Weekly Photo Challenge: Windows

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Coming East

Yesterday was a good writing day.  I managed to get 5,049 words down and now have a grand total of 21, 717.  Lots to do today, like try to at least make the downstairs livable (I’ll settle for just making the kitchen livable again), but I’m setting 3,000 words as my goal today.  I was worried about not posting anything new today until I remembered the photo challenge for the week.  Love windows, especially the ones in New York City.  Enjoy!

Inside Cape Henry Light, Virginia Beach

Store window in New York City

Apartment building in New York City

Shop in Newburyport, Massachusetts

 

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From Dust Thou Art

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Coming East

I really wanted to work on my novel this weekend.  I had a very good day on Friday, writing 5,652 words, but since I am well aware of all the commitments facing me over the next few weeks, I don’t see how I will be able to keep up the pace of my first week of NaNoWriMo.  But as I started to say, I really did want to work on my novel this weekend, but I do have other obligations, like housework, so I spent Saturday dusting while my husband was at his office.

Dusting.  The most ridiculous job ever invented.  As soon as you’ve done it, it needs doing again.  One of the problems I have is that we’ve been married nearly forty years, and you accumulate a lot of things over time.  My daughter-in-law, when she and my youngest son came for a visit last March, said she loves coming to my house because it’s like walking through a museum.  Stop laughing.  She meant it in a good way.  She loved all the little knickknacks I had placed “just so” on every possible surface:  two little antique books (a Tennyson and a Spenser) piled one on top of the other at a 45-degree angle with an old brass-handled magnifying glass next to them, a spyglass next to dishes of seashells, ceramic birds purchased from El Mercado during our years in San Antonio, a vintage cranberry glass candy dish next to a cut crystal tea light candle holder, and many more objects that held my daughter-in-law’s attention.  And pictures everywhere, pictures of all the people I love or ever loved it seemed.  How sweet of her to notice.

But she doesn’t have to dust everything!  There is something refreshing about going to my son and daughter-in-law’s apartment in Boston.  It is totally clutter free.  They haven’t lived long enough to accumulate the paraphernalia that comes with longevity.  I’ve started sticking things in drawers or boxes, trying to aim for those minimalist roots I started with.  Yesterday, after taking nearly two hours to dust—just our bedroom—I decided I had had enough of all the pictures that adorn every surface.  I do not need pictures of all these people.  I know who they are.  I have their faces memorized in my heart.  For goodness sake, I get to see them several times a year.  I don’t need to dust their little faces every week.  I’ve made one concession.  If you’re dead, you get to stay.  That’s the least I can do.  Sort of a place of honor, you know.  But if you’re alive and kicking, I’m rounding you up and you’re going into the trunk.

Note to children:  When I’m dead, feel free to stick me on your shelf.  My picture, of course.

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Shut Up and Do Something Already!

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Coming East

It is day four of my writing adventure.  Yes, I know it is 9:37 and I’ve yet to write a word on my novel today, but in a minute I’ll take Lady Macbeth‘s advice to her husband and “screw my courage to the sticking place” and get on with it.  I knew when I began writing this novel that my first draft was going to be less than stellar.  Okay, it was going to be crap!  But I didn’t know how quickly these characters would take over and start writing their own novel, not the version I had in my head.  My exciting main plot is getting little attention because their secondary stories are taking over.  All they want to do is yammer all day long.  They talk and talk and talk and never seem to do anything.  Ack!  Are they a mirror of my life?

You would think I would have more control, wouldn’t you?  After all, I created these people.  I gave them life.  They should be a little more appreciative and do what I want them to do once in awhile.  I really do care about their emotional well-being, but if they are having problems, they need to get counseling on their own time and give me back my story.  I have things for them to do and places for them to go.  I don’t have time for their boo-hooing.

Today I vow to get tough with them.  Sorry, guys, but you’ve left me no choice.  If you don’t cooperate, I may have to kill one of you off…

*********

Yesterday I wrote 3, 682 words.  My grand total for the first three days of writing is 11,011.

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Please Bow Your Heads…

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Coming East

Yesterday, when my sweet young Vietnamese friend, Chi, came for my help with English, she surprised me with two dozen homemade spring rolls.  I knew my husband would be thrilled.  When he came home from work, I had a few of the rolls sizzling in oil on the stove, the rest of the dinner nearly ready as well.  We sat down at the table, held hands, bowed our heads, and he said grace as he usually does.  Then he dug into those delicious spring rolls.

A few minutes later, I put the rest of the dinner on the table, a tuna-spinach casserole (trust me, it’s delicious), macaroni and cheese, and a baked acorn squash which my husband had cut open for me that morning before he left for work since those winter squashes are just too hard for me to cut.

I placed his plate in front of him, sat down in front of mine, reached across the table to hold his hand, and started to bow my head.  He looked at me and began laughing.

“Honey, we already said grace.”

Not missing a beat, I continued to bow my head while holding his hand and said, “I just wanted to offer up another prayer, Lord, for my wonderful husband who would never make me feel like a stupid old woman.”

He needed to dry his eyes with his napkin, he was laughing so hard.  We were enjoying the rest of the meal, especially the acorn squash that was filled with butter and brown sugar, soft and delicious, when I decided to thank my husband again for his help that morning.

“Thank you for helping me with the squash because it’s always too hard for me to cut.”

He looked over at the squash on my plate.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, honey.  Why would you need help cutting the squash?  It looks perfectly soft to me.”  He smiled at me innocently.

I grabbed his hand again.  “We need to pray some more.”

********************************

On another note, I wrote 25 words less than 2000 words yesterday on my novel, not a bad show when I had such little time.  I may have to increase my 20,000-word goal.

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Progress Report #1

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Coming East

“How many words did you write today?” my husband asked when he walked in from work last night.

“Five thousand three hundred fifty seven,” I said.

“Wow, that sounds like a lot.  Congratulations!  About how many words do you think it takes to make a novel?” he asked.

“Oh, at least 100,000,”

“The way you’re going, you could easily do that,” he said.

“Well, it has to be 100,000 good words,” I told him.

“And your words aren’t good?”

“Actually, they are good words, just not in the right order,” I joked.

“So, if you were to randomly rearrange these good words into a different order, what do you think your chances of being published are?”

“Zilch.”

Honestly, I have never written so many words of drivel all at the same time.  Don’t get me wrong.  I write drivel all the time, just not so much of it in one sitting!  But it sure was fun. NaNoWriMo is all about quantity, not quality, so I am meeting that criteria.  I won’t have another long writing day like that until Friday, unfortunately.  I’m hoping to get a couple of hours today and maybe three or four hours tomorrow and then hit it hard on Friday.  I’m glad my blogging friends enjoyed the dancing videos yesterday.  I watched them yesterday every time I needed a quick break.  Today I leave you with one of my first blogs.  I noticed it didn’t have even one comment, so I don’t think many people read it in those early days.  I’ve reprinted it here in its entirety.

Look Ma, No Wrinkles!

You know you just might need a facelift if you bend over to dry your hair and you nearly suffocate when your nose is stifled by your sagging cheeks swinging forward to meet and greet each other.  Recently, I saw an article in my Prevention magazine about alternatives to surgical facelifts.  The only kind of facelift I’ve been able to afford is to lie across the bed on my back with my head hanging slightly over the edge.  Yes, it does make my cheeks fall back into position, but it also makes my husband think I’m always ready for him.

Anyway, this article mentioned an invisible tape that you put on your eyelids and it gives you an instant eye lift.  I’ve never heard of such a thing.  The article didn’t mention where you can purchase this tape, but it did say that it cost $30.00.  Quite pricy, especially if you can only wear it once.  I’m wondering if the double-sided tape my daughter uses for scrapbooking would work as well.  Certainly much cheaper.  How do you blink with it on?  Are your eyes always wide open?  Uh oh, creepy zombie image just came to mind!  Clearly, I’m not getting the concept of this product.

Now I’m wondering if there is a tape strong enough to smooth out this chicken neck of mine.  I tried pulling all that extra skin around to the back and holding it there with a potato chip bag clip, but besides being rather painful, if I wanted to look side to side, I had to turn my whole body.  I think this tape idea might work better.  And getting back to the original cheek problem, I wonder if my sagging cheeks could be held up with tape as well.  Perhaps I could anchor them to my ears.  Would have to be something strong, though, like electrical tape, and it would take an awful lot of foundation to disguise it.  No, I think the weight of my cheeks would bend my ears in half.  I need to study this a little more.  I’ll get back to you.

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And So It Begins…

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Coming East

This is the first day of NaNoWriMo, and I’m not going to leave the house.  I’m even giving up my t’ai chi class.  Yep, have to make sacrifices.  Tomorrow I have a committee meeting that will last for three hours in addition to the 45 minutes of driving time each way, and tomorrow afternoon I have my English tutoring with Chi.  So I know not much will get written on Wednesday.  That being said, I’m going to write my brains out this first day.  It will be very hard because, now that I finally have my violin back, all I want to do is play it. So I will reward myself with fifteen minutes of violin time for every hour I put in of writing.  If I’m on a roll when my husband comes home, I may have to send him out to pick up something from Five Guys.  Yep, as I said, I have to make sacrifices.

I didn’t want to leave you with nothing while I’m hard at work writing the Great American Novel (or in the case of NaNoWriMo, the Great American Schlock), so I’m going to give you this great video to watch.  My brother e-mailed me the link, and I’ve watched it four times already.  Ah, to have real showmen again instead of just actors! Enjoy.

I also added two more of my favorites:

I love this one of the very dignified George Murphy, who later became a United States Senator from California, dancing with Shirley Temple.

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Oh, no! NaNoWriMo!

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Coming East

I read an article the other day that said nobody wants to read another blog about writing. Apparently, there are too many out there already.  I was unaware of that, but I don’t want to be accused of adding to that plethora, so I will state upfront that this is not a post about writing.  Not really.  It’s about creativity and our response to it.  And it’s about discipline, too.

A few weeks ago, shortly after my Hampton Roads Writers’ conference, I went to Michael’s, a craft store, and bought a bunch of fine-point art pens with ten different colors of ink and a large art pad of unlined drawing paper.  It was for planning out my novel.  I bought them in response to one of the workshops I attended at the conference.  One of the authors said planning on unlined paper will stimulate the right side of your brain.  I added the colored pens to make it even more fun.  I brought my choices to the cashier, a young girl in her early 20’s or perhaps not even out of her teens, and she asked me if I was an artist.  I said no, I wasn’t an artist, I was a writer, and these items were to help with my creativity.  She got excited.  “What are you writing?” she asked.  I wanted her just to ring up my items and let me get out of there.  I didn’t want to talk about what I was attempting to do.  I mumbled something about writing a novel, hoping that would be the end of it.  “Wow!  A novel!  What’s it about?”  I did not want to talk about it to this stranger.  I should have just said I was buying art supplies for my granddaughters or something else that would shut. her. up.  I told her I was just beginning it and wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.  Before I could finish, she said, “Oh, do you need an illustrator?  I’m a great illustrator.  Let me give you my number and …” I interrupted her and told her that no, I did not need an illustrator.  My novel was definitely not going to have pictures, and I was sorry, but I was in a hurry, so could she just ring me up. 

On my way home, I thought about how insecure I felt mentioning that I was writing a novel, as if it made me look like I thought I was really a writer, and how egotistical is that?  Besides, if you tell people, then they might really expect you to put your money where your mouth is.  So, now I’ve really done it.  Shary Hover, another blogger and wonderful writer, challenged me to participate in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, that starts November 1.  The goal is to write 50,000 words of your novel during the month of November.  There is no way I can possibly write that many words, especially since I will be taking one week off  when my husband and I will be spending Thanksgiving week with all my children, their spouses, and my two lovely granddaughters.  But can I write 20,000 words?  I don’t know, but I can set that as a personal goal and work towards that.  No matter how close I get, I’m willing to bet that it will be considerably more than what I would have produced had I not challenged myself, so thank you, Shary, for urging me to go for it.

Isn’t that the way it should be for anything we hope to accomplish? We may be nervous about sharing our plans lest we make fools of ourselves in our eyes.  I don’t know why creativity brings out the insecurities in us.  After the month of November is over, I might just set another goal for myself:  To practice my violin one hour a day until I can make it sound sweet enough, my husband doesn’t run upstairs to use the shredder.

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Oh Horror, Horror, Horror

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Coming East
One of several versions of the painting Image via Wikipedia

A piercing screech shattered the silence of the quiet afternoon, setting my teeth on edge, like fingernails on a chalkboard.  My shoulders tensed, anticipating the next shriek.  It came, even more curdling than the first.  The blood drained from my face, puddling in my toes, anchoring me to the floor.  I wanted to run screaming from the room, but, somehow, I was mesmerized by the horror of that sound.  I had never heard anything so frightening in my life.

The howling persisted, becoming rhythmic now, repeating over and over and over, picking up speed, the beat angry and demanding:

Da da dum dum, da da dum dum
Da da dum dum dum dum dum dum

It was racing to a fever pitch, tortured into a frenzy.  My face contorted in agony, my mouth forming a silent circle as in Edvard Munch‘s The Scream.   Then a voice started shouting, pleading, begging, “Stop!  Stop! Make it stop!”  With horror I realized the voice was my own.  No, this was no dream.  No nightmare, except one of my own making.  When the pain became unbearable, I put down my violin.

After six years of neglect, my violin finally has its new Diamond e-string and I can begin playing again, thanks to my husband who took me to the violin shop Tuesday to have some repairs made and get my new string.  He’s been wanting me to go back to playing for a long time because he knows how much I enjoy it.  In fact, he is such a sweet honey, he prefers me to practice when he’s at work so I won’t be distracted.  Isn’t that thoughtful of him?

I wish it sounded as pretty as it looks.
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Another Look at Instinct

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Coming East

Yesterday I watched a flock of swallows, in tight formation, flying in one direction, suddenly shift their flight path and fly in another direction.  They moved instantaneously, as one, with not one straggler, not one that made the formation appear off-balance in any way.  There did not appear to be a leader, though surely there must have been one, and yet, there had to be some signal, some trigger that caused them all to change gears at exactly the same time.  It was an amazing sight.  In fact, they did it several times, this weaving back and forth, looping up and down, in and out, so flawlessly, as if they were highly trained synchronized swimmers of the air.

I’ve seen the same behavior at the aquarium with schools of small fish, or on film with herds of wildebeest.  I don’t know how that works with animals, but we humans, if we ever had anything closely resembling that in our prehistoric history, long ago lost that instinct to follow the group mindlessly.

Or have we?  We’ve all experienced adolescents, ours or somebody else’s, following the crowd.  I suppose you could argue that it’s not instinct, really, but just the desire not to be left behind or singled out.  In a way, that is their survival instinct kicking in, isn’t it?

My husband and I have been married nearly forty years, and neither of us would claim to be the “leader” of our family.  We are individuals with our own minds, people who think independently.  And when my husband smiles sweetly and says, “Yes, dear,” every time I ask him to do something, that’s his survival instinct kicking in, too.

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So Sorry to Have Left Without a Note of Good-bye

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Coming East

Last night, as my husband and I were driving along the Eastern Shore in the dark, not passing car after car (if you’ve ever driven on the Eastern Shore in the dead of night, you would understand), my phone rang.  I wondered who would be calling me at that hour (okay, it was only 9 P.M., but that is the dead of night for us).  It was my other best friend, Joanie.

“Did you go out to dinner or something?” she asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, we had dinner at Dogfish Head in Rehoboth Beach.”

“You’re kidding!  Did you spend the weekend there?”

“No, we were coming back from Boston, and since it was dinner time when we were getting near to the turn-off for Rehoboth Beach, we thought we’d take a little detour.”

“You went to Boston?  Did I know that?”

“Um…I think I might have told you.  Maybe. Is everything alright?  I mean, you usually don’t call me in the dead of night on a weekday.”

“Yes, everything’s fine, but I’ve been watching your blog, and you haven’t updated anything in a long time.  And then I went to Emily’s blog [my daughter who writes My Pajama Days], and I saw that she hadn’t written anything in a long time either.  So I got worried.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.  We left last Thursday for Boston, and I didn’t have a way or time to post anything new.  As for Emily, she went to San Antonio for her high school reunion.  I feel bad I worried you.”

We talked awhile more and got caught up on each other’s news.  When we hung up, I thought about how this blogging business has become more important than a little lark, a fun diversion, a way to practice my writing skills.  It is a way of connecting to others, and those people who follow my blog closely do wonder what’s going on when I don’t post.  I understand this, because when I keep going back again and again to your blogs and don’t see any new activity, I wonder if everything is okay with you.  I worry about you, too.

When I started this endeavor, I never would have thought that I could become so absorbed in strangers’ lives, yet it happened quicker than I would have thought possible.  I have dreams that one day we will have a blogging convention of our own.  We will include everyone on our blogrolls, and they, in turn, will include everyone on theirs.  We will figure out a program so that we will be productive during our convention, but we will make time just to sit and talk and talk, face to face.  I don’t know how that would ever work because some of my blogging friends live in Australia, New Zealand, Wales, England, Shanghai, the Phillipines, Canada (okay, Canada isn’t too far away), and maybe other places I’ve forgotten about.  Anyway, it’s a dream of mine, and you never know about dreams…

On another note, I returned to Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge this weekend, armed with my trusty camera.  I was prepared to finally take pictures of the beautiful fall foliage, since two weeks ago when I was there, the leaves still hadn’t changed.  Guess what, I didn’t see much new.  How is that possible this late in the season?  Here are some comparison pictures, from two weeks ago and this past weekend.

Two weeks ago

Two days ago

Two weeks ago.

Two days ago. Still dead.

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