We’re going out of town to the cabin on Saturday and will be gone through Friday the 24th. I hope to do some writing while I’m gone–a little bit of working and a little bit of playing. Hopefully I’ll have some fun stuff to post when I return. We won’t have internet while we’re there.
Have fun everybody! Frank and Janelle, good luck with the surgery. We will be praying and calling for news.
s
The first time I woke up today, it was dark and I heard a whiny, whimpering little person clambering up into my bed. Then I felt that little person edge me over and co-opt my pillow. Then I felt the chilly hands of the whiny little person seeking out my warm skin–my breasts and tummy were the targets of those grabby hands. Then there was the annoyed bark of a man’s voice, which said, “Leave your mother alone and go back to sleep or I’ll take you out of the bed.”
The second time I woke up today, it was light in the room. There was still a whiny little person next to me, clutching my arm and burying his cheek into my neck. But there was also the smell of coffee wafting in from the kitchen, and sounds of my lover making me a Valentine’s Day breakfast: low-carb warm ricotta crepes with strawberry jam. They were delicious and only 7 carbs (unfortunately we learned later that’s 7 carbs for two crepes–Oh well). We ate breakfast together gazing on a vase full of pink tulips that he brought me a few days ago. That whiny little person whined less after he ate his cereal.
Thank you, my loves. Thanks for a wonderful morning.
More About Tidoo
Tidoo seems to have largely lost her “Baby” appellation. More and more we hear about Tidoo as though she is Lucas’s imaginary friend. Tidoo has other parents who live in a house far away. Lucas says she lives with us so that she can be close to him. Tidoo enjoys sports and going places with us. Tidoo can eat many bowls of cereal. Sometimes when she’s feeling sad, Lucas has to hold Tidoo to comfort her. Candy always makes her feel better.
I Thought Imaginary Friends Were Supposed to Be Imaginary
Those Waldorf people are right: Lucas’s imagination is working on overdrive lately. But I thought imaginary friends were supposed to be imaginary. Apparently I was wrong. Imaginary Tasha and Imaginary Xander are now spending a lot of time at our house–“For reals, Mom.” They play ball games with Lucas (a sort of Calvin-Ball, except I guess it’s Lucas-Ball). Imaginary Tasha is really good at this game. Lucas has to help out Imaginary Xander a bit because he’s little still. Imaginary Tasha and Imaginary Xander have been riding in the car with us lately too. They have great conversations that keep Lucas occupied in the back seat.
What lies behind the cut is recent everyday stuff.
We had mom and dad over last night for dinner. This is a fairly rare occurrence, considering they live just a short drive away. Dad’s 60th birthday was last week, and we didn’t make it to the family get-together at Cattlemen’s on Friday. (I’m sure the food was good at the restaurant, but they said no one could hear anything. They all apparently got to see how poor, deaf RoRo feels most of the time.) Anyway, for mom and dad we made tri tip, broccoli with browned butter and mizithra cheese, black-eyed peas, brown rice, salad, and corn bread. I confess I ate a piece of cornbread; it was very yummy. We gave dad a print we bought in a gallery in Maui; it’s a pretty island and ocean painting.
Last week was something of a work nightmare. I worked all week on a project for Former Employer that should have been done and printed last December. Thanks to the licensor’s penchant for reaming us, the whole book had to be remade–not because of any fault of mine, or anyone else on the project. They simply changed all the data without telling us. I’ve been talking with Former Employer all along about how such remaking is well out of the scope of the original project agreement, and thus, I’ll have to be paid to do the book over again. (It is hard to be bold and brassy enough to demand payment for extra, out-of-bounds work, but to have to do it four or more times really sucks!!) Unfortunately the issue is not resolved yet, but I’m sticking to my guns. I worked more than 40 hours last week on said nightmare book to get it to the printer on time. Former boss also worked hard and helped to make it happen, but that doesn’t diminish the work that I did or reduce the amount that she owes me. “Sorry, dear. You have to pay for services rendered. That’s the way it works. I don’t take it for the team anymore. We’re no longer in the same Former Employer boat.” I worked all week and the stress of feeling like Former Employer would like to screw me out of my dough has made me really angry and bent out of shape. I learned a lot on this project. I don’t think I’m going to go forward with similar projects without getting a lot more down on paper first, including the consequences of “change orders.”
Lucas’s roster of brothers and sisters is expanding. Now, not only is Kimberlee his baby sister, but Tasha, Ella, Laurel, and Ambrosia are his sisters too. (It is fairly remarkable to me that he now includes Ambrosia in this list, as they have had a challenging relationship until fairly recently.) The little brothers are fewer: Xander and Henry (and sometimes a kid named Rocco–who I gather is the baby brother of another kid at preschool).
Recently Lucas told me that when he grows up, I will be his wife. (Freud was so right.) I tried to explain to him that I’m already married to Ian, so I can’t be his wife. He was not amused. I distracted him by telling him that no matter what, now and forever and always, I will be his mommy. He’ll have to be satisfied with that.
Other Tidbits
* Lucas (and dad and mom) got a great report card at his latest dental checkup and cleaning. We are doing a great job cleaning off all the “sugar bugs.” Lucas was very brave, but he also doesn’t know yet that some people are scared about going to the dentist, or why.
* We’re really enjoying attending services at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento, which kinda blows my mind a little bit. But since the pagan thing is on hiatus, I need something to get me thinking of stuff beyond myself. Ian and I are considering becoming members. We are making friends there.
* Ian’s spooky fundamentalist freako step-sister is coming to Sacramento for a visit. Fortunately, we’ll only have to see her for an hour or so. The woman gives me shivers. I wish she would stay in stupid Oaklahoma.
* Tomorrow afternoon, on Valentine’s Day, we are going to the Sacramento Waldorf School for an interview with the Red Rose Kindergarten teacher. We are hoping that this will help us to determine whether Lucas is ready to go there next fall.
Tonight, Lucas told us a story about how he built a castle out of blocks for big dogs and little dogs to skate on the roof. Then he said that he told the dogs they could skate on the roof of our house.
“Up there?” Ian pointed to the ceiling.
“Yes,” said Lucas.
“Why they don’t skate outside on the driveway?” Ian asked.
“If the dogs skate on the driveway, they might accidentally skate into the street and get hit by a car,” Lucas explained.
He then revealed that there are, in fact, nine little, fluffy white dogs living in our house with us. They hide from mommy and daddy.
“Really? I haven’t seen them around here anywhere. Where do they sleep?” I inquired.
“They sleep in crates, in a secret corner in the bathroom, where you can’t find them.”
“Who feeds the dogs?”
“Me!”
“What do they eat?”
“Broccoli!”
“Ah ha! So you and the dogs are the ones who eat all the broccoli?”
“Yes!”
much giggling
One of the little white fluffy dogs has skates.
“What color are they?”
“Pink,” he replied.
“How many skates does the dog need?”
“Four!”
This message is for all those who were afraid to come over because of our very poor housekeeping skills.
Last night, with noxious chemicals, a vorpal blade, and a fearless heart, I vanquished the monstrosity growing in my microwave oven.
I hate maintenance.
“A euphemism is most apt to be noticed if it is new. When an occupation once regarded as lowly wants to come up in the world, it may try to shed the name that signaled its humble status: ‘farmers’ become ‘agriculturists,’ ‘garbage collectors’ become ‘sanitation engineers,’ ‘janitors’ become ‘custodians.’ Our awareness of the euphemism is shown by our tendency to laugh at what we regard as false pretension. Yet other occupations that upgraded themselves in the past enjoy euphemistic names that are no longer questioned. One may laugh at an ‘undertaker’ who calls himself a ‘mortician’ or a ‘funeral director,’ but not at a money-handler who calls himself a ‘financier’ or a tradesman who calls himself a ‘businessman.’ These euphemisms are accepted at face value — to the benefit of those labeled by them.”
–Dwight Bolinger, Language: The Loaded Weapon 73 (1980).
let’s see…
“prunes” become “dried plums”
“unemployed mom” becomes “freelance editor”
Last Saturday we had Ambrosia over to play while Kelly went to the funeral of her friend’s son.
Despite the sad reason for Ambrosia’s visit, we all had a wonderful time with her. Ambrosia wanted to play dress-up, so I got out all the stuff and we all dressed up as princesses in flowing silk scarves, tiaras, turbans, boas, and veils. Luckily we had enough magic wands to go around and we all danced to Enya in our princess costumes. It was very fun. Lucas and Ian got into it as well. Later we rode tricycles to the park and we played there.
Baby Tidoo, Lucas’s dolly, has taken on an even greater importance in the family over the last week.
• Tidoo gets to eat doughnuts for breakfast
• Tidoo eats whole bowls full of salt
• Tidoo likes trains as much as Lucas does
• Tidoo goes on play dates
• Tidoo and Kimberlee are good friends
• Tidoo is sick and doesn’t want to go to school some days
And other stuff…
Saturday night my parents took me to dinner and to see Jack Gallagher’s new one-man show “What He Left,” at the B Street Theatre. I’m planning to write more about that another day. Suffice it to say that it was a great show and it brought forth some interesting stories from my father.
Grandpa Glen came over for dinner last night. When I reminded Lucas about this in the afternoon before Glen arrived, Lucas said, “Oh good. I love my Grandpa Glen.” I was careful to relate this story to Glen last night. Unfortunately, Grandpa Glen seems sometimes to feel like he’s missing out on Lucas’s development. We don’t see him as often as we see the other, closer grandparents. It was a nice evening, without too much political discussion, and grandpa read Lucas several stories and listened to the endless train talk with the degree of fascination that someone who doesn’t listen to it constantly can still muster.
Lucas’s relationship with Jackson (a new boy) at preschool is improving. In fact, Lucas seems to be slowly accepting the new students from Mulberry Cottage, which recently closed its doors, into the Hidden Treasure fold. (At first he was resisting making new friends.) Lucas told me last night that Jackson hasn’t been “playing guns at me” and is playing trains with Lucas instead. “I like that much better.” He also reported that he spent some time yesterday talking with Abigail, another new student. “Abigail is nice. We talked a while.” Max, however, is still playing guns. Lucas is convinced that Max hates him. This social stuff is tricky.
“There is one tendency of speech which, though founded on a firm basis of psychology, is constantly spoken of by those who know nothing of the ways of linguistics, as new and vulgar in the extreme. This is the inclination to use words more grandiloquent or more honorable than the occasion calls for or admits. Such a tendency has characterized the languages of all cultivated nations, and seems to be inherent in the human mind. Vanity and social ambition, on the one hand, combine with courtesy and servility on the other, to support and enforce this natural bent, and the disposition to magnify one’s office contributes its share in producing the final result.”
–James Bradstreet Greenough & George Lyman Kittredge, Words and Their Ways in English Speech 317 (1901).
I appears that I didn’t get the fiction job I bid on recently.
It’s a shame because it would have been my first taste of editing fiction and would have required me to grow and learn new stuff. I suspect I bid too high, but I prefer to err on the side of valuing my time and work appropriately and losing jobs, than killing myself working for peanuts.
In coming up with my bid, I spent a couple of hours reading over a very long and intricate book proposal and then several sample chapters. I made an estimate of the hours it might take me to do the job, evaluated the (first-time) author’s writing, and provided him with some feedback and a few sample edits of short passages (so he could see how I would edit his work). My analysis concluded that while the author’s plot, characters, and story might indeed be adequate and interesting enough to get published, he had about 25-30% more words than were really necessary to tell the story. I figured streamlining and simplifying the text to make it friendly to the reader would require a fairly heavy edit: I would have had to touch nearly every line in the 170,000 word novel. That prospect is scary to me, given that authors frequently are fragile creatures.
It might not have been my bid though. I might have been too heavy-handed with the prose. That’s the balance the editor has to achieve, the way I see it. That is the key to editing fiction. The editor must find the perfect degree of involvement and that depends entirely on the specific work and the specific author. Oftentimes, an author expects me to read his/her mind to know what degree of involvement they want me to have. This is true when I’m editing non-fiction too. However, my experience is that non-fiction authors are often really open to revisions that improve their work. Fiction is more emotional.
I asked this prospective client, “What level of editing are you looking for? Substantive editing? Copyediting?” (and provided him with definitions and examples of both types).
He said, “I believe my best answer to this question is, unfortunately, a very positive, ‘I don’t know.’ I can only admit that I am too close to the work to objectively attempt to edit the material and would trust in an editor to have the reader’s best interest at the heart of their decision making. At this point I need to secure the best editing job available as if I were going to self-publish the first novel in the series for a June release.” (See what I mean? He’s a very wordy guy.)
I took him at his word and evaluated the text with the reader’s best interest at heart, assuming there might not be any other editor (such as an aquisitions editor at a publishing house) intervening on the reader’s behalf.
In a way, I’m not sorry to see it go to someone else. I don’t really feel like justifying every single change, every single decision I make. Still, this novel is the first of six planned novels, and a long-term gig like that–if he actually managed to write a six-novel series–might have been nice. C’est la vie!
