Thursday Thirteen #20

I needed a giggle or two after the week I just had. I thought maybe I wasn't the only one.

Thirteen Giggles 1st Giggle 2nd Giggle 3rd Giggle 4th Giggle 5th Giggle 6th Giggle 7th Giggle 8th Giggle 9th Giggle 10th Giggle 11th Giggle 12th Giggle 13th Giggle Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. L^2 2. THE BLUEST BUTTERFLY 3. Robyn Mills 4. Lady G~ (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

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The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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Taking Stock

While I was preparing my Thursday Thirteen post last Wedensday, I was realized that I had not posted betweeen Thursdays for several weeks and was determined to not let that happen again this week.  As always of late I am push hard against deadlines.  I have thirty minutes to get something posted or I won't have another chance until Wednesday afternoon.  I started composing a potential post in my head on the walk home from the library Friday and fully intended to get one done before I slept that night.  But I learned before dineer Friday evening that I would be spending Monday thru Wednesday with my husband's grandmother so my inlaws can go on ther vacation to the coast.  I was taken by surprise because they usually schedule their spring one for late March or early April but I guess my mother-in-law has learned they are going to be booked solid with a full house at the motel where she works through the next two months so she has to take her spring vacation now or not at all.

So I had to shift my expectations for the weekend.  Especially regarding the library due-dates for the coming week.  I would have to finish with the items due on Tuesday before Monday monring now.  PLus I would need to get laundry done, shampoo my hair, pack my bags, get my sleep schedule swung around from days back to nights again....

I got all of that done before I slept Sunday night.  Except for a handful of last minute things.  I accomplished this by not sleeping at all Saturday night.  But then I ended up with a headache all day Sunday coupled with an anxiety attack that had my heart racing and my chest feeling tight for a solid ten hours on Sunday.  This made it difficult to sleep even tho I hadn't slept since Saturday morning.

Several things have contributed to the lack of posting here in the last several weeks. The looming closing of our local library doors on April 6 is the principle one.  I am trying to get finished with a lot items I may not get a chance with again for who knows how long.  To make matters worse, I learned the last Friday of January that as of March !st all patrons would be limited to 30 items.  I typically carry over three times that many on my card.  I decided that weekend that the fastest way to bring down the total would be to have a movie marathon over the next week.  That would be an average of 2 hours per item.  Less than I anticipated for books.  Over the next ten days I watched forty movies.  I also had to finish up with books coming due over those days too.

Releasing books as they came due used to be easy as I could expect to send for them again in a monty or so If I wasn't done with them. Now, releasing them probably means months or even an indefinite hiatus with them.  And the projects they are related to...

As if I needed more trouble, that very weekend I came down with a virus--possibley the flu.  And I broke my reading glasses by packing them wrong in my laptop's bag and then tossing it into the back seat of the car as I was leaving Grandma's after spending the morning with her.  It was over five days before I got a replacement.  They wern't my perscription reading glasses.  Just those drugstore magnifying glasses.  I ruined my prescription reading glasses a year ago by wearing them on top of my head when not in use.  The lens were damaged by my hair gel.

So over this weekend besides getting ready to leave for half a week, I got nearly thirty items ready to go back to the library.  I watched seven movies and read two books cover to cover and prepared twenty-some more books for return by spending from thirty to sixty minutes per book getting what I could out of them and letting them go.  That was probably the primary source of the anxiety that I worked up yesterday.

Well, i gotts go get ready to leave now.  Will be working on a post about my stay with grandma while I am gone.  No access to the internet until I get back.  I am going to have serious withdrawal....

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Thursday Thirteen #19

My TT last week was a sort of tribute to Molly. I was intending to write a more voluable one later but I was sick all week so instead I collected other peoples tributes and thouroughly intimidated myself. This little obsession of mine took second place only to the major movie marathon I was engaged in as I attempted to watch all of the thirty some DVDs coming due at the library over the past ten days.

So when it came time for TT again this week, my choice of topic seemed limited to movies or Molly tributes if I wasn't to have to wrench my focus away from what was engaging it. Molly won hands down because I really wanted to do one more thing to honor her and engaging in thie project was an antidote to the funk I sunk into as the virus had its way with me and the anxiety that consumes me as the library's closure date looms ever closer..

Thirteen Tributes to Molly Ivins 1. Matthew Rothschild: Molly Ivins, In Memoriam 2. John Nichols: Remembering Molly Ivins 3. Paul Krugman: Missing Molly Ivins 4. Bill Moyers: Remembering Molly 5.James Galbraith: A Tribute to Molly Ivins 6. Ralph Nader: For Molly Ivins 7. Linda Milazzo: Ann Richards and Molly Ivins Ain't Done with Us Yet! 8. Maya Angelou: Molly Ivins: America's Jericho Voice 9. Jay Root: What it was like to know Molly 10. Dan Rather: A Tribute to Molly Ivins from Friends, Colleagues, and Occasional Targets 11. Garrison Keillor :A Tribute to Molly Ivins from Friends, Colleagues, and Occasional Targets 12. Jim Hightower: A Tribute to Molly Ivins from Friends, Colleagues, and Occasional Targets 13. The Nation: Remembering Molly Ivins Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. J 2. Tawny Taylor 3. April Decheine 4. Susan (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

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The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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Thursday Thirteen #18

Thirteen Qualities of a Hero 1. courage 2. truth-teller 3. grace 4. grit 5. sense of humor 6. generous of spirit 7. humility 8. respects the dignity of self and other 9. unmasks the hubris of the pretentious (ego masquerading as dignity) 10. champion of the vulnerable 11. vigilant against abuse of power 12. guardian of liberty of conscience, speech, assembly etc. 13. irreverence for convention and conformity One of my heroes died Wednesday. May her spirit live on in those of us who benefited from her example.. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Di 2. Tink 3. Ally Bean 4. jenny 5. Susan 6. spyscribbler (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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Thursday Thirteen #17

Thirteen Things our county library system provides (until they close their doors due to lack of funding April 7, barring a miracle) 1. Books. Fiction, Non-Fic. Juvenile, Young Adult. Large Print. Espanol. 2. Audio books for the visually impaired, pre-readers or just to listen while doing something else--driving, knitting, jogging, walking etc. available on cassette, CD or downloadable for MP3. 3. Movies for VCR or DVD. 4. Music on CD 5. Periodicals: Magazines and Newspapers 6. Reference collections--Dictionaries, Encyclopedias Almanacs and more for consulting on site. 7. Weekly storytimes for young children and summer reading programs for kids are among the ways our community libraries encourage literacy which is necesary for a thriving economy and healthy democracy.. 8. Outreach for the homebound--delivery and pickup of materials to those unable to get to the library due to illness, age or disability. 9. Access to the internet. 10 Computer literacy classes 11. Access to online catalog of library collections and dozens of databases for a variety of research needs. 12. Resources for homeschooling. 13. One-on-one help--get questions answered from a live librarian on site or by phone or email. Yes, I'm obsesseed. And will be for the foreseable future. Barring a miracle. Even then, I will never take library services for granted again. Do you? How much do you use your library? What would those services cost you elsewhere? Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Di 2. Bubba 3. Susan 4. Kimo & Sabi 5. my 2 cents 6. scribbit 7. spyscribbler 8. Tink (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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Thursday Thirteen #16

Thirteen Things The Sound of Music means to me or The Power of Story to Impact a Life: 1. It was the first movie I ever saw on a big screen in a theater. 2. I was seven years old. 3. I wasn’t to see another until I was 16. 4. For several years afterward I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to be a nun or a governess. (Only until I could be married so I could be a mother, of course.) 5. But even then I identified most with Marta, the Captain’s daughter who had to be whistled for twice in the scene in which the children were being introduced to Maria. She walked to her position in line with a book in front of her face. I already had a reputation for that and continued the habit into young-adulthood. Walking and reading at the same time is something the RP has taken from me. 6. The experience also woke me to the sound of music which I can’t redeemer I ever much noticed before that. I began to vigorously participate in the song services at Sunday school and Bible study. But then as now I could carry a tune about as well as a duck with hiccups. 7. If it hadn’t been for this movie, I would never have missed the dancing that our religion denied us. 8. "The hills are alive with the sound of music.." that song as well as Climb Every Mountain could bring tears of joy to my eyes then and as I discovered Sunday night, they still can. 9. My Favorite Things, Do, Re, Mi, and ‘(What are we going to do about) Maria?' could give me a fit of giggles then. And still can. As can the word flibertygibbet which one of the nuns called Maria in that song. 10. This movie also gave me the idea of having a very large family. I kept hoping for more brothers and sisters after the sister that was born the previous year. None arrived. I also began talking about wanting seven kids of my own someday. A couple years later that became a dozen after I discovered the novel, Cheaper By the Dozen. It has been one of the biggest disappointments of my life that I never became a mother. 11. This movie also made me aware of the fact that some people lived in houses in which a single room could swallow up my family’s entire house and yard. This was the seeding of my consciousness of wealth and class and power. 12. Speaking of which. This movie gave me my first inkling that there was a power in this world that was so much bigger than my father it could require something from him that he could not refuse unless he was willing to flee with his family in the middle of the night, leaving everything they owned behind except the clothes on their backs. And concomitantly there are things powers in this world will require that must be refused at all costs--for submission to them would entail loss of something more precious than life itself. 13. From about the time I saw The Sound of Music my experience of reading stories was dramatically changed. I began to visualize the stories playing out in full color and motion as tho on a screen that allowed a global view with all the variety of camera shots--from long shots of glorious landscape to close-ups of a single tear falling from an eyelash. The same became true of the stories I began to create. There are probably many ways it impacted my sense of how a story is made, of which I am still unaware. It was within the following year--before I turned nine--that I began writing stories. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. amy 2. JohnH985 3. my 2 cents 4. Incog & Nito 5. Susan 6. Candy Minx 7. Tink 8. Jenny Ryan (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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Best Bedtime Story Ever! NOT!

I closed last night's post with the announcement that I was about to watch Poltergeist.  it was just after one in the morning.  I figured I would get myself settled in bed first so that all I would have to do was close the DVD player and the laptop lid as the title hit.  I was due to be called before seven to get ready to go with my mother-in-law over to my husband's grandmother's to sit with her while my in-laws went grocery shoppign for both households.  I expected the movie to be over shortly after three, which would give me almost four hours of sleep. 

I knew little of the moive beforehand.  Only that iconic image of the angelic somambulant blond child approaching a TV screen ablaze with off-air white-noise and intoning "They're heeeere." If I had known (or remembered) that Stephen Spielberg was the director, I might have had an inkling of the potenial power of the special effects.  But even so, I doubt I could have reckoned on their after-effects.  I am a vetern scary movie watcher, tho seldom have I watched one all the way thru without commercial interruption.  Could that have made that much diference?

I've loved ghost stories since I could read.  I've read nearly every one of Stephen King's books.  I thought I was innured to them. That they could never do more than give me a frisson of virtual fear.  I even read them or watch them in the dark while home alone.  No big deal.

This time was different.  Maybe it was because I set it up so that there was no transition between the end of the movie and shutting my eyes to sleep.  Need I say that sleep did not come immediately?  Nor in fifteen minutes.  Nor in fifty.  Everytime I began to slide into the hypnogogic image stage of sleep, I had a major startle reaction as the images from the movie morphed and mashed in a kalaidascope lightshow behind my eyelids.  I wasn't scared.  I in no way bought into the story once it was over.  It was just that the antics of those images produced one startle reaction after another for the next hour or so.

Next time I plan to watch a scarey movie before bedtime, I will be sure to spend at least fifteen minutes afterwards looking at or doing something that will clear my mental cache and fill it with something safe to sleep on.  Say AFV of laughing babies or pet peccadillos.  Better yet, the first fifteen minutes of The Sound of Music.  If only I didn't have to send it back to the library this week.

But, I'm sure to have something of the sort on hand when i get my turn with Poltergeist II and III sometime in the next three to six weeks.  Especially if I continue to bring them home from the library at a similar rate with a similar range of mood and theme.  I mean, really, from The Sound of Music, to documentaries about the Constitution to Emma to Poltergeist inside 24 hours.  It's enough to make your head spin.

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Weekend Movie Marathon

When I posted on Saturday, I mentioned that my goals for the long weekend were to watch twenty DVD's and finish the Nicholas Sparks novel, At first Sight.  It was already late afternon Saturday and I'd only watched one movie, The Petrified Forest and was half way through the novel.  I was already hopelessly behind and yet I posted the goal intact, thinking it would help me hold myself acountable. 

It may seem like a silly goal and a silly obsession with all the serious stuff going on in the world; in the nation; in my persoal life.  Seem like?  I'm sure it is.  And yet.  I'm not apologizing.  Some of these movies I've been waiting my turn for for months and with the libraries closing the first week of April, I may not get another chance for many many months if not years. 

No one knows how long the libraries will have to stay closed.  They are planning another ballot measure in May.  But I hold little hope of it passing.  Such measres in this valley seldom do.   Representatives, Weldon and DeFazio have introduced House Bill 17 to restore the sefty net monies, which had been partially funding the librarys among many other things.  But there is only moderate hope it will be enacted.  And even if it were, it would still only be a temporary solution.

So, yes, there are more important things going on in the world than my movie marathon.  But that is exactly part of the promblem.  I am worn out with worry.  My worry has added exactly zilch to any solutions.  I'm exahuasted with it.  And one of my resources for healing and stress release has always been stories. 

Then there is the fact that most of these movies, whether just years or many decades old, are first time views for me.  Because I was raised in a fundamentalist religious sect that discouraged going to movies I have a huge culture lacunae.  After discovering that my new laptop, bought a year ago last September, doubled as a DVD player and that our library system had a rapidly expanding collection of new and old movies and documentaries on DVD I started to attack that lacunae like a spider mending its torn web. 

I haven't written about it much here.  I'd been writing book reviews since grade school but I didn't have experience at reviewing films. I barely knew how to watch them--other than to just get lost in the story, which is still, and I hope always will be the main thing. It was that sense of intimidation though that kept me mostly silent about the dozens of movies I've watched in the past year.  Plus it is hard to pick up a movie and thumb thru the scenes to refresh my memory of facts--character's names, dates, locations, actor's names, director's names.  That info crowded onto the DVD cover is in such fine print most of the time I can't read it with a magnifying glass. 

When I set my goal to watch 20 DVDs this weekend, i was figuring on four nights starting with Friday.  But I watched only one Friday night.  And then spent several hours preparing that post Saturday afternoon.  Then I picked up the novel instead of starting a movie.  And I read until I wore out my eyes.  I was getting ready to start a documentarty Sunday morning when my neice arrived.  I spent the next several hours visiting with her about books and moves and music and school and.... It wasn't unil her grandma--my mother-in-law--went to bed Sunday night that we were able to start a DVD.  We watched The Sound of Music and Heidi.  Over five hours of story. 

I will have more to say about The Sound of Music in my Thursday Thirteen this week.  It is a very special movie to me.  One of the few I saw before age 21.  It was a wonderful experience to share it with my thirteen year old neice who was seeing it for the first time herself. 

It was fun to share Heidi with her as well.  I had never seen it either.  But I had read the book when I was in third or fourth grade and I had acted in a play of it in fifth or sixth grade.  I had played the nasty old governess of the invalid Claire.  I still remember that mostly because I got to stamp my feet and yell at the girls who were playing Heidi and Claire--girls who had tormented me for years.  Ah, the simple pleasures of an eleven year old.  Except that simple pleasure had garnered for me the requirement to chastise myself for having a mean spirit for months afterward.

It was four in the morning when Heidi finished.  So it was that I reached Monday morning with only three movies down and seventeen to go.  It wasn't until after my neice left around one Monday afternoon that I got serious.  I watched three documentaries about the Constitution in a row. They were from a series put out by Annenburg for use in classrooms.  I was surprised at how much I sitll didn't know.  I watched them reved up to 1.40 of novrmal speed.  So it took me about ninety minutes to watch two hours of film.

Next came Cold Comfort Farm.  A fun comedy of manners.  It's protagonist fancies herself a budding Jane Austen.  Her talents lie more in the way of manipulating the behavior of those around her and matchmaking--like Austen's Emma--than in writing though.  Ironically, I watched Emma, immediately after Cold Comfort Farm.  Also ironic was that Emma was played by the same actress as the heroine,Flora, of Cold Comfort Farm.

So that is eight.  I was popping Poltergeist into the drive when I decided to stop and write a post first.  I may not get another chance until Tuesday night.  I am watching my husband's grandmother Tuesday morning while my in-laws run errands. 

Sometime before Thursday morning I have to find time for eight more movies, writing and posting my Thursday Thirteen and paying my respects to other T13s.  And there are still the books.  This week there are more movies than books coming due but I have a huge batch of books coming due next week which is why I had hoped to get 20 movies out of the way over the weekend so that I could concentrate on those books I may not see again for a very long time.

I did finish the Sparks novel.

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Twelve weeks and counting...

The date of closure has been announced for the 15 county library branches. Friday April 6 is the last day the doors will be open to the public. All items out will be due on that day. The previous day, Thursday the 5th will be the last day items can be checked out. By Saturday morning even remote (internet) access to the card catalog or patron accounts will be denied.

How many books can you read in 12 weeks? How many movies can you watch?

Since this is going to be a major focus for me over the next twelve weeks, I figured I might as well establish it as the main theme of my posting here for the duration. I’m going to have a hard time keeping my mind on other topics long enough to write about them or do the necessary research.

So this is my tentative plan: I’m going to try to post each day with some comment however brief and off the cuff about whichever books or movies I spent time with that day. No more waiting until I can find the time to do a formal review. No more waiting until I’ve actually finished a book before I write something about my encounter with it.

Over the next several weeks I will be doing a kind of catch and release of a number of books I have no hope of actually finishing. I have to start letting them go and in the process keep some kind of record of what they mean to me, how they fit into my various research projects. And that is just the non-fiction books. Novels will be another thing. I can only read one novel at a time. It is unlikely I can read more than twelve more. I’m going to have to make some ruthless choices about which ones to commit to.

I began the process of releasing books I haven’t finished with and don’t plan to send for again in the next three months yesterday. Here are some brief comments regarding two of them:

Savage Reprisals: Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks
by Peter Gay
(c) 2002
W. W. Norton & Co.
192p

The thesis challenges the assumption of many casual readers and serious scholars that the novels of the Realism movement of the late nineteenth century provide documentary evidence of the actual realities in the societies they depicted. Examining three novels written at the height of the movement, Peter Gay, contends that they are highly filtered through the biases of the unique psyches of their authors and therefore they hold up to society a mirror with a distorted reflection. This, Gay maintains, in no way implies there is no truth in them, just that they can not be treated by historians as objective representations of the era they depict.

Releasing this book after just a thorough pre-read in which I establish the author’s thesis and highlights of his argument, is the beginning of letting go of all literary criticism. It takes too much concentration plus to read it right, I also need to send for and read or re-read the novels in question. In this case, I’ve read Bleak House and Madame Bovary years ago but have never read Buddenbrooks.

The only exception to this guideline re lit crit will be material about Shakespeare as that relates to my research for my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld which is a project I intend to sink myself into beginning with the research now and the writing in April. I hope to make the weeks following the library closure an intense fiction writing time. A JoNoWriMo (Joy’s Novel Writing Months). I think it is the only project that has any hope of alleviating the pain of loosing my library access.  My Contribution to WriteStuff''s Creative Carnival this week, Kicking the Bucket,  was a vignette featuring one of the charachters from that storyworld.  You can meet a few more of the characters in my Thursday Thurteen #13

How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001
by Joy Harjo
(c) 2002
W. W. Norton & Co
242p

Joy Harjo's poems weave word and image into scintillating stories drawn from the raw wounds of life and told with integrity of heart and fierceness of spirit.  They resonate in your soul and haunt your dreams.

Releasing this book before I’d read more than a dozen of the poems begins my release of one of the intended BIG projects for this year--reading more poetry and reading about the variety of forms and their history.  Along with learning and practicing technique.

I’ve been in the habit for a number of years--I can’t quite pin down how far back, but I think over a decade--to select one to three topics for intense focus over the coming year. This year trying to acquire some formal training in poetics was one of them. You can’t speed read poetry and I don’t want to devote the time right now to practicing the techniques revealed in books like these two which I will be releasing in the next couple of weeks:

The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms edited by Mark Strand and Evan Boland.

The Ode Less Traveled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry.

 

Meanwhile, this (long) weekend it is my intention to watch 20 DVDs and finish the light romance novel, At First Sight, by Nicholas Sparks--a sequel to his True Believer, which I read last October.  If you’ve either read the novels or seen the movies: The Notebook, A Walk to Remember or Message in a Bottle, you will have an idea of the kind of story this is. Sparks trademark seems to be inflicting a life-altering trauma on his protagonist which causes him or her to re-assess their life and rediscover hope and meaning in living. You know, the stories that rival colds and flu in keeping tissue manufacturers in business.

I’m a bit behind in my weekend movie marathon. I’d hoped to watch at least three last night. But I was too tired after the effort involved in getting to the library and back yesterday so I watched only one: The Petrified Forest, staring Bette Davis, Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart. I fell in love with Bogart in The Man Without a Face and Sabrina and started ordering everything Bogart on DVD at the library. I watched Casablanca last month. Lined up for this weekend are The Big Sleep and Key Largo. Possibly The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as well. But that one just came home with me yesterday and I need to put priority on the movies coming due in the next week.

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Thursday Thirteen #15

Thirteen movies I've watched recently. They were all DVDs checked out of the library. A privilege we in the Rogue Valley are about to loose the first week of April: 1. Spanglish. 2. Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House 3. Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man 4. Close Encounters 5. Farenheit 451 6. Antoine Fischer 7. Sabrina 8. The Man Without a Face 9. Casablanca 10. Sunset Boulevard 11. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? 12. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the recent remake starring Jonny Depp) 13. Good Night and Good Luck. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Debbie 2. Gattina 3. Caylynn 4. Jane 5. Jamie 6. ChupieandJ'smama (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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Kicking the Bucket

The following is my contribution to the WriteStuff Creative Carnival. The prompt was: A New Beginning.

Kicking the Bucket

by Joy Renee

The sky was beginning to lighten when Reggie pulled around a long curve and caught her first glimpse of the sea. She spotted a bench facing the ocean at the side of the road and pulled onto the gravel cut-out that provided parking space. As soon as she opened her car door, she regretted that she had left in such a rush the previous evening. She had no jacket and still wore the same tank top she’d worn in the sweltering packing sheds yesterday. Memories of that heat made the chill morning breeze off the water more refreshing than unpleasant and the chance to see, unobstructed, the view that had beckoned her across the coastal range was enough to draw her out of the car to brave the shivery gusts that whipped her hair about her face.

Only the prospect of a sunrise over the water would make this more perfect. It had been the thought of a Pacific Coast sunset that made her turn her steering wheel towards the west last evening. But there had been no hope of reaching here in time. She was determined, instead to watch the changing color of the sky and water and the early morning flocking of the sea birds as the sun rose behind her back. Could there be a better place for contemplating than a bench on the edge of the world as dawn scribbled the sky with the colors of hope and peace?

She was determined to figure things out if she had to sit here until the sun set as well. She could not go back until she knew what to do.

Reggie hugged her arms and rubbed them to generate heat. She might have to retreat to the car after all. There was no color in sky or landscape yet so sunrise was a solid half-hour off. The shadows among the dunes and rocks were still fathomless. Her eye snagged on a light near by. Not a football field’s length away. A campfire. Probably some local teens had partied all night. But minutes later she smelled brewing coffee. How many teens knew how to brew coffee over a campfire or had the foresight to bring the equipment to a Friday night keg party? Not her two. For sure.

"Brrrrrrrr!" Reggie finally sang out and jumped to her feet to jog in place, hoping to force her muscles to heat themselves. This just might work she thought after three minutes or so. Yet it was not conducive to a peaceful reassessment of her options. She looked toward the horizon and was startled to see movement of shadow on shadow just yards away.

"Yoo-hoo." A voice emanating from a blob of dark gray sliding against charcoal.
Reggie blinked her eyes trying to make sense of what approached across the sand, wondering if she was still asleep in the car at the rest-stop and dreaming this apparition.

"Yoo-hoo." Now accompanied by sounds of heavy breathing. "I have hot coffee. And a sweater."

Reggie was as surprised at her own impulse to trust this as a gift called up from the earth in response to her need as she was by the sight of a very large woman pushing a baby buggy. She was moving toward it before she fully realized she had decided to. And then the woman abandoned the buggy and moved to meet her, holding open a voluminous sweater in which she enfolded Reggie before pulling her inside her heavy cloak. "Honey! Whatever possessed you?"

Reggie laughed as much to quell the urge to cry like a child against her mother’s breast as in amusement. "It was over 100 degrees when I left home."

"Come sit by my fire. I’ll make hot cereal." They were already moving in tandem toward the buggy before Reggie nodded. The woman pulled a thermos from the buggy and poured a steaming stream into a mug saying, "Call me Mama Cat."

Minutes later Reggie was settling on a driftwood log in front of the fire. Mama Cat removed her cloak and slung it over Reggie’s back before pulling a handful of squirming fur out of the buggy. There was enough light now to identify this as two barely weaned kittens. "These guys’ll keep you warm. Oats or wheat?"

Neither spoke again until their cereal bowls were on the ground for the kittens now numbering four. "If my own kids would eat out of the same bowl like that, I probably would have slept in my own bed last night."

Mama Cat’s silence invited her to continue. "After I kicked the bucket, I thought I better get away to think what to do."

"Yes. Mama Cat chuckled. "Kicking the bucket does tend to make room for new beginnings."

"I passed out twice from the heat yesterday. Once while waiting on the pizza as I held the KFC bucket. Jay prefers pizza and Rae fried chicken, see.. Then again in the driveway at home. The kids were standing over me calling, ‘Mom! Mom! Where’s dinner?’ Must have been pure rage gave me strength to stand up and reach into the car. First for the pizza which I launched like a Frisbee, then…" She closed her eyes against the sight of seagulls flying against a clear blue sky and saw again the arc of the KFC bucket she had drop-kicked into the neighbor’s yard.

"How old are they?"

"Jay’s nineteen. I got him a job in the sheds. He quit at noon on his first payday. I smelled pot on him that night. Rae’s sixteen and dating Jay’s friend behind my back."

"Have you ever seen a mother cat defend her kittens?" At Reggie’s nod Mama Cat continued. "Have you ever watched a mother cat wean her kittens?" Another nod. "Then you know what to do."

Reggie sighed. "I know."

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Hey Diddle Diddle, The Cats and Weffriddle

I've been following with amusement the affect of certain of my posts on my stats.  As I'd hoped, my involvement with Thursday Thirteen gave a regular boost to my visits and page views every week since I began last October, and I wasn't too surprised to discover that the ones in which I discussed my two cats, Gremlin and Merlin, were the most popular of those since other mentions of 'cats' or 'pet' in a post or post title would bring in more than the usual visitors.  But I was flabbergasted at the response to my post, Nurlo!, the week before Christmas. It has more than tripled my weekly visitors because somehow that post has catapulted me to near the top of a Google Search page for that query.  Sometimes the query is just the one word, sometimes it is for a definition for the word and sometimes it is for the Nurlo T-Shirt proffered by the creator of Weffriddles.  I thought I might as well write a post that would direct those visitors to the best answer to their questions while simultaneously updating my progress with Weffriddles.  Not to mention giving another shot in the arm to my stat!  Hey, whatever works.

So.  Updating my progress on Weffriddles:   I solved the one I was agonizing over shortly after posting my wail.  It was while writing that post that I got the idea that led to the solution.  I'm not telling.  I don't do spoilers.  I kept meaning to update that post or post again to announce that but never got around to it.  I am now on level 39.  But I haven't played for over a week.  Although I am itching to return to the game, I am currently denying myself the pleasure because I spent over ten hours on it each of the three times I played and I don't want to succumb to that temptation again until after the local library locks it's doors at the end of March.

Looking for the definition of Nurlo?  The best one is found in The Urban Dictionary:

A vocalization of frustration, an interjection of one who is failing to understand, the groan of realization when one realizes he or she had been making something that is fairly easy way too hard.

I am still unclear as to whether this word was in use before the creation of Weffriddles or was coined by the riddle master or the players.  Can anyone enlighten me?

As for the T-Shirts:  The best place to find them is on the Weffriddle forum where the players and Weff Jebster himself hang out and discuss the levels of the game and of their frustrations.  Hints and nudges are available here too.  But don't try to find or deposit a spoiler.  Not cool.  Leaving a spoiler can get you banned from the forum.

I am so into the whole concept of Weffriddles that I am already thinking of starting a similar web site.  One in which the clues and answers are on themes that reflect my special interests.  I'm thinking that not only would that be fun but it would exercise my budding HTML skills while also taking advantage of the obvious interest in riddle solving evinced by the over 20,000 members of the Weffriddles forum.  One of the players posting there got impatient while waiting for a new batch of riddles to be prepared and started one of his own. I've bookmarked it but don't dare start to play.

Meanwhile, I've got twelve weeks left in which to finish up with as many of the books and movies and other library dependent projects as possible.  If only there were a way to eliminate the need for sleep!  My insomnia seems to have deserted me when I most need it.  It hasn't really returned since I had the flu during the first three weeks of December.

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Thursday Thirteen #14

Thirteen Things My Cats Gremlin and Merlin Do To Amuse or Annoy Me: 1. Gremlin jumps on my back whenever I bend over for any reason and then climbs up it to perch on my shoulder as I stand back up. This was amusing when she was a kitten. Now? Not so much. 2. Merlin chases balls vigorously enough to bonk into objects in his way. 3. Gremlin sits on my right knee as I type on the laptop positioned on a shoe box between my legs on the bed. This tends to put my leg to sleep, strain my knee and hip and leave numerous punctures where she grips to ride out any shifting of position. This completely negates the use of the shoe box to keep the weight of the laptop off my legs and leave them free to move. 4. Merlin shoots rubber bands by holding one end with a claw and the other with his teeth. When he miss-coordinates the release and gets smacked in the nose, he hisses. When they shoot across the floor he stalks them like a bizarre insect. 5. Gremlin hooks a claw on the rim of the food or water dishes to pull them closer when her leash is snagged. Often she tips them over. 6. Merlin is sometimes the one who 'snags' her leash by sitting on it. He will also tug on it to rile her up. 7. Gremlin is very vocal which is amusing when I am in the mood to converse with her but annoying when I'm trying to read, write or sleep. 8. Merlin does a fair imitation of a feline Houdini when he strips out of his harness in under twenty seconds by pulling the leash taut around the door jamb, tucking his chin against his chest, clawing at the section of harness at his throat until he loosens it, squirming one elbow out of the section that fastens under his belly then sliding out backwards as the whole thing turns wrong-side-out. 9 Gremlin, back in the days when we were in our own home and she could roam it freely, would climb into any open cupboard or drawer. I once found her asleep in a salad bowl on the second shelf up in the cabinet above the counter. Not so amusing once it sunk in that every dish on every shelf of that cabinet now needed to be re-washed. (hence the necessity of the leash here in my in-laws home) 10. Merlin knocks his balls under the door into the hallway and waits with his nose at the crack in expectation that someone will knock it back because occasionally someone will. He especially loves it when that someone keeps the back-and-forth going and will show his appreciation by reaching under to grab their foot. 11. Gremlin, at our homes in Longview and Sunnyvale, would climb up a door to perch on its top and then push against the closest wall to make the door move back and forth. Anyone walking through the door was fair game. 12. Merlin, disappeared from a closed up room during his 7 day quarantine after we brought him home from the pound in Sunnyvale. It was several hours before I discovered his exit had been the trailer house's heating vent in the floor under the bed. The metal grate had been laid atop the carpet and not screwed down. We feared he got stuck somewhere under the floor but he showed up on the front porch the next morning. 13. Gremlin clawed holes in every window screen at both the Longview and Sunnyvale houses. She would enlarge the holes until she could squeeze through them. One window was over the tub in the Sunnyvale trailer house. We could not figure out how she managed as it seemed impossible to either climb the slick tile wall or leap the eight feet up. Until the day I witnessed it that is. She jumped from floor to toilet tank to towel rack to shower curtain rod to window ledge in a quick series of moves without pauses. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Raggedy 2. Sweet Kitty 3. Tink 4. Write From Karen 5. Caylynn 6. Chickadee 7. Janie Hickok Siess, Esq. 8. Jamie 9. my 2 cents 10. scribbit 11. Jennifer 12. Nichole (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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What's a Blog For After All?

I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I can't begin to count the number of posts I began and didn't post let alone the number I never began at all just because I suspected that something--more info, more sleep, mood shift--would cause me to repudiate my words or regret my hasty exposure of raw-naked emotions. Yet other posts were begun but never posted because I knew I needed facts or links to sources to back up my words and by the time I tracked them down--if I ever did--either the blogosphere or I had moved on.

With the understanding that all is in flux and that the very act of observation affects events from emotional reactions to particle trajectory and thus perfect certainty is unattainable, I wish to be less cautious, less constrained by fear of being factually contradicted or emotionally exposed. If I cannot acquire some modest level of comfort with having my words and myself subjected to scrutiny, I have no business blogging. Worse, I have no business being in the writing business. How could I continue to be me, if I were forced to relinquish a core passion that has been with me since before age nine?

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May Your Year Be Filled With...

Harmony

Assurance

Peace

Patience

Yielding

 

Nurturing

Enthusiasm

Wisdom

 

Yearnings fulfilled

Endurance

Abundance

Radiant joy

 

and so much more: love, hope, grace, gratitude, mercy, balance, courage, justice, liberty, truth, acceptance, beauty, wonder, awe, kindness, compassion, generosity, increase, empathy, fruitfulness, giving, humility, faith, empowerment, health, happiness, goodness, wealth, wholeness...

these are a few of what I think of as the Fruits of the Spirit.  My New Year's resolution is to spend more time reflecting on them so as to reflect them in my life and then incorporate those reflections in my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld, which I have referenced here several times--most recently in last week's Thursday Thirteen.

It follows that future posts will be reflecting this shift in attention.  If ever a week passes with no posts referencing these reflections or said storyworld, ask me why.

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Thursday Thirteen #13

Thirteen characters from my story Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes which is part of my Fruits of the Spirit story-world, a multi-novel project: 1. Jubilee Faith Fairchild aka Faye Gardner. The POV character of this story which, though it can stand alone, is one chapter in the 'Faith' novel. A music teacher in her fifties. Has a habit of taking in strays. First it was cats--lots and lots of cats. Then it was people in crisis. Absent-minded and often anxious she wears on the nerves of her twin Julia. She is married to Inny. 2. Julia Love Fairchild. A physical therapist who once worked in a war zone and now is a high-school phys-ed teacher. She is strong-minded and often sarcastic with little patience for incompetence or hypocrisy. She glories in playing pranks. She bickers continuously with Wilma. (Julia has her own story in the 'Love' novel in the Fruits of the Spirit world.) 3. Wilma Grace Gardner. A high-school English teacher. She is a grammar cop in and out of the classroom. She a stickler for law and order. She seems hard as the steel color of her hair until witnessed in the presence of her twin Inny--especially after his 'bad trip'. (Wilma, too, has her own story in the 'Grace' novel) 4. Workman Innocence Gardner aka Inny. He was once a high-school shop teacher and an elder and teacher at a church until he was poisoned by an apple injected with an hallucinatory drug left on his desk by a student. He went on a bad trip that culminated in a years-long coma. Upon waking he spoke only in Biblical quotations. It was years more before Faye realized that the quotes were relevant to the moment and thus attempts to communicate. (Inny has his own story too. In the 'Innocence' novel.) 5. Mae Beatrice "Mae Bea" Morgan. A woman in her forties who has been making custom-designed rag dolls for decades. She also loves to play bingo and dreams of winning the lottery. She became the mother of Fancy at age fifteen. 6. Francine "Fancy" Morgan. A woman entering her thirties with a career as a country-western singer just taking off. She became the mother of Breezy at age fourteen but leaves most of the raising of her to Mae Bea. Her first hit, Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes, based on their life, was co-written with her daughter. 7. Briana "Breezy" Morgan. Just fifteen and already the mother of Brandy. She is angry and rebellious, flaunting authority. The father of her baby is a mysterious figure on a motorcycle dressed in black leather with a visored helmet who never shows his face when in public with her. Her hair is multi-colored and multi-lengthed with tinsel and beads braided into it. Faye discovered her extraordinary singing voice when she was five and became her voice teacher as well as mentor. 8. Cassandra Cosgrove. Childhood friend of Fancy. They once won a teen singing contest as a duo named The Rag Dolls. Now she is a highway patrol person who often brings people in crisis to Faye's attention. She often has dreams that seam to forecast the future but are given little credence by anyone--even herself. 9. Estelle Star. The stage-name of a woman who wanders in and out of Faye's and Julia's lives. She once acted in Shakespeare plays but now appears to be homeless. She appears ancient and communicates only through Shakespearean quotes. (I know her real name but giving it here would be a spoiler until I've written her story) 10. Mama Cat. She is the mistress of the house Faye is living in as caretaker. She takes in stray cats and finds them good homes--hence the nickname. Faye is also entrusted with the care and adoption of the cats while Mama Cat is on a mysterious quest. She pops in now and then (but actually not in this story where she is just mentioned in passing) and leaves with a litter of just-weaned kittens. (Again, giving her real name here would be a spoiler before I've written her story.) 11. Lawson "Brick" Travis. A policeman and scoutmaster who trains his scouts in search and rescue. He and his boys are instrumental in the rescue of five-year-old Breezy when she is stuck up a tree on a limb over a river with a kitten she attempted to rescue. (Brick is a major figure in the 'Love.' novel.) 12. Jerrica Holmes. A college journalist major who was doing an interview with The Rag Dolls when Breezy went missing. She stayed with the teen mother until the child was found and rescued. 13. Troll. Very tall--over 6 1/2 feet-- and mostly silent, he is Jerrica's cameraman. He filmed the rescue of Breezy and kitten. (I once knew his real name but lost it when I lost my note file on the Fruits of the Spirit stories. I'll have to rename him when I tell the story of Jerrica and 'Troll' who become a couple and travel the world making independent documentary films. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Tink 2. Rashenbo 3. Candy Minx 4. Chickadee 5. Jamie 6. Teena 7. Marcia (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

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Nurlo!

Echidne introduced me to Weffriddles in a recent post I just found Tuesday and now my brain is full of weird chants: Alf, I bet. The answer is waiting in the dark. 16 + 1. Google Eyes...

Weffriddles is not a typical riddle or maze game. Answers to the riddles advance you through the maze. But the maze is the website and the idividutal pages are the riddles. The answer to each riddle provides the url to the next level.

There is something about puzzle-solving that is so addictive. I love puzzles and riddles and puns and braintwisters. Partly because they usualy make me feel smart. You know, that rush that comes when the answer lights up your brain. I thought I was smart but now I feel stupid.

Echidne implied she was barely fazed before Batch 3! I was off to a roaring start when i solved Level 1 and 2 of Batch 1 in, like, 30 seconds. But then I was stuck on Level 3 for more than 4 hours!

So maybe I am stupid. I must be. My head feels like a brick it just knocked out of the wall!

Knock Knock. Who's there?  404.

And this after just two days. Well, just 16 straight hours. I haven't dared to go back since I ripped myself away Wednesday afternoon having reached Level 16 whose clues are in the form of mathematical equations of the sort that glaze my eyes and raise the hackles on my neck as though I am feeling the piercing gazes of three dozen classmates fixed on it as we all wait for that inevitable moment when the teacher, voice oozing with contempt or pity, commands me to hand the chalk over to someone who has been paying attention.

Maybe the math formulas are red herrings and the real clues are something else, somewhere else in the make-up of the page. In the text, in the title, in the text formatting, in the colors....

I can hope!

But how likely is it seeing how the creator claims to be an engineering student. And only 19!!  Yeah, he's probably the son of that kid in my sixth-grade math class whose hand was always threatening to wipe the light fixtures off the cieling like so many cobwebs as he vied for the honor of grabbing that chalk out of my sweaty hand.

Arrrrgh!

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Fireflies in the Cloud: The top 10 most ridiculous products for babies

This is a must-see for about-to-be-parents. Especially first timers. But anybody who knows or has ever known a baby will be just as tickled.

Be prepared to laugh til the tears flow. And other stuff too.

This guy is funny. Check out the rest of his blog. I just blogged this post because it gave me the first rollocking belly-laugh I've had in a long time. I snorted!! and I don't snort. No, really, I don't.

I'm so glad I was alone in my room with the door closed and only my two cats to witness it. I'm sure it was that unattractive. It would have traumatized my mother to see.

HT to Rashenbo at Writing Aspirations for sending me to the site.

I think I may have finaly got a grip on the holiday spirit. I got to play Santa this morning with my Thursday Thirteen list. And now I'm doing a pretty good jolly. I'm the right shape. But I don't have a red suit. Will a red T-shirt do?

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Thursday Thirteen #12

Thirteen Web Gems I've gathered for you. From useful to fun. Either free or with a free trial. Merry Christmas! 1. Chaos Manager 2 Besides To Do lists and other jottings, I use the notebook function as a clipboard for shuffling info between applications. Indispensable! Not to mention free! 2. Open Office Suite six gifts in one. Free and open source. Write is a powerful word processor and desktop publisher that can save in HTML and PDF. Impress with presentations and side shows. Draw and edit graphics including photos. Base excels at organizing data and generating reports. Calc manages money, time and tasks with spreadsheets, analysis and calculations. Math allows you to create and edit scientific and mathematical formulas. I can't use this yet but would like to learn. 3. WhizNote Organizer I used this for NaNoWriMo the last two years. It is ideal for organizing large projects like novels. This older version is free but it will probably make you want the upgrade. I know I do. 4. Literary Machine Similar to WhizNote in some ways but very different in others. You can store info in a less formal manner that almost seems disorganized but as the cross-linking among the data matures you will find patterns that inspire. It works with a creative mind instead of making it conform to a formulaic application. I was going to do NaNoWriMo with it this year but did not learn my way around it in time. This version is free but there is an upgrade that I already drool over. 5. Windows Live Writer Free. Can't imagine blogging without it. It lets me create hover messages for links. Be sure to check them out on all thirteen items here. 6. The Psychedelic Screen Saver Free trial. Have to see it to believe it. 7. Gnod. The Global Network of Dreams Free hangout with other music, movie and book lovers. Find out what else is liked by others who like what you like and you might find something new to like. Is that clear? No? Spend an hour or so on the maps and it will come clear. I, of course was especially fond of the literary map: Gnod Books 8. My Way Games No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. Play most of your favs online for free. (Hint: For those on dial-up, some of the games will continue to play after you disconnect if you don't close the game window) 9. Pretty Good Solitaire Free trial. So many games! Multiple player profiles under which you can personalize backgrounds, card backs and favorites lists. You can also use a wizard to create your own games. 10. Moraff Games graphics are always candyland for the eyes! There are both freeware and free trials on this page. I am most familiar with, and thus wholeheartedly recommend, the mahjongg games--some of which are free. 11. Sokoban Free. You can push but you can't pull so watch out for those walls. 12. Jigsaw Puzzle Lite Free. Sure they want you to buy packs of stunning digital photos to turn into jigsaw puzzles and I would if I had the discretionary income for it. Meanwhile it allows me to input pictures from my own files. 13. Weffriddles. Free online riddle maze. Each page is a riddle the web site is the maze. Don't leave your mind behind. I just discovered this Tuesday HT to Echidne one of the blogs I haunt. Warning: highly addictive for anyone who is into puzzle solving. Um. I meant the game, not Echidne. Tho, come to think of it, if the puzzles you are into solving are sociological in nature, then yeah, Echidne is addictive too. Finally, I feel as though I have done something in the Holiday Spirit. It didn't cost me anything but time but if any one of you finds half as much value in any one of these web gems as I have then I have given gifts that will keep on giving. If you fall in love with anything you find here, pass it on. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Chickadee 2. Caylynn 3. Cindy 4. Tink 5. Candy Minx 6. Rashenbo 7. Jamie (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

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Save the Internet!

Why should net neutrality matter to you?

What if the rules of the road changed such that stop signs were manned by bribe-takers? Or the freeways were only for the rich or big corporations? Or there was a toll at every intersection and on/off ramp?

Still don't get it? Watch the video!

I spent the last ten days contemplating being locked out of my public library in 2007! It seems some are arguing I should be locked our of the Internet too!!!

If you are not someone who can afford significant fees to insure that your emails download in seconds rather than minutes, this must matter to you too.

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Blah Crumb Blog

Tis the season to be:

weary
leery
bleary
teary

anything but cheery.

I'm having a harder time than usual finding a holiday spirit this year. Could be because I've been sick since the evening of the 3rd. As has my husband since several days before that. We have two 30 minute windows of opportunity to speak to each other each day--just before he leaves for work about 6am and right after he walks in the door, whenever that is. In spite of feeling miserable and occasionally fevered, he hasn't missed a single day. And those days are ten to twelve hours long. Not counting the commute. And today is the sixteenth* of a planned 19 in a row. The good part is that puts him on overtime by sometime on Wednesday each of the three weeks. The bad part is that we can't do any Christmas shopping until the Saturday morning before Christmas and the beginning of the family's celebration starts that evening in deference to members who have other family commitments on Sunday and Monday.

This has essentially been the pattern each year since he got this job on the shipping docks of this major, seasonally-driven, national specialty-gift company six years ago. One of the perks is that we can shop in the company store with his employee discount that knocks off a significant percentage of the original 80% mark-up. Somehow this has always felt a little bit tacky to me. Maybe because the products are mostly of the kind that time-harassed executives pay assistants to select and buy in bulk to present to clients, colleagues, customers and secretaries as tokens of appreciation that may or may not, in fact, exist. Maybe its because I know too much about the actual contempt held between ranks, departments, divisions, and plants.

Then there is the fact that we continue to live with my husband's family after five** years and I question whether we should be spending the holiday bonus and overtime money on Christmas. But on the other hand, how can we not buy gifts for those we know are buying for us?

I would rather be a giver than a receiver and have often been ashamed that the things we bought others (with too little money split too many ways) were cheap and/or poorly chosen. I tried to rectify this after 1990 by making needlework gifts for at least a few each year. I lost over a dozen such projects and all of the accumulated materials for dozens more when we lost our stored belongings in 2001. That was a huge demoralization and the holiday season serves to remind me of that.

But even these challenges to the holiday spirit are minor compared to the ambivalence toward them created by the indoctrination against them that was an integral part of my childhood. We were taught that all 'keeping of days' was pagan, including birthdays and modern remembrance days. Whenever such days afforded time off from work, our assemblies would assemble for Bible Conferences or Youth Camps. We didn't decorate or exchange gifts and we spoke with pity or scorn of those who did.

I married into a family who does celebrate the holidays. It was important to my husband and because the dictum that a wife submit to her husband was stronger than the one against 'keeping special days' I went along though my spirit always lagged. Shame and guilt would often plague the lead-up and let-down for each holiday. I consciously repudiated the teachings against holidays several years before I broke with the fundamentalist doctrines entirely. I gave my full blessing to having a Christmas tree and decorating for the holidays for the first time in 1992. Before that my husband had deferred to my sensibilities. Since then, I continue to struggle with the sense that the 'bad' things that happen are 'chastisements from the Lord' because I did not 'keep the faith'. Half the time I feel shame and guilt over it. The other half I feel angry that I feel that way. Either way, there isn't much room for the Holiday Spirit.

* I started writing this last week when it was the 'tenth' day.

** Updated to correct. August 2001 to present equals five not six years. Must have been a bad day when I wrote that line!

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Thursday Thirteen #11

Thirteen Things I can do to compensate if Jackson County Library Services shuts its doors: Read the books I own, neglected in favor of library book due dates:. 1. Of the backpack full of books that I managed to bring with me when we fled the Silicon Valley streets in August 2001, I have yet to finish at least 50% of those which are not primarily reference books. 2. There are a couple dozen books that I picked up cheap over the last six years or were given to me by those who took pity.. A few of them are even novels. 3. There is the 1999 World Book Encyclopedia set which I bought from the library at $1 per volume. Sure some info would be dated but not a very high percentage. I used to love to read encyclopedias and the World Book was my favorite from an early age. Which is why I bought this set in 2005 by dipping into the funds I was saving for my laptop. The drawback is that I always ever used encyclopedias as curiosity wetters, a jumping off place--anything that grabbed more than momentary attention sent me running to the library card catalog. 4. The creme de la creme is the Britannica Great Books set, also bought at $1 per volume from a library book sale. In this case it wasn't pre-owned by the library but donated by a patron who had never taken the shrink-wrap off more than ten of the volumes. We used to own the set and I got hooked on the Syntopicon which indexes the Great Ideas of several millennia of literature and allows you to follow the centuries-long dialog/debate on a great many topics. I bought this a week or two after the World Book set out of the same funds. The major justification was the use I had been making of them since 86 to inform a major fiction project (multi-volume) whose theme is the fruits of the Spirit. Read the books loaned to me: 5. I borrowed a couple dozen books from my Dad's library after his passing last year. They are mostly from the fundamentalist/dispensational viewpoint. I wanted them for reference for the same Fruits of the Spirit fiction project which is concerned with contrasting dogma and piety with the actual behaviors of individuals rooted firmly in the fruits of the Spirit. I haven't looked at these books much since I brought them home. It has been too painful on too many levels. I'm still not sure I'm ready. 6. My niece loaned me the first 12 volumes of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and Harry Potter and The Half-blood Prince last July and I've only read the first three Lemony Snicket's. Make better use of the Internet: 7. Read the free e-books I have downloaded and go after more. A lot of classical fiction is available this way. 8. Explore the web for more free resources. College and University sites are one good jumping-off point. I've been collecting them in my favs for years but not making much use of them. It is the personal pages of professors that are often a goldmine. 9. Use the free resources I've found online to study HTML and Webmistressing--design, managing and promotion--and turn Joystory, Joywrite and Joyread into the awesome sites they were in my first dreaming of them. All three currently fall seriously short of my aspirations. Write more: 10. Write more stories. (the fiction in my collection--not counting that in the Great Books set--won't last more than three months so I would have to write my own stories to get my fiction fixes) 11. Post more regularly to Joystory, Joywrite and Joyread. 12. Return to the serious journaling and writing exercises that were often the source of insight and fodder for my more formal writing--fiction, personal essays and poetry. Misc.: 13. Get more balance by increasing activities unrelated to reading and writing: fine needlework; meditation--a creativity stimulant among other things; daydreaming--the wellspring of my stories which must be primed months if not years before a word is committed to paper or screen; mentally stimulating games; listening to music--another creativity stimulant; walking--something will have to replace my weekly trek to the library if I'm not to become bed-bug fodder! Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Tink 2. Rashenbo 3. JohnH985 4. Gattina 5. dawn 6. Jamie 7. amy (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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Shocked, Stunned. Undone?

I am still reeling some fifteen hours after receiving news that ranks right up there with the major losses in my life: learning I was loosing my sight; learning I would not be able to return for my final year of college; learning that I was infertile; learning my manuscripts, research notes and personal library were unrecoverable along with all our other belongings after payments on our storage unit fell behind; learning I could no longer acquiesce to the belief system of my childhood and loosing the pure fellowship of that faith community; learning that the building that was once the Bible Chapel in which I went to Sunday School and later taught Sunday School and later yet was married in had been burnt to the ground as a training exercise for firemen; learning that the high-tech company my husband worked for was closing shop instead of going public just weeks after his stock options had vested; learning we were being evicted from the first nice house we ever lived in and then five months later from the motel room we'd exchanged it for onto the street.  And yes, this ranks right up there with learning that my Dad was loosing his battle with cancer--tho not with the actual moment of his loss.

What could be so dire?  Our public library system lost it's funding and will most likely be shutting its doors next month.

I had already been awake for 24 hours at the moment I learned this about two yesterday and I have yet to sleep.  I think I've been in a full-blown anxiety attack ever since.  I developed a migraine about six hour ago.  This has prevented me from writing the thoughtful explanatory piece I had planned.  But if I don't post something about this event, I'm afraid I will never post again.

Understand, it is not just that this story addict is loosing access to her regular fixes.  Everything I have planned for Joystory, Joyread and Joywrite is dependent on free access to good resources.  I have dozens of projects in various stages of unreadiness that cannot be completed without access to the resources.

How many times can the reincarnation of my hopes and dreams be kicked in the teeth before they stop rising from the ashes altogether?

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Thursday Thirteen #10

Thirteen Things about the past week(this is more story than list for which you can thank my NaNoWriMo trained fingers) 1. NaNoWriMo ended last Thursday at midnight and I rewarded myself by watching four Gray's Anatomy episodes in a row on abc.com. Followed by two Ugly Betty episodes. The beginning of the story binge I'd been promising myself. 2. On Friday, I finished the short novel, Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote and read the three short-stories bundled with it. 3. Having encountered other TTs last week who confessed to addictions to the game Zuma, I had to try it out. Played fifteen games between Friday and Sunday morning. I can see why it would be addictive but it is too frustrating for me with my RP as the field of play is too large and I often can't differentiate between two similar colors--like yellow and gold or green and aqua. 4. Saturday was my 28th wedding anniversary but we didn't do anything special as my husband had to work and didn't get home until after nine. Tis that season. Began the novel, Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut Saturday evening. 5. Sunday was to be the last day off for my husband until the Sunday before Christmas and I planned to spend it with him even if I had to give up sleep to do so. But he came home sick Saturday night and tho he got up at his usual pre-dawn hour, by eight o'clock he was crawling back in bed. I sat on the edge of the bed playing Zuma until I got sleepy. I was just drifting off about eleven when the phone rang. My husband recognized my sister's voice on the answering machine and went to try to catch her before she hung up. She and her son and my mother were about five miles from the Phoenix exit on their return to Longview, Washington from Gerber, California--delayed nearly a week by the snow and fog in the passes. I hadn't seen them since we had gone to my Mom's twin sister's funeral the week after Thanksgiving last year. We visited until after four when they hit the road again 6. I slept from eight Sunday night until four Monday morning and woke with a raging sore throat. I had the virus my husband brought home from work. Tis the season. I watched the DVD Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, after my husband left for work. It was among the items due at the library Monday. As was Slaughter-house Five which I was only half finished with. 7. Sat with my husband's grandmother Monday afternoon while my in-laws went grocery shopping for both households. My mother-in-law dropped me off at the library on the way home and waited for me to check out. The librarians were dressed as if ready for the ski lifts. The library's heater and given up the ghost. They were on the phone calling patrons with reservations on the computers that evening to let them know they were closing early 8. I hung on to Slaughter-house Five, hoping to finish it before morning so I could drop it off on the way back over to grandma's house, but I got caught up in the news reports of the Kim family that had been missing and feared stuck in the snow on the bad roads between Grant's Pass and Gold Beach just north of us. The same area another family had been lost last winter. I was hoping the Kim family's story would end as happily as that one and it seemed to be heading that way when news of the rescue of the mother and two young girls broke Monday afternoon. But the father was still missing, having attempted to walk out for help over the weekend. 9. Sat with grandma again Tuesday morning. Had not finished Slaughter-house Five in time to return it on the way over. Hoped to finish it in time to return it on the way home but still had about fifty pages to go when the time came. My mother-in-law suggested she drop me off and come back for me in an hour and a half. She had driven off before I remembered the broken heater. The sign on the door said Emergency Closure. Although chilly, it was blue-sky sunny and I was bundled warm so I sat on the raised brick flower-bed box next to the drop box and read.until my mother-in-law returned. She was five minutes early and I had two pages left. She waited for me. 10. Tuesday evening I again followed the story of the Kim family. It was not looking hopeful for the still missing father, James Kim. I wanted to cry for his wife and baby girls. I was too caught up in this local story to start another novel or movie or online TV episode or play games. At any rate my cold symptoms were escalating to the point my eyes weren't working very well. I was ready to have the light out when my husband was at eight. 11. Woke with my husband at four Wednesday morning and fixed coffee for us but had to go back to bed before he left for work. I slept until two in the afternoon. Discovered upon waking that James Kim's body had been found at noon. So sad. 12. Began the novel Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce Wednesday evening but read fewer than ten pages before fatigue overcame my eyes. Once again, I slept the same hours as my husband. 13. Woke with my husband at four Thursday morning and sat with him over coffee. As he checked his email and played Bejeweled 2 online, I started reading Trickster's Choice. I kept on reading after he left for work shortly after six and, interrupted only by a pesky cough, was still reading at nine when I suddenly remember TT... Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. K T Cat (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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NaNoWriMo Conclusion

My final word count, when I threw in the towel about eleven-thirty Thursday night, was 25,411. This is about double my results from last year, which were about double my results from the previous year, my first attempt. So I am 0 for 3 but I'm seeing an encouraging pattern here--if I double it again next year I will cross the finish line. Especially since I more than doubled my word count in the final five to seven days, which means that I had hit the stride in the final week that, if reached the first week and sustained throughout, is the one needed to make it to 50,000 in four weeks. I learned a lot about method and mindset that I can apply next year. I hope to muse about some of those here over the next couple of weeks.

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