Why I Need a Momcation

Yesterday I noticed that Sammy, my male dog, was black under the tail. Yuck. Unfortunately, Tom didn't get home until about 8:30pm, and by the time he walked in the door, I was so flat out exhausted from a horrible-screaming-whining-three-year-old day that I just didn't have it in me to add a dog bath to my evening to-dos.

Then, earlier today, I noticed that Tuendi had a giant glob of poop hanging from her hind end fur (one of the downsides of pet ownership). Double yuck. The dogs spent the day outside while Tom and I worked around the house. Tom laid backerboard and ceramic tiles in the toilet area of our bathroom (which was an all-day affair, save for a quick jaunt to Sam's Club and Home Depot), and I corralled boys, packaged items I plan to sell at the upcoming consignment sale, did laundry, scrubbed our toilets and bathtub with CLR (surprisingly effective stuff), and cooked dinner. After dinner, Tom went out to mow the lawn, I bathed John and put him to bed, and finally had a moment to bathe the dogs as well.

It started out fine. Two dogs in the bathtub, warm running water, large bottle of dog shampoo. Then Sam appeared at my elbow. He wanted to help. Great. The dogs HATE him. Tuendi cringes every time he's in the same room with her. And they were already stressed from a day spent outside, and the bath wasn't exactly a highlight of their day either. I showed Sam how to make the shampoo sudsy if he rubbed it between his palms, and for a few minutes, we happily worked side by side, me soaping up Tuendi while he lathered up Sammy--until he lobbed a rubber ducky at Sammy's nose. Sammy growled and while I was scolding Sam, Tuendi made a break for it and ran pell mel around the upstairs leaving a trail of suds on the brand new carpet. On my way after her, I told Sammy to stay, and shut the bathroom door.

I tried to grab Tuendi, but she slipped from my grasp like a greased pig. I finally cornered her as she tried to crawl underneath the bed (where she was thwarted by the Rubbermaid under-the-bed containers that hold Sam's winter wardrobe), and got a firm enough grip on her to carry her unceremoniously back to the bathroom. Where the door was locked.

For whatever reason, Sam likes to fiddle with that particular doorknob, and it is prone to locking easily. We have been locked out of the bathroom so often that we've actually stashed a long, pointy screwdriver that can disable the lock from the hall in an easy-accessible drawer. So picture me, a death grip on a slippery dog, muttering expletives to myself as I trudge back down the hall to get the screwdriver, stick the screwdriver into the hole on the doorknob, and with soapy fingers, attempt to hold the dog, keep the screwdriver in place, and turn the knob, while telling Sam that it is not neccessary to repeat all of mommy's bad words. Then I unlock the now-open bathroom door, shove Tuendi back in the bathroom, put the screwdriver away for next time, return to the bathroom, rinse, and repeat.

Out With the Old...

The whole month of July has totally taken me by surprise. It showed up completely unannounced and by the time I recovered from the shock it was, well, today (the 17th)...

I had a minor heart attack when I realized that the local Fall consignment sales were a short two weeks away and that I needed to get my butt in gear immediately to prepare for them. This is easier said than done, and anyone who's been following my blog a while knows that it's an all-consuming twice-yearly process that very nearly kills me.

So yesterday, I went up into our attic and pulled down the Rubbermaid Containers of Death and began sorting. One pile to sell. One pile for Goodwill. One pile for It-Looks-Big-It-Might-Actually-Fit-John-Another-Year. (The nice thing about having two boys close in age is the whole insta-hand-me-down thing. I promised Tom this day would come. John is set for the next 2 years. And since I always buy Sam's clothes at the end of season clearance sales, and he hasn't been growing very fast, so is he.)

Then I bagged and boxed everything that needed to be bagged and boxed, and shoved it in the closet I lovingly refer to as Pandora's Box. The door closes only by the grace of God, and you'd better be prepared for all manner of things to rain down on your head if you ever open it.

I packed up toys, and tracked down outgrown socks. I washed. I ziplocked. I re-organized the boys' rooms. The upstairs closets were neat as pins (except for the Pandora closet--my post-consignment-sale project). The only thing I didn't do yesterday was fold and put away the laundry and run around with a garbage bag for last minute pieces of trash.

Tom comes home and has a roaring shit fit about "all the crap everywhere." He has no idea...

Today I took Sam and John to K-mart. They have the best prices/cutest clothes for boys I've found anywhere and I always make it a point to shop their clearance sales. The prices were pretty good ($2.50-$5 for t-shirts, $5 for pajamas, and $6 for 2-piece outfits and 2 packs of shorts) so I went ahead and bought everything he'll need for next year. My strategy (which I would recommend to any mom) is to do all your shopping at a store like K-mart and try to buy pieces that are mix and match. I've found that Sam is very long in the torso, and at the beginning of the summer, he was wearing 24 month shorts and 3T tops, but is now more or less in 3T. Because I buy everything at K-mart, the dye lots all match, and the colors from two years ago match the colors on the clothes I bought last summer, and the clothes I bought today match the previous two years'. I save crazy amounts of money doing this. For $130 dollars, I walked out with 14 outfits, 2 pairs of pajamas, and a swim set (rash guard and board shorts).

This was the first shopping trip where Sam's ever expressed an opinion on his wardrobe. He picked out a lot of Lightening MacQueen clothes. He made me put back a shirt with jungle animals on it, which he called "shirt for the baby," and for some reason did not want dump truck pajamas. Go figure...

Why It Sucks to be a Writer or Beware, A Rant

I sent my full manuscript to the publisher at 2:37pm and by 3:44pm I had a response. Now, I am a fast reader, but even I cannot read 289 pages in 67 minutes.

The verdict--"the laundry list of rooms and their flaws was more than their editor could take".

It was suggested to me by the editor that I re-work and then re-submit--with an eye toward holding the reader's interest.

In case anyone is curious, THIS is why ordinarily nice, placid authors stick their heads in ovens and drown themselves.

I worked for THREE years on my novel. Yes, it's a first novel, and yes, it's probably rough in places and could stand some editing, but I also wrote the scenes I did on purpose. And then I joined a critique group. No less than seven pairs of eyes have read and critiqued my novel. In an earlier draft, I glossed over Alex and Will's home buying trip/description of the layout of the house, and was told repeatedly by my critique group that I needed to describe the interior. That I had to explain right off the bat why they buy the house they do and show that Alex and Will are at odds about the house from the very moment they walk through the door.

Perhaps the chapter could use some enlivening, but I am offended that the powers that be at this particular publishing house read however much they managed in an hour and seven minutes and without getting past that point in the story, decided that the book in its entirety needed to be re-worked and that things weren't going to pick up considerably. And furthermore, I am pissed off that they told me to re-work "it", whatever "it" is and then re-submit it to them.

You know how you break up with someone and say "I hope we can still be friends?" That's what "Re-write your book and then re-submit it to us" feels like.

Add to this the indignity of being rejected in sixty-seven minutes, and it's something like Speed Dating where you've spent two hours getting ready, are looking as attractive as you possibly can, sit down at the table, open your mouth to introduce yourself, and he takes one look at you and says, "Oh, hell no!"

One Lovely Blog Award #2

My friend Cathy who authors the blog Musings in Mayhem nominated me for another Lovely Blog Award. Thanks Cathy! You've got a lovely blog too!

Again I've got to come up with seven previously unknown things about me. Let's see what I can dredge up today. :-)

1. I took a Facebook quiz today that seemed really accurate. It seems the color green suits my personality best because:

You are a cool yet energized person. You probably tend to be a little more introverted than extroverted - while you love being with your friends, you still need your "you" time. You are probably a rather laid back, zen sort of person, unless you get a good kick of energy; then you can be crazy fun! You are probably insightful and smart; logic comes easily to you. You tend to be a balance between red and yellow. Reds are passionate and intense, and tend to walk over people. Yellows tend to be the walked on, because they like to keep the peace. You, however, are a balance of both. You know when to lie down and let someone take the lead, but if you feel strongly about something, you're not afraid to stand up for it! You are probably compassionate as well, and like animals and plants. You may be a little off-beat, and feel like not many people really see the depth in your personality. You would probably rather keep things on a superficial level that other people can understand than show the deeper side of yourself. You, in a nutshell: Cool, energized, balanced, strong, funky, zen, deep, intelligent, logical, compassionate. GREEN!

2. This description made me almost-deleriously happy and I would be thrilled to think this is how people actually saw me. No matter what I do, I always feel like a gigantic fuddy duddy. Even during the wildest times in my life--times I wore plastic mini-skirts, was bar hopping in Europe, danced on bar tops for free shots, and spent weekends partying at clubs the only female with an entire troop of Danish soldiers, I still felt like I wasn't doing enough to put myself out there and really go nuts. I always feel like I have to prove that I'm fun to hang out with, when I probably already am.

3. I have no tattoos or piercings (except for my ears and they periodically grow closed since I rarely wear jewelry of any kind).

4. I can't stand to wear flip flops because I don't like the feeling of anything between my toes.

5. I have to go in tomorrow for another CT scan of my thymus. It's probably unchanged since the last time, but I hate the unknown all the same.

6. I'm not doing a very good job of being profound today. I want to say something really interesting and insightful about myself, but I'm exhausted from traveling. Whether you're driving or flying to NY, it's a long way away, and I wish it wasn't such an ordeal just to visit family. I'm also sad that all our big plans have already happened and we don't have anything exciting to look forward to now.

7. Tom's pretty much out of vacation for the rest of the year, so we will be here by ourselves for all the holidays. I'm not looking forward to that at all. Thanksgiving and Christmas are my favorite holidays and I like it when all is a hive of activity. I also like an excuse to cook big, starchy meals, with lots of desserts, and throw parties. But for whatever reason, our house is never the gathering spot for any of that, so I never get a chance to do it, and I'm not inspired to knock myself out when it's just the four of us.

Another Embroidery Project--Daffodils

If it seems like I've been quiet of late, it's because I was feverishly preparing for my brother-in-law Dan's wedding. In addition to making 100 daffodil-themed favors, I also embroidered his new wife, Kelly, a daffodil-themed tablecloth(they're her favorite flowers).

This was a lot easier said than done, and not only because of the embroidering itself. I learned to embroider in Hungary, where there are traditional flower patterns embroidered in tranditional colors. Since daffodils are everywhere, I figured I could just look online for the daffodil pattern and go nuts. But no. There were no daffodil patterns to be had. I even went so far as to look up the Hungarian word for "daffodil" (which I didn't know offhand) and did a search on Hungarian search engines. No luck. I emailed my Hungarian friend, Dora, and said "Why can't I find a daffodil pattern?" Apparently, Hungarians don't embroider daffodils. (And yet they do embroider paprika and wheat???) Since she's currently living in Munich, she offered to look there and see what she could find. She came through for me and sent me the pattern for a beautiful daffodil-themed tablecloth, and it fortuitously was covered in lavendar. By a happy coincidence, Kelly's wedding colors were yellow and lavendar. Perfect!




So, anyway, for the last month and a half, I have been an embroidering fool, trying to get the tablecloth finished in time for the wedding. I couldn't mention it online because the post would've shown up on Facebook and ruined the surprise... So I seemed to be in hermit mode, when I really wasn't.



I finished the tablecloth at the end of June, and am really pleased with how it turned out considering that before I started, my embroidery skills were limited to the satin and stem stiches (the main stitches in the Kalocsa style of Hungarian embroidery I learned). This tablecloth had those stitches, in addition to the lazy daisy stitch, long and short stitch, and french knots--all of which I had to teach myself on the fly! I discovered that there are a plethora of helpful internet tutorials and by using them managed to do a fairly adequate job even though I'd never attempted those stiches before and they scared the you-know-what out of me! I was sure I was going to ruin a patch of fabric at some point from sewing in and then ripping out again.



I was really surprised (and pleased) that Kelly and Dan liked the tablecloth so much that they included it in their ceremony. It covered the table with the unity candle on it, and looked really beautiful, even if I do say so myself.



When you hand sew something for someone (especially now, when most people don't value handcrafts as much as they once did), you always wonder if it's going to be put to use or just get stuck in a drawer somewhere. It's gratifying to know that the things you make are appreciated and can be used and enjoyed.



If I can expand on the idea and become metaphorical, it's much like writing a novel. (It seems like everything in my life leads back to my novel in some way...)After submitting the first chapter of my novel to a publisher, they've requested to see the full manuscript. Hopefully it will be used and enjoyed too.

Fathers and Sons

I don't remember where I read it, but it was surely in some parenting magazine or book of child-rearing advice. It said that when you have a son, there will come a time, when he is a toddler, that you (the mother) will become, in essence, chopped liver. During this phase of his life, all things will revolve around Daddy. Mommy will be passe.

I read this passage to Tom at the time, and I recall him saying something to the effect of "Yeah, right."

But it is true, and Sam has reached that phase.

His love of all things Daddy is in stark contrast to John, who whimpers whenever Tom holds him, and wants Mommy's endless attention and minstrations. I suppose that's why I'm suddenly so aware of this change in Sam, because once, not too long ago, he acted just like John.

Tom works crazy long hours. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows us. He typically leaves the house at 7am and isn't back through the door until 7:30 or 8pm most nights. I hate it. Sam hates it more. Lately, starting at about 4pm, Sam'll begin asking "Daddy come home soon?" and keep asking me every ten minutes until Daddy does, in fact, come home. He's learned to say "I miss you" in the last week, and lately I'vd heard him while he plays with his trains saying "Daddy, I miss you. I miss you. Sam misses Daddy. Daddy come home soon."

On the weekends, Tom is often too busy to play--working on home improvement projects (yep, still at it), finishing up household chores, running errands. I feel for Sam because it seems like he spends so much of his time waiting to be with his Dad. It should be easier to spend time together



This weekend, Tom started tiling our master bathroom. I encouraged Sam to set up his train sets on the carpet in our bedroom, so he could play while Tom worked. Tom was surprised at how happy Sam was just to sit beside him and play. He'd envisioned all kinds of apocalyptic scenarios where Sam would try to ingest the mortar or throw a tile against the wall, and none of it happened. Sam was extremely well-behaved even though he wanted to help so badly he could barely stand it.

This morning, Tom left for work before Sam woke up. Later I was sitting in the bed, feeding John, while Sam played on the new tile in the bathroom. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to what he was doing. It wasn't until I went in the closet to get dressed that I saw what he'd done.



As a writer, I see metaphors everywhere, and this one stood out to me immediately. This was one little boy's way of connecting with his Dad.

Lazy Summer Days

Tomorrow begins the first of the boys' last three days of camp this summer. After Thursday, they will be with me 24/7 until the end of August when school starts back up. I wish they went to year-round preschool.

It's not that I don't enjoy spending time with them, because I do. But I also like time to do things around the house without interruption and there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done. I had really high hopes at the beginning of the summer--the weeks that the boys were in camp I thought I'd really scrub the house, really work on my book, really organize the closets, really get a jump on the fall consignment sales. It's almost July and I haven't accomplished half of what I hoped to do, although I've been more productive than I would've if the boys had been home.

It's annoying that children get vacations that they don't need, but adults who sorely need them end up spending all their free time cleaning up after vacationing children.

I miss the summers of my childhood. Waking up late and playing outside with my neighbors until well after dark. Hide and go seek. Basketball. Softball. Roller skating laps around the subdivision. The annual trip to Myrtle Beach with my cousins. And the one summer I had nothing better to do than watch the movie Dirty Dancing over and over every day.

It's been a long time since I had an extended stretch of time that was totally mine to do with as a pleased. It was probably in the two months in 2000 that I strapped on a backback and traveled in a big loop around Europe by myself for two months. It was a little like a postmodern vision quest in a lot of ways, and was rejuvenating to my spirit. Very soon afterwards (a matter of weeks actually) I met Tom, and haven't thought of myself as a single entity since. With the addition of Sam and John, any free time I ever had for myself has gotten lost in the shuffle. Here's what I dream of--several hours where nobody needs me for anything and I can lay in a dark room and think my own thoughts all by myself without interruption. But the only way that would ever work is if Tom and the boys, and the dogs, and the cats left the house and were physically prevented from returning before a certain time.

I don't know about the rest of you mothers, but I can no longer really truly relax because I'm so used to being interrupted constantly. I've just given up. In the course of writing this one (relatively short) blog, John has unplugged the TV twice, and twice I've had to get up and turn Lady and the Tramp back on, I've fetched a bowl of gold fish and two sippy cups for the boys, retrieved the bowl of goldfish from the living room where they're not allowed, told Sam to stop sticking a blanket over John's head at least six times, put a meowing-for-absolutely-no-reason cat in another room and shut the door, and started our dinner... Now I have a headache, the blog isn't finished, I'm ready to send a certain 2-year-old to his room, and need a dose of extra strength Tylenol for the stress headache I have coming.

This is just a twenty minute segment of my day...

As Things Manifest...

An update is in order. A couple of weeks ago, I sent my book to a publisher in Oklahoma for consideration. They publish my friend Elysabeth's young adult novels, so she's put in a good word for me. In April I submitted some poetry to the Petigru Review, the literary journal of the SC Writer's Workshop. I'm still waiting to hear if anything will be selected for that, and they should be announcing results soon. I feel like I should submit more things more often, but it's actually really time consuming, and the wait to hear yay or nay is excruciating.

I'm still doing research for my next novel. Mostly I've been researching folk medicine, which is really interesting. I've also been researching authentic Cherokee women's name, but am not having a whole lot of success. Sometimes I'll find the English translation of a woman's name, but not the actual spelling or pronunciation of the word in Cherokee. Not really helpful when you want to call a character by their name and not its English translation. I wish that my linguistics professor at UNC-Charlotte was still alive, since his area of study was Native American languages. Unfortunately, he died unexpectedly this year, which seems to be a trend lately.

This was not a good week for me to watch "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." I loved the movie, but I cried through the entire second half. I can't even put into words what depressed me so profoundly, except to say that I wish when I'd been in my teens and twenties, I had the brain and the life experience of a sixty year old. Oh the crap I might have avoided. Oh the fun I might've had.

Lately, I've started feeling "mature." I won't say "old," because 32 isn't exactly old per se. But it is experienced, and a few steps beyond youthful. I've seen pictures of myself recently and thought I actually looked like someone's mother. It's a depressing thought. Time has marched on. And I find myself more and more living through and for my children.

And oddly enough, I can hardly remember what it was like not being someone's mother. It has taken over my being completely. Once upon a time, I was a Snow White-watching toddler who dreamed that "Someday My Prince [Would] Come." And then I was a boy-crazy teenager, and a romantic young-adult, and every single solitary second of my life was spent wondering who Mr. Right was. I know this about myself, and I want to give myself a retrospective slap upside the head. I want to slap myself because now I'm a mom to two boys.

It was an innocent remark, really. Nicole told me that after they were back in Australia, Mackenzie was talking about Sam. She told her mother that her heart was broken, (Here I'm thinking "Awwww. How sweet and romantic...") and that Sam's must be too.

Insert that cheezy record-scratch sound effect, and my brain, imagining cartoon bluebirds, wedding-gown sewing mice, and beautifully-drawn Disney heroines all colliding into each other as my happy little world grinds violently to a halt.

Internally, I become, for the briefest of seconds, the manifestation of Maleficent, "Mistress of Evil," as she morphed into a fire-spewing dragon. "Excuse me? His heart is what? Broken, you say? (insert evil laugh) His heart is most certainly not broken. Not over the likes of you! (more evil laughter)"

It was an oddly visceral reaction. But moms are charged with helping their boys grow up and unnecessary distractions (like cute little blonds) must be avoided at all costs. I wouldn't be surprised if almost every mother of boys feels this way. And when you feel it, you know, you have left your youth behind and are now full-bore in Mom mode. A scary proposition.

Family Pictures

In honor of John's first birthday we had family portraits made again.







I brought along two Thomas the Tank Engines and some train engineer-y type clothes. I wasn't sure if my vision would work out. John didn't want to wear his engineer's cap, but Sam cooperated and actually enjoyed himself. I think the pictures turned out awesome!

Planning the Novel

A typical scene from this writer's life:

Me, googling Cherokee women's names frantically, cross checking them with my notes for any meanings or symbolisms I can use to my advantage. The boys are in bed, I can research to my heart's content, and I want to make the most of my time. Tom is in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher.

Tom: There's a pile of your laundry on the bed.

Me: Mmm hmmm. (I acknowledge the pile of laundry on the bed, but I could truly care less.)

Tom: Do you think you can get to it tomorrow?

Me: Maybe. (I have a million things to do tomorrow, none of which has any bearing on whether my clothes are clean, folded, or put away.)

Tom: Are you going to be working on your book all day tomorrow?

Me: (Stop interrupting me!) No. I've got other things to do. (Re-organize the closets, pick up the finished painted pottery from the paint-your-own pottery store, play with the boys, work on wedding favors, etc.)

Tom: I don't know why you're spending so much time doing all this research for a book idea you're going to change your mind about fifty times anyway. The least you could do is fold your laundry...

This is the point in the conversation when I start looking for a large blunt object to lob at his head.

Whoever thinks being a writer is all glamorous fun is kidding themselves. Maybe once upon a time it was, when a writer like Hemingway could live in Key West, have six-toed cats as his chief distraction, hang out all day in bars with the locals, drinking himself silly, and still have an editor like Maxwell Perkins foaming at the mouth. Maybe that's still what it's like for male writers. I certainly have no idea. As an as-yet unpublished female author, I get no respect, and my writing takes a backseat to well... everything.

But back to Hemingway for a moment. Try to imagine poor Ernest... He has a great idea for this book about a group of American expatriates who travel to Pamploma to see the bull fights. He's buried in a pile of books, researching Pamploma and bulls, when his wife comes in and harrasses him about folding his socks. Then, to add insult to injury, tells him he's wasting his time on a book idea that will never come to fruition.

Of course it won't come to fruition if he's interrupted every time there's a pile of laundry to fold.

I tried the "write as you go" approach with How Home Improvement Saved My Marriage and it was a complete nightmare when I got to the middle. I had no idea how to get from one part of my story to the next and probably spent six months staring at a blank screen and a blinking cursor. But then again, when the idea for Home Improvement occured to me, I only had a title, a rough beginning, an end scene, and a very vague middle. Consequently, it played out a lot of times like a choose-your-own adventure novel in my own head. I'd write myself into a scene and think "Uh oh." Then I'd have to sit there (sometimes for months) wondering where to go with the story next. I wouldn't recommend this method to other novelists.

Home Improvement popped into my head, literally. The ideas were a lot like the first bursts popcorn kernels make. Idea here. Idea there. Scene. Character. Dialogue. As Yet Un-named Novel didn't pop. It unraveled. Protagonist, antagonist, motivation, turning point, dark spot, conclusion. Subplots unraveled in the same way. In my head I saw all the connections. Within an hour, I had worked out the entire story. Beginning, middle, end, every plot twist, in the order they would occur. The only thing I didn't get was a title.

All that was left for me to do was name my characters (harder than you'd think... and yes, I've already changed Ivy's name to Anna--for a reason), outline the story so it wouldn't be a jumble of notes in a Word document, and research, research, research. The story takes place in 1916. I need to know exactly what people wore, what they ate, what they grew, how people talked, what they lived in, how they traveled, the medical interventions that were common at the time, what it was like to vacation in WNC, the experience of the Cherokee during this time, what they were named, what they wore, how they lived. I also need to know about life in Boston at the time, and what Harvard Medical School was like. I have to research an endless number of things. It's going to take some time. But in order to write with any authority or transport my reader to another time, I have to know.

This does not mean I'm not committed to the idea, or that I will change my mind again. It just means I'm still planning...

SC Railroad Museum Part 3

This train was a refurbished executive car, with an office/meeting room, a dining room, luxurious (for the time) bedrooms with adjoining bathrooms, and a kitchen area and sleeping quarters (not quite so luxurious) for the staff.





We also toured an old mail car, and saw how mail used to be transported and organized.



There were a variety of other types of trains to look at up close. We saw this cattle car, some old Pullman coaches, and more passenger trains.

The South Carolina Railroad Museum Part 2

Sam was absolutely entranced by the museum. There was an amazing variety of things to do and see.



He could check out an engine's huge wheels.




And tour a caboose inside and outside.



He took a one hour train ride through the countryside with Grandmom and Grandpop.



He's packed and ready to go on his next trip!