Happy Halloween

Halloween at the Rosedale Mall with friends. Cutest lil' cowgirl you'd ever see in a blue state! And a puppy that wishes she was old enough for chocolate! :)

Halloween Part 2

The preschool Halloween party was a big hit.

How two teachers helped 20 little kids wiggle into 20 little costumes, I'll never know.

I tried to convince Maya to wear her firefighter costume again, but word on the street was that fairy princesses were all the rage. She insisted on borrowing Elliot's tutu, and with her new butterfly wings, princess crown, and magic wand, she was a lovely little fairy princess.

We' ve been playing dress up nonstop at home, too, switching costumes every half hour or so. Who knows what she'll dress up as tomorrow!
This evening, she is already sorting candy, eyeing Joe and I to be sure we don't swipe anything good. Unfortunately overprotective parents give lots of little bags of goldfish and tiny Halloween puzzles instead of kitcats and snickers.

Itchy Fingers

I'm so, so ready to begin.

Free writes are all starting to tie into my novel idea one way or another now.

Just a few days to go, so I guess I'll just cool my heals.

Absolutely no one in my life can imagine why I would want to do this.... why cram a novel into a month.... why do it now, with a baby and a preschooler and barely enough time each day for personal hygiene (did I put on deodorant today.... hmmm, think so).

The only answer I have for them is, if I don't make myself do it now, I'll just keep putting it off for the magic day when I have enough time... then I'll be 80 and completely unfamiliar with whatever crazy technology people use to write.... or people will have evolved away from the written word.... preferring some form of flashing lights and car chases....

So Saturday I take the plunge, with 125,000 other crazies aspiring to the Great American Novel or more likely, a great month of creative indulgence.

I'm most looking forward to ordering a midnight pizza for the first time in years.... I intend to pull at least one all nighter just to prove I still have it!

Then & Now

The girls one year ago:


The girls today:
Hee hee!

Removing the Clutter

I didn't write at all today.

First time in two months, I think.... almost three really. Instead, I spent the day with my one-year-old and three-year-old making a huge mess of the basement. We sorted and cleaned every toy in the house, which is no small feat for two girls who are the only grandchildren on both sides of the family.

We tossed/donated a bunch of under-used items, and made a Christmas list...

Yet another November chore out of the way. I'm hoping to leave myself no excuses!

Getting Crafty

With the weather truly cooling off and the days getting short, Maya and I are starting to look around for good in-door projects again.

One rainy day last week, Maya looked through a great craft book she got for her birthday, and found an egg-painting project. We modified it, a bit, for Halloween, and brought a few of our pumpkins in to paint as well.



Elliot stayed busy with her Tupperware cabinet, and the egg innards that we blew out of the egg were later scrambled with cheese for our lunch!

Amusingly, Maya still likes to mix all of her paints together, and for this project, she selected pink, brown, orange, and blue. As it turns out, these colors, when mixed together, resemble a sort of beige-y orange. Her painted pumpkin looks remarkably like an unpainted pumpkin!

A Haunting Thought

Not yet Halloween, I know, and yet I've posted holiday lists for both girls.

Check out the sidebar, right below the other blogs we keep up on. They are just suggestions, based on what the girls like best at other houses and at preschool.... and a few ideas I had.

I feel more than a little silly, but everyone is already asking for ideas.

Looking around my house, it's not hard to guess why our family requests a bit of direction regarding gifts.

We have one of everything! Sometimes two.

So with the economic crisis looming, I hope everyone believes our insistent assurance that we need very little. Simplify. One small gift, something as simple as new markers and a big refrigerator box, will make our girls happy.

After Halloween, probably after Thanksgiving, when the tree is up and the holiday season is rejuvenating the post-election nation, we plan to sit down with Maya to write a second list.

She's old enough now to begin a new tradition, creating a Holiday Wish List filled with things she (we) wish to do for others during the giving season. I'll keep you posted, and I'll add to the gift lists as I get new ideas.

Outline + Characters + November = Novel?

I finished the short stories about my main characters!

The process did two thing, helped me dig deeper into the character's voices, and illuminated the most interesting characters in my cast. They weren't who I thought they would be!

From these stories I was able to quickly summarize the key physical, psychological, sociological, and story-related features of each character. Plus, thanks to a great NaNoWriMo Forum suggestion, I figured out each characters Eneagram Personality Type. It was a great way to get a little more insight into the way the characters think.

I wrote about 2,500 words five days in a row this week, which is the most I've written since grad school finals week.... and the most fiction I've written ever.

It gives me high hopes for November, especially since I enjoyed it.

Woohoo, 1 week to go!

Halloween Part 1

For the first time, we are celebrating Halloween in three parts. This is one holiday that I didn't expect to grow wild, but I suspect it might in the years to come.

In addition to official trick-or-treating (this year at the mall with some friends), Maya will trick-or-treat around her school building for her preschool party... and last night we attended the Halloween Carnival at the Community Center.

Of the many costumes we already had, Maya chose to be a firefighter, and Elliot giggled and danced around in the puppy costume that used to make Maya cry.

With each new parenting experience, Joe and I have more and more respect and gratitude for our own parents. Of COURSE we LOVED buying all of the raffle tickets we were expected to sell, dressing the girls up, and spending a Friday evening in the sweaty gym playing the Succor Tree and Treat Walk games. Joe even worked in time to volunteer, running the Hockey Shoot game for an hour, and then returning to help Maya win a prize.

But by the time we laid our exhausted party-goers in their respective beds, we were beat too.

The best part of the evening for me were the flashbacks to Veblen's Halloween Carnival, just add a couple of bouncy castles and remove the fantastic haunted house we used to build in the creepy basement of the high school. I guess big city life isn't all that different when you get down to the basics.

2 Down

& at least two to go.

I'm still working on my little mini-series of stories designed to illuminate characters in my NaNoWriMo novel. In story two, though, I covered two of the 7 character groups I intended to flesh out this way.

I think I'll do at least two more. This was a really helpful way to get to know the characters. Unfortunately, I still have to work through some of the character sketch questions afterward to fill them out a bit, but the questions seemed more interesting and easier to answer after writing a little story from the character's perspective.

This process has renewed my love of the MC, who was beginning to seem dull. Now that I have layered in her background, her goals, and her quirks, I'm convinced once again that she is one of the main voices in the story.

Another perk from this little project is that I can stay busy writing before the (ever closer) November kickoff without dwelling too much on the NaNo plot.... I can start November fresh, but well acquainted with the cast of the story.

Off to start story number 3, a slapstick comedy of errors for a pair of professors and their precocious off spring.

The Newest Writer

Thanks to Lynda, child-caretaker extraordinaire, Maya has been writing "M"s since she was about 20 months old. Now, just a few weeks into preschool, she can write M-A-Y-A with ease, not to mention that she can identify all of the letters on her Obama/Biden stickers (hee hee).

Amid my pride is a little guilt. Clearly I should have been working with her on her letters. If I had been diligent since she first scrawled that M on her coloring book almost two years ago, she could probably be reading at a seventh grade level or something, right?

No, no, I did work with her, on her name and on letter recognition. When I tried to make time for that here at home, she wasn't all that interested. She much prefers to play with her Little People stuff or tear around in the backyard running from "not-so-nice monsters."

The key, I think, was other kids. At Lynda's, her older friend was working on writing his name, and now at school, she's got 20 little friends practicing the same skill.

Clearly, preschool was a good choice.

Miss Elli's Tupperware Party

I try to keep the house clean. Really, I do.

Soon after I stopped working, I realized I would never rival Donna Reed. In fact, I've learned that in my few alotted hours of non-child-chasing time, cleaning ranks just before mowing the lawn, which my mother can assure you is not a favored activity at our house either.

I'm don't intend to live like a slob, though, so I try. As the girls and I move from room to room with various activities, I try to use the transitions to keep things clean.

Elliot's new fervor for Tupperware is seriously hindering my ability to keep things tidy.

In fact, as she litters the smooth flooring in our kitchen/dining room with slick plastic lids, Maya and I find ourselves in a minefield of potential twisted ankles and fractured tail bones.

As usual, I can't bring myself to train her out of a bad habit that makes her so gleeful. So the house is a bit messier than usual lately, as I pick up the same 12 Tupperware lids a thousand times a day.

Character Adventures - 1 down, 7 to go

I'm working my way through my little character adventure slash short story mini-series.

Kate, the MC of my nano novel, Prairie Apocalypse (uh oh, that might stick), really enjoyed the state fair. The exercise was great fun, and I learned as much about her as I would have learned filling out a list of questions, I think. I sorted through some of her past, some of her quirks, and a couple of relationships I didn't originally know she had.

At the very least, I learned how to "become" her while writing. Her voice is sillier than I anticipated, but it fits with how she's coping with her wounded past. Humor frequently seems to be covering for damage, I think.

I also had some of the other characters cross paths with Kate along the way, which set the tone for their stories both in this little side project, and in NaNo.

I've loosely sketched out small story lines for the experiences the other character groups in Prairie Apocalypse will have, and I'm looking forward to continuing with the exercise.

It's really a great distraction from the daily "to do's " that I've been avoiding.

Random Flashes of Beastie & The Bulldog

Honestly, that's what we call them. Our beautiful, dainty little darlings. Elliot has been Bulldog since her first, determined moves to crawl, that humorously resembled a ferocious baby bulldog.... and Maya has been Beastie since she played the role of Cookie Monster in her high chair, tossing food all over the kitchen with the hope that some would eventually reach her mouth.

Hmmm... Beastie & The Bulldog... maybe a new blog title? I can almost see Nana and Grandma shaking their heads... not our little darlings!

An Outing with My Characters

I just read Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kittredge.... It's a fantastic collection of connected short stories that demonstrates how broken we all are, and how connected and strong and determined. It's a wonderful idea, very beautifully executed.

Inspired by her imagery and her method, I'm taking a little trip with my characters as we all cool our heals before the big Nano start of Prairie Apocalypse (my adopted title of "Making Light of Darkness" just isn't sticking... maybe I've used Prairie Apocolypse in my head too long!).

I'm sending all of my characters to the state fair the year prior to the start of my novel; as good Minnesotans, it's likely that they all made an obligatory appearance. I'll add in a unique conflict for each of them, and try to make them cross paths at some point in each story. I'll let you know how it goes.... it's basically just an exercise to get to know them better, since all of those character sketch question lists ended up boring me to tears.

It will be fun to try and create a little miniseries of short stories related to these characters prior to the big conflict. And hopefully it will help me develop a voice for each of the main characters.

I'll report back!

Escape from Over Thinking!

Yeah, books on how to write aren't the best idea.

Orson Scott Card's book on SF&F actually really got the juices flowing, but I only got a couple of chapters in to Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver. I already was so bogged down with the tools that he had deciphered, that I started to forget how simple writing really is....

So I spent last night working on a little story that has been bouncing around in my head, and just had a good time with it. A couple thousand words on that made me feel MUCH much better.

When you take stories apart and analyze them, it is easy for the process to sound so difficult.... but when I just write, showing characters in motion and creating conflict come naturally. That's what story is all about.

On the upside, up with the baby early EARLY this morning, I let her play around me while I worked on my MC who I was nearly ready to excise from the whole story for being to dull. Spending just a bit more time on her illuminated the real reason that she is at the center of the story.

A much better place today, and with one of my little monsters off to preschool, I should get extra time to write this morning! Maybe I'll finish that story.

Phew.

Update: Frayed & Frazzled

Our beautiful girl is a fast learner!

On Saturday I filled you all in on my concern of Maya's hair twisting habit. After finding a ton of reassuring information on other parent's blogs, I took comfort in the knowledge that she will eventually grow out of it.

So I'm not pushing her to stop.... at least not hard.

I have offered her a ton of alternatives things to twist, though, and she doesn't seem to mind! She now watches Maggie & the Ferocious Beast and their adventures in Nowhere Land while petting Anakin's fur, or if he isn't available, her Zoe dog.

At naptime, she twirls on Zoe or her Giraffe's tail. Each time I tuck her in, she usually let's me know, "Mama, Zoe's hair isn't as nice as mine." She's right! But she goes right back to twirling his fur anyway.

And she stopped pulling knots out of her hair, too! She's done that since she was Elliot's age, but now she just comes to me and asks me to brush her hair for her.

What a smart, beautiful kid!

On Blanking

I have officially arrived at the "Over Thinking" place.

I blame it on too many books about writing. The last one steered my right past "I Can Do This," where I've been putzying comfortably for a month or more.

Suddenly I am bogged down by complicated transition rules and how to develop the perfect momentum through goals, obstacles, disasters, dilemmas, and resolutions to achieve a well-crafted novel.

My absolute inexperience is staring me down like an overbearing college professor, demanding undue respect in spite of its irrelevance, at least with this project. Why should I be so intimidated? I am prepared for the first draft to suck... I don't even care. I really, really want to create a draft!

I've always been overly into research. With November rushing to meet me, now is not a good time to be horrified by the daunting goal I've set for myself.

So I'm off to do some free writes and random, unfettered creating in order to get past my fear that this is too complicated. It's just writing! I've been doing this since I was a kid...

Happy Hens Huncker Down

We gave the chickens a special treat this weekend, letting them run in wild place that our garden has become.


They have picked their chicken run clean, requiring Joe to haul in 7 tons of gravel to prevent it from becoming a mud pit. They have spent a couple of months in a barren run, staring at the lovely bounty of our garden, so it seems only fair that they get a bit of free range access now that the growing season is over.



They provided several solid hours of family entertainment, foraging comically among the tilting pole bean tepees and overgrown cabbage patch. Maya rummaged around the garden with them, presenting them with tomatoes or carrots or beans that we missed on the last harvest. Elliot stalked the perimeter of the garden fence, looking for a way to join the messy crew. Poor kid, mom just doesn't think a 1 year old can be trusted around livestock....

Suddenly it was time for Maya's Spirit Play class (more on that another day), and we all headed quickly inside to clean up and dash out.

We didn't think of the chickens again until the girls were bathed and in bed... long past sunset. You chicken lovers know that at sunset, the ladies can't help but seek out a place to roost.

I would have predicted a noisy panic from our little flock when they realized they were cut off from their coop.

Not so.

Joe found three chickens roosting together on a portion of fence sheltered by bowed sunflower stalks. Two more chickens, the more creative pair, were perched together high atop the pole bean teepees.

After tucking them all safely into their coop, Joe reported the best discovery from this little chicken adventure: the racial segregation of our flock has ended.

In the beginning, the two white rocks always roosted together, the two Rhode Island Reds were inseparable, and our poor Black Sexlink was always alone.

But now, Ina (red) and Clementine (black) are happy to cozy up together. They have made friends. They have overcome the old "birds of a feather" social interaction rule...

And they give us hope that in spite of the riotous, clannish tone the McCain rallies have adopted, the majority of us can move past the old prejudices and hunker down together with a new President with the skills, the plan, and the judgment to lead us out of this economic darkness.

Writing Quiz

Thanks to Chrysanthemum Promise, a fellow writer's blog, I've completed this little meme quiz that is racing around writer's blogs.

I'll be brief.

Do you write fiction or non-fiction? Or both?
Loads of nonfiction, in the form of hundreds of grant proposals and graduate school papers. I've dabbled in fiction for years, but never actually nurtured a story past a terrible first draft.

Do you keep a journal or a writing notebook?
Always. Unfortunately I also lose everything. I end up with writing notebooks in coat pockets, purses, diaper bags, under piles on my bedroom floor, and in my kid's toybox. I try to dump all of my good notebook ideas into a word folder every now and then so a lost notebook isn't so heartbreaking.

If you write fiction, do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing?
While preparing for this big NaNoWriMo-inspired push to complete a novel before I'm 30 (incredibly cliche I know), I'm thinking through the story quite a bit ahead of time. I have actually followed the Snowflake Method, and it's helped me create a substantial storyline, subplots, character goals, motivations, obstacles, conflict..... and yet I still feel that there is a lot I don't know or can't nail down without actually taking the plunge on a first draft.

Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?
Extreme procrastinator. Before I had kids, I routinely spent days laying around reading, consuming vats of coffee and all sorts of good food, and indulging every whim, confident that I would write "later." Now, with a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old who have shaken the procrastination out of me by the force of a thousand midnight snuggles, I'm committed to stealing the time to write away from my regular responsibilities.

Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?
I enjoy both. Now that I have tuned into my inner muse again, I get bursts of creative momentum at least daily (the reason for my many notebooks), and even when drafting pieces I care about, I rarely have more than a couple of hours to give to anything. I'm learning to be efficient.

Are you a morning or afternoon writer?
During my baby's morning nap... both girls' afternoon naps, and after they've gone to bed in the evening. Basically whenever I don't have to be vigilant about a tiny person's self-destruction.

Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?
I used to require perfect silence, but I haven't heard that in 3 years! So now, I write to Noggin's latest kid show, or my husband's guitar practice, or when I'm lucky, good music.

Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?)
Computer. I can never read my handwriting. Even my brief notes are tough to decipher. I used to write with a pencil and a legal pad, but the smudgy wild writing only got worse the more I got into my story. In the end, the whole thing was lost.

Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One? Or do you let the story evolve as you write?
I have to know where the story is headed, and I have to know the major turns it will take along the way, but so far I'm always surprised by first drafts. No matter how well I outline, the story has its own momentum.

Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?
No. I've just gotten into writing. If I can make it through the creative cycle, past the first draft, through several edits, arriving at a manuscript I don't hate, maybe then I'll give it some thought.

Editing/Revision - love it or hate it?
Loved it during the grant writing phase of my life. Progress was so immediate. I haven't yet edited any of my own fiction.

Dance Party Done Right!

We drug all of the dress up costumes out this week, hanging them on the laundry rack right in the living room.

This was mostly a scheme to convince Maya that we have lots of fun costumes already, and we don't need to buy new ones.

It turned into a dance party extravaganza. Why haven't we been dancing in costume (beyond tutus) this whole time?!





Ultimately, it lead to a neighborhood costume walk, which caught a lot of attention. If you are in the mood to talk to neighbors who are usually a bit up tight, bring the little mermaid with you. It really lightens the mood!

Frayed & Frazzled

We're so frazzled we're pulling our hair out! For me, that's just a figure of speech, but for Maya, who comforts herself by sucking her thumb and twirling her hair, it's all too literal.

As you can see in the pictures below, she has twisted off half of her hair. The worst of the damage was done in just the last couple of weeks, though it's been thin on that side for a month or more (brought on by preschool?). And before that it was thin on the other side.




Let's emphasize that she is a remarkable kid. She's extremely articulate for a three year old, really strong, and incredibly creative. She's full of joy, sweetness, and, um, a clever spunk that is constantly entertaining. In light of all of that, this is a tiny problem.

I just don't know what to do about it. According to several mommy bulletin boards on the web, there are other many parents dealing with kids who suck their thumbs and twirl their hair... off.

The options seem to be:
1. Cut her hair really short, so that she has nothing to twirl. By the time it grows back, she'll be over it. (her curls, where she has them, are so cute though!).

2. Make her stop sucking her thumb. (really? it's her only real comfort/attachment issue, and she only does it when sleepy.)

3. Keep her hair pulled up and wait for her to grow out of it (she rips ponytails and clips out all the time, only contributing to the problem!).

4. Get her to twirl some thing else, a stuffed animal tail, doll's hair, or frayed blanket edge.

This last one seems easy enough. I've tried getting her to bond with an old corn-silk cabbage patch doll I had, but that went no where fast. Today she snuggled with a fuzzy puppy she got for her birthday, which worked better.

Joe is wiling to just let her grow out of it, but that seems a little too hands off, given that she's going bald.


It is heartbreaking, though. I have gently let her know that she should stop pulling out her hair, but she just looks up at me with those big eyes and says, "but I really like to do it, and my hair is still pretty."

And when she sees a man with thinning hair, she sometimes asks, "did he twist his hair off too, mama."

Gulp. I don't want to give her a complex!

So I'll just offer her fuzzy toys and blankets when she watches TV, rides in the car, and right before bed (the only two times she pulls on it). I'll keep her hair back as much as possible... and I'll try not to make it an issue that she gets concerned about.

Light to Lay By

Consistent with the usual rhythm of our life together, Joe has spent the last month or two researching how to get light and heat to the chicken coop... Then as he went to implement his efforts, I stopped him, suggesting that I wanted to research IF we should.

Originally we were going to send these ladies back to the farm they came from.

Of course, now they each have names, and Joe and Maya are awfully fond of them, so plans have changed.

At issue, is it ethically okay to artificially light the coop to force these ladies to lay? Over the past three years, I've developed an overstimulated sense of injustice for dairy cattle. Is it just as bad for backyard laying hens?

I really can't find much information against the lighting except that it's an added expense and isn't their natural rhythm. Chickens don't seem to be harmed by year-round laying as long as they get good nutrition.

So then, I guess the question is what do they need for the winter:

1. 14 hours of light, using artificial light in the morning ONLY. Apparently, sudden darkness caused by turning the coop light out at night can cause them to huddle in the corner and possibly suffocate each other!

2. Heat the coop on extremely cold days (below zero... some owners wait for even lower temps) to prevent frost bite, otherwise leave the coop door open for proper ventilation.

3. Keep water unfrozen by using a heating base with a large dog dish, or buy two large rubber bowls and trade them out... filling one up with warm water and setting it out int he morning and another in the evening.


I guess we'll follow these guidelines, take our cues from the chickens, and see how it goes.

Sisters

In the beginning, Elliot was just a doll to Maya.

Someone to pet occasionally, and someone for Mama to mess with while Maya played with her own doll.

Then Elliot crawled, and for Maya, that meant toys up on the couch or constantly finding a new toy to distract Elliot while she pulled the one she wanted out of Elli's gooey grasp.... and then washed it.

Walking was a whole new challenge for Maya. The couch was no longer safe, and her speed demon sister could catch her before she got toys settled in a new, quiet location.

For most of August we heard, "Mama, come get EL. LI. OT. She's ruining my puzzle (or train, or sand castle)." In we would swoop to distract Elliot.

Suddenly, though, Maya has given in to the fact that escaping from Elliot isn't possible.

Suddenly, they're playing like sisters.

They dance around and with each other, sometimes holding hands, and always landing in a pile of pillows and tutus.

Maya runs into the play room, with Elliot wiggling fast behind her, and I hear high pitched giggling from both of them, announcing their entrance, both carrying improbably large toys, a drum set and a stuffed aardvark. They bring all toys into the living room to play, because playing is only fun if someone is watching them.

They giggle through meals. They giggle while Maya tries to help Elliot put on her sunglasses.... when Elliot screams in protest after Maya whacks the side of her head with the band of the sunglasses, Maya hugs her, rocking gently and saying, "Shoosh, baby, it's okay. I'm here and you're okay."

More often than not, Maya's hugs and shooshing stop the tears after a bump on the head as easily as mine do!

Hmmm, I'm off to call my sister.

November... Oh so far away!

Okay, so shortly after my hubby's 30th birthday, I rediscovered the NaNoWriMo contest and thought, "Exactly, I must write a novel before I'm 30."

Actually the thought was more like, "I can still do it, I'm not 30 until April." The truth is, at the end of the day, I would rather identify myself as a failed writer (with the rejection letters to prove it) than a successful anything else.

Remarkable, isn't it, what a round-numbered birthday can do for your motivation!

So here I sit, with an outline I really like, several characters falling over each other to play the lead or share the POV, and concepts for scenes inspired by moments as simple as spooning oatmeal toward my wiggly toddler.

This weekend I'll finish the synopsis. I have a bit of research to do.... then I am left with the first draft looming ahead and November still 3 weeks away!

Do I start another project in the interim, to keep me from getting board and pursue some of the other interesting ideas bumping around?

or

Do I stick with some freewrites, read a couple of good books to get me in the mood, and keep tweaking my outline and character info?

Kids These Days?

Sometimes, I'm so cynical about my little attempt to finish a novel before I'm thirty.

I have always wanted to write, since I scratched funny little poems at 5-years-old. I wrote my first fantasy story at age 8, on a spiral notebook while I sat perched in a tree behind our farmhouse.

Now though, plunging ahead with a novel that I'm beginning to really love, I occasionally wonder what's the point.

Half of my family is full of voracious readers, but the other half (the, um, in-law half) doesn't read anything ever.... occasionally the paper, but often not even that.

We hear all the time that reading is on the decline. Minnesota Public Radio just did an entire hour on the decline in the publishing industry.

Eeek. And I want to do this, why?

Of course, the answer is, because I have to, and I want to, and I won't be happy if I don't.

And David Eggers' article in Esquire makes me feel so much better! Check it out.

Updates & a Recipe

It's been a while since I've offered up a general update... I'll conclude with an awesome apple pancake recipe, so stick with me.

1. Sleep Training: Elliot is doing pretty well, falling asleep on her own after many visits and pats on the back from Joe and I. She's only nursing right away in the morning and right before bed, with a snack in the middle of the night more often than not. Progress... We want to get her over that nightly wake up.... but progress all the same.

2. Orchard: We had a fantastic weekend adventure at a local apple orchard. We went with friends, who took the best pictures! Check it out at Adventures of Erik, Shana, & Anya. It was a fabulous place for adventure, with hay rides, apple picking, really aggressive goats at the petting zoo, hiking trails, and a stack of hay bales to climb.... The girls loved it!

3. Chickens: We're still getting 4 or 5 eggs a day, but we're also researching whether to put a light in the coop to keep them laying through the winter. Joe has added insulation to the coop, and has rigged a system to heat them on the coldest of days. More on that later.

4. Preschool: Maya is still loving it, bringing home loads of art projects that I don't know quite what to do with it. We may start sending them to family in the mail... remember snail mail etiquette. If you get a letter from Maya, please, PLEASE send her one back. She checks the mail every day!

5. And, as promised, the recipe. The apple orchard has inspired an apple pie, apple cake, apple sauce, and our favorite so far, German Apple Pancake. It's easy to make and sooo tasty. Let me know if you try it!

Too Crafty

I have a nice rough, but layered outline for my story. But I set to work yesterday on character development and found myself totally stuck. Oh, I have a good grip on the basics of the primary characters, but when I started describing them in more detail, I defaulted to descriptions of people I knew, or cliched versions of characters I had seen in movies.

I have real, nuanced and interesting characters in my head, I swear! But working through my character development questions was tough.

I decided to spend some time building a visual representation of my characters. That's right.... a collage. Can you tell I spend my days at home with a preschooler?

I built a childproof fortress for my on-the-run one-year-old, giving her safe access to the whole living room. I cut out lots of cutesy pictures of ice cream, school buses, and Elmo for my three-year-old (I'm saving TV for November!).

With them occupied, I went to work. I found look alikes for all of my characters in the ridiculous stack of magazines we now get (courtesy of Northwest air miles). Now I have a real physical image** to match the backstory, goals, and motivations of my characters. We'll see if this makes developing a unique voice for each of them a little easier.

**Typical magazines like GQ and Health are not good for this exercise, given that all of the people are shined up and edited to look alike. I found the best character pictures in my college homecoming update, a kids magazine that featured a lot of parent contributors, and the Minnesota Monthly, which features a lot of stories about average citizens. Flipping through these periodicals, I often recognized one of my characters instantly, even when I previously hadn't given any thought to hair length, eye color, etc. Maybe none of this will make a difference for the actual writing, but it was fun, and it occupied my girls!

Onion Wrapping

This process of building a novel is fascinating.

I am oscillating between certainty that this attempt is ridiculous. Who am I to write a novel?! It will be awful! Then I swing back to completely unfounded confidence. This will be the best novel EVER!

I read once, that to write a good story, you need to hold both of those beliefs simultaneously; thinking "this is the best story ever" helps you write it, and thinking "this is ridiculous" helps you edit (that little nugget of wisdom came from Chris Baty's NaNoWriMo book, I'm pretty sure).

Today was a good day though. After exhausting my girls at an apple orchard, complete with a hay ride and a pumpkin patch, I worked on a few new characters that emerged from the brainstorming I did last week.

I discovered some people that need to be there for the story to make sense, to move other characters into position, etc.

By fleshing out these formerly missing characters, my thin plot has already become richer. It's like the old layers of the onion metaphor, but in reverse. Each block of time I devote to thinking through this story, or its characters, or the challenges posed by the plot (a pandemic) adds more complexity.

It's really FUN!

Now I know that I'm the big nerd I always suspected of myself. This is way better than playing Wii :)

Joe Six Pack?

Is anyone else appalled that we middle class Americans have earned the nickname "Joe Six Pack?"

It started with Palin's relentless attempts to mask ignorance and carelessness as "average," but the media has really picked up on it. Suddenly all non-elites qualify as "Joe Six Pack." My status as a "Mainstreeter" for the past two weeks has been hokey and annoying, but "Joe Six Pack" is just offensive.

The moniker is a derisive way to tear down the middle class, suggesting that all working Americans live only for the beer at the end of the day, and can't possibly muster the intellectual capacity required to fully engage in complicated political conversations of the day.

Think of your reaction to similar nicknames, not by a friend but by the people you have elected to represent your interests: Joe Weedsmoker, maybe then it would be Mary Jane McDooby... or Joe Scratches-his-butt.... or Joe Eats-too-much-chocolate.

Anyone of those might be descriptive for some or all of the average Americans it is trying to reach, but is that the key descriptor we want our leaders attributing to us. "Hey country of complacent, alcoholically-numbed simpletons, vote for me, cause I get 'ya."



Well, that has worked for 8 years, why should we demand more respect as the economy crashes around us, our political leaders threaten armed conflict with two or three new countries, and our main concern is how pretty one VP candidate looked in her bikini 20 years ago.

Perhaps I'm just bitter that Palin didn't implode last night, instead retreating to her "safe" topics of energy, her non-elite status, and the democrats as tax-raising-job-killers every time Biden's impassioned, reasonable, and clearly well-understood responses left her floundering with no prepared, relevant material.

I must say, though, that the Joe Six Packs in the house would be in the undecided category if one VP was a presidential candidate (hmmm, I didn't actually notice him when he was one, so he's probably best at #2). Biden was inspiring,very clear, and very respectable.

What a fantastic ticket we get to vote for!

We Turned Her One!

A trip to the zoo, birthday cake madness, dance party, and chinese takeout all surrounded by people that love her, made this the best first birthday party EVER! :)