Month: September 2012

Appointed guardian of the mead of poetry (and chunky jam)

Dear Internet,
TheHusband and I were pretty busy this weekend with lots of Martha Stewarting it up around Throbbing Manor, which precluded me getting any more writing done other then some tweaking of a few things. I am fairly pleased with myself having completed almost two weeks straight of writing in my private journal, something which I haven’t done this long of a stretch in ages. I’m also getting in the habit of taking a daily picture so if I can’t get write, I can at least embed an image to kind of illustrate how my day is going. Because sometimes you want to showcase just how awesome the internet really is.
The biggest relief was when my brother popped over on Friday and Sunday and fixed the electrical in our boiler and stove. Over Labor Day weekend, with a house full of guests, the neighborhood transformer blew not once, but twice in the same day. The first blowout happened in the morning and power restored within a few hours after. The second blowout happened that same evening and was a number of short burst where the entire neighborhood flickered on one minute/off one minute for about ten minutes. Once that arc finished, we discovered the stove and the boiler, which were both on the same circuit, were fried.
We could write a novel about Throbbing Manor’s electrical problems, with the first chapter on how not to use three various types of electrical (knob and tube, modern, a hybrid) running through the house. Upon my brother’s recommendation1, this summer before my surgery, we buried the house electrical from the pole to the house so it is no longer aerial, upped our panel from 100 amps to 200amps, and repositioned the house surge protector2 from the sub-panel in the basement to the main panel in the garage. Every time Jeff comes over to do work on one small project, he uncovers a plethora of other issues that are bigger then the original project.
Throbbing Manor is almost 90 years old, and we live in a historic district where we’re one of the “newer” houses built, so coupled with the houses all trying to modernize their interiors, it’s not terribly surprising to get the occasional blown transformer. Except, this happens nearly every month and so much so, we signed up for the appliance plan via our electrical company that if ANYTHING should ever happen and an appliance breaks, they will fix it for free3. Since it was Labor Day weekend, I called on Tuesday and find out that our boiler is not under the repair for the plan.

me: “But it says ‘furnace and other heating elements,’ ” I insist to the customer service rep.
Consumers: “Except for boilers.”
me: “But when I called to set up the plan, and asked about boilers, the assured me it was part of the plan.”
Consumers: “I’m sorry you were told incorrect information, but that is not true. For an additional $7/month, we can add the boiler addendum.”4
me: “…”
me: “Just so I’m clear: Even though our boiler and stove are fried due to transformer blowing out not once but twice on the same day, and this is Consumer’s fault, I have to pay for the repairs on my uncovered equipment.”
Consumers:”Yes.”

Consumer’s was quick to get the stove repair to us within a day but he had to “order a part,” which was nearly two weeks ago. Boilers, due to their complexity, are expensive. Since we were going to have to pay for the boiler ourselves, we waited until my brother was free to look at electrical before calling the boiler people because they would have had to call an electrician to fix the fried bits anyway since Jeff discovered the arcing over the years coupled with shoddy repair jobs on the house electrical, mixed in with sketchy installation of circuits was causing various bits to melt in the shut off switch attached to the boiler, which he also repaired.
By fixing the circuit the stove and the boiler were on, viola! The stove now works! Which means, we no longer have to use a lighter to get the range going (gas stove/electrical ignition) and we could use the oven.
Edit 1/03/2013: This has been languishing in my drafts box since September. I think I was planning on finishing this post after I made a batch of pear cherry chutney but never did the update, hence for the abrupt ending.
TTFN,
Lisa

1. My brother is a licensed electrician. Don’t try this at home.
2. Brother checked and verified the house surge protector is working so why it didn’t catch the arc the second time reamins a mystery.
3. Consumer’s offers the ASP which is insurance for your appliances. Most energy providers have this kind of service and it’s way better then the typical renter/house insurance since there is typically no deductible. ( I would still keep house/rental insurance for other things, but for appliances, this is the way to go!) You pay $X dollars a month, attached to your bill, and you call if there is an issue. They send out a repair person, and you don’t get charged for the visit or the repairs (however, the last bit can be variable but it’s typically free / low cost then if you did not have the plan).
4. I signed up for the boiler addendum. Dammit.

Brevis in longo

Dear Internet,
Apparently, I’m pretty prolific. In addition to upping my writing here, I’ve also been writing every day in DayOne, which I mentioned here, and also actually working on my fiction. There is one thing to be said for a humanities scholar: We know how to crank out verbiage like no one’s business. Between the three, and this is including the re-writes of public blog entires and the fiction, I’m cranking out about 5,000 words a day. And that is being conservative. Now how much of that is “good” writing? Hard to say, really. My writing in the public sphere tends to be tighter since I obsess over the editing, the writing on the private journal has better readability (because I an writing more freely and more about the minutia of my life), while the fiction writing is still uneven in a deckled edged way. Some of what I produce for the fiction side is dreck and other times, it’s pure gold.
(Also, I decided to style myself as a modern day Samuel Pepys, at least in my head.)
I think one of the reasons why this is becoming a lot easier is that I have finally figured out a system that works for me to keep all of this organized which was so problematic for me for years. I know, it’s crazy considering that I organize shit for a living, but I couldn’t organize my writing to really work for me until now. Finding the Day One app was probably the tipping point, and also being a heavy user of Evernote and Scrivener also helped.
Here’s the status of my current projects, and which will find it’s way to Readers. The main landing page for my writing will also have all posts about this topic on the page, and if a project has their own landing page, those too will have posts updated on their landing page. Thus, if you’re hot into Edwardian good times but not Viking gore, you can skip directly to the landing page for the Edwardian projet instead of slogging through all the posts about Vikings and everything else.

Books

Project Name: Cabinet Particulier
Status: Research
Details of the project on its own page, so I won’t repost them here. I started collecting the research in July and currently haven’t moved forward yet other than doing the readings. Ideally, I see this as a pretty big project (read book series) so I want to get it off to a good start and I have a vague idea of how the first book will go, I want to dig deeper into her world before I begin writing.
Project name: Unnamed Medieval project
Status: Idea formation and preliminary research
Details: At this point I know it’s going to concern a woman, possibly in Scotland, sometime before 1066. Possibly containing Vikings.

Short Fiction

Title: PETITIONS OF THE GODS
Status: 80% finished
Summary: From my notes: Anonymous protagonist gives background on the invitation, a brief history of the Althing, and beginning of the world creation.Our protagonist is losing power and she knows this. The struggle with her, and with others like her, is how to remain relevant in a world when less number of people are believing in them. What would you do to stay relevant?
The beginning and ending are strong, but I’m floundering in the middle. It’s already at 2500 words with some heavy revision in the last week, so much so that the outtakes have their own folder in Scrivener. TheHusband read one of the first drafts and liked a lot of the clever uses for explanation of things but I can’t unstick the sticky at the moment. While I think this is at 80%, I would not be surprised if I end up ripping it entirely apart and restructuring all of it.
Title: AD LIBITUM
Status: 80% finished
Summary: What happens inside the Sistine chapel when no one is looking? Answer: Sex, drugs, and disco.
Idea sparked a “what if” when reading an article tonight about Russia’s Golden Ring and the author wrote eloquently about the medieval cathedrals and churches they were visiting. The line, “Jesus jumped off the cross, stretched, and went to light a cigarette.”, which sparked the idea of what in the hell happens in a cathedral at night when no one is around? Within minutes, I found this gorgeous virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel and the story started writing itself.

———————————-

So far, I have nearly a dozen people signed up for Readers, which is awesome. I haven’t decided if I should close the request at this point or keep it open. I had planned on start pushing some of my older stuff through the list to get those cleaned up and publishable, but after reading through many of them decided not to. They are that wretched or I am not into the genre as much anymore or the story just doesn’t appeal to me. So they will stay buried in the digital trunk.
I’m so motivated to be creating again but I keep thinking what do I want to do with the stuff that I create? I definitely want it to be read by the world, but how to go about that is tap dancing in the back of my brain. Having been a bookseller for many years, I work now as a librarian, and then throw in all the writers, literary agents, artists, booksellers, and other people in the publishing world I either know personally or stalk online, I feel pretty grounded on the back end o the industry. I just want to make sure that I do the right thing by my work.
I was pretty thrilled to discover Duotrope yesterday in my quest to sort out submission organization for at least the short pieces because my librarian-fu was actually failing me looking for a comprehensive source for magazines, literary zines, and other such publications to submit my work to. At the very least, I know this is the path I want to take with my shorter fiction. I’m also thinking of some kind of crowdsourcing shenanigans might also be in place too. This is going to be amazing.
TTFN,
Lisa

Looking for alpha/beta readers

I need eyes other than my own (and TheHusband’s) to read, comment, make suggestions, and the like on stories that are mostly finished, on some that are rough sketches, and everything else in between.
Here’s how it will work:
I’ll subscribe you to an announcement list. Every time a story gets posted, you’ll get an email that will include a link to the password protected story on my blog as well as the password. You can either comment on the blog piece directly or email me with thoughts/suggestions.
Only major revisions will be posted. You’re not obligated to comment every time. The announcement list will only come from me.
Please add readers @ exitpursuedbyabear . net (minus the spaces) to your allow list. Gmail is sending confirmation emails directly to the junk folder.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!
(It goes without saying: Please do not post commentary in public spaces (Facebook/Twitter/etc) or repost my content anywhere without my explicit permission. Thanks!)
And a huge thank you to everyone whose already signed up!

Thruster, Mover, Inciter

Dear Internet,
It’s a beautiful afternoon here at Throbbing Manor and I plan on taking full advantage of it before the cold eventually sets in. Since I’ve spent most of the summer, okay all of the summer, cooped up in the house, the desire to be outside sometimes borders on desperation.
TheHusband and I got into one of our many fake fights this morning because I’ve not been after the doctor’s and physical therapist’s rules to the letter. When he pointed out this was the exact same behavior as my mother1, I decided if there was any good time to change it would be now. I’ve been monitoring my behaviors all summer to figure out routines which would not only work on my days off from the library, but also I could easily modify as I move from working part to full time.
The big time suck, of course, is social networking. You cannot just login and read Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr or whatever your vice is and get off (figuratively and literally) in a short amount of time. There is some stickiness to this wicket as many of my friends are only on X network and often, that may be the ONLY way to communicate with them. Social networking is also part of what I do for the library, so I need to be up to date with what is happening in those worlds, so it’s a lot harder to just kiss off social networks or even specific services.
Ultimately, I think the real motivation of what’s keeping me on these networks is I want people to read what I write. I want my words to connect, resonate, laugh, and perhaps give others courage (or fear depending on what it is I’m writing about) so that at the very least, we do not always feel so damned alone. I find it hugely interesting with all of these tools to connect us, so many of those that I’m acquainted with often still feel like they are all alone. This may not happen all the time, sure, but even I have found while I may have over 300 friends on Facebook, but when TheHusband had seizures in the spring of 2011 and I rushed him to the hospital, I had no one to call locally for comfort. I not only want to be big in Japan, but I want a more locally fulfilled life.
With that being said, I received a lot of outpouring of support across the networks as of late over this morning’s entry and others. While I may not have responded to all of those who have written, I did want to publicly let everyone who has reached out to me to let them know how much I appreciate and adore everything you have said and given me.
This space, here, is my safe space. While I am grateful for those who have reached out to me and tell me they are there for me, please understand if I do not immediately take you up on your offer. I use this space to work out what I’m feeling, but attempting to express those thoughts does not always work vocally or in an area I cannot control. Each piece takes me hours to write so to vomit emotionally on a person is lot more complex then it is here. Also understand that I have a difficult time discussing my feelings with TheHusband and I live with him.
With that all being said, I still encourage people to comment, whether via the comment option at the bottom of the posts, via email, or on any of the social networks I am. I want to know that you’re alive and listening.
By the by, Wedensday the Pug and I were chased out of the backyard this afternoon by an indignant squirrel who kept yelling at us, for over a half an hour, from the tree tops. At first I thought it was several squirrels fighting, only when I looked up in the trees, I saw one squirrel running up and down the branches, squawking, but no other squirrels were (that I could see) in the vicinity. The squirrel made a point to jump lower and lower, keeping its gaze on the dog which is when I figured the squirrel must of thought Wednesday was intruding and it wanted to protect its space. Fair enough. I took Wednesday in and as soon as we were in the garage, the squawking immediately stopped. My office looks out onto the back area and I have yet to hear a single peep for the rest of the afternoon.
There is a metaphor in there somewhere, I just know it.
TTFN,
Lisa

1. He was commenting on how mother has been hospitalized and then placed in a physical rehabilitation center for nearly four months each time, two years in a row. Both of these incidents stemmed from her own negligence of her body, meaning that as someone who is a brittle brittle brittle, has congestive heart failure, and severe arthritis to the point that she’s had joint replacement surgery, she takes terrible care of her health. The doctor’s have told her repeatedly that all of this could be circumvented if she stopped eating like crap, exercised, and was more proactive.

Precious or costly things

Dear Internet,
I often feel like a spectator to my own train wreck of a life.
After years in the making, my mother and I broke up on Sunday. I spent much of the afternoon and night writing about it, only to find that I could not wrap my brain, and apparently my fingers, around the whole episode. Thousands of words were written and thousands were tossed aside.1 Instead of the world lifting from my shoulders, I felt the guilt that often hides in the shadows and was now dancing around my peripheral heart with glee. My heart itself felt like it was tightening so hard that I could not breathe.
The cumulation of our break-up, for me, was the realization she may have lied to me about something very big. After getting over the initial shock of, “Why in thee fuck have I not thought of this sooner?”, I felt my entire world crumble and I was instantly emotionally drained
Her potential lie has two consequences:

  • If what she told me was indeed a lie, then she not only poisoned me with her hatred against my father, but she ruined my relationship with him; whom I’ll never get a chance to make-up with since he’s been dead 12 years.
  • If what she told me was not a lie, then why did she never protect me, ever, from that danger?

What started down this road of holy fuckery was putting the connections together after her birthday lunch earlier in the day. She and I were buffered by TheHusband and my brother, ensuring that we barely spoke a word throughout the entire strained meal. After, I spent the better part of the afternoon obsessing over how thin our links had become to the other in the last year; with TheHusband wondering loudly, and quite rightly, why I had not broken the connection long ago. I steadfastly believed, until the very second I did not, I could not be that girl. I could not, no matter how horrid our relationship was, give up on her as a daughter. I did not want to be filled with regret after she was dead for missed chances and opportunities for maternal connection. I was barely on speaking terms with my father when he died and it has haunted me for over a decade on everything I may have potentially lost with him and I did not want to go through with that with her.
I’ve never known a time when she said anything even remotely kind about him. As I got older, I started piercing together some of the mistruths she had told in relation to him and of course to me, and rationalized it was all due to, at various times of her life, depression, being bi-polar, or general bitchiness about her divorce from him. But whatever reason she may have had for what she said, in this particular instance, could only come from pure evil and I could not rationale away what she did any other way.
When that connection was made, that I knew she had lied to me in the past and that this one event that shaped much of my teenage years and beyond could also potentially be a lie, the bond between us was finally broken.
Just so we’re clear, there was a long period of time in my ’20s when she and I did not speak. However, since the death of my father in 2000, I have tried desperately in vein to work things out with her. And in the years since then, anytime I’ve tried to tell her or even just to discuss my thoughts and feelings about our relationship (good or bad), it usually boils down to she either telling me if she hurt my feelings, she didn’t mean it and she’s sorry or that I’m insanely jealous of my brother (because it is always about him) or she claims she never said whatever it is I’m supposing telling her she said. There is no real discussion, catharsis, emotional break throughs or fuck, even understanding.
In the very near future, I will be removing myself from her legal documents and transferring that over to my brother. I will be canceling and/or removing her from any accounts or services she may use through me.
While I know I may be revisiting this again and again in the future to work out feelings, she no longer exists in my world.
TTFN,
Lisa

1. The baby was not quite thrown out with the bathwater just yet. I have been using, daily, Day One for all of my personal journaling needs. Since I have it on all my devices and machines, it syncs seamlessly with iTunes and Dropbox. The tossed aside content was added as Sunday’s journal entry and will probably remain there until I feel braver discussing it publicly.

Those who fight alone, good warrior

Dear Internet,
I’ve been remiss in keeping you up to date on what has been going on with me these last few weeks, primarily with the outcome of my surgery. When we last spoke, I was six weeks into to my lay up. A week later, the doctor gave me the all clear to walk, perchance to drive when I could, and also I was freed to work. Physical therapy to immediately start. There are conditions, of course, the main one that I am to be kept sedentary at all times and to ice my ankle as much as possible. Thus, if I drive, the ankle gets iced after driving. If I walk, I need to take my cane with me. If I work, I have to be always sitting which means no teaching. That later is huge as teaching is a huge part of what I do. I’m on restricted work hours in order to ramp up to going back full time and I often find that driving the short distance, walking to my office, working for a few hours and then back home is always exhausting to me.
While everything professionally is neat and tidy, emotionally I’m still a giant mess. Frustration, and rage, rue most of my days. I drive for long periods, I’m laid up for days. Trips to the grocery store have to be split into multiple trips because I cannot physically handle doing it all in one go. I walked up and down three flights of stairs the other day without pain but my ankle was swollen to the size of grapefruit and I had to ice it for two days straight.
Thursday marked ten weeks since the surgery and I’m nowhere where I physically thought I would be. I asked my physical therapist about training for a 5K or even a walk-a-thon and she laughed at me. Genuinely laughed. Next spring if I’m lucky. Next fall if I’m not.
It’s interesting to me when people comment on my lack of full mobility in that they always comment as if it is an age thing; that my slowness to heal is because I’m getting older. I’m always feel like I’m on the defense about this, because no, I healed slow last time this happened, over 18 years ago. I have brittle bones. I smoked for ages. The surgery was much more intense then they thought. There is a myriad of things as to why I’m not training for Dancing With the Stars right now.
I’m always, always sensitive about my age. I succumbed a few weeks ago and bought bottle dye (forgive me divine hairdresser!) as I could not afford my regular appointment since I was off all summer. My hair was a jumble of colors, over seven hues and shades from greys, reds, browns, blondes, and whatever else lurked under its depths. I do not look my age, sure, but once the dye was applied and rinsed, I effectively created a facade to hold against time temporarily all over again. The nurses at the surgery center kept arguing with me that my band with my age was a typo – I could not have possibly been born in 1972. Moisturize, moisturize, moisturize. (It is as if I am Cassandra!)
But I digress.
My body’s slow progression is temporary, I know this. A year from now I will be mainly free from pain, will be running, biking, and walking with the best of them and this will all be a distant memory. I know. I choose to do this to myself. There was no accident, no repair, there was only the choice of continue living in great pain or get better.
I choose to get better.
TTFN,
Lisa

Bumps in the midnight

Dear Interent,
Recently one night while it was incredibly late (and almost shockingly so), I found myself in my office writing for the first time in so many months. Earlier in evening, TheHusband had dropped off to sleep earlier then his usual times and I found myself anxious to move out of bed and into my office, so in attempted silence, I walked-thumped to my office to work. What struck with me in particular about that night was the intensity of the desire, which has been burning for weeks, more brightly then it has for years. It was becoming physically painful to ignore the urge. I felt like I was in high school all over again, except without the forbidden pack of cigarettes hidden in my desk and the 2 liter of Diet Coke on the floor by my side.
Lately, I’ve found myself sketching out story ideas, notes, and other ephemera on anything I can get my hands on. That night, I decompressed a Moleskin notebook I’ve been carrying around for a few years and found that it contained travel logs, journal entries, and notes for knitting and gardening amongst a few of the types; kind of a catchall, if you will. A page of WOULDN’T THIS BE AWESOME flipped with “CO 68 ST st” and a drawn out pattern of the design I am remarking on.
In addition to decompressing the Moleskin, I’ve been picking apart some editing and doing some note taking on existing story lines. The vast amount of notes on story sketches is startling to me whenever I chance upon them. I keep finding fairly decent first chapters written, note, and outlines for the projects. I see potential here for amazing creating to occur and that gets me excited. I’ve started to collate everything into either Evernote or Scrivener, depending on the status, and will begin the world building and story plotting.
I’ve got three distinct worlds that are fighting in my head at the moment: Pre-history, medieval, and Edwardian. Sometimes it gets a bit messy. I have A Teach Yourself Guide: Complete Old English (Anglo-Saxon) rubbing shoulders with Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End. I have Beauty and Cosmetics 1550-1950 snuggling against The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. I’ve almost finished The Prose Edda and I’ve got The Dark Mirror: Book One of the Bridei Chronicles waiting in the wings.
This is just the tip of my (almost too long) reading list.
Right now I’m falling, almost rather neatly, under the weight of the research. The next month I’m working on shorter hours so I’ll have time to get organized before I go full-blown day job mode. My first priority is to organize writing schedule with the research schedule into something that can be scaled back to a doable mode once work goes in full swing.
I’ve got a couple of completed short stories I need to start workshopping and a few more to finish in the next few weeks. I’m going to be looking for alpha readers, so keep your eyes peeled for that announcement.
TTFN,
Lisa