Library Displays I Have Loved, Part 4

Some of you may have seen on my personal Facebook page that I shared a memory of a library display this week. I've also been thinking about this one a lot recently.

When I worked for Kennesaw State University Library a few years ago, one of my tasks was making displays for the library on the Marietta campus. Sometimes these were just selections of books based around a theme, and sometimes they were more informative displays with facts, information, or trivia.

Each year, the university did a "year of" where they selected a country whose culture they would focus on for activities, lectures, etc. One of the years I was there was the Year of Russia. Needless to say, as a Russian minor in college, I was brimming with ideas for this particular display case. In fact, my last display that I put together for the Year of Russia display case was a Black History Month tie in.

Many people are not aware, but Aleksandr Pushkin, one of Russia's most famous and most beloved authors, was of African descent. I've been thinking about Pushkin a lot lately, partly because of the interestingly ethnic casting in The Great (a show in Hulu about Catherine the Great). (More on that to follow in another post.) So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you my Pushkin display:

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Grocery Shopping on Mars

Every time I go to the grocery store now (which is a non-negotiable only one day a week trip), I think about the changes to my routine.

I plan what I'm wearing carefully - I wear pants with a lot of pockets so that I can take my wallet, phone, keys, and hand sanitizer without taking a purse.

I check my equipment before I pull out - do I have my mask? My hand sanitzer? My wipes?

I think about my "safe zone" - anything in the passenger seat is clean. I take my sunglasses off and put them on the seat before I put my mask on and get out of the car.

I think about my decontamination procedure when I get back to the car - what have I touched? What needs to be wiped down?

When I get home, I think about the "clean" zones and the "hot" zones. I hang my decontaminated keys by the door. I put my phone and wallet in a pre-arranged spot on the counter (on top of the old grocery list, which will get thrown away like the paper table liner at the doctor's office). I don't touch the dog or the baby. I take my shoes off. I wash my hands. I put the groceries away. I wash my hands again and wipe down the phone and the wallet. I change my clothes - it all goes in the dirty clothes hamper, not to be touched for several days. I wash my hands again before I touch Jason or the girls.

And, yeah, it's still weird and new. But I'm also starting to get used to it. I actually like the one-way aisles at the grocery store - it's easier to go around people.

Elianna may be getting used to it, too. We had exterminators come on Friday. They were wearing masks with ventilators - full lower face with big canisters on either side. Elianna, who is 10 1/2 months old, waved at them cheerfully, rather than reacting with fear. One of the exterminators (after getting over how giddy he was that our baby was waving at him) commented that this might be normal for her generation. Maybe. Maybe this "new normal" is the way it's gonna be for a while.

I try to think of it as an excursion on a strange new planet - we have to go out for supplies but we also have to be cautious about what might be in the atmosphere. Because when we have settlements on other planets - and I imagine that someday we will - safety protocol, quarantine procedures, decompression, decontamination, and other procedures that may still be a glimmer in a sci-fi writer's eye will be the norm.

The Fate of Queens

A week or two ago, a friend of mine made some comment on her Facebook page about Maleficent, or the idea of the "Bad Fairy/Wicked Witch" rehabilitation that's kind of the thing in fantasy right now, or something similar. I responded about an idea I had had just that morning on the edge of sleep, kind of a half dream, in which this friend had been Maleficent, I had been Aurora's mother, the queen, and we were best friends. In the idea, baby Aurora was "cursed" not out of spite, but to protect her from the fate of the original Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, which was pretty grim. (I'm including it behind a cut because it's kind of disturbing.)

Sun, Moon, and Talia

In the oldest version of the Sleeping Beauty story, the princess (Talia) doesn't fall into the enchanted sleep from pricking her finger, but rather when a poisoned or cursed splinter of flax gets stuck in her finger. Overcome with grief, her parents leave her where she is, shut the castle, and leave, taking everyone else with them.

Some time passes and another king who is out hunting comes across the castle. Discovering this beautiful, but presumably-dead, woman he proceededs to rape her. Nine months later, Talia gives birth to twins, while still in her enchanted sleep. The spell is broken and she wakes when one of the babies sucks the flax splinter out of her finger. She names the children Sun and Moon.

At some point after this, the second king returns - and finding not a dead woman, but a very much alive woman with his two children, he returns home with them. But he is already married and has to hide them from his wife, with whom he has not been able to have children. When his wife finds out, she orders first the children, than Talia, killed and cooked, to be served to herself and the king. Fortunately, the cook hides the children and their mother instead, substituting goat and deer meat.

The king eventually discovers both that his lover and her children are hidden at the cook's house, and his wife's plot. He has his wife thrown into the oven instead and is left free to marry Talia and recognize the children as his.

In some of the early versions, the king's wife if part ogre or part giant, I guess to explain why she wants to eat the princess and her children. In some versions, the half-orgress queen is the king's mother rather than his wife, I guess because it's "better" if the prince isn't married when he sleeps with a seemingly-dead body.

I'm also currently reading Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik, which is kind of a deconstruction of the idea of marrying the king as a reward for completing an impossible task. In the story, two of the three main female characters end up married to powerful men who would kill them as soon as they are no longer useful, or as soon as they set a toe out of line. (That's not how the story ends - it's the impetus for the two of them to work together to resolve their situations.)

Why is this a thing? Why is it a reward, something to aspire to, to be married to an unstable despot, or to a man who finds a seemingly-dead woman in the woods and his immediate response is to kiss her (or more), or a man who can't even remember what you look like but knows that gosh darn you had some fantastic shoes?

And then there's also the new show coming out on Hulu, The Great (about Catherine the Great, played by Elle Fanning, who I would watch do pretty much anything). As much as I love Russian history, I actually don't know as much about Tsarina Yekaterina II as I should. I do know that she was a German princess, married to the Russian Tsar who was, depending on what source you're looking at, either insane, mentally deficient, or just your common garden-variety megalomaniac ruler. The show (based on the previews) is portraying her as a smart young woman who wants to help her new people, wants to be an equal partner in this reign, but who is "trapped in a marriage with a madman." And for what it's worth, she was historically one of the best and longest-reigning Russian rulers (once she got ride of that madman, of course.)

And of course I think of Henry VIII and all his ill-fated wives...

I found myself thinking, "Is this the fate of queens? To be a beautiful trophy, a brood mare, an expendable model to be replaced if she doesn't do what you want?" Why would anyone want that? Why is this the "dream," the fairy tale we have been sold for centuries, the tale we are still, to a certain extent, selling today?

I actually have a couple "wicked fairy/evil stepmother" rehabilitation stories in my head right now. One of them being the idea mentioned at the beginning of this post, the other being the idea that Snow White's step-mother - again, someone with a prior relationship with the princess's mother - recognizes that Snow White is not a natural child, but a vampire or dhampir.

The Ghost House

Every neighborhood has That House - the house that doesn't look lived in without being abandoned, the house where you never see anyone. In our neighborhood, it's a house we've been seeing on our daily walks.

Now that we have Elianna in the stroller, and the Jack Russell down the street doesn't get along with Athena, we've been taking walks up the other direction, deeper into our neighborhood. We had been passing this house every day and after a while I started noticing that you never see a car in the driveway, never see the flag up on the mail box. Jason pointed out that you never see trash cans, or anyone out mowing or working in the yard. The yard never looks freshly mowed, but also never looks overgrown. After the last round of storms came through, sticks sat in the yard for several days. There are curtains across the windows and bushes cut down to stubs. There is something about the house that seems... empty, bare.

A week or two ago, after staring at the house and speculating every time we saw it, Jason looked it up on Zillow - and found that it last sold in the late 90's. We thought that was even more intriguing. We had almost expected to see either that it had been on the market for years (despite the lack of a lock box on the doorknob), or that it had sold multiple times recently. We started wondering if it might be a property owned by a company - somewhere that they put up visiting consultants for a few weeks or something. That would explain the lack of activity while it also looking at least somewhat cared-for.

I said every neighborhood has That House. The ghost house in our neighborhood suits the other houses around it. Doesn't look exactly like any other house, but it doesn't stand out, either. It's just one more standard suburban brick house - brown and unremarkable. The ghost house in the neighborhood I grew up in, on the other hand...

Most of the houses in the neighborhood were ranches or very classic two stories. This house, though... It was a contemporary house that sat at the top of the hill like an overgrown Art Deco hat box. It was an odd slate blue color. It was curved in the front, with step-like windows that got progressively smaller as they neared the front door. The door itself was partly hidden by the curve of the front of the house. The front door had no adornment whatsoever and just sat there like someone had suddenly remembered you needed a way to get in and out and just slapped it on. There was a single light above the front door and it was always on. There was also a large swath of overgrown wooded area between it and both houses on either side. It just looked weird and creepy, but not in an obvious Addams Family house way.

Unlike our current ghost house, this one did have a lock box. All the time. Every year at Halloween, we would check - there was always a lock box. Sometimes one of us (me, my sister, or one of the neighbors we were trick-or-treating with) would get brave enough to go up and ring the bell. There was never an answer, never any lights aside from the one over the front door. I still don't know what the deal was with that house.

But back to my current ghost house. One day this week, we came upon the ghost house - and there was a guy down the side with a weed whacker! I didn't even notice him at first. Jason pointed him out. I wanted to call down to him, "excuse me, are you the imprint of a departed soul?" After we turned around at the cul-de-sac and passed the house again, we watched the Ghost House Guy very normally switching out gardening tools in his very normal garage where his very normal car was parked. Jason commented on how disappointing this was. I agree - the legend has died.

The Language of Dogs

Back several months ago, I stumbled upon an article about dog body language and "culture" - things like why dogs sit on your feet or lick your mouth. With the mouth licking, it comes from a pack behavior in wolves. When the alpha couple hunt, they bring meat back to the cubs... in their stomachs. The pups lick the adults' mouths, sometimes thrusting their snout into the corner of their mouth, to signal the adult to spit the meat back up for them to eat. (Yeah, gross, I know.) This behavior of dogs licking your mouth means that they recognize you as a senior pack member - someone who will provide you with food (even though Fluffy is expecting something more along the lines of you opening a can or sharing bits of your burger rather than you vomiting up elk).

When I read this article, I remembered reading Julie of the Wolves as a kid, and then later rereading it when I was a children's librarian. Julie, a teenage Native Alaskan, has run away from an arranged marriage and is somewhat adopted by a pack of wolves; she observes the behavior of the pups and manages to mimic them in such a way that the pack allows her to stay with them, and even to eat the food that they bring back to the den. Both times when I read this, I recall thinking that it was interesting behavior, but it didn't really occur to me that domestic dogs might have mannerisms relating to it.

Last Christmas, we took our dog, Athena, with us to Jason's parents'. It was her first time meeting their new dog, Gillie, who, while still a puppy, was also already close to double Athena's height and weight. We weren't really sure how Athena and Gillie would get along, what with Gillie being much larger and more energetic, and Athena being deaf (and therefore not privy to social cues related to sound, such as barking or growling). I ended up being amazed, not just that they got along (Athena is a good, sweet girl, and generally gets along well with other dogs), but that this much larger dog instantly trotted up to our little girl and started licking her mouth. Gillie apparently immediately recognized Athena as a senior member of the pack.

Thinking about the mouth licking, and bringing food back to the pups, I also thought about a story I wrote from the perspective of a wolf. The story is written in first-person present tense. In the story, the wolf narrates her plan to take her kill back to the den for her pup. When I wrote the story, I debated how to write this scene, and how true I should be to actual wolf behavior. I decided not to be entirely accurate - the wolf described intending to drag her kill back to the den rather than eating part of it to take back to her pup.

I made this choice for stylistic reasons, and not to alienate the reader. I figured most readers wouldn't be familiar with wolf behavior and would be so turned off by the idea of eating and the regurgitating the meat that they would lose what else was going on in the story.

I usually aim to write with accuracy. And every time I reread this story, it does bother me a litlte bit that I don't have the wolf's behavior exactly right. But, ultimately, I think the feel of the story is right - and apparently other people did, too, because it was published by the James Dickey Review. You can read it here ("Ashes," the fourth story on the page) if you're interested - and then you can decide if you think my change suited the story: https://www.iveyink.com/myworks

Hi, there!  I recognize that you are a senior pack-member - do you have food for me?

Hi, there! I recognize that you are a senior pack-member - do you have food for me?

On Not Making Lemonade

I wish I were more domestic.

Right now there are a lot of social media posts out there about people picking up new domestic hobbies while they're under quarantine.  There are articles on how to start a garden with plants you can sprout in your kitchen (and more than just "ew, who left these potatoes in here for too long?"), how to sew (and in some cases, not even sew) face masks, how to make pickles and bread - heck, how to make your own yeast and/or bread starter.  There are articles about recipes to use scraps and stretch or substitute foods you don't have large quantities of - some of which date to World War II rationing or the Great Depression.  I'm reading and saving tons of these.
But am I actually putting any of this wealth of domestic knowledge to practical use?  No.  More often than not I'm saving articles and recipes I know I'll never actually get around to making what they spell out; I'm saving them for writing research.

My sewing machine gathers dust in the basement.  I briefly entertained the idea of planting some sprouted potatoes, but then I reminded myself that my previous attempts at gardening were pretty bad.  I've contemplating saving the crumbs from our English muffins that we cut apart every morning.... but then I don't.  And the baking?  I have enough bad baking stories that I've toyed with writing a comedic cook book about my baking disasters.

I also have a baby who will be nine months old in a few days.  You'd think I'd have a better grasp on this parenting thing by now.  What I do have a grasp on is that most days I have to plan what I'm doing around when Elianna is eating or sleeping.  I'm getting things done in 20, or 15, or 5 minute chunks based on "she's gonna wake up soon," or "she's gonna be hungry any minute."  Not a great time in my life to be starting projects that need to have good long hour-plus time slots dedicated to them.

Additionally, a lot of people are posting "Quarantine, Day 25:", etc. - either jokingly, or as serious or semi-serious journaling/blogging.  I've thought about doing that several times.   (For the record, today is day 35 for us, as Jason and I began our self-imposed quarantine on March 15, a day before the President's March 16 statement to the nation, and weeks before Georgia's state-wide shelter-in place order.)  I used to try and keep up with a daily journal habit, and then weekly, and then just try to scribble down important things that happened to me in the last month or six.  I just don't have the time.  (And, yes, I do have this blog, but it's not a personal journal - in theory, it's about writing.)  

I'd like to go all Laura Ingalls Wilder on this - I love the idea of learning how to bake bread, and make my own cheese and my own pickles.  But I also tell myself that's silly.  While the Little House books are written in a generally cheerful voice, I'm reminded that a lot of times the Ingalls/Wilder family was dealing with stuff that was hard as Hell.  Every couple books they're moving 'cause the crops fail.  Their carefully planted corn is eaten by crows.  The girls catch scarlet fever and Mary goes blind.  They spend the majority of The Long Winter twisting hay into sticks to burn in the stove and grinding wheat in their coffee grinder (which, being 1880-something, was of course hand-cranked).  Almanzo comes home one day to find his new wife sitting on the kitchen floor crying because "the jelly won't gel." (And yes that last one is just kind of funny compared to the rest.)

I think it's the idea of making something good that is what has me wanting to be more domestic.  I want to bite into some still-warm bread that I made myself.  I want to save up bread crumbs and vegetable scraps and make some new yummy casserole.  I want to feel like I'm doing something useful.  I want to take the proverbial lemons and make some satisfying lemonade.  

And once again this blog turns into something this isn't quite about writing, like it's supposed to be.  Though, writing is one of the ways we record and share the human experience.  So maybe today's post is exactly what it's supposed to be.

Library Displays I Have Loved, Part 3

One of the things I miss about working in a library is making displays.  I first started making displays when I worked in the Georgia Room, Cobb County Public Library's special collection for genealogy; family, local, and state history; and Georgia authors.  These displays started out very simply - a sign with a few clip art flowers advertising books on local plants in the spring, a short list of Georgia authors whose birthdays were in a given month.

I worked in the Georgia Room sporadically at first, and then for all of my part-time shifts.  As I spent more time there, I got more creative with the displays.  Eventually, I got a full time position in the children's department of another library in the county - one of the things they were looking for was someone to make displays.  I also ended up being one of two display makers at the Marietta campus library of KSU.  

Of course, as the years had gone on my displays got more in depth, requiring more work and more research.  I loved using them as an opportunity to tell a "story" - to take a theme or an event and either find relevant books (sometimes using very loose interpretations of a theme) or to highlight facts and trivia.

One of my favorite display ideas (though, as one of my early ones, definitely not one of the best finished products) was my Ides of April display, highlighting various disasters and serious events that happened in the middle of April.  Enjoy - and be careful out there!

If you’re interested in some of my later (better) displays, you can also check these out: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/9/25/banned-books-displays-i-have-loved-part-1

https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/9/26/banned-books-displays-i-have-loved-part-2

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It's OK Not to Be OK

It goes without saying that this is a tough time for people.  Parents are being asked to teach, discipline, and work at the same time.  Teachers who rely on teaching by discussion or experimentation are being asked to teach via the internet.  Students who thrive on in-person discourse, or who need to be able to speak to anther human and clarify points, are being asked to learn via email and video.

There are going to be an awful lot of students who "lose" this year.

As many of you know, I spent the two and half years before Elianna was born working in the registrar's office of small liberal arts university.  Academia has always been important to me.  I've also worked at a university library.  I went to a very well-to-do-university.  There was never even a question of whether or not I would go to college.  But I also had it lucky.

I was the sort that really didn't need to study.  I was very good at just remembering things.  Except math and science.  I was OK in math and science until I got out of the biology and geometry type disciplines and entered into chemistry, physics, and calculus.  Once, during a high school physics test, I determined that the canon ball was traveling at -43 miles per hour.  I knew this could not possibly be right.  But I also looked back over my work and could not find where I had gone wrong.  I left the calculation and answer, but added "I know this is wrong - sorry."  Because my teacher was the type that gave partial credit if you showed your work on tests and homework and weighted homework heavily, I squeaked through this class with a good grade despite actually being pretty inept at the work.

My college calculus class was dreadful.  I mean the work.  I could not comprehend the problems.  The homework - which was less than half a dozen problems per class - took me hours to complete.  I was crying in class regularly.  Fortunately, because I went to a school where a large class consisted of 25 people, and the professors were approachable and understanding, I was able to get help.  Every night that the tutoring center was open, I was there.  Every time my professor had office hours, I was there - usually crying about how I couldn't fail this class.

At one point, having already failed several tests, and with the final looming, I sobbed to him about how I knew I was going to fail. 

"You're not going to fail this class," he said, gently exasperated.  

"But I've failed all the tests!" I wailed.

"But you've also put forth far more effort than anyone else in the class," he countered.  "You do all the homework.  You show all your work on your tests.  The tutors tell me you're there at every session.  There are students who are failing this class - because they are not trying and they are not seeking help.  You are not one of them."  

Still, when grades came over Christmas, I opened the envelope with dread.  I knew I had failed the final, and I had gone into it with a grade hovering right at the border between passing and failing.  And I unfolded my grade report and found that my calculus grade was the lowest final grade I'd ever gotten in my life: C-.  I screamed and laughed and jumped around the room.  I had been praying to simply scrape by with a D-.  To this day, I'm not entirely sure my professor didn't give me extra points simply so he wouldn't have to see my weepy face ever again.

I do believe at one point my adviser or roommates or friends suggested withdrawing from the class.  The Hermione-like first year that I was, I was scandalized.  Drop a class?  Me?  I might as well commit murder.  There was also the (much more realistic) problem that as bad as I was at math and science that I had chosen to take math my second semester of senior year of high school, and my first semester of college so it would be "fresh" in my mind.  I also had planned to take my lab science requirement second semester freshman year and get it out of the way.  I was concerned that if I had to retake math it would derail that plan - I knew I couldn't manage both a math and a science at the same time, and I was concerned pushing biology too late would also be detrimental as I had last taken bio as a freshman in high school.

Once I got past calculus, however, I took a new outlook on dropping or withdrawing from a problematic class.  My senior year, in a moment of panic just before registration for my final semester, my adviser and I realized we had misunderstood the science requirement.  We had read the requirement as needing two sciences courses.  I had taken a biology lab and a psychology class.  But we realized the requirement was actually for two LAB sciences.  Because my psych class had not had a lab component, it didn't count.  So now here I was, a senior theatre major who, as previously established, was very much NOT a science person, now needed to find a lab science I was sure I could pass.

I went to college in the mountains of rural Tennessee.  My university had an observatory and offered astronomy.  "What a fantastic opportunity!" I thought.  "I can do astronomy - that's looking up at the night sky and identifying planets and constellations, right?  That sounds like fun!"  

The first day of class, our professor put up an overhead projection that was just a sheet of numbers.  

"This is a comet," he said, circling a cluster of numbers that, to my eye, looked no different than any other group of numbers.  My eyes glazed over as he described to us how this group of numbers represented a comet, and then explained that a substantial part of our final grade would be using sheets like this to find and describe a hitherto undiscovered heavenly body moving through our solar system.  I left the classroom and went straight to the registrar's office for a drop form.  (For those of you wondering, I ended up taking forestry instead, as I remembered that my university was, as previously mentioned, in a rural area and we owned 13,000 acres of mostly woodland.)

I guess what I'm trying to say with this rambling tale from school is this: don't force yourself to continue something that is making you miserable.  Drop what you have to drop to get by.  (While I mean this academically, it applies to anything that you might need to stop doing to just keep yourself sane during this time.)  While I can't say 100% that every school is doing this, the university that I used to work at announced that they were extending their deadline to withdraw without academic penalty so that students that are not adjusting well to online learning, or are stuck away from their families and worrying, or, heaven forbid, are dealing with the illness or death of friends or families, can release themselves from just one more thing that is weighing on their mind.

There are a lot of people that are not OK right now.  And that's OK.  If you are one of them, know that it is OK for you to let go of whatever you need to so that you can be OK.

Dreaming of the Dearly Departed

I had a rough day yesterday.  It actually started the night before:

-I had a bad headache (allergies).

-My back was bothering me (stupid unsupportive slippers).

-I was mentally exhausted from trying to keep up with all the COVID-19 news.

-I had restless dreams.

-My head was still bothering me when I woke up.

-I went to the store and while I was able to get everything we really needed, seeing so many things still out of stock - especially being short on things in the baby aisle - it took a lot of effort to calm myself down and not start just snatching things I didn't really need in a panic.

-I got home to find that a delivery I had been expecting - that I had made plans for the week around and that had already been delayed - was wrong.  

And then I kind of said, "screw it."  I cracked open a coke and ate a large Reese's egg that I had meant to save for a special occasion and went in search of cute animal videos on Facebook.  (Puppies at the aquarium - heck yeah!)  In scrolling - intentionally scrolling past serious news stories - I came across a humorous post a friend of mine made about how to prepare for a tornado warning.  It was a twelve step list in which every other instruction was "gather up cat."  I got a good laugh from it.

A big part of why it made me laugh was because it reminded me of the time when I had been alone at my parents house during a tornado warning and had to gather up our panicking Maltese and our stubborn cat and get them both to shelter.  Fortunately, each of them weighed less than twelve pounds and I was able scoop one up on each arm and schlep them to the closet.

Miso

Miso

Did I mention that part of why I had a bad morning was because a memory came up on Facebook reminding me that today was the day Miso, the aforementioned cat - died?  While I hadn't exactly forgotten, I hadn't really thought about the date because the year he died, it was Holy Week.  He died on Wednesday.  When we buried him, I couldn't help but think of the upcoming Resurrection on Sunday.

And, at some point after that, I had a dream.  I dreamed that one morning, three days after Miso had died, that I was standing in the kitchen looking out to the blooming ornamental cherry trees where we had buried him - and there he was, poking his head up out of the ground, shaking the dirt off his ears.  In the dream, the neighbors just accepted this - we had a cat who had died and came back after three days and they were all cool with it.  

Murphy

Murphy

Similarly, long after our little Maltese died, I had a dream that Jason and I were visiting his parents.  In the dream, we pulled up in front of their house and Jason's dad was waiting for us.  He seemed a little confused as he greeted us and said, "Uh, Lizzy, I found something that I think is yours."  He stepped away from the door of the garage, and Murphy came running out.  She was covered in dirt, as though she also had been buried and dug her way back out.  But it was a happy dream - we were all excited to see her.  (The really odd thing about this dream is that I met Jason, and therefore his parents, after Murphy died.  This dream may have even been many years later.)


Baldur

Baldur

And of course, this week is bringing us very close to the anniversary of Baldur's death.  I've been thinking about him a lot lately.  But remembering these dreams I also remembered a dream of Jason's from after Baldur died.  It was really beautiful - rather than try to reproduce it, I'll link to the blog where I go into detail about it: 

https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/4/20/death-rebirth-and-rebuilding 

Yesterday was a tough day.  This week has been a tough week.  Things are going to get tougher.  But days like today it helps to remember my sweet fuzzies.  It also helps to remember that the story I've been working on - that I mention here and here on this blog - is a story of rebuilding. 

Searching for the Silver Lining

Depending on where you are, you may have experienced a sudden jump in how you and/or your community are preparing for or dealing with the coronavirus.  Because I'm really bad keeping up with my to-do lists lately, this morning when I went to update my to-do list for the week, I saw that on my list for last Monday was "ask [friend] about getting together for lunch."  I didn't get around to asking... and at this point I won't.  I actually had a couple friends I was going to email about getting together to grab lunch and catch up, but that's now on the back burner indefinitely.

In addition to not having gotten much of my to-do list done, I also haven't gotten much writing done.  The Wolf and the Sheath, as well as my other partial novels, sits as unfinished as it was in July when I had Elianna.  I've been thinking a lot about it this week, though.  The story begins not long after a an outbreak (Small Pox, though it's not referred to as such in-story) has died down and societies have started rebuilding.

When I first started the book, an embarrassingly large number of years ago, I just kind of slapped that setting on it.  In November of 2018, when I went back in during NaNoWriMo to actually do some serious work on it, I started thinking more practically of things like the recovery process.  What is the harvest like now?  What kind of shortages (or surpluses) are there?  Did some areas of society lose people disproportionately, or was it across the board?  I had thought, and even worried, that having lived in a comfortable place and time where we hadn't ever had a major outbreak that I might not be able to understand and write this world.  Oops...

I'm not saying I'm glad that this pandemic is going on - of course I'm not saying that.  But as we start to see the number of cases take a sharp turn upward, I personally find that looking for the positive, the silver lining in this very dark storm cloud, is something is something that we can - and should - do to help keep our spirits up.

I am actually going to reread through a few of those newer scenes, where I address some of those issues (rather than the older ones where I just slapped a "post-pox" label on it and moved on), maybe see how dealing with the looming threat of a major disease affects how they read now.  I actually would like to take one of these scenes, workshop it a bit to stand on its own, and post it on my My Works page*.  We'll see if I can get that done in a timely manner.

*Normally, I don't post unfinished pieces, as that can affect their ability to be published later, but small excerpts from full novels are usually considered to be a small enough percentage of the story that publishers don't mind.

But back to the search for the silver lining... 

Jason and I are actually very fortunate.  His work is such that it can be done remotely (indeed, he already worked from home two days a week).  His company's decision that everyone will work from home at least until April 17 is no hardship. 

I had been planning on starting taking Elianna to story times at the library since before Christmas, but something always got in the way.  Now Elianna has not, in fact, visited my former coworkers in Cobb County (which has one of the highest number of cases in the state).  

We stock up on paper goods and soap regularly at Costco, and everything else when it's BOGO at Publix.  When we started seeing shortages in stores, and recommendations to start preparing to spend and extended period of time self-isolating, we were not caught up short, unable to find what we need.

Despite the worry, despite the fear, it turns out I have a lot of silver linings.  Do you have a silver lining?  Maybe yours is that you didn't really want to go to that conference, or now you have more time to snuggle your dog during the day. 

Find your silver lining.

Be Prepared

So of course something that's been on a lot of people's minds recently is the corona virus and preparing for it.  Reactions and preparations range from "I guess I better talk to my boss about work from home options, just in case" to "I WILL BUY ALL THE TOILET PAPER AT COSCTO!"  No, the latter is not an exaggeration.  The Costco closest to us sold out of toilet paper last week because someone started circulating a (false) rumor on Facebook that Woodstock High School would be closing due to an infected student.  (To clarify, the school is not closing, and the infected student lives in Fulton county and attended a private, home school study location in Woodstock that is now closed for two weeks.)

As a writer, part of my brain has compartmentalized and takes every headline as a story prompt.  No children under 10 have died from the virus?  Wouldn't that make for an interesting YA dystopian novel!  

I used to read a ton of what I thought of as "plague fiction" (I guess they'd be more properly termed medical thrillers) - suddenly a new and deadly bacteria or virus is spreading across the globe with an unprecedented ferocity and death toll.  Will our plucky scientist be able to stop it (and also save/reconnect with his/her estranged love interest)?!  Oh, woe!  

I also used to be more involved in emergency preparedness, due to work.  When I worked at a public library, our head librarian had a meeting every year to discuss emergency kits - what you should have at home in case of a multi-day power outage due to a hurricane or winter storm, what you should have in your car in case you get stranded in the snow, etc.  (And boy didn't she have a big "I told you so" moment the year everyone got stuck in the ice on I-285...)  

When I worked at as the evening/weekend closer at a university library, I was training to be a Crisis Coordinator - someone who could be prepared, be in charge in the event of anything from a heart attack to an active shooter.  I even made displays and fliers for things like winter weather safety and heat stroke prevention.

I've written little snippets of various disaster scenarios based on writing prompts.  I've thought about writing some post-apocalyptic stuff... but I always find I've made things too convenient for the characters.  They just happen to live near a pristine, clean stream?  They live in an area powered by a hydroelectric damn that somehow keeps running without maintenance?  Golly, gee, that's swell!

This week, though, things kind of started hitting home how very unprepared most of us are for any disaster (not necessarily even this virus).  Completely unrelated to preparing for The Virus, I needed to get a refill of my sleep medication.  My doctor had initially given me a 90 day supply, but back about a month ago she had me start taking double the dose because my insomnia started coming back.  No biggie, just call for a refill when I run out sooner than expected, right?  Except she's on maternity leave now - and won't be back until mid-May.  But, hey, no problem, another doctor in her practice is covering her patients, and that doctor called in a refill.  For exactly the same medication, not the higher dose. When I checked with the pharmacy to see if it was ready, they said insurance wouldn't cover it for another two weeks because I was getting the same medication too soon into the 90 day period.  I would need the medication 17 days before insurance would cover it.

Fortunately, this medication is neither expensive, nor life-saving.  I mean, yeah, it's best for everyone if I take this medication, because when I don't sleep well I get frustrated way more easily, which means I either end up crying or yelling at the baby.  But it's not insulin.  It's not cancer medication.  I could have made do for a couple weeks on crazy amounts of melatonin or Benadryl.  But every emergency prep list I've ever seen, every class or workshop on crisis control I've ever been to, they tell you to have extra prescriptions.  All of them.  For each family member.  And an extra for both the house and the car. 

Standing in the pharmacy, paying out of pocket for my prescription, having passed empty shelves with signs asking shoppers to limit their purchases of hand soap and Clorox wipes to two per customer, it occurred to me how tenuous our control of our comfortable lives is.

Be safe out there, y'all.

What's in a Name, Act IV - Title Changes

A few days ago, I saw a little thing circulating around Facebook about how, 22 years after its release, people are still arguing about the title change of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the American version of the book.

As a writer, having been to various classes and workshops about publishing, I understand that to a certain extent you have to be concerned about whether a title is marketable.  For example, the film version of a certain Stephen King story was changed from Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, to The Shawshank Redemption (which, admittedly, is still a mouthful).  Likewise, the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe became simply Fried Green Tomatoes for the the film version.  However, these changes were made so that the title was shorter, more easily accessible - someone walks up to the ticket counter and asks for two tickets for Shawshank.

In the case of the Harry Potter example above, it wasn't just the title that was changed. On several occasions, British words were switched for American words; the quaffle is described as being the size of a soccer ball rather than a football, and at one of Harry's quidditch matches he's cheered on by a banner that says "Potter for President."  The mentality, in the late 90's when the book came out, was that kids weren't going to read a book with unfamiliar British terms, that the word "philosopher" was boring, and kids would be more likely to read a book with "sorcerer" in the title*.  

*This leads me to ponder if the book would have received less challenges had the title been "philosopher."

I find it particularly intriguing that the title was changed from "philosopher" to "sorcerer" because the Philosopher's Stone was a "real" thing.  In the middle ages, during alchemy's heyday, it was thought that it was possible to create a substance, an item, that would transform any metal into gold, and that a side effect of this process created an elixir to prolong your life or make you immortal.  (Not sure who came up with this idea - "hey, if I tinker around with a bunch of metals and salts and things I'll just randomly come up with this magic stone that does all this cool stuff.")  This led to a large chunk of students in my college humanities class suddenly gasping amongst themselves during a lecture, "What?  It's real?  She didn't make it up?"

I can see why some titles are changed for sake of brevity, or to inject a recognizable character - Indiana Jones's name was added to Raiders of the Lost Ark when the second film was released.  Harley Quinn's name was added to some listings of the recent film Birds of Prey out of a concern that the poor opening weekend meant that people weren't aware who the movie was about.  

But in Harry Potter's case, I honestly feel that this is a case where changing the title was not needed at best, and possibly detrimental.  J. K. Rowling built this world balanced firmly on western mythology and canon.  The books are peppered with well-known (and lesser known) characters, creatures, and plants from mythology and literature.  Why dumb down the title for kids?  Kids are smart.  They'll pick it up.  They'll eat it up.  As Robin Williams said in Mrs. Doubtfire, "You don't have to play dumb to them."

Bad Dates and Good Caregivers

A friend of mine asked for tales of bad dates on her Facebook page today. I didn't have anything truly horrible, but I shared a couple stories. (I honestly don't have a lot of stories about dates to begin with; I didn't go on my first date until college, and Jason is only my second relationship that lasted longer than a couple weeks.)

One of the stories I shared was how at the end of a first date, I had told the guy I was feeling sick and was going to head home, he kissed me anyway.

Another was the time that I was out with my boyfriend at the time and started coming down with a migraine. I told him how awful I was feeling (indeed, he claimed that he had had migraines and understood). We were at a very expensive restaurant, though, and I felt that I should at least let him finish the meal. As I sat there, trying very hard not to throw up, he leaned across the table and said to me, "Smile! I want everyone to see my beautiful girlfriend." I should have realized then that the relationship couldn't last. But I felt like hell and was also taken aback because I hadn't had many people (who weren't related to me) tell me I was beautiful.

When Jason and I first started going out, I didn't want our first date to be a big meal. Both of the, ahem, gentlemen above took me out to dinner for our first date and I was so nervous that not only could I not eat, but I actually felt sick. (I found out later, after Jason and I had been together for at least a few months, that it was actually a medication I was taking at the time that was making me feel so bad.) So Jason and I did a light, easy ice cream date for our first date. Spoiler alert - it went well.

Thinking I had gotten those first date nerves out of the way, we decided on Italian for dinner followed by mini golf and arcade games for our next date. But, thanks to that medication (and, yes, maybe some nerves, too) I started feeling sick again. I told him what was going on but that I also decided to press on. He did NOT tell me to smile. (And he had already told me that I was beautiful.) After a round of mini golf and quite a bit of ski ball and air hockey, I decided it was a losing battle after all and decided to head home before I started feeling worse. Jason did NOT try to plant a kiss on the sick girl.

Shortly after this, I came down with mono. (Being 29, I was misdiagnosed with a sinus infection twice. No one expects a 29 year old to come down with mono.) Jason brought me soup and we watched rom-coms on the couch with my parents' cat.

Fast forward a couple years. I was no longer on the nerve-amplifying, nauseating, migraine-inducing medication. I hadn't had a migraine in a long time, but Jason knew about them. One afternoon, I came home with vertigo. It proceeded to get worse and worse - the egg drop soup he got me for dinner didn't stay down. I slept in the bathroom. Every time I moved, I threw up. I kept reassuring him it was just a migraine, I'd eventually feel better. After 12 hours, he called urgent care himself, having decided, no, this was not "just" a migraine. On their recommendation, he carried me out of the house and drove me to the ER. (They recommended the ER, he decided to do the carrying as I couldn't even stand.) It was not romantic. I was wearing my I-don't-feel-good dress - the one with holes in the arms. And I threw up in a grocery bag as soon as he set me down in the back seat of his car.

He's been to the hospital with me a lot, as it turns out. The vertigo uncovered a sinus issue that needed surgery. Surgery that he drove me to. Very early in the morning. As with coming down with mono late in life, I also had my wisdom teeth out late. Guess who drove me to and from and who bought me a milkshake on the way home. A couple years ago, I caught my shirt on fire. Guess who drove me to the burn unit multiple times. We had to stay overnight at the hospital when I got rear-ended last July. And then of course we had a second hospital trip last summer when a certain little someone decided she was not waiting for her due date and I woke up with contractions at 1:00 in the morning.

I feel like each of my blog posts should have a tie in to writing, and I guess this one doesn't really have one. I also feel like my posts should have a "point," a conclusion. That, I do have, and it's this: Ladies, find someone who won't tell you to smile. Find someone who understands when you feel sick and respects that. Find someone who will bring you something light and comforting when you feel bad. Find someone who will carry your puking ass out of the house and drive you to the hospital even when you're in denial about how bad off you really are. (Because there's a big difference in telling a woman to smile and be beautiful, and seeking needed medical attention.)

In sickness and in health... Poor Jason already had the "in sickness" well taken care of by the time we got married.

The Atheniad (Athena's Journey)

I've talked a lot about Baldur, our "goodest boy," lately, so I think it's time for me to talk about our "goodest girl," Athena.

Athena has gone through a lot in the past two years.  More than two years, actually - read more about our first few months with our second fur baby here: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/5/20/athenas-tale.  But this past year has been particularly hard on her.

A year ago this week, we discovered that Baldur was sick.  While we knew what was going on, and that what we were doing was to help him, Athena didn't understand why he was gone all day one day and didn't come back home that night (he was having surgery).  She didn't understand why he went on truck rides without her every couple weeks (he was having chemo).  And she especially didn't understand why he was suddenly getting so many treats that she couldn't have (more cancer meds)... but, ooh, hey, he got liver and ground chicken and rice and she got to have some too, so she was on board with that change.

And she understood that something was up.  She understood he couldn't play with her like he used to and she had to be gentle with her big brother who outweighed her by 12 pounds.  She was a sweet good girl for her brother, who had been so sweet and good for her when she was scared and confused when we first brought her home.  And because we wanted her to understand, when the inevitable eventually became unavoidable, we took her to the vet with us to say goodbye.  We wanted her to understand that he didn't just disappear.  And she understood - maybe too well.  She was the first dog I ever knew who didn't care about going to the vet.  Now... now she's scared to go to the vet, I think because she understands that Baldur never came back from there.

And that would have been enough for a tough year.  But I was also pregnant when Baldur died.  And because we had put off projects while he was sick, we suddenly had to hit the ground running getting things ready for our first human baby.  We replaced the carpet and painted several rooms upstairs.  We moved furniture from the guest room to the room across the hall to make room for the nursery furniture.  We even bought a little bed for Athena to use in the nursery while we were in there with her.  While we didn't want her unsupervised in the nursery, we also didn't want her to think she wasn't allowed in this room.

Three and a half months after Athena lost her big brother, she gained a little sister.  We had finally started letting her sleep in the bedroom with us (Baldur had done so for years; Athena was still prone to overnight accidents even when Baldur was sick).  Unexpectedly, two and a half weeks early, at two o’clock in the morning, Mommy and Daddy left and didn't come home for four days.  I mean, Miss Tracy, our neighbor who is Athena's Very Favorite Person came by to take care of her, but, still.  

When Mommy and Daddy came home, they had a little thing with them.  It was tiny.  It smelled weird.  Because Athena is deaf, she was spared hearing her baby sister crying all the time... But she knew something had changed.  Mommy and Daddy kept getting up in the middle of the night to take care of this thing.  

Athena quickly decided that this little thing wasn't going anywhere; this obviously must be a new pack member.  She got to where she was protective of the bassinet - if anyone other than Mommy and Daddy were over and went over to pick up her baby sister, Athena was right there, checking them out.  When my mom would come over to help out and I would go upstairs to take a nap, Athena would NOT come up to snuggle with me, but rather stayed in the room with Granny, following her around just to make sure she wasn't Up To Something.

There were, of course, problems with the transition.  We thought we had taken a step backward with the potty accidents... until we realized that Athena might actually be marking around the bassinet when we took Elianna to the nursery to feed and change her at night:

"Sis, you gotta mark your spot.  Hey, did you hear me?  You gotta mark your spot so no one takes it while you're gone.  Nothing?  OK, well, I'll do it for you this time so you'll know how it's done."

Mommy and Daddy were so tired, so sleep deprived and stressed that even though they tried to make an effort, they just couldn't seem to find time to play with Athena like they used to.  But our little trooper just kept on trooping.  And somewhere along the line, we realized she had become the Goodest Girl.

When Elianna is napping and wakes up, even before she gets upset, Athena knows and comes to find Mommy.  If Athena can't find Mommy or Daddy, she goes to check the nursery first.  She sits sweetly and lets Elianna touch her - we're teaching Elianna that her sister gets soft, gentle pets... but Athena was good with her little cousin when he came to visit Elianna this summer and crawled around the living room trying to touch her face, and when he almost pulled her tail at Christmas.  

She has gotten along so well with the new dogs she's met this year; she went to the dog park for the very first time in October, and played well with furry family members at Christmas.  And remember those marking incidents?  As of last week, it's been four months since she had any kind of "accident" in the house.

There were times in the few weeks after we got Athena that we wondered if we had made a terrible mistake, that we were going to have a panicked, stubborn, floor wetting dog for the rest of her life.  We couldn't imagine that she could ever be a as good as her very good big brother.  Even a few months ago, it still hadn't really sunk in how much she improved.  

I'm not sure when it happened, but somehow it did - Athena became a Very Good Girl.  She met the very high standard that her big brother had set, and I know he would be so proud.  We certainly are.

The Goodest Girl gets gentle pets from her sister.  (Not the best quality picture, admittedly.)

The Goodest Girl gets gentle pets from her sister. (Not the best quality picture, admittedly.)

Seeing Baldur's Shadow

Sunday is a very important day.  No, not the Superbowl.  No, not Groundhog Day.  Sunday would have been Baldur's 8th Gotcha Day.

Of course, our boy is not here today .  I won't go into that more now (though if you aren't aware of what happened, here are my posts on that: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/2/24/baldurs-saga, https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/3/9/baldurs-battle, https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/6/9/great-baldurs-ghost )

Although... I say he's not here with us, but sometimes we wonder.  

When we set up the nursery, we used the room that had been the guest room.  Baldur used to love curling up on the guest room bed.  (We didn't do anything to set up the nursery while he was still sick - we didn't want to upset his world.)  We found a little plush corgi that looks a bit like our boy and put him on a shelf overlooking the crib.  It's a place of honor, and place where he can keep an eye on his baby sister.  And the thing is... we think he does.

The shelf is over the recliner where we feed Elianna at bedtime.  We have a little night light in the room and it casts its gentle glow up toward that shelf, making the shadow of the little corgi plushie look a little taller, a little sleeker - just like our corgi/shepherd mix.  

A few months ago - just before Halloween, in fact - Elianna had just started making little baby chatty noises.  One night when Jason was putting her to bed, he noticed that she wasn't looking at him as he held her.  She was looking up past his shoulder, up past the top of the recliner, up to the corgi on the shelf, happily chatting away at it.

We have other stuffed animals on shelves around the nursery.  Elianna never focuses on them or chats at them.  She's never done this when I put her to bed.  (I loved Baldur, and he loved me, but really he was his Daddy's boy.)  

Baldur never got to meet his baby sister.  One of my last memories of him, shortly before I could definitely tell that the little flutters I was feeling was Elianna starting to kick, was my sweet boy curling up next to me on the couch with his soft ears pressed to my tummy.  Baldur usually didn't curl up with me - like I said, he was his Daddy's boy.  But I think he knew - could either feel or hear - that his little sister was in there.

So it was a little weird at first - weird but touching.  And then a couple months passed and Elianna seemed to stop telling Baldur about her day.  And we thought, "well I guess that's that."  (Many cultures believe that the veil between worlds is thinnest near Halloween.  Given that she started doing this in late October and hasn't done it in maybe a month or so, I thought maybe that veil is getting too thick again.)  But then last Friday, something else happened, involving Baldur's other little sister.

Athena has always been a noisy sleeper - snoring, snorting, and grunting.  But she never really makes vocalizations - never barks or whimpers while sleeping.  Baldur, on the other hand, frequently "talked" in his sleep.  He made a little whooping noise - "vwoop-vwoop!  Vwoop-vwoop!"  

Last Friday night - Jason's birthday - Athena was curled up under the blanket on the couch.  Suddenly, from under the blanket, we heard "Vwoop-vwoop!  Vwoop-vwoop!" - a noise Athena has never made before.  Had our boy come to visit again, to say "hi" to his daddy on his birthday?

I don't know if we'll have another visit from our boy.  But I tell you what, if I see Baldur's shadow on Groundhog Day, on his Gotcha Day, I'm going to take it as a good sign.

Listening for his baby sister.

Listening for his baby sister.

Someone to watch over me.

Someone to watch over me.

No Joke

Jason and I watched Joker last night; he was interested to see a villain origin story where the villain and the hero (in this universe, Batman) don't interact.

When Joker was first released, there was a big to-do about how it was glorifying violence, glorifying shooters. Having seen it myself now, I have to say that anyone who thinks this movie is glorifying anything obviously hasn't watched it. It is the disturbingly tragic tale of an absolute dumpster fire of a man who no one cares about and who is repeatedly kicked (literally and figuratively) until, after enduring more misery than anyone should have to, he breaks.

When some people break, they quietly crumble into themselves. Not here. Here, when he breaks, he shatters and produces shrapnel that breaks other lives. It is not glorious. It is not fun. At no point would anyone watching this movie say, "man, this obviously disturbed and frighteningly skinny man has it going on! I want to be him!"

There are no "good guys" in this movie. Thomas Wayne (who usually is remembered posthumously as a saintly philanthropist who could have fixed Gotham had he not been snatched away so soon) is an out of touch, wealthy, would-be politician who alienates the very people he's trying to help. Joker's therapist is an overworked public counselor who doesn't listen to him and who, when accused of not caring about him, retorts that the system doesn't care about her either. His mother is a piece of work that I don't have time to go into. The talk show host who seems like he's going to give Joker his big break into the stand-up comedy scene is really looking to milk an awkward video clip for views. He has a well-meaning but very irresponsible coworker who causes more harm than good. The list goes on.

It is a good film. It's not fun. It's not pretty. It's not a glossy comic book with a dapper villain. But it's worth watching. It is a cautionary tale of why you shouldn't be horrible to people, why you shouldn't cut the funding that helps the helpless, and what happens when the already broken are pushed past the final breaking point.

A Tale of Holiday Cheer

Our next door neighbor's daughter had a liver transplant last week. She is doing well, but had to have another procedure yesterday. They are hoping to be able to bring her home this week; no one wants their child in the hospital over Thanksgiving.

Bella was always the one out in the yard with her dad putting up Christmas decorations (or rather, she was the one directing Tom) the week of Thanksgiving when she and her brothers were out of school. Knowing this, Mark, the neighbor across the street came over Sunday night and asked Tom if he'd like to have his "light guy" come help put up lights so the house will be all festive when Bella comes home.

Fast forward to yesterday morning...

I had gone back to sleep after Elianna's first morning feeding and woke to the engine of a large vehicle outside the house. Monday being trash day, I didn't think much about it... until I realized that the motor wasn't going away, and there seemed to be a lot of voices outside. More voices and for much longer than the few seconds it takes to pick up the trash. I got up and peeked through the blinds. There were two fire trucks parked on our street - one in front of our house, and one in front of the neighbors'.

I jumped up and hurried downstairs (quietly, because of the sleeping baby). I was thinking, "Oh, no - not an emergency next door. That's the last thing they need while their daughter's in the hospital" Jason was just coming back in from taking Athena out and he told me what was going on.

It turns out Mark's "light guy" is a firefighter and he brought about 20 fellow firefighters with him to help deck the halls. They were out there most of the morning (much to the delight of Bella's 2 younger brothers). While you can now probably see the neighbor's house from space now, it's so nice to see people do something so nice for a family they don't know ( at least beyond "I know a guy who knows a guy whose kid had surgery").

Na No... Uh Oh

Hello, readers!

As those of you who have followed this blog for a while know, I always post about what my plans are for NaNoWriMo*. And as those of you who have read my last few updates may have guessed by now, since I have a 3-month-old baby, I am not planning to do much.

It's weird to say that. I first started doing NanNo 10 years ago, and most years since I've done something, even if it's not straight pounding out 50,000 words for a new novel. In fact part of why I haven't always just straight up done NaNo is because I started a novel 10 years ago... and still have yet to finish it. I don't need to be writing 50,000 more words for a novel that will take me another decade to finish.

Last year, I wrote almost every day, adding scenes that needed to be written to my still-in-progress novel from 2009 (more on that here: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/10/30/lets-go-wri-mo and here: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/11/30/you-go-wri-mo ). I wrote 31 pages of new material last November, and then wrote a little more in February before Baldur got sick. And, between Baldur and preparing for Elianna this year, I never got all of that new material inserted into the main document. I haven't done any work on The Wolf and the Sheath in probably 4 or 5 months. And, honestly, I have very little expectation of my ability to get any substantial work done on it before the end of the year. It pains me to say that.

When I started The Wolf and the Sheath, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't have finished it in 10 years. But a lot has happened in my life since 2009. I was living with my parents and working 2 or 3 part-time jobs (that didn't add up to 40 hours a week). I hadn't met my husband yet, and so we obviously didn't have our dogs or our baby. And yes, I know there are people out there who write while working full time and/or taking care of their kids. And maybe I will eventually get to the point where I can write and take care of Elianna and the house - but it will not be before Friday.

But I shouldn't be discouraged - my sister recently finished writing her first novel. It took her 10 years, during which time she has not only been teaching full-time, but also earned her master' degree. It can be done. Just not right now.

So what am I going to do instead? Well, I never did finish rereading all the new material I wrote earlier this year, so I'm at least going to try to do that. Check back in late November or early December to see how it goes.

*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 the novel after November ends.

Memories and Magic

Hello, readers! As I mentioned a few weeks ago, posts will continue to be sporadic for a while as I get used to the routine (or lack-there-of) of being a new mom.

For the meantime, though, please enjoy a re-posting of a blog I wrote right around this time 3 years ago:

How many of you remember what you went as for Halloween when you were kids? How many different years' costumes can you name? I'm going to make a go for ALL of them (at least up to senior year in high school).

2 years old - Smurfette

3 - Minie Mouse

4 - Cinderella

5 - Dorothy

6 - a bride

7 - an Amish girl

8- black cat

9 - black cat again. I don't remember why I was a black cat 2 years in a row, but it was the closest to "something scary" my mom would let me be until I was older.

10 - gypsy

11 - a vampire! Finally!

12 or 13 - a butterfly. Whichever year I was a butterfly was the year it snowed. On Halloween. In metro Atlanta. The butterfly costume quickly turned into "Elizabeth in her green parka." Don't remember what I was the other year.

14 - Egyptian. I was quick to point out at the Drama club Halloween party that I was not Cleopatra, as I didn't consider her to be a "real" Egyptian due to her Greek ancestry (I was weird about stuff like that at that age). Not that I, as a re-headed Celto-Ukrainian have any business being picky about who's a "real" Egyptian...

15 - Spanish Renaissance Princess

16 - Salem Witch. I won the Drama club Halloween contest with this costume.

17 - Juliet. Not entirely dissimilar to age 15, but it was a different dress...

In all honesty, 15, 16, and 17 may not actually be in order. I went to the Drama Club Halloween party every year, and also chaperoned my younger sister and her best friend trick-or-treating.

I always tried to have a cool costume every year after that, working or not, going to a party or not. Some years in college I lucked out in that Halloween would fall in the middle of the week and the weekends on both sides ended up having some costume extravaganza to go to. Sometimes I had a costume for each party. But then, I was a theatre major and a costume nerd and could usually "throw something together" that was at least as good as something you could buy.

Halloween 2014 stands out as one of my favorite costume experiences. I was a children's librarian at the time, and I went as Elsa from Frozen. I tell you what, kids know exactly what you're doing if you have even the most vague representation of a costume. I had a platinum blonde wig that I had braided, and a vaguely blueish satin(ish) dress. And every kid (except one) who came into that children's department that day stopped in their tracks and said in whispered awe, "It's ELSA!" (The one kid who did not told his awed 6 year old sister, "That's not Elsa, that's just a grownup.") Oddly enough, this was the second Halloween I can remember that it snowed... Maybe I should be more careful with my costume selection.

But the things I remember most about Halloween as a kid, was the feeling that anything could happen. Those chilly, cloudy nights out walking through the dark neighborhood, I would look up at the sky and see faint ghosts in swirling patterns. Most other nights I knew that wasn't a ghost, but rather a search light from a concert or a car lot. But on Halloween, it was a ghost. On Halloween, that empty house down the street might really be haunted. On Halloween that neighbor that likes to dress up like a scarecrow and sit on the front porch to startle trick-or-treaters might actually be an evil scarecrow come to life that would come get you.

Certain nights hold magic. Halloween is one of them. Christmas is another. On Christmas as a kid, that flashing red light in the sky isn't a plane - it's Rudolph. The fireplace making a thump isn't the flue cooling off and contracting - it's Santa. And I really believed for many years that if I sprinkled glitter on the Christmas tree and the nutcracker collection that one of these days they would magically transform and take me to a magical land... I believed this probably 'til I was way older than I should have.

But my point is, there is something very magical about Fall. (Yes, I know Christmas Day itself is about 4 days into Winter, but most of that buildup, most of that magical transformation is in Fall.) And there is something amazing about kids; they believe. They want to believe. They love to believe. And that is awesome.

Please comment with your favorite Halloween memory, costume, or story, and share with someone who believes in the magic : )

The Challenge Doesn't End Today

Because I have a 9-week-old baby, I’ve spent a lot of time this Banned Books Week holding her and scrolling one-handed on the tablet or the phone. Sometimes I come across a Banned Books post or article from somewhere and I share it in my Facebook page. A few days ago, I shared a picture of one of my former coworkers posing mug-shot style with a Harry Potter book. She’s the director at a college library and they wrote up a funny little snipped about her having been “caught” reading banned books.

Normally, when I share someone else’s post like this, I offer a few words of why I find it interesting, provide context, etc. But, when posting one-handing, it’s a lot easier to just click “share” and not type anything. That’s what I did for this one. One of my friends commented along the lines of “Wait a minute, is banning books still a thing? What is this, the 1600’s?” I went back and explained what was going on in the picture.

Now I’m not sure if he genuinely misunderstood, or if he was being sarcastic himself and I didn’t catch it. But the answer to his question is, yes, this still is a thing. People are not getting thrown in jail over the books they read, of course, but there are still many, many attempts (some successful) to remove books from public access. Read more about that here:

https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/9/29/speak-out-write-out-read-out

(You can tell I wrote the blog in the above link a few years ago, as I refer to not having kids and having plenty of time to read…)