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Posts by Cathy

Mar 9

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Cathy: Weekends were built for excavations

Good news! Friday, I worked out a kink of a catalyst in an earlier chapter of the manuscript that I had conveniently skipped in my attempt to write the book chronologically. I had prior plans that day that had been cancelled, so as I showered, the ideas actually flowed with the water. My self-imposed pressure to write was off. It felt good to not just get that part out of the way, but to really feel inspired and write an idea into it I wanted to get across, besides get from point M to point Q. I’m really enjoying third-tier characters’ personalities these days, and truly believe I only have about 3-5 more good sit-downs to complete the plot line.

In the meantime, S’s room is slowly coming together. It had to come apart further before it could come together. I am staying away from it by weekdays, so I am not thoroughly frustrated with the one-step-forward-half-a step-back progress. This Saturday morning, my hope was to finish it so that I can move the monster of his bed and the mess of the bookcase to opposite walls. Pulling ye olde switcheroo. But I didn’t. I lounged. I enjoyed my coffee, my kids, and some low-pressure time. Then I drove out in the beautiful weather and went to my salon appointment. How much shorter that excursion is without the coloring time! Snip-snippity-snip, and a fifth of the previous visits’ price, then out the door. We took a family excursion to the giant home store and bought a ladder that was on sale.

In the afternoon, we gathered all but the teen, already off doing his own thing with his friends, and MIL was ready for a rest. We had a leisurely dog stroll through the neighborhood. S was in fine form with his very interesting questions, very loud. We walked by our neighbor who taught me how to make authentic Chinese fried rice, and he asked, after our chat, “Um, I forget. Are you Japanese or Chinese?” He has an obsession with Japan because of his obsession with Godzilla. We walked by his brother K’s best friend’s house, whose parents were also outside doing yard work, and he said as we walked away, “I always wondered why K2 wasn’t like African Black. Then I saw his father was married to a white woman. Since African-Americans got their Civil Rights in the sixties, is it legal?” I reminded him of the Supreme Court case of Loving v Virginia, which federally stopped states from prohibiting intermarriages between blacks and whites. Another obsession of his is the Civil Rights Movement. I think it’s hard for him to believe that any one group of people had that much power over another group. He’s been trying to wrap his brain around the concept since it was first pointed out to him in school while studying Martin Luther King, Jr., in kindergarten. I believe he’s asking perfectly innocent questions but my husband and older son think he sounds racist when he’s asking the things he asks. To me, I think he’s just trying to figure out the world in a concrete manner. Human relations are not a very concrete concept. This boy is just doing some digging.

Also on the schedule for the weekend was weeding and tilling the rest of the garden plots, doing something about the sprouts of crabgrass that have cropped up everywhere all winter. But Sunday was spent pruning instead. S’s room was put somewhat on hold for outside work, but I motivated him to do some of it on his own with the bribe of a new Calvin and Hobbes collection. I guess we have week five to complete the excavation of his room next week. The weather is supposed to chill down again, so I might actually return to the excavation site.

Mar 5

9 Comments

Cathy: Art for Life’s Sake

Fisherman watercolor, John Tinari

Fisherman (watercolor), John Tinari

I often feel guilty or self-indulgent knowing that I am not contributing an income to my family. I have never not-contributed an income to my family, in each of its mutable forms throughout the years, for as long a time as now. I have improved my perspective on these feelings in the past six months or so, since I’ve been working on my manuscript. It is slower going than I’d like, but it is going.

I have a constant reminder in my home to tell me how important it is not to forget that creative work is purposeful work, not just an indulgence. My late father-in-law, John Tinari, and mother-in-law, Rose, married very young — I believe while he was in art school. The wedding was in January 1966 and by December, their son, my husband was born. Then within the following year, they had a daughter. Four years after that followed another son. As you have probably guessed by now, John’s dreams of being a painter were quickly put on hold as he worked trade jobs, mostly carpentry or having to do with carpentry, in order to provide for his family.

Trees, John Tinari

Trees, John Tinari

In one of the earliest conversations I had with my husband (we hadn’t even met yet; this was a phone conversation that lasted a few hours), he told me his father was really sick with lung cancer. Within about six months of beginning to know my husband and his family, his father was gone. But what he left behind was beyond legacy.

When my father-in-law realized he was too sick to work, as he underwent chemo and radiation, he put down one set of tools: hammers, saws and levels, and picked up another: watercolors, brushes, palette knives, and paper. Sometimes he worked outside, sometimes from photos while getting his treatments. The results of those two years are hanging within our home: many small to medium sized landscapes full of life and green and light and shadow.

House (unfinished), John Tinari

House (unfinished), John Tinari

The most amazing thing to me about these paintings was finding out after I had been in awe of his execution of the variable greens in the leaves of all these paintings, is that he was colorblind to the green and red spectrum. One of my favorite paintings is of a fisherman deep in a river, red hat standing out amidst all that green. I can’t imagine how he was able to do that without some amount of divine sight. According to Rose, he couldn’t match two brown socks from his drawer.

Outhouse, John Tinari

Outhouse, John Tinari

I bring this up because I don’t want to wait until I am dying to do what I love to do most, even if at times I am working from a bit of a torturously dry well. My creative work is what gives my real sense of purpose beyond parenting or the rest of life’s sundries.

Cows, John Tinari

Cows, John Tinari

I was in my second paragraph when I turned to Andrew to confirm or straighten out a detail, and he said. “Hey, it’s Johnny’s birthday today, right?”

So, I just tilt my head up and say thank you, Johnny. This message is really from him to you. I just happened to be here to catch it.

[Editor’s note: Click on any image for a larger view.]

Mar 2

7 Comments

Cathy: Start by doing what is necessary

“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” — St. Francis of Assisi

This quote is an oldie but a goodie. It’s embroidered on pillows and you can purchase froufrou-looking magnets of it in gift stores. I first hung it over my desk at home, on my refrigerator and over my desk at a job I had as a class assistant for a fifth through sixth grade class. At the time I was working three part-time jobs around my boys’ schedules as I was going through a divorce. Okay, stop right there, I’m not looking for sympathy or anything, I am merely recounting the circumstances that first inspired me to hang this quote everywhere I would most likely see it, and be able to take a moment to breathe. A couple of students even mentioned it helped them to see it, too.

Anyway, at that time, I felt like I was just pointing my bull’s horns forward and ploughing through life, surviving from waking to sleeping. St. Frankie here gave me hope that this too, shall not only pass, but I would be the better for having gotten through it. I was doing what was necessary for that time, so that I could make for a better possibility and maybe even reach for my dreams in the near future.

Well, it was during that chaotic time that I started the manuscript I’ve been moaning about lately. A lot in my life has changed since then, virtually all of it. I have remarried. I have relocated by a significant distance. I have another child, just to name the biggest and most obvious. It’s a new desk, but the quote still hangs, highly visible at the top of my list of inspirational quotes on the wall where I write.

Well guess what! I am taking this quote and rethinking where I am with the manuscript. I’m no longer at the beginning. I am very nearly finished. I have never finished a novel, a lifetime dream I was beginning to think was impossible. It’s not. I am doing it. I am doing it now, through mobile, teething, napless baby needs, a little at a time.

Feb 24

9 Comments

Cathy: Stopping the analysis

The February Finish-a-thon has been a great tool for all of us to realize where we fit in setting ourselves deadlines, what project we’re working on, how far we have to go, and whether can we finish it in a certain time frame.

For me, it turned my otherwise small penchant for analysis of why I’m not writing as much as I set out to into a life’s purpose in a public forum. I spent more energy on thinking about not writing than I spent on writing my manuscript. In the meantime, and it took 21 days of this, to realize that I was actually keeping the same pace I had been keeping on the manuscript since I re-opened it last spring: exactly the same pace. The six weeks around the holidays were taken up with the holidays and everyone in the house being very ill in long phases, including me. Otherwise, I have written a small burst of between three to six pages on one day per week, while Baby C naps in the morning, since the beginning. Those naps are rare these days.

There are reasons for this, not excuses. I am incredibly sleep deprived, and can barely function on normal household stuff, let alone have a clear thought for continuity in a novel. I am now on the older baby chase besides her usual kicking keyboard cuteness. She motors everywhere and I follow. We don’t have baby gates up or cabinet locks on, etc. I am all for letting her learn her world. The rest of the world doesn’t have baby gates, why should I here, except it would make my life easier in getting basics done. I am vigilant, and how will she learn to cope on her own, if she doesn’t understand how to get around safely. She needs to learn the stairs, so we teach her, when she wants. She wants to now, so there I am, following the climber up, and keeping her from repelling to her doom. I hold her hand while she scoots down on her butt. We do this over and over, and she laughs and learns a little more each time. The dog and cat enjoy it, too. We’re having a blast.

In the meantime, the little nagging voice in the back of my head tells me I’m making excuses to go fly kites, tend the baby, and bake cookies to avoid the writing. Once, it was a huge voice in the front of my head that told me who the hell do I think I am to write? Who wants to hear what I have to say? The voice shrinks and fades into the background, because, yes I am almost done with this novel. Now it’s just the voice that still wants a voice as I gain my own. During Feb-Fin, I let it out and let it inhale deeply in order to spout through my all my public analysis of not writing. Well, it’s time to show that voice the back door. I won’t give it anymore fanfare.

I will escort it back to where it belongs, as the distant echo in the back of my head. I will get on with writing, my little bit as I can. I will tend the baby, bake cookies, and fly kites. I will enjoy my kids, my husband and dare I say, the housework. I will do so without the dread that the time I am doing something else, or better yet, nothing at all, is time not writing. If my ideas percolate away from the keyboard, so be it. They will form better in the single two to three hours I really have to hobble all those ideas together.

As for the writing itself, I have blogged before that I can’t set a schedule for it. That’s just an axe at the throat of my writing. I can set a maybe schedule, but have to be realistic that if I “set aside” three mornings a week, really only one will serve for the possibility. John Updike may have written six days a week, but that’s just not how my muse works. Mine sprints and recoups. She’s always been like that to an extent. She’s never been a marathoner. Since motherhood, it’s her modus operandi. Regardless of my whining online about not writing, I really have been pretty good about recognizing this pace and letting the writing happen in its own time, and Baby C’s.

Feb 18

14 Comments

Cathy: Can someone please explain how all the time in the world disappears without writing?

[Editor’s note: Shortly after she submitted this post on Monday, Cathy wrote to ask me not to publish it after all. She worried that her post sounded too whiny. I told Cathy that I thought she didn’t sound whiny at all, and that she was covering ground that many of us can relate to. (Me, for one!) At my urging, she agreed to the posting. Thanks, Cathy!]

Right now, I am a stay-at-home mother with a baby who won’t sleep off of me and must have one hand pinching, rubbing, or tweaking my muffin-top under my shirt at virtually all times, not just when she’s nursing. I look around my home, and think I need to do laundry, wash dishes, plan meals better, etc., but feel like I am accomplishing nothing because of little miss clingy or I’m on the chase because she must crawl, cruise, etc in the rare moments she is not attached to me. I know the regulars here are thinking my lack of sleep and how Baby C won’t sleep off of me are becoming like a Zen mantra of complaint: noooo sleeeeep….oooommmm…..noooo sleeeeeep. I’m sorry, but this is what I’m living right now. I have raised two other kids out of this phase and nannied a handful of others when the boys were little, so I know not all babies are this clingy and shallow sleeping. Just mine, apparently.

I must add that while it seems she is preventing me from getting anything done, she is generally a pretty mellow baby who is kicking my keyboard when I’m not giving her my full attention because I’m trying to have a creative life or a somewhat internet based social life. She’s not a screamer, like at times, my eldest could be, or always, like my second was. She’s generally the most pleasant baby I have known. But if I put her down in the port-a-crib, she won’t sleep and fusses for me like I’m breaking her heart. If she’s crawling around when I’m trying to accomplish something, S (by some miracle) is the only person who can pick her up and put her in the port-a-crib, and she’ll entertain herself nicely for enough time to make dinner, as long as she can see me hovering at the stove.

Now I can and do easily and often analyze the part I’m playing in this, such as giving in to her baby demands when I should let her be, put her down, train her to sleep off of me, etc. But then I turn around and don’t remedy it with all the advice I can readily give others. Part of me says, I’m 43, I had no business having this baby at this age, but in having her, I appreciate and want to hold her and have much more patience and appreciation for her than I did when my boys were little and I was 10 and more years younger, working, etc. I think my age difference is very telling about patience and perspective.

However, I’m trying to finish writing a novel. It’s not a very big or complicated one, it’s a children’s novel for goodness sake! A good old friend peeks in on this blog, but doesn’t comment because he’s a guy. He calls periodically with concern. He’ll say things like: are you sure now is the best time for you to be trying to finish the novel — because I remember when my son was that age, and it was impossible to write between lack of sleep and divided attentions. I thank him, tell him, I need to finish it now because I’m that close, and if I can sell it, it may bring some much needed income and assuage my guilt in that department.

Then I think: when S was in part time integrated preschool thru first grade and K was in kindergarten through fourth grade, I was working upwards of three part-time jobs, going through an unpleasant divorce that took forever, and began writing this novel. I was able to write it in the 30-minute snatches between my arrival home from job number one and when S’s bus arrived. I was extremely stressed, had no time, little to no child care, terrible finances, yet I wrote and managed my home by myself. And read The New Yorker within the week, novels and the collected poems of Robert Penn Warren repeatedly. I also journalled a la The Artist’s Way every morning while staving off the boys with the mantra “mommy’s morning pages!” How the heck did I manage all of that and start a relationship with my current husband, too? I seem to recall passing out on him often when we’d rent a movie at the beginning of our relationship. He claims that’s why he fell in love with me: I drooled on his shirt sitting on his couch on our second date.

Now I can barely see the time fly by while I feel like I am incapable of reading a book, doing anything beyond the wash and fold stage of laundry re: housework, yet I am home all the time! I have no brain to maintain a level of writing on a regular basis that I can honestly say: yeah, that sustains from the last part, and I can be proud of it. Is it that in being able to be more present for the baby, at my age, I am also less able to multitask in the ways I needed to at a much more stressful albeit younger time in my life? Or is it merely, I have baby-fied lack of sleep brain and forgot exactly how that taxes the mind from when my boys were also less than ideally sleeping babies?

I also know that I don’t feel like I’m having a heart attack for most of the day, because my stress level is nowhere near what it was then.

Someone please explain. Maybe I’m just having an overly critical moment. I did only write the first not quite 30 pages then, now I’m on page 85, after a four-year hiatus.

Feb 12

5 Comments

Cathy: Go fly a kite

image002We were going to do a whole lot of chores the other day, but the weather was absolutely beautiful. My thirteen-year-old would be in the pictures, too, but for finding his friends skating on the neighborhood tennis courts. He and they promptly left together. Oh well, he made his own fun, but he sure missed out on ours.

So, not much progress over the weekend on my manuscript, I’m not even writing much of a blog here, and S’s room is still in the state of disaster that I was hoping to give emergency relief. But the sun was shining, the wind was just right, and sometimes, you just have to go fly a kite.

kite_mosaic

Feb 9

8 Comments

Cathy: Yard work is a blessing

trellisfix-003I know most people feel toward yard work the way I feel about dentists. I’d rather let my teeth rot in my mouth than go and deal with the dentist head on, mouth open. But I love yard work, especially now, for a few reasons.

Last Saturday, I did a lot of yard work. I cut back the crazy roses and repaired the trellis for this year’s crop, and reset it so they won’t grow up into the siding. I cut back the holly that has no business being taller than me or overwhelming the rest of the front landscaping. It was a great day to be wearing a thick old Irish fisherman’s wool sweater and a good pair of gardening gloves, as I dealt with all those thorny things. I dug the tarp out of the dirt pile that never really made it behind the back fence into the gardens and has started growing into a grassy knoll at the side of the garage. I loaded thorny things galore onto the tarp. I dragged it to the fence and headed out back for more branches and brambles.

I removed all the branches from the old pine mulch pile I started the first autumn in the house. From under those branches, etc, is now a beautiful bed of piney compost, and later I consulted with the garden center lady about what would grow in a shady piney corner, and think I came up with a new corner of interest plan. But first I moved those branches as well as fodder from the surrounding trees into the wheelbarrow, wheeled it over to the fence and lifted it all over and threw it on the tarp. I then dragged the tarp to the driveway, and put the Christmas tree and wreath that the garbage company wouldn’t take away for three weeks, and added that to the tarp. Then I recruited my dear Honey’s aid to remove the seat in my van and get the tarpful of yard waste into the back of the van and took it all to the dump. In the end we had to tie the tree to the top, but hey, we got a lot done. Er, I got a lot done in the yard. He helped at the end. There was no wind and it was about forty degrees — a lovely day to work up a sweat outside and have cool fresh air to breathe.

While I was out there, somehow my mind cleared and I didn’t even have to think about the novel or the kids or my Honey or not having an income. I just enjoyed being out there and communing with my piece of suburban Mother Nature. I like to think I made her a little prettier and she appreciated it. I definitely got the scragglies out of her hair.

The next morning in the shower, it occurred to me that one year ago I went to church with a walker. I was seven months pregnant and had no business with my complications getting out of bed to do anything. I had the wheelchair in the back of my van, but I refused to use it. I dragged my son K along and he helped me in and out, carried my purse and bottle of water, held doors, etc. It was also the first time I attended that church, but I was in serious need of some spiritual gathering and to get out of my stir-crazy bed.

So last Sunday, I ended up crying in front of the whole congregation that I’m just starting to get to know, about how far I’ve come from not walking to yard work since my first appearance there last February. I proclaimed in front of all with shaky voice and tear-filled eyes, “I know most people view yard work as a curse, but to me it is a blessed thing — especially since I was able to clear my yard by myself yesterday.” I think I was trying to say, don’t take things for granted, because you have a home, you can bend over and pick up sticks in your yard. It’s the simple things in life we must always appreciate. But I blubbered.

Then Monday, mind uncluttered, I sat down to write as soon as Baby C was asleep. Everything flowed beautifully. I was able to get my main character out of his clammed up state and began to resolve his issues and get him some confidence. Or the start of it, anyway. Then Baby C woke, but I nursed her back down a little and was able to plot out the wrap up of the book in one-liners for the coming scenes. I wrote a solid five pages of the manuscript then plotted the rest out!

Chipper from my productivity, I washed the dishes, loaded the dishwasher, handed the baby to grandma when she came home so that I could clean the kitchen. Then I promptly readied the stroller and leash and took baby and dog and me for a good refreshing walk. I saw cormorants and geese in the lake at my little bench, where I chugged my bottle of water and gave Baby C her juice. When she and Lucy started showing their signs of restlessness (such as dropping cup off side of stroller into goose poo), I hopped up and took off for home. I haven’t hopped up since well before I was pregnant! She was 10 months old as of Sunday, and I can now hop up, in spirit, in yard work, and in my writing. That’s why I love yard work. It feels good to accomplish something physically. It frees your mind and spring is on its way, so I get to garden again. And as long as I can garden, the writing and a whole lot else seem to come much easier.

Feb 3

10 Comments

Cathy: 100 Happies

I have been seeing or participating in a lot of these 16 random things about, 25 random things about, or 48 questions about me lists that are rattling around on Facebook. Well, now that it’s officially February and the start of the Finish-a-thon, I am foregoing participation in another of those lists. But it got me thinking again about Elizabeth Beck’s list of 100 things that make her happy. I thought it was about time I started my own. Granted, I’m sure I could make it a thousand easy, and that that list can change minute by minute, because that’s just the varietal kind of person I am, but here it goes:

  1. my husband acting goofy whenever I take his picture.
  2. the way my son s can make me laugh like no one else in the world.
  3. baby c’s deliberate pursuit of whatever she’s doing.
  4. writing poetry
  5. writing a good chunk in a longer project
  6. my son k’s smarts and good looks, both of which I lay claim as the genetic source
  7. taking photos of the kids when they don’t know the camera is on them
  8. chocolate, wait that’s too easy
  9. daaaaark chocolate
  10. creamy things with nuts
  11. wait that sounds gross, creamy sweet goodness with walnuts or pecans or crème brulee
  12. ice cream, and then,
  13. potato chips
  14. and then making dinner while full on ice cream and potato chips
  15. coffee in the morning as I pour it into the cup and the aroma wafts up while it makes that particular pouring sound, and then adding a bit of milk so its all swirly, and then
  16. the first sip of the morning.
  17. a hot shower.
  18. lavender soap.
  19. a tall glass of water on a hot day
  20. a big mug of herbal tea on a cold day
  21. or cocoa, my version, no packets in my house!  with four big marshmallows floating in it
  22. baking cookies
  23. baking cake
  24. cookie dough and cake batter
  25. pasta with red sauce.  I could eat this everyday for the rest of my life and never tire of it.
  26. apparently food
  27. fresh veggies from my garden
  28. growing fresh veggies
  29. gardening
  30. even flowers and trees
  31. yardwork
  32. the beach
  33. anything about the beach
  34. except maybe jellyfish stings
  35. jellyfish in the water is so pretty though
  36. walking
  37. yoga
  38. sunshine
  39. rain
  40. the moon
  41. sky gazing
  42. stars
  43. sunsets
  44. sunrises
  45. the smell of my kid’s heads when they are sleeping.
  46. baby c’s wild curls
  47. babies
  48. dogs
  49. cats
  50. horses
  51. the smell of hay in a barn
  52. the smell of the sea
  53. the smell of hay when the sun is shining on it.
  54. wet grass
  55. dancing in the rain
  56. snow
  57. snowball fights with the kids
  58. building something out of snow
  59. crisp air with snow
  60. snow, snow, snow, snow, snow.
  61. swimming
  62. making snow angels
  63. watching my kids make snow angels
  64. getting up out of making a snow angel and not leaving footprints in it
  65. lying on my back on the sand, on the grass, in the snow, on a boat, on a rock, and watching the sky.
  66. rock climbing
  67. listening to friend’s woes, and realizing hey, they’re just like me!
  68. listening to someone’s tale of woe and feeling blessed that it’s not me.
  69. helping a friend find a way past woe
  70. saying Whoa!
  71. when my dog looks at me with the look of love
  72. when my cat looks at me to say something besides feed me which amounts to, yeah, you’re alright, lady.
  73. when she purrs.
  74. bread
  75. making bread
  76. sledding
  77. driving
  78. adventures
  79. knowing that life is an adventure
  80. and all you have to do is liiiiive it
  81. reading
  82. when my husband pinches my butt just because we’re in the vicinity
  83. when I pinch his for the same reason
  84. a really good laugh
  85. jumping in my husband’s arms, even though it’s not so easy to do anymore, but we’re both in the kitchen, and it’s kitchen affection
  86. bubbles, on the stove or in the air
  87. a good movie cry
  88. a good book cry
  89. Christmas trees
  90. Halloween
  91. knowing that how much I love my family only ever gets bigger and better
  92. when I can think of a new way of approaching a bad situation that makes it better.
  93. caramel
  94. snowcones, preferably at the beach
  95. French fries
  96. morning quiet, so rare these days
  97. love
  98. friends
  99. family
  100. random tap dancing

That was fun and kind of cleared my head before I launch into the February Finish-a-thon. I recommend both highly: making a list of what makes you happy and joining us in the February Finish-a-thon! Good luck!

Jan 27

24 Comments

Cathy: Facing things

I’ve really appreciated being a part of this community. I’ve gained confidence in areas I neglected for a long time. I got back in touch with my own creativity in a variety of ways, the biggest of which was returning to a long ago manuscript that I had back-burnered along with many other projects. I’m great at starting things.

However, I think I’m at a point where I’ve hit a freeze. I wasn’t sure why for quite some time, but I think I finally figured it out. I’m near the end. I’m not great at finishing things. I don’t really understand why I have this historic block on finishing things, but I do. I’ve worked in education for many years, but without a degree in it. I started my MEd, but barely, many years ago now. K was a toddler, now he’s a teen. I can say this or that got in the way, but then I think about writing papers in college, or even my thesis, or art projects, or that silly modeling stint I wasted 600 bucks getting together a portfolio then dropped just as suddenly. And I realize, I really have an issue with sticking it out to the end. I rarely stay in one employ for more than a few years at a time, even if I’ve stayed in the same field. I seem to keep starting over.

Now, I’m at the end of my novel, and I still have some research, etc to do for the middle, but I’m really at the point where I’m tying up the loose ends, and I’ve hit a wall. A big wall made of concrete with a tangle of rebar throughout. I have all the advice I can give to anyone else, however, all my advice isn’t doing a darn bit of good for me. I keep hearing myself repeat that I know where I’m going, I know how to get there, but the writing just isn’t happening.

I don’t think pushing my self-imposed deadline out a little farther is going to help me. That just tells me, I still am not writing whether I give myself another couple of weeks or a month to do it. I’m. Not. Writing. The. Manuscript. Now. I wasn’t writing it yesterday. Or, well, you get the idea.

I really hope as in 12 step groups, that the first step toward solving a problem is admitting I have one. OK, I’ve covered that, now where’s my 12 step group for writers who can’t finish?

Hi, my name is Cathy…

Jan 20

8 Comments

Cathy: To see, perchance to dream…

My son S was the only person in the house without glasses, minus the baby, cat, and dog, of course. They must be counted, they are family after all. But with four of us two-footers walking around as four-eyes, he was feeling left out. For years now, this has been a fairly regular conversation:

“Mom?”
“Yes, my love?”
“How come I’m the only one in the house without glasses?”
“Be glad you can see well without them. They’re a pain.”
“But I waaaaant glasses!”
“Be careful what you wish for, Buddy.”
“Aw, c’mon, mom, I want glasses, too-oo-oo!”

S seeing himself with glasses for the first time

S seeing himself with glasses for the first time

So, in October we had his annual physical and he professed to not be able to see past the third line. The nurse and I found this very odd, since the year prior, when asked to read down the chart as far as he could, he continued past where the nurse and I no longer could see even with our glasses, and read the copyright line, too. That’s the kind of thing that happens with Asperger’s Syndrome. Aspies are likely to take you very literally. So when the nurse said read as far as you can down to the bottom, well, he did, down to the last character. He read the whole darn poster, not just the chart. That was the itty-bittiest print. I couldn’t read it even when I walked right up to it. But that may be an over-forty story for another day.

Anyway, after what I went through with his older brother at the same age, because he couldn’t see the big E on the chart (yet another story for another day, or week, if you have time for the unabridged version), I said, time to go to the eye doctor. I can’t take S to any old eye doctor, I have to get the referral for a specialist who is accustomed to dealing with the autism spectrum. Luckily, this was one of his brother’s regular specialists, so they had met before when S had been dragged along to K’s appointments. It’s a big help to have had prior experience with each other. So, a few months down the line we had his appointment with Dr. L last week.

How's this?

How's this?

I warned Dr. L that everything S says may not be exactly the 100% truth. That was as much for S as it was for Dr. L. I have to put things in terms of 100% truth for S so that I don’t get school stories of Godzilla or zombie invasions when I ask how his day was. And sure enough, S’s interpretations of the letter lines were interesting, to say the least. Very creative: Big H P became C uh, uh, uh, Z. T V P E Z became 4 3 2 Q uh, uh O. Numbers continued to be thrown in even after Dr. L repeatedly assured my son that only letters were in the charts. Both the ophthalmologist and I found his responses very entertaining, but didn’t let on. In the end, after eye measurements, etc, he is a little nearsighted. It’s pretty common at age ten for kids to suddenly need glasses, especially if a parent has them.

So we headed over to the glasses store the next day, when his eyes were no longer dilated, which with any kid is another form of parental entertainment that is amped up with S. One pair of horn rims he kept returning to gave him a bit of a James Dean look. I liked those the best. Then he found the metal frame wall, like his brother has, and that was it. We selected a slightly more rounded frame from K’s, but they are the same color blue and are very close. Even though older brother mental torture, and otherwise, goes on in our family, S still worships him and wants to be just like him.

Thinking about it

Thinking about it

Later the same evening, he announced that he faked it. He was just pretending and making up answers to the chart. He looked afraid that he’d be wearing glasses that screwed up his eyes because of his embellishments on the eye test. I said, “That’s okay, S. Dr. L and I knew you were making up some of it. That’s why he dilated your eyes, and took measurements with that big mask looking machine.”

The look of shock at being found out was enough to make the most hardened criminal laugh, but in my experience with him, it’s very important not to. No matter how cute he is. Suddenly, after years of the opposite when he didn’t need them, he announced, “But I don’t waaaaant glasses!”

I know this one is going into my writer vault to be used someday.

Jan 13

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Cathy: Getting back to business

After the long holiday hiatus I took from my manuscript, I opened the document the other day and worked really hard to pick up where I left off. It wasn’t easy. I did realize during the time I was away from it, that a character name I had was a little close to a character name in a book series I admire which handles the same theme. In fact, in re-reading one of the books during my hiatus, I had the not so fleeting thought that maybe my book was a little close to that one. Maybe a little too close.

Though I had not read it in about five years, it occurred to me that this was the book that inspired me to say I could manage to write a book for this age group and this length. It was doable. After all, I’m no JK Rowling with a story arch to cover seven rather lengthy books. I could write a hundred or so pager first time out. My Great American Novel could be shelved a bit longer than it already had been. Four years ago, that one was already shelved for about seven. By the time this blog community gave me the courage to say I could return to working on this four-year-old project, I had forgotten where my inspiration came from, but apparently not the story and theme.

I can fix it, it’s not that close, and there is a bevy of bully theme books for elementary readership. However when I was reading the inspiration book and even a character name was in kind, oops! She’s a secondary character, but still. That was it. Time to figure it out. But before I do that, I really need to finish out my plot.

So back to where I left off about six weeks ago: I feel like the Tin Man. Can’t quite get those legs moving by myself. I went back a few chapters to read up to date in the plot, but I’m still writing like I’m stalling — a paragraph here, a sentence change over there, a grammar correction or three. I lost my prior groove. Any ideas on how to get it back? It may help if I can squeeze in a yoga session before I write during Baby C’s morning nap, to clear my head, but that sends likely wake up time right into when I’m likely to recover a groove. Ugh. I can hear the resistance thoughts gathering momentum.

Jan 8

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Cathy: Double Whammy

Original art by SBM

Original art by SBM

Everyone is thinking resolutions, new beginnings, new projects, etc at this time of year. On news programs and morning shows, they obsess about it for weeks leading to and long after the big ball drop in Times Square. Everywhere you turn, a neighbor, the grocery clerk, your mechanic, discusses options and fall offs for this and all prior New Year’s. I have the extra special honor of having my birthday in the same week, so I get a double whammy.

I’m putting all this resolution stuff to bed. This weekend I heard an interesting take on viewing birthdays as a new beginning and a turning point for putting hope into action, optimism into more than just dreams. Rather than just the pointing out: yes I survived another one. Oh boy, yep! I reached 43 big ones! With a new baby here, still can’t believe how I pulled that one off, but I have another still gestating — my manuscript.

I admit, in this past crazy holiday time, including up to two weeks prior, with all in the house sick in various states, myself included, I mostly mulled the manuscript in the back – or fore — of my mind. Not much writing got done while coughing, snuffling, caring for coughing and snuffling, prepping for all three holidays, guests, travelling, and so on. Nevermind the two solid weeks of Winter Break! In my own schooling or in my years working in public schools have I ever had a two solid weeks’ worth of vacation. Finally I’m beginning to feel like life might settle back down.

Honey baked the cake. Yum!

Honey baked the cake. Yum!

And then rolls up my birthday, like a big old tail finned red Cadillac. That’s right, my birthday is an American model. I don’t think we have many of my particular vintage Japanese models floating around here. I’m certainly not a compact model anymore, either, though I was often noted for being so until recently.

Anyway, I felt really creaky and crummy yesterday, and my dear dh who is a bit of a grumbler himself, managed to take something I said personally, though that wasn’t where I was going. We have this particular communication defect pretty often, it goes both ways. Well, this time, as crummy as I felt, I said, after I wrote an inflammatory note, blew up, cried, and bemoaned, that I do not want to live this way anymore. I will not try to be the solitary cheerleader in the family of grumblers. I will do my best not to grumble myself. And if anyone around here grumbles, I’m throwing a sock at their head.

My main really good Life Philosophy is that while it may be hard, it may be challenging, at some times more so than others, the bottom line on Life is that it is Good. Life is an Adventure. Life is Beautiful, Everywhere, All Around Us, Everyday. This year in particular, after a couple of rough crabby ones, with some pretty incredible joys, I am going to return to living mine as such — especially in writing. But I’m also going to buy that camping equipment before summer, and get these kids out into the world and Mother Nature. Get out and stare up at the stars while the campfire burns, smoke and pollen in our eyes, up our noses, and bugs, too.

Isn’t that, right there, whether you’re a writer, artist, or accountant, what life is all about? No computers, no TV, no handheld video games. It’s you, your family, the night and stars, and by day fishing, even if you catch a dagblasted empty hook, or just walking along a beachy, or woodsy trail. Then I’m going off-path. Not that I was ever one much for staying on it. Especially looking back at all the above mixed metaphors and winding tangents just since the first paragraph here.

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