Trying to Roll with It

Back from Arnold, California, one of our less-than-ideal vacation experiences.  The vacation cabin we rented had not been cleaned up after the previous guests left--towels piled up in bathrooms, beds unmade, crumbs everywhere...we immediately called the owner, who apologized and said he would summon the housekeeper, but we thought for a minute and asked him if we could just have a refund.  He graciously accepted.

Found a hotel in town...unfortunately it was in one of the busiest sections of downtown Arnold; plus the first night it snowed which meant, at 5 a.m. the next morning the snowplows were at work, which in and of itself might not have awakened us, but the snowplow operators kept shouting at each other across the street...

Another unpleasant moment of this trip was during our short hike that first afternoon in town, when the skies threatened rain or snow and it was already getting dark.  We stopped at White Pines Lake, then hiked a small portion of the Arnold Rim Trail.  About ten minutes into the hike, when my husband had gone on ahead because our son was going too slowly for him, a medium-sized brown dog with a big muzzle came up to us and snarled at my son, who instinctively hid behind me.  The owner, an older woman, apologized and said, "He's not good around children"; even after that it took her a long time to catch her dog.  But either he got out of her grasp or she released him soon after, because we were continuing up the trail when the dog suddenly came chasing after us again, the woman far behind him.  

He gets to within five feet of us and is snarling and barking excitedly while making movements as if to attack.  I pick up a large stick and wave it toward the dog.  The woman catches up with her dog a second time, but she does not succeed at corralling it.  My son and I continue down the trail (I'm still clutching the stick), and luckily the dog seems to have lost interest in tearing us limb from limb.  

We woke up after the first night to a winter wonderland.  It was still snowing, so we stayed indoors until around noon.  Had lunch in a kitschy western-themed cafe (ominous cow skulls balanced on copper milk jugs in front of the fire, poster of John Wayne over the mantel).  The proprietor, a potbellied man with a hard stare that softened up only a little when he smiled, served up some tasty scrambled eggs, hash browns and toast.  At one point my son looked up at a sign and said, "That sign doesn't make any sense."  The sign said, "WHEN YOU'RE HERE YOU'RE FAMILY."  What can I say, my son is a literalist.

We ended up eating dinner twice at a spacious and inviting family restaurant called the Snowshoe Pub.  The service was great, especially since the waitresses were being run off their feet by the crowds that piled in each night.  

That second afternoon we found a decent spot at a turnoff (Black Springs, I think it was called) for my son to go sledding for the second time in his life.  (The first time was in Klamath Falls, Oregon when he was 3 years old.)  The first slope we tried was too steep for him.  I found myself idiotically yelling instructions at him which he wouldn't follow simply because it was too much to take in. Why on earth did I start yelling?  Not one of my stellar moments as a mother.

The whole experience turned around when we tried a smaller slope which he mastered quickly.  Then a group of about ten children (ages 2 to 15) and one man (the most good-natured man ever, which was necessary considering the army of excited kids he was leading) stopped at the same spot and started blasting down the really steep slope, tumbling into the snow several times and almost breaking their necks, but laughing and having a great time.  They soon found a better place after that, a rock about four feet high covered in snow in front of a medium-steep hillside.  We followed them to their new spot, and then my son truly mastered the art of sledding, going farther once than any of the other kids (was I proud?  Yes, of course).  "You get extra points for hitting a kid," the man joked, when my son almost started down the hill with a kid still in his path.  

That sledding experience was the highlight of the trip.  We also visited Bear Valley Cross Country center, where they had three beautiful slopes for sledding, and not much of a crowd even during the President's Day ski week, and my son had fun, but it was somehow not quite as enjoyable as our semi-private sledding adventure.

I also had a mishap at Bear Valley, which might have influenced my opinion somewhat:  walking back to the car to get my husband's cell phone, I took a "shortcut" off the ski tracks and my foot sank three feet into a hole, which quickly filled up with water.  I could only pull my foot out without the snow boot; then, after a minute of struggle, I finally managed to extricate the soaking-wet boot.  Trudged back to the car, I dried my foot off as well as I could with one of my son's socks, and put on my rain boots (thank heavens I'd brought them) and lumbered back to the sledding slopes, where my son was having a blast.  Yes, it was well worth it, freezing wet foot and all.

We came home a day early because the hotel room, though pleasant enough, just wasn't very restful; the second night some noisy neighbors stomped into their rooms at midnight, talking loudly and laughing, waking up my husband and me (my son sleeps the very sound sleep of a six-year-old).

So the "ski vacation" became a mostly-enjoyable sledding vacation...which was just fine with all of us.   

  

Ski Day

Our "ski week" will probably be a ski day...but it'll be the first day in my son's life...if he makes it to the ski slopes, that is.

We're going to a small town near the base of the Sierras called Arnold, then making quick excursions further up the highway to Bear Valley for the skiing.  Except that there's supposed to be a rain and snowstorm tomorrow, into the next day.  That will be wonderful for my son to experience, of course--the very first falling snow of his life--but it will impede any skiing we were intending to do. However, we still have Friday and Saturday to give it a try; we'll see.

Parks Near You

One of my favorite things to do is to discover something that feels off the beaten path, yet is less than a fifteen-minute drive from our house.  That's what I found yesterday, a park near San Francisco Bay that includes at least two miles of trails, marsh areas that look fairly clean, large green fields, and a few play structures.  Someone has done a lot of work on this place.  And my son and I enjoyed it with just a sprinkling of other people, maybe fifteen total.  Our first sight, when we left the car, was a huge heron, probably a great blue, passing over our heads.  The way it moved, so slowly and majestically, and with a great sense of purpose--made me feel, somehow, that my life mattered, that we all fit into the pattern of things...

On another topic (I'm tired, need to make this brutally short)--I can't believe I forgot to post anything for two days in a row.  But I suppose the world isn't going to stop spinning because of that.

Routine and Chaos

I have a love-hate relationship with both.  I recognize that they play off of each other, are sometimes two sides of the same coin.  No routine without occasional, minute injections of chaos (otherwise how do you keep from going insane?).  No chaos without the comforting return to some sort of routine.

However, lately I've swung over to the "chaos" side of things and have had no luck achieving and maintaining a routine.  And -- I blame the stories.  As well as the five different volunteer assignments I've taken on at school.

With the stories, it's not about the work itself, it's the fact that I'm so sick of having them around; they're like friends who've stayed waaaay past the end of a party and seem to have forgotten how to go home.  You sit there smiling and stifling a yawn, but inside, you feel like strangling them.

At any rate--I finally finished editing, but still have to input the changes for those same 25 stories.  Could get it done in two hours.  Hope to finish by Sunday night.  Then the hunt for magazines starts in earnest.

81

As in, I'm on #81 and still have 25 to finish...could get there tomorrow with a little concentrated effort.  I'm so sick of all the stories, every last one of them.  I know that some of them are pretty good...but, it's been so many years now...and just in the last several months, I've read all of them at least five, some of them forty-five times...I am really at the limit.

Inching Along

All my posts sound alike these days...but, I'm about two-thirds of the way through the LAST, god-awful proofreading of all the short-short stories.  To say that I'm sick of them doesn't begin to describe it.  But I still find glaring typos and other ridiculous errors in them.  Got to finish...and get them out...three more days and I'm really, really done.

Babysitting is Damn Hard Work

Today I babysat one of my son's classmates, just for two and a half hours, right after school...I was exhausted after it was done...which had to do with the fact that I didn't get enough sleep last night, but also with the fact that I'd decided the kids had to have a cookie-baking session and a treasure hunt--one that included finding three clues and solving three problems (math, French and spelling-related. It had nothing to do with the girl I was babysitting; I adore her and she was very sweet and cooperative throughout the play date; my son, on the other hand, was terribly jealous and not very polite.  He was supremely disappointed not to be the one to discover the treasure, but as the girl so rightly pointed out, he discovered the hidden location of the treasure map so they were virtually tied...and what does it matter?

The real problem, of course, is that my son is so used to having me 110% to himself.  I had a talk with him after the play date, about taking care of people when they come to our house, making them feel welcome, and why there was no reason to feel jealous of all the attention I was paying to his friend.  I emphasized the fact that no one is more important to me than he is, that I will always love him more than any other child.

That's definitely true...but every now and then, a little girl following the rules can be awfully nice to have around.

Checking In

Still fighting the over-arching sense of depression that has plagued me for a couple months now.  Still worried about a number of things.  Today I managed to clean all three of our bathrooms, for the first time in at least a month...it took two dismal hours.  We have about 2100 square feet and it seems like most of that is bathroom space.  Also spent a lot of time with the boy (it's Sunday), reading, doing a writing exercise, taking him to the library, getting started with multiplication tables (just for fun...he was really excited about that).  Yet, felt guilty because we didn't get to go boating; by the time I called our local (very small) lake, they were almost ready to shut down for the day.  I told him, for sure we'd go next weekend.  I hope to be there next Saturday (or even Friday afternoon?) right when they open.

The depression has to do with the very big feeling of being LATE for every single aspect of my life: the writing, getting my son signed up for after-school classes, getting ready for a triathlon, getting back into French and Japanese, reading the classics, fixing up the house so that I'm never ashamed to have guests over, studying cooking recipes, the video work.

But this is so silly, and I know it.  Why am I guilt-tripping about all this?  I'm barely keeping up with housework and my son's daily needs and my school volunteering and some sort of exercise regimen...and the work on those damn stories.  BUT, I'm doing it.

It just really doesn't feel like enough.

Doing Something New--2

The other aspect of these short-shorts that is not new, but not done much these days:  I've opted for plain speech that is, for the most part, not snarky and not pretending to be omniscient.  I think we have too much of that in contemporary American writing, and in the culture in general, a sort of empty smartness...

"No, it's not empty smartness, it's just trying for something original and interesting," I hear someone reply.  Maybe so.  But I'm still trying for simplicity.

Doing Something New

One of the stories I reviewed today is about two women who are trying to write.  They met in a grad school English program; one went on to teach at the university level, and is discouraged about her dissertation thesis, thinking it's not worthy of publication; the other ended up working in a preschool and writing stories that attempt to use language in new ways.  "I don't think it's worth it to write anything unless you're trying to do something new," the short-story writer says to the woman who is a university professor.  The professor thinks:  yeah, but what if you're just trying to pay the bills?

I see both points of view; one of the reasons I wrote the story, obviously.  But I side mostly with the short-story writer.  It's too depressing to write unless something about what you're doing is completely new.

Are my short-short stories new?  Just in the sense that I'm trying to write stories that talk about people's lives in a deep way, in a thousand words or less.  But in terms of language, the stories aren't all that innovative.  Also, their structure isn't all that exciting.

One thing that appears necessary, however, when you're writing a very short story, is to have extremely good beginnings and endings.  The opening has to set the scene very quickly and pull you into that character's life in one or two sentences.  The closing has to resonate, like a bell that's struck and makes your whole body hum.  It has to open up the characters--expose secret passageways into their souls, and by extension, into yours.  Maybe, as the writer, I'm not going to guide the reader through every secret passageway (in fact it's impossible to do so), but, I must show the reader where they are, and let them imagine what the path looks like.  Some of the characters are depressed or shut down in some way; in that case, I lead the reader to that secret path, only to have it disappear under brambles and thorns; no way through.

I'm a bit depressed myself, about several different things; but at the same time, I have a stronger sense, as I work my way through the stories one more time, that most of them--maybe eighty percent?--deserve to be published.  In some ways, I feel like my stories are more myself than I am, right now...they're my better self.

In the next batch of short-shorts (if I ever get to the next batch) I will experiment more with new styles and forms.  It just feels like the direction in which I'm headed.

Sleep Is the Best Drug

I was just drifting off to sleep when I remembered...this.  So, short and sweet.  Today was not at all terrible in spite of the fact (because of the fact) that I was hanging out with my son all day, unexpectedly, because he was sick, with that same bad cough that has been plaguing him frequently, since around mid-December.  Tonight he's sleeping quietly, thank goodness...I'm exhausted, so that's it for now.

10 urgent little things

I had coffee with my mother's group...we run away for coffee in the middle of morning once every month or so.  And of course, we talk about kids, summer camp, school issues, etc. etc.  It was an enjoyable time, for sure, but it was also like being in an echo chamber--all of us hyper-concerned about what summer camp to choose for our kids, what swim school, whether to sign up our kids for 4H, Little League, and so on and so forth.

But what I really wanted to say:  I arrived at the coffee about ten minutes late, explaining that my day was jam-packed.  "You know one of those days when you have about ten different urgent things to take care of, and none of them by themselves amount to much, but they all pretty much have to get done that day?  That's the kind of day I'm having," I told them.  Which was true enough.

But it dawned on me later:  that's the day every mom has almost every day.  That's the kind of day I've been having, every day since my son was born.  There are always at least 10 urgent little things to do.
But today, this week, it's even more that way than usual, somehow.

Inundated

Somehow I'm swamped again this week with tasks for both home and school...it's a bad week, that's all I can say.  Today we had drywall workers here until 2 p.m., making a hell of a racket (this after the plumbers were here all day Thursday and Friday, installing new copper pipes for our kitchen sink...it's a long and uninteresting story, the saga of the kitchen pipes, so I'll just stop there).  I had to take my cat to the vet in the middle of all that, a trip which took up most of the morning.

The only bright spot of the day:  my son prepared a nice booklet of all the writing projects he's done at home in the last week and a half to improve his writing skills; every day we look up a new animal on Wikipedia and he writes about it.  We assembled these "reports" into a booklet and we'll present it to his teacher tomorrow.

That was the big depressing thing I refused to mention a couple weeks ago:  my teacher reported to me that my son is struggling at school with his writing and with more complex reading (reading to follow a complicated plot).  But when I say, "struggling," I wonder how much of it is truly a struggle for him?  Because at home, he seems to be doing pretty well.  Anyway, he's now working hard on the writing, and somewhat on the reading.  We'll see.

And tomorrow--if I don't get in some decent jogging and three hours on the stories...inundated or not, it's got to be done.