Towels

If you’d been peeking into my backyard the other night about 10PM you would have been treated to the sight of my husband not once but twice running out to retrieve and put away tools he’d been using on the roof reno earlier that evening. The treat part, well maybe just for me, was that he was in his towel. Actually, towels could almost be considered part of his wardrobe. I laughed when I realized he’d been out like that. He didn’t see anything wrong in it. It was dark after all, and it isn’t as if our neighbors have much of a view of our backyard. Out where we live most yards and houses are sheltered by trees and shrubs, not to mention the garages and privacy fences and RV’s that are typical of the back yard parking areas that connect to the alley. I think the real reason that I laugh is that it’s interesting that I should have found and married a man who is more casual than I am about running about in towels or less. My habits stem from years on my own, but his I chalk up to his exotic Canadian roots. Canadians drop drawers for outdoor tinkling without much thought really, so it stands to reason that running about in towels isn’t any big deal to them.

Of perhaps his lack of modesty is a male thing? In the locker room at the gym the other morning I was drawn into a conversation on nudity etiquette. It began with a woman fresh from the shower and trying to pull on her panties before dropping her towel, which is something I do to if there are a lot of other women around and the quarters are tight. When I have elbow room and there women are familiar to me, I just drop the towel and dress. Though I have to admit I sometimes do this just to make people uncomfortable when I get the feeling they disapprove of my changing out in the open as opposed to gathering up all my things and heading to the draped cubicles. The conversation covered a range of topics within the larger context, but we reached the unanimous conclusion that age and experience and above all comfortable confidence in your body that the aforementioned bring to many women eventually are the chief reasons that we eventually drop the modest act and just get dressed.

I have told Rob that if we ever get to the timeshare in St. Martin, I want to try the nude side of the beach. Not that I have anything spectacular to share with the world. It’s not about the world. It’s about being comfortable and confident in me. That is something I see in Rob that I find incredibly attractive, and I think his influence has helped further my own ease with myself. So, I guess it’s not really about towels or “neckidness”, is it.

Meanderings of Writer's Block

One of my favorite authors is a man named Gary Paulson. If you are a middle school teacher, you probably are quite familiar with his work. He is a phenomenal talent who writes accessible fiction that promotes thinking without being preachy. I was thinking about him the other day when I read yet another newspaper article about how brave the author of the Harry Potter series was to “out” one of her main characters. I was and still am unimpressed by her after the fact revelation. Had she written the character as a man who happened to be gay in addition to being the head master of a school for wizards that would have been worthy of praise. As it was, she opted for the cheap politically correct option of telling her readers she imagined that the character was gay as she wrote about him......not being gay. Not that it matters. Orientation is not the sole defining characteristic of any person and that should have been the point. It reminded me of Paulson because in his novel The Car, one of the man characters is a gay man. As readers we learn about this through yet another main character as he reveals the fact in passing during a conversation. Paulson never mentions the fact again in the course of the novel because it’s not relevant to the story, but he mentions it upfront and not as an aside in an interview later on. So why do I bring up Paulson at all? Was it to discuss the Rowlings revelation? No, actually I wanted to talk about his theory on writing. I may have mentioned it at some point in my blogging but it bears repeating. He feels that writers have to be willing to “go there” in other words, dig deep into the rubble pile that is the sum of all our bad experiences in life and be willing to put ourselves back in those circumstances and draw on the rawness to fuel artistic endeavors. And no, it’s not much more fun that it sounds. I know because I have been reading back through the first six months of my blogging from July through December of 2006. Not fun times. Although not as dark as times that preceded it in 2005 or 2004 or even earlier. When I truly think about, life has been a struggle since early spring of 2002. That’s when Will first began to be obviously not right in so many ways. That’s a long time to struggle. And sometimes I would like to forget about those times completely. Why not? There is no reason to go back there and agonize, second guess or berate myself. Except that those times made me who I am in the same way that my father’s alcoholism shaped me or my long, lonely single years laid the foundation I built upon when Will was sick and it was just me and Katy, just as examples. How do you integrate and use those lessons, for lack of a better word, and forget the circumstances at the same time. In retrospect, I am a lucky person because I know there are people who lives have been beset with far more tragedy than my own and for whom there never seems to be much, if any respite. Though most of these people are strong, resourceful and able to hang onto those wonders and joys of life that see them through and give them hope; no one is able to hold up the world day in and day out when it seems intent on rolling off their shoulders or becomes to heavy a burden alone. Those times when I felt that life was little more than an endless battle against the bad things; I hung onto the fact that I would be happy again. Even when I wasn’t sure if that was really true, I clung to it stubbornly and it saw me through to where I am now. Today I was reading one of the many widow blogs I peruse. It’s author, Alicia, called to mind the endurance that is necessary to sustain oneself when the forces beyond our control have us tightly boxed and seemingly in their grip. Her poem reminded me of the power within us all to dig within ourselves and express our need for strength and empathy and a glimpse of that elusive and lit tunnel exit sign.

Iowa, B.C., Texas and the Kingdom of Saud

When we were back in Iowa visiting with my family a few weeks back, we spent an afternoon out in the rural area that my dad’s family helped settle well over a hundred years ago. The old homestead is the house I remember from my childhood and visiting my Grandma and Uncle Jimmy, who was farming it at the time. It was a house that my great-grandfather built and all but his oldest son was born there. In fact the trees that run along the driveway were planted the day my grandmother was born back in March of 1894. The house is still livable but no one has lived there for several years and it shows. One of the McCarthy boys, Phil, owns it now. He is my third cousin on my grandmother’s side. At least I think that is the degree of our relationship. I have trouble with the whole cousin rating system once I am past second cousins. Phil’s great-grandmother and my great-grandfather were siblings is all I know. And even that might not be entirely accurate. Phil wants to sell the acreage the homestead is on, preferably to family. My sister and her husband looked at the place over the summer but decided against it as the house needs too much work. After we visited the place with my dad and Katy and my nephew, Luke, Rob surprised me by commenting that he could see himself living on a place like that in future and that he found my hometown a fairly nice area to live. Interestingly, I had thought about buying the homestead on different occasions in my live but it was never for sale until recently.

I bring this up only because Rob and I have been talking about where we want to retire. A bit premature you say? Well, not really. We are both of the mindset that “retirement” in its current form is a fantasy for the majority of people our age (40’s). The social structure will be bent to the breaking point by the older boomers and won’t exist in its present form for us. Unless we win the lottery (and apparently you have to play in order to win) or I really do write that Oprah Book Club masterpiece some day soon, we are going to be working in some form or another all of our lives. What we need to do is settle upon careers that we enjoy and that can be done anywhere. And we need an anywhere to do it.

So, now we have one possible anywhere. My family’s homestead. Next week we are heading to B.C. (British Columbia) to visit Rob’s mom in her new digs. It’s in the mountain valley area and it’s apparently very beautiful there. That might end up being another “where” possibility.

Rob mentioned the Iowa retirement option to both his daughters in an email he sent to them recently updating them on things going on around here, not the least of which is a possible job offer that could take us back to the states very soon. Jordan, the younger, thought that Iowa was about me and my wanting to be close to my family. Rob asked me about that too when we were discussing it. Probably because when we first met, I was under some pressure from my mother and sister to move back to my hometown and I was resisting it. My reasons then where that though it would be good for Katy in some ways to be nearer my family; it would not have been good for me. Not then with my life being what it was. I told Rob that now was different simply because I am different. My circumstances are different. Things do change. Iowa would still be good for Katy because she would grow up around extended family and as an only child with older parents, it would be good for her to have connections beyond us. It would be okay for me too now because I wouldn’t be in danger of being sucked into some of my family’s dysfunctional ways the way I would have been had it been just Katy and I.

However, for the immediate future there is what a move to Houston and then quite probably Saudi Arabia would mean for all us. Iowa or B.C. is food for thought and a later date to ponder and act upon.

Time Flies

Not literally and yet literally, time flies. And it’s not about fun either. I am not always having fun. The dishes, the laundry, the child, the cat, the groceries, the miscellaneous errands. The care and maintenance that goes into the all of the aforementioned can run a considerable range up and down and around the old fun meter. There are my various physical activities (running and swimming) and mental activities (my novel, the blog, attempting to keep up with the world of literature and the news of the day - although sometimes I don’t get to today’s news until tomorrow). I have written about this before but I just run out of time, nearly every day it seems.

As I sit and type this, I can hear and feel the roof shuddering because Rob is out back in the pitch dark building a new gable over the kitchen window box because the roof is leaking and it’s pretty much winter here now. And he hasn’t time either and I don’t need to wonder why or how this happened. We merged our lives and doubled everything essentially but the time we are alloted.

So, the novel is over 31,ooo words and 108 pages and I am certain I will hit the 50,000 within a week but I will likely not be done. More like 3/4ths done. I have discovered however my novel writing style, which as I suspected it would be, is not a start at the beginning and write to the end; but more of a have a good idea where things go and write as the ideas germinate whether that is starting in the middle or rearranging chapter order as you discover that you wrote chapter 11 when it should be chapter 2. My writing is more and more consuming time. I am becoming of those people who sit in waiting rooms with their laptops open and pounding away.

Tomorrow I promise to blog more topically but tonight I am tired and there is a novel calling and a hay fever attack subsiding and my husband is back inside to be snuggled up to. Time just continues to fly by.