Month: February 2011

move day eve

February 25, 2011 / jeanne / 7 Comments

Margaritas

an exhausting day, mentally, physically, and emotionally. an hour and fifteen minutes before the movers are to arrive, the truck rental place announces they don’t have the truck we’d reserved and offer little – very little – empathy. i’ve learned that staying calm works best more often than not, and it works again, albeit slowly. the two women (lisa and leslie) at the moving company are fantastic to deal with – i feel like angels are helping me move. they just keep assuring me that they will get me moved today, and they do. had i been close enough, i’d’ve had to use every ounce of self-restraint i could muster to avoid kissing them on the lips.

we eventually get a truck, arriving home about 7 minutes after the movers. my mother, my sister-in-law, and my daughter are busy beavers as they pack, move smaller things, and help me stay on top of things. eventually there is no more room in the truck, something that still makes me feel ill – but i just keep telling myself that like meredith, i’ll purge as i unpack. i mean we needed to completely fill the truck to prevent things from falling and flopping, right?

were it an olympic sport, i’d own the gold in justification.

all the hubbub upset the cats who pee and slink and hide once they are let out of their apartment (a.k.a. the garage), and as much as the cats wage battle against me, i feel quite loved as friends offer guest rooms, house keys, and even girl scout cookies.

hubbie, daughter, and i see everybody out and headed out for a margarita – something we’ve done three days this week, something we’ve never done before now. you know, that’s the one thing i’m enjoying about all this – how we shove work and chores and other miscellaneous to do’s aside to gather and see the day out together, laughing and talking and enjoying the company of each other. and i can’t help but wonder why we haven’t been doing this all along . . .

m-day approaching fast

February 24, 2011 / jeanne / 16 Comments

boxes

we are moving.
didn’t plan to.
didn’t really want to
– at least not just yet –
but we are.

moving.

and i am struck
once again
with the undeniable fact
and weightiness
of accumulation.
accumulation
of the
emotional
and
physical variety,
i mean.

as we fill more and more
and more and more
and still more and more and more
empty liquor boxes,
i long to streamline
to carry only what i can fit in my car
or better still
in a single backpack
and okay, possibly a suitcase.
(albeit an extra large suitcase).

i remember the days
when i covered empty cardboard boxes
with contact paper
to create nightstands.
i remember the delight
of making do
with what we had on hand.
and honestly,
i kinda’ want to go back to those days.
that kind of resourcefulness
builds confidence
and character
and creativity of the first order.

most of my boxes are filled with
family history and herstory.
photos
documents
and such
from a grove of family trees.
i will resume operation scan ’em up and roll ’em out
hopefully in the foreseeable future,
even though my daughter worries just a tad
about ever-advancing technology
eventually rendering them
inaccessible.

ah, my daughter.

my son moved away years ago,
so i’m kinda’ used to
the way loving him
comes with a side of pain,
but it’s shocking how much
i already miss my daughter.
we are close, you see,
geographically
and otherwise.
but hey,
the good news is:
she’s able to take possession
of some special items
without me having to die
for her to get them.

dying.
interesting that i’ve been thinking about death
a lot
lately.
and here we are moving.
now i know that i can create a home
wherever i go,
but
there’s a kind of grief that
occasionally breaks through the barriers
i’ve hobbled together.

this whole scenario
came about just last week,
and though my son
worries that we are living
more impulsively
than waldenly,
when the couple appeared
and asked,
we said yes
and immediately began packing
because
a four-week turnaround
flies by quicker than you
can touch your ear.

the qualities of mud

February 17, 2011 / jeanne / 8 Comments

JHCToddler1

as a little girl, i loved dressing up in frilly socks and ruffled panties and petticoats that made my skirts stick out like a tabletop. i liked patent leather shoes and dancing in the grocery store and creating private nests for myself where i could get away from it all and create. one thing i did not like was getting dirty. dirt just did not interest me at all . . . which for some reason, disturbed my mother to the point that one day as i sat quietly working on a new book, she picked my 5-year-old self up, carried me outside, and sat me down – ruffles, lace, petticoat and all – in the middle of the biggest mud puddle she could find. she still loves to tell that story, and i declare she sounds embarrassed that i didn’t like to get dirty and smugly satisfied when she gets to the part about unceremoniously plopping me down in the mud. i can just see her wiping her hands and laughing as she walked back to the house to watch me from the window.

now i may not have liked mud then (and i still don’t like to get stuff under my fingernails, so i’ll not be making mudpies any time soon), but in some ways, mud is kinda’ growing on me. not that i want to spend time in a mud puddle, mind you, but i do like holding clay in my hands and shaping it into something or other. and i love not having a clue what i’m going to write but picking up the pen anyway and just watching the words spill out on the page.

my precious friend and writing partner julie daley (jewels, i call her with very, very good reason) recently asked me a most excellent question: what does writing from the feminine look like to me? that question captivated me for days, and the mud story kept tugging at my sleeve pointing out that writing from the feminine can sometimes be muddy. muddy in the sense that i don’t always know where i’m going when i start to write. it’s not always clear, and there’s not always an outcome – intended, expected, or otherwise. when i write from the feminine self, i write from (including myself, my vulnerabilities, my feelings) instead of about (reporting, answering the 5 questions of who, when, where, what, and why).

when i write from the feminine, it’s more about process than product, and quite often, i don’t even know what i have till i get to the end and can see patterns and threads and word crumbs. when writing from the feminine, i write from the body, and often there’s a lot of space in what i write – space enough to crawl into and get comfortable while things incubate. writing from the feminine, it’s more about following than questioning, intuition than the cognitive. writing from the feminine uses dreams, metaphors, and imagery, relying on intuition and an inner knowing that can’t always be explained (nor does it need to be, actually) more than giving ink to what others think and write and theorize.

. . . as i sit here writing this, my resident owl serenades me under the glorious full moon, and i swear she’s urging me on, telling me that writing from the feminine is natural and needed and even necessary . . .

you know how when cars get stuck, little flecks of mud go everywhere as the tires spin their way forward and out (“out” if all goes according to plan, anyway)? when writing from the feminine jeanne, little flecks (and sometimes big flecks, too) get slung out, often without segues or outlines or even capital letters. there’s seldom a nice, tidy, linear structure, and often as not, there’s not even an

The Virtual Red Carpet

February 13, 2011 / jeanne / 6 Comments

No Academy Award was ever more of a surprise or more appreciated than the various honors and awards i’ve received from my friends in the ethers over the past few weeks . . .

Tracy Brown and Gordon Simmons allowed me to sponsor the Daily Gratitude Journal over at Happiness Inside where there are multiple ways to discover, well, happiness.

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My darlin’ Jewels honored me with the Beautiful Blogger award on The Awesome Women Hub on Facebook.

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Susan, Abigail, and Noel dropped a Stylish Blogger Award on me, and with that award comes a request to tell seven things about yourself . . .

1. I am named after my uncle (my daddy’s brother) who was killed at age 18. My mother and daddy met in third grade in a most unfortunate eraser-to-the-back incident while doing long division at the blackboard. It may not have been love at first sight, but they dated each other exclusively throughout high school, then enjoyed over 50 years of marriage . . . except for that one weekend in high school when a little spat found Daddy taking their classmate, Jean, out on a date. When Uncle Gene was killed, Mother saw a chance to solidify the affection of her mother-in-law, but oh the dilemma when her firstborn turned out to be female. G-e-n-e, short for Eugene, is a male, so that wouldn’t do. And she didn’t want to go through the rest of her life being reminded of That One Awful Weekend, so Mother tinkered around with various spellings until she decided on J-e-a-n-n-e.

2. I met my sinuses while flying the wind tunnel in Denver. It was fun, though – the wind tunnel not the sinuses.

3. As a child, I loved potato chip sandwiches.

4. I still don’t drink bathroom water.

5. I don’t wear a watch – haven’t for years.

6. I don’t like strawberries . . .

7. Or tomatoes.

~~~

“I need 5 more quirky things about me. I’m struggling here. Can you think of anything?” I asked my husband.

In less than 5 seconds, Hubby rattled off all sorts of things to me (almost before the question mark was out of my mouth). “That’s enough,” I told him. “I have my 7.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Cause I was just getting warmed up.”

~~~

While I am loathe to thank my husband, I am not at all hesitant to say Thank you again to these lovely, talented folk who have seen fit to bestow a little spotlight on me, though I deliver it red-faced with embarrassment for my tardiness.

resolved

February 2, 2011 / jeanne / 13 Comments

Calmdownoncommand

January’s Idea of Time Management

February 1, 2011 / jeanne / 11 Comments

Logs

Don’t read. There’s time for enrichment and enjoyment later. You’ve much more important work that needs to get out the door now.

Don’t exercise. Moving from bed to desk chair to bathroom to kitchen to table to laundry room and back to bed is enough movement for now.

Don’t slow down to write thank you notes. You’ll still be thankful later.

Don’t turn on any music, it might distract you and make you forget what needs to be done now.

Bubble baths, leisurely walks in the wood, afternoons spent behind a book are indulgences you earn by getting things done. And since you haven’t gotten nearly enough done, head down and back to work with you.

When you can’t sleep at night, just lay there and think about how awful it is that you can’t sleep. Or get up and get something done. But don’t you dare get up to write or draw or read or stitch.

Just keep saying “Yes” and eliminate every form of “no” from your vocabulary.

Put your friends on hold. If they’re really true friends, they’ll still be around when you’ve caught up.

Don’t waste time putting things up – out of sight equals out of mind. Just pile things up on your desk, on the floor, on tabletops throughout the house. Consider creating mountains as creativity, if it makes you feel better.

Buy a gross of sticky note pads (okay, make it 2 gross) and write one item – only one – from your to do list on a single sticky note. Pretty soon your walls, ceilings, even your furniture will be colorfully shingled. (Of course at the rate you accomplish things, the sticky will eventually wear off, so be sure to write yourself a reminder to replace fallen notes.)

Accept every offer to go out to eat – every single offer. Just remember to eat fast so you can get back to work. The extra weight? Bah, you can lose that later.

Writing retreat with friends? You can do that one day when you’ve whittled down your to do list. You’ve already put it off for 8 months, anyway.

Want to be a writer? Just keep telling yourself that writing checks and meeting minutes and grocery lists and to do notes is writing. Then quit the whining and get back to work.

I’m so glad today is February 1.