and visual arts requirements for the state and for Wake County and, aside from the cost, there shouldn't be any reason any teacher in North Carolina wouldn't want one of our programs for their students. (I'm only a little proud of myself!)

And, this week I got the downstairs painted before Hans got home on Tuesday night! Yay! I surprised myself a little there, too. It looks good and I now have color oozing off every wall. I went with the full sunset scheme I had planned, with the kitchen in an aqua blue that shifts toward seafoam or robin's egg depending on the light and location of the wall with dark periwinkle accent walls, and an orange living room. The only color that's missing that would make it truly representative of a Carolina sunset is the ice pink, but four colors is just too much for such a small space. I'm considering doing the downstairs bathroom in the ice pink, but will probably just do it in orange. I'd like to do it in aqua, but I'm worried that would make everyone look green when they looked at themselves in the mirror, and that's not good. The colors don't sound like they go together, but I think they do. Hans even came home and told me twice how much he liked it - very cool of him since I know the fumes are making him sick. After we moved in last summer, I decided that since we can't afford a beach house to which to escape with the rest of North Carolina on the weekends, I would just have to make this my beach house. I am very nearly there. I still want two large photographs of pink clouds at sunset for my living room wall next to the fireplace, and I want to make some sand sculptures of sea animals to hang in the kitchen on the wall between the sliding glass door and the window, but those are just details.

This week I turned in only a partial query to my class, but I got a message back from the instructor that she thinks my first query is ready to be mailed out. That's a little scary. I bought a copy of the magazine I wanted to pitch the story to on my way home from Raleigh tonight, and I'm not so sure the market is for me. The magazine has a really cool name and I like the way the editor describes its purpose in the Writer's Market listing, but I was almost embarrassed to be walking out of the store with it tonight. The cover has Katherine Heigl posing in a crochet bikini - in what world do women want to buy a non-exercise, non-health magazine with a thin, beautiful blond scantily clothed on the cover? The inside wasn't any better. Ads for eligible men you can email today and pictures of scantily clad couples illustrating an article on how to add sizzle to your sex life. I am not a prude, but somehow, that magazine makes me feel like one. I need to talk to Christina to see if she thinks I should go ahead and make my pitch or look for another market. There is a small chance I'm belittling the magazine because I don't want to actually mail off my pitch and potentially get the green light to write the article, but I don't think so....

More tomorrow. Must sleep now!

Will I Ever Learn???
Topic: Writing
I've done it to myself again. In deciding what I wanted to write about over the six weeks of my pitching class, I chose marriage. It makes sense to me that any time I set out to write about a topic, I should choose one that I could write four or more articles on. It means that researching four articles takes essentially the same amount of time and work as writing one, and I don't have to go back to my sources for quotes repeatedly if I have all my angles and slants figured out in advance and can just ask everything in one sitting. I chose marriage because, if you've been following along, it's been on my mind lately. Plus, UTNE just did an interesting three piece feature on that topic in this month's issue.

For the first query, I pitched an article that leans heavily on my personal experience but includes quotes from leading marriage counselors on ways any reader can bolster her own marriage, regardless of its current state, and offered 2 sidebars.

In writing that one, I realized that was of interest to me, but that there is an even deeper question, which is, should you fight for an ailing marriage, and, if so, why and in what circumstances? Last night I had gone to bed slightly deflated after reading the other queries turned in by the other women in my class - all more experienced in magazine writing than I am, and all very qualified to write whatever piece they were pitching. Before I could fall asleep, however, the first line of my next query came to me and before I knew it, I was out of bed and writing a two paragraph introduction to my topic. So tonight I decided to do my "no more than one hour of research" - that is the time-limit mandated by my instructor, and, yes, you guessed it, the time-limit I way overshot - and realized that I am in way over my head. I tried googling the title I was going to propose for the piece and found that it is such a great title, it's already been used dozens of times.... The search yielded a TON of information, all of it useful, including the names of some social scientists that I will want to talk with - even one here in Durham at Duke. (This activity of scrolling through the faculty list of Duke's sociologists was depressing, too - so many of these people are my age or only slightly older and way more "Accomplished.") [Author's Note to James (if you're still reading) and any one else who cares about my self-esteem: Yes, last night and again tonight I subjected myself to comparisons between me and the other writers and me and professors, and, no, the comparisons were not positive. BUT, on both occasions, I quickly reminded myself that I am on my own crazy path and social comparisons do not matter. I am fine.]

The problem is that I am in information overload. So many people are writing on this topic, and all of them seem so confident in what they have to say. I want to pitch the piece to an alternative paper or magazine, and I read a Salon.com piece tonight that showed me how much edge and opinion a story could have and made me worry that I don't have enough attitude to write for an alternative outlet. Plus, the controversy over what the social research means (are married people healthier, wealthier, and happier than single people, and if so, is there a causal relationship or merely a correlation?) that I know I am going to want to go to the source material and read the published papers before interviewing any of the scientists or even attempting to say which way my story might lean. Essentially, what I'm proposing to write is the equivalent of a term paper for a Soc or Psych class, and there's no way I'm going to be prepared with even a draft query of it by Monday night. So, my dilemma is, do I write up as much as I can of this query and turn it in, knowing that it will need much work over the next four weeks? or, do I try to come up with a simpler, 1,000 word article idea that I can write up without a great deal of research? (Yeah, right. Like that's gonna' happen!)

So I guess my answer is write up a crappy first draft of the long piece and get as far as I can in laying out all the sides.... I can honor my feminine impulse by not offering an opinion until I've carefully analyzed all the available data - and who knows when that will be!