Where I am
… and she’s off!
Here’s where I’ll be tomorrow (or today, if you’re reading this on Wednesday, March 7th): at the Harbourfront reading series in Toronto, 7:30pm.
Which is exactly where I was a little over two years ago, except then I was in the audience, listening with such pleasure and joy to a conversation between two literary lionesses, Alice Munro and Diana Athill. At the time, I jotted down the moments that stuck out for me, including Alice Munro’s confession (and I’m quoting my own post here) that “she doesn’t consider herself a very brave person, and though she might be a brave writer, it was very difficult to come back from that writing world and have to deal with the consequences of what she’d written. She admitted that she’d caused pain, not purposely, of course; and one could infer that it pained her greatly to have caused pain.” Kevin tells me that both with Hair Hat and now with The Juliet Stories, coping with being published has been much harder for me than doing the writing work itself. And so I appreciated re-discovering Munro’s insight. Maybe I, too, am a braver writer than I am a person.
But I’m trying.
And on that note, here’s also where I’ll also be tomorrow: lunching with a few of my very favourite Canadian book bloggers, one of whom, Deanna, was a friend in grad school. It will be the first time I’ve had the chance to meet Kerry Clare of Pickle Me This or Patricia Storms, who is best known as a children’s author and illustrator (if you subscribe to Chirp magazine, you see her work monthly). Kerry and I spent last week emailing back and forth, questions and responses, and you can see the results of our interview here. Kerry proved both a sympathetic reader and a sharp interviewer, and she’s not afraid to go in-depth even on the blog medium. I must confess that I’m a little nervous about meeting these three. Blogging creates these strange relationships, mediated through the very specific information we choose to share. Sitting down to lunch at the same table — What will we talk about? What won’t we talk about? As much as I love blogging, there’s nothing like meeting in person and diving into the shared space of a moment. I might be nervous, but, oh, it’s going to be a treat.
And be warned, I’m bringing my camera. Toronto, here I come!
The week in suppers: the challenge edition
stir-fried fish
**Monday’s menu** Fried tofu. Mashed potatoes. Cheese. Brussel sprouts.
**The challenge** Ham leftover from Christmas (frozen and thawed) was on the menu, but it smelled “off.” Quickly disposed of, and I marinated some tofu and fried it up instead. Some considered the alternative delicious; but not all are tofu fans, even at its crispiest.
**Tuesday’s menu** Red sauce with local organic beef. Pasta. Bought garlic bread.
**The challenge** Prepared an enormous batch of sauce in the afternoon. But how to cook the pasta up fresh between swimming and soccer (half hour turnaround time for the whole family this week)?
**Solution** Kevin came home early to turn the water on and put the garlic bread in the oven. The bought garlic bread (impulsive purchase for which I am to blame). The kids loved it. Sigh.
**MIA** Something green.
**Wednesday’s menu** Black bean chili. Tortilla chips. Fried kale.
**The challenge** Cooked on the gas stove during an electricity black-out. A quick switcheroo from crockpot to stovetop at just the right moment saved the day.
cilantro pesto
**Thursday’s menu** Rice with peas. Marinated stir-fried fish. Cilantro pesto.
**The challenge** No real challenge, I’m just sticking with the theme. I enjoyed having a little more time to cook this meal. Fooey was keen to try these recipes from her “China” cookbook (library), and both turned out very well indeed. I used a bunch of leftover cilantro to make a pesto, which added flavour to the fish.
**Friday’s menu** Egg-fried rice (with grated carrot). Leftover fish.
**The challenge** Maintaining interest in cooking. Admittedly this can be a challenge most every day, but somehow seems worst by Friday evening. What? You kids want to eat AGAIN? Oh, alright, fine.
:::
pizzas!
**Weekend kitchen accomplishment** Pizza for a crowd!
**The challenge** We doubled our population in children overnight on Saturday as our part in a babysitting exchange (our turn next weekend!). So we made homemade pizzas. Three with pepperoni and cheese and one with tapenade and mushrooms and onions. Guess who ate which?
**Cooking with kids** CJ’s menu.
**The challenge** CJ’s menu. It’s been CJ’s “turn” for two weeks now (and we were too tired to attempt it last week). CJ is showing little inclination to plan menus or participate in the cooking. Well, he is still only three. He was not at his best on Sunday and fixated on wanting to make sushi, which would have been lovely but takes advance planning. Cue enormous tantrum. So instead Kevin and I worked together to pull off a delicious Asian-themed feast of no-ketchup pad thai and hot-and-sour-soup. (Amusingly, we each used our cellphones as recipe books, looking up Obscure CanLit Mama recipes; ah, technology). Less amusingly, we cooked in tandem whilst our youngest lay upon the floor kicking the cupboards and howling random incoherent demands. Just to give you a little window of realism into what “cooking with kids” can sometimes be like. At least supper was delicious. And bedtime mercifully early.
A few small good things
1. Giving away food. On Tuesday afternoon I cooked a giant pot of pasta sauce using my home-canned tomatoes. We ate some for supper and I froze three containers. And then along came Friday, a beast of a day; the worst of it was not what was happening, but how I felt I was handling what was happening. Performing poorly all around; know the feeling? By the time 3pm arrived, I was feeling downright down. And then an opportunity presented itself: to provide not one, but TWO meals to families in need of a little extra help. And I had these containers of frozen pasta sauce, plus lots of extra pasta on hand. It was the best part of my day, I’ll tell you honestly. Packing up food and giving it away. A reminder that being asked to help is a real gift, not to be taken for granted.
2. One good run. I ran super-fast on Friday night. My leg didn’t trouble me, and I covered ground quickly: 6km in under half an hour, at a pace of better than 5 minutes/km. Speedy! As speedy as I’ve ever run. In truth, it was probably too much, too soon, because yesterday afternoon’s follow-up run was slow and pained; good news tempered by bad. But at least I know speed is still there, waiting for me; and I feel certain that if I can retrain my muscles, I will be able to run faster than before. Plus just being outside, no matter how chilly, is a small good thing in itself.
3. Downtime. Friday night, Kevin and I finally spent some time together, just the two of us. And thankfully we both wanted the same thing: to rest our weary minds. So he made us each a martini with big juicy olives, and we vegged on the couch and watched Downton Abbey. An ahhhhh, thank you, Life, moment.
4. A nice review in the Montreal Gazette this weekend. A couple of really lovely things about this review. a) The reviewer remembers Hair Hat, which he read eight years ago; it stayed with him. b) He’s rooting for Juliet: “It will be interesting to see how this book, at least as mature and powerful as several recent major award winners, performs in the marketplace.” He’s rooting, but he knows the reality. Juliet is one in a crowd. Will she break out and be found? He thinks she has a chance, if people pick her up and read her. (Is it weird that I’ve started referring to the book as if it were a person? Hm. I’m just going to file that observation away rather than subject it to analysis.)
Messy rooms
Keeping up with basic chores is pretty much overwhelming me. I’ll admit it. I read in a Macleans article that a family needs two full days/week of domestic labour in order to keep the household running. With me working more, we’re not even coming close. The house is in a constant state of crumb & clutter disarray. So I’ve been trying to use at least a few hours every weekend to tackle some corner or manageable project. Last Sunday it was: everyone gets fresh bedding! (With five beds, three of them upper bunks, that is no pleasant undertaking.) Today it was: haul the vacuum upstairs!
We’re reasonably good at crisis cleaning, as in: someone’s coming over so let’s take the vacuum for a spin around the kitchen/dining-room/living-room, and forget the rest of the place because no one’s going to see it anyway. It may have been months since our upstairs had been visited by the vacuum. And of course in order to vacuum, first I had to pick all the crap up off the floor and put it somewhere, preferably where it belonged.
I realize this should have been a job assigned to my children. Their rooms were the problem. I know that. And they’ve “tidied” occasionally. A superficial tidy occurred last weekend in advance of their grandmother coming to stay. But today they were all off to friends’ houses. And it just needed to get done. So I did it. And here’s what I found: Little kids’ room: passable, and every toy has a place. Albus’s room: easy, mostly Lego and books on the floor. AppleApple’s room: UNMITIGATED DISASTER ZONE.
Not surprisingly, my most creative child has the most unbelievably messy room. I mean, honestly, there were pins, staples, hair bands, beads, fabric, ribbons, scissors, cardboard, cut paper, thread, Lego, paper scraps filled with tiny handwriting, glass bottles filled with unidentifiable liquids, and on and on and on. It was like a window into her wild mind. For example, I give you “FroggieWorld,” which looks to the uneducated eye to be a shelf cluttered with cardboard tubing, string and cloth swinging from chopsticks, scraps taped together, and vessels filled with water and rocks: a complete mess, right? I chose not to touch it. It was contained on a shelf, and besides, I knew it to be FroggieWorld because she’d given me the tour. She’s devoted many happy hours to its creation.
I devoted a rather unhappy hour to clearing her floor from end to end, before vacuuming could begin. And I love her to bits. But I’m wondering, will she ever be able to organize herself? How much of what we accomplish happens because we’re able to stay on task, to prioritize, to keep what we’re working on boxed into separate tidy containers — literally and figuratively? It got me wondering, again, how organized I really am. And how much more organized I need to be in order to compartmentalize different aspects of my writing work into different sections of the work day, so that I can, say, answer emails here, write blogs here, process photos here, and write books here. What to do with a head full of “good” ideas? How to pin down the ones that can realistically be pursued and completed? How to stay on track? How to make FroggieWorld, and sew Sock Puppies, and keep a regular journal, and a story-writing journal, and invent a Harry Potter game, and take notes on ancient Athenians, and read French books, and and and … voila, messy room! My version includes: The Big Fat Juicy Belly Worm; photo projects; Obscure CanLit Mama; recording more Juliet songs; an idea for a novel titled The Runner; an idea for another novel told from the viewpoint to four different characters; an idea for yet another novel about a spy … and, and, and … voila, messy room.
Lingering in between
I had another physio appointment this morning. It’s hard work retraining these muscles. My physio says she expects it to take another four weeks of work (and that means daily exercising at home too) before I can run without pain. And only when I’m running without pain will she begin to address some of the more technical problems with my stride. I’m grateful to be running again, if only for 20 to 30 slow-paced minutes a couple of times a week; but I’m frustrated by not being able to push harder, to run faster, to challenge myself at the pace and speed and distance that I could just a few months ago.
So I feel in between. Very much in between. In a kind of quiet zone I’d never planned to visit let alone linger in.
It occurred to me this morning that I’m in a similar place with my writing. Last year I worked so hard on the specific project of Juliet. In parallel, I worked so hard to become a long distance runner and triathlete. I achieved both goals. And then I fell into this in between zone. And I’m lingering. And I’m impatient. And I’m anxious to get training and working hard again.
For my writing, the in between zone is the launching of the book. It’s done. It’s ready. Here is its chance to enter the world and sink or swim on its merits. I feel a great responsibility toward it, and toward those years of effort. I want to help it find its way. It’s my job, too, to spread the word, to share the words. And that takes time. And mental energy. And painstaking work that feels a little bit like those strength exercises I’m doing every day now. Tiny repetitive muscle motions that are much harder to do than it would appear.
What I hope for, with both of these lingering lulls, is to emerge on the other side stronger and fitter, with muscles retrained and fresh ideas gained and the pent-up angst of a forced rest period channelled into positive energy and drive. Writing a book and training for a marathon are similar exercises. Both require intense commitment to a goal, and the ability to keep working toward that goal even on off days, even when the point of the goal feels temporarily lost. Will this forced wait renew my commitment? Return me afresh to work that can seem, at times, tedious and interior?
I don’t know for sure. But I can hope.