Accessing Ideas Packed in Like Sardines, Except They're Stuck

I read a lot. I read so much that you know my head is absolutely brimming with ideas. But I can't always access them.

When I first read Michael Pollan years ago, it was his book, The Botany of Desire. I enjoyed the book, but I was troubled by a couple of things in it. Thing #1: He included his entire, apparently un-edited, chapter on the potato, and waited until the very end to reveal that the Monsanto GMO he had been talking about had already been pulled from the market. The guy could have at least given us a footnote or something earlier on, but then I suppose people wouldn't have bothered to read the chapter. It seemed a little disingenuous to me at the time, but then I also understand that not all GMO's have been pulled from the market. Thing #2 was the chapter on Cannabis, in which he described the artist's search for access to his own ideas. That chapter reminded me too much of my college boyfriend. It haunted me for weeks.

Orson Scott Card, a Morman, writes about the creative process, and wanting nothing, not even caffeine, to interfere with his brain's normal  function.

I fall somewhere in between. Recreational drugs are absolutely not an option. But am I willing to give up coffee? No. And unfortunately decaf doesn't taste quite the same.

So how do I gain access to my ideas.

My husband and I suppose that time must be a factor. We believe that if I set aside the time every day to sit in front of my computer, or journal, and allow myself to do nothing but write, the ideas will come. Stephen King supports this in his book, On Writing. Ann LaMott supports it in Bird by Bird. I don't remember what Annie Dillard said about it in The Writing Life, but then, it's about time I started reading that book again.

My Grandmother's Kitchen Table, with a Lazy Susan in the Middle

I was sitting in Sunday School, sipping decaff coffee from a paper cup, when I unintentionally visualized a cigarette being tapped into an ashtray. For many years I have closely associated coffee and cigarettes, even though I've never smoked, even though no one in my immediate family smokes. It isn't because the two are paired so often in songs, though they are. It isn't because of that first scene in Stephen King's *The Shining.*  I realized right then that it is because my grandmother used to sit at her kitchen table with her coffee and her cigarettes. She would smoke, and stir her coffee, rapidly with a silver spoon.

My grandfather, her husband, used to sit at that same table with his red-backed playing cards, playing a game of solitaire. She had her crosswords. He had his cards. I don't do crosswords, or play cards alone. But I remember the cigarette being tapped out into a heavy glass ashtray. I remember the cards arrayed on the kitchen table.

P.S. It's my wedding anniversary today. Thirteen years together.

What Happened, Part 3

It is news to me when he tells me that the swelling in our dog's head has gotten worse instead of better. For two days I had been saying, “I think it's working; I think the swelling has gone down.” For two days I had been preparing myself to tell the children their dog is dying.

I've been thinking through all the reasons why it would be better if we didn't have a dog. I've been trying to balance what my heart feels against what my head knows: that we can't afford to take her to the vet for more than the most absolutely necessarily things (that would be the rabies shot), that not having her would save us the cost of dog food every month, that our air filters wouldn't get so clogged, the vacuum bags wouldn't fill up so quickly, the yucky dog smell would go away, and the floors would stay cleaner longer. I wouldn't have to feel guilty about her ears or her flea problem anymore. She wouldn't suffer anymore.

A recent visit with a friend had taught me to accept that sometimes we make really unfortunate mistakes with our pets, the living creatures in our care. When a pet dies, it teaches us the lessons we need to learn in order to better care for future pets. I hate for any living creature to suffer, whatever you may believe about cats and dogs, but despite our best efforts, suffering is an unavoidable fact of life in this fallen world.

I went downstairs and asked my husband if we were going to spend a lot of money on Allie before the end of the week. He said, no, we wouldn't be able to spend any more money on her. She was getting worse and not better. When he took her to the vet that morning, she would probably have to be euthanized.

And that's when my heart broke for my dog. For My Dog. Yes, she is a living creature, and our chosen responsibility, but she's just a dog. Though I don't believe we were ever in any actual danger of losing our child on Monday afternoon, we could have lost Our Child, and that would have been truly devastating. Still, my heart broke for her. I'm the one who didn't want a dog. I'm the one who complained about her hair, her smell, her ears. I'm the one who used to put her out at night so I could sleep, or vacuum, or think, yet there I was, weeping for my dog.

When Michael took her to the vet that morning, I thought I was saying good-bye to her for the last time.

When he came back without her in a surprisingly short amount of time, and I asked him what had happened, he told me there was one more thing the vet was going to try. It was unusual that she had started eating again, a little bit of dog food from my husband's hand, but eating. It seemed worth another shot to save her.

This felt even worse than knowing my pet was dead, because it meant more days of waiting and wondering. I was sure by now that she was going to die anyway, and now we were just dragging it out. It felt worse, but maybe it was better. Dr. Askew did a little minor surgery on her, and we picked her up that night, along with prednasone, and instructions to continue the antibiotic. The next morning she was still alive, and the swelling had gone down. She started eating again. The swelling went down more. I started taking her for walks.

Michael bathed her, and we started babying her, giving her plenty of water, taking her out to pee with regularity (i.e., frequently), keeping her out of the basement. I've stopped ignoring her all day.

Keeping her out of the basement has probably brought about the most significant changes. There's something down there that makes her skin itch, and scale. That's where she picks up the fleas. All this time we have probably been exacerbating her sickness without knowing it, all because I didn't really want a dog that lived in the house.

A week later, though still on meds, Allie is probably healthier than ever. I can't take her on long walks like I want to, but she looks and smells better. This morning when I got up at 5:00 to give her medicine, she was anxious and happy to head out the door. I still wonder what might happen when the antibiotic runs out. We left her outside for a couple of hours one evening, and when we came back she had clawed her wounded ear so that it was bleeding.

Almost a week since I started this blog post, she's gained weight because of the prednasone, and despite the occasional self-mauling, the wound is beginning to heal. I think we'll run out of the antibiotic today, and we're weaning off the other. I still have a dog, and she still sheds, but I love her more now than I did before, so I don't mind as much. I still have my dog.

What Happened Last Week, Part 2: The Cockroach Attacks

I realize I'm risking TMI, but I'll spare you the less necessary details. I'm in the bathroom, and I'm stuck there, when the large, disturbing cockroach appears.

This is the South. I'm used to having these little guys around, but they disgust me to the point that I usually can't even stand to kill them. I can catch and release a lizard, I can kill a wasp, I can capture and release a spider, given a plastic cup and a piece of cardboard, but I cannot deal with cockroaches unless they are already dead.

He crawls around the room from corner to corner. I ignore him as best I can, thinking he'll naturally stay away from me. There's no need for histrionics. Until there is need.

I'm telling you, this thing flies from the bathroom wall to my arm while I am sitting there, and proceeds to make its way up toward my shoulder. No amount of arm shaking or swatting can detour him from his goal, and that's when I start screaming. I refer you to “What Happened Last Week, Part 1” if you wonder why so strong a reaction. He eventually falls to the floor, and that's about when my two little boys arrive to find out what's wrong now.

“The roach was on my arm,” I huff, breathlessly.

Warily, we watch it crawl around the room. I'm still seated, you realize, a captive of this thing, and the fact that there are now other people in the room with me. Next thing we know it flies again, from the corner of the bathroom to land RIGHT ON MY LEG. And that's when we all scream. When I shake it from my lap and try to stomp on it, this thing miraculously survives, And that is when my husband arrives on the scene, ready to dispatch dread creature, only after demanding to know why we're all screaming, that is.

I have damaged my children irrevocably. Now they are afraid of roaches. Especially afraid is my little one, aged four.

You may still be wondering what happened to the dog, right? Next post.

What All Happened Last Week, Part 1

We had a rough week last week, and I talked and explained, both in person and on Facebook, until I was tired of talking about it, but I'll go ahead and talk about it again anyway, because this is real life. This is the way things really happen in this crazy, mixed up world.

Sunday night my husband turns to me and says, "I think Allie is dying." Allie is our yellow lab who is probably mixed with something else, but we don't know what. Allie is the first dog I remember owning. She's suffered from ear infections almost her entire life, and we've never had the funds available to do anything about it. I hate how she sheds, hate how she makes my house smell, hate how she sometimes keeps me awake at night with the noises she makes, hate that she doesn't get the care from us that she should. All the same, I love my dog. I do not want her to die so soon. Not like this. But I don't want her to suffer either.

Monday morning the entire right side of her face was swollen huge, and there was a never-ending string of drool hanging from her lips. Michael took her to the vet. I was anxious while he was gone, wondering whether she would come home with him at all, trying instead to focus on what the boys and I were doing in school. She did come home with him. There were medicines we would try. We'd see what happened, and take her back on Wednesday.

Monday afternoon Michael and I watched the Doctor Who finale for the most current season. I cried a lot. It's was one of those really good, emotional episodes, and every incarnation of the Doctor was referenced.

Monday afternoon I bumped my head really hard on the door handle to the freezer, so hard that I wound up in the floor weeping for at least five minutes. It really hurt. My boys gathered around me wanting to help, but there was nothing they could do.

Monday afternoon, maybe thirty minutes later, I'm cooking bacon and starting to dice an onion for collard greens when I hear a crash followed by my four year old son screaming, my six year old calling for help. I run to the living room only to find my youngest on the floor, the right side of his head covered in blood. I scream for my husband to come quickly, while I run to the bathroom for a washcloth with which to wipe the blood away. He has an ugly gash on his temple, less than half an inch across, but gaping, with a puncture where his head hit the corner of the coffee table. After the emotional trauma of morning and afternoon, I am not prepared to handle this calmly. It is a mercy that my husband works only feet away

We spend the rest of the evening in the Emergency Room. He's fine. No problem. Nothing to worry about. Man stuff, as my brother tells me. My oldest child and I manage to have fun in the waiting room while my husband waits for the doctor with my little one. We play the dot game. We open and start Life of Fred Apples, and he doesn't even seem to mind having to work a few problems after every chapter. We read Magic Treehouse. The kids are in bed by 10.

And then on Tuesday I am attacked by a large and strangely aggressive cock roach.

Mysterious animals

My dog. Yesterday I'm in the kitchen working on something. I don't remember what. Allie, my dog who almost died last week, walks up to me and stands there, staring at the back door.

Oh, I think to myself, I guess she wants to go out.

I take her out like I always do, watch as she travels down the stairs. I sit on the door step waiting, so she'll know she is welcome inside once she's done. She does nothing. She comes right back in the house.

I get back to work until, only seconds later, there she stands again, looking for all the world as though she wants to go out. I repeat the process. Again she does nothing, and I have to call her to come back in side.

I get back to work, but still she stands there, looking as though she wants to go out.

“Will you see if you can figure out what she wants?” I ask my husband.

Michael takes her out, and again she travels down the stairs only to stand there. When he brings her back in he says, “She's a Fox.”

“There's a fox in our yard?”

“No, Allie is a Fox. She goes outside and then forgets why she's there. Must be hereditary.”

Napping in the middle of the day

Okay, so you know how they call a person who likes to get up early in the morning a lark, and a person who likes to stay up late at night an owl? I have recently come to the conclusion that I must be both, because, honestly, my worst time happens to be right in the middle of the day. So recently I have been experimenting with naps.

Now, I read in one article that if you wanted to take a short nap and be ready and alert at the end of it you could drink a cup of coffee beforehand. Since the caffeine takes about half an hour to take effect, it should wake you right up at the end of approximately 20 minutes.

I tried it today. It didn't work.

It takes me a little while to drink a cup of coffee, I'm guessing ten minutes or so, though I've never timed it. Well, then I had to go to the bathroom. And then my sister called me on the phone. The net result was that I was wide awake by the time I closed my eyes to take that little nap. Better luck next time?

Language: I love it; my husband doesn't. There's so much more about language that I'd really like to learn.

Nobody talks like me, except that I actually do. I use words like ameliorate, or imbued. I look up the meanings sometimes when I'm not sure. I don't always remember to look up spellings. Since I've taken to letter writing recently, I've noticed some alternative spellings creeping in. Sometimes I use an s when what I really need is a z.

Someone asked about an old English pronunciation on Sunday. These are not things we typically discuss in church, but it did come up, and that's when I realized a benefit of teaching my children the 70+ phonemes that Romalda Spalding identifies. If I learn how they are pronounced in English, without the prompting of a familiar word-surround, it'll probably be a lot easier for me to read the alternative pronunciations that occur in other languages. Phonics instruction suddenly becomes a much more exciting idea to me.

Speaking of phonics instruction, I thought and fretted over what sort of program to use with my children this coming year, thought about it all summer, trying on different possibilities and notions without actually spending any money. And then I thought, why not just do whatever Andrew Pudewa recommends. I like him. I like what he has to say about education. I like that he seems to understand boys in a way that I haven't found elsewhere. So after agonizing some more, I realized, Hey, I can try it. I'll just consider this year a trial run of Primary Arts of Language (PAL). I hope to get the package in the mail today. I'll want to start putting it together immediately. I can't wait.

I'll let you know how that goes.

A Totally Biased Review of Nancy Pearcey's book, Total Truth

10/30/14***I'm going to have to revisit this book now that I've read Saving Leonardo. There were times, particularly in chapter two when Pearcey again discussed the fact/value divide, that I yet again felt frustration with Pearcey, verging on anger, but I stuck with Saving Leonardo. There were times when I thought she was saying some particular form of art that I had enjoyed in the past was valueless, only to find out later that she wasn't saying that at all. Pearcey urges us to be discerning cultural consumers, and to combat a decaying culture, not with boycotts and protests, but with the creation and dissemination of good cultural products. At least that's what Saving Leonardo was about. I continually struggle with the fact that my own raising was such that there was no fact/value divide, I struggle with it because it makes it hard for me to relate to the culture I've been planted in, even within the Christian Community. I wouldn't trade it for anything, but it does make practical and relational life rather tricky.

4/27/13

Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm trying to establish a bookshelf entitled "highly recommended books that have infuriated me." This book would go on it.

I know that I cannot give this book a fair review because Nancy Pearcey pushed all the wrong buttons as far as I'm concerned. I try to read, even books I don't like, on their own merits, but it was impossible for me to do so with this one. I kept getting the feeling that the author's alternative vision, which she had only hinted at up to that point, was one I would eventually be unable to sign onto, and by the time I reached Part II I had to give up, because my husband was tired of hearing me complain about it.

Even thinking back on it now I have that hot, uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach, all of which is to say that my review should certainly not be trusted.

Let me tell you who I think does the philosophical part of this thing better. I am unable to review the scientific apologetic, because I couldn't muster up enough interest to read it, and therefore know nothing about it. Eugene Peterson's book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, is great on how faith permeates our lives. I haven't been able to finish it either, only because it is too rich, and I haven't recently been able to give it the attention it deserves. I also think that James K.A. Smith's book, Introduction to Radical Orthodoxy, while technical, offers a much better understanding of what has actually been going on philosophically throughout modernity and post-modernity. When it comes to those things I think Pearcey is far too unsympathetic to address them properly.

Man, I hate to be so mad at a book, and I really do hope to be able to give it another chance at some moment in the future when I can evaluate it more calmly.

I hear her Saving Leonardo is terrific, but I admit that based on this first experience I am too suspicious to be willing to give it a chance yet.

Additional note: I read this book about a year ago, and thought I might finally be ready to revisit it, but I was wrong.

View all my reviews

If I were a habitual drinker, I would have given it up immediately.

I started a fire in my kitchen last night while trying to make the kids popcorn. Wanna know how I did it?

I forgot that you never want to leave your oil on the stovetop on high. This is a lesson I should have learned long ago, but I usually remember, while making popcorn, that you're only supposed to set your eye to medium. It had been a while, I guess.

And I couldn't find the baking soda to put the durn thing out. I had to throw the lid on there instead.

Thankfully, no popcorn was lost in the conflagration, no flesh was burnt, and no kitchen surfaces destroyed. I remembered to deprive the flame of oxygen long enough to set it on the steps outside and find the many, many boxes of baking soda I had stashed away. I didn't need the baking soda by then, but poured it on in quantity anyway.

I made a smaller batch of popcorn later and learned a new trick, thanks to Elise Bauer, of my favorite cooking blog, SimplyRecipes.com. After the popcorn has popped, you pour it out into a bowl, then you put your butter in the pan the popcorn popped in to melt it. It worked beautifully, the butter melted into a lovely froth, plus it saved me one more dish to wash. Thank you very much.

No more kitchen fires, please.

"I love technology, but not as much as you, you see. But still, I love technology..."

Don't you just hate the way that technology has nurtured our natural impatience? I have been pleased to note that my family's less than stellar web access has served to counteract some of technology's negative effects. In fact, I am even grateful that we don't have access to every piece of lightning-fast technology my heart desires, though I do have two items on my list:

• One of those internet capable devices that streams online video to your TV, so that we can watch movies without paying the library fees that inevitably occur when your organizational systems do not operate at optimum. It would also gratify my ego if we were to get books every time we went to the library instead of DVDs. So maybe those library fees are good for my character after all.
• Whatever the device is that you can get to stream music from a centralized location into any room of the house. Yeah, I'd like that.

Whatever devices I may or may not have, I'd prefer they didn't control me. I try to remember that technology is ideally supposed to serve me, not the other way around, but it can be really challenging not to give in to the flashing red light, or green, or whatever color your light happens to be.

Practice patience. Don't give into the Power.

A Work in Progress: Schooling, Teaching, figuring this thing out.

We're already a whole month into the new year and I haven't told you all the things I want to tell you.

So I'm going to dive right in, and keep it short.

They warned me that homeschooling would leave little time for housework. I didn't believe them at first. As difficult as I have always found the housework, I was sure I would be able to do both. After all, I'm only teaching one child at the moment.

More than a semester in, I still haven't figured out how to include the four year old in what the six year old and I are doing. I haven't figure out how to decide when to take a day off, and when not to. Schooling, like parenting, is a work in progress.

This particular morning, I know I'm not ready for our math lesson. But it's a tremendous thing for me to know that in advance, rather than finding it out at the last minute with lesson immanent. It's also a tremendous thing for me to know that I have twenty minutes between my first and second sessions to get math ready.

Because I've divided our work day into sessions.

• Michael has his own assignments for session one while I continue to prepare for my day.
• My first session involves CC materials, i.e., timeline, science, English, and history sentence.
• Second session includes a lesson from Saxon math; reading and dictation from Story of the World, Volume One: Ancient Times; and reading and dictation from another, child-selected story or book. Parker, being six, dictates something he remembers from the story to me, not the other way around, and I record it for him, then have him read it back to me.
• Third session has a lesson from First Language Lessons, and anything else I think we need to cover at that time.

There are other books and workbooks we use, such as for spelling and phonics, but I've started alternating those with Story of the World, since I only read from it two to three times a week. I keep it simple because this is our first year and he's not ready to settle down for long stretches at a time. Parker gets three breaks between sessions, and each one is limited to twenty minutes.

So far this is working better than anything else I have tried. There is structure, but it is not a confining structure.

It's time for me to teach.

It Works, but Not Immediately--and this is what so often keeps me from thoroughly enjoying poetry (and philosophy too, for that matter)

I am astonished this morning. I plan to respond more to James Sires book, How to Read Slowly, more later, but this morning I cannot hold back and wait to say this.

I read a poem this morning, a poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins this morning, and got it, at least a little bit, understood it in some sense. I read it twice last night, and it was nothing to me but a jumble of words and sounds, but this morning, even though I had forgotten all about it in the night, this morning it suddenly and unexpectedly made sense to me. I knew how to read it this time, even though I didn't know how to read it before.

Can I reprint it here, or must I satisfy myself with providing a link?

Hurrahing in Harvest

I don't do a lot of poetic analysis if I can help it, so I cannot tell you what I got from the poem, and don't really wish to, but what astounds me is that I read these words last night and didn't understand the rhythm of them, and when I read them again this morning, all of a sudden I did.

I want to understand and appreciate poetry, I really do, but I do tend to be like the tourist that Sire describes in his book, moving too quickly to really see what I am looking at. We do this in life too, you know.

And what I realize just now is that part of the Hopkins poem is the gazing, not any kind of sleazy voyeurism, but the taking time to see what's there. The Carolyn Weber book, Surprised by Oxford, is about this in some sense too.

I am one who wants to see. There is enough of the mystic in me for that. But I don't always see. I don't always see.

Read the poem, if you wish to, and if you don't understand it, read it again. And then read it again. And then don't read it for a while, and then read it again. This is one of the ways that poetry works. How easily I forget that.

Seasons...perhaps we anticipate a season of travel without quite realizing we are doing so...

This is a blog post, not a Facebook update. I realized it three sentences in. I don't always catch it.

I always said that Tuscaloosa was a nice place to live so long as you didn't have to stay here all the time. My family used to go away for whole summers at a time, and Daddy always took his sabbatical year in another place. I've been in Tuscaloosa far too long.

It's been what? Twenty years since I lived anywhere else? I had no idea it had been so long. I've never taken the time to tote it up before. The rest of the family spent a year in New York while I was in college, New York which is beautiful when the snow falls, but can also be bleak when the leaves are off the trees. They were at West Point. I visited them twice.

Since then it has been nothing but Tuscaloosa all the time, except for the occasional week-long excursion. A family took me with them to Gatlinburg once. Daddy took me with him to Mexico City on a trip with the Evangelicals to the Universidad there. We drove as a family cross-country to attend a campus ministry training seminar in Colorado once. We've been to Alabama's beaches more than once, and my husband's family lives in Huntsville.

But now I'm getting the traveling bug. He (my husband) prefers not to travel merely for the sake of traveling, but I begin to think we need the experience now of being forced to interact with unfamiliar people, unfamiliar cultures even within our own citizenship, though I lack the skill. I feel we need to scope out this country we live in, trying on new geography until we find the place that fits. But I'm not sure how we'd do it, and we'd miss our beds back home.

And with the University here, of course, the world comes to us.

But I hope perhaps this is a preparing. Maybe we are to be called away soon, and this longing to move (move freely, I mean, not necessarily in terms of a moving van-type move) comes on full-force so that we will be ready to answer the call. Maybe. Maybe we were tied here before in ways I could not perceive, but maybe change is coming and God is protecting me, preparing me for change. Maybe. Sometimes I think speculation is vain, and other times I think the speculation is the Holy Spirit sending messages to God's children. I couldn't tell you which this one is. It's certainly hard to distinguish between the two.

All I know is that all of this, this discomfort, this emerging need, must be building trust and faith. I think these past two years must be important, as hard as they've been, though others may say, "Aw, you've had it easy." Though sometimes I accuse God of torturing me, I also know anything He does is good, and for our good because He is Good.

This is where I metaphorically stand, watching the bamboo of my yard sway in the breeze.

I wonder if Christmas is about newness in a different way than the New Year is about newness, or Spring is about newness. I wonder.

The Problem with Memoir is...

You know what the problem with reading spiritual memoirs is, don't you? By the time you reach the end of the book you feel like you know the author, but you really don't. You can't pick up the phone and call them, say hey, I know we haven't talked in a while, but remember me? How's your week been?

Well, I suppose you could, maybe, but you'd probably come across as a lunatic.

And yet, I really do like the genre. I'm reminded of a quotation from Wayne Boothe that I used to use as the tag line under my email signature: "In life we never know anyone but ourselves by thoroughly reliable internal signs, and most of us achieve an all too partial view even of ourselves (The Rhetoric of Fiction, 3). Even though we know that the author has used their creative and selective vision to tie their personal story together, we still come away knowing something about them that we otherwise wouldn't discover from reading their profile off a fly leaf. I like knowing something about what another person, different from me, has experienced, mediated though it is, and must be.

My favorite memoirs:

• Most any nonfiction written by Madeleine L'Engle, as her writing style is largely memoir-esque, even outside of her published journals.
• Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner
• An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
• Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis
• most recently, Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber

There's a whole world of memoir I have yet to discover. Name your favorites?