Jettisoning

I usually have a theme for each year, and it’s becoming clear to me that this is the year of ditching old crap that no longer serves me. Like excess weight (15 pounds down and counting; compulsive overeating no longer interests me whatsoever; wish I could explain why not, but it’s sort of beyond my grasp at this point), the piles and piles of clothes, paper, tsotschkes, and toys that overwhelm our living space, and worries over finances.

It’s all getting chucked out the window like the TVs in the old intro to SCTV.

In the short term, this means we’re going to have a garage sale this year, probably at the end of this month. I’m really not a garage sale person; I’d much prefer to throw shit in the minivan and have Dan haul it off to some charity, where I’ll misplace the receipt and forget to claim the donations on our taxes. But we have some bigger pieces to get rid of and an unusually large amount of stuff to go along with it, so for this year, at least, we’ll do a garage sale. Well, truth be told, a “let’s pile a bunch of our crap on our front lawn and hope someone will want to buy it!” sale. All proceeds will go toward helping get rid of our credit card debt.

Any tips on running one?

I’m also in this weird state of mind where I don’t want to travel very much, no epic journeys right now (it helps that I have Fred to look forward to this summer). EDITED TO ADD: There’s one trip I desperately want to take–to Denver to see Foo Fighters play Red Rocks this July. (No, I’m not kidding!) But I know that ain’t happening the way this year has gone financially. Boo.

If this isn’t a sure sign something’s up with me, I don’t know what is. I really want to hunker down right here, take care of the family and the house, work hard, laugh often, and pay down our debt.

Monday Music

One of the main characters in my novel is Irish, and I’ve had The Waterboys and Prefab Sprout on the brain as a result. Here’s one of my favorite songs of theirs. Oh, 1980s, you puckish decade, you.

Here’s another. And really we can’t have a Waterboys conversation without “Fisherman’s Blues,” can we? Light in my head | You in my arms | Woo! (There’s no actual video here, but I prefer the studio version to the scores of live clips available on YouTube, and don’t know of a source for linking to MP3s, so that’ll have to do).

Sadly, my very favorite, a cover of Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing,” from their album “Fisherman’s Blues,” isn’t available online anywhere except for one really icky live version. Bummer.

From “The Whole of the Moon”

I was grounded
While you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truths
You cut through lies
I saw the rain-dirty valley
You saw brigadoon
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered, I guessed, and I tried
You just knew
I sighed
But you swooned
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

Edited to add: I’m a huge fan of ipod commercials, and make Dan rewind the TiVo to watch them every time. So when I bought this song from itunes, the boys went absolutely batshit crazy for it, making me play it about 30 times on the way home from my parents’ house the other day. It’s a great little tune. The Ting Tings had a featured free song in the iTunes store the other week, too. If you weren’t aware of this, each week iTunes is featuring a free song to download each week, and Starbucks is also handing out cards with code numbers on them for free songs. I got an awesome Counting Crows song from Sbux and discovered both the Ting Tings and The Kills from the free song download deal. You can’t beat free music, you really can’t. Unless it’s sucky music, but so far, I’ve been lucky.

In Between Days

I find it hardest to get back to blogging after I haven’t written in a while. Also: my life isn’t all that fascinating these days. Not that it was before, but perhaps I have greater clarity and that’s causing me to avoid writing here at all. I’m finding Twitter suits my attention span much more, too. No, I’m not going to stop blogging, I’m just sayin’. Hell if I even know what it is I’m sayin’.

I’m working off-site today, and realizing what a boon this is to my oft-tenuous mental state. Productivity!  Now that Starbucks allows AT&T customers to log onto the Internet without an additional charge, I’ve been a very happy writer today. Ran into a couple of friends today, a handful of annoying strangers (::shaking fist at Booming Voice Nextel Walkie Talkie Phone Guy::–hey, Walkie Talkie Man by Stereogram just came on my ipod as I typed that–awesome! Go watch that now; it’s a great vid), and a really interesting lonely guy a couple of years older than my dad. He just wanted someone to talk to, I could tell, so we talked for a long while. Mostly, I listened. He’s a former photographer turned airline mechanic who’s now switching back to photography; he had an old Hasselbad film camera and was on his way to photograph the Square with some shutterbug pals. He also has a hard-on about arguing against illegal immigrants, but I nodded and let him have his say. It’s not like there’s an easy solution to that problem, anyway. Had we met on the Internet, I’m sure the conversation wouldn’t have been nearly as pleasant.

Still working on the novel, 101K words deep (not all of which are usable), but taking a couple of days off (mostly) due to being sick while having paying work to do. Even while laying on the couch for hours, staring out the window, dialog and scenes kept coming to me. Whatever, brain; rock out with your dendrites out, little buddy. I came up with what I hope is kind of a cool plot twist for the ending, but what the hell do I know? I strongly suspect what I’ve done here is string together approximately 10,000 cliches that are the result of  my pop-culture-philic temperament and have the temerity to call it a novel. The best part? I’m having too much fun to care, though I really do want to sell it. I think my total ignorance about fiction writing and publishing is my saving grace here. What my brain doesn’t know won’t hurt me, right?

My in-laws are back in town and hopefully we’ll see them soon. Welcome home, McLellans! Try not to notice the crud that’s accumulated under the dining room table and the toy explosion. I’ve been sick and on deadline, and there’s no helping us when those two worlds collide. Some dear friends had birthdays this week; Melessa and Texas Jen and Kelly and my friend’s little boy turned 2 today (we celebrated yesterday). Lots of excellent humans were born in May, I’ll say that.

Our Poor Brains

Either I’m not terribly bright, or life really is a continual learning process, because I’m rather surprised I didn’t see this connection between my firstborn son and me sooner.

I’m cleaning my pit of an office and sorting through all the crap that’s cluttered our dining room bench since JANUARY, and came across some of Jackson’s notebooks from second grade. There are a series of drawings of the Titanic, from his months-long phase where he ate, slept, and drank all things about the ill-fated ship. He’s done oil paintings, marker drawings, pencil sketches, and made books about her. That’s his brain: he totally immerses himself in his passions, seldom coming up for air. And when he’s done, he’s done, no looking back, call yourself a cab and get out. (Can you tell I’m loving that joke? God, I’m so glad not to be dating!). Right now, he’s into all things Olympics, thanks to his new Mario & Sonic at the Olympics game for the Wii. He’s even planning on being IN the Olympics when they hit Chicago in 2016, and given that ever since I vowed never to tell him he can’t achieve something after he got the parakeet to ride his Lego train despite my protestations to the contrary, who am I to tell him he won’t make it? I wonder where he’s going to take that brain of his, what will rob him of sleep and food that will drive him to keep creating, creating, creating?

I’ve come to realize since this novel fell into my head last month, that gee, I just might be the source of Jackson’s pit bull brain. Especially when the novel first hit me, all I wanted to do - and pretty much all I did - was write it. I dreamed about it, talked about it, foisted scenes on my unsuspecting husband and a couple of friends, and I wrote scenes in my head while doing other tasks like doing dishes or gardening or walking. The characters have their own vocal mannerisms and accents and motivations and they all play in this crazy orchestra up in my head. Oh yeah, also: Always playing in the background? Foo Fighters. I just cranked up the tunes and wrote and wrote and wrote. Conduit, indeed.

Some days, entire scenes come to me, and others, I go back and tweak stuff after re-reading it. But I keep returning to it, over and over, with a thirst I’ve never experienced about anything in my life before that’s unconnected to those I love, something that’s entirely mine.

Now, I know how completely insane I must sound by admitting to all of this, but I ask: what are you, new? I suppose now I’ll have to dedicate the novel to both my husband AND Dave Grohl AND Robert B. Parker. And Jackson. Awesome.

TValicious

Yeah, another one of these posts where I write not about what most people care to watch, but what I do, because I’m a selfish prick like that. Let’s see . . .

The writing on Medium continues to be superb. It’s funny, it’s often dark and sometimes scary, and the dialogue is believable. The opener made both Dan and I laugh aloud. Alison has a dream about her friend, Detective Scanlon, and calls him in the middle of the night. He’s in bed, shirtless, and at the end of their conversation, says something to the effect of “Could you cover your eyes, Alison? Because I’m about to get out of bed and I’m not wearing any clothes.” I think maybe the bit is funnier if you’ve been watching the show for a while, but it was hysterical.

I could say the same about Bones, where the cast really continues to gel and the writing is peppered with another bizarre mix of humor and the macabre.

We just got around to watching last week’s Battlestar Galactica, and if you haven’t seen it yet, don’t read this paragraph. It started out pretty slowly, and 2/3 of the way through, I found myself apologizing to Dan, saying that prior seasons were far more exciting and captivating. Figures, right? Well, then the action picked up and he was treated to a dose of classic Galactica action, drama, and trauma. I will say that I’ve despised the Callie character pretty much from the get-go (plus, she landed my second-fave character, the Chief!) but hated the way she had to go. As an aside, while I realize that the point for the writers was to portray her to the world at large around her as a mother experiencing post partum depression or something akin to that, the scene where she tells Doc Cottle (sp?) that she’s sleep deprived and unable to get decent rest, and then says she’s taking antidepressants that aren’t helping, the very last thing he should’ve told her as their appointment wrapped up was, “Go home and get some rest.” The hell? Isn’t that her whole problem, that she can’t get any rest? That she’s exhibiting symptoms of depression and paranoia, both likely the result of severe sleep deprivation? Crikey, writers, I know you needed to make your point, but why do so this lazily? Also: you really can’t go wrong with angry Starbuck/Anders sex, can you? Though the good-bye between her and Lee Adama the week before was far more powerful.

Finally, Law & Order, featuring Jesse L. Martin’s last episode as Det. Green. It was okay, not as disappointing as other farewell episodes, and at least he didn’t ask if he was being prosecuted because he’s a lesbian, (though that stupid Andy Capp hat he wore had me wondering). Anyway, the writers need to devote more time to the consistently entertaining S. Epatha Merkerson. And I’m not sure about the new guy; he bungles through his first investigation and that gets him hired onto homicide? Things that make you go, hmm, we have to write a quick wrap-up after the writers’ strike, and the lesbian plot line’s already taken. How about we just jump him from IAD to Homicide after first presenting him as moderately incompetent but able to crack wise in classic L&O fashion? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Watching anything good? Tell me about it.

Not the Best of News

So I requested a script for physical therapy on my ankle, since my knee is in need of it so I thought, why not coordinate both parts of my seriously screwed up right leg? When the very nice physician’s assistant called me back, he said he’d get the okay for this, but that he wasn’t sure how much P.T. could help, since “the more range of motion you have going on in there, the more it’s going to hurt.”

Nice.

I told him that I’d like to see about therapeutic massage, since the whole leg gets screwed up and tight from my improper gait, causing me to ask my friends, husband, and random strangers on the street if they could please stick their elbows in my butt. He said that might be possible (the P.T. massage, not the elbow-in-the-butt thing). I told him I walk all the time and have no intention of stopping any time soon, because it’s better to burn out than fade away, right? That cracked him up. My physician’s assistant: he’s a great crowd.

Mostly, I’m okay with the levels of pain I live with, even though I think about running all the time, probably because I can’t. I’ve taken to walking really fast playing really loud music instead. I’m not sure if or when I’ll have ankle replacement surgery, since I refuse to have it fused, which stops the pain but leaves you walking like Frankenstein’s monster’s sister. His much younger, hotter sister. But still: Frankensteiny. I found out that I don’t need knee surgery, which is great. And since I’ve lost 15 pounds so far this year and have drastically changed my diet due to losing my appetite, I’m in far less pain. So, all in all, I’ll take the not-so-great news about not being able to really move that ankle too much if I can keep on feeling as good as I do now. I can save up for that tummy tuck instead. What?

Eat, Pray, Shut Up, Already!

Somebody besides me fails to see the greatness in Elizabeth Gilbert’s epic journey:

And finally, at the suggestion of approximately 5,478 people, I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, and made it through the Italy part and so far, I’m trying to resist the compulsion to hunt her down — wherever she is right now, I don’t care — so that I can rip her self-indulgent, bratty little face off. Oh WOE IS ME. GROW UP. We ALLL go through shit, and many people do it with infinitely more grace than she’s demonstrated through her (totally not) self-deprecating filter. And further, OH FURTHER, we manage to do it without a book advance so that we can go “find ourselves” abroad (at 34, mind you) and learn to — you guessed it — Eat! Pray! Love! and then write about our “journey” while whining our way through three countries.

Here she shares her new doctor’s opinion about the book. While I am already madly love with my new doctor, I’d see that one just based on that one-liner review.

Thanks to Meagan for turning me on to this blog!

Hell Yeah Remember Aurora

One of their best songs. Sorry but this WordPress theme won’t let me embed videos. Grr.

This song makes me go all squishy inside. Drums. Ooooh.

This is pretty much cementing my plans to see these guys at Red Rocks this year.

One more? Okay. I love screaming along with this one in the car with the kids. What?

But I Guess I’m Already There

Here’s one of many reasons I love living where I do - the people are just amazingly cool. Yes, I know, cool people exist everywhere, but humor me as I’m feelin’ the love from our very first McHenry County (ish) flickr Meet-Up. Five of us met for lunch at my favorite eatery, The Woodstock Public House and then headed out to the Square to take photos. (There’s only 3 links here because one person brought her really amazing and cool daughter, who isn’t on flickr). One of the people has a Nikon D300 (JEALOUS!!) and we tried out each others’ lenses - like this wide angle used to take the above image.

I was kind of nervous about this, wondering if everyone would click (ahem) or if nobody would show and I’d have to sit alone at the bar, drinking Fat Tire beer bongs while texting Lonna about what a loser I am. But everyone was great, and those guys know way more about gear and technique than I do. See what I mean about what a boon it is to hang out with people who are more talented than you are? There’s always opportunities to learn and grow. Everyone agreed that we should make this a regular thing, and I’m going to invite a couple of my flickr pals who live outside of the county just to add to the mix. We’ve also talked about invading one of the monthly Chicago flickr meet-ups, too.

I learned today that I’m still pretty much a mediocre photographer, and maybe I always will be. But I could really stand to get my hands on Adobe Lightroom, because Tom’s group photo was processed to look soooo much cooler than mine. But I know how to tell a good story with my photos, and that somehow matters to me more now. I’m really feeling okay about telling perfectionism to hit the road. Call yourself a cab and don’t call me, I’ll call you, asshole.

Doing > Thinking

For most of my life, I was sort of a timid thinker instead of a doer. I used to surround myself with people who were better at this than me, probably because I sensed that I possessed what I saw in them but didn’t quite know how to get out of my own head yet.

Lately I’ve been experiencing something akin to a mid-life crisis (though, since I plan on living to at least 100, I’d have much rather waited 10 years to get started on that). Having a novel fall into my brain in two weeks’ time kind of sparked it. I just did it, I didn’t research it, I didn’t over-think it, I just . . . wrote. And of course, any fool can tell you, isn’t that the crux of anything worthwhile? You just do it.

I’ve read about half the interviews with Dave Grohl on this site that houses all things Foo Fighters the other day, and he mentions teaching himself the drums on his pillows in his room. He said that when he’d hear music, he could picture which part of the drums were being hit when he’d hear the drum parts. And he dropped out of high school to tour with a punk band, and that led him to audition with Nirvana and, very shortly afterward, fame and fortune beyond his wildest imaginings. I’m convinced that this is what killed Cobain; Grohl insists they weren’t going for fame, but just to play, and having everyone recognize and want a piece of you had to have been crushing.

But the point is: they just got out there and did what they loved, they steeped themselves in their passions and ran with it and it literally took on a life of its own. That’s how I feel about writing fiction right now. I am not enamored with freelancing, but I do see it as a vehicle to get me where I want to be. Having passion for writing and music right now is my saving grace; the rest is gravy. It’s making me think about my writing business differently; no need to reinvent the wheel, no need to build huge platform as this or that expert; just do the job and cash the checks, maybe having a little fun along the way and working with editors I enjoy working with. I’m not suggesting that any novel I write will change the world in the way that Nirvana changed music; what I am saying is that I’m going to do it no matter what, whether I’m paid in cheap beer and beans and hot dogs or land a healthy book deal. I’m doing it anyway, because I have to.