Household Predictions

Prediction: Our kitchen will be remodeled soon.

I know this because I got out the duct tape today to fix the temporary flooring that's been in place for about two years.

When you get out the duct tape, you know things are about to get serious.

What we didn't name the cat that wasn't ours.

How about Buttercup?

Buttercup is my name.

Okay, so we'll name her after you.

How about Butterball?

Butterball is a turkey, not a cat.

It's a yellow tabby, it needs a yellow name.

Amaranth?

It doesn't have to be a yellow name.

How about Butterbeer? That would be a good name.

Butter is not the only thing that is yellow, you know.

The cat that is probably not named Buttercup did not come home with us this morning. She met us at the half-way mark our second time around and Not-Buttercup and our old dog, Naisey, enjoyed walking together for a while. They behaved like old friends. Happy to see each other and enjoying the cool morning breeze. It's still chilly at 5:30 in the morning, but spring is definitely in the air.

When our big (younger) dog, Nancy, approached, I was very curious about how the very friendly Not-Buttercup would welcome her. Cats must have a sense about these things. She pulled herself into Halloween cat pose and when Nancy gave her the nose, the cat exploded into a little yellow fury ball of spits and nose swats. Nancy backed down immediately, as any good dog faced with a good cat should.

We also saw a fox this morning. It first crossed my path on the first quarter of track (also Naisey's, but I don't think Naisey sees well enough to spy a sly fox these days). Needless to say, I was more excited by the near-encounter than the dog. The fox is a beautiful animal. We would see them occasionally in western Kansas when I was a kid and it always felt like a really special encounter. They seem like such sophisticated animals.

Near the end of our walk, I was excited in telling the rest of the family about the fox encounter, as well as warning little Not-Buttercup that she should keep an eye out. About that time, the fox made its second appearance, running in the opposite direction. Everyone saw it this time. Except Naisey, she's definitely not seeing as clearly as she did when she was younger.

48 Hours of Me Time

The family left at 1:00pm on Friday. I happily shooed them out the door. They were headed for Planet Comicon in Kansas City. I was to stay home, all by my lonesome... well, me and the dogs.

By 1:15 I had a plan formulated. I made a quick trip to the store (4 stores, in fact) for all of the necessities I would need for the next 48 hours of my life.

1) Aldi: they have my baked chips, a vice I continue to cling to.

2) Price Chopper, the only grocery store in town with anything resembling a salad bar. I knew I would have a chance to shop at the farmers market on Saturday, so I didn't want to commit to a big tub of organic greens until I had a chance to buy fresh and local.

3) Sweet Granada! Because it's a chocolate cafe. Is any other explanation needed?

4) The Liquor Store (yes, that's the name of the place) because it felt like if I was spending a weekend alone indulging, I should have some pear cider on hand. As it turned out, I didn't open a single bottle. But because it was available I knew I wouldn't have an excuse for leaving the house--and the task at hand--later.

So what does one do with 48 hours alone?

Set the stage. No need to get up from the table. Everything I could possibly need was within reach. I was starting with 6,446 words of a work-in-progress and was determined to use the time to grow it as much as possible.

At 4:30, I got an unexpected call from a friend who was in town meeting a relative. I was at 7,477 words, so took a break to visit my friends at Java Cat.

Back in the writing chair at 7:30pm. Fresh popcorn for fuel, 2 glasses of water, and 10 dark chocolate covered coffee beans.

9:25 pm = 9,316 words.

I was setting the timer for two hours at a time. Each time it went off, I took a break to stretch (okay, maybe did some dancing... I was home alone, after all) and restock the necessities table. I also did a little house cleaning each break and kind of shook the limbs until I felt like I could sit again.

A clean sink leaves a lot of good mental space for the creative soul.

11:00 pm = 10,591 words.

I was feeling pretty super-charged because the writing was going so well. Drank some sleepy time tea and made myself prepare for bed. I had market Saturday morning and, while I knew I could go tired, I didn't want to be completely off my game.


Saturday breakfast:

Kale, Strawberry, Mandarin Orange Smoothie.

8:15 am Saturday morning - Took break from alone time for farmers market and farmers market annual meeting. Good times. Oh my, what a gorgeous day it was. Perfect weather. Love my market friends and family!

2:00 pm -- home from market. Showered and set the alarm for a two hour nap. When I woke up, the sunny sky had been replaced by grey clouds and the temperature was dropping.

4:45 pm -- back at the keyboard.

8:12 pm -- 13,433 words

11:00 pm -- 17,077 words

Midnight -- took a break from writing, messed with some family photos till about 1:15 am. Went to bed.

Chamomile tea! I can't decide if it's really effective, or just a placebo effect. I love ending the day with a good cup of tea.

Sunday morning -- up at 8:30, brief review of emails and Facebook, before back to clickety clacking at the keyboard.

Washed and folded what laundry I didn't manage in yesterday's breaks. Swept the floor in the kitchen and living room. Emptied all the trash cans in the house.

1/2 hour past noon: 19,452 words. The story is rolling along, though it has turned darker than I expected. Good time to take a break and ponder my progress. Time for a little more dancing and stretching. Family should be home soon.

That, my friends, is how I celebrate 48 Hours of alone time. 13,096 words added to the work-in-progress. I think I'm going to call it, What the Heart Knows.

Life is good.

Anticipating Change and Enjoying the Creative Fuel it Brings

I've always maintained the belief that creativity begets creativity. Writing, painting, composing... it doesn't matter the form. One creative act leads to ideas for at least two more. Most of the time I would claim to be engaged in creative work on pretty much a daily basis. Most often it is writing, but I've been known to draw a picture, pick out a tune on the piano, experiment with recipes or take photographs all with that same satisfied-at-having-created-something feeling.

I also enjoy spending time doing more rote, logistical type things that I've come to think of as creativity fueling. I enjoy being busy, productive, and there are certain tasks that I know I can turn to when my mind needs time to process its more unruly thoughts. I am delighted by spreadsheets, for instance, and I take pride in the management systems I have created with them to aid my work with the farmers market or in managing the billing and bookkeeping for my husband's law office practice. I suppose the act of generating a good spreadsheet is creative, but the act of using a good spreadsheet is incredibly satisfying (especially if you are confident of all of the mathematical functions because you placed them there yourself for reasons you fully understand). I place a number here, and it calculates this, that, and another.

Sometimes my creative mode turns more habitual, however, and I come to the realization that I've not so much been creating as going through the motions simply because I think of myself as a creating kind of person. Perhaps I am writing the same words in a different tense, or putting them to paper in cursive rather than print. Maybe I have turned to doodling for the sake of filling blank space. Or I am serving the same dish meal after meal and forgetting what everything tastes like. Sometimes I am so practiced at what I do that I can fall into the habit of work without really feeling the satisfaction of actually having created something.

It is interesting to look back at my life and see these patterns of actively and passively engaging with the creative process, and the pattern of falling into ruts (usually caused by finding a pattern that works so well I never want it to end). When I was younger, I was more prone to get caught up in the fear of changing things, but now I've almost come to the point of looking forward to those moments. I might recognize that I am getting stuck in a groove, but am more content than I used to be to wait for the right moment. I'm less likely to feel the need to hang on to actions or routines because they once worked. Situations change. I change. My creative process changes. Sometimes I have to do something different in order to move forward and move my creative life to a place of greater satisfaction.

It may be that I've come to anticipate those changes so much that the knowledge that they are coming is enough to fuel a resurgence of creativity. The hubby and I had an idea last week. It was a big idea, for us. An idea that would involve a new house and a new business. I don't know where that idea is going to go, or if it is going to go at all, but I have felt that opening of my mind. I'm ready for change. I'm ready to switch up my routine in a bigger than usual way.

Just the idea of making this move has resulted in an flurry of creative energy. It's infused my market work, my law office work, and my writing. I've got more ideas on the plate than I have room for, but I'm happy that way. I'm coming to the end of each day exhausted and satisfied. I'm excited about that open state of mind, the feeling that anything is possible, and whatever it ends up being, it will be good.

Sunday Book Review: 600 Hours of Edward

600 Hours of Edward

by Craig Lancaster

600 Hours of Edward is the story of an adult man on the Asperger's end of the autism spectrum. I downloaded a sample of it several months ago when a friend recommended it to me. When I finally picked it up and started reading on my Kindle, I was hooked. I purchased as soon as I reached the end of the sample and pretty much continued reading until I had finished the book.

I absolutely adored Edward. Each time the author wrote, "My data was complete," I smiled with satisfaction, and when he barrelled out of bed without recording the time he woke up and the previous days temps, I laughed out loud.

As Edward tells his story, the 600 hours where his life--his routine--changed, I was moved by his observations and his relationships. I can't claim that this must be a true representation of the different way a person with Asperger's must think, but it certainly felt realistic. Edward's routine gave a rhythmic quality to the story telling that had exactly the right timing. I didn't want to put the book down. I kept reading pages, eagerly anticipating the twists, the events that would change things.

This story is brilliant in both its construction and its conclusions. I am looking forward to reading the sequel, and I am putting it on my "recommended" reading list.

Misery and Happiness

It takes a certain amount of effort to be miserable. It simply takes a different kind of effort to be happy. 

These are not Ann Patchett's exact words, but I've been reading Ann Patchett and this thought is one of my take-aways from Truth & Beauty: A Friendship. 

I picked up Ann at the library a couple of weeks ago - This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. The book was billed as a collection of essays about commitment. I absolutely loved it. I devoured every essay, and a few of them I read twice. There were portions I wanted to print in big letters and wallpaper my room with them. She writes such lovely words. I wonder how it is I had not discovered her before now.

And so my love-affair with yet another writer begins. When I returned the book of essays, I checked out one of her fiction and non-fiction books. I made it through Truth & Beauty in about three days, which is very speedy for me, as I always have at least two or three books going at a time and, except for weekends, my reading time is often limited to the few minutes I can keep my eyes open before going to bed. I will admit that I took Sunday as a sick day. I came home from "camp" (a Friday and Saturday event with my daughter) with a head cold and so threw myself upon the couch on Sunday with a box of tissues, a few pillows, a blanket, and the book.

Unlike This is a Story..., Truth & Beauty was heartbreaking in content; yet still lovely in its way with words. 

It left me dwelling on the above.... on the effort of being miserable vs. being happy... I see this so often in life. (Or perhaps, more accurately, so often of Facebook, where people tend to put both their misery and happiness in words.) 

Far too often I think people get into the habit of demanding that their misery be noticed.

I'm sad. I'm lonely. Nobody loves me. Why doesn't anyone appreciate me?

I wonder why it is so hard to see the problem of focusing on what brings us down. Only occasionally am I drawn to respond. I might comment or send a private note to someone who truly seems to be suffering, but more often I turn away. 

Does that make me cold hearted? Does that make me a bad friend?

It's not the occasional, "Hey, I'm having a tough day," that I'm talking about. We are only human, after all. I don't mind the now-and-then harrumph, or enough already, or man life sucks! But I have friends who have truly gone through some serious pain and loss and, yet, they still manage to smile and show their sunny side as much or more often than they frown out loud.

My issue is the people who dwell there. The people who seem intent on expending all their energy on feelings misery when it seems that those feelings are primarily being generated by the person to create more misery. It's as if it were a contest and they want everyone to know that they are winning. As if collecting the "oh you poor thing" comments actually makes life any better.

Manipulating others into feeling sorry for you only confirms that you are a sad and sorry person. Trust me. It doesn't make you feel any better except maybe for that brief moment of connection when someone looks your way (or comments on your wall). In the long wrong you have done nothing to improve your state of mind or state of being.

Truth & Beauty was about a friendship... a lovely friendship that spanned twenty years. But honestly? As much as I admired Ann, and even admired her friend, to some extent, I found myself midway through the book thinking that I would never be a person, like Ann, who has that depth of kind and generous. I have many friends that I consider life-long, but I don't know that I could/would put up with the things Ann dealt with in her relationship with Lucy Grealy.

Is my bar too high? Do I have unrealistic expectations that all of my friends should be stronger? Wiser? More capable?

Perhaps the truth is that I find the line between happiness and misery too easy to cross myself. I fear tying myself to people who are so freely miserable. I've found myself in the position of purposely getting out of these relationships in the past. I let them drag me down until I finally see it, they are trying to take me with them and beginning to succeed. Maybe I am the one who is not strong enough. Maybe if I were stronger, I could spread enough sunshine for both of us.

What I wish these people could see is that dwelling on what is wrong in life makes the wrong things grow big until it is hard to see beyond the shadows they cast. 

When instead, I've tackled my own grey clouds with a quest to bring a smile to someone else's face, I find that I can smile easier, as well. It works. I find happiness by focusing on good. To dwell on them, especially publicly, where I get feedback, only makes them last longer and grow darker. 

I don't want to be a person who runs from people who are in pain. I know that there are times in life when we simply have to embrace what is, even when it's hard and/or sad beyond reason. But I also don't want to be a person who exerts all my effort on chosing misery.

I hope that I am wise enough to see the difference.

Snow Day

This winter weather is proving to be hard even on me. Yes, the one who returned to Kansas, in part, because I needed four complete seasons. How can one appreciate summer without the deep cold of winter to catch up on snuggling-beneath-the-covers time?

Last winter we opted to save the dollars we usually spent on winter gym time and kept up the three mornings a week walk/run/whatever even through the cold and snow season. I felt pretty hard core, as spring arrived. With morning temperatures routinely in the teens and single digits, however, it has not been nearly so easy this year. I don't want to get out of bed, never mind bundling up enough to move about outdoors. I still haven't broken down for a gym membership, but have pulled my 75 cents for one day from the change basket on the fridge enough to have paid for a membership perhaps several times by now.

As a family, we spent three and a half hours shoveling snow after last week's episode, which honestly, is easier for me to take than bitter cold without the moisture. At least I can appreciate the snow will stay and take its sweet time seeping into the ground. We are still in a drought here in Kansas, after all. My greener, eastern half of the state is reminding me, far too often these days, of the golden shades of greenish brown from my childhood home of western Kansas. My arms still ache a little. The constant scarf around my neck and winter coat over my shoulders is starting to feel like extra weight I long to be free of but can not shake. I am tired of my bulky sweaters and extra layers. I open my t-shirt drawer with longing.

But the real bonus of cold weather plus snow (this round) was the unexpected days at home. I mean, when you work for yourself, as the hubby and I mostly do, any day can be a day off in theory, but the reality is that I often find myself more mired in the rut of working hours than I was when I was punching someone else's time clock. I've learned to schedule vacation days for sanity's sake.

Last Tuesday, however, to wake up to real snow falling from the sky and then listen to the list of cancellations and closures on the radio began to awake memories of snow days from long ago. Staying home, though not necessary, at least in the early hours of the day, was an entirely real possibility. And so I made the decision to do so, and the result--a day free of the routine, unexpectedly--was refreshing and good for the creative soul. 

My writing projects list has grown by leaps and bounds. 

I find myself studying the weather forecast. If there is no promise of warmer temperatures, can't we at least have more show-stopping snow? I find myself thinking. I could use a good excuse to stay here at home for a few more days. Just me and my keyboard and a couple of my favorite notebooks. If enough snow were to fall, I might even write one of those projects all the way to completion.