One Month Later

I've spent most of my free time this past month hard at work on my 80s memoir and rewarded myself this morning with a few roses snipped from a bush in our apartment building's yard.  

After two weeks of rain, the blooms that haven't blown are browning and just about done for the year, so I think my fellow tenants will forgive me for having cut three for this small bouquet.  Although a bit bedraggled, it is beautiful and does me good.  

Back at It

The holiday hoopla threw my writing routine out of whack, but this first week of February, I'm finally settling back into one.  This is how dreams live or die, it seems:  A few days of not working toward a goal turn into weeks of not working toward it, and then a couple months have passed, and then a whole half-year, and then the dream becomes something one was involved in in once years ago. . . .I return to this, though, and I will keep returning to it:  to my seat at this table and to these stacks and bags of index cards and diaries and family photos, and to the belief that this matters.  

Onward.

Seven Nice Things

I was nursing a headache most of yesterday--yes, my turn, Lisa!--but am feeling better today for Day Off #2 and have gotten a lot done.  And am just enjoying myself.  Seven sweet things this week:

1.)  'Am still working on my 80s childhood memoir.  Loving!  It!  ♥  That pile of paper scraps in the photo above is all the remaining notes that need to be turned into index cards--which will later be turned into "real" writing.  The pile has shrunk so much since I started this in earnest earlier this year.  My goal for the rest of today is to get as many scraps onto cards as possible so I can move on to the filling-the-notebooks-with-rough-drafts stage of things.  Progress!

2.)  The building manager and a plumber had to stop by earlier this week for routine winter-prep radiator maintenance, and as I welcomed them in,  the plumber glanced around and unexpectedly greeted me with "Oh, I like it in here!  It's very family-oriented!" and moments later commented, "It smells really good in here too!" as he left.  I hardly knew what to say besides thank you, but both remarks made me laugh.  A sweet encounter.  

3.)  A coworker left a thank you on my note that accompanied the cookies I'd brought into work last week and later thanked me in-person.  A day-brightener for me. 

5.)  Chicago Cubs in the World Series playoffs!  I'm not wildly enthusiastic about any one team--I tend to wish them all well--and it would have been a treat for Dad if his Pirates had advanced in the playoffs, but how fun to see the Cubs and their fans having such a great ride this fall.  

6.)  This pup, an English Yellow Lab--

--is now my younger brother's dog.  So sweet!  ♥  My brother, his wife, and somehow-almost-two-year-old Bianca have all wanted a dog for ages, and this one looks so dear. 

7.)  Chilly fall weather has returned, and with it, a pot on the stove here of simmering cinnamon water.  Today's mix is simply cinnamon with vanilla, but as I finish my iced teas while I write this afternoon, I'll throw in the lemon slices too.  Snow flurries and a frost warning are in the forecast for the next few days.  Oh, fall!  Love, love, love.  

'Back to the index cards.  'A sweet weekend to you all. 

You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be. ~ David Viscott

The past two weeks have been wearying, and aside from a Saturday when a combined headache, kink in my neck, and day without sleep found me waving the white flag from my bed, I have plodded on and even have some good things to show for it.  The bathroom has been put back together post-painting, with new shower curtain and curtains too.  The bedroom wall-painting is almost done.  The headboard project is at least begun, with stars, string lights, and waiting-for-payday pillow shams next on its to-do list.  The bedroom curtains are up but lacking their ruffle-trim, tie-backs, and the hankie-patchwork-type sheers I'm planning to hang underneath them.  The 1980s childhood memoir-writing continues. The healthy eating continues.  It feels, though, like I've just been hanging on and getting through this fall so far.  Do you remember the brilliant exchange between the frustrated sheriff and his secretary in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men?  It keeps coming to mind this month.  "What is it that (Justice) Torbert says?"  he asks her.  "About truth and justice."  She distractedly answers, "We dedicate ourselves anew daily.    Somethin like that."  The sheriff responds, "I think I'm goin to commence to dedicatin myself twice daily.  It may come to three fore it's over."  Hear, hear.  I brought in Halloween cookies for my coworkers this week, and the cashier yesterday morning told me "I love your smile" while bagging my groceries, and I'm choosing to accept both gestures as signs that hope is not lost.  :)  Here's to the plodding-on.  

It's the 80s Every Day Here--Or How I'm Writing My Book

As I mentioned in my birthday post in May, I decided awhile back to buckle down and really dig into the 80s childhood memoir I'm writing.  And so I have.  Most days/nights these past few months, I can be found for at least an hour--usually more, because I'm truly loving the whole process and am just determined to keep at it this time until a book comes out of it--sitting here at my green gingham tablecloth-covered table with my seemingly-endless piles of notes, my 1980s diaries, all sorts of memory-jogging ephemera my mom and I have saved all these years, hometown maps, old photos, packages of blank index cards--Mead-brand 3" x 5", and as with the green gingham tablecloth, and my usual black Bic-brand pens and ever-present glasses of iced tea, I'm almost afraid to shake up my routine now by changing any of these details, so I buy these index cards a few packages at a time--and a wide assortment of spiral notebooks--one for each year the final memoir will cover, plus one for family recipes I think I'll be including, is the plan--writing and remembering.  I've never enjoyed writing anything more, which is saying something for this one who has always loved finding the words. 

The old diaries mention all the personal girlhood and family memories, of course--Christmas wishlists, what we ate for dinner, who got in trouble for what, first bra, first deaths, school assignments, school book orders, Papa and Grandma's 50th anniversary party, Dad's local races, Mom's country decorating magazines, my younger brother's new stuffed "Pound Puppy," my older brother's new "Miami Vice" poster, and my proud "I learned how to do a front walkover today!"--

--but also record the drought and scorching temperatures during the summer of 1988, former First Lady Nancy Reagan's mastectomy, and that Michael Jackson's video for "Bad" is really more like a movie.  :)  Diaries are such treasures, and mine are, for this project, a most-amazing resource.  

It makes me happy every day to be getting somewhere with this.  I have a number of other writing projects here that I've started and stopped, and re-started and set aside again, but I'm in such a beautiful groove with this one, it just delights me. 

My parents have been answering the most random questions--"Where did our neighbor Paul work?" and "What model of car was that beige-ish one we had that had the backseat that folded down?" and "By ANY chance, do you guys remember who lived in our house before we loved in?  You DO?!  Oh my goodness!!"--  ♥ 

--and I have been in touch with others recently who have helped me piece a few more memories together.  When I was three or four, I would spend the hours my mom worked outside the home at sweet fifty-plus-year-old Bobbi's house.  This heart-of-gold had been recommended to my mom as simply the best with children, and she truly was.  I loved my days with her.  She had Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls and a big jar filled with marbles, but it was Bobbi herself I most enjoyed.  "Maybe the two have nothing to do with each other," I prefaced a query with a few weeks ago, "but I always associate the smells of lumber and manure with her home.  I've always liked the smell of manure!  It's a good memory for me."  My former babysitter's grown daughter--I am now in touch with this woman's daughter!  I'm having a blast, I tell you!  ♥--responded that this all makes sense because they had, after all, lived on a farm.  And her dad had owned a construction business.  :)  When I reported this to my parents, they immediately said, "Well, yeah.  We could have told you that."  They hadn't known that I'd been wondering all these years.  In this case, though, both the memory-confirmation and the contact with Bobbi's daughter were more than worth the research. 

Bobbi's daughter actually remembered me and my family, it turns out.  I hadn't known until I started looking into it that my dear babysitter had even had children of her own--let alone that her children had known my family--so this was all news to me.  "I remember you and your brother as well as your dad, can't remember your mom," Bobbi's daughter wrote in one of her emails last month.  "I sold the family farm to a couple from New Jersey. It is something else now. My mother is 87 now. . . .I remember your curly hair."  Ha!  ♥  This woman I'd gotten in touch with online not having realized we'd ever met--and until finding her name online I hadn't even known existed--remembers my hair!  I laughed out loud when I read that, and I alternately smile and shake my head at the wonder of it all. 

Picture me at my gingham table, then, with a full-to-bursting heart and ever-growing stacks of index cards as I make notes on 1977-1980 and recapture my memories of 1981-1989.  

One of my earliest memories has always been that of my maternal grandmother's asking me a day or so before my birthday party in 1981 if I was excited to be turning four.  The more I think about it and write about it, the more it's struck me how poignant it is that one of my first memories is of being asked if I'm excited about something--and such a celebratory something.  ♥  A most-beautiful beginning to the lifetime ahead. 

I write, and I write. 

The days/nights that I don't write, though, I read a little more and listen to extra 80s music--"extra" because I'm all about the 80s music, anyway  :) --and just let myself think. 

I can't attend this one--most unfortunately for me, while I work on this--but my twentieth high school class reunion is this summer--so this is very much a season of nostalgia here. 

Many of my former classmates will be hearing from me in the days ahead, of course, even if I can't join them for drinks and dinner just yet. 

And I intend to be at the twenty-fifth reunion, whether I attend it with research questions to ask or a finished book to share.  :)

I have been in touch with a few favorite former teachers recently too, and each bit of contact means the world to me.  Sweet Mrs. T read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH to my class during second-grade afternoons.  Mrs. R, Kindergarten Teacher to Beat All Kindergarten Teachers, would remember me and my mom even when we'd run into her in town when I was in high school.  And wonderful Mr. V encouraged my artwork and turned me on to science too.  I feel so much love for these gifts of people. 

There has such a blessing of love in my life all along, and I feel more grateful for it all the time.  To connect all the dots now, page by page, and note by note, is pure joy. 

The recipe for Grandma's fudge--or "Gramma's," as I spelled it in February 1988--mentioned two photos up is here, by the way.  "Yum!" is right.  And Paul Simon's video for "You Can Call Me Al," one of my favorite songs from the 1980s, noted in the photo above, can be seen here, (speaking of pure joy).  :)  ♪  "A man walks down the street, he says why am I soft in the middle now, why am I soft in the middle, the rest of my life is so hard. . . ."  ♫  Ahhhhhhhhh, the 80s, truly!  Love, love, love. 

The process--or at least, the process so far--is to gather all the 80s-related memories and thoughts I've jotted down onto scrap paper, in my diaries and journals, here on the blog, and sometimes even quickly onto paper towels fast-before-I-forget-this and transfer them to the index cards.  This has taken most of the past three months, and. . .many notes to go before I sleep.  A few years ago, before I'd really declared my intention, even to myself, to write this book, I was jotting down memories onto scraps of paper and saving them--thinking, I suppose, that I could elaborate on them here on the blog or at least transfer them into my journal to record them, so now I have a huge number of scraps and pages to sort through--and in some cases, decipher, if I scribbled the notes too quickly--and rewrite onto the cards.  When I know which year--between 1977 and 1989--the memory is from, I write that onto the index card.  Eventually, I'll rewrite all the "1987" index cards into the "1987" spiral notebook in a more organized way, for example.  And then it will be more writing and rewriting to turn each year's notebook into "Real" Writing.  The 1981 index cards' notes have almost all been transferred into the 1981 notebook now, which is encouraging to me. 

And yes, the (twelve?) spiral notebooks are all different 1980s-themed ones I've been collecting at thrift shops and online.  Mike thinks that's excessive, but why not have 80s supplies around me while I'm otherwise so immersed in the era, says I--and "You're not the one writing it, so what do you care!?" I retort as I return to my Care Bears and Lisa Frank rainbows and Mrs. Grossman stickers. 

I'm still aiming to have a finished draft by my next birthday.  And then the work of submitting it to potential publishers will begin. 

In the meantime here, it is index card-by-index card and a decidedly enthusiastic Val .  ♥

A Giveaway and Six Years of Pretty Little Rough Patches

Six-Year Blog Anniversary Giveaway  ~  Click to enlarge pic.

This month marks six years that I've been writing here.  It was only a mere six months ago, though, that I made the blog public and findable by online search engines.  I Struggle with Shyness:  A post for another day.  :)  It was especially fun and rewarding this past fall and early winter, then, to find comments from new readers in my email inbox--I have all comments emailed to me--and to notice each time another person had found the blog and hit the "Follow" button.  When I learned that big-hearted at Vicki over at 2 Bags Full would be hosting an online blog party today, right before my blogging anniversary, to express her thanks for what blogging has brought into her own life and to help other bloggers meet, I asked to be added to the virtual guest list.  Blogging, even if I've done it quietly and kind of under-the-radar for so many years, has been a sweet thing in my life too, and I share her appreciation of it.  Thank you to Vicki ♥  and welcome to everyone who's visiting here via her party.  :) 

You know how people joke about visiting someone only to have to sit through his/her slide shows of vacations, pets, and family outings?  I'm a person who is thrilled by such things.  Tell me about your best friend from elementary school, your best friend now, the first person who broke your heart, the work you do and the work you want to do, the language you'd love to learn and the lesson you need to learn, the last movie you loved and didn't want to end and the last book you hated too much to finish, the flowers that most remind you of your grandmother, the birthday cake you always bake or buy for your wife, your funniest memory of your grandfather, the dress you'll save forever because you once had a perfect day wearing it, those songs that take you back to high school, that one dog who was your Best Dog EVER, the craziest neighbors you've ever had, and the kindness a stranger showed you the day your child died.  Give me your tired, your poor, your fridges covered in magnet-held family pictures and your scrapbooks bursting open with saved mementos. . . . ♥  Where did you find the piece of driftwood shaped like a seal?!  I love it.  ♥  Is that photo you and your sister when you were kids?!  ♥  Oh!  Your dog by the fireplace Christmas morning!  Look at his FACE!  ♥  Is that sketch of the house that you told me about?  ♥  That has to be your mom's photo above your chair--You look just like her.  ♥  My seventh-grade English teacher always had us spend one class period a week writing journal entries that we would hand in to her to read.  She said that we could write about absolutely anything and that that there was really nothing she didn't think was interesting.  I remember thinking, when I heard her say that, "Well, yeah, I'm the same way."  I hadn't known it until she articulated it, so that realization stuck in my memory.  And now I live in the Age of the Internet and get to see your slide shows and hear your stories this way, and every day, I find someone--and something--else that interests me.  And I love that. 

To celebrate six years here and to thank you for following along, I'm hosting my first-ever giveaway.  Everything (but my beloved old green check tablecloth) in this post's photos will be packed-up and shipped to the winner after I draw his/her name February 1st.  I had fun shopping for all the prizes and love putting care packages together, so this has already added some fun to my own week.  ♥   

The winner will receive: 

• Real Simple magazine's hardcover book Celebrations:  Easy Entertaining for Every Occasion, a big book that's full of ideas for gifts, meals, parties, invitations, and just thoughtful ways to make "everydays" into holidays and "special" occasions even more special
• one of my favorite books, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn  ~  If you've read it, you know what a treasure it is, and if you haven't, I envy you the fact that you still have your first reading of it ahead of you.  Follow Francie as she grows from an eleven-year-old girl to a post-high school young woman.  I love this girl and her story.  
• the "love issue" of Sandra Lee's magazine, filled with recipes, tablescape and party ideas, Valentine-ey thoughts, and the most beautiful photos  ~  Her magazine is always a feast for the eyes and heart.
• a little book of 23 friendship-related stickers 
• 20 paper napkins covered in cupcakes-decorated-with-hearts
• 8 heart paper plates, also perfect for either Valentine's Day or any day
• 48 pink and red floral die-cut cupcake wrappers
• 4 packets of hot chocolate, each a different flavor
• 3 thinking-of-you-type cards with envelopes 
• 3 Valentine cards with envelopes 
• and 2 red-ink pens because, as some of you guys already know, I add red hearts to almost every piece of personal mail I send.  It's not just a "blog-thing."  ♥  :)

To see larger versions of the photos here, just click on them.  A reader mentioned the other day that it would be helpful if my blog's photos were bigger, but when I post extra-large versions of photos with this blog design/layout, their sides get cut off a little bit--and I really love this design/layout.  (I tried, Jenny!)

To enter, just leave a comment on this post--and please make sure that either your comment or profile gives me a way to contact you if you should win.  Any comment with a date of January19th-January 31st will count, and I'll randomly choose a name and announce the winner here on February 1st.  You don't need to "follow" to enter.  I hope you'll follow if you want to, though, of course.  :)

Good luck!  And a truly warm welcome to you new readers and an equally-heartfelt thank you to those who have been with me either from my very first post in 2007 or since earlier this week.  I've loved sharing the past six years here.  Keep telling your own stories.  Make time for your friends.  Finish and mail the letter you keep meaning to write.  Offer a piece of gum to the person sharing the elevator with you.  Keep putting yourself out there.  Say thank you.  And remember that even when it's rough, life is good and beautiful and worth the effort.  Ride it out.  Find the silver lining.  Go hug your cat.  ♥

xox♥, Val