none

Memmmorry!! (you know…CATS)

At about eleven this morning I sat bolt upright on the couch. “I have to go to Ken’s and take care of the cats today!” I said to Sanguinity.

Now, Ken and Dale only left on Friday afternoon, so yesterday would have been the soonest I’d go over there. It’s fine to wait til today because they are cats. But, I did not think of Loaner Kitty and Hermi-1 once yesterday! I mean, what if they just hadn’t popped up in my brain for several more days? It seems unreal, and not like me.

I’m going over there when Sang comes home from work, with the car.

Not a lot to salvage from this day, but I did complete my first long run of the year. Six miles, for a Week One total mileage of fourteen. It was fine. I ran around the college track and listened to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. It ended just when it was time to head home through the canyon.

I’ve walked through the canyon four times since the turn of the year, starting on New Year’s Day. I half wish I had an internet project going, posting photos every x interval and so on, but 1) I don’t need another internet project, and 2) maybe I want my acquaintance with the canyon to be more quiet than that, a gradual accretion of knowledge and familiarity. Oh, and 3) my camera is kind of big and I’ve never been that diligent at carrying and using it.

But here’s a photo from New Year’s that shows the general look of the canyon this time of year. For today, add a pair of diving ducks and the sound of Canada geese overhead, then the cawing of crows.

good reading that I make myself do

An update: I am very happy with my subscription to One Story. I’ve gotten three issues now. The typography and layout is the same for all the stories, except for the title and author’s name on the front. They’re pretty, pretty little booklets, and the stories have been good too. There are author interviews on the blog. There’s nothing I don’t like so far.

Despite all this, and despite the little thrill I feel when I see the One Story envelope in the mail, I can tell it’s the sort of thing that I could easily let pile up on my desk. (When is the perfect time to read an 8,000-word story?) But I think I solved this inadvertently: I got my dad a subscription for Christmas! It’s fun to think we’re reading each story at more or less the same time, and I’ll have to stay caught up so we can compare notes.

In another instance of slightly-forced reading, I signed up with Daily Lit to have Moby Dick sent to my email in 260 installments, one per day. It’s a sweet service, and free for the classics: you can choose email or RSS delivery, skip weekends if you want, change the length of the installments, and so on. I’ve read 17 now and they haven’t started piling up. Maybe I’ll finally redeem myself as an English major and finish Moby Dick!

Further bulletins as events warrant. ;)

there’s nothing simple and easy about being a child

I’m thinking about a four-year-old today. He’s the son of a friend we had coffee with today– he was at preschool during our visit, but we got to meet his beautiful baby sister for the first time. She’s still in eat-and-sleep mode mostly, though I think she appreciated Sang’s funny faces. It was wonderful to meet her and to see her mom for the first time in a few months!

My four-year-old friend (can I call him my friend if we visited when he wasn’t there and probably no one will tell him? On purpose?) is having a hard time. His family changed, and he didn’t have a choice about it. His mom– his mom!— can’t play with him as much as she did before. He loves the baby (sometimes?) and definitely wants the baby to interact with him, but the baby is not so interactive yet, so that mostly means making the baby cry.

Even just hearing about it second-hand, I can feel what big emotions he’s having. So when his mom explains to him that he can mess with the baby and end up with the baby crying, OR he can leave the baby alone and Mom can then play with him because the baby is still asleep? And he messes with the baby? Well, a lot of adults don’t handle their relationships much better, honestly. It is really hard to accept a loss and eschew drama and take the way that’s better for everyone considering the new circumstances. I feel kind of wrung-out and teary just thinking about it. (Sang said in the car afterwards, “But if he lets the baby sleep, the baby has won.”)

That, plus watching the baby devote her entire, serious energy to growing at a rate that would be like my putting on ten or fifteen pounds a week, plus wiring up vast numbers of brain cells… well, when people talk about childhood as simple and innocent and carefree, I wonder why their minds are misleading them so.

Ramen! Yesterday I had something called “snack noodle soup,” a mildly spicy Korean packet. I think I’m developing a brand fondness for Paldo (they also made the green ramen) noodles: they’re chewier and more golden than Maruchan.

Today I tried Unif Tung-I Instant Rice Noodles: Chinese Onion Flavor. I was excited to see this flavor at FuBonn, but didn’t eat them right away because I usually prefer ramen noodles to rice noodles. I opened the oil packet, which was half white fat and half reddish-brown onion paste, and was scared. You know that fried onion smell, like the cans of french-fried onions you sprinkle on top of green bean casserole? It smelled like that. Like the onion smell that’s hard to wash off my hands sometimes. I like it and then soon I can’t stand it.

I liked it in the rice noodles, as it turns out. I suspect that if I had this a few more times, I’d get kind of hooked on it, as happens sometimes with scary chip seasonings. But I don’t think I’ll go out of my way to make that happen.

one-mile runs

I was so incredibly lazy the last few months and hardly ran at all. My commuter walks with friends were the bulk of my exercise. Now with my Nu Skedyool I’m running once in the morning before work, once on a weekday after work, and once (longer) over the weekend. Once a week for each of these timeslots, I can handle it, right? With additional walking two mornings and one afternoon during the week, and a hike on the non-running weekend day. But those aren’t the hard parts. The hard parts are the ones where I have to change clothes, and then move fast enough to stay warm.

Both weekday runs are going to be one mile, this week. One. Mile. But if that one mile feels good when I’m doing it, then fine. And it does. Hello, running! I maybe kind of missed you, in a weird sort of way. Okay, I did. I missed you.

Seven miles for my long run this week. That’s my basic starter run, to Mt. Tabor or through Eastmoreland and over the railyards. Or down to the college track and around a half dozen times and back. I wonder how that will feel.

I have what I always wanted

First of all, I concur entirely with Cheaper Than Food on the qualities of Nissin curry-flavored ramen. The powder was just a powder. I wouldn’t turn down a stash of this one, but won’t be seeking it out.

I have this very complicated schedule for the new year. On weekday mornings I walk to work with friends (2x per week), go running and catch the late bus (1x per week), read the internet and catch the medium bus (1x per week), or catch the early bus and do some writing downtown (1x per week). I map it all out in my moleskine planner. Maybe no routine will seem onerous if I have to execute it only once or twice a week. And I even have an internet-reading goof-off morning!

Afternoons are similar. And on two of them each week, I go to the university library after work for a generous hour’s writing.

This week is the first week of the term, and students are everywhere with their bags from the bookstore and their cell phones and their bikes and backpacks. They study mostly in groups, it seems like, at the wooden tables along the curved glass face of the library building, on the second floor. Yesterday I snagged the end table and could look down at the greenery and all the people walking from building to building and across the park blocks. There was a low buzz of students talking, but I had room to spread out my notebook and the book I was reading and a copy of the story I was revising, and work in peace. I went back and forth between reading and writing, revising and taking dictation of new sentences that came into my head.

It occurred to me that when I was a college student, I was always wishing that I had time just to read and write. To work on what I felt like working on, instead of miserably cramming down books and dredging up papers. Well, that time has come. Maybe only a few hours a week, but I love sitting in the university library and not being a university student. It is the perfect disguise, better than sitting in a coffee shop. The people at the other tables are doing stuff they have to do (99 percent of them, anyway), but I get to work at my own pace, to my own standards, work on four different things if I want. I love those hours.

Beyond Green Eggs and Ham

What’s a writer’s life without ramen? On a recent trip to FuBonn (the big Asian supermarket in my part of town), I hit the instant noodle aisle and bought one packet each of whatever caught my eye. I always tell myself I’ll find my One True Ramen that way and stock up next time I come in, but then I always fail to keep good records. I have this problem with unusual squash, melon, and citrus varieties, too. Blog and tags to the rescue!

Today I came in from a cold, sunny walk to the Reed canyon, peeled off several layers of clothing, and cooked up some green Korean ramen:

The color comes from green tea powder and chlorella, an algae, and is of course what caught my eye at FuBonn. I suspect these are sold as healthy food, as there is no MSG and no oil packet, just powder and dried vegetables. (But at over 1000 calories and 1600 mg of sodium, can anyone be pretending this is good for you?)

The veggies rehydrated to nice-sized seaweed scraps, which I love. The noodles kept both their shape and a pretty green tinge, and the flavor was a mellow blend of garlic, cuttlefish, and vegetables. I’ll definitely get this again next time I see it!

(photos from a recently retired ramen review blog)

Now to the evening’s writing work: I have seven days to get a story in shape for the IPRC student anthology, if I want to be in it. I feel like a one-trick pony with this story because it’s been my workshop piece, reading piece, mentor-review piece, et cetera ad nauseum. I suppose the remedy is to write something new, huh? But revisions need to happen sooner or later whether it goes to the anthology or not, so now I’m going to clean up my desk and set out all my notes and copies and start working, so I can come back to it all week.

from friday evening to saturday morning


Rabbit rabbit!

The turn of the year saw Sang and me watching the end of Xena Season Four on my laptop, sitting close on the couch and sharing a pair of earbuds because the speakers tend to cut in and out. Before that we tried playing the disc on Sang’s computer, which kept spitting it out for apparently no reason. And of course before that we tried watching it on the TV, but the TV no longer acknowledges the remote, and the tracks weren’t navigable using only the buttons on the TV. BUT WE PREVAILED, with the dog standing on the couch panting loudly in my other ear to protest the gorgeous noisy fireworks set off by the neighbors.

It’s a fine line between the pleasure of working all the little tricks and oddities required by our old house and its stuff, and a feeling that it’s all one step from collapse. But we’re good, and today we ate our black-eyed peas for luck. (Thanks, Sav-A-Lot! Safeway and Fred Meyer still haven’t clued in that they should lay in extra for this week.) I baked them up with some leftover rice and cans of chiles and tomatoes, with avocado on top instead of collards for lucky green. Okay, so the avocado turned black in the oven, IT STILL COUNTS. (But maybe I’ll go have a green tomato pickle from the fridge. Just to be sure.) Happy new year!

p.s. I don’t have any favorite book scenes featuring New Year’s Eve. But the title of this post refers to Mary Stolz’s The Noonday Friends, in which Marshall, for his fifth birthday when money is tight, gets a ticket “ONE WAY FROM FRIDAY EVENING TO SATURDAY MORNING” from his parents, meaning he can stay up all night like he’s always wanted. You go, Marshall. I was happy to turn in at one-thirty.

Year of the Series?

At the end of each year, my dad, my sister, and I send each other lists of the books we’ve read that year, with a little blurb about each book. (Sanguinity makes a list too sometimes, but not every year.) I eschew the letter grades my dad and sister assign to their books; I don’t like my relationship to the books to be one of picking and choosing, or judging. But I do sort my list into categories and mark my favorites, which I put in my LibraryThing collection to admire and remember along with the favorites of other years. (If you really want to see my whole list, you can view it here in Google Docs.)

What strikes me this year is how many of the books I read were part of a series. Two out of three of my adult-fiction favorites: Lisa Lutz’s The Spellman Files and its sequels, and Kage Baker’s Company series. (The other favorite was Molly Gloss’ Wild Life.) In children’s and YA fiction, I loved The Mysterious Benedict Society and its sequel (I’m saving the third book), finished off the Hunger Games and Life As We Knew It trilogies, and read a whole bunch of other books-with-companions:

  • Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
  • Catherine Clark’s Wurst Case Scenario
  • Grace Dent’s Posh and Prejudice
  • Dianna Wynne Jones’ Conrad’s Fate
  • Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy’s Wedding
  • Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s Alice in Charge
  • Patrick Ness’ The Knife of Never Letting Go
  • Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s The Shadow Speaker
  • Ellen Emerson White’s The Road Home

Srsly, like half my list of books. At the video store I get much more excited about long-arc TV shows than about standalone movies, but I hadn’t realized how much of a series reader I am. It’s not just the additive value of more books by authors I like: there’s a particular pleasure in tracking everything from book to book, the atmospheric changes, the writing quality, the character constellations. Almost a gossipy element. I hope someday I find a series to write. It must be wonderful to have such a rich field to play in again and again, mixing up the familiar and new aspects. Like seeing a place through many seasons and years.

My very favorite kidlit books of the year, however, were two standalones, and I must, must tell you about them in the hopes of tipping someone toward reading them. Christine Fletcher’s Ten Cents a Dance is that rarest of historical fiction, the kind that feels real and not even slightly like I’m being instructed and educated in history. And Frances Hardinge’s The Lost Conspiracy was my long summer book that took me away to an island with multi-cultural details and twisty plotlines and made me not miss Harry Potter one bit.

Thank God there are books to read, every year.

The Shopping News

Yesterday was blech, and there’s not much I mind consigning to the abyss of forgetfulness. But I did indulge in something I very rarely take part in: retail therapy.

These are Step One in my long-planned New Look. (My Old Look involves past-their-prime running shoes.) I put them on in the kitchen yesterday when Sanguinity and I were cooking. “I feel like Harriet the Spy!” I said.

Step Two requires a trip to Sock Dreams. Let me know if you want to go too!

Especially after a weekend of commercial television at the in-laws’, I do see how shopping can keep the feeling of disappearing at bay, and instill a sense of triumph and participation instead. Not as good as making stuff, but easier.