Continuing my blog from yesterday which was kind of phoned in.

I had an idea about a couple that likes different seasons in the mountains - she likes summer and he likes winter.  The picture above are the stairs to a ski resort condo in Summit County, Colorado in July.  The grated stairs are so snow gets knocked off your snow boots when you go inside.  I liked the contrast with my muddy sandals.

So all the scenes were taking place outside - they actually meet on the sidewalk outside a bookstore.  And they ski, hike, hot tub, go to football and baseball games and bike.  Everything happens outside for the most part, because it's Colorado and that's just how people live there - outside.  I made him a painter because I wanted him to have something to do that would surprise her.  And he jokes about how he played football and painted and his mother suggested that he should get a teaching degree so he had something to fall back on (he actually played and retired from the NFL - in my head he is Chris Chandler - marginally good, but decent career, cute, and kind of a dick - not a tv personality).  And he paints in the Impressionist style - sits outside and paints.  And that's when I realized that my whole novel should be an Impressionist novel.  The scenes are short.  The descriptions are quick.  The indoor scenes are crisp and competitive - debate tournaments and card tournaments.

I used to think that I would someday publish one of my novels, but I doubt that very much now.  Mostly I like the creative process and the challenge of doing something creative.  It's also a way to indulge myself.  I'm noveling, I can't make you dinner!  Heat up a chicken pot pie!  And this past weekend my friend Ann and I stayed in a hotel and ordered room service and wrote.  I went to the art museum for an hour on Saturday and sat in the Impressionist room at the Joslyn and wrote.

"You're working on a project?" the docent asked.

"I'm writing an Impressionist novel," I said.

And I have kinda been in love with the idea ever since I said it out loud.

I needed it this year.  I did Nano for 5 years and "won" each time and then stopped a couple of years ago.  The first time I wrote it was exactly as Chris Baty suggested - it was the novel I mean to write "one day."  So I wrote it.  And I wrote for years after that for fun and because ideas came to me and I enjoyed it.  I stopped enjoying it at some point and my life started to unravel and so I stopped.  But this year I had an idea and wanted to write, so I am doing it.  And it does sort of clear out the creative pipes.

Route66 (Ann) and I are both doing Nanowrimo for the first time in a long time.  We are both behind on our word counts.  We got reservations at a frou frou hotel in downtown Omaha and we are having a massive write in.  Last night I got about 4000 words in before celebrating with a martini from the bar around midnight.  I slept well and we ordered room service.  I got in another thousand before breakfast was delivered and another thousand in before the exercise bike.  I am showered (mmm marble shower with raindrop shower head thingy) and I am carefully avoiding the football game, though Ann is in the room trying to watch Husker football and write.  I opted for the beautiful business center lounge and even got a pot of hot water from the bar so I can sip tea while I write.  My plan is to power through to the afternoon and then head out to the art museum to see what they have for Impressionist art.

I wish I could live in a hotel.

I hate canned food drives.

I dropped my son off at middle school with three flats of ramen which
he was triumphant about since they were so cheap and he got a point
for each package.  My daughter has not been as easy to satisfy when it
comes to the food drive this year.  She goes to a science focus high
school and they are apparently very competitive about the canned food
drive.  There are different points assigned to food based on the day
of the week.  They even have something called negative points, which
you got for toilet paper last week.  Earlier this week she needed
protein because they got more points based on the grams of protein per
serving (dried beans and tuna were the best deals here).  And today
she needed straight canned vegetables.  She took four flats of canned
vegetables today.

You really would be hard pressed to find someone more bleeding heart
liberal than me.  I have spent my professional career working for the
poor and homeless.  I know how important the food bank is and I know
that they need donations.  I also know that they don't need ramen.
And I know that as cheap as the beans and tuna and vegetables were
that I bought, that the Food Bank could purchase them cheaper.
Because they can buy groceries at whole sale prices just like a
grocery store and the food can be delivered right to the food bank.

I don't like the emphasis on the quantity of food (ramen and tomato
soup?), so I appreciate it that some canned food drives assign points
for foods that have protein or to encourage kids to bring toilet
paper, for example.  But again, the food bank can buy it cheaper.  And
it saves the fossil fuels used by me to drive to the store and the
Food Bank who has to pick the stuff up from the school.  It just
doesn't seem efficient to me.  I've spent $60 on food bank food this
month, but really, I would much rather just write a check.

Canned food drives are visually appealing.  Kids like them.  But
really, the Food Bank needs money.  They just need money.  They can
buy the the food they need at a better price.

But I buy food for the kids to take to the canned food drives anyway.
Because I am a pushover that way.  I still hate them.

I could tell you about the awesome grant I helped write that was submitted yesterday so that I can have a mobile legal clinic at the dual diagnosis treatment centers in town, but really, what is most interesting around here is that we are getting a new refrigerator.

Our old refrigerator was old (it was that weird avacado green color from the 70s) and the freezer made lost of frost on the walls and there were some permanent stains (brown in the eggs tray?  What?).

There are 9 of us in this office and most of us bring our lunch (and breakfast).  There is one of us who clutters up the refrigerator with her plastic sacks with an orange, or empty sacks, or a sack with a piece of candy and half a sandwich.  One day there was half a pear left on a shelf.  Half cans of pop are common.  She also likes to put pop in the freezer (and really, if you already have 15 Cokes in the bottom drawer (seriously, the whole drawer is full of her pop and fruit) then why do you put it in the freezer?).  And when you put pop in the freezer it sometimes explodes.  And then the Coke turns the ice brown.  And she leaves it!  She does not see what an absolute slob she is.  Take out food left on the conference room table is a frequent offense.  A coworker once moved her Chinese take out garbage from the conference room table to her desk top.  Another coworker said that she has just started eating her fruit because, hey, there's no room in the refrigerator for anyone else to put food in the refrigerator, so why not eat hers?  We have been direct.  We have been passive aggressive.  We have complained to each other about her.  My kids think she is hilarious and call her "Pop Lady."  When they come in with me on the weekend they make bets about how many half full cans of pop will be in her office (I think the record is 7).  She frequently has open bags of chips and half eaten granola bars, etc., just laying around her office.  (And her office is her own space, but ew, and it all attracts bugs and mice.)

This woman works insane hours - sometimes she is here until 2am.  She puts in hours that no self respecting non-profit worker would put in.  Most of us are here so we DON'T have to work those kinds of hours.  I think she could work much more efficiently (4 Hour Work Week?), but she is set in her ways and oblivious to everyone.  I was once in line for a buffet lunch with a secretary and the executive director when self-centered coworker breezed in and cut right in front of our boss while we stood there agape watching her fill her plate ahead of us.  She didn't even do it on purpose.  She just doesn't see anyone.  She has two small children at home and never cooks and is not home until nearly their bedtime.  Apparently she worked late on Halloween, even.  I guess the parenting stuff is irrelevant to the direct issue of rotting, half eaten fruit in the refrigerator, but it's sad and an example of how she just doesn't see or think of others.  Her mother and father live with them and do the majority of the child rearing and house keeping.

So we are getting a new refrigerator (!!!!!!).  It is being delivered today.  We were told to have the old one completely cleaned out by the end of the day yesterday.  Of course, she hadn't done her share of this.  Everyone was talking about it all day.  ("She has 6 apples in there plus oranges," the clerk exclaimed.)  My daughter and her friend stopped by around 4:30 to get a ride home from me and asked for something to do while they waited for me.  "You could clean out the refrigerator," I said.

So they threw out all the condiments and some old cream puffs in the freezer from a long ago party.  They claimed the 2 liter root beer left from a training lunch a month ago.  And then it was just the offending pile of lunch parts.

So I stuck my head in her office.

"The girls are trying to finish getting the refrigerator cleaned out."

"I haven't gotten my stuff out!" she said in a very aggravated voice.

"I know.  Did you want any of it?" (I am not kidding you that we were talking about half eaten sandwiches, half bags of chips, fruit, little candies, etc. and about a case of pop all cans separate and frequently in its own plastic sack.)

"Yes!" she said.  (Seriously, it was like that show "Hoarders" at this point.)

She got up and stormed past me and grumbled about how she wasn't leaving yet and pulled her garbage out of the refrigerator and put it in plastic sacks and took it down to the little refrigerator on the other end of the office (the folks that use that refrigerator were pissed when they got to work and couldn't refrigerate their lunches for today).

The girls threw away everything else (like her Chinese leftovers - I love how she left her garbage).

The Managing Attorney sent an email today with a list of rules for the new refrigerator including "don't put pop in the freezer" (which was already on a sign on the freezer that she put pop in) and "don't leave food over the weekend."  We were asked to comment.  And people are.  This is huge, huge stuff.

And to think that I have been spending time on my proposal to help alcoholic schizophrenics modify their child support, get divorced, or file an answer against the fucking credit card company.

We know what's really important.

Refrigerator Turf Wars!

I forgot that weird feeling when you blog something and everyone tells you how amazing you are and it's nice, but feels inaccurate.  A blog is a slice of life.  I do think blogs are accurate depictions of people - I base this off of meeting bloggers in person and they really are just what I imagined them to be.

Last night was fine until 8:30pm when my daughter announced that she had to go to a friend's house to work on a Spanish paper.

"No," I said.  "But she can come here."

And then I found out it was really just a social thing and that she wanted to go watch a movie with friends.  So after fighting with me, we separated and went to our rooms, and then I heard her leave.  Walked out.  And didn't come back until midnight.

So I blocked all calls and texts on her phone and took her car keys.  She is pissed.

"But I have theater tech after school," she said.

"No you don't," I said.  "Your dad is picking you up after school and you need to be outside the gym waiting for him."

Am I a good mom?  I don't feel like I am.  I have a horribly rude an inconsiderate child who steals her siblings' cell phones, who disregards extremely reasonable house rules and is barely passing her classes.  She has a college visit tomorrow and it makes me want to laugh.  She is not ready for college.

So hey, I am going to try and work today even though I barely slept and feel like shit.

Tv and movies make small towns seem like fun places filled with quirky personalities - like Northern Exposure.  But my experience is that small towns are pretty unpleasant places to be if you are different than the other people who live there.

My stepdaughter is quirky.  She was wispy and fairy-like as a small child.  She talked about a secret passageway on her playground in rural Nebraska that connected her to another world.  She had make believe friends which were different than the make believe friends that the other kids had.  She had a casualness and fierceness about the whole thing that the other kids didn't have.  She is 12 and doesn't care how other people think she should dress or how she should do her hair and she still says odd things.  (I know that I am not describing her accurately - she's difficult like that.)  She wears hacked off jeans with mismatched knee socks and tshirts with slogans (I've noticed that her favorite tshirts are ones I have bought her "This whole town is high" from Breckenridge, CO and an Ivanna Cone tshirt from a local ice cream parlor).  So there's all that.  And then there is the feeling that I have had for a couple of years now that she is a lesbian.  I could not tell you why I think that either, but I do.

So plop her in a small town (pop.1800) on the other side of the state from us (they're 7 hours away).  Add in a redneck stepdad.  And a mom who is an idiot and won't talk to her exhusband or to me.  We see her once a month.  And I am worried about her.

She ran some errands with me on Saturday and we were at Trader Joe's where the cashier commented, "I wear mismatched socks, too."  S giggled and peeked around the counter, and sure enough, the cashier was wearing two different colored socks.

There is so little I can do as a very distant stepmom in such a situation.  I can love her unconditionally and give her a space where not only can she be weird, but other people can be weird and it's all ok.  I think that cities are more comfortable for people who are different because not only do they blend in, but they find each other.  Also?  Fewer people care what you're doing and notice or talk about you.  I think she would do better as a teenager in Lincoln than in the middle of nowhere.

But who knows, maybe one of Ted Turner's buffaloes will wander down Main Street.

(Also, I don't think homosexuality is "weird" and I think most of you know that I don't think that, but I am clarifying.  I am lumping it all together because it makes her stand out, not because wearing mismatched socks = homosexuality or anything - they're not related.  My state does not have a stellar reputation for acceptance when it comes to sexual orientation.  People get killed over this stuff.)

I can't get the kids to do anything.  Apparently screaming at each other, flipping umbrellas repeatedly (What?!What?!, he says as he flips the umbrella.), and deleting each other's Mii's is more fun than anything I can suggest.

It is a beautiful afternoon.  I will herd them out of the house and drag them down a path in the park.  It will be awesome.

My day started with ear nibbling and sex.  I cooked bacon in my new oven and started laundry, cleaned the bathroom and washed the kitchen floor.  (I love a clean house.)  Zucchini and parm omlette with bacon and coffee.  The dog is sprawled on the floor shifting her eyes back and forth at me.  We will drive out of town and walk on the prairie.  I'm meeting my husband for lunch downtown and then will work on my novel in a coffee shop before meeting girlfriends for Happy Hour.  Home to lay on the couch watching movies until my husband gets home with his kids who will be here for a long weekend.

It is Veteran's Day, which means the kids have school, my husband has work, and I am off on this glorious fall day.  I prefer Columbus Day because I feel more free to wallow in the awesomeness of having a day off from work, plus the weather is generally better.  It is, however, a glorious fall day here and I am looking forward to a long hike.

All this self care was carefully planned.  I am glad it happened to be a vacation day from work.

My exhusband gets married tonight to his live in girlfriend of a couple of years.  I am very happy for them and think that they are well suited for each other.  The kids are happy and get along with her well.  It is all good.  There is a little bitty piece of me that is not sure how to feel today and there is sadness and memories that are coming up in unexpected ways.  I remember the look on his face as I walked down the aisle of the church towards him, for example.  I can see it very clearly in my mind.  And tonight he will look at someone else that way.  It's all very good, but sad.  I really have no animosity or anger about this, but it is a strange type of deja vu.

Three and a half years ago I was in LA for a work conference and on the last day I took the bus to Venice Beach where I watched surfers, ate papaya and met a hula hooper.  It was the first time I had ever seen an adult sized hula hoop and I was fascinated.  She let me borrow hers and there in the sun and sand, I hooped.  She taught me how to make the adult sized hoops ("The hardest part is finding someplace that sells the right size irrigation tubing," she said in a confidential tone.  Yeah, no problem finding irrigation tubing in Nebraska.  )

I came back to Nebraska and made hoops for everyone I knew.  I started selling them at street festivals occasionally and taught an occasional workshop at my dance studio.  I got an email from the community college asking me to start teaching hooping through the continuing education college and I wrote up a 5 week curriculum, bought materials to make hoops for class, made playlists, and started teaching as a Hooping Professor.  (Technically I do have a doctorate, though not in hooping.)

Last night was the end of my second quarter as a hoop professor and my students were sad that it was over, excited to keep hooping, and one had bought the materials to make piles of hoops for everyone she knew just like I had years ago.  It makes my hooping heart happy.