Sitting Still, Standing Up, Braving Through

A lot more people in the world have desk jobs than ever before in history. Once upon a time, you might have had to convince people about how back-breaking and even debilitating working at a desk can be.

In a way I'm really lucky. I stand all day at my day job, so when I come home to write, I'm ready to sit down for a good, long while. But even that gets hard. Because I'm either standing for a long time, or sitting for a long time, my body wears out quick even though I get to switch between the two. I try to get up a lot and walk around to break up my writing, but I want to get a lot of writing done, and so I always sit longer than I mean to ....

Anyway, it made my mini-adventure yesterday a lot more fun than it otherwise would have been. I came home to a lost dog shut into the upstairs bathroom. Luckily, she had a collar with all her information on it. Calling did no good. Power was out up the road. So the girl and I walked her home. The place was all shut up with, get this, an electric gate blocking the way. No way to buzz the house to let us in. So I had the girl hold my flashlight and umbrella, hefted the dog into my arms, and lowered her over the gate safely to the other side. She dropped maybe the last six inches was all.

Pouring down rain, warm wind, transformers sparking and arching red and gold, the trees swaying and creaking and cracking, fir needles and pine cones littering the road, no lights except the flashlights that flickered and grew steadily dimmer, the flash of lights on a truck as an emergency power crew waited for the go-ahead to work on the line, my shoes squelching and squishing with so much water it felt like I was wading along a river shore ....

Awesome.

So often, writing feels like living in a cell. Sometimes, even if it's uncomfortable, its so good to get outside I never want to come back in.

Sometimes, especially because it was uncomfortable, and a little scary, and so real, I want to do it again.

Instead I sit down, and do my work. At least until the next time the weather and the world summon me.

Words and Rain

The rains have come.

I've been working on a particular book cover for a while now. It's making me crazy and stretching me to the limits of my abilities. It seems like every time I start to work on it, I run into a problem that I'm not sure how best to solve, and I end up watching a bunch of You Tube videos on Photoshop to figure out how to fix it.

The deck is all shiny. The rain-cleansed wind is pushing, pulling, making me want to explore. Beneath the trees next to our house, the air is full of the scents of ripe grapes, clean, musky mulch, and wet hay.

I've been copyediting too. I start to get involved in what I'm reading and I have to stop, go back, and look hard at each individual word. It's really hard to copy edit, and I'm not as good at it as I want to be. I know I'm missing things. I just have to keep going over and over and hope the stuff I do miss, everyone else will miss too as the story transports them into other worlds.

I've missed the clouds. Later I'm sure they'll feel gloomy and heavy, but right now they remind me of silver jewelry, campfire smoke, early mist on a mysterious lake, of winter days spent curled up around hot apple cider or hot chocolate.

The rains have come, and like the wanderlust the weather brings with it a drive to write. But I can't write yet, except for a few stolen minutes during breaks and lunches at work. I have this cover to finish, and copyediting to do. I have tomorrow off. I hope it rains. I want to get up early and write, and hike in the rain sheltered under an umbrella that the wind uses to play tug-of-war with me, and write some more, write until I can hardly keep my eyes open.

Summer's Cusp

The crickets and frogs sing through the cool evenings, and the morning mist parts to a glorious golden glow and frosted blue sky. The heat of summer never quite rises beyond the embrace of a warm bath. Impatience paces beneath the languor of easy weather with easy, flowing clothes and bare feet and sun hats. The hours of daylight have already begun to huddle and bow before the coming winter. Gardeners feast amid the overgrowth, ignoring weeds and the delicate touch of powdery mildew on pumpkin leaves, that autumn pest that comes with the vanguard of cold winds, the sooner twin of frost.

It's so warm and exquisite I can hardly imagine what's coming, but time's river flows and it's pulling me, the landscape changing around me as I'm drawn from summer into autumn. Autumn is opening her eyes, and she smiles that knowing, seductive smile. What games we'll play, what work must be done in preparation for the Cold Queen and her retinue. Better to get it done in advance of her arrival, for working beneath her heavy gaze is harder work than is made in the comfort of autumn's arms.

And I want autumn to rise and dance, even as I grieve at summer's passing.

Integrity for Grownups

This post is not actually all about me, even though it sounds like it and sometimes I'm self-absorbed like that so that wouldn't be an inaccurate perception. There's stuff going on. What I'd like to say is, I will treat others gently when met with matters of word, honor, and responsibility, because I see myself in them. I won't always and unyielding-ly hold people to their words ... they must hold themselves to their words, unless they feel in their hearts, minds and spirits that not holding themselves to their words would be a greater sin than following them. As for procrastination and denial ... those things hound me too.

Someone recently told me that they read (or thought up) what it meant to be a grownup. They got to live in their own place, go out with friends and do whatever or stay home and enjoy the solitude on their own schedule ... and went to the dentist without being bullied or dragged in.

In days of yore, people would say things like 'a man is as good as his word' and 'my word is my bond.' When thinking about these things as a young adult, I thought it meant that no matter how crappy things got, you followed through on promises, even if it killed you.

How do these things connect?

I'm not entirely a grownup, as my DH well knows. I don't go to the dentist for annual checkups or six month cleanings. I go when I feel a hole start to develop on the surface of a tooth, or if something hurts. And though I try to be careful to: A. only make promises I can keep and B. follow through when I say I'll do something, the hard reality is that I'm usually on the verge of being late for work almost every day (I generally arrive just a couple of minutes before I have to clock in) and that I'm a sloppy communicator, so I may not always mean exactly what I say. This has caused some irritation and grief over the years, mainly to my DH, who has to put up with my silliness and inconsistency and my tendency to race around the house looking for my purse when I ought to be walking through the door at my work site.

As I've grown older I've come to realize that 'my word is my bond' and 'a man is as good as his word' are more complex and beautiful and difficult than mere adherence to formally-made vows. The things we say, especially the things we say over and over again, are the things that people around us have to assume that we mean because otherwise the stuff that comes out of our mouths is worthless. We might as well not say anything at all. In fact it might be better not to say anything at all, especially if what we say is something to let ourselves off the hook when we fail.

Integrity isn't always as simple as a failure or a success, a truth or a lie. If I say I'm going to work really hard to get this project done by Tuesday, and the work is overwhelming so that I'm late on delivery but I stay in touch with the manager, let him know how things are going, and tell him as soon as I can that it's going to be done on Friday (or ask for help so that I can get it done on time), he'd be a pretty crappy guy to say "but you saaaiiiid you'd be done by Tuesday! You're a crappy employee!" My lateness shouldn't reflect on my integrity, just my powers of estimation. But if I say, "we can have whatever you want for dinner tonight," and then the suggestion is deep fried shrimp, potato salad and devil's food cake for dessert and I start to wheedle with "but it's so fattening and I'm really in the mood for a salad and some nice broiled fish ...." That's not fair. And I have pulled crap like that.

I've also realized that being responsible isn't just being response-able, though that is a huge and important part of being an adult. There's a need for people to grow and learn and constantly seek new ways to become better at surviving, thriving, and contributing. Being a responsible, grown-up adult also means facing and dealing with the unpleasant, scary, painful shit in our lives, and doing our part to survive, thrive, and contribute to the solutions that will hopefully lead to some improvement if not actual victory. Ignoring or hiding from problems, hoping that they'll go away or get better on their own, or convincing ourselves that they're maybe not so bad, or focusing on all the other stuff that goes on in our lives in the hopes that a lottery win will fix it all for us ... that's not being a grownup.

And I am not a grownup. Not all the way. I hope I'm getting better, stronger, smarter, more competent. I hope that my efforts and communication skills transmit to the people that I love that I probably won't be done by Tuesday, but that I'm working until I'm exhausted every waking hour trying to fulfill my promise. And when I whine for broiled fish and I see the look of betrayal in my friend's eyes, I hope I'm forgiven, though now both dinners are poisoned for everyone because of the guilt and the betrayal. I hope I don't pull that kind of shit again next time I work to deadline or yield a decision to someone else, if I'm given the honor of a next time. Part of what motivates me to do better is the awareness that my friends don't have to forgive me. To respect them, to honor them and to build integrity, I must assume that they might not forgive me.

Damn I've got a lot of growing up to do.

I won't drag my friends to the dentist. They have to go to the dentist themselves. For my part, if they ask, I will be honest about the decay I see, and offer what insights I have. However unworthy they may consider themselves to be for whatever they have done or not done, unless they've managed to hide something extreme like that they're a bunny-raping axe murderer, I know we are akin in our imperfections, and forgiveness, understanding and love will remain possibilities in our ongoing lives.

One last observation. The things that we are most ashamed of or most fearful of might not be what our friends and families find most painful and distancing. So often it's not the mistakes we make, but what we don't do about them or don't say about them that damage our integrity the most. Those times that we are most afraid, hurting the most, and the most isolated are often the very times we need to reach out, if for no other reason than to get a second opinion from people we trust. If we have chosen our friends wisely, it's more likely that our worst nightmares of condemnation and isolation will vanish, and we'll wake into a world of support, caring, and with the hope of a fresh new start.

Stuff

Lately I've been feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, not only because of work, although that contributes, or because I also have too many projects in various stages of completion, which of course doesn't help either, but because I have too much stuff to track and maintain and organize. I feel a strong desire to downsize, not so much in the direction of a smaller house, but in terms of unloading things that I don't want or use anymore.

Some of the stuff we have around the house is garbage. It's useless, not just to us, but to anyone really. Some of the things I have in my office are so dirty or water damaged or bug/mouse/creepything infested or stained by the leavings of those things that I don't even want to touch them. Motivating myself to go through those things, especially because I'll want to try to clean/repair/rescue some of those things is tough. The last thing I want to do after a long day at work, or even worse, on my weekend, is wrestle with giant spiders and dust mouse droppings off of something that had once been precious to me.

It's too dry to have a paperwork burning. That's one of my favorite forms of purging mess, is to sort through boxes or bags of paperwork that I didn't feel comfortable just chucking into the recycling bin. It's easy with no guilt and very little desire to retain/rescue individual pages, but it's time consuming. Anyway, since I can't really do my favorite garbage-ridding, I'm looking for ways to downsize the rest of our accumulation.

Donation is easy and convenient for those things we don't want or need anymore. We have a Goodwill station right by the grocery store. But I sometimes wonder if I might be able to get some actual cash money for some of our items.

Unfortunately, a lot of that non-useful-to-us stuff really needs to be cleaned up and organized, and then what? We're a bit too far out to have a garage sale. Ebay would require a big learning curve, and a friend of ours let us know that it can be quite time consuming without any guarantee of making back enough money to offset the time you spend on it, never mind get what the item is actually worth.

So, I'm debating what to tackle in what room, to what extent, and when, and while I debate, of course no progress is being made. Still, it's on my radar. I now that having less stuff will help reduce my stress level and give us less housework overall. When I look at homes that look nice, they tend to have very, very little clutter and almost no stuff in each given room. That would be full of awesome.

As long as I don't have to sacrifice any books. Clearly what we need are more bookshelves. Which technically are stuff, but ... not, right?

Ugh. Stuff. Too much stuff!

Yet Another Weird Thought About Writing

I wondered today if I was the last person on Earth, or marooned on an island with no hope of anyone finding me, and/or if I could only write on materials so transient that they would become unreadable before anyone but me could read them again ... would I still write? I know these aren't original thoughts, but that's where my brain went today. Nothing new under the sun.

Anyway, I think I would write as much as I could. In fact, I think writing would become even more precious to me. I don't think I'd have much time to write in a survival situation, so there's the scarcity principle in action right there.

But I also have a scarcity principle in operation because I work full time, so I have very little (by comparison to the rest of my day, considering that I have chores, have to eat, sleep, etc.) time to write. So writing is precious to me in part because of that.

And I have no guarantee that anyone will find my work, or read it. It's a grain of sand on a vast beach. I would like to be read, but that's not the primary thing motivating me.

Still, there's a chance. In that marooned situation, last person in the world scenario, why would I write?

To ease my loneliness, even if it's only until the tide comes in and sweeps the words from the sand.

I wonder if there's a lonely part inside every writer that writes to make itself feel better. Is it deluded, unaware of all the companionship all around it ... or is that part of a writer the part that's aware that no matter how many friends we have, how close we are to family, or how many pets we cherish, each of us can only live our own lives. As we are each born into one body, that one body must die and no one can take that journey for us, or go with us ...

Our writing is perhaps one of a few things that exists as part of us outside of us. Sculpture, art, music ....

Prehistoric cave paintings on a wall. Made for posterity? Maybe, but even so, their creators were like us. Are us. Found pleasure it extending their existence outside their bodies so they could look at something so much better than a mirror. Art, as a companion? A soul mate?

Bonny blue een

The girl is putting together a paper and a diorama for her poetry class. She and I had a lot of fun making a rice-stuffed doll. She did the rest entirely herself (although as a surprise, I'm going to make a shield for her fallen knight tonight.) We may have reached new lows, or highs, depending, of family weirdness as we both really like the doll. Even though it has no legs. And looks wounded. And is creepy.

She has ravens, a nest, and everything. We used corn silk for the hair, and painted two buttons with blue nail polish (doesn't everyone have blue nail polish just laying around the house?) for the eyes.

Her subject:

  Twa Corbies! (Anonymous, from bartleby.com)

AS I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane:
The tane unto the tither did say,
'Whar sall we gang and dine the day?'
'—In behint yon auld fail dyke	5
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there
But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair.
'His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,	10
His lady 's ta'en anither mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.
'Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike out his bonny blue e'en:
Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair	15
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.
'Mony a one for him maks mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane:
O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.'

Whether the doll is weirdly, creepy-cute, or just plain wrong, that was about the best quality time the girl and I have had to spend together in quite awhile.

Getting Stuff Done

As most of you know or have gathered, I work a full time day job (yay!) and then write, design books, garden, do light physical training, create cover art, and teach myself various business-related skills like web page design, tax accounting, graphic design, typography, and how to maintain my delicate facade of calm and competence when in fact I'm constantly overwhelmed by work and dreaming crazy dreams.

Lately I've been more overwhelmed than usual (!) with stuff that needs to get done by various deadlines. This is what I do when I have so much crap to accomplish that I don't want to do anything at all. It might work for you too.

I separate daylight and after dark activities. It really doesn't work to garden after dark, though I've done it. Ditto for trimming goat hooves, mowing, taking the dogs for a walk, staining the deck, carpentry, etc. So if I plan to make headway on one of those sorts of things, I prioritize my time accordingly.

I separate heat-of-day activities from cool temperature activities. I might get away with staining the deck, washing a car, giving the dogs baths, or even pulling tansy during the heat of the day, but mowing during the heat of the day, or rototilling, or digging up a huge plant and moving it to the opposite end of the garden might be best for before noon or after 6pm.

I give myself an hour or so playing dithering games. Those vary from the obvious, like playing endless rounds of Bejeweled, to weird, like deciding to reorganize my underwear drawer. I could try to not do those sorts of things at all, but I find that if I don't give in at least for a little while, I can't seem to focus and I end up puttering and not getting much done ... basically I dither by default. Once that hour (or so) is up, I have to stop and work on one of my real goals. Something about the time restriction, and allowing myself to waste time on my own terms, helps put me in a good working headspace.

Then I get to work, dividing my time between two or three things over the course of the day so that I don't get mush brain and start to make mistakes. I listed this last, but I seem to do much, much better if I decide in advance which two or three things on my long to-do list I'm going to work on on a given day.

When I start to hesitate, or realize that I don't have all the stuff I need to finish, or my eyes start to cross and I lose track of what goes where and whose eyes are green, I stop, dither a while, tank up on food and water, and do something different, whatever is next on the day's list.

This system has been working really, really well for me. And the more I practice it, the more I seem to accomplish.  Pretty soon I hope to announce the completion of a big project I've been working on for years. I'm very, very close to getting there. Because I'm a typical, self-sabotaging creative type I of course didn't want to put the finishing touches on this project as soon as I got home from the day job, and instead watered my garden, played Bejeweled, weeded around some of my roses, trimmed oregano back from a garden path, and made snide comments about a really, really bad movie playing in the background while I played Bejeweled. Well, I've had my fun now. According to my rule, I need to put some time into real work now, so it's off to copyedit a few more chapters in my book, and then bedtime. Who knows? Maybe if I get on a roll, I might even finish tonight. That would be awesome.

Junk

I tried to find something today. It was a fairly important thing that at the time I thought we would need today, ASAP.  Turned out that we didn't, but, I spent about an hour looking for it.

I found:

Boxes of paperwork intended for burning.
Spiderwebs larger than my head.
Enough dust bunnies that they could probably be felted into a fine and substantial hat.
Old CDs I'd burned for bellydance classes that I haven't held in many years.
That although the floor had been recently swept in my office, there was enough accumulated cat litter tracked out of the cat box now that it's extremely unpleasant to walk in there barefooted.
Paycheck stubs from years ago waiting to be filed, along with a huge stack of other to-be-filed material.
That we have an impressive colony of the spiders I loathe and fear the most in our downstairs.

And much, much more.

I'm inspired to get some of this stuff organized, cleaned out, and whatever is junk, thrown away. I would also like the spiders to magically disappear as if they've never existed, and I will pretend that they were all nicely let outside where they belong and will lead their happy, long, creepy spider lives elsewhere.

And I would really, really like to find the disk we were looking for. We found the box, the instructions, the legalese ... but not the disk. Argh. We don't need it, but in case we do, I don't want to search through all that junk again.

Because, seriously. That was scary, and gross.

Rose Rosette Disease

Rose Rosette Disease.

I've been out of the horticulture world for a while. I garden a lot, I learned a bit of plant taxonomy, took classes in plant propagation, helped build a greenhouse, toured nurseries around the northwest corner of Oregon, and drove my husband crazy by collecting plant samples and drying them in weird places in the house and spewing Latin names as we drove through neighborhoods while studying for exams.

This disease was never mentioned in class. It snuck up on me.

Part of the reason is because it hasn't officially blipped on the radar in this area. Part of it is because thanks to a newly-developed test and the devastating loss of some important rose gardens, in 2011 RRD and the rose rosette virus have gained new attention.

It has no cure. Roses that have the disease have to be destroyed, and no new rose may be planted in its place, as the roots remaining in the ground may transmit the virus to the new rose. This disease has destroyed a huge number of wild roses, and many healthy wild roses are destroyed in an effort to restrict the spread of this disease.

The primary vector appears to be a particular sort of wingless mite that doesn't appear to live in this area, and so it may be that my other roses won't be affected, but it may also be true that they're already infected, and I'll lose them all. As symptoms arise, I'll destroy plants, and in their place put lavender and rosemary and peonies and try not to think about how much I loved the scent of all those blossoms in the early morning as I walked down my favorite paths.

I suspect that the rose was infected when I bought it, probably through root stock or a graft purchased from a nursery in an infected region. Last fall, the rose sent up a bizarre shoot. I thought it might be just a weird sport, and wondered if it would bloom. It did, beautifully. The stem remained red, as did all the leaves, and the stem was covered almost completely in thorns. It grew so tall and thick and fast that it easily broke in the next strong wind. Very short side shoots developed, with more rose buds, and one more bloomed. None of the side stems grew more than a couple of inches--unusual for a knocked down branch that bothers to grow side shoots.

In the spring, my husband accidentally mowed it where it lay. The grass had covered it up. I snipped it and forgot about it.

While surfing I ran across an article about the disease, and my heart sank. The stem covered in thorns, the red foliage that didn't mature to green, the very lush, brittle growth ... I had everything except the witch's brooms, elongated and twisted leaves and short stems growing in profusion from a single node, eventually forming 'brooms'. The next morning I went out. That weird stem was long gone, of course, but I had the rest of the plant to look at. It looked normal, except ... the red leaves at the growing tips looked twisted and puckered. No more stems covered in thorns, but .... I emailed our county master gardener program. They concurred with my assessment. Dig it up, burn it. Don't wait for more symptoms. Even if the rest of the rose isn't blaring signs of the disease, even though those leaves might be twisting for other reasons, even though the leaves may eventually turn green, because the rose was probably infected via a graft or root stock, because there's no cure ... there wasn't much point in waiting to see if the rose might not be okay. It wouldn't be.

I may have unwittingly spread the disease. I didn't disinfect the clippers after I clipped off what I thought was a weird sport. I don't have a lot of problems with powdery mildew, and black spot is endemic ... all my roses have at least a little black spot, and so I don't worry about making that worse.

That lack of foresight and basic sanitary practice may have cost me my rose garden. There are always diseases, known and unknown, ready to arise in all our gardens that could kill living things that we prize and that rely on us for their survival. Sloppiness, laziness ... it's easy, but it's risky. I gambled. We'll see how much I lost. Maybe nothing. Maybe just the one rose, a rose I didn't infect, a rose that came infected, that was dying, though neither of us knew it. I surely hope so. Because I have some great roses, and I'd like them to stick around a long, long time.

Cat up a Tree, and Down Again

It's been one of those weeks.

The two main things are near and perhaps impending badness.

First, Wizard got stuck in a tree. I have no idea how he got up there. All I know is that the dogs went bananas, and then I heard people talking, and saw a pickup truck. And then I heard yowling. You know how a cat sounds like your cat, but not, because it's making a weird, not-usual sound? Yeah. So I head up there, terrified that he got hit by a car, and I'm a little grateful that someone pulled over because most people when they hit an animal keep going or worse, slow down, decide that they can't cope and jet away ....

But, he's not at the side of the road, bleeding. He's about 25 feet up a Douglas fir. I couldn't find my big ladder, and the folks that stopped (I still don't know if they hit him--thanks to today's sue-happy society, I'm sure they'd be terrified to admit they did, even though they wouldn't be liable for anything) and 'noticed him' stuck up there, had to go but they promised to come back and check on him. Right after they left, of course then I found my big extension ladder. I flagged down one of the folks that use our road as a bicycle training hill, and he held the ladder steady while I climbed up there.

For my family's sanity, I won't describe what it took to get a terrified cat, who has four clawed feet, off of a tree branch that he doesn't want to leave, while perched close to the top of a tall extension ladder set up in the back of my pickup truck because the ladder wasn't tall enough set up on the ground.

Wizard had a very, very bad limp when I got back to the house, so I took him to the vet. Right now he's still on major kitty pain killers. The vet suggested that if he's still walking funny with his elbow tucked in under his ribs in seven days that I should get him x-rayed. I'll keep all y'all updated. In the meantime his limp has all but disappeared, and he seems happy, although a bit confused about why I won't let him or Huntress outside anymore.

Reason being, if it wasn't a truck that scared him badly enough to chase him up a tree, it was probably a coyote, or a bobcat, or some other critter bent on eating him. Neither cat is going out right now, and quite possibly ever again. Both our remaining kitties are older animals now, and it's simply too dangerous for them out there. I had no idea Wizard got that close to the road (assuming he wasn't chased across the road, of course) and the traffic is too ugly there, too. So, it's just best all around if they don't go out anymore.

The other news has to do with my roses. That'll be a long-ish post with pics and links, so that'll wait until next time. The gist is, I may lose some, or all of my roses over the next couple of years to a viral disease. You might too, so if you have roses, be sure to check in and I'll give you the skinny on rose rosette disease, or RRD, caused by the rose rosette virus or RRV. If you can't wait, Google a bit and prepare to be alarmed.

More About Work

Not everyone gets to work at a job they love. I wonder sometimes if the vast, overwhelming number of people actually actively hate their jobs.

I think the world would be a better place if everyone loved their job, but that's sort of like wishing that diseases didn't exist. It's a nice sentiment, but it's not gonna happen.

Disliking or actively hating a job can damage a lot of stuff. There's that sense of time being wasted or lost, and we all have limited time, whether we like to think about that or not. Because most of us need to eat and like to have a roof over our heads and electricity and telephones and stuff, we're forced to endure the unpleasantness of work. Even really good, fun jobs can be boring or stressful at times. Unless you're independently wealthy, you just gotta power through.

That stuff is not that big a deal, and it's certainly not a revelation. Everyone pretty well does that every day without needing someone to remind them.

What I have been thinking about lately is how hatred of a job, of some aspect of a job, can twist and scar morality and spirituality. You may consider yourself a kind person, but be rude to someone who doesn't deserve it because the person before irritated you. You may consider yourself honest, but lie (or stretch the truth) to get out of doing something. Maybe, over time, core values get so worn away that the kindness that was once all yours to claim divorces you and moves away and you become bitter. The job did it to you.

Or did you do it to yourself?

I think I'm going to pay special attention at work today, to see if I'm upholding my work ethic, and to make sure I'm being myself, the self I want to be. I don't hate my job, but I certainly don't love it (though most of my coworkers and customers are great.) Sometimes it's stressful or boring (or both ... it's a bit mind-bending but it does happen) and because I'm there for such a great proportion of my overall waking time, I know my work shapes me. I think it's a good idea to periodically check and make sure that any changes are changes I want to see in myself.

And if I really want to be proactive, maybe I should think about ways I can change my work, or my attitude toward my work, to make sure I behave the way I want to be. In the end, I can't really blame my work for turning me into something I don't like. I'm the one living my life. My work isn't living my life for me. It can't. It's inanimate, unless I animate it. I have the power to work in a way that reflects my ethics, morality, spirituality, and creativity.  I may not choose when to work or what my work is, but I choose how to work, and how I work is what builds my character and shapes my soul. I choose.

I choose.

The Work of a Lifetime

I've written about work and keeping busy before, but it seems to, like history, keep repeating itself every day.

Customers that come into the store where I work all have work lives that wrap around them like clothes. Sometimes its invisible, but most of the time it's clear ... not necessarily what they do, but how they do it, and how passionately they do it.

A friend of mine at work that recently retired always worked quickly, efficiently and with great attention to detail. She's busier than ever. She and I sometimes had a quick chat (no time to dawdle and talk at work!) about the work we had at home and how it never seemed to get done. Even with her day job behind her, she never gets done with all the things she wants to accomplish. I know it'll be the same for me. There's always something else that I'd like to achieve, whether it's to move the appliances and scrub the entire kitchen floor, weed out an ornamental garden bed, rough in another book cover, or finish the front porch (argh, there's so much to do!!) When my friend shops she's a woman on a mission. She's got to get back to work. Time is slippery, and we all have only so much.

But not everyone's life is like that. People shuffle in, bored, and roam the aisles looking for something to divert themselves. Sometimes it's just that they're exhausted and shopping is a vacation from the daily slog. But that in and of itself is telling. They slog, not just one day but every day. I have a beloved customer that always teases me when he comes in. He never seems to find anything to do. He shops out of boredom, often more than once a day, and more often than not leaves without getting anything because he can't find anything he wants. He's my opposite.

There are shopping explorers where everything is an adventure and fun and they're looking for something new to add to their homes or their hobby stuff. There are distracted people who can't pull their gazes away from their telephones or their conversations long enough to notice what they're doing. People who devote the vast majority of their time interacting with their children. People who come in with children and spend the vast majority of their time ignoring them or demanding that the children behave in such a way that they're easier to ignore.

It's just one shopping trip, but it's one of many that build into a pattern. I see the same people every day, week, month and watch them build this pattern. It's just one hour, of one day, of a lifetime. But the days form an architecture. Brick by brick, everyone builds their lives, and it's amazing and humbling to notice the ones that live in stark, empty rooms that they circle in restlessly with little to do, and those that have tidy homes and tidy gardens where they find enjoyment in the art and order, and those that beat trails through jungles, and those that build villages, or huge cities with all that they do and create ....

We are all of us, every day, contributing to the work of a lifetime, a masterpiece. It's not always beautiful or awe-inspiring, but it is who we are. Some feel like they're forced, some choose what they do, but we all do it just by managing our days. I find that endlessly fascinating.

Soul in the Words

After, my pagan afterlife novel, is almost ready. I've had other projects take over my spare time recently, so that book has been set back by a couple of weeks, but it's close.

Or maybe I'll finish producing it this weekend. It all depends on how quickly the other projects come together. 

A long while ago now I posted on facebook that this book could have far-reaching repercussions in my life. I didn't want to go into details, which worried some people. The kind support warmed my heart. Whatever happens with After, it was and is my choice to publish it, and I'll live with the consequences, whether they're negative, positive or a mix of both at the same time. Chances are that the people who might object in a way that could make my life miserable won't ever read it. That won't necessarily keep them from passing judgement, I suppose, but unless they hear about it in some way, they shouldn't feel a need to.

I don't make a secret of my beliefs, but I don't talk about them much either, especially lately. When I was young, I think I spoke more about them because I wanted to share my experiences. Subconsciously I may have also been testing society to see where I fit in and how it would react as a whole. That openness helped me connect with other like-minded people, and I even spent a short time with a coven. I miss them ....

As I get older, the more private I become. It's not fear. I know where I fit in. I don't feel a need for everyone around me to know me well enough to share in the knowledge of my connection with the wider, spiritual world. And if my friends want to know, they can ask. (That's permission right there if any of you are curious but are shy or worried that you might be crossing a line.) As for the confidence ... I'm not. I'm absolutely confident about what I experienced first hand. I even believe most of what I've heard and read, though I now listen with a keen awareness of how experiences and beliefs can be rewritten in the person's own mind and heart to fit with what they expect and want.

Ultimately, it's that expectation and desire for my experiences and understanding of the physical-spiritual world to fit into something easy and comforting that has silenced me. The older I get, the more I realize that it's more important for me to learn something true and experience something real than to have a religion that almost-but-not-quite fits with what I believe. That much as I want to be part of a larger community, my religious experiences keep pushing me out into solitary expression and study.

I wrote After as a work of fiction, not as a religious text. There's a lot in there that's meant to be story, not parable. The book is about KJ, not me, and it's about her growth beyond the life that both nourished and confined her. My childhood and marriage were and are radically different from KJ's, though on paper we appear to share minor elements. I didn't write After as therapy. I don't need any. 

But I did want to write a work of fiction that had a pagan aesthetic closer to my own, rather than the more mainstream pagan culture, if there really is such a thing. Measuring against that bar, I succeeded. Today I would probably write a different book. But at the time that I wrote After, I wanted, maybe needed to reveal little pieces of my heart and I hid them away in the words on the pages of that book. There's no need to go looking for them. Chances are that if people go looking for them, unless they know me very well, they'll only find themselves.

I'd count myself most fortunate if they did find themselves. I couldn't ask for anything better than that.

Publishing Company News

Today I read about two individuals who are leaving traditional publishing houses to start up literary agencies.

I sincerely wish them both well and good luck with their ventures. Having said that, a thousand questions popped into my mind. These are things that should enter any writer's mind before they shop for a literary agent, so I'll go ahead and list a couple of them here. If you don't like the answers a given literary agency gives you, don't sign up with them. In fact, if they post their terms on their page and those terms don't make sense from the writer's point of view, I wouldn't contact them at all.

What percent? Historically, agents received 10% of the writer's paycheck from the publisher (both the advance and royalties.) This has crept up to 15% and stuck. Most folks would, perhaps rightly, contend that an agent will get them a bigger advance than they would on their own. But the royalties? For all time? Where is the justification for 15% there? Not arguing, just asking. What would be the added benefit of having an agent over, say, a literary contract lawyer, who actually fully and completely understands contract law from his client's perspective, not from the publisher's perspective? A literary contract lawyer will charge a one time fee, based on how much time and trouble it is for her/him. And then s/he's gone. If s/he charges $800 to vet a contract for you, it won't matter if you're negotiating a $5000 advance or a $750,000 advance. And then you get all the royalties from your work. Forever.

I have to admit, I did cringe a bit when I heard the news. One of the reasons I cringed is that I have heard many stories about agents and editors settling on a contract with a writer that was actually worse than the worst-terms boilerplate for the publisher. With an agent on your side, you wouldn't think that it would happen, but it does. Editors mainly edit. They don't practice law. Having an editor leave the editing business and go into agenting ... well, I have my doubts.

Next question:  Will they ask for rewrites before they're willing to send your work out? In this case, if the editor was very good at their job, I'm more comfortable with that than I would be with an agent whose history and education I have no clue about. Having said that, I'm wary of anyone who would take on a writer because of that writer's compelling writing who then turns around and asks for a major rewrite. Little stuff, oh yeah. Bring it on! If I change the character's name in the middle of the story, let's go ahead and fix that and save us both some embarrassment. But I don't want to go with an agent who is trying to groom me into becoming the sort of writer s/he believes will sell better (or who will write like s/he would like to write themselves.) That says that they see potential, but won't work with me until I'm better. I'd rather get better on my own, with my own learning process, than under the direction of someone who is supposed to be selling manuscripts to publishers, not reading and critiquing almost-there manuscripts for their stable of writers. Seriously. I've heard of agents bad-mouthing their authors to publishers, calling their work commercial dreck, smut, etc. If an agent doesn't love, really love, my work, I don't want to have them represent me. And if they're asking for extensive rewrites, especially with the idea to make it more commercial, they don't love my work. End of story.

Stuff to think about before signing on with an agent. There's lots more questions. I hope that writers who see two new literary agencies on the horizon don't start setting up their submission packages before they've settled these and other questions in their minds.

When the Coyotes Sing

Misread of the day: Urban Wine, for a second, looked like Urine Wine and I thought, ew, what?!

A long-haired, pure black (doesn't have any sun-faded brown areas even!) kitty has been dumped in our neighborhood. It's not feral. I can't get close to it, but it understands domesticated kitty concepts like food comes from houses. It's also been in our house (I think) eating from the kitty food bowl.

Here's another plea that will not reach the right ears. Please don't dump your kitties in the countryside! Yes, most of us will feed these animals but our own cats will fight with them, and if they get injured, there's no way to get them to the vet. Also because they're so skittish and scared, we can't take them inside at night and they will inevitably be eaten by coyotes.

After I noticed it around for a few days the kitty, which I believe is female, disappeared for a couple of weeks and I thought damn, I guess that's it. But now she's back. My son is calling her Oops for the moment.

The coyotes sing at every sunset very near our house. And often during the night they yip and cry while they tear apart and share whatever kills they've managed to snag. One of these times, it will be Oops.

Every morning now I wake up and wonder if Oops will come up to the deck to snatch a quick meal, or if we'll never see her again.

Sigh.

Long Grass

Lack of gardening continues unabated.

It's been wet, cold and rainy, so gardening amounts to walking through during a break in the rain so I can evaluate what's going on, and applying slug bait.

These are actually really important things to do. I have seedlings hanging out waiting for a spot to open up. If a zucchini is destroyed by slugs (happened) or if a tomato is broken off by wind (might happen today--wowza is the wind rockin' and rollin'!) I can replace them without having my garden set back. It might not be the same sort of plant (tomato it will be--in the case of the zucchini, I'm going to stick a cucumber in its place) but the space won't be empty. Which reminds me--those seedlings need to come inside today, not because it's too cold, but too windy for them.

Slug baiting right now is super important, with frequent re-applications needed. This is prime crawling, eating and breeding time for slugs, and newborn baby slugs are really hungry. They also have this nasty habit of eating their way down into the crown of a plant and destroying it beyond any hope of recovery without ever being exposed to future applications of slug bait or pesticides. So, best not to let them have the opportunity. Early and often, folks. Early and often.

BTW if you haven't pruned off spent peony heads, do that now. Don't take any leaves off. The more stem and leaf you leave on, the better. Next year's blooms will thank you for it, and you'll take some weight off of the plant so that spring storms aren't as likely to snap off a stem or twig and make you cry.

I guess there's stuff to do in the garden after all.

Waiting for the next break in the rain, while the grass grows longer and longer ....

It's that tender root time of year

I've got almost my whole garden planted. It's really hard to say what the growing season will look like, but so far it looks promising. I'm a little worried that the tomatoes aren't growing lots of new green yet. That's probably due to the temperatures. We've had some low lows (one night below 40 degrees, very chilly for tropicals) and it may have set the tomatoes back. Once they're set back, they don't like to get going again.

But, they're still alive.

Also, there's a lot going on with plants that we can't see, mainly, root development. It's easy to focus on the leaves. Why aren't my leaves bigger? Why isn't the plant taller and more full? What are all those yellow spots and purple patches? Oh noes, there are little holes in the leaves! But these things, though they may signal something like flea beetle damage, aren't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. As long as the plant has enough surface area on the leaves to get sugar to the roots which can then fuel the development of new healthy leaves, ultimately the plant can be okay. It's much harder for the plant to recover from bad stuff going on with the roots.

For best root health:

Drainage, drainage and drainage. Here in the Pac NW it's easy for plants to get cold and waterlogged from chilly spring rains.

Mulch. It brings good soil organisms closer to the surface where they'll help aerate and fertilize soil that's closest to those young seedlings whose roots don't go very deep. Also, it keeps competing weeds down and helps warm the soil from the previously mentioned shivery rains.

Don't go too crazy with pulling weeds, especially if you use tools. You may be inadvertently damaging your plant's roots. Especially when the plant is very young and vulnerable, it's better to snip weeds that are growing very close to your plant, and to gently rub out tiny seedlings rather than using a hand rake on them.

Happy gardening!

More Garden Geekery

Did something today I haven't done in a long time. I cut flowers for my table.

Also, I was very bad and bought a tree peony, Golden Experience. They say I can hybridize using the pollen from this plant. I'm not sure if the other peonies I have are able to do this, but hey, it's worth a try, right? I have two other tree peonies that I'd love love love to cross with this beautiful plant. And who knows? I might help create an incredible new peony. That would really be something. Of course I won't find out what the offspring will look like for ten years or more after planting the seeds ....

Which makes me want to play with roses, which have a similar seed-to-flower span.

Yes, it's a long time for payoff. But people who do this sort of stuff don't think like that. They don't think about payoff so much as love. I didn't raise my children for a payoff. There's no time at which point I'll feel like I've gotten something in return for my time and effort.

I can plant a seed, and help it grow. I can appreciate what it becomes. The pollen, seeds, plants--they do the actual work. I provide a nurturing environment and occasional guidance. That's it.

So, maybe if I remember, this year it'll be roses. Next year, peonies. It'll be a whole new adventure.

If you would like to give it a go, do some reading first to save yourself some trouble. First of all, not all blossoms have viable pollen and seed production capacity. Second, to control pollination, bag the blossoms before they open (careful to make sure there aren't any bugs first) and then mingle the pollens after the stamens after the flower has opened into full bloom. To prevent fungal issues do this only in dry weather and use paper bags. To figure out when the buds have opened into full bloom, mark buds on the same bush that are at the same stage as the ones you're using. Mark on the bag who the daddy is. And keep records someplace easy to find--on your computer is okay, but it's actually better to have a easy-to-find gardening book that you make entries into on a regular basis.

Of all the gardening things I do, it sounds easy-peasy compared to digging out new beds or weeding!

Baby Roots

Sorry about the long break between posts.

I came home yesterday from work with the intention to go working out. I just had to do one thing 'real quick' in the garden.

Two hours later I had my 'real quick' thing done. The pumpkin and squash starts that absolutely, positively had to go in the ground or else went in. There were several that probably won't make it, or will be so stunted that it wasn't worth starting them in advance.

The thing about squashes, pumpkins, cucumbers, zucchinis, melons, etc. is that they hate having their roots messed with, especially when they're wee. Retailers sell them at nurseries and grocery stores but honestly, I would save my money. Except, that we're in a short season area for them. Long season for just about everything else. It's just that for crops that really need hot weather to get going, we don't get that hot weather, not for long. So although my roses are in full bloom and happy, the tomatoes are still shivering.

If you must buy pumpkins, cucumbers, zucchinis, melons, etc. at the store and take them home to plant, this is what I'd do if I was doing as I say instead of as I do (which is plant my own in peat pots and then wait too long):

Don't buy any where the root is coming out the bottom. At all. Peat pots are better than the plastic.
Plant them ASAP, preferably as soon as you get them home.
When you do plant them:
Prepare your area very carefully first. Weed, dig around to make the dirt soft, and make a little hole that's almost exactly the right size. Just make the hole a bit deeper (1/2 inch to an inch, depending on the size of the starter pot.) Use the pot to make sure the hole is the right size. Stick it in the ground, gently compress the dirt around it so that the hole doesn't collapse, and pull the pot back out. Don't worry if it does collapse, you'll be fine if you made it deep enough that a little extra in the bottom won't matter. Get scissors and (very carefully!) cut an x in the bottom of the pot--

Unless it's a peat pot!

Just trim the peat pot (with scissors, don't tear because you might tear down to the roots) down to the soil level if there's a rim, which there usually is. Put some water in the bottom of the hole and then plant the peat pot. (Make a shallow well around the plant and make sure the whole peat pot is covered.)

If it's not a peat pot, proceed to cut from the x up onto the sides a little bit so that you have a guide. Set the pot in the hole you made, make sure again that it's deep enough, and add water. Then cut down the sides down to the lines you cut on the bottom. Gently, gradually remove the pot from the plant, cutting wherever necessary, filling in and gently compressing the dirt as you go so the roots are disturbed as little as possible. Make a shallow well so that water will tend to pool around the plant, but dirt doesn't drift toward the stem when you do water.

You're done!

Sadly I've been too busy to deal with my starts so about half of them had roots poking out the bottom. Sigh. But, I also planted seeds directly in the ground a few days ago. With a little luck, between the two I should have something to show for my trouble come autumn. I will say that although it's a lot of trouble, it's very worth it to grow your own vining broadleaf hot weather plants. Try using them as ornamentals, and even the heavy-fruited ones can climb, though I wouldn't let a pumpkin climb up enough that its fruit won't touch the ground or have some support when it develops past the 10" size.