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 |  My American Notebooks |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** When Nathaniel Hawthorne was writing, he kept a series of journals, The American Notebooks. They were part daily journal, part diary, but mostly a place for him to jot down and try out bits of writing he hadn't a full venue for yet. He kept character sketches, odd bits of conversation, and observances he wanted to remember for future writings in his notebooks. This, then, is my place for odd bits I want to remember. When you read this, keep in mind, you are rummaging through my mental storehouse. Check out:
And don't forget to vote for your favorite blogger each month. 
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I've realized how many days have passed since I've really taken a stab at serious writing and I'm shocked  and appalled at how long it has been!I've been seeing Nano adverts for June and I realize I missed the boat, but I could have a Nano for myself for July if I wanted. The summer is a better time for writing for me. November is too crazy to contemplate. LOL I've been looking at it and I've decided that if I begin the groundwork now, a Nano for July is actually VERY doable. I have a novel/novelette I've had on my back burner for too long. Now is the time to pull it to the front and start it to really cooking. If I start laying the bones: outline, characters names and short sketches, etc., brief setting sketches, so on and so forth, lay out a daily word plan for July for the actual writing...see, it's totally doable! Anyone want to join me and sign a pact in indelible ink over it?  |
I got up REALLY early today. Not something I EVER do. Mostly I couldn't sleep. I did some light yoga.  I'm feeling a little better. Still creaky, but well enough to do old lady yoga.  Then I made myself some coffee and thought I'd enjoy it out on my patio with the morning birds, et al. So off I go...I swear it began to feel like one of Nada's trips to the store or one of Lauren's remodel jobs!  First, make the coffee, I grind my own. Then clean the glass on the patio table...it's always filthy every time I want to use it. Then fill the darn birdfeeder. (I swear I JUST filled it yesterday!!) Anyway, I'm finally ready to drink my by now lukewarm coffee when writing inspiration hits me and I scrap the whole excursion. So here I am....My inspiration? Cleaning the table off. You almost had to be there, but it was a very Zen moment. I took a folded paper towel and put some dishsoap on it. I guess I got too much. I ran water on it and out I went to wash the glass. Bubbles, everywhere. No good! So I go back inside for more paper towels and just wet them this time. Still bubbles, only they are just kind of smeared around more this time...sticking to everything. It's funny, you'd think I would be getting frustrated at this point, but this was the Zen moment for me. I went in once more and got two more folded paper towels almost saturated with water and brought them out to have another go at it. Most of the bubbles were gone. And I realized at that point, when you use too much soap at the beginning, water only gets you so far. Some times you just have to dry it off and let the bubbles just be. The Zen of it? It's just like raising children. Love (water) alone can't clean them when they get themselves dirty (in trouble). Sometimes you must use discipline (soap). Using too much soap will get you in trouble. A little goes a long way. Soon you can get so much soap there's just NOT enough water to wash all of the soap off. The soap just clings and smears, sometimes it makes the child slips right out of your hands. When that happens, only the drying power of time can help that child. And occasionally adding love again just makes them slippery once more. There is the opposite reaction of just continuting to add more and more water until the child feels he is literally drowning in it, but that's not really a good answer either. Moral of the story? Know from the outset how much soap you need to bring to the bath. And how much love you'll need to wash it off. If you don't, you'll ruin a perfectly good child. One who doesn't need to drown, or get slippery through your mistakes. |
I jumped off the dock and entered Nada  and zwisis's blogging contest. "Invalid Item"  My entry "Invalid Item" was the first thing I've added to my portfolio in a while.  I'm thankful to Nada and Forever for having the contest, because it nudged me off the sidelines by giving me a topic I'm too passionate about to pass up. If you haven't entered, I urge you to do so. It may be that, like me, you haven't been pushed out of your comfort zone in a while. It may be that you haven't pushed yourself out. Maybe you don't enter contests here onsite for whatever reason. Fear of losing, fear of rejection, fear of winning, no time, no passion, no topic. They have graciously given us three perfectly good topics. My entry took me less than thirty minutes to write, about the same time it takes me to blog each day. (Certainly less time than it takes me to READ the blogs I read each day!) No passion? My God, you are a writer...BUY some if you have to, but get some for SOMETHING! LOL My entry was dashed off, not a Pulitzer Prize winning entry by any means. I don't hope to win, I'm just proud I got up the gumption to enter. That was a victory for me!Rejection? I never fear that with this group. I've never met a more open and accepting group of people in my life. So, thanks again, guys for lighting a writer's fire in me. It was an honor to enter. I am among good company.  |
In his entry "Invalid Entry" , PlannerDan  writes about entitlement. Normally I would have responded there, but this is gonna be long and a little more personal.I applaud you Dan, for this entry. It is wonderful. You've said it straight out, but I'll boil it down even further. By God, I work for a living. I bust my ass every day and so does my husband for every blessed thing we own. We have a mortgage and a car loan, but nothing we can't handle. We have student loans, but nothing outrageous. We aren't $10,000 or $25,000 in debt on credit cards while we spend handfuls of money on stuff we can't afford. We live well but simply. We have food on our table and our daughter has nice new clothes. It hasn't always been like that. I had an abusive first husband. Long story short - I left him and had him jailed. When I walked away, I had nothing. Well, I had a 2 year old, a car, some clothes and my books. We lived in my car. There were no homeless shelters. I never considered going on welfare. I just wasn't brought up that way. The only positive thing I had going was I still had a job. I CLUNG to that job. That job kept us from starving. NO one knew we were homeless. He had run off all of my friends, and I was alone in Colorado with family in Texas. My family came for my daughter and kept her for me for 3 weeks until I came up with a place to stay. Because, with income, you don't have to stay homeless. You have options. I got a tiny little house and got her back. And mental health problems aren't an argument for me...I'm bipolar. I still managed to function. Sometimes you just have to grab life by the bootstraps and pull yourself up. The world most certainly didn't owe me a damn thing. So, life has managed to deal you a few tough blows? Suck it up. It's still LIFE. As long as you've got that, you've got options. Use them and pull yourself up and quit expecting me and everyone else to do it. We've got our own problems. Sorry to sound harsh. I just don't like people who feel entitled or think that I or anyone else got here the easy way. Just 'cause we look rosy and cheery now doesn't mean we've always had it rosy and cheery. |
| I usually restrict my news consumption. The world is a volatile and upsetting place and my psyche is fragile. When I get online to come here, I just glimpse the headlines that are flashed at me. I try to never go into the story because that is where all of the upsetting facts are. Today as I was logging on to come in here I saw an article about a passenger on an American Airlines plane who was shot. The small print under the headline informed the entire world that the man was bipolar. The headline and the blurb under made it out like that was the reason the man was shot. Because he was bipolar, he was too dangerous and so he was shot for it. I read the full article and it explained (very carefully) that he was "off his medication" and therefore dangerous. It went on about how clearly the air marshall thought the man was a danger and the authorities felt the marshall had acted properly by shooting him. I have such horrible mixed feelings, I can't even describe them. Yes, I understand it is the air marshall's job to assess danger and respond accordingly. Yes, I understand that post 9/11 you can't run around an airplane or airport shouting about bombs. But, was there no way to assess that he was just nuts? Was there no other way to stop him or ask his wife who was accompaning him what was going on? Have we really degenerated to a shoot first, ask questions later society? Plus, what does this article and all the articles and news stories that will come tell the world? Bipolars are dangerous people that need to be shot when they go off their meds? When someone who knows nothing else about bipolars learns of this, this becomes their baseline of knowledge. How much misinformation will come out of this? How many hard feelings and strange looks will come from people who know I'm (or you) are bipolar or have another mental illness or disorder? It is a giant setback any way you look at it in relations between "normal" people and those of us who are a little challenged. |
| What is the new fascination with bidets? My husband is in construction and all of the new houses going in lately want bidets. What really is the point? At the end of it, all you have is a wet ass. And then you are back to your original problem. Why not save yourself a step and the extra room and plumbing? |
| Today I saw the ultimate redneck. This guy is the one all the comedians are out there making fun of. He was white, late twenties or early thirties. He was a little over six feet tall and built solid. Wide shoulders, thick neck, HUGE beer belly, and big meaty arms. He was wearing the ultimate redneck outfit, too–cutoff blue jeans, all raggedy at the bottom; bright orange thong sandals; a camouflage trucker hat; and the dirtiest wife-beater muscle shirt I’ve ever seen. But, that alone didn’t raise him to ultimate status. When he set his case of beer on the counter, I saw the first one. On his left shoulder, he had an amateur tattoo of a logo of a leading snuff manufacturer. While I was staring, stunned, at it, he smiled at me and turned to display his right arm. On it, he had the logo of a leading truck manufacturer. I ask you, who tattoos company logos on their bodies and then proudly displays them to total strangers? The ultimate redneck, that’s who. |
| I saw a funny T-shirt today. It said: THE VOICES IN MY HEAD AREN’T REAL (but they have some good ideas). I liked that. To me it said, “I may be crazy, but I’m optimistic about it.” Sometimes it’s good to laugh at a potentially bad situation. I was having a really bad day at work when I saw the shirt. It reminded me to smile. Very few situations are so bad that a smile can’t help them. |
| Today I had a total stranger shout obscenities at me. It happens to me almost every day. It’s part of my job to just listen politely and take it. I work customer service at a big box store and we didn’t have enough cashiers available to provide adequate coverage. A little blue haired granny who was seventy-five if she was a day came over to the desk and cussed me out royally-using actual four-letter cuss words-about the situation. I smiled and apologized for her inconvenience. It amazes me what people will say to another member of the human race over something so insignificant. I mean honestly, we weren’t performing her open heart surgery too slowly, she just had to wait in line for five minutes. In the thirties people would wait for hours for the chance of bread in the depression bread lines. Nowadays people will wait days in advance for a chance to see some big pop star or rock band perform. But ask them to wait calmly for five minutes to have their $200 worth of groceries rung up and they act like hyenas. If you really want to see their dark side, tell them they can’t return an item without the receipt. Oh, Lord. It hits the fan then. They get more excuses than I have dustbunnies. And reasons why THEY should be the one and only exception to the rule. It’s funny, too. The calmer and more collected you stay, the more frustrated, louder and more obnoxious they become. I’ve had housewives who are probably churchgoing, law-abiding sweethearts call me some nasty unprintable names over it. They act like I’m persecuting them personally. One day, I swear I’m not going to smile and apologize for the inconvenience. One day, I’m going to look the little blue haired granny in the eye and say, “Have you lost all sense of decorum? Is this how your mother taught you to treat other people? Is this how you would want people to treat your daughter? You should be ashamed of yourself for your behavior. Drag the tatters of your dignity together and go wait in line like a polite well adjusted member of society and remember that regardless of what television may tell you, we are NOT an on demand society. We are a just a collection of overworked, underpaid, underappreciated folks trying to do our jobs under very trying circumstances and you are not helping. Try to remember that 'please' and 'thank you' still open doors, shouting obscenities never will.” |
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