CrunchyBread

• Illustrations, especially for “encyclopedia” entries
• Side notes, “encyclopedia” style, to explain unusual words or things I reference. I want a city kid to know what I mean when I talk about a chicken’s “wattles”.
• Foot notes—copius. I don’t know why, but I like foot notes. They make me feel like I’m getting something extra out of my book. Maybe a peek into the author’s mind.
• New mores I just make up. EG: I want it to be culturally accepted in my book’s world that NOBODY has children before they’re 30, unless something is terribly wrong with the world.
• 24-hr clocks that run “my way”. This is totally personal. I want clocks (and all time) to be based on NOON. This will impact the culture because it keeps folks aware of sun position, so sunless buildings would be unthinkable. This will also influence folks’ priority on staying aware of/in sync with the natural world, not treating it like “just” a resource or an enemy.
• talk about food – how it’s gathered, prepared, cooked, and eaten. Talk about what food and it’s activities mean to the folks and how they interact. Include one or two passages detailed enough to replicate a real recipe.
• Keep things light. Talk about nice things. Have the characters all be pretty much friendly and cooperative. This isn’t a novel about hardship or evil, but about the challenge of building a beautiful world folks can actually be happy in.
• Use “Little House on the Prairie” and “The Swiss Family Robinson” and “Heidi” and “The Island of the Blue Dolphins” as a model. Whenever unsure how to proceed, turn to one of those books and recall how they used language, and made a story flow.

“The Island of the Blue Dolphins” was the first full-length novel I ever read. I read it when I was seven. It is also one of the very few books I’ve ever loved and that had a deep impact on me, which I’ve never read a second time. I’ll have to go find a copy and re-read that old book to refresh my connection with it. Although…honestly I feel like its words are written on my mind indelibly.

As August 1st approaches I continue to get geared up for my 50,000 word sprint. Or whatever portion thereof which I actually complete.

Quick link to the other entry where I talked about the book I intend to write this year.

Under this goal I will keep track of my progress, in general. I will probably whine and groan a lot. Feel free to respond any way that seems appropriate to you at the time. Please know I’ll probably lose my mind and get snippy, because writing is painful sometimes and when ripping one’s heart out and serving it on a plate, one does not want to hear that it lacks salt.

Still, I promise not to hold anything against you if you accidently say anything I take umbrage to, if you promise not to hold it against me that I’m overly sensitive and cannot take a joke.

Obviously I won’t be posting any part of my writing here. It’s almost sure to be 99% crap. If I’m lucky, though, it will have some potential somewhere, and will be worth a rewrite later.

This goal is for keeping track that I AM indeed still writing. I’ll mention how many pages I finish each day… or since last I mentioned, anyway.

I’ll probably rant and whine about everything that keeps me from being successful, which will be 99% bullshit since we know the only thing that can keep a writer from writing is their own darn self. Mostly this will be a journey of self-revelation for me. I hope to God I succeed, because I really would like to believe this is something I have inside me that is worthy of existing. I WANT to be a writer. I’ve wanted to write a book ever since I was a kid. I love books with a deep and throbbing passion. If I wrote a book of my own, and if it had any redeeming value at all, I would be extremely proud and would consider my life to have finally achieved some lasting value.

Oh, don’t talk to me about all that “being a good mother/friend” crap. I know that’s important. Probably the most important thing I’ll ever do. But writing a book is something that is just about ME, and my ideas and talents etc. It isn’t about doing a duty. It isn’t something I have to do to survive. It’s something extra, which means in CHOOSING to do it I’m giving it honor and value far beyond ordinary life. And in doing it, I’m also saying my ordinary life isn’t just about survival… I have room for extravagance, beauty, reverence, dreaming, and silliness. It’s a Maslow’s Hierarchy thing. Sometimes we NEED to do things we don’t need to do, just to prove we can.

26. I think I’m great at writing poetry. But then, I also think Dr. Seuss was great at writing poetry. I don’t comprehend why everyone doesn’t agree with me.

27. Numbers like 43 or 100 seem like relatively small numbers to me, until I start trying to compile a list of that size. Then they seem worryingly large.

27. I like keeping lots of food in the house. Basements full of food is my favorite part of being Mormon. Sometimes I almost think I want to hang out with Mormons for a while and pretend I’m one of them just so I can pick up tips on how to store food. I like the idea of a pantry you could eat from for a year and not go hungry.

28. Sometimes when I’m dreaming my dream feels more real to me than real life. I can almost remember real life, but it seems like a stupid dream I can easily forget. The dream world is what “matters”, and I can’t imagine why I bother paying so much attention to that other world. This makes it very difficult to wake up sometimes.

29. I tend to have “serial” dreams rather than recurring dreams. It is as if my dreams occur like a TV series, and I catch an occasional episode, and I marvel at how the scenery has changed and story line has progressed while I wasn’t watching, and I almost feel guilty for not keeping up with the various threads of the soap opera. Sometimes my dreams feel like playing a video game, and I have to play the same level over and over, changing small things each time until I get it right. Sometimes I think real life is exactly like those two scenarios.

30. Sometimes I think that if I wanted to date I could find a date quickly and easily. Sometimes I think that I’ll never date again, because I’ll never find anyone who could possibly fit with me and my life. Sometimes I feel very content being celibate and imagine feeling happily secure in my aloneness for the rest of my life. Sometimes I think I’m a sad and miserable hermit who has a mental disorder for ever behaving as if love and connection to others wasn’t the most important part of life.

31. I like strawberry jam. Sometimes I eat a spoonful of it straight out of the jar.

32. I miss having a cat very much. My kitty was extremely sweet and loving, and I think about her frequently, and missing her makes me cry if I think about it too much.

33. My only pet now is my goldfish, that I have had for four or five years. I also have houseplants, a garden, a kefir culture, and two kids. But they don’t count as pets, I guess, though they are things I keep alive. I tend to think of them more as minions.

34. In order to get to my front door you have to go up a ramp, over a bridge, down some stairs, and through a tunnel. Whenever I hear anyone walking across the bridge I feel like rumbling in a low voice “Who’s that walking over my bridge?” to see if I can scare them with my troll impersonation.

35. I like to pretend I’m a lot meaner than I am. And I also pretend I’m not funny at all. It makes my son laugh harder when I act mean and not funny, because he knows I’m really such a softie. I wonder sometimes whether other people get the joke, or whether I sell my deadpan face too well and they really are afraid of me.

My daughter (20) decided to start cleaning out the junk room today. That’s GREAT! There are so many boxes stacked in that room you can’t even reach most of them. She did a good job of going through all the boxes that got left in her bedroom (all her own stuff) sorting through what she wanted to keep or give away or toss or whatever. Now she’s able to use some of that space in her bedroom as a staging area to sort boxes from the junk room.

The problem is that sorting is a high-stress occupation. And tomorrow I’m both coordinating and lay-leading the church service, with many speaking parts, and it’s an odd service anyway because it’s a poetry reading and that’s weird. PLUS, at the last minute last night a friend begged me to watch her daughter tomorrow from after church until about 7pm so she could catch a show in Seattle that she already bought expensive tickets for, because her regular babysitter fell through and she’d already asked a dozen other friends who all said no. And the child is seriously autistic. And mute. So tomorrow is going to be a heck of a day for me.

So I have all this looming stress, and now is the time DD chooses to start unpacking boxes.

I was curious about some of the things in boxes way in the back that I haven’t seen in months. I went in there and poked around a little bit, and she had the nerve to ask me what I thought I was doing, as if SHE had all the rights to that room and I was going to mess it all up. I was very mad at her for that. I snapped that I don’t have to justify myself for looking in some of my own boxes and I’m not hurting anything and she should watch her tone. She apologized.

But now I know she’s pissy. I know I certainly am. And it isn’t conducive to having a good day tomorrow if tonight gets wasted in us being pissy at each other.

We need to put this behind us. She has already put back most of the boxes she dragged out to sort. We have a few things left in the hallway that we need to handle, but it isn’t too bad. We need to baby-proof the house, though, because the child I’m watching tomorrow has the mind of a two-year-old in an 11 year old body. I have to be sure she won’t hurt herself accidently by playing with something I left out, like scissors or whatever.

DD KNOWS this is happening tomorrow. I don’t know why she couldn’t project herself into my shoes a little bit and understand that now is not the best time to begin anything major like going through junk room boxes. I know she felt bored and wanted to be useful, but I wish she could have recognized the flaw in the timing there.

Now I’m all spun up. Normally I don’t hang on to feeling spun-up very long, but right now the tension of tomorrow is making it hard for me to relax. I hate feeling like this, but I hardly know how to calm down. Normally calming down just happens on its own rather quickly for me. I don’t know how to MAKE myself calm.

This bodes not well for the morrow.

Has anyone out there ever made ghee? It’s a type of cooked and clarified butter popular in Indian food. I found out about it recently and made some.

A pound of butter made two cups of ghee for me. It has a lovely butterscotch scent, if you put your nose right close to it. That comes from the cooking, as the milk solids in the butter actually toasted. Since the ghee is clarified, it cooks at a much higher smoke point than regular butter. It also does not go rancid as quickly as whole butter, so it’s safer to leave on the countertop.

It took about 15 minutes of cooking to reach the proper stage, then I strained it through a paper towel and keep it in a large coffee cup by my stove. It’s fabulous for frying eggs in the morning, or for anything you need to sautee.

YouTube video on making Ghee

I think this is what it’s called when you do NaNoWriMo in the summertime. I could be wrong. I’m not part of any group or cabin or anything. I just picked up my copy of No Plot? No Problem! recently, and the start of August is conveniently close, so here I am again trying to do something I’ve never even come close to being able to do before.

I’m probably gonna fail utterly at it. Last few times I tried I never got past page four. Once I did something that wasn’t exactly a novel, but should have been, and I got close to page 25. But that was really more like a personal history than a novel. Even I got bored pretty quickly with that.

This time the difference is that I think I have a clue what to write about. Not that it won’t suck. But before I didn’t even have a ghost of an idea, and just struck out blindly in the fog, and sure enough got lost inches from my own doorstep. This time I have a faint notion of what my book should look like. I’m modelling it after The Swiss Family Robinson and Little House on the Prarie. I’m gonna write a utopian novel about a little village growing exactly the way I always dreamed it could, with the kind of mores and values I wish everyone held.

I don’t know if it is “supposed” to be in an alternate dimension, or far in the future, or somewhere in the past, or on some other continent, but the point will be that the world is exactly like this world, except for the parts I don’t want to be there. It’s BRILLIANT! I get to play God and make things the way I’d like to see them. At least, on paper.

I’m going to have pictures, too. I like pictures. I’m going to have footnotes galore, and side notes too. It’ll be like an encyclopedia reading all the entries describing the weird things I talk about. I’ll have recipes that you could actually use if you wanted, and information about chickens etc that is not crap. I’ll talk about food a lot, because I love it when books talk lovingly about food. I’ll talk about making homemade gifts, and furniture, and the reasoning behind the hair and clothing styles. I’ll have everyone behave as I wish they would, and change norms of marriage and childbirth and clocks and holidays willy-nilly.

I actually really rather care about this book, and don’t care much about NaNoWriMo particularly. So I don’t expect I’ll bang it out in a month as prescribed. But I’ll get started, and see whether in a month I can get the FIRST 50,000 words written. Of which I’m sure 45,000 will need editing later.

Since I don’t have a job, this should be possible. I want to try to stick to a schedule of writing for at least two hours per day, five days a week. More would be better. I already like sitting at the computer that long, and have been known to type WAY more than that much in comments and posts, etc. This isn’t an impossible dream for me…even if it is rather improbable.

Maybe I’ll even get around to scheduling my housecleaning too. Maybe the angst of not knowing what to write will make cleaning stuff look like fun by comparison.

Today two kids returned who had brunch with us before. Their mother also came, who was new, because their father had brought them last time. It was nice getting to meet another neighbor.

Today’s brunch went well. Everybody had scrambled eggs and toast and muffins and juice.

I’m disappointed that not that many people came, overall. I was told the time might be a problem for folks who work. Therefore, I’ve decided that in the month of August I’m going to be hosting Saturday Night Pizza Parties!! That will be my new goal.

Now we know why I suck so badly. I can’t stay consistent with anything. 30 days doesn’t seem like so much, but I simply couldn’t make myself follow through with this simple program. I’ve always failed at simple things like this.

Sure, I had excuses that seemed good to me. But I know that excuses don’t actually help at all. They just explain why you failed. They don’t make you NOT have failed.

I need a damned routine. I need to have some framework in my life. Lately I’ve been getting on the computer all day long and doing nothing else. The house skates along, but this is hardly living.

Today I tidied the bathroom. I half-assed the kitchen. I did cook dinner of baked chicken and vegetables. I felt tired because I walked a lot today. I probably walked about two miles total, which took about 90 minutes because of my out-of-shape-ness and hurting feet and climbing hills.

I got new shoes this afternoon and am ECSTATIC that I can walk now without my feet screaming in pain! I went to a specialty store called Route 16, and Jeff the salesman expertly sized up my feet in all three dimensions and got me special insoles that I needed. Turns out the shoes I got last time were four sizes too narrow for my feet, as well as being too pointed in the toe and not high enough on the top of my foot. Part of the reason why I walked for an hour this morning was so my feet would be appropriately swollen so I’d get a better fit that didn’t pinch like the last ones.

So I worked hard today. I shopped, I walked, and I cooked. But I didn’t do 30 minutes of cleaning.

I just realized I forgot to post how my second brunch went last week. Or maybe I forgot to post it here under the goal, where it belongs.

It went okay. I made cranberry orange muffins, but they were a bit dry and tough. The plain ones I made the first week were better. I also served juice, scrambled eggs, toast and coffee.

I met a few nice ladies, and a family of four. Nobody from the first week returned, but I enjoyed getting to know these new people.

I thought things went pretty well. This week of course I feel discouraged, but at the time last week I felt I’d done a good job and was enthusiastic that the trend would continue. Now I think I need to do much better if I want to achieve my goal of actually creating an event people WANT to attend. I think I just got a few curious people, but the lack of returns tells me I didn’t do a very good job of creating an inviting atmosphere. I’ll have to try harder.

Today’s brunch didn’t go so well. It was supposed to start at 10am, but I slept in until 10:30. Strike one.

I had to receive a delivery, field demands from my kids, and answer two phone calls at the same time I was trying to quickly grab together supplies to hotfoot down to the cabana to do the brunch anyway. I nearly lost my cool, what with being pulled in so many directions at once. Strike two.

Nobody showed up. Strike three. :(
Actually, one person did show up, but since I wasn’t there yet, she was told we weren’t doing it today and she went home. I feel bad about that.

I did go down anyway, and ended up making breakfast for my son and his friend. It wasn’t awesome, but it was a fair attempt. Had anyone come, I’d have been ready to cook for them too, even though I started 45 minutes late. I served scrambled eggs, toast, coffee and juice, and grapes.

I need to be better organized, preferably the night before I do these things. I need better advertising, like flyers or a sign, or at least balloons to draw attention. I also need to choose a different day, maybe a different time of day. Monday Brunches just doesn’t seem to be cutting it, as far as getting people motivated to come out and socialize. Maybe I’ll try Friday Nights, or Saturday Afternoons or something.

Still, I’m not unhappy with my attempt. I’ve learned a few things, and that will make future attempts better.

I forgot to make entries this weekend, but I did not forget to clean! I had a sick day of migraine-y-ness on Saturday that left me struggling to function, but I did clean the kitchen anyway, as I did other days. I also had a dinner guest on Saturday for my daughter, and an overnight guest for my son. I was maxed out.

I’m not doing well at getting it all clean at the same time but I have been cleaning it in spurts as energy allows, and I cycle through the tasks so they all get done at least once per day. I’m asking for help when I can get it.

Today was another Monday Brunch, which I will detail under that goal. I cooked and cleaned in a kitchen other than my own, so I guess that counts (in a way). If I wasn’t dirtying my kitchen, I guess that’s the same sum as if I cleaned it.

Mike had a good point that there is a distinction between “cleaning” and “decluttering”. I guess I didn’t quite define for myself which I’m intending this goal to cover.

I find myself delaying even simple cleaning chores every day. Normal stuff that one must do daily to maintain a pleasant and functional house, like keeping the kitchen tidy and public areas nice. So for this 30 days I will focus on that. Decluttering may or may not happen.

I notice that every day I battle with feeling like even 30 minutes seems to demand more energy than I have. I need to swallow two Tylenol and a Vivarin just to get moving, otherwise I tend to stay in bed all day long, or only find energy to piddle around on the computer. Just standing and cleaning out the dishwasher feels like a drain of very limited energy resources. So that is where I’m focusing. Keep the kitchen clean = my number one job, even if it means my 30 minutes of work get broken into smaller increments.

• trash emptied that day
• dishwasher emptied
• stove and counters wiped
• floor swept and rugs shaken out
• clutter reduced to one small area (I’m not perfect)
• fresh rags always available in the cleaning drawer, and fresh sponges or scrubbers available near the sink (not old stinky slimy ones)
• sink shiny (not full of dirty dishes)

I want to reach this standard of cleanliness in my kitchen for at least a few minutes every day, even if I have to get there in stages.

I don’t know why sometimes I have the urge to make a comment on a YouTube video. I know what will happen. I don’t know what insanity makes me believe this time there could be some better outcome.

Anyone here ever heard of Rebecca Watson, or Elevatorgate? It has to do with feminism, and folks who HATE feminism, and an awful lot of name-calling within the online Atheist community. It has raised a lot of awareness. Unfortunately, most of what we’re aware of now is that the world is full of assholes who hate any woman who has the audacity to expect respectful interactions with men. Such women are labelled with every horrible name you can imagine. I have now joined that sisterhood of women that some men feel entitled to shit all over.

I hope it doesn’t need to be said that I really am not a bitch. I’m always respectful in my conversations, even in debates with folks who seriously disagree with me. I’m fine with others having a different perspective. But on YouTube if you’re on a thread talking about feminism you are automatically treated by most commentors as fair game for any nasty name or baiting trick they can pull. Then if you answer back, you’re called MORE names. If you don’t answer back, you’re called MORE names. It’s a no-win situation.

I have two people in that thread who are speaking with me rationally. One is on my side, the other not. I consider both to be friends now, because I like a good conversation. I have ten people on that thread now who have called me bitch, troll, feminazi, whiner, victim, arrogant, over-reactor, and accused me of pepper-spraying them or harassing them. I walk away and say “please don’t talk to me anymore” and they follow me like toilet paper shit-stuck to my shoe. I block them and STILL somehow their messages get through.

This from men who claim women have “nothing to fear” at an atheist convention because sexism and female objectification is “so overrated it doesn’t exist”, except they do believe MEN experience quite a bit of discrimination by evil women like me.

It’s depressing. I love being an atheist. I love my feminist heroes who fight for respect and equality, and who are no more man-haters than I am. I really am saddened that even in my own community so many people have trouble recognizing those are not two opposing camps. Rationality should embrace both. It’s depressing that some people’s rationality only goes part way.

(Apologies to spiritual/religious friends who may ALSO be rational. Just sad at my own community, not trying to diss you.)

Made my bed.
Cleaned the kitchen.
Scrubbed the toilet.
Made my kid fold laundry.

That last one TOTALLY counts. It’s called “resource management”.

I helped as a lay minister at a service recently, and got nominated as an honorary member of the worship committee. Tonight will be my first meeting. If I like it and fit in, I may join as a real member.

I don’t know if I want to join anything. I’m feeling apatheistic. I just don’t seem to care about church much anymore.

ARGH! dropped the ball already.

I did clean out the dishwasher. And I baked some bread and a pizza. But that’s not really “cleaning”.

I don’t know why I’m such a wuss. I feel grouchy and like I’m angling for a fight. I’ve actually walked up to some YouTubers having a rumble over feminism and gotten in the middle, just so I could enjoy a battle. But there is no sport in arguing with folks who just want to call names, and finding opponents there with the maturity and intellect and manners to NOT just call names is rare. Such people are usually already on my side. (sigh)

It does not do to go into a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

Five days ago I mentioned I was helping a friend hang shelves. Obviously that got sidetracked while my son was ill. He is getting much better now, thank you. He’s even eating solid food again, though his appetite is naturally taking time to get back up to speed. He’s looking well.

Yesterday I went back to my friend’s place to finish the shelves. They hadn’t gotten done the other day because the oil paint was still tacky-wet. I brought along a drill and we got a screwdriver attachment for it. Everything got screwed together beautifully, and it all looks lovely and professional and level. I even helped her stage the shelves with her car collection, and hang pictures above. Then I installed the sixth and final shelf in a different part of the playhouse, where she’ll display beanie babies.

She is overjoyed. It was almost funny to see how impressed she is. She was not able to envision the shelves the way I described them, and I could tell she was extending a lot of trust to take my word for it they would be nice. She almost cannot believe they really ARE that nice!

It makes me so happy to be able to build something tangible that will be appreciated for years. I’m glad to make my friend happy. I hope this will help her to trust me even a bit more in the future when I give advice about something and assure her I know whereof I speak.

Made my bed.
Emptied the trash in the kitchen.
Filled the dishwasher, but not allowed to run it until after 8am.
Cleaned the stove and one counter in the kitchen.
Scraped and stacked and soaked dishes that wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher.
Filled the Brita water pitcher.

All that took me 30 minutes. I haven’t cleaned the kitchen properly in days, and a lot of stuff has been stacking up. There was NO counter or stove space when I started, so that’s a definite improvement. After I start and then empty and refill the dishwasher I’ll be within shouting distance of the kitchen being clean. Hopefully by 10am.

The Children’s Garden is growing well. One strawberry plant seems to have died, probably from dehydration from that three-day stretch we had with no rain. (It was on an end.) I intend to be more diligent to ensure things all get watered from now on.

The other weird thing is somebody stole the cherry tomato plant. The whole thing, roots and all, like they just wanted to plant it on their porch or something. It was beginning to flower and looked like it might produce tomatoes soon. I’m disappointed somebody would be that selfish, but whatchagonnadoo? At least the rest of the garden is still fine.

Hey, I’ve got a cleaning buddy! Mike has graciously agreed to partner up with me, and the goal will be to post an entry every day (morning for me, evening for him) about what we cleaned during that 30 minutes.

A lot of this may seem cut-and-paste. That would be GREAT. Boring to read, maybe, but anything to help build a good habit and routine.