Near the road's end

That glorious sound that has been missing for so long is back, the sound of thunder. Lightning snakes through the clouds and brightens the overcast sky in a searing flash. Cars swish by through the rain and torrents flood the sky and my ears. I've missed the rain and the sound of thunder. The blossoms on the tree next door are deep pink and stand out as though freshly painted, the backdrop of pale yellow-green leaves brighter and more real now that it's raining. Everything is darker, brighter, clearer with the rain and the air smells like spring. The sun gilded everything moments before but the massed clouds hold the world in a twilight grip, the day hanging between dawn and dusk like the world is holding its breath, eyes half closed, still, but not silent.

This explains my recent lethargy and heaviness, the sense of some impending something suddenly released like elastic pulled to its limits and let go. I feel energized as I always am during a storm with so much electricity and energy in the pounding rain that needles my flesh. I've missed this. I need this. And to think so many people fear this. I cannot imagine why, but probably can't imagine why someone would feel as if the bottom dropped out of the world when looking down from a height the way I do. Then again, they probably haven't fallen thirteen feet from the slender grasp of a rope swing in a tree to a debris-littered jungle floor with only an arm ripped open and a hairline fractured humerus and got up and walked away. I can.

I don't know if everything has its opposite or that there are subtler shadings to the universe where all possible choices and situations and states exist at the same time mirrored in the myriad differences of every person on this planet and every parallel world that moves in all directions from this point. There are degrees of fear and elation, degrees of everything, but we seldom see the pastel and nearly black and white shades because the vibrant primary colors, the brightest white and the deepest black command the attention.

I wished for this rain last night, seeing it in my mind, hearing it with my heart, feeling it with my soul and knowing it would come today and wash the world and wash away the heaviness in me as I tossed and turned in the suffocating warmth of my bed last night. I am separating from this home where I have found solace and imprisonment, happiness and discontent. I know it is time to move on. I have lived here longer than I've lived anywhere since I left home thirty-five years ago and I know my next home, a simple cottage at the edge of the alley, is temporary, too. There is another home waiting for me, a home where I can finally put down roots and let them thrust down into the hard packed skin of earth and drive through the soil like a Methuselah tree instead of the shallow-rooted pines so easily blown down in a violent, ripping wind. I have been transplanted too many times to count since I was born and have finally reached my natural home. There will be one other home, a quiet aerie higher in the mountains, a retreat, a place to re-energize my soul and my heart, to cleanse my mind of the sounds and lives that sometimes intrude and hem me in. At last, I am where I belong and I've had lots of experience letting go and moving on, being pushed or running from one temporary haven to another, but not for much longer. My road is narrowing and coming to an end, not a final end, merely a permanent home from where I can welcome travelers and direct them onward. My mother will be so proud. I'm almost an adult.

Like a long soaking rain, instead of the wind harried storm that blows in and moves on, my life has changed. I have changed. Both are needful and both welcome, but the change is as welcome as it is inevitable.

Thank you, technology

Despite some of the drawbacks of communicating on the Internet and in emails, I am so grateful for them both. You don't really understand what kind of paperwork is involved in moving until you consider all the magazines, books and publishing checks that could be rerouted and maybe not arrive at all. It used to be such a chore, and filling out the form from the post office helped a little, but it doesn't help with changing information on subscriptions, or what to do with all the labels stored up for future use from charitable organizations wanting money. I have a drawer full, a big drawer full. But the post office now exacts a charge, although it is only one dollar, to change the address on line.

That's a lot of money when you figure in how many people move on a daily basis nationwide who have computers and want to simplify things by making changes online -- and yet they are raising the price of stamps again, as if the two cents last year wasn't enough, now they want another penny. This is getting ridiculous. They should learn to spend less money and save more instead of dinging the consumer again and again and again. No wonder more people use email than snail mail. If Scotty could beam my online purchases directly to me and save having to deal with delivery companies and the post office. Talk about reducing the carbon footprint, although I'm sure someone will figure out how that is depleting the ozone or adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere so Al Gore can pick up another Nobel prize for wagging the dog. I digress.

People are talking about minimizing the individual carbon footprint and I do my part. I get most of my bills by email and pay online so there is no paperwork, and yet the phone and utility company continue to send me notices by mail. At least I could change my address by phone or online with both of those. I did my share. Of course they will send me a confirmation by snail mail even though they also sent one by email. Government mentality.

I also changed all of my subscriptions, at least the ones I could remember, online and that saved a lot of time and effort. I'm good to go and go I shall very soon now. The only paperwork I expect from those changes are the magazines going to the new address without being routed through the post office to be forwarded and risk ending up in a plastic bag with an "I'm sorry we ruined destroyed damaged your [fill in the blank]" message printed right on the bag.

Not to fret too much. There was good news last night, and again this morning, but it was followed, as always, by bad news. The picture I sent the magazine to go along with the detailed and very personal questionnaire I filled out is insufficient for publication. It's not 300 dpi (dots per inch) and it's too small and resizing it is not possible. I can size it down but not make it bigger without losing even more resolution. There are two options left for me now. I can either find someone to take a picture of me with my digital camera and end up as I usually do looking more hideous than I truly am or I can spring for a professional digital photo that I can send out whenever another picture is needed, and I've been asked several times today for pictures to go with upcoming books. What happened to the words being sufficient?

I called around and found several local photographers who will do the job but not for less than $250 if I want to have the pictures on a CD or by email. I don't understand why it costs so much. There's a little touching up to do, but that is a minimal charge of $9-17.50, depending on which photographer I choose, but why does photograph that exists in binary code and can be saved to a CD that costs less than a dollar cost more than a package of photos that have been printed and sized and come in different sizes? Technology should reduce the cost not increase it, especially since there is no darkroom time and no chemicals to buy and use and no paper and hardly any time at all to develop the film since it isn't developed. At least I can take it off my taxes as a business expense and this writing business is getting expensive indeed.

I'm not complaining about the writing just the circus maximus that now attends the creation of stories and articles, etc. and the need for the public to see a face with the words. I doubt that Shakespeare or Plato or Aristotle or Guy de Maupassant or even Poe would have lasted in this image crazy time in which we live. On the other hand, Washington Irving would have loved it, especially since he sat for so many portraits, although fewer in his later years.

I told Beanie about my situation and she said, "I know. I don't like having my picture taken either." Beanie is a petite little thing of 43 years who still looks like a 12-year-old boy when her hair is up and she's wearing ball cap. Not everyone, no matter who they are, likes to have their likeness preserved for eternity -- or at least as long as someone remembers how to use the fragile technology we've created. I'd offer to let them use my skull to create a likeness when I'm gone, but the skull will be ash, along with the rest of me, when I depart this particular physical form. Oh, well, I have about a month to save or earn enough money to pay for the digital rendering of my head and shoulders and I hope someone knows how to use Photoshop. If I'm going to pay that much I want my skin tone like blush on a peach, my eyes luminous, my mouth like a ripe plum and my cheekbones sharp enough to cut marble.

That is all. Disperse.

Oh, no, Mr. Bill

I love clothes. I love looking at them and mentally designing different looks. I do not want to be the one who has to go trawling through the mall looking at and buying clothes. I am missing that gene. But I have a dilemma. I am scheduled, so far, for four personal appearances to promote Cup of Comfort for Single Mothers and I don't think I can get away with my old standbys. As someone recently pointed out, when I wore them two years ago they were nearly transparent.

I have had the clothes for more than a decade and they have a few holes that I've patched and they're clean, but they are getting a bit thin and the elastic waistband isn't what it used to be: tight, springy, etc. I have added one or two things over the years, but even they have seen better days (I don't know how those stains got on there, except that they went into the washer without them and came out of the dryer with them -- I blame the fabric softener). I do realize that I should be presentable, but I hate shopping. Why oh why can't someone make shopping easier for shopping gene-free people like me? What I need want is a personal shopper with a keen sense of style that won't make me gag or feel the need to commit murder, an eye for bargains and the ability to stay within a limited budget. Somehow I don't think such a person exists.

Most designers, and I use the term very loosely, design clothes for the hanger. The fact that the hanger has arms, legs and a head does not detract from the fact that it's still a hanger. I understand about designing for a flat two dimensional surface; I have painted portraits and people before and I was pretty good at it, but most people are not made that way, just a small segment of the population that are obviously the offspring of a wire hanger and a skeleton. What I don't understand, is if designers are such geniuses why they cannot design clothes for a three dimensional person with curves and bulges and not make them look like clowns or dressed in cast off circus tents caught in a tie-dye massacre. A true couture genius should be able to design clothes to make every body look good. That would be something to see and something I would be willing to use my hard-earned book money to buy.

No amount of artful accessorizing or draped shawls, tabards and dust jackets is going to change the fact that the clothes are awful, the patterns hideous and the selection more limited than Paris Hilton's common sense. Making a pattern bigger and painting it in neon-bright colors that come with a small generator does not make the clothing look any better. Rather, it calls attention to an otherwise gaudy and distasteful incident that causes traffic accidents and clock stoppage. It definitely won't work for me. Good thing I have a whole day to go shopping after the move so I can find something to wear to the book signing on Saturday. Or maybe I'll remind my co-authors that I am moving this week and need the weekend to pull everything together so I can go back to work on time on Monday. It's only one signing. The next appearance is in June and that will give me enough time to force myself to go to the mall if I can't find something suitable online that will arrive before the book signing. There has to be an easier way to do this, but I'm afraid I'll have to rely on the one person who has seen me through every other difficult and potentially dangerous situation -- me.

That is all. Disperse.

Harmony and memory

It's a bright morning, a little too bright after a late night, or rather an early night that turned into a late night when I suddenly woke up at 1:25 a.m. I want to finish the current book so I can write my review and focus on stem cell research (another book to review) and moving some more things today. The apartment is beginning to look a little bare without all the books. I've decided to tear down the computer and move it over to the cottage and set it up since I'm on vacation this week. It will make things a lot easier when it comes to getting close to the windows to clean them and then I can get at that section of the sun room that hasn't been dusted or vacuumed in the three years since I put the desk there. It's not practical to tear apart the computer and move the desk just to dust and vacuum once a week. It's like not moving the stove or refrigerator once a week to clean the kitchen. What I find back there should be interesting.

One thing about moving this way is that it will mean I won't have so many boxes to unpack and it won't take so long to get settled. That's one part of moving I dislike. I like the moving part and the settled part, but since I'm not Jeannie or Samantha I can't just blink or do a little magic to transport everything intact. Either would come in handy when it comes time to clean, too.

I had a short conversation this morning with an old boyfriend back in Ohio. He and I have stayed friends all these years and he keeps asking when I'll come back to Ohio, or he did until he got hooked up with some African women who trawl the International Internet waters looking for suckers willing to part with their money. He likes to play with them without giving up the cash. I guess he's become a miser in his old age.

He retired about five years ago at the ripe old age of 51. He worked for the Columbus Fire Department as an EMT and lead on the bomb squad. When we dated, we spent his days off together (he worked 24 on and 48 off) and I switched my schedule around so we would have the same three days off together. We had a lot of fun together working on and flying his planes, walking his five dogs (something I did for him when he went on vacation or was at the station), working in my yard trimming bushes and mowing the lawn and planting bushes and flowers, etc. We went to movies and dinner and had sleep overs, but mostly at his house since he couldn't leave the kids very long or they'd have the place torn down, not that you could actually tell they hadn't when you walked into the house. We also cooked together. His specialty was green bean casserole. My specialty was everything else, although he did grill meat very well.

This morning he told me one of his dogs, Major, was on a 40-foot leash and he heard this ruckus outside so he rushed outside in his boxer shorts. Major had jumped the fence and was hanging by his left hind foot. He couldn't free Major's leg so he ran back into the house, got the pliers and cut Major free only to find out that Major's right ear was shredded and bleeding like it had been chewed. It had. Skipper, finding Major in a helpless situation, shredded Major's ear. I guess they haven't figured out which one of them is the alpha dog or else Skipper doesn't like Major being the alpha dog and took advantage of the situation to savage his rival. I haven't met these dogs, but I'd say they are very different from the five Rick had when we dated. I should also mention there are now seven dogs and not five, as well as a couple of cats, at Rick's House o' Dogs. Good thing Rick is an EMT or he'd have to pay extra to get his vet to go in on a Sunday and Rick doesn't like parting with money, although his dogs are the exception to the rule. Major is in one of the many cages in Rick's house and Skipper is on the 40-foot leash outside. Neither of them are happy but they're both quiet, by all reports.

All this makes me a little nostalgic. Rick and I were always chasing after one of his dogs, but there were a lot fewer dog fights. One of his dogs like to hump everything, including a hole in the ground when Kodiak wouldn't stand still long enough, but the dogs didn't fight with each other, just with other neighborhood dogs. We mostly chased after Peanut, the little beagle escape artist who only escaped when there were rabbits or groundhogs or moles nearby, which was most of the time. For a little dog, she was strong and nearly pulled my arm out of the socket a time or two when she scented game. I learned to keep her on a short leash and hold the leashes of the other four dogs in my left hand since they weren't nearly as rambunctious.

I guess it's normal to feel nostalgic about the past even when I know it will never be the same. I know what's back there and I miss some of it, but I'd never leave Colorado for Ohio, not even for a house with a $38/month mortgage. My parents' mortgage on their $12,900 house with a double lot was more than that. I think they paid $142 a month. Don't ask me how I know; I just do. My grandparents had a four-bedroom, two-bath house and they paid $74 a month. That was a lot of money back in the 1970s when minimum wage was $1.65.

It's amazing how much I remember, like making more than minimum wage and buying my mother a pair of half-carat diamond earrings for her birthday with my wealth. Diamonds were cheaper then, too. The car payment on my 1973 Silver Vega Hatchback was $65 a month and the rent on my first apartment was $50 a month. I remember an electric bill that was about $8 for the month and it seemed like a lot, but then I could buy two weeks' worth of groceries for $30 and it didn't take much to fill the gas tank on my car since gas was 30 cents a gallon. It's more than 10x that now.

Everything changes, and not always for the better, but any change sometimes is a good thing since it shakes up the ant farm and keeps us from getting stale and entrenched in those deep ruts we make by following a routine that is only distinguished by the day of the week. For me, it's time to find a new routine and a different rhythm, one that will hopefully bring me back closer to a natural rhythm uncomplicated and unfettered by anyone else's rhythms.

I'm reminded of the sign above the door at Plato's school: music of the spheres. It's all about balance and harmony and it's not just for music. Like the rhythm of unlabored breathing, a pure and uncluttered energy. The harmonies and music of rising and setting sun and its trek across the sky, the rise and fall of light and shadow, heat and cold. The body needs those rhythms to stay in balance so the mind, like the body, can remain in balance and be productive and open to all the possibilities of living. When everything is in harmony the petty daily problems melt into nothing, receding into the background into white noise and dissonance that can be dealt with at leisure when mind and body are armored against their assault. But it's not a battle. Rather, it's a dance, sometimes a passionate tango, sometimes a sedately romantic waltz and sometimes it's a frenetic frug that vents the pent up heat and mental and emotion debris.

Even battles are dances as enemies move close, engage and whirl away to engage again or drop away, lobbing explosive invitations from a distance in time and space until ultimately battlers pair off or dive into a mosh pit of myrmidons to be trampled or emerge victorious. It's all connected, a dissonance like Beethoven's crashing chords giving way to softer lilting passages of peace after the breathless surge of clashing cymbals and throbbing drums that mark the cacophony of battle enjoined.

It's all part of the music of the spheres: asteroids careening drunkenly or deliberately drawn to the magnetic grave of the sun or one of the planets, clasped to a bosom until both are changed. Planets dancing around stars in a Highland or Virginia reel of seemingly complicated steps that are really quite simple. Birth and death and the journey in between where all is an essential part of all at the beginning, middle and always at the end, drawn like moths to a flame. Fireflies dancing on a warm summer night winking in the dusk and lighting the late night darkness until they fade with the morning light, connected by time and experience in an unending spiral dance to be forgotten in the rush of the larger pattern and sneaking out when all is silence and the mind is open to the haunting refrains of the past.

This is mine

In my search for a new place to live I happened across a site that sold the addresses of house in pre-foreclosure. I couldn't afford the $200 fee to get the address and a knowledgeable gentleman with lots of experience in real estate and foreclosures told me it didn't sound kosher to him either. The problem is that I fell in love with pictures of the house and I had two clues: the house was in pre-foreclosure and the street number. I don't know what street it is on but I know it's here in town and the general area. I was resigned to not getting the house, even though it is within my budget. So I kept looking at apartments, and that's when I found the cottage I'm moving into. I'll post pictures later this weekend.

When I talked to one of the landlords, who had just bought a new property in foreclosure, and since I'm a bold and unashamed kind of person, I asked him how one would go about finding a house in pre-foreclosure. He gave me some tips and a web site. Yesterday, while downloading and uploading, I checked some of the other links on the site he gave me and I found a house with the right address. It was close by. My heart raced. My pulse sped up and I could hardly sit still. But I couldn't go look at it until I finished working. I went over there after I finished work, and after cashing the check from Chicken Soup that finally arrived yesterday, although it was dated 04/05/08, and found the house. It wasn't the right one. So I had a steak dinner and came home to watch a little of the third season of X-Files, read a little of the latest review book and went to bed still wearing my jacket because the temperature had plunged from a balmy 57 to brisk 30 even before the sun went down. It's a little frosty this morning, too, but not unbearably so.

I pulled up the pictures I saved of the house and checked the number again. I have a very long list of houses to go through this morning before I get dressed, pack up some things, go to the grocery store, get some gas and begin moving the small things into the cottage this morning. I had the address a little bit wrong, but a little means a lot when you're scrolling through thousands of houses in pre- and foreclosure. I've fallen in love with the house and I am determined to find it and buy it before it can come onto the market. The landlord who's apartment I didn't choose said he would be glad to help me get the house and that they do it all the time. I'm going to save money with the move and all of that, after I pay off my remaining debts, is going into the bank to save for this house, and I will have it. Are you curious yet?

This doesn't mean I'm going to give up the dream of a secluded cabin higher up in the mountains, but there's no law that says I cannot have both places, a cabin in the mountains for summer and weekends in the spring, autumn and winter and a house in the city. I do need both.

The house of my dreams










Now can you see why? I know a lot about that house. It has a two-car garage, three bedrooms and two baths, a Jacuzzi garden tub and glass block stand alone shower, brushed metal zero-degree refrigerator, kitchen island, brand new brushed metal appliances, utility room with washer and dryer, walk in pantry with floor-to-ceiling shelves, atrium, private tiled patio and a fireplace, among other things. The moment I saw the house I knew it was where I would live. Some things you just know. And I'll find it.

That is all. Disperse.

Trade-offs

There are lilac bushes next to the new house and a planter at the front of the house and along the side from the deck to the back of the house. The side planter is full of low growing evergreens and there's some kind of climbing plant in the front planter. I can't tell what it is because there are just bare branches now.

I went over to the house and unlocked the door with my keys after I picked them up. The place is mine now. I walked through it, checked all the doors and cabinets and it's bigger and smaller than I thought. The bedroom that will be my office has a big closet with a shelf for files and books and there's a built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcase just inside the door. The utility closet is big enough for the washer and dryer and there are hookups. The bathroom is bigger, too, and I have decided to get a hemp shower curtain. I have to measure my bed to see which way it will fit in the master bedroom. It's small, really small, but I'll work it out even if I have to sell my bed and get something smaller. I'll work it out. The refrigerator is smaller than here but it's perfect for the house and fits in with everything else and I can't wait to start using the gas stove and the dishwasher. I want to find out how I can work in some other means of electricity and heat with something like passive solar to cut down on costs, but that will come later. I also want to find a screen for the entry (what people call a mud room nowadays) to camouflage the open closet area. And I think I'm going to buy a grill for the deck so I can BBQ outside once in a while. I can also grill vegetables and smoke meat and vegetables for freezing and canning and meals.

After my quick and idyllic trek to the new place to mark my territory, I came back here and the landlady accosted me in the hall. It has become a habit with her that she rushes out of her apartment to catch me in the hall either coming or going and one of the reasons why I feel like a prisoner here sometimes. It wasn't always this way and my manner of handling it has been to run errands at odd hours or when she's gone. She said she didn't want to leave things as they were (that's obvious) and that she wanted to part on good terms, and I don't have a problem with that, but she wanted all the details of where I'm moving and how much I'm paying and why no one called her for a reference. I told her it was less than what I pay here and it's a house. Since the deal is signed and I have the keys, and the money has been paid, I felt it was time to tell her where I'm moving. We had a short discussion and rehashed the same disagreement and I said thank you and goodbye and came upstairs.

While I checked my email I heard her car start and saw her drive down the street. She turned onto Pikes Peak, the street I'll be living on as of next week, and went east towards the house. I have a feeling she went to check out the house. She either didn't believe me or she's just being nosy, probably the latter.

As I sat in my office and watched the afternoon brighten and clear and the snow clouds break up, I looked around at the mountains, the tree next door filling with dark pink blossoms and a baby squirrel in the squirrel porn tree snacking on buds and new pale yellow-green leaves. The sun room with its wealth of light and warmth and the views of the mountains and the neighborhood is why I've stayed so long. I put up with Nel's moods and noise and the landlady's prying and questions because of that view. I'm reluctant to leave it. Even now, as I sit here writing with the sun glinting off the windows, I feel a little sad and then I see the laundry piled in the corner because I can't use the washer and dryer when I need them, or when it's convenient for me, and the cool dim living room where I can't open the windows at night to breathe the cold fresh air because the landlady sees and calls up to tell me to shut them, and the bathroom that should be filled with light and fresh air but the landlady has warned me about leaving the windows open and listens to me on the phone or climbs up the ladder to "check the gutters" when the blinds are open to listen in and see what she can see and I realize what I love most about this place, this haven, is not worth the hassles.

The landlady is a good-hearted person and she's generous and shares food when she makes five-quart pots of soup or a big fruit cobbler, but more and more it seems a cover, a trade-off. It is beginning to seem like she is nice so she can pry into my life and what's going on in my home. I have seen her go into Nel's apartment and close the windows when Nel's at work because she didn't like having them open when she has the furnace on, and I understand the need to save on heating bills, except there is no working thermostat up here in my apartment or Nel's and she controls the heat; it's all determined by her thermostat. Nel and I have space heaters to compensate for the lack of heat control. The landlady goes into Nel's apartment at other times when she isn't home to check because she hears a sound. She's done it here, too, and I was home when she walked in the door and looked around. I guess she thought I was gone, but her excuse is that she heard something fall. I locked the doors after that and changed the locks when that didn't stop her. She demanded a key, which I had to give her. I can tell when someone has been in my apartment when I've been gone and it's one of the reasons I don't leave here very often, unless she is out, because I don't like having someone go through my things. And yet she's a nice person and I do like her. It's like any relationship, you learn to live with each other's quirks and idiosyncrasies.

I'm sure she isn't comfortable with me either. I keep to myself and I don't like to sit and drink a bottle or two of wine every night. I'm quiet and a bit of a hermit sometimes and I work at odd hours, compared to her and Nel. I don't play the television or radio loudly and I keep to myself most of the time because I'm usually working or writing or researching. I'm not a social butterfly, although I can be, but I have to make a living and further my writing career.

As much as I'm going to miss the light and the mountains and the neighborhood outside the sun room windows, I'm going to enjoy the privacy and not having someone prying into my life and walking into my home whenever they feel the need. The landlady and I can be friends from a distance. It might even improve our relationship. I don't know if she was always this way or became this way after Marius moved in and changed the energy around here, but I know the place feels different. Even my ghost, George, has been quiet lately. I feel his presence less and less as though he's retreating into some forgotten corner. I don't know if it's because of my silence or because he's not happy with me leaving. He's close by and I feel him like a protective warmth, wrapping me in the scent of rain-washed pine, when the landlady is lurking outside the door or outside under my windows when I'm talking on the phone with the windows open, warning me to be careful. It's a little disconcerting sometimes. I didn't know ghosts could be so moody and watchful, but I guess they would be since they have nothing in their own existence to engage their interest.

This place was obviously temporary and that's all right. I'm used to temporary. I know the house is temporary because my house is still waiting for me. If my mother has anything to say about it, my house will be back in Ohio. She read me the list of houses for sale in the neighborhood where I lived as a teenager. Beautiful old Victorian and Craftsman homes listed for under $20,000 with payments below $100. I recognize some of the houses she mentioned and I couldn't believe what she told me. Now is the time to buy real estate. At those rates, I could buy five houses and still pay less than I pay for rent right now, maybe even ten houses. She would like me to come back and live there, especially now since her remaining kidney is failing and she has decided to refuse dialysis and a transplant. I told her since she was so ready to die, this was a good time to do it. Her insurance, even split four ways, will be more than enough to set my siblings and I up for life as real estate moguls. She laughed. Carol wouldn't laugh though if she heard us; she takes a very dim view of joking about death and dying. Mom has her faults but she at least has a sense of humor about mortality. It's another dysfunctional relationship where I've learned to work around the difficulties and find a common ground.

I'm sure I'll have to find some common ground even with the new landlord who told me yesterday he drives by the house every day on his way to and from work. He lives on the west side, too, and has for thirty years. Somehow, driving by the house isn't quite the same as living in the same house and I doubt he'll walk in and go through my things when I'm not home or tell me to close the windows or listen to my conversations when the windows are open or freeze me in the winter and roast me the rest of the time because I will control the heat. I know he won't count how many times I flush the toilets or take a shower or run water to wash the dishes either. I won't be able to see the mountains unless I go outside, and there will be no more squirrel porn tree to watch when I should be working and no trees budding with leaves and blossoms. But there will be lilac just outside the door and space for an herb garden in the front planter. There will eventually be a grill of my own to barbecue, smoke and cook meat and vegetables. There will be space for a table and chairs and a breakfast bar with stools next to a gas stove with a real broiler underneath and plenty of windows to open to bring in the fresh air and the scent of plants and flowers. It will be enough for now and I'll have the time to find what I really want, a home of my own in just the right spot with land for kitchen and herb gardens, flowers and trees with plenty of space and wildlife, and no neighbors right next to me without any breathing room. I have time. In the meantime, there's work and writing, peace and privacy, and memories and photos of the view outside the sun room windows. It's trade-off, but isn't that what most of life is about?

That is all. Disperse.

Falling down on the job

I've been up for hours, about two of them (I went to bed late), and I feel productive and energized. I'm not sure why unless it has to do with the week being half over and moving much closer to getting the keys to the house and actually moving. Or it could be that my brain was activated earlier than usual this morning when I had to respond to a query about editing a trilogy and realized I hadn't updated my writing resume in a long time. I'm caught up now but I'm also a little disappointed that I cannot add all the books that are coming out this year. It would definitely add enough lines to create another page. I'm up to five now, and that doesn't even include all the reviews I've written over the past several years (200+), most of which have been written in the past two years. I do, nevertheless, realize I've fallen down on the job a bit, and not just about updating my resume and organizing references from writers with whom I've worked.

It's a bit of a shock to realize that I can't add the articles and editorials I've written for the ham club newsletter over the past three years because no one sees them outside of the world of ham radio, especially in the rather narrow world of ham radio in Colorado Springs, or the pieces I've written for local newsletters and throw-aways, and that I can't include the posts I write nearly every day in my different blogs. There are quite a few. I'm writing a lot but not the kinds of things I can use on my resume, even if you count the articles I write at Helium. I need to change my focus or at least change my writing focus.

Okay, quit the smiling and celebrating. It doesn't mean I'll stop writing here. I need somewhere to gather my thoughts and try out ideas and words where not too many people venture or read. It's like sending my work out to an uncaring public that will, more often than not, glance past my articles and stories and never comment even to those closest to them. I don't write for the comments. They're nice, but they're not my main raison d’être . I write for the one or two people who might gain in some small way by seeing that someone else has been where they're headed or have arrived. It helps to know you're not alone. That's what writing has been for me ever since I stopped worrying about who might be reading my diaries and journals. Aside from fame and fortune (HA!) and the eternal gratitude of the Nobel and Pulitzer prize committee judges, to name a few, I suspect most writers write because it connects them with others and gives them a witness to their lives. Money and prizes are nice, very nice sometimes, and fame is a heady draught that has turned (and inflated) many a head, but when you get down to it, writing is about connections, a cry in the wilderness carried on puckish winds to . . . someone.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean anything with regard to keeping records, and I have fallen down on the job -- at least temporarily. It's not January, but I resolve to get back into the habit of recording sales and publications as soon as they occur. Someone might be looking.

That is all. Disperse.

Quick shot

If you're in the first wave of people with direct deposit looking for your economic stimulus check to be directly deposited, and you read or heard the government was sending them out as of yesterday, don't hold your breath. You won't receive the letter about your money until next week and you probably won't see the deposit in your account until Friday. I know because I've been looking and, after two days of disappointment, I decided to call the IRS directly. The person I spoke with, operator #1903236, was quite polite but also quite stupid. I told her I knew I was in the first wave. I told her I knew the amount I was getting and that it should be deposited on Friday. I also told her that I read about the early deposit of money and if I could expect to see the deposit before Friday. She parroted everything I said without giving me any new information, repeating, "You can expect your direct deposit on Friday."

"Yes, but that's not the question I asked. I asked whether or not my money would be deposited earlier and how they determined who would get the money before Friday since President Bush stated the money was being deposited as of yesterday."

"You can expect your direct deposit on Friday."

"You didn't answer my question."

"You can expect your direct deposit on Friday."

For that, I listened to Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy" for 15 minutes. Resistance is futile and so is talking to a government automaton.

ADDENDUM: In case you missed the fine print, the economic stimulus package has a proviso in the fine print where most high colonics reside. This money is a loan. The government is robbing Peter to pay Paul, but Paul has to pay the government back out of next year's refund. That's it in a nutshell. This money is next year's refund in advance and we get to pay taxes on it, too, unlike a normal refund.

That is all. Disperse.

Weekend follies

I spent the weekend in bed, mostly, and I wasn't alone. The weekend was an orgy of food, men, women, cultural discussions and electronics. There were also games and exchanges of ideas. My guests are still in bed with me now but soon will have to move so I can get up and get moving for another week of work before my vacation next week, which will be another week of work getting ready for the move. Yes, it's almost here. Even with the hot bed of activity here this weekend I managed to get a lot done, like the ham club newsletter.

One brand new ham demanded I send him the edited version of his article, which is something I usually do not do. I edit. I publish. You read. That's the way it works. I thought I'd be nice for a change (it's always good to try something new) and sent him the edited version. He added another paragraph to clarify things, which was more of the same and not very clarifying, and then asked me to change his photograph because he was recovering from the super flu in the previous photo. I didn't see much difference, other than a bigger and more detailed shot of his head. I explained that by the time he sent the photo I had already sent the file to the printer and he'd have to be satisfied with seeing his head shot only on the web PDF version. He didn't respond to that email. I don't expect he will.

One regular columnist sent in his article and said, "Try to get my callsign right this time." I emailed back that I would do my best without telling him that I cut and paste and edit but I don't write the articles and that the error in his callsign happened because he sent it that way. I did resent his tone, but didn't blast him the way I initially intended since I'm not going to have to deal with him or any of the rest of them much longer. I have two issues to go before I step down as editor and they still haven't found someone to take my place, which is a shame since I won't stay until they find one. I know how that game works and I'm not falling for it. This morning, after much deliberation, I sent off the PDF version to be emailed and uploaded to the web site. I'm done, except for picking up the printed copy of the newsletter, printing labels, putting on said labels when newsletter is picked up, attaching mailing disks and stamps and putting the rubber banded issue into the mailbox. At least I'm getting it done two weeks early this month.

You probably wonder how I worked in all those men and women while I futzed with the newsletter. Well, I'll tell you. In between downloading and watching Moonlight, Doctor Who and a few episodes of Firefly, which I adore, I plunged into a house of secrets and lies in Victorian England during the time Scotland Yard and the police were trying to decide whether to use dactylography or anthropometry as the tool of choice in discovering and unmasking recidivists. Well, I had to use the words eventually and this is as good a place as any.

Dactylography is fingerprinting and anthropometry is measuring a person from head to toe because supposedly a person's measurements, including distance of eyes, size of nose and ears, lips, fingers, etc., is unique to each individual. The French police during this time period had a department dedicated to anthropometry and were very successful in detecting career, or repeat, criminals (recidivists). The big argument between using fingerprinting versus body measurements is that it was easier to retrieve the data from measuring and nearly impossible to catalogue and quickly retrieve fingerprints data. I guess they hadn't heard of the computer and visual recognition scanning, but they are both rather backward countries. Anthropometry was the tool of choice in England for eight years before fingerprinting became the detection source in 1901. I was particularly impressed that the author managed to find an even more compelling story to weave in and around this bit of scientific trivia. I'll write and send my review later today and then you can read all about it.

That's one of the best things about reviewing books, being introduced to all sorts of writers and stories that I wouldn't have been drawn to in the first place. It has certainly broadened my horizons, although there are quite a few clinkers out there, and one or two near clinkers, like the book about a fiction class. I'm still not sure how to review that one because it is as much a fiction class as it is a story and I'm not sure I'd have paid cold hard cash to be taught by the protagonist. She's a whiny, self involved shrew that at times makes me want to punch her in the nose and I'm not even related to her. However, the fiction class was basic but interesting and helpful. More about that later.

Then I dove into the Indian Mahabharat told from a woman's point of view, for a change. So far, it's fascinating and I find the mythology very different from anything I've read so far. I always wanted to read the Mahabharata and now I can, although I'm still holding off on Mose Tolliver, folk artist. I need to get that one done this week.

In between writing, editing, dozing, watching a little TV on the laptop and reading, I also found out that I can connect my laptop to the TV to watch my shows. There are only three right now, which amounts to about 2.25 hours per week of time that I could be writing but choose to fritter away laughing and sighing over antics and hot guys with and without fangs. As a middle class American, it should be no surprise that in these times of stress and economic uncertainty I would cling to guys with guns, like Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the Firefly class ship Serenity. Go figure.

As for my staying in bed over the weekend, I confess I have a problem. When I sit too long, like the hours I spend chained in my chair at the work computer typing operative reports, my feet and legs swell and the best thing I've found to relieve the pressure is keeping my feet up over the weekend and getting some rest. The swelling is a result of pressure edema, which is a result of my backside turning to lead and forcing all the fluids from my brain and blood to pool in my trapped hips, thighs, calves, ankles and feet after sitting for 10-14 hours a day. I do get up to empty my bladder fairly frequently and get more water to drink so it, too, can pool in the tissues in my lower extremities, but it's a job and it pays every two weeks, so if I have to spend a weekend in bed reading, writing and editing, then that's what I'll do. It's severe punishment, but I've had worse -- and liked it almost as much.

Now it's Monday morning, 5:39 a.m. to be exact, and the birds are rioting outside. The midnight blue sky is lightening just a bit between the budding and leaved branches of the trees and the glittering gems of the lights across town are beginning to look less bright and twinkly. I could turn off the light, close up the laptop and slip back under the covers for another hour or two or I could dive back into Indian mythology for a while. Then again, I could drag my lazy butt out of bed and take it to the shower and get ready for another grueling day of operative reports, punctuated by a trip to the new landlord's office to pay the first month's rent ahead of time and see if he won't let me begin moving a few things in early, and maybe have lunch at Coal Mine Dragon for some soft noodles and shrimp or scallops and vegetables with a side of jasmine tea and fresh orange. Then again, Nel's taking a shower next door and I'm averse to having my warm shower go cold on me right when I get to the good parts. Choices, choices.

That is all. Disperse.

One thousand to one

It's quiet right now, except for the space heater coming on to take the chill off the room. The birds chirp, singing up the sun, and outside the light is an ethereal luminous blue like a full moon on snow. My nose runs and I'm running out of tissue, but the running should stop soon now that I'm up and moving around. The gem lights in the distance fade slowly as it lightens outside and suddenly the birds quit singing, hushed as the sun wells up in the distance. All is silence except for the ticking of my fingers on the laptop keyboard and the soft hum of the fan. Now the heat comes on after being off all night. It never made sense to me to leave the heat off during the night when the nights are so cold, but that will change soon.

Lines and dialogue chase around in my mind as I search for the right combination for a story I need to finish by 11 a.m. It's still wispy in places, darting out of sight as I near to catch them and string them together. The idea's still not clear, but coming closer, clearer, brighter. After chasing around in my dreams all night the story should be a lot easier to catch in the light, but it is shy of the light, playing coy and hard to get. Maybe if I focus on this post it will think I've forgotten it and will leap out at me, fully dressed and ready to speak, because I'm not paying attention so I can grab it by the vowels and consonants, commas, periods and quotes and coax it into the light, or at least onto the page.

After a short discussion with about Great Literature and the Great American Novel and how serious writers look down on genre writers, I am reminded of conversations I had with Andre. She was shunned and slighted early in her career for being just a YA writer. Although she already had more than 100 published books to her credit, she was still just a YA writer. Never mind that she was never just anything or that, although her characters were young, her stories transcended labels; she was just a YA writer.

From where did all this snobbery and arrogance come? The classics didn't become classics in their day but the stories they told have withstood the test of time. Edgar Allen Poe's tales are still literature despite being what would now be considered genre. Does that diminish what he wrote or the characters and stories that are instantly recognizable: the raven, Lenore, The Tell-Tale Heart or Fortunato? Homer wrote down stories that had been told for centuries about Odysseus and the Trojan War, Achilles, Paris and Hector. They too were genre stories, tales of adventure, magic, love and folly. Michael Montaigne wrote about every day things, domestic trials and joys, random thoughts, society and passing thoughts he caught and wrestled to the page, little moments of life in simple language. Guy de Maupassant did the same and so did O'Henry and Twain.

These stories aren't great literature because they're laden with beautiful (and sometimes tortuous) language but because they resonate with the human experience. The words are basic and uncluttered and so are the descriptions but few can forget them; that's what makes Great Literature. It's not about high flown language or over wrought similes and clichéd metaphors; it's about telling a story that touches the reader in some way with truth or emotion or fancy or laughter. It's the kind of literature that leaves you feeling as though you have traveled somewhere and met people that will always remain shadow companions. It's the kind of literature that makes you want to return over and over again, stories that are familiar and yet just a little changed because you are changed by life and experience. It's Heidi and Harry Potter, Arabella and Aragorn, Red Chief and Tom Sawyer and Carrie and Christine Daae.

Don't get me wrong. I like great literature, and sometimes I even understand it, but I love genre stories because they are so much easier to relate to. Dostoevsky simply wrote stories about dysfunctional families and poverty and guilt. Henry Miller's wife, June, lamented that she thought she had sold herself to another Dostoevsky and thought Miller's work was lousy, not even as good as Anais Nin's stories, but Nin isn't remember as much for her stories as for her diaries, the simple, every day recounting of what she did and thought and felt. That, too, is literature, great literature, and so is Henry Miller.

It isn't the minute examination of a May fly moment that has no beginning, middle or end, but the books and stories that sprawl or quickly sear, chronicles of fact and fantasy, that make literature. The guilty secret of writers of great literature is that their favorite books are often genre. Laugh at J. K. Rowling's facile sentence construction and simple language or Stephen King's fantastic horror and flights of fancy, but at the end of the day it's about how many people remember the characters. It's the difference between selling one bottle of perfume for a thousand dollars versus selling a thousand bottles of perfume at one dollar.

That is all. Disperse.

Missing the point

My family is so used to me writing about other people, even when I write about myself, that they completely miss the point when a story is about me. In this case, the story is Love is Enough from Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul on sale now at bookstores all around the world, and online. (Yes, it's a plug for the book even though I don't get royalties.) Not to give too much away, but the story is about being adopted and giving a child up for adoption.

I spoke with my sister, Carol, this morning and asked what she found inaccurate about the story. "Well, you knew who adopted Jaime and you knew where he was."

"Actually, I didn't know where he was and that's not the point of the story. The point is giving up a child and how that feels. It's about me."

"Oh." Okay, the "Oh," came after much more conversation and repeating the mantra, "It's about me and giving up a child not about who adopted him or what happened later. It's about me."

My family is so used to me being out of the spotlight and giving up center stage the few times I get there as soon as one of them, or anyone else, bumps me off. I feel like I've perpetually had the hook around my neck and I've been dragged to the wings because everyone else is more important, especially in my family. And I gave way, not willingly but because I really don't like bloodshed . . . if it's mine. I've shed enough blood, voluntarily and involuntarily, for vampires and blood suckers of all kinds. I've always been the family's Uncle Tom, smiling and nodding and moving to the side to let them promenade past me -- and more often over me -- while I continue smiling and nodding. It happens a little less now that more of my work is getting published, but that's only because of the reflected light, such as it is, that shines on them. They are quick, however, to point out where I made a mistake or misrepresented something despite the fact that they were not present during the events I write about or were so busy focusing on themselves that what happened to me wasn't important or even notable. I am quick to remind them these days that they weren't there and couldn't possibly know what did or did not happen and that it's not about them: it is about me, my views, my experience.

I could -- and probably should -- go on to remind them of situations in their lives that they have either pushed aside or remember in a way that's not accurate, but it wouldn't solve the problem or change anything. It definitely wouldn't change them.

That's the thing about memory, it's a very personal thing and we remember what is important to us regardless of how someone else sees it. We are often like blind men describing an elephant with no real experience of having seen an elephant or even the things we touch and use as examples. A blind man who has never seen a rope and only felt its texture would be reminded of a rope when feeling the elephant's tail, etc., but he has no real experience of what a rope is, what it looks like, how strong or weak it is, or what it really is. We are all blind men when it comes to memory and experience. We cannot see things as another sees them, even when we can sympathize, because we do not live in their skin and have not had their experiences or been changed in the same way.

The Christians and gypsies who lost family in the Holocaust cannot understand the Jewish experience of losing family in the Holocaust even though the experience is similar because Christians and gypsies do not share the same identity or history as Jews, do not feel the same isolation or exclusion. Gypsies come close, but they are not Jews and Jews are not Christians. Religion does not define the gypsy or the Christian in the same way religion defines Jews; it is not as culturally or even sociologically ingrained. Gypsies and Christians may share deep ties to their religious beliefs but they are more than their religion, and in some ways less. And yet it is the Jews who take center stage when the Holocaust is mentioned. Few remember that more gypsies and Christians died in the camps than Jews, which does not diminish or detract from the Jewish experience or the horror of what they lost. There are fewer Jews overall than Christians and gypsies and losing so many families was the difference of taking a cup of water from a barrel versus taking a cup of water from the Mediterranean.

It is the same for me. I am one of fifty writers and few outside my family and friends would notice if the book didn't have my story in it, but that doesn't diminish what I contributed in time and in opening up a part of my life that I have held silent and close to my heart. One of my cousins, when she wrote to me about reading the books, said she had forgotten about Jaime. I haven't. During all the years since I gave him up a week before Xmas, I haven't forgotten him or forgotten how it felt to hand him over to someone else and walk away. It was easier to tell people I lost him a week before Xmas when he was twenty months old and let them believe he died than to go into all the details of why I gave him up. He was one child and I am one mother who made that decision among tens of thousands of mothers who chose to let go. I am a cup of water from the ocean and yet I feel more like a cup of water from a barrel.

Too often people focus on the wrong part of a situation, the wrong moment in a person's life, like Carol focusing on what Jaime's life was like when his adopted parents changed his name and where he lived and went to college. It's not about them. It's about me. It's not even about Jaime. It's about me. It's about what I felt and still feel. It's about how society sees a woman who gives up a child, who doesn't, as my mother always claimed she would do, strap a mattress to her back to support her child. It's about how giving up someone so much a part of my soul diminished me and left a void that can never be filled. It's about me. It's about how doing the right thing can hurt more than soldiering on and how the scars still bleed and never heal. It's not about how a blind man describes an elephant but what the elephant really is. It's about me.

Distraction

There's so much light spilling through the windows I thought it was later than it is. I usually have a good sense of time and don't often have to look at the clock to tell what time it is, rather knowing almost intuitively from the position of the sun, but my intuition is off this morning. I guess it's because I didn't wake up until 6:30 instead of my usual 4 a.m. I don't know where they move to morning person came from or why after decades of shunning dawn, except when I stayed up all night, I feel ready to get out of bed and get on with my day. I'd say it's moving closer to becoming a senior but that seems like a too easy answer and doesn't really answer anything. I still stay up until pretty late, although sometimes I am ready to crawl into bed at 9 p.m., and sometimes even 8 p.m., after long full days of work. Then there is a reason to get up in the dark hours before the sun pushes up over the horizon. Maybe it's the birds that start singing the sun up even before it's ready to stretch forth it's gaze and spill molten light over the distance that wake me, except that I'm usually up before they are. I do remember when it first happened -- at the cabin.

There were no blinds or curtains or drapes or anything at the windows in the cabin and I moved the bed so I could see the sun rise through the pines in lock step formation down the hill. A woodpecker began his tap-tap-tap-tapping in high speed staccato and the sound drilled into my dreams, tap-tap-tapping on my shoulder to get my attention. I'd brush it off and plunge back into my dreams when the first golden spears struck my eyelids and bored down into my dreams. I'd burrow deeper into the covers but the light bent and twisted and found me again while the woodpecker tap-tap-tapped more insistently.

At first, I grumbled and carped about being waked before the morning was distant enough and then I opened my eyes one morning and was stunned, my usual grumble half carped, as liquid gold showered everything from snow-capped mountains to serried ranks of ragged firs, welling over the dusty window sill and gilding the dusty spider web, turning it into a complicated cat's cradle touched by Midas. I was awed. I didn't need an alarm clock any more as my body and senses tuned to the light and the darkness and the rhythms all around me. I knew the moon's phases as well as my own inner rhythms and welcomed the full rising moon on nights when everything was an ethereal blue and the spider webs danced and drifted on unseen currents like luminous ghosts. Even in the midst of my technological playground, I was intimately aware of the music and movement of the world around me. For the first time in my life, the sun wasn't a heartless taskmaster pulling me from soothing and adventurous dreams to a cold, harsh reality but a soft lover's whisper that illuminated a warm and welcome reality. Glorious morning and mysterious night were playgrounds where I played and danced and breathed with equal joy, one no longer more dear or more welcome than the other.

You could say I'm a morning and a night person now, shifting easily from one to the other as the seasons turn and the earth and sun continue their dance to and fro, far and near.

I have lost a little of that communion in the past few weeks, but it's a temporary loss. It will return when reality settles into a new pattern and there are no other sounds or energies to distract me.

Looking the right way

Just when you think everything is going your way, someone changes the rules and you're left floundering around sticking a finger in the dike to plug up the hole and prevent a flood. Standing there all alone while the world goes on around you, you keep your finger in the hole and pray it doesn't get any bigger or that someone will come along with the right things to help you patch the hole. Just when you have run out of options and are beginning to feel the hole get bigger and the trickle turn to a streamlet, a friend who noticed you were missing and stopped by to check on you helps you put everything to rights. There is nothing to do but thank them.

It's hard sometimes to see all the people who have so much to be thankful for complain so bitterly about what they don't have. Some people have the right to complain. Come to that, everyone has the right to complain but they should be ashamed to do it.

Last year I reviewed On Strike for Christmas about a group of women in a small town who stop doing all the things they do for their families during the holidays. They want to teach their families, but mostly their husbands, how much work they do to make the holidays special. Their husbands respond with varying degrees of success and along the way husbands and wives begin to realize they all have a lot to learn about each other and themselves. One of the characters, a widow who is jealous of her friends for throwing away what she would give anything to have, is full of anger over what her friends are doing. They have so much and she has so little. She feels like her friends are spitting in prosperity's eye. She doesn't see that prosperity is within her grasp if she would but open her eyes and reach out to take it. Instead, she's too busy being angry and jealous and focusing on what everyone else is doing instead of looking at what she already has. I'm guilty of the same thing.

Over the past two years I have struggled to make ends meet. It's been difficult but I've been mostly content. I don't spend much money on myself but my bills were paid even though the cupboards were empty most of the time. I listened to friends and family who had their own homes and either a spouse who brought in a second income or made 3-5x what I made and wondered what they had to gripe about. They went on cruises, bought third and fourth cars, took vacations several times a year or went out to eat 2-3x a week. What did they have to complain about? They didn't struggle and juggle finances so they could cover their bills, pay the rent and still have enough money to buy something other than seventy-nine cent Banquet frozen dinners to last until the next paycheck or splurge on a bag of grapefruits, oranges or apples. At least water was free. Working more hours didn't help because the work just wasn't there and the only thing that saved me most weeks was the reviews I posted every Tuesday morning. I didn't realize someone saw what I was going through and was willing to help. I was looking in the wrong direction.

Blame it on pride or on the fact that I'm not comfortable asking for help. Blame it on stupidity or shame or whatever you like, but there's really no one to blame. We all get to a point where we're so busy looking around that we forget to look right next to us. That lesson was driven home for me late last night when I was worried about a situation I found that would keep me from moving to the cottage next month. I was busy running numbers again and again hoping that somehow they would come out in my favor, but they resisted my efforts. Somewhere I had to find some extra hours so I I could plug the hole in the dike. And then a friend quietly asked me a question and told me to check something in a few minutes. I agreed but went doggedly back to work for another couple of hours to pound out a few more reports, diving into work to keep my mind off my problem. When I finished, I checked and got a big surprise. My friend took care of the problem and asked for nothing. I wept.

I can't say there won't be times when, like my sister Carol, I won't look at someone else's life and see only that they have so much when I have so little. I'm not envious of the things they have but I do confess I'm a little envious of what they throw away without thinking. I don't want more things. I don't want to be married. I didn't until recently want my own home. I do not want to have to struggle alone any more, but until last night I didn't realize that I don't struggle alone, that there are people who care and are willing to share their tools and show me how to deal with problems that crop up. For them I am very thankful. There are no words to explain or show the depth of my feeling except in saying, thank you for caring and for being there. It makes all the difference that you were looking the right way when I wasn't.

Catching up

The new season, and the last for a while, of Doctor Who has started and overall I'm impressed with the show. The Narfer commented that one of the episodes was dire and dark, but it reminded me more of an early episode when William Hartnell was The Doctor. They were in Mexico among the Aztecs and one of his companions (he had three) was upset about the sacrifices and wanted to change them. As the Aztecs queen/leader/oracle, she started changing their culture and the Doctor told her that wasn't acceptable. She had to accept their customs without changing them or making them over in her own image. It was the same sensibility that the current Doctor showed in the second episode of the season when they went to Pompeii the day before it destroyed the city and Herculaneum. The Doctor said some points in history are fixed and others are not and he was willing to let the disaster happen without saving any -- almost. Donna convinced him to save one family and it turns out they were the ones who coined the word "volcanic". Just when you think the Doctor is changing a fixed point in time it turns out he's not, that it was meant for him to save the family all along, which in turns argues for the fixed point in history theory and the theory that everything is predestined even if we don't know it, sort of like Meg Ryan in the present following Hugh Jackman into the past to become the great grandmother of her recently ex-boyfriend. Nothing like sampling the fruit before you're the seed.

Battlestar Galactica is back and is following a strange story arc, although an interesting one. It seems one of the Cylon skin jobs just spaced the last of the five remaining Cylon skin jobs, if that's what they are. The Cylons are fighting among themselves and destroying some of their own by not having the resurrection ships jump with them when they attack some of their group; they are dying and this time they won't be coming back, so there is trouble in toaster paradise. What was most interesting to me is that some of the Cylons think of themselves not as God's instrument but as programmed machines with a softer side, sort of like Sears. Okay, not like Sears, but I couldn't resist. Starbuck is back in a brand new off the showroom floor Viper and she thinks only a little time has passed when it has been two months. The Cylons don't seem to know about her so what happened and where did she come from? Have the current writers delved back into the past to pull the light beings from reruns to help with Starbuck's return? It certainly has all the earmarks, but one never knows what goes on in a writer's mine, even the writer at times.

Desperate Housewives (yes, I watch it) has surprised me, not with its story lines, because it's still just Knotts Landing with a smaller community and smaller incomes, and without the nefarious J. R. Ewing mucking around and injecting venom, but with a budding friendship that does not bode well for the future. Something tells me Bree Hodge and Katherine Mayfair are headed for a hair pulling, eye scratching, leg biting cat fight that even the dark and salty goodness of Adam (Nathan Fillion) can break up, but I'm sure he'd rather watch Katherine get the lemon meringue pie stomped out of her anyway.

At long last, Moonlight returns on Friday, April 25th and I am glad. Talking about dark and salty goodness. Mick St. John is what has been missing from my weekends. The show got off to a rocky start but it has gotten better and it's definitely different than the usual vampire fare and a little closer to Stoker's vampire vision since these vampires can go out in the sun without exploding into a pillar of fire and being reduced to ash. They do suffer but not in the usual comic book way and the only way to kill a vampire is to cut off his head. Stakes through the heart just paralyze them, even if they're made of wood. And to add my take on Spike's Leman's concerns over a newly created vampire not recognizing the vampire who made him and yet being able to recognize Mick as "like" him, I think the vampire who made him was not the same kind of vampire -- a killer -- that Mick is and has had to be. The guys a professor and more of a geek. Add to the confusion of being turned and not knowing what was happening to him, the disorientation and the bombardment of so much coming at him so fast, it's easy to see that by the time he confronted Mick he was a little more in control and less deluged by the flood of sensory input that he was able to recognize one of his own kind. Okay, so actually two possibilities. I may not be right, and I did notice the gaffe when it happened, but I think I'm probably close to what the writers intended, or at least what they'd say once they noticed the gaffe when vampire lovers from all over the world stuffed their email in-box with complaints about it.

The only thing to catch up here is packing for the move, which will happen after May 2. The lease is signed. The deposit is paid. I'll pay the rent at the beginning of May and begin shuttling things from here to there. I'll move something myself, like clothes and sundries, a bit at a time until the movers arrived on May 8th to pack up the rest and shift the heavy stuff from here to there. I've hired someone to steam clean the carpets and someone to do a final cleaning on the place and make everything ship shape and Bristol fashion. The utilities and phone are scheduled for the change and I'll be one day without an Internet connection, unless I can find a local unsecured line to ride along but it will give me time to inaugurate the kitchen, make the bed for the first time in months and sleep in my new place. I might even get some reading and writing done or at least get some of my books unpacked and put on the built in shelves while I luxuriate in the blissful sound of silence and the feeling of privacy. A friend mentioned yesterday that I was spoiled by the seclusion and privacy of the cabin and she's right. Once I get moved and settled in maybe the deep crease between my eyebrows will finally soften and dissipate. Stranger things have been known to happen.

And it's only Tuesday

As of 2:30 this afternoon, the lease on my new place will be signed and I will be one step closer to moving, one step closer to my dream. It's a short step, but a step nonetheless. I picked up the money this morning when I went out to buy some groceries.

When I fired up the work computer and signed in to my email, I had a surprise waiting. I had inadvertently used Muslin instead of Muslim in a review I emailed last night. I check these things, but sometimes I miss little details, kind of like my supervisor spelling my name wrong so that a review doesn't show up when I do a search. It's not a big deal. However, what she added to the email was a big deal.

Our boss, the owner of Author Link, Doris Booth, read the two reviews and liked what she saw in the review on Jon Land's latest novel, The Seven Sins and she sent it to Jon Land and his PR person. Less than 10 minutes later his reply and Doris's comments were forwarded to to me with the subject line: "Praise for Jackie Cornwell". Here is a copy of the original email.

* * * *

Hey,
Look what Doris got back from the author of Seven Sins.

Thanks,
Elaine


> DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
> d=airmail.net; s=dktest; h=From:To:Subject:Date:Message-ID:
> MIME-Version:Content-Type; bh=LcG8SjXyv5W6KHuiZ4lLHxuBrFQGzinay7
> H2bw/gEoo=; b=UPC8gtjQbxeQo+ZGzbKeGuf9xP/+XAOgT8mOQtrDcM1dkEU8MX
> 6KsJQWbGTrRZ1XIGTJa8D7qxc9qZ7ioXvmnOCgC8LyPTSVGa57nIVI/BFWZ5caKY
> KwQzGxEbXNfG77
> From: "Doris Booth"
> To: "'Elaine Lanmon'"
> Subject: Praise for Jackie Cornwell
> Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:12:57 -0500
> X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11
> Thread-Index: Acikk7i+rkWKzaj3QumPRi4dTFOsuA==
> X-Chzlrs: 0
> X-Spam-Level: 0/7
> X-FS-Classification-spam: 0
> X-FS-Diagnostics: database-version=2008-04-15 tests=WHITELISTED,FS_CLASS_SPAM_0
>
> Elaine, please pass along Jon Land's comment to Jackie Cornwell, along with my own. Jackie is terrific!
>
> Doris:
>
> What a great review! And I say that not just because it was so positive, but also because of the excellent writing and the reviewer's clear grasp of the subject matter. Kudos to whoever that person is!
>
> Jon
>
> Doris
>
>
> Doris Booth
> Editor-in-Chief Authorlink.com
> Manager, Authorlink Literary Group
>
> dbooth@authorlink.com
> (972) 402-0101
> Fax: 866-381-1587
> www.authorlink.com
> http://www.authorlink.blogspot.com

* * * *

To say the least, I was flabbergasted and I'm still doing a great imitation of the Cheshire cat. It's really great to know that an author appreciates my writing, but even better to be told I got what they intended. It's happened before, and from very well known authors, but seeing it myself and not hearing it second hand, just makes my week, and probably my month. I've not reviewed any of Jon Land's books before, but I will definitely look out for the sequel to this book. I couldn't put the book down. The book isn't due out until June 2008, but look for it if you like a fast-paced tale of intrigue with complex characters.

After everything I've been through in the past few weeks, it's like a little signpost on the path that tells me I'm going in the right direction and the little bumps and pot holes don't matter.

That is all. Disperse.

Things are changing

I got the word this morning I got the cottage . . . all to myself. It's not perfect; the master bedroom is smaller than the one I have now, but the other bedroom has built in bookcases. Guess where my office will be? The living room is bigger and longer and there's an tiled entry way with lots of closet space, a deck and plenty of privacy. The gas stove and the dishwasher make up for the lack of cabinet space, as do the long and roomy counters. There's also a tiled breakfast bar with room for 3-4 stools so I'm not complaining. Unless you build the house yourself or stumble onto the perfect place, everything is a compromise. At least there are no neighbors close by since the cottage sits well way from the street and there is plenty of space on both sides. My parking spot is off the street and right by the front door, which is just one step up to the deck and one more into the house.

I've already contacted the movers, arranged for the utilities to be shut off here and turned on there and scheduled the phone service to be switched, and I get a much faster DSL line, from 1.5 to 7. Talk about zooming along. I sign the lease and give up the deposit tomorrow afternoon, but I'm looking forward to the change. All I need to do now is contact the cleaning service and coordinate them to come in and make this place ship shape and Bristol fashion so I can leave with a clear conscience. Life is good.

Oh, did I mention the privacy and no landlord counting how many times I use the toilet or how long I take a shower or run water to wash dishes?

That is all. Disperse.

Money, money

Reminds me of a song: Mony, mony, except that wasn't about money and money is on my mind a lot right now. Robbing Peter. Paying Paul. Shifting, checking, rechecking, adding, subtracting, subtracting more than I had, and juggling, lots of juggling. And frustrated and angry.

You'd think as big a publishing phenomenon as the Chicken Soup books are they would be on time with payment, but they're not. I got my author's copy well ahead of schedule, and the book plate with the names of Jack Canfield and crew, but no check. The letter I received with the book said I would receive the check about 30 days after the release date. That has come and gone and gone a long time ago. The book was available on Amazon January 22nd. No check by February 22, or March 22 either. I emailed in March and was told the book had not been released until March 11th and I would receive the check 30 days from that date. Guess what? No check yet. I emailed again and was told this time that it would be 30-60 days; that wasn't in the letter or the contract. I emailed a third time and was told that things were in a bit of a mess since they were consolidating their office and moving departments around and it would take some time to figure out who and what went where, but I would be contacted, and I was contacted. I was told checks were "in process." I never did get an answer for what "in process" meant or a firm commitment on when my check would be sent, so here I sit, still frustrated and getting angry. I don't like having to keep asking for money that is owed to me.

Conversely, my dealings with Adams Media, owner of the Cup of Comfort series, are completely different. I got the check for the book before I got the book; it arrived last week, about 30 days after the release, by FedEx, with post cards announcing the book to hand out at book signings, which are being coordinated and set up as I write. Two other local authors and I are clubbing together to promote the book, and we will all be paid for our efforts. I'm handling press releases and they are handling setting up the signings; they've done it before and I'm more comfortable with press releases and contacting media. It works out well for all three of us. We're all three on the slate for the Mountain of Authors next year. I have several other books coming out this year with Cup of Comfort and I'm looking forward to dealing with them because they have been a joy so far, but they would since Adams Media is a subsidiary of F+W Publications who owns the Writers Digest imprints, among others. Nothing like having your foot in the door with a publisher when it comes time to deal with them on my own.

When I came back from seeing yet more places yesterday, the mail had run. I held my breath as I walked to the mailbox and pulled out the magazines and a few envelopes tuck between the folded magazines. I wanted to see two things: check from AuthorLink and one from Chicken Soup. I got the AuthorLink check for the two latest reviews, no surprise there. They are very good about paying me on time. I turned around and got back in my car to deposit the check, but there was another surprise waiting for me when I opened the envelope. The check was more than expected, twenty dollars more. I asked for and received a raise in January of $10 per review and the check yesterday reflected yet another raise of $10 per review. I was stunned. That's a hefty raise in such a short time and I'm grateful for it. Just what I needed, a big old ego boost.

I had spoken to the big boss at AuthorLink a couple weeks ago when I had to contact her about releasing information regarding my annual income. I did the same with my medical transcription employer. I've always thought I'd have to wait until I died and was hovering around the wake or the memorial service to find out what my bosses thought about me, but I was wrong. Both of my bosses praised me in such terms I blushed a deep crimson and couldn't get the shocked smile off my face for quite some time. I got effusive rave reviews from both of them, but this is a rave review I didn't expect for another year or so.

Into every life rain must fall, but once in a while the sun shines through the clouds with a brilliant burst of light that dusts everything with gold. Yesterday was one of those days. Now, if I can only find the right place to move and get that over with a minimum of fuss, I'll be very happy.

Dangerous wake

While reading my bi-monthly Total Funds for Writers this morning I came across this quote: "Same goes for your writing, your writer's voice, your presence. Everyone has opinions. Some folks gun their motors anywhere, oblivious to the hurt and destruction they leave in their wake. Some flaunt that voice more loudly in chats and on blogs. Just because there's fewer people in the room, doesn't mean damage isn't done.

Whatever you write, wherever you speak, however you wish to say your piece, take heed of the setting, the attendees, the baby ducks, docks and turtles. Because after you move on, you leave an impression. You can leave the cove intact or you can leave wreckage. Better yet, you can leave it
a better place.

Because you have a point, doesn't necessarily mean you have to make it. You'd be amazed at who watches from the bushes when you rev your engine a little too much."

She was talking about a fisherman who revved his outboard motor and raced out of the little cove near her home, leaving a dangerous wake that left destruction in its path. Writers are prone to the same thing and I am not immune. I came face to face with a dangerous wake I had left without knowing. I didn't deliberately throttle the engine to high or pop the clutch and peel out across someone's prize azaleas, but what I wrote affected someone adversely. I didn't find out about what had happened for more than two weeks but when I noticed the person's absence I asked for answers. I'm still not sure what to do about the answer since I have no idea what upset the person so much, just that she was upset, and because of one of my posts. I don't expect people to always agree with me because not everyone experiences life in the same way. To me, that is a given. But I do hope that when something I write offends or upsets someone they bring the matter to my attention and tell me how they were affected. Unfortunately, that seldom happens.

The post in this instance is one I wrote about a toxic relationship between a friend and his fiancee. That particular post was helpful to someone close to me in illustrating what he couldn't see up close and moved him to make a change in his life, a big change. He ended a toxic and abusive relationship. He said I changed his perceptions of something he had taken for granted in a relationship where he had felt trapped for so long. The choice to end his relationship was not an easy one and it has caused some problems with his friends and family, and in his relationship with his church, but he says he does not regret it. And there have been responses from other people who thanked me for opening their eyes and getting them to take a good hard look at their own relationships. But to find out that same post had upset someone in any way makes me wonder if I hadn't revved the engine and left a dangerous wake.

It took me many years to be able to speak up and speak out when something was wrong and, as a journalist, I have often been faced with the decision of whether or not to write a story that would put someone's pain and despair on display. Sometimes I chose not to write the story in deference to the person's feelings, although other journalists chose differently.

After seeing what happens to authors who take on their critics and prove themselves to be spiteful, small and oblivious to anything but their own egos and needs, I think twice when I answer a critic who makes personal attacks. I have opted instead to share the facts and leave personal commentary out of the mix so people can make their own decisions. Not all writers feel or act the same way, but what kind of world would it be if everyone were the same? In essence, I endeavor to leave a small wake, always aware that even a small pebble dropped into a pond makes waves that affects everything and touches all shores eventually, as I obviously did last month. Now I wonder what I can do to make things right even as I realize that no matter what I do or say I cannot take away anyone's distress or pain so long after the fact -- if at all -- and certainly not knowing the exact nature of their distress.

I can only think before I write and accept whatever comes with grace, even if what comes is criticism. I learn something new every day and incorporate that knowledge into who I am. For better or worse, I am a work in progress and mistakes and shortfalls are inevitable. If you have come looking for an oracle or perfection, look elsewhere; you will not find it here. What you will find is an honest heart and an open mind searching for meaning and answers.

No dealing

LadyCelia asked this morning if no one deals for themselves any more. No, no one just deals any more. They expect someone else to deal.

Case in point: My mother has griped for the past two months that she didn't have a copy of either of my recent books. She can drive all over creation shopping, but she can't get in the car and drive to the north end, which is maybe ten miles away, to go the bookstore and get the book, even though there are bookstores in her area where she shops that she can get the books. After listening to all this griping I went ahead and bought the books and sent them to her. She'll have them on Tuesday.

I told her that if she didn't feel up to going out and getting the books, she could have asked my brother or one of my two sisters to pick up the book and get her to her, but, no, they are too busy because they work. I work, too, but I work at home so it doesn't count as working, despite putting in 14-hour days. When they get off work after driving in all that traffic they just want to go home. What about weekends? Well, they're tired and have other things to do, things that take them past bookstores.

"Well, I don't like to ask them to do things for me."

And they all have computers. "You just don't understand how busy they are." No, but I understand that if they wanted something bad enough they would have it already. Gah!!!

I guess I'm the only one who knows how many bookstores in and around Columbus there are (I checked) and there are five on the west side of town that sell the books and three on the way home for Beanie, but they won't stop for five minutes and pick it up. They don't know how to pick up a phone and call the bookstore to hold it for them so they don't have to go farther than the cashier at the front of the store, get it, pay for it and walk out the door. They don't know how to use a computer to buy it online and have it sent. They don't have the time.

Mom reminded me that they all have cars. Good, then they have the means to get what they want, despite the fact that they could carpool or run all their errands at the same time instead of everyone driving their own car and adding to the traffic and pollution problems. I live 2000 miles away and I end up doing more for my mother, other than taking her to the doctor and getting monthly transfusions, than the other three do because their lives are so busy and I work at home. Carol is retired and she chooses to work because she likes the money -- and getting out of the house so she doesn't have to listen to Mom all day. It amazes me that I can still be blamed for things not getting done when I no longer live in the state because none of my siblings will take the time out of their oh-so-busy schedules to go buy or order a couple of books since Mom doesn't want to bother them.

It's a good thing I don't live there any more or there would be a sudden rash of horrendous and bloody mutilations in a certain family and I would be an orphan.

That is all. Disperse and deal.

Unavailable space

It snowed Wednesday night and yesterday I woke to a work of falling clumps of snow as the sun rose and warmed the icy blue sky to something less anemic, blooding the horizon and warming the heavy clouds until they bushed with rising heat. It would have been my grandmother's 98th birthday and even though she is gone I still remember her as the calendar tells me the day gets closer. She was on my mind yesterday, as she has been all week, but for a very different reason. She reminded me, as I looked at houses and apartments, some less appalling than others, that she had her feet firmly on the ground and was not dazzled by wealth or possessions. It isn't that she didn't have nice things or live in a tastefully furnished home, but that she did everything with economy and a comfortable space.

I went to a small clutch of brick ground floor apartments, five to a row, to check out an inexpensive apartment. It was at the edge of Old Colorado City and near to a school. It sounded idyllic. The reality was less than ideal.

I didn't see a vacant apartment at the end of the first four rows, so I looked for an apartment where someone was home, found an open door and knocked. "Come in," a female voice called. I reached for the door handle and pushed the button. "Wait, don't let the cat out. Meathead, come here. You're not getting out." Veined and gnarled hands reached out of the shadowed dimness to pick up an orange tabby. "Okay, come in." I wrenched open the door when it stuck and walked into the only clear space in the cramped room. A huge couch was wedged against the wall to my left, flanked by a massive aquarium where huge fish lolled against the glass, hovering in watery space above a cluster of divers, coral and buildings among the floating green of plastic seaweed and sea trees, light bathing them in viscid gold and diffused blue. The door scraped a worn trough of denuded wood of the coffee table that took up a good third of the room. A big screen TV flickered with images to my left as I sidled into the room, introduced myself and asked if the woman knew which of the apartment was empty and for rent. She smiled, baring rotted and broken stumps of teeth between cracked, dried lips and tossed the cat to the frayed and dented cushions of the couch. "There's always some place open. They all look pretty much the same." She turned to me and waved me toward the rest of the apartment, crammed with knick knacks, makeshift cupboards, dishes, pots and pans. "Take a look." I thanked her and sidled towards what proved to be the bedroom.

Posters of nubile blondes covered the walls above the massively ornate waterbed wedged between dresser, a bookcase filled with bongs, knick knacks and magazines, mirrored dresser and armoir. A open door revealed a bathroom where tub and toilet looked like a single piece next to bland cupboard above craftsman drawers with little room left to open them against the ancient sink growing from the wall. The landlord told me the apartment was about 600 square feet but it felt more like 300 and nearly ever inch was packed with a wealth of new electronics and massive furniture that would have been less conspicuous in a 2000-square-foot home. The only new thing in the apartment, other than the occupants' possessions, was a Corian counter atop a worn wooden box shaped wall that cleaved the living room from the narrow galley kitchen, barely camouflaged beneath a coat of dingy thin white paint. I touched its smooth surface. "Bud made that. He's a carpenter." She pointed to the fussy Jacobean paper border that perched beneath the water-stained ceiling and framed every cupboard door. "He did that, too. Doesn't it look nice?" I nodded and smiled. "So, the landlord lets you do what you want?" She brayed suddenly, throwing her head back until I saw every blackened and broken tooth stub in her mouth. "We did it, didn't we?"

The door opened and she looked around for the cat. "Don't let the cat out." A broken shell of what was once a biker, lumbered into the room. He smiled at me with teeth as blackened and shattered as the woman's as he drifted toward the refrigerator, opened the door and took out a beer. The woman explained why I was there and he shrugged as he tilted the open bottle into his mouth and sucked down a cold stream of Budweiser. A gold skull dangled from a creased and flabby earlobe.

I thanked the woman for showing me around, offered my hand and asked her name. "Carrie." I shook her hand limp, dry hand. "Thank you, Carrie, for your hospitality." I walked toward the door, scooped up the feather-light cat in one hand and offered him to Carrie who rushed to take him and clasp him to her sunken chest. I shook hands with Bud and thanked him, complimenting his Corian counter. His thick-fingered hand was warm and rough but firm. I shut the door behind me and mounted the new wooden stairs that squatted above a pitted cement wall to the parking lot in back. I drove down the alley and back toward home. I wouldn't call the landlord back and fill out an application. The place was too small for my meager possessions and there'd be no room for my computer and desk.