When, if you have to turn on a light to keep working, you know you’ve been up too late!
Oh, and sunscreen season has officially started. I’m a little behind.
Aren’t they a good-looking bunch!
Category Archives: Personal
About me and/or for my benefit
For The Flourishing Mother.
I’ve always loved your blog‘s name.
It’s a meme, but as I want to do it I’ll find a way to make it belong on Untangling instead of SnowFairy. ;)
Six Quirky Things about You (Note it doesn’t define *quirky*)
Here are the rules:
* Link the person who tagged you.
* Mention the rules in your blog.
* Tell about six unspectacular quirks of yours.
* Tag a new set of six following bloggers by linking them
Anyone who’s read here long knows I’ll disobey that last edict (anyone who wants it is welcome, but I won’t make assignments).
1. One thing I’ve done all my life is make “soundtracks” to the stories in my head.
As a child this meant everything was recorded off of records– mainly Don Fransisco, Keith Green, Roar of Love, and a few others– because we didn’t have a double cassette deck.
Until my computer and iPod got out of sinc I made lists there for each project I was working on (two novels, in particular) and now I’ve got playlists on YouTube for most of my major characters.
2. I change the radio station within a few bars of intro if I know there’s a line of lyric in it that I don’t want my kids to hear.
3. I sometimes don’t trust my judgment of whether a song sounds good because music is such a whole-package experience for me.
e.g. I love this song (even though tonight was the first time I heard it) because the voice, delivery and rhythms are the stuff of my early memories. Have no idea if it’s a quality song, just know I like it.
4. I like the Willow Tree figurines. This one is by my computer (or, at this moment my sewing machine, which has usurped my laptop’s position of honor/usefulness):
5. I can’t not-create. While my computer-time was on moratorium I took on the project of making costumes for a Renaissance Faire coming up next month. Half-way through Natasha’s indigo princess gown since yesterday afternoon. More about that some other time.
Jay hid my laptop most of last week, along with his big computer-screen and I, obeying the spirit of the law rather than the letter, resisted looking for them.
I didn’t have my novel to peck at, and the zeal with which I dove into sewing (which I haven’t touched in literally a year) made me think of how much sewing I did before I wrote regularly.
Back when clean-up wasn’t an issue…
6. I label my movies for what age I think my children should be before I let them watch something. I needed a way to hold myself accountable when I want to watch something they shouldn’t see.
What Kind of a Writer am I?
The portfolio I mentioned last week was my final for an “intermediate” creative-writing class.
I titled it The Partial Histories of Often Confused People and filled it with three poems and four short stories. Most of the stories were strongly based on real occurrences, or how I imagined reality to be from a smattering of facts I’d gleaned.
Mostly “downer” stuff for some reason.
Each of them hold hope, but they’re all very heavy. I re-read the ending of one and it actually got me choked-up.
This class was the place I first learned to consciously vary my sentence structure. The teacher called me on my repetitive tendency to start each sentence with the subject (e.g., these two sentences).
Now whenever I start a sentence not that way I’m aware that the reason is that class. I think it made me a better writer.
Here’s the teacher’s response to the work (where the title of this post comes from). It’s interesting think this is from four years ago, and I think about how I’ve changed and how I’ve stayed the same.
Well, thanks much for The Partial Histories of Often Confused People. It is a good collection and seems very Amy, standing up for what it believes in, assembling moments with no small sense of conviction.
Having said that, I’m not sure just yet what sort of a writer you’re meant to be, someone writing stories or literary nonfiction — or maybe essays that allow you more room in some ways to tackle the issues that clearly matter so deeply to you.
I’m somewhat inclined to see you in that final sense, using your training as a journalist and your affection for telling stories to create different kinds of essays.
Whatever you tackle it will be spirited. And perhaps if you go the essay route, the sense of humor you display in class will also find an outlet on paper (humor is almost totally absent in your stories, which seems odd considering how downright goofy you can be in class— that’s meant as a complement, honest).
~ ~ ~ ~
April Links
Because 5 Things I Learned the Hard Way That I Believe Fostered the Right Disposition for Gaining a Better Understanding of God but Since I’m Just Some Fool With an Internet Connection and Not a Pastor or a Theologian You Should Take This and Everything Else I Write With a Big Grain of Salt, just felt too long.
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The artist’s story of his mother leaving the abortion that would have killed him. While completely outside my usual style of music a very intriguing and moving piece (H.T. Sarah)
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Stuff Christians Like is already a terrific place to go for a grin, but for more of a blink-and-think than a laugh I encourage everyone to read Letting Porn Win.
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Ten Commandments of Trying a Case
A smart evaluation of the weird J.K Rowling vs. Biggest-Fan case by Bluestocking.
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Two writing blogs I’ve just discovered and enjoyed.
Their very usable writing and noveling advice makes their archives more of a trap than many blogs’.
~
And as a side note, I’m 29 today. Jay’s coming home a bit early to make a cake with the kids and we’ll have a family night.
About that other stuff…
It is interesting how much our (however temporary) present reality can affect our thinking.
I wrote that pair of posts about “Not just staying home” while I was still recovering from my severely twisted ankle, and while I was still basically useless around the house. (And feeling a higher need to justify non-house activities.)
Today, while I still think it’s good to have a vision beyond my days with children at home, I got to tire myself out in a satisfying return to my “domestic duties.”
Jay came home from his evening meeting at church and saw the work I’d done. “Well, we totally blew that Sabbath,” he said, referencing my accomplishments and his work on his car.
I didn’t have words for it at the time, but now I’d say that my cleaning felt like an act of worship, in a way it maybe never has before. I was so *delighted* at what my recovering body could do.
Despite my clingy boy’s protestations (no guilt here), I cleared and swept the floor of the front part of my little-ish house. That would be the living room, kitchen, and dining area.
Those, along with 2 dishwashers and 4 racks of sink dishes cleaned over the weekend (Jay’s good help) and a cheery new (hand-me-down) floral couch, have transformed my home and me. I am positively Miss Domestic again.
For the moment.
After being physically-incapable of maintaining my home for about a month, I am reeling. Giddy. I am doing my job and getting back to doing it well.
I was telling my husband just last week, “When I feel absolutely refreshed and energized when I come home from a writers’ group or a critique meeting, I feel like that’s an indication it belongs in my life. The question left is, where?”
I felt like that tonight only about homekeeping. Without the hanging, Where?.
And I made two (good) meals from scratch in the same day, in addition to cleaning, and cooking’s been a challenge as long as the cleaning, so this also feels like a victory.
I feel a disproportionate delight when I see these accomplishments that will (in theory) mean nothing tomorrow.
But what I think God’s been teaching me about this homekeeping stuff during my convalescence is that it is meaningful the next day.
By maintaining daily the accumulating areas, I keep stress and additional clean-up times minimal, providing more freedom to do fun and creative things with my kids.
And I (almost) never do creative –read, messy— stuff with my kids when the house is out of order.
The fact that I have had seasons of fun, creative stuff-doing reminds me I can get (and even keep) my house in order. But, as in everything, it is only by the grace of God.
Happy Monday, everyone.
My Poems
Jen F.’s post about the “Secret Handshake” of art (I love that phrase) has inspired me to be brave and throw out a couple of my poems to the world.
Honestly, it didn’t make me think of either of these, but the third poem I wrote in this class (the one I did think of) needs revising before I will bring it into the light– though now that I’m thinking of it again, it probably will.
I was forced to write four poems (of different styles/content) as a part of a creative-writing class I took while pregnant with Melody. I will not protest to anyone that I am a poet, but the images of these (and the third if I can revise it) worked in this format like they never would have in my normal language of story or essay.
One of them apparently did come out as an essay, despite my best intentions to meet the teacher’s expectation of a “Prose poem” (go figure), but these were more acceptable to him and I’ll preface them with my teacher’s comments.
No great reason for this other than it seems to legitimize them somehow.
~
From his response to my 47-page portfolio of the semester’s stronger work (he himself is a poet, so I hope it doesn’t minimize the prose too much that he liked the poems best):
Two of my favorite pieces in the collection happen to be the poems.
They stand up awfully well, I think, with “My First Love” quite nicely capturing spiritual joy— which typically leads to poems that are terribly corny.
Yours isn’t, and the genuine delight apparent in the language and imagery take us, whatever we believe, to a fine place.
“Thoughts While Cleaning…” is considerably more somber, of course, but the arrangement of details is quite smart, and the nature of those details brings us close to the horrors of what happened— even as the way those details are viewed is meant to find distance from those same horrors.
~
My First Love
I always thought of the quiet breeze
as God playing with my hair,
and the soft raindrops were his kisses.
I’d turn my face into the wind
and feel
my hair curl behind me.
The warm breath
fit my face
perfectly,
like a strapless dress
that magically stays on.
Then,
as the rain began to fall,
I’d turn my face up to taste it.
Gentle touches over my throat
and lips.
I would begin to dance–
in my young way–
spinning about and lifting
my arms to welcome the divine
caress.
~ ~ ~
If you caught that last post in your feed-reader
I realized that (however unlikely) it is possible that the subject of that post may read about the project and miss the full-impact of it being a surprise. So I’ll just wait until after the day mentioned (don’t you love how vague I am?) to de-privatize it.
Curious yet?
Anyway, I’m still open to input if you saw the questions. Mainly:
- Is there a good way to avoid talking about myself (or keep from looking self-absorbed if I must)?
- Can you think of a good way to organize the speech?
That is, I’m inclined to tell it like a story or a blog-post, with one idea leading into the next. But I’m wondering if, since it is a stand-up presentation (5-minute speech) I need to follow a more conventional tell-em,tell-em, told-em format with discrete points.
~ ~ ~
And how do you like the new signature? It was a freebie from here, (HT Happy Home).
What My Mom Did Right
Great title, right?
I’ve been asked to craft a 5-minute speech to deliver at my mom’s church on Mother’s Day. I don’t know yet if I’m doing it, because I don’t know if I have 5-minutes worth of material.
That sounds bad, sorry.
There’s good reason for me to give this speech. There’s probably lots to say, but at this moment, before I’ve struck a structure, I do not have the differentiation to know how much of this is from her, how much is from the them (both my parents) and how much I’ve extrapolated and combined from all the observing and reading I’ve done in the last 15 years.
I’m so literal-minded those distinctions actually matter to me.
And, also, how can I talk about what my mom did right without, basically, elevating myself?
I’m only a good bearmaker if my bears turn out well, right?
How else should I express my mom did well, than that I turned out okay?
I feel like it would be easier to talk about what a good job, say, my Mother-in-Law did, removing me one degree from the discussion.
This also reduces by some percentage the chance I will become a blubbering mess in front of a congregation that’s only seen me once before (I’ve noticed crying is my stress-response).
I should e-mail my old ToastMasters club and find out if someone there can help me with the project.
In theory I like it a great deal. In practice… We’ll see.
My Latest Challenge
Yes, my silence since the last post means that I’ve been working on my novel.
I’ve had limited writing-hours and have been focusing on what I’ve thought most-important at the time (meeting the kids last week helped with that).
As much as my dropping stats pull at me, I don’t want to feel obligated to post just to post, so I won’t pretend this blog is *important* to anybody but me.
Speaking of personal stuff, now that it’s past I can tell about my latest “trial and tribulation:”
I twisted my ankle severely on the 18th of March.
I know the date because I had 3 hours of errands to run with my kids that morning, and one of them was to pick up Enchanted on its DVD release date.
Well, we did the three hours of errands and got the movie— all after I jumped off the porch and landed my full weight on the side of my foot— but I must have been building up pain for when I got home.
I got the kids down for nap though I was hobbling by that point.
Afterwards I was under ice with my foot up for the rest of the night, but I don’t think it stopped hurting before 10 or 11.
It was interesting to watch the coping mechanisms pile up.
- Jay came home early from work and went in late for several days.
- I learned to quit caring about what the house looked like.
- We saw Enchanted three. times. before it went back. It was a one-day rental.
- I bought a higher percentage of fast food while Jay was gone on his (5-day!) snow machining trip.
Not Just Staying Home (Part 2 of 2)
Sometimes I think that if I didn’t have other things (reading, writing, storytelling, music, teaching) in addition to keeping my home I probably wouldn’t enjoy “staying home,” but it’s only partially true.
My best analogy just now is to electricity. I’ve proven I can live contentedly without it, with the right attitude, but life is (forgive me) so much easier to enjoy with than without, I see no compelling reason to stretch myself that way.
Thankfully, God hasn’t asked me to do without these things I enjoy, and He’s shown me their place in my life just now: mixed with my children or spread thinly around the edges.
He’s also given me a “vision” (as it were) of their possibilities in the years to come.
This is where reminders such as that late chapter in Home by Choice are encouraging to me; they show my now-locked (think: land-locked) mind the possibilities once I reach the “coast” of empty-nesting.
I can touch and look at water in lakes, pools and streams now, but my current job doesn’t allow me to live by the ocean. I remind myself to be content in the wait because I know this job will eventually be over, whether I want it to be or not.
Hearing stories about women who fulfilled their second callings second helps me remain patient and content. I am such a *now* person I need the now stories of others to assure me I can wait for the train to arrive.
~
This doesn’t mean I am just hanging on until my kids are grown. It means that I have the same double vision in my home life as I have in my spiritual life.
All of we who are waiting for an eternal and infinitely better kingdom are only doing a good job if we are also doing everything in our power to equip ourselves and our children to live well in this one.
As a mother I am aware both of my present time with my children, and that it is not an end in itself.