So, in a burst of unmerited good will, I took the Assistant and her small Child to the native gardens at The Point Defiance Zoo.  As I opened the gate to admit it, I told the four year old, "This is the part of the zoo where they let the tiger roam around free.  Let’s go find him!"

After searching the native gardens fruitlessly for the tiger, the Assistan’s Child proposed, "Let’s play superheroes!"

"Very well.  Let us do that. How do we do that?"

"I am Spiderman."

"Fine."

"Mommy is Ironman!"

Okay, I see the resemblance.  "Fine. And who am I?"

"You are a duck."

"What?"

"You are a duck. With a cape!"

Genetics will tell.

I kid around a lot on this journal, especially with Robin Hobb’s assistant.

But this, I think, is a serious matter.  If you are a published writer, a children’s book illustrator, a translator, a publisher of books, or the heir of a writer, this is something you should know about.  It’s all written out neatly in the Robin Hobb Live Journal.  Please read it there.

Thanks.

Megan

http://robin-hobb.livejournal.com/8885.html

1.  This morning’s disruption is that she has abruptly decided that she wants to be a muppet.  Actually, looking at her, I can see that  this is what God intended for her all along, and that if she had moved to Sesame Street when she was twelve instead of growing up and going to college, etc, her destingy would have been fulfilled.  But yes, I think to myself, as I watch her flit about the office.  Yes, please. Go be a Muppet. 

2. Every roll of tape in the office is stuck to itself. Not to its cutter thingy, but to itself, on the roll.  I think there is probably some deep Freudian significance to this, but I’m not sure what it is. Something disturbing, I suspect.

3.  Coffee cups. Everywhere.  Some full and cold, some with only a sticky trace of coffee with too much creamer in the bottom.  Everywhere.  There is a sink on the other side of the basement, deary.  And once you found the sink, you could, mirabile dictu, wash your cup!  And put it in the drainer.

Ah, well. She did remember to submit her pay data yesterday, so she is capable of learning . . .

:0

Megan

I don’t look in the mirror much.  I never remember to do it before I dash out the door.  I stand in front of it to brush my teeth and hair but I don’t really look at myself.  When I do, I don’t at all look like the person I think I am.

Today, catching sight of myself, I thought, "Oh, look, my nose is bigger.  I didn’t think it would look like that as I aged." 

I was completely prepared for my nose to be larger; only the shape surprised me.  Noses and ears, my friends, grow all your life. I remember looking at my grandmother, who wore her long white hair swept up in a bun, and thinking that her ears were very large. She wore large button earrings, the screw or clip on kind, for ‘only Gypsies and street women pierce their ears" she once told me. But her earrings, white or pink mostly, were about the size of a quarter and clipped nicely onto her earlobes.  Which had grown along with her ears.  Perhaps I should go look at her portrait and see if my nose resembles hers.

Today in Mass, one of the readings was about the Ten Commandments.  As I listened today, it came to me that the one that admonished us to rest every seventh day was probably a revolutionary idea.  It was addressed not just to the Chosen People, but to everyone in their households.  Wives, sons, daughters, servants and slaves, work animals and even aliens living with them were to rest on the seventh day.  It seemed to me that that stipulation might be a real indication that God Himself made up the rules.  What human would be so kind hearted as to say, "Rest is not just for me.  It’s for my slave and my servant, for my wife, even for my donkey and my ass."

Jesus let us know that it was okay to do things that had to be done. If your ass falls into a pit on the sabbath, it’s okay to take immediate action to get him out.  And many people who work on the Sabbath are doing it only because they have their ass in a crack and have to find a way to get it out. 

I can remember when most stores were closed on Sunday.  Just as banks and the post office are still.  What if we all planned ahead that little bit and everyone had Sunday off?  What would change in our world as things slowed down that little bit.

I wonder if I can learn how to have a true Sabbath again.  I think I’m going to try.

And finally, reading my Sunday paper today, I first read an article about all the things that my state needs to do, and how much money they will cost. Next to it was a list of ways to add taxes and how much the state could expect to gain from each.  How much from hiking up cigarettes another dollar, how much from doubling estate taxes and how much from taxing chewing gum. 

Then there was an article about the bailout and where all the big dollars are going.

A few pages later, there was an article about student loans.  Horrible things in there.  It’s the only loan that not even a bankruptcy can erase.  Some people mentioned would pay back more than a hundred thousand dollars in interest alone, according to this article.

Hm, says I. What if we took all those big dollars and instead of putting them at the top of the pyramid, we put them at the bottom.  What if everyone’s student loan was suddenly just forgiven?    Oh, I know we’d have to make up rules.  Maybe each person had to pay back at least the principal, but no interest. 

But if every one of those households suddenly had that payment money back in their budgets, what might happen?  Pay off credit cards?  Buy consumer goods? Buy an American car?  Buy a house?

I think this is a worthy idea and I’m going to find a way to get it out there. Amnesty for student loans.  If the Federal Government wants to put those millions and billions to good use, that would be a great place to start. 

It’s not unheard of.  My spousal unit and I got student loans from the state of Alaska. Part of the deal was that if we came back to Alaska after we graduated, for every year we lived and worked in the state, a portion of our loan was forgiven.  The idea was to make educated people want to live in Alaska.  It worked, for many years.  (and I often wish I still lived there!)

I think it’s an idea with merit.

Things were crazy around here this last ten days.  Lots of frantic late night editing.    Then Robin discovered that someone has substituted the word ‘boobs’ for breast in her book.  And dragons don’t even have ‘boobs’. 

Things got so crazy that somehow the assistant’s hours were not faxed in on time.  Hm.  I wonder if she’ll get paid this month. 

Then, as the office was being tidied after the deadline seige was over, a copy of the Doctorow  (no, not that Doctorow!) book  "Ragtime" was found on the desk. As it was being returned to the shelf, a mini-pad dropped out from between the pages.  Not funny, guys. 

Well, actually it was. But not as funny as the day Robin picked up the Norton anthology and all the porn fell out of it.  Vintage porn, I might add, carefully razored out of old magazines.  Except for that one photo, of course. Ew.

Months have passed but no one has owned up to that.  However, I noted that the Norton had been purchased from a second hand bookstore in New York. AND the assistant’s book plate was in the front of the book . . .   I wonder if she borrowed it from that Molly person and then put her book plate over Molly’s name.  That would explain a lot.  She’s always going on and on about ‘Molly this" and ‘Molly that’ and ‘Molly reviewed a book‘  and  "This is how Molly alphabetizes’ and ‘Molly doesn’t have a Miscellaneous Crap file in her filing cabinet.’

Well, la de da!

M

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.  Lent will last for 40 days. During that time, I will abstain from meat on Fridays.  That’s not really much of a sacrifice for me.

But today was a day of fasting and abstinence.  That means two small meals and one regular meal, and nothing else to eat all day.  And no meat.

That sort of a fast should not be a big deal, and because most years it isn’t, I upped the ante this year.  No breakfast.  I went to Mass, received my ashes, and came home.

Which, as it turns out, is tough for me, as I am a breakfast person.  I started watching the clock at 10:30, and let myself have lunch at noon sharp.  A simple lunch, just bread and cheese.

By three, I was watching the clock.  I was hungry and out of sorts.  And cranky.  Of course, I had the grandkids here after school.  And all the Girl Scout cookies arrived.  Kids don’t have to fast, of course.  So they had an afterschool snack, cookies and milk.

Hunger makes my sense of smell very sharp, and those cookies smelled great. It also tends to make me short tempered.

I’m proud to say I got through my day of fasting without blowing my temper.  But Robin Hobb’s assistant and I finally agreed on one thing.  Being hungry is not that big a deal. Being hungry with kids around is really difficult to deal with.

And this was just a little five or six hours hungry, with the knowledge that there is lots of food in my house, and that tomorrow I will get up and have breakfast.  And that none of my kids were going hungry.

So, how does a mom living in poverty do this? How do you feel that hungry, all the time, and still manage to be a loving, attentive mom?  When the food does come how does she resist gobbling down more than her share? I can’t even imagine the pain of knowing that my kids were as hungry as I am, and the despair of  not being able to do anything about it.

So.  Lenten promises.  Some people give things up.  Some people do things.  I like a combination of both.  I’m daring myself to stay out of coffee shops for 40 days. Think I can make that? 

On the doing thing, each of my grand daughters wants to contribute one item of food for each of the 40 days to a food bank.  And they want it to be foods they like themselves.  I like that idea, so I’ll be putting a food item for them to donate in each backpack every morning.

And I think JRS will get my charity donation for March.

I am very, very blessed.  I hope I never lose sight of that.
 

I’m in the office, late on a Sunday night, listening to Robin Hobb’s assistant’s favorite song.  Hm. I just keep trying and trying to grok her, but it may be hopeless.  I need to find some way to suggest to her that she can listen to this on headphones instead of blasting it through the office every morning.

And now for my grumble of the night.  Have you ever noticed that if a person friends you on Livejournal, Livejournal sends you a little note inviting you to check the person our and friend that person back.

Only Livejournal puts it thus:  Friend ‘them’.

Now, I suspect they are trying to avoid the gender mire, but would it have been so difficult to make it ‘friend this person’? 

Really.

Megan

I’ve been married to the man for close to forty years now.  Someday, I’ll sit down and figure out how many of those years we’ve actually spent in the same house.  Not that it would change anything. 

For a lot of those years, he didn’t even have a chest of drawers in the bedroom. Just a place to toss down his sea-bag.  He’d come home, put his razor and tooth brush in the bathroom.  About the third time I ran all his clothing through the washer and hung them on the line to dry, they’d lose some of that diesel-and-boat smell.  I’d get to see the latest addition to the scar collection.  Hear the latest ultra gross jokes.  Hear which boats had caught their limit, who was losing his boat, who was buying a bigger boat, which old friends weren’t ever coming home from sea again.  Usually he left again just before spring to go north and fish herring, stayed for salmon, and came home in late September or early October. 

The toughest year was the one our younger son was one.  The man was home for just under a month that year.

He went from fishing boats to tenders to ocean going tugs.  Then to a NOAA ship in 2007.  He was gone for almost all of that year, but we got a few breaks together when he came home for a week or two.   And such a novelty: Email!  And sometimes, his cell phone worked.  Not if he was down in the engine room, but some nights, if he went out on the deck, he’d have enough bars to call home.  He managed to get home for a couple of weeks at the end of August and we went to the World SF Convention in Japan.

2008.  The man stayed home for amost a whole year.  Saw summer with us.  Celebrated our daughter’s birthday in June, one of the rare years that he has ever been home for that.  Got to know his grandson.  Had to help mow a lawn!  Went out on a couple small jobs, but nothing over a couple of weeks. Then he was home again.

And, I suspect, got just a bit bored. 

So, on Wednesday, he headed out the door.  Loaded up the duffle bag with all the usual gear.  Checked to make sure he had his licenses packed.  Put him on a plane for Freeport, Texas.  Not sure how long he’ll be gone. The Sea Trader needs to be rejuvenated, and it may take a bit of doing.

Irony department: Since Robin Hobb was so late finishing the book and had to work so many hours on it, we didn’t have much free time together after September.  Well, now the book is finished and the man is off to sea again.

The house will be quieter.  The bathroom will stay clean.  The house will look as if only women live here, as will indeed be the case.  The menu will change.  There will not be any sockets or screwdrivers going through the washer or dryer.  The weekly laundry will be done in three loads or less.  The cat will walk on the table with impunity.  The dog will sulk.  The coffee cups will stay in the house, not wander out to the garage or vacation in the cab of his red pickup truck.  I will not have to share the remote control. The newspaper will stay where I put it. 

Guess it’s time to start writing another book.  It’ll go a lot faster without a sailor underfoot.

That would be, of course, Bagheera.  She of the silky black coat, immense yellow eyes and even more immense appetite.

Bagheera belongs to Robin Hobb’s assistant.  Said assistant has recently decamped to Texas for a week or so, leaving her neglected, starving cat in my care.

Bagheera is obviously an underprivileged cat.  Last night she informed me that she had not been fed in days, possibly weeks.  And that she had never, in her neglected life, enjoyed canned cat food.  She put away a whole can of Fancy Feast by herself.  Then she showed me the folded towel on the floor by the furnace .  The assistant apparently thought was an adequate cat bed for the poor thing.  She had been forced to take refuge on top of the hot water heater in an effort to warm her aging kitty bones.

Although the Pi owns the rocking chair by the gas fireplace in the basement office, there is another cushioned chair available.  I pushed it up to the fireplace and showed it to Bagheera.  This met with her feline approval.  She and Pi are old friends.  Well, not friends, really.  But over the last 16 years or so, they have perfected the art of ignoring each other and co-existing in what passes for peace in this household. 

I wonder what the assistant will do when she returns and realizes her cat has not missed her.  No, not at all. 

Most of us are accustomed to the idea of recycling now, but I remember well the very first time my Dad was at my house and saw me sorting out the trash into glass, cans, paper and garbage. Then I began to rinse out the cans. He asked me what I was doing and when I explained it, he was incensed. 

“Washing your garbage before you throw it away! That’s just crazy. I don’t know why you put up with the government making you do a thing like that!”

I explained to him that it was a voluntary thing that I wanted to do, but he just didn’t get it. To him, garbage was garbage. You threw it away and that was that. He had grown up in a world of endless resources and still believed in it. 

That was a long time ago.

Now most of us, I think, recycle at home, work and school. I have two big brown bins for lawn clippings, yard waste and organic kitchen waste (non meat). I have two very big blue containers for paper and plastic and neatly bagged batteries. And a smaller container for glass.

And I have a garbage can. 

I’ve purposely kept the inside-the-house garbage can small, so I have to dump it daily. Into it goes all the things that I turn into garbage every day. Those things are not garbage when they come into my house. I make them into garbage.  Strange to think that I am a one-woman garbage manufacturer.  “Food-contaminated paper” is one category I make. Non-recyclable plastics. Bottle caps. Old ball point pens. Used tissues. Used paper towels. Laundry lint and floor sweepings. Handfuls of dog hair. Broken toys. Dead light bulbs.  Well, I won’t list any more. You can look in your own garbage can and inventory for yourself how much good stuff youturned into garbage today.

Some of it, of course, will decompose. Dirty paper towels and used tissues and handfuls of dog hair and floor sweepings will, in time, turn back into dirt.

But what about the stuff that won’t? Plastic toys from McDonalds that only lasted half an hour. Broken hair clips.  Pretty foil wrapping paper. The used up ball point pens. And again, I bet you have a supply in your own garbage can that you can inventory. 

Lately, whenever I throw that stuff away, I realize that I’m taking the very ‘stuff’ of which the world is made and discarding it in a locked up form, just as if I were burying it in a big sealed casket. All the un-recyclable plastic was made from stuff that came from the earth. Ditto for the lightbulbs and the cheap mechanical pencils. But it’s not going to get back to being a useful part of the earth any time soon. It’s just going to sit there in a dump for a long, long time, being an empty ball point pen. Or a broken flash-light. Nothing can eat it, nothing can grow from it, nothing can break it down, at least not in the foreseeable future. The cracked CD cases. The extension cord with a short in it. The Barbie doll with no head. A hundred years from now, I think those are still going to be recognizable artifacts if anyone cares to dig them up.

So, I think about how much of that stuff my family makes. Despite my best efforts at being green, every week a truck dumps a 40 gallon container of my garbage somewhere. It’s not always full, and a good part of it is biodegradable. But there’s a good amount of ‘stuff’ in there that is not. So, every week my family and I are removing that much of the earth’s ‘stuff’ from circulation. Every week, by virtue of how we live, we lock up a certain amount of the earth’s resources that will not, in the foreseeable future, ever be used by another living creature.

You know, there has to be a tipping point. There has to be a point at which we will have locked up so much of the earth’s ‘stuff’ into non-biodegradable, non-recyclable,  stuff that there just won’t be enough stuff left for the earth’s natural cycle to continue. When I close my eyes and think about this, I visualize a plow turning up a furrow laden with broken ball point pens and old cd’s.   I don’t know how much stuff has to be taken out of natural circulation before the whole cycle grinds to a halt, but given that, big as it is, the earth’s resources are finite, that tipping point must exist. 

I wonder, sometimes, how far away it is.

No, I’m not saying the sky is falling. I’m not saying it’s going to happen in my life time, or by the time my great grand kids are grandparents themselves. I am saying that, from time to time, it’s good to look around and see how we live and think about that tipping point. To perhaps use a handkerchief instead of a box of tissue, or to put cloth napkins on my table every day. Maybe I should write with a pen I can refill.   Maybe I should use a dust mop with a head that can be washed instead of a ‘disposable’ head that is discarded with every use. I want to do the small, simple things that reduce the bucket of garbage that is hauled away from my alley every week. Not because some awful disaster is just lurking over the horizon, but because it’s what I should be doing.

I think we’ve had far too many disaster warnings. I was a freshman in college when the first Earth Day was declared. I remember that we were told we’d run out of oil by, well, it was sometime in the 1900’s. My roommate came home and threw her big box of Tide laundry detergent down the garbage shaft because Tide was polluting the ocean. It was my first real experience of people telling me, in a convincing way, that the earth was going to hell in a hand-basket if we didn’t change.

Trouble was, most of us didn’t change and the predicted disasters didn’t happen. Every year, I still hear about how many species are going extinct this year, how many acres of rainforest are going to disappear in the next fifteen minutes, how many years away we are from no more oil. It’s the stick that has been brandished far too often. Too many people don’t believe in it any more. So.  The End Is Near is not my message. My message is, “Clean up the bathroom after you’ve used it. And stop locking up resources that the next guy might need.”

That’s all.