Baldur's Saga

Be forewarned - if you will be uncomfortable reading about canine health or surgery, you might want to skip this post.

In Norse mythology, Baldur was the most beloved god. He was called "Baldur the Beautiful." Everyone loved him (except Loki, but that's par for the course). Badur's mother, Frig, obtained a promise from everything in the world that they would never harm her son. Except mistletoe - being so small, she assumed it could never be a threat.

We chose the name Baldur for our boy because he is beautiful and golden, the perfect sun god. Jason and I have joked that it's a good thing that we had our second dog, Athena, in addition to Baldur because Baldur is so easy-going that he is not preparing us to raise children, but rather to raise Buddhist monks.

This last week has been tough for us and for our boy. Baldur has never been a big eater. He has never been super food-motivated and sometimes won't eat until bedtime. He had been eating less than normal off and on for the past few weeks. Sometimes he acted like his joints were bothering him - not wanting to go up the stairs or hop up on the couch or the bed. But he would act funny for a few days, and then be fine. And act funny again for a few days, and be fine. Monday night, though, he really wasn't acting like himself - he wouldn't even eat canned food, which always gets him going. He had had a checkup about a month before where everything seemed fine, except for the recommendation that we start him on joint supplements. But Monday night something was wrong - he seemed to be breathing heavily and his sides seemed a bit puffy.

Jason took him to the vet on Tuesday. Our vet felt his stomach and said it didn't feel right. He knows Baldur so well that he could tell that right from the get go that something was wrong. He wanted us to leave Baldur for some testing - X-rays and ultrasounds. Jason and I came back at 5:00 to pick up our boy and to hear what the vet had found. It wasn't good.

Our vet had found that Baldur had a mass on his spleen, and that his spleen was bleeding into his abdomen, causing the swelling. While he said the mass could be benign, there was also a good chance it was cancer. He recommended we take Baldur to a special 24/7 animal hospital that had everything from emergency surgery to oncology. He called it "the Mayo Clinic for pets." He called them to make sure they knew were coming the next morning. Jason and I were devastated. We took our boy home to prepare for the next day. I hadn't cried so hard in a very long time.

The next day, we arrived and they took him back for an assessment and ultrasound immediately. They had the x-rays and ultrasound from our vet, but they have a radiology and ultrasound department there that that's all they do - there might be something more they could find that would help them be more precise in the surgery.

While we waiting, we watched several calm, relaxed owners and their happy doggies come and go for their chemo treatments. While we were there, the Georgia Aquarium brought one of their otters in for an ultrasound. These gave us hope.

After his consultation and ultrasound, they recommended that we remove his spleen*. There was concern that if the mass on his spleen was cancerous, it might have spread, though we were also assured that if the left side of the liver was also affected that it too could be safely removed.

*Dogs (and humans) can live without a spleen. I don't know why we have them - they are apparently fragile blood sponges.

They brought Baldur to us so we could snuggle him and wish him luck before his surgery. He was already acting like he felt better (our vet had drained some fluid from him the day before). We were glad - it's better to go into surgery when you're strong. They would keep him for monitoring for a couple days - they said that with an organ removal, they would need to make sure his heart remained steady after such a big change. We wouldn't be able to visit 'til the next day, which was tough.

Our vet called to touch base and see how our boy was doing. All the vet techs at our practice know and love our boy, and we could tell Tuesday, even as upset as we were, that they were concerned about him, too. Everybody loves Baldur.

We got a call from the surgeon a couple hours later. The mass was confined to the spleen - no other organs were affected. For a moment we were ecstatic. But then the surgeon said that there were other small lesions throughout his abdomen. He said we wouldn't know for sure until the biopsy of the spleen came back, but that in his experience, he was 90% sure this would turn out to be cancer. Again, the rug had been yanked out from under us.

The surgeon said chemo would be an option. Our concern with that was his quality of life. He said that with dogs, the chemo is a proportionally smaller dose and they don't experience some of the horrible side effects that humans do - the hair loss, the constant nausea and sickness. Again, going on his assessment of 90% likelihood of cancer, he said that without treatment, we were likely looking at just a couple more months with our boy. With chemo, in his experience, we were looking at likely somewhere between 6 months and 2 years. After a short but very tearful discussion with Jason, where both of us could barely speak, we decided that, given the relatively good quality of life he could expect with treatment, that we would do everything we could for our boy.

The surgeon promised to call with updates, especially if something went wrong, and said that we could see him in the morning. When we called the next morning just to confirm that we were arriving at the beginning of visiting hours, we were told, "actually, he's doing very well. You can take him home this afternoon." Our strong, brave boy was recovering quickly, eating and drinking, and generally just kicking butt.

We brought him home, tired, bruised, and with a cone of shame, but glad to see us, and more enthusiastic about food than he had been in a month. Athena, who had been confused and antsy without her brother home, had to be held back so that she didn't go barreling into him when we brought him in.

Baldur will have a huge scar on his stomach - maybe about 5 inches long. When we brought him home, his whole stomach was purple - it's already faded to mostly pinkish-brown and looks almost more like a rash than bruising. His post-op notes said that they drained 1700 ml of blood that had bled from his spleen into his abdomen. Jason had to look up the conversion - that's seven cups. He weighed four pounds less after surgery. But he is still kicking butt.

He is enthusiastically eating his food and his meaty pill balls. He wants to get up on furniture and go upstairs (he can't do either without help yet and is annoyed with us for holding him back). He de-stuffed one of his toys yesterday. Our happy golden boy is back. We still aren't sure what happens from here. We get the biopsy results back some time this week, and will be able to plan from there.

In Norse mythology, Baldur was killed because Loki tricked Baldur's blind brother into throwing a dart made of mistletoe at him. Hel, the guardian of the realm of the dead, said that she would let Baldur return to the land of the living if every living thing loved and missed him. The gods went around asking all gods, giants, and creatures. They all said they loved and missed Baldur. But they found one giantess in a cave that said that she didn't care, so Baldur wasn't allowed to return. Of course, this giantess turned out to be Loki in disguise. For his part in Baldur's death, Loki was bound in a cave until Ragnarok.

We don't know for sure what will happen with our strong, brave boy. But we do know that he is a fighter. We know that everybody loves Baldur. He is Baldur Spleen-Slayer. We have an incredible veterinary oncologist with happy patients who we can go to. And Loki is bound in a cave until the end of the world. So we are being optimistic.

What's in a Name: Act III

I was once at a workshop where the speaker talked about how it can be difficult to pick out names for your characters. "I know people who have taken longer to name their characters than their kids!" he proclaimed. There was a lot of laughter and understanding nods.

I have done a lot of name research in my life. I own two name etymology books. Each longer story that I'm working on has lists and index cards full of name research - meanings, root words, etc. So now that it has come time for Jason and me to choose a name for our baby girl, I already have a lot in my mind as to what I like, what I don't like, meanings, and connotations.

When you're writing fiction, the sound and symbolism of a name can be important, but you can also get away with more in fiction that you can in real life:

https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/4/15/whats-in-a-name

https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2017/7/16/whats-in-the-spelling-of-a-name

Like an old Celtic name that no one can spell? Books often come with a pronunciation guide; your child's kindergarten class doesn't. Authors take care not to name to many of their characters Jon or Rob (unless they're George R R Martin); Jason and I both have been in many classes or work settings where we have been one of two or more people with the same name. Think a name sounds really bad-ass? Well that's all well and good, but if you name your kid Leonidas, he's gonna end up dying in a battle. (One of my university's founders, General Leonidas Polk, died at the Battle of Kennesaw.)

It's a lot to think about. Unlike naming a character, where if you decide later that it's not working, you just change it before publication, there comes a point where you're out of time on deciding on a name. (It may come as a surprise, but unless you're Nora Roberts or James Patterson, the amount of time between sitting down to begin a story and having said book published in much longer than pregnancy.) Plus, usually, you're the only one naming the character in your book. Most people naming a child are working with another person to choose a name (it's fortunate the Jason and I have similar tastes).

Ladies of Language

So - the registrar, the head of the language department, and the registrar's admin assistant walk into a restaurant...

No, it's not the start of a joke. But it was the start of a very interesting dinner.

Last week, my boss and I went out to dinner with the head of the language department (who is also the head of the honors program). It wasn't really a work dinner, though we did occasionally kick around ideas about how various programs might be improved, or our experiences with similar programs in other places.

We ended up just sitting around and talking for a long time - in fact, my boss had to leave earlier so the other professor and I stayed and chatted for a while longer. It was really nice to be able to hang out with someone else who is "overly educated." I don't mean that as a slight against anyone I regularly spend time with, just that I don't often get the chance to discuss 19th century Russian poetry translation or Central American magic realism in depth.

We also got onto the subject of the novels that I'm writing and, and she sat and listened raptly while I described characters and plot. I think I've told her more about my writing than I've told any other one person in one sitting. At one point she asked what the title of my book was. I told her The Wolf and the Sheath, but also clarified that that was just the working title. I said that I probably wouldn't decide on a final title until after I finish the book, but at the moment I like The Lady, the Wolf, and the Watcher. She said she liked the rhythm of it. (I think that was what actually lead to the discussion of literature in translation.)

Tangentially related to the above, before my boss left, we sort of reprized the discussion my boss and I had a while back about why she doesn't like the term "ladies" to refer to a group of women. (More on that here: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/1/7/ladies-gentlemen ) I clarified for the new member of our group, who hadn't been at our previous discussion, that "I read a lot of fantasy. I write a lot of fantasy. To me, a lady is someone who might strap on a sword and lead a battle." And, a twinkle in her eye, she responded, "That's not a lady - that's an empress."

The Trouble with Casting

Some of you who follow this blog know that I was in theatre for a while. Sometimes it was in school (middle school, high school, and college), a few times it was community theatre, and on a couple of occasions, a professional company (one of these was a professional company that I didn't get paid to perform in, as the production was cast with kids in their dance school, and the other I would have gotten paid a small amount had I accepted the role).

The trouble I always had with theatre was casting. Once I got into a show, I always had people tell me what a great actress I was, how much they enjoyed my performance... But the problem was getting in.

I hate auditions. Always have. Auditions are a very large reason why I'm not in theatre anymore. In theory, at an audition, if you're good enough, you get the part. But in practice, there's a lot more to it than that:

-What's their first 5-second impression of you?

-Do you look like what they want for the part?

-Are you ungodly shorter than everyone else in the cast?

-Do you look like someone else they want to cast? (This can be a plus or minus depending on the show.)

-Are you related to someone else who is also auditioning?

-Are you just a wee bit chubby?

-Can you pass as a teenager? (Again, can be a plus or a minus - more on that later.)

-Are you one of 3,000 women auditioning for a play with 3 female parts? Are you a guy? Are there more male parts than men auditioning? If you are a girl and there are more male parts than guys auditioning, can you either pass as a guy, or know a guy you can bribe to be in the show?

-Are you sleeping with someone involved in the show (yes, sadly, that happens)?

-Can you dance?

Examining some of these (and of course these are only the tip of the iceberg of reasons you might not get cast) shows some of the challenges I've run up against (though a couple times things that could have been challenges worked out).

Do you look like someone else?

There was a time when I was in college that I wanted to be in a show that featured three sisters. I was a senior theatre major and there were two junior girls who had a similar build and coloring to me. One of them looked so much like me that when my dad saw a picture of her in a show that she had been in (that I had not been in), he was was annoyed that I didn't tell him I had been in the show. There were a bunch of people who were convinced that we were going to be cast as the three sisters. But the day the cast list went up, the two juniors and a sophomore who didn't look as much like them as I did got the parts. Many people were surprised - including the two juniors. Having not been cast at all, I was devastated. A couple friends, I think trying to comfort me, speculated that maybe I looked so much like the one actress above that the director was concerned the audience would get us confused.

Are you related to someone?

A few times when I was a kid, I think this worked out in my sister’s and my favor - two kids with one parent bringing them means one less person you have to rely on to get their kids there on time. My sister and I were in the Nutcracker together the last year I performed, and we were Wendy and Mrs. Darling, respectively, in a community theatre production of Peter Pan. Of course, the fact that at 18 I was the oldest actor in the children's production probably had more to do with my playing Wendy's mother than the fact that Wendy and I had a family resemblance. Of course there was also the fact that at 18 I had the body of a 40 year old woman who had let herself go somewhat... (no, seriously, I weigh 15 pounds less today than I did when I graduated from high school).

Can you pass as a teenager?

As someone who got carded into her 30's, this was something that I would have thought I had going for me, auditioning for young roles in adult shows. Sometimes it did - I played a 15-year-old school girl at the age of 23. But, as previously mentioned, I might have looked like a teenager, but I did not look like a SKINNY teenager. As in, not Sandy in Grease. And not many other young ingenues, either. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, people will believe a fat 40 year old is a consumptive 18 year old, but they won't believe a fat 18 year old is a consumptive 18 year old (he was talking about opera, but it's true of straight theatre, too).

There were also times that being able to pass as a teenager was something of a detriment. When I was 24 or 25 I went to an audition for a musical using 50's/60's pop music. The four actresses in the show were supposed to be young bobby-socksers. Being in my mid 20's but looking more like 18 - and also being well-versed in the music and dance of the time - I thought I had it in. But all the other women at the audition were in their 30's or 40's. Like Terry said above, the audience will buy 40 year olds playing teenagers - provided they're not asked to believe that said 40 year olds are the same age as the girl who really does look 18.

Can you dance?

Oh, dear. This is a blessing and a curse. If you're auditioning for a musical with a major professional company, you damn well better be able to dance. But if you're auditioning for a community theatre where 90% of the people who show up can describe their dance experience as "I once did the Hokey Pokey without falling over," you will get stuck as the choreographer or the one-scene wonder.

My sister was once in a community theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (aka, that Shakespeare play with the fairies). When the director found out that Katrina was at a near-professional level of ballet skill, boom, she was suddenly a blue-haired one-scene wonder fairy that did a pointe scene to cover time for a scene or costume change.

Sometimes, you get stuck as the one-scene wonder AND the choreographer. When I was about 25 (again, late teens-looking) I auditioned for a production of Grease in rural Tennessee. The casting call requested that we prepare a song as well as a short dance number. I showed up prepared to dance to Elvis's "Hound Dog" with a piece I had choreographed that included two swing steps, salsa, basic tap, and ballet. I really wanted to be Rizzo. I was offered to be the choreographer, and also Cha-Cha DiGregorio - "the best dancer with the worst reputation" - a character who exists for the sole purpose of being able to have a dance-off with Sandy in one scene.

Admittedly, there was a show I was in once where I was the choreographer, but also a had a decent amount of stage time as 2 other characters, but that seems to be the rare exception.

That's why I prefer writing - doesn't matter what you look like or if you can dance.

Revenge of the Inability to Type!

If you've been following my blog for at least the last six months or so, you may remember a post I made last summer about a couple characters in a show Jason and I were watching who were thwarted by their lack of typing skills. https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/7/7/technology-and-time-period This show takes place in the 80's.

Recently, Jason and I have been watching Schooled, which takes place in "Nineteen Ninety-something." In the most recent episode, a young teacher enlists the mother of a friend of hers to be a cyber Cyrano for their pushover of a principal. The idea is that while the principal meets with a difficult parent that Mom will listen in and provide witty and scathing comebacks for him via AOL chat.

The problem is that Mom can't type. It takes her a full 30 second to deliver the message "I'm."

It kind of made me realize that even though these shows don't take place all that long ago, they're period pieces. It seems weird to think of a show set in a time period that I lived through as a period piece.

All Just a Dream

Yesterday Jason finished playing a video game that had two possible endings. He chose one and was disappointed to find that his character woke up in an insane asylum, the whole experience having been a dream or hallucination. We got to discussing how this sort of ending often feels like a cop-out or lazy writing.

We also talked about it can sometimes be done well. In the case of The Wizard of Oz, for example, I don't know if it's because it's usually the first example of this kind of ending any given person is familiar with (given its classic family film status), or the fact that this was a new ending that audiences hadn't seen before - it doesn't feel trite. Discussing it, Jason also pointed out that Dorothy protests that it "wasn't a dream - it was a place," also kind of negating that "just a dream" idea by placing a question in the audience's mind.

I do like the stories that end with the character thinking or wondering if what just happened to them might be a dream or some other situation that didn't really happen - only to find that there is some object in the room, or something is different or changed in a way that can only be explained if the "dream" was real. I actually wrote a story like that once.

We had a competition when I was in 6th grade, and I won an honorable mention for my story. In it, my main character and her sister and parents were in a boat on the Amazon River. A tidal wave came racing up the river, capsizing the boat and separating the children from their parents. They proceeded through the rain forest having adventures and close calls, at one point, so narrowly escaping a snapping crocodile that the main character lost a piece of her shoelace. In the end, she wakes up in the boat, her sister and parents with her. She thinks it's all just a dream, until she looks down at her shoe and sees part of her shoelace is missing.

Tales from the Travel Journal: The Northern Lights

Well, it's been a while since I regaled you with a tale from my travels this September, so here is the story about how Jason and I kind-of saw the Northern Lights.

When we visited Iceland, our ship's route from Reykjavik (RAKE-ya-vik) to Akureyri (Ack-er-RARE-ee) would take us across the Arctic Circle overnight. Jason and I bundled up and braved the wind to go up to the top deck of the bow and try to see the Northern Lights.

It was very cloudy and foggy that night - wisps of cloud were passing very close over the top of the ship. We stood out there for a while, gazing out at the horizon. It was about an hour after sunset and we weren't sure if it was dark enough to see the Aurora yet. We were also concerned it was too overcast.

There was a large group up there as well, many of them armed with professional-level photography equipment. At various times, they'd point excitedly up above us, but Jason and I realized what they were seeing was the low wisps of fog catching in the ships lights.

Not a great picture, but it’s the best one we were able to get.

We started to think that we just weren't going to see anything at all, staring out in front of us at the pale light on the horizon that we assumed was just the last dregs of the sunset. That was when we realized that we were heading due north - the light ahead of us couldn't be a reflection of the setting sun on the clouds. We looked closer and watched for a few more minutes. The very pale, very subtle bluish light would shift a little. We weren't sure if we were seeing a gap in the clouds, or if maybe a very bright aurora above was shining through the cloud cover.

Seeing how it very much resembled the first light of dawn or the last light of sunset, I understand a bit more now how it got the name Aurora Borealis - "Northern Dawn" in Latin.

The next morning, Jason and found certificates on our door, congratulating us on having crossed the Arctic Circle.

A Plan for Jan!

(January, that is...)

So even though I posted by big list of goals for the year this weekend, I neglected to talk about what I'm doing right now, for January.

The plan for January is to get my head back in the game.

You might recall in my post about my December plans that I said I didn't expect to get a lot done that month. We'll, I may have given myself a little too much slack for a busy month - I got nothing writing-related done (unless you count my weekly quotes).

So for January, I'm going to work back on getting into my routine (a little about that schedule in the previous post). I'm going to update and reorganize my to do lists, reread my new material for The Wolf and the Sheath, and decide if I'm going to continue working on W and S for the next few months.

New Year, New Goals

It's that time of year again - time to look back on the goals I set last year, and re-examine what I can do in the coming year.

First we'll take a look at what goals I set myself last year and how well I accomplished them. Below is my actual list from last year's blog (linked here if you're interested https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2017/12/30/2017-summary-2018-aims ):

1. Prep and submit my latest short story, "The Cause of the Disturbance." This will actually require some research as it is a decidedly different genre and style than my three other published stories, and may need to be submitted to different places than I have been submitting to.

2. Make measurable progress on The Wolf and the Sheath. Don't ask me what "measurable" means right now - this may end up being the amount of new material written, amount of editing/rewriting, etc.

3. Attend my writing critique group semi-regularly.

4. Manage my time better in the evenings.

So, how did I do?

1. I have submitted "The Cause of the Disturbance" to several contests and publications. No luck to date, though one of my "rejections" noted that I made it to the final round of considerations in their contest.

2. For The Wolf and the Sheath I have:

• Finalized all place and character names.

• Neatened up and edited some scenes.

• Started work on a map and costume research (both really for myself - I doubt that either a map or costume illustrations will make it into the final version).

• Written 31 pages of new material in November. Not all of this will go straight into the book as is. Some of it is to replace really clunky introductory scenes, some of it still needs to be fleshed out, and some of it is for a character and pronunciation guide, as opposed to actually being part of the story.

3. Ha. Oops. I think I went three times this year - and one of those times was to a guest speaker, not a critique meeting.

4. This one is kind of up in the air as to whether it was successful.

In February, Jason and I adopted a new dog and she took a lot of hands-on time those first couple months that ate into writing time. But Jason and I also realized that since he works from home on Wednesday and Friday that it makes more sense for me to use those nights for writing (I had been using Tuesday and Thursday) - he can start dinner on those nights so that it can be ready when I get home or slightly thereafter so that I can start writing earlier. I also discovered recently that I am not giving writing the same priority that we currently give to other things - scheduled gaming time, groceries, or even preparing my lunch for the next day. This needs to change. If I'm ever going to "do something" with my writing (and by do something, I mean something other than publish a couple stories every 2 years), I need to stop treating it as a hobby.

So my goals for the coming year are:

1. Better commit to my writing time on my writing evenings.

My new schedule will be:

• Monday - writing business. Submissions, looking into paid writing opportunities, articles and research not related to my current project, etc. Also some writing social media (currently I post my "writerly quote of the week" on Mondays).

• Wednesday and Friday - work on current project (whatever novel or story I'm working on) and just that - no writing social media, no articles, just pure writing, editing, or research for that project.

• Sometime over the weekend - write and post my weekly blog.

If we do something on a Friday (or on one of my other writing nights, but Friday is the most frequent offender), I need to make sure that I set aside time on some other evening to make up for the time lost. If I'm not done making lunch, putting laundry away, etc. by the time I'm supposed to start writing, it doesn't get done. (I've been trying to eat healthier, which means not buying lunch or just throwing a frozen lunch in a bag, but we'll see.)

2. Finish the story line of Wolf and Sheath.

I say this with hesitation. I usually get to a point after working on something for a few months where I just don't want to do it anymore. But in November I made big progress with adding new scenes that needed to be done - filling in backstory, exposition, transitions, etc. I still have a lot of transitions that need to be written, in addition to a climactic battle, but I think I could get at least the bones of those laid out in the next year, even if I don't work on W and S the full year. That won't mean the book will be publishing-ready at the end of the year. I mean, it potentially could be, but I don't want to back myself into that corner just yet.

3. Prepare some nearly-finished short stories for submission.

These stories (working titles) are "Olivia's Luck," "Certain," and possibly "The New Inventory." (I say "possibly" on the 3rd because it's something I wrote a few years ago and it's not as good as the others.) I will also work on submitting "24 December 1944," but that won't be 'til summer - it's a Christmas piece and no one will be looking for those now.

4. My 4th goal is a little more vague, a little more dependent on luck and whether the right things present themselves at the right time - receive payment for my work.

This could be winning a paid competition, successful submission to a paid publication, or finding something like a little side free-lance job. I need to look into these possibilities more, but like I said above, I need to stop treating my writing as a hobby.

OK, well this post is a lot longer than I thought it would be when I sat down to write it - if you're still with me, I appreciate it!

Three Minutes on the Stage, Forever in my Mind

I was in the Nutcracker four times when I was a kid - when I was 8, 10, 11, and 12. This meant that I spent every Sunday afternoon for most of Fall rehearsing. (I can't believe my mom's patience and dedication, driving me down to the studio on a sketchy corner of some Peachtree Street all the time.)

We rehearsed for what felt like months, years. The scenes - the performances themselves - seemed like they took half an hour. I mean that in a good way. The first two years, I was one of the toy soldiers. Our scene felt like a battle. It was action packed - it must have gone on and on, right?

The first year, I was the Littlest Soldier - the drummer. I was on stage the longest - the second soldier to move and the last soldier to leave the scene. I was the only soldier not carried off my a mouse; I stayed to the bitter end and pulled the Rat King's tail to distract him just long enough that the Nutcracker could get the upper hand. In the moment, and in my memory, it seemed like this scene took at least 20 minutes. I mean, it was a battle - it had to be long, right?

According to my Nutcracker CD, this scene is 3 minutes and 21 seconds.

Oddly enough, the scene that I felt was shorter, the opening of the second act where I played and angel two years in a row, is 3 seconds longer.

Now granted, despite the shortness of these scenes, I was on stage quite a bit. The first year I performed, there were 2 children's casts who alternated performances. I think each cast performed a total of about 20 times. By my last year, more performances and more casts were added - 4 children's casts in total each performing about 10 times.

As you might imagine, these shows took up a large portion of my December (in addition to the rehearsals taking up most of the Fall). There were even a couple days each year that I got to miss school, as there were several matinee performances on school days specifically for local school field trips.

The last year that I was in The Nutcracker, my younger sister was also in the show. She was 8 that year - the minimum age for the children performers with the Atlanta Ballet at the time. She actually was onstage for the half-hour that I perceived my scene to last. She was one of the Party Children, and if I thought my time was taken up by the show, hers was more-so. In addition to her longer scene, her hairdo took about 2 hours.

We were in the Nutcracker the last year that The Atlanta Ballet did the Balanchine version - the version that is still performed by the New York City Ballet. The next year, neither of us got in. We were devastated. There was a rumor that they weren't casting kids who had been in the old version. I don't know if it's true, but we comforted ourselves with both that idea, and the fact that the show we loved just wouldn't be the same now, so maybe it was better to remember it the way it had been.

4 years. Approximately 60 performances. 3 minutes on stage each time. That doesn't sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things. But it was such an integral part of Christmas for me, and the memories are still so bright. I could probably still follow most of my choreography for each scene, and, for that matter, some of the other scenes that I just watched.

Pick up your feet. Listen for your cue. It's Christmas - the time when memories and magic happen.

Behold 12-year-old me and my 8-year-old sister in all our giant-sweatshirted mid-90’s glory! Notice her curls. My mom had to redo her hair after every performance; she wore curlers to school sometimes.

A Memory of "A Christmas Memory"

I had a really cool 7th grade English teacher. We had a day where we dressed up as characters from Greek mythology. We had this massive poetry project that I really enjoyed putting together. And we made a fruitcake using Truman Capote's aunt's recipe.

We read Capote's "A Christmas Memory." In the story, he recounts going on an excursion with his aunt one December to gather all the ingredients for her famous fruitcake. When I say fruitcake, I don't mean that Claxton brick that we all love to hate. I mean something like a pound cake with dried fruit and nuts in it.

The problem for young Truman and his aunt is that one of the ingredients is whisky, but this is the Depression and Prohibition is still the law of the land. But that doesn't stop them - Truman's aunt knows a guy. They set out to find a bootlegger. (Or maybe he was a rum runner. I don't remember - I was 12 and had no idea what either was...)

Returning home successfully, his aunt lets him have a taste of the whiskey while they bake. Things get rowdy and before you know it, parents are berating the aunt for "a child of eight with whiskey on his breath!" Later, quite chastizsd, Truman's aunt laments to him that "I'm old and funny*." He corrects her, "Not funny - fun."

*"Funny" here meaning not "amusing" but "weird" and "not quite right."

We read the story, and each member of the class brought an ingredient for the cake. I believe I brought pecans. One intrepid mom agreed to transport a small amount of whiskey (in a Chinese take-out soup container, if I recall) to be handed directly to our teacher. We made the cakes in the school's kitchen. I imagine that we probably would not be allowed to do this today.

Afterward, we ate our cakes while watching a film version of the story. I recall being worried about pecan shells in my cake, as my mom had instructed me to make sure I got all the shells out when we cracked the pecans, as their shells are particularly sharp and hard.

So today, I lift a metaphorical Chinese take-out container of whiskey and a slice of (good) fruitcake in salute to Mrs. Bunte, my awesome English teacher. Thanks for the memories.

Worth Sharing Again

I’ve had a lot I’ve been trying to get done this week and this weekend, and a lot still left to do. Such is the time of year. So rather than stressing out too hard coming up with a new topic to blog about this weekend, I’ll be sharing a link to a post I made last year.

https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2017/12/16/a-time-for-solitude

You Go, Wri Mo!

November draws to a close and so it is time for me to reveal the results of my personal NaNoWriMo challenge (read more here: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/10/30/lets-go-wri-mo ).

On Wednesday evening, I sat down to write my daily scene, struggling to find a snippet that still needed to be written that would be long enough for me to consider it complete (I was thinking 500-1000 words, but I have some good solid scenes I wrote that were only in the 400's). But on opening the separate document that I had been writing these scenes in, I discovered that at 24 days of writing (I missed 2 days, and one day I wrote a scene for another novel in progress, Brinyor) the document stood at a hulking 31 pages.

Looking at this, and looking back at my much-crossed out "scenes to write" list, I said, "Hmm... Maybe rather than struggling to find more scenes to pound out just for the sake of being able to say I wrote up through the 30th, I should instead stop while I have good material that I need and change gears."

So what's next?

I am in the process of rereading and making minor edits to the new scenes that I have written. For the month of December (which is a month that I'm always pressed for time), I will work on editing and planning for Wolf and Sheath, as well as working on short story submissions.

For W and S, I have some new scenes in addition to the ones from this month that need to be inserted into the main document. I need to look at those in conjunction with these new ones and see what needs to be put where. Does that mean that my 86 page novel will now be 117 pages? Well, no. Some of the new scenes that I have written were to replace really clunky telling-not-showing exposition that I wrote lo these many years ago. But some of it is also completely new material. We'll see what the updated word and page count are in a few weeks.

Jo, Laurie, Charles, J. K., and Neil

While I was driving home one beautiful afternoon last week, listening to the Little Women soundtrack, I remembered a scene from the movie. Jo is helping Laurie pack for college (Harvard, if I remember correctly) and laments that she can't fit his favorite Dickens volumes into the trunk he'll be taking with him.

"I won't be taking all of Dickens with me," he chides.

"Oh, of course not, you'll have much more important things to read," Jo snarks.

Until recently, it didn't occur to me that she wasn't just being sarcastic. I mean, she WAS being sarcastic, but not for the reason I had originally thought. Jo and Laurie share a love of Charles Dickens and Jo is worried that now that Laurie's going off to college without her that he'll move on. But what I hadn't realized was that I was looking at this scene without taking the time period into account.

Watching this scene without being grounded in the historical context, you kind of think, "well, Dickens is one of those 'important' authors you would be expected to read in college." But Little Women begins during the Civil War in the 1860's. Charles Dickens started publishing in 1836. He was still alive at the beginning of Little Women. While he was recognized as a great author in his lifetime, this isn't a case of a couple of nerds bonding over their shared love of the classics - this is two friends who enjoy the same popular author.

Imagine your friend is going off to college and you can't. Will he come back still a fan of J. K. Rowling or Neil Gaiman (just for purpose of popular, acclaimed authors who have been writing for 20-30 years)? Or will he come back having found new favorites among the classics, leaving you out of the loop?

The Other White House

One of the places we visited in Iceland was the Icelandic president's residence. On our tour of the city of Reykjavik, we were driving out away from the city, and the tour guide pointed out a large white house and a white church on the other side of an inlet. He told us that this was the president's house.

According to our guide, he is a relatively young guy - early 40's. He's a history professor and shortly before the last election was on TV talking about the history of the office, how it functions, its importance, etc. And apparently everyone in Iceland said, "Huh. This guys really understands the office. Maybe he should be president." He wasn't even running for president at this point, but he received about 60% of the vote - in a country that has about 7 political parties. And apparently most Icelanders are happy with the way he's handling things.

Meanwhile, on the tour bus... We came around the inlet and arrived at the church that we had seen from a distance. To my surprise, our guide informed us that we would be let off the bus and allowed to walk around. There were no fences separating the church and the area where we parked from the president's house behind it. Before the doors opened, our tour guide cautioned us, "Now, don't go behind the church. That's the president's house, and if you go back there, the police will come talk to you and you will be considered impolite."

Of course, as soon as we were off the bus several of the people in our group made a beeline back behind the church. The police did not come and no one got a talking to, so I guess maybe they didn't get close enough. Jason and I held back, reading a sign about the history of the buildings (and what areas were off-limits), and watched as a black car came up the private road that ran along the edge of where we were parked. It paused at the gate where we were and then turned off onto the main road.

"There goes the president, off to buy groceries," we joked.

Politics and Education

I've been thinking a lot this week about how I don't really understand how our political system works. This is particularly egregious, as I consider myself to be a pretty well-educated person in other subjects.

I went to a small liberal arts university where one of our general education requirements was a social science of some sort; our options were political science, economics, or anthropology. I originally selected economics, because I thought knowing about money would be useful. I ended up dropping it after the first week* because the amount of reading surpassed the amount required by my "writing intensive" English and humanities classes. But instead of choosing government when the time came to satisfy my social science requirement, I chose an anthropology class. And not just any anthro - I chose Celtic Culture and Archaeology. Which was a FANTASTIC class, don't get me wrong. But you can probably see where I'm going here - it wasn't useful, in a practical sense. Not that knowledge isn't useful. But unless you're going to Stonehenge and Skara Brae (which I did this September, but obviously most people don't), you could legitimately argue that taking a class where you learn about the government of the country in which you live is probably more useful.

*This explains a lot about my finances in my early 20's...

Now I work in the registrar's office of another small liberal arts university. One of many things I do is help students and advisors when they're trying to determine which courses they want to take to satisfy their various requirements. We don't have exactly the same set up as my alma mater did, but one of the "domains" that you have to satisfy is "critical thinking and inquiry." Included in this group are a math class, a lab science, and either Intro to Psychology, Intro to Sociology, or American Government. Meaning that you don't HAVE to take a class on government.

Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a say, shouldn't have choice, in what classes you take... but when you're 18, you have no idea what's actually going to be useful to you in the "real world." I think there definitely needs to be a stronger push for students to be required to have both a course in how our government functions, and a course in personal finance. I'm not saying that a well-rounded education isn't important, that humanities aren't important - because they very much are. But I can tell you that I have never, ever used the calculus that I took in college. (Heck, I didn't us it while in the class, which is why I spent a lot of time my freshman year crying in my math professor's office.) I would have been much better served learning about credit card interest.

The longer I go, the longer I think that finance and government should be required no matter what. You HAVE to take an English. You HAVE to take a math. Why are learning how money and politics work less important than these?

I don't have a nice neat conclusion to this train of thought, so I'm just going to leave this where it is.

A Scottish Ghost Story for Halloween

One of our favorite stops on our trip was Glamis* Castle in Scotland. Our tour guide was great - among many of the stories that she told us, the below was one of the best.

*pronounced "glams"

We stood in one of the tower keeps, and our tour guide pointed out and area in the wall, where if you looked closely you could see that there had once been a doorway. She told us that back a few hundred years ago, when it had been illegal to play cards on Sunday, that the lord of the castle had been sitting up late on a Saturday night playing cards with a friend. As midnight drew near, a servant came to remind the lord that playing cards beyond midnight was forbidden. The lord, who had had quite a bit to drink, bellowed at the servant, "I shall play cards if I wish to play cards, and the devil can take me if he does not like it!" Upset, the servant retreated.

Not long after, as the clock struck midnight, a hooded figure appeared in the doorway. "I am the devil," it announced, "and I am here to answer your invitation." The next morning, none of the servants could find the lord or his friend - but they found that both the doorway to the room the lord had been playing in, as well as the window looking out, had been bricked over during the night. They say that if you stand at the bricked-over doorway on a late Saturday night, that you can hear cards being shuffled.

It is a testament to our guide's storytelling skills that what could have been a cheesy telling gave me goosebumps.

Be careful what you ask for this Halloween!

The barred, bricked-over window in the top left of the picture is supposedly the room in the ghost story.

Let's Go Wri Mo!

Hello, readers! It's time for both my end of the month update, and to announce my plans for NaNoWriMo*.

For the month of October, I focused on looking at various submission opportunities, and to a lesser extent, posting anecdotes from my trip. I've found various places I'm going to keep an eye on for submissions - though neither of the 3 stories I have ready at them moment will work for them due to either the style not suiting them or that they don't accept simultaneous submissions (one of those pieces is currently being considered by another competition).

For November, I will be "participating" in NaNoWriMo, but not in the normal sense. NaNoWriMo 2009, I started a novel that I've referred to on this blog several times. (Working title is The Wolf and the Sheath.) 9 years later, I still haven't finished it. I have lists of things that need to be done, including scenes that still need to be written. So for NaNoWriMo this year, I am going to write at least one new scene for W and S every day. I've worked on it off and on this past year, and often find myself getting bogged down by research and trying to nail down details like place names. I'm hoping a concentrated daily effort to create new material will get me ramped back up again to make some actual real progress on it so that I can finish it before another 9 years rolls around : )

*If you're not familiar with the abbreviation, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel-Writing Month, which takes place annually in November. Writers challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's not as hard as it sounds - it breaks down to about 1700 words a day, which is just a couple pages. The hard part is not writing 50,000 words - the hard part is actually finishing it.

Bad Boys and Phantoms and Elves, Oh My!

Despite being married to a nice guy, I have to admit that I have a soft spot for the bad boys, at least in fiction. I had varying levels of crushes on the Phantom of the Opera (musical version, not novel version) and the Goblin King in college. (But then, I'm sure a lot of people have had a crush on David Bowie at some point or other.)

There's this stereotype (or archetype?) of good girls liking bad boys. I never went so far as actually wanting to be involved with someone who was dangerous, but the reason for the fascination with the dangerous man fascinates me. It's a huge staple in literature. I'm sure that most of the women out there would rather have a nice stable Sam Gamgee than a singing sociopath, but the dashing bad guy is what sells.

I wonder how much of it is biological instinct. The little lizard part of your brain tells you to look for the other, the different, the alien - in other words, not someone who might be too closely related to you. I wonder how much of it goes back to when the "good, safe" men where the men in your village and the other other men you might encounter were dangerous invaders come to steal brides who were not too genetically similar to them. (I also think this idea of the neighboring clan abducting women may be where the stories of elves/fae/sidhe stealing people away comes from.) I think this may be where the teenage fascination with the bad boy comes from - Daddy approves of the boys he knows, so the leather-wearing motorcycle-riding boy from "the wrong side of the tracks" satisfies that instinctive need for someone different, someone "other."

The modern woman who knows that abduction is not the right way to find a bride still gets a thrill reading a book or watching a movie where a rebel highlander, a vampire, or a musical murderer swoops in and snatches his love interest away. It takes a while for ingrained instinct to catch up with 21st century sensibilities.

Tidbits from the Travel Journal: Icelandic Humor

Strolling around Reykjavik (rake-ya-vik), we discovered that Icelanders have a great sense of humor. We passed a lot of restaurants and bars with funny advertisements, and saw a lot of magnets and t-shirts with clever sayings on them. (It is worth noting that these were all in English - I'm not translating Icelandic advertising humor.)

-Happy hour: 8:00 PM-12:00 AM*. Sad hour: 1:00 AM-8:59 AM

-Beer: because no good story ever started with, "so I was eating a salad..."

-A yawn is just a silent cry for cake.

-What part of Eyjafjallajökull** don't you understand?

-A shop named "Idontspeakicelandic"

*But in 24 hour time, which is more prevalent in Europe.

**The name of the volcano that erupted a few years ago and wreaked havoc on world air travel.

The tour guide our second day in Reykjavik was one of our funnier guides on the trip. At one point we were driving past an open grassy area. He gestured vaguely toward it and said, "and out here, we have lunatics." Given that the day before, our tour guide had pointed out the old Victorian-era mental hospital, I was a little shocked to hear him say the word so casually. But then he went on to explain the reason he had called them lunatics - they were golfers.