If nothing, it gave me an opportunity to snap a photo of my beloved lab mix Maynard. He had another impression of the snow. He saw it out the back window and wanted to play in it. I think that pets remind us that what we may see as a cold nuisance, they see as an opportunity for fun.

The happy sunshine mug and Maynard remind me that there are so many things to be grateful for, even when we are in the darkest depths of winter, well relatively speaking. I’ve seen winters where we have been in much darker depths, or course. Still, on my recent drive home from visiting my friends in Tecumseh, the sun was so bright and warm I felt the presence of spring. The fact that I am able to do that on any given day is warm in and of itself. I spent breakfast last week at Selma Cafe, as my husband served as guest chef. I knew only the hosts, Jeff and Lisa, but it was exhilarating being amid all those people wanting to help local farmers and have a great meal all the same. That same day I had lunch with my oldest and dearest friend, Kim. I’ve known her since I was 11 years old. We had not seen each other in a while, so it was such wonderful time of catching up and laughing like we used to when we were girls. I was tired, but it was a good tired. This has been a fantastic week. The kids have midwinter break and we have been able to hang out a bit. The extra rest time has given me a chance to clear and organize my desk area. My dad laughed as he caught me on Skype during the massive undertaking. He says I do desk cleaning about once every month.  My desk area is what I refer to as my sacred space, the one corner of my house that I have devoted to my writing endeavors. Virginia Woolf wrote of having a room of one’s own to write. The best I can do is a corner with a window view of my little Ypsilanti street and the red maple that gives me inspiration. That is good enough for now. It’s a cozy spot that is quiet in the early morning as my family sleeps. That is the time I choose to write. Speaking of gratitude, writing has been difficult these past months. Who am I kidding? Writing is always difficult. But, the opportunity to show up at the page, to get what few words I can from even the driest of spells brings hope and clarity. I realized recently, perhaps I’ve always known this, that there is no easy path to writing. There are no “give mes.” Still, to say it takes “work” is to say that it is “work” in the most utilitarian sense of the word. Work is not the word I choose. Is there a word to describe it? Play? Even play doesn’t capture the agony I feel some days. Writing is its own act. Writing is the only word to describe the act. It encompasses itself. Writing is not work. It is not play. It is writing, the act of bringing something alive in words.

You see, I have been living with the idea that I live a new normal, when all along I’ve been kicking and screaming for the old normal, for the time when I was oblivious about the reality of my future, the reality of everyone’s future really. I lived with the illusion that death was an enigma. It was so far from where I was that I didn’t really think about it. I even feared thinking about it. For the last five years, all I have wanted was that innocence back. I talked a pretty good game, but the reality is that I didn’t accept the new normal. I’ve kept trying to get back on track with life. While my doctors have been nothing but good to me, I have dreaded every office visit, not because of the possibility of bad or good new, but because of the imposition it put on me wanting the old normal, on me wanting to get back to the life I once had. I stopped going to breast cancer support groups. I stopped going to anything that reminded me that I once had cancer. I even stopped writing about it so much.

Why is this coming up now? I watched the movie 50/50. As a member of Cancer World, as the late Leroy Sievers called it, I was reluctant to watch the movie, but wanted to see the movie all the same, mostly because I love Seth Rogen in anything. I’d also heard a lot of good things about the movie. I’d heard writer Will Reiser talk about it in an interview and I just couldn’t resist. Last night, I finally did get a chance to see it. I settled into my recliner. It was a rare night when my 13-year-old curled up in my lap. I held her tight as I watched, and relived a little, the experience one has going through cancer. It was like everything I ever wanted to say about what was most definitely the worst year of my life was flickering right before me, and just when I thought I was going to cry, Seth Rogen was there to make me laugh and laugh loud and full and free. It was a the perfect blend of reality and laughter that allowed the feelings I’ve held inside for a long time to more or less be expelled. It allowed me to begin facing the new normal or whatever it is. I have been hard on myself. I have put unnecessary expectations on myself. Post-cancer, it seems balance has been the hardest thing to find.

If nothing, the movie made me see that the new normal is a silly term. Cancer does not bring a new normal. There is nothing normal about cancer, even five years after all the crap. It’s not normal that cancer happened. It’s not normal that everyone is afraid to talk about cancer when it does happen. It’s not normal that even medically still we treat cancer as something that has to be dealt with but hidden as we deal with it. There is nothing normal about cancer, but the real illusion is that there is anything about life that is normal.  The only real normal is that I am hardly the only person who is dealing with anything out of the ordinary. Even the most ordinary life is extraordinary in good and bad ways. Perhaps it’s silly that a movie could make me see this, but the fact that the movie is based on Will Reiser’s real life experience with cancer makes me understand why I connected with it.  Maybe, it’s not that the movie made me see it at all. Maybe, it’s that the movie gave me a chance to laugh out loud about something that everyone seems frightened to laugh about. Maybe, it’s the fact that the movie gave my entire family a chance to laugh about something we all were frightened to laugh about. For that, Will Reiser, Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jonathan Levine, I can’t thank you enough for daring to make a movie about cancer.

Here is to giving the old heave ho to “old normals” and “new normals.” Here is to simply having a rare night to sit with my daughter curled up in my lap again. Here is to sitting with husband and my son. Here is to all of us laughing and laughing and laughing until the tears come. Ah, now I feel, dare I say, normal.

Take my computer, for instance. This week, it died. Kid Two got a virus on it. It was an old computer that should have been replaced a year ago and would have, were it not for my husband being a technical guru. My computer, it turns out is a necessity, a necessary evil is more like it. I need it to do things like write on this blog, or compose the six freelance articles I’m working on or organize materials for the three college classes that I teach. Still, it is a time sucker. The fact that my husband can make a six-year-old laptop still run means he spends countless hour debugging and reformatting and cussing up a storm in the process because he had better things to do.

Moving on. I drink coffee. I love coffee. I can’t be without coffee for very long. I’ve tried and I always go back. Still, coffee makers, the ones made to make life easier, have only given me headaches. I once received one of those coffee makers with a built in grinder, which was indeed a really nice gift. Still, the grinder only held so many beans and would get wet from the steam and clog and stick so that I would have to take a knife to it. Eventually, I killed it trying to get the parts to work right. I also killed at least one expensive coffee maker at my old job, and the hand me down I had been using at home overflowed every once in a while, making a huge mess all over the counter. None of the coffee makers ever made coffee the way I like it, so I went into the garage and fished out the percolator I used once or twice while camping. Best coffee I’ve ever had. No mess, no fuss and surprisingly it doesn’t really take that much longer to make.

This week we also lost our dryer. We didn’t physically lose it. It’s a big appliance. It’s kind of hard to miss. We lost the use of it. That’s when it dawned on me that the thing took too much energy anyway. It ran too often. I thought of when I visited my sister in the Netherlands and how she, a full-time working mom, managed to hang dry her clothes even with an infant who messed up a whole lot of clothes. I decided to do the same. Hang clothes, that is. I am in no way shape or form going through the infant thing again. What strikes me as odd and refreshing all the same is that hanging clothes to dry has somehow made doing laundry less of a chore, which seems counterintuitive. Sure, I have a rack of drying clothes standing in my front room, but I don’t have three baskets of dry clothes that need folding staring at me on a daily basis. I no longer do a bunch of laundry at once. I do a load a day and pull the pieces off the rack throughout the day.

With each step, I feel like I am becoming strangely more efficient and at the same time reducing my impact on the environment where I can. So, I guess the question to ask is, does “easier” necessarily make things “simpler”? I am finding the reverse. Simpler is easier.

This is the very best photo anyone has ever taken of me. My dad took it a loooong time ago. I sat forever because he used a large format camera back then.

As it happens, Popeye had something in that little old saying of his. What I love about the statement, “I am what I am,” is that it’s not fear based. It’s a simple declaration of love, love for being who he is when others don’t quite get him.
That is kind of how I see being a writer. I have heard other writers say they won’t tell people they are writers. I understand the reason. I know that it all comes down to that dreaded question, “Oh yeah, well do you have anything published?” As if that is somehow supposed to validate what I feel inside. As if it somehow deminishes what I am doing because a few people on the outside may or may not think my words are worthy.
What I realized, as I am journeying through this thing called life, is that what others say or believe doesn’t really matter. I am what I am. I am so many things, a writer is one of them and I am not afraid to say it. But, I also am a mother to two great kids. I am a wife and partner. I am someone who loves to bake. I am someone who loves to bead. I am an educator. I am also the things I am not. In other words, I am not the sum-total of my publications or awards, as perhaps I’ve been led to believe at times. I am not a workaholic, though I love my work as a writer and an educator, but none of it feels like work. I am not nearly as good a cook as my husband, though I give cooking a try.
If we give voice to who we are, then we validate it. If we shout it from the rooftops, then we validate it, even when others might be laughing or doubting that we can create the life we want.
I am reminded of a Sunday Morning on CBS interview with Dolly Parton I saw a while back. In the interview, she spoke of her high school graduation. She spoke of declaring then that she was going to be a super star. She said everyone laughed at her, but look at her now. It wasn’t that she knew it so much as she said it and kept saying it until she manifested it.
So, go ahead and say it. I will. I am a writer, among so many other things. I am what I am.

P.S. Rather than have a bio associated with this blog, I have changed it to an Artist’s Statement, because that is what I am, too, and I rather like the idea of an artist’s statement versus a list of all that I have accomplished, which really doesn’t say anything about me.

Maynard in the Moment

a cold Sunday morning. Eventually, I’ll get out and take Maynard for a walk.

It’s probably in the middle of winter that I find it most difficult to write. The short days have sunk in. The cold penetrates my core and I just want to sit back and do as little as possible, but I won’t. I’ll keep at everything because I have to, because my body needs words.

As with more than half of America, we are struggling to make ends meet. We both took leaps at the same time, leaps with great risk. I have read people’s thoughts on risk taking and the idea that risks should be calculated. Still, even the best calculated risks are frightening. It wouldn’t be a risk, if there wasn’t the potential for failure. So, we are mid-flight in our risky leaps and, as to be expected, things at times feel exhilarating and at other times feel down right terrifying.

It’s at the moment when it is most terrifying that it is hardest to stay focused, but I have to remember then to stay in the moment, to let go of regret, to keep moving forward. After all, regret is rooted in fear and fear leads to ruts. I hate ruts. I’ve been stuck in too many of them only because for my whole life I feared the act of taking a leap.

So, I’ll just continue to plug away at my dreams, continue to understand that in mid-flight there is not going back to where things felt safe. There is only what’s below (or ahead).

And Maynard? Well, he reminds me that sometimes the best antidote for fear is taking a moment to play in the snow with a friend.

Kid one on his way to Hogwart's

simulated pretty well at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure Theme Park’s Harry Potter area.

The trick, or not so much of a trick, is to keep at it, to keep going and going and going. As I begin this new year, I am trying to keep this in perspective. My mantra as of late is “stay the course.” Who am I kidding? My mantra always is “stay the course.”

I did read something recently that said that often writers aren’t given all of the time in the world to be writers. More often than not, they are as busy as everybody else. It’s all about clinging to that dream with all we’ve got.

Just as with last year, I set goals. This is how I cling in what is again going to be a busy, busy winter. I started the goal setting last year, thanks to my Momwriter pals. I managed to meet or at least make some headway on all of my goals, so my goals list has been created again. There is no magic, but at the end of the year when I look at my list I am sure my reaction will be Viola! I did it. Each little step forward is a nice push in the right direction that, while not really magic, feels a little like magic.

I’ve written before about the couple of times in high school I had written something and teachers pulled me aside to tell me I should send those things out. One thing I neglected to mention about those incidences is that it wasn’t so much that the teachers recognized anythings. Recently, I got in touch with an old friend from my high school French class. It got me thinking about why those teachers said anything, one of them was my French teacher Mrs. Hodgins. I remembered the feeling I had when I wrote those couple of things. I remembered the feeling of excitement I had as I created those stories. I didn’t realize then that that was the spark of inspiration. I might even have been frightened by that spark in some way. Either way, I knew what I was being shown then was that I loved creating stories. I just didn’t really realize it until much later. Well, it’s back to the drawing board, but no biggie. I’ll get there.

There are of course times or events in our lives that shatter that glass jar and the only alternative is to finally take that crazy messed up road. What are my events? Well, there is an insane long list of them starting with the birth of my two beautiful children and ending with a little rumble I had a few years back with breast cancer. There were a host of other crazy things that were sprinkled in between there for good measure.

I know I am not the only one who has gone through all of that crap. The point is, however, that I could either succumb to all of that and whine and cry about it all or I could say, “In your face!” to all of it and leap into the life I am meant to have. I chose the latter. Again, I am not saying it’s easy and that there aren’t moments where I say to my self, “What the hell was I thinking?” Still, I come back to the way those shards of shattered glass twinkle like stars, flare even like sparks of dreams of places I am supposed to go. Those sparks include sending my book and stories out until something aligns and they become what they are supposed to. They also include weaving more stories and writing the story that makes up the new book I am working on, one I grow more excited about every time I think about it. The sparks also include the merging of my love of good food with my love of words as I build a following for my Ann Arbor Cooking Examiner site.

So, I keep plugging along. I’m really excited about my step forward into food writing. If you are curious, go ahead and check it out, and thank you in advance for doing so.

The following is a list of the things I am currently grateful for in this writing life:

1. The many new and old friends I have that inspire me and my writing with their own. This is a solitary pursuit for sure, but there is a community built so steadfastly around it.

2. The seed of a little novel “Sometimes the Smallest Things” was planted ten years ago with immediate encouragement by author Betsy Cox at Bear River Writer’s Conference. I scrapped for bits of time between raising children and working full time in order to massage every word and every scene. That took every bit of ten years. I finally have a full and what for now is a complete manuscript, complete enough to be sending it out into the world. It is getting some notice, so we will see what 2012 brings, but for now I am happy to have completed it.

3. I have been fortunate to dive into my passions this year. I am teaching, now, which I have longed to do since finishing my MFA. Because I am teaching, I get more time with my writing and my family.

4. This year, I have had some writing success. A couple of my poems appeared in publications. The first was Driftwood 10. The second, which I recently received my contributor’s copy, was a cool little book called Bigger Than They Appear: An Anthology of Very Short Poems.

5. I stay connected with my old writing job by still being able to write  feature articles for the magazine Homefront, my favorite part of the job. I also get to write a poem specific to the center photo spread of each issue.

6. I am able to merge my love of food with my love of words in my online post as the Ann Arbor Cooking Examiner.

7. I am always grateful for my family and the support they give me in pursuit of this crazy ass dream.

First, my Dear Partner J got sick, really sick, which put him out of commission for the last week of food cart season. He has been running the show pretty much on his own since I went back to work. I help here and there, but he is Debajo del Sol. So, that final week there was no Debajo del Sol. He couldn’t get out of bed. We got through that only to have a dog crisis on Tuesday.

I am to blame for that. I thought the day started out well, even if it started out at the doctor’s office with my daughter. That was a planned, routine thing. I dropped her off at school after that and stopped at grocery store number one. I made a quick stop home and went to grocery store number two. I had this grand plan of making all this stuff and gathering lessons for my classes. In the interim, between my two grocery store runs, I failed to secure the pantry doors. That meant our dog, Maynard, had full access. Of course, the two things that were in his reach were chocolate chips and raisins, the two worst possible things a dog could get. That tripped the switch on an afternoon of chaos. I made repeated failed attempts to induce vomiting with peroxide, per the vet’s recommendation. The dog just burped and lollygagged playfully around the backyard. I ended up taking him to the emergency clinic where they had much better luck inducing vomiting, and sure enough he had eaten raisins and chocolate. I understand that was irresponsible of me. That was why I had such a rough day. The lesson I learned from this is that all canned goods go on the lower shelves and all chocolate chips and raisins go on the top shelf of the pantry where Maynard can’t reach them even if he gains full access to the pantry.

In our defense, we are not used to a chow hound like Maynard. With his predecessor, Maggie, we could leave a whole Thanksgiving dinner out on the counter and she would never have touched it. Maynard, however, will find a way to get the Thanksgiving scraps, do or die. Thankfully, I realized what he had done fairly quickly, so he seems to be doing well. We are still keeping a close eye on him.

I, too, am feeling a whole lot better. I am back on track, not with NaNoWriMo numbers, but I have some off time next week to get caught up. I can’t wait to bake a pumpkin pie. I can’t wait to have the unfettered time with my family. It will be the first time ever that my holiday week isn’t packed with deadlines and work.

A long time ago, I did a couple posts on the glamorous life of a writer. That, of course, was the irony. There is not glamor. There is toil, rejection, small victories, rejection, a kind rejection for an editor or agent, just plain rejection, and the more than occasional day of complete chaos. It’s up to us to continue to gather roses, even when it’s not a rosy day or a rosy week. That means gathering the gumption to write as much as you can in those times. I did that. It wasn’t much. It was zero on the day of chaos, but I put a few words down yesterday. I’ll put some more down in the days to come. Really, that’s what pulls me back up, back out of the chaos. Folks, this is the glamor–the sticky, messy, chaotic glamor. There’s nothing shiny, new or rosy about it.

NaNoWriMo Count: just over 19,000 words.