It’s been a pretty good birthday so far.

The day started with birthday hugs from two sleepy kids, a beautiful hand-picked bouquet from my dear friend firstmausi—in image form, since her garden is roughly 4,500 miles from my house—and several birthday e-mails and Facebook comments that were remarkably light on the elder-abuse.

Breakfast brought me birthday cards, gift certificates,* the desk lamp I asked for,** and handmade soap my husband found on his last trip to Chicago.  And more hugs, of course.

Before I clocked in this morning, I printed and mailed my Pigeons stuff to The Midwest Writers Workshop,*** and figured out how to print one of Sunny’s stories into a little booklet without swearing too loudly much trouble. 

Hitting a deadline and conquering MS Word?  Not a bad way to celebrate a birthday.

Aaaaand I was challenged to a Poem-Off by none other than indy clause herself, who thinks I should start posting verses from the Twenty-First Century—late Twentieth, tops.  I’m treating it as a special birthday gift. 

I mean, knowing someone cares enough to kvetch about my poetry posts?  Priceless.

Can’t wait to see what the rest of the day brings—besides patrons, since I’m working the evening shift tonight.

And I can’t wait to see what the next year brings, too. 

Maturity maybe?

Yeah . . . me neither.

It’s also the week of my blogoversary:  Three years and 961 posts, including this one. 

I was even freshly pressed last month—and though my stats have settled into something a bit less mind-blowing, the follower number refuses to drop, even though I’m pretty sure at least half of  y’all are actually reading my posts.

Some of you have even been kind enough to hit the like button on occasion and maybe comment or drop me an e-mail—or send me really weird things for Random Thursday. 

Thank you all so much!

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*Which I may use to buy a new Bag of All Holding, since my current one is finally starting to shred wear at the straps.

**I recently moved my writing space form the dining room table back to the  rolltop desk in my bedroom.  It’s quieter and a tad more organized, but there’s no overhead light back there, and we old people are highly suspicious of staring at lit pixels in dim light.  Plus, I can’t see the keyboard.

***Where I’ll be rooming with the amazing Sherry Stanfa-Stanley, who knows how to make birthdays count.

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Happy Father’s Day to everyone who fills that role for someone!

My gift to my husband is a day of baseball without the kids.

Because I rock at gift-giving like that.

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The receptionist from last week might be distracted by our boys, but she does eventually find the right office . . .

The receptionist paused at a room, knocked softly, and opened the door.  “Your two o’clock is here,” she said.

“Thank you, Sheila,” said a voice from the other side of the massive mahogany desk filling one end of the well-appointed office.

A woman stood and flowed around the enormous piece of furniture, which was spread with documents and scattered over with data crystals.  Her terminal screen sprouted old-fashioned sticky notes like a bright yellow mutant flower.

She held out her hand.  “Citizen Mykota-Regold, how nice to meet you at last.  I’m Samantha Rhys-Hargaty, but please call me Samantha.”

But I never noticed how few female narrators there are in movie trailers—in fact,  I can’t think of a single trailer with a female narrator who isn’t a member of the cast.  It never even occurred to me to pay attention to this.

But Lake Bell noticed.  And she’s  written and directed and acted in a movie about it that looks as thought-provoking as it is funny:

I completely agree with that last line.

Who’s with me?

You’re a grand old Mom
You’re a wonderful Mom
Whom troubles and travels can’t faze.
You’re the sanest of
The family I love*
A home for cat rescues and strays.
My heart beats true
When I think of you
And that’s neither a boast nor a brag.
Should e’r your birthday be forgot
Just look for the grand old flag

You’re a grand old Mom
You’re a marvelous Mom
Funny, supportive and kind.
You know the fix
For your grandkids’ tricks—
You’re there when I near lose my mind.
My heart beats true
When I think of you
You’re so worth a boast and a brag
Should e’r your birthday be forgot
Keep your eye on the grand old flag
I forgive you for the occasion’l nag
Keep your eye on the grand old flag

(and Happy Birthday, too!)

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*You get to judge how far that one will get you . . .

Now what?

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Summer Fun!  Or Not!

A nearby cosmetology college offers a short-term day camp so kids from first grade to twelfth grade can learn about skin, hair, and nail care, exercise, nutrition, and all sorts of other things.  So all this week, Jane has been learning about face masks and nail files, doing Zumba, and putting makeup on model heads.^   She’s stoked.

Sunny is going to YMCA Camp.  She’s . . . not so stoked.  In fact, she’s ticked, and the main reason she’s so angry is that Jane doesn’t have to get up as early as she does.

This is unfair, Jane is hogging all the age, and there is no way  we will ever catch Sunny having fun at Y Camp.

‘What did you do today at camp, Sunny?”

“Nuffin’.  It was not fun  and I didn’t like it.”

“Did you swim?”

“Yes.  I got a purple band, ’cause I can swim without a floaty all across the pool, so I could go in the big pool with the big kids and there were all these noodles and Marla and I played Cowgirls and Jason was the bad guy and Orson was a whale-cow.  And we did crafts and played a running game—my team won because Marla and I are sneaky!”

“Wow! Sounds like you had fun.”

” . . . No.”

oooooooooooooooooOOOOOooooooooooooooooo

Fountain of Youth

Watson thought we could rig one of these for the front yard.  You know, to class up the place.

I showed Jane the image and she said, “Let’s do it!  Please?”

“Well, we’d have to find out—”

“And can we make it so we could swim in it?”

“You mean make the bottom pool bigger?”

“I guess.  But you could just leave the top part off.”

” . . . The part that makes it a fountain?”

“Yeah.  It would be so cool.  Don’t shut down the image, Mom—I want to show Sunny!”

oooooooooooooooooOOOOOooooooooooooooooo

Slightly Creepy Convos

You ever really listen to the conversations you have with your kids and think how odd they would sound out of context?

Matthew Clarke did. And then he took it a strange step further:

There are three of them now, if you’re interested. The second one is my favorite so far, probably because it’s really familiar—in context, I mean.

oooooooooooooooooOOOOOooooooooooooooooo

What about Fahrenheit 235?  I’m in  rush . . .

Summer reading lists are appearing at the library.  I like the early birds—they’re happy and relaxed in the knowledge that they have plenty of time to browse through the options, find stories they’ll actually enjoy, and put their choices on reserve or InterLibrary Loan if they aren’t on our shelves.

It’s best to savor the peace, because all too soon, the late birds—aka “Toast”—will be running around, desperately judging books by page counts instead of covers, and discovering that all the titles with the fewest pages were just checked out—for three weeks—and the only ones left are War and Peace and the complete works of Thomas Hardy.*

Both flocks have provided me with the impetus to look over the kids’ summer learning lists before late August, even though my children tried to hide them from me in the bottom of their trash can.**

Sunny’s  first grade prep is mostly not forgetting how to read over the summer and to keep trying to tie her shoes, but Jane’s fifth grade prep is a little more substantial.

Luckily, her required summer reading is School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari—she owns a copy, she’s read it, and she could tell me all about it when I asked.

Done!

Before you raise an eyebrow at the title, it’s about four kids with phobias who are sent by their families to a special school, run by very strange people, to learn to overcome them.  Weird things happen, as they tend to do, and while the kids aren’t completely cured by the end—according to Jane—they’re at least functional enough for a couple of sequels.

Now, if we could just get Janie’s math phobia under control . . . wonder if there’s a School of Bored within driving distance?

(Ms. Daneshvari has one of the coolest author websites ever, by the way.  Go see!)

oooooooooooooooooOOOOOooooooooooooooooo

Mooooooo!!!

Janie showed me this one yesterday. Her  cosmetology camp played them over lunch, presumably to encourage table etiquette.  Or something?

I honestly have no idea why this is so funny . . . but it is.

Most of the other videos these guys make are a similar combo of Wayne’s World and punk’d, and clearly not for my demographic—though I can still remember  why I would have found them hilarious about fifteen years and a common sense filter ago.***

Still watched ‘em though.  And laughed.  Don’t judge me.

Warning:  If you show your kids this video, you will have to restrain them from doing the T-Rex bit during the next meal.  If you’re more worried about the Rhino . . . good luck to you.

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^Rule in our house is no makeup until she’s 13 or older unless she’s onstage as a clown.  She’s negotiated down to lip gloss, but only if I can’t see it shine from across the room.  But at least she’s learning how to apply the stuff with brushes instead of trowels, which is more than I can say for a lot of kids I see these days—and I was a teenager in the eighties, so I know about heavy makeup.  And clowns.

*This is when we field questions like, “Do you have Apocalypse Now?  Someone told me it was based on Heart of Darkness.  Or something?”  Or “Does this book have themes? Because I only have three days.”

**I’m glad they didn’t know the school sent me digital copies, or I’d be looking for my missing laptop right now.

***Hush, it’s around here someplace.

In the baleful female infant this ferocity we spy,
It glares in bloodshot fury from the maiden’s dewy eye,
But the really deadly female, when you see her at her best,
Has two babies at her petticoat and a suckling at her breast.

Yet hold! there is Another! A monster even worse!
The Terror of Humanity! Creation’s direst curse!
Before whom men in thousands must tremble, shrink and fail –
A sanguinary Grandma — more deadly than the male!

—”More Females of the Species”

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Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman, was an early American feminist who wasn’t particularly subtle about her opinion of the treatment, neglect, and suppression of women in the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th—or the many other social issues of her day.

I knew this, because my high school English teacher made us read the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which remains more frightening to me than anything that ever stemmed from Stephen King’s imagination,* and later, I read parts of her autobiography for a college class** and a few poems, too, which were as grave and pointed as the prose I’d read.

So I already knew she was strong, brilliant, and could write like whoa.

But I didn’t know until recently how beautifully sarcastic she could be:

I Would Fain Die a Dry Death
(Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman)

The American public is patient,
The American public is slow,
The American public will stand as much
As any public I know.
We submit to be killed by our railroads,
We submit to be fooled by our press,
We can stand as much government scandal
As any folks going, I guess,
We can bear bad air in the subway,
We can bear quick death in the street,
But we are a little particular
About the things we eat.

It is not so much that it kills us –
We are used to being killed;
But we like to know what fills us
When we pay for being filled
When we pay the Beef Trust prices,
As we must, or go without,
It is not that we grudge the money
But we grudge the horrid doubt.
Is it ham or trichinosis?
Can a label command belief?
Is it pork we have purchased, or poison?
Is it tuberculosis or beef?

There is really a choice of diseases,
To any one, little or big;
And no man really pleases
To die of a long dead pig.
We take our risks as we’re able,
On elevator and train,
But to sit in peace at the table
And to be seized with sudden pain
When we are at home and happy –
Is really against the grain.

And besides admitting the poison,
Admitting we all must die,
Accepting the second-hand sickness
From a cholera-smitten stye;
Patiently bearing the murder,
Amiable, meek, inert, —
We do rise up and remonstrate
Against the Packingtown dirt.
Let there be death in the dinner,
Subtle and unforeseen,
But O, Mr. Packer, in packing our death,
Won’t you please to pack it clean!

Awesome.

Her poem “Christian Virtues,” which presents a mocking, pearl-clutching excuse for keeping the Have-Have Not status quo, is even snarkier—and still sooooo applicable today.  Go on, have a look.

Ms. Gilman loves rocking the status quo, she does.  She also seems to have had a particular hatred for stasis, complacency, and any kind of suppression, whether it be of individuals, socio-economics, or even science.

This next one, which was the first to make me realize that she could totally bring the  funny, takes on evolution,*** underdogs,^ creativity, and human civilization.

I also find it personally encouraging:

But of course, Ms. Gilman’s major crusade was to better the lot of women—which needed a lot of bettering—and to encourage all women, even those who were living comfortable lives, to transcend the status quo and help each other.  She wrote several more serious poems to that end, as I mentioned way up there somewhere.

However, the stanzas at the top of this post—and the title—are from a poem that, in my opinion, takes all of her frustrations and irritations with the dismissal of women and lets it all go, full blast.   And I  love it.

“More Females of the Species” was written in response to Rudyard Kipling’s “The Female of the Species” . .  . though to tell you the truth, I don’t know how Mr. Kipling really felt about women—jungles, inner fortitude, and manly strength, yes, women, no—and I don’t know how he meant his poem to be taken, because I’m too lazy to look up other people’s opinions and this post is pushing reasonable length as it is.  I mean, the last few lines could be a jab at men who are afraid of women’s political opinions, but maybe the whole thing is simply about mistrust . .  .

And without knowing, I can’t tell for sure if Ms. Gilman’s poem was meant to be a knife-edged sarcastic response or if she’s simply taking his point of view to the next level.  It could go either way.

So I’m going to ask you.

Mr. Kipling’s poem is here.

Ms. Gilman’s is here.

What do you think?

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*Seriously. Not only did it put me off wallpaper and the color yellow for a long time, it made me extremely angry. It still does, not only because it’s based in reality—Ms. Gilman’s own “treatment” for postpartum depression—and crap like this still happens.

**Unlike the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” she recovered from her “hysteria,” moved to California, and divorced her husband (whose name was Stanton, in case you come across any first editions of her earlier work).  I cannot fully express how much I admire this woman’s strength.

***I’m not sure when this poem was written, but the Scopes Trial was in 1925 and Ms Gilman passed in 1935, so maybe.

^Undereohippuses?

I’m having a Duck in the Shooting Gallery Day—the kind where I make a lot of trips back and forth for things I’ve forgotten, hoping no one fires.

It started when I arrived in my department and discovered I’d forgotten something in my car.  I grabbed my keys, but remembered at the elevator that I’d need my badge to get back in the building, so I went back to get my badge . . . and realized inside the elevator that I didn’t have my keys anymore.

I’m off tomorrow and well aware of it, but I still tried to schedule training for our new intern tomorrow morning.  Once with our Scheduling Queen, who is a wonderful person with whom I can’t adequately communicate  in my lucid moment,* and again five minutes later with the intern, whom I’m sure is feeling confident about being trained by someone who clearly has trouble grasping the fundamental concept of time.

I ran out of item donation forms, printed twenty copies of the wrong one, and then hacked a stack of the right ones apart with the paper-cutter like I was reenacting the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.**

After trying for ten minutes to get the catalog to cough up the record for a specific parochial school yearbook,*** I saw that I wasn’t misspelling the name of the saint, I was misspelling school.  Five minutes and a few choice words after that, I figured out that I’d somehow set it to search for DVDs.

I’m adequately caffeinated, my sinuses are quiet, I had breakfast, and I’m not rushed or anything.  And it’s not that my brain isn’t engaged, it just doesn’t have much traction.

So clearly, the majority of my brain cells are off doing something else today.  I hope they’re working on the book and not succumbing to meningitis or trypanosomiasis or narcolepsy or pernicious hypochondria or something.

Maybe they’ll come back after lunch.

Or maybe I should go find them before they get me into even more trouble . . .

See you tomorrow.

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*We’re both bright people who speak the same language, work in the same department, have the same level of education,  but for some reason, our respective transmitters and receivers don’t sync.  When one of us says anything more complicated than, the sky is blue, the other one just doesn’t get it and feels dumb.  Or we think the other person isn’t getting it, so we try again, except the other person did understand actually, for once, but couldn’t get that across, either and is now feeling patronized.   And that’s on good days, when I’m not likely to walk up to her with my brain spinning in the sand and say that the sky is a rutabaga  without my conscious knowledge.

** Yes,  I did count my fingers afterwards.  Always do.

***Either our catalog hates yearbooks or all of our cataloguers have. I’ve memorized their shelf locations in deference to my blood pressure, and  if I didn’t need the OCLC number to process donations, I’d leave their records alone.

I’ve never once made things easy for myself when it comes to writing.  It’s a gift, like sky-diving lessons where you have to pack your own ‘chute.

And fly the plane.

But because I occasionally dream of exchanging my gift for a little sanity, this time I’m not only outlining, but have decided to  compile a  bible for it as I go, which is as new a concept for me as starting with a full outline.

A writing (or series) bible, for those of you who aren’t as obsessed with every aspect of this writing gig as some of us are ( cough),** is a document that  keeps track of the pertinent details of all the characters (names, physical descriptions, relationships, hobbies, police records, etc.) the settings (maps, distances, geography, etc.), the laws or rules governing the place,*** any Off-Page stuff that happens, backstory (whether or not you use it), future story (if you’re working on a series and want to lay foundations) and whatever else you think is important to keep in mind as the story unfolds.

According to Nathan Bransford, the stuff you put in your bible depends on the project and your own memory:

If my stories are set on earth in the present day, I don’t need to add a page about gravitational law—though depending on the story, I might want to add a URL or a medical reference that gives information on what damages the human body can suffer if it submits to those laws after someone shoves it off a cliff.  And maybe a Googlemap showing the shortest route from Matlock, Derbyshire, to the nearest cliff off which a human body might be shoved.  And a note about that body’s eye color, pre-shove, because according to one of the medical references, it might be difficult to tell,  afterwards . . .  And since the character pages will tell me that the PCSO^ faints at the sight of blood, I know how the s/he is likely to react when my MC calls for help.^^

And so on.  It’s your own personal bookwiki that keeps you from searching your whole manuscript—or worse, previous books in a series—for the single sentence in which you think you may have described the nose of the MC’s first cousin, so you know whether it’s likely that s/he won the spoon-hanging contest at the village fete, because you think it was hooked, but maybe it was snub instead, which means she couldn’t be the one who shoved the abovementioned human body off the cliff because of the spoon clutched in the victim’s hand, so you have to start over.  Or change her nose. ^^^

Since I have trouble remembering names at the best of times (right, Steve Mike?), I’ve made Excel lists of characters before, but not in great detail—and nothing like this.

It also seems like a good place to keep research facts once they become pertinent to the plot, lest they bury themselves in the reams of research materials I’ll be generating for this one . . .

Memory aid and filing system—who can beat that?

Do you outline?  Do you make writing bibles?  How was your weekend?

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*Not the anti-cupid project—that outline was done last week, but I’m still wrangling the POV and figuring out how much of a ditz the bride should be and if it’s inherent or for reasons.  But I do have two songs on the playlist—“King of Anything” and “My Life,” which remains one of the coolest theme songs for one of the oddest successful TV sitcoms ever.  A brownie point to the first person who can tell me what it was.

**Or missed that bit in Stephen King’s Misery (the book, not the movie/miniseries) where the MC  wishes he had his, because it would make writing for his Number One Fan slightly easier—though for him that’s probably like wishing the metaphorical sharks surrounding his leaking boat had two fewer teeth each.

***This could include anything from Pennsylvania state laws about seat belts or the rules about magic in your created world or the physical ways lasers act in space.  Whatever you need to know or remember about whatever needs to stay consistent.

^The websites of the various UK police forces and auxiliary support services are exceptionally user-friendly, by the way.

^^This whole thing is just for example; I’m not planning any murders via impact in this one—though I do have two pages on poisonous shrubbery.

^^^Again, example—and a disturbingly detailed one at that.

Want to sample other people’s WIPs, EIPs, MSs, or published works, eight sentences at a time?

Be a Weekend Writing Warrior!

Rules are here!

List of participants is here!

________________________

I’m hopping back a bit from last week to just before Clyota meets the lawyer who will defend her in her murder trial, but right after she and Charlie trick the Pressman into eating vegetables by hiding them in chocolate cake, which in retrospect was a potentially dangerous idea—for the Pressman, not in general—and I’m ashamed of myself for exploiting the Pressman’s dietary quirks for a slapstick moment that doesn’t even belong where I put it.

I’m less ashamed of exploiting the receptionist, but she’s making a play for Charlie and clearly deserves what she gets:

“Oh, Citizen Mykota-Regold!”  the receptionist said, standing up and smoothing her baby-blue sweater dress. “Counselor Rhys-Hargaty is expecting you.”  Her eyes strayed to Charlie.  “Please follow me.”  She undulated away, and I and my entourage followed. 

I snuck a look at Charlie, who appeared to be more interested in the paintings on the walls than in cashmere-upholstered hipwork.  Reynard’s lens, though, seemed to be trained at an odd angle.

I snorted, and covered it with a cough as both men looked at me.

Please note, though, that it isn’t quite as safe for work as the Fish-Slapping Dance—especially if you watch all the way through the credits—though nowhere near as unsafe as The Meaning of Life.

You have been encouraged warned:

Everyone I’ve shown this busts out with a variation on, NO WAY! at one point (okay, maybe  two).  If you’re so inclined, let me know if and when you said it.