The Good Dirt

...argh. sitting here trying to ramp up for my critique group tonight. also, i have the hiccups.
i am most of the way through a glass of red, hoping that would loosen my thoughts, but i am so uptight about this manuscript that i don't really know what to think.
sprocket is reading my thoughts. he has his head insistently under my arm and keeps on pushing upwards to get my attention...
there. he's stopped.
phew. i don't think he likes it when i have the hiccups. he doesn't like it when he has them.
i'm a little nerve-wracked about my hound, here, too, though: yesterday he had a terrifically bad case of the tremors. wouldn't stop shaking. don't know what's up with him. the vet said to just hang tight and wait until we had tremors coupled with something else--throwing up, coughing, other symptoms--and then we'd see.
well, ain't that nice.
so long as it doesn't happen again, it'll be fine. but i do remember it happening once when we were in california, although for a much shorter period of time.
argh. argh. argh. must not think like this.
ok. off to writers' group.

but instead i am following mike's lead and posting a little bit about what it was like to write a short story in 24 hours.
i was really really not smart about this, actually. both mike and lara are in london, so their time period for writing was 6PM-6PM their time; mine was right on track with the actual writing competition organizers, 12 noon to 12 noon.
jim and i had to teach the Leave No Trace clinic to REI staff members both saturday and sunday, but both classes were at 7:20 in the morning, so i thought i'd just pretty much bank on the class being mostly out of the way by the time i started writing. then i'd do the 2nd class on sunday morning, come back, and write.
of course, things did not go to plan.
we were up at 6:15 on saturday morning, getting ready to go and putting the final touches on our presentation and strategy for the morning. the thing went well, and then we were back at home again, and then i answered some e-mail and fell promptly asleep at 11 until noon. i suspect the fact that it was my first full six-day training week (and i took an extra day off) since...oh, i don't know--last year might have had something to do with the need to nap.
i got up, read the prompt, which had been e-mailed to me (something about writing 950 words on a prompt that involved a winter wedding in a small, drafty church), and then had lunch, percolating.
i rode on my trainer from one until 2:30, then i showered and jim and i went to walk the hound. all the while, i percolated.
i thought, okay, if i really want to win this thing, i'd better find out what they liked in the past. so when we got back home, i went back and read many of the award winners, the first, second, and third-place winners, and instantly felt like, okay, i'm in trouble.
because the thing is, every piece i read had a twist..a funky ending...somethign quirky and interesing about it. (i was particularly charmed by this story.) i suck at ending things. i really, really do. even now, looking at the piece i turned in, i'm not sure where the ending is.
anyway, i read them all, and then i percolated some more, and i banged out something and made jim read it, and by then it was something like 8:30, 9PM. and i was a little freaked. because i knew that there was something critical missing. there wasn't (okay, big shock here) enough resolution. there was, as jim said, "a lot of angst," and then i was looking for a big resolved ending that went BANG! and i got this: "EEEEEeeeeeee..."
and then i thought, this is going to drive me crazy. i need to sleep on it.
so that's what i did. i went to sleep. and got up at 6:30 the next morning, and taught an excellent course to a really receptive class, and made some excellent contacts, all the while thinking, "four hours left...three and a half hours left....argh!"
I had jim stop by mcdonald's on the way back, telling myself that i couldn't actually take the time to feed myself properly (actually, i'd been craving a stupid sausage mcmuffin for days), and then i got home, sat down at my desk, and worked until 11:47, at which point i thought, crap, there's a ton of things i have to add to the end of this, rules i have to follow, like where i'm putting my address and things, and how to send it, and which address to send it to....ARGH!
i spent some time agonizing over that, and then, at 11:54, i thought, shite, what if gmail decides it doesn't want to send this thing? what if the queue is all screwed up? what if WritersWeekly.com's queue is all screwed up?
ARGH!
ARGH!
ARGH!!!
so i checked the thing over one last time, and realized with a shock that all the resolution happened just by adding a few lines of dialogue, a little more raw emotion, a little more angry and a little less subtle, and hit send.
and then i spend the next five minutes anxiously refreshing my mailbox to see whether or not my story had filed.
it did. phew.
then i went to lunch with a friend, ordered a bloody mary, and indulged in a good meal and good company. and then i mucked in the woods for a little while with a pack on, and felt sorry that every short story couldn't be written like that.
it's considered a leisurely, very intellectual, lofty thing to write short stories. but i wonder what would happen to the market if all of us were asked to write under such journalistic deadlines. i'd bet we'd spend less time stuck in our heads all around, when forced to just do.
lara has said she's going to do the next one, too. i'm very excited about that one, as well, although it's a whole quarter away. sigh.
i wish i had thought to save a different draft every time i changed my story. i think that process would be fascinating. when i next do this, i might set up a web cam over my shoulder, just to record the changes, and the process of writing.

went snow-mucking again. no snowshoes; 50-pound pack; suck.
nice scenery though. trying to be all macro like paul but it's not working.

1. golf balls--people must find 'em and then stick 'em up here for range employees to find in the spring!
2. feather, trampled.
3. evidence of a hound. i had to "enhance" this photo and then make it black and white in order for the footprint to be visible.
4. two lighthouses, two trees. the hound crashes the photo.
5. the city. i crash the photo.
6. follow the yellow brick road, the winter-in-chicago version.
7. it's a sky! it's a lake! it's an oil slick! no, no, it's just the lake in winter.
8. water in bottle froze. clearly, must carry vodka next time. whiskey, even. no, no, i mean, where's that insulated camelbak i have around someplace???

               

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stuff_i_did_and_saw_today.zip (10522 KB)

...so right after i told you i was going to take more photos of random things starting with the party on friday?
i forgot to bring camera.
also, i forgot to bring camera to the other interesting things we did this weekend: teaching two leave no trace clinics; working on a short story competition; mucking in snow. (that second item might not have made for any interesting photos.)
i am a moron.
so the short story competition is over. i roped lara into it too. provided that i don't win anything (and i'm not sure i will; i think i am having a hard time actually even sussing out what i was trying to say in said short story), i will share it with you too. why, no, i'm not above subjecting you to my terrible writing!
er. what else? the leave no trace clinics went really well. i'll have to write them up for LNT headquarters.
okay? okay! now, on to mucking in the snow.

...in fact, i may make them as long as i fricken want.
so. i've decided that i'm angry with my camera. red eye all the time, lousy flash...and yet, i really like its portability.
i also have decided that i need to take more pictures of things and stuff around, not just people. i mean, i love people...but i think that i need to start taking photos of things that remind me of where and when i've been.
yes, yes, that would be nice. i'll start tonight. kathleen and i are headed out to an fashion event. too bad i have nothing to wear. it is ASS COLD out there again today, so i will be mucking about in pants and boots. no pretty dresses, no interesting tops...best i can do is a pencil skirt and interesting tights. well...i guess that could be interesting. oh, i just can't be bothered to think about it.
i ahve been thinking about the photo thing because i've been introduced to an old friend's macro photography. he makes ordinary objects look so beautiful that i want to see if i can reproduce some of that effect myself. no, it won't happen, but oh well. i can try.
sigh.
today there were some writing. i was awakened, however, by my pal bill from shelterbox. he called and i picked up, and the first thing he said was, "You Lucky Shit!" and i was all, like, "what?" and he was all like, "you haven't heard?" and i was all like, "no, damnit, just tell me."
well, it turns out, my guy Ed from ShelterBox is leaving.
now, Ed is a hard-ass. he made the two-training hell, and the reason bill was calling me a lucky shit is because now i will not have to deal with ed on the 9-day traiing course.
this actually makes me sad. i know that Ed can be a pain in the ass, but not having him there will make it so that, even if i do make it successfully through the9-day course, i won't have been as much of a challenge as it could have been.
this makes me sad.
this is always happening to me. OK, it has happened exactly twice, where someone who has championed my cause and who had the potential to push me really far, to the maximum of my own potential, has been booted. (i can't actually say that Ed got booted with certainty. but i will say it here for sake of continuity and for feeling sorry for myself.)
right. now. some of you will say, "well, you'll just have to be your own motivator, then," and i will say to you, yes, yes, i know, but just let me have my moent in the muck, okay?
some photos:

1. sprocket. boots. refusing to touch paws to level, even soft squashy level like sofa.
2. lara, during a recent skype on her netbook. she looks all seeeeeeepia toned. i like this photo, however, because of all of the stuff it the background: the open skype chat window, the ironman.ch window, the word processing window...oh, wait, that last isn't there, is it?
3. jim. sprocket.
4. sprocket watches the inauguration.

       

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i_am_going_to_start_thinking_u.zip (5581 KB)

today has started nicely. <A HREF="tabwriter.blogspot.com">tab</A> came over and we wrote for a few hours. it was nice to have the company: having another human being dilligently pecking away at the keyboard is a really good influence.
last night drinks and snack with allison was nice. it was good to see her, but i felt like a deaf old woman: she's very soft-spoken, and i could swear my hearing was going...i had to ask her repeatedly what she was saying. we had nice whiskey drinks at the uncommon ground on devon street...seeing the Tr33tin1 sign up made my heart do painful horrible things, but one must move forward.
i still have not returned the corrected contracts on those. somehow, i can't bring myself to look at the paperwork again. i have to soon, though. i can't let this go much longer. in september or october it will be a year since we started this separation process. i want it to be finished by then, but then again, i say that about a lot of things. this is different though...it's a credential i have to be able to put down without any fuss or question. all it takes is some cutting and pasting in word, then throwing it in an envelope and waiting again. it's always so icky, dealing with these things. i need a real lawyer.
in other news, i am still thinking of going for my MFA. i can't decide which i want more: to be immediately helping people, or to be working my way towards helping people, safety net included.
i got my first e-mail from a ShelterBox pal in deployment. i may paste it in later. he's in somaliland, delivering tents to displaced persons. i'm itching to go, but i must go through that 9-day course first. i also got an e-mail from a good friend who was on our florida assessment course. he didn't make the cut, but only because he was physically not ready. he told me later that he'd already lost 60 pounds getting ready for that first weekend, but since then he's lost an additional 40 pounds, is off almost all of his medication, can hike 10K over rough terrain with a 60# pack in an hour and 45 minutes, and has just completed his second chance at the 2-day course. of course he's now on to the 9-day course, although he won't get to go until june. stilll, i'm happy he made it. noel is in his 60s; i know he wanted this badly. [noel has a unimog and a lotus 7; there's not much more else a man with so many material toys could possibly want outside of life experience, is there?]
i'm plowing my way through what i think is the end of the book i'll be turning in to my critique group. it's going well. i'm also plowing my way through that guide to Things That Go Bump in the NGO World, or Stuff I Have to Know. it's slow going, but neccessary.
you know what's even more neccessary? me and jim writing the Leave No Trace presentation we're supposed to be giving to 18 REI employees saturday and sunday morning. argh!!

Spent a good hour and a half outside with k today on snowshoes, with pack. It was a gorgeous, crisp day, and since we had chosen to snowshoe farther north than we have been doing, we got to experience, in many places, new fallen snow. Sprocket enjoyed being outside too, of course. Off to see Allison at uncommon ground decon street for drinks...more later. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

it only just now occured to me that we're going to have a minority president. totally overwhelmed.

...tired.
one bright spot: yesterday K and I went snowshoeing with sprocket.
well. she snowshoed. i mucked. yes, mucked. no snowshes; 50# pack. suck. suck, suck, suck.
today's workout: 1150 yard swim; 1-hour run. tomorrow: another 1-hour run. bleck.
here are the photos!

1. k with sprocket. he looks SO impressed.
2. me and k. i dont' know what is going on with my face there. a ton of weird wrinkles. gorgeous backdrop, though.
3. k, snowshoeing. action shot!!

     

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first_full_day_of_workout..zip (4192 KB)

i admit it. i am nuts about my hound. but i never thought it'd go this far: Sprocket has socks.
it went like this: 'round here in the winter, white stuff falls from the sky and freezes to the ground. the people in this neighborhood, who live mostly in apartments, don't usually shovel. they salt. and it's been in the single digits here, not counting the windchill.
salt is bad for hound paws. cold pavement and ice is also bad for naked paws. so we bought sprocket some swank boots after he ripped through the bootie balloon thingys we bought him. those things don't hold up to a long run, anyway.
so we got him some hard-core, vibram-soled ruffwear boots.
and them jim took him for a run, and sprocket came back limping and barely able to touch his paws to the ground, and we took off the boots and found horrible rubbed-raw spots where the gussets were irritating him.
i looked up the problem. the ruffwear web site mentioned socks. and it made sense: i have to wear socks with my heavy-duty boots. why not my hound?
now sprocket can at least walk without pain. and yes, yes, i have to admit it: i am a dog person.

   

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dog_people_and_their_proclivit.zip (2791 KB)