R.I.P. Robert Jordan

In his bestselling Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan proved that the imagination is limitless. In spite of that, he fearlessly probed its edges and sought its boundaries. He refused to be shackled by the confines of history or convention. Through his books, I spent countless hours in exotic places with people who were both real and yet far more than real. The best authors have that ability to distort your perception of time and place, making you come out of their books dazed and blinking, wondering where that world you were just in had vanished to. The best stories are the ones that become, at least for a time, more real than your living room. Those are the stories Robert Jordan wrote, the stories that find a place inside you where they stay forever.
The Wheel of Time series is unfinished, and will remain so-- at least by the man who created it. Internet rumor is that he left notes for its completion, and I hope that is the case. He died on Sunday in South Carolina.
Farewell Robert Jordan, and thank you. May you always find water and shade.

Thursday Thirteen

I see a lot of other bloggers doing these sorts of lists about themselves, so I thought I'd join the party. If you read this and want to join in too, then go ahead and do your own Thursday Thirteen, and please link back to me, or link to yours in my comments. Oh, and since this isn't for assignment or anything, it might end up being a Thursday Eleven or something, but that just doesn't have the same ring, so we'll stick with a Thursday Thirteen list that may have eleven items. Or ten. Or fifteen.

Thirteen things I love about fall:
The smell of the air-- I love that clean, crisp smell, which is both a smell and a feel at the same time.
Warm socks-- Socks are my most favorite things in the world. I have tons of them. My favorite pair is pink and grey and I love them best because Michael knitted them for me last year. Yes, my husband knits. When I started learning, he joined in too because he is just supercool that way.
Pumpkin bread-- Or pumpkin anything really: Pumpkin muffins, pumpkin soup, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin spice latte, pumpkin pie, pumpkin pudding (Insert Bubba Gump voice here.)
Knitting-- I knit year round, but it just feels all cozy and homey to knit when it's colder.
Hot chocolate
Football games
Halloween, also known as Samhain in the old Celtic tradition.
Walking in a nearby nature park
Major League Baseball play-offs-- The Cubs just might be there this time.
The season's first pot of chili-- Autumn isn't officially here until Michael fixes that first pot of chili. Though we are vegetarian, chili just isn't chili without ground beef, so we break our no-meat rule for chili. Mmmmm, can't wait.
Sleeping with the windows open-- It's hell on my allergies, but I love it.
I have never had surgery during the fall. Every other season, sure. Practically every other month, but never September-December.
Fleece pajamas

Find an original way to insult me, would you?

I had a CT scan of my abdomen on Friday. It's just routine for people with VHL and I don't expect any problems. It's part of my getting healthy in preparation for pregnancy plan. I figure if I'm going to share a body with another person, it's best to make sure everything is in as good a condition as I can get it. So, the radiology tech, Jill, her name was, was very nice and helpful. Michael stayed in with me as long as he could because he knows I'm something of a baby when it comes to these sorts of things, but he couldn't stay in the room once the actual test started.
Once he left, Jill said, "How long have you two been married?"
"Ten years," I answered.
"He seems very nice."
"He's wonderful."
"Did you know you had this disease when you got married?"
"Yes," I said, barely suppressing a groan, knowing where this was going. I have had this conversation with countless people.
"Are you blind because of this disease?"
VHL is very rare, so I understand that people, especially those in the medical field, are interested, so I try to be polite and patient and answer their questions. "Yes."
"Were you blind when you met your husband?"
There it was, the question I knew was coming. "Yes," I said, and I think I gave a resigned sigh.
"Oh! What a sweetheart he is!" Jill gushed.
Okay, I know he's a sweetheart. What I find interesting is that he was previously just "very nice," up until Jill found out I was already blind when he married me. Then, all of a sudden he's "a sweetheart." What went unspoken but that I know she was thinking, was: Isn't it nice of him to have married you and you being blind and all! Yes, yes, I was selling pencils on a street corner, and he took pity on me and married me. Sheesh. I mean really, the things people will say. What would she have said if I'd said I lost my sight after we married? Oh, he's such a sweetheart to have stayed with you? Oh, that poor man? I held my tongue though, and just agreed, yes, Michael is certainly a sweetheart, because it's true, he is a wonderful man. But he's a wonderful man because he's patient, compassionate, hard working, funny, and a million other things—not because he married a blind woman. I'm sure Jill thinks Michael has to dress and feed me in the mornings. he doesn't, of course, and the truth is that we take care of each other about equally. In every relationship, home duties and responsibilities get divided up on the basis of likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. Naturally, I don't do any of the driving for our household. Michael doesn't do the laundry-- not unless itty bitty and pink becomes a fashion trend. he balances the checkbook, and I maintain our family calendar of events. It isn't a 50/50 split, the scales tip in either direction from time to time, but I don't think a good marriage is about equality. It's about doing what you do with love and respect, and sight is not required to love and respect someone.
But I didn't tell any of this to Jill because it was none of her business, and-- more importantly-- because she was about to inject me with x-ray dye.

Strunk and White

My writing process is messy. In every other aspect of my life, I am almost maniacally organized. I formulate plans and I adhere rigidly to those plans. I'm really out of control when it comes to planning. for example, if I have three tasks: fold and put away laundry, make a phone call and pee, I will determine the most efficient, time-saving way to accomplish all these tasks before I even get up from the couch. Most times, I end up talking on the phone while folding laundry and jumping up and down with my legs crossed, but damn it-- it's efficient. If you know me, then you know the sad truth is that I am not exaggerating in the slightest. so you'd naturally assume that when I write, I write out character sketches and detailed plot outlines. Oh, if only. My creative writing process seems inexplicably to require chaos. Set me down with a laptop and an idea for a story, and I'm like a Boston terrier on crack. The process is anything but efficient. I have accepted this. Admitted defeat is probably more accurate, because I have tried and tried to change the way I write, but I end up with flat characters who go through contrived motions. Granted, they do so in a very streamlined manner, but the writing isn't fun, and if I wanted to sit at a computer and do stuff that wasn't fun... well, I have a day job for that.
So I'm in the very last stage of editing my manuscript, the polish it up all nice and perfect stage, and it's a little like wrestling an octopus. Well, I've got it mostly subdued, with only the occasional stray fly-out tentacle, but it occurred to me that after all the cutting and rewriting and moving and shuffling and point of view shifting, that I might have lost sight of the basics a ways back. You guessed it, I need to "Omit unnecessary words!"
I was trained as a journalist, so there were two books that I was taught to revere as though they were holy scripture. The first was the Associated Press Style Book, which changes with each new edition for reasons that I can only determine are monetary, because the last really substantive changes came as a result of the fall of Communism, yet they keep cranking out new editions year after year. Still, the A.P. Style guide is the journalist's definitive handbook, even if it seems to be definitive only on ambiguity. Word usage that would have instantly revealed you to be an amateur to the upper classmen when I was in college is now somehow the divinely decreed "right way." We have one handy office copy of it here. We use it to swat flies. The other book, which isn't big enough to give a fly so much as a mild concussion, is "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White. Reading it is like a no-nonsense boot camp on grammar. It is perhaps a bit rigid and can be heavy handed, but there's a reason it has withstood the test of time with hardly a change and it is just what I need as I embark on my final manuscript polish. Saint Strunk? Maybe.

Big life changes, none of them mine

Two of my friends are in the middle of major life events today. One friend is in labor with her first baby right now-- a particularly blessed event since she tried for two years and had been given a normal infertile diagnosis before finally getting pregnant, and Molly is buying a house. I've never been in labor but I have gone through the home buying process, and I imagine they are just about equally painful. All this joy for my friends is making it hard to sit at my desk and work when what I really want to do is run outside and dance, which given the way I dance would help spread the joy of the day as anyone happening buy would certainly find cause to laugh.

My Husband's Zucchini

No really—I mean the vegetable.
Michael and I have a system when it comes to meal preparation: I plan our weekly menu and make the grocery list. We go to the grocery store together and both do the shopping. One or the other of us (usually Michael) does the cooking and we do the cleaning up together. It's a system necessitated by my blindness, but we like the extra time spent together, so it works for us. Friday evening however, we hit a SNAFU in the system.
We had both had horrific weeks at our respective jobs and so decided to go out to the movies to take our minds off work. We saw Becoming Jane, which is an incredibly beautiful and brilliant movie that I highly recommend even if you aren't a true Austen fan. But for those, like Michael and me, who really love Austen, you're in for a real treat, as scenes from Austen's novels are woven expertly through the plot of Becoming Jane. Anyway, you should go see it, but I digress. Movie times never seem to be when I want them, and Becoming Jane was on at 6:50 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., when what I really wanted was a good 7:30 show. We decided on the earlier showing since I'd likely be asleep by 9:30, and since Friday evening traffic is always a bitch here I decided that since I was home a little early, I'd make dinner. Dinner was veggie wraps. Seriously, there is very little room for screw ups with veggie wraps. It's simply red onion, spinach, mushrooms, black olives, and cucumber wrapped in a tortilla, and we make a spread of cream cheese and Italian dressing. Sounds like the easiest thing in the world, doesn't it? And it is, when you have the right ingredients. The right ingredients being a cucumber, which—though admittedly similar—is a very different vegetable from a zucchini.
I thought the cucumber felt strange, but as I was in a hurry, and it was the only thing that even remotely felt like a cucumber in the vegetable crisper, I didn't ponder the matter over much. I love the smell of cucumbers, so once I pealed it and cut it in half, I took a big whiff. Nothing. No nice fresh clean cucumbery smell. No smell at all. Hmmmm. That's odd. So I again check the vegetable crisper. Nope, that has to be the cucumber. So I chop it up becoming ever more convinced that this is not a cucumber. Ahhh the joys of blindness, where all of life is a surprise. So finally I taste of the darn thing. Mystery solved. The non-cucumber like vegetable is absolutely not a cucumber and is most certainly a zucchini. I stood in the kitchen for a while trying to figure out if Michael was just fucking with me or if my husband in fact does not know the difference between a cucumber and a zucchini. So when he got home, I said, "Would you mind taking a look in that bowl and tell me what that looks like to you?""
"hmmmm."
"Does that look like a cucumber to you?"
Long pause. "It could be a cucumber."
"Uh-huh." So we go about finishing up dinner, minus the bowl of what could be a cucumber. Finally, I said, "You know that's a zucchini, don't you?"
Silence.
"You just aren't going to admit it's a zucchini because then you'll have to explain how you managed to confuse a cucumber with a zucchini, right?"
"Pretty much."
So we had a good laugh about it (I laughed more than Michael) and it sort of took the tension off the rough week. However, if you plan on making the above recipe for veggie wraps, I do not recommend zucchini as a substitute for cucumber.

Productivity Breeds Productivity

I have been absolutely swamped with work for my day job, the J.O.B. I knew it was coming-- this is the busy time of year where I work. I have been dreading these few weeks since early July, but I find there is a curious phenomenon at work here. The busier I am in one area of life, the more I get done in the other areas as well. This completely defies logic, but it seems to be true. When I am swamped at work, I find that I make the most of the limited time I have for my writing and for home stuff, and more gets done in all areas. Conversely, when I set aside an entire day for writing, my subconscious seems to say, "Well, since we've got the whole day, why not go ahead and check our favorite blogs. Oh, and let's do some knitting. And how about we spend just an hour or so reading." Next thing I know, it's 5 p.m., and the only writing I got done was a frantic paragraph-- guilt inspired-- begun upon realizing it was 4:50. What up with that?
One of the things that most concerned me about having a baby was that I might not have the time to write. Getting published has been a dream of mine for so long, I feared it being backburnered for anything, even for a baby. But now, I feel sure I'll be okay. I'll learn to use my time more efficiently, and make those fifteen minutes of free time really count.
I'm researching agents now. I think the process of getting published is as much about endurance and perseverance as anything. If you are talented and dedicated, you can write a book. and if you're determined enough (or crazy enough) to jump through the hoops that lead to publication, you can get your book on the bookstore shelves.
What I wouldn't give for a writing partner or a critique group right now, but there really isn't one to be found where I live.