100 Things - 11 & 12

I've decided to do the 100 things list one or two at a time. Since I made it through 10 things about me a few weeks ago, I'll start at 11.

Some will be long. Some will be short. And some will be just right.

11. I wear mostly solid colors, and a lot of brown, which I got teased for a bit when I posted the above picture on Allie's Answers for a post on clotheslines.

What's the deal with brown? I'm not entirely sure. I used to wear a lot of black, but I've mellowed, maybe? I was told when I was younger that I couldn't wear brown (because of my coloring), but I think I look good in it. It could be an act of defiance.

12. I'm a bad sleeper. I need to watch TV until I fall asleep (Scrubs, Northern Exposure, or Futurama are my preference) to get my mind out of thinking mode. I have perfected the switch the TV off right before I pass out move. The TV sometimes drives my husband crazy, but usually he's done when his head hits the pillow anyway. He can fall asleep mid-sentence, rarely wakes up during the night, and when he's done for the day, he's just done and there's nothing anyone can do about it. For me, sleep is this elusive, magical thing.

I'm writing this right now because he's fast asleep, and I'm wide awake, but I feel bad turning the TV on, even though he probably wouldn't notice.

Amy Tan on Creativity

I LOVE Amy Tan, and if you read Allie's Answers, you know that I LOVE Ted Talks, so put the two together and you can pretty much guess that I was in heaven when I found a Ted Talk by Amy Tan.

When I was in high school, I read The Kitchen God's Wife so many times that the binding of my book fell apart. And even before I had any idea that I wanted to be a writer, I secretly longed to become a part of The Rock Bottom Remainders and bang an tambourine on my ass with the likes of Amy Tan, Dave Barry, and Stephen King.

If you're a writer, or a reader, or you have questions about the universe and "the nature of life", you'll love this video too. It's a little long (23 minutes), but some of her thoughts are absolutely breathtaking. Check it out here.

Days Are Getting Shorter

When I was a kid, summers were long. Getting out of school in June left me looking at this expanse of free time that never seemed to end. There was time for camp and swimming and biking and catching frogs and going on vacation and trying on back to school clothes and chasing after the ice cream man.

I know that in relative terms, 2 months to a 9 year old is going to seem a lot longer than it will to a 31 year old, if you consider that 2 months is almost 2% of a 9 year old's life and .5% of a 31 year old's life, (and seriously, that is a little beyond my mathematical skills, but we can talk about that another time).

I suppose if you take into account the responsibilities of a 9 year old vs. those of a 31 year old, it adds to the explanation of summer feeling leisurely then when it doesn't now. At nine I didn't have repainting the mint chocolate chip green bathroom, researching the local garbage companies to see if we're getting the best deal, paying the mortgage, cooking dinner, getting my glasses readjusted, reading that thing that I promised I'd read, replying to the e-mails I need to reply to, emptying the dehumidifier, feeding the dog, cleaning the kitty litter, or turning the compost on my to do list.

My summer to do list looked like this:

1. Go to camp
2. Come home from camp
3. Climb tree
4. Catch frog
5. Get muddy
6. Hide muddy clothes to avoid getting yelled at for being muddy

The list comparison and the lifetime percentages don't fully explain the fact that I swear about 3 hours ago it was 1:30 in the afternoon, and now it's past 11:00 at night. Today whizzed by, and I feel like I need a few extra hours. Bonus time or something. And we won't even get into how it felt like June was last week.

Everything on my 31 year old list will get done (well, maybe not the bathroom, it's been on the to do list for several years now), but it doesn't leave much time for lolling around, studying blades of grass, looking for lightening bugs, or running like one of Pavlov's dogs when I hear the ice cream man's bell.

He's okay!

This afternoon, I decided that I couldn't just sit home and worry while I waited for a phone call that wasn't even supposed to come for another couple of days, so I took Argo to the p-a-r-k for an h-i-k-e (both words need to be spelled around my pup). I was determined not to think about it, and just focus on having fun with my friend. I actually impressed myself with how much I was able to just let go and enjoy my surroundings. I live in my head a lot, and this was a victory for me.

We did some trail running, hung out by the creek for a bit and watched turtles swimming just under the water. Argo rolled around in the dirt and ate grass. We followed a deer trail, and only saw one other person the entire time we were there. It was only in the 60's today, and so clear and sunny. The perfect day to be out hiking with my favorite hiking buddy.

When I got back to the car and into cell phone range again, I had a message from the vet. She said no cancer, just a cyst. I was sure I wouldn't hear anything until at least Thursday or Friday, and so worried about what I would hear. I feel like I can take deep breaths again. And I'm so thankful that I didn't have to wait any longer to find out that he's okay.

Waiting Impatiently

I took Argo to the vet on Friday to have a few bumps checked out. He has pretty bad allergies, and gets skin irritations as a result. One bump was a little too close to his incision site for comfort (he had cancer in February). Apparently, the bump I worried about was just a doggie zit, but the bump I wasn't worried about looked "a little suspicious" to our vet and "given his history" warranted a biopsy. The biopsies take about a week to come back, and the waiting is killing me.

I did just fine over the weekend, telling myself it was all going to be okay, keeping busy cleaning the basement and the garage, listening to my iPod compulsively, coming up with an amazing idea for my folk singer project. I did everything in my power to put it out of my head. But today, I'm having a hard time keeping my mind on other things. Argo keeps doing impossibly cute things, like begging for blueberries (which are probably his favorite food ever) or cuddling up with J while he's working, or watching me bake zucchini muffins like it's the most fascinating thing he's ever seen, and all I can think is do not take this dog from me. I need him.

Argo is such a damn good friend. When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to have a dog, so I had an imaginary one. Her name was Star and she was big, black and furry and actually looked a lot like Argo, except she had a white star-shaped spot on her forehead (hence the name). Star was pretty incredible. Since she was imaginary, she never used the cat's litter box as a snack bar, puked on the living room rug, or chewed any one's wedding shoes right before their wedding . But as great as Star was, Argo is a million times better. And he's real, which is totally an added bonus. Star never licked tears off my chin, scared away the people who go door to door peddling politics I don't subscribe to, or slept next to me to keep me warm when I was sick.

I need this phone call to come soon, and I need it to be good news. Thankfully, our vet is incredible and promised she'd be watching the fax machine religiously and call me the second there's news. In the meantime, I'm going to pull out the iPod again and do my damnedest to stop thinking. But if you're not trying to turn off your brain, think some good thoughts for us, okay?

Guest Posting

I'm over at The Modern Gal with a recycled post on birthdays and underwear.

I totally believe, don't you?

The Bigfoot press conference is today. Unfortunately, I have to take Argo to the vet and I'm going to miss it. Sigh. . .

(Oh, what I do to get J's goat!)

I hide in my music, forget the day . . .

Picture from my bike trip.

I did a guest post over at Extra Ordinary today about my love of cheesy music, and it got me thinking of another writing habit I employ.

I make playlists for my main characters. Getting my butt in the chair and getting focused is another really important part of writing (obviously). Playing songs that my character would like or listen to, or songs that in some way trigger something for me about that character is a vital step in my the process. It gets me thinking in their head instead of my own, and makes it easier for me to stay true to my character, so I don't feel like I'm manipulating their actions, just following them.

I'm not saying I'm channeling anything. No imaginary people speak to me, there's no voice from the heavens, no deus ex machina action providing me with divine inspiration to solve all my writing problems. It's more along the lines of what Anne LaMott says in Bird By Bird about listening to your characters so they'll tell you how to write them. Listening to a character specific playlist helps me listen to my character.

One of my main characters was really into Boston, so I spent a lot of time listening to Boston, Journey, and bands of that ilk (from my post at Extra Ordinary, I'm sure you can tell that was horribly painful for me). It helped me get her on a different level.

When I started writing Bathtub Mary, I decided early on that the story needed to take place during the summer of 1982, and I started listening to a lot of music from that year. Rio by Duran Duran came out in May of '82 and was a great fit for Margie's story. It was a song that would have sounded so different and new to her, coming from a household where her mom worshipped Stevie Nicks. I also loved being able to play with the image of someone walking on water ("Oh Rio Rio, dance across the Rio Grande"), and the issues of religion in the story. I could have written the story without the music, but it would have been missing something.

My current project actually started with music. I was listening to a lot of Dar Williams, and started thinking about how hard it would be to actually be a folk singer - the travel, the dive bars and coffee shops, the people who want a piece of you. Then I heard This is the Sea by The Waterboys, and it really struck me. The first line "These things you keep, you better throw them away," gave me a rush of ideas. I started a story about a girl named River (being very literal to the song lyrics, "That was the river, this is the sea") who was a folk singer, and left something behind everywhere she went. The story was overly symbollic and heavyhanded and exactly the kind of dreck a first draft should be, but when I got to the end of it, I had a character who, with a name change, and a different focus, is one I've decided to keep, and not throw away (sorry, I couldn't resist).

Her song list is heavy on the folk - Jeffery Foucault, Dar Williams, Kris Delmhorst, Peter Mulvey, Josh Ritter, Ryan Adams (Call Me On Your Way Back Home feels like it was written just for my main character at this stage of the game) - but also heavy on The Cure, Counting Crows, REM, and The Lemonheads, because that music taps my teen angst and also puts me in the story's mid-90's time period.

I just downloaded a recording of Toad the Wet Sprocket playing live in Arlington yesterday, and I've got 20 songs worth of writing inspiration right there. Time to put my butt in my writing chair.

Biking and Writing

Much of my work happens away from the computer, when it probably doesn't look like I'm working at all. I do a ton of my writing in my head before it ever hits the page. I'm not perfecting dialogue or anything along those lines, just creating a loose sketch of what could happen and what makes sense for my characters. I do my best sketching and problem solving when I'm doing something physical.

When I was a theatre major, back in college, I had a horrible time memorizing lines (kind of a vital skill for a theatre major). One of my professors told me that walking while trying to process information engages the "cross-corporal" muscles and clicks things into gear. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I was desperate. I walked around campus with a script, reading to out loud to myself like an idiot. It worked like magic.

When I went back to school, I studied bio, wrote papers, and practiced for public speaking class while pacing around my kitchen table, talking to myself. I don't know why it works for me, but it does. When I'm moving, my brain really does click into gear in a different way.

One of my major breakthroughs on a past project came when I was raking leaves. I worked out an issue in a short story, finally, after a week of being stuck, while hiking with Argo.

Today, I need to figure out how to get my wily little folk singer a new guitar, so I'm going for a bike ride. I find that trail biking is best for thinking and mountain biking is best for clearing my head completely. I'm going to hit the trail and see what I come up with. Although, this time, I'm going to pay more attention to the biking part than I did last time.

A few weeks ago when I hopped on my bike to work out a problem, I got so wrapped up in my thoughts that I ended up 25 miles away from home in late afternoon, before I even thought to check the time or look at a map. I had to haul ass to bike 25 miles back before dark, and I could barely move the next day.

I'm going to aim for 20-30 miles today, and keep my thoughts in check enough to be practical about my trip length. I'll probably chat with myself a little bit while I bike, but at least I'll be going too fast for anyone to notice.

Where do I start?

So, I've finally created a personal blog where I can talk about my writing and my life beyond being a greenie (although, being green is a part of every aspect of my life).

I've been a personal blogger without a personal blog for way too long - finding ways to sneak little snippets of my life into that other blog over there, wondering if the poor soul who stumbled across my website while looking for a recipe to use up the beets in her CSA bag really wants to read a story about 3rd grade me pretending to drive a spaceship on the school bus.

But beyond telling you all of that, I really don't know where to start, so I'll just tell you ten non-green things about myself and we'll call it a day. Then the next time I blog I won't have such a hard time, because I won't be just starting out.

1. I'm slightly afraid of Jello even after a concentrated effort to overcome my fear by eating massive amounts of red and purple Jello for a week. I don't think anything should move like that and still be edible.
   
2. My dog, Argo, and I are probably closer than is really healthy or normal. We've worked out a signal where he comes over and licks his top front teeth at me. This means he's either thirsty or he has to poop. Very useful, since his other "I have to poop" signal is dryheaving until someone lets him outside. My fiction never includes characters that are based on anyone I know (myself included), with the exception of a dog that is based almost entirely on Argo. He is my muse.
   
3. I'm now embarrassed that my very first blog post mentions poop, but not so embarrassed that I'll change it.
4. I've been married for 4 1/2 years, and getting married to J is the best thing I've ever done.
   
5. I'm starting to realize that ten things is a lot and I'm considering going back and changing it to five, but I won't. I'll just cheat and make this one of the ten. Number 3 was probably cheating too.
   
6. I wrote a short story that was published in The Summerset Review and will be reprinted (in a different form) in Slice Magazine in September. It's also being course adopted in a local junior high school English class.
7. I did horribly in junior high school and high school English, and am totally relishing the idea that my work is being taught in an English class. I'm also completely humbled by it, and if I think about it too much, I get a little choked up.
8. I barely cried at all until I hit 23. In my mid-twenties, one of my best friends from high school saw me tearing up and yelled "What the hell are you doing?" because he'd never seen me cry before. I have no idea what turned me into a crier after years of being a robot. Now, I cry whenever I have to buy someone a birthday card, because for some reason the stupid little sayings get me going. It's mortifying.
   
9. I make my own cards.
10. I insist to my husband that I believe in Bigfoot, simply because my husband is a super logical type and it drives him up the wall when I talk about it. Also, if Bigfoot were real, I think he'd totally get me and we'd be really good friends.