Yesterday's words

Yesterday was the first day I managed 1000 words in weeks. It's too bad the words weren't on A Gift of Time! But they're sort of fun, so here they are:

****

“It’s so bizarre,” Akira said thoughtfully, staring up at the motionless ceiling fan. 

“Is the baby moving?” Zane asked, sliding a hand along the slight curve of her belly. He hadn’t been able to feel a kick yet, but that didn’t stop him from trying. 

“No, not that.” Akira tilted her head sideways, letting it come to rest against his shoulder. She sighed, feeling content with her position although mildly exasperated by her body’s demands. 

“Bizarre,” Zane repeated. “Would that be the miracle of life growing inside you?” 

“A natural process that women have been managing for thousands of years.” Her voice was dry. Of course, it was a little strange that she’d met her baby’s previous incarnation—she imagined that not too many women throughout history could claim the same. But no, that wasn’t what she’d been thinking about.

“What then?” Zane stroked up, long fingers reaching the underside of her breast and lightly tracing a pattern along her skin. 

“How much I want red meat.” Not just red meat. Steak. Gorgeous steak. Red in the middle, seared dark on the outside. Mmm, with salt. Luscious salt, bursting with flavor on her tongue. Or maybe a hamburger, juicy and rich, dripping with . . . ick. Fat and blood. That’s what hamburgers dripped with. But even knowing that didn’t change the way her mouth watered at the thought.

Zane chuckled. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” Akira protested.

“Sure it does. The baby needs some protein.” 

“I ate a pound of edamame last night. A whole pound. That’s about five times the amount of protein the average person needs.”

Zane’s hand stilled. “I read something . . .” He pulled away, Akira’s head dropping to the pillow as he got out of the bed and crossed to the dresser on the other side of the room. 

“Hey!” She complained. She’d been comfortable. And his clever hands had been starting to stir up something a little more interesting than hunger for steak. 

He looked back over his shoulder and grinned at her. “Coming right back,” he promised. He grabbed his smartphone and started tapping.  “Soy,” he reported, “contains phytic acid.”

Akira raised her eyebrows. “And?” She’d never even heard of phytic acid. Why had Zane? 

“It blocks the absorption of minerals.” He joined her on the bed, lying down and putting a proprietary arm across her. 

“Minerals such as . . .”

“Calcium, magnesium, and iron,” he said cheerfully. “Also zinc and mercury, if they matter.” 

“Let me see that.” Akira held out a hand for his phone and he passed it to her, a small smile playing around his lips. 

She read the information on the website he’d found, scowling. “Damn it. All right, maybe I’m craving meat because I need iron. Fine, I’ll eat broccoli.” She couldn’t suppress a shudder at the thought. Broccoli. She loved broccoli. But not for the past few months. Just the thought of it brought a nasty taste into her mouth. 

Zane leaned down. “Good job, Henry,” he whispered to her abdomen. “You and me, bud? We’re gonna be friends.” 

Akira groaned. What was a semi-vegetarian doing getting involved with a confirmed meat-and-potatoes man? Worse, having his baby? 

Zane grinned. “How about I pick up a couple filets? Fire up the grill? We can have steak and baked potatoes for dinner tonight.”

“Steak and salad,” she answered grumpily. 

“Baked potatoes. With butter. Maybe some sour cream.” 

Akira closed her eyes. Why did that sound so good? What was Henry doing to her? Having her body taken over by a creature with his own tastes and desires was not what she had expected from pregnancy. Was it like this for every new mother? 

“Knock, knock!” The cheery voice from the other side of the bedroom door stopped Akira’s response to Zane before she could make it. It was almost with relief that she called out, “What is it, Rose?” 

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but . . .” Rose paused and Akira’s eyes narrowed. Was that nerves she heard in the ghost girl’s tone? Rose wasn’t the nervous type. “I need your help.” 

***

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be okay. She acts real mean, but she wasn’t like that when I knew her.” 

“When you knew her? When she was alive, you mean?” Akira didn’t bother to look toward the ghost seated in the passenger seat next to her. Florida drivers were insane. She needed to keep her eyes on the road. 

“Uh-huh,” Rose responded eagerly. “She was a few years younger than me in school, so I didn’t know her well, but she was nice enough.”

“Nice enough. Huh.” Akira thought back to the mean old woman ghost she’d met briefly on her first day in Tassamara. Meredith, her realtor, had been showing Akira houses supposedly available to rent. Akira hadn’t even been willing to go into the little lakefront cottage. The angry ghost grumbling on the porch had made it clear that she wasn’t welcome. “Is that what they call damning with faint praise?” 

“No, really,” Rose answered. “I’ve visited her a few times recently. As long as you’re not planning on moving into her house, she’ll be perfectly friendly.” 

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” This time Akira dared a glance at her passenger. To Akira, the ghost looked almost like a typical teenage girl—only her full skirt and blonde curls showing that she was out of her own time—but Akira knew she was more than that. And more than simply a ghost, too. 

“Yes.” A little frown between her eyes revealed Rose’s worry. “She’s determined to get rid of the new tenant.” 

Akira turned her gaze back to the road. Determined. She didn’t like determined ghosts. She didn’t like angry ghosts, either. She sighed. “I was supposed to be writing wedding invitations today.” 

“Zane said he’d take care of them,” Rose said.

Akira didn’t roll her eyes, but a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, as she tried to imagine Zane’s version of formal invitations. It wouldn’t be careful calligraphy, that was for sure. If she had to guess, he was picking up the phone and calling most of the people on their list. And then he’d tell her it was all taken care of. 

She dropped a hand to her belly.

Bitter break up songs

We were in the car on the way to school when Katy Perry's Teenage Dream played on the radio, right after Taylor Swift's We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together. I mentioned to Rory that the singers singing about infatuated romance two years ago have now moved on to bitter break-up songs and something about his expression -- first thoughtful, then mildly horrified -- made me laugh so hard I almost choked. I can't remember the last time I laughed like that. I'm sure whenever it was he was the one who made me do it and we were also in the car, because it felt like such a familiar experience, but wow, it felt rejuvenating. I think I've felt happier all morning long because of it.

I wrote yesterday for the first time in weeks. Literally, weeks. This morning, I expected--somewhat gloomily-- to hate everything I wrote last night, but  in fact, I quite liked it. Whee. I haven't yet written any more today, but I'm trying to make a pact with myself that I'll write 1000 words a day of something. If not Time, then a short story or a letter or a blog post. Anything that lets me get back into the habit of fingers moving across the keyboard. This counts as a couple hundred words, but there will be more to come later.

From Fanfiction to Self-Publishing: Ten Tips for Making the Move

Tip #1: To make money, write a lot and write for a long time. Don’t think of writing as a quick path, but as a long-term trek. Every book you write is a seed you’re planting. It may take a long time to reap the rewards, but you could be harvesting that seed indefinitely.

Tip# 2: Spend what you’re comfortable spending. You can self-publish while still treating your writing as a hobby.

Tip #3:  Download Building Your Book for Kindle from Amazon for everything you need to know about formatting an ebook. Your filtered HTML file should work for ePub, too.

Tip #4: Editors aren’t magic.

Finding an editor: www.alanrinzler.com

Faking Editing: Find readers at fictionpress and wattpad; critiques at critiquecircle.com, critters.org, and projectteambeta.com, and an online software editor at prowritingaid.com

 

Tip #5: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough, but take your time while editing.

Tip #6: Cover design isn’t rocket science. Some basic guidelines:

·         The thumbnail is the most important size

·         Keep the imagery simple

·         Use colors to catch attention and set a mood

·         Good typography matters for than fancy art – make your title readable

·         Attractive doesn’t matter

Design site: 99designs.com

Tip #7: Distribution decisions aren’t set in stone, but it’s easier to start small and expand.

For audio: ACX.com

Tip #8: Dead trees actually do sell and CreateSpace does a nice job.

Tip #9: Most promotion is a waste of time and energy.

Info on A/B testing: www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/24/the-ultimate-guide-to-a-b-testing

Tip #10: Write fanfiction!

A Gift of Thought

A Gift of Thought is free today on Amazon (and for the next couple of days, too). That's because I'm at GeekGirlCon in Seattle. I'd create a link, but I'm on my iPad and typing is too hard, plus I haven't had any coffee yet, so the chance that the link would go sadly awry is high. But it's been fascinating. I've never been to a convention before, rather than a conference, and maybe this falls somewhere in between. But there are loads of people in costumes wandering around amidst discussions of misogyny and gender and online space and community. I've always thought web design conferences were an improvement over code conferences and this is definitely the step up from that. I'm a little nervous that my presentation is too practical, not philosophical, but c'est la vie, it's way too late to worry about that now. Pam says I need to go slower so people have time to write down the links, so I'm still trying to figure out how to do that. I might have to cut something. Anyway, time to find some caffeine -- but download Thought if you haven't and tell your friends, if they're the type to enjoy quirky ghost stories!

August 5th

I sort of anticipated that tomorrow would be bad, but today. . . today has been not good. Unexpectedly not good. After about my fourth cry, I finally went outside and swam despite the weather (what's a little rain when you're in a swimming pool, right? it's just the lightning you've got to watch out for) and finally managed to get away from my relentless brain. And then getting out of the pool, I thought, "damn, I'm just so sad, I really need to call Mom, she always..." and then there I was again.

There ought to be a word other than "anniversary." Anniversary sounds too positive, too festive. Anniversaries are for celebrations. But I can't figure out what the word would be.

Cooking

Twelve years ago, or thereabouts, I decided to learn to cook.

It didn't go well.

I'd been living in a basement with no real kitchen. I had a little hotplate, a refrigerator, and a microwave, but we mostly lived on bread, cheese, fruit and yogurt. I'd cook the occasional meal, but pasta with grated cheese sprinkled on it counted as a meal to me. But I'd moved into an apartment with a real kitchen and I didn't want to spend the rest of my life needing to go out to restaurants to get a decent meal.

So I experimented a lot, but I followed recipes precisely. I made shopping lists and bought ingredients and made fancy concoctions like pork chops with a cherry Marsala glaze. That was delicious, by the way, which is why I still remember it, but R won't eat pork, so it was also frustrating. I tried to make eggs benedict, which meant learning to poach eggs first -- so much harder than it sounds -- and then making hollandaise sauce. I gave up on that one. I made innumerable pasta sauces, most of them mediocre, and I tried to master making decent rice, but failed. (R makes rice when we want it and has since he was 8.)

Still, eventually, I finally developed a little repertoire of foods I could make and consistently expect to turn out well: stir-fried beef with spinach, meat loaf, chicken piccata. And I kept trying. I mastered holiday meals -- cranberry sauce is by far the most fun, but I can pull together a basic Thanksgiving dinner with a few interesting elements without stress or fear. Eventually, I became someone who liked to cook.

Not a cook, though. I didn't know what the difference was but I knew there was one. I wasn't a cook, just a person who knew how to make a few meals.

Yesterday, I made my way to the kitchen around noon, hungry and feeling grumpy for no real reason. I opened the fridge door. Nothing to eat. Sigh. We have apples but they have that squishiness of fruit that was frozen or has sat for too long. Yogurt, but it was Greek and I wasn't in the mood for the tang. I thought about nuking a hotdog, but both the buns and the hotdogs were frozen. But there was a big thing of leftover cold spaghetti, no sauce.

I pulled it out. Not much, but it was food. Did I want to eat it cold or nuke it? Then it occurred to me that I could saute it to heat it up, like turning leftover rice into stir-fried rice. That'd be interesting, and give it a little more flavor. Olive oil? No, I didn't want to be able to taste the oil. I don't like fried rice made with olive oil, so I pulled out the canola and put a little in a pan and started it warming, then started rummaging through the drawers. No garlic, I really need to pick some up. No ginger, no surprise. A red onion, though. I chopped up a little red onion, tossed it into the pan.

When I went to put the oil back into the fridge, I had to shift a few things around to angle the bottle just right. Ouch, leftover veggies from the tray at the wedding reception. Those wouldn't be in good shape, I knew, and they're weren't, with edges brown and carrots dried and white. I picked through them, anyway, chopping off the bad bits and pulling out some broccoli, cauliflower and cherry tomatoes. Threw those in the pan, too, and pitched the rest.

And then I was starting to feel creative. I've made pad thai before, but I didn't have anywhere near the right ingredients. I did have cilantro, green onions and lime, though. I pulled those out. And an egg, because even though I have no idea why you need to add a scrambled egg to stir-fried rice, it tastes better when you do. And then I grabbed the srirachi bottle. Perhaps I'd test our theory that everything tastes better with a little srirachi. (It is an awesome ingredient to add to homemade chicken soup, incidentally.)

Ten minutes later, I was eating lunch. It was yummy. So good that I wish there were leftovers so I could have them for breakfast.

I think I might just be a cook.

Birds

A year ago Saturday my mom went into the hospital. She never came home again. This year, my dad got married on Saturday. I suppose it was a better way to spend the day than the way we spent it last year. But...yeah. Anyway, my brother and his daughter came to visit for the wedding so there were many photo op events -- the wedding, the reception, dinner at my house, a picnic and inner-tubing at Kelly Park, the Science Museum, that kind of thing ... but that's not what I want to write about.

On Monday morning, I was sitting on the patio when suddenly, "thunk." A little dark blob whizzed across my line of sight, and hit the ground. The dog immediately investigated and her level of curiosity and excitement was so high that after a minute, I followed suit, despite thinking it was a big bug. It wasn't. It was a bird. Maybe a baby, maybe not. It had hit the spinning fan and it was sprawled on the ground, clearly hurt, its wings a mess, its feet curled oddly, but still breathing, still in distress.

What do you do with a hurt bird? I had no idea. It was the damn baby rabbits all over again. I picked it up and set it on the side of the grill, so that it was away from the dog. I watched it lying on its side, struggling to breathe, its heart beating fast, its eyes closing and going from dark beads to cloudy white orbs. The feathers were so soft, but I didn't touch it after I set it down, just talked to it and grieved as it died. I couldn't bear to bury it right away, so I took the dog for her walk and did my morning chores and then I went back out on the patio to deal with the body. I didn't look at it -- didn't want to see it -- until I'd found the trowel. I figured I'd bury it next to the two baby rabbit bodies -- my little garden is turning into quite the cemetery. But when I finally came back to it, it was in a different position. Eyes closed, it was huddled small, but on its feet, and as I watched, I could see its heartbeat.

Huh.

Great. So it was going to take a long time to die. Lovely. Just what I needed. But I bent over it and its eyelids fluttered and then closed again, so it was clearly not ready to be buried.

I went back into the house and found a little bowl and brought out some water and put it next to the bird and then we went off to the park and did our inner-tubing and our picnicking and the whole time, I kept wishing that I'd added some sugar to the water. I'd brought out some millet, too, but it was only after we were on our way that I realized that the shape of its beak meant that it was a nectar drinking bird, not a seed eater.

We drove home, and I came into the house and I dreaded looking out onto the porch. I knew there'd be a little brown shape huddled on the grill and I knew that I would feel helpless and indecisive and miserable, not knowing how to help it. But no. No shape. I went out with such trepidation -- had it fallen off? Had it tried to fly and landed on the hard ground? Why hadn't I put it someplace soft? But I went out and looked all around and it was gone. Just gone.

It lived. It must have. It must have recovered, and then flown away.

It was such a surprise. Such a delight. A little miracle. For the rest of the day, I could be happy knowing that the bird was out there somewhere, maybe bruised, maybe sore, but at the very least able to fly.

Then two days later, I was driving home from the vet -- $160 poorer but with a dog that I could stop worrying about -- when the car in front of me hit a baby sandhill crane. HIT IT. The car saw it, slowed, and then fucking drove into the bird and drove away. The bird crumpled to the ground, but it was still alive. It was struggling to move, spasmodic twitches of its wings and legs.

I was on Dodd Road, which is a crappy road. Two people died in just about that spot ten days ago. There's a curve and no place to easily stop on the right. The car next to me -- a minivan -- pulled over into the turn lane, but I couldn't. Plus, I had the dog in the car. So I drove home, crying all the way. I'd never seen anything so callous and cruel. The person who hit it -- they saw it. They slowed way down. And then they kept going. Who does that? What kind of sick person sees a two foot tall baby in the road and then just decides to run it over? (That's a picture swiped from wikipedia. Sandhill cranes are a protected species, only 5000 left in the wild according to wikipedia, and if I'd been smart enough to get the license plate of the car, the driver could have been fined.)

The moment I got home, I called the vet and asked if I went back and the bird was still alive, if I could bring it to them. She told me to call Birds of Prey, a bird rescue place in Maitland, so I found their phone number, grabbed a sheet to wrap the bird in, and headed back out. 

It was gone. Totally gone. But two adult sandhills and a baby stood in the grass on the side of the road.

I don't know whether the person in the minivan took the bird somewhere but if he or she did, it must have been alive. Or maybe that baby by the side of the road was the same baby and the car had knocked it over but not hurt it. But either way, I drove home with at least hope that the second bird of the week would survive.

Can I call it a weird week? Two birds that I thought were dead, not dead. It's . . . nice. Also a very odd set of coincidences. One bird is just a nice small miracle. Two? Feels like a sign, except I'm not at all sure of what.