Seagull and Raven

The WOTF short story is done. Well, mostly done. I'm going to let it simmer in its own juices over the weekend and give it a final polish on Tuesday before I send it out. It will be the shortest thing I've ever subbed to WOTF at barely 15 pages. It's also the first thing I've written that fell into the "correct" Fleish-Kinkaid ranges. I don't know if this will bode well or not, but those are interestingly developments. I don't think there is a semicolon in the entire piece!

Someone who was critting this for me mentioned that it reminded her of Fast Runner. A quick search later, this turned out to be a movie that came out a year or two ago about the Inuit (in their own language to boot). So of course I had to track it down, to make sure my story wasn't a dim retelling of something I hadn't even seen. Luckily, the Inuit thing is the only real connection. It's a very interesting movie, shot with digital cameras it looks like, and it's just gorgeous. Particularly if you, like me, love snow. It's filled with culture tidbits, but it's also a really great story about two brothers. I highly recommend it, but I'm sure it's hard to track down for rental. I bought my copy from Amazon.com (of course).

So once this is off on it's way to sunny LA, I'll be turning my attention back to the last story, "Of Tapestries and Daemons" and seeing what I can do with that. I think it needs to lose about 2000 words just to start, but we'll see.

Anger

Have you ever been angry? I mean really angry? So angry your hands shook? So angry your heart beats - not faster but harder. So hard it hurts. Have you been so angry your chest is filled with a liquid heat, decidedly icky and unnatural. Time doesn't flow: it's a series of snapshots. I imagine that last one would come in very handy in a fight. Not so much in sending an angry e-mail.

I've only been that angry twice. The first time was when my little weenie of an ex-boyfriend thought he'd give stalking a try and took the keys out of my car while I was making the night drop at the bank at 2 a.m. after work. I didn't kill him, but I did get my keys back. I don't know what he was thinking. I was bigger than he was.

The other time was last night. It's not a pleasant feeling, ballistic rage. I don't enjoy it at all. If I were in an Icelandic saga I imagine I would have come to my senses surrounded by the bloody bits of my former neighbors and hightailed it to Greenland. Being in the 21st century as I am, I sent an e-mail.

It's all work-related and not worth going into for oh-so-many reasons. Have you ever read Atlas Shrugged? (Kim has. Hi Kim!) Somewhere in the middle of this enormous book someone describes a company that changed management and was run like a communist collective where all decisions were made in committee and everyone found reasons why they couldn't be the ones doing any of the work. I've been thinking of that lately. A lot. I'm an American: I want to work hard and I want to be compensated based on how hard I worked.

The problem with the adrenal surge of a ballistic rage (aside from the very frightening feeling of not being in control of your own responses) is that empty feeling when the hormones drop out. Both times it's happened to me the anger gave way to weeping. That's not exactly a ball either. It tends to freak out the children too. I was still crying when the UPS man dropped off my package: Anansi Boys. Both boys were doing their best comforting, "Look mom! Your Neil Gaiman book came. Doesn't that make you happy?" I wasn't a complete mess, by the way, I was getting dinner made and all that. My kids are just intuitive. That and I don't hide my feelings well. Too much Scots-Irish in me for that.

I haven't had the chance to read Anansi Boys yet, what with updating the resume and researching companies who hire for what I want to do and all, but I've been carrying it with me from room to room, like a security blanket.

I have read the inscription. He dedicated the book to me! Wasn't that sweet? Well, technically he dedicated the book to you too, but I think it was mostly to me.

Random Musings

So The Corpse Bride is out on Friday. The boys are very excited; they've been watching trailer at Apple QuickTime for months. I asked Oliver last night whether he thought it might be too scary for him. He said, "Well, the Corpse Bride has an eyeball that just pops right out of her head!"
"Is that too scary for you?"
"It makes my guts hurt."
"Is that scary?"
"No! It's funny!"
He really likes The Nightmare Before Christmas so I'm sure he'll be okay. He's hugely interested in vampires, but that's the only movie we have with vampires in it that he can see. I'm not even really sure how he found out what a vampire is; I only showed him The Nightmare Before Christmas because he was already talking about them. He has a Lego minifigure vampire; maybe it came from that. I know when his brother was building the Empire State Building out of Legos, he was calling it the "Vampire State Building", mostly because it irritated his brother to no end.


On a completely unrelated note, I've been mucking about with some of the features on this blog. I figured out how to put a picture on the top, and once I get an actual photo of me I like I'll put it up there. I kind of like the South Park me, but the colors clash with the rest of the page. Also, I figured out how to add links on the side, but since my blog template didn't have that feature I had to put it in the HTML myself. Intimidating. Yet exhilirating. I love that feeling of "Wow! I almost know what I'm doing!" I can't get the script to match, but I'm not done noodling around yet.

The Neil Gaiman post

To celebrate the release of Anansi Boys this week, here are a few Neil Gaiman memories.

First of all, I came to the party late. I have an obsessive personality. I never like things just a little bit; they pretty much consume me, at least for a while. So I have a tendency to avoid things I think I might like too much, fighting the pull of the tide as it were. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I purposely didn' watch the show becaused I knew I would obsess on it (and Aidan was a newborn when the show came out, and I didn't have much time for TV anyway). I gave in at season 4, simultaneously watching new eps once a week and reruns on one of the cable networks to catch up.

But I was talking about Neil Gaiman here. My husband listens to MPR at work, and he was always telling me about this comic book guy that they were interviewing whom I'd really like if I would just listen. Well, I can't listen to public radio and homeschool at the same time, so I was always missing these things. But he kept insisting I would really, really like this guy, he was just my sort of thing, and I should pick up some of his books.

Now I knew what Sandman was, of course, but being a loyal Marvel fan I'd never read it. Someone had shown me the Ramadan issue once but it was at a party when I couldn't just sit down and read it. But I knew this was something that would suck me in once I started it.

Then on one of the homeschool e-loops I subscribe to one of the mothers made some disparaging remarks about comic books and two of us posted pro-comic arguments pretty much simultaneously. The other mom was a huge Gaiman fan; she said I simply had to read him.

Then I was dusting bookshelves one day and the name "Gaiman" caught my eye. I had a Neil Gaiman book already and didn't even know it (he wrote a biography on Douglas Adams, which was what I had). I actually believe that Douglas Adams bio was the second Gaiman book I read; he also wrote a book about Duran Duran which I believe I read (I had a friend with more than 20 books on Duran Duran and at one point or another I read all of them).

So. I have this rule about threes. Something that comes at me from three different places is trying to get my attention. So I pooled together all of the book store gift cards I had gotten for my birthday and Christmas and bought all of the Sandman collections, plus all of his novels (American Gods had just come out in paperback). Yep, that was over $200 spent all at once. Good thing I liked it, eh?

My other memory was the first time I read The Wolves in the Walls to Aidan and Oliver. Aidan was 6, Oliver was 3. I read stories to them while they eat their lunch, usually longer books like Harry Potter, but I made an exception for this one since it had just come in the mail and I was anxious to read it. I was so engrossed in the story I was halfway through the book before I realized that no one was eating. Oliver had a fork hovering in front of his mouth. Both of them were wide-eyed, way freaked out. I couldn't stop reading now; they would never know how things came out all right in the end. I finished it, but for days after Aidan told everyone about this really scary book that his mother had read to him that she must never, ever read again.

You know, they still haven't come around on that one. But this will be the book from their childhood that they will remember for the rest of their lives.

Writing Update

I finished the story for WOTF, formerly referrred to as the "weird" story, now officially called Seagull and Raven. It was my first official submission to the only crit group I joined recently. Up until this point, I've only had one person reading my stuff (thanks, Jenny!). She still reads, but I wanted to try getting more opinions. Also I'll be reading other people's stuff and critting them, which I understand is very helpful with your own writing. I posted the story Friday night and by Sunday morning I already had three really good, well thought out crits, so this is pretty cool. This is the first time I've gotten opinions from complete strangers who aren't familiar with me or my style, so that was interesting as well, seeing what comes across strongly.

I was going to let it sit for a few days before revising anyway, but now I'll have to as I realized that this is the week that Anansi Boys comes out. I undersand it's shorter than American Gods, but I know I won't be doing anything else until I've finished that book.

I hit the dartboard again!

Finally got my letter back from WOTF for "Of Tapestries and Daemons". I was a quarter-finalist... again. Partly, this is good news since that means I was in the top 10-15% of entries. On the other hand, it's frustrating. I keep hitting the dartboard, but I have no way of knowing if I'm getting any closer to the bullseye or not.

The story I'm finishing up is so weird I don't know what to think of its chances. It's a departure from my usual style, but it remains to be seen whether this is a good thing or not. It's been demoralizing work because I'm so bad at judging whether what I write is good or not. I was pretty down yesterday (ummm, did you notice?). Then at dinner Aidan and Oliver told me their new knock-knock joke that they came up with themselves:

Knock-knock.

Who's there?

Jenny.

Jenny who?

Pkew (exploding noise).

So I'm just staring at Aidan because of course this makes no sense when he volunteers this crucial bit of information: "It also works if you say Dennis."

Well, maybe you had to be there. It was the most surreal thing he could have said, and he was completely serious. I haven't laughed that hard in quite some time.

Writing is like...

Do you remember that seen from the movie Fight Club when the recruits are standing on the porch, and every so often Brad Pitt will go out there and kick their bag down the steps and tell them to go home, they'll never make the cut, they're too fat, thin, blond, whatever. I think that's what writing is like. And no one tells you how long you have to stay on the porch before they let you in.



Wasn't Meatloaf good in that movie? Is it Meatloaf or Meat Loaf? I think I've officially digressed...

Cave painting

We restarted history.

We have been using Story of the World for nearly three years, but Aidan was getting more and more bored with it. It's supposed to be written for third graders, but it's so dull! So we stopped doing history about a month ago so I could figure out what to do next.

My final decision: start all over. So here we are: prehistory. The Ice Age. Cave painting.

Of course this was 10+ minutes of set up, and nearly half an hour of clean-up, for something that took fifteen minutes to do. Typical.

The cave painting 

Bloggity Blog Blog Music Blog

I love the itunes on my computer. I've always wanted a jukebox for my CDs, but now I don't even need one. I've never been a big reader of liner notes, so downloading music is cool for me too. My two latest acquisitions are the newest discs from the Backstreet Boys and Nine Inch Nails. I feel fairly confident I'm the only one buying that combination.

The Backstreet Boys was more of the usual, middle of the road but well sung. They always talk about how they are all so different, one likes hard rock, one wants to do more Latin, another wants to get into Christian music. They should do what the Beatles did on the White Album; divide up the tracks and have at it. That would be a disc worth listening to. The lowest common denominator of their combined passions does not have much zest.

But it did come with a free QuickTime video. And a booklet which I've honestly haven't looked at yet (see above, liner notes).

The Nine Inch Nails, With Teeth, I'm really enjoying. In my opinion, it's the best NIN front-to-back listen since Pretty Hate Machine. I know, I know, Downward Spiral is supposed to be the masterpiece, but I found most of the songs went on too long. I realize as I say this that I am being the Emperor in the movie Amadeus ("There are too many notes. Just cut a few and it will be perfect!"). I wonder how many other suburban work-at-home moms listen to NIN. Probably not as many as listen to the Backstreet Boys.

I just got a new book on my all-time favorite band, a-ha. It starts out like this: "When a pop song makes you wonder if it's written by an idiot or a genius, it is almost certainly a hit. Take on Me is a song like that." This is probably the most positive thing the whole book has to say, but it was a very interesting read. Apparently they were hoping to have a career track like the Beatles - one big hit and the record company would give them total autonomy. So they wrote that one big hit... and never got out from under it. Their new disc comes out sometime this fall, but I don't know yet if Amazon.com will carry it as an import or if I'll have to pay steep eBay prices. They say it will be "dance music for the soul" which already has me intrigued.

I'm warning you...

Don't click on this link.

Addendum to previous post

As it turns out, the service station guys replaced the wrong tire. I drove all the way home on that madly hissing iffy tire and didn't even realize it. In a way I had sort of noticed, because the completely wrecked tire was gone from the back of the car, and the new Dunlop tire was on the front. I mean, I looked at it before I got in the car to drove home and noticed this and was feeling stupid because I thought I really should understand why they had to swap all the tires around, like this was something normal people know and are not confused by. When we got home I looked again, but had that same confused, I wish I wasn't so dumb about cars feeling.

It never occurred to me that the tire guys had apparently not been listening to me when I explained what I needed done and just did the most obvious thing. Perhaps I should be been clearer. Passenger, rear seems pretty clear. At any rate, by the time Quin got home it was completely flat. He doesn't trust anything, not the job the tire guys did or my word that I didn't hear anything clanging across the bottom of the car, so on Monday he's going to have it towed to the Subaru dealership to get it thoroughly looked over. It needed its first routine maintenance visit anyway.

So we're back to one car for the next few days. I went a year without leaving the house during the day, but just today - and it's not like I had anywhere to go - I felt really trapped. Still, it's not like my house just got washed away or anything. Trying to keep it in perspective.

I have the world's best kids (although I may be biased)

Today was Lego Club day for the boys. This is a once-a-month thing they do with other homeschoolers. It's mostly boys (some sisters tag along), and they are all rabid Lego builders. For the summer months, the club meets in Stark, which is a little bit beyond Cambridge. Actually, it's Fishlake Township, but Stark is the closest... Not a city or town... The closest place where the 50 mph goes down to 30 mph for about a quarter of a mile. It takes over an hour to get there. In all honesty, Lego Club was the reason we bought the Subaru Forester. The Chevy wasn't going to hold up for that long haul.

Well, today was the last Lego Club in Stark; we'll be back in the Hennepin County Libraries in the fall. All of the other trips had been uneventful. From weather reports I was expecting to be driving in the rain today, but the storms had blown past by 9 a.m. when we left the house, so the trip out there was fine.

On the way home, I was driving behind a minivan when something fell out of (or off of, not really sure) the truck in front of the mini van. It was a pipe, maybe the truck's exhaust pipe because that's what it looked like. The minivan tried to swerve, but we were against one of those road construction concrete walls so there was no where to go. He had to go over the pipe. I tried to take it between the wheels but I nicked the passenger tires. Both of them.

So there we are on the side of the road somewhere in the vicinity of Forest Lake (almost made it back to civilization) (that's a joke, those towns are practically suburbs nowadays). AAA says it will be an hour before anyone will be out to get us. When we had left the house, it had just finished raining and was maybe 60, but now it's full sun and getting over 80 sitting in the car. Aidan was a little freaked out a first because you can feel the car move when trucks go by (and because he really doesn't think Mom can deal with these situations on her own, there was a lot of "when are you going to call Dad? You need to call Dad!"). Aidan being Aidan, though, once I got him involved in a conversation about wind resistance and car design he forgot to be scared. Also, since we were on our way home from Lego Club that had brand new Legos with them (Dinosaurs this month), so that helped.

We sat there for more than 45 minutes before a man stopped to ask if we needed any help. I have stranger fear in a big way, and this guy clearly wasn't from AAA. He had two bumperstickers on his truck. One was really faded and ended with GUNS, the other said "I (heart) Minnesota". I decided to attach him to the second one and think of him as the "I (heart) Minnesota" guy. He had a jack in the truck and changed the front tire, which was completely flat. He was one of those guys who does this and that (he talked the whole time he was changing the tire) and had seen us on the side of the road when he was heading North to do a job. When he saw us again going South after finishing his job he knew we'd been there awhile, which was why he stopped.

So now I had the spare in place of the completely flat tire, but the back tire was barely holding on, so we limped up to the next exit, only that was just a gas station. If we wanted to patch the tire, we would have to go back to Forest Lake where the service station was.

Aidan wasn't happy to see us heading North again. He wanted to be home, and we were going the wrong way. Not to mention it was pretty nervewracking driving on an iffy tire. I had inflated it as much as possible at the gas station, but it was hissing like mad. I was scarcely surprised when the service station said it wasn't patchable; it would have to be replaced.

So we spent another 20 minutes waiting at the station, only this time we were waiting in the cool indoors with cold water and M&Ms. And Aidan finally got to talk to Dad on the cellphone.

All told, it took three hours to get home, and we missed half of naptime, but they were both very good about it. I would have expected sitting confined in a nonmoving car for nearly an hour would drive them bonkers. It drove me bonkers. But, you know, they're just really cool.