Time--Running Out of Somedays

I was listening to one of my favorite songs the other day….

Yeah, one of my favorite songs is sung by a frog. You got a problem with that?

So I was enjoying the part about following your dreams and how you hear destiny calling your name when I heard it:

Someday I’ll find it—

The rainbow connection—

The lovers,

The dreamers,

And me.

And it hit me. Crap! I’m running out of somedays!

No, I’m not ill or anything—I’m just getting old. (I refuse to accept that I’m old now, but I will admit I’m progressing in that direction.)

Not sure what made me so introspective that day, but it got me thinking about how many people run out of time before they realize any of their dreams. Of course, as the rock star said, our dreams change as time passes, but more often we just give up on them—convince ourselves that we’d really do this than that anyway. But when we abandon our dreams like worn out refrigerators, they (the dreams, not the refrigerators, though the thought of being haunted by a refrigerator is amusing in a surreal way) come back to haunt us like bittersweet nightmares.

When I was a child, our mother used to entertain my sister and me by drawing pictures of our favorite comic book characters. She had real talent. Only months before she died, my mother mentioned how she’d once dreamed of becoming an interior decorator, but had instead married young and decorated only her own homes. Did she regret it? Not really. But the dream never died, and she wondered “What if?” all her life. I think many people suffer that same fate. Is it because we choose dreams that are too far above us? Perhaps we just aren’t willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve them. Or do we just drift into other things and let our somedays play out without ever moving toward our goals?

When I took my brief detour into melancholy, I had already realized several of the dreams I’d listed when I graduated from high school:

1.     Be first in family to earn a college degree—check.

2.     Become a staff writer for a newspaper—check.

3.     Work for a large company writing and editing their publications—check.

4.     Write novels—check.

5.     Become a published author—oops.

That last one eluded me. But since I’ve cut about 40,000 words, my first novel appears to be on track for publication. I’ve finished a novella, started two more novels, and have plots for three more novellas.

Ok, so I worked for a regional newspaper instead of a national one, for a division of that large company instead of headquarters, and I didn’t get a big advance on my novel. I still feel a little like that country song, “Why Me Lord?” because I can’t think of one thing I’ve done that makes me deserve even to come close to fulfilling so many of my dreams.

Now I find that I need another dream to inspire me through the rest (may they be many) of my somedays. But I did have a Number 6 that I haven’t told you about, and I kind of suspect it’ll be enough to keep me writing as long as I can sit at a laptop—or even croak words into a mike. What do you think?

           

6.     Win a Hugo. *

(*author’s note: Please be aware that the author realizes that her chances of winning any award, much less a Hugo, for her novel are nil to none. The author will be ecstatic if a few people admit they enjoyed reading it. ( - : )

A Pet Peeve of Presidential Proportions

I wish I could tell you that I’ve been absent from the blog because really exciting things had been happening, but the truth is, it’s just life. A half-written essay about the history of my family sits on my computer, abandoned while I worked on edits, did critiquing for the two groups I belong to, sewed one sleeve of lace on the very fancy dress I started as a Christmas gift for my granddaughter, went with said granddaughter to a fashion swap meet in the Chicago suburbs, went with my husband to his cousin’s funeral in Southern Illinois, and spent a day lying on the sofa whining because the room wouldn’t stop spinning.

And this week’s GBE2 subject is pet peeves. Friend, neither of us has the time to go through all my pet peeves! I’ve had many decades to form and collect them. They range from young whippersnappers who call me honey instead of ma’am as befits my rather advanced age to people who misuse the word “comprise.” And in between are people who don’t know the difference between their/there/they’re, to/too/two… Well, you get the idea.

So let’s just settle on one pet peeve, shall we? Given the year, I have to say it’ll be long political campaigns bankrolled by big business in order to elect politicians who make any promise they think will get them elected, knowing full well that they can’t do a darn thing without the OK of all those other politicians who are trying to line their pockets at the expense of the rest of us.

So in that spirit, here’s a poem I wrote to express my bad attitude:

The Woes of  a Presidential Election Year

All hail the coming election spring!

It doth the fruits of politics bring!

Throughout the land, the song of the lyre

Is heard in volume ever higher.

The telephone pole one year of four

Brings campaign poster blossoms forth.

O how happy we all will be

If we can only survive to see

November bring the winds of change

And the political leaflet begin to wane.

The snows of silence will gently fall

Alike on winners—and us losers all.

Work--The Cake Curse

Why would writing a blog about work be so difficult for me? I started answering the phone for the family business when I was in grade school, and by the time I was 12, I was putting in time at the office.  I’ve worked in retail, fast food, and as a waitress. I’ve been a staff writer at a regional newspaper, an office supervisor, a logistics planner, a metallurgical technician, an editor, event planner, photographer and public affairs specialist. I’ve driven a fork truck and side loader and soared up over mining trucks in a cherry picker. Now I’m an author with short story collections available on the Internet and a book to be published sometime this spring or summer. But nothing is jumping out at me.

So I’m going to tell you about how my sister tried to teach me to do her work.

You might remember from my story, “The Anniversary Cake,” that my sister baked and decorated the cake for their 50th anniversary celebration. My sister was better in the kitchen than I even before she spent several years working for a caterer. And no place was this more evident than in baking cakes.

Not that I couldn’t bake a cake. I mean, you just open the box and pour it into a bowl and add the stuff the box tells you to add. I could do that. What I couldn’t do was get the darned thing out of the pan in one piece to make a traditional layer cake. I solved the problem by buying some attractive glass baking dishes. My kids endured years of sheet cakes for their birthdays.

When my brother-in-law, then in the Air Force, had to do TDY at a nearby air base with Thanksgiving coming up, it seemed like a good opportunity to invite my sister and their kids to spend some time with us. We’d cook Thanksgiving dinner together. It’d be fun!

“I’ll do the side dishes and you do the turkey and cake,” I suggested.

“I’ll do the turkey, but you have to help with the cake.”

“May I ask why?” My sister knew about the cake curse.

“I’m going to teach you once and for all how to take a cake out of the pan and decorate it.”

I went cold. This was not going to turn out well. “But you know what happens when I try to make a layer cake.”

“Nonsense. It’s easy. I’m going you to show you, step by step.”  She selected two identical pans and greased one of them with shortening. “Now you do the other one.”

I did, and she inspected it to make sure I’d covered it sufficiently. Then she sprinkled her pan with flour. I did the same, and again passed inspection.

Finally she poured half the batter in her pan and I poured the other half in mine. We slid them into the oven together, and when the allotted time had passed, pulled them out and tested them with toothpicks. After a short cooling period came the moment of truth.

My sister flipped her pan upside down and lifted it off, leaving behind a beautifully formed layer.  She nodded for me to follow her example. Hands shaking, I flipped my pan upside down EXACTLY AS SHE HAD. And when I lifted it off, the cake split right down the middle.

She stood with her mouth open.

And as you know from reading “The Anniversary Cake,” the curse is effective even when I don’t actually bake the cake. Apparently all I have to do is touch it for something horrible to happen.

My sister now believes in the cake curse. When she comes to visit, she brings her own kitchen. She and her husband park their RV in our drive, and I am not invited to help her bake.

Curiosity and the Munt Knee

Have you ever been curious about an adult’s odd pronunciation of a word? Especially if when they say it, they get that sad/happy look that tells you it’s connected to a cherished memory.

“Mommy, I want a munt knee.”

The expression on my two-year-old’s face was intense and sincere. A munt knee. 

I’d had a similar experience with my older daughter, who’d looked up from play one day and said,  “Mommy, I want a rubber ducky.”

How cute, I thought. She’s been watching Sesame Street. She spoke very plainly, and I knew exactly where to get her a cute, yellow, rubber ducky.

So next time we went to the TG&Y, I picked one up.

“No,” she said when I presented it. Her tone and expression added, Silly adults. They just don’t understand anything.

“But…but… It’s a rubber ducky.”

“Not that kind of rubber ducky. The other kind.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t know about any other kind of rubber ducky.”

Her expression said, Of course you don’t. Poor old thing.

“What does this ‘other kind’ of rubber ducky look like?”

“It looks like a real rubber ducky.”

I finally had to take her to the store. “Show me this rubber ducky you want.”

She led me directly to the sporting goods section. The decoy she selected still sits by our bathtub and has entertained both children, four grandchildren, and assorted nieces and nephews.

But you can see why I might be set back a bit by a request for a munt knee. If I couldn’t figure out a rubber ducky, how was I going to figure out a munt knee?

“Ummm. What does a munt knee look like?”

She stomped her foot and shook her head, sending all the strawberry blonde wisps of hair I had carefully combed down back to floating in the air.

“You not sayn it wight. It’th a munt knee.”

I knew I wasn’t going to win this argument. “OK. Next time we go shopping, can you show me this munt…uh….thing you want?”

“OK.” And she danced off.

Some time later, while shopping at Sears, I saw one of those stuffed chimpanzees with a banana in his hand, and it hit me. Munt knee. Monkey! She wouldn’t know the difference between a monkey and a chimpanzee. I snatched it up and took it to her.

Tears welled up in her little eyes. “No,” she said. “Not THAT. A munt knee.”

OK. So she did know the difference. “I’m sorry I got the wrong munt…uh…monkey.” I thought maybe now that I had discovered what she didn’t want, maybe she could give me some kind of clue about what she did want. “Please tell me again what kind of monkey you want.”

She screwed up her face so hard I could practically see the thoughts zooming through her head: How can I get this dense grownup to understand what I’m asking for?

Finally her face relaxed and she said, “I want a kyoo we us Joe wedge munt knee.”

Oh, great! I wracked my brain trying to remember if we’d seen a monkey named Joe Something-or-other anyplace. At the zoo? No. No Joe Monkeys there. But then, no cows lived at the zoo, either, and she’d insisted she’d seen cows last time we went. Never did decipher that one.

“OK,” I said, surrendering. “We’ll look again.”

So next time we went shopping, we looked again. Nothing. No Joe Monkeys anywhere. But we kept looking. And we finally found what she wanted. You’ve figured it out already, haven’t you?

We were walking by a bookstore when she grabbed my hand.

“Mommy! There him is!”

“There who is?” (Ok, I’m kind of slow sometimes.)

“Kyoo we us Joe wedge!”

She pulled me over to one of the displays, and there it was—the latest book about Curious George the Monkey, accompanied by an assortment of stuffed Curious Georges. 

And that’s how Curious George became her bedtime companion at least until she married, and how our family came to pronounce “monkey” such an odd way.

Truth or Imagination?

A friend of mine calls himself a professional liar because he writes fiction. He’s joking, of course, because we all know the difference between lying and storytelling is whether you present your story as truth.

Unfortunately, in the last few years several great storytellers have presented their work as truth and later had to admit they had been writing, if not fiction, at least embellished truth. In some cases it seemed that they had actually begun to believe what they wrote. That can happen. A story repeated often enough becomes indistinguishable from truth even by those who tell it.

And in my many years of observing people, I’ve discovered that truth is somewhat relative anyway. This happens when individuals perceive facts differently because we approach events from the perspective of our own lives and experiences. (If you don’t believe this, just try comparing memories from your childhood with your siblings.)

I remember being asked once if someone was tall or short, dark or light. But from my particular place in the world, pretty much anyone over 14 is tall, and anyone who isn’t a tow-headed blond is at least as dark than I am. So I described the person in question as tall and dark and was later chided because they were of average height and complexion. I had told the truth from my own perspective.

I observed another aspect of the relativity of truth when my mother started showing signs of Lewy Body dementia. Those who have Lewy Body dementia seem to have trouble telling dreams from reality and they tend to misinterpret stimuli. A dream about a power strip catching on fire was so real that my mother poured water on it and told me not to worry about the smell of smoke. (Try being awakened at 3 a.m. by that kind of “reassurance!”) A robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door became person to her—a person who failed to regain consciousness when she moved the robe to the bed. So she called 911 for help. Her reflection in a mirror became a stranger in a room beyond the wall. She couldn’t figure out why they were living with her, but they became an entire family who would leave the children with her when they went to work. She’d leave snacks out for the kids to eat.

I learned very soon not to tell my mother the people she saw didn’t exist. I just told her I couldn’t see them. To her, their existence was truth, and my inability to see them was a simple fact she accepted without question.

And sometimes truths change over time. Once people believed that trees were inhabited by spirits, that nixies lived in the rivers, that fairies danced in the garden under the moon, leaving circles of toadstools to show where they danced. They accepted it as truth. We still can see those circles. Maybe we can’t see the fairies because we no longer believe in the truth of their existence.

On Seeing Half a Fairy Ring

So, what prosaic modern faeries danced last night

On an open lawn beside a cornfield

In East Central Illinois?

Musicians who in olden tymes

Played harps strung with spider web

Must now play fiddle and steel guitar

While they sing wild haunting melodies

'Bout truckin and drinkin beer

Made from honeysuckle like their wines of eld.

Do they yet wear gauzy flowing medieval robes,

Or do they dress in Levis, cowboy boots and Caterpillar caps

And clog around the circle

Left to warn away nosy humankind?

And was the circle left unfinished

Because a few minutes after midnight,

They heard a hot tip

On grain futures and pork bellies to invest

Their hidden treasures in?

No matter. For the day after they danced

The farmer’s son rode by on his tractor

And mowed down all their toadstools.

My Evolving Bucket List

An old 80s or 90s rock song—by Bad English, I think—includes a line that says something like, “…will it always be that the dream gets changed as it gets close to reality?” It is inevitable that our dreams, and with them our bucket lists, are changed as time passes. Some things we accomplish, some things we put on the back burner, and some things we decide are no longer important to us.

When I was a child, I thought if I could just own my own horse and get my pilot’s license, my life would be complete. I did eventually own a dark bay half-quarter horse filly for a few years, during which I realized I really like to look at horses. Ride them—not so much.

When I graduated from high school, I thought my life would be complete if I could get a college education, marry my high school sweetheart, get my pilot’s license, and make a living writing. I did all those things except get my pilot’s license, but not in the order I expected and not exactly in the way I expected. I did them—well, kind of inside out. And in the process, I learned to love photography. Hadn’t even been in my sights.

When I finally graduated from college, I already had a husband and family, and I thought my life would be complete if I could get a job I enjoyed that would allow me to contribute to the family income and work on that novel that was beginning to percolate in the back of my head. I got a job I enjoyed that included writing and editing and paid enough I could support myself, and I eventually completed that novel—plus a novelette that started percolating somewhere in the middle of the novel. I also did a lot of other things I never dreamed I would, but somehow I don’t think learning to weld or standing on the hood of the largest truck in the world the first time its engine was started or planning a party for 10,000 people would ever have been in my bucket list anyway. And somewhere along the way, getting a pilot’s license fell out.

When I retired, I thought my life would be complete if I could learn to water color, finish visiting all the national parks of the US, go to Scotland, and get my first book published. I’ve visited Yellowstone and Scotland, and I’ve found a publisher for my first book. I took watercolor lessons and realized maybe I should stick to photography.

So you’d think I’d be about finished with my bucket list, right? Um…remember what I said about adding things? Now I want to go to Scotland again, because the sequel to the first book is set there. Then come the two other sequels and the two sequels to the first novelette, and the stand-alone novel. I also want to go to Wales.

And that’s how I like it. I should always have another book to write, another trip to take, something new to learn. Because if your bucket list contains all the things you want to do before you die, and you complete it, you’ve symbolically completed your life, right? I hope the day I die, I’ve just thought of something else to add to my bucket list.

Time for a Little Laughter

Years ago, I took a poetry class at a local community college. The teacher was a well-known Illinois poet named Kathryn Kerr. During one class she showed us "Another Muse Poem" that she had written in response to a number of poems on that subject, and she challenged us to write about our own muses. This was the result. And I hope this makes up for the poem I posted a couple of weeks ago. : - )

On Reading Kathryn Kerr's "Another Muse Poem"

The Greeks thought of art personified

As nine beautiful and graceful ladies,

Each lovely lady identified

With an aspect of creative activities.

They gave each a melodious appellation

Like Terpsichore, Urania, and Calliope,

And seemed to derive satisfaction

From calling them Muses collectively.

In our day of scientific knowledge

We talk about right-brain phenomena,

And when desiring poetic tutelage,

Run back to the arms of Polyhymnia.

But one lady poet of my acquaintance

Swears her Muse is no lovely Erato--

He's a dirty old man of impatience

Who makes advances at inopportune moments.

I think my Muse most definitely

Can be diagnosed manic-depressively.

He's split my personality effectively,

So I write horror and humor successively.

 And there are some times of near normality

When the idiot just sits on his hiney

Staring cross-eyed in total banality,

Twiddling his lips with his pinky,

Going “Blub—blub—blub.”