It finally stopped raining, so I went for a jog, and I discovered a new texture to add to the list of icky textures I carry around in my head so I will avoid touching them in the future.
SATURATED GRASS
It looks solid, but it's so not.
I also don't like the texture of:
After I attended RT Booklovers, I came home and plotted out my scenes and updated my long synopsis of the new adult novel I'm working on now. (I've decided it's new adult, not young adult, because the story works better that way. Though I would like to write another YA novel. Really like writing teenagers -- it's such an exciting and also terrifying and also boring time of your life, all at once and every day.
Then I completely stalled out as we started spending every night ripping apart our kitchen and foyer and then slowly rebuilding it and holy hell we're not done yet because the last cabinet is STILL not installed which means the pantry can't be attached to the wall, which means every bit of nonrefrigerated food I own is on the kitchen table and floor. And because I can't control that situation, I turned my frenzied eyes back to a project I can move forward: THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES.
The beginning is so hard. I don't really know Meg well enough yet. I'm getting there, slowly, but most of what I'm writing right now will probably end up chucked and I'm just writing it to get to know Meg and for no other reason. I like the plot so far, which is funny because the plot was the hardest part of THE OBVIOUS GAME. Of course, I didn't really think about the plot in advance for TOG the way I am PARKER CLEAVES. I probably should've done that, but what did I know about writing novels?
So now I've got a scene list that I like and it's much easier to sit down after my daughter goes to bed and tell myself to just start a scene or add to a scene that's started or just puke out a thousand words somehow and then you can watch TV. I've been doing that and I'm up to about twenty thousand vomit words. This way of thinking makes the process much easier because I have absolutely no delusions about this rough draft being good. No, it's vomit with maybe a few decent sentences sprinkled in there so I don't set my Mac on fire in the end.
The other thing that's different this time around is the pressure I'm putting on myself to move forward. I do want a career as a novelist. I want to write a bunch of books. It seems more likely that I'll get anywhere if I have more than one book. But the first novel is done, I proved to myself I could do it, and that temporarily has muted a huge voice in my head. (There's another one in there pointing to my book sales, but I just shush it by saying DISCOVERABILITY, ASSHOLE, and that works for as long as it takes me to fall asleep at night.)
I haven't added anything to my PARKER CLEAVES pinboard in a while, so I added something today. I'll be adding to the board as I write, for my amusement and anyone else's. I also have a pinboard for THE OBVIOUS GAME.
ONWARD!
First, there was rain. From my bed, it sounded nice and dreamy, the kind of rain that makes you want to record it for posterity and secure your mosquito nets as you drift back off to sleep on a peaceful Carribean island. Near a waterfall. And interesting birds.
Since we've been in Chateau Travolta for six years and haven't had water in the basement since that fateful first week, it didn't occur to me to check the basement for water until the little angel and I had donned our swimsuits to avoid the torrential rain at the local rec center pool. Beloved, unfortunately, caught us before we escaped with the news that Hoggin Craft had flooded and Tiny was a casualty.
We crashed down the stairs to find two inches of water in the Hoggin Craft headquarters. Tiny was indeed soaked in a way only a giant stuffed gorilla can be soaked, and that is a way in which soaked is soaked and don't even think about keeping him because BLACK MOLD IS REAL. I asked Beloved if we could stick Tiny in the basement shower to drain while we cleaned up the mess. No, we could not, he said, because Tiny is too damn big to fit in a shower for humans.
Farewell, Tiny. I can only imagine your trip to the landfill.
We mopped up the muck and threw the rest of the stuffed animals that were stored in Hoggin Craft (in case of a tornado, extra stuffed animals are required to live in Hoggin Craft full-time by the little angel) were in the washer. Only two hours remained before the indoor pool closed, so Beloved excused the little angel and me, but our joy was short-lived, because an hour or so later, I got a text from Beloved:
Borrowed ladder. Will need you to hold it when you get home so I can blow out the gutters.
Oh, yay! Can we please spend the rest of our day off from work cleaning out gutters after vacuuming up four bathtubs' worth of water?
Our roof is quite tall. I really hate seeing anyone on very tall ladders, least of all someone to whom I'm related by blood or marriage. But no, we had to do it, and I knew we had to do it, but I very much did not want to do it, anyway. Alas.
Minutes later, there I found myself, holding a ladder, while my husband used a leafblower tied to an extension pole to blow water, dead leaves and helicopters out of the gutter and on to ... me. It was like some unique form of Nickoledean-sponsored torture to close my eyes and grimace as I was spattered with rotting, muddy tree matter as neighbors frolicked about in the sunshine, enjoying their Memorial Days and pretending like they weren't listening to me squawk as I was pelted with feculent foliage.
After the little angel went to bed, we had this conversation.
Beloved: "We're going to have to do that every spring if we don't want more water in the basement, you know."
Me: "I know. I hate ladders."
Beloved: "Maybe we should get those gutter covers."
Me: "That sounds like the least fun way to spend thousands of dollars I can think of. Except maybe mudjacking."
Beloved: (.)
Me: "I am so bored by this conversation I can't even believe I'm continuing to talk."
Adulthood, huzzah!
Him: "Are you sure the kitchen walls are Egg White? We also have Egg Shell."
Me: "I'm positive. Absolutely positive."
Him: "I don't know. This doesn't look right."
Me: "I painted both sides of the wall the wrong paint color before. Do you need me to go pull up my archives for you?"
Him: "Okay, then. Egg White."
And then I stomped back to the foyer to paint the space next to the baseboards the WRONG COLOR OF WHITE.
Make it stop. Just make the painting thing stop. Guess what I'm doing tonight?
I'm watching my husband spackle our kitchen ceiling. It's a new beginning for our kitchen, a new beginning five years in the making. But it comes on the heels of mass destruction just one state over in Oklahoma City, where tonight parents are wondering where their babies are.
It's not fair.
All I could think all afternoon is that it's not fair Chateau Travolta is still standing.
We had a tornado watch all day.
What leaves, what stays: It's not fair.
My daughter fears the tornados. She has trouble falling asleep in the midst of a heavy thunderstorm. I remember feeling that way as a child, living in a house my parents built on the footprint of another house destroyed in a tornado, as if the same thing couldn't happen twice.
Surrender, Dorothy.
But we live here, in the Midwest, in the land of extreme weather, of pop-up storms where the warm winds of the Gulf of Mexico kiss the winds of Canada on a fairly regular basis.
We live here, and we hope.
But whether or not our homes are torn asunder, there is one guarantee: It's not fair.
Tornadoes have shaped my faith. We all need grace, because in the land of dust storms and redemption, nothing is as it seems, and no amount of clean living can save you from the cold front meeting the warm front and dancing.
You may live another day, you may lose your house, you may lose everything. Or you may not. It's not fair, and it's not even predestined. It's just ... there.
And so, tonight, my heart breaks for Oklahoma City and its suburbs. I'm so sorry.
It's not fair.
And I love you all. I wish there were some way I could do more.
Summer starts early in Kansas City. My daughter's school gets out this week. The pool opens this weekend. The severe weather is already here.
I just signed my daughter up for the summer reading program at the local library. Summer reading programs were my savior when I was a kid -- I remember the excitement of being rewarded for doing something I liked to do, anyway. I thought, this must be what it is like for athletes!
Even though I no longer have an official summer break, the approach of that stretch of long evenings and heat-shimmering days still makes me happy. The first hot day has me staring longingly at the pool floaties. Smelling them, just because they smell like summer, like splashing and sunscreen and stacks of books and time to read them.
We cut every activity except swimming lessons in summer and try not to make any plans that don't involve the lake or the pool or a backyard. Despite those measures, summer always shoots by way too fast, and here my girl just turned nine and we've had half her childhood summers already.
The windows are open now, and I can smell the cut grass and hear the birds calling to each other, saying hurry, hurry, summer's almost here.
Summer starts early in Kansas City. My daughter's school gets out this week. The pool opens this weekend. The severe weather is already here.
I just signed my daughter up for the summer reading program at the local library. Summer reading programs were my savior when I was a kid -- I remember the excitement of being rewarded for doing something I liked to do, anyway. I thought, this must be what it is like for athletes!
Even though I no longer have an official summer break, the approach of that stretch of long evenings and heat-shimmering days still makes me happy. The first hot day has me staring longingly at the pool floaties. Smelling them, just because they smell like summer, like splashing and sunscreen and stacks of books and time to read them.
We cut every activity except swimming lessons in summer and try not to make any plans that don't involve the lake or the pool or a backyard. Despite those measures, summer always shoots by way too fast, and here my girl just turned nine and we've had half her childhood summers already.
The windows are open now, and I can smell the cut grass and hear the birds calling to each other, saying hurry, hurry, summer's almost here.
When we moved to Chateau Travolta in 2008, the housing market was on the verge of tanking. Then it tanked, and the For Sale signs started popping up like dandelions. Some of those houses took years to sell, which made me realize just how stupid it was to take on two mortgages at once when we sold This Old House to move here.
This week there are ladders all over my neighborhood, as the houses built in 1978 have begun to show their age. Shingles pushed well beyond their limits topple from roofs. The boards on the sides of houses are torn away and replaced. The aluminium ladders sparkle in the May sunshine.
As I jogged past a pile of boards pocked with bent nails, I started thinking about the kitchen remodel I've not blogged about. It's not that I'm not proud of it -- I am -- it's so pretty -- but I really only feel comfortable blogging home improvements we did with our own little hands, and though the demolition was difficult and Beloved has been moonlighting as a drywall installer, a plumber and an electrician for the past two months while I just took a crowbar and pried off floor tiles and anything else that pissed me off, for some reason, I just didn't want to blog about it because there were so many parts we paid someone else to do, and then for some reason that feels braggy in a way "look at the pocket door Beloved installed" doesn't. This may be justified only in my head. Or worrying about bragging in a Pinterest world may be ridiculous. Or I may be a huge hypocrite because I brag about my writing here (or at least that's what the About Me page feels like, but dude, I'm a professional writer, not a professional kitchen person). I'm conflicted, clearly.
Anyway, I was thinking about all that stuff while jogging by these piles of wood in my neighborhood and feeling so happy my neighbors were fixing up their houses instead of selling them. And feeling happy they had both the money and the desire to maintain their houses so they don't fall apart. And feeling happy and proud that we are taking care of Chateau Travolta and will leave it a better place than we found it. I wrote on BlogHer earlier this week about not toppling your blocks, and ever since then I've been really focused on how important it is to pay attention to your mind and body and environment and address problems right away, before they metastasize into something more.
Maybe it came from growing up in a house my father built perched on the edge of land my family farmed. I like taking root, propping up and staying on. I'm glad my neighbors do, too. There is beauty in that.
It's Children's Book Week! Yay!
And to celebrate, I'm giving away a copy of THE OBVIOUS GAME and joining a bunch of other great authors and bloggers on a blog hop. (Although teens aren't really "children," YA falls in this category.)
In order to enter to win, please fill out the form below. Also! If you want to read THE OBVIOUS GAME but don't have a book budget, don't forget to ask your library to order it. Or if you just want to be nice, ask your library to order it. I'm not afraid to beg you to ask your library to order it. All you have to do is go up to the librarian (check to make sure the library doesn't already have it, of course), and ask them to order it! Aren't libraries fantastic? Don't forget high school libraries! And then, once you asked your library to order it, email me at ritajarens(at)gmail.com and I'll send you a signed book plate for your troubles.
