Weight and Self-Image, Part 2

There's a lot of fantastic stuff in the comments in the last post. I'd like to continue thinking out loud in an actual post rather than writing vast blocks of text in the comments. I tried to be succinct, but I got carried away, so, here we go.

During a writing course, one of the things the instructors hammered home is the idea that most writers can't hear positive things about their work. Even when they do hear it, they often dismiss praise. I was taught in the class to write any praise I receive down and study that part of my writing *more* than the negative. The aim is to reproduce success rather than try to eliminate failure.

I try to extend this to the rest of my life, too. I try to hear praise like Rory gives, and see myself how he sees me. That way I keep fighting to 'stay in shape' or to work on physical goals that have some other payoff than a number, like to be able to run a certain distance, achieve balance in a yoga position or be able to stand on my hands. I think that's healthier than 'get in shape,' which doesn't work from a premise that I'm okay where I'm at too. I also try to avoid aiming for a certain number of pounds (up or down, thank you Regolith for reminding me that some people think they're too thin), or to 'look good in a bikini' – I have to repeat over and over that Rory likes the way I look in a bikini right now, rather than listen to the self-revulsion of the thought of myself in a bikini (or LBD, or whatever.) And if he didn't like the way I looked in a bikini, why in the world would I strive to try to look good in one? As if that would make him love me more ....

I'm sure he'd be pleased if I had the flexibility of a gymnast and less excess in certain areas, but he's not unhappy with where I'm at right this second, either. I don't have to do a damned thing if I don't want to, and that places the things I do in the arena of my choice for my own purposes, rather than trying to satisfy some idea of what I think he might want me to look like instead of the way I look right now. My DH has the power to make me feel overweight, underweight, ugly, old ... and he has more power in my mind than society. He's not just my friend and lover and husband, but an ally in my mind when I battle self-image monsters.

If I remember to listen to his loving words, hear them, and believe them.

If he wasn't an ally, well, why would I listen to him? But that's a whole 'nother post about relationships.

It's still there, of course, the self-talk that emphasizes the negative. And it's tricky. Working from this paradigm seems to say, be happy with yourself the way you are, The End, and that's not a concept anyone will buy, for sensible reasons. We don't want to lose our drive to constantly learn, improve, to grow. If we're satisfied with the way everything is, from the state of the housekeeping to the mechanical soundness of our vehicles, what's going to motivate us to get off the couch?

But that's not what being happy with yourself actually does. Time moves on. We can be happy with the mechanical soundness of a vehicle, but it's going to need an oil change in X number of miles, and tires need to be rotated or replaced entirely, and inevitably there will be a crack in the windshield bad enough that a new windshield will be required, etc. I can love my car as it is, but I still need to take care of it.

I love my car, therefore I take care of it. If I'm okay (see, I can't even say if I love myself–ugh) with myself, that doesn't mean I stop doing all the things I always do. Nor does it mean I'll lose all motivation to try new things, or to get better. I will paint that old pick up truck, not because I don't love it the way it is (and I really do! Scratches and all!) but because I do love it. I want to play with it. I want to express my love for my truck by turning it into an art project, and of course I want to maintain it too so that it runs as long as possible. Would I fuss with the truck if I didn't love it? Of course not. I would let it languish or ignore it.

So if I didn't love myself, would I be motivated to take good care of myself? Would I only take care of myself because I'm supposed to, or because there's a tiny hope that if I take care of myself maybe in some distant future I'll be lovable? That's working from a place of pain and despair. That's less motivation, not more. And some people, because they don't love themselves, let themselves die or even speed their deaths.

Self-love also seems to mean vanity, arrogance, hubris, and other nasty things that we can safely agree are bad. I love Steve Barnes' approach, though I have to say this is my read on it and may not be his actual words or thoughts. We've known each other a few years, so what he's written and taught are tangled up with my own thoughts. Anyway, one of the lessons I've learned from Steve on this subject strips away all the bullshit, negative, backward-thinking societally-reinforced garbage we allow to rot in our minds.

Most people want to nurture children, love their friends, etc. If you saw yourself as a child, would you want to protect that child? If your friend was in pain, would you want to comfort your friend? If your favorite cousin needed help to survive, would you give it? So, assuming you say yes to these things, and assuming you consider this a positive aspect of yourself, can you see your self as your own child, your own friend, your own favorite cousin who you love? Sometimes I picture myself as a little girl and give her a big hug and tell her I haven't forgotten her, and that I love her. That's easier for me and reaches deeper than looking in the mirror. In the mirror, the whole world seems to see my flaws along with me through my own eyes. But when I picture my child self, the little blond, fragile, creative, loving, sensitive, horse-adoring, kitten-nurturing non-stop reader who loved playing by the water and building miniature architectural wonders with child-made ponds and rivers, I adore her with all my being and if the world wanted to hurt her I would destroy the world to save her.

Is it a trick of the mind? I don't think so. Looking back, there are things that hurt so bad and I wish I could go back and tell her that she's loved. So I do. I go back and hold her and tell her it's all right, I'm there for her. I'm her friend and ally, her mother and sister, her dragon if need be to fight her monsters and turn them into bits of charcoal. I don't want her to be so sheltered that she never grows up and never becomes strong, but by the blessed world she deserves to know she's loved and that she's not alone!

It's harder, maybe too hard, to extend these feelings to my grown self. I don't know if there's value in trying, when there's so much power in embracing the child within and honoring her. It's hard to see myself as Rory sees me, but I don't know if there's value in that either, when there's so much strength and joy in not just hearing the words, but accepting his love.

So that's where I'm at. By hearing and accepting praise, we let ourselves be loved, and can love ourselves. If we love ourselves, we're more likely to take care of ourselves, nurture ourselves, and grow. We can't always be stronger, or wiser, or more beautiful. Disease, age, genetics and all kinds of other stuff stand in the way. But the only thing that stands in the way of accepting love, loving ourselves and taking the best care of ourselves that we can is ourselves. I see nothing to be gained with self-loathing, and everything to be gained by being a friend to myself and help myself achieve my goals.

Maybe someday it'll be easier to do that. Even now, after all I've written and knowing it's true, it's hard to accept that liking myself isn't narcissistic horror. And maybe that's a check-and-balance within ourselves, to keep from become self-centered monsters that don't give a crud about anyone or anything else. But negativity and self-doubt should be just that, a thing to help keep balance, not the only thing in our minds. Ever.

Weight and Self-Image

I've been putting off writing about this for a long time, because I don't like to write about my more unattractive personality traits, no matter how human and normal they might be. But someone's gotta do it, damn it. If no one ever wrote about unpleasant things, nothing real would ever get said. In part I've been inspired by The Divided Mind by John E. Sarno, M.D., in particular a part where he talked about one of his own episodes with psychosomatic illness. He developed symptoms while on vacation with his wife (you'll have to read the book to find out what kind) and he had to admit that he resented taking her on vacation before the symptoms would let up. As he said in his book, this wasn't a very nice thing to have to admit, and he didn't like that about himself at all. It made him feel like a horrible person. That's the awesome and scary power of the unconscious. Sometimes it's easier on our egos to feel physically ill or cripple ourselves than admit that part of us is whiny and selfish, or whatever else might be going on. When I'm done with this book I'm going to check out some of his other ones. They sound fascinating.

Anyway, I've been fighting with my weight most of my life, even when I was skinny. I just didn't know I was skinny at the time. That tells me that I don't see myself very clearly. It makes it extremely difficult to know where I'm at. I can't look in the mirror and say hey, I'm huge or hey, I'm looking pretty good right now. I have a very athletic body and so I weigh a lot more than other people my height. Although I use the scales, it's better for me to use a tape measure around my waist and my pant size to gauge where I'm at. So, at 5'6", I'm about 175 pounds (right now less, two weeks ago I was a bit over) and wear a size 14. I know of very few women who are my height and weight that weigh as much as I do. So, there's the visual distortion, there's the weight wackiness (I feel ponderous whenever I look at the number on the scale), my intellectual goals which want me to be at a healthy weight where I can do all the stuff I like to do without hurting myself, my rational goal of maximizing my longevity and quality of life, and my not-very-subconscious goal of looking great and feminine and sleek (sleek's not going to happen with my shoulders. Just sayin'.)

Most of the time I'm okay with my size, and I'm strong and I have decent endurance though more cardio training is always good. I haven't done that in a long time now. Months.

Here's the ugly part, the things I don't like to admit.

Somewhat big doesn't trigger this–I grew up with a family where some members were perpetually round and I have some wonderful friends who are round that I consider healthy. But I'll see someone really big and the wow, how the hells, why the hells start going around in my head. I'm instantly ashamed of myself. And then I often imagine what it would be like to be that big, and to see that in other people's eyes every time they look at me, and I think, crap, I might never leave the house.

I have days when I want to do nothing but sweat so I don't have to face the scale at a given weight. I get really twitchy when I start to approach my pregnant weight. At the 175 mark I'm within five pounds of that. Maybe ten, if I'm generous with myself. 180 is the number in my head, but I think I went over that slightly when I was pregnant.

Pregnant. I'm almost as heavy as I was when I was pregnant with my first born child, with no child in my body. That slays my hopes and dreams and desires to be that super-fit grandma I might become someday if I'm lucky, the one who charges up and down mountainsides and goes skiing and fishing and all the things my mom does and other older women I admire do.

And now that I've said those things about my weight, I'm scared that someone I love and care about will think damn, if Kami thinks that's heavy, what does she think of me? I fear I'll hurt someone who has the same or worse self-image problems that I do, or that they'll hate me for thinking these things when they believe that I've got it good compared to them or whatever, and I start to make myself crazy and fearful.

So add to this mix of emotions that make me loathe myself, I have people I love that can't do all those things and I see them as beautiful and strong. One of them is very ill and believes they look fat. They don't. In my eyes, that person is thinner than I am. And that person probably is. I bet if we adjust for height and everything, that person is slimmer than I am. But that person doesn't see themselves that way, because that person's self-image is all messed up. Just like mine.

So I see someone super-heavy by my internal scale, and I try not to stare and try not to think the awful thoughts that I always do about how someone can 'let themselves go' and I think about myself and think, like I have room to talk, I have rolls like the Michelin Man, (but hey, my arms are totally like that, so, bonus!) and I go into a death spiral of shame and self-loathing and pity for the other person and I have this desire to try to help and encourage them. How awful is that, on top of everything else.

I'm ashamed to admit that I have the nerve to want to encourage and help someone who doesn't know me and would find it incredibly intrusive and arrogant and horrible to have a stranger try to be supportive about something so personal, when they have absolutely no knowledge about what I've done and been doing or not doing about my weight. I have my decisions to make and no one can make them for me. Our friends can keep us going, but a stranger has no business butting in. Just because someone is a certain size, or has twins, or moves with the aid of a wheelchair or whatever does not make them public property to ooo and aahh and approach with praise or sympathy or whatever. And yet people do this. And I think it.

Is social pressure to change our bodies all bad? I don't think so. Some social pressure is good. Social pressure reminds us to not be jerks, and helps motivate some of our other better natures including picking up trash, volunteering, etc. It's not the entirety of a given behavior (at least I don't think that people do everything just to please others and fit in) but it can be a valuable piece of a motivational spectrum to help get me off my butt. But some social pressure motivates people to distort their natural beauty, to carve up their faces and bodies until they don't look like themselves anymore, or to become housebound because they can't bear the stares. And some of that social pressure is entirely imaginary, about what I think people see when they look at me, versus what they really see. Some of that social pressure is distorted by a culture that is itself distorted (think the scary-thin models) and some social pressure is motivated by cruelty and our less-attractive selves. I don't like that part of me that stares at huge people, but others revel in it, laugh, make awful comments, and use weight as license to demean people and think less of them. I'm not sure that my desire to help overweight people become healthier is any better than the people that make fun of them. It's just as intrusive, but in the opposite direction.

There's nowhere I can take this. Society is what it is, I am who I am, and people are who they are. I just wanted to write about this because I'm a talker and a writer and I feel compelled to get this stuff out of my head and into the light. I think it's important to poke at this stuff, figure it out, and then do something positive if at all possible. I don't expect to change the world, or make people be nicer to each other. But maybe I can start a dialogue (or monologue.) This stuff has all been discussed before by others, but maybe not by all my readers, so, here you go. You've got thoughts in your head. What are you going to do with your thoughts, if anything? They're yours to keep, or to share, whatever you want or dare to do. If they're not what you want them to be and you're willing to fight to change them, I'll be here, silently cheering you on. I wouldn't dare actually cheer you on unless you asked me to, because ... well, you've read this far, so you know.

I'm scared to butt in where I'm not wanted.

I almost deleted this post. I don't know what it means that I didn't, and I don't know what it means that I put it up despite my qualms. I just hope that getting the thoughts out of my head will help someone or something someday.

Public Face: Who's it all about?

Recently I spend some time investigating some writers I'd never heard of for a friend who is handling the programming for a convention. Two websites and a few blogs later, I noticed a pattern of not-goodness. I'm keeping this super-generic because I don't want anyone assuming (wrongly or otherwise) that it's them. I don't want anyone to go hunting for a rock to crawl under. Nor would it be any fun if people assume I'm talking about them and get all defensive and decide that they're an exception for whatever reason.  I just want to offer some advice that hopefully everyone can use.

There are a lot of writers who blog about writing out there. Writers write, and writers obsess about how to write, when to write, why to write, who or what to write about, what music to write to, where to write, etc. I went in with that knowledge and expected that a writer's blog will involve writing on some level. So that's fine. It's natural for writers to obsess about writing on their blogs.

But.

Assuming that a writer blogs because they want to connect with their audience, it seems to me that it might be a good idea to make the blog about the audience. Impart useful information, write teasers, talk about cats [because the interwebs were created for cute cat pictures, instant information (right or wrong might not matter as much as getting it right away) and porn, as we all know] or whatevs. Get excited about the latest book coming out, or report on the awesome that's the convention, book signing, movie that came out, fab new writing haunt, etc. But I would suggest avoiding what these authors did, which was make it all about themselves. I don't mean, don't make it personal. Personal is fine. But there's a difference between sharing and narcissism. These websites seemed very narcissistic to me.

Most readers tolerate promotion so that they can find out the latest about the writer's new work. There's the work, which readers like to read about so they can snag the latest info about the story they love, and there's the author, who is the respected creator but not the focus of the reader's interest.

The posts had nothing to do with me as an interested party who wanted to know more about the author's work, and the author themselves. I didn't care about how hard it was to write the synopsis for the person's latest work, though I've been there and it does suck. Discussing an imagined slight of The Author's craft by some unwashed, unworthy fellow author or a critical reader or whoever–I wanted to bounce off the site but I was doing research, so I reluctantly read on. I do enjoy reading about stuff like that sometimes, but usually only if the author is a celebrity and is misbehaving. In other words, I read about that at their expense, usually through a third party. (See the Anne Rice example coming up shortly.) I also like to hear about famous authors being awesome, but again, through a third party.

I did actually want to know about the authors. And I found out plenty, though probably  not what the author intended. Reading between the lines, the authors sounded more interested in themselves as authors than they were their own work, or anything else going on in the world for that matter. They may be perfectly fine writers, but I'll never know because their web presence didn't inspire confidence in their writing. I'd expect that their books are in keeping with the level of self-awareness and insight into the wider world expressed in their blogs. Which is to say, they seemed to be using really tiny windows to look out at the world, and there were a lot of mirrors outside those windows.

I think an author-focused blog can work very well. Jay Lake famously blogs about his cancer journey. In fact, he's stated that he has more hits on his blog from others wanting information about his battle with cancer than his books. I think it's valuable to study how Jay talks about his cancer and how people respond, especially others who are facing cancer or have family with cancer. The information he gives helps people feel less alone, and prepares them for the things they'll have to face and decisions they'll have to make. This is valuable (and generous, and courageous.) I've also enjoyed author blogs when the authors discuss their trips to foreign countries, antics with their pets (again with the cats!) and stuff they've learned through research.

Contrast that to talking about how mean someone was when they offered unsolicited criticism of the author's work. If there was some insight, humor, something to entertain me, as a fellow crazy writing person I might have felt a connection. I've certainly had my share of weird, cruel and off-putting critiques. But as a reader, a potential buyer of the author's books, those posts turned me off more than anything. And, sadly, even as a writer sympathetic to the plight of other writers, my main reaction was to wonder if the author had a thick enough skin to survive in the business. That, and I had a flashback to Anne Rice's reaction to a bad review on Amazon. I still get a chuckle out of that. As entertained as I was by that whole debacle, it didn't endear me to Anne Rice, no matter how much I can sympathize with how hard it can be to deal with a bad review. She looked terribly unprofessional.

And these websites and blogs were just that. Unprofessional. It's not about the author. It's about the work.

And cute pictures of cats.

The Divided Mind by J. Sarno

My DH and I are going to be at Norwescon 37. I hope we'll see a bunch of you there!

For once, I'm not overbooked. I'll have plenty of time to visit with folks. I expect I'll be spending a lot of time at the NIWA (Northwest Independent Writer's Association) table and possibly some time at barcon. I'm a bit of a foodie so if anyone has a suggestion for fantastic food around the SeaTac area, let me know.

Otherwise I'm assuming that I'm going to relax, do some writing, go to some panels, periodically sit in a hot tub, do some reading, and visit with friends.

Speaking of reading, I'm currently being blown away by "The Divided Mind" by John E. Sarno (which looks like Samo in the current font I'm seeing it ... see the whining in my last post for more rant-astastic information on this topic.) It explains a lot about the state of the physical and emotional health of, well, pretty much everyone in the western world right now. I firmly believe that not enough people get help for their mental and emotional problems and I think that this is in part because there's not a lot of quality care available, or maybe people just have trouble finding it or funding it.

I think a good indicator of whether or not a mental health specialist is worth the research, referral (if necessary,) time and expense is if they make things better within a finite period of time. And that may be what's going on with the majority of cases, but the public perception, or at least my perception and I don't think I'm alone, is that it takes years to work out your problems with your upbringing, and that puts the expense both in funding and time out of reach of just about everyone I know. What I like about this book is that the author addresses a problem and puts it in perspective. He then lays out a blueprint for how to deal with this problem, and what it's going to take. If all is as he presents it, then his methods are easily accessible, take a relatively short period of time to bring relief, and isn't going to rob you and your family of valuable resources forever. If the average person believed that this was what they could expect from a mental health program, I think most of them would sign up.

If. If they knew that the problems they're experiencing are mental rather than physical, and it seems that many of the problems we're facing, including lower back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, dare I suggest planar fasciitis, GERD, etc. may in fact be caused by a rather insidious mechanism triggered by the subconscious. It's actually been recorded and studied for over a hundred years. And yet psychosomatic illness is what happens to the other guy, or to the hypochondriac, not to, well, everyone. Really. It's, like, normal to have psychosomatic stuff going on. I should have figured this out. I had horrible dizzy spells that stopped me from going to school. No cause was ever found. And when I stopped going to school and we finished moving and things settled down, so did my dizzy spells.

Normal. It's not dumb, or a deficiency. It's a coping mechanism. And like a lot of coping mechanisms, sometimes it's worse than what it's trying to help us cope with or get through.

This book makes me happy. It's hard for me to contain my enthusiasm and delight. I feel I need to, though. I can't foist this on people who I think might need it. I can't wish stigmas away. If I could, then yes, I could go to people and say, oh, oh, you have to borrow this book from me and read it right away because it might help you! and they won't feel like I've just slapped them in the face and called them crazy and dumb and on top of it intruded into their private life.

Sometimes social stuff makes me crazy. Sometimes I really want to open my brain to someone else and let them see that all the things they might imagine that I believe about them isn't true. Sometimes I wish I could turn off the feeling that people assume things about me, because chances are they're thinking about the latest awesome You Tube video and don't give a crap about what I think about them. All that can help us be nice to each other and polite and kind and considerate, but it also can be an excuse to not say what we really want to say and it keeps us from telling the truth. Not the mean truth, but the scary truth, the real truth, the truth that exposes ourselves as much as it exposes the person we're speaking to.

Anyway, I'm only halfway through the book, but so far, I can definitely recommend it. The style is repetitive, but I suspect that's because the author is accustomed to disbelief and denial. Be prepared to be amazed.

Dear Font Designer ....

I spend several hours a month looking at fonts that I might want to acquire for my business. I'm pretty choosy. It's not just a matter of expense. I budget for fonts that will set me back over a hundred dollars and purchase them shortly before I need them (or sooner if they go on sale.) So if price is (usually) no object, what's getting in my way?

When I'm roughing the design for book covers and interiors I don't always have a specific thing in mind, so browsing through fonts helps me focus and suggests ideas. This means that your font design might suggest a concept that will result in my buying and using your font on my next project. I don't want to limit your creativity. Your vision and passion are an inspiration to me, and I'm always eager to look at your latest font.

Having said that, I'm often frustrated by some typographic tropes and give lots of gorgeous fonts a fast pass because of problems that come up when I'm trying to create a cover. Here are some very, very common problems that keep me from buying otherwise wonderful fonts:

Letters that look similar to other letters:  Usually, font designers are good about making certain that their letters look different from each other. They do a less-consistent job of making letters look uniquely like themselves in the grand scheme of all of typography. I see S letters that look a lot like a fancy P, and lowercase L letters that look like a lowercase T. A slanted, narrow, lowercase E when placed next to a F, T, or other letter with an overhanging element can be mistaken for an i with the dot obliterated. Here's the thing. When you have the entire font or a big block of text to look at, these visual misinterpretations by the human eye are rare because the context of all the letters helps our wonderful pattern-recognizing brain tell the letters apart. But if the title of my book is FiSh, which must stand alone on that book cover, it might look like FePh, or Tilk, or any other number of weird things depending on the font's idiosyncrasies. Those idiosyncrasies can have strong artistic and traditional foundations, but tradition doesn't help me a darned bit when I'm trying to make the reader understand that the book's title is FiSh. I recently saw this illustrated painfully in an otherwise beautiful poster where STRANGER seemed to read SIRANGER. For real. I even had a whole phrase to help me interpret the typography and I still had to take about fifteen seconds to see it. This is mainly a problem in swash and cursive designs, but I've seen it in decorative serif fonts as well.

Which leads me to letters that run into each other in unhelpful ways or that are spaced poorly, aka kerning and white-spacing: I think it's fair to say that all typographers, except perhaps novices working in a vacuum, address kerning and negative space to the best of their ability. For titling, I can adjust kerning to a certain extent and I'll be fine. Having said that, there's really nothing I can do with an r and n that combine into a figure that looks like an m but that, when I adjust the kerning, have awkward negative space around them so that they look ugly. The most common problem I run into? The capital letter M whose legs have such an extreme lean to them that even when the following letter's stem is touching them, the spacing still looks far too wide, white and awkward. The abbreviation Mr. and MA suffer in particular, and neither of those are an uncommon letter pairing. I find it maddening that this happens so often. All by itself, I have to say, the broad M letters look quite nice, but letters don't usually live in a vacuum. I rejected a huge number of otherwise wonderful fonts for the title job for MASKS because the combined slants for the M and A created a huge amount of white space that was not carried through to the rest of the title, even when I adjusted the kerning for SKS. As for body text, I'm not going to go through a whole book checking to see if rn looks like an m, so please, play safely out there, typographers.

Asian-inspired brush scripts that have letters that are too rough and have truncated parts meant to serve as absence of brush or a 'natural' brush look but end up looking unfinished and awkward:  Some of my clients are martial arts writers and would love to have a font that had the elegance and sophistication of good Asian-inspired brush calligraphy. Me too! The most common problem with the fonts I've looked at are incomplete letters. (The capital letter T in particular seems to always have a broken stem.) The second main issue is an almost random baseline and x height. I appreciate a certain looseness to the baseline and an overall feeling of freedom, but more often than not the baseline looks like someone tried to make a font that looked like Chinese or Japanese writing which is artful and gorgeous, but doesn't translate well into roman letters (roman letters are what most American and English readers think of as 'normal'). There's little respect for the roman letters in their own right and even less respect for the 'normal' baseline aesthetics for roman letters. Roman letters written as if they're set on a vertical rather than horizontal line and with a huge variation in ascender, descender and x height invariably looks sloppy, no matter how lovely the individual letters might be. More griping about baseline: capital letters are used to start the word more often than not, right? How am I supposed to ground my baseline with a broken stem? Sadly, such fonts that I attempt to use on a book cover end up looking like a Japanese or Chinese restaurant menu rather than a professional book design. I like that look ... on a menu ... but I'm trying to sell a book here, not food, and more often than not I need a formal mood. Artistic, good. All over the place, bad. Very short book titles can work using a rough font provided that the individual letters in the title harmonize well, but unfortunately, often they don't. Longer titles result in very poor results. I often have the feeling that the typographer is speaking with an awkward accent rather than working with a true understanding of the language of brush calligraphy. It would be very, very nice if there were alternates, btw, so that commonly used letters that repeat in words: e, s, t, o, a, r, etc. (and especially letters that are doubled) can have an alternate to make the title look hand-written. It would also be excellent if all the capital letters had alternates so that it's easier to ground that all-important baseline with something that will enhance the rest of title. I suspect that if I want a book title with Asian-inspired typography, my best bet will be to contact a brush calligrapher and commission a custom piece. Otherwise, I'll have to stick with calligraphic fonts with no brush-style elements but which have Asian architectural influences. There are some fine Asian-influenced brush fonts out there, but sadly they are very rare.

That about covers it for now. Thanks for reading!

Much To Do About Everything

Ack! It's been almost a month!

I've been using a list to keep track of things I want to accomplish. It's been working great, except that I've begun to realize just how much stuff I've got to do. That can be overwhelming. I'm more productive, but I'm also feeling constant pressure to get my list worked down so that I can have some leisure time without feeling guilty. I suppose I could have leisure time scheduled on my list as well ....

Which reminds me about something Steven Barnes teaches. Several times a day, take a few minutes (I try to do two or three minutes but sometimes I only do 30 seconds) to just breathe. Focus on your breath, make sure the breaths are deep and even and calming. Try to put everything else out of your mind. I wouldn't recommend doing this while you're driving. The point is not to multi-task and belly breathe while you're doing something else. The point is to take a mental break.

I've been doing this and it really helps. For the fifteen minutes total it takes out of my day, it gives me back a restfulness that's worth more than a nap of twice that length, and without the guilt of 'lost time' or the grogginess. Plus, on days when I don't do it or just do a couple of cheater 30 second sessions, I notice I'm less productive. If I don't give my brain the total break-and-breathe treatment, my brain takes it anyway, usually in the form of playing Bejeweled for a far longer period than I would have taken with the breathing. Besides, the breathing focuses me and clears my head. Playing mindless games on my computer A. keeps me at the computer, so it's not a real break and B. with my brain occupied the whole time, I don't get any silent, non-visual, black time.

What's black time? I don't honestly know what goes on. But when I breathe deeply, with my eyes closed, and deliberately don't think about anything, ideas start to pop in my head. Maybe I connect with my subconscious. I'm not sure. I just know that I come out of black time with workable stuff to do, whereas when I'm done playing a round of computer games, I have to spend time getting back into the working groove.

Weirdly (or maybe not) watching really good movies, reading good books, or tuning into a well-written tv series puts my brain into a great creative space too. I think it puts me into a playful mood. Not just any playful mood, either. Maybe my brain sees people at play and develops a desire to play Let's Pretend too. It's not as good as black time, but it's still better than playing computer games. The art equivalent of watching good movies is visiting Inspiration Hut or surfing Pinterest. I also enjoy paging through design and art books.

There's a big difference between how I view work and inspiration now and how I approached it as a kid. As a kid, inspiration was something that just happened, and I had a tendency to either do nothing until an idea whacked me in the back of the head, or I sat down and tried to think hard, and then I'd go with whatever came first that didn't seem lame. Now it feels less random. It's still mysterious, but I know if I breathe deeply, and then start to doodle, or do this, or do that, the thing that I'll need will appear and I can start to shape the vision into reality. It's nice to get excited and feel inspired, but I don't have to wait for that feeling to arise first. That feeling will come if I head in the right direction. I might be uncertain when I start on something, but if it's a good idea, guaranteed I'll be sucked into the project within a few minutes and the time will just fly on by. When I'm there, I don't care how much work I have to do. When I'm there, work feels like a blessing, and I want to do it all.

Another Helpful Hint: Don't hurt yourself

My posts about retail life and small acre farming are my most popular subjects, so today I thought I'd treat you all to one of the more important safety tips when working in a farm environment.

Don't clamp the gate's Y latch on your finger.

I know, I know, everyone does it, but it's not safe. Not safe at all. We're all especially prone to do it when the wind is blowing and our fingers are numb and the gate doesn't want to shut because there's a ton of snow in the way. I pulled hard on the top part of the gate while I braced against the pole on which the Y latch would clamp onto. My finger was in the way. And in the thoughtless way that all folks do these things, I pushed the latch down first chance I got anyway.

It took off a chunk of skin, which hurts, as these things tend to do, but the thing I seemed to have forgotten about (as one does when working around a farm) is that when metal and metal are forced together by extreme external pressure, any bone and flesh that gets in the way squishes.

Fortunately it only bent the joint backward rather than breaking bone or snapping tendon. I talked to the gate for a little while, and then I squeezed my finger nicely for a while, and I admired the blood dripping onto the snow. That's always pretty. And then I went home, talking to no one in particular because I'm quite the Chatty Cathy when the mood strikes me.

So, the point is, no matter how tempting it might be to go the easy route, remember, don't close Y latches (or any other sorts of latches) onto one's own fingers even when you're in a rush or you don't want to be bothered with doing it right. I got off easy. Next time, I might cry.

And that would be bad. That's, like embarrassing. Way worse than pain.

Just don't do it. Be safe. And stay warm!

Brownie Love

While the wind mutters and the snow continues to drift into amazing sculptures ...

I bake.

Here's the thing about brownies. You mustn't overcook them. They're not cake. They're meant to be gooey. Also, although it's possible to add too many chocolate chips, I've yet to see it happen in my kitchen. Lastly, to bake in cast iron is divine.

Assuming you're cooking with real ingredients and/or have a high-quality mix, they shouldn't stick to cast iron. The directions on the extremely yummy Dassant chocolate chip brownies (they taste like homemade because they have awesome ingredients–for real, read the label!) call for parchment paper and greasing the pan. Ha! I lift my chin in disdain at your parchment paper!

Preheat the oven with your super-awesome 8" round cast iron pan in the oven. Mix the brownies according to the recipe. Add chocolate chips, or butterscotch chips, or white chocolate chips, if desired. When the oven is preheated, remove the cast iron pan and carefully pour (or rather scrape and shovel) the brownie mix into the hot pan. The sides will rise much more than the center. Don't be alarmed. It will still tasted good. Check the brownies earlier than the directions say, as the hot pan may cook them faster than the directions state. When the center no longer wiggles like jello and a toothpick inserted comes out only slightly goopy with mix (most likely it's melted chocolate chips anyway), remove from the oven and allow to cool for as long as you can stand it.

Ice cream is not amiss in such situations.

This is how your pan should look when you remove the still-warm brownies:

Notice the lack of brownie stuck to the pan

You may notice that the brownie in the bottom of the frame has some crust peeled off. It had risen to a height too great to abide, so I ate it.

Should the brownies for some reason stick a bit to the pan, run the pan under hot water. The residue should slough right off.

Cast iron is amazing. Love your cast iron pans, and they'll love you right back.

Brrrr

Like a lot of people, we're in the teens (F) with snow coming down. It's a good day for hot brandy and writing with a dog curled up close by. Not so good for going out and covering roses that should have been covered all along (oops) but my DH and I did that too.

This is how mean I am. I make my DH smoke outside, even in this weather.

I hope everyone is warm and safe and well-fed. Keep your pets close, and don't forget ... in about ten days you can start some veggies from seed, provided that you have a plant light combined with a sunny window or sliding door area (the combination really helps) and that you're willing to pot your plants up at least twice. Herbs, tomatoes, eggplants and peppers are all worthwhile starting right now. And if you like hanging baskets, if you start them in March they should be huge by the time it's warm enough to put them outside! Just remember about that light requirement. They need a lot of light, and a good spectrum. I like using 4' aquarium lights in a shop fixture next to a window. I have my lights on a timer. Right now they're over my orange trees. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I start my veggies, aside from make my annual mess when I rearrange everything.

Also next month, if you took your fuschias and geraniums into the garage, find a spot to hang them in the house where they'll get some light, start watering them, and prune them. The warmth, moisture and light will stimulate growth, and they should be in peak form by Mother's Day.

Weird things Kamis do

Kamis are notorious for doing weird things.

This morning, this Kami got up at 6am so she could take down the hummingbird feeder (which she forgot to take in last night), thaw it, and fill it with fresh, warm nectar. She was very happy when the hummingbird showed up about an hour later to tank up.

Then she decided to take a look at her African violet seed pod. It was ripe! She danced a little happy dance, picked it, and then took a picture of it. This is what they look like:

African violet seed pod

 She's really looking forward to planting the seeds and raising them up to be new african violets. She has a bunch. This one was probably fertilized by a fly. Since then, she's hand-fertilized several other blooms, and once again her plants are pregnant. It takes months for the pods to develop and ripen.

This may not seem all that weird until you realize that this Kami already has lots and lots of African violets. Yet she wants to make more. She will probably have to start giving some away.

Kamis have also been known to go out in their robe and slippers into the snow to take pictures of their cats:

Wizard in the snow with cute paw prints

Kamis also take delight when their chickens do weird things, like lay miniature eggs:

Tiny chicken egg, laid 2/2/2014

They'll even take pictures of said weird eggs early in the morning for a blog post. It's a good thing when Kamis have others, especially Rorys, take care of them because they may be too silly and weird to survive on their own.

Eggses! And cooking eggs in cast iron

Our new chickens are laying! As you can see, the eggs are a nice blue-green color. They're slightly smaller than the eggs Beatrice and Sophie lay, but they're just as yummy and the yolks are exactly the same size. Three of them make the perfect omelette.

I now have a favorite egg dish that I make most mornings for breakfast:

3 eggs
1 tbsp oil
pat of butter
1 mushroom
1 section of green pepper, chopped
1 thin slice of onion, chopped
1/4 celery stalk, finely chopped
1/2 of a roma tomato, chopped
1/2 cup of mixed cheeses (I like smoked gouda and cheddar)
salt & spices (I like salt, pepper, dill, and a tiny bit of curry)
bacon blue cheese dressing by Lighthouse or your favorite creamy dressing
1 tortilla (preferably the princess-y kinds like the blue corn flaxseed by Mission)
Optional: guacamole or chopped avocado, chopped lettuce, sliced olives

Heat a cast iron pan on medium heat. Warm the tortilla and set it aside on a warm plate covered with a paper towel. Add the oil to the pan and sauté the mushrooms, green pepper, celery and onion until the onions are transparent. If you like, you can lightly salt the veggies. While the veggies are cooking, beat the eggs with the seasonings. Add the butter to the pan. When the butter is melted, pour in the eggs and turn the heat down. Let them cook for a bit and then scramble. When the eggs have mostly cooked through, add the tomatoes and the cheese. Heat to desired consistency. If you like melted cheese but don't like browned eggs, you can cover the pan. The tomatoes and cheese will heat through very quickly. Dress the tortilla with bacon blue cheese dressing. Add optional ingredients to the tortilla. Roll the eggs into the tortilla and enjoy!

Because time is often short in the mornings, when I want this for breakfast I chop the ingredients on the evening before, usually when I'm making salad. The mushrooms, peppers, celery and onion go in one snack-sized ziplock bag, the tomatoes (sometimes salted and with a splash of balsamic vinegar if they're not very ripe) in another, and the lettuce and olives in a third bag. It'll keep for a couple of days so you can make more than one morning's ingredients at once. We usually keep grated cheese on hand, as we have two sets of the fabulous cheese grater/grated cheese storage plastic combo sold at IKEA. It allows us to create custom blends of grated cheese that we use on salads, eggs and sandwiches.

It's a pretty rich breakfast burrito, but the benefits of having mostly-fresh ingredients and cooking a high-protein meal from scratch outweigh the fat and cholesterol contents. It seems like the more home-cooked meals made from scratch I eat, even if they're classic bad-for-you items, the better I feel, and the more pre-processed, factory-made meals I eat, the worse I feel. I also seem to gain weight when I eat ready-made meals as opposed to scratch, home-made meals, even though the calorie content is probably higher with the scratch meal.

By the way, cast iron will act like a non-stick pan if you let it do its thing. I preheat the pan for a reason, add the oil and the butter at those times for a reason, and let the eggs cook a bit before I mess with them all for the same reason. The eggs won't stick (much) to the pan if you keep that oil hot and don't scrape too much. Using a wooden or bamboo spoon helps. When you're done cooking, clean the cast iron right away while it's still hot and the eggs should come right off. If they don't, put some water in the pan and leave it on the stove on low heat while you eat. When you're done, turn the burner off, run the wooden spoon around the pan to separate the remaining egg from the pan and rinse using a clean sponge under very hot water. Lightly oil the pan and put it back on the burner, which should still have some residual heat. Wipe out the pan after a few minutes with a paper towel until it feels dry but is still dark with oil. If you do this faithfully, you never have to use soap in a cast iron pan.

If you let the pan sit, though, you can later boil it with water in it, and then use a little soap, some elbow grease, or even an SOS pad to take care of the dried food in the pan. You might go down to bare metal in the process ... don't worry. Then oil the pan and put in a warm oven or on a burner set to 2. Very lightly oil it. Leave it on the burner until the oil begins to brown to the bottom of the pan. Wipe with a paper towel. Add a little oil to a clean part on your paper towel and wipe the pan with it. You'll notice a kewl pattern forming on the bottom of the pan as the oil seasons the bottom of the pan. Keep wiping with fresh (thin) layers of oil and continue to season the pan until the bare metal areas have darkened somewhat. Before you put the pan away, make sure that there's as much free oil wiped away as possible so that it feels dry and has a satin, not glossy, sheen, and please let it cool first. Over time, if you're good to your pan, it'll be a uniform black and will be shiny, but not greasy.

Yay Chickens! And Seeds!

We've had some progress in our flock combining efforts. Well, efforts may be a strong word. Ever since they were out of quarantine, we've let them do whatever they want, and whatever they want has meant pretty much that they avoid each other.

Until now!

My DH has been feeding them at the same time every day, which has encouraged Sophie and Beatrice to come down to the coop because the new chickens get fed before them. And voila! They still don't roost in the same place, but I'm hoping that will change soon.

And then ....

The rooster finally started crowing the other day. He's so proud of himself! So I'm hoping that we'll have fertilized eggs come spring, and maybe even a batch of chicks if the little black hen gets broody. That would be so awesome.

In other news, I finally made my seed order from Territorial Seeds. Here are the veggies:

Armenian Cucumbers, Cherry Buzz Tomato, Chinese Pac Choi, Cube of Butter Squash, Flash Collards, Gold Nugget Winter Squash, Helda Pole Beans, Improved Dwarf Siberian Kale, Lemon Cucumbers, Planet Peppers, Kosmic Kale, Red Ace Beets, Stupice Tomatoes (from the former Czechoslovakia!), and Winter Luxury Pumpkins.

In the flower department I have:

Cheyenne Spirit Echinacea mix, Mow-No-More Flower Mix, Rosa Romantica California Poppies, Sunseed Sunflowers, and Unwin's Striped Butterfly Sweet Peas.

Whew! I'll probably pick up some fava beans from our favorite Middle Eastern grocery store, and nasturtiums and some main-season tomatoes from BiMart. Beyond that, I'm set!

Except.

The deer fence isn't around the garden yet.

Argh! I can just imagine them foraging their way through my lovely garden again this year, slaying my plantings with large-eyed, big-eared, adorable glee. I told my DH what I'd like him to do for the next stage, and the next time the weather is good and he has some time, he will make it so. Thankfully, realistically, it will be late May or early June before I dare put most of my treasures in the ground. The pac choi, collards, kale, and possibly some of the flowers are the exception. Everyone else will have to wait until the soil is nice and warm.  Sometime mid-February, I'll put tomatoes and peppers into seed trays, and maybe start some flower seeds to, and we'll go from there.

It's all very exciting. I think this is going to be a good year. Of course I always think that when I start planning, but I'm getting better at this every year. Here's to hoping!

An Old Perspective on Phones

Apparently I've gotten to that stage in my life when "I remember when ..." becomes seriously amusing. It's easier to notice and happens sooner now in our lifetimes because we're living longer and technology changes the world so rapidly.

So this morning, I heard an angry buzzing noise, followed by The Good, The Bad and The Ugly theme. My DH was still in bed, so his phone was not actually on his body.

That's another sign of our generation–we don't take our phones to bed with us, no matter how sexy the voice on the phone sounds or how many toys there might be on there to distract us. Now I'm editing myself as far as what we prefer to distract us. Moving on!

Back in my day, the phone rang on the other side of the house. We had a fancy house. We had one upstairs, in the kitchen, and one downstairs, in the family room. Sometimes it took a while to get to the phone.

To answer my DH's phone, I had to slide my finger over the screen, and I did an old lady thing. I said, "Rory's phone, Kami speaking." During my youth, no one had a personal phone. You had to learn to answer the phone, and it was a grave responsibility, like being a butler. "Hi, this is the Zeman residence, Kami speaking!" Because, get this, we had no caller ID. Unless we had a pre-arranged phone call coming in (that we had to sit by the phone and wait for) we had no idea who might be on the phone. It might be someone from my dad's work. Some of us were a little psychic and knew why the phone was ringing (or we were lucky guessers.) But my DH's phone told me exactly who was calling, so while I was doing the finger slidey thing, I was already on my way to get to him.

That's another thing. Phone cords! They got twisted and tangled and the older and more worn-out they got, the more often they did that. Longer cords were great because sometimes you could do stuff (or hide in another room with the door closed) but that only made tangling more likely and far worse when it happened. Of course this generation has been deprived of one of life's great joys–dangling the phone at the end of the cord and watching it unwind. (It's faster to hold the phone and let the cord unwind, but much less fun.) Another lost joy–playing with the coils, which could be interlocked, partially uncoiled and recoiled again, etc.

So I'm on my way to my DH with this cordless marvel, and I hand it to him with, "it's G." During the pass somehow, something that would have never, ever happened with the phone I grew up with happened. The phone took a picture somehow. Click! Wrong part of the screen touched or something. I can't wait to see the results. It should be the best pic ever, or at least best pic of the week. For a moment my DH wasn't sure if G. was still on the line. He couldn't hear anything. But eventually he got into the right phone mode and it was all good.

I was raised in the modern era, don't get me wrong. In the unlikely event of a dropped call (almost never happened) we did have one modern convenience during my teen years, and it was actually easier to access than on my DH's phone. A redial button.

But it only worked if we made the call from our side. And it was only the latest number.

Still, it came in handy. The digital phones (the early ones of which had to transmit the rotary phone noises in order to communicate with the switchboard) were a huge advance and my sister and I love playing with them. I did miss playing with the rotary phone dial, though. There was something magical about putting my finger in that little hole and turning the dial around the center pin. (Quiet, all y'all with dirty minds out there!) Also, not only were international calls expensive, we had to talk to a human being to make them, who then talked to a human being in another country to make the switch. There was excitement, drama, and suspense when we made a long-distance call!

And you were never in danger of your phone taking a picture of you, sending you on a wild-goose chase if you're trying to find your way through an unfamiliar town, compromising your identity or pocket calling someone who then listens to your garbled conversation at a cafe for gawd-knows-how-long until they get bored of yelling to get your attention or laughing at you.

Though toddlers were still capable of randomly calling and talking to perfect strangers for quite a while before you caught them at it.

I'm enjoying the hell out of this sense of perspective. It's a never-ending source of hilarity. The fact that half the population doesn't get it doesn't diminish it's charm.

Seeds of Spring

The seed catalogue arrived last week, and seedling growing supplies are in at the stores. Here's a summary of what I've found over the years of starting vegetable gardens on the west side of the Cascades in the Pacific NW:

Despite fears of 'starting too soon' (and ending up with spindly plants in root-bound containers) I always start late. So I'm going to order my seeds this week.
I can never start tomatoes or peppers too early. One year I ended up potting all the way up to gallon containers and they were gorgeous! We had a really good year that year.
I've tried starting squash/pumpkins indoors. Really uneven results. Direct seeding seems to work the best.
Even when starting indoors, early varieties of tomatoes work out the best. In particular I've had good results from Stupice, Legend, and pretty much every cherry/grape/etc. tomato I've tried. Main season tomatoes have always been a disappointment. Even when they get ripe in time, often the tomatoes succumb to various diseases.
Want to try an odd variety? More and more nurseries are offering Indigo Rose and other rare or unusual varieties that I've only managed previously to find in catalogues. Rather than fuss with a seed packet, buy a single plant. It costs more, sure, but there's far less labor, and it takes up less space in your garden (one plant vs. a whole row of something that may or may not work.)
Yes, you can make the soil in your garden too fertile. Guilty as charged. I have to set aside some space for plants that like impoverished or average soils to do well. Not all plants are heavy feeders. Blame my love of tomatoes for wanting to make the entire plot tomato-friendly.
You gotta develop a strategy of weed suppression that works for you. Not a weed-pulling schedule. Those fall apart, and not just because of time constraints. As your veggies get bigger and their roots spread, it gets harder and harder to work among them without causing excessive damage to them. For me, I mulch with weeds and compost. That may have to change this year (due to the rich soil issue) to mulching with straw, chips, plastic, newspapers ... I'll figure something out.
Row covers are your friend, not just to protect the young plants from unpredictable weather, but it also foils a lot of pests. Commercial farmers use it, and you can benefit from that because producers of the material keep the price attractively low so that the commercial farmers can afford to cover a whole field with the stuff and still make a profit on their veggies. Shop around before you buy, and do some research on the various types. I like the white, very thin stuff ... but you have to have every weed off the ground because when you go to pull it up, it'll tear and snag. So good housekeeping will allow you to use the same material year after year.
There's no such thing as too much shed and shelf and potting bench space. Now is the time to get organized. Pick a dry weather day, get out there in the freezing cold and mud and make sure you've got your duckies in a row.
Weeds grow year 'round here. Go get 'em!

I'll be ordering my seeds soon. I'll post my seed order when I make it. Happy gardening!

Animal Stories Pt. 2

It had been a long time since the DH and I took the puppies for a walk, so we decided, today was the day.

Bear in mind that the 'puppies' are all adult: two Great Pyrenees crosses and a little herding dog. All together they probably weigh 250 pounds.

So we get our leashes and go outside. Instant excitement. Walkies! The sea of unconditional love froths into a storm and we're surrounded by wagging tails and a yipping, chirping, squeaky little thing running between and under the big dogs. I have no idea how we go the leashes on them, but somehow we did, and out to the 'dirty' car we go.

This car, a Nissan Sentra, is the walkies car and is already lined throughout the interior with white dog hair.

We open the doors and in they pile. The DH and I manage to get in before they invade the front area, shut the door, and buckle up. The scent of dirty dog is immediately overpowering. "We gotta get them to the groomers sometime," I choked as we rolled all the windows down a safe 6" each.

My DH is driving, so I'm the 'arm bar'. I'm fending drooling, excited dogs as we make our way down the hill. None of them are used to being in a car, since we usually walk them up the road from our house, so this is big fun. They're rocking and skidding around in the back and I worry about the big dogs' hips as we negotiate the steep S bends on the hill. But at last we make it to the park. Normally we try to hang on to the leashes so they don't bolt, but this is unmitigated as opposed to mitigated chaos, so we just open the doors and they pour out. I snag two dog leashes and my DH grabs the third. And then I realize we forgot the plastic bags.

My DH hands me the third leash briefly while he forages through the car for plastic bags. In about five seconds I'm at the center of a cat's cradle weaving of dog. The Finn and Chase immediately wind themselves around the nearest posts (two separate ones) and Brian criss-crosses the others.

"Hey, that's pretty kewl," my DH remarks when he gets back to us. "How did you do that? It's doing a great job of keeping them under control."

"Um, yeah, they did that."

It takes a while to get organized, but eventually we hit the trail and cruise around the park. Brian, the big bum of the group, quickly tires. No surprise there, but the little herding dog, Chase, who runs endlessly after cars along the fence line all day long, wears out too and starts heeling like a champ.

We explore a while, cross the dreaded hole-y grate where Chase slinks around so low her belly almost touches the ground and tucks her ears and tail while running around on it trying to escape the evil, and then we head back to the car.

The dogs are all exhausted and just lay there. No arm barring needed. We take them home, they run in through the gate, and we're all good.

"We gotta do this again," I told my DH, but it's going to be a while. I'm serious about the groomer. Gross gross gross. In the house they're fine, but in the confines of the car, not so much.  And yet ... so much fun. The chaos was part of the fun. Walking was fun. Spending time with the dogs and my DH was amazing. Such a simple thing, stuff most people think nothing of. Simple pleasures of life, the cliche' goes. I think it's a cliche' for a reason. It's too true to let go of, no matter how corny it sounds.

Animal Stories Pt. 1

Lately I've been bumming around the house when I'm not at my day job. If I'm not writing, I'm doing art, if I'm not doing art, I'm designing stuff, if I'm not designing stuff I'm reading about art, writing or design. Sometimes I'll do housework, garden, or go for a walk when I get stir crazy.

Anyway, my DH has been taking care of the animals for months now, with me picking up the odd day here or there. I do like having a vacation from it, but I miss my animals. I hardly see them except at a distance. It's good, though, because if I kept at it, he wouldn't have come in from outside with a subtle smile lighting his eyes. He turned around in place to display himself. "Any chicken poop on me?"

He had a dirty shoulder. That's about it. "Nope."

"I got the little black hen to sit on my shoulder. Had to shoe her down after a while. She eats out of my hand now too. Won't let the other chickens get near. And that rooster? He's a big chicken." He smiled and I laughed. "He starts to come closer, and she looks at him, and he moves away again." My DH made a coy gesture with his head. "Like, sorry, I'll go over here now."

"She's the big boss," I agreed. "Does Sophie still come down sometimes?" Sophie being our mean silver-laced Wyandotte.

"Oh yeah, every day at 3 o'clock she's there, and she won't let any of the other chickens into the shed until she'd done. Did you know that the little black hen can fly, like five feet higher than the roof of that shed? She did that when they had a chicken tiff."

"Wow." None of our other birds are capable of that kind of air. The best Beatrice can do is the top of the highest fence post, about six and a half feet. "I hope they all form one flock. It'll be good for them."

We talked more, mostly him sharing micro-stories about the animals, me listening. With me doing the grunt work day job and my DH freelancing, we've changed roles in a lot of surprising ways. This sharing of animal stories after he's had a day of working outside is fast becoming one of my favorites. From where I sit, it looks like he's loving it too, loving our farm and all the crazy critters on it. They're not outstanding or unusual animals, except in this: they know us. Now that they know him better, he and I share something new through them, a new connection in our lives after over twenty years together.

Thanks, little black hen.

Good Things

My DH and I watched Catching Fire the other day.

We seldom go to the movies, and when we do, usually one of us is disappointed. This time both of us walked out of the theater feeling like we could have watched another hour or more. It was that good. I enjoyed The Hunger Games very much. Catching Fire took an already great story to the next level. Outstanding, and highly recommended.

Speaking of highly recommended ....

I had to leave work early yesterday because it felt like someone was knifing me from inside my gut. I don't know if it was just a passing thing, or what happened. Various stomach products didn't even touch the pain. Eating made it worse.

Until I decided it was time for yogurt.

I don't know for sure if whatever was going on fixed itself or not, but as far as timing, the yogurt seemed to be the thing that ultimately fixed my tummy. I had yogurt (plain, Greek, mixed with a little marionberry jam–honey might have been better) when I got home, again in about an hour, and when I felt well enough to eat real food, I had yogurt on my baked potato.

I used yogurt instead of soy milk with my cereal this morning. Here's hoping my stomach is all better!

When something upsets your stomach and intestinal bugaboos, anything probiotic is worth a try. My go-to is yogurt, but if you can't stand the stuff, there are alternatives in the vitamin/herbal remedies section at pretty much any grocery store. It's worth a try. At the feed store, there's a goat version too for my goaties when their tummies are upset! Good stuff, good for you. In fact, we really can't do without our little gardens inside us. Treat them nice, and invite some new friends over for them when they're feeling down.

Happy Birthday 2014

Just a quick note to wish the new year a happy birthday!

Here's some un-asked-for advice, as is traditional for this time of year:

Adopt healthy habits so that you can feel better inside your own skin. Set health goals that aren't abstract, driven by fashionistas or that rely on stupid numbers, like being able to walk on your hands or do the splits.
Make good financial decisions so that you don't feel guilty or afraid all the time. If you're already trapped in a corner, go to the library. Seriously. There are all kinds of resources there.
Appreciate the other beings in your life. The awesome thing about appreciation is it gives to others and feeds your soul at the same time. They don't even have to appreciate you back for it to work. It's like magic.
Feed your brain. Look what doing the same things over and over again does to animals trapped in a cage. They lock into repetitive movements. Caged too long, and the brain doesn't know how to escape its training. Like the polar bear released from a tiny cage, it'll pace the same square over and over even after it's set free.

I hope everyone has a great 2014!

Post-Holiday Return Guide

It's the rare person who enjoys returning stuff, whether it's an unwanted gift or a defective piece of merchandise. Here are some tips to make the return process much easier, plus some information that might head off problems and save you time and money:

1. Argh, I can't find my receipt and/or I can't get the receipt and/or I don't want to confess that I really didn't want that lime green and pink striped sweater!
  Don't just assume that you're doomed. Not all stores require a receipt. What you will need to know is where the item was purchased. It may require a Google search to find out what stores carry the brand and model of item you're looking for. Stores often have a designated UPC code, so, for example, an item bought at Joe's Mega Store won't usually come up in the system at Woo Hoo Grocers, even if the model is identical in every way. One store can't accept a return on behalf of another store, especially if it's defective. Manufacturers and distributors track what goes where, and they're unlikely to give one store credit for an item that they knew was shipped to another store if the item can't be resold.

Speaking of UPCs, bring as much of the packaging as possible. Don't throw away those boxes until you're absolutely sure your gift has no defects. I know they're bulky and awkward. Fold them up and put them someplace until the thirty days are up and you're no longer able to do a store return. Keep the boxes longer if the item has a long warranty that requires shipping to fulfill. If you don't have the box or whatever packaging the item came in, be prepared for the possibility that your return will take extra time or may not be able to be processed.

2.  Okay, I took the item to the right place and they accept returns without receipt, but they're giving me the sale price and I know it was purchased at full price. What the heck?
  Unless you can prove it, you're likely stuck getting the most recent sale price when you return an item with no receipt. If you bought the item, sometimes if you provide the date and time that you bought the item, a store with a decent tracking system might be able to pull up an electronic receipt for you. They might not be able to do it on the spot, which means you'll have to take your item home and wait for a call back when they find the information. Prepare to be patient, calm, polite ... they're more likely to help you out than if you play hard ball.
Every customer's business is valuable, but threatening never to return will probably earn a sigh of relief rather than force the clerk to accommodate you. If it seems like the clerk is exhausted, edgy or evasive, remember, they're human. After return number one hundred and eleven they're done with special cases. Nicely ask to speak with a supervisor. They're there to handle special cases and you may be asking the clerk to do something he or she doesn't have the authority to do anyway.

3.  It's been more than thirty days. I hate my life.
  Don't hate your life! Many stores will accept returns after thirty days, especially around the holidays because they know many things were purchased well in advance of the holidays and were intended for a holiday gift. Give it a try. But, be warned. Some stores have exceptions, for example, delicate electronics might not be returnable after a much shorter time frame, like 2 weeks, or they may not even be returnable at all. Kindness, patience, and persistence go a long way toward reaching an accommodation. Yelling or threats tend to make even the most customer-friendly managers dig their heels in. If you're really nice, they might even offer alternatives that you're not aware of. Managers like friendly customers, and want to help them any way they can so those customers feel welcome to come back.

4.  It's defective, never worked right out of the box and I have nothing. Nothing! I'm doomed.
  It's a gift, right? If you really want it, really love it but it doesn't work and you can't return it at the store level, go to the manufacturer. Really. They'll probably make you ship it to them, but not always. I had a problem with a leaky water filter. It started leaking only a couple of weeks after I installed it. I had no receipt, and the store I got it from wouldn't take it back. I called the manufacturer and they sent me a coupon to get a new one for free. They didn't even make me ship them the old one, because they were aware of the defect in that lot.
If you do have to ship ... shipping can be expensive, but it might not be as bad as you think, and it may be worth it. If you think about how much the item is worth to you versus how much you're willing to pay to have it ....  Yes, it stinks that the gift-giver is robbed of the intent of giving a gift because the manufacturer goofed. But the way the manufacturer keeps costs from skyrocketing through fraud and theft, and the way they learn how to develop a better product, is to actually have the defective item in their hands. Long term, that works to your advantage.
You can always call the hotline or email and find out whether or not they'll refund your shipping costs if they find an actual manufacturing defect, or compensate you in some other way, like coupons or special offers.

5. Ugh. It's such a hassle!
  It's tempting, especially with gas prices being what they are, to do a return at the same time that you do a regular shopping trip. Resist temptation! You don't have to make a designated trip, but do consider going without the kids if you can. It's even more boring for them than regular shopping, and there's less for them to see and do during a return.
Try to schedule your return when you have plenty of time, and when you don't have a ton of stuff to pick up and get home in a timely fashion. Avoid peak hours if you can. Lunch, and right around 5pm (when people are getting off work and on their way home) are usually busy. Weekends after 11 am are also typically busy, especially after the holidays.
Also, assume that there's going to be a wait, and that things might not necessarily go smoothly. If you have that expectation, you'll be less likely to develop frustrations that will make the process far less pleasant for you.
If the clerk is dawdling or talking to a coworker, rather than let your blood pressure rise and your temper get the better of you, take a deep breath and resolve to fill out a customer service report card. Getting worked up and angry at the clerk will do more harm to you than to that person. Taking calm, rational actions against poor customer service will do far more good for you and for everyone! And if you get good, fast customer service, consider filling out a report card for that too. Employers are more inclined to give good clerks more hours and more compensation, making it more likely that you'll continue to get good service. With no feedback, employers only know how well their employees are behaving when they're physically present, and employees are usually on their best behavior then. Bear in mind, too, that an employee may not be deliberately malicious, just poorly trained.

6.  It's hopeless. The store won't do anything, the manufacturer won't do anything, and I'm stuck.
  If the item is in good condition, package it, store it someplace safe, and regift it somewhere down the road. Or save it for a garage sale. You can organize a gift swap with your friends in mid-January. If the item doesn't work, look into charities that accept non-working items of otherwise high value that require repair. Sometimes they have volunteers repair them or they sell the parts for a good cause. Look up recycling centers and scrap services, especially for items that have a lot of metal in them. If you approach your unwanted or non-working gift as something you can apply your creativity to, it can cease to be an issue and turn into an opportunity to try something new or have a little fun.

7. This sounds horrible. It's not worth it to even try. Besides, all the store customer service desks are packed this time of year, and the phone lines are always busy and I'll end up on hold forever ....
  Don't talk yourself out of it before you even begin. A little planning, and with your expectations aligned with common store policies, you're far more likely to find that making a return is easier and faster than you anticipated. As for the wait on the phone, learn to love your speaker on your phone and play some solitaire. They'll get to you as soon as possible.

Creation and Destruction

Another brilliantly gorgeous day. I'm listening to Lindsey Stirling, and I'm debating whether I want to clean up around my desk area, do artwork, write ... might have to just do it all today.

I think the thing that makes me most resistant to cleaning is a close relative of what makes me happy when it's done. Sometimes the clutter is incredibly overwhelming, and it feels like clearing a small part of it does so little good that I might as well spend my time and energy on something that has a more significant impact, or gets me closer to my longer term goals. Cleaning is an endless battle and I get emotionally worn out even before I begin.

At the same time, when I do clean even a tiny bit, I get a disproportionate sense of pride, and a little burst of hope. If only I did just this little bit every day, my home would be so fantastic!

But I don't do a little bit every day, and I lose whatever progress I've made in the days that go by.

That's one of the many things I love about writing and art. If I dilly dally too long, I might forget what I was doing in a book, but other than that, I can't 'lose' progress on a work of art or a book through neglect. Once the colors or the words are there, they're there until they're actively destroyed.

Of course, now that I've said that, is adding clutter to a clean area a form of destruction?

Stuff to think about. Like writing and art, keeping house requires developing good habits and rooting out bad habits. That requires long practice. Think that after almost thirty years of keeping my own house, I might learn how to keep it neat?

That would be nifty.