Waiting for Book

Last year, I published my first novel.  

The process is a long and grueling one and involves days, months, or years of writing.

 Then there is an editing phase, and a proofreading phase.  One goes through the design phase and then the production phase, until your book has been put together, but you have not yet actually seen it.

Then you hear that it is in the mail.  There is the waiting.  Last year, I waited and waited.   In a way, it is not unlike waiting for the "baby to be born".     The gestation period ends and you want to "meet this book" to which you have given birth.

Last year, on the "delivery day",  book baby was actually delivered to the wrong house!  That was rather traumatic!

Quite a number of the readers of In Its Time felt like the book needed a sequel.  At the time it was published, that thought had never crossed my mind.  But I did take it as a challenge.   And the more I thought about it,  the more I wanted to know what happened to my characters, those familiar folks to whom I had given life.  The only way to find out what happened to them was to write it.  And so I did.

Again, I am waiting for the book to be delivered.   That is supposed to happen tomorrow.  And if all goes well, hopefully it will be delivered to my house!

I know what the contents of the book are;  I know what the book looks like, but I have never actually seen it.  I can't wait!

The delivery day will soon arrive, and a new book baby will be born!

Wellness on Vacation

I have always really appreciated my health, and I boast of my wellness like a red badge of courage.  No major illnesses. No medications.  No major surgeries.  Rarely ever even remotely sick.

But I have been really really knocked off my can these past few days.   I guess I never really appreciated my energy level, until I didn't have one at all!   My symptoms have run the gamut.  Pounding headache.  Body aches.  Swollen eyes. Nasal congestion.  Chest cough.  Chest pressure and discomfort.  Unable to function.

 If this is by chance the flu, I think I'll get a shot next year!

Yes, I have gone to the doctor and am on medications.  They did not make me instantly better overnight, as I had expected.

When I don't have my health and wellness, and most of all, my energy, I don't even recognize myself.  My husband has no idea who this person is he is currently living with.  All he knows is "that I am not allowed to be sick"  per my own mantra. (which isn't helpful when one is really sick!)   My mantra has failed me.  My wellness has taken a hike.  My health is sleeping on the job.

Despite all of that, I am finding it extremely difficult to just do nothing.  Just sitting there hurts.  Laying in bed hurts.  Light hurts.

But I do believe that there will be light at the end of the tunnel, and once I emerge from the tunnel,  me and my health and wellness and energy will re-unite and have a grand old time once again.

Easter

Easter

Three hundred and sixty four days a year,

I am glad to be retired.  I am happy and content

With all the things I do.

More than glad to be

a pastor in the pew.

Then there is that other day

when I wish I still had the chance

to sing and shout and skip and tell

the resurrection dance.

Easter evokes such joy in me,

I am always so inspired,

  I wish I had a place

To preach, and could unleash

all my Easter fire.

 Easter is a state of mind, a new reality;

Not just the one time event;

But a cosmic shift in consciousness.

There is so much joy in me at Easter

That it cannot be contained;

Nor even fully named.

The way is open to eternity,

And we are one with God.

Hot Blood

Yesterday, the sun was shining and it was 52 degrees.  A great day for tennis, or so we thought.  Actually, there was a breeze, and I regrettably wore shorts.  I did have on layers on top, so that was okay,  but I realized that 52 degrees was much colder than it used to be.  In other words,  I can remember vividly going coat-less in that temperature.  In my mind, anything above 50 is warm!

We generally go to the local college campus to play.  And sure enough, there were the coeds out on the court playing in shorts and tee shirts.  No coats or jackets or hats.  I thought to myself---it must be all those raging hormones!

Then,  it occurred to me that body temperature must vary considerably with age.  Being cold in my old age is a new experience for me!  I have always been very hot-blooded.   But I guess those days are gone!

Discovering all the changes that go with being sixty-plus is a constant learning experience.  Joints and muscles ache and move slower.  Warts and bumps and brown spots pop up.  Gravity takes its toll.  Hot blood turns cold.

The Winter of Forever

If this winter were a good friend, or the in-laws,  they long ago wore out their welcome!
The good old friend, the snow, came early this year, and stayed forever.
Now in mid-April, when spring long ago came, and Easter is near,
I want all of this snow out of here!
Begone, old friend.  Your time is up!

Don't be a greedy hog, and use up the time of the daffodils,
they are here so briefly, to show their glory.
You, however, get days and weeks and months to show your stuff.

Now I want to wear white and yellow to celebrate the resurrection.
I want the resurrection of the grass and the trees and the flowers.
If I wore white today, I would be invisible in the white white background of the forever snow.
But I refuse to wear my heavy coat!  I'd rather freeze in these cold degrees!

You had your play days of skiing and sledding and snowman making;
now give the bikes their time, and the swings and the slide.
I want to see children outside.

I want to feel the heat of the sun and sit on the deck when day is done;
or better yet, when the day begins.

Give spring her time, you greedy pig,
come back next year for a shorter stay.

Leave, I say, out the door!
I don't want you here any more!

Trope Troupe Presents

I received a couple of email reminders about the performance of The Skin of our Teeth, by Thornton Wilder.

For the life of me, I could not understand why anyone would send out such an illegible, out of focus, confounding flyer!  The words were all written on top of each other, and it was quite hard to read, or even pick out the time it started.

After seeing the play last night, I can now understand completely.  Whether intentional or not,  the flyer was the perfect metaphor for the play itself.

It was out of focus, non-linear, and confounding. And you could not tell the time frame of its story.   Here is a quote from a review in the church newsletter:  "Others have noted the combination of farce, burlesque, and satire that adorn 'a vast symbolic play about all of humanity."

The play is set in Excelsior, New Jersey during the ice age;  during the time of the biblical flood,  during WWII, and at the time of creation??   The rational and logical mind of the 21st century longs for some kind of chronological theme. Sadly, that does not exist in this play.

At the very least, it was humorous.  It was a commentary on human existence.  It was about good and evil, war and peace, pathos, folly, family, solutions, survival, and the desire to start again.  The overarching theme:  humanity continues to exist by the skin of our teeth.

The three main characters had two and a half hours worth of lines to remember.  That was very impressive.  Of course, one might say, if they flubbed their lines, probably no one would know the difference anyway.  The absurdity of the lines of this play does make me wonder exactly what Thornton Wilder might have been into during this time frame of his life!#?

What a unique and unusual piece of work.   Thanks to Thornton Wilder, and to the Trope Troupe for a most entertaining evening.

Young Poets

My community outreach project for a couple of months is a Poetry Club at the Elementary School.   I go there on Thursday afternoons during the last time block of the day, when various activities are going on.

Every Thursday the Poetry Club works on a different form of poetry.  We have done acrostics and cinquain,  haiku and limerick, rhyming and rhythm.  Nick and Devan have been there every time.  They are fourth graders.

 The top two are Julianni and Amani, also fourth graders.  Some have been sixth graders.

Julianni lives in Cortland now, but says that her family is moving to North Carolina next year.  Her mother works at a lab doing blood work.  Julianni's favorite subject is Physical Education.  She says she is not especially fond of her 5 year old little brother.

Amani is also a fourth grader.  He has lived in Cortland all his life.  He has one brother and one sister.  He likes P.E. best of all, and especially enjoys playing basketball.

Nick  (left)  lives with his grandparents during the school year.
He is part Native American.  He loves to swim and
ride his bike, only his bike recently got stolen.
During the summer he will go and live with
his mother in Florida.

Devan (right)  loves to play video games, and especially Wii.   He loves to ride his bicycle also.

Devan and Nick have been there for every session.  I have had as many as thirteen and as few as two.  Sometimes they go to band, or have state tests, or have outside recess.

It is a low key, fun activity.  Not a class.

A cinquain poem is made up of five lines, and the number of syllables go:  2,4,6,8,2

Here is one by Julianni:

Soccer

Soccer

Run all over

Kicking the soccer ball

I once played on a Blue Jays team.

So cool!

Not to Worry

I have raised four daughters, and believe me, that comes with many worries and anxieties and concerns and dangers, and fears and uncertainties,  and disasters, and so on.   Over the course of many many years,  I have learned that for me to be eaten up by worry and anxiety adds nothing positive to either my children's lives, or mine.   So I have pretty much learned to shut it down.  I have learned to practice the discipline:  Not to Worry.

At the moment,  my one remaining un-married daughter "Cate" is in transition.  I should use the plural.  She has many transitions going on in her life all at once.  They include leaving her job,  moving,  planning a wedding,  getting married, selling her house. (Not to mention launching a daughter into adulthood).

 The details are like dominoes.  The house closing date and the moving date have to be coordinated.  The house that she is moving into is unfinished. There is the need for a storage shed for some place to put her things.  There is a time between when her health insurance ends, and she can get on her husband's.  And on and on the list goes.

 But it doesn't do me any good to worry.  I am a planner and a detail person in the extreme, so not having all the details worked out may drive me crazy, but I do know that there is no point in worrying.  I work very hard at practicing non-worry.  I have memories of my own mother's high level of anxiety over all things, and the stress that caused in my life.

Worry won't get anything done.   Cate admits that in order to function,  even she has to "let it all go".   In other words, give up on worry.  What gets done will get done. What doesn't doesn't.  Despite all of that, she is still excited about her new life.  And therefore, I am excited for her.

May the next stage of Cate's life bring all good things!  
She deserves it!

Food Evolution

Lately I've been thinking about the evolution of cooking and eating which has taken place in my life over the past fifty years.   Thinking about this has made me realize that there have been numerous factors which have played a role in that evolution.

The food evolution follows my own evolution and it is tied to where I lived at a certain time in my life,  how much money I had to spend on groceries,  what was available at the location where I lived, and so forth.

All of this has made me wonder whether or not people who spend their whole lives living in the same place actually end up eating the exact same foods. Nowadays I think probably most people at least experience Italian (pizza, lasagna) foods,  Chinese, Mexican, and so forth because those are all so readily available.

The factors that have affected my food and cooking choices include:  geography, culture, economic status, and stage of life.

I grew up in the South.  Food often came from what had been put up in the freezer or canned.  Or what grew in the garden or field.   Cantelope. Watermelon.  Corn, butter-beans, black-eyed peas.   Fresh tomatoes.  Cornbread.  Fried chicken.  Lots of things were fried.  Fried okra.  Hushpuppies.  Fish.

In my twenties, I spent a year eating fast food, and really paid the price for that on the scales!   For that decade, I was pretty much in transition,  moving away from the "southern/regional" foods my my childhood and youth, and learning to cook a broader range of foods.  In particular, they were of a more northern variety.

Another thing that has been pretty much a staple in my life, no matter where I might have lived, is the "church potluck supper."

When I was raising a family, anywhere from four of us to six of us,  there was definitely the "casserole stage", a time of stretching the food, stretching the budget.   I was always working, so there was also the matter of limited time.

With young children, especially when I was a single parent with very few resources, there were a lot of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.

By the time I reached retirement,  I became much more committed to and interested in healthy food.   By then, I had lots more time and resources, as the family had all grown up and moved on.

I also had a lot of serious digestive issues that needed to be addressed.

In the past five years,  I have moved very much toward cooking and eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, trying to make the vegetables the star of the show, rather than the meat. While not rigid, I am about 90% vegetarian.

As one gets older, you really need less food and are better able to make direct connections between your health and the food you eat.

At this life stage, reading recipes, grocery shopping, cooking healthy food and eating well are the things I enjoy most.

I have probably said this before and will probably say this again.   My husband loves vegetables,  is not picky and genuinely relishes leftovers!  He will gratefully eat whatever I put in front of him.

I have occasionally wondered what that would feel like...to sit down to a dinner every night that someone else has prepared for you.

Hopefully,  I will never know!

Ladies Literary

Whenever I mention that I belong to the Ladies Literary Club,  family and friends always seem to think of it as a book club.

 They ask,  "Oh, what book are you reading now."   I have to explain that it is not a book club.  We do not review books, but write papers, which is much more to my liking, since I enjoy writing.

 Writing a research paper on a topic may involve using one book, or ten books in the process of doing that research.

Each member presents a 20 minute (approximately 10 page) paper on one over-arching theme each year. This year's theme has been: Literary Controversies.   Topics have included specific selections, such as Candide, or To Kill a Mockingbird,  or broader subject matter, like Books Banned from the Library, or Muckrakers. Other years the annual themes have focused on countries-- China or Canada.

Next year's topic should produce some interesting results.  Escape.  It is broad and can be interpreted any number of different ways.   Escape artists.  Prisons.  Immigration.  Slavery.  War, and so on.

It is interesting hearing the papers presented,  and also fascinating to see the direction one goes with the theme.

This particular Literary Club has been around for over 120 years.  It has its origins in the era when women were well educated, but had no employment opportunities.  This was one way of creating their own.   They used their intellectual abilities,  learned from one another, and created a community.

Women are exceptional at all three of those!

Cutting Hair

Today we are having professional photographs done for the church directory, so I needed to do a little trimming of Gerry's hair.

This picture, of course, does not look at all like Gerry, but the cutting tool is the same.

 I have been cutting Gerry's hair for the past 33 years!   Of course, in the beginning, there was considerably more of it.  

Back then, I just used scissors. Now I use clippers. He hasn't been to a barber in that long.  So if you ever think his hair looks scruffy or is sticking out,  it is all my fault.

He always wears a hat in the winter, and where it fits around the head, inevitably there is "hat hair" which drives me nuts!  (even though there is very little hair)!

Back when I was 19 years old and in college,  my hair had grown too long over the summer and I didn't like it.  I went around the dorm and begged someone to cut my hair for me.  And someone finally took me up on that!  It ended up being a "buster brown" cut!   Hating that look, in desperation,  I took the scissors and made layers myself.

The truth is, I have been cutting my own hair now for more years than I want to publish!

Yes, I have grown it out a couple of times.  Yes, I have occasionally gone to the salon for a professional cut, but surprisingly,  I have never liked the result.

For me, it is all about how it feels on my head, and no one else but me can tell what that's like!

My hairdo always looks pretty much the same.

Now you know why!