TheExHusband – Page 8 – A Most Unreliable Narrator

On the Occasion of TheHusband’s 35th Birthday

TheHusband and I, circa 1998

Dear Internet,
Today is TheHusband’s 35th birthday, which in true TheHusband fashion was spent with basketball, ice cream, and cake. It seems then, on this momentous occasion, that I should dig up the poem I wrote him for Valentine’s day a few years ago to cement how much I love the bastard.
Ode to Snookie Wookums:
A billet-doux for Justin
I struggle to tell you how much I love you,
Not because I do not know how to say it –
But because it has been said many times before (and in many different ways).
Not just from me to you, or from you to me, but
Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Keats — dead white guys
(Your favorite kind.)
Who wrote overly flowery language to describe,
The merest changes in touch, scent and vision of their beloveds,
When they were naked upon the often stained mattresses.
(And why were those mattresses always so stained?)
(Did they not believe in cleaning in those days?)
Or having their woman kill themselves for whatever reason –
(Death, despair, misery – your favorite subjects).
Love, then, is a word we throw about carelessly these post-modern times,
To describe anything we have strong affection for from –
Our pets, food, clothing, movies, to music and cars.
(And do we love, in that we have strong emotion or do we love because we cannot use any other word to describe how we feel for the item we are attached to?)
So then, on this Valentine’s Day –
(A saint who is honored for love instead of being remembered as a Christian martyr in antiquity)
Let me not talk of death, misery, despair, or Nazi’s –
(Thrown in to see if you’re still reading),
But rather let me just tell you that for all of the reasons that I love you,
And for all of the reasons that could possible exist and
Have been turned into a Lifetime Movie Extravaganza –
It is because of your quirks and your stubbornness,
Your strong sense of wavering morality,
Your love of pretentious literature and even more pretentious music,
Your arrogance, your silliness,
Your daring and your bravery,
Your sense of adventure and your resoluteness,
And all of the physical reasons that I adore you so –
(Not stated in case your mother reads this).
Thank you for stalking me all those years,
For proving to be worthy, for believing in me,
For being all of the things that I could hope for and more –
I love you, my snookie wookums, and am every so glad
That I will be dragging you, unwillingly, to the alter in May!
Happy ~~Valentine’s~~ Birthday, my love!
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe:

but mostly it’s uplifting

Cocaine toothache drops for children circa 1885, via ClassicPixs

Dear Internet,
The lesson here is to stop the pizza/Benadryl combo because honestly — I’m not fooling anyone.
The weather has shifted from days and days of nothing but snow to a quick warm up and sleet and ice. As we are the first driveway on the block, when the city plows we get the built up from them going around the corner. The last few days of sleet and ice meant our fairly pristine driveway had a 2′ ice dam at the end that was impossible for me to drive over in either direction.
So we didn’t leave the house on Saturday because who has time for that?
Later.
A fairly good evening was had as we went out with my brother and his girlfriend for TheHusband’s birthday and sat and shot the shit for a few hours before we got into the cake, which I had made for his birthday. German chocolate cake with “35!!!” scrawled across the top. One foot in the grave is my husband. One foot. Time for an upgrade.
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2012, 1999

Coffee, Tea, Cocoa

“How Sir Lancelot Was Shot by a Gentlewoman Hunting” by Arthur Rackham circa 1917

Dear Internet,
Last night I dreamt I was in command of a Viking longship, my braids flying in the wind as we traversed the seas. I had silver hair cuffs to hold my hair back, I wore leather leggings and tunic, my belt was made of metals and precious jewels, and I took lovers in every port. It was a glorious dream.
It is mid-Sunday afternoon and the only leather I have been in contact with is the leather of our couch where I’ve been settled for the last several hours. TheHusband, who is currently driving me crazy with his songs reinterpretations by replacing lines with “Pookie Bear” and interjecting “pug” when neither pookie nor bear fit, is reading The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century sprawled on the chair opposite. Wednesday, who is aghast she is not allowed up on the couch or the chair, paces the living room like the little old lady she is before heading to one of the many dog beds we have scattered around the house for her particular use. After 20 or so minutes of watching us wearily from her bed, she starts the pacing over again thinking she will eventually wear us down with her silent demands.
[Interlude: The dog, 30 minutes before she was due for her afternoon constitution, decided to pee in the kitchen and then 10 minutes later, poop in the dining room. She’s now lounging on the couch, a fleece blanket beneath her. You win pug. You win.]
It has been snowing for nearly a week straight, we are on day three of our self-imposed home rule and we’re already snarling at each other. TheHusband and I have not had a good, healthy, screaming drag out fight for months so we took care of that yesterday afternoon. The fight started when I asked how he planned on cooking the beef for today’s beef pot pie and corkscrewed out to something else entirely, as it always wants to do. I’ve never understood these people who claim they never fight with their partner — how boring and uninspiring those people must be! I can’t imagine living in perfect harmony day in, day out — it would be living with a husk. I need the conflict to keep me enthralled.
Fight out of the way, we’re establishing patterns. We wake up sometime between 8A-9A, the dog is walked. Breakfast is consumed, either something individually or as the case of this morning, a shared meal of pancakes and bacon. TheHusband wanders off to do his thing, I wander off to do mine. Lunch is foraged and dinner is planned between 5P-7P, depending on how hungry we get. Yesterday I baked two sets of muffins, sorted out our grains and legumes, a load of laundry was done, kitchen eternally cleaned, and writing and reading was adhered to. While all that housework seemed to go against the idea of “do nothing staycation,” I can attest I did it all in yoga pants, tshirt, and a sports bra.
This morning was not that much different than yesterdays, except instead of muffins I made the crust for tonight’s dinner as it needs to be chilled and pre-baked before it is used. TheHusband, once his husbandly chores for the morning were completed, has been reading (and randomly singing) in the chair. Tomorrow will probably be no different or the day after that.
And we cannot forget the already mentioned, never ending, infernally maddening snow.
TheHusband has challenged me to another round of “how long can you go without taking a shower,” a family tradition in the making. But two days in, my teeth are feeling fuzzy, my yoga pants are getting slick with day to day dirt, flour, and pug hair, and my hair is standing up on its own without product so I am declining. A bath will be taken this evening, no matter what.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012

The art of judging character or telling a person’s fortune from the forehead or face

Bors’ Dilemma – he chooses to save a maiden rather than his brother Lionel.
From Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, via Wikipedia.

Dear Internet,
I woke Sunday morning buried under the covers and clinging to TheHusband. With my penchant to sleep late on weekends, to make up for the shortened sleep cycles during the week, I was surprised to find it was barely 9AM. The clawing fear of sinking deep again has abated for the morning, but hangs over me like a terrible rain cloud. It was not helped when as I was preparing for bed last night, I remembered I was teaching a college-wide class this week and needed to finish the prep work, thus my anxiety shot through the roof.
After getting out of bed, and spending several hours of catching up on newspaper reading, both this weeks and past editions, TheHusband and I began the yearly house cleaning. We’re having friends over this weekend for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, then the following weekend is Thanksgiving which will mean people will be coming and going all weekend. With the addition of my mother-in-law is coming between Christmas and New Year, we could not procrastinate any longer.
In the past, we’ve divided up the housework one to two days, which is overwhelming for two people in a house as large as Throbbing Manor. TheHusband’s recommendation this year was to break it up into chunks, and pace it over a week, and we decided to start in the Rumpus room in the basement and work our way up.
The Rumpus Room and other rooms in the basement were to get a once over on Saturday, but we ended up not getting to it so we tacked it on to today’s work. Within a couple of hours, we had swept, vacuumed, mopped, dusted, and sorted the Rumpus room, foyer into the Rumpus room, stairs and landings down to the basement, the upstairs pre-foyer and foyer, first floor living room, solarium, and dining room. Monday is the kitchen and downstairs bathroom, Tuesday will be the stairs and landing connecting the first and second floors, then Wednesday will be our bedroom and respective bathrooms. Thursday I’ll be on campus for roughly 12 hours as I’ve organized an author’s reading so no cleaning, and I’m off on Friday. So whatever we don’t absolutely get done will be done on Friday and allow for any other errands I need to run.
We were done with Sunday’s bits within a few hours, which beats the usually 8-10 hours it takes us to get the whole house down, giving us time to do whatever else we planned for the rest of the day. The one task I’ve been dreading all week is responding to my mother, and after much discussion with my shrink about it, opted to send her a decline to her dinner invite for Thanksgiving. I wrote something along the lines that I appreciated the thought, but we must respectfully decline and perhaps another time in the new year. Maybe I’ll be up for talking to her then, maybe I’ll be up to sorting us out, but not now. Not here. Not because my brother is desperate for our family to be whole.
As I paid bills, and did a few other administrative tasks, I kept an eye on the weather – ready to run down to the basement, the dog under my armpit, at the very last minute if need be.
Grand Rapids did not get the brunt end of the storm band as some areas did, but the wind was obnoxious and the rain, sometimes mixed with hail, pelted against the house. TheHusband predicted the storm would passed us by quickly, which it did, but several hours later we’re now getting the second wave. I’m grateful we didn’t get hit hard, and it seems no one I know across the storm’s path were in trouble. Many blessings were sent to the gods and fates for sparing us today.
I fretted, as I always do, about the safety of the house – did shingles get ripped off in the storm, did a leak spring up, did something happen that I may not have been aware of? TheHusband tutted my fears – the house is made of brick and has stood for 90 years and will probably stand for 90 more. He then pretended we were one of the three little pigs and the wind was the big, bad wolf. TheHusband huffed and puffed, and the house did not fall down.
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2010, 2010, 2009

jolly hockey sticks

Street graffiti, Fountain / Division, Grand Rapids.

Dear Internet,
I wished the other day for a burger cooked in pork fat, Friday I got my wish. Work husband #3 and I have a monthly standing lunch date which was happening that week and he suggested we meet at Reserve. The menu was a message from the gods since a large number of the plates were Lisa-friendly AND then there were the aforementioned burgers and fries cooked in pork fat; I was starry eyed on my walk down to the restaurant.
The burger and two helping of fries and lots of good conversation later, I felt full. Uncomfortably full. To work off some of the deliciousness, work husband #3 suggested we walk over to Vault of Midnight, the GR arm of the famous Ann Arbor comic book store, to check out the latest comics. After that, we grabbed coffees at Madcap before heading back to our separate work destinations.
Protip: Making an audible comment in an artisanal coffee shop that pour over coffee is nothing more than fancy drip, earns you dirty looks in said coffee shop.
But they do make a damn fine mocha.
A good Friday was had, but I could not shake the feeling of over fullness – which isn’t surprising given I had not had any meat or animal products the entire week. The uncomfortable feeling turned into queasiness and didn’t go away. There is no dinner for me Friday night and no breakfast on Saturday.
TheHusband and I went to a birthday party Saturday night, which was held at a local bar that served food. After barely eating since lunch on Friday, my eyes were as big as dinner plates and I ordered too much heavy food on a stomach that was already not feeling awesome. This was going to become a potential pattern of solid plant diet during the week and meat lovers delight on the weekends. The lesson learned is even when being mindful when eating something you’ve been depriving your body for a while, the sensitiveness of your stomach will kick into overdrive.
[And no, I am not going to go vegan. The momentary sensitivity after eating a tasty, delicious bacon burger is totally worth the price of admission.]
It was a quiet social weekend but a busy domestic one. TheHusband and I decided to turn our solarium, which I tried to capture as my writing office, into a meditative space for him (and for me), which meant spending quality time at a local garden shop figuring out plants. He wants to go back to one of the very original ideas we had upon our move in by turning the room into a meditative space with mainly plants of various flavors and sizes to create the desired tranquil environment. I do currently use the room for my own yoga and meditative practices, so when TheHusband suggested we turn it into a global meditative space, I couldn’t really object. We’re attempting to utilize as much of the space we have as possible, but we know at some point with the next few years, this house as lovely as it is, is going up for sale.
This summer after putting the writing space together, and a few haphazard attempts at using it, I then spent the rest of the summer at the cabin. School started in August, time was unprioritized but not entirely unfruitful, but I still wasn’t using the room as I had intended. And right now I’m splitting my writing time between my proper office and our bedroom since my flat ass doesn’t take kindly to the chair I have in the curated space. Ideally, I’d like to move the writing work outside the house to a co-workspace or something along those lines sometime in the future.
We’re noticing WednesdayThePug has started shedding large amounts of hair and it is not just her summer into winter coat. But instead of regaining replacement hair, she’s going bald in random parts of her body. I noticed it during the summer, but the bald spots didn’t seem get bigger or multiply until recently. Her attitude, food, and bathroom habits haven’t changed, but as she seems to continue to lose more hair at a faster rate than in the summer, I’m going to book her in with the vet this week to check on that and to get her shots up to date. Fingers crossed it could be as simple as age or the effect of her daily 1/2 dose of prednisone is finally catching up with her. She is 13.5 years old, which is bordering on extraordinary for a pug whose median age is 11.
I’m not very confident she’ll make it through the winter due to her existing arthritis, hip dysplasia, and other health issues even though she’s constantly in good spirits, will slit your throat for a pizza crust, and waits every day at the door for me to come home from work. She’s had a few close calls with death in the last few years, of which all she’s rebounded quite majestically from, but she’s torn my heart out enough with her illnesses that I feel as though I have grieved already for her many times over. I’m not attempting to be cruel or cold, but more matter of fact as I also know that once she’s gone, whether naturally or because we had to put her down due to health reasons, I will be an emotional wreck. I’ve had her for 1/3 of my life and she’s been my most constant companion and my best friend during all of that time, even if her farts can clear a room.
Well that forked path was cheery.
It’s quite late now and I’ve made the mistake an hour ago of checking the weather forecast and discovered it is going to snow sometime between now and sunrise. As much as I complain, as much as I hate driving or dealing with it, snow is quite beautiful to watch. From afar. Preferably in a house or other locale. I’m kind of sad I’ll miss tonights flurries, no matter how brief. But I will say I am looking forward to winter break in December where I’ll have nearly a whole month to watch flurries all to my little heart’s content.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2009, 1998

weekenders on our own, it’s such fun

Dear Internet,
It wasn’t until the day was almost over that I realised today was a pretty perfect day.
I was intent on waking up early this morning, hopefully naturally, so I could spread out my day in larger chunks rather than waking up at noon, zombifying it around the house until I realize it’s almost 5PM and then it’s time to get ready for the week. Nothing ever completed, nothing ever done, not even relaxation. The almost insurmountable stress of trying to do ALL THE THINGS in a short amount of time while feeling strangled with reproach. There is always some residue guilt of not having done laundry, waxed my ‘stache, vacuumed the house, or the million of other chores. Somehow this week I wasn’t feeling that pressed to get much done chore wise other than swap the sheets on our bed and I felt totally okay with that.
I got my wish for an early rising when one of our smoke alarms started chirping it had a dead battery at 730AM. Not too ungodly early, it seemed, and instead of rolling over and hoping it would magically die on its own, I woke up and got ready for the day. And by getting ready for the day, I mean put on my glasses, yoga pants, and stealing one of TheHusband’s hoodies when I took the dog out for a walk in the drizzly mess outside and not taking it off when I came back into the house.
TheHusband, who was grumpily complaining he did not want to wake up at some inhumane hour while the alarm continued to annoyingly chirp, was fixing the broken alarm when I came back from the dog’s morning constitutional. We foraged for breakfast, which was simple since we had thrown boxes of Yummy Mummy and Count Chocula into our grocery basket last night. Coffee percolated, bossa nova on the home stereo, some kind of vanilla concoction candle lit, and I settled on the couch to read the New York Times.
Four hours of near vapid article reading later, coffee was consumed, toast nibbled, and paper tossed into the recycle bin, and it wasn’t even noon.
With my afternoon free, I opted to do some organizing on the site and work on some back-end work, which I did while catching up on podcasts. When was the last time I sat down and really listened to a podcast, more importantly, for longer than say 30 minutes? Months maybe, if not years. I was able to plow through five or six of the BBC History podcasts, putting me firmly now in July 2013.
I had no plan on mind rather thinking I’d start cleaning up some of the broken links, several consisting of near full nude of pics of me from the past when I was getting photographed for my earlier tattoo work and a NSFW pic of my very spanked behind. The images are not going to be easy to find — the content of the pages, tags or titles doesn’t lend itself to the images at hand. Consider them easter eggs linked somewhere in the nearly 700 pages on this site. Happy hunting.
(I remember the spank picture, hysterically so, for it was taken with an analog camera on a roll of film that had everything from pictures of flowers to sexy time pics. The boyfriend at the time was near lunatic thinking the processing place was going to turn in the images for their content or refuse to print them. Neither of course happened and I have both the images, complete with very vivid date stamp, and the negatives still on hand. Ah, the momentary discretions of youth.)
TheHusband had started slow roasting a roast beef dinner this morning (which ended with smashed sweet potato/squash and amazing green beans for sides), which was filling up the house with delicious smells. For the rest of the afternoon until dinner, I plugged away at cleaning up broken links, adding new to the site content, and whatever other miscellany the rabbit hole took me. Including a link to TheHusband’s 1997 Geocities site.
It is becoming increasingly clear I need to set up a plan of what work I’ve got up and how it is formatted as well as a more concrete path. I came across a folder today I had forgotten about, while cleaning the broken links, containing works written for the web but were not blog pieces but more prose and flash fiction. I ended up scrapping a few of these that were already up as blog entries, turning them into pages to make the work consistent, and viola! A new section, Ephemera was born. Stylized as the prose companion to The Lisa Chronicles, this contains pieces that were written as mainly non-fiction creative prose rather than a diary entry as well as some earlier flash fiction I had written for contests and the like. Most of this stuff hasn’t been up for a decade, and a list of the works added will be on this weeks Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes, so please do keep your eye there.
Dinner rolled around, which was delicious as almost always (the one incident of TheHusband adding corn to chili has kept me on guard on his cooking for the last few years), and by 6PM, I was back to finagling some more back-end work on the site and mulling over other ideas.
I did have plans on doing some fiction writing today, but I got so wrapped up on getting the site back-end cleaned, but time just slipped by. And for once I do not feel guilty about losing that time, for finding that trove of written work I had forgotten about was a brilliant replacement. Now the question is – what to do with it?
The day meandered slow and steady, there was no rush, no plan, no agenda. TheHusband and I, and of course the hate-pooping dog, just went our own ways, meeting up in the hallway or in one of our offices for stolen kisses. Neither of us bathed, brushed our teeth, and the bed was only made because I changed the sheets. My desire to treasure the day, even if the day glossed over with the seemingly mundane and the wink of a cliché, was a success.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2010, 2003, 2003

we were all waving flags

Street words on the side of a church delivery door.

Dear Internet,
This morning I cried because I couldn’t put on a pair of shoes.
The inability to put shoes on is not an uncommon thing, but it is a frustrating one. Over a year since my first surgery and six months after the second, I still unable to fit anything beyond flip-flops or Chucks on my feet, with the occasional foray into a ballet flat. This is made even more difficult as my right foot post-surgery is now an 11.5W while my left is a 10.5B.
I’ve been piecing out my shoe wardrobe to keeping only what fits or I absolutely positively love rather than keep everything. While I was never really a heel girl, even the ones I own and loved are almost useless to me at this point and into the pile they go. A recently purchased and rather expensive pair of flats I got at 75% off, talked into buying them via a beloved shoe courtier who silkily promised they most assuredly would fit, turned out to be a “thank fuck I did not buy these at full price” mistake. Several wearings indoors per their instruction and then the eventual public airing of the shoe found they were, after an hour or two, almost unbearable. How a pair of flats could cause so much issue with my feet is beyond me. I do not blame the shoe courtier for the pressure because they do fit at slip-on and comfortably so at that; I blame my feet for their rebeling at being fashionable.
My current obsession is finding a pair of dress boots that are flat heeled (more due to height than comfort) and can accommodate my tennis calves and odd feet. Boxes have been arriving from various vendors for me to try on — funny how I never thought of the shipping of shoes from Zappos and the like to Throbbing Manor to be similar to the receiving of gifts from my subjects but there you are — and again, the frustration at mismarking and advertising of wrong sizes and widths is causing more stress. Last winter, after the first surgery, TheHusband counted I had purchased and returned a dozen pairs of everyday boots before finally finding a pair by happenstance at the mall.
The crying this morning was not simply over the fact my shoes don’t fit, but more about this bottom of this often never ending and seemingly black oil pit I find myself in. Yes, it sucks I couldn’t wear my walking shoes to go on a walk and had to opt for flip-flops, but it’s not the end of the world. Yet to me, it was and also rather symbolic of everything going on in my life.
As I continue the tapering down of Lithium, in fact today is the first day I’ve been Lithium free, my moods have started shifting like a radiograph, even more rapidly in the last week. I started bawling yesterday reading Facebook and then proceeded to go into a several hour depression that quickly, and shockingly, emptied me of life. The black clouds descend so quickly and with such force, I felt powerless. TheHusband spent a couple of hours walking me through my feelings, which continue to be a catalog of everything I feel are to be truths:

Nobody loves me
Everybody hates me
I will never be happy
Everyone leaves me
I will not amount to anything
I will have never accomplished X,Y,Z
I will never have the kind of life as seen by X,Y,Z
I am too old
I am too young

This has been the same laundry list since I could remember keeping track of all of my demons.
TheHusband got me calmed and by bedtime I felt relatively able to sleep with peace. This morning however, when I woke, the black cloud was back and circling with a vengeance. Since we woke at mid-morning, the sun had been up for several hours and our bedroom was bathed in light which was even more depressing. This blinding happiness depressed me more as the idea of staying shut in all day while the day glowed like the summer. Toss up: Stay indoors and become more depressed because everyone is seemingly having some kind of life, the world looks shiny and new OR go outside, even against your will, to at least experience what it feels like. Which will hurt more?
TheHusband made the executive decision we were going to walk Wednesday and then talk a walk ourselves. Chop-chop, wash your face, put on a sports bra and let’s go. He tempted me with treats from a local bakery conveniently located around the corner from our house if we did at least a quick jaunt around the neighborhood. Instead, we found ourselves roaming farther and longer, and the quick jaunt turned into a four mile walk in flip-flops, which ended with breakfast at a local place and some Gerbera daisies for the dining room.
We made half-heartedly plans for the afternoon, but found ourselves hiding in our offices while I read and wrote and TheHusband played video games. I was also opposed to the idea of having to put on pants for some reason, but that is not a black cloud thing, that is more of a sensibilities thing. Because, well, pants.
On occasion there will be days where I’ll get a glimpse of happiness, where I know that even at the darkest hour there will be a snap and things will become stable again. That as is before, as in the future, and as is the now, I will climb out of this slick pit of despair and change something. It’s hard to remember the positive in your life, when you’ve gotten so used to the idea that happiness is fleeting. HOW DARE YOU NORMAL PEOPLE HAVE HAPPY LIVES? Which is why I cry at Facebook. And stalk some people’s lives online because I find it so fucking hard to believe someone could legitimately be happy. SURELY, they must be faking it. Or projecting it. Or something. The world is unreal, ergo, what I am seeing is also unreal.
It’s hard to remember not everyone is like me, that feelings are felt and gone so fast, their tail is often the only reminder they are there. It’s hard to remember often what I’m seeing in other people is really a projection or a sum of their life, I don’t know everything going on in their world. All I do know, their happiness reinforces my lack of having any. It’s hard to remember a trigger by something sending me into a spiral, should not be reinforced by swimming in that sea.
And even harder to remember, no matter how prickly I may be, I am not unloved.

x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2003

Conversations with TheHusband on Writing

Dear Internet,
TheHusband is a snob.
So when he asks me what I’ve written lately, and I give him the word count from EPbaB for the day, he turns his nose up at me. “That’s not real writing,” he says. “That’s just your blog!”
This conversation goes back and forth every couple of months, with me defending and him objecting. Finally, it comes out to him, real writing is fiction. Preferably long fiction, a novella or even a novel. Short bits, flash, and other work such as writing a diary online are not “real writing.” But it would count, he says, if I got paid for what I did. (Which is a whole ‘nother entry.)
Writing fiction is hard work. You have to be an exceptional liar, because something you’re creating is false; a lie upon itself. You also have to have the witheral for isolation, tendency for physical solitude, and the ability to create at the drop of a hat. Doing all of this without going insane.
At least that’s my interpretation of it.
For years, when I come up with a story from my past that I was planning on working into a diary piece, he stops me and says it would make good story period. Why not turn that into something else?, he asks. Use it as a jumping off point for a bigger story concept. In the past, for whatever reason, I’ve chosen to ignore him because where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do with my writing seemed to be so opposite of where he tries to gently push me.
Something today clicked. I was thinking of something, which leads to another, as it often does, when I recalled an event from my childhood that upon my nearly 30 year removal from the incident, seems quite extraordinary. I was indeed going to write about the incident in its natural form for EPbaB, but something stopped me – the idea that this bit from my childhood would indeed make a grand launch pad into a fictional world. Why attempt to explain what happened and why when time has eroded the more fragile of the concepts of the period? Instead I could create another world where I can fill in the details as they were meant to happen or as I wanted them to happen or as I thought I had remembered them.
In short, make shit up.
This dawning of clarity of how this world works came to me at 4:45PM as I was in the bedroom taking my afternoon pills. When the dust cleared from this acceptance of truth, I checked the clock for the time so I could recall it back to TheHusband for I wanted this moment to be ingrained.
And just like that, the beginning of something came and within an hour, I had slightly over 1200 words (or the equivalent of 43 tweets) committed to paper in some kind of coherent series of events. When I told TheHusband I had committed 1200 words on fiction today, I got a “That’s nice, dear. Is that about two pages?” I huffed and corrected him on the page count.
It was the first time since the beginning of the year I have written anything resembling a fictional story.
A couple of years ago, I purchased Scrivener and last year, I started organizing my work. I have roughly over 40 story sparks, ideas or lines that could be the basis of something, which also includes a couple of ideas that are formatted for novel length. In addition, I have five pieces which are in progress and more than a dozen completed. With the exception of the odd submission here or there, none of this has been shopped around anywhere.
It’s always been painful as I could come up with ideas, I could take notes on these ideas, but getting those notes into a fully formed idea has mostly failed. One thing is for certain, I keep collecting ideas and my tenacity to see them through exists regardless of past experiences.
Another truism that has occurred over the last couple of weeks, as my come down from the drugs has taken place, I’ve started to seriously wonder why I haven’t been using writing as a way of my own escapism from this chaos in my head. Isn’t that what I’ve done before? Why is it so different now? And why wasn’t I exploring a fictional world to give some peace to the conflicts that keep occurring?
I have no answers.
If one thing is for certain from going through my archives in the last year, I am my own worst enemy.
x0x0,
Lisa
P.S. The one thing I do know, is when I was able to do what I did today, the first thing I wanted to do after telling my husband was to tell you.

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

In which we buy a cabin

Throbbing Cabin, circa August 2013.
Dear Internet,
Since we did not end up going up north this weekend, it seemed like a good time to tell you about our latest harebrained scheme.
The plan, of course, was to pay off our house in Grand Rapids, my student loans and car debt before doing any more big purchases. The house in GR was (and still is) to be the collateral for a home in Europe somewhere, with intent to purchase that within the next decade. Owning a cabin in one of the most expensive counties in the state wasn’t even a twinkle in either of our eyes at any time in the near future.
In a way, that sentence is not true. TheHusband had been coming up to the area on and off as a kid and I had been here myself when I was dating TheEx and loved it, ergo, a mutual desire of the area was acknowledged between us. TheHusband and I have vacationed up here often together, so there was a twinkle, but one of a nano scale, I promise.
TheHusband has a penchant for stalking Zillow and while I was in the middle of my recuperation from ankle surgery last summer, he found the listing for a short sale cabin in Leelanau county for scary cheap. When I got the all clear to travel beyond my bedroom, we road tripped up to the area for the day (dog in tow, of course) to check it out.
I will tell you dear reader, upon first blush I was meh on the ordeal. While the exterior A-frame was lovely to behold, the interior was sketchy.

And by sketchy I mean the kitchen, with the exception of the fridge, has retained its original 1972 charm. The entire first floor, with the exception of the bathroom and back bedrooms, was entirely carpeted in white berber and it seemed they decided to take the no clean approach to keeping the carpet healthy.

The loft, which contained the master bedroom, was done in red shag so blinding of a color, you’d think we were in a house of ill repute.

The half bath in the loft was hastily added in later, it seems, for the toilet was not a standard toilet but one for a RV or a boat, but they added in a standardized sink directly in front so the only person who could use the bathroom was me. I could essentially pee and wash my hands at the very same time.
The previous owners did a lot of DIY, but terribly so. They built cupboards under the eaves of the roof in the loft for storage but the doors didn’t fit. They sanded down and painted the kitchen from the natural cedar to a burnt green, but only did one coat. They stained the exterior of the cabin itself but only did it half way up until they could reach no more. The platform the gas fireplace was sitting on had been redone in field rock that was so loose, if you stepped on it, pieces would roll away.
In addition to the interior work that needed to be completed, there was a lot of what TheHusband referred to as infrastructure work that needed to be done, such as:

Repair the well
Replace the septic and drainfield
Have mold removed from the crawl space and condition it
Replace the gutters
De-moss and de-lichen the roof and clean it
Power clean the deck and restain it

So even knowing all of this work that needed to be done, that it could end up being incredibly expensive beyond our savings, we took the plunge in the fall of 2012 and put a bid in for the place.
After several months of going back and forth (they wouldn’t leave the bear skin, they wanted the modern fridge, we didn’t want the cedar furniture they were trying to sell to us for $9,000), we closed the week before Christmas, 2012.
I had the good sense of getting our Internet turned on before the closing. We had no fridge, no furniture except an air mattress, no lighting except what we brought up, but by jove! We had incredible DSL speeds. Also, interestingly, my brother who is an industrial electrician, had just turned up 4G in the area a few weeks prior.
The cabin, thankfully, is all season and has heat, so we stayed for a few days. Initially, we planned on staying for a week but time started ticking as a winter storm was approaching, with discussions of feet of snow. Not inches, but feet. We talked about toughing it out, but we are 10 miles from two villages in either direction, and while the county plowed our road, we still had a long driveway to worry about. No food on hand, no fridge. We came home. We scheduled for a local plumbing company to come out after Christmas to winterize the cabin and then we put it to sleep for the winter. We left one breaker on, the one electrical outlet that had our router plugged in for the Internet and our smart home application.
In the spring 2013 we would begin the renovations.
Oh. Joy.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #37)

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

Magnificent men and their flying machines

South Eastern Wheelers from Waterford Bicycle Club circa 1909, via National Library of Ireland. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.

Dear Internet,
Unintentionally, yesterday was one of the laziest days we’ve had in a long while. I woke up around 8:30A to take Wednesday out and do her mourning rituals. TheHusband was still asleep when we came back to the bedroom, so I grabbed my laptop to start working on the archives while he slept. I made a lovely cup of tea to keep me warm as our house is freezing.
After a couple of hours, TheHusband finally awoke and we were quiet for a few more hours while he checked the interwebs on his tablet and I continued to work. Sometime around 1PM, we wandered downstairs for food and to plan our meals for the following week.
As we’ve been to-ing and fro-ing to the cabin every week, we haven’t had a grocery shop, like a serious one, since June. Maybe even May. When I’ve been alone at the house, I graze so chips and dip it is!
Because of all our to-ing and fro-ing, we haven’t had time to do much shopping at any of the local farmer’s markets either, which has kind of bummed me out. I discovered, by happenstance, a local version of Door to Door Organics called Doorganics, with most of the food certified from local farms. Our biggest problem when we were with Door to Door Organics was the food was almost NEVER local (though they claimed this to be so). With Doorganics, each item is marked with what farm it came from, which is awesome. The ultimate goal is to shop at the Downtown Market once the interior is finished, use Doorganics, and use local shops for missing items. While we’ve gotten good use out of our Costco card, we’re not renewing it but I should add, we did get a Sam’s Club membership for when we are up near the cabin, so losing the club membership isn’t really a tragedy.
With food and meal plans organized, instead of taking a shower and getting our shop on, we wandered back upstairs where I continued with working on the archives and TheHusband read on his tablet for awhile. He ended up taking a nap for a few hours, while the dog and I continued on with what we were doing. Sometime around the dinner hour, I walked the dog for her afternoon constitutional, refreshed whatever I was drinking, and came back to bed. TheHusband snored on.
Dinner plans were thrown about but only if the place delivered, both feeling too lazy to put pants on to pick something up. Not having take out delivered in months, I was hoping there were new places available to try.
I would be wrong.
I’ve been cheating like a mad woman on eating dairy and I was tempted to order pizza but I couldn’t chance what would happen if I actually went into anaphylactic shock. Eating Cheetos is one thing but solid cheese is a whole nother piece of business. In the end I ordered from a local Chinese place, while TheHusband ordered pizza. I eventually fell asleep sometime around midnight.
I calculated with walking the dog, bathroom breaks, and some to and froing to getting drinks or bugging TheHusband in his office, I was out of bed maybe only 2-3 hours out of my 16 hour day.
I didn’t even bother to take a shower or brush my teeth.
If you think this is unusual, you would in fact be wrong. The sheer amount of time I spend in the bedroom when I’m not sleeping is kind of frightening. After I get up, and rouse TheHusband out of bed, the bed is then made. So I’m not snuggled up in the bed itself, instead I treat the bed like a giant desk. Everything I could possibly need is in this room: 37″ HD TV with all the accoutrements, all my electronics, portion of my books, even an en suite for when I need to use the loo! With the kitchen located right off the stairs, everything is within reach.
I live in a beautiful house that is 3200 SQFT, I have my own private office with an Aeron office chair and a desk that dates back from 1923 and came from a college library that we picked up at an antique show. I don’t utilize any other room in this house (which only furthers the notion we definitely need to downsize) and to be fair, neither does TheHusband but I’ve taken it a whole new level.
So then why?
The explanation we’ve come up with dates back to when I had my surgery last year. For three months I was bed ridden. When I started becoming weight bearing, I had to constantly elevate my leg whenever possible. So when I came home from work, on the bed and up went the leg. Then there was surgery #2. Laid up for nearly a month, then back to partial weight bearing, then finally I am free.
For a year I have spent most of my non working, waking hours on the bed with my foot propped and a dog who thinks it was an extension of my left hip. So it makes sense, then, this has become my base for all things.
It doesn’t help the bed is a king and extremely comfortable.
It also doesn’t help my excuse for not working in my office is that computer is old and too slow.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been trying to move myself to a place where I could feel inspired, was outside the bedroom, and was comfortable. In June I created a work area in the solarium.
And then promptly never used it.
To be fair, the to-ing and fro-ing to the cabin this summer has impacted how I work, but now that is over, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into how organize myself so that I can get things done.
As much as I adored my lovely king size desk and the great distractions around me, work won’t get done while I’m set up this way. I’ve had a year to make this work, and granted a good amount of time was because I had to, not because I wanted to, but in this configuration is not conducive.
Forward on to finding a work space!
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #30)

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2003