Art and Sunset
Month: November 2011
Leave Me Alone! I Am Writing!
I cannot get a thing done around here. Just since I started this blog post, I got:
Child 1: Mom, where is the blank paper for the printer? In this box of office supplies.
Child 2: Mom, where’s your credit card? I need to update my XBox name. You really need to? How much? $10. Here, Mom, I will pay for it myself. Here’s the money. (He hands me $10.) Okay. Now where’s the credit card? Here, take my credit card.
Child 3: Mom, I can’t find my Spanish text book. Where is it? I will help you look. (We cant’ find it. She’s upset.)
Husband: Mary Beth, how come Google is telling me I’m timed out? What does that even mean? All right, I’ll sign you out, now you have to sign back in.
Seriously? I cannot buy a freakin’ vowel around here.
But to cope with the demands, I did what I had to do. I plugged in some headphones (thanks for the tip, queenbeetf) and began writing.
I visited Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die site. There, you set a goal — mine is usually 500 words in 10 minutes, which I’ve yet to achieve. You must keep writing for the committed time, because if you lift your fingers, even for a few seconds, lights will flash, car horns will start honking, and I don’t know what else happens, because I start moving my fingers on the keyboard so that Dr. Wicked will not yell at me ever again. (Fear=motivator.)
So with the prodding from Dr. Wicked, I have broken the halfway mark on my NaNoWriMo novel. I have written 25,012 in 20 days. I have 10 days left to hit 50,000. My NaNoWriMo stats page informs me that I must write 2,272 words per day to hit my mark.
If I hit 400 words in 10-minute increments, five times a day, I should be able to finish. All I need is one extra hour every day.
I want to keep writing. The novel has taken a dark turn, following our crazy (or is she?) mother of three into the subway where she finally gets some relief from her parenting responsibilities sleeping in a secret room under the subway. But when she sleeps, she enter another world where a Corporation is trying to take over souls, forcing happiness on everyone. Our protagonist knows happiness is overrated. Hardship is necessary. Well, that was the plot from today. Who knows what will happen tomorrow? Not me.
The month will be over in a week and a half. I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled life. So until then, people, leave me alone, I’m writing!
Wait, this just in — Child 3 just found her Spanish book (it was on her desk, of all places!). So, there you go. This story ends like most good ones with a happily ever after.
What We Value
Our family values the arts and to have dinner together and we also like to support each other in our ventures for example if one of us Jonesys wants to go hiking the next day we will have climbed mountains and we will complain and sulk and kick but we will have climbed the mountain and we will rise on top undefeated. Joneseys:1 Mountain: 0.
This morning, these words were open in my daughter’s binder. This was Cat’s answer to the question, “What are your values?” If you can get beyond the lack of punctuation and the run-on quality of the sentence, and I can, I think it’s a wonderful and inspiring piece of writing. (I know, I know, I’m not unbiased).
I love the struggle and the victory over that struggle to climb the mountain.
The other day Cat asked me, “Why do we climb so many mountains?” I don’t know. The view is so beautiful from on top. The air is clear. We are all off our hand-held devices.
Why do we struggle? Why do we take on more struggle? Why am I doing NaNoWriMo this month? Why do I blog, plan parties, work my full time job, parent, cook, clean, care for my kids (two of them have been on antibiotics this week), be supportive of my husband (despite the reality that, due to his Parkinson’s, he drives me totally crazy), teach one night and take a non-fiction writing class another? Why do all that?
I guess I do it so that the next day I can say I did it. I have climbed a mountain. I have risen on top undefeated. MaryBeth: 1 Mountain: 0.
Pilates
My fitness app says an hour of Pilates burns 336 calories. I find that hard to believe. It doesn’t seem like I’m doing that much.
Yesterday, at our lunch time work out Jenn said, “You all seem so down, like I’m torturing you,” when we were doing the hundred.
Hey, who has a smile on their face on Monday at noon, trying to hold the plank position? I said, “On Thursday, we’ll be less downcast.”
Also, it cracks me up that we work out in a small conference room right next to the cafeteria kitchen. Constantly in class, we hear the servers and the cooks yelling directives at each other, usually they say, “I need more waffle fries. More fried chicken.” But yesterday, I heard, “I need more broccoli.”
During exercise class, I am often thinking about lunch and so, always open to suggestion, I thought, “Yes, I need more broccoli too.”
Even though I’m not always happy during exercise class, I am always happy when I’m done with exercise class. Then I can eat guilt-free, (broccoli not waffle fries).
I especially like when I am done with yoga class. That’s when we bow to each other and say, “Namaste.”
Modern Warfare 3
I hung my head, ashamed. I was not alone. Every parent at the Upper West Side Game Stop store was embarrassed to be there, ashamed to be buying the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
I assume that’s what we, these pairs of parents and sons, were buying. The updated game was just released last week. How do I know this? I have no idea. It has simply seeped into our family culture.The posters with the dystopian world in the background and the gun-slinging hero in the foreground.
We, parents, have to be there to buy the game because it’s rated M for Mature. My 14-year old could not buy it without me, and he cuddled me as if he were a toddler, while we wanted in line for the purchase.
The cashier handed the mother in a business suit ahead of me the DVD X-Box game in the plastic bag.
“This is not mine,” she took the bag, like it was a dead mouse.
“It’s all yours,” she passed the bag to her son. He could barely suppress a smile. These teens and preteens get their way and they know it.
Why do I do this? I wondered. I am basically a pacifist. Maybe I let him have this game, because I want him to be happy, popular and a part of pop culture (UGH! I did just write that!). My son runs track, gets good grades, has the money ($65) to pay me back. Yet I am enabling an addictive activity. And I know it.
Yesterday he had three friends over and they had a great day. They played all day. They stopped to eat at Shake Shack; played a brief game of Apples to Apples; and watched Saturday Night Live; but otherwise, they were glued to the game.
The boys believe war gaming is useful because, my son tells me, “It develops hand-eye coordination and teaches about guns and modern-day battles.” Hmmmm. Doubtful.
My son’s friend’s dad, Daniel, told me he believes the boys talk about important things besides slaughtering one another while playing MW3. He said he’s overheard them talking about school, girls, and the Yankees. I don’t know. I only hear, “I need another kill” kind of thing.
If I didn’t have a 14-year old son, I would think parents, like me, who buy this kind of game for their sons are irresponsible. Wait, I still think that.
I want to write more on this, but I have to pry the boys off the XBox game (yes, one of the boys spent the night so they could play more) and get them ready for church. It’s a beautiful day in New York City and I don’t want them to miss it. There is a time for everything, a time for peace and a time for modern day warfare?
Small Victories
I like the gold star, I like the big win.
I like wearing a fancy dress and getting my hair blown out for the awards night where I finally might be recognized for all my hard work. For example, I totally had a blast at the UMAC (United Methodist Association of Communicators) awards dinner in Albuquerque last month. And yes, my name was on a few certificates and awards.
Recently, I’ve been published in some awesome venues. And last month, I did a reading of a couple of funny essays at a hip East Village club — Felt so good, like I was coming home. These were home runs for me and my writing — big wins in a lifetime of convincing myself to be content with small victories.
But I had one recent victory that I keep dwelling on. See, I started this creative writing workshop at lunch time. And I’m not very good at promoting it, so I’m sorry if you didn’t know about it. We meet on Wednesdays.
While I’ve led many of the sessions, (I am an unstoppable teacher), most of the time we rotate leadership. Last week, one of the shyest and most consistent members of the group, J.C., led our group of five people.
J.C. offered a simple suggestion for our time writing together: Make a list of five things you are grateful for. Then write about one or two. We wrote for 20 minutes. And then we read out loud. J.C. read hers, and it floored me. My jaw dropped open.
J.C. wrote that she was grateful for me and for our creative writing workshop. And she noted the exact date the workshops started, March 16, 2011.
Wow, it made me feel as if my life’s efforts — these little things I do, especially the ones that I take on when no one asks me to — mean something to someone. And my whole messy life makes sense. It feels great. Small victories? Small wins? I don’t know. Maybe the seemingly small victories are the biggest deals of all.
Foggy
This morning, I felt I lived in San Francisco as I walked in Riverside Park. The fog made everything quiet.
The muted fall colors and the sun somewhere behind the fog made me feel so good. So peaceful.
There is something sad, inevitable, beautiful about autumn in New York.
Maybe the bittersweet beauty is the reason writers write songs about New York this time of year. 
NaNoWriMo Progress
I’ve got 7,200 words and no plot going on my NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) novel. To win I need to write 50,000 words by the last day of November.
In 2009, when I won NaNoWriMo (yes, that’s right, WON!), I wrote a young adult novel, but this one I classified as literary fiction. Yes, LITERARY fiction. Not, crappy, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants fiction.
Oh, wait, that is what I’m writing. I have no idea what is going to happen next. Let’s say a song about diamonds comes on the radio as I’m writing, I put a diamond in that scene.
On Sunday morning, I read a New York Times article about a drunk roller, a pickpocket who slices into a drunken and passed-out subway rider’s pocket with a straight edge razor. So I added a scene with a drunk roller.
My protagonist is a crazy, overworked mother of three, a writer, teacher and New Yorker with a benevolently neglectful husband and an active fantasy life. A stretch for me? Not really. As they say, Write what you know!
I wish I had time to write thousands of more words today. After all, it’s quantity, not quality that counts with NaNoWriMo, but I have to get to work. Two of my three children are home sick with a flu today.
Perhaps by tending to my real life, I will find some direction and plot points to share with my protagonist. And, in turn, by writing my novel, I will create a cycle of adventure and creativity in my real life. (This fits with my Rule Number 2: Escape through reading literary fiction.)
Soccer Mom vs. Theater Mom
Yesterday, chilly, I was on the sidelines for CoCo’s 8 am soccer game. I was rewarded for this parental duty by seeing her score two goals. WTG! FTW!
I got thinking — being a spectator at a soccer game is not as much fun as being an audience member at a school play, as I was last weekend.
It’s better to be a theater mom (than a soccer mom):
1. The hours are more reasonable. (Theater would never start at 8 am.)
2. The seats are more comfortable. (There are no seats on the soccer sidelines.)
3. The show is indoors. (No need to wear mittens!)
4. The cast party has better food. (Last weekend, after the play, we had finger foods and oodles of fancy cupcakes. After the soccer game, we shared a box of Entenmann’s.)
5. The players are a bit more dramatic and entertaining. (There is drama and comedy — before, during and after the show. But before the soccer game, we hunted for the uniform; during the game, we cheered and tried to stay warm; after the game, we tried to stay warm.)
After the play, we lingered, carrying flowers for the performer, waiting for her to make her entrance. Of course, theater mothers have bad reps as stage mothers, controlling divas, whereas soccer moms are wooed by politicians, trawling for votes.
Writing about this — about being a supportive spectator at a play or game — reminds me of how I had to shift my attitude about my own importance once I had a baby. Suddenly, no one was that interested in me unless I brought along the baby. If I showed up empty-handed, people would ask, “Where’s the baby?”
I was no longer the star of my own show, I was a bit player with a walk-on part. Or maybe I was the dresser, making the star look good, staying backstage. At least now, with my kids as teens, preteens and tweens, I’ve moved from “back of house” to the “front of house.”
On the sporting event’s sidelines or in the audience, I want my kids to do well, look good and, God, I hate to admit this, but I also want them to, ever so occasionally, share the spotlight (with me).
Running on Marathon Weekend
I don’t want to make anyone feel bad, especially those sinew-y runner types getting all psyched up for Sunday’s marathon, but I ran today and I ran at a pace of 12:15 a mile. That’s right, beat that, suckers!
I am definitely in the slow lane. I don’t want to make excuses *much. But I have a foot problem… And I have other problems, but I can’t remember what they are at the moment, because I’m so dang exhausted and hungry for chocolate. But hey, I did it. I did something! I pushed myself away from the computer.
I ran with my friend, Liz, at a secret indoor track near work. And I’m not telling you where it is ’cause then it wouldn’t be secret.
Liz and I agreed that it’s way more fun to run with a friend and we wouldn’t have run without each other.
And I do LOVE going out with friends for breakfast, lunch, dinner, happy hour, etc., I also LOVE running and working out with friends. So anyone want to join me running someday? Then after our two and a half miles, you can sprint ahead of me like Liz did. That’s right. When you’re in the slow lane, you’re just happy to be in any lane at all.
All those people passing me? I celebrate them! I do! Especially all those runners I’ll see on Sunday afternoon, wearing silver blankets, looking fabulous and exhausted. I salute you!
Now, excuse me, I have to go and hunt for some Halloween chocolate. I think my kids still have some hidden somewhere.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 