shakespearemom

At my husband’s urging, I am considering writing another ghost book, centered on the area where I live here in Washington State. I say “another” because I have already written one describing various first-hand accounts of ghosts in SE Kansas, where I used to live. I love ghost stories–far from frightening me, they fascinate me. What are ghosts really? Why do they appear, make sounds, move things, try to get our attention? Why do they exist at all? Intriguing questions for me.

Besides, I love a good story. And ghosts usually make for a pretty good story. And my first collection of stories has led to the novel I am currently writing, so they inspire me beyond telling the stories themselves. All good things.

I believe the area is ripe with stories, too. And I have contact information for a ghost hunting group close by…so I might have many resources at hand to help me.

What is holding me back, you might ask? It’s a big project, writing the whole thing. And I don’t know, as yet, whether I’ll be able to collect enough ghost stories to fill up an entire book. SE Kansas was a lucky guess, and I might not be so lucky this time. And if I take the time to write out press releases asking for ghost stories, send them all out, field phone calls about possible ghost sightings, and write out even a dozen stories–before discovering I don’t have enough to justify a book–I’ve wasted, more than likely, months of time I could have spent on a novel.

Still, I can’t get the idea out of my head. I just wish I had more time. If I were looking for a new project, I would jump at the chance to write another one. Right now, though, my writing is backlogged horribly, and I have so many parental obligations, as well, and I just don’t have the time.

Maybe if I just clear up my schedule a bit…

This morning is trash day. I need to get my trash out in about nine minutes, so this will be quick.

I’m facing a day of Have-tos… a long list of things to do, none of which are particularly fun, and none of which can be put off. Halloween is tomorrow, and I still have three costumes to finish (mine isn’t even started!), along with trash, vacuuming, paper grading, and numerous other feats of endurance that will keep me moving all day long.

I could fret, but I won’t. Without this list of things to do, what would happen? Do I seriously fool myself that I would spend all day writing? No, I know myself too well for that. I’d probably lie around all day, watching crappy tv shows (are there any which aren’t crappy?), or reading (and even I can’t do that all day), or just being bored and antsy because I have nothing to do.

And at the end of that day, I’d just look over my world and think, well, darn, I could have accomplished something, and I didn’t!

So here’s to taking out the trash! Be sure to mark some of those have-tos off YOUR list today. You’ll feel better for it!

Disclaimer: This is not my typical blog. If you are squeamish about breastfeeding, skip to something else and come back tomorrow, when I’ve posted something about writing again.

I am reminded weekly about thrush. I check out several mommy sites, and also get daily e-mails, and a week does not go by that I don’t find some poor nursing mother who is enduring terrible breast pain while nursing. And even if she’s be diagnosed with thrush, she is still in pain, taking some pathetically useless prescription like Diflucan or Nystatin, hoping that some day the pain will go away.

I know that pain from personal experience. I had to take antibiotics when my daughter was only a week old, and I developed thrush almost immediately. Thrush, in case you don’t know, is a yeast infection, but it’s one which lives off of breast milk–thrives off it–and when it sets in, it not only spots the inside of the infant’s mouth with white film or nodules, but it makes nursing extremely painful. Imagine a six-inch jagged knife stabbing into your breast while you nurse, and you’ll have a just about perfect impression of the pain.

Yet it took me nine months to get rid of this terrible pain. And it wasn’t because my doctors hated me, it was because they simply didn’t know what to do. All they knew was what pharmaceutical companies told them. And if it wasn’t some registered medication, they didn’t know about it. I tried Nystatin first–and refilled it–with no change. I tried Diflucan for a month, paying over $300 for it because my insurance had only approved one pill per month, and I needed four.

Our only medical options exhausted, I tried gentian violet, which lessened the pain a little, but in the meantime stained my entire stock of bras a funny dark purple color. I ruined several blouses and my entire daughter’s wardrobe in the process, too. I tried it for a whole month, but in the end, the pain was still there.

And then I found the miracle cure–a cure so potent that a whole gallon of the stuff costs about $1.50 at the grocery store. Vinegar. Turns out vinegar is yeast’s natural enemy, and a solution of 1 part vinegar to 5 parts water, swabbed on all the infected areas, will wipe out the pain inside of an hour. REALLY. And it’s safe, non-staining, and non-toxic enough to swab inside a newborn’s mouth. REALLY.

But nobody knew about it except the La Leche League…and it was only some obscure notation in a pamphlet that I found. Even its members didn’t know.

Now, any time I find a woman in this horrible situation, I tell her the cure. My aunt, a pharmacist, calls me about it when she has a customer who is buying Nystatin. But how can I get the word out to everybody–Doctors, pharmacists, midwives, other moms, etc.? The pharmaceutical companies won’t help, not unless they can make the solution themselves and sell it for $35 a bottle (when I could make it for 5 cents). If it doesn’t make them money, nobody will advertise it.

Maybe that’s it–maybe I need to write a pamphlet on it, have it it printed (I’d be willing to pay for that), and supply it to all the area hospitals. But that wouldn’t be enough, for I doubt whether the doctors would read it. I’d have to schedule time with OB/GYNs, family doctors, and midwives, along with health clinics, etc., so that I could explain it to them.

But I don’t have the time for all of that. Even if I had the energy, I don’t have the time to make thrush the end-all and be-all of my existence.

Any ideas? How can I get the word out? I won’t ever nurse again, God willing, but no one should have to feel the pain I felt.

“We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.”

Okay, so I don’t have the source for this…but it’s certainly true for me. I’ve realized that, since moving to Seattle, I’ve kind of shut off the emotions which feed my nature (I’m a very emotional person in general–just ask my hubby). Whether to protect myself, or to deal with the state my life is in–the interminable sending off of writing, only for it to be rejected; the interminable football seasons; being at home with kids all day; interminable loads of laundry; interminable sinks of dishes; interminable everything–I’ve closed myself off emotionally, so that I don’t have to care so much about all of it.

Only now, with my husband’s help, I’m breaking through all the stoic walls I’ve placed up, and it’s often cool, but sometimes really ugly. Yesterday I was on the way to a playwrights group I had just joined, and it was the first time I’d actually been able to make a meeting. And I started sobbing in the car, like my life was ending. I drove back home, and sobbed all over my husband, telling him I just wasn’t ready to be rejected anymore–I’d just have to stop writing, stop trying to be someone I was never going to be. I was tired of trying and failing.

And my husband did the best thing–he told me there was no pressure, but I would really like going, and he helped me deal with the sobbing, get back into the car, and go. And the meeting wasn’t bad at all. It was kind of refreshing, really. I hadn’t been to a writers group in months (in years if you count writers groups I didn’t start up myself), and I hadn’t been around fellow playwrights since I’d lived in Kansas.

And I realized on the way back why I’d been crying. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to be a writer. It wasn’t because I thought I wasn’t capable–or even talented going on brilliant (yes, I do have moments when I think I’m brilliant). It was because I was truly passionate about my writing–as passionate about it as I am about my children. I want to be a writer so desperately, and now that the walls are coming down, the passion for it is welling up, and it’s sometimes overwhelming.

You might say that I already seem passionate about writing…but you have no idea. Intensity is my nature, so I may end up blowing the top out of this whole writing thing (as soon as I have a working copy of Word, that is–drat!).

What makes you passionate? (And I don’t mean steamy….) What is your passion?

I know I have a good life. I have great kids, I manage to earn quite a bit of money doing many various things I love, I have a great husband, and so on….

But for several weeks now, I’ve needed a break. Not an hour after the kids go to bed, so I can watch television with my husband. A break, where I don’t have to time everything down to potty breaks, where I don’t have to dodge all sorts of schedules and get to everything on time.

So today, right after I play at church (another thing I love to do, but one which has been wearing me a bit thin), I am taking off. I can’t say I know what I’ll be doing. I could go to a playwriting workshop, where I don’t have to bring anything with me–they are doing a full-length play this weekend–or I could go shopping for a halloween costume, since I won’t have time to make my own because I’m making everyone else’s–or I might go see a movie. I’m especially needing a movie with period costumes and a lot of people speaking with British accents.

Whatever it is, I hope it helps me recharge. If I’ve had some time to myself, that just makes me all the better when I return to all of my responsibilities. I would just go to a coffee shop and write, but that isn’t possible right now (see my previous blogs on the topic). And, for once, I don’t mind. I just want to relax, without obligations, without a schedule, without any particular goal or task I MUST do.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

I have done my best to cope. I really, truly have. I recovered from my devastation when my computer’s programming–Microsoft made–told me I had not used a rather large program since 2002 and urged me to erase it to make up space. I obeyed, believing my computer would not steer me wrong–only to discover I had deleted the entire Microsoft Office 2003 suite–a part of which I had USED that very morning.

I weighed my options–$299 for another 2003 version off the Microsoft website? Hardly. I opted for the 60-day trial of 2007, allowing me two months to find other options. I could suddenly open my documents.

I celebrated–but only momentarily.

I suppose being able to open and modify my documents only lasted a few weeks into the trial–and with about a month left of my “trial,” I was not allowed to edit what I had already saved. I couldn’t work on my novel. I could only stare at it, inhibited from adding to it or fixing problems I saw as I read through it.

I tried to work positively, despite this setback. I thought, well, then, I’ll just write something new, a short story, a short play, or something I can complete in a day or so, without closing the document. So I tried to open a new document, only to find that now, after only a few days more in my “trial,” I can do nothing more than open an existing document and print it. No new documents, no editing allowed, nothing. I assume within a week or so I’ll have the option of opening my document and not printing it, since at this point that is all Microsoft will allow me to do.

I’ve ordered Microsoft Office 2007 through my college, but I find that it must be mailed to me, and should arrive in 3-4 weeks. So now, I have but one option: if I want to write ANYTHING, I get to use Word Pad. For the next 3-4 weeks. And then, once the new stuff is loaded in, I hope I am able to transfer it from Word Pad to Word.

All of this leads in one direction: I want a Mac, and I want WordPerfect. And I’m willing to go out of my way to use as little belonging to Microsoft as I can. I hate them. I hate their need to dominate everything, I hate their crappy programming, I’ve hated Word for decades, and I’m tired of dealing with inferior products because those are my only options.

I’ll just have to pay more for what I want–and at this point, I couldn’t be more willing.

A friend of mine broke the news to me yesterday: Her husband walked in two days ago, told her he was done (after around 15? years of marriage), packed his bags, and left for good. She never saw it coming, and she is devastated, still in love, and lost.

The scenario is too common, and always painful. I have trouble seeing how the pain of divorce is at all outweighed by the bliss of marriage, even the bliss of early marriage (the honeymoon period). I’m not suggesting divorce shouldn’t happen, but what makes one spouse–or both–decide he or she doesn’t want to try anymore? I don’t think people make the choice lightly. I told my husband about my friend’s separation, and he was floored. He asked me, “Did you see it coming?” And I did, but only to the extent that I saw they weren’t communicating with each other, that she was living her way, he was living his, and they seemed, well, too separate. Honestly, I could look at any marriage I’ve seen and see the signs of divorce in it. No one’s marriage is perfect, and it takes two people trying hard to make marriage work well.

But my friend’s husband didn’t want to try anymore. More than likely he’s been unhappy for a while, and he couldn’t communicate that to her. So he gave up, and left her alone. And she’s never seen herself as anything but a housewife. But she may never even be married again. And she can’t figure out why–at least not yet.

Hard stuff. Painful. I think the only reason I can even write about it is that I haven’t actually gone through it. My parents never divorced, Richard’s parents were divorced and remarried long before I knew them, and I’ve only experienced it through a few siblings otherwise. But it was utterly painful for them, even though both siblings were the ones who chose to leave.

I am musing here, but I’m not sure I’m adding anything to the discussion. I’m so pained by it. I imagine the same level of rejection in my own life, and the truth is I don’t have it –unless you count my separation with my parents. I’ve finally started looking at it in terms of divorce, so that I can understand it better. Yet, like my siblings who divorced, I was the one who chose to leave. 

How is it different for the person who is left behind, who, like my friend, didn’t see the divorce coming? I try to put myself in her place, but the pain is blinding. No wonder my mother is still so bitter. More than likely she will always be bitter about me. I hope I am never rejected like that. 

Perhaps I should write about this more–in my fiction. A much safer way to explore it than in real life. Let my fiction be exciting, not so much my life–however much I might wish in other blogs that it be more eventful.

Those of you who’ve been following my blog for a while will remember my last run-in with Word, a program I use every day whether I want to or not. My laptop (pathetic, hardly useable, according to a techie friend) was having hard drive issues, and it told me I had too little free space on my hard drive, and said I’d need to take off programs I had not used in a while, and even provided a list by year last used. According to its directive, I ended up deleting the whole office package, which, according to the computer, I hadn’t used since 2002 (even though I’d worked on my novel that morning!).

Needless to say, I had nothing all of a sudden. So I made do by getting Office 2007 temporarily–a sixty-day trial. But, of course, that meant I could write documents, but once I’d saved them and closed them for the night, when I re-opened them, I couldn’t change a word. MS Word “locked” them. So now, though I can send off any document I own, I can’t write on any of them. Can you imagine the steam rising from my head?

So, finally, the college I work for finalized their contract with Microsoft, and they e-mailed me a way to purchase MS for home use at their rate (a HUGE improvement on cost). You may ask, “What’s the big deal, if you’re going to have the program for a long time?” That isn’t the issue. I am in the market to buy a new laptop, but I’m seriously leaning towards getting a MAC, and paying $300 for a PC program, only to turn around and buy one for Mac, is not my favorite of throwing away money.

So, I bought a college version, this morning, only to find out that it may take 3-4 weeks to arrive. I could fill the rest of the blog with expletives, but Today.com would kick me off.

But, today, I SWEAR, I am going to write. I’ll just have to write a ten-minute play, or start a new novel, or get working on a new collection of ghost stories in Washington. I can’t work on my novel, but I can write something else. And I will.

Maybe this is a good time to send off my first novel again…pick a few agents, and send off a letter and a few sample chapters. ANYTHING to keep on writing!

As I scanned through my calendar for the week–a calendar for a supposedly stay-at-home mom, I realized that I was preparing to spend NO time writing this week.

And even though I’d spent the last three weeks NOT writing–except for my brief stint conjuring up my church’s nativity play–I suddenly realized that not writing for even a few more days simply wasn’t acceptable.

The panic began: What if I got all the way to Christmas without writing a word? What if I somehow found yet another responsibility, and I never got back to my ghost novel? What if I never made it to the playwrights’ group I joined over a month ago, and wasted yet another opportunity? What if I never wrote AGAIN?

Thank God I’m a Pisces, and specifically designed not to panic that long…so my Taoist leanings came through, calmly reminding myself that I’d already written four books and as many full-length plays since my kids were little. And I knew that, even if I didn’t get it done today, I would write again, and brilliance would come, for I would take opportunities as they came, I would go with the flow, adapting to change the way I add layers when the weather turns cold, almost without thinking.

So, now where does that lead me? Will I spend the day doing laundry and dishes, going to the store for toilet paper, working at church, watching kids, and otherwise catching up on everything? Yup.

But that’s not all I’ll be doing. I may not have J.K. Rowling’s time-turner, but I can get things done, and with a goal like being able to write, I’ll get them done just a little bit faster. And I’ll write before the day is out, even if it’s the hour before I go to bed.

I’ll write, no matter what. I can feel the flow within me.

I’m taking two little boys to a pumpkin patch today, in the misty rain. One is my son, one a little boy I now watch full-time. It will be wet, it will be cold, it’ll get really messy, we’ll be picking out muddy pumpkins–frankly, it’s going to be wonderful!

Now, I wouldn’t want to work there–day after day out in the cold, the rain, being soaked–but this makes for a nice change, a different day, and last year, when I took my son and daughter, I felt inspired to write. Being outside usually does that to me, even if it’s cold, windy, rainy, snowy, tornadoey (okay, so the word doesn’t exist, but that never stopped Shakespeare!). I can see why Nature (yes, with a capital N) inspired the Romantics, for it does the same to me. Maybe that’s why so many scenes in my novels happen outside, with the weather affecting the overall feeling of the scene (and often the characters’ actions).

What does weather do to you? I admit the only weather that doesn’t inspire me to write is sunshine (perhaps because it just makes me want to sit out on the swing and relax!).