Soggy Leaves

Oh, October! Where hath your crispiness gone? No crunchy leaves. No dry snap to the air. No sharp sunshine.

Instead we get gray and drizzle and damp and blah …

And soggy leaves that are going to kill someone if I don’t get them off the sidewalk in front of the steps. (Most likely I will be their victim.)

Soggy leaves, central Minnesota, October 29, 2009

If only we could have a few dry days ….

Not that I’m promising to rake the whole yard, mind you.

Writer’s Panic

Daughter had a serious case of Writer’s Panic last evening. Writer’s Panic is three steps beyond simple Writer’s Block. If you don’t have to write, Writer’s Block can make you much more interested in cleaning the cat box and sweeping the stairs than facing the computer screen. Sure, you can mumble about not being able to write and how grouchy that makes you feel, but the only thing riding on Writer’s Block is your sense of personal accomplishment. It’s up to you whether you want to get that novel written in your lifetime.

Writer’s Panic arises from a combination of Writer’s Block and an external deadline. The pressure of the deadline ramps up the physical manifestations of Writer’s Block from comfortable avoidance tactics to rapid heart rate, a harried expression, periodic table-pounding, threats of tossing the computer out a window, and a strained voice (the latter often employed to tell your mother that nothing is going to work). Writer’s Panic is contagious and can even be passed to non-writers. (Blame mirror neurons for that.)

If you witness a person in full-blown Writer’s Panic, the best thing to do is remain calm. (I know how hard that is, but do it anyway. The situation will not be resolved if you break down in Writer’s Helper Panic.) You must then attempt to soothe the writer’s fears, because, obviously, if someone is in a panic, they are afraid. Ask the writer leading questions like, “When is your essay due?”, “What is your thesis statement?”, “What are you stuck on?”, “Is there a written description of the assignment you can show me?”, “Can I see what you’ve written so far?”, “Do you have an outline?” Ask anything you think will get the writer working productively again.

If the writer is particularly distraught, have him or her get up and go for a brief walk, do jumping jacks, have a drink of water or a bite to eat, use the bathroom – anything to distract from the sheer terror of writing. Upon returning to write, he will likely still be on edge, but won’t be quite so ready to remove your head.

If the panicked writer is having trouble generating any significant prose (typically caused by self-censoring as she is writing), offer to take dictation, typing while the writer talks through the assignment topic. This method allows for a lot of material to produced in a short time, which will give both you and the writer an idea of where the piece is going for organizational purposes.

(It’s important to note that this is the writer’s assignment, not yours, so when taking dictation, type whatever the writer says as he says it. Don’t embellish with your own thoughts. If the writer is speaking too fast for you to type, ask him to slow down, which will make the writer compose more complete statements.)

Once the writer sees how much is on the page, she will breathe easier because progress has been made. The writer can then take what has been dictated and edit it by moving paragraphs around, tweaking sentences, and deleting what doesn’t work. It’s much easier to edit writing that is solidly affixed to a page than to edit amorphous thoughts prior to formation. If necessary, print out the pages of dictation in order to give the writer a different sort of physical manifestation of the words, providing distance from the writing. Crossing unnecessary stuff off a piece of paper will be a delight for the formerly-panicked writer.

If the writer continues to be in panic mode after all this, you’re on your own. I’d suggest investing in tranquilizer darts. You can decide whether you or the writer are in greater need of them.

——–

A couple of helpful links related to this post’s topic:

Why Writer’s Block is Your Secret Weapon by Melissa Karnaze on Copyblogger.

Generate Ideas Through “Object Writing” by Pat Pattison on Writer’s Digest.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of the Woo Woo Teacup Journal. Happy birthday, blog!

Car Shopping

A few weeks ago, Hubby and I bought a new-to-us car, a Buick Park Avenue. This was after our Mazda Millenia went kaflooey on the interstate. (FYI: The interstate is not a fun place to break down. Dangerous as all get-out because the cars come fast and shoot by without slowing down. If you get out and stand on the side of the road, as is habitual during car trouble, you risk being hit. Best to stay buckled in the vehicle – unless it’s in flames – and wait for help.)

Our Millenia had overheated so badly that the heat had warped parts of the engine. That meant dropping a new engine into the car for a minimum of $2,200. We decided it wasn’t worth it, preferring to spend that money on something newer and more reliable.

Thus, our research began. Or, rather, Hubby’s research began.

When we were young and dumb, we played hit-or-miss with the whole car-purchasing task. We were seriously burnt doing this, ending up with a car that had a major mechanical issue because a salesperson pressured us into buying. He used the line, “The car won’t be on the lot tomorrow; you’ve gotta buy now.” Yeah. We don’t fall for that anymore. As soon as a car salesperson uses that kind of line on us, we walk. No car is so good a deal that we can’t take a day or two to think about it. And if someone buys a car out from under us, fine. It wasn’t meant to be.

Since that time, along with not knuckling under to high-pressure sales, we have learned to do our research before we head out to local car lots. The first part of research is figuring out what features we want in a vehicle. For our latest experience the most important feature was size, followed closely by good gas mileage. Our children have all grown to be taller than I am, so had to cram themselves into the Millenia like it was a clown car. We didn’t want to keep torturing them, which meant finding a bigger vehicle. Because we also wanted good gas mileage, most SUVs were off the list immediately. Hubby wasn’t keen on a minivan, although a couple were possibilities.

Based on these features, we created a short list, which included the Buick Park Avenue, Toyota Sienna, Mazda MPV, Buick LeSabre, and Buick Rendevous.  (Lotta Buicks on that list.)

Then, we looked at cost. A word about car prices. Whatever you know you can afford, don’t reveal that amount to salespeople. Instead, tell them you’re willing to spend about $1,000 to $1,500 less.  If you tell them you can afford $8,000, the vehicle will cost $9,000 guaranteed. Part of this is because car salespeople upsell (they always think you can afford more than you’re willing to pay) and part of this extra cost is for sales tax and licensing fees.

After determining our budget, Hubby went online and checked car values by make, model, year, and odometer reading. Taking our desired features and budget into consideration narrowed our options considerably. We decided the Buick Park Avenue was going to most closely fit our needs.

At that point we visited numerous car dealerships, searching for our specific car. We sat in a number of other vehicles during our visits, just in case we had missed something. Hubby also regularly checked used car listings online to see if there were any Park Avenues available. There was one that was in good shape at a dealership in town and that’s the one we eventually bought.

Now we’re busy getting used to the specific nuances of our car. It’s got all kinds of power features we didn’t have in the Millenia. (The automatically adjusting driver’s seat is the bomb!) And we are all enjoying the extra space.

In reflecting on this car-buying experience (for which Hubby gets all the credit for the research he did), I realized that when we purchased the Millenia, we didn’t have the internet available. I think I prefer car shopping better with the assistance of the Web.

The Demise of the Bookshelf

During my recent house feng shui-ing, I emptied and refilled a couple of bookshelves. One of the bookshelves contained our collection of VHS tapes, which we can no longer play because our video tape player went kaput and is no longer even in the house. I shuffled these tapes to a bookshelf in the basement. I also moved a bunch of music CDs from the same shelf to a shelf upstairs. As I was taking  cookbooks off the front entry shelf and moving them to the shelf cleared of the tapes and CDs and replacing the cookbooks with other books from our collection, a thought dawned ….

Soon, we will no longer need bookshelves.

The seed of this thought was actually born when I was dusting my CD collection a few weeks ago. Now that I have an iPod filled with digital music (much of which was burned from my CD collection), I have no need for the CDs. I don’t take them out to play them anymore and, although it would cost me to replace the music, I can easily download the music on them from iTunes or some other music service that holds the digital files in the cloud.

Our VHS tapes are obsolete, but no matter. We can rent DVDs of what we want to see, or there are services available that will let us download movies from the cloud.

At the rate the book industry is going, with past books rapidly being digitized and current books automatically being digitized as they are produced, I can imagine a time when people won’t buy as many physical books as they do now. They will download them from the cloud, either as audio files or in e-reader format. When that happens en masse, people will no longer need bookshelves to contain their collection. Bookshelves will go the way of VHS racks and CD containers.

Tchotchkes are their only hope.

Painting Freaks

Hubby and I painted the front entry yesterday evening. It took about 5 hours. Daughter says we’re so RANDOM. Like, where did this painting the entry idea come from? Like, she hadn’t heard about it. And here we are. Suddenly. Painting the entry.

We explained to her that it wasn’t as random as it appeared. After I had finished cleaning and rearranging the front entry, which included moving a vintage floor radio, Hubby noted that the walls looked not so nice.

The front entry was redone when we had an addition put on the house a number of years ago. The addition replaced the sagging, crumbling, musty old porch. Two walls of the old porch were really exterior walls to the house, which is made of a lovely local yellow brick, only the brick walls within the porch area had been painted white. When the front entry was finished, we left these brick walls as they had been when they were in the porch, trying to achieve a distressed look in a portion of the room. We painted the other walls in the front entry a muted green.

Fortunately for you, I have pictures, so you don’t have to try to imagine this.

Front entry, pre-feng shui, showing one of distressed brick walls. Note the bright green sill. This bugged Hubby & I no end, but we never mentioned it to each other before repainting.

Front entry - more of the brick wall. You can see how distressed this wall looked.

Front entry - the muted green walls.

Front entry - the brick wall with the vintage radio. This is a pre-feng shui shot, as well. Note the skateboard wedged between the radio and the wall. Yeah. Not good.

The wall without the radio. This is the wall that drew Hubby's attention to the fact that the brick walls looked like crap.

When Hubby pointed out the state of the brick walls, I took a good look at the room and decided it was time to get rid of the distressed look, along with the split personality of the room with its two non-integrated colors. I wanted to bring cohesiveness, tidiness, and some drama to the front entry. In an effort to follow feng shui principles, I thought a soft gray would work. (Black and white are the colors for the career bagua, but they’re too stark for us.)

Hubby likes to humor me (he says he lives for it), so we went to the store to get paint yesterday and he told me to pick the color. While Hubby may like to humor me, I also know that painting is his Achilles’ heel. The mere thought of painting a room makes both of us giddy. We are painting freaks. (Which means this project wasn’t random in comparison to our past behavior. Daughter admitted that she can’t remember a time we weren’t painting something. We even assisted a friend in repainting an old hotel.)

We ended up with a gray that ranged toward the blue, which wasn’t quite what I expected, but I love the result. I present to you, our newly painted front entry …. [Drum roll and cymbal crash, please!]

The front entry after repainting.

The no-longer-distressed brick wall. Note how the artwork and trim "pop".

The closet doors also "pop" against the blue-gray because of their yellowish tone.

Front entry - the bookshelf nook.

The wall that started the repainting project.

Grumpies

It’s Friday night and I’m catching up online. (I seem to be saying that a lot, lately … catching up online.) We’ve had a constant drizzly rain for the past week and my mood has ranged into the grouchy zone more than usual. (If you ask Hubby, he’ll say I’m rarely grouchy.)

Other than the rain and my cyclical mood fluctuations, the news has been bugging the crap out of me. It ranges from reports on the depressing economy with its lack of jobs to the cantankerous health care debate. None of it is stuff I can control, which contributes to my crankiness. (If I were in control of the health care situation, I’d make selling health insurance illegal and treat health care as a right, not a privilege in this country. And I’d reconstruct the system from scratch, with Alan Grayson at the helm. But I’m not, so …. [sigh])

The grumpies built to a fever pitch one morning this week, at which point Hubby gave me a listening ear, hugs and perspective and I felt much better. I also ran across an article on gratitude in an issue of Reader’s Digest and a reprinted ministerial talk in our church newsletter “On Living Abundantly.” In addition, I’m avoiding the news, at least the stories that are filled with bad news and vitriol (although I did catch the story about the boy and the runaway balloon).

My mood is elevating, which it normally does after a few downer days. The drizzle is supposed to abate and the temperature is expected to warm to a more normal level this weekend. That’ll have me kicking my heels, washing the sheets (Happy Clean Sheet Day!), and finding a way to be outside for a while.

Now, then … I think I’m officially caught up. (Writing also helps to remove the grumpies from my soul.)

Difficult, But Not Impossible

Found a link on Twitter today that got me thinking ….

Aren’t stories about people accomplishing difficult, but not impossible goals inspiring?

The quintessential difficult, but not impossible goal is climbing Mt. Everest, so much so that it’s become a cliche. Still difficult, but it’s been done.

With the internet, people are inventing new difficult, but not impossible goals, ones that don’t require a physical to accomplish. These goals are tough enough that the promise of failure is high, which is what makes them thrilling to attempt … or to watch.

There’s The Julie/Julia Project, for which Julie Powell decided to cook all 536 recipes in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” within 365 days, blogging about the experience. This is the project that inspired the movie Julie & Julia.

There’s NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every November (just around the corner for those of you partaking this year). During the month, you have to churn out a 50,000 word novel. That’s about 3,000 words per day.

A spin-off of NaNoWriMo is NaBloPoMo (which I wrote as NaNoBloMo and NaBloWriMo before looking it up). This is National Blog Posting Month, which encourages bloggers to pick a month and write a blog post for every day of that month. (It’s not as easy as it sounds.)

And then there is the difficult, but not impossible goal that inspired this post. The New York Times has a story on Nina Sankovich, who set as her goal reading one book every day for a year. Every. Single. Day. For. A. Year. She started on her birthday, last October 28, which means she’s almost done. The day after she has read a book, she posts a review about it on her blog.

Wow. That’s a double whammy of difficult, but not impossible – read a book a day and write a blog post every day. Awe-inspiring.

Have you taken on any difficult, but not impossible goals? If so, what were they? Are there any difficult, but not impossible goals you’ve witnessed others accomplish? Share them in the comments, please.

Long Drive

Eldest Son was home from college for the weekend – a most excellent birthday gift for this mom. Hubby picked him up on Friday. He was due back today for a class at noon, so we left gray and early this morning. His college is about a three-hour drive from home.

Other than the weather, a sneeting sort of snow, the drive was uneventful. Hubby drove; Eldest Son and I napped part of the way. We listened to Minnesota Public Radio for part of the drive. On the second half of Mid-Morning, author James Ellroy talked to Kerri Miller as part of Talking Volumes. For a Minnesotan, Talking Volumes is second only to Oprah as a respected place for an author to hawk a book. (For a Minnesotan, maybe it’s even first.)

Ellroy was an interesting fellow to listen to, quite full of himself. He claimed that he doesn’t read other people’s books (with only a handful of exceptions), although he’s been writing more historical fiction lately. As a historian, I wonder how anyone can write anything based on history without, oh, I don’t know …  reading some history. I can’t hold complicated historical facts in my head for longer than a few minutes. I have to make copious notes from my primary sources in order to put together an essay. Maybe Ellroy meant that he doesn’t read other fictional books. He did say that he writes long outlines (over 400 pages for a particular 600-page novel) as part of his process, so maybe I’m missing something.

After stopping at Eldest Son’s dorm so that he could unload his stuff, snarfing down the homemade pizza we brought with, and dropping Son at his class (with the requisite goodbye hugs), Hubby and I were on our way back home. This time there was sneet with periodic bursts of sunlight. Go figure.

On the drive back, we first listened to the Dave Matthews Band’s newest CD, Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King – a birthday present from Hubby and the kids. It is fabulous if you haven’t given it a listen yet. But what’s almost more impressive than the music is the art work, drawings all produced by Dave Matthews. The guy is multi-talented; the art not the work of an amateur. His fantastical, Mardi Gras inspired drawings are so complex that they beg to be stared at for a long time.

After the CD finished, we switched to the radio, tuning in to a station Hubby had discovered on his last drive to pick up Eldest Son – Z 103.3. The station plays the weirdest mix of music, from the Scorpions to the Psychadelic Furs, from Social Distortion to Rob Thomas, from The Monroes to AC/DC. We heard all of these within an hour and were delighted. There’s no rhyme nor reason as to genre, nor does the station repetitively play today’s hits. It seemed to be kind of heavy on the ’80s, which was what we grew up with. WCCO weatherman Chris Shaffer, who often references his passion for ’80s music, would totally dig this station. Unfortunately we lost the signal about 45 minutes from home.

There’s something about long drives that saps the energy out of us, even though it involves copious amounts of sitting. When we arrived home, Hubby and I took a nap. I’m still tired, so will try to go to bed early.

More Feng Shui

Just finished with the dishes. Time to catch up with the online world. I’ve been missing here over the past few days due to a birthday party, more feng shui-ing, and a long drive.

I mentioned a few days ago my feng shui efforts concerning the career bagua of our home (i.e. the front entry). I’m mostly done with that, but have determined that the space needs repainting. I’m considering a soft gray with white trim. Right now the space is two colors, flaking white paint on yellow brick for two walls and a dusty olive green for the other two walls. I’m sensing the need to pull it all together into one cohesive color scheme.

The crazy thing about serious feng shui-ing is that I can’t stop at one area. Once I’ve up-ended one bagua, others will be up-ended as well. Yesterday I worked on the dining room, which falls within the prosperity and family baguas. I use the term “dining room” loosely here as we very rarely actually eat in this room. Oh, it has a dining table and lots of chairs we are forever shuffling around, but I primarily sit at the table to pay bills or go online. (It’s where I’m sitting now, in fact.) I also use the room as my impromptu fiber arts studio, employing the table for cutting out patterns and sewing.

Another major piece of furniture in the room is my floor loom, which I haven’t used in years (and years and years), primarily because of the cats, who see the string involved and shout, “Woohoo!” as they claw it to shreds. As part of stirring up the chi, I pulled it away from the wall, opened it out fully, and dusted its various moving parts, removing embarrassing amounts of filth. When it was clean, along with the floor underneath, I arranged it so that I can use it.

This involved moving a side table to another part of the room. The side table is actually a folding table, under which I store a plastic tub full of fabric and my sewing machine. In order to hide these items, we cover the table with fabric. Prior to feng shui-ing, the fabric was maroon with a black swirly pattern that had been mottled by sunlight. After feng shui-ing, the fabric is a solid dark green with a gray-and-white runner of Tomptegubben, in turn topped with a deep red, floral placemat. Red and green are good colors for the prosperity bagua. Not sure what the Tomptegubben will do – Tomptegubben are gnomes – but I like the effect.

After arranging the loom for use, it became apparent that there wasn’t as much room for the dining table, so I’ve dropped the side leaves on it. The space is better, the the table isn’t ideal in this way because I keep knocking my knees on the side leaves. Hubby and I are contemplating replacing it with his motorcycle table.

Now that the furniture has been rearranged, it’s become even more apparent that this room needs repainting, too. Except that this is one of the few rooms in the house we didn’t gut during our remodeling, so it actually needs new walls altogether. I’m not ready for that kind of feng shui-ing.

Where Was Autumn Again?

Look what greeted us this morning:

Snow in central Minnesota, October 10, 2009.

Even by Minnesota standards, this is early for snow. I can only remember one other time in my life where it snowed on my birthday, which is the 11th for the record, so this snowfall beats that one by a day.

I’m scratching my head wondering what happened to autumn. We went directly from summer to rain to snow. The leaves haven’t all fallen yet, so no raking has been done. Hopefully we’ll get a warm-up before winter proper. (Is it okay to use the term Indian summer? If so, that’s what I want. This early snow feels unfair after the late, short summer we had.)

Does Anyone Read Book Reviews?

I have written a number of informal book reviews on GoodReads, which I have also posted here on my blog. After watching the blog stats, I’d have to say that my book reviews are perhaps the least-read of all my blog posts. I also notice that when it comes to reading other people’s book reviews, I don’t. That’s because I don’t want to be influenced by someone’s opinion of a book before I read it. I’d like to make up my own mind, please and thank you.

Do any of you read book reviews?  Do you use them to make a decision on whether to read a particular book? Do you read them after you’ve read a book? Do they have any influence on your reading habits?

Let me know ….

As for me, I think I’m going to use the book review section on GoodReads to write sketchy thoughts about the books I read, notes to remind me of the content. I’m not going to worry about writing reviews for a potential audience, which means I’m not going to make lovely sentences or concern myself with flow. If my reviews become cryptic, well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Here’s my first of the sketchy reviews:

The Passionate, Accurate Story: Making Your Heart’s Truth into Literature by Carol Bly

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Second time reading. Worth the re-read. Too complex to remember all of it. Read like a fresh book. That’s the first thing I thought; what’s the second? Include competing ethical dilemmas in fiction. Focus on short story, but applicable to longer fiction.

View all my reviews >>