nudle

Han has been waking at all hours, usually way too early in the morning, and yelling, moaning and crying. Since he is three and a half, I'm not convinced I should let him cry it out, but I don't know what else to do. So I'm letting him cry it out. This morning he commenced crying at 4:30, then 5:15, then 6:30. When I did sleep in between bouts I had horrible dreams about lice and flies buzzing in my ear. Then I dreamed that Han drowned in a swimming pool because I wasn't watching him, and someone took his body out and left it on the side. It was a horrific dream, and I woke to that feeling of great relief after such a nightmare.

When I finally got out of bed this morning I felt limp and soggy. I returned home after taking kids to school feeling blue. I forced myself to go for a run, and as I was tackling my first hill a guy on a bicycle stopped to let me cross the street. "Lookin' good," he said. "Keep it up." That simple thing, encouragement from a stranger, lifted my spirits immensely.

In other happy news, Iona doggedly finished a whole book in a day. Saturday night as she went to bed she broke down in tears, confessing that she had not read the book assigned to her class. Book group discussion for the book is today, and I am one of the facilitators. Yesterday I lectured her about responsibility and telling the truth. She picked up the almost 200-page novel and managed to read nearly the whole thing in between doing homework, being pestered by her brother and accompanying me on a three-hour outing. This morning she finished the book. I could tell she was proud of herself.

And finally, also in the good news department, it looks like Han has embraced the potty!

I really have no reason to be blue, do I?

Snow to thaw.

Live blogging writing.

12:32 -- open already overworked first chapter, just in case instructor expects evidence of draft-in-progress at FIRST CLASS tonight. Jitters. Fraud police around every corner. Should not be drinking coffee, that's for sure.

12:42 -- feel like getting up out of the chair. Don't I need to take off shoes and put on slippers? Gritting teeth, keep butt in chair. Close blog and get back to work now. Think I should get out of chapter 1 and move on to draft a new scene. Get the crap down on the page. Think I should look up the definition of scene. 

From Wikipedia, of course: In fiction, a scene is a unit of drama. A sequel is what follows; an aftermath. Together, scene and sequel provide the building blocks of plot for short stories, novels, and other forms of fiction.

Since I totally don't structure my writing, I'm pretty much screwed. Maybe when Han goes to school full-time I can get that job as a toll booth operator. Oh yeah, we don't have toll booth operators here in Seattle. Back to work.

Okay, I've been structuring my story. Doesn't that count for something? Can't I structure my scenes (and sequels, which I never, ever think about) AFTER I get the crappy second draft down on paper? BACK TO WORK for real. Now.

Oh. My. God. My instructor is the first name listed under References in this Wikipedia entry. Which means she will take one look at me and throw me out of class tonight.

Went on Amazon and bought two books by instructor. Will have them Thursday. I've bought nine books on writing since I signed up for this class. Back to work. It's now 1:09.

1:47 -- still working chapter 1. I had to put some flashback info in after nixing the first three chapters (all that work squished into one little paragraph). And now I have to figure out how to plausibly make Eleanor let Theo tag along almost immediately. I mean, he's kind of weird, but also kind of cute. Why would she let him hang out right away? Because Sam likes him. Because it's awkward to tell him to get lost? 

I wasn't sure Ichiro was still on the team. I'm glad to see he is. I like him. Theo is wearing an Ichiro jersey. Do they call them Jerseys in baseball? 

I wish I hadn't turned up the heat. It's hot in here. 

2:20 -- Eleanor gets embarrassed easily, as it turns out. Go figure. I wish I knew a song that included the lyrics, "We all got to have a mission." Speaking of missions and bad grammar, I got to turn down the heat like right now. And I have 39 minutes until pickup. When was the last time I wrote this book? December 26. 

I left some adverbs in. So there. I have 28 minutes.

2:48 -- Now we're in the back room of the 7-Eleven. Again. Eleanor's just glad Theo is keeping Sam busy, which is why she's letting him hang out. She's a little single-minded. When I got up to turn down the heat my knees reminded me I'm old. Better than the alternative. Now I'm knocking off (and I was on a roll) so I can meditate for my remaining 15 minutes. Maybe it will help with tonight. Firsts are always difficult for me. First Hugo House class. First "advanced" class with the word "master" in it. Crap.

Han had a febrile seizure late this afternoon. He's okay now. He'd been sick all day with a fever and a 'stomach ache.' He slept, and ate and drank almost nothing. Around four, when the skiiers came home, he finally ate a few berries and watched a some Nemo. I hoped he was coming out of it.

Then he wandered into the office where I was jumping rope, trying to break loose from a paralyzed day. He laid down on the floor with his blanket. He does that sometimes if one of us is working in there and he's boycotting nap. Only this time, when I turned around a couple minutes later, he was in an unnatural, face-down position. His legs moved weirdly. For some reason, I knew immediately that he was seizing but my brain jammed. I turned him over. His face was blank. He wasn't with me. His lips looked blue. I shrieked nonsense. "Han! What are you doing?" I felt helpless. I called 911 on my cell. It seemed to take forever to connect. All I could think was every second mattered. Every second. He could die if I wasted even one second. I sent a freaked-out Iona to get Ewan, who was in the shower. Han stopped his bizarre dance after a couple, maybe several, minutes. He wasn't with me. His eyes looked somewhere else.

The firepeople came (one was a woman!). The main guy told us what was up. Many kids have seizures with a fever (febrile seizures). It is common. I yelled, "But he's still not himself! He has this birthmark!" The firepeople were nice and very good. They were confident. They were not alarmed. They said, "You can watch him or you can take him in." They said, "You can call us again if you need to."

We took him to urgent care, Children's Hospital, in Bellevue. By the time we got there, Han was himself, demanding a cereal bar when he saw Iona eating one. The doctor was calm. She looked at him, in his ears, made him pee in a basin. She gave him amoxicillin for an ear infection. I learned that a child's fever doesn't even have to be high to cause a seizure.

Han is asleep beside me. He will be fine. I thought I was going to lose him.

Iona asked what I would like to be if I was not me.
1. A boy carpenter with my hair sticking out every which way.
2. Christopher Hitchens.
3. Lynda Barry.
4. Iona.
5. Mother Theresa.
6. Neko Case.
7. Shel Silverstein.

My mom and sisters make the best pies. I don't eat leftover pie. But I guess that story's about to change, because I just downed a piece of leftover Mom's pecan next to one of Kathy's pumpkin with day-old whipped cream spread all over the top and it was pretty much like heaven.

I am seriously considering changing the name of this blog to writing into the void. I've been absent for so long I have to blow the dust away before I type (or poke, since I'm doing this on my iPhone). I am sure I've alienated my ten readers.

But today I wrote 820 words. Can I second draft this baby in a holiday month? Yes, it's the same book I've been writing for two years. Fourteen scenes written(ish) and eighteen to go. How much crap-on-the-page tolerance can I muster?

Time will tell. My heart is beating a little faster.

I am badass.

We are remodeling our house. No, we are not, Stuart and His Guys are. I will likely miss Stuart when this is all over, but I will welcome the dishwasher with open arms and loving kisses. Last night I went to lock the new front door and found that it didn't want to lock. After moaning and swearing I got a screwdriver and took off the strike plate, and then it locked.

Today our interwebs went out. I called Comcast. The Comcast feller was nice, but he didn't solve my problem. I called them again at 9:30 tonight. The guy I got, Bert, was really nice and even funny. But our conversation ended with an apology from Bert to me. Fifteen minutes later I changed a setting and the light on the Apple Express thingy went from flashing yellow to green. I did it. I did. By myself. 

This is all to say that when I take the time I can solve the problem. But before I learned that lesson (again) I chose to grab the kids and escape to The Mall to get some inspiration for certain in-demand holiday wish lists and eat dinner and maybe buy myself a pick-me-up gift. I am so sick of washing dishes, I really can't tell you. Like the thought of cleaning wetfoodshit out of that drain catcher one more time makes me want to vomit. Ah, the problems I face, they are insurmountable.

So we escaped to The Mall and went to the Independent Toy Store that rawks even though their web site is hideous, rather than Toys 'R Us, because I can't help it, I'm listening to the 99% and they're getting to me. And we've lost two great indie toy stores in the four and half years we've lived here and that makes me want to weep.

So, in summary, I am hardcorebadass with a Philips and I fixed the Apple Express thingy by accidentally changing a network setting I probably messed up in the first place. I prevailed. And we went out and had some fun tonight.

She wants to wait up for the real deal on Christmas Eve.

I kind of want this. But I think Han wants trains. Or elaborate plastic fantasy figures.

"I love all these!"

This was after Han, terrified, refused to go anywhere near Santa. Not for a candycane. Not for an Altoid. I have a $23 photo of Iona sitting on Santa's lap by herself, and they gave us two horrible flashing plastic snowflakewands.

We ate at Nordstrom. This is the ladies' lounge. Han was dancing to ELO.

And a gratuitous trippy photo from Thanksgiving.

Playing with ink and a brush.

Part 1.

State of me today.

There is a wall of noise in my head, and outside my head. Guys whose names I do not know are sanding the floors directly above me as part of a major remodel that kicks us out of the house today. And it is Monday, and it's raining, raining, raining, the first real rain we have had in a while. Plus I yelled at the kids this morning as I tried to get Iona to school early. Her teacher, for whom I have a lot of respect, suggested it's beneficial for them to be there fifteen minutes before school starts so they can "transition." If only all of life was so gentle. Of course it is, most change is gradual, but we fail to identify those transitions. "Here YOU, this is the transition from youth to middle age. It's happening now." Or maybe, "Time to transition to a surge of joy from just sitting at the beach watching Ewan play in the surf with the kids, here it comes…now! Okay, get ready, 1, 2, 3...it's gone."

I had intense dreams last night about male friends from high school. Two friends in particular -- one is someone with whom I'm very close now, and the other was my first real love, I guess. Like many high school relationships, our love was blissful for maybe two or three weeks before Other Girls started to complicate things. Maybe there were Other Boys too, but my memory says that happened later, after he kissed that first Other Girl when he was supposed to be kissing only me. In the parking lot of his church, by a chain link fence. Or so I heard from a friend who was Catholic. I was fifteen. There should be a book of rules that states it's okay to kiss ANYONE when you're fifteen and sixteen, and maybe even when you're seventeen and eighteen. But my book has always had as rule #1: IF YOU PAY ATTENTION TO ANYTHING BUT ME I WILL BE RABIDLY JEALOUS.

But ANYWAY. This near-comical first relationship was something I tucked in the past around year one into college and gazed upon with slightly bitter amusement from time to time -- until this first love was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor in 2008. He passed away in the first days of 2011, leaving behind a big family and a community that loved them.

I regret that I never could be casual and easy and affectionate with this guy after our fun three weeks. I'm paying for that now, in my dreams, because he shows up frequently. In my dreams he is sick, but I have another chance to show him the pure affection that was part of that early time, and the only part of our interactions that he ever deserved. In my dream last night I took the opportunity to show him that by holding him and trying to comfort him.

Maybe the message is that it's time to get rid of my rule #1. It still gets in my way today.

The noise and the rain and gloom and aftermath of a dream about jealousy and death makes me a little bleak in the soul.