I love bees. Some day, I will keep bees. (Some day I’d also like to keep bats, but maybe I shouldn’t do both at the same time, mm?) Until then, I have to settle for taking care of the wild bees.
About a week ago, the weather finally started to warm up. Not one of those fluke 70-degree days in January, but a good, sturdy March day pushing into the 60s. These are the days when you know spring is really on the way in (especially when such days are preceded or followed by six inches [or feet] of snow).
My garden boxes, empty and covered with leaves for the winter, were suddenly full of prowling bees.
“No, bees!” I cried. “Stay home! It isn’t spring enough yet! There aren’t any flowers for you!”
I worry about the bees.
But the nice weather has persisted all week, and for some reason, the bees keep looking for food in my empty garden boxes. I imagine the moldering leaves smell sweet and possibly tasty, but I can’t imagine they actually are either of those things.
Remembering some info I read about bees in the past, I did a bit of looking and discovered that yes, bee keepers do supplement their bees’ diets from time to time, especially in early spring. With what? Sugar water! I can do that.
So I put out a frisbee full of sugar water (after perusing several apiary forums to make sure I wouldn’t screw it up and accidentally poison the bees). The frisbee (‘scuse me, “flying disc”) was bright orange, and I thought that might attract them. Y’know, like flowers.
I watched the frisbee and I watched the bees. They completely ignored it. They keep nosing around the dead leaves as if that was so much more interesting than a bright orange disc full of tasty, fake nectar. So I put a little of the sugar water on some of the leaves around the disc, and a few of the leaves into the disk. The bees immediately took interest in the water on the leaves around the disc.
I was running late for work, so I contented myself that they could probably figure it out from there.
When I came home eight hours alter, my frisbee was completely empty. I was confused. Had the neighborhood kids come over and spilled it all out? Maybe a dog had come by for a snack? Had the leaves I’d draped over the sides somehow wicked the water out into the surrounding leaves? It couldn’t have evaporated – only a few sticky smudges remained in the bottom.
Rather disheartened, I filled the frisbee again and set it out. Perhaps it had been eaten up by the bees.
When I left the house this morning, I nearly fell over from surprise. Apparently word had spread, and my bee-feeder was full of bees.
Huh. Somehow it looks less full of bees in the photo than I remember it looking. Here, have a close-up:
I took these photos when I came home at 11:20 to pick something up. No liquid remained in the frisbee by then, the bees were licking on the damp leaves to get whatever was left.
And down the hill, in the tree where I know they have their hive, the bees are flying happily in and out and I’m a little less worried that they’ll starve before the daffodils bloom.
Yay bees! Don’t forget me when it’s squash-pollinating time.
This is a love letter to my family – the one I grew up with and the ones I have chosen for myself as life goes on.
Gratitude has been on my mind a lot lately. If I had to count my blessings today, I feel like I could start and never stop. I seem to be in a perfect storm of blessings, where every part of my life is full of happiness and satisfaction. My life is not perfect, but there is so much good surrounding me, that even the less-than-ideal bits aren’t too troublesome. I know this can’t last forever – there will always be those valleys of disappointment, sadness, and troubles – so while it does, I desperately want to soak up every little drop of wonderful.
Two people have recently come into my life who have made this more clear than it ever was before. Megan and Grace originally came to stay at our bed and breakfast because, as I’ve evasively told so many people, they needed to get away from a difficult family situation for awhile. But it was so much worse than that. The family situation wasn’t bad, the family was completely lost. Not lost in the sense that they’re far away, across the globe in an remote location where communication with them is difficult, and visiting nearly impossible. Not lost in the tragic sense of death, by some horrific accident.
No, Megan and Grace lost their family because their family chose to cut them off. Completely. Forever. Megan and Grace chose to leave their family’s church, and to their family, this means they are worse than dead. They are traitors, sinners, and to be regarded only with scorn. A family who loved them – cherished them, even – only three months ago, has now turned them away with no room for negotiation or communication.
The girls are, understandably, heartbroken. Imagine what it is like to understand why your family has done this, but to wish beyond hope that it did not have to be so. Imagine knowing that your family is still there, doing the regular things you’ve known all your life, laughing and working and playing and pretending that you never existed while you struggle to figure out who you are apart from them, and what you should do with your life now that everything you knew is gone.
In attempting to imagine this, in attempting to sympathize with such a devastating situation, I find myself returning again and again to gratitude.
I have made some choices in my life that my family does not approve of. Like Megan and Grace, I left the church I was raised in to follow a different path. And though I know this occasionally causes my parents distress, they have never rejected me. Despite emotional disputes and confused expectations, they continue to love me for all they are worth. They love me with the kind of love that involves hugs, tears, rowdy family dinners on long weekends, difficult conversations over tea, confused phone calls about unimportant daily problems, and gifts of marshmallowy treats because they know how happy such a small gesture makes me. We see each other often (thought not as often as we all might like), we talk every few days. I know what is happening in their lives and they know about mine. For every difficulty that has ever come between us, there has been infinitely more love, support, and forgiveness.
And I am overwhelmed by gratitude.
Mom, Dad, Megan, Tommy, Grandpa George, Grandma Shirley, and Grandma Lorena: Thank you for being there. Thank you for loving me unconditionally and for always challenging and encouraging me. Thank you for being there through ups and the downs. I hope you know how much I love you in return, and how much more I wish I could express this. There is nothing in the world like family, and I could not be more grateful that you are mine. I love you. Forever. As Grace would say: Every day and every day and every day.
Megan and Grace: if you read this, I didn’t mean to make you cry. For all that your family has turned you away, I continue to believe with all my heart that they still love you. I disagree with the way they choose to express their love, but I deeply, firmly believe that their love for you is still there, and I deeply, desperately believe that we can always continue to hope for a day in the future when perspectives may be changed. Maybe in this life, maybe in the next. Whatever the case, I want to be your stand-in family for as long as you’ll let me, and you know I’m not alone. You are surrounded by people now who want to help you and love you and take care of you. Our ideas of what this means may not always match yours, but if that doesn’t make us more like a real family, I don’t know what does. But know this: you are not alone. Every day and every day and every day.
Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert is taking on Philip Roth over some advice he gave to a young writer named Julian Tepper. In a Paris Review essay, Tepper says Roth told him he should quit writing: “Really, it’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it’s not any good. I would say just stop now. You don’t want to do this to yourself.” Gilbert counters with an essay in which she says being able to write for a living is “a profoundly luxurious act,” and not “some sort of dreadful Mayan curse, or dark martyrdom that only a chosen few can withstand for the betterment of humanity.” Amen. Roth, for his part, hasn’t said anything.
This little blurb particularly struck me today, because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about writing lately. I love writing. It makes me happy. I love revising. That makes me happy too. (I don’t tend to care for reading the comments that lead to revising. That’s just painful. But what’s a little pleasure without pain, right…?) In fact, I’m going to have a short story published in anthology by the end of the month. Woo!
But I wrote that story last spring, and I haven’t really written anything since. I made a really half-hearted attempt at NaNoWriMo last November, but the timing was bad and the idea I was working on didn’t even start to gel until about the 20th of November.
Novels are intimidating.
On vacation, over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reading a lot of short stories. Jeffery Archer is possibly my favorite short-story author of all time. If you haven’t read any of his work, go check him out now. I also gave some time to Steven King (though I vastly prefer his short stories to his novels, this particular collection was a little dull) and an anthology of Best-Of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. In the anthology, each story is preceded by an author bio which lists the humongous number of awards and awesome publication credits these authors have.
Which lists make me jealous.
“Laura,” I say to myself (because in moments of self-loathing I always talk to myself), “you’re not allowed to be jealous. You’ve never even tried to publish in any of these fancy magazines, so it isn’t like you’re failing where these people are succeeding. You’re failing on a completely different level!”
Ouch.
But I’m right, you know. I socialize in circles of writers. I have two friends who have been published in such impressive journals as noted above. They do it because they write, they edit, and then they try to get published. If they can do it, why can’t I?
Because I’m not very focused. Nothing new there. Look at this poor blog. I was posting 4-5 times a week when I started. Now I’m down to what, 4-5 times a year?
I read a blog around the end of the December that described the author’s mission to read 366 books during 2012. Ridiculous, right? But he did it. He did it because he didn’t do anything else for fun that year. He kept up with his job and continued to be a good husband and father, but he gave up video games, he gave up newspapers, he gave up everything except reading books.
That thought, combined with the Cracked article about harsh truths that will make you a better person, has really been rattling around in my brain for the last couple of months. “Do the math: How much of your time is spent consuming things other people made (TV, music, video games, websites) versus making your own? Only one of those adds to your value as a human being.”
I don’t DO much. I consume a lot, but I don’t DO much.
Perhaps it’s time to see about switching that up. If a dude can read a book every day of the year by giving up all of his other hobbies, surely I could write a few stories in a year by just slimming down on a few of mine?
My life is full of interesting places, interesting events, and most importantly, interesting people. I certainly do not lack for material about which to write. (Ooh, and look at that good grammar!) So let’s do this thing. Let’s get some stories written, or some blog posts, or even some letters to people I haven’t seen in awhile. Then maybe one day I really will be the person my 5-year-old self was sure I would be, after writing my first story, called “Majic Dors”. (Upon reflection, that story idea was awesome. Doors that take you to magic places? Maybe I should revisit that.)
Derp derp! I am looking forward to my first non-win since I started NaNo in 2008.
(I originally typed “my first failure” but that isn’t right, because as I’ve been preaching to my Wrimos all month: writing less than 50k words does NOT equal failure!)
I’m actually kind of pleased about it. As an ML (regional coordinator, for you uninitiated folks), I feel like I ought to know what it feels like to be one of the people who doesn’t make it, but who keep writing every day anyway. That includes a fair majority of people who participate. Now I know some of the trials and real excuses, and I know a little better how to support that crowd. Yay me!
On the other hand, my story really started taking shape around the 20th of the month. I went from writing rambling pages about my characters taking a walk through town, describing every single thing they see in excruciating detail because I had no idea what the plot was supposed to look like, to suddenly having two or three major insights in a row that gave my story substance and direction.
It was very exciting. If only my organizational abilities could keep up with the thoughts zinging around in my head.
And I’ve had an interesting revelation about how I handle brainstorming. Apparently I deal with brainstorming the same way people with addictions handle interventions. This might have something to do with the fact that most of my brainstorming happens as a conversation with my husband. Here’s an example:
Me: My characters have no motivation! Why would anyone go to such huge risk and expense just to drag a couple of dragon hearts home from the mountains?
Him: To save someone’s life?
Me: Mm, that could be good. But the people mounting the expedition are bad guys. Whose life could be worth saving to them?
Him: Maybe they want to start a war.
Me, internally: Psh. War is stupid. I don’t write about war. What a dumb idea.
Me: Interesting. I’ll write that down.
Him: But their obvious motivation should be something noble. War could be a secret motive!
Me, internally: War is stupid.
Me: Secret motives are interesting! But saving someone’s life is too hard to work in, since this expedition will take, like… eight months. Should be something a little less dire.
Him: What if they’re trying to do something stop-gap to fix the problem they need the dragon-batteries for? Maybe there’s a coal shortage.
Me: There can’t be a coal shortage. My world runs on coal.
Him: …
Me: Oh, that would certainly create a need, wouldn’t it?
Me, internally: Noooo! I already wrote thirty excruciating pages about the wonders of the steam-driven technology in my world!
Him: There you have it then, coal shortage and war.
Me, internally: War is stupid.
Me: I’ll write it down.
… Later, in the throes of ecstasy over having taken away most of the technology in my world …
Me: What could possibly be so important that you would pay for the coal to make an 800-mile train trip to the edge of nowhere every month?
Him: Oil.
Me, internally: I should have known better than to ask that after I saw him watching that History Channel special on the Vanderbilts.
Me: Oil is boring.
Him: Yes, but it’s valuable.
Me: I’ll write it down.
Me, internally: This is not going to be a book about freaking energy crises.
… Two days later, I’d done some outlining and much additional pondering and realized that an energy crises presents a perfect backdrop for a more atmospheric setting, the opportunity for royal conspiracy, the introduction of monsters, AND it produced – out of non-smog-filled thin air – the missing mother of my protagonist.
I have to admit, after much denial, bargaining and depression over lack of other prospects, that boring, real-world-style world conflicts can make excellent background music for a story that does not have to be about those things at all. My story can still be about clockwork dragons and mysterious power-sources and missing persons and wild adventures across dangerous terrain, now everyone involved has proper motive to get started.
Hooray!
My name is Laura. It is Day 30 of NaNoWriMo and my novel has just begun.
Soooo I had to make a call to a radio station with a billing question, and the gal who answered put me on hold. Their “hold music” was a talk-show program where angry men of one political alignment were bashing men from the other political alignment. I dropped my head to my desk and wept a little, because I am seriously depressed by the negativity of all public servants (and their pundits) in this world. I don’t care who’s bashing who – none of it is okay with me.
I put the phone on speaker because I couldn’t handle having that babble directly in my ear. The gal I wanted to talk to didn’t come back and didn’t come back and didn’t come back. Finally, the angry guys on the talk show wrapped up for a commercial break and I heaved a sigh of relief.
Then the commercials came on.
I didn’t pay much attention through the first few, but then one came on for environmental responsibility. The first bit of the ad claimed that if we wanted to be more green, we could consider riding our bikes to work instead of driving. If just 1 in 5 Americans did this, we would save X-hundred-billion barrels of oil a year. (Okay, that’s nice.) Other ways to be green included something something about reducing plastic use – “see how your life could improve if you just remove plastic from it!” and then – please understand, my attention was wandering a bit – the nice advertising man suggested I could try using dryer lint to make a new pair of shorts.
My jaw dropped and I turned my full attention to the phone — just as the person I was waiting to talk to picked up the line.
Now I will never know who thought I should make new shorts out of dryer lint, and I’m seriously bummed out about this. The commercial had to be some kind of a spoof, right? Poking fun at heavy-duty environmentalists? I tried googling it, and found out that there’s a very nice man who has a really nice mustache and all sorts of ideas about how to recycle dryer lint:
I’m considering calling back and asking to be put on hold again. Listening to those lint-heads flambe’ each other might just be worth getting to hear this again.
I have never had to watch what I eat. I am blessed with a fast metabolism and some very skinny genes on my mother’s side. (Thanks to the well-cushioned genes on my father’s side, however, you will never catch me wearing skinny jeans.) I love my body. It has some flaws, as all bodies do, but I can work with them, and I’d say my body’s assets easily outweigh its problems.
For my whole life, I’ve lived around people who are dieting for one reason or another, and I’ve felt varying degrees of scorn or sympathy for them. Scorn in the cases of people who were dieting to lose those 5 vanity pounds that they clearly didn’t need to be losing, and sympathy for the ones who really struggle with their weight or with health issues. I’ve looked over the meals of folks dealing with lactose intolerance, high cholesterol, celiac disease, type I diabetes, or allergies, and I’ve thought to myself, “Thank God I don’t have these problems. I would die if I couldn’t eat cheese/bread/chocolate/eggs/whatever-it-is.”
Eating is an activity I really enjoy. I began life as a picky eater, but grew out of that when I spent a year living in France. I love to taste new things. I love to experiment with what I can cook for myself. I love rich foods full of delicious, flavorful things like butter and spices and homemade stock. I want to learn to like all the vegetables (though I’m currently stumped on broccoli… it is not a vegetable that goes out of its way to make itself lovable). I’m even trying to learn to like fish, a thing that does not come naturally to my land-locked palate. (After California Rolls, the world!)
But I’ve been recently diagnosed with GERD. That’s Acid Reflux disease in fancy new medical terms. After a lifetime of eating everything with no problems, what caused this? Probably an over-dependence on ibprofun. Is there anything I can do about it? A lifetime of taking drugs, perhaps, but I’m really not into that. The alternative? Eat things that don’t make me sick.
And when I say “sick,” I mean it. GERD strikes by spazzing out the Lower Esophageal Sphincter, the muscle that keeps the contents of your stomach where they belong. My issue is not eating too many spicy or acidic foods, my issue is eating foods at all. Fun fact: eating tomatoes doesn’t give you heartburn because they are acidic, it gives you heartburn because they cause the LES to relax, loosening the barrier between stomach and esophagus. Esophaguses are not designed to fend off the level of acidity that’s very normal inside a stomach. When that happens to me, I feel like there’s a tiny little man living inside my stomach, punching me repeatedly. Antacids don’t help. All I can do is wait for the evil little man to finish digesting my food and take a nap.
So apparently there are things I can eat that will keep my LES from going on the fritz. Lots of websites out there advocate extreme measures (giving up carbs and giving up dairy completely are the most frightening propositions I’ve seen), but I’m much more interested in trying the middle of the road options that at least leave me with balanced diet options.
Even those are hard. Here’s a list of things that are straight out the window: Fruit (except apples and bananas), dairy (except low-fat cream cheese), flavorful meat (the leanest of all cuts are okay), egg yolks, garlic, onions, tomatoes, peppers, alcohol, anything sour, anything spicy, and cookies.
COOKIES.
You guys, I’m going to die.
But I’m not, actually. I keep thinking I will. I love to eat these things. Cheese? Onions? Peppers? BUTTER? My favorite things. I had no idea how dependent I was on them until I had to start thinking about not eating them. I’ve spent about a week moping, declaring that all I can eat is peanut butter toast and rice. But now that I’m (mostly) done feeling sorry for myself, I’ve been finding some better options. Stir-fry is a very good option, as long as you’re careful with the amount of fat you use for the frying (hooray for a well-seasoned wok!) I had a very nice pork chop with apple marinade last night. I bought things to make low-threat sandwiches for lunch, and some rice cakes for when I get the munchies.
Rice cakes…
I take it back, I’m going to die.
No no no, I’m not. Because my goal is to keep this up for a couple of months until the GERD goes away. If I can teach my body to behave again, I should be able to add the good things back in, hopefully a little at a time. I sincerely hope that if I can retrain my body, and stay away from the ibprofun, eventually I’ll get fully back to normal without having to restort to a lifetime dependence on Prilosec. (If too much ibprofun killed my tummy, I don’t like to think about what too much prilosec would do to me.)
In the meanwhile, if you catch me casting sad puppy eyes at your slice of pizza or your giant piece of chocolate cake, you’ll know what’s wrong. And I sincerely hope I don’t lose too much weight, because I need what I’ve got, and my honey likes my soft parts.
.
This story begins with an office party. There’s one every year, of course. It’s usually in January, the better to make sure everyone can be there. For the first several years I worked at the office, we had the party at a local restaurant. Five years ago, we had it at the Deadwood Social Club, which has a beautiful black box theater, complete with a stage. After eating our delicious meal, a few of us sat staring at the stage, pondering how awesome it would be if there was something to watch happening on the stage.
The the idea of the Office Talent Show was born. The next year we had the party at the home of some of the bosses, and the Talent Show was mandatory. There was a lot of grumbling, but everyone wound up participating. There was a kazoo band incorporating may of the humbugs, to magnificent effect. Other acts included a classically trained pianist playing ACDC’s TNT (classically), which was hilarious, several of our staff members who are in local bands playing original songs (impressively), some of our singers singing, one of the owners riding a unicycle, one of the owners doing a Monte Python sketch, and me demonstrating my infallible knowledge of Disney music (ending with a rousing audience-participation chorus of Mulan’s “Be A Man”).
The second year met with less variety in talent and much more grumbling. (“How can you force us to do this? It’s cruel and unusual punishment!”) But the show went on. There were ukuleles and card tricks and singing and Eddie Izzard and I demonstrated my proficiency in sign language, accompanied by a friend singing an opera aria she and I composed an hour before the party. It was a little lame, I confess.
The third year – last year – full-out rebellion set in. Our employees refused to come to the party if we forced them to participate in a talent show. So there was no talent show. The party was okay – there was food and drink and some chatting – and then everyone left. It felt very unfulfilling.
And so this year we re-instituted the talent show, under a “not quite mandatory” policy. And I like showing off, so I was happy enough to volunteer…
Especially when I realized I have an actual talent.
You see, there is a particular employee in our office who is well-known for whistling badly. Christmas songs, mostly. And one day I was walking by while someone was talking about his bad whistling, and I thought to myself – “heh, heh. Poor guy. I bet he wishes he was as awesome a whistler as I am.” And then it struck me – I really am an awesome whistler.
It is a talent I inherited from my Grandpa George.
I can whistle on-pitch, on-tempo, and I can trill, which isn’t too shabby at all. So, curious, I hopped over to YouTube and searched for “good songs to whistle.” Up came a slew of videos relating to the World Whistling Championships, which I didn’t even know existed. And let me tell you – there are some really amazing whistlers out there.
Finally, I saw an interview with the 2009 Whistling Grand Champion, and she mentioned that maybe next year she would tackle Bohemian Rhapsody.
…
Well obviously, if the World Whistling Grand Champion thought it was a good idea, so should I. And it fit the talent show bill perfectly – something talent-ish, but more importantly, entertaining. Everyone knows Bohemian Rhapsody, and it’s kind of a silly song. Perfect.
So I started practicing.
You know what? Bohemian Rhapsody is not a piece of cake. Normally, I can pick music up very quickly by ear. After listening to Bohemian Rhapsody for two solid days on endless repeat, I was still losing track of which key I was supposed to be in during the middle section, so I downloaded the sheet music. Turns out the song changes keys three times, and time signatures another three times. I complained to my friend Carlynn, a Doctor of Cello and Graduate of Freddy Mercury Week(tm), who said to my pain: “that guy [Freddie Mercury] was not messing around.” She also pointed out that the dude hates shirts.
True enough.
So I kept practicing, using my out-of-tune piano as a crutch. I’m glad I had a full two weeks to get it under control. I probably could have used one more.
Finally the moment arrived: the Not-Quite-Mandatory Talent Show that All But Three Employees had volunteered for. Suddenly, it turned into Only Three Employees who were interested in performing. Whatever. I had a talent and I was ready to go.
After a rousing accordian chorus of Louie Louie (Louis Louis? Lewie Lewie?), I was called to the stage, in front of my massive dining room table. I called for a B to begin my a capella intro to the song and launched into it.
(Disclaimer, in case you elect to watch the video: my accompaniment was provided by a laptop, making it rather hard to hear. Also, I especially love the bit in the video when Dan checks to see if I’m really whistling. )
My talent was received with exactly the enthusiasm I had hoped: delighted giggles from the first folks who realized what I was up to, applauding, and maybe even a little whistling along.
What I did not expect was the rousing endorsement I got afterward. Apparently, I really amazed my coworkers with what may be a legitimate talent. I promised that if I made it into the World Whistling Championships, I would invite them all along.
And you know what? The World Whistling Championships are hilarious. I looked them up after everyone went home, and here are some of the guidelines I found:
“You may not accompany yourself … [because the] judges need to watch your facial expressions and particularly the use of your lips.”
“But for serious whistlers whose goal is to become an international grand champion, they must enter both the classical and popular categories.” (Which leads me to believe there may be room in this competition for kicks-only whistlers. Also, it leads me to believe you can’t accidentally win.)
Regarding your selection for a Classical Entry: “Composers to be considered are usually those of Europe and the United States. … If Asian, African or South American compositions, a professional music authority must vouch for authenticity of your choice.”
Regarding your selection for a Popular Music Entry: ”…the choices are wide and varied from folk, blues, jazz, county, rock and roll, western, reggae, and many mixtures of music for the ‘masses.’ Your selection could be from ancient ballads to the most current pop song. When in doubt about your choices, you may wish to use the New Harvard Dictionary of Music edited by Dan Randel, or discuss your selections with musicians who have graduate degrees in music.”
That last one is really long, but it was so funny, I had to post it all.
All said and done, I have come to this conclusion: if the World Whistling Championships ever come to South Dakota, I am SO there. Or a state fair. I would almost certainly enter a whistling competition at a state fair.
Stay tuned, and if Dustin uploads it and it’s not too embarrassing (I did run directly into the dining room table when rocking out to the last section of the song), I’ll post a link to my awesome performance.
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