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a journal |
 This book is intended as a place to blog about my life and things I'm interested in and answers to prompts from various blog prompt sites here on WDC, including "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  and "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" I'm not sure yet what it'll turn into, but I'm going to have fun figuring it out. |
| Fun Fact Friday! On this day in 1964, the game show Jeopardy debuted on NBC-TV. What are some of your favorite game shows? How do you think you'd make out on 'em? When I was in high school, I was on a TV game show--trivia based. My team lost terribly. I answered some questions, but we were beaten out on the buzzers. We did better on the non-tv tournaments. I remember one time (in a tournament), the question was about dinosaurs, and there were two levels--for more points, we had to name the dinosaur based on the power ranger, and then they'd give other clues until someone got the dinosaur. I got all the power rangers (all five of them for maximum points. In a row. in front of other high school students and our team sponsor who was one of the biology teachers). I didn't even watch the show, but my siblings did and apparently I'd picked up enough that I got them all. I don't think I ever lived that one down with my team. But that's the closest I've ever come to being on TV. And we lost. Terribly. I don’t watch TV, but I like Jeopardy. I’m not sure how well I’d do—I like trivia games, but I don’t do as well with sports and current events, and I don’t like those buzzers. They make me feel anxious and flustered, which isn’t the best inner self to be coming up with rapid answers to trivia questions. I like Wheel of Fortune, although I wouldn’t play that either. Too much like gambling on luck, and I’m not confident in my luck when I’m playing for something that actually has value (like money—we play poker in my house sometimes for chocolate, and I am much luckier then). There are other game shows, but they mostly either fall into the luck category or the trivia category. I tend to like the trivia better as long as the host isn’t mean or scary (like Weakest Link. That lady is scary), and I don’t think I’m lucky enough to win in the luck based ones (like the Price is Right. Or the one with the whammies), so I think I’d not do particularly well in any of them. But I don’t mind watching. When I have the TV on, which isn’t often. |
| The Wildcard Round! This week's winner, from all eligible entries, gets a Music MB! What tunes are on your "road trip" playlist? I don’t listen to music on road trips. Never have. It’s not something that we did as a family. We went on road trips. Mom would drive because she can’t stand it when Dad does (he’s easily distracted—good driver, but Mom knows how distractible he is, so she gets nervous), and Dad would read novels to her. All sorts. They still do it, read novels together in the car and to put Mama to sleep at night. All sorts, but mainly Regency’s and mysteries. They like Georgette Heyer and Dick Francis, Agatha Christie and Elizabeth Peters. They’ve read Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Divergent, and they’re currently in the middle of Robin Hobb. I’d listen or read my own book or write or draw or do something with a sibling. Depending on the trip and my age and other random factors like the position of the sun and the length of the day and the proximity to West Texas (which lasts approximately forever when you’re driving through it in a car with all your family). When it’s just me and Mom or me and Dad, we talk. Or sometimes I read to them, although Dad thinks I read too fast and not clear enough. But I’m never the driver, so if we listen to music, it’s not mine. I’m much more likely to read or do a crossword puzzle or something on a road trip. |
| War Chest Wednesday! From the vault... Is there a form or genre in writing you're afraid to try? What about it scares you or causes apprehension? Okay, this question is more complicated than it looks, because depending on who you are talking to, genre can have different definitions. As an MFA student, my first instinct is to go with the definitions we go with in academia—where there are four genres: fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction. Each one has different categories within it—novels, short stories, free verse, formal verse, comedy, tragedy, personal essay, travel writing . . . the subgenres go on because there are so many different things to write. I personally have written or tried to write all four major genres. I write fiction, mainly short stories, all kinds of poetry, creative nonfiction (mostly personal essays, but I’ve written things that don’t have me in them and called them CNF), and a few short drama piece—skits really (generally comic). The only one that felt difficult enough I might hesitate to write another are the dramas. I don’t think in terms of plays and actors. I’m not afraid of it, it’s just that I’m not familiar enough to be comfortable writing it. As a reader, I also have to look at genre in terms of types of popular fiction. These are categories created for convenience of readers which tell them what kind of story they are buying (or checking out of the library): romance, fantasy, science fiction, western, mystery, horror. Within those broad genres there are subgenres like erotica, steampunk, high fantasy, space opera, detective, murder mystery . . . again, the subgenres can go on and on because there are so many different things to write. Young adult fiction is treated as a separate genre, although within it you can find elements of any of the genres of adult fiction. Children’s fiction is categorized more by age group than by genre. I’m not afraid to try any of those genres. I would hesitate to write western or mystery, not because I’m scared but because I’m unfamiliar with the genre. I have read some, but it’s not my favorite so I don’t have the background to know where my voice would be an addition to the genre. I tend to write the kinds of things I read. Last, there's the WDC genres. I'm willing to write something that would fit any of them. If I'm so inspired. |
| Talk Tuesday! Why does blogging appeal to you? Once upon a time, I had a journal. I wrote in it every day for eighteen months, except for the one day, maybe the second day in, which I skipped because I was at hospital until about one in the morning without it, and figured it was better to write that story the next day. Then, I came home again, and I realized that most of my life was too dull to actually write about. I read, I write, I knit, I eat, I cook—and I do those things in some sequence every day. I know there is value in journals which contain a specific account of the eating habits of individuals in a specific area and era for a historic record. However, I would be bored stiff writing something like that. I eschew boredom with a passion. But blogging isn’t about a daily habit of journal writing. It’s sharing thoughts. And I enjoy doing that. I enjoy sharing the contents of my memories and getting an opportunity to spend ten minutes or so (usually longer, but today I am reduced to about five because I need to leave in about a minute) each day, thinking across the page with my fingers, and then sharing it. And that’s why it appeals to me. |
| Motivational Monday! Actor/Comedian Martin Short , born on this day in 1950, once said "I think loss can fuel how you lead your whole life." Is this true? In what way or ways has loss affected your writing? Absolutely I think it’s true. Our first instinctive responses that we had as babies, crying at the chill of the air and the pain of birth are also about the loss of the womb and the comfort of being surrounded by mother. One of the first things we teach to babies is the concept of peek-a-boo—I know, it’s a game, but still, it’s an important concept: just because you can’t see me right now doesn’t mean I’m gone forever. That is a concept that is connected to loss—something that babies instinctively fear. We rock babies to sleep at night, and when we do, we’re making them a promise. You can fall to sleep. I will protect you. I will keep watch. You don’t have to watch to make sure you don’t lose during the night. Of course, that’s taking loss to be something very big—any time something changes, there is an element of loss. Probably gain as well, but we tend to focus on the loss. I have lived all over the United States over the course of my life. Every time I moved, I lost my old environment and gained a new one. I lost old friends and acquaintances (some of whom I’ve never found again—we moved when I was six months old, when I was three, when I was five, when I was eight, thirteen, fourteen, eighteen, twenty-two, thirty-two, and that doesn’t count student housing and the various flats when I was in England for eighteen months—it’s easier to keep friendships when you’re old enough to remember a friend’s last name). I’ve always cared more about the loss of the people than the loss of the place. No place really has a root inside me. I’ve lost health. I’ve lost people to death—grandparents. A nephew. Friends. One of my parents’ best friends died of cancer. I lost a high school history teacher when I was a freshman in college. A friend lost a son to a freak accident when a rowing machine fell on him in the basement. He was seven years old. He was one of my youngest sister’s best friends. We never told her because we’d moved about six months before. I’ve lost little things. The name of a book that I liked. The smell of my first grade classroom. The face of my best friend in kindergarten whose name was Tara and who didn’t go into first grade with me. In preschool, I remember disliking the apples because they were washed and the place where the core was filled with water and the water tasted funny, but I don’t remember the taste or why it was funny. Part of living is letting memories wash out so that new ones can enter. I am my dead. I am the sum of my memories, however subtracted and divided they are. And so, of course it affects my writing. I have a difficult time with setting because place is an alien concept to me. This means I’ve worked on making it more real in my stories. I write blood and death into my writing. I write dead children and pain. I write random losses and great losses and random gains and greater gains because I try to write life. And life is a complicated series of losses. That we (all people, not just the storytellers) turn into pattern and tell as story. |
| The Sunday News! What's your take on the #MarchForOurLives events that have been happening all over the US today? First off, I’m grateful that this particular protest is occurring on the weekend. With so many school age children participating in it, it would be irresponsible to hold the march on a weekday. It was bad enough when kids walked out of school (and as a side note, part of peaceful resistance is accepting the consequences of protest. People like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks were jailed for participating in sit ins and walk outs. Well, if students want to participate in this walk out, they should accept the punishment that the school requires without arguing about it violating their right to protest.). I’m not sure what these marches are going to do to change the underlying situation. When I googled “march for our lives” the first thing that came up was marchforourlives.com which troubles me, not that they shouldn’t have a website, but the fact that it’s a commercial website (.com instead of .org) means that part of the process is to make money. And that frustrates me. Funds are an important part of political change, but as a potential donor, I want assurances that the money I donate will be used responsibly. I have no guarantees based on the information they are giving out. Underscoring that fact is the first tab on that webpage: Media, which leads to a dropdown menu with items: Merch, Press, Don’t put a price on our lives, and Amplify. The “Merch” selection leads to a store with t-shirts and bandanas designed for the march with proceeds going to “march for our lives.” The problem I see with that is that with the march over, there’s no saying where further proceeds will go. There is a still active link to at the right hand side of the home page. On the other hand, it took some wandering before I was able to find the manifesto for the march—the list of demands that they were taking to congress to do something about. This implies to me that the people who designed this webpage were more interested in making money and a splash than real, honest change. Now, that’s nothing against the movement itself. The people who are committed to change and the students who are its voice are well intentioned for the most part, but this webpage tells me that they’re riding momentum and may not have the foundation necessary to support a long lasting group for change. It could be that they are building those foundations now, or it could be that they’re trying to move too quickly without the support (I don’t mean people who believe, I mean a solid, ideologically sound structure to support change) and that the movement itself will falter and die as quickly as it rose. So, what does that mean? I don’t know. It could be that this march is going to spark change. There are some good points that the protesters have made. But in terms of practical, real world, effective solutions to the problem of school violence? I don’t know that it’s going to happen as a result of this. |
| Creation Saturday!! Your blog is being turned into a book! But part of your publishing contract states that this image must be its cover. Tell us why this particular photo suits the content of your blog...convince us why this was your idea from the start; use excerpts from previous entries or comments on them if you think it'll help.  For some reason, this image makes me think of invisible or disappearance, probably because the person or people who were sitting on the bench have obviously just vanished in a puff of smoke. It’s left behind a tree with a shadow that reflects down onto the grass as though it were a lake, with twisting branches and a trunk that looks like it has baggage. Obviously, this picture was meant to depict my life. After all, sanity has disappeared and confusion reigns like a puff of smoke or the twist of branches. I am standing there, in the shade of that tree, looking down at my life reflected in words, the shadow place in the background where everything is strange and the foreground where there’s a sharp contrast between the sunlight and the shadow. I live in both places—a world of strange connections. If I turn my head a slightly different way, I can see the harmonica that makes up the bench. So, music is an important part of this picture. And the tree has some obvious roots that were clearly meant to be me, because I’m able to live in such fluctuation because I have roots that hold me steady like my family and the church. In fact, the more I think about it (and write about it) the more I know (without quoting myself, which I hesitate to do because I’m writing this between the time my sister left with her kids (and rodent) to go back home and going on our own errands) that this picture was meant to be part of my blog. I think I’ll rename my blog in its honor: or at least I would if I could figure out a new title, which I hate to do because I’m really tired at the moment. |
| Fun Fact Friday! On this day in 1972, daredevil Evel Knievel broke 93 bones after successfully jumping 35 cars . What would you say has been your biggest success that also came with a great personal cost? I don’t know. I have spent most of the past fifteen years of my life and all my time and money in getting my MFA. It took two programs/schools because I got sick in the middle. I made it. I graduated last August. And I’ve gained a lot along the way. I have a book of short stories that I am proud of, some pieces of creative nonfiction, and many poems. So, while it took a long time and all my resources, including the use of various aspects of my life inside the creative work, I think it was successful and worth it. I learned from all my professors, peers, and students. I learned about what I want to do with my life. I learned how to turn heart sick agony into poetry and I’m approaching being able to turn it into short story. So, that has to be the answer. I think. Maybe. But I’m tired and sore and my teeth ache, so I’m not going to be able to think of any other answer. Today involved a nearly forgotten dentist appointment, a trip to the zoo with my sister and her four kids (ages 11, 8, 5, and 2) and making dinner for all of the same, which involved peeling potatoes. I still have to do the dishes and possibly save the five year old from killing himself. That’s something we have to do periodically. He’s a little escape artist. But it’s all worth it when my sister tells me that little Eddie wants to come to Aunt Rhyssa’s house, and is so excited about it that he asks when they’re going for two days running. So, maybe that’s a success. And the cost—this family should have another little boy, who would have been six next month if he hadn’t died at five days old. I love being an aunt. Love can’t count costs. |
| Prompt: Who/what is the best cereal mascot, and why are they better than the runner-up? I don’t eat cereal. It’s not worth the insulin, especially in the morning when waking up produces strange blood glucose readings in the first place. If I’m ever tempted into cereal, it’s usually cereal without a mascot, like granola or cinnamon toast crunch (which we keep in the house because other people besides me potentially eat it). I don’t watch TV much, so I can’t tell you if there are mascots that are especially good from the memories of their commercials. It always struck me that those commercials were remarkably silly with strange messages. Think Fruity Pebbles (Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone)—the underlying message being: This cereal leads to obsession and your children will become criminals if you buy it. Or Coco Puffs (that weird bird?): If you eat this cereal, you will become certifiably insane. I always felt sorry for the Trix bunny, and wanted to tell him that they weren’t as good as they looked, the leprechaun from Lucky Charms felt kind of whiny, and Tony the Tiger frustrated me with his insistence that a sugar cereal was good for you. Ummm, but I’m trying to come up with a best. As a child, I remember liking Count Chocolula, probably because we never convinced the parents that we needed it, so I just remember the picture on the box, not the taste. He can be the runner up. And I kind of thought Snap, Crackle, and Pop were cute, so they get top billing. I don’t eat Rice Krispies, though (they get soggy too quickly and the taste isn’t worth the insulin). Except in marshmallow treats. Now, that may be worth the insulin. |
| War Chest Wednesday! From the vault... Would you allow your government the opportunity to give you anything and everything you want in life in exchange for allowing them to perform experiments on you randomly? The simple answer is no. I would not give blanket permission for any study that the government wanted to run. I would need to consider each study on a case by case basis and have the right of refusal. Given the reward, I doubt that in this scenario, that is the case. I am not confident in the government’s power to come up with reasonable studies or their ability to control my personal and private information afterward. I’m also not confident of their ability to give me anything and everything I want in life. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t participate in studies. Right now, my family is involved in a study (not allowed to say what they’re researching) that we get paid for periodically and which doesn’t require a behavioral change. It isn’t sponsored by the government. If we took the government out of it, and considered studies and rewards on a case by case basis, I’d probably go for most. |
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