After a long time wrangling with health systems regarding my darling husband's back injury, punitive testing, spinal surgery and long-assed recovery, we now have to do it again with my little Leo. As much as I am thankful that we have access to medical care and can (barely) afford health coverage, I still resent medical interventions. Isn't it enough, say I, that we stay active and eat good food and shoot up antibodies when necessary? Shouldn't we be then blessed with good and perfect health?

I have just learned that the thumbs house a pressure point associated with the brain, the pituitary gland, clear-headedness and thinking.

Given the scope of what I must accomplish today, I am now pressing my thumbs with wild abandon.

I'm hoping they won't be too bruised by the end of the day.

I love love love love Pandora Radio. If I could write sonnets, I would write one to the big-hearted geniuses (genii?) who thunk that thing up and brought it into my life.

Particularly, since my ancient cd player coughed, vomited some kind of acid on my dresser and died last week. And I don't feel like shopping.


Thank you Pandora! I am amused and productive and listening to They Might Be Giants and even though I still can't talk, all is currently right with the world.


Love,
Kelly

I'm now at thirty six hours of being utterly unable to speak. My vocal chords are non-operable, and even a whisper brings intense pain. As I have, for as long as I can remember, been constitutionally unable to keep my yap shut, this situation has thrust me into an existential crisis of nearly epic proportions.

Who am I if I cannot speak?

No fucking idea.

If my thoughts go un-uttered, do I actually have them?

Again, new territory for me. I say everything. Hell, I often talk as I write - in fact, the oration of the written word is a crucial tool for my revision process, which is particularly troubling, as I am right smack in the middle of a Big Ass Revision.

Aw, hell.

I would very much like to be able to tell my children a story in the dark. Or sing a love song to my husband. Or howl at the moon. Damn, damn, damn.

I'm currently on day seven of sore throat/low grade fever/aches and pains/ coughing so painful it feels like a serrated knife is sawing through my lungs. Suck, suck, sucky. Even worse, it's a beautiful day and I want to be outside running, sledding, slush kicking or climbing trees with the kids. Illness should be banned on beautiful days, say I. Perhaps I should circulate a petition.

I'm wading through editorial changes today and feeling disheartened. Or not disheartened, exactly, but I'm finding it necessary to force myself to turn off a fundamental (perhaps elemental) aspect of my personality, i.e., making decisions based solely on their ability to please others.

I'm a pleaser. Pathologically so.

This is problematic because while the editorial suggestions are extensive, they are just that: suggestions. It is up to me to decide what exactly needs to get fixed in my book and how to fix it. In the end, the primary editorial direction to follow is my own.

So how do I do this? No fucking idea. It's killing me to force myself to not say, "Oh, you're right, I hate that part too," when in fact it is a section that I consider crucial to the telling of the story. What I'm trying to do instead is to highlight the sections that my editor had trouble with, or that she suggested that I remove, and figure out what the story would look like without them, and if I hate that, to figure out a way to make the wobbly bits so good that we would sooner rip out our own eyes then take out those parts.

That's the goal anyway.


When I worked for the Park Service out west, I knew this grizzly old ranger named Vic Stansculescu (I say 'old', though he was only about nine years older than me, and I was only twenty two at the time. Still, he acted old.) who, when we were out for weeks on the trail, clearing trees and rebuilding washed out sections, used to say this: "Find the worst sections of the trail and turn them into the best." This is the advice today. I am now channeling Vic. We'll see if it works.

I went for a magnificent, reminds-me-of-why-I'm-a-runner kind of run yesterday. It was warm and slushy and blindingly bright and the sheer pleasure of moving and breathing fed my soul full up. I was hoping to go again today, but it is windy and cold and I am a lily-livered panty-waist. On the upside, though, my writing desk is situated in front of a large window that looks out on the backyard, which spills into the park, which runs down to the frozen creek. The snow is glinting in the slanting light and the snowflakes are caught in the wind and are refusing to ever hit the ground.

The cold is lovely when we lean into it, brace our skin, set our teeth, and overcome.

The cold is lovely when we peer out at it from someplace warm and soft and full of sleep.

Today, I prefer the latter.

One of the best things about motherhood is the potential for ridicule. Or not ridicule per se but a gentle.....ok, fine. Ridicule.

For example: I walked into Leo's room today and found Leo and Cordelia sitting in the dark. I turned on the light.

"DON'T TURN ON THE LIGHT!" bellows Cordelia. I turned it off.

"Why," says I.

"Because, mom," Cordelia says witheringly, "We're omelet." Pause. Pause. "No. Amish."

Will I use this when some pimple-faced, untrustworthy boy picks her up for a date in ten years? Oh. Yes.

After about sixteen false starts, I'm now in the last chapter of The Final Exile of the Insect King. It still needs a final read by my darling husband who is a flinty eyed and pitiless reader - just the person you need for a final read.

Then, it's off to the agent, and I can finally get back to Ironhearted Violet (who has, I've noticed, gotten very pissy since I started ignoring her. I'll be glad to get back to work on her story.

I'll tell you, having all three kids in school - despite the fact that preschool hours are limited - is a gorgeous, gorgeous thing.

Since I'm wasting time, anyway.....a meme. Ahem:



"And the Elephant's Child's nose kept on stretching; and the Elephant's Child spread all his little four legs and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose kept on stretching; and the Crocodile threshed his tail like an oar, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and at each pull the Elephant's Child's nose grew longer and longer - and it hurt him hijjus!" Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling