a commercial break

We interrupt this blog for a commercial break!  And by commercial break, I mean, a focus on something very commercial.

The iPhone released today–and no, I didn’t buy it (I have an aversion to buying technical things when they first come out–I’ll wait a few months, thank you very much)…but I did watch its release with great intrigue. What would the lines look like? Who among my friends would go buy one?

According to the news, the lines at some stores, such as the ones in Manhattan, began days ago. Hrm. Intriguing. We drove by the Apple store closest to us, and it was empty and void of lines last night, even though there were plastic cones and ribbons clearly marking a winding line, ala Disneyland.

Never fear, the lines began forming this morning. Steve Wozniak, the cofounder of Apple himself, was first in line at the Apple store in the Valley Fair mall–he was there at 4:00am PST. The lines were 50 people long at most Bay Area Apple stores by mid-day. The phone’s “hawtness” spread like fever–people at work left early to go stand in line at either an Apple store or a Cingular store. Anyone on the fence about whether they wanted one, had hopped over and run to get one by the end of the workday.

No. They couldn’t wait for it to be ordered online. They had to have it TODAY! And before the stores potentially ran out!

Would Apple run out of iPhones at its stores?

We wondered. We walked by a Cingular store, where its employees stood, looking exhausted outside the doors. Did you run out of iPhones today? Yes, they said, a long time ago. They had 60 in stock. Go to the Apple store if you want one!

“How many does the Apple store have in stock?” we asked.

“A thousand!”

And so we walked over to the Apple store–still we asked ourselves, would Apple run out of iPhones at its stores?

Nope. We went by the store (where the employees stood and applauded (and high fived) each customer as they entered the store in a gauntlet)…it was late, less than an hour before closing time. I needed a camera (mine broke today), and we were the only ones not buying an iPhone, nor interested in looking at one. The store practically didn’t know what to do with us–in fact, the floor plan was strictly geared towards iPhone purchases…and so they led us to a secluded corner to conduct our camera purchase.

The scene was marvelous–incredibly diverse in age, etchnicity, gender, etc., etc. Everyone was buying an iPhone. And then it dawned on me–every one of the people here was plunking down $600 for an iPhone. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS.

So–I asked the guy ringing up our purchase. How many do you have here? He looked at us and said “A LOT.”

“A thousand?” I asked, knowingly.

“No,” he said with a face that said he was totally awe stricken by the amount they did have in the back of the store. “I can’t count–we just have a lot. We didn’t want to be like the Wii where people waited in line and still didn’t get one. We have plenty!” His eyes went wide.

So there you have it. The Apple stores have “a lot” of iPhones, and they haven’t run out.

I came home, logged into flickr, and was flooded with pictures of friends purchasing iPhones. The world of the cellular phone has changed forever.

a flaw in my idea bank

As a writer, I have my own personal way of cataloguing my story ideas and notes. Some writers may jot down their ideas on index cards and keep them in a index card box…or other writers may have an entire wall of post-it notes (btw, I bought a big package of post-its, in multiple colors, to track my novel and short story plots–hey, it was suggested to me years ago, and I tried it, but I think I’ll try again).

So–how do I catalogue my story ideas and notes? I email my story ideas to myself, with the story idea in ALL CAPS in the subject header. This way, as I riffle through my email inbox, I know that anything with ALL CAPS in the subject header is a story idea or something pertaining to my fiction.

It’s worked well for years–I can sort by time (click date sent on my inbox) and I can sort alphabetically too (click subject on my inbox).

However, after years of relying on this brilliant system, I finally ran into a flaw (every system has a flaw).

Our mailserver went down a couple days ago, for an entire weekend. It is up and running now and I find an empty mailbox refreshing…but it also means that my entire archive of ideas and notes are…GONE….along with old emails from friends, and the kind of information that gets exchanged via email (addresses, for instance).

I think that if you’re running on gmail or yahoo or any of the other free email systems, you’ll be fine. But if you’re running your own mailserver–this system has its major pratfall.

And now I throw out the question to you–how do you catalogue your story ideas?

Maturation

My first day alone at home since my surgery, and I’m trying to figure out what I can do, given my physical limitations. I can’t carry anything, so no grocery shopping (or ahem, shopping in general, for that matter), despite a mostly empty fridge. All big projects are also out the window (I am eyeing another terrace for the vegetable garden).

I can read. I can watch TV. I can write. Oooh–I can email, now that my email’s back up. I open the fridge, and I wonder what to eat. But aha–I can go out the side door and into the vegetable garden and gather my ingredients, too!

A couple months ago, in the wake of awful news, I planted a vegetable garden, long desired but finally greatly needed. In the face of permanent loss, every feeble act pronouncing life becomes a brash announcement. And I just wanted to combat the echo of loss with something, anything. I planted seeds, with a great fervor, my lips sealed tight in a thin line, and my head full of hope.

The seeds sprouted, radishes first, until the garden was dotted with sprinkles of green germination everywhere. And today it is a gorgeous leafy edible jungle.

Watching my garden grow has provided me with so many gifts. The act of nurturing the garden, whether by thinning or transplanting or changing my mind about the layout or finding organic ways to combat the predators, has given me insight into many things like writing revision. You can still move things around, you can adjust, you can add into the skeleton of the structure. You can learn to protect your writing.

I’ve learned about companion planting, and how certain plants benefit each other if planted next to each other. Chamomile, for instance, becomes more fragrant and potent if planted next to other herbs. And carrots prosper next to onions, chives and other alliums, which repel slugs, aphids, and carrot flies.

And of course, that concept of companion planting (mutually beneficial relationships) gets me started on another thread of thought in life. What can we do to make sure our surroundings benefit us? Who do we have sitting next to us? That’s just for starters.

Now the garden is at full velocity. The temperature outside is warm and the skies are clear–it is amazing to see that sunlight translate into growth. The anise hyssop is knee high now, the Korean chrysanthemum leaves towering higher than that. The French tarragon is beginning to grow, the French sorrel readily eaten, and the chervil has, well, not died (it’s a picky little plant).

The garden is entering a new phase–I’m taming the growth, thinning out and eating whatever I can, and beginning to enjoy the green onions, chives, and herbs–even the baby radishes.

Now we enter a new phase of creation–what to do with the produce? What can I create from this bounty?

And as an added note–I send out a big hug to Tea, who planted a vegetable garden of her own this week. Let hope prevail! And may you have a great harvest!

fire

Oh. This fire south of South Lake Tahoe is not so good at all.

Update: Containment of the fire has begun, but it is still alarmingly close to many homes. I’m reading the news with great helplessness, knowing I can’t do anything from hundreds of miles away, and worried for my neighbors there. Where is the fire? What direction is it moving in? It is within 2 miles of our house up there, if it’s close to the high school:

Earlier today, the fire came within several yards of the football field at South Tahoe High School. Fire lines were still smoldering near the football field about 2 p.m., when a helicopter flew by overhead.

Bleah. Let’s hope for a freak rainshower.

In the interim, I keep calling and feel relief when the answering machine picks up.

Discharged

I am home! I have a whole new set of prescriptions (no more coumadin, but now I am on plavix and aspirin), and it has taken a couple of days for the morphine to leave my system and I have lost track of the days.

There are marks all over my body that remind me of what has happened: the “W’s” on my feet that the pre-op nurse marked me with, and all the sticky adhesive marks on my body from the EKG and telemetry stickers, now turning gray (ugh, yes, with collected grime)…and most of all, the entry point of the catheter, a very tender incision on my body, where the doctor wove the amplatzer device through my veins to my heart. And if I move suddenly or if I bend down, I can feel the device in my heart, a stabbing and sharp reminder that takes my breath away and makes me feel very vulnerable. I mean, yesterday I sneezed and I swear it moved the implant. I swear to not sneeze again for a week!

It feels very strange to ask someone to pick up something when I drop a fork or pen on the floor, when I know it is something very simple I ought to do myself. But I can’t–bending down takes my breath away. And it feels very strange to ask someone to carry something that weighs 10 pounds ore more, because I’m just not allowed to carry any weight. It feels strange to have to hold my groin when I laugh, because every chuckle and cough makes me feel like my incision is about to explode! And it feels very strange to excuse myself to go for a nap and to just feel very very tender overall.

But for all that, I am mobile and feel very good. No running or exercise, or any vigorous activity–just allowed to move about the house, really. Eventually, my heart will develop scar tissue around the implant and hold it steady.

The most annoying part of my recovery was in the hospital where I was on strict bedrest–flat on my back, not allowed to my my legs or lift my head, for hours and hours. And those hours were extended because I developed a bleed at my incision (btw, at my groin, so I got to flash a lot of people my privates–niiiice. And the nurses spent a lot of time applying pressure to my said groin. Thank goodness I was on morphine to deafen the humiliation).

So–more hours flat on my back. Which meant getting to know the bedpan very well, ick. YOU try peeing while flat on your back, knowing your bladder is bursting full but not being able to pee, so you just lie there and stare at the ceiling and pray to pee, and try to imagine a rushing stream, and you ask your nurse to run the water, and still you can’t pee.

But now I am home–getting better day by day. I’m weirdly disconnected from the world, not helped by the fact that my main email address is not working at all. I think this is not a bad thing–to get some rest and be shielded from the world.

But the hole is closed! And I’m very glad for that. My doctor came by to check in on me and shook my hand during my stay at the hospital–“You had atrial fibrillation during the procedure–but we were really tickling your heart so it was not entirely unexpected…and you talked to us the whole time…”

Uh. I barely heard the atrial fibrillation part–instead I blurted out, “WHAT DID I SAY??!”

And now–it’s time to nap again. Bye.

Today is the first day (and the last)

Today is the first day of summer. The vegetables in my garden look vigorous and green and oh-so-tasty. Everytime I peek out onto the garden, I imagine all the dishes to cook. My dog (above), looked out the window too, with many ambitions. They were probably not the same as my own, but still, today he dreamed.

Today, the fog burned off early, and I drove through the tunnel to even sunnier climes where my doctor’s office and hospital stand.

Today is Pre-Operative Day.

Today I sat in the doctor’s office with the nurse, attaching sensors to my head, trying to detect the teeniest blood vessels running inside my skull. The machine pulsated with the sound of my blood vessels, and shot mountains and valleys onto its screen. The nurse injected bubbles intravenously, and I saw the transcranial doppler machines light with noise and sound, fading into the distinct sounds of bubbles. The light and roaring sound were the bubbles rushing through my vessels–the bubble sounds were the last few bubbles trailing the rush through my arteries.

The bubbles had gone into my arm, into my heart, through the hole in my heart, and straight into my brain…skipping the lungs.

The room went silent–they had already been silent, but it went even more silent with certainty and awe. The room turned gray for me. In front of us was a conclusive test that said the hole in my heart was a straight path for clots to travel to my brain, resulting in strokes and TIAs. The bubbles would normally, without a hole in my heart, go straight to my lungs where they would be dissipated.

They had me take one more test as well–I blew into a tube very hard, for 10 seconds, while they ran the test again. The machine alit with noise and light again, louder and brighter than before.

Okay. I’m definitely having surgery tomorrow.

Today, I left my doctor’s office and went across the street to the hospital. I walked to Admitting and filled out paperwork. “So THIS is the other way to end up in the hospital!” I joked, having only been admitted via the emergency room before.

The lady took my insurance card, verified my personal information. She gave me a map to the blood lab and the x-ray lab. I had my blood drawn. And then I sat in line to get my chest x-ray.

X-rays freak me out with their invisible beams that can see right through flesh. I wore a lead apron, and I did not think it was anywhere big enough to protect me. I walked out of the hospital, after this pre-operative process, feeling almost invisible. I drove home.

Today my parents arrive–they are driving by car across hundreds of miles to be here when I go for surgery. I have made them promise not to worry or to fret in front of me. By evening, they will be assembled, we will be assembled.

Everything is prepared and done and ready. Tomorrow I have surgery to close the PFO. Today is the last day I will have a hole in my heart. Today I wait. Today I am thinking about climbing mountains with fully oxygenated blood, without a hole in my heart to slow me down.

Today is the first day of summer. It is beautiful outside.

Everything has to have a reason

I learned a writing lesson from Gordon Ramsay this week!

I was watching Gordon save a restaurant from inevitable doom on “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” in his typical fashion (ie., lots of spirit and lots of swearing). I love watching Gordon on television, especially his British shows.

On one of the episodes, he said something that made me perk up. “Everything that goes on the plate has to have a reason,” he said to a chef who had a tendency to have too many flavors in his dishes. “Not for this (pointing to his head), but for the palate (pointing to his tongue and mouth). [By doing so] You’ve given your food clear insight.”

The chef had been showing off his various “skills,” overembellishing his dishes, piling on too many ingredients…until in the end, the character and flavors of the dish had been destroyed under his arrogance.

A lesson for writing, too. You have to have a reason for the things you include in a story. And your stories have to taste right. You put too many things in, especially in the name of showing off…and your story will collapse underneath the burden of your ego.

A full life

I have been keeping myself distracted busy, trying to iron out details and take care of tasks before I’m out of commission for a few days, post-surgery. When I close my eyes, I want my mind to be clear of nagging worries–the fridge should be full, the bills all paid, the books balanced, and the laundry done. Same for things at my job.

When I’m lucky enough that a friend calls me up to do lunch, I eagerly say yes. So we eat pizza and guffaw at fennel, all in a good day’s work. I’m happily distracted.

Of course, I google information about my surgery on the sly–Patent foramen ovale surgery….and what of the recovery? How long will it take to recover? Will there be any pain? Agh. I need to stop thinking about it. I hear it takes up to a week to get back to work fulltime. And that the incision point is the source of most discomfort. That’s all. I’ll update you later.

…back to being happily distracted! What pleasant thing was I writing about? Ah. Friends!

Yes–! This week, I met a new friend in Elizabeth of Fluent. We met “in real life” and wondered aloud as to how one would take an online, written correspondence, into spontaneous real life interaction. But we’re writers. We’re used to having a written life coexisting with an interactive life somewhere else. And we managed. We managed well!

So attractive were we to our fellow diners that our table was quite the attention getter! Diners asked us what we were eating–perhaps our faces spelled out comfort and joy and they attributed it to the dishes on the table? (We were eating a chicken curry and a beef bavette dish…plus a chicken bun as a starter).

Oh shush–it wasn’t the food, it was US! 😛 Really.

My community just got larger by one, and I think my soul and writing will grow as a result. Writing is a solitary act…but I always desire a community–in fact, a big reason I enrolled in an MFA program was the desire for a writing community.

Ironically, as I have written previously and learned, friendships have an awkward existence inside of an MFA program. Artists tend to be jealous of each other, and an MFA program engenders jealousy and competition. I’ve been lucky to make a few friends, and I met more than a few writers I respect…but for the most part, I do a lot of social ducking and diving. And still I end up hurt sometimes.

So where do we writers go for friendship? So far, I’ve made lasting (writing) friendships outside of my MFA program–at writing conferences, at a writing colony, online, through other friends–just about anywhere outside my MFA program’s ecosystem.

It’s a bit odd–like walking through a prairie and finding a frog and fish. Or meeting a penguin in the desert.

They must have a place

As you may know, I am rooting for turkeys these days. Somehow, in all the six years I have lived in this particular neighborhood, I have never spotted a wild turkey. Yes, I have seen deer and skunks and possums and squirrels and vultures and eagles and of course frogs on a regular basis…but no turkeys.

So I was so overwhelmed with delight and curiosity when I spotted turkeys last month. In fact, it was a momma turkey and her turkey-lings. Yay! Go nature! It was as if they had come out of nowhere (even though I believe there are turkeys elsewhere, perhaps in the nearby regional park).  Boing!  Turkeys.

Then the public works groups cleaned out the underbrush (they’re still doing it)–where I’d spotted the turkeys. Where did the turkeys go? Did they have a safe place? How are the little ones doing? I wondered. I hoped.

And then today, while driving up the street, I saw them. The turkey brood, proudly ambling down the street towards my car, as if on a Sunday stroll. The turkey family was very very well, all of the turkey-lings intact and healthy, and Mama Turkey perfectly proud and calm.

I shuffled around in my purse to take a few shots, as they continued walking, nonchalantly, down the street.

They had a safe place. They are well. And that makes me tremendously happy and hopeful.

25

Elizabeth wrote a post involving the milestones of life, in particular the milestone of age 25. Karen Russell wrote and published a book at the age of 25 (and I myself know a handful of writers who had novels out by this age, and whose writing careers were accelerating by 25). TWENTY-FIVE. What was I doing at that age?

I know that I was a jagged person at that age–and I’m not sure what kind of wisdom I had to impart to the world. Yes, I wrote a short story at age 25 (well, I started writing it when I was 21 and didn’t finish until I was 29) that eventually got published in ZYZZYVA…but a novel?

So–what was I doing at age 25? What were you doing at age 25? Elizabeth took this query as a writing prompt and ran with it. I was intrigued by the snapshot she took of her life…and reading her answers made my fingers itchy to participate.

Ahem, and so I will.

When I was twenty-five, I started a blog. That was nearly ten years ago, and I still have that blog up, though I can’t point you to it because then I’ll blow my cover of anonymity (not that I haven’t already, with all these details about my life that an ambitious and curious person could eventually piece together). I don’t specifically know why I started blogging, but I do know that I wanted to write, somehow, and that blogging could set me on my way.

In that sense, blogging has been very valuable in my life, despite its more “lowbrow” status as a writing genre. I don’t care. It got me started as a writer, and has kept me going through the darkest times, including the initial weeks following my stroke, when I couldn’t pen a cohesive storyline to save my life.

When I was twenty-five, I got the first of my beloved two doggies. I had wanted a dog in my life, and I took the leap and got him, even though I wasn’t sure where I would end up living, or what I’d be doing in years ahead. I just wanted a dog, and I got him. He was a rescue–and the minute I saw him, I fell in love with him. He crawled over to me, his tail tucked between his legs and I thought, “Oh crap–this one’s mine!” I didn’t even look at the other dogs the rescue organization showed me afterwards.

He was incredibly bouncy, and his energy never seemed to sag. I would take him on 4 mile hikes uphill and through leaves that he had to hop through (he is a very short creature), and that still never got him down. Now, he sleeps on the couch most of the day. He is still awfully cute.

When I was twenty-five…I used to commute a hundred miles round trip to and from work. I didn’t mind it that much. I got a lot of thinking time in the car. Like my dog, I had a lot more energy back then. There is no way I’d do a hundred mile roundtrip commute anymore.

When I was twenty-five…I was emotionally jagged. I wore my heart on my sleeve, and I think I scared a lot of people away. Now I don’t wear it on my sleeve, and I think I scare the other part of the populace away.

When I was twenty-five…I was in the same romantic relationship I’m in today. Except now I call him my husband.

When I was twenty-five…one of my closest friends had a stroke…at the age of 28. Her right arm got paralyzed, she dropped the pen, she couldn’t talk, and had a horrible headache. What are the chances, I remembered asking myself.

When I was twenty-five, I was not very sure of myself at all.

When I was twenty-five, I traveled to Korea and to Paris. I went to Korea with my mother, a mother-daughter trip that I still cherish. We travelled around the country and ate sashimi straight out of the water, and drove through the mountains and walked the streets of Seoul. While there, I also got eyelid cosmetic surgery. It was an impulse decision–I thought I would emerge looking entirely different, but I didn’t. I walked around for weeks afterwards and although there were a few people who noted the difference, there were many more who said they wouldn’t have noticed. Still, I can wear eyeshadow now.

I liked having it done. I know it’s totally not PC to say I like it, but I do. I also know it’s bad form to reveal that I’ve had eyelid surgery (most people keep it hush hush and say they’re “natural”), but I don’t care. I wasn’t born with the folds in my eyelids.

When I was twenty-five, I bought my first house. My dog and I moved in, and he immmediately spent days sitting along the windowsill, staring out at the street. It was a small cottage in a cute town north of where I live now. I was incredibly proud of my home. I’m still proud of it. Weird. I just sold it this year, after my tenant moved out.

When I was twenty-five…I think the pieces in my life were starting to fall in place, even though I didn’t know it at the time. So much of what I found then, became the foundations of my life now. I know I was moving myself forward towards an uncertain goal, and it drove me nuts to not know where I was headed, but I took reassurance in some semblance of progression.

I was trying to define what it was that I wanted. I was trying to dredge up my dreams and overcome my fears. I’m in awe that the choices I made at twenty-five are choices I happily live with now, the choices I’m married (in one case, literally) to. It is incredible see how much of “living” is entirely intuitive.

I think there are lots of people who are trying to find what they want, overcome their fears, and set up a life course, at all ages. I’m lucky that I did it at twenty-five, early enough to give me a start.

Update…the following have also done wonderful renditions of “When I was 25…”

• Charlotte Otter

Combine ingredients and mix

“How are you?” she whispered. “Are you worried about the surgery this week?” My friend (who happens to be a nurse), was hugging me hello and leaning in to ask these questions as she joined our dinner party. She was genuinely concerned.

I could feel her empathy and I wanted to reach out to her across a thousand miles of desert and barbed wire. I have contained myself within a weird emotional DMZ in recent days–I stopped for a split second, wondering what the answer might be, and then checked myself. “I don’t think about it,” I replied, with a weird distance to my own voice, one that reminded me of how echoes sound, tinny and unconnected to my voicebox.

“Oh!” she checked herself, too. “It’s best not to think about it, isn’t it?”

And so our dinner proceeded.

We had a jolly time–I cooked a spicy provencal tomato soup, and prepared a salad with poppy seed dressing, and corn (Indiana style, boiled in milk with salt and sugar), and the hubby grilled marinated steaks, concluding dinner with a homemade ice cream. I felt incredibly competent and everything was well in the world. We were surrounded by friends, an awesome way to cap a good day’s fun, as the water from the swimming pool slowly evaporated from our hair and our stomachs filled and the conversation rang like bells through the house.

I’m a thousand miles from myself these days, and in some ways that makes me more of a pleasant person–in other ways, that makes me a very distracted person.

And distracted, I indeed am. I love thinking in the car–some people have clarity of thought in the shower, or while running…I have clarity while being driven in a car. (It’s a long story–my husband likes to drive, and when we started dating, we would go for very long drives together…and it has now become a very meditative habit of ours–him driving and thinking, me sitting passenger and thinking, watching the world go by, while sitting very still).

These days, I’m begging for car rides–I feel so on the edge of clarity somehow. And I’m retreating more and more into my fiction “writing”–brainstorming the story plots, pondering the character plights, letting their souls mingle with my own. The stories are my sanctuary, the characters my delight.

I think about them in the car.

***
The other day, while driving in the car, a bicycle darted out into the road, not more than a mile from my home. I saw him well before he hit the middle of the road, a man with shoulder length, curly hair and a bicycle helmet, knowing he was full well pushing the boundaries of safety, his head darting back and forth. Our eyes made contact by the time he was in the middle of the road.

For some strange reason, I thought he might be a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, one who lives within a mile from my home. What a weird way to meet him in person, I thought.

But that thought slid from my brain quickly, as he did not look very much like that writer. I could have confirmed it by asking him to speak, as I have talked to the Famous Writer via phone and would recognize his voice…but I knew it was not the same man. Still, I then wondered why the scenario of hitting a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist biker traveled through my head.

He had become a character in my head somehow.

***
I love water. I will paddle around in my pool, marveling at the blue of the sky, and the incredible texture of water, so gentle and graceful and beautiful, lilting in waves over my paddling arms. When I submerge my head, I muffle the sounds of the world–another realm, one in which I am weightless.

I am trying to add another place in which I can think and bond with my characters and ideas. Why should I only have the car to think so freely?

Would love to have such freedom in the pool, where I already feel so happy and peaceful.

***

There are a variety of other things I don’t think about, either. My mother in law died nearly three months ago, sending us on a surprising and shocking life trajectory. There is so much less (why did I write that word?) left unresolved. I push her out of my mind, because my feelings about her and her death are so confusing and raw and I don’t like them one bit.

Yesterday, I saw a post on PostSecret:

“People think I dealt with the death of my father very well, when in reality, I just pretend he never existed.”

PostSecret is a great hunting ground of mine for story ideas. But I did not expect to find something that segued with my own life story at that moment. I was just curiously browsing, waiting for something to strike my fancy, to pierce my psyche.

And I did. I really do pretend my mother-in-law never existed. It is awful, but I do. I sometimes pretend she’s still alive, too, and estranged.

Which Peanuts character are you?

Discovered via Literate Kitten:

HA! I’m Lucy. (I did go back and change one answer I was “iffy” on, and then I was Schroeder, but I’ll put Lucy up for now)….

Which Peanuts Character are You?

You are Lucy!
Take this quiz!