Bullet Post Monday!

This morning is one of those mornings where I definitely have too much to say and not enough to time to say it, and so, huzzah, a bullet post Monday! Incidentally, these posts happen to be S.’s favorite kind of posts for some reason – probably because these posts are the only time in my life my thoughts come out in any sort of order, with any attention at all paid to brevity.

• Firstly, thank you all for your thoughts on the revision process. I realize I didn’t reply to each and every one of you like I do, usually, try to do, but you all did give me so much to think about. Pete asked if I’m still having fun with the process and I thought about it and thought about it and then decided I really couldn’t answer his question…fun? Is revision FUN? Certainly not the word I would use to describe it but I am still engaged and encouraged by the process – I am still committed. Cam mentioned that I honestly need to examine the reasons *why* I am not ready to share the first draft with readers, and I really thought about this, too, and I came to the conclusion it is because it’s just not a novel, yet. There is too much wandering and too many strings to follow…I am not ashamed of my writing so much as I am determined to have a well-developed narrative before passing it around. So, here is where I stand: still revising, still committed, and to all interested parties, stay tuned!
• It would have been hard for whatever book I read after What I Loved to live up to the high, high bar Hustvedt set but David Baldacci? Ick, yuck, blech. I was reading both Baldacci’s The Hour Game and a collection of essays by Barbara Kingsolver called Small Wonder and I ended up giving up on both books when I realized neither interested me enough to continue…it would probably take me months to finish them because when I hate a book I can ignore it for ages. I HATE HATE HATE giving up on books…something in my overly compulsive personality practically demands that I finish what I start, but I managed to shut the cover on the Baldacci and put both The Hour Game and another of his books my mother-in-law gave me in a pile of books to donate. I also stopped reading Kingsovler’s essays…I have loved everything she has written to date but I just couldn’t engage in this book at all…I’m not sure if it’s because of the dual authors…the switch in narrative voices really threw me off – or if because comes across as quite dated…it’s very very post 9/11 angsty, but I put that in a pile to return to A. over Thanksgiving.
• I bought a beautiful new winter coat yesterday – it’s all long and black and sort of has a swing to it. Of course, today the temperture is going to reach seventy-two degrees so I’ll be wearing a summer dress and heels instead. Who didn’t put her summer clothes away yet? This girl. Sometimes procrastination pays, people.
• I’ve lost ten pounds since meeting with the nutritionist in mid-September. I don’t know if this is from the celiac diagnosis, his program, or a combination of both…I am betting a combination of both because while I *mostly* follow his program I did have a week where I was so hungry all the time that I ended up eating cheeseburgers four, yes, count them, four times in six days (obviously bunless). I have never eaten that much fat in one week in my life,  I don’t think. I am still struggling with overwhelming hunger…it seems like no matter what I eat – whether I follow his program or if I gorge myself – I’m hungry minutes later, but this is apparently normal for celiac-in-recovery. I’m meeting with him on Wednesday so perhaps I’ll update further then.
• I am really looking forward to this week – on Wednesday I’m going to see a production of Candide with my neighbor that’s being performed in an abandoned auto dealership in my neighborhood. On Friday my hospital is having a fundraiser and I’m attending with a bunch of co-workers…there will be cocktails and good food and fun and I am very excited.
• But my excitement is offset by the fact S. is leaving for ten days…a combination of work travel and, well, deer camp in northern Michigan with my dad, brother and uncle. I am trying to look at his absence as an opportunity to finish some pre-Thanksgiving projects I have going. I’m actually not feeling too maudlin about his travels what with the play and the fundraiser and possible other events, too, but I’m sure by Thursday I’ll be rather morose.
• I think that’s all! I hope everyone has a fantastic Monday!

…and some further thoughts on revision…

The stupidest thing I ever did during this whole crafting-a-novel process is promise to send it to several readers for their thoughts and opinions once the second draft is completed. These people are now asking for drafts of the novel, wondering aloud when they might receive them, and I risk becoming a characature of a writer, the kind of writer who is always working on something that can never be shared.

I have been struggling with the revisions. Seriously struggling, enough to wonder if perhaps this was just the crappy first novel I had to “get out of the way” so I could write a real novel. I mean, after all, I did dump just about every issue I personally have into this novel. It’s more than that, though…by following the advice not only to write what you know I also tried to write a book I would want to read but instead of locating my own voice, I feel this manuscript is chapter after chapter of approximations – this chapter sounds a little bit like Pat Conroy, this other chapter models the way Jeffrey Lent crafts language. There is no consistent voice in the book and beyond that, the thought that keeps coming back to me, admittedly a rather ridiculous thought since this is a novel, is that this book lacks honesty. If it is going to be in any way successful, and by successful I mean something I can at least walk away from with some pride, then it needs a humbler, more honest approach, and I need to take it a little less seriously.

Another thing this little book, this titleless little book of mine, suffers from is the fact I tried to stuff WAY too much into it. It overflows, it runs on, with the most meaningless information imaginable. Don’t get me wrong, some of that information was very fun to write, but it no longer belongs.

I really thought about walking away. I could move on one of the dozen other writing projects floating around in my head, clammering for attention, and just chalk this manuscript up to a great first novel-writing experience. But that just doesn’t feel write…this book still feels like unfinished business, and it’s not just because I feel this dogged need to complete it, which i do – it’s because I still feel pulled in by the characters and by parts of the story. Anna and Ben and Mira and Brian are going to stay with me until I can finally, once and for all, put them away and say I did my best by them.

Yesterday I spent two hours reworking the first to paragraphs of the novel. I wrote and erased and wrote and rewrote and searched the first draft for the moment where the story really begins, which is NOT the first chapter I originally wrote, and at the end of the two hours I think I at least settled on the beginning. Now it’s just a matter of all the rest of it – of approaching the book as honestly and openly as I can, without aspiring to write like anyone else but me, and without trying to create a book like others I’ve read and instead make sure this is a book only I could write.

 

What I Loved

I completed Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved yesterday and I don’t think I can say enough about this book – it is definitely in the running for my favorite book of 2009. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book that so well balances beauty, structure, character and plot before – it is the kind of book that makes me want to give up writing altogether because no matter what I will never be able to create a book as gripping and stunning as this one.

I started this book late last week, and over the course of the six or so days it took me to read it I developed a mild sinus infection – not so terrible as to keep me bedridden but just awful enough that I worked half days, spending the hours after lunch first napping and then reading this book long into the evening. Apart from short walks with S. and the dog I had the energy for little else, and so reading What I Loved was an interesting reading experience – I rarely have the opportunity to remain still for hours at a time, and this luxury allowed me to fully sink into the story, to become immersed in the world of Leo, Erica, Bill, Violet, Lucille, Matt and Mark for long stretches.

The book centers around the friendship between two couples – art history professor Leo Hertzberg and his wife, a professor of English, Erica, and artist Bill Wechsler, his first wife, Lucille, a poet, and his second wife, Violet, an academic. Leo purchases a painting from Bill early in Bill’s career, and this purchase launches a life-long friendship between the two men. In one way, this book is about that friendship and the toll only time can take on two people. What Hustvedt does so beautifully, though, is immerse us totally in the lives of these two men – we meet their wives, their siblings, their parents, and we attend parties with all of these people in the same room.  (Bit of a spoiler alert coming up, just fyi) – We sigh in relief when Bill leaves the awkward and uncomfortable Lucille for the passionate and much more likable Violet, his artistic muse. We meet the sons of both men and, as the reader, we become apart of the very intimate, messy world that plays out between two families tied together by the friendship of first, the two men and later, by their wives, their sons.

The book, though, is also about art – it’s filled with pages and pages of description about the art Bill creates and it is written is such a lovely yet accessible way that I at once found myself fascinated by the work Bill created and determined to learn more about the history of art, myself. It’s also about art criticism, and the roles of the art historian, the art critic, who determines what art IS, the inherent value of art. At one point Leo points out that art, by its very nature, is useless, but that doesn’t make it unimportant.

All of this is well and good – intriguing, complex characters and long discussions about art, but those two elements alone wouldn’t have left me so haunted and impressed. From the first page of the novel, you realize you are reading a mystery. I don’t want to write too much about here because I really want to encourage everyone to run out and buy this book, but you understand, as the reader, that life was once one way for Leo, the narrator, and now it’s extraordinarily different, and the book is going to tell you why, and the journey is not going to be an easy one. One of the blurbs on the back refers to this book as psychological thriller and it absolutely is – and that is what keeps you turning the page as opposed to setting the book down and meditating on various thoughts of the artist and art.

Oh, I just loved this book so much! I loved this book because I’ve met characters like the ones in this book – I’ve met women like Erica and Violet, who throw themselves fully into life, all passion and no reserve, and I’ve met people like Lucille, who never manage to say the right thing or make people comfortable in their presence, and are maligned for this inability; and I’ve read about artists like the shock-artist Teddy Giles. And I loved this book for the way Hustvedt created New York City – not once does she spend long paragraphs describing the city and yet I never doubt for a moment where I am – she writes about the New York City I dreamed of living in as a child, full of artists and actors and poets, the New York my drama teacher told me when I was twelve years old didn’t exist anymore.

Have I raved enough? This is the kind of book that makes an aspiring writer both rejoice and despair – rejoice at the discovery of a new-to-her author with awe-inducing talent, and despair because I do not have the natural talent to write like this.

I am going to leave you with one of the more light-hearted paragraphs from the book, a paragraph that does nothing to give away the plot but gives a small taste of Hustvedt’s writing:

Birth is violent, bloody, and painful, and all the rhetoric to the contrary will not convince me that I am wrong.  I have heard the stories of women squatting in the fields, snapping umbilical cords with their teeth, strapping their newborns onto their backs, and picking up the scythe,but I wasn’t married to one of those women. I was married to Erica. We went to Lamaze classes toether and listened attentively to Jean Romber’s breathing advice. A storcky woman in beruda shorts and thick-soled sneakers, Jean referred to birth as “the great adventure” and to the members of her class as “mom” and “coaches.”

Goblins, Ghouls, Ghosts, Oh My!

Emily tagged me for her spooktacular new Halloween meme II. I thought about putting off filling it out until Friday or Saturday but then realized with my current blogging pace of about one post a week I might not get it up before the cobwebs are swept away and the creak in the stairs is nothing more than that, a creak, instead of ghost footsteps, and pumpkins are turned into pies while the last of the leaves fall from the trees. I am super excited for Halloween this year since I learned we get quite a few trick-or-treaters. S. will be out of town visiting his father so Skylar and I will be left to protect the house from tricks. Do you think this face could carry off a witch hat?

I am not going to tag thirteen separate people for this meme…if you are reading this, please consider yourself tagged! I’d love to see this everywhere this week.
Rules:

1. Answer the questions on your own blog.

2. Tag 13 others to answer the questions on their blogs and link to them.

1). Which urban legend ghost scared the bejeezus out of you when you were a kid?

I can’t think of a specific urban legend, but I was always very freaked out the idea that if you went into the bathroom, looked in mirror, and said …what was it…red rum? Bloody Mary? Murder? I don’t remember what you had to say but you said it three times and then Bloody Mary would appear in the mirror. I always found the temptation to do this almost overwhelming, but I never did it.

2). Which horror movie has the best premise?

I have to admit I haven’t seen a ton of horror movies but some movies that scared me include Arachnid, Cape Fear and Silence of the Lambs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a slasher type horror movie.

3). What is the most disappointing “treat” to receive in your bag on Halloween night?

Apples or popcorn balls, because they could hide razor blades. Come to think of it, are razor blades in apples an urban legend? Did this actually ever happen to anyone?

4). What’s the best non-candy item to receive?

gift certificates to McDonalds or Burger King. I wasn’t allowed to eat fast food when I was little and I LOVED that I could go get a burger or a shake with one of those gift certificates.

5). Did a monster live in your closet when you were a child?

No. He lived in the radiator and in the toy box. I have no idea why. I was an odd child.

6). Which supernatural creature sent chills up your spine when you were ten and still does?

Zombies. God, is there anything scarier than a zombie?

7). Which supernatural creature makes you yawn?

Frankenstein the Monster (right? We call the tv version of Frankentstein Frankenstein and not Adam, right? Well, Adam, Frankentein’s monster makes me very sad, but Frankenstein with the green head and the screws and etc. makes me yawn)

8). What’s your favorite Halloween decoration?

Carved pumpkins with candles inside. My neighbors also have a pretty cool collection of witches happening next door.

9). If you could be anywhere on Halloween night, where would you be?

At my mom and dad’s house, handing out candy and drinking martinis like we have for the past few years, Warren Zevon on the stereo. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be this year.
10). What’s the scariest book you’ve read so far this year?

True Evil, Gregory Isles

11). Haunted houses or haunted hayrides?

Haunted hayrides! I used to go on these with my youth group in high school. Delicious.

12). Which Stephen King novel/movie would you least like to find yourself trapped in?

The Shining.

13). Which are creepiest: evil dolls, evil pets, or evil children?

Evil dolls. Sheesh, those things are scary. In fact, one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen was on Alfred Hitchcock presents when I was younger. It was about a girl who had an evil doll and the evil doll did lots of bad things but those things kept getting blamed on the girl until one day her parents, who did NOT believe her, found HER, their daughter, IN THE DOLL BOX and the doll alive!! OMG. I have been trying to track this movie down for awhile now so if it sounds familiar do let me know because as it stands I have every season of Alfred Hitchcock presents in my blockbuster cue in an attempt to find it.

Happy Halloween week, everyone!

Conversations from the Lunchroom

In recent weeks I’ve come to embrace my job. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I have always worked hard, putting in extra hours when necessary, wearing a smile even when I worried my inner-artist was dying a slow death by corporate jargon – lost in the weeds, so to speak – and a topic for another post – but in the last several weeks I’ve gone from thinking I was working mostly to support my writing habit to realizing I actually enjoy myself on a regular basis. This shift, also, is a topic for another post because for a long time I considered freelance writing my personal golden ring and now, while I will never, ever in a million hundred thousand years stop writing, I no longer worry quite so much about living for the day I stay home and solely do that. So, yes – two upcoming posts: marketing jargon and my shift in how I consider work. Remind me, because we are not here for that today. Today, I am here to share with you some recent conversations I have had with my colleagues, conversations that have helped me feel much less alone in the world. My co-workers are, in no small part, why I’m enjoying my job more than I used to, and we eat lunch together regularly, at least once a week and generally much more often. Our talk mostly runs the gamut of weekend and/or week night activities, Steelers football, what we are eating for lunch, what we are making for dinner, tv shows, the good/the bad about the workplace, books and shopping. Keep in mind, we are all women, all in our late twenties or early thirties, with the exception of the Young One, who is twenty-three, and we are all married, again, with the exception of the Young One, who we keep around because she is fun and tells stories about bars and dancing and drunkenness. So, for our purposes today, let me introduce you to The Glamorous One, who spends her weekends and vacation time traveling to exotic cities both foreign and domestic and who can always get us excellent reservations for lunch, and The South Beach One, who has lost fifteen pounds on said diet and spends a lot of time mourning baked goods, and The Fashionista, who looks startingly like Audrey Hepburn.

On Cooking Dinner, or any meal, for that matter:

The Glamorous One: Last night I planned to make this new chicken recipe  for a dinner but I got midway through the recipe and saw it called for a bouquet garni. I made a bouquet garni once in my life and it was the biggest pain in the ass. We went out to dinner, instead.

Me: Yeah, bouquet garni is one of my trigger words. No matter how much my mother-in-law assures me it’s the easiest thing in the world to assemble, I skip any recipe I see calling for one. It just sounds daunting.

Fashionista: I don’t even know what a bouquet garni is but I have a whole list of words that will prevent me from trying a recipe.

South Beach One: Like what?

Me: Bechamel sauce is definitely one of mine. Bouquet garni and bechamel sauce. I don’t know what either are and life is too short to find out.

South Beach One: I totally agree. And creme fraiche. Where does one buy creme fraiche? Or does one make it?

Fashionista: Roux. If I see the word roux, I move on.

The Glamorous One: Right, roux. I know what a roux is but I’ve never had one turn out correctly.

South Beach One: Well, I’m from the south and everything we cook starts with a roux, so it doesn’t scare me, but I don’t make them anymore, since starting south beach.

Me: So, what do you guys cook? I’m always looking for new ideas that both S. and I would eat, and, obviously, no bouquet garnis or roux or difficult-to-pronounce sauces.

The Glamorous One: A lot of crockpot meals.

Fashionista: And takeout. Mexican takeout.

South Beach One: And cereal.

The Young One: I am so glad I am dating a chef.

*

On breastfeeding – note, none of us have children but we all hope/plan to.

Fashionista: I can’t believe she’s doing that here.

Upon seeing a co-worker entering the designated pumping room in the office.

The Glamorous One: It’s not like she’s doing it in front of you.

South Beach One: Yeah, when you have a baby you’ll be very glad we have that room.

Fashionista: Oh, I won’t breastfeed when I have a baby. It’s straight to formula, I don’t care what those lactaid consultants say.

Me: Are you kidding? You HAVE to breastfeed! It’s so much better for the baby. And I don’t think they are called lactaid consultants.

Fashionista: I don’t have to breastfeed- what, are they going to make me? I wasn’t breasfed and I’m just fine. Were you breastfed?

Me: Well, no…

Fashionista: Was anybody here breastfed?

The Glamorous One and South Beach: No.

The Young One: I was.

Fashionista: Yes, and you are the only one with crippling seasonal allergies that make you miss work. I think I’ve proved my point with our little control group, here.

Me: Well, I’ve never liked the idea of breastfeeding. I know I’ll do it because everyone says you should but that has never been my vision of bonding with my baby. Plus I hear your nipples get sore and they can get infected and, well, it just sounds disgusting.

The Glamorous One: Plus you end up having to pump at work and sterilizing your equipment in the office microwave. Nobody needs that kind of hassle.

*

Misc.

Fashionista: Yesterday J. came home with a brand new X-box and said we were turning the living room into a video-game room

South Beach One: What did you say?

Fashionista: What could I say?

Glamorous One: Yeah, there is no response to that.

*

C is for Celiac Disease (I guess)

It’s been less than a month since my Celiac diagnosis, so it feels sort of strange to write about it in this format, as though it’s already part of my history, but when I think about it I believe this…this, what? This disease – although it doesn’t feel so much like a disease – has formed a significant portion of who I am. For those of you unfamiliar with celiac disease, it’s an autoimmune disease wherein your body doesn’t recognize, or, perhaps a better way to put it, is your body really really hates gluten, the protein found in wheat, rye and barley, which gives things like bread their elasticity. Its symptoms can’t really be characterized because there are just so damn many of them, some of which I’m going to write about here but if you are interested in learning more you can go to celiac.com, which is a stunning wealth of information.

For most of my life I think it is fair to say I could be characterized as a somewhat anxious, high-strung person. I am more prone to worry than most people I know, and while much of that worry comes, I think, from my rather stereotypical first child, desire-to-please personality, a good portion of that worry has always been focused on my body and how it is, or is not functioning, to the point where other people viewed me as and I felt like a true hypochondriac. Some people move through this life with bodies rather impervious to the various mechanations the environment can wreak on it – but I am not one of those people. Examples:

If leaves are falling from a tree a mile away, I will break out in a rash from the one mold spore that caught a breeze and landed on my doorstep.

I get pink eye if I even look at a public pool where children have played.

For years, any sort of cold or flu or crud that was going around, I caught, and caught massively – while other people would shrug off the virus I would be out of work for a week. I do have to admit, though, that working in hospitals for so long has strengthened me in that regard…I don’t want to jinx it but I haven’t been that kind of sick since moving to Pittsburgh.

Food, reliably and regularly, has made me sick, all different sorts of sick – from classic upset stomachs to brain fog so thick I couldn’t add two plus two to heartburn that felt something akin to a chemical spill, and none of this even touches upon the overwhelming anxiety I so often experience.

In the last eight years (I believe my most upsetting symptoms began in 2001 while we were living in Wheeling, West Virginia) I have gone to the doctor for chest pain, stomach pain, rib cage pain, persistant, pushy rashes, general malaise and the just general feeling that something was wrong. I came away from the doctor with diagnoses of general anxiety disorder, panic attacks and just generally existing as a highly-strung individual. I also came away with lots of prescriptions for drugs to help with all of the above, most of which I never filled because I was convinced that if I just struck on the right combination of eating, exercise and relaxation I would be able to control the anxiety beast.

At one point, one of my doctors diagnosed me with a soy allergy, and I avoided studiously and fastidiously anything with soy. My nutritionist thinks I will be able, now, to eat soy just fine once I am properly healed.

Here is the thing, I guess. I remember going to slumber parties as a teenager with my closest girlfriends. We would gorge ourselves on pizza and breadsticks and brownies before moving on to whatever the hell it was we talked about – boys mostly, undoubtedly, but somewhere in between the festivities and falling asleep I would have these just awful panic attacks – panic attacks that included nausea so debilitating I couldn’t move. Sometimes I would share these attacks with my best friend, M, who would bring me wet wash clothes and talk to me until I fell asleep, and we both assumed (I think) that these attacks were just my nervous personality, showcasing itself in new and exciting ways.

I could continue listing a hundred different examples…how during graduate school I suffered the worst insomnia of my life and would literally stare out the window of our apartment for hours, fixated on seeing the sun rise over the horizon because then, at least, I didn’t have to pretend to sleep; how I never fully embraced trips with S. because at some point I was guaranteed to feel unwell, which I now realize is because of the cookies or pasta or beer I was enjoying and not because I am some nervous homebody who can’t stand to leave her nest; how even when doctors promised me I was just experiencing anxiety and stress I could never see that diagnosis within myself…I never felt that diagnosis was accurate, for me.

Over the course of the last decade, there were moments difficult enough that I considered not even attempting to try having children, because no child deserves a mother who thinks she is dying every month or so.  At times, I thought about leaving S. not because he was unsupportive – he was more supportive than anyone has a right to expect but, as we all know, he rocks the free world, but because I was sure he deserved a wife who felt well, physically and emotionally.

But, you know what? A lot of that is over, now. Oh, I will still get pink eye if I share a public pool and I have no doubt cheap jewelry will always make me break out in hives, but even in the first few weeks of eating gluten-free, I can feel such a difference…a difference that avoiding soy or dairy never gave me. It’s going to sound stupid, but I feel happy – and it’s not like I’ve felt unhappy before, but what I feel is stabilized…if someone at work doesn’t like my writing, it isn’t the end of the world; if a song comes on the radio I particularly love, I turn it up and dance (hence the continous re-watching of the Beyonce seen in Glee a few weeks ago). The overwhelming sense of urgency I felt for so long has slipped away and in its place is a feeling I can only describe as mellowness, patience. Gladness. I am sleeping for long stretches…eight or nine hours at a time. When I told this to my mom she said “Well, honey, that’s a normal amount of sleep. What’s so special about that?” I had to explain to her how I rarely, if ever, got a full night’s sleep before now.

Right now I feel like I’m going through a period of healing. As I mentioned, I’m sleeping more than I ever have. I’m learning what I can and can’t eat and, equally as important, I am trying to teach myself new behaviors – a headache is not a brain tumor, a cramp in my leg is not a blood clot. I am learning to not overreact to every little thing. I’m looking at what is left of 2009 and looking at it as a time of recovery, not just recovering from the physical aspects of celiac but from the emotional ones as well, and I am looking extraordinarily forward to 2010, when I hope to be much less defined how I feel and much more so by what I accomplish.

And that is C, which is for Celiac.

Revising the Novel

I am really, really behind on revising my novel. So behind, in fact, that it wasn’t until yesterday around five in the evening that I sat down to read the thing, and it took me two and a half hours to read the first half. There are a thousand reasons for my neglect but basically, September was a pretty shitty month, between continuous layoffs at work (I live to serve another day), quitting smoking (yes, really. for real this time. I promise. It’s been almost a month), the celiac disease diagnosis, seasonal allergies and the fact that every single thing we own decided to go kaput, all at once, including our coffee pot, our microwave, our dvd player and various car problems.  I spent half the month either withdrawing from nicotine or gluten, the other half battling my allergies, several days wondering if I would be laid off,  several more days watching people I care deeply for lose their jobs and, oh, hell, it was just a bad month. I didn’t feel well emotionally or physically for most of it.

BUT! It is October. I LOVE October. Any day now a frost is finally going to come our way and kill all this sneeze and sinus inducing mold, and in the meantime, pumkins and scarecrows and popcorn and apple cider and leaves turning colors and long walks and Octoberfest beers (well, can’t have those anymore, but still! Love them!) and then it’s November and December and, well, I love winter. I know a lot of people don’t but I do and October to the end of January is just about my favorite quarter of the year what with the football and the family visits and the winter solstice, and, well, you know. Also, sweaters and boots and scarves and going to my main hair man, Corey, for an autumn tune-up, color wise.

And that is why I didn’t start rereading my novel until last night.

So. I’m only about half way through, as I mentioned, and my opinions could change, but here are my initial thoughts:

1. I am not going to change from first person to third…I think the first person actually works better. This is hugely relieving.

2. I definitely rush too much – there are paragraphs so loaded with information that I wonder how much coffee I must have been drinking when I wrote them. Several places need to be unpacked and explored more deeply.

3. I actually have a lot more scene than I thought I did.

4. I am going to keep the overall structure, which I wasn’t totally sure about – it might not work on the end but I am going to need advice either from my readers or an agent (should I ever get so lucky) to improve it…I actually think it works right now.

5. I need to take parts of it much less seriously…there is a lot of opportunity for humor and I tend to skim over it. I am going to have to remember that each time I approach revising – to leave space for the light-hearted.

6. All in all, I am facing less work and more fun than I anticipated. In keeping some of my original decisions…point of view, structure, etc I don’t have as major an overhaul as I initially thought. My biggest challenge is fleshing it all out – adding details, taking more time with important moments- in general, making the whole thing more human, more real, more sparkly. How unwriterly is that…I actually think what my novel needs is sparkle. Perhaps more appropriately what it needs is the life that comes from really thinking and playing with it as opposed to pounding it out in the early mornings…time to add some late afternoon and early evening energy into the pages.

I have so many other projects I am keening to start – from short essays to a nonfiction book idea to a mystery series, to the prequel to this novel – but I am determined – DETERMINED -to see the process through with each project. The easiest thing in the world is to drift to another writing project without finishing one…the hardest thing, I think, is to see one through to full completion.

I don’t try and ask too many questions on this blog, but I am in a questiony mood today. If you are writing, how’s it going?

PS, my deadline to send this out to my readers is right before Thanksgiving. I don’t know if it’s achievable or not but it’s what I’m aiming for – I need something to hold me accountable!

The Honest Scrap Award

Just a quick FYI, there won’t be any recipe (s) of the month this month – the only new recipe I tried was one for ChickenVesuvio and while the flavor was spot-on it warrants further tinkering before I share…otherwise I’ve been doing a lot of lean meats, veggies and whole grains. Hopefully I’ll have a recipe or four to share at the end of October!

So, quite some time ago the lovely inthemainstream nominated me for The Honest Scrap Award. Here it is:

And here are the rules:

1. “The Honest Scrap” award must be shared.
2. The recipient has to tell 10 true things about themselves that no one else knows.
3. The recipient has to pass along the award to 10 more bloggers.
4. Those 10 bloggers all have to be notified they have been given this award.
5. Those 10 bloggers should link back to the blog that awarded them.

In terms of ten things about myself no one knows…well, I’m not sure if I have three, let alone ten…if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you probably know all there is to know about me, but I’ll give it a go, anyway because I am very honored to receive this award!

1. I secretly want to run into Jake Gyllenhal and Reese Witherspoon. Jake is in Pittsburgh filming a movie and I secretly want to run into them…where…the bookstore or a coffee shop or something…but I’ll act very cool and won’t ask for an autograph or anything and we’ll strike up a conversation and realize we have a terrible amount in common. A friendship will be born.

2. Um, continuing the Hollywood theme, I wish people would stop giving Jennifer Aniston a hard time.  I think she is one of the most underrated actresses in Hollywood -I don’t think critics understand how difficult comedy is – equal to or more difficult than drama, I think – and she is someone who really disappears into her roles. And also, all the tabloids continuing with the whole Brad/Angelina/one hundred babies thing? Just, ugh. I am pretty sure Jennifer is pretty happy living in sunny California instead of running around after a bajillion babies in a drafty French castle.

3. I watch “The Soup” every week. And I tape “Chelsea Lately” and watch it nearly every day too. And while I used to think if I could be anyone I would be Tina Fey now I think I would be Chelsea Handler, because she is just so wicked funny and also, she drinks vodka while Tina Fey comes across as sort of a teetotaler.

4. I’ve never read To Kill a Mockingbird. I often THINK I have because I confuse it with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest which I have read but, no, I haven’t read it. The only reason I can write this and not go running back under the covers, though, is because I checked it out from the library and will be rectifying the situation this week. Really, I think a concrete plan to read Harper Lee’s book is the only way one can admit to not having done so previously.

5. I watched the opening sequence to last week’s episode of “Glee” – the dance number to the Beyonce song – at least twenty-five times. I also practiced the dance a little bit in the kitchen while cooking dinner.

6. I am very prematurely worried about the Oscars, because I am pretty sure I am going to have to see “Precious” and the thought of seeing it scares me – it looks like the kind of movie that can knock you down for a week.

7. I miss my friends…my before-I-became-an-adult friends…J and A and M…and I worry that no friends I make now will ever measure up to them. I went to the movies and lunch with some newish friends on Saturday and it was fun but it wasn’t, like, the most fun, you know? Everyone I am making friends with here in Pittsburgh seems to be younger than me, too – late twenties – which shouldn’t feel like a big deal but it DOES, anyway. I am going to keep making an effort to make friends but I do wonder when I’ll stop thinking of my old friends as my “real” friends, as though everyone else I hang out with are just place holders or something.

8. I have absolutely NO patience for facebook, blogging or twitter angst. I am pretty sure I have said this before but if facebook, blogging or twitter is annoying you then STOP USING THEM. Don’t clog my status updates, google reader and tweets with your anxiety, and furthermore, I think all of these academic discussions surrounding social media tools are hilarious…all of the what does this mean and is society going down the toilet? Yes, probably our society has taken a turn for the worse with some of these things but it can’t be too much worse than when people started eating insects on television.

9. Sometimes I think my life would be infinitely easier if I gave up writing. I am pretty confident everything else in my life would improve…I’d be a better wife, a better employee, I’d work more on and around the house and would go to the gym more often – and lately I’ve been having the whole “what’s the point” thoughts run around my head. But I’m not going to quit.

10. I still don’t fully appreciate the band Wilco – my favorite song remains Heavy Metal Drummer – but I like the latest cd more than the last two.

Now, to tag ten people. I am going old-school with this one – all of whom have probably read To Kill a Mockingbird.

1. Bloglily

2. Cam

3. Charlotte

4. Emily

5. Gumbomum

7. Noble Savage

8. Of Books and Bikes

9. Litlove

10. Andi

6. Ms. Make Tea

I’m dieting so you don’t have to

I recently spent over two hours with a nutritionist recommended by my primary care physician. I met with the nutritionist for two very distint reasons – the first so he could help me understand a gluten-free diet since I was diagnosed with celiac disease (more on that in a separate post), the second, and frankly, the one he was much more interested in, to help me lose weight and improve my cholesterol.  I was game for the weight loss plan since I have a stubborn fifteen to twenty pounds to lose but skeptical about using cholesterol as a measuring tool because (a.) both my parents have terribly high cholesterol, at least twice as high as mine with the addition of statins, and (b.) my numbers aren’t bad to begin with.  In fact, once we dispensed of all the gluten -related talk I waved my latest numbers if front of him, absurdly proud of myself. My good cholesterol was up, up, up.  My bad cholesterol was down, down, down. My trigicerides were low. Sugar? Normal. Given my family history I felt happy, proud. That is, until the nutritionalist started talking (I thought for a bit about nicknaming him Jack Ass Nutritionalist but have since decided against doing so since, really, he’s just trying to make me feel better, heal, and live a really long time).

“We’ve got to get your numbers down.  They are still significant,” he said, leaning over the table and grabbing notebook from my side of the table.

“Really? I thought I was on to something – the overall number is lower than it ever has been. It’s forty points lower than it was six months ago.”

I imagine many doctors and nutritionalists would congratulate their patients for a forty point, all natural, cholesterol improvement but S. and I go to the meanest primary care physician in the city and there are no congratulations, no hand shakes, from her – just a laundry list of things to improve every visit.

“But you are near the high end of normal,” he pointed out, writing something in his mysterious notebook.

“Well, I think that’s good! I mean, my parents’ both have cholesterol hovering in the high 200s…with statins! So did my grandmother.” I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest, pleased with my argument.

“Are you your parents?” He asked, continuously jotting. I imagined him jotting patient extraordinarily difficult – in denial.

“Well, no. I mean, obviously not.”

“So why are you comparing yourself to them?”

“Well, it’s just – cholesterol is at least partly a hereditary thing, right?”

He waved his hand in the air, which he does a lot – as though erasing my thoughts as they fall from my mouth.

“I don’t do that – I don’t care about your parents. My goal is to get your bad cholesterol down to sixty.”

“Sixty?” Truly, I sputtered. I laughed.

“Yep. Then it’s a negative risk factor for heart disease. So our goal number is sixty.”

“Well, I just really don’t see how that’s going to happen,” I said. “I think that’s impossible.”

“With that attitude it certainly is. But look, you’re young. You don’t have any health problems. Why not nip these two things in the bud…your extra twenty pounds and your cholesterol? Why have them hanging around you in a decade, when you’ll have kids and more pressure from work and less time to take care of yourself?”

See why he isn’t really a jackass?

“Okay.” I said. Grudgingly.

“So, let’s go over what you eat. What do you eat for breakfast?”

“Oatmeal and fruit. Almost exclusively.”

Okay – for the sake of expediency I am going to omit all the foods he ask me if I ate that could contribute to my current situation, including pork rinds, nightly ice cream, a daily beer or three…it took a grand tour of the American Way of Eating before he pinpointed my (in his eyes) problem.

“What about butter? Do you ever cook with butter?” He asked.

“Well yes. Of course.”

“How much butter?”

I honestly couldn’t think of an answer for him. How much butter? However much is necessary for whatever I am eating, is what I told him.

“You can’t have butter. It’s terrible for you. Use olive oil exclusively – measure how much you use. Use something like Benecol or Smart Balance if you have to – measure that, too.”

“But I thought it was better to eat more natural products, like in Europe…”

“Europeans don’t eat butter. Besides, do you live in Europe?”

“Um, no.”

“So I don’t want to hear that argument again. Until you are living in Paris or Rome and living a true European lifestyle it does not matter what they eat or what they do – you are still working a high-pressure job and eating on the run half the time. Now what about cheese? You eat cheese?”

“Of course.” Since I was trying to be all European and all.

“You can’t eat cheese. Cheese is death. You know what I think when I stroll through the cheese section of Whole Foods?”

Um, food orgasm? Because that is what I think.

“No, what do you think?”

“I think early heart attack. I think death. Cheese is death. Remember that.”

Together, we reviewed foods I could eat and foods I couldn’t and while I have to admit the list of foods to avoid seems grossly over-exaggerated to me I have decided to commit to this low-fat, low-carb, high-intensity exercise diet for one year. Because, really. I know I have been given the gift of pretty wonderful health…despite the celiac diagnosis I have pretty fabulous bloodwork and unlike a lot of my friends in their thirties I don’t have a bad back or a funky thyroid or anything like that, and I should protect what I’ve been given. So, as I told S., here is the deal – I am committing to this diet (both the gluten-free and the low-fat) and if, in a year, I don’t feel fabulous or I haven’t lost weight or my cholesterol hasn’t reached that elusive goal of sixty, then I’ll deal with it at that point.

Jokingly, I say I’ll throw myself headfirst into a pile of cigarettes, martinis and steaks – all things I’ve either given up or am watching very carefully.

In all seriousness, these are my parameters: While the nutritionist and my doctor may measure my results by my cholesterol, I am not going to do so. I will measure myself solely by the way I feel and weight loss. After all, my numbers are NORMAL. That’s worth celebrating for me, even if it isn’t for them. And I am not entirely avoiding meat. I’ve already been on the diet a week and butter and cheese haven’t felt like a big deal at all, but I have a terrible craving for my mom’s sausage, pepper and potato recipe. I am going to make it, have one serving, and freeze the rest. If I can’t have some of the things I love, I won’t stick to  this – I just know it.

So, that’s the scoop! This diet seems a little ridiculous, even to me, but I am doing it so you don’t have to. I’ll share my results with you.

Oh! And also! Not only does cheese = death, apparently sugar = an even worse one. So, you know – avoid sugar. It is apparently a scourge.

Stay tuned, and happy weekend.

G-20 Madness

Unless you live under a rock – or, say, not in Pittsburgh, which might as well be the same thing – then you know the G-20 will be held here this week. I just stepped outside to collect the papers and I can happily report my own particular neighborhood is still standing and is, in fact, even peaceful. This may not be the situation come Friday when the dignitaries, rioters and journalists all depart, taking with them their thoughts on the economy, their protestations against capitalism and their articles, many of which will undoubtedly feature stories that describe Pittsburgh as the steel town that went bust and then boom again. If my sources are to be believed, and by sources I mean people whose conversations I overheard at the grocery store yesterday, then it is highly possible we will be living in ruins by Friday, what with all of these out of towners arriving. In other cities an event of this magnitude would probably warrant more celebration and less angst but here everyone is very grim-faced and steely-knuckled, prepared for the worst, not even bothering to hope for the best.

Some of the things I’ve heard recently in regards to the G-20 Summit:

the protesters will throw feces and urine on you so make sure your hepatitis shots are up to date

the police will let loose with the tear gas for any reason whatsoever so just be prepared – and see if you can get your hands on a gas mask

Riots greater than those in Seattle are being threatened – if you can get out of town, do so

All of the roads are going to be shut down – no one is going to be able to get into or out of town

I really don’t know what to expect from the summit. Mostly I am excited to see the city expand to accomodate so many more people than it usually holds – when I lived in Detroit and the Super Bowl came to town the city took on a sort of holiday air and it feels like that here in Pittsburgh right now – the thrill of being chosen by President Obama co-mingling with the apprehension of G-20s past. The only thing that I find truly concerning is how concerned and disdainful everyone seems to be of those coming to town to protest – there already is a lot of animosity toward them, as though their right to free speech should be revoked, or at least very critically examined.

Anyway. It’s all sorts of exciting, actually. I may update here with pictures and thoughts as the week progresses but if everything is boring and status quo I won’t, so stay tuned – who knows!