shakespearemom

I sort of took this blog idea from another blogger, Rocketscientist, yet the idea also sprang from something I’ve been toying with for some time. You see, if you know me well, you know I’m an Anglophile, meaning I love everything English… the language, English literature, the accent… the accent especially.

And I work on my own British accent all the time. My kids are used to me using it, or an Irish one, or Scottish (my Scottish is probably the worst of the three–makes me sound like a man)… and the accent pops out in other ways, too. I can’t say this is a recent thing, either, since my husband first met me after seeing me in The Importance of Being Earnest, where my accent was good enough that he thought I really did speak like that. 

Just this last week, I discovered that a new member of the choir thought the same. I used it enough during rehearsal (a recent habit of mine) that she thought it was real, and was surprised when standard “American” speech came out of me all of a sudden. 

Okay, this story is getting far too long. The point of it is that I’ve always wondered what it would be like–how people would treat me differently–if I really did have a British accent. My husband suggested I try it the next time I interview for a full-time job. If I started out with an accent, they’d assume it was me, and I could speak like that for the rest of my life (and I would LOVE that). I’d have my own alter ego, a prim British ex-patriot with a sassy sense of humor. I can’t tell you how much the thought of speaking like that for the rest of my life thrills me. I would be a completely different person with that one change, more confident, funnier, etc. I know this because every time I use the accent, I feel different. I say things I wouldn’t say in my normal voice. I would love to try this some day.

But I won’t. I just can’t do it. Would a fake accent be grounds for dismissal? Would I be falsely representing myself? Would I be found out immediately? I don’t know, but the prospect of breaking some unknown rule is enough to keep me from trying. 

That leads me to a question, though. If you could pretend to be someone else, who would you be? What alter ego is inside you, waiting to get out? 

As an added bonus to all the good news yesterday, I realized I still hadn’t created a blog for the award Rocket Scientist gave me:  The Honest Scrap Award. 

And since the main requirement is that I tell ten true things about myself, and, in addition, I simply love to talk about myself (just ask my students), here are ten things:

1.  I am a vegetarian pacifist. I don’t eat animals, and I do my best not to kill anything (except spiders inside my house). 

2.  If meat tasted like bread, I would never have become a vegetarian.

3.  The quickest way to my heart is to give me a back rub. 

4.  I dislike cooking, yet I cook every meal, every day, with perhaps one weekly exception.

5.  I dislike cleaning, but I hate a messy house more. So I clean. And clean. And clean.

6.  I am one of 500 quarterfinalists for the 2009 Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Contest! Hurray!

7.  I am a stay-at-home mom who really isn’t suited to take care of little children (that’s why I teach college). Ignoring that tendency, I also watch an additional child in my home (and he’s very cute, even if he isn’t 18 yet).

8.  My ideal magic item from the Harry Potter series is Hermione Granger’s Time-turner. Oh, if only it worked, I’d use it every day. I never have enough time, and I resent having to waste a third of the day sleeping. 

9.  I am positively beastly when I don’t get enough sleep.

10.  I love magic. I love anything involving some sort of departure from reality, from ghost stories to psychics, Tarot cards to Harry Potter, spirituality to fairies. The easiest way to bore me is with reality. 

There it is. Now I’m bored, since all of that was true. I’m going to throw myself into a book to get my equilibrium back! 

Well, surprise, surprise! A reader of my last blog discovered that three chapters of my novel Mariah’s Ark can be downloaded at Amazon.com for free… it seems I’ve made it to the Quarterfinals of the contest, one of 500 entries out of most likely 10,000 turned in (they only accepted the first 10,000). That puts me in the top 5%, doesn’t it? (I’m not very good at math… that’s why I write instead).

I knew I’d been reviewed by experts (that discovery was in my last blog), but I had no idea anyone else could read the first chapters. I also had no idea that meant I’d made it to the next level. Three people have reviewed the book so far, too, so I must have made it to a second level, or I don’t think the chapters would even be available. (Sorry, but I’m still so surprised, I’m not sure if I’ll discover I’ve made a mistake tomorrow).

So, if you’d like to know what I’m tooting my horn about, check out the page right HERE. You can download the chapters for free, and even leave a review of them. If nothing else, I’d like your feedback. I haven’t had enough people read the book yet, so every bit helps. And I’d really like to know what all of you think, too, since you are my loyal readers…

You’d think I’d be quicker at all of this. I must be jaded by all my lack of response over the years (except for the lovely photocopied form letters rejecting my submissions). I think the next level happens on April 15, so you have time to read and respond, but the sooner the better! You can create a review on Amazon.com yourself, so I know what you think.

Thanks to all who read part of “Mariah’s Ark”! I’m so excited!

We are so caught up by the reality surrounding us–the dirty dishes, the traffic, the drippy-nosed kids, the chores–that we come to notice little else. Even with the good things–the best TV show ever (Lord only knows what all of you think that is), our spouses, those same drippy-nosed kids when their noses aren’t drippy–we notice little more than the physical. Yet I sense, most days, that far more is around us than meets the eye (or the nose, or the tongue). We are surrounded by the invisible something.

Religion speaks to this to some extent, but they go too far with it, in my opinion. When someone of mere Muggle means purports to know what the invisible something is, and denies the possibility of anything else invisible existing alongside (or instead), then he goes to far. And churches have expended far too much energy irritating each other (or worse) because some other church believes something a bit different.

I cannot know what the something is. I am neither sensitive enough to it, nor clairvoyant enough to read it. But I appreciate when others can, and I am fortunate to have others in my life with just those gifts. Take my sister, for instance, who just started a blog where you can pretty much ask her ANYTHING. Not only does she know a ton of stuff, she’s also a fabulous Tarot card reader. 

That doesn’t mean she knows exactly what’s out there, what’s between our reality and our perception. Her gift, though, reminds me that the unseen is there, shaping our world more than we give it credit, guiding us more than we wish to believe it does…

She is by no means the only sign I have that something else exists. All I need do is look outside on any day, or feel the breeze blow around me, or sense something behind me, something I cannot see no matter how hard I look, to know that I am not alone.

What signs have you seen? How sensitive are you? Think deep.

Although my main profession is writing, at least according to this blog, I actually have over 15 years’ experience teaching English and writing at the college level (with a little junior and high school thrown in). I am about 2/3 of the way through a writing class right now, and a recent conversation reminded me of an important point with teaching: expectations.

As part of my education degree, I was required to conduct “field experience” three times, including two stints at the local high school and a 12-week session in junior high. At the high school, the teacher’s lounge was an illuminating place for me. Teachers–and even the principal–sat around at lunch ranting about the lame students they had, whining that retirement wasn’t closer, and commiserating about everything. In the class I was observing, the teacher–one of those whining in the lounge–was spending four weeks reading The Scarlet Letter aloud in her classes, in a droning voice that nearly put me to sleep. Now, I really like that novel, but I nearly forgot how much I liked it because of her reading. And I could tell that the students didn’t like it, either. The only time she actually interacted with them was when she told them to be quiet or insulted one of them, telling them they’d never amount to anything if they didn’t listen. The students were naturally crabby about the whole thing, and they weren’t the kindest in response. And those same students were going to walk out of that class believing that The Scarlet Letter was a terrible book, that English stunk, and that school was a waste of time.

When I moved to the junior high, the teacher’s lounge was a hotbed of enthusiasm. The same actions that depressed the high school teachers made the junior high students rave. And I found myself drawn in by their happiness, by their optimism about their students. Instead of being encouraged to quell student discussion, I was pushed to do the opposite. “Expect them to be involved,” the principal told me, “and they will be. Encourage those who aren’t sharing to do so, and  create activities that involve the whole class, but let each kid shine.” I was teaching speech and theatre, so the task wasn’t hard, and I had a few lone resistant students, but they were won over. I had one student especially who, seeing on his progress report that he had a C+ in class, told me he’d never thought he’d pass at all. He was suddenly filled with a desire to do even better, and his final grade was a B. Overall, my classes were teeming with students who couldn’t wait to do the next activity, who raised their hands desperately, who wanted more than anything in the world to be involved.

Were the two groups of students radically different? I don’t think so. It was the expectation that changed. I have found in my own personal experience that I resist low expectations. When someone dismisses me, assuming I have little to offer, little talent, or a low capacity for achievement, I get mad, and I want to prove them wrong. However, what I’ve realized as an adult is that these same people will see what they want to see. I cannot ever prove to them that I’m worth more than they expect. So I stop trying. At the same time, I find I want to be around people who expect a lot from me. Their high expectations mean a great deal, for I know that as I grow and gain in expertise, they will be there cheering me on, watching my progress, and raising their expectations as I raise my game.

Perhaps the saying is true: “You get what you expect.” My kids know I expect a lot, but they aren’t weighed down by my judgment (you don’t want them to think they can never measure up, for that won’t help them–that is actually a low expectation), and they act better as a result. They are better behaved kids because I expect them to be.

So, what are your expectations? What do you expect from others? What do they expect from you? Can you raise those sights a bit, push yourself farther?  

Just in case you thought my blog was predictable, that I was the equivalent of Jane Austen, all thought, no hormones, here I am to shake things up a bit. I was intrigued by the top ten lists on JD’s I Do Things blog, I thought I’d make one of my own. 

You see, I was blessed with one (likely final) episode of Crusoe, literally the ONLY show I regularly watch on television. A previous blog I wrote discussed why I liked it, but to sum up, it was:

1. Not the writing.

2. Not gripping plot.

3. Not the well-known actors.

4. Not the tremendous special effects.

I could go on with all the other elements the show doesn’t have, but if you read the title of this post, you’ll already know: Beefcake, plain and simple. Okay, yes, the costumes help, since I’m a natural born costumer and sucker for beautiful clothes. But until this show came around, I didn’t realize how much of a sucker I was for beautiful men. 

And why is that exactly? Why has it taken me this long to realize my own level of testosterone increases with a cute guy around? Perhaps part of it that, for nearly 20 years, I’ve had my own beefcake. My hubby’s pretty darn cute, the tall, dark, handsome type. He even wears a beard, mainly because I love beards. 

But there hasn’t been enough beefcake on TV, at least not on Prime Time. You see, women are more complex than men. We can enjoy the way a guy looks, but if he’s a creep, we will gradually see him as only a creep, negating any beefcakeyness he might otherwise have had. And, typically, a really cute guy is stereotyped either as narcissistic or so stupid he might as well be a rock. For some reason, while a woman is stereotyped as worthless if she isn’t pretty (with very few exceptions), beautiful men can’t be trusted. If they are that pretty, they have to be significantly flawed. 

Let me see if I can come up with two lists. The first, the top ten Cute and Nice Guys (on television):

1.  Robinson Crusoe (you have to see it if you haven’t), played by Philip Winchester

2.  Gray’s Anatomy… but only Dr. McDreamy (although I like him best in Enchanted)

3.  Um… well… 

You see, I can’t think of anybody else. I have even tried to think of past shows, but Bo and Luke Duke never appealed to me, and David Hasselhoff? Bbbllecccchhh! I remember liking the show BJ and the Bear, but I can’t even remember what the guy looked like. And as a kid I loved Buck Rogers, but he wasn’t exactly the ideal beefcake either (though I did catch a marathon of that show a few months ago…and I love the one where he was captured and auctioned off). The old Battlestar Galactica had two sort of beefcakes, but Apollo was too stiff, and Starbuck too much of a lady’s man (remember the stereotype?).

I know the beefcake is out there, waiting for an acting job. I just need to get through to TV producers to let them know what I want. 

Requirements for Truly Delectable Beefcake:

1.  A good, emotive face. 

2.  Kindness/sensitivity (and not just to a woman when he’s in love with her).

3.  Heroism (yes, he needs to face tough stuff, and that doesn’t mean choosing between 2 women).

4.  Intelligence (His voice has to sound intelligent, too, not just say smart things. For me, that means Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are out.)

5.  Vulnerability (no man is always strong… just ask Mr. Incredible, or Spiderman)

6.  A sense of isolation, even if he has friends (think Harry Potter)

7.  Honesty/honor

8.  Loyalty (to a woman, to friends, etc.)

9.  Good clothes (and, yes, 18th century coats and half-open shirts work better than underwear. My imagination works great, thanks. Often better than the original.)

10.  A great body (even a good body would work, if he has the other stuff)

So there it is, my testosterone-laden entry for the year. I might do a second one on films, but right now I need to go snuggle with my own beefcake. Think I could get him in a pirate costume?

Okay, so I think this is the second time I’ve gotten the Lemonade award, shown here:  Only, the first time I got it, I was a bonehead who didn’t know how to put anything but words into my blog. So here goes:Who nominated me?Flitting (one of my first regular readers) and Unorthodox Chef (can’t wait to try her pizza dough).And whom do I nominate, in turn?

Oh, where to begin. I love all of you! But I especially love:Rocketscientist (the genius of the family, and of the web)

Exchange of Realities (another genius, though no relation)

I Do Things So You Don’t Have To

Dark Passenger

Write More

Book Publishing

Writely Applied

My Life as Stori

Write More

Chronicles of Caelan

Writing for Your Life

Write 4 Money

and 

Working Wifey

Some older blogs (old by months, mind you), some new…all worth reading!

Okay, so the rules…for those of you who received the award (unless this is the second or third time you received it, and you did the right thing the first time)…

1) Display the logo somewhere on your blog, even if it is only in the post acknowledging the award.

2) Nominate your favorite blogs, at least 10 of them. You can nominate them for any reason you want but they must display attitude or gratitude!

3) Link to your favorite blogs and give them a little link love.

4) Tell them all about the award you have given them and a little about what it means to you.

5) Link to the person that nominated you as well to show a little love to the person that loves your blog so!

It certainly is nice to be recognized! (Honestly, it’s nice that someone reads my blog once in a while. I feared weeks would go by without a nibble. So, happy nibbling–and if you really want to nibble, try some of the recipes on Unorthodox Chef’s website.

Oh, and I also got the Super Scribbler Award last week (okay, almost two weeks ago, *sigh*), but I haven’t figured out all the Scribbler rules, so that will come later! 

After I had finished playing piano at church today, and a woman gave me two compliments. The first one was that my playing was getting really good. Now, the reason I took this one to heart is that she is the first person who didn’t say “getting better,” but who actually claimed I was doing what I was doing well (okay, so she said “good,” but that doesn’t work grammatically). 

Now I knew that I had made a ton of mistakes. I knew I had mangled the first hymn until it was unrecognizable–but I was saved from disgrace because my fellow pianist was playing it too (I on organ, she on piano). I also knew I was playing some things one handed still, after all these months, because I’m still not good enough to keep pace with the congregation playing both hands. 

But did that mean I ignored her compliment? Nope.

She also gave me another one: She said I looked beautiful today. Then she added, “You looked statuesque.” Now, I have never, never been called that in my entire life. I assumed one had to be at least 5′ 8″ to be statuesque, and in a world where supermodels are all 6′ 1″, even that might not make it. And I’m 5′ 5″. I could list out the other bodily imperfections I know I have, but I don’t want all of you writing in all the ways I’m pretty (since NONE of you regular readers have ever seen me, except my sister). I’m not fishing for compliments, so I’ll spare you. But this woman did see me, and despite my shortcomings (emphasis on “short”) she called me statuesque.

Now, I am not fat-headed enough to sign up to be a professional musician, playing piano in a night club. I don’t have enough material to last thirty minutes. And I’m not foolish enough to set off for all the local modeling agencies, intent on becoming a supermodel. I’m not an idiot (and I hope my blog is evidence of that).

But I have no intention of negating this woman’s comments. On days when my world looks (and smells) like a stinking garbage heap, or even a field of trash as far as the eye can see, her comments will be a wildflower among the refuse, dappled with dew, pink in the bright sunlight, waiting to cheer me. I love those wildflowers. They seem so small, so fragile, yet they survive years of turmoil. I have wildflowers I’ve kept since I was a very young child.

We all know the opposite can be true, as well. Perhaps we know someone who holds onto the harsh words, the bad events, clinging to them even when life is good. Someone who can look out onto a field of wildflowers and obsess about the one crushed tin can lying in the shade under a tree. The rotting smell of spoiled food from the can negates the pleasant fragrance of each flower, the sunlight glinting off the metal, blinding the person, making their head pound.

So, which are you? It’s easy to fall into the second pattern, to ignore the happy in one’s world so that one can dwell on past hurts or one irritating exchange. But it is so harmful to live this way, unhappy despite the happy parts of one’s life. 

I, for one, intend to feel statuesque the rest of the day. It might even improve my posture.

I just finished the third installment of Libba Bray’s trilogy…and it was as I’ve described books to be: imperfect, but with flashes of brilliance. I think the hardest part for me, as far as her books are concerned, is how long it takes for stuff to happen. Gemma, the main character, takes about 800 pages to figure out what she needs to do, and all the time she does this, people are pulling her in other directions, none of them trying to look at the big picture except for her. But in the end, she does act, the one clear-thinking, unselfish person in the world, surrounded by a load of people who don’t understand what needs to be done, or don’t care enough to make the sacrifice. 

Frankly, I’d love to believe that I am the one person in the world looking at the big picture, that I can be the Frodo in a world of others who turn creepy and violent in the mere presence of The Ring,   the One, the Anointed, the only possible savior of a world gone wrong. I’d love to think of myself as the “special” one, with gifts nobody else has, the one whose smell attracts vampires more than any other human (think Twilight), yet who can somehow resist and defeat them. 

I’m sure that desire what Libba Bray, J. R. R. Tolkien, Stephanie Meyers, and even J.K. Rowling are all working from. Isn’t that the reason so many superhero comics are turned into films (and, of course, I own most of those superhero movies–I am especially fond of Spider Man and Wolverine).

Perhaps this is part of the suspension of reality–our desire for fantasy–for in our ordinary lives, we are, well, rather ordinary. We don’t fight off supervillains, or vampires…just jerks who hog the road and caustic fellow employees. Yet, even with those people, we rarely act. Sure, their comments burn at us, and we might rant at them in private, but we rarely have the strength to do more than that. We don’t act, even if we long to.

Now, I’m not deluded. I know I can’t fly, I know I can’t turn things to ice, or lift trains, or climb up buildings. My four-year-old son would like to pretend he can shoot webs out of his hands, but even at his age he knows he can’t. But we can all act…we can all take a chance here and there and work towards the common good. 

So, that’s what I’m trying to do, in my own small, unheroic way. I do what a mom should, raising my kids as well as I can, and I write, and write, and write, here and on my novels, hoping that they will inspire others to act according to their own conscience, instead of watching the ugly stuff of the world go on, without saying or doing anything about it.

I’m no superhero, but I might just inspire one some day.

Does anyone truly know who she is? I think of this every time I see someone’s blog on Today.com, and most have the tab, whether on the side or at the top, saying “All About Me.” It took me a few days of navigating around my page to find this tab and actually put something in it, but even when I did, I was struck by how little I really knew about myself, by how little I could put there. 

Most bloggers, at least those whose blogs I have visited, put info about their professional careers…what they do for a living, how many dogs they have, kids, spouses, favorite hobbies. But is that who we really are, or what we are? Are we only made up of our relationships, of what we like to do in our spare time (or whether we have any spare time at all)? Aren’t we more than that? 

I’d like to think we are, or at least I have the desperate hope that I am (I am the center of my own universe, after all). But if I am, how do I discover–or uncover–this person? It is impossible to see myself as others see me. Even if they are willing to tell me the truth of what they see, there is no way for me to accept it (good or bad) without qualification, for I have my own filters through which to see myself and others, and those filters color everything.

I think my writing is one way I venture into the “Who am I?” question, for I place qualities I believe I hold within my characters, watching those qualities move the characters in different ways. If the characters act the way I believe I would act, I know that quality is one I likely share. Writing fiction also gives me the chance to try out other choices, choices I wonder about, choices I might have made a long time ago, which may have significantly altered my life now.

But is it my choices that make me who I am, or are they, like my relationships, my hobbies, my profession, merely the result of the authentic ME coming out? It’s funny, but even though I tended to be a rather tractable young woman, I’ve made so many choices that step completely outside the list of possibilities other people gave me as choices. I’ve chosen so many times to do things others didn’t want me to do, and I keep doing it. 

Perhaps I am merely being rebellious, but I don’t think so. I feel more as if I am listening, doing what I can drown out the voices of others–others who are sometimes VERY insistent–so that I can hear the leanings of my soul and follow that path. And for the most part, I am content to follow the path rather blindly, not knowing where any particular choice might lead, but trusting that I will be okay. 

And when I make a choice out of obligation–and that happens at times–I sometimes find my heart wraps itself around the choice pretty quickly. If it doesn’t, an I feel myself bending elsewhere, I change eventually, following a new path that feels better. 

Perhaps there is no reason to figure out WHO I am, as long as I follow the yearnings, feed my soul, and willingly follow the path of my dreams. Perhaps that is who I am.