Saturday miscellany

Okay, so Parks and Recreation, The Office, and 30 Rock were all insanely funny this week. I think all of them had lines that could go down in the history of great TV one-liners, although I don’t recall any of them verbatim. Matt Damon’s line about the birds on 30 Rock was pretty awesome.

Speaking of TV, I’m sure none of you are watching American Idol this season. I have to say, after performers like Adam Lambert last season and David Cook the year before, the contestants this year are basically a snoozefest. Lee will probably win but it’s like, I don’t care! I’d still vote for Didi Benami if I could. I do think this year’s contestants were a highly good-natured and courteous bunch. Maybe that’s their problem. Time to start throwing chairs and wrecking hotel rooms. Where’s the passion?

I got overly optimistic with my last batch of library books, and I am way behind (in terms of due date). I’ll get there, though! An interesting mix of books on the reading list this month.

I started going back to yoga. YAY! Especially since I hurt my leg in Hawaii, stretching it feels sooooo good. Plus the teacher is a friend of mine and I like to support her. She always seems to know exactly what parts of my body need stretching, although sometimes that means doing poses I’m not particularly fond of. Have you ever noticed that the yoga poses you dislike the most are the ones you need the most?

The weather is warming up. I forgot how quickly my house transitions from “winter freezing” to “summer baking.” Insulation, what’s that? The upside is that I can wear my cute summer dresses around the house without getting frostbitten toes! Huzzah!

So that’s the news around here. I’m a little behind on BALTWIM (Blogging At Least Thrice Weekly in May)… does that mean we’ll see a sneaky Saturday night post? Possibly! Bite those fingernails!

Cheers!
k.

May 22nd, 2010

In the moment.

This has been on my mind a lot lately.

I am preoccupied with the idea of gratification: why we want what we want, and what it feels like to get it.

It’s like getting a job. When you’re out of work, nothing in the world seems as important as getting a job. Then you get a job, and there’s that moment–YAY! I got a JOB! All is right with the world! …And then two months later you wish you could stab yourself in the eye with a hot poker just to get out of having to go to work.

You see it everywhere: If I had a bigger house, everything would be great. If I could lose 20 pounds, everything would be great. When really, a bigger house will drive you nuts because it’s more house to keep clean. You lose 20 pounds and you still feel fat.

Won’t the thing we wished for always disappoint us? I’ve known people who base their entire conception of happiness on these moments. The next, newer, bigger, faster, more exciting thing. Their lives are a series of highs punctuated by lows–the lows of the absence of gratification, and the even worse lows where something that was supposed to lift them up instead lets them down.

This is how I often feel about people who are intent on getting published. Yes, there are people who know exactly what they’re in for. But there are just as many people who have big problems in their lives and seem to think that writing and publishing a book will fix it all. “But I don’t expect to be famous,” they say. “I just want to know that I’ve done it.”

Yeah, that’s a nice moment, to be sure. But at the end of the day, it’s a moment like all others–and like the others, the misty excitement of it will fade away and leave you wondering where you glory went.

Not to mention that being published isn’t exactly a cure-all. You go from being one of the struggling masses of unpublished people to being one of the struggling masses of published people. And despite the claims I’ve seen that just seeing one’s book on a shelf would be enough to sustain the glow for all time, it’s NOT. Trust me. You’d see your book, feel the golden moment, and then start wondering why no one is buying your book–why is it STILL on the shelf? And when it’s off the shelf, why haven’t they ordered more?

Maybe I say this too much. Maybe I’m a broken record. But listen up, my friends:

IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY UNPUBLISHED, BEING PUBLISHED WILL NOT MAKE YOU HAPPY.

It won’t. It just won’t. The same way that the new car, the new house, the bigger paycheck, will not make you happy.

I’m not saying don’t write, or don’t strive for success. By all means, do. But while you work on your book, also work on fostering a sense of how lucky you are regardless of whether you’re a bestselling author or not. And when the glorious moments come, keep them in perspective. Don’t count on them to define you or to change your life. You must be the force behind the change in your own life–not any moment, good or bad.

Happiness, sustained–contentment–is not made out of a collection of moments, no matter how dazzling those moments are. They are not the picture; they are the paint. You can have all the paint you want and you won’t necessarily have a beautiful picture. You could just as easily make a mess. Or you can have a tiny amount and still create a masterpiece.

Remember–this is the only way. Remember, remember, that every moment is its own blessing.

k.

PS – Nothing alarming is happening in my life to inspire this. It just really has been on my mind lately. Why are we so discontent when we have miraculous lives in this miraculous world?

May 20th, 2010

Hurry up and wait

“Hurry up and wait” is a term I first learned in film school, when I worked as a crewmember on the older classes’ projects. Basically it means that you sit around for an hour and then have four minutes to do something very important. Kind of like being on a pit crew, I imagine.

That is exactly the nature of my authorly life right now. Hurry up–that’s the part where I’m at the computer all day, every day, from mid-March to the end of April. Wait–that’s the part where I wait for my editor’s feedback. Right now, I’m in “wait” mode, and honestly… wait mode rocks!

I wish I were better at achieving balance–when I’m writing furiously, everything else gets neglected–chores, exercise, social life. I do make a point to spend time with the husb, because the marriage sits on a pedestal, but everything else goes by the wayside.

And then when I’m not writing, there’s this blissful sense of actually having time to do stuff. It’s really indescribable. This morning I went to yoga class! Yoga! I haven’t been in months. The theme of the class was “hips,” which the teacher described as the body’s junk drawer. I felt my whole body letting go of junk (metaphorically) as I creaked and croaked my way through the class. It was wonderful.

So I am a sewing, bending, email inbox-tackling fool, and in my quiet moments I’m reading like a madwoman and giving some thought to (gulp) book 3!

I hope you are all having the happies right now. I almost always have the happies, but it’s definitely nice to have time to appreciate them!

PS – My stepmother flies out tomorrow to visit us, hurray!

PPS – This is BALTWIM 2/3… one more blog this week (guess that would be tomorrow), and I’m still in the game!

PPPS – I got a post office box. I am tremendously excited, because now I can give out my address for snailmail. I love snailmail. Writing it, getting it, even saying the word. “Snailmail.”

PPPPS – If I seem to have a dramatic case of the happies (verging on the hypers), it is probably because I just slammed back a 20-ounce Diet Dr. Pepper. Pep pep hooray!

May 14th, 2010

The author will now look around.

My desk faces the yard, and over the past few weeks, my view has been considerably brightened by the blooming of the peach blossoms. I felt inspired to take a picture and share it, and then I figured, why not take a walk around and see what catches my eye?

First, my little peach tree. No fuzzy infant peaches yet, but I’ve seen the bees a-buzzin’, so here’s hoping…

Aren’t the flowers gorgeous? So delicate!

From the looks of the dwarf orange tree, it’s going to be a bumper crop:

The sad ivy bed, which I’m try to coax back to life after it got tented along with the house in July:

The french lavender, which decided all by itself that it belonged in our yard and has proceeded to thrive (voulez-vous fleurir avec moi?):

Strange little leaves on stilts!

The shady side of the yard:

Vs. the sunny side of the yard:

Beloved old oak canopy:

Red berries untouched by the cedar waxwings:

Cunning little pink flowers (this is called “pink clover”… it found its own way in):

This picture shows the retaining wall Winston jumped off of as well as the cement planter border he landed on (face first) back on July 4, 2008… a day that will live on in infamy, a bad dog back, and vet bills:

Neglected pepper plant continues, without human interference, to bless us with its horrible hot peppers (the husb rather likes them):

Sweet winding vine! Self-taught.

Naughty gopher! Wishing I hadn’t scared you away when the neighbor tried to dispatch you:

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of the most vile-tasting oranges ever conceived of:

The windchime is broken, but it still smiles (and chimes):

I’m starting to worry that the crape myrtle isn’t going to come back from winter! Grow some leaves, already!

Upstairs we have the succulent garden. The spiky plant which is on the left and in the middle amuses me to no end, because the one in the middle is actually a shoot from the main plant that decided it would prefer to run away from home:

And, lastly, Winston. Because no post about anything is complete without him. In the first picture, I thought he was just doing the Cavalier ‘tude thing with the nose in the air. Then I realized he was mad at the little reflection cast around the ceiling by my phone.

Cheers, all! Happy Thursday night (or Friday morning, as the case may be)… (try as I might, I can’t break this text off into its own paragraph. Just as well that we’ve reached the end, I guess.)

k.

5 comments March 18th, 2010

Monday, Monday…

This can’t be a long post because I’m writing, writing, writing, but no way am I going to let a litle bit of a busy schedule interfere with 31 Days of Blogging at Least on the Weekdays or Else. I realize now that not blogging on the weekends means that my 31 days will extend into April, but I’m okay with that, if everyone else is.

The weekend was nice and quiet. Friday night the husb and I had dinner with my aunt, uncle, and cousin who were in LA for a long weekend, looking at a couple of colleges. I can’t even remember what I did on Saturday… website redesign is what I’d say if I had to guess. Then we went to a gathering at our friends’ house in honor of some good college friends who are in town from Georgia. It was a very low-key night with some delicious food, and then I got sleepy and chilled on the couch while their French Bulldog lovingly licked my feet. Sounds creepy, but it’s like his favorite thing to do, so how can you say no?

Yesterday, we went to see The Ghost Writer–oh, no we didn’t! We did that Saturday. Okay. Maybe I did web design on Friday. Anyway, this is the new Roman Polanski movie, and though I’ve seen some great reviews, it didn’t bowl me over. The production design and the overall look and feel of the film were very effective, but the story didn’t make it all the way around the block for me, if you know what I mean.

Plus, I’m not wild about supporting Roman Polanski. But that’s another blog post.

Last night we had some friends over and ate a Sunday Neapolitan Ragu, which we learned in a cooking class and have proceeded to make on a large portion of the Sundays since then. It’s insanely good, and I’m fighting myself not to go eat some leftovers right now.

So, back to writing, and hope you’re all having a great Monday! Just remember, waking up on Monday morning beats the alternative.

2 comments March 15th, 2010

Lifestyle change.

We got a new sofa.

When we moved into this house four years ago, we for some reason went on a manic furniture-buying binge. Well, I guess the reason is that we wanted furniture. Our old sofa was little and our new living room was big. So we went and found a big old leather sectional, very lodgy looking and dark. (Big ol’, really, not big and old.)

My house has a view of the San Fernando Valley, home to about 1.75 million people. But the thing I love is that we’re low enough to hug the tree line, so it just looks like a big valley full of trees. In fact, until some neighbors started an aggressive tree-trimming campaign, you couldn’t even see any of the other houses in the neighborhood. Now we catch a glimpse of a porch here, a roof there.

So on one hand, having a nice, dark lodgy sofa and a tree view made it feel very much like somebody’s hunting cabin out in the wilderness. On the other hand, the sofa was ginormous, and it dominated the room, which is actually not a lodge-style room.

So we gave the old guy away and got a new, smaller sofa, as well as a chair with a footstool. (The husb has an obsession with chairs. He got the idea after watching an HGTV show about a guy who was obsessed with chairs. His goal someday is to have a special room with many cool chairs in it, where people come and… sit, I guess. So the new chair is his baby.)

We spent approximately 45 hours yesterday afternoon rearranging furniture. Small sofas are heavier than they look, by the way. We couldn’t find a configuration that satisfied both of us at once, until we decided to do something fairly random that conventional wisdom, and I, would tell you was not a good idea (hint: diagonal furniture).

It opened up the room and created negative space and all of those other home-blog-term types of things.

The problem is that, for example, I am sitting nicely upright on the new sofa typing this blog entry. Sitting UPRIGHT. On the old sofa, you would need to rig a pulley system to achieve anything like normal posture. Also, I am drinking my coffee nervously, because this sofa is not leather and therefore cannot just be hosed down.

The old sofa was like an RV–you could eat on it, sleep on it, have three close friends hang out with you (four was possible, but tight), bring your dogs, etc. etc. etc.

The new one is not the kind of thing you curl up on when you’re sick. It’s not the kind of sofa you sit and eat orange-cheese-powder snacks on. If you drop chocolate on this sofa, so help you God you’d better get it off before it melts under somebody’s body heat.

So there’s going to be an adjustment period. We need better side tables now. We need a new rug. And we need to relearn how to eat dinner at the dinner table. How to sleep in our own beds when we aren’t feeling well. How to watch TV from a few further feet away. How to keep the dog on his blanket or a lap–never the sacred upholstery.

Despite, or maybe even because of all this, I’m glad New Sofa has joined us. Change is a good thing, right?

The Daily Plah: Day 6
Currently reading: The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong, and Unclutter Your Life in One Week by Erin Rooney Doland (which totally got me to go through my yoga clothes and coat closet yesterday and clear out the ones I don’t use)
Song of the day: I don’t have one yet. I’m sitting in awed silence on the new sofa, you see.
Other notable facts: I was just going to say it looks like rain, but then I turned around and saw the sun shining on everything. So never mind!

3 comments March 6th, 2010

Balance: on seeking it.

So, some of you are very organized people. You have no problem maintaining a schedule, keeping your food healthy, getting a moderate amount of exercise, and keeping everything in your home in its proper place.

This post is not about people like you. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read on–in fact, keep reading, because you will find lots of opportunities to be happy with yourself and the discipline you have cultivated.

If you’re the other kind of person, like me, keeping all of the plates spinning isn’t quite so easy. Tending to one plate generally means two or three others slow down or come crashing to the ground: if I’m on a deadline, I’m not exercising, AND my house starts to look like the intake at a Goodwill drop-off, AND I eat marshmallow and Diet Coke fondue every twenty-five minutes (that’s not really what I eat… but it’s the nutritional equivalent). Or, if I’m exercising and eating well, I don’t seem to have time for anything else. Or, if the house is clean and dinner is cooked by, you know, dinner time, everything else falls apart. Or, if I’m keeping up with Facebook and Twitter, I’m unable to accomplish anything else.

I think this is because, as writers, we are constantly striving to find new and better ways to procrastinate. So doing something else for a while isn’t enough–we need to find a way to make that thing the ONLY thing we can do. That way, nobody can blame us when we don’t hit our wordcount.

For 2010, my goal is to find balance. Not just to concentrate on one of these things, but to divide my focus among all of them. And–gasp!–to do it well enough to keep my household running (and fed), my health in a normal human range, and my work schedule efficient and effective.

Even though it sounds impossible, I think that might not be the case. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that once you get all of your plates spinning, things actually become simpler.

The reason for this, I suspect, is the concept that we procrastinators try very much to avoid: self-discipline supports itself. It’s kind of an all-or-nothing proposition. If you’re always saying yes, it’s much harder to say no in one area. But if you’re able to temper all of your yes with a healthy sprinkling of no, you get in the practice of it.

At least that’s what I hope, and that’s why I’ve been so scarce lately. I’ve added a little no to my yes, and my house is getting cleaner and my body is getting healthier (that’s the plan, anyway), and my to-do list is getting done.

…Just in time for my editor’s notes to come and blow everything out of the water! But I’m hoping that will just be one more spinning plate.

7 comments February 3rd, 2010

Utilitarian observations on rain in Los Angeles.

Hello! It’s been such a lengthy absence that I’m not even sure I know what to talk about anymore.

The obvious thing would be the rain.

The whole country makes fun of us Southern Californians for acting like crazies when it rains, but I have to defend us. First of all, we live in the desert. We spend a whole year forgetting what rain feels like. Then, when it happens, you kind of freak out a little. Even if you didn’t mean to. There’s the whole balancing an umbrella AND your purse AND your bags AND getting into and out of the car… that, my friends, takes practice. And we don’t get a lot of practice. So we just get soaked.

Then there are our roads, which aren’t really set up for rain, in that when it rains, the lanemarkers kind of disappear. And we have long stretches of road with no streetlamps, because there are always so many cars that it would just be redundant. So then you have all these lights shining on the non-existent lanemarkers, and what you end up with is half the population of Los Angeles taking a sick day. When we first moved out here, we marveled at the fact that no one goes to work when it rains.

I’m off work right now, anyway, but if I weren’t, I’d be calling and leaving fake cough voicemail messages for sure.

But all of that doesn’t change the fact that I kind of like the rain. I live up in the hills, on a street where everybody knows everybody. The only person none of us knows is the jerk who owns the undeveloped lot at the end of the street. He doesn’t take care of it, so every year, more of it falls down into the street, severely impeding drainage for half the street.

I get to put on my boots, my poncho, and my work gloves, and go shovel dirt. I like it. It feels sort of dramatic and very low-grade heroic to go tromping around the neighborhood, managing the flow of water, keeping nature in her place, etc.

I like the fact that we finally refined our “not down our stairs, you don’t” water repellant system. It used to be a bunch of boards held in place by pieces of stone statuary. But now we have it down pat–the key is to use 5-gallon buckets to brace a piece of sturdy plastic garden edging. The harder it rains, the fuller the buckets get, and then when it’s all over, we don’t have to carry 50-pound statue pieces to the back wall of the garage.

I like helping our neighbors, who have bad backs and bad knees and hefty work schedules, keep their houses safe from rainwater. It makes me feel closer to the community.

I like shoveling and getting wet and getting that secret kind of exercise that doesn’t involve paying $15 per class or the Wii balance board.

I like drying Winston’s little paws and his belly after he goes outside. I like watching him take a flying leap over the trench of running water at the edge of the curb. (The wet dog smell I could live without, but…)

I like hearing the rain outside, starting and stopping all night, and knowing we’re safe and warm inside.

I’m trying hard right now to get the house back in order after 3 months of negligence (multi-tasking and I, we don’t always make things work). I turn on an audiobook and work for hours.

It makes me feel very earthy and useful and connected–all of the things that life in LA doesn’t normally afford you. Oh, it’s always there, the potential to feel that way. But it’s easier to understand it when the rain comes and washes away the distractions.

10 comments January 20th, 2010

Everyday-type dialogues around my house.

My house gets cold in the winter. Like, “the kitchen floor makes your toes hurt” cold. So we compensate by wearing fuzzy socks, warm robes, etc. The only problem is that I hate rolling my robe sleeves up to do things around the house, like washing dishes.

So a few weeks before Christmas, I told the husb that if he saw a cute short-sleeved robe, he could get it for me for Christmas.

A couple of weeks later, he says, “I’ve looked everywhere for a short-sleeved robe. They don’t exist.”

(Technically, they do exist, but you have to be content looking like Betty Draper’s dumpy cousin to wear them.)

So I went to the store and found a robe on sale and brought it home with the intent of hacking the sleeves off.

I said to the husb, “Never mind about the short-sleeved robe. I’m going to make my own.” Didn’t have a chance to do it before Christmas, though.

Christmas morning, I open a box from the husb that contains… wait for it… a half-sleeve sweater robe. The only thing is, it’s so cute that I don’t want to wear it as a robe. It’s really just a cute, long sweater with a waist tie.

This morning, I spend five minutes hacking the sleeves off my other robe (and finishing the cut edges so they won’t fray). I come upstairs wearing it. The following conversation takes place:

HUSB: (blinks, looks at robe)

ME: It’s my short-sleeved robe. I just made it myself.

HUSB: But… I got you one for Christmas.

ME: I know. But I had already told you not to.

HUSB: (stares thoughtfully)

ME: Anyway, the one you got me for Christmas is too nice. I don’t want to wear it when I wash dishes. I want to wear it as a sweater.

HUSB goes on with his day, highly pleased with his excellent sweater-choosing abilities.

I go to the kitchen and wash some dishes.

And then there’s Winston. We were outside last night and he stepped on a leaf that must have had some sap on it or something, causing it to stick to his back foot.

He walks along, happily oblivious, for a few steps. Then he realizes something is wrong. There is a LEAF! A terrifying LEAF! Attacking him! He tries desperately to get to his foot, contorting and just about falling over in the middle of the street.

WINSTON: What is it?!? GETITOFFMEGETITOFFMEGETITOFFME!

I reach down and pluck the leaf, tossing it away.

WINSTON: Wait, I wanted to EAT that.

6 comments January 8th, 2010

2009: a year in review

Number of books read: 25; 4 audiobooks, 21 regular books (sad, sad, sad — must do better in 2010!)

Number of books published: 1

Number of dog shows produced: 3

Number of dogs snurgled during production of said dog shows: 40 bazillion

Number of trips to New York: 2 (heaven!)

Number of times I drove my car into my garage wall and very nearly into my kitchen: 1

Number of times somebody else drove their car into my car: 1

Number of inches away from my car some lady stopped, which would have made it three times to the body shop in 2 months: 6

Number of Chuck Norris one-liners conceived of in dream state: 1 (“Chuck Norris is so tough that when he turned 18, the Army joined him.”)

Number of new beds purchased in hopes of gaining some square footage for myself: 1

Amount of increase space, in square feet: 0

Amount of wasted space in the middle of the bed, as Winston edges me off the side, in square feet: 12

Ratio of sewing machine breakdowns to number of sewing machines owned: 3:2

New songs purchased this year: 216

Most-played new song (25 times, according to iTunes): Adam Lambert’s “Mad World”

Most-played song of all (81 times, according to iTunes): “Work” by Jars of Clay

Number of husbands who will lose their minds if I don’t go upstairs and start chopping lettuce: 1

Cheers, everyone! Happy New Year! And thanks for the good wishes.

k.

6 comments January 3rd, 2010