Short Stuff

Don't Eat Anything

2012-01-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

Remind me to not research the health benefits of food. It seems that everything has side effects that are bad for you.

In my desire (need!) to find foods that decrease peri-menopause symptoms, I ran across an interesting site that talked about not eating cruciferous vegetables as they interfere with the thyroid. Cruciferous veggies are fairly hard to avoid since they are a main staple in the American diet. (They also interfere with some prescription drug absorption rates.)

You can get rid of the bad goitrogenic properties if you cook them for 30 minutes. Can you say mush? And what of the nutritional values and other benefits after that much cooking?

There was (possibly) something to this avoidance as my internal temp settings seemed more reliable when I was in my lazy, spinach only mode. Once I added broccoli and cabbage back into the mix, I had cold/hot sleepless nights once more.

Ah spinach. My favorite childhood vegetable. The down side? It's chock full of oxalates which can cause kidney and/or gall bladder stones. There's also blocking the absorption of iron and calcium but no one seems to know by how much.

Of interest - it's better to get spinach in frozen form as the nutritional value deteriorates rapidly once picked.

Leeks were touted as a good one to add to the mix as they exhibit many of the same beneficial properties of onions and garlic with a milder flavor. (I do love raw onion dipped in salt with a glass of almond milk - another throwback to my younger days.)

The bad part about leeks? Oxalates - again.

Oxalates can also be reduced by boiling in lots of water and discarding all the water (and all the nutrients?).

My kidneys and gall bladder seem fine, for now. My shake recipe has morphed: frozen spinach, leeks, carrots, frozen fruit, cashews, bananas, flax oil, and vanilla almond milk with the optional raw chocolate powder.

A list of cruciferous vegetables and their pros and cons.

Even in eating healthy, it's a case of choosing your personal poisin.

Movie Season

2011-12-26T13:18:00.001-08:00

Tis the season for releasing movies. Not sure it's one for watching them given the low amount of money spent on tickets this past weekend.

My favorite movie this time around is one made for TV - in 2004.
Something The Lord Made

So far, I've only seen half of it before we stopped for dinner, but I'm totally hooked and the last scene is sitting in my head waiting for the story to continue.

This one depicts medical breakthroughs, racism in the days of Jim Crow, a slice of history (based on a true story), and amazing acting. It's currently playing on one of the premium channels.

Warning - includes some medical experimenting on dogs and scenes of surgery, but, so far, nothing too disturbing.

Giving The Season

2011-11-26T12:52:00.000-08:00

December 16th is approaching – my niece’s 25th birthday. By now she would’ve been well on her way to becoming a veterinarian or perhaps starting a family with her amazing boyfriend. Maybe both. She was level-headed, grounded, sure of herself and the direction her life was going in.

7 ½ years have passed since she was killed. Maybe it’s the milestone birthday that’s bringing the grief up anew. Maybe it’s time for me to process more of those feelings. Maybe it’s all that and more.

In her memory this year, I’ve given to today’s random animal charity (Louie's Legacy Animal Rescue)

With 5 dogs at the age of 17, she was well on her way to starting her own rescue or becoming a very young crazy dog lady. Something her grandmother and I both honor. Yes, the animal rescue gene runs strong with the women in this family. Very dominant. My poor wife is dealing – sort of.

A month after Amanda was killed, we knew something was wrong with my father – but not what. It took another 4 months to find out it was a very aggressive and terminal kidney cancer. Expiration date: 1 year. In the depths of his grief, I doubt he had the strength to fight for his life. What he did have, he put into MADD and writing letters to the editor of the newspaper. He was working on Amanda’s Law – justice according to the grieving grandfather.

Then he wrote his own eulogy. How was I to know this Future Farmer was really a writer in disguise? It took most of his life but when he finally put pen to paper, he was eloquent, impassioned, funny, enraged, engrossing. He was a writer who didn’t read and never understood the power of words until it was almost too late.

In those last pages, my father understood who he was. He took a long honest look at his journey and shared the highlights with his friends and family. He gave us everything he could to help us through our grief.

Honoring my father this season is as complicated as our relationship was. I will think more on this one.

They say 1 in 5 US children are going hungry and that number shoots up to 1 in 3 when talking about African American or Latino kids. My family, mostly, has no real needs. We have decided that giving to charities will be the packages under this year’s Christmas tree.

Food banks seem high on the list this year. My regular food charities:
St. Vincent Meals on Wheels
Project Angel Food

And a new one I’m considering:
Valley Food Bank

As for the younger set, it’s a bit harder to not give them something (green). One has the ambition to follow her dreams but only a passing acquaintance with responsibility. The other has the responsibility and buries her dreams deep inside. What they each need cannot be given.

UPDATE: Jenny the Bloggess has some cool giving ideas. I really like the first one.

Meaning

2011-11-01T07:19:00.000-07:00

The word takes on so much significance this time of the year. Birthdays drive me to reconsider who I am and what I’m doing with my life. Having this milestone birthday on the heels of a roller coaster emotional month is kicking my philosophical ass.

Buddy was my birthday present to myself 9 years ago. And here we are wondering when, not if, it’s time for him to go. He’s been very close and then he bounces back. Today he’s better, yesterday he wasn’t.

Balance is not a part of my life right now. I’ve done essentially no writing this past month. I think about doing a NaNoWriMo kind of editing effort, but that would mean the pendulum swinging to the other extreme and that’s not what I want either. Oh sure, the thought of living a hermit existence and doing only what I want to do when I want to do it is appealing. Wouldn’t that be something? I’d be insane in a short period of time – after I caught up on my sleep.

So I’m sitting on the edge of coping cliff ready to leap off into the unknown hoping to find greener grass. It’s the ‘what do I want to be’ syndrome times fifty. Only there are a few things tying me to this chosen path. The financial wreckage of my past is still with me. Buying all that love has its price, you know. One that reaches years into the future in the form of a second mortgage.

The end is in sight and maybe I’ll get there before this decade rolls over. Maybe I’ll find a different lifestyle in a smaller town where walking to the store and work is doable. One where I’m not tied to a profession by the paycheck (though I do still enjoy aspects of the work.) One where I have time for all I want to do.

Yeah. There’s never enough time for all I want to do.

Blogger Woes

2011-09-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

Blogspot has been a bit bizarre lately. I have blogs I love to read and comment on and now I can only comment on about half of them. Those are the ones where I am logged in as myself as soon as I look at the comments. With the other half, it doesn't recognize that I'm logged in at all.

At first, all I had to do was re-login but uncheck the Keep Me Logged In box. Then it would take me back to the comments and I'd be me.

That stopped working when it took me to an error page and said I was not allowed to comment on that page as me. But I could comment on it if I logged in as someone else. I was game even though there's only one of me. I re-logged in as me and unchecked that box again and it worked! For awhile.

Today is a whole new story. I can't comment as me and I can't comment as Anonymous either. No matter what I select, the page blinks, the comment box clears and I'm back at square one. Once I got to a new error page that said something was messed up with my cookies.

Sorry my friends. I am reading your blogs, I just can't tell you that or participate in the conversation today. Maybe tomorrow will be something new and different. Maybe powering down and starting this computer up again will help. One can hope.

Five Page Critique

2011-09-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

The first five pages of my bad luck Middle Grade are being critiqued at Adventures in Children's Publishing. We're on round 3 today. I'm entry number 4.

Would love it if you'd pop over and take a peek. Many thanks!

Note:
Revision 3
Revision 2
Revision 1
Original Entry

Soldiering On

2011-09-18T09:40:00.001-07:00

If you've never owned a beagle than you might not be acquainted with their interesting personality. They will follow a scent through brush, mud, what have you. They don't care what's in the way, they have a job to do. They even keep going if they've hurt themselves in some way. It's a particularly strong laser focus.

This is my beagle (maybe beagle mix) Buddy. He was an 8 year old owner turn in at the high kill pound in L.A. He wasn't the dog I went there to save, but he was the one I walked out with. The other one (6 year old, female, border collie mix) was in the process of being adopted by someone else.

I've posted about my OCDoggie previously, but I don't feel like searching through for the links. Do you? Yeah, that's what I thought. Short story, this little bundle of joy came home with skin cancer. Started with squamous cell, then moved up to mast cell, maybe some basal cell, and finally ended with hemangiosarcoma. That last one is a particularly nasty beast.

We removed the spots as they came up except for one. Placement of that one made removal far too problematic.

When he started waking up panting, we went through many rounds of what-the-heck-is-wrong-with-you. Took awhile and some lobbying on my part to get a diagnosis. He had Cushings - kind of. He didn't test high enough to get an official label. So he's a symptomatic Cushings boy.

And then there's the test to see if the dosage of the Cushings' med (Trilostane) is correct. Did that twice and never again. Poor guy was a mess for days afterwards. So finding the correct dose became another symptom watching experience.

When his belly distended, we nodded and said - another Cushings symptom. Only it wasn't.

A few years in, he refused a biscuit and I raced him to the emergency room. You see beagles don't refuse food without good reason. He was bleeding internally. According to the emergency vet he had several tumors that were inoperable and fatal. He wasn't in obvious pain and they were stopping the bleeding. We had time to get more information though I was very close to letting him go based on the doctor's evaluation.

Got him to our regular vet and had some keystone cops moments with them and a specialist appointment. The specialist did another ultrasound - there was a mass on the liver and a bright spot on the spleen. He felt they could cure him of this cancer through surgery and remove the spleen while they were in there. Buddy's blood work looked really good for a 14 year old.

We gave the nod to the surgery and waited and waited. The tumor was wrapped around his blood vessels. One tore open and they almost lost him on the table. They had to give up and be satisfied with getting 90% of the tumor. The surgeon told us that these dogs lived about 2 years with this type of surgical result. He'd be 16 then. That's a decent age for beagles, so we went with that thought and worked on feeding him a high protein diet to help combat the cancer. Along the way, we stopped his Cushings' meds. He did better without them.

That was 3 years ago this month. We took him back to that specialist yesterday as Buddy's liver values have skyrocketed. They had said when this tumor got going again, it would hit all his internal organs. So this was it.

Only it wasn't. This ultrasound showed the mass is in the same place and still only on the liver. We came home with anti-oxidant pills to help the liver heal and some hope that he will hang around a bit longer. Also found out that steroids often have a chemo-like effect on such cancers. Seems his untreated Cushings is helping him live longer.

In the meantime, little mister stubborn has suborned us into hand feeding him canned cat food. Twice a day. Yeah, he's quite good at training humans.

Working Writer's Retreat

2011-09-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my favorite SCBWI event of the year. Even being part of the planning team didn't lessen the enjoyment for me. Having this darn post-retreat head cold is a major pain in the butt though.

What did I learn?

I learned that sitting in a room with 39 other authors and listening to them pitch their book to a panel of editors and agents was a wonderful, tension-filled experience. The pitches included a log line and about 250 words from the beginning of the manuscript. Hearing the panel go through their thought process on if they would read on and why or why not was fascinating.

Next time, I have to remember that fear and excitement feel the same physically and decide that I'm excited.

I learned that the beginning of one of my MG books is "chatty". Lots of dialogue between two characters that helps set the stage for the rest of the novel. I've already cut the first chapter down to a couple of paragraphs that work at the beginning of chapter two which is the new chapter one.

With another MG book, the feedback was mainly that there wasn't enough information on particular aspects of the story in the first chapter (or even in the first 250 words). Chapter one introduces the MC, her brother, her parents and sets the stage for what follows. Chapter two introduces her best friend and gives more info on what led up to where they are. Chapter three starts getting into the details. I need to take a good look at chapter three to see if that's where the story really starts. Time to kill my darlings. I really liked chapter one, but I haven't been happy with my attempts to add more detail.

My dark YA which was two books with two distinct characters at two different ages and two different voices that I had smushed together is going to be two books again. Chapters two, four and five make a nice start to book one. Chapter one will be part of the first chapter for the next book in the series. Chapter three? Bye bye. For now.

The second book will be YA, but the first is a challenge. The trick will be in riding the line between the subject matter and where I really want this book to be - which is Middle Grade.

I can no longer say I am a karaoke virgin. *sigh*
Actually it was quite fun. I got up in front of a group of people I had just met and sang by myself. Johnny B. Goode because I love Chuck Berry.

Breaking Silence

2011-08-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

I recently experienced an internal code of silence that surprised me greatly. It’s been over 40 years since I was raped by my uncle, and yet I found it difficult to talk about. It seemed as if I would be punished in some unknown way for speaking up. Over 40 years of an ominous, ethereal lock on my tongue.

After I’d dealt with the crushing aftermath of resurfacing memories; after I’d been kicked in the chest and got back up again; after I’d spent time in therapy (finding a good therapist is a long, sometimes scary story), I tried to report him. I found his county. I called the police. They would not even go and take a look. I knew he still had access to young children, but they wanted the name of a child who was currently complaining of the abuse. What had happened to me didn’t matter.

It had been years of molestation (such a schmaltzy word for another form of rape), followed by a single night of a violent act involving a large, heavily muscled, very angry man and an eight year old child often called Half-Pint for her tiny size. I know something went on for about two more years, but I have no memories of what that was. Yet.

This code of silence, this inability to open my mouth and speak the truth astonishes me. And yet, I hear people wonder why rape and incest is under-reported. I hear them marvel that a character in a book who has just been raped doesn’t rise up and slay her attacker. I hear them blame the victim for not being enough, for not being strong enough to fight back, to raise the stakes from rape to murder. I hear them talk from a position of strength and a lack of personal knowledge. I hear in them some of the reasons why the silence continues.

But what can be done to rescue the children living in their own private hell and unlock their voices?

One of the manuscripts I’m working on contains incest. Some of it is based on my experiences and some is fiction. There are many reasons why I’m having trouble working on this one. Part of it is the silence. Part of it is public reaction to such subjects in books. Part of it is this business of writing.

The details can be graphic, the subject matter taboo. Does that make it not suitable for young children? Does that mean the only readers of such a book should be adults? Are children younger than 12 only allowed to be raped and not to read about it? If I make the character older, would it be suitable for Tweens? Teenagers?

Am I falling into the trap that says this doesn’t happen to little children? If we admit this does happen to young children, are we failing as a society?

I don’t have the answer for my manuscript let alone for our society or those many thousands of children who feel hope has abandoned them or that this life they lead is normal and there is nothing else, no other way to live.

Do you?

In case you’re wondering, my uncle’s dead now. Found that out through an accident of the internet on a genealogical site.

Change

2011-08-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

I started out with a degree in Law Enforcement and did an eight year stint as a University Cop. During that time, I spent two years debating what did I really want to do with my life. Finally registered for college - late - for physics. Something I had not even considered during that two years. The plan was to get my undergraduate deficiencies out of the way, apply to grad school, and get a TA job. The reality? I got a second Bachelor's degree and was so completely burned out on school that I got a "real" job instead.

That's how I wound up moving from LA to L.A. But it wasn't a physics related job, it was software. I had taught myself programming right before I started back to school and followed that up with more programming classes. Software combined creativity with logic and I was in heaven. After 20+ years, heaven has started to pale.

At some point, I took a long look at what I was doing and what other options were out there. Architecture seduced me, but I was still burnt out on school and decided I couldn't do that many years of classes. I found an interior design program and gave it a whirl. One art class later and I realized two things - I could draw given the practice, and I wasn't hanging around long enough to get the interior design certificate.

A few years ago, I applied for an MFA in Writing program. I got wait-listed so I started Law School instead. (Somehow that made sense to me. Apparently I was also done with my burnout.) Law School was not what I expected, but it was actually a chance meeting in a coffee shop that decided my fate. A lawyer on maternity leave talked to me about my background and what companies would fight over me - including what divisions within those companies that would fight over me. Other major life changes happened, too, and I ran away from Law School.

Maybe I should figure out why I run from the idea of being popular.

Throughout it all, I've been writing. My first "book" was a collection of short stories and poetry that I gave to the sixth grade teacher who didn't like me. The bribe worked. I'm still writing, still inching closer to that goal of being published, but it's not going to keep a roof over my head or food in my mouth. And it isn't going to pay the extraordinary vet bills I rack up given the animals I choose to bring home.

I'm about to tell my forties to piss off and I don't know what I want to be next. Though they raised the age limit for astronauts, they also killed the shuttle program. Bummer. I'm not motivated enough to get in shape to be a fireman. And seriously - I don't want to sit in a classroom for any great length of time. I generally find it slow and boring. I've been thinking about something blue collar next, but I'm not sure if it should be HVAC Tech, Electrician or Plumber. And there's that school thing again.

So I keep writing, I keep hoping, and I keep playing career dress up.

Suggestions welcome.

Conference Hangover

2011-08-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

Spent this weekend (Thursday around noon to Sunday night) with 1300+ of my closest friends. It was the 40th Anniversary of the SCBWI Summer Conference.

Being a (relatively new) Regional Advisor, conference attendance is sort of mandatory. It's a good way to connect with people in the industry and get a feel for who they are, what topics they speak about and if you'd like to bring them to your own region for an event. This conference is in L.A. and I haven't really been to it since I joined SCBWI in 2000.

Though there are numerous exceptions, writers tend to be introverts - the solitary type. Plus I'm a software geek for my day job and it's two, two, two introverts in one. I don't like large crowds, but I do handle them better if I have a job - a purpose for being there other than holding up a wall and trying to look less uncomfortable than I feel. I had a few assigned tasks and added several more to them as I went along. If I was in a room, I was working it somehow. And I'm not talking about the crowd. My soon-to-be Co-RA is the one who's awesome at working a crowd, a room, singing Love Shack.

While large crowds, lots of noise and maybe 3 hours of sleep each night would generally be a recipe for disaster, I was at an SCBWI event. Children's book writers and illustrators are by and large a supportive, generous, wonderful group of people. So yeah, I did wear pajamas to the 40 Winks party. The sandals I had on were hard to walk in, so I didn't get to dance away my stress. I should've kicked them off and gone barefoot. Now I know. And although I like it quiet when I'm writing, that night I sat on my balcony with my laptop and let the music and the creative vibes of the party goers wash over me as I revised the first 6 or so chapters. Hope it still sounds good today. Plus I got a great tip from Libba Bray to help me over a manuscript rough spot that has plagued me for months.

The conference is not quite over yet, but it is for me for this year. I think I started calling people by the wrong name there at the end. I'm not even sure. There's a day of intensives today, which I didn't sign up for, plus a last gasp faculty/staff party tonight. Feeling a little too strung out, too tender to be around yet another group of people. Even this really nice bunch. I did catch up on some sleep last night at least.

Today I freak out every time I look down at my feet and see green toenails. They were part of my pajama party outfit. I'm blaming post conference jitters.

What did I learn? Not a lot of new stuff, but repetition is really, really good for my soul - and my particularly hard head.

1. Writing is hard, lonely work.

2. Your first draft will probably suck. Your second and third might, too.

3. Persistence may be more important than talent.

4. Even published writers get anxious and also write books that don't work.

5. There's definitely not enough diversity in books or in the authors who write them.

6. If you're standing on the figurative cliff, jump.

And one of my new personal favorites:

7. It is the job of a writer to disturb the Universe.

An Answer For Jen

2011-07-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

I started to write a comment to Jen’s wonderful post on the physical aspects of addiction, but it was getting a bit long. So I’m putting my answer here.

Yes. Ask an expert. But even we don't agree on what it is, what causes it, what "cures" it.

Did I consciously make the choice to start drinking? As much as one can make such a choice at 4 years old. I was drinking to help cure my insomnia by the time I was 8. Is that a conscious choice to pick up a substance and abuse it? No. I don’t believe it is.

And now - after 27 1/2 years of sobriety - I still have a self-destructive nature. I still struggle on a daily basis with who I am, who I want to be and the gap in between. Physically, I still crave sweets though even that has slowed down over time.

What recovery from this disease, affliction, alcoholism has given me is:
The daily self-reflection that allows me to become a much better person.
The drive to be of service.
The desire to improve things for everyone I can.

To see someone like Amy Winehouse try and try and try and, in the end, not succeed in getting and staying sober is heartbreaking. The most painful part of recovery is the beginning and to do it over and over again is beyond the limits of some of us humans. We look at this permanent solution to a temporary problem and see it as viable. And it's not. And yet our minds will tell us that it's the ultimate answer. Stop the world, get off and everything will be fine. But it's not.

To me, and to many others, this is a three-fold disease. One that affects the body, the mind and the spirit. For a stay of execution, one must address all three parts. Drying out to clear the body of mind-altering substances (which does take years); clearing away the rubbish in our brains that tells us we are simultaneously the best person in the world and the worst person in the world (egomaniacs with inferiority complexes); and connecting with something outside of us, something spiritual, that we can rely on for that crucial bit of strength that we are missing.

With so much knowledge about addiction out there, I still find pockets of misunderstanding of its nature. I headed to a going away party the other day where drinking would be involved. Mentioning this and my length of sobriety to a friend as we walked to our cars, he said I was "safe". I am never safe. I have experience. I have tools. But my mind could knock all that away without blinking and I could be back where I started. Worse actually, as this does progress whether or not the addict is using.

I am grateful that I am an addict in recovery as it has led me to live an amazing life so far. I have experienced things I never would’ve dreamed of for myself. I have also done things that I was deeply ashamed of. Life is full of such lessons and such prizes. Being in recovery has given me the tools to learn from the one and enjoy the other though sometimes I still get them backwards.

"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact." --William James

Present For Me

2011-07-02T19:26:00.000-07:00

I am so getting this, even though they forgot to mention it's great for when you're having your own personal summer.

Questions Of The Day

2011-06-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

Serious ones...

Why does sexual abuse - even when it involves rape - seem to carry lesser penalties, prosecution? Is the crime easier on the child victim than on the adult one? Are there serious concerns about separating the child victim and the abuser? Should molesters be charged with rape?

Is this a case of family problems and the courts don't want to get that involved? Do Domestic Violence victims get the same justice as a stranger who has been beaten?

Is it because wives and children are still property?

Why are boys considered less of a man if they admit to being raped either as a child or an adult?

We have some bizarre loopholes when it comes to domestic crime and its treatment in our culture.

Kid Lit Drink Night

2011-06-18T11:37:00.001-07:00

The first one in Los Angeles is tonight. Details are on Lee Wind's blog.

I'll be there.

The Nosy Neighbors

2011-06-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

In March, I squeezed in a little down time at my mom's. She's got 5.5 acres in the "country" - it's starting to become fairly well populated. In between chores and devouring books, I met the new neighbors. They're an unusually curious bunch and came running when I got close to the fence.

These are (were?) beef cattle. You want fries with that?

Life

2011-05-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

Upholstery
Where my baby sits up close to me
That's supposed to be
What life is all about*

Life. Is it about upholstery?

*Phantom of The Parardise

E-Book vs. Paperback

2011-05-19T08:30:00.001-07:00

I'm deep into Naomi Novik's Temeraire series (Horatio Hornblower with dragons!). I'd heard about them on Phoenix's blog, then chanced upon a 3 in 1 volume on the bargain table at a brick and mortar. Read the first few pages and I was hooked.

After devouring those 3, I visited another brick and mortar (different chain). The information desk person told me those books are old and they do not have them on the shelf. She was wrong. They did have books 1 and 5. (So you can't always believe the information people on whether a book is in the store)

I needed 4, 5 and the soon to be pubbed 6 (yes, not that old after all). I picked up 5 there and went home to check on number 4. Having the Kindle for PC would allow me to read it right away. My wife even graciously offered her Kindle (she's reading a paperback right now). So there it was on Kindle - for the exact same price as a paperback (price set by the publisher).

I virtually checked the first store where I'd gotten the mega-volume book and they had number 4 on the shelf. So here was my choice - get it now electronically and dive right in, or wait a day or so and pick up the paperback at the local chain store. For the same price.

Immediate gratification versus the convenience of a portable device that requires no electricity.

I got the paperback.

Friends Don't Let Friends...

2011-04-22T08:42:00.001-07:00

Submit Tired.

I entered a first page in Confessions From Suite 500's First Page Shooter. Read the directions several times and they were on multiple pages. Checked my submission, checked the directions and hit send. I woke up the next morning wondering about genre and realized I must have missed where to include that. Then I saw the first entry. I goofed on a few other things, too. Ah well. Lessons to be learned. Sometimes multiple times.

In the meantime, check it out. Critique from agents on first pages can be invaluable whether it's on your writing or someone else's.

An Ad Worth Watching

2011-04-09T18:45:00.000-07:00

Check out this post featuring an ad that brought tears to my eyes.

Thanks for posting that, Lee.

Separate And Nowhere Near Equal

2011-04-01T18:22:00.000-07:00

The feds decided they would acknowledge part of the states' laws where gay marriage and domestic partnerships are concerned. We can't file married federally, but now we need to take CA community property laws into account when we do file.

It's been suggested we hire a lawyer to figure out what is and is not community property just to be able to file our federal taxes.

Unfortunately not an April fool's joke.

Favorite Read of 2010

2011-01-22T12:22:00.000-08:00

Not sure how many books I managed to read in 2010. I’m thinking about keeping track this year.

Honorable mention has to go to The Hunger Games. Yeah, I finally jumped on that popular bandwagon and read this one. Finding a book I literally couldn’t put down is pretty rare.

More rare? Finding one that encompasses my world. It’s like the author sat down with me and took notes about who I am, what interests me, and even threw in a guilty pleasure. That’s right. This fantasy nerd loves a good romance.

Freudian Slip by Erica Orloff is that rare gem. Physics, metaphysics, the nature of reality, redemption, the grey morass that is good and evil, and, you guessed it, a wonderful romance. Before you go thinking this is heavy stuff, picture Albert Einstein in drag and you’ll be closer to the feel of this book.

Erica has an amazing blog, where she shares her thoughts on writing, and life - as it applies to writing.

Resolution Revolution

2011-01-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

We interrupt our irregular programming to bring you this breaking news...

Resolutions don't work. Or do you just need the 'write' motivation?

In other news:
EA is back in business! Yay!

Someone please win this thing so we can have an impromptu writing conference (or several) in the ski dorm.

And finally - scheduling my time worked fairly well. My morning animal chores are habit now and I don't have to stop and think about what to do next. Next step is scheduling the rest of my day. I'm not a daily writer, but I think I'm going to try that again for January. Do something each day towards writing with a larger chunk of time dedicated to it once a week. Social media will get a small chunk of time once a week (or so). I'm going to be scarce y'all.

Have I Learned Anything In 2010?

2010-12-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

First she did it, then he did it, so now I'm doing it. Peer pressure is so not dead.

1. I still love to obsess about movies. The most recent one to occupy my listening attention: The Blind Side. But that led me to read...

2. About the popcorn theory of giving: In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving. It's written by the Tuohy's (and Sally Jenkins). Which moved me to open my wallet and...

3. Participate in the first annual Saint-To-Be James Garfield Christmas miracle, though I'm technically not christian or even celebrating a secular Christmas these days.

4. I still seem to take care of others before I take care of me. But that balance is shifting and...

5. My cholesterol which has never been below 200 (with LDLs above 122) took a nose dive (sort of). I'm down in the low 190's for the total and the 90's for the LDLs. That one I think I can attribute to the apple cider vinegar I add to my breakfast every morning and not the new (almost) raw vegan diet which...

6. Lowered my triglycerides from 172 to 76 in about a month and a half - plus I fit in my smaller jeans again (without working out). I haven't got the new cholesterol numbers but the doctor was very impressed with them, too. My vitamin D level is still crap (even on 7000 IU a day) , so...

7. It's always something. Isn't that how life works?

8. A new way of eating might mean a new way of cooking (or not cooking as the case may be). It can be expensive to start when you buy a dehydrator and a Vita-Mix, but the results (as well as the food) are worth it. (Anyone need a barely used stove?) Somehow I still managed to pay off my car 9 months early. Merry Christmas to me.

9. All of the above happened in the last 3 months of this year and mostly in the last month. Therefore...

10. Getting older means having less room in my head for the unimportant stuff and helps with living in today because remembering yesterday - just ain't happening.

Happy Winter One and All.

P.S. KFC Original Recipe - really, really, really good for trapping cage-shy wild fur balls. After over a year of trying, we finally caught our feral momma. She's now fixed and healthy and living (sometimes) in our front yard. We share her with a neighbor on the next street.

Not In The Holiday Spirit?

2010-12-19T14:47:00.000-08:00

Try reading this.

Gifts

2010-12-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

Today I celebrate 27 years of sobriety. 27 years of soul searching, of finding myself and redefining myself.

The more I grow, the more I realize I need to change. The only constant in my life is change.

I am not who I was nor am I who I will be, but I am enough just as I am today.

My life is a gift.

Today I also celebrate the birth of my niece. 17 years of love, laughter, tears and joy. 17 years of learning what it means to be around a child, to nurture a young spirit, to be proud of another's achievements.

Today she would've been 24.

Her life was also a gift.

Easy Water Saving

2010-11-07T10:21:00.000-08:00

One 5 gallon bucket in the bathroom to collect the bath water while you're waiting for it to get hot. Use that to water plants or flush the toilet. Depending on how you use it, how often you bathe, and how far your tub is from the hot water heater, that's about 1 - 2 gallons per day of savings.

That might not seem like a lot, but consider if everyone did it. 2 gallons a day is roughly 700 gallons per year per household. In a large city like L.A., we're talking millions of households and hundreds of millions of gallons of potable water - every year. In one city in one state in one country.

The Weaker Sex

2010-11-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

The other day, as my boss was warming his hands by the exhaust of the projector, he mentioned that they were cold like a woman’s. Being the shy, retiring type, I blurted out “You did not just say that!”

I pointed out it was sexist. He countered that his wife didn’t object when he said it at home. He did apologize – very sincerely – but it got me thinking about this culture we have concerning the weaker sex.

My one grandmother died young of cancer, but she outlived her second husband – my grandfather – by over 10 years. Her first husband died before she married my grandfather. That means she hung around at least 30 years longer than he did.

My other grandmother lived a very long time. Her husband died just before I was born. I was in my early forties at her funeral.

My dad lasted a bit longer than his predecessors, so my mom has the potential to outlive him by about 30 years.

Seriously guys, we might not be able to shake your belief that women are the weaker sex, but we promise to bury you with all due ceremony.

Breakfast Shake Redux

2010-10-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

Although I can do the same thing over and over (and over) again when it comes to food, I do like to experiment a bit from time to time. This time I've been playing with my morning shake.

I tried replacing the tofu with hemp protein powder. Meh. Lost the creamy smoothness and gained the chalky taste that comes with too many powdered ingredients. But the hemp does have the added advantage of being a "complete" protein - it has all of the amino acids. It's also fairly high in fiber. I wasn't ready to toss it in the trash.

Then I heard about this - sort of - new food thought. Our blood likes to maintain it's pH balance and will do so even at the expense of the rest of the body. If you eat more in line with the pH of your blood, you'll have less disease issues. That's the nutshell, layman version.

Now the carrot juice has made room for juiced greens. The tofu is still there, but so is the hemp protein powder. The added processed sweeteners are gone.

Current Chocolate Shake Recipe

2 Bananas
1 box Mori-Nu Tofu
Carrot Juice
Greens Juice (vegetable only: spinach, kale and the like)
1 tablespoon Hemp Protein Powder (Bob's Red Mill)
1 heaping tablespoon Chocolate Powder (Baking chocolate, not the sweetened kind)
Flax Oil (vegetarian Omega-3, Omega-6)
1 or 2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar (supposed to reduce cholesterol - seems to be working)

I still save half for the next day. This morning, I had leftovers, but instead of drinking it straight from the frig, I threw it back in the blender, added another banana and some carrot juice. Yesterday's juice part was all greens. It lacked a little much in the sweet department.

Heading out for lunch and a bookstore soon (still love the brick & mortars). We hope to find something good on this pH diet.

A Day Late

2010-10-12T08:05:00.000-07:00

For National Coming Out Day.

This is amazing.

Rejection

2010-10-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

My fingers reached for the ground. I squinted and calculated the distance. We were above the roof of the house. Two stories. Maybe thirty feet. I’d need really long fingers to touch that stone. Stretchable ones that could zoom out and back at will.

I swung upright. My best friend perched on the opposite side of the trunk. This was our favorite place to be. Up high, away from the others.

“Jordan. Would you go out with me if I were a boy?”

Jordan’s face scrunched tight in the middle. “Ew. That’s a really weird question.” She scrambled down the tree and disappeared into her house.

I stared at the spot where she’d been. What did it mean that she thought it was weird? I was never asking that question again.

My gaze followed the path Jordan had taken. She’d left without saying ‘Goodbye’. No plans made to meet up tomorrow.

I slowly climbed down from the tree. When I reached the ground, I stared at her house. No sign of Jordan. No sign of any of her brothers and sisters. I didn’t feel like playing any more anyway.

It was obvious. I wasn’t getting what I really wanted – a ‘Yes’ from Jordan.

Shaun's Open Letter

2010-10-04T09:50:00.001-07:00

A very touching letter to gay kids being bullied - or anyone who's feeling lost and alone.

Shaun David Hutchinson's letter

Lost Links

2010-10-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

I belong to a few online groups which sometimes have link issues. So I wrote up a little info that might help.

Links can be a tricky business. Part of the problem is one e-mail program talking to another and not always speaking the same dialect.

Some usual issues:

Too long – If a link breaks across a page, then it won’t work right to click on it. You won’t have the full address. In those cases, you might have to copy and paste the full link into your web browser.

Extra punctuation – AOL loves to add beginning and ending underscores to a link. And sometimes when a link is at the end of a sentence, it picks up that period as if it belongs to the link. In those cases, clicking on the link won’t get you where you want to go. For the underscore issue, there is usually a second link in ()s and that one won’t have the underscores. You can click on it and get to the right web page. When there’s a stray period tagging along, you’ll have to copy and paste the link – without the period.

Link isn’t a link – sometimes a link won’t translate into one of those nifty, click here and be magically transported, hyperlinks. It won’t be blue for one thing. And clicking on it won’t do anything. Another copy/paste solution.

Link is hidden – there can be links in posts that don’t look like links. They’re not blue. They don’t have a recognizable link address. The way to tell if something is a link is to hover your mouse over it and see if a link address pops up either at the bottom of your web browser or in a little pop up bubble.

What to do:

Copy/paste will generally cure all of your linking issues.

There are other things to keep in mind. The link might begin with www and end with .com, .net, .org or some other recognizable domain. That’s for a home page type of address. Other links might end in .html, .htm, .pdf or the like. These are pages within a website. http://www.scbwisocal.org is the home page and http://www.scbwisocal.org/htmls/la_co.htm is the L.A. information page within the website. The first link ends in .org and the second in .htm. This is good to know when trying to sort out where a web address begins and ends when the link is carrying extra baggage.

There are links that have a ? in them with a string of nonsense following it. A lot of times, you can remove everything from the ? on and still get to the same page. The ? is used as information tracking – like where you were when you clicked on the link – and is not necessary for finding the right page. Sometimes though, it’s used as an article identifier and you have to have it.

When putting a link into your own post, try to add the http:// to the beginning. If you don’t, it won’t always become a link. It might in your e-mail program, but it might not for other e-mails. And if the link is for promoting your book, then you really want people to be able to click and go without any issues.

e-mail links can have nifty little add ons. Remember that ? in the URL link? Well it has a special meaning in e-mail links. If you put one at the end of the e-mail address (no space), then you can add what you'd like to appear in the Subject field of the e-mail that pops up when you click on the link.

For example - Ignore the first part of the following link. It's only there to show you the ? part and what comes next. If you want the Subject field to read "RSVP To My Meeting" this is what to do:
mailto:my e-mail at domain dot com?Subject=RSVP To My Meeting

My Life is Crap Returns

2010-09-28T10:17:00.001-07:00

Our formerly craptastic baby, who has been without meds for many months, had to be rushed to the vet this morning. Luckily such haste proved to be unnecessary.

For her first birthday, which falls somewhere around this time, she is getting the full poke and prod treatment. And the vet set down the possible new feeding law – separate but equal – and we all know how well that works.

Our spoiled rotten, um, oldest feline child gets fluid build up on the outside of his lungs. He has to be on a reduced calorie, low fat diet. He showed signs of struvite crystals in his urine at the same time as little Maya. We tried switching them both to food that contained what they needed to prevent crystal formation, but his body wasn’t getting with the program. So he went back on his trusty Natural Balance Reduced Calorie.

Maya switched to a new food just fine and seemed quite happy and reasonably productive. First it was Evo, then Instinct when we realized P&G owns Evo. About 3 weeks ago, she stopped eating out of her bowl. We tried a new bowl. We tried putting his food in her bowl. No dice. She refuses to eat on her side of the room unless it’s her baby food that she gets twice a day.

Unfortunately, her brother’s food does not travel well through her. We’ll find out soon if her issues are limited to the hard stuff.

The vet wants her off dry food completely. Yeah right. We have one room – the proverbial guest room – that belongs to the cats exclusively. There are two mouse hole type exits from this room. Ever since we got a little wiser and screwed in the brushes that line the holes, neither of the dogs can get in that room.

It's obvious she needs to be on her own food. The feeding logistics are becoming quite interesting.

Please wish us much crappiness once again.

Any spark of imagination on how to feed two cats different food and not allow them to eat each other's would be wonderful. He doesn't like canned, so it's preventing her from eating his that will be a challenge.

Another update: OCDoggie hit his 2 year mark since his liver cancer surgery. His eyesight and hearing aren’t what they used to be and he’s a bit stiff when he first gets moving, but then he’s up and running. Not bad for a 16 year old Beagle. My little cancer poster child is going strong and nicely outlasting his average survival rate.

That's So Equal Rights Backlash

2010-09-17T18:06:00.000-07:00

I've read a few things lately that I thought more than worthy of sharing - except for one little detail: homophobia as a pop culture reference.

If your site, post, book, link, what-have-you perpetuates homophobia, I'm not sharing your otherwise amazing writing, idea, joke, widget 'cause that's so not cool.

Book Review – The Tavernier Stones

2010-09-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine, whom I’ve never met, wrote a book. He rewrote it 10 times by his count. I’m sure there were tweaks in between the rewrites.

His work shows. The Tavernier Stones is hard for me to describe in short form as there are many dimensions to what I got from reading this book.

As a reader, it was a fun romp through history, cartography, gemology, cryptography and the Amish culture. I felt like I attended a very entertaining college and learned more than I would have in a classroom. The story pulled me along. The characters gave me insight into what made them tick. The mystery kept me guessing. And everyone got what they deserved or sought in the end. A very satisfying read altogether.

As a writer, I sometimes read books with an eye to how it’s done. I want to learn from those who have gone before and incorporate those lessons into my own writing. Multiple POVs is a hard one to pull off successfully. It’s also a hard one for me to read and not get lost or tired of the constant switching around. Steve does a great job of defining characters who are individuals with their own voices, their own demons, their own views of life and why they’re searching for the Tavernier stones. I always knew whose POV I was in and it was a breeze to settle in with each character.

The characters – and there were many – were three dimensional. They had good and bad points. They made mistakes. The good guys were sometimes bad and the bad guys were sometimes good. They were real, and they were true to themselves. I had a clear idea of who to root for, but mixed feelings on what I wanted to happen with those characters. A trick, I think, that helped me accept the decisions made at the end. They chose according to what was right for them even if that would not have been my choice.

I mentioned how much I learned. From another perspective, I am in awe of the amount of research that went into this piece of fiction. Sure some of the knowledge came from the writer’s background – past college courses and such. I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember enough from my college days to be able to write facts in a novel. I’d know the basics, but beyond that, I’d have to research to verify what I remembered. This novel represents tons of research.

And the best recommendation? My Mom loved it, too.

About the author:
I first met Steve, well, I’m not sure when. It might have been through Evil Editor, but it also might have been through EE by way of Chris Eldin who introduced me to Erica Orloff – the Scrabble bane of Steve’s existence.

If you take the time to look over Steve’s blog, you might notice how much he supports his writing community. Between the funny, poignant, rabble rousing blog posts, there are reviews and publication announcements. There are also pictures of his blogging friends’ books on his sidebar. Steve has a big heart and he gives of himself with a certain abandon that I find endearing.

When he offered to send me an autographed copy of his debut novel, I said ‘Yes’, of course. Then I saw it at a local brick and mortar store. I couldn’t resist buying it. I’d looked forward to doing that for months. Mom got that copy.

Some day I hope we do meet in person. Until then…

Awesome job, Mr. Parrish.

Question Of The Day

2010-09-03T14:20:00.001-07:00

Does Microsoft run Linux on their employees' computers so they won't have so much down time?

Garlic Synopsis Critique

2010-09-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

My The Trouble With Garlic synopsis is up for critique here. Please feel free to shred it. I welcome the blood. :-)

P.S. Yes - I stole this post from myself.

Vote For Me...

2010-08-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

And I'll set you free.

Yeah. Like that'll happen. I just like the song.

So Writtenwyrd's having her 4th bloggaversary flash fiction contest and I entered. Appreciate it if you stop by and vote for your favorites (even if mine isn't one of them). Voting ends this Sunday.

Quote For Today

2010-08-17T11:35:00.001-07:00

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision. ~ Lynn Lavner

Cheshire Cat

2010-08-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

Contest, Contest, Who's Got The Contest?

2010-08-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

There's one here. Urban fiction based on the prompt: 200-250 words (more or less). The prizes are unbelievable. I love the nun myself. Come and stretch those creative muscles with me.

Okay, this is not a contest, but it is a chance to get your synopsis critiqued.

The Rest Of The Story?

2010-08-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

Bright Shiny Gods

The cold wind bit through my jerkin. I longed for warmth, but could not allow a heavy cloak to weigh down my arms. Pellam dashed off the trail, chasing the next bit of fluff that caught her eye.

“Come, dear. We have to get to the top.” I reeled in the leash attached to my waist and guided her back.

Daylight was precious. I didn’t want to be on the mountain after full dark again. She bounced and raced ahead to the end of her lead. Her energy buoyed me. Her persistence in moving uphill, this time, helped me get the sled underway once more.

The last hill was the steepest. The rope bit into my hands. My arms shook. My shoulders screamed. How had she pulled this up here last month? How could I have been so selfish as to ride it when she offered? Shame piled on top of guilt. I’d weakened her arms before the fight of her life.

I lowered my head and concentrated on the now. Right foot. Left foot. Over and over.

The weight of the sled released and it slid to a stop against my leg. We were there. I allowed myself a small space of time to breathe while I scanned for the gems, making sure to note where each one was. I would not touch them too soon again. Pellam was near the treeline trying to catch her imaginary butterfly. I looped the leash and tied it off at half the length. I needed her closer.

A lone spear jutted out of the snow. The splash of blood at its tip gleamed red. So that tale was true. God blood lasted forever. I prayed for truth in the other stories.

“Bright shiny!”

“Pellam, no. Don’t touch.” I swept her fingers aside. I wasn’t ready. Not nearly. If she repeated my mistake of last month, it would be a form of justice. But it wasn't the one I was seeking this day.

She tugged on my finger and rocked. I slid a piece of straw out from under the nearest diamond.

“Here. Chew on this.”

She stuck the middle in her mouth and happily sucked away. The ends twitched beside her cheeks. One dirty whisker completing her humiliation. Or rather my humiliation. She was beyond those feelings.

I dug a hole and set the second spear. Pellam’s drawing called for four spears – one for each cardinal direction. It seemed scant protection for attack from above, but she had sworn this would defeat the Gods. I stared at the southern spear and its evidence of a measure of success. But it was the weight of her sword on my hip that reassured me. I was not relying on stationary spears or tales spun in the company of plentiful ale.

I glanced back at my warrior mentor and hastily knocked her hand away from the ruby.

“Ow! Hurt me!” She sucked her fingers.

I dropped to my knees and cradled her against my chest. “Oh Pellam. I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know if destroying the Gods would bring her back, but I had to try. I had to make amends for my ignorance. The moment she had kicked me away and screamed for me to run played in my dreams nightly. And each day since, I’ve woken to her lying beside me, curled into a ball and sucking her thumb.

I never should have left her alone to face what I had called forth.

A drop of salty mud snuck into the corner of my mouth. I swiped the tears. They wouldn’t help either of us. And I had spears to set.

My back cracked as I straightened; the butt of the fourth spear buried at North. Straddling some gems, I drew the sword. This time we would face the unknown together. This time, there would be no guilt-ridden apprentice to drag an unconscious body down from the mountain. We would live, or die, right here.

“Come, Pellam. Play with bright shiny.”

She scampered over and crouched at my feet. I scanned the skies. The upraised sword quivered in my shaking hands.

Ca-caw!

CoNtest

2010-07-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

Jason Evans is doing it again.

The 13th Annual Clarity of Night Contest: Uncovered. This one honors that great debut novelist Stephen Parrish and his The Tavernier Stones. (My mom loved it, too, Stephen!)

Entries start July 19th. Tomorrow! Get writing. 250 words based on the prompt.

Bummer. Did not make the forties club this year. So here's my entry:

Bright Shiny Gods

“Bright shiny!”

“Pellam, no. Don’t touch.” I swept her fingers aside. I wasn’t ready. Not nearly.

She tugged on my finger and rocked. I slid a piece of straw out from under the nearest gem.

“Here. Chew on this.”

She stuck the middle in her mouth and happily sucked away. The ends twitched beside her cheeks. One dirty whisker completing her humiliation. Or rather my humiliation. She was beyond those feelings.

I dug another hole and set the second spear. Pellam’s drawing called for four spears – one for each cardinal direction. Scant protection for attack from above, but she swore this would defeat the Gods. I patted the sword on my hip. I swore I would defeat them – somehow.

I glanced back at my warrior mentor and hastily knocked her hand away from the ruby.

“Ow! Hurt me!” She sucked her fingers.

I dropped to my knees and cradled her against my chest. “I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know if destroying the Gods would bring her back, but I had to try.

A drop of salty mud snuck into the corner of my mouth. I swiped the tears. They wouldn’t help either of us. And I had spears to set.

My back cracked as I straightened; the butt of the fourth spear buried at North. It was time. Straddling the gems, I drew my sword and held a hand out to Pellam. “Come. Play with bright shiny.” She scampered over and crouched at my feet. I scanned the skies.

Ca-caw!

Hacked

2010-07-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

My electronic life disappeared without a trace and then I got it all back. Very scary moments there. I did get a chance to see that my gmail had been hacked and some people were e-mailed spam from my account. Looks like Google swooped in and stopped the ones that were sent then shut my account down.

Makes me stop and think though about where I keep my ones and zeros. I have a website and it has e-mail capability. Looks like I will need to migrate blog, e-mail and all - some day. In the meantime, I think I will delete all of my online e-mail contacts.

Lagniappe

2010-07-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

What's that? It's the little bit extra that store owners put in the bags of their favorite customers - that 13th donut in the baker's dozen.

My current writing challenge is in my sidebar. I started out strong and avoided the deathly claws of the Koala. Unfortunately, I seem to have run out of steam.

My writing lagniappe? The Tour de Writing. Anyone can join in the fun. C'mon down and see what jersey you aspire to win. And the book prizes are pretty awesome, too.

Apocalypse Training

2010-07-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Shamelessly stolen from Natalie Whipple.

Adopt Alex

2010-06-28T16:47:00.000-07:00

I'm three months old - a brown tabby with beautiful markings and unusual dark amber eyes which don't show up as well in my photos as they do in person. The vet even said she'd never seen a cat with eyes like mine.

I can be found at The Lange Foundation. Lots of other great cats, dogs and horses here, too. All looking for a forever home.

The Never-Ending Root Canal Story

2010-06-23T17:25:00.000-07:00

Since the beginning of April, I've been having lots of dental fun. Many trips to the Endodontist later, I now get to play with an oral surgeon. This next procedure has a 60-70% chance of fixing the problem but it also comes with a 6 week recovery time and months before we know if it worked. Surgery isn't until the 15th because the surgeon is going on vacation first.

So here's my whine. I'm off to find some cheese. At least that's good soft food.

Wish I had a better reason for not being around much lately. Hopefully I can knock down some good editing time this weekend and keep that crazy Koala from ripping my butt to shreds.

Could. Not. Put. It. Down.

2010-05-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

Literally.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Turned off the light at 3:45am.

I bow in homage.

Now I have to plan carefully before I buy the next book.

Virtual Tears For A Real Friend

2010-05-12T08:22:00.000-07:00

I lost a friend last Thursday but only found out this morning. I never met him. Couldn’t tell you what he looked like. But we shared personal stories, writing, a love of life and a questioning of everything.

He was also another blogging friend of mine, only I didn’t know this one was him. So today, I’m grieving two virtual friends in one real man’s death.

Bevie - I will miss your stories, your ideas, your poetry, your search for truth and for yourself.

Algebra In Real Life

2010-05-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

My liver cancer boy needs a high protein diet. We've been doing well with mixing cans of Tiki Dog with 95% Wellness Turkey. (And no, we're not using 95% of one can, that's the name.) There have been a couple of problems with this method lately. The dog's tired of fish (he's allergic to chicken so choices are limited) and the wife's tired of wanting to puke when she mixes his food.

Got a new pet store here (Krisers) and they stock Stella & Chewy's raw diet. It's freeze dried or something and comes in a nice hockey puck that doesn't stink, is easy to crumble and is also a big hit with the boy wonder.

He can't handle a complete changeover to the puck diet. A little too much for his delicate digestion. So we're down to mixing the Wellness can with the puck. And here's where the algebra comes in. You ready?

He normally gets 2/3 of a can of food (twice a day) or he gets 3 hockey pucks. We wanted to back him off to 1/2 a can of food and needed to figure out how many hockey pucks to add.

So 3 pucks = 2/3 can of food or to make it easier to write:
3p = 2/3c

First, we solve this one for pucks (p) to see how much of a can 1 puck replaces.

(3 * 1/3)p = (2/3 * 1/3)c

1p = 2/9c

So 1 puck replaces 2/9 of a can of food.

But we went from 2/3 of a can to 1/2 a can and need that 1/2 a can in ninths to be able to deal with the hockey pucks. Only 1/2 won't do well with ninths. So we're bumping this up.

2/3 = (2 * 6)/(3 * 6) = 12/18
1/2 = (1 * 9)/(2 * 9) = 9/18
2/9 = (2 * 2)/(9 * 2) = 4/18

So now we're all on the same page. The total food he got previously was 12/18. The half can is 9/18. In order to get to 12/18, we need 3/18 pucks: (12 - 9)/18. A whole puck is 4/18, half a puck is 2/18. Three quarters of a puck (3/18) is too much of a pain and he could stand to lose a little weight. Math is only getting us so far. Real world steps in and says he gets 1/2 a can and 1/2 a puck.

The next phase is to give him more puck and less can. If I give him 1/3 of a can, that's 1/2 the total can amount we started with or 6/18 (half of 12/18). To get 6/18 pucks means 1 puck (4/18) plus half a puck (2/18). Or we could look at the original problem and see that it's a lot easier to do half and half: 2/3 can or 3 pucks becomes 1/3 can and 1 1/2 pucks.

He might like that stage. Sure requires less brain power.

Breakfast To Go

2010-05-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

Lately, I’ve been making myself a shake for breakfast. Started out with my standard tofu, soy milk and fruit. Then the experimenting began.

I tend to use organic ingredients whenever possible. Sorry, but I’m not much for exact measurements.

Chocolate Shake Recipe

2 Bananas
1 box Mori-Nu Tofu
Carrot Juice
1 heaping tablespoon Chocolate Powder
Optional:
Flax Oil (vegetarian Omega-3, Omega-6)
Agave, Maple Syrup or a peeled, cored and quartered Apple

In a blender:
Break up bananas into smaller pieces (thirds or so)
Add semi-drained tofu (don’t have to be precise)
Pour in carrot juice to cover the bananas and tofu (more or less depending on desired thickness)
Squeeze in some flax oil
Add agave, maple syrup or apple for a sweeter taste
Plunk in the chocolate
Blend (but put the lid on first)

This makes 2-3 servings depending on how thirsty you are. I save some in the frig for the next morning. It will get slightly thicker overnight.

More bananas add more sweetness. The bananas also mask the chalky taste of the chocolate powder.

When I juice the carrots myself, I add apples to the juice. Other possible juice ingredients: celery, ginger, pears, kale.

Simple Alternatives: Blend the tofu, bananas and your favorite fruit juice. I add the flax oil to this, too. And then there’s playing with frozen fruits and your milk of choice to give it a more milkshake consistency.

It’s easy to play with this idea and make pudding. Blend tofu, bananas, chocolate powder and agave or maple syrup and let it sit in the frig. I actually use the food processor for this one. It gets a bit thick for the blender though it really doesn’t get to pudding consistency until it’s been in the frig for awhile.

Four Years of Evil

2010-04-23T09:24:00.001-07:00

The Evil Overlord, he of the mighty blue ink, is celebrating four years of shredding our work with a perfectly evil laugh.

Come join the celebration, if you dare.

First 50 Words

2010-04-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd stick something light into Miss Snark's First Victim's 50 Words.

My entry

Hopefully I won't make her followers want to throw up this time.

:-)

More Crap

2010-04-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

The craptastic kitten is still craptastic. And taking over the house. So this is not about little Maya.

It's my old man - my 15 yr old Beagle boy - who has a crappy time and I'm very grateful for it.

He's got primary liver cancer and Cushing's disease. A year and a half ago, he had surgery that gave him more time - two years on average. I will know when he starts feeling bad. It's when he stops eating his own discards and breathing that wonderful aroma in my face.

I'm grateful that my dog eats crap.

Poetry Feature

2010-04-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

Lee Wind honored me by posting two of my poems - one written when I was a teen and a more recent one looking back on that time.

Crazy Week

2010-04-02T14:31:00.000-07:00

This week has not been what I had expected, hoped for, anything remotely normal. I wanted to have certain blog posts done and published by now and I'm not ready yet.

First I had this toothache on Saturday and that became a trip to the dentist Monday morning. Cracked filling, lots of drilling and a temp crown. Yee Haw.

Tuesday morning, my whole face was swollen and hot. Back to the dentist for a quick peek and a bottle of antibiotics.

Today I was there again and he sent me to the endodontist to take a closer look at the tooth next to the one that got drilled. Yep. Abscess. And my face is still a little too swollen for the necessary root canal. That special time will be next Tuesday. He's going to drill through the crown rather than pop it off and we'll keep our fingers crossed it doesn't crack.

It's been real.

In the meantime, I've been doing some research for a post on skin color in books. Perusing the one on my nightstand has been fascinating. No mention of skin color anywhere (or hair color, eye color, etc.) and the POV shifts - a lot. This one is good research for many different reasons and it's a book I've read dozens of times. Each time, it pulls me along and I can't stop reading. [Dragonsong by Anne MacCaffrey]

More on the skin color issue later, unless you'd like to pop in here and tell me the color of your favorite character's skin. Bet a lot of you won't be able to quote it from the book.

Unwritten Character Rules

2010-03-30T16:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there are actions, likes, etc. that are fine for most characters but totally unacceptable for one particular type of character.

For instance:
Is it okay for your Black character to like watermelon?
Can your Jewish character haggle for a discount?

What are the unwritten rules of characterization?

Post the ones you know in the comments and I'll add them here. It's about time these rules were written down.

Update:
Looks like we're building two categories - Not Allowed and Boring

Not Allowed
Black Character who:
likes watermelon
likes fried chicken
sits on the veranda
poaches catfish

Jewish Character who:
bargain hunts/haggles

Hispanic Character who:
is a migrant worker

White Ex-Military Character who:
is anything other than slightly to the right of the John Birch society

Boring:
Asian Character who:
excels at math/science

Lesbian Character who:
plays golf

Are these in the right place? Interchangeable? What else can we add?

Are the following Not Allowed, Boring or Okay?
A pedophile Priest
A pedophile Gay Man
A Black or Hispanic gang member
A Black single mother
A Black or Hispanic person in prison
A Lesbian ice pick murderer
A Lesbian prostitute (who only does this because she hates men)
An alcoholic who is:
Native American
Irish Catholic
a cop
Black or Hispanic poor
White trailer trash
An uptight, anal Asian student
A Black or Hispanic drug dealer

If you can stomach it, try watching Save The Last Dance (2001). Talk about stereotypes. And it's touted as an "enjoyable teen romance". Ugh!

Where Is The Harm?

2010-03-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

I'm about to visit with my family and I'm not looking forward to it. It's not my family that's the problem, though we've had our fair share of dysfunctional fun, it's the location. When I step off the plane in Louisiana, my "purported marriage" will be against the law and the constitution.

I will venture outside of California for the first time since before we got married. And I will no longer be legally married. Should the need arise, my wife could join me there, but she will have no rights or claims as a result of our marriage. Were it not for the fact that I haven't seen some of my family in years, I would cancel my trip.

I love my wife and I have no desire to not be married to her for even one second.

Proponents of these anti-marriage laws and amendments claim that my marriage harms theirs. They fail to see that their laws harm my marriage. That freedom and equality should not be curtailed for their convenience. That their intolerance and bigotry harms this country.

I know that this will be over one day and all of us will have legal equality. This is America after all and equality does win out in the end.

While we wait for that time, perhaps a peek into the mind of a conservative who believes that Same Sex Marriage is an American Value.

Ingrained Racism

2010-03-08T09:03:00.000-08:00

Excellent opinion in the L.A. Times today.

Don't Sweat the Buffoons.

I was raised by one racist parent and one non-racist parent. I considered myself to be non-racist and yet... And yet... I still find times when my thoughts are decidedly racist, sexist, ageist, etc.

Have you excised your inner racist today?

Linky Love

2010-03-06T17:14:00.000-08:00

Puppies, Puppies and More Puppies

Joe. My. God. blog's Cool Ad Of The Day. Dogs in a 1000 frames per second video. After this one is done, there are more in the little menus at the bottom. Wonderful procrastination opportunity here.

And one of my wife's favorites: The Daily Puppy.

Enjoy!

Did You Know...

2010-02-27T16:45:00.000-08:00

That there's still (kinda, sorta) a leper colony in Hawaii?

Seems the residents no longer have to stay, but most decided not to leave when given the option (in the 1940s?). They were evacuated to higher ground today due to the tsunami threat.

From the description, it sounds like a nice little slice of paradise.

You can visit - only through the official tour - and you have to be at least 16. Unless you're invited by a resident, that is.

It's So Yesterday

2010-02-22T08:10:00.000-08:00

Waking up to a coffee commercial is not a bad thing. Unless it's the one I saw this morning.

A father berates his grown daughter for being out late. She reminds him she's not sixteen and then shows him her new engagement ring. He hugs her and tells her Todd is a lucky man. Then he tells her that's what he told Todd last week.

If I found out my brand new fiance told my father a week before asking me, I'd be pissed. Marriage is between the two people getting married. Yes, the in-laws play a role, but not one of supremacy in the relationship. Women are not property and we do not need daddy's permission to tie the knot.

And for more spitting into the wind. Here's my note to NBC concerning the coverage of the Women's Downhill.
I suggest that Christin Cooper stop demeaning her own sport and the women athletes by referring to them as "girls". These are Olympic athletes, not school children. Bad enough to start out the Downhill with "Oh my gosh, I wonder if the women can handle it." But to continually refer to them as children is disgraceful.

Down And Dirty

2010-02-21T09:09:00.000-08:00

Now that you know how to count in binary (heh), it’s time to let you in on the secret. It’s easy to translate binary to decimal and vice versa.

Each digit in binary represents a power of 2. The smallest digit is 1, the next is 2, then 4, then 8. Like so:

2 to the 0 is 1
2 to the 1 is 2
2 to the 2 is 4 (2 x 2)
2 to the 3 is 8 (2 x 2 x 2)

You could keep going, but hey, we’re talking easy here.

Take a 4 digit binary number like: 1001
Everywhere there’s a 1, you add in that digit value (8 4 2 1 from above)

1 0 0 1
8 4 2 1

So 1001 has a 1 in the 8 digit and the 1 digit. 8 + 1 = 9, therefore 1001 in binary is 9 in decimal.

0 1 0 1
8 4 2 1

4 + 1 = 5, therefore 0101 in binary is 5 in decimal.

0 1 1 1
8 4 2 1

4 + 2 + 1 = 7, therefore 0111 in binary is 7 in decimal.

1 1 1 1
8 4 2 1

8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 15, therefore 1111 in binary is 15 in decimal.

And yes, there are easy ones that you don’t have to add:
0001 is 1
0010 is 2
0100 is 4
1000 is 8

Now for the advanced part. My non-math readers can stop here.

Translating from binary to hexadecimal (base 16) is just as easy when you break the binary number into groups of 4.

1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1
8 4 2 1 8 4 2 1 8 4 2 1 8 4 2 1

8 + 2 = A
4 + 2 = 6
8 + 4 = C
8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = F

Therefore 1010011011001111 in binary is A6CF in hex.

Octal (base 8) works the same way with one less digit. That same binary number gets broken into groups of 3.

1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1
1 4 2 1 4 2 1 4 2 1 4 2 1 4 2 1

1 is 1
2 is 2
2 + 1 is 3
2 + 1 is 3
1 is 1
4 + 2 + 1 is 7

Therefore 1010011011001111 in binary is 123317 in octal (which is A6CF in hex).

Simple, eh?

Beware

2010-02-18T09:07:00.001-08:00

The vicious feral feline.

Who is quite craptastic now. And we thank you for your support.

The Dark Side

2010-02-08T09:56:00.000-08:00

And I'm not talking about Facebook.

I entered Miss Snark's First Victim's February Secret Agent contest.

It's my alter ego this time - dark, edgy YA.

My entry.

Then there's this one: "Dear Lucky Agent" Contest. This one needs a tag line, so I have some tinkering to do.

Hm. On second thought, this one has a lot of rules that I'm not so comfortable with. Check the comments before you enter.

Where Is Your Editor?

2010-02-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

When I write, the words in my head morph by the time they appear on my laptop screen. I figure there must be an editor in my elbows. Or maybe it's these new guns of mine. I've been working out with my trainer for over a year now.

Editor guns. Yep. That sounds about right.

Rabbit Hole Math*

2010-01-27T06:00:00.000-08:00

I Lost You At Decimal

This alien walks into a bar. He holds up his finger to ask for a whiskey.

“Whiskey for Bin, coming right up.” The barkeep tops up a shot glass and plunks it down with a splash.

Bin downs the drink, slaps the glass back on the bar, and holds up his finger again. The barkeep pours him another one. Bin slurps that one down, too.

Bin puts all of his fingers in the air.

How many glasses of whiskey is he asking for?

When we count our fingers, we start with 1 and end with 10: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. If we counted our toes too, we would end with 20. And be very, very plastered. Or in an alcoholic coma.

For us, 10 is one set of fingers and 20 is one set of fingers plus one set of toes.

But dear Bin, and all the other Ary aliens, have two fingers and two toes - one finger on each hand and one toe on each foot. When they count to ten, it’s very short: 1, 10. (They’ve only got two digits - 0 and 1 - to work with.)

They count based on their fingers and toes, just like we do. Only their numbers get big very quickly. Counting their fingers and their toes looks like this – 1 (one finger), 10 (two fingers), 11 (two fingers and one toe), 100 (two fingers and two toes).

Keep away from that shot glass and I’ll throw up a chart to help (yeah, right).

Us 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Them 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000 1001 1010

Oh, all right. Go ahead and drink Bin’s 10 glasses of whiskey. Probably not enough to get you too drunk. Just don’t drive after, okay?

*In honor of Lewis Carroll's Birthday.

Yet Another Contest

2010-01-17T20:57:00.000-08:00

In for a penny...

Agent Mary Kole (Andrea Brown Literary Agency) is holding a Novel Beginnings contest on the kidlit blog.

There are some interesting rules to enter. Good time to practice your paying attention to submission guidelines skill.

Favorite Book - Ever

2010-01-16T07:27:00.000-08:00

Reading today's post on Erica Orloff's blog (awesome writer, awesome blog - go check it out) got me thinking. And it's far too early for these brain cells to be churning.

I re-read a lot of books. When I want a certain emotional feeling, to be taken to a certain place, I know which book will get me there and I read it again. Dozens of times sometimes. It's not like I have nothing to read in my TBR stack. It's comfort reading.

But if you ask me what's my most favorite book - ever - I will tell you it's one that I've read once. Only once. And I may never read it again.

It's not that I don't want to go to that place again. It's not that I don't like the emotional reaction I got from reading it. It's that it was so strong, so haunting, so compelling - I don't need to read it again. It's always with me.

If you're up for a serious read that will stay with you for the rest of your life, try On The Beach by Nevil Shute.

Another Contest

2010-01-15T18:14:00.000-08:00

I did that massive edit effort so I could enter Miss Snark's First Victim's Secret Agent contest.

My entry

Hope to have updates on both contests soon.

Update #1: I am in the list of Notable Mentions in the Secret Agent contest and get to submit my query and first three chapters.

O M G

2010-01-10T16:25:00.000-08:00

Finished a 49K word edit in this 3-day weekend. Very, very, very happy camper.

Short Fiction Contest

2010-01-05T18:26:00.001-08:00

The new Clarity of Night Short Fiction Contest has started.

Off to sharpen my pencil...

My Entry

My Life Is Crap

2009-12-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

You might think I'm saying that my life is bad. It's not. Not even close. This isn't one of those wonderful idiomatic phrases. Perhaps someone who doesn't speak english and has the title translated would have a clearer idea of what I mean. Or perhaps an autistic person who tends to understand the world in a more literal fashion would read that and get the picture.

The next chore on my list today is to pick up poop. Yep. Exciting, isn't it? There's the cat poop in the death star litter pan. That big round thing that automatically scoops itself and conveniently dumps it all in the bottom tray. Then there’s the dog poop in the back yard that needs to be removed before my beagle boy decides he’s got a craving.

Bringing up all kinds of different images?

That is the normal amount of crap that I expect on a daily basis and did not prompt me to write this post. Nope. Death star, back yard – piece of cake. Um, hm. Not the best metaphor.

No – my life is crap today because of something that barely weighs 2 pounds. Little Maya. The newest addition to our household. Seems this poor darling cannot push the crap out of her body. She tries hard enough, but it just won’t exit. She got two visits to the emergency vet’s this weekend. The second one was much longer as my little full of shit kitty got her shit taken care of (via two enemas). One hopes this is not a permanent problem.

Please wish us all luck in our crap filled world.

Update: Still not craptastic, but it's better. Made some pumpkin prune puree today.

Where she was shaved, the fur is coming in grey - light grey. Bizarre.

The Thanksgiving Goat

2009-11-29T21:19:00.000-08:00

I took this blogcation to figure out where I am, where I'm going and how I'm getting there. I didn't know I would get a teacher to guide me. She is my thanksgiving goat only she hasn't gone away.

Last Saturday, I was walking my dog and had to detour because a neighbor was working on his sprinklers. OCDoggie stopped to smell the roses, the bushes, the bricks and whatever else was in the vicinity of his nose. I looked down and there she was. Malnourished with an upper respiratory infection, one eye covered in pus, an intestinal parasite and flea-bite anemia. She spent the night at the vet's and then came home for feedings every 3-4 hours.

My first lesson was that sleep is not as high a priority as I had thought. I'm also learning how to sit still - and do practically nothing. My blogcation is continuing as I learn more.

My teacher - Maya:

Blogcation

2009-11-15T08:05:00.000-08:00

Major priority restructuring in progress.

Estimated completion date for this phase: December 1, 2009.

Obsession Contest

2009-11-13T11:23:00.001-08:00

I love love.
I love politics.
I love strong women characters.

If you can guess what movie I'm currently OD'ing on, then you can win a set of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows CDs (audio book 7). First right answer wins.

Contest closes at my whim.

Afterthought: Contest closed really early with a winner! Heather Lane picked The American President - which is the movie that has taken up residency in my video player.

Horror Contest Voting

2009-11-01T16:36:00.000-08:00

The entries are here. Twenty-one short horror stories and a chance to vote for your favorite. I'd tell you which one is mine and try to stack the deck, but the true horror would be seeing that poor Chthulu five minutes after meeting my beagle.

Short Horror Contest

2009-10-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

Though I don't normally write horror and I'm not certain my entry is horror, I've thrown my creative hat in the ring for this contest over at WrittenWyrdd's pad. Deadline is Halloween, so there's still time to jump on this hay wagon.

To Self-E-Pub Or Not To Self-E-Pub

2009-10-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

I recently read this on Kindle royalty differences. Joe’s argument is that he makes more money self-publishing $1.99 e-books than he does with his Hyperion e-titles (priced from $3.99 to $7.99). There’s nothing wrong with his math, so is self-e-pubbing the way to go?

I think the answer is – that depends.

He self-edits with the help of his critique group. He has a freebie typo corrector. He paid $200 each for cover art for his self-pubbed titles. He has name recognition and a following – thanks to his traditionally published titles. He is a brand – also thanks to his traditional publisher.

Self-e-pubbing means keeping more money from each sale.

So why not jump into the deep end of the pool?

Let’s start with Picture Books – the answer here seems to be a definite No. The e-readers I’ve seen or heard about do not carry PBs and are not in color. So the e-PB market is not even near the water. Not yet.

Easy Readers, Chapter Books? I haven’t seen any statistics on how many young children own e-readers, but I doubt the number is very high. They might be sitting near the shallow end. Maybe.

Middle Grade is pretty much in the same boat – in dry dock. There might be a toe in the water depending on what cell phones these kids score.

Young Adult has some possibilities for e-reader gifts to complete the electronics haul that started in the MG timeframe with cell phones, mp3 players and myriad game consoles.

When you get to Adult books, whether or not you drown becomes a more serious consideration.

(All of the younger categories draw in adult readers as well, especially the ones who write those books. I think the actual age group makes up the majority of buyers though.)

The question remains of what does a traditional publisher offer. This is what a self-e-pubber would need to replace in order to have a chance at being successful. The up-front money comes out of your pocket. The risk becomes yours – exclusively. Becoming known and branding yourself is in your hands.

What you might need money for: editing for content, copyediting, cover art, publicity, rights negotiations (for those 400 or so other rights you could sell), ISBN number, reviews, hard copies – if desired, technical assistance – if required.

Freelance editors that I’m familiar with charge up to $5 per page. A 200 page book could cost you $1000 for editing. 300 pages? $1500. Using Joe’s numbers, you’d need to sell over 2000 $1.99 copies just to cover editing a 300 page book.

Let’s look at a 200 page book example. That’s roughly 45,000 words.
Editing - $1000
Cover art - $200 (one of Joe’s numbers, but I think he got an amazing deal.)
ISBN number - $100

$1300 for the easily known numbers. That’s 1857 e-books’ worth of profit.

Advertising is not cheap; lawyers set a high hourly price on their expertise. We’ll low-ball it (a lot) and round up your total expense figure to $2000.

In order to break even, you’d have to sell 2857 e-books. (Every $700 in cost means 1000 e-books’ profit.)

Can you sell 3000 e-books? If so, you’ll pocket $100.
4000 e-books? $800 profit.
5000 e-books = $1500 profit.

Compared to a $5000 advance from a traditional publisher, you’d have to sell 10,000 e-books to make the same money.

Think it will help to raise your price? Not according to Joe’s numbers. But for fun, let’s say you raise your price to $2.99. Instead of keeping $.70 per book, now you’ll bring home $1.05.

Break even point: 1904 e-books.
To make $5000, you’d have to sell 6667 e-books.

Even if you do your own editing, rely on word-of-mouth publicity and only cough up $300 in initial expenses, you’d have to sell 7571 $1.99 e-books or 5047 $2.99 e-books in order to match the $5000 advance.

Should you self-e-pub? Depends.

The Mice

2009-10-18T22:19:00.001-07:00

I wake to darkness.
Light from the cages
Draws me close.

Mice scurry.
Surround the mother
Giving birth.

A baby emerges
Pink and hairless.
Eager hands whisk it off.

Hungry mouths feed.

The cycle repeats.
Another baby,
Another meal.

Question Authority (And Reality)

2009-10-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

What gender are you? Have you been tested?

Caster Semenya was sure she was a woman. Genetic testing forced on her revealed she is a hermaphrodite – Intersex. She may be stripped of her medals and not allowed to compete as a woman. But why?

She is a woman by identification, birth records, and, at least partially, physiology. Are we to punish her then because she is a natural athlete? If we stop her from competing because her body has a distinct genetic advantage over other female athletes, then there is a line to be drawn - somewhere.

My inability to wow the crowds at tennis or running or sticking a pole in the ground and hoisting myself over a little bar without knocking it off is, I’m sure, due to these other athletes having a distinct genetic advantage over me. Should they be disqualified from competing? They were born to do what they do. Their bodies, genes, training all combine to give them that advantage.

So here is a runner who suddenly bursts on the scenes and excels at her sport and instead of celebrating her, we subject her to worldwide public humiliation. All by herself. But should she be the only athlete who is tested? What is the mix of non-standard females and males in our athletic population? (No male athletes have been subjected to gender testing.)

Let’s hear from some experts:

“Gender, typically described in terms of masculinity and femininity, is a social construction that varies across different cultures and over time.”
“The Berdache in North America, the fa’afafine (Samoan for “the way of a woman”) in the Pacific, and the kathoey in Thailand are all examples of different gender categories that differ from the traditional Western division of people into males and females.”
“Aneuploidy is the condition of having less than (monosomy) or more than (polysomy) the normal diploid number of chromosomes. Aneuploidy occurs in at least 5% of all pregnancies and is the most commonly recognized chromosome abnormality in humans. Divergence from the normal number of X and Y chromosomes, called sex chromosome aneuploidy (SCA), accounts for approximately half of all chromosomal anomalies in humans with a total frequency of 1:400.”
“The high frequency of individuals with SCA is due to the fact that their effects are generally not as severe as autosomal abnormalities and are rarely lethal. Indeed, most cases of SCA are compatible with normal life expectancy and often go undiagnosed.”
Genetic Components of Sex and Gender

Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS)

“Individuals with CAIS, which affects 1 in 20,000 people, look like normal females. But at a genetic level CAIS women have XY sex chromosomes rather than the usual XX. The condition is due to mutations in the gene coding for the androgen receptor, which means that androgen signalling doesn't work: it essentially knocks out the effect of testosterone.”
Sex Hormone Signature Indicates Gender Rather Than Just Chromosomes

“Total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female
one in 100 births”
How common is intersex?

It seems to me that athletics would be a natural outlet for someone whose chromosomes do not match the current standard. So do we test them all and then sort who is and is not acceptable?

Still sure what gender you are?

In a small town of 40,000 people, these statistics say that possibly 100 people do not have the ‘typical’ XX or XY chromosomes, but only 2 are XY females. 400 do not have ‘typical’ male or female bodies.

In L.A. County, there are approximately 23,750 such non-XX/XY individuals and 475 XY females. Non-typical bodies number over 95,000.

In the United States – there are more than 760,000 non-XX/XY people and more than 15,200 XY females. Are you ready for the non-typical number? 3,040,000.

Living, breathing and marrying in all of our states despite whatever laws or constitutional amendments are on the books.

When states pass these laws or constitutional amendments limiting marriage to one man and one woman, I have to wonder how they legally define those terms. I also want to know who is paying for all the gender testing that should be going on to assure this law or constitutional amendment is being upheld. And what about those who know they are Intersex? Can they marry anyone and still pass the one man / one woman test? Or are they violating the law by marrying and not revealing the ambiguity of their gender?

Are you a man? Are you a woman? How do you know?

If you're married, are you really legally married? Would you and your spouse pass the one man / one woman test?

I'm In

2009-10-10T16:19:00.000-07:00

So I did it. I got on Facebook. Finally.

The signing on process was interesting and a bit scary. Long before I mentioned writing, SCBWI or this blog, there were friend suggestions that related to those parts of my life.

If you're there, too, feel free to send me a Friend request. When I figure out where things are, I'll respond and we'll be even more virtually connected.

It's funny to realize I have more virtual friends than, um, non-virtual friends.

Dignity

2009-10-10T08:41:00.000-07:00

They wheeled her out of the house
Onto the sidewalk
Frantically pumping her chest
As they maneuvered to the waiting ambulance.

People around me
Talked about her health
Her age
Her chances for living.

I took it all in
The sunny day,
Fall crispness,
The dirt on the sidewalk,
The chatter,
The urgency.

And her breasts.
Her shirt ripped wide open
Hands pumping on bare flesh.
There was no dignity
In this death.

Time Out

2009-10-04T13:58:00.000-07:00

I’ve had enough.
I can’t live like this.

First time I tried
Running away
I was four.
I reached for the front door lock,
Stuffed dog in hand.

It was easy
To talk me into staying,
Then.

I listen for Mom.
Keep my suitcase hidden
As I smuggle it
Out the door.

A block away
Mom calls my name.
It’s too soon
For them to know I’m gone.
I hide the suitcase
In the bushes.

Does she know?
Did she see me?
No.

She hands me a rag,
And a can of polish.
Dust the furniture,
Then I can go and play.

I don’t want to play.
I want to live,
Free of this chaos,
Free of this anger.

I dust,
Better than usual.
Mom’s pleased,
With my industry.

No arguing,
No whining.
Just spray and wipe,
Spray and wipe.

She’s happy and
Won’t be looking for me
For awhile.

It’s time.

I get the suitcase and go.
One block.
Two blocks.
Three blocks.

Mom calls my name.
Can’t stop now.
Can’t go back.
What if someone saw me
With this suitcase?

I get to Kathy’s
She hands me a plastic bag
Opens the side door of the garage.
My dinner and my new bedroom,
For tonight.

The bag holds gravy
And leftover turkey
Frozen.
I hope it thaws soon.

I look around the garage
Not sure where I’ll sleep.
There are boxes
And tables
No chairs.

There’s something in the corner.
A cat skeleton.
Picked clean.
How do they not know
They have a dead cat in here?

Yelling out front
Draws my attention.
I climb on a table
Look out the little windows
At the top of the garage door.

My brother, on his bike,
Circling in front of the house.
He knows I’m here
Somehow.

Go away.
Leave me alone.
I know you hate it
As much as I do.
Let me get out.

He’s not leaving.
His friends join him.

The back door of the house opens.
Kathy and her mom.
I get down,
Try to hide.
But it’s no use.

Where can I hide
When they know I’m in here?
I look at the cat.
He hid very well
Apparently.

First Love

2009-09-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

Lying in your arms,
I feel safe,
Loved, adored.

I snuggle closer.
You talk
Of your future.

Husband, kids.
White picket fence.

I’m so confused.

Do I have to be a man
To be with the woman I love?

Rusty

2009-09-18T17:08:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night
Beer bust,
I get a can.
Can’t handle the tap.
Can’t stop at two.

My friends are here.
Always here.

Short, curly hair,
Cute smile,
Much older than me,
Not my type.

We make eye contact.
I break it off,
Talk to a friend.

I’m looking again.
I don’t know why.
Turn away,
Chat with the bartender.

What the hell?
Why do I
Keep looking at her?
I’m not interested.

She comes closer,
Asks me to dance.
My fault.
Too much eye contact.
I still don’t know why.

Her friend wants to leave
She wants to stay
Will I drive her home?
I say yes,
Sit at her table.

We talk
About nothing,
She likes me
Because I don’t drink much.

I like that
She likes me.

I get my second beer
Return to her table.

She stands up,
Ready to leave.
My beer’s almost full,
She thinks I don’t drink much.

I stare at the can
Lost.
Settle for chugging half
And putting it down.

My fingers linger
In the drips
Of condensation.

Walking out,
I look back,
See the can sitting there,
Waiting for me.

I’d stop, go back
Let it know I’m still here.
But I’m following her
Out the door
Into my car
To her home.

We kiss good night
Do I want that?
She’s still
Not my type.

Back in my car
I tell myself
The can is gone
Cleaned up, thrown away.
I want to go back,
Change that fate.

We call, date.
I meet her daughter
Who’s almost my age.

Sit down dinner.
She yells at her daughter,
Like dad always
Yelled at me.
I’m siding with her daughter,
If only in my head.

I manipulate her
Into letting me stay the night.
Far too easily.
She loses more respect.

Her nightly ritual,
She pulls out the Big Book.
Over her shoulder,
I read one line:
Prove you’re not alcoholic,
Quit for a year.

A year’s long
But I can do that.

I think.

Three weeks later
I realize I can’t.
I realize I am
Just like my dad.
It’s not a happy thought.

WWR, Part Two

2009-09-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

I got a request for a critique breakdown from the retreat weekend. So, here it is.

Universal Health Care

2009-09-15T08:01:00.000-07:00

What he said.

SCBWI-LA's Working Writer's Retreat

2009-09-13T20:15:00.001-07:00

My brain is still humming from this past weekend. A non-stop critiquing, writing, revising, laughing, seeing friends I only see this one time each year and meeting new editors weekend.

This year's editors were Arthur Levine and Martha Mihalick. What a great duo. They were both funny and insightful. I got the privilege of (almost) knocking Arthur out of his chair with the first chapter of Thirteen Black Cats Under A Ladder. Alas, he doesn't like having his head shoved in a blender from the first word of a novel. But he did offer a lot of praise for the writing and help with how to move on from there.

Martha took the zit popping of Garlic (nearly) in stride. Another batch of good comments from her that included both praise and where she saw it needed a bit more work. The next morning, I knew what I had to do to fix that chapter.

The road ahead seems clear. I hope that doesn't wash away after I (finally) get some sleep.

Dream

2009-09-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

Dream of a time
When freedom means
Being out of this house

When security is real
And not a vague notion

When I can sleep
With my eyes fully closed
And not need a metal bar
Under my pillow

When I don’t have to wonder
About that gun in your nightstand

Push

2009-09-07T09:52:00.000-07:00

“Get me a beer.”

Push
“No.”

He clears his throat.
“Do as you’re told.”

Push
“No.”

The recliner rocks forward.
Deep breath.
Almost there.

“Defiant bitch.”

Final push
“Asshole.”

He’s on me before I’m ready.
But I’m never ready.
Not for this.

We thrash around on the floor.
I get my feet on his chest.
Push him off just enough
To not hit the cabinet behind him.

Then it’s over.
No bruises
No broken bones.

Tension deflated
We’re smiling
But Mom’s leaning on the washer
Crying.

She doesn’t understand
This bleeding off of his anger.

I can’t always be here
To save her.

And Then There Were None

2009-09-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

Well, almost.

This little fellow is all that’s left, and he goes to his new home on Saturday. It’s been an exhausting, funny, amazing, teary journey finding homes for the little ones. I’m glad it’s almost over and I’m sad to see them all go.

Urban Planning

2009-08-27T07:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry to say, I missed filming OCDoggie's urinary comment on the first seed pod.

Aging, But Not Gracefully

2009-08-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

I get these killer multi-day headaches regularly these days. Not sure of the cause though there are several suspects (including stress and hormones). But it’s not the cause I want to discuss today; It’s the cure.

Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Chai Tea Latte w/soy

Yep. That’s what gets rid of my headaches. Definitely not your standard remedy.

Oh I thought it had to be coincidence, but several months later, I’m convinced. Just got my cure last night for the most recent two day long bout and it worked – again. Plus I was able to fall asleep easily even though I ingested enough caffeine to keep me going all night. For those of you who regularly imbibe, this may not mean much, but I gave up caffeine and these occasional lattes are my only foray back into that vice.

But here’s the kicker – it’s not just the caffeine. It’s not any old chai tea. And it’s not Starbucks where they use a mix rather than brew up real tea. I’ve tried them all and only Coffee Bean will do it for me.

So is it their tea? Their powder? Their brand of soy milk? Dunno, but I’m going back this morning and I’m buying some of their tea to brew on my own for the next headache session. While it’s nice that my cure is delicious and feeds some craving that resides deep in my soul, driving to a store in that condition is not conducive to other people’s safety.

I’m thinking about a weekly preventive dose of the full monty as well.

Playground

2009-08-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

Old metal handle
Pump it fast
Water starts running
Quick, cup my hands

Water and bits
Of red metal flakes
Tastes so good
On this hot summer day

Run through the grass
Dodge the stones
Rest in the
Shade of the tree

Wander back
Towards the house
Read the words
As I go

Names of people
I don't know
Numbers that
Mean nothing to me

My playground
This cemetery

All Kitten TV

2009-08-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

It's all in the ears.

Scary Place

2009-08-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

I was in a chain bookstore recently. Horrifying. On many of the shelves, the books were face out - with space in between! And some had multiple stacks! They are carrying so few titles.

Gives me the chills and much trepidation about whether to submit now or later. Will we recover and return to the day when the titles were abundant? Something tells me this trend will not reverse easily.

Not Me

2009-08-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

Newspapers
Stacked to the ceiling
Little fingers reach for the top
So far away

Right hand grip
Dig in a shoe
Push up with left foot
Rise to the next level

Grip
Dig
Push
Rise

Grip
Dig
Push
Rise

The pile teeters
My grip slips
Sliding down
An avalanche of news

Neat stacks scattered
All over the floor
I’m in trouble
If I get caught

Not me
Only one in the room
Not me
Newsprint fingers and knees
Not me