Thankful Things

I'm totally stealing this from another blogger (with a link to her site below), but it's such a great idea I had no choice but to steal. I've honestly never done this before, and I can't think why. Thanksgiving Day has never been about the food, at least for me (I like the term "turkey day" about as much as others like "xmas" being used for "Christmas"). Football also isn't a draw, as you probably know. But thankfulness, well, that's a big deal to me.

So here it is, my GRATITUDES, my top ten list of things I'm thankful for:

1. Other bloggers--like Sia McKye--think of fantastic blog topics so that I don't have to. And my wonderful fellow bloggers also encourage me, offer me fantastic advice, and show me that I'm not alone in the world.
2. My online and face-to-face community sees the world in new ways and helps me broaden my mind. They remind me what's important and also remind me when stuff is coming up locally (Thank you, Facebook people!)
3. My kids are both helpful, emotionally stable, caring people. They try new things and still take my advice, and though I know it's because they are not yet teenagers, I'm grateful they want my input and encouragement, even if it's just for now.
4. My sister and I are still friends, despite all the stuff we've both been through. Lots of stuff, pretty much all family-related. Yet she's never given up on me, never taken sides against me, never done anything but thing I'm great (and the feeling is mutual!).
5. I still have hope, despite taking off my rose-colored glasses more than twenty years ago. I don't pretend that evil isn't there, but I believe one voice can help, and I am strong enough to speak truth.

Isn't he cute? Here's the turkey
we won't be eating this year!
(Photo credit: NWTF)

6. I have yet to really feel any signs that I'm getting old. No creaking when I get up, no back pain. I'm more fit now than I was when I was half my age. I still have all my faculties, too--okay, so my memory is going, but that's been happening since I was twelve.
7. The hubby and I still care deeply about each other--after all these years, we are still best friends. He neatened the house last night and made dinner. Said it was because he knew I'd be cooking today, and he wanted me to rest the day before. He also said all he wanted for dessert on Thanksgiving was cookies--bless that man!
8. I don't have to cook a turkey. Hurray for being vegetarian! I get to start cooking around 11:30, and we'll be eating our tasty meal by 2!
9. I have time to do the things I love: paint, sing, sew, write, play piano. And though I still don't have enough time, I am not so overloaded with stuff that I don't have a chance to spend time playing.
10. Christmas is just around the corner, and since we don't do much for gifts at our house, I don't have to shop on Black Friday. In fact, I don't even have to enter a store at all. I can get what I need online.

There it is. I have a ton more to be thankful for--a TON--but today these are the gratitudes uppermost in my mind.

What are your gratitudes?

Have a fantastic Thanksgiving Day, people. And hugs to everyone!

The Camera is On

The tape is running
Twenty-four hours a day
Watching people
Fight
Argue
Cheat and
Lie

It's "reality TV"
They say
But don't these people
See the cameras?
Do they act differently
Because producers are eyeing every move?
Are they worse than they portray?
Is this all an act?

It's easy to forget
Easy to act in ways that, if we were watching,
We would horrify ourselves.
Words we say in anger
Shoves, sneers, insults, gossip
Petty problems we blow up
Into mountains

But we have our own cameras
The eyes of others
Our family
Our children
The mirror
Who do we want to see when we play that tape over?
A beast?
A sponge?
An emotional wreck?

That is the choice:
Live with purpose
Or waffle and whine?
Use time
Or waste it?
Add to the lives of others
Or create only pain?

You may think no one's watching,
But your portrait is created step by step
Your scars formed choice by choice
And the final picture is all your own.

Choose
So that you don't regret.

Bore Me

Go ahead

Bore me

Tell me for the eighteenth time

How you and the wife first met

Or what your third grade teacher once called you

When calling you that was okay

Before parents sued

Before teachers were fired for stuff like that

Tell me again where you got your watch

God knows I've needed one to add to my

Already extensive collection

And please tell me how kids should be raised

How tuna is best made into a salad

Why tomatoes aren't as tasty

As they used to be

Go over the chemical composition of

Latex paint

Or the effect of tornadoes

On Wal-Mart's consumers

Or how hair follicles go gray

And when

And why

And the day you first got

Your first gray hair

And what you did with it

Once you'd pulled it out

Go ahead

Blather about it all

With little fear

That I will copy all your wisdom

Down

After all

I wouldn't want my novels

To become famous

For boring people

To death.

Early Morning Rant

I'm still working on the backsplash. I designed it perfectly, so that I pretty much have to cut every single tile at least once. Brilliant. Several days' more work to go before I'm done, I fear.

Even worse, I woke at 3:30 a.m. with a horrid Christmas song running through my head, along with the steps from Zumba running through my legs. And calluses everywhere. Some from yard work, most from doing the %&#$! backsplash. I tried to go back to sleep. But no, it wasn't going to happen. So I got up, wrote a little, read a little, and tinkered.

I'm just starting to get tired again, as I hear little kids stirring in the bedrooms above me. This is going to be a very long day.

At least, at the end of it, the hubby will be home. For that, I am truly grateful.

Dealing with Death

I've heard it said that writers write to practice "the good ending," to go over what would make a satisfying conclusion to their own lives. And readers read the books/plays/poems/essays to practice their own endings, to define more clearly what they want their lives to be and how they wish them to finally turn out.

I'm not sure I'm convinced, but I do tend to rework elements in my life into novels and plays, trying to make sense of them or end them differently (resolving open issues or redoing mistakes or missed opportunities). Perhaps, though, I'm also practicing for my own death, not just my own life.

Death has been cropping up in my writing a lot lately. I'm revising (a.k.a. "rewriting," since that's what it always seems to end up being with me) a play about death. It's actually the second play about death I've written (or is it the fifth, now that I mentally go through my various plays?), but it differs from the previous one because no one in it is actually dead.

The death theme of this play, though, has turned ironic, and not in a good way. The premise is farcical, where a woman has to face an entire family that has decided she's close to death and might as well kick the bucket sometime soon. And until then, she needs to act like she's dying.

Morose, yes. Did I tell you it was a farce?

Strange, though, that my husband's grandmother died last weekend. And she was about the same age as my character. It was sudden, though not entirely unexpected, but we're all pretty devastated by it. Both of my children have been teary-eyed for the past few days, and my husband and I have kind of wandered around the house, uncertain what to do without her. She was a sweet lady, smart and funny and genuine. She gave love unconditionally. We'll all miss her.

But the guilt is awful. I feel as though I've been practicing her death.

Even worse, this same sweet grandmother is in one of my novels--the one I am slated to revise (a.k.a. "tear to shreds and nearly start over") once the play is revised. I had actually read a little of it before I found out about grandmother's death, and I realized that I'd changed her name from my previous 5-6 drafts of the novel. Right then I thought, no, I need her actual name in there, and changed it back. And then I found out she'd died.

Now I'm set even more on keeping her character in it. My husband thinks she'd like being in my novel. But her real death casts deeper shadows within the novel itself, and it will make revising more painful. It might help me work through my own regret and sadness, and help others work through the losses in their own lives, too.

I just hope Grandma Mae likes it once it's finished. She lived a good life, filled with love and family. And this novel might be the best way I can remember her, giving others a chance to know her when they read the book, even though they never met her.

Issues

Those of you who have been regular visitors to my blog already know my son has issues.

(Isn't it weird that so many of us have "issues"? I think it's weird. Maybe I'm just weird. Or maybe I have issues.)

Anyway, today he came home with his first "PRIDE Slip," which pretty much means he was a creep-o in class today and upset a whole lot of kids. Said mean things, didn't pay attention, cut up in P.E., and the list goes on. Fortunately, the slip only gives three lines of explanation, so the teacher doesn't have to spend the whole afternoon writing it out.

My son and I have a talk, and we establish both what he did and what he should have done. And then I sign it. And he signs it. I even make him write out his last name, spelling it for him since he's in first grade (I told you he had issues).

Is he remorseful. Not really. More matter-of-fact that in the heat of the moment he made some stupid choices, and will try to do differently. But then he picks up the slip and--oh, the change in his demeanor!--his eyes widen with excitement, and then--

"Mom, my name! It's on the other sheet!" Yes, two pages are together, the bottom yellow form creating a lovely blue copy of the top white form.

I'd tell him what kind of paper it is, but I just don't know. It's that paper-that-when-written-on-gets-those-copied-blue-line-things-on-it.

"How does it do that?" he asks me.

Now, I can explain that... so I do... and, tickled, flapping the paper back and forth so that he can see over and over how well the yellow sheet has copied the white, he skips back to his room to put it lovingly into his backpack.

Yup, my son has issues.

Missing You

Tohru Honda smiles from the TV screen

And I think of you

Grinning at the pages of manga with me

Sharing stories and dreams and fantasies

The nights we spent thinking up stupid nursery rhyme versions

Of Fuzzy Wuzzy and Jack be Nimble

I remember them all

Giggling in bed well past bedtime

We don't agree on anything

But never disagree

For our souls connect at the bellybutton

And they always will

No matter the distance

No matter the time between phone calls

No matter the restraints our lives place upon us

The trials, the pain, the sweat, the sadness

I know you are always near

That I can reach you

That you always make sure

I am never alone

Thank you

Speaking Klingon

I've discussed this before, my insatiable desire to speak with a British accent. Where does it come from? Too many sources to name, but I'll give it a try:

1.  My love for Shakespeare, begun just before ninth grade, when I attended the Utah Shakespeare Festival. 

2.  My love for Harry Potter novels and movies (can't wait for July 15!).

3.  My wish that I'd been born in England.

4. My love of British literature in general, including such authors as Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, etc.

5. My belief that the accent sounds infinitely more refined and polite than the standard American accent (only the deep southern accent, to me, gives it any competition). I have a similar reaction to people who speak with a Spanish, Italian, or Russian accent. 

So I slip into the accent several times a day--with my kids, with the church choir, etc. I have even considered interviewing for work with a British accent, and maintaining it 24/7 (at my husband's encouragement). 

Only now the roof has fallen in on all of this. Richard's mother came for a visit this weekend, and she told me plainly (more than likely parroting what her other children said last time I visited Shelton) that speaking the way I do is "creepy." I told her it wasn't (and it ISN'T!!!), and she insisted it was weird, like "speaking Klingon." Not only that, but my husband--the one who had once encouraged me to interview using a British accent--admitted, in front of her, that he found my accent "annoying"--after I had just written a blog praising the dork! My MIL insisted that it was creepy because I'm "not British."

Needless to say, I got pissed. I told my husband--in front of his mother, no less--that he was not only wrong, but he was wrong to have brought it up this way, after telling me otherwise. I went upstairs as I burst out crying, and I didn't stop until my husband came up to apologize (and I still cried for a while after that). 

It wasn't the disloyalty, though, that hurt. I was devastated by the whole thing because I truly am an Anglophile. I love all things British, and to be told that something I found so much joy out of was "creepy" was devastating, somewhat like wearing an outfit I love more than any other, only for someone well-meaning to tell me it made my butt look huge.

On the other hand, I think both my husband and his mother are wrong. "Speaking Klingon" is equivalent in one way, for it's an affected way of speaking, and a few Trekkies probably get some joy out of expressing themselves in that way, even though it isn't their usual way of speaking. Honestly, I don't think there is anything wrong with that (people should do what makes them happy), but my habits are only somewhat equivalent, and here's why:

Difference #1:

*  No one is raised speaking Klingon as a first language.

*  Millions of people speak with a British accent, and have for centuries.

Difference #2:

*  Klingon was a fictional language from the start, with varied words that must be subtitled to be understood by the English speaking populace.

*  British English is merely a dialect of English, and is understood rather easily, especially by those who have heard it before. The fact that Richard and his mother do not understand it as well means they have simply not experienced it enough. Subtitles are NOT needed--if anything, British English is easier for me to understand than many American dialects.

More than anything else, it's a matter of being non-judgmental. I don't tell Richard that his football watching is "stupid." It makes him happy, even if it bores the crap out of me, and therefore I want him to watch (so that he's happy). His happiness outweighs my own personal opinion. In the same way, all of my relatives and friends have little quirks like this, yet I don't mind them, for those quirks and habits make them happy... and it's not my job to tell them what I think they should do with their lives. 

Yet much of my family (well, Richard's family) believes it's perfectly fine to tell each other where they are going wrong in their lives. One person is told he eats too much, another that she is too angry all the time, etc. The problem isn't my accent. It's that my husband and MIL think they have a right to correct me for it, to judge me for it. I don't think they have that right at all. It's my accent, and therefore it's my business. They should leave me alone.

What do all of you think? If you're afraid to tell me the truth, feel free to write in as "anonymous." I'd love to have another perspective... though I doubt you'll change my mind (you can try, though).