Worms!

So here's the e-zine with the solstice issue I'll have some fiction in. (I don't know if I can make it 'link' just now, however.)
http://www.cezannescarrot.org/

I got lucky with the long-term sub position I accepted last night. Instead of "intensive resource"--a very challenging position I summarized a few weeks back-- this position turned out to be a pre-kindergarden special ed assistant. I've done this before and it's just plain fun! The kids are between 3 and 5. They are in the class for language immersion/motor skills and socialization--how do you deal with "share" when you don't have great language?? :( It's a day about snowsuits and goldfish crackers, sandbox time and 'name that color/texture/taste'. There's a group from 830 until 11:15 and then a group from noon to 3pm. I will be working for the only school in the district actually ON Ft. Wainwright military base. I got the pass for my vehicle today . . . the vehicle with the bumper stickers that say "Love your mother [earth]" "Make coffee not war" "Buy local" and "Support the troops, bring them home". Because it's military this elementary school is one of the most racially diverse and culturally unique (military? as a culture?) places to be. On the way home, leaving the base I got to drive by the digital sign that flashes "2K bonus for each service person who refers someone who enlists to serve their country!" It is an exceptionally difficult time to be a military family. This job runs unti Dec. 21, unless I hear from UAF that they want me and need me sooner.

But back to worms. For these pre-K tots the school district does a brilliant thing. It "enriches" these small classes with a few "typical peers"-- the kids who DO have the language we expect of a 4-year-old. The Typical Peer Program helps the kids that are there and it helps us as play-instructors (most of the class time is spent on the floor talking to the kids as we play) see what the little guys are reaching for, what's possible for someone of their age group. First thing this morning I'd just finished telling the two other teachers that I normally work with cats and dogs, that dealing with much of the noise, chaos, peepee, doo-doo and crisis (and the appropriate adult response of a quiet, calm voice) is a transferable skill set. At that moment the first child of the day, a "typical peer", a tiny pale-skinned blue-eyed child with hands the size of Nilla Wafers came running into the room in her outdoor gear and announced "I have WORMS!" before stopping in front of me to demand "Who are YOU?"

"See, it is just like a vet clinic!" I said. At least she didn't come running in and stick her nose in my crotch.

Unfortunately, we were unable to ascertain what KIND of worms she has. We are hoping her parents are into vermiculture.

You Won!

So it's official.

Our word-counting robots have analyzed your November novel, and they've delivered their final, binding assessment: Winner.
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I should be super-stoked over this but I just have a headache now. I finally got word today that I was approved for the Alaska Dividend this year (other Alaskans got theirs in October) . . . but how can I complain about $1600, even if it is 2 months late? UAF HR is still trying to find itself . . .and then maybe they'll find me . . .I'm starting a long-term sub position at the elementary school military base tomorrow. It's a special ed resource position that is supposed to go until Dec. 20. One of my short stories will be published in an online journal Cezanne's Carrot, which I'll link to later. I was rejected from Hedgebrook writers colony for the second year in a row. I have other things that are keeping me from looking on the bright side right now. Just feeling blah. Oh well.

43K

. . .everything else in my life is going very, very slowly . . .

Good-bye left brain!

My mind is swimming with milligrams, kilograms, micrograms, fluid rates, radiograph settings, capnograph readings and blood pressures. It was a very full day at the clinic yesterday, complete with an "emergency" visit from Rocky the raspy rooster. Every dog in the place looked up when Rocky crowed up in reception. There was a "doo" missing from his cock-a-doodle--
It felt good to be sent into the room to weigh the bird 'cause I would know "what kind it was". It was a barred rock. Thank you Overlook Farm :) Rocky also came with three dozen eggs from the girls to leave with us.

There were lots of emergencies yesterday, and every machine in the place was having trouble. You know --surgery light bulbs went out, the copier wouldn't work. We needed bloodwork results PRONTO and I had to get on the phone with tech support in Maine and take the blood analyzer apart and flush it with alcohol and talk dirty to it. After lots of other "elective" surgeries (spays, neuters, etc.) we went into an orthopedic surgery around 4pm. A nine-month old cat had broken his femur by "falling off the entertainment center". We were working with a newly licensed vet, so she was rightfully very nervous, cautious and stressed. There were lots of intra-op xrays involved. Another example of why I can't spend any energy judging veterinary clients: the owners of this kitty were ADAMANT that we NOT neuter him. On every xray his fuzzy little kitty testicles showed up like holiday pompoms. Oh well. Whatever you people want. Good luck selling your house after he sprays eveything.

OK, time to right out the rest of that novel . . .

This Sunday Night . . .

. . .I am released from some pretty intense obligations and am looking forward to reporting "Niagara: a novel" as a 'finished' mss. I'm only at 33K right now, and I'm about to head out to work to run anesthesia on some difficult surgeries all day. I didn't write yesterday. I just enjoyed myself. Organic Prairie makes a truly tasty T-bird.
Take care all!!

at 30K

Still kicking

I'm only at 25K words for NaNoWriMo. I'll do some catching up this weekend and see about frantic morning writing next week.

Through Nov 25 I'm housesitting and working full time at North Pole Vet Hospital. The heated garage makes the morning commute out there VERY nice. And the clinic has been nice and busy. It's amazing to me to remember that in a single year's time this clinic has gone from 1 doctor to 3, from four employees to eight. I worked out there last December and it was sooo slow. . . now it's a nice pace. For the field of veterinary technology I definitely count as a "senior tech". While I hardly have answers to all questions, I get a lot of "I dunno, ask Cat" stuff during the day. Someone was shaving the belly of an anesthetized 2-yr-old fuzzy lap dog for a spay.

"Cat, what do blue nipples mean?"
I think they expected a lecture about heat cycles, pregnancy or psuedocyesis (false preggo in small dogs).

"It means it's gonna be a bad year for the Mets" I said.
The dog had pale, white skin and had just ended a heat cycle, so once the belly was shaved you could really see the mammary blood supply.

There's also an amazing tech out there who said "Lately I've been going into rooms and forgetting what I came in for!"
Before editing myself I said "Yeah, that starts at about twenty-five".
"But I'm two years early!" she said.

I promised myself I would NEVER be one of those people that made age generalizations to younger coworkers . . . having found it so grating during my life . . . and here I am!!! Is that how we try and make ourselves feel better about being older?

All the employees are women currently. And quite a few of them are pregnant. I bring bottled water.

Blog Spectuation

My spelling and punctuation on this blog is dismal.
Knowing is half the battle ;)

20K & The Girls Next Door

So, it's 1030 am and I've hit my 20K word mark. 22 by the end of today, hopefully.

While house sitting I usually let myself go on a cable TV binge. I let it count as "cultural research". The binging happens once a year . . .when I'm at this particular house. In ten months I'd forgotten how much I love the reality show "The Girls Next Door". Every other reality show leaves me so bored and uncomfortable I flip back to E! Hollywood news or the "Praisathon" channel (c-u-l-t ural research . . .) But, y'know, I feel like I have a personal relationship with Hugh Hefner (sp?) and those three girls! They're so unabashedly THERE, doing what they do. And it feels like Hef is a genuinely kind and tempered fellow. He's so old he's mostly admiring and patting and hugging his 20-year-old minions . . .who are all clearly, and without reservation, on the rich-and-famous circuit because they're proud of their T & A and what Daddy Hef has done for them. The whole show feels far less perverted and twisted than say "The Bachelor" or "The last bride standing" or whatever else is on. I've seen one episode of each and would rather be subjected to CNN than return to them.

The TV binge may be getting a little out of hand as I had a dream two nights ago that I came upon a weeping Brittany Spears at the Fireplace in the local Barnes & Noble ands actually ended up becoming her first real friend and role model. This is wrong. It's just wrong. It's as wrong as receiving a ten page flyer from Leonardo DiCaprio about saving drowning polar bears and enclosed are your five pages of sticky address labels made out of compressed petroleum. And if you send 20 bucks NOW you get a free tote bag, too!

Something that's RIGHT? I'm searching to balance this blog entry . . . OK. Online bill pay is a good invention in modern America. The fact that oil prices are insane is a really good thing because it gets people thinking and acting. The fact that fart humor is cross-cultural is wonderful. King crab is also "right". And I ate an entire 2 lbs of it last night while enjoying the movie "Ratatouille"
Enough. Go off and find your own "Right". Namaste

"There's got to be more Fukuokans!"

So while waiting to pick my friend up from the airport I finally got a chance to look at ALL the NaNoWriMo message boards from all the regions around the whole world!!! The above quote is the title of a post from two people in 'Fukuo' Japan looking to organize a write-in. Someone on another part of Japan is announcing a "temple visit and write-in" South Africa has actually pitted its cities against each other with graphs . . .i.e. "Durban is bananas!" "Go Jo'burg!" The Denmark region advertises:"Where Danes congregate to write stories about ugly ducklings and new clothes for the emperor." Unfortunately, the rest of he posts are written in Danish
:( (Damn insular Scandinavians! JOKE!)
Imagine if this writerly spirit kept up year round! A whole world of writers supporting each other . . .imagine . . .(insert John Lennon lyics here)
sheesh, I'm tired!

16.5K

The next shout-out will be at 20K. Looking at my calender for the rest of the month fills me with panic and fear . . . close cousins and motivators. Yeah. Panic and Fear. Like I NEED that in my life.

ha!!

Umm . . . .NO . . .

Warning! A rant about Ameican culture is coming on!!

From the back of a Windows 95 CD-Rom
"Catz II! The next generation of PF. Magic's Virtual Petz have been born! A whole new litter of living, purring, animated and intelligent Catz can't wait to pounce onto your computer desktop! And now they can even play with each other! Catz II has more breedz, more toyz, more trickz, and more fun! All the fun of owning lots of pets without needing kitty litter!"

My thoughts are mostly circling the cost/benefit balance of accepting that the world is made NOT of melodrama, but of a true mixture of good and bad and everything in between. The human body perspires and has an odor. Cats can get annoying and smelly and expensive. Real milk has carbs. Real eggs have cholesterol. Real tomatoes and oranges go bad much more quickly than their genetically enhanced counterparts. Cotton is not flame-retardant, wood-flooring isn't waterproof. Relationships don't just happen because heaven blew the soul mate whistle.

I don't have any of this "figured out" but I do wonder if it is spiritually wise for us to believe that we can sift out all the 'goodness' of something and leave the 'bad'. By what yardstick are we then measuring ourselves? While breast milk is excellent food for your baby, if your unique body and bond with your baby isn't conducive . . .is that completely bad? Obviously, that's an issue I'm unqualified to really weigh-in on, but I wonder--as Americans--if we are loosing a dexterity of thinking that impoverishes the growth of our spiritual lives. I think we are becoming more and more inpatient with a world that can't be bent to our bidding . . .missing the great wonder that something grander than ourselves is at work.

12 thousand at 4 pm

I haven't been "slow and steady" with this novel writing, but when am I ever with anything? I have my hopes for this book, as I have for all of them. But at least this story will stop following me around.

I'm house sitting for some friends who have a heated garage for my truck and a love of indulgent snack foods that I can never stay away from. It's really amazing how you can feel the difference in your body when you start eating stuff with chemically-named ingredients that you don't normally eat, how even our health food (egg beaters, Danon one-shot yogurt drinks,etc.) have travelled so far from nature to get into out bodies. Just a non-novelistic thought. I may spend a day or two eating foods with ingredients I can pronounce. But that involves shopping. Yuck.

The Third Graders Kicked My Caboose!

Who ARE these people who can go into a room of 25 nine/ten-year-olds for four hours at a time as the only adult and emerge at the end of the day still capable of quality interaction with other human beings???!? Well . . .we all know there's nothing like having a a sub teacher to make it even more fun to steal your neighbor's Cheez-its during snack time and create warring classroom factions that make Animal Farm/Lord of the Flies look poorly plotted. No, really, it was fun. I was just WIPED and my throat hurt and my arm was sore from giving the "SHUT UP" signal. Crazy little humans. It's the equivalent of 12 5-month-old Labrador puppies . . .

I was at Hutchison HS today as a journalism teacher. Not much teaching but a lot of test administration. I was looking over a 300-page journalism textbook published in 2005 and was surprised to see the word "blog" not even indexed. "Internet" was mentioned in passing--a single page here, another mention 150-pages later. What IS the face of journalism, and journalism as a paying career choice, in this age? I certainly don't think newspapers will disappear, nor will interview skills change that much . . . but what is 'public media' and what is its power and saturation?

Back to the novel-a-thon tonight and tomorrow. UAF job interview Monday. *SURPRISE* its really dark and cold and snowy here again! It's the perfect time of year to see people driving around dragging the extension cord they used to plug in their car (oil pan, battery, engine block heater) overnight and then forgot to unplug when they drove out in the am. I, uh, have done that . . . oh, one or two times ;)

The Little Prince

. . .I never understood that book, or liked it much, or found it wise. Someone I knew swore it reminded them of me. Perhaps I'll understand some day. Today is not that day. Yesterday wasn't, either. If anyone wants to weigh in on what I'm missing with it, be my guest.
7K words on the middle of Sunday afternoon here. I'm teaching third grade at Anne Wein Elementary tomorrow. The whole house here on Goldfinch smells like fried SPAM today. We tried to go to the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre's rendition of "Bunnicula" last night but it was sold out. What other staccato sentences can I throw in here? Yes, I bought the cat her 'whirley mouse jr.' as detailed several entries back. I've signed the Goldfinch house up for Netflix and I can now order outrageous films exactly when I think of them (like "Shaft"<-- I never saw it!! OR the 1934 Tarzan movies, or weird cinema versions of Aristophanes plays). I'll be house sitting starting Wednesday, and K will be out of town until Saturday am, so I hope to be writing in lockdown Thurs-Fri with (hope! hope!) perhaps a UAF interview coming up.

Fresh snow today. I love living here. I recently heard, from a couple different sources, Fairbanks described as "the Athens of the North".

When you just read that you either rolled your eyes or sighed knowingly.

Finding Releif

Ah, the great whole-body-mind *sigh* of letting the fingers think for me! Not only am I having great fun with this write-a-novel-in-a-month challenge, but--just as I thought--once I stopped groaning and pushing at that mean, ugly Internal Editor, he just got carried downstream and out to sea! While I am working on this new novel project, I've suddenly realized how to make sense of "structure" for the former non-fiction "stinging anemone" manuscript (four posts ago?) And there is also happiness for me in finding that I can actually WAIT to go back and implement my new insights until this one is done.

There's great fanfair about posting word counts under an entrant's name on the NaNoWriMo website. There's a bar that automatically turns it into percents. I only have about 4300 words, which is, like 8%. I started yesterday, when the official start was Thursday. I suppose I could feel more self-concious or make more excuses . . . but it's fun and I'm getting somethign out of it so who cares if someone else already has 12 thousand or something. I will keep letting you know how it goes.

I'm re-reading Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" and I can not tell you with how much conviction I beleive the ENTIRE ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD SHOULD READ, REREAD, perhaps MEMORIZE this book if they want to see what prose can do with subject, form, acuity, and stark raving beauty.

I'm also drinking a lot of coffee. Can you tell?

Faster Pussycat, Kill [the editor]! Kill!

Uh. . .mm . . .yeah, I'm doing this this year. The manuscript that has begun to flagellate me has been put on hold in pursuit of old-fashioned fun. If I get 50K words by midnight on Nov. 30 then I win. That sounds like a solvable problem! The goal--for me--is to dash the internal editor and trade up fear for exuberance. . . for a little while anyway.

The website for this is currently getting 20K hits a day, so it's a little slow if you visit it right now. Around 80K people all over the world start this. About a third actually 'win'. There's extensive regional networking, parties and other inanities. Tomorrow I'll look to meet some other caffeinated, pimpled, writer-types at Lulu's bakery.