AND FOR MY NEXT BOOK...

The more work I've done on my book, the more thinking I've done about the very real characters in my actual life. My next thought was: what if in my next book I take all of my larger than life family members and friends and make them into characters in a book? Woah. They wouldn't necessarily interact in the same way with the people that they do now... just take their essence and use it as a basis for a character.


Since you don't know the main players here, this isn't scrambling your brains. My grandpa on my mother's side was a big man who liked to boss people around and really wasn't all that likable. However, he really did love his family. He just had no clue about how to show it. He was a complex person. And there wasn't a surgery that he didn't love or a pill he didn't think he needed to take. His philosophy was: the more, the better. My grandma, his sweet wife, was the nicest person in the world and received most of the bossing. She was also very smart and witty and it's a real shame that her husband never knew it. However, the rest of the world recognized what a wonderful person she was. Her fatal flaw was her inability to leave the person determined to crush her spirit. Like I said, it was a complex dynamic. My other grandma would have crushed him like a bug. She didn't take crap from anybody and she had five divorces to prove it. She also worked lots of jobs, including tending bar, and liked to ride horses. She says that the only man she ever loved was my father's dad, but they got divorced when one or both of them cheated on the other. Yeah. It's complicated.

Moving down the family tree, my Aunt She was a lot like my grandma, the bug crusher. Stands to reason because it was her mother. She was divorced I don't know how many times, worked in the coal mines,had black hair, and an olive complexion. She reminded me a little bit of Cher, except her hair wasn't as long, and she wasn't as skinny. She'd tell stories about working in the coal mines and kicking butt. Aunt She was larger than life. She walked into a room and you felt all of the oxygen disappear. My mom's sister was a lot like my Aunt She, but less kick butt, and more funny. When we went to her house to visit, it was all hilarious stories of the wild and crazy things that she did as a teenager. Things like running through the house because she'd turned the hose on the boy who lived behind them, and he chased after her, and she couldn't stop and ran right through the front door screen. Stuff like that. She had some impulse control issues as a teenager. Again, another great book character!

My mother's brother is mellow. I don't know what I would do with that. But his wife is a totally different story. It is the women in our family who keep things interesting. The men just try to keep up. Well, there are some exceptions... but I haven't gotten there yet. My aunt has been a firecracker since birth, although I wasn't around then. But I grew up on tales like this one: she bought a case of Pepsi (when it was in bottles) and someone had put a cigarette butt in the full bottle and capped it. She called Pepsi and pitched a fit. She had free Pepsi for a year. She has had free products of all kinds of things for a year because if it isn't right, she calls and she lets them know. There are no free passes at her house!

I guess I have to include my dad on this family tree. He is a man of few interests. However, whatever these interests are, they are solid. And he is absorbed. He is knowledgeable on his subject matter. Every now and then he may discover something new, but he pretty much sticks with the same things, learning all he can. He is not high drama. So, all of these personalities are not easy for him to take. These are all high maintenance people. I guess that just makes it more interesting (in terms of my book) probably not so much for dad:-(.

My mom is tougher to pigeonhole. She is pretty level. She's not high drama. She's smart. She's funny. Most of the time she would be one of the people who looks normal next to these wacky other characters, but then she has her moments, so...

Moving down the tree again (we're now into siblings and cousins)... On my dad's side, are my Aunt She's kids. Lynne has also made a pretty normal life for herself. She has some unusual talents and gifts and she is a bit arty, but I think that is cool. My cousin Mike never was normal and never will be. He didn't stand a chance. He got the wacko gene all the down the line and then on his daddy's side, too. But, he is a laugh riot. There is no one funnier, no one more loyal, and no one I'd rather spend a night in jail with if that was how that it all went down. In fact, he'd make an excellent main character. He's been there, done that, and seen everything TWICE. And he does excellent impersonations.


The screwy gene seems to have dried up on my mother's side of the family. I think I'm the only still running with it like Don Quixote tilting at the windmill. Everyone has jobs, kids, and normal lives. What is that all about? Not one of them in the bunch makes for a good book character. Well, I do have a cousin who does float from job to job, but she stays employed. I think that says more about the economy than her, so I don't think that counts.

Now, shake the box and mix these people up. Far out. Especially if I throw in some wacky friends.

Gee this was fun. I hope that I didn't offend my entire family and get uninvited from all holiday functions for the rest of the year. Easter is just around the corner. I maybe should have waited a couple of weeks before publishing this blog. The next big holiday is 4Th of July and we don't do much for that anyway.... Then, it's Thanksgiving. Surely, they won't still be mad in November...

IT WENT DOWN JUST LIKE THIS...

I have an unwritten list of topics for blogs. Do you have one of those? Some of the things on my list are pretty straightforward, meaning one-time events. Others are a bit more complicated. They are people. Important people. They are more ambiguous because I know that they aren't really one blog, they are probably lots of blogs, and I am not really sure how to tackle them. I thought about it ~ again ~ today and decided that probably a general introduction and then one story at a time. Kind of like my mom blogs. She comes up a lot. And I don't give you the low-down on her every time.


The summer between sixth and seventh grade, one of my mom's best friends from high school moved out from California with her husband and daughter back to Ohio. They stayed with us until they found a house to buy. Turns out they bought the house right next door to ours. My mom's friend's name was Robin, too. That gets confusing sometimes in the storytelling. Or not. Robin and my mom are nothing alike. It was probably why they were such good friends in high school. Robin knew stuff. My mom didn't know stuff. Knowing stuff is good. It's good to know people who know stuff. What I am saying here is that Robin was street smart and my mom wasn't, isn't and never will be. I take after mom. That is a good and bad thing.

I trust people. You can lie to me over and over again and I believe you. It takes about ten times of me catching you in bald faces lies before I start to get that YOU ARE A LIAR. Seriously. Robin can listen to you lie the first time and her bullshit button goes off. I'm all ready to buy that story and she'll pull me to the side and say, "That person is lying. That is bullshit." She was always right. It's too bad I couldn't take her on all my first dates. But that would have meant a lot of traveling for her and it probably would have been a bit uncomfortable, but I would have saved myself a WHOLE BUNCH OF HEARTACHE. Moving on...


Anyway, seventh grade was awful. I have already covered junior high school and how sucky it was ad nauseum. Robin made it better. I spent a lot of time (and I mean A LOT) in her living room bemoaning whatever dire situation was going down at school. She would get the play by play and then I would wait for the what do I do to fix this? I don't remember specifics because this was a day to day ritual. It was that bad. I have no doubt that she probably told me to stand up to the girl who was bullying me and I told her, "No way Jose." Well, then it became duck and cover. Of course, the coward does die a thousand deaths and the brave man only once. This is true. Although she was a mean bitch and might very well have killed me outright. But, my pain would have ended. I am not joking. Well, sorta joking. I do know that Robin made the pain of junior high more bearable. Even if she didn't actually fix anything, she sat and listened to all of it. It takes a strong person to listen to the same old crap day after day and not just slap the kid sitting there crying about their terrible life. But, she did it. And I never got slapped once. I have to hand it to her. That was pretty awesome. And she fixed what she could. She did give me some pretty stellar advice. I am saving that up for future blogs.


I spent some time thinking about why I didn't take this junior high stuff to my mother. My mom and I have become very good friends as adults and I would say that she has been my best friend for a long time now. She is the person that I call first for good and bad news. Then, I remembered my first bad incident in junior high, and how I took it to mom. She didn't take it well. She looked like she was ready to make an appointment with the principal of the school, call in that girl and her mother and scratch off both of their faces. Egads. And she had no advice whatsoever. Like I said, mom wasn't street smart at all. I went to see Robin. I had two problems. What do I about my situation at school and at home? My mom is ready to scrape the faces off of two people she doesn't know and I still have this girl at school giving me grief. Robin said my mom would cool down and her nails weren't sharp enough for that (or something like that). She was right. The girl at school... well she was an ongoing issue. But, I stopped telling mom about stuff at school.

When my ex's kids came to live with us, I got a taste of how that felt. C-Man did fine socially at school. But H-girl, who was a year younger had a tougher time making friends. She was shy and just didn't feel confident about approaching other kids and talking to them. Pre-K and Kindergarten were hard on us both. I really thought that by kindergarten in the same school she would have made some friends. In kindergarten, H-girl was getting in trouble for talking during class. When the note from teacher came home, our conversation went something like this:

Me: What is this about?

Her: I am only talking because I am trying to get someone to play with me at recess.

Me: Why don't you ask someone at recess?

Her: Because they already have picked people to play with by then and no one will play with me.

Me: (about to cry) Why don't you ask to join in?

Her: I've tried and they won't let me play with them.

Me: ( really close to crying and feeling the migraine start to pound) So what do you do?

Her: I just sit on the bench and cry.

Me: (ready to call the principal and set up an appt with parents and kids for some face scraping) Why don't you talk to your teacher at recess (knowing this is lame as I'm saying it) and see if she can help.

Her: What is she going to do?

Me: (yeah that was lame alright) I'm so sorry. (rethinking appt with principal. Now ready to drive down at recess tomorrow ~ surprise ~ and kick a bunch of kids across the playground wearing the highest heels I have. Well that's maybe an inch and a half, but it will still hurt.)

An hour later, I decided that beating up a bunch of kindergarteners wasn't a good idea. Plus, I had a raging migraine and couldn't get out of bed, so I had to scrap that plan. But, I kept thinking this isn't supposed to be happening in kindergarten. Kids shouldn't have to go through this crap until middle school and junior high. And, seriously it sucks that they have to go through it then, but it seems to be this rite of passage that no one escapes. That thought is followed by the one that parents are completely unable to solve these problems. However, I did have a greater understanding for my mother's reaction to my story. She was too close to it. Happily, H-girl did integrate better as she got older and became less shy. In fact, she is now so social that her grades are not where they should be because she spends too much time talking. And it isn't because she's trying to arrange a playdate at recess. So, she has bounced back from this trauma more than successfully. However, she is about to go to middle school... God help us all.

KID STUFF

Do your parents tell you stories about your childhood that you don't remember? I have a lot of those. I know a good many of them are true because there is photo documentation. Don't you love that? Lucky for me that I don't know where those photos are right now. Everything is topsy turvy since the move. If I didn't have it on my flash drive before we moved, chances are good I don't got it!


My mother says that when I was between one and two years old, she put me in the stroller to walk to the store. Apparently this was not unusual. It was a fairly long walk. We hadn't gone far and I told her that we should probably turn around because it was going to rain. She looked up at the sky and I was right; it did look like rain. She was stunned. I knew it was going to rain before she did. She turned around. No, this doesn't mean I was destined to be weatherperson and missed my calling. Actually, I am not sure what it means. I guess I was just observant as a child.


At about the same age, we were riding in the car after a bad thunderstorm, and there were a lot of downed tree limbs everywhere. She says I got very upset when she was about run over one of them in the road. I started crying and carrying on and made her stop the car. What was the matter? "Don't run over it. You'll hurt it." Yep, that's me. Apparently, there was a conversation that day about how the tree was already dead blah blah blah. If you've been reading my blogs and thinking, "This girl feels like she needs to band-aid the whole world, and she is setting herself up for crushing disappointment." Well, the whole thing started with this tree in the road when I was one and half.


When I was three, or so, my parents bought me this cute, plastic, yellow car that I could sit in and pedal around. We had moved to Florida and had this little patio outside our backdoor. I say patio. It was more like a concrete slab. Whatever. It was large enough that I should have been able to ride my little car in a circle around the slab. I say should. I would ride from one end of the slab to the other. My mother is saying,"Turn the wheel and pedal." Nope. That was just not happening. I dead-ended at the end of the slab. I stood up, picked up the car, because it wasn't heavy, did a 180 with it, put it back down, and pedaled to the other end of the slab, where I repeated the performance. Unfortunately, there is photo documentation of that somewhere. I am not sure what this says about me. Driving wasn't going to be easy, particularly a stick shift, is one possibility. Another was that life was going to offer up a lot of dead ends that needed creative solutions. It is a good thing that I am in the creative solution business.

So what childhood stories do you want to share? And what do you think that they say about you?

MY MOJO IS BACK

"I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short."
~Blaise Pascal

I used to be one of those people who thought of fictional stories all of the time. I was a novel starter/stopper. I didn't really like that. I would rather have been a novel finisher, but at least I heard the stories in my head. My problem was the arc, or the through line. I always got bits and pieces of the puzzle, but couldn't put it together. Then another story would come along, and I'd set the old one aside, and just never get back to it. And so it went. A couple of years ago I really thought I found "the story." I was excited. I became a writing fiend. I made the mistake of sharing it with too many people. Some people were really supportive and assured me that it was really, really good. When I say "some people" what I mean is my mom and someone she was working with at the time. Everyone else was like, "Yeah, it's good. Where do you want to eat?" That isn't actually a direct quote from anyone. It just wasn't the standing "O" I needed to keep my momentum going. Had I been finished with the book, that might have been okay. I was about three chapters in. I lost my mojo. It just went away. All of that storyline that had been coming to me so fast and furious that I was losing sleep and typing through the night, just packed its bags and left for parts unknown. It didn't come back.

A little over a year ago, a good friend of mine started corresponding again via email after a long hiatus. Life gets like that. We started talking about writing a book together. I felt the euphoria begin to build the more we talked; it all started coming together in my head. It was the first time that had happened in a while. When I got her pages, I could tell that we weren't seeing this book the same way at all. That wasn't good, bad, right, or wrong. To make matters worse, she was also about to be really busy going back to school, she was a single mom, and I could see that there was no way that she was going to have time for this project even though she liked the idea of it. Heck, I liked the idea of it. I knew that given enough time we could bring the project into sync. Time was something we didn't have. I could feel my mojo slipping and my brain shut the whole thing down.


Yesterday morning I woke up with a fictional book idea buzzing around in my brain, and it wasn't letting go. It hounded me all day. I was having trouble with Microsoft Word on my laptop and I couldn't write a word. Can you say frustrating? I can. Over and over. I fought with it all day. I gave up, wrote my daily blog, watched LOST, took some Excedrin Tension Headache (at 10pm) and knew I was "in for it" because of the caffeine, watched GENERAL HOSPITAL on Soapnet, turned off the TV, and laid on my bed and thought about my book. After thirty minutes of that I got up, picked up my flash drive, got on my stepdad's computer, pulled up Microsoft word, and started typing. Before I knew it, it was 2am. Holy cow! I wasn't even tired. I really wanted to keep going. My brain was firing neurons, or whatever it is your brain fires when it is producing ideas, like fireworks, and I wasn't ready to quit.

The thing is I am SUPPOSED to take Rx internal cortisol at 7am and noon to get my body back on a "normal" schedule. That means not being up all night and sleeping all day. I just got this Rx on Monday and started taking it on Tuesday. I haven't seen 7am in a really long time. When I read the instructions Monday night I knew that wasn't going to happen, so I decided to ease into this and shoot for 9am and noon. It seemed more reasonable since I was currently getting up at 11am. 9am was only seven hours away. Uh oh. I inserted the flash drive and saved my work. There was a problem here. My brain was not done. I laid in bed still writing. The beast had awakened and I couldn't find the Off switch. I turned on my guided meditation CD so that I would listen to that instead. My inner voice just talked LOUDER. I couldn't even hear my CD. I was still mentally writing at 4am and doing a mental countdown to 9am.


When I woke up at 9am I took my cortisol and fell right back to sleep. I really don't think that was what the doctor had in mind at all. It's designed to jump start you. Kick off your day. I woke up again at 1pm and took the other one and made myself a sandwich. I decided to write this blog earlier, rather than later, so that I can get going on my book SOONER. This time NO ONE reads it until it's done. I admit to making mistakes. If there were an Olympic Mistakes Contest I would have medaled A LOT. Gold. Silver. Bronze. I just don't ever want it to be in the same event. I like to spread it around.

THIS ISN'T YOUR USUAL PILLOW TALK

Do you ever have conversations with God? In the middle of the night I started getting this sore throat and I knew I was getting sick. I actually had the good sense to get up and start dosing myself with vitamin C. My father believes high doses of vitamin C at the onset of illness will ward it off. So, I took two or three grams (two or three thousand milligrams) and brought the bottle back to bed, since I was waking up on the hour. When I would fall back to sleep I was having this crazy dream about people returning gifts to me, and I was really ticked about it. It was really nice stuff and they were bringing it back "just because." They had no good reason. They just didn't want it. Who does that? If you don't want it, you regift it. Everyone knows that.

Like I said, I was waking up on the hour and popping a couple of vitamin C. While I was in this in-between state, I was aware of having these conversations with God about this whole crazy gift thing. Unfortunately, I can't remember now precisely what God said. The only thing I do know was that I didn't like it. It was all philosophical and God probably wanted me to be the better person. It was that sort of thing. I didn't want to be the better person. I wanted to drive across town and do some ass kicking. In lieu of that, I wanted to verbally knock someone (actually several people from the amount of gifts I remember from these dreams) into next week.

The last time I woke up, took my vitamin C, and went down again, I could see God talking but couldn't hear a thing. The mouth was moving but the volume was off. And I do remember being able to do some lip reading. Again, I have no memory recall of what was actually said. I think it was because I was still not liking the message. This time I was doing some talking of my own into my pillow. I said something like, "I am really glad that's over. You are really annoying. If you can't say something helpful, You really should just keep it to Yourself."

Did you read that blog I wrote about my mom? If you didn't, it's called THIS ONE'S FOR MOM. (Check that out. It's a link to my old blog. I actually did something techy and it worked. Woohoo. Thanks Patsy. ) Mom and I had issues in my teenage years because Mom was always so right about things. Jesus told us that God is the Father. Our Father. The Father. Everyone's Father. He is the Most Right. It only stands to reason that a person like me is going to find that extremely annoying. The beauty of that is that God understands me better than anyone else. It's called omniscience. Look it up. He's also more forgiving than anyone else.

It's funny. When I started this blog, I really didn't intend to stay stuck in my dream or my interaction with God. It was going to be my segue, that was kind of odd, into something else. Turns out that I think I know what God was saying, even though I still don't actually "remember" it. He was telling me to be more forgiving of those people who are returning my really nice "gifts." After all, He is forgiving of me when I tell Him to buzz off because he is annoying and He's God. Usually, I am the first person to love the metaphor. Today, not so much. But you get what you get.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world"
~Gandhi