Look! I'm using my degree! (sort of)

Yeah, so I've been kind of quiet recently, and there are lots of reasons for that, most of which I won't bother to go into here.  Suffice it to say, August kind of sucked for a lot of reasons, and my font of writing awesomeness dried up for a while.  I'm trying to prime the pump and get it going again, so don't worry - I'll be back in gear again soon.  

One reason I've been away - a good reason, for once - is that my duties at work have been expanded to include writing ad copy for the shop's website and online store.  This allows me to engage in two of my many passions: gushing about yarns I love, and overusing exclamation points and elipses:

Debbie Bliss Fine Donegal is a luscious fingering weight wool with just enough cashmere to make it something special.  A tweedy single-ply, this yarn is both lofty (read: warm) and easy to work with.  Try a versatile neutral like Snowdrift, which has a cream base and touches of blue and yellow in the tweedy bits ... or go for the wilder Blackberry with its black base and flashes of bright primary colors.  And check out the pattern support Debbie Bliss has provided - you can use Fine Donegal to make beautiful garments, accessories, and more!

Between coming in early to write before the customers arrive, designing and writing up patterns for the store, and joining a gym so that I don't turn into a cautionary tale about the health effects of too much sedentary crafting, finding time to write anything for myself has been a challenge.  Oh, and Erika also roped me in to making some tutorials, too, which mainly demonstrate why I was always more interested in radio than in television:

We're going to have to work on her camera skills, I think, if she wants these to reach a wider audience.

At any rate, school is back in session, and I'm settling in a routine with work and the gym, so hopefully I'll get back in the saddle again soon.  One good motivator is the writing conference I'm attending, um, tomorrow (gulp!).  This will be a first for me, and I'm excited to see what it's all about.  I'm also psyched to meet some actual agents and editors in the flesh - it will be nice to know that they really exist, and not just in my dreams!  Trying to get started as a writer can seem like throwing lots of time and mental effort down into a deep well, waiting for an echo that never comes.  Maybe this conference will be the push I need to start getting responses and feedback and (one day) maybe even a contract.  Stranger things have happened!

Prompt: explain why no one hits the bottom

Today I learned that an acquaintance of mine committed suicide last week. According to third-hand sources, the anti-smoking meds she was taking have some pretty serious side effects ... like, for example, suicidal thoughts and attempts. So someone who, only a few days earlier was picturing herself as having enough of a future that she ordered expensive yarn from Germany, instead threw herself off a bridge three days before the yarn arrived. She was a wife, and a mother, and a daughter, and a sister. She was funny, and smart, and determined, and a great knitter. She was 46. She will be missed deeply, and by many, many more people than she ever could have imagined.

For all of our sakes, I wish there was some way that people who jumped off of bridges would somehow get a do-over. Some way that they would automatically bungee back up to the bridge deck, step back from the edge, and get help. Or a giant safety net would deploy automatically when brain sensors located in the drop zone detected regret or fear. Or something.

In honor of Nora, today's prompt is this: one (unfortunately fictional) bridge, which was previously a popular spot to commit suicide, hasn't had a recorded fatality in five years. Describe why.

Prompt: Today my daughter told me her underwear was malfunctioning. Discuss.

RESPONSE:

I was young, in maybe second or third grade.  Keep in mind, this was back in the VERY early '80s, when fashions for young ladies were not quite as casual - or comfortable - as they are today.  Think polyester turtlenecks and corduroys ... and plaid, lots of really ugly plaid.

Anyway, I had this red turtleneck shirt that I wore a lot.  It was mostly comfortable, once I managed to squeeze the too-tight neck over my head (which inevitably squished my plastic-framed glasses down on my nose so hard I saw stars, because I never remembered to take them off before I started).  The sleeves were almost long enough if I hunched my shoulders just right, and if I didn't, well, that just allowed them to ride up enough to show off my awesome Mickey Mouse watch.  But no matter how groovy it was, the most notable feature of this shirt wasn't its color, or its neck, or its sleeves - it was the snap crotch.

Yes, this shirt had a crotch... with snaps.

See, back in my day, mothers were somewhat obsessive about the whole "keep your shirt tucked in" thing. They were always telling kids to tuck in their shirt, only slobs go around with their clothing untucked - were you raised in a barn? In the interest of making shirts that would stay tucked, no matter what, someone invented the snap-crotch turtleneck.  You'd put it on like a regular shirt, then fasten the two or three metal snaps that were on the flap that came between your legs.  It was sort of a onesie for the elementary school set, if you can imagine that.

Given that I was tall for my age (see comment about sleeve length above), wearing snap-crotch shirts was inherently fraught with danger.  I had my choice between hunching over to keep from embedding the snaps in my delicate regions, or standing up straight and hoping the snaps didn't let loose and send one of my overstretched shirttails flapping up in the air.  Yes, that actually happened.  I'm sure one of my friends on Facebook will be happy to confirm that for you.

By far the worst part of wearing a snap-crotch shirt was the fact that I generally forgot how much extra time was required to deal with it during bathroom trips.  Inevitably, the snaps would get stuck just when you were really hoping they'd come undone, and trying to get them fastened again was a nightmare of awkward maneuvers and mis-matched snaps.  Add to that the fact that I tended to try to "wait it out" rather than raise my hand and walk past all the other students to the bathroom, and it was sort of a recipe for disaster.  There were a lot of near-misses, but only one trip was truly horrifying.

I don't know what had possessed me that morning, but I had somehow managed to snap up my shirt before I put on my underwear.  But I didn't realize it, or else I forgot all about it in my hour of need.  So when I finally got desperate enough to use the bathroom, I slammed the stall door, threw down my corduroy pants and Underoos, and sat down to business, forgetting all about the snap crotch I hadn't bothered to undo.

I noticed something was wrong almost immediately, but being only seven or eight years old, I had neither the presence of mind nor the control of my bladder required to prevent this disaster.  So, smack in the middle of my school day, I peed all over the bottom of my shirt.  It soaked in almost immediately and began slowly wicking its way up my body, like some sort of ammonia-scented nightmare.

My mind has somehow blocked out what must have followed - the embarrassed hiding in the bathroom until another student was sent to fetch me, the cringing attempts to wring out the tails of my shirt, the whispered consultation through the crack in the door, the summoning of the teacher, the call to the office for a plastic bag and a fresh shirt, the teasing of my classmates who could only imagine what I had been through but teased me about it nonetheless.  It's horrible and cringe-inducing enough in my imagination - thank goodness I don't have to actually relive the memories.

I do know, however, that snap-crotch turtlenecks were no longer a staple of my wardrobe after that incident ... and now, thirty years later, I NEVER tuck in my turtlenecks, no matter how sloppy it makes me look.  There are some sacrifices for fashion that are just too much to bear.

Prompt: I just had a life-changing short rib sandwich

PROMPT:
I just had a life-changing short rib sandwich.  Write a nonfiction narrative about a memory you have that centers on food.

RESPONSE:
(I cheated and sent them an old blog post from 2007)
Liza's got the pukies (don't worry, no pictures today). So far today the laundry total includes : carseat, carseat cover, straps, and buckles; Liza's jacket, mittens, expensive pants, expensive sweater, socks, and necklace; Jason's sweatshirt, my jeans, my socks; my fleece jacket, my fleece pants; four pairs of Liza's pajamas; my watch; the wool rug in the family room; the washable rug by the back door; about 14 different places on the wood floor (including one where there's a 1/8" gap between the boards, and I had to try to fish out the worst of the chunks with a table knife); the kitchen sink; the bathtub (because I gave Liza a bath after the first episode, stupid me); and probably a few more places I've either forgotten or haven't found yet. And it's only lunchtime.

Some observations: 

• We have hardwood floors in every room. There are two rugs on the first floor, and the kid has managed to cover both of them. The cats do the same thing. Is there some sort of puke magnet built into the rugs that I wasn't warned about when I bought them?
• What was the thought process that made it seem like a good idea to include hideously stain-inducing red food coloring in a rehydration solution? Someone without a carpet puker did this ... or maybe it's a conspiracy led by the carpet industry.
• Why is it that the kid can be happily sipping Pedialyte for an hour, watching videos and asking to be tickled, but as soon as she gets down and makes it to a virgin piece of carpeting, the fountain starts again? Why, why, why?
• Why, when called for emergency backup at lunchtime, would my husband choose to bring home food from Taco Bell, the place I've only been able to eat at once in the past two years because a particularly bad bout of stomach flu had me puking up the same burrito for a day and a half? Why, why, why? Dude, the smells of vomit and Taco Bell are now so firmly linked in my brain that the restaurant is dead to me. Dead, I tell you.
• Essential supplies for toddler pukefest: large sheet of vinyl-coated fabric that used to be the stain-catcher under the high chair (used to protect sofa or floor from puke); plastic bucket to fruitlessly try to catch puke (even if you get there in time, she'll be so pissed that she's puking that she'll slap it away, so you'd better have a good hold on it); as many rolls of paper towels as you can find in the house; as many pairs of easy-to-change clothes as you can find (for both of you - zip-fronts work best, as they keep the puke out of your hair when you're changing); as many DVDs as you own or can beg, borrow, or steal. We've watched two hours of Baby Einstein and Curious Buddies today; this afternoon I'm going to indoctrinate Liza with the finer points of the Muppet Show.
• Oh, and did I mention that my stomach doesn't feel so great, either? Hopefully I'll wait until she's done before I start ... I'm having a tough time keeping up with the level of cleaning now, I can't imagine trying to keep up while being sick myself.
• On the positive side, Liza has learned new words today, including "puke" and "sick," and has gotten plenty of practice saying "YUCK YUCK YUCK" at the top of her lungs. Nothing like a little stomach flu to improve a kid's vocabulary.

If it ain't broke...

I've been thinking a lot this week about routine, how it can either work for you or bring you down. Case in point: the soundtrack for my life while writing.

Before we get into that, though, a few details about me. I tend to have problems sorting through auditory input. It's not a hearing difficulty as much as it is a brain problem: I hear everything fine, I just have a hard time ignoring the unwanted parts and focusing on the parts I need. I'm an expert at eavesdropping, but it makes having a conversation in a crowded room a real treat, let me tell you. At least after 16 years of marriage my husband has finally worked out that I am incapable of conversing intelligently when the television is on, so when he mutes it I know we're about to capital-T-Talk.

I also tend to imitate the cadences and rhythms of the speech I read in books. It's entirely unconscious on my part, but it happens so frequently that I can't ignore the effect. It's especially bad with some series - my husband groans every time I pull out an Elizabeth Peters book because he knows I'll be talking like Amelia Peabody for days.

Given these two facts, I decided early on that I would have to be careful what I was reading and listening to during the time periods I was writing. Not just while actually writing - that's a white noise situation, no question about it - but also during the rest of the day when I didn't actually have a pen in my hand. I didn't catch on at first, of course, which is why some of my early children's writing had to be HEAVILY edited. Apparently, listening to R-rated Paranormal Romance audiobooks in between writing a kid's book isn't a good idea, at least not for me. All of my 10-yr-old protagonists ended up sounding world-weary, if you can imagine that. Not quite what I was going for.

Since then I have learned to either sequester myself from other books ("to give my characters room to think for themselves," as I pretentiously describe it) or be VERY careful what I listen to. Classic literature is okay - Great Expectations and Red Badge of Courage, while not terribly exciting to hear, at least didn't influence my muse. But I have to take a vacation from Sookie and her vampire buddies while I'm writing , lest my tiny protagonists end up with fangs and ennui.

When I got the spark of inspiration for my latest story and started writing last month, I listened to the classics while I ran errands and did the laundry. About the time things started to go really well with my writing, I pulled up The Fault in Our Stars, and things really took off. Apparently my brain can admire John Green's prose without trying to imitate it, which is a relief because I was getting really sick of Dickens. But then Gus and Hazel's story ended before mine was complete, and I had to make a choice. Should I start a new book and risk ruining the good mojo I had going with my manuscript? Should I go back to Dickens and his boring brethren? Or should I give up and just maintain radio silence until the draft was complete? What if Gus and Hazel were giving me the mojo - should I start listening to that book over again? Or would that be like declaring these my lucky socks and not washing them until I was finished? How superstitious was I willing to become?

Fairly superstitious, as it turns out. I shut the radio off and wrote like a mad woman for two days, nearly crippling my wrist in an effort to finish before I lost my mojo.

And then I threw down my pen, bought the next Kim Harrison audiobook to celebrate, and dug out the magazines I had hidden for the previous few weeks. I let myself listen to Welcome to Night Vale again, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Next time I start a book, I'll probably try crying along with Mr. Green again. Because why change something that seems to be working for me? That would be silly, kind of like shaving during a winning streak or not wearing my lucky hat to an Indians game. And that's just crazytalk, my friend.