chronicled & illustrated

Yesterday I wrote about being drawn off-task by the newest shiny thing. Well, here it is: animoto. They’ll make slick videos of your photographs…pretty much effortlessly.

Yes, I paid them money. No, you don’t have to, but yes, they make it seem like something you reallllly need to do. Hey. I was vulnerable. I needed something shiny.

Anyway, here’s one version of my first video. The photos are of my granddaughter, Cadi. She was playing in a fountain in the park. Nearby were anti-war protesters who have come out to the park in Bar Harbor, Maine each Sunday since the invasion of Iraq and stood in silent protest. I do not know the priest’s full name but his colleague told me he’s Father Jim and is retired. He couldn’t resist playing with Cadi and she, as you will see, took to him immediately. I’m so grateful I was there not only to see the spontaneous joy of their sharing but also to capture some of it with my camera.

Enjoy Acadia and the Priest, perfect strangers sharing a perfect moment.

Thanks to Beth Felice who first posted an animoto video on Being Practically Creative and to Suze Corte who showed me how to play with them!

The 21st day of NaNoWriMo and all I could think about today was Christmas! It literally took over my writing time. I got about 500 words written.

Maybe if I hadn’t been ahead on the word count, I would have buckled down and concentrated on what I should be doing now. But as the word count has been good for the last five days or I let other things crowd in and take over.

I live far away from both of my sons and farther still from my mother and sister and brother. Getting together for Christmas has become a big hassle! Last year I decided that to have my sons, granddaughter, husband and me descend upon my sister and mother for the holidays was just too much. If any of us had our own home there (in Houston), it would be different, but we don’t.

What I would most like is for my sons and grand-daugther to come to my house, but at the moment that isn’t possible. Neither of them have passports and they live in the States and I live in Canada. I have to go to them. So considering these two parameters, I decided to take matters into my own hands and find a nice vacation rental in a beautiful place, invite my sons and that way we could have Christmas under one roof without causing more work for some third party.

Nice plan. Didn’t work. After spending hours online looking for that illusive perfect vacation rental, my younger son told me, “Honestly, Mom, if you are asking me what I want to do for Christmas, I’d have to tell you that I want to go to Houston.” He went on to say that it was important that my mother and sister see his daughter before she gets too much older. They haven’t seen her in a year. So what’s a grandmother to do? I sprang into action in the other direction. Back to Houston.

But I was still determined to have us all under one roof.

Unfortunately finding a “vacation rental” in the big city of Houston isn’t easy. I couldn’t find a thing that was near our families.

In desperation, I put two ads on Craigslist, one for a short-term (very!) rental and the other for a pet/housesitter. Guess which one paid off? No contest, is it? The pet sitter ad just came through for us.

We’ve been offered a truly gorgeous home in a nice location for almost the full amount of time we wanted. Our pet is an 8 year old greyhound who, we just found out, sleeps in the master bedroom. Eeeu, major drawback! At least it’s a king-sized!

It’ll be an adventure but I’m already feeling 100% better, just knowing that I’ll have a kitchen to cook in and a place to invite family over. In fact, I’ve already started inviting people for our first night in the house to help us make Christmas decorations for our tree. Once they get a load of the tropical plant-surrounded swimming pool with waterfall and koi pond in the back yard, we won’t be able to get rid of them!

Tomorrow, however, I have to remember that it is still November, so it’s back to my novel.

[Santa's little elf up there is Cadi LAST Christmas]

fathers go to war
Originally uploaded by nuanc

My dad died on November 20th. I think. But I’m not certain of it. It is one of those dates that really seems as if it SHOULD stick— forever and without a doubt—in my mind, especially for someone like me who is basically good with dates and details. However, it doesn’t. I know what this is about. I have a mental block. I don’t want to remember it. If I remember the date, I have to also remember the details of that week and other things that my mind will immediately associate with this part of November such as when John Kennedy was shot and sometimes even US Thanksgiving which wasn’t always the best holiday for me.

Both John Kennedy and Corey Shepard—these good, interesting and smart men—have been gone a very long time. I was pregnant with my second son when my dad died and he is now 27 years old. But it will always make me sad that they died young and unfinished.

We are smartest when we appreciate life even through all the hardships and challenges and sad days that are rougher than others.

Yesterday I got a rejection letter. It was a wonderfully personal and NICE rejection letter. But it still hurt. I’ve always said that they’re like getting kicked in the shin. It’s a sudden unexpected sharp pain that doesn’t last long, then it’s sore for a little while and then you move on and don’t think about it much. Today, it’s still a little tender.

Small wounds and large, we sometimes just have an achy day to get through.

Isn’t 8 a lovely number?
I didn’t have time to write yesterday. I mean…I DID have time to write my novel; I didn’t have time to write my blog post.

That’s good, right?

November 8th is my husband’s birthday. We were out all afternoon with an EPIC Board Meeting—not a chore at all, but instead an enriching experience to be with such fine people!—and then to Youth Peer for some minor business and then to our Film Series where we watched a well-done film called Pierpoint-The Last Hangman (based on the life of Albert Pierpoint who was a hangman for the British government from 1933 to 1955). Then we came home where Barry fielded calls from his kids and step-kids and had cake and presents.

But before all that, I wrote.

I’m finding that 1700 or so words comes extremely easily. It’s that being behind scenario that makes the writing hard. I knew that of course, but I got behind so fast this year that I forgot what it was like to be able to do under 2,000 in a flash. Two thousand in fact, may be the best average daily word count for me. Sometimes it’s hard to get to 1000 but once past that, I’m into it and will easily go over the goal without knowing it. Makes sense, I suppose. Up hill is harder than down hill.

Ideas are flowing more smoothly. However, I did, lying in bed last night before drifting off, begin to worry a bit that there’s no plot. I guess that’s a late-night kind of thing. If the plot’s not taking hold, then I have control over that. But where I am now—in the middle of the beginning—it’s easy to feel lost in the multitude of words and not be able to know what the WHOLE is like. That’s okay. It’s November. Time to write, not to know.

Later~~~

learning our colours,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

One evening while in Maine, I picked up my granddaughter, Acadia, and took her for a little drive. It was getting toward dusk. We stopped between my son’s house and my rented cottage several times as Cadi was asking to “see the water.” We got in and out of the car and took short walks.

These days, she holds tightly to one of my fingers as we walk. I showed her things. A bird flying. White cherry blossoms and lilacs. Bees on the bushes. A feather. A pine cone. The sound the water makes as it rushes over the rocks. The older boys playing on the other side of the street.

Our last stop was where this photo was taken. The wetlands at this spot are always stunning to see whether it’s sun, fog, rain, morning, noon or night. This day had been gloriously sunny. One of those late spring days when the new warmth, super-blue sky and the fresh young leaves and grasses combine for a spectacular crispness that will soon blur into summer fullness—rich, deep green, hot, but no longer new.

As the sun went down I held Cadi while snapping a dozen photos or so. She was patient with me and afterward we talked about what was happening to the colour of the clouds. I reminded her that they are usually white but that sometimes when the sun goes away for the night they change into a variety of colours. Cadi’s only just learning her colours. She has the idea now, but the specifics as to green, blue, red are still in process. Sometimes she gets them right and sometimes she doesn’t.

I started naming the colours in the sky.

“Pink.” “Orange.” “Violet.”

“Yellow,” whispered Cadi, her eyes fixed on the sunset.

“Yes,” I agreed, so pleased that she was with me, “yellow, too.”

READING: I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes by Jaclyn Moriarity
WRITING: NetWorld, a short story
PLANNING: Our new front porch
WATCHING: A mama woodpecker feeding her babies in a tree outside the bedroom window

two loves,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

So now it’s time to write. I have other things to do, of course. I am supposed to be working on the update of the EPIC website.

It’s so far overdue that I’m embarrassed—even though there is no one but me upset by it or waiting for it (though my husband will definitely like it—and me —when it’s done!). As well, I accumulated other things to do while I was away. I started a small artist’s site for my son and promised him some business cards. I want to do that asap because his career is taking off in small ways and I want to give him what I can to help. And of course, those are *fun* things to do. There are other things on the to-do list as well. But none of them are crucial. They are all things that can be fitted in around whatever is most important.

So now, it’s time to write.

All the way down to Maine, I thought about three stories in various stages. First I thought about the one I had just started. I have about a page and a half written. JUST a beginning…but, the idea came to me full-fledged (a rarity!) and with hours by myself to do nothing but drive and think, I filled in a lot of what was vague. Or, I think I did. One never really knows until the writing is being done. Sometimes what is in your head, isn’t what comes out on paper and stories can definitely take sharp turns that weren’t on the planned journey.

A second story I thought about was one I did a lot of work on a year or more ago. I liked it, it seemed like a good beginning, but I never could push myself to finish it. So I thought it through. Decided what needed to happen. How I could improve the tone of the piece. I don’t even think it would take that long to have a finished first draft.

The third thing I thought about was just an idea for a story. It has to do with music and communication and ‘races’ of ‘people’ who use music for their own ends. I am not sure yet what else. It’s definitely NOT a story yet but I write down the whiff of an idea here so as not to forget or minimize it as a future possibility.

This is all motivating to me because I had just about given up on writing short stories. Novels, it seems, are my forte. A short story feels frustrating and limiting and I began telling myself that it was okay for me not to write short stories if I didn’t want to. But now…with a collaboration project in the planning stages, I’m motivated again. If I can pull off any of these ideas, it’ll please me to have gotten back to a written form that I should be able to participate in whether it’s my favourite or not.

READING: Tales of Protections by Eric Fosnes Hansen (book club this Saturday!)
WRITING: NetWorld, a short story
WEBBING: Quintessential Abstractions, an artist’s website
PHYSICALLY: lousy, I’ve got a cold
EMOTIONALLY: calm, optimistic

The Illustration: this is a layered composition made up of one of my doodles (marker and gelpens) and pages of my writing. Click on it to see a larger version on flickr.