Social Life

Spent the morning preparing for then hosting a brunch, just for a couple family members...very low-key, but somehow, it managed to stress me out...also, looking at the next few days, they are remarkably busy with school and social engagements, also, taking the cat to the vet for a nail trim and rabies shot, etc. etc.

Trying not to freak out about all that...but it does mean, I'll only have brief snatches of time to work on the stories.

I'm going to try to appreciate the fact that I have some kind of social life, and, find a way to carve out at least three hours a day for the stories...no matter what.

Now aiming for February 14th (Valentine's Day) for a final completion date.

All But Done

Made it through all of the stories; 104 total.  They are cleaned up and ready to go, finally.  Except.

I do feel the need to read through all of them one last time.  I'm sure I missed a typo here and there. And maybe a few of them just don't deserve to see the light of day.  And I probably used too many inactive verbs.  Maybe three or four of the stories are just dumb, or implausible...

Okay.  One more time.  But this time, it'll be quick.  Two days, tops.

Back to Work (Finally)

Finished editing one more story today, just one...but the last five stories are all further from completion than the others.  The work today was like chipping away at a statue where you know that many parts of it aren't quite right, but as soon as you remove a bit from the hand, the lower back suddenly looks funny...laborious, in other words.  But now I have just four more stories left.  Must get them done pronto.

Unbelievable

It's terrible that I didn't get to the writing today.  And yet...

It was my husband's birthday.  We had a nice celebration; my husband loved his presents, and enjoyed the cake, and our son had fun unwrapping the presents, lighting the candles with me, and helping my husband blow them out.  It was a simple event, yet meaningful.

I had a good run.  I still haven't checked to see how far I went.  Felt strong twinges of pain in my knee at the start, but kept on running, and those twinges vanished and I ran slowly but steadily...and the absence of pain made it all feel extra good.

I cleaned the kitchen and straightened out papers, something I've needed to do for at least a month now...I had to do it because the plumber is coming tomorrow to redo the kitchen pipes.  Now the kitchen looks presentable--not completely chaotic--which is a big mood-booster somehow.

I thought more about moving to Washington...which won't happen any time soon, certainly not this year and probably not next...but I have a stronger and stronger feeling that it's in the cards for, perhaps, four years from now; perhaps six.  And my husband feels the same way.  Somehow, that makes us both feel pretty good.  We feel like we're headed towards a more balanced, less frenetic life.

And, speaking of frenetic, I have a meeting at my son's school tomorrow, to talk about parent drivers who are breaking safety rules for drop-off and pickup times; I've done my utmost to notify all the people that should be there about this meeting...and they're all coming.  Mission accomplished.

So things are good...in every area except the writing.  Which feels bad.  But tomorrow--after the meeting--will charge ahead.

I give myself eight days to finish the whole damn thing.

Day by Day

Things still not rosy...but not bleak either.

Still just coping, in some ways...and yes, this was another day away from the writing.

I had a garden lesson to teach this morning for my son's class, and in many ways that was the highlight of the day.  We looked at earthworms and potato bugs (I grew up calling them potato bugs; "roly-poly" seems to be the most popular word for them nowadays but they'll always be potato bugs to me), and conducted two experiments.  I tried to teach the kids how to be scientists:  observe closely and record your observations, make a hypothesis, conduct the experiment, write down the results. The potato bugs didn't seem to want to be the subjects of a science experiment; they curled up into their delightful little balls and threatened to stay that way throughout.  But finally, they uncurled themselves and meandered over to one of the two dirt piles.  I was trying to show that potato bugs prefer moist soil over dry soil, but of course, one potato bug wandered over to the dry soil just for the hell of it.  I think most of the kids doing the potato bug experiment wished they had chosen the earthworm experiment instead (which was, "can earthworms smell"--one dirt pile had vinegar in it, which those wriggly creatures avoided like the plague in favor of the non-vinegar pile).  However--I'm trying to think of the whole thing as a success...and really, for the most part it was.

Other than that...shopping, basic cleaning and organizing, a little bit of vacation planning, exercising, taking the kid to his coding lesson, going to the pet store for cat treats, watching excerpts of various Star Wars movies with my son (he can only watch certain scenes--he self-censors to avoid the "really scary parts"), helping with his writing homework, cooking, and doing some reading with him...took up the rest of the day.

Tomorrow, finally, I have around three hours to spend on the writing...holy cow it's been a long time.

Better?

I've just barely made it through the exercise regimen these last five or six days...all the language work, the reading, the organizing, have fallen by the wayside.  Not to mention, the stories.

But--I do feel slightly better today.  More hopeful.  That will not be my life, the dull routine I described yesterday...

Went ice skating with my son today, and yes, that was another much-needed change of pace.  The fascination with which he watched snow falling from high overhead (they have an artificial snow machine), during the last few minutes of the skating session...that alone was worth the trip to the rink.

The Flip Side of Fun

Okay, so I had the exciting lunch date yesterday...today it was, help little guy with homework, do the dishes, vacuum, get little guy out of the house for some exercise, send an email (requiring an hour of thought) regarding one of my volunteer duties at school, cook lunch, read with little guy, jog, cook dinner, wash dishes...

And suddenly, after not feeling so bad all day, I'm feeling bad.  Just down in the dumps.

"It's just insane!" one of the digital video program friends I met yesterday was saying, referring to her new life with two young kids.  "I'm soooo tired."  She has a three-year-old and a six-month-old, and anyone with kids knows how tired she must be, even if her daughters are angels.  At the same time, she's thinking about applying for a job at a sound studio...she's the kind of woman who will make it happen one way or another; I definitely believe that.  If not this sound studio job, something else equally interesting...she just has that solidity about her; she's both extremely dynamic and extremely practical, which are two qualities that don't usually merge in one human.  She can move mountains.

So what about me?  I can move piles of junk around in my house so they don't look quite so awful.

Did I mention that I feel down in the dumps?

What's in a Lunch

Spent time today with special friends I made nine years ago, while taking the Digital Video Intensive course at San Francisco State.  Nine years--good grief.  I've only been in semi-regular touch with one of those people and after the lunch today I'm really thinking, why on earth did I let those terrific relationships fade?

The eight of us bonded as a group, very quickly, and had loads of fun during the 16 weeks of all-day training.  They taught us every aspect of making digital videos (not that all of it can be taught in 16 weeks--but they did a great job at covering each aspect of making a film--if not in exhaustive thoroughness, at least, in a fair amount of depth.  And at the same time we learned (at least I learned, or had the message brought home to me once again) that "intensive" is the best way to approach any new field of study.  Just go all out.  Eat and drink the stuff, day and night, whatever it is.  Try to learn everything there is to learn in 16 weeks...then keep doing it for another 16, and another...

If you don't approach something with that degree of devotion and passion, you're not likely to make your mark in that chosen field.  That is--if you don't approach it that way for a good four or five years (not just 16 weeks).  Four years, times 3,650 hours (assuming you've worked 10 hours a day) is about what it takes.  Just to start doing something interesting.

But yes...we all need a balanced life...

I say that with a fair degree of irony of course.  Because a BIG part of me would have loved to have spent the last eight or nine years immersed in filmmaking and writing (I see them as part of the same whole).  Let's throw in some music-making for good measure...A big part of me would have loved to have spent the last nine years immersed in crafting good stories, whether in documentary videos, in writing, or in music.

But what I was reminded of, today at lunch with my old buddies, is what it feels like to hang out with others who share the same sort of dreams...and, damn it, what it feels like to dream.  I'd lost that for a little while.

Even More So

It has not been a good week.  It doesn't feel right to go into details, not yet at least...need to spend some time with the problems first.  I don't think they're insurmountable, but they aren't trivial either.

Yes, I've had to fake it today like a maniac...and right now I'm just extremely tired.

At the same time...I think things are getting into better focus, and that's good.

And, at least no one is terribly ill at the moment.

Faking It

Finally today, my son returned to school; he'd been out the previous two days.  This morning he woke up and didn't cough for the first forty minutes or so, but that was a bit deceptive.  He had a vigorous attack of coughing, suddenly, and then I was so much on the fence about school, that I ended up keeping him home until 10 a.m.  He happily sat down at the picnic tables to eat his snack, after saying goodbye, so I thought he'd be fine...but at pickup he mentioned that something a bit traumatic had happened during the day; at one point during the Mad Science presentation they'd had in class, the smoke from an experiment had blown into his face and, according to him, caused him to cough, and he couldn't stop coughing for a long time.  I will have to ask his teacher for more details...I'm not a huge fan of what I've seen of Mad Science, an outfit that organizes "wild" science parties and things like that, all over the Bay Area...but my son was also eager to try one of the science experiments they demonstrated, so maybe it wasn't all bad.

Am so incredibly tired right now, as I write this (couldn't sleep more than three hours last night)...and, yes, still depressed.  Though it isn't hitting me like a sledgehammer today, as it did yesterday.  These days I'm just going through the motions of living--faking it, in other words--but sometimes that's enough to, well, lift morale a bit.  The faking went successfully in other words.

I know that things will settle down, eventually; that I'll finish the stories and send them out...but he's been out of school for two and a half days; I've been far too busy with school chores since winter break ended; and he'll have a three-day weekend again this weekend; and then there's another vacation week, February 15th through the 19th...I've got to finish the stories before then.

The only really nice thing that happened today (besides my son's very beautiful smile--not stemming from anything I did or said, just, his normal beatific smile, stemming from his exuberant, peaceful spirit), and a few wonderful things he said--besides my son, the only really nice thing that happened today, was a 4.2-mile jog (finally, after three days stuck at home, I could go jogging), on a new route, one that seems more peaceful and promising than the other two jogging routes I've usually used.  I didn't jog fast at all, but it didn't really matter.  And my depression definitely shifted after that. Instead of a 50-pound anvil it's maybe a 20-pounder now.

The Depressive Theory of Creativity

I subscribe somewhat to what I'll call the "depressive theory" of creativity.  I do believe that some artists can reach new creative heights after suffering depressive episodes...the dark episode, in some unknown way, unleashes the creativity.  Maybe because, after an attack of serious depression, the brain is more quiet than usual--allowing new thoughts to enter.

Of course, the key word there is "after."

It's not a scientific theory; it's just based on my own experience.  It depends partly on the degree of depression--too intense and it just muddles the brain.

I seem to be going through one of those bleak periods...so I'm hoping for great things in, say, two weeks?  Either that, or complete burnout.

It's partly due to fatigue.  Have not gotten enough sleep for weeks on end.  In fact, my sleep has been similar to the stock market's performance for the last several months.

It also has to do with a complete stagnation on the writing front (yes, due in part to tending to a sick child--who's much better today thank goodness--but more to the fact that I've had so many other pressing mom-related chores to accomplish in recent days).  I've only got five stories left to finish.  So completely desperate to get to them.

Health

My son is sick yet again, a bad cough, again.

I think this coughing "thing" is going around, a cold that starts with the cough, unlike most colds...but I haven't compared notes with enough local moms to know for sure...anyway, my son had a cough for three weeks in December/early January (just in time for Winter Break), and now it's already back.  Rather concerned.  This blog seems so trivial compared to my son's health, so I'm going to stop there for now.

Oh Well

I wasn't very successful at getting things done, again today...but I wasn't completely pathetic either. A few chores took up an inordinate amount of time.  I decided today that the Number One priority had to be, transplanting all the potted plants and seedlings that needed transplanting in the front and back yards...some of those poor plants were obviously desperate to get out of their confined spaces.  I also managed to do some cleaning (though very little), and got on my exercise bike for 35 minutes (not the outdoor bike which has been languishing in my garage since the rains finally returned to California over a month ago).  Went shopping for basic stuff.  That's about it...

But I forgot to mention...the cat woke up both my husband and me at 3 a.m. with her "Let's play!" meow, so soft and cute (and SO annoying)...then, a minute later, my son stumbled into our bedroom announcing that one of his front teeth had just come out, and I had to help him rinse out his mouth and stash the tooth in a safe spot so the tooth fairy could do her job...I could NOT get back to sleep until around 5:00 or 5:30.  And that was after at least three nights in a row of slightly less-than-adequate sleep, partly because my son seems to be coming down with something.  So my having accomplished "precious little" is a-okay.  After all--my sanity is still intact.

Going Down in the Snack Aisle

Today was such a low-energy day it's hardly even worth it to write.  I could have committed hara-kiri in the snack aisle of our local Safeway, I was so bored at that particular moment and had so many groceries to buy...managed to run three miles, but at a slower pace than I'd wanted...it's raining a lot these days, which is wonderful, but adds to the feeling that seems to have overtaken the whole family, this long weekend, to whit:  let's all just be lazy, and do exactly what we want.  My son is coughing again (again!) so it makes it easy (again) to indulge him a little...he's gotten a lot of computer time this weekend, though he did get out for a short hike today with his dad.

I'm looking at cabins in the Sierras, not because we are seriously thinking about buying at the moment, but because it serves as a mini-escape...and my husband is reading books about World War II.  That has been our weekend, so far...tomorrow though, determined to take my son ice skating, edit two stories (am down to the last five), clean the house more seriously than I've cleaned it for a while, and (if the rain lets up tomorrow) get on my bike, even for a short ride.

Coding at Six

My son is crazy about coding.  I'm glad that he is developing a skill, but it's so much about designing violent video games (knights' battles with ghosts and skeletons for instance) that I have to wonder:  what overall effect does this have on his imagination?  To tell the truth, I'm worried.

He's been learning simple coding skills for about eight months now, and has made terrific progress...but I feel that it might be at the expense of so many other things:  developing a strong body, improving his gross motor skills by learning a few different sports, going for a medium-length (3 miles?) hike or 7-mile bike ride at least twice a week, learning snorkeling so he can do that in Hawaii (which we plan to visit in the next year or so), improving his fine-motor skills through art class and just sitting down with a pen and writing something, reading chapter books with ease and understanding more complex stories, playing an instrument, learning martial arts, joining the Cub Scouts or 4H so that he improves his social skills and learns about other things besides software...and so forth.

I need to make more progress with signing him up for some of the aforementioned activities...I've been slow about that, partly because I've been busy, but perhaps in large part because I know he'll be reluctant to try anything except coding classes, which he's already taking...but that's all the more reason to do it.

And even if I do sign him up for various things...we need to set a harder limit on the time he spends in front of a computer.  Too strict a limit and he'll hanker for it...but he simply needs a more balanced life.

Gardeners and Crossing Guards

People think that suburbia is boring, and yes, it is...which used to drive me crazy when I was a teenager.  But there are people here quietly doing difficult work that must get done...people who should be recognized and amply rewarded for what they do.  Instead they're ignored most of the time, and not paid much at all.

We gave our gardener a Christmas bonus, but are we really paying him enough?  He is so conscientious about gathering the leaves from our lawns, driveway and patio; and these are sizeable areas.  Plus we've had so much wind lately that the volume of leaves is at least three times what it normally is.  But he gathered them all this morning (he must have been here for an hour) without any complaints, and without cutting corners.  He's getting a raise; that's all there is to it.

I just spoke with one of the crossing guards at my son's school.  He's worked that same intersection at the school for 11 years, and in that whole time, the salaries have never increased.  He's in a step pay system, and is now on the highest level--but even that level is still only a few dollars above minimum wage.  They should raise the salaries of every step of that difficult, stressful job, for crying out loud.  Like they do for any other city employee.

Eleven years of protecting kids and their parents, at an intersection that must see about four or five hundred cars go through during the dropoff, and again at pickup.  And he's just about the nicest guy around, though he sees people behaving like jerks at that intersection, all the time.  They're having trouble hiring enough people for the crossing guard positions in this town.  Is it any wonder, when they putting their lives in danger every day, and get paid so little for it?

Very Close

I'm so close to finishing the stories that I can almost taste it...but...

I've got to read them through one more time before sending them out.  I want to punch up the language in places...take out boring "is" sentences, find better verbs and better ways to describe things...take out absolutely all the deadwood; and perhaps cut out the four or five worst stories, the ones where the central character is a dull schmuck or the story just doesn't flow well.

Can I stand to postpone finishing for yet one more week??

Yes.  I must.

The Tuxedo Cat and Guerrilla Warfare

Our crazy cat, when feeling frisky, bites my feet or lower leg or whatever part of me she can access; five times out of six, it's a sneak attack.

It just happened.  It often happens at around this time, 9 p.m....which is the "top of the morning" for cats.  I was exercising with 8-pound weights and so, was irritated that she lunged for my foot at that precise moment, when I might have dropped the weights on her by accident.  And, it hurt.   I bent down to where she was hiding, under the bed, clamped my hand on her back, and held her there for about five seconds.

I felt bad afterwards for this gesture.  It just wasn't all that fair; she had no way to know how to interpret my actions.  I'd intended to convey a simple message to behave, but I think the message probably got lost in translation.

That's the problem with being stronger than anyone...those intentions to "gently instruct" often get lost in translation, too, on any level--personal, local, international; they sometimes devolve into actions of brute force, without anyone wishing for that to happen.  Obama bragging about the U.S. being far stronger than any other nation, yesterday in his State of the Union--I know that he was just telling the Republican candidates to stop yammering about how weak and vulnerable we are.  I don't blame him for this message.  I'm just not as comfortable with America being the super-duper power of the world, as he seems to be.

The Mysteries of Editing

A busy day...this and that; chores for my son's school took up most of the day, but did manage to squeeze in about two hours on the stories...a bit frustrated with the amount of rewriting some of them seem to demand, but I know that's pretty normal.  Chris Rock put it the most eloquently perhaps; you start out with a first draft and everything sucking, and it takes a long time "to get past the suck."  I think I've gotten past it with some of the stories, maybe even, the majority of them...but how many of them are really going to spread their wings and fly onto the pages of some magazine, or get published in a book?

How the hell should I know?  I'm just sweeping out the garbage.

Alviso

I've always wanted to visit the tiny town of Alviso, perched at the bottom tip of San Francisco Bay...because I grew up not too far from there, and it hovered for decades on the periphery of my consciousness as a geographically important yet demographically insignificant part of the Bay Area.   It used to be a dump, literally; at least, there used to be a huge dump there, and if anyone was talking about the place, they were usually talking about the dump.  It used to be smelly, and it often floods, so I wondered why anyone would want to live there.

Now, there's a 19-acre wildlife refuge and county park; people go duck hunting, and there are several miles of hiking trails, on levees that lead out through Alviso Slough and into the bay.  It's not exactly gorgeous, but in its emptiness and its air of seclusion, it's a good place to stroll or jog, or think about life, or watch a wide variety of shorebirds.  (It wouldn't be my first choice on a summer afternoon, however, as there's not a spot of shade.)  Yesterday we walked for about an hour and a half, the stillness of the scene around us punctuated from time to time by the roar of jets leaving San Jose Airport.   At one point we encountered a white heron, as tall as my very tall six-year-old; at about the same time we spotted six or seven white pelicans, taking up most of the space on an island the size of a large closet. Two trains went by--first a freight train, then an Amtrak passenger train which was (in keeping with the lonely atmosphere of our surroundings) nearly empty.

The town of Alviso has experienced more than its share of upheavals and transformations.  A major Bay Area port in the 1850s, the importance of the city faded quickly when the railroad system was created that linked San Jose and San Francisco, starting around 1864.  After his canning factory was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, Sai Yin Chew moved his canning operation from San Francisco to Alviso (an extremely dilapidated hulk of a building, with the words "Bayside Canning Company" proudly inscribed in old-fashioned lettering on its facade, still sits there near the waterfront, along with some colorful old Victorian houses and a few more modern dwellings.  For a while, that canning operation was the third-largest in the United States.  Alviso was a popular place for gambling and bootleg whiskey in the Depression, and became a popular boat-building center in the 1960s and 70s; it was a disaster site in the early 1980s when floods devastated the entire town.  In 1968, it was quietly incorporated into the city of San Jose--but it still looks and feels like a place apart.  The population is recorded at around 2,100 these days, although when we visited, we didn't see a single man or beast walking its streets--though we weren't there very long.

The wetlands areas are fighting to recover from the degradation caused by a century and a half of neglect and outright abuse; yet there are plenty of signs that it's now a functioning, if not thriving, ecosystem.  The county park was created a mere six years ago.  Maybe in another sixty, I wouldn't even recognize the place.

Nothing to Envy

Just finished reading another book about North Koreans, written by Barbara Demick, a Los Angeles Times reporter.  The book, entitled Nothing to Envy:  the Lives of Ordinary North Koreans, focuses on the stories of six defectors from the same North Korean city, Chongjin, the 3rd largest city in North Korea.  It's based on her interviews with these six defectors as well as supporting material from about 100 other defectors she interviewed in Seoul, while based there, for a series of Los Angeles Times articles.

What a book.  I don't want to wander over into hyperbole, but I've rarely read any piece of reportage that impressed and moved me as much as this one.  I feel that I've gotten a very truthful glimpse into an extraordinarily closed, dangerous, completely Orwellian world.  And more than is the case with In Order to Live, the book has uplifting moments, as the defectors find various ingenious ways to improve their lives within that horribly repressive regime, then shift gears completely and attempt to thrive in ultra-modern, ultra-capitalist South Korea.

I can't recommend the book highly enough.

Grin and Bear It, Phase 2

I feel horribly "behind" in every aspect of my life.  Housewifely duties, motherly duties, writing, exercise, everything.

I'm going to have to just accept that this is where I am right now.  And make it better.

End of story.

In Order to Live

Usually in this blog, I write about "freedom" as time away from my duties as a housewife and mother.  When I know that in reality, I'm lucky to have the freedom to have chosen those roles. Beyond the fact that I'm free from persecution, I'm free from my former jobs as a secretary, administrator, and badly paid college lecturer.  (At least for the time being.)  And with only one child, and my husband working successfully in the tech industry so that I don't have to go back to work just yet, I really have an enormous amount of freedom.

The lack of freedom Yeonmi Kim, the author of the memoir In Order to Live, has experienced in her life so far, is almost too monumental to comprehend...but it's important to make an effort--to try to understand North Korea, and how badly its 25 million people are suffering.

As a child, Kim was frequently starving and doing without the most basic necessities, including, in one harrowing passage, the necessity of having one's parents at one's side (at the age of eight, she lived alone with her only slightly older sister in their very poorly heated home in North Korea for weeks, waiting for their mother, who was in another city looking for their imprisoned father.  They were alone, freezing, and had almost nothing to eat).  Not only was her family stripped of everything because of the difficulty of making a living, but they were simultaneously forced (like everyone else) to believe that their rulers were nothing short of gods, even though those same rulers were killing and torturing hundreds of thousands of their own people.

Then, as a refugee in China, she and her mother were treated worse than farm animals--raped, beaten, sold as sex slaves.  In another horrible moment shortly before leaving North Korea, she had her appendix removed and then, while recovering at the hospital, had to walk past dead, decaying, rat-infested corpses stacked up outside, just to use an outdoor latrine.

She quotes Joan Didion in the title of her book:  "We tell ourselves stories in order to live."  I feel that way sometimes--that if I don't tell stories, I might as well be dead.  But for Kim this statement has a much more important meaning.  There are people being cruelly tortured and treated like animals right now in North Korea and the part of China that borders it, and they are essentially voiceless.   She is speaking for all of them.

I am afraid for her; she talks about her post-traumatic stress, as well as the difficulties of fitting into both South Korean society and Western society; also, there is the simple fact that she is considered a despicable person now by the North Korean government.  But she has an incredible fighting spirit.  Looking at the trajectory of her life so far, I have to believe that she'll survive everything life throws at her, and will continue to be an admirable spokesperson for her people.

Given the disparity between how she speaks in live interviews and the smooth-flowing English in which the book is written (it was written "with" another writer, Maryanne Vollers), I feel somewhat cheated; that's my only slight criticism of the book.  I want to hear it in Kim's own words, directly; it's her story, her very personal story, and I want to know exactly how she described it before the professional writer made it sound more beautiful.  My mother was also from another country, and spoke English badly; I could never write a story about my mother unless I included her grammar and usage mistakes.  Those flaws in her English tell a story, too...of how hard it was for her in America, and how she was always painfully straddling two very different identities.

But that's a minor quibble with what is otherwise a very moving book, well worth reading.

Grin and Bear It

I worked well this week... I always have interruptions to deal with...basic housewifely chores to complete...but I think I worked at least three hours every day, Monday through Thursday.  Friday is a short day for my son so I know I'll only have about two hours tomorrow, since I have some other urgent work to do for his school...that will mean, about fourteen hours I've spent on the stories this week.  

But I can't feel good about this at all.  It feels, constantly, like it's not enough time.  And like I'm horribly behind.

Blending Together

Certainly I question, sometimes, the worth of any of these stories I'm writing.  Don't they all sound alike?  Aren't they all just the same?  And, aren't they all equally boring?

I've edited the stories now for months, and they're all blending together in some sinister way...I've got to finish this project soon because I can't really tell any more if the stories are good; I've gone over them too many times.

The truly distressing part of it is--I keep finding dozens of things to correct in them.  No matter how many times I've already cleaned them up.

I've really got to finish this project and move on.

When...

When, Oh, When Will It Be Done?  That's just about the only thing on my mind right now.

The house is a mess, papers and books strewn everywhere...upstairs, downstairs.

I have about five overdue tasks to take care of related to my son.  Signing up for art class, swimming and/or gymnastics and/or or martial arts...plus volunteer duties at his school (at least four major tasks to start this week).

I edited about five stories today; so, making progress.  But everything else in my life has been shoved aside.  Everything, that is, except the activities on my new daily schedule:  Japanese and French (30 minutes a day), piano (at least 15 minutes), reading a "Great Book" and studying art (at least 30 minutes/20 pages), yoga and knee and weight exercises plus aerobics (45 minutes)...plus this blog.

For the next week and a half...I'll have to focus a little less on the editing; there are just too many motherly chores to attend to.

But I've got to carve out at least four hours a day for the editing.  So hungry to get it done, once and for all.

The Shock of Drop-Off

My son returned to school after winter break today; it was perhaps more of a shock for me than for him.  Somehow, the little three-minute chat session with various parents before school starts, and again before the kids are released in the afternoon, is always both a mildly pleasurable and mildly uncomfortable experience.  No one knows what to say, and therefore we all launch into inane remarks about the weather, about what we did during the break, about this and that...today, I felt both genuine happiness at seeing other adults again besides my husband, and genuine discomfort...I know that other parents experience these feelings--and many of the ones who are chatting away with ease are actually thinking, "why do I have to submit to the chit-chat routine?  Can't I just sit in a corner of the waiting area, drink my coffee and check emails on my smart phone?"

In spite of it all, I often end up engaging in fairly substantive conversations with the other parents, in spite of their brevity, and in spite of the somewhat forced (involuntary) quality of our connection ...however, if it's pickup time, my son usually pulls on my arm to steer me toward the car just at the point when the conversation with the other parent is getting interesting.  For which behavior, I don't really blame him.  Who wants to stand there, right after school, while his mom blabs away with another mom?

I've never been good at being natural during any sort of transition moment.  But I've got at least another couple years of this dropoff-and-pickup routine...better start doing it more gracefully, if possible.

Editing at a Snail's Pace

During my son's entire winter break, I only managed to finish editing three stories...a very pitiful level of productiveness.  But tomorrow, finally, he's back in school.  I have thirty stories out of one hundred left to complete.  It's not that much...and now, finally, I have about four hours a day for the next four days to spend on them.  I should be able to finish, let's say, the lion's share of them by the end of this week--and all of them by the fifteenth of this month.

I really need to get it done and send them out...it's been about six years now that I've been mucking around with these stories.  Time to move on to something else.

So Far So Good / Montara State Beach and Environs

I managed to do everything on the list, yesterday and today, except paper organizing.  The "writing" I did was actually editing, but until the short-short stories are finished, that's probably the way it has to be.

Getting back to the piano felt great.  So did (to a lesser extent) studying Japanese and French.  I devoted a large portion of my life to those three activities...pursuing them now feels like exercising three very underused and flabby muscles; but, with any luck, in four or five years, I might be able to get them close to the level they were at when I pushed them aside for everything else--caregiving, video production, writing.

We went to Montara State Beach today (since we were visiting someone in San Francisco and we all felt like taking a hike); it was high tide, and about ten minutes into our walk in Gray Whale Cove, my son was "attacked" by a rogue wave--he only got his pants and socks and shoes wet, so it wasn't a complete disaster, and I had stuffed (just a few minutes before our departure) an extra pair of pants for him, and two pairs of socks, into the backpack I took along for the trip.  After changing him while he balanced on a log above the sand (supported from behind by my husband), I suggested we hike the Gray Whale Cove trail, which skirts the edge of the cliffs above the beach.  The trail only lasted about a quarter mile; we walked past a restaurant (La Costanera, it's called), then found another trail on the other side of Highway 1 and off 2nd Street.  We soon found ourselves walking through some of the only surviving wetlands marshes in all of San Mateo County, through a working horse farm, and beyond that, partway up Montara Mountain.  My son's energy flagged pretty quickly, though we did manage to get a pretty good view of the entire cove before he had to turn around and go back to the car.  My husband and I would like to hike to the top of the mountain the next time we return (probably without the little guy, for the time being).

Both my husband and I were cheered by the discovery of this set of trails--new to us--that meander through the parcels of land east of Montara and its beaches--once privately held, now (since the 1980s) open to the public.  We were also discouraged to see how short a distance our son is capable of hiking these days (we only hiked for thirty minutes and he was already complaining of fatigue)...though it's true that he's had a very decent cough since a few days before Christmas, which has undoubtedly affected his stamina to some degree.

At any rate, it's the beginning of a new year, he's six years old, and I told him we're going to go hiking at least twice a week...increasing the distance little by little, until, hopefully, he can manage a five-mile hike with very few problems.

New Year, Manic Me

I was experiencing some kind of end-of-the-year temporary depression, these last several days.  Once again, running has pulled me out of it; I managed a 7.2 mile run today.  It's probably the longest I've ever run so it feels good; and my mood has lifted.

Aside from daily exercise, the new diet, and daily blogging, and despite the very great possibility that this will make me sound like a manic, obsessive idiot--here are the other things I want to do just about every day this year:

--touch the piano at least once for around twenty minutes on average, leading to at least one or two afternoons playing a Schubert Piano Trio or the Brahms Horn Trio or similar with a group of old musician-friends.

--have a mid-afternoon tea or hot cocoa break.  Partly because I feel I should drink more tea, partly because it sounds like such a relaxing thing to do.  I don't have enough relaxing moments incorporated into my day.  (And that ten-minute break cannot include checking emails, paying bills or any other particularly useful activity; that would defeat the purpose.)

--check emails less; instead, set aside just a few minutes in the early morning, and ten minutes after dinner, to handle all emails.

--read and speak French and Japanese for at least 30 minutes (not at the same time, ha).  I've lost most of my fluency with both languages these past eight or nine years; time to reclaim it.

--play outdoors with my son every day:  basketball, soccer, tennis, biking, walking, whatever.

--write or draw or complete science projects or carpentry projects or board games with my son (even ten minutes is far better than nothing).

--write a minimum of 30 minutes a day (new stuff, not editing).

--watch or read something funny, keep fully abreast of the news, and learn something significant about history, every day.

--read twenty or more pages of one classic work a day (I have a goal of reading about 100 "great books" in the next few years).

--start playing the electric bass (I have one, given to me a few years ago by a friend, but I've never tried to play it).  Maybe try the guitar too.

--read once a day with my son.  (I'm setting the bar kind of high as a mom this year--but why not?)

--work every day to become a published writer, either by sending works out, developing a web site, finding and reading good magazines, etc. etc.

--spend about ten minutes a day, perhaps right before the afternoon tea, organizing papers (otherwise I'll keep falling behind with that).

--watch fifteen to thirty minutes of my art history or science dvds right before or after dinner (the two "Great Courses" I've meant to complete for about seven years); take an extension course on astronomy.

--make time to cook a special dish, maybe twice a week a completely new dish (I want to improve my cooking, make it more nutritionally balanced and more creative at the same time) or an old dish, prepared in a careful way.

--make time to email and call old friends (not every day, but at least once a week).

--garden at least once a week; start a composting program at home.

--go hiking or walking somewhere special at least once a week.

--meditate at least once a week for twenty minutes.

--advance the video career with at least five hours of effort a week.  More once the stories are out (ten hours a week minimum).

Am hoping, with this slightly over-the-top micro-managing of my own life, to break the habit of letting too many things slide.  I'm applying here the same technique I used in 2015 for diet and exercise, which is simply:  do it, whatever "it" is, every single day.

So, time to get started.