Category Archives: etc.

Satisfying My Inner Child

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I often joke that my husband’s inner child tops out at 11 (which makes it problematic to have sex without getting arrested). Or I say that a friend has an inner child “very close to the surface.”

I didn’t think I had an inner child. But then I realized that I must.

I need naps. Even if I’ve had a full eight hours of sleep, I often need to conk out for just a couple of hours in the afternoon. My doctor just put me on thyroid medication, so we’ll see if this goes away. But I hope not. I love naps. My inner child is atypical that way.

I have a collection of plushies (which we used to call stuffed animals until that got too confusing). Easters as a child always involved a plush bunny with my Easter basket.

Now I have a pirate Winnie the Pooh. I have a Raggedy John Denver doll that a friend made for me (the heart on his chest says, “Far Out”). I have a cat that looks just like a cat I once had. I have an official Vorkosigan Butter Bug hand puppet. A couple of armadillos. Assorted teddy bears and Beanie Babies. Once my husband and I went to a thrift store and pawed through an absolute vat of stuffed toys and found such lesser-known varieties as a camel, a snake, and Thing One. (We never did find Thing Two.)

I still need a woobie. Apparently coined for the movie Mr. Mom, the “woobie” is also known as a “blankie” and scientifically called a “comfort object.” (I wrote about these a while back in “I Want My Blankie!” (https://wp.me/p4e9wS-k9). Now in our house, any soft, warm, comforting thing made of cloth is a “woobie.” A bathrobe. A sweater. A body pillow. I even have a pair of woobie socks (fleece-lined).

I have an inner teen, too. She lives in a box inside my head. Throughout my teen years, I missed most of what was going on around me, likely from a combination of depression and having my nose stuck in a book (even while walking from class to class). So the inner teen makes up for those lost years.

She gets to have the experiences I never did. Painting her faux fingernails. Thinking “He noticed me! He noticed me!” when a boy notices me. (Well, when a man does, really. See above about getting arrested.) She gets to have mad crushes and wants to go on spending sprees. (I have to close the box and sit on the lid sometimes to prevent that. Or give her an allowance of $20 to spend.)

I enjoyed DisneyWorld. “The Happiest Place on Earth” was like a taunt to a depressed child, but as an adult, I could let my inner child go. I remember one time when at a business convention in Anaheim, the boss said he would get us tickets to DisneyLand if we wanted to take a potential client or vendor there. I replied, “I can’t even imagine wanting to do that.” But since then, I have gone to DisneyWorld several times, including with the friend whose inner child is close to the surface and my husband’s 11-year-old inner child. They all helped my inner child come out and play.

I love to go barefoot and sit on the floor. I don’t get much of a chance to do either, but I still love to. Or would if I didn’t step on pointy or gushy things and didn’t have to have someone to help me up.

I still like classic grilled cheese sandwiches. I’ll take them with bacon and gouda and avocados and whatever else is being offered, but what I wouldn’t give for one of my mother’s sandwiches – Wonder bread, margarine, and Kraft American singles, fried in a cast iron skillet. Gooey goodness. Since I can’t get that – and no one else makes them quite the same – I’ll savor them in memory with my inner child.

 

 

 

Why Blog?

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I started blogging almost by accident. What I meant to do was start a daily journal to track my moods and activities. I quickly noticed that it was boring, whiny, and short.

So, I said, I’m a writer (though I have been mostly editing for ages). Why don’t I actually write something? Anything. Get my writing muscles back in shape. Why not blog?

But, I said, what shall I blog about? I happen to be bipolar (type 2) and I have years of experience being that, so why not blog about that? Thus was born “Bipolar Me” (bipolarjan.wordpress.com).

Wait, I said; that’s not all there is to me. What else can I blog about? The answer was stunning – everything else that interests me. Thus was born “Et Cetera, etc.” (janetcobur.wordpress.com), the blog you’re reading now.

After some thought, I decided to publish in each, once a week, on Sundays. Now, after several years of writing both blogs, I can say that both have affected me for the good, in addition to whatever good they may have done for others.

My blogs give me structure. As a work-from-home freelancer, I can easily get lost in the week. There are no lunch-with-the-work-gang Wednesdays or casual Fridays to remind me. Even calendars don’t help much. Is today the 27th? The 28th? Unless one of them is a major holiday, I have no idea.

But blogging identifies where I am in time, if not space-time. (The space is in front of my computer.) Wednesday: choose a topic and make notes or start thinking. Thursday and Friday: write and proofread. Saturday: add illustration and tags; proofread. Sunday: proofread, tweak, and post. Mondays and Tuesdays are blogging “weekends.”

My blogs keep me engaged. Sitting here in front of my computer, it’s hard to keep in touch with the outside world. When I search for topics – in news stories, in experiences I’ve had, in things people have said to me, in the sorts of things that seem to fall into (or out of) my brain – I am connected with the world outside. And when people read my blogs, and especially when they comment on them, I am in touch with them too. I may or may not have ever met cupcakewitch or huskybear or journeyupward, but I know them, at least a little.

My blogs may do some good. I know Bipolar Me does. It does good for me and it does good for readers as well. Symptoms, treatments, feelings, research, news, strategies – I hope that every week at least one person finds one take-away from my post.

Et Cetera, etc., being less well defined, has a more diverse readership. Some people like the things I write about writing; others like when I write about books or travel or language or politics or families or humor or … or … or…. If these posts can amuse, divert, educate, interest, or make someone think or laugh, then they have done some good.

My blogs allow me to share. It may be hard for people to find their way to my blogs, which are small potatoes in the world of blogging. So I repost my blogs at sites that solicit input on similar topics: The Mighty and Invisible Illness for Bipolar Me; and Post-40 Bloggers, Medium, SheKnows, Epic Freelancing, and (occasionally) Red Tricycle for Et Cetera.

I don’t expect that my blogs will ever garner hundreds of thousands of readers. I don’t expect ever to be “the new Bloggess” (no matter how much I would like to). I don’t expect to change the world.

But whatever else blogging has done for me, it’s lots more than a boring, whiny, short journal. And even when it’s work, it’s fun.

What could writing a blog do for you?

When You Have a Cold: Some Unsolicited Advice

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Say you’ve got a cold or a light touch of the flu. Then keep far away from me. You feel awful and I don’t want to feel awful too. I know you don’t want visitors, but here I am. And at least I’ve brought a gift: a few suggestions for entertaining things you can do while you suffer in peace and quiet. Except for, you know, the coughing and sneezing and assorted other noises you’re making yourself. Relative peace and quiet, if you know what I mean.

Drink tea. It really doesn’t matter what kind, since you can’t smell it anyway. Earl Grey will smell just like jasmine. Peppermint and Irish Breakfast, the same. And if you want to, you can use it as the base of my father’s restorative tonic, which consists of tea, bourbon, and horehound candy (tea optional). Or boring old lemon and honey, if you insist, though my father would not approve.

Cuddle large, fuzzy cats. Even if you’re allergic to them. You’re already sneezing as much as humanly possible, so you have nothing to fear from dander. Bonus: A large, fluffy cat makes an excellent substitute for a heating pad or hot water bottle.

Read. Or pretend to. Actual reading may distract you from how miserable you are (unless you’re reading Les Miserables). Pretend-reading will encourage people to keep their voices low, plus it doesn’t matter if you fall asleep with the book elegantly displayed on your chest. (Make sure it has a classy dust jacket, even if the book inside is Fifty Shades of Grey. Which I don’t recommend, unless it’s for pretend-reading. It may lead to barfing, which may be in your future anyway.)

Eat chicken soup. Tell everyone that you need it for the fluids and the electrolytes. Egg drop soup is an especially good variety, since if you can’t convince someone in your household to make it and bring it to you, you can always convince the Chinese take-out down the street. Nibble saltines daintily, or the little fried things that look like Chinese tortilla strips.

Hit the Nyquil. And I don’t mean the non-drowsy kind. Sleep through as much of the cold as possible. Warning: Do not mix Nyquil with Southern Comfort or the bourbon-horehound mixture (see above). You’ll barf and you may be doing that already. Also, don’t mix Nyquil with cough syrup, which can cause unintended psychedelic effects and more barfing.

Squash tissues. Let them blossom all around you in a protective ring that no one will want to cross. If you try the ones with built-in lotion, don’t use them to wipe your glasses before actually trying to read (see above).

Call the doctor. Don’t go see the doctor. You’ve got a virus and there’s nothing she can give you for it. Just ask how long it is until you can get an appointment, then rest assured that your cold will be over before that. Unless you start making a sucky, moist kind of wheezing sound when you breathe. The advantage is it will keep people even farther away from you, but the downside is that you may have pneumonia, which is even less fun than a cold.

Use Vick’s Vapo-Rub. You won’t be able to detect the scent because your nose is busy with something else (snot), but other people sure will, encouraging them to keep a respectful distance. If you don’t have Vapo-Rub, try Ben-Gay. Bonus: Nice warm feeling on your chest. Note: If you use either Vapo-Rub or Ben-Gay, do not cuddle the large, fuzzy cats (see above). Unless you want to look like Bigfoot. Just sing “Soft Kitty” instead, or insist that someone else sing it to you.

Whine. Punctuate with coughs and sneezes. Again, the goal is to get people to leave you alone. If this isn’t working, move on to even more disgusting symptoms. Keep a bucket by your bed, just so people get the idea that you could use it at any moment.

P.S. I’ll give you one guess why I wrote this. If you don’t get it right, I’ll start whining. And coughing. And sneezing. And barfing. Just bring me some egg drop soup and leave quietly.

You wouldn’t want to catch what I’ve got.

 

 

 

What the Client Wants, the Client Gets

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It should be a truism that you always give the client what he or she wants, but sometimes it’s extra-difficult. Not to say that clients are picky, but, well, let’s just say that clients are picky.

Although sometimes vendors can be, too. As a case in point, I remember a magazine that I worked on that needed an illustration of a slice of pizza. Not a difficult thing to draw, and there are reference materials everywhere if one suddenly does not remember what pizza looks like. And we would have taken any kind of pizza – supreme, pepperoni, veggie, ham and pineapple, spinach and feta, double anchovies – whatever.

But the illustrator we often worked with came back a few days later, no illustration in portfolio, and informed us that he couldn’t do the assignment because he was a vegan, or some brand of vegetarian that would have nothing to do with milk products, and couldn’t bring himself to draw cheese.

We were miffed. First, that he hadn’t told us sooner about his cheese-drawing aversion. There were any number of professional illustrators in the area who had no such qualms. Second, because we weren’t asking him to eat pizza or buy pizza or something else that might reasonably have caused him qualms by supporting the pizza industry. Just a simple black-line drawing of a slice of pizza. You couldn’t even see the cheese, really. You just knew it was there. But apparently even that was too much for him. But we knew what we wanted. We wanted cheese on our pizza.

Sometimes you do have to wrestle with your conscience to fulfill certain jobs. I edited for a religious client for many years, whose religion I did not espouse. I came to terms with it. As far as I could see, I didn’t have to believe the beliefs I was writing about; I just had to respect them, understand them, and make them intelligible and appealing to the readers. Whatever else I believe, I believe that religious publishing companies should not restrict themselves to only like-minded believers in their hiring. And yes, I wrote for them too, on non-doctrinal topics like charity and more official ones like prayer services.

Many freelance writers and editors and even the occasional illustrator must make these decisions – whether what the client wants is something you feel comfortable giving. In general, my advice is to suck it up and do what the client wants.

To use a trivial example, I stand firmly behind the Oxford comma, but if my client’s style guide doesn’t, out it goes, no matter how much it pains me. In those cases, the style guide wins. And the client.

Writing for children can be the most difficult assignment of all. Clients who assign writing that will go into textbooks are the worst. They specify not just story length, but also reading levels (there are programs that calculate this in any number of systems – use whichever your client likes),  grammatical forms (e.g., dental preterites), and even phonics examples (two words per paragraph with diphthongs, for example). Then try to make the writing creative and engaging.

One set of children’s stories I worked on was a doozy. Instead of word count, the client wanted 15,000 characters-plus-spaces (a measure I had never heard of, but fortunately Microsoft Word has). Then there were nine separate characters, each of whom had to play a role in every story. There were other requirements, too. An abstract. Pull-out quotes. Illustration descriptions. Not to mention specific topics. And a schedule that required a story every five days. And I did it all, thankful for the work.

I have blogged about writing children’s stories before (https://wp.me/p4e9wS-cD). One of the things I said was:

I believe that requiring writers to abide by rigid rules makes it less likely that the story will be appealing. And if the story isn’t appealing, I believe it is less likely that the children who read it (or are supposed to read it) will get anything from it.

But that’s not my call. It’s the client’s.

The Year Our Christmas Presents Changed

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Our family Christmases were idyllic, if simple. Each year on Christmas Day, we would all open our presents. My sister and I would get doll clothes (this was when you got outfits, not multiple Barbies) and plush animals, Spirograph and paint-by-numbers, and such.

Then we’d get dressed, jump in the car, and drive to Granny’s house, where we’d open more gifts of clothes and stationery and Avon cologne. We’d wreak havoc on a turkey and trimmings, before the adults went off for naps, after dropping us kids off at the movies.

Then came the year when my sister and I had to grow up fast.

My parents had always tried to keep any bad news away from us and carry on as normal, but there was no hiding this bad news. After being accidentally hit by the garage door, my father’s injured neck turned out to be something much worse than a sprain, strain, or contusion. It wasn’t the garage door that caused it. of course, but that was when my father was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

It’s a horrible form of cancer that attacks the bones all throughout the body and destroys them. I hope the treatments have gotten better in the decades since, but for my father cancer meant radiation, chemotherapy, and an operation to fuse the bones of his neck using bone from his hip. He lived many years longer than the doctors predicted, which I attribute to his stubbornness. He certainly wasn’t a health aficionado.

Naturally, all those cancer treatments and hospitalizations were expensive. My parents had good insurance, but even that was nowhere near covering the costs. And my father’s illness was not something my parents could keep secret from us kids, much as they would have liked to. It affected every part of our lives.

When Christmas came that year, I was 15 and my sister was 16. My mother explained that because of the family’s medical expenses, we wouldn’t be able to have Christmas as usual. No driving from Ohio to Kentucky to see our relatives. And no Christmas presents.

Except one.

My mother said that all we could afford was a magazine subscription for each of us. Our choice of titles. She hoped we weren’t disappointed.

I wasn’t. To me, a magazine subscription was special, something that grown-ups got, and something that kept giving all year long. I chose Analog, a science fiction magazine, and my sister chose Sixteen. It was exciting to watch the mail for each month’s issue. (As kids, we didn’t usually get much mail, except cards on our birthdays.)

For the Christmases after that, my mother would renew our subscriptions, or let us change to a different title. When I started studying astronomy in high school, I switched to Sky and Telescope. When she turned 17, my sister switched to Seventeen.

Now I subscribe to the electronic versions of three magazines –Smithsonian, National Geographic, and Discover. I still get a little thrill each month when the new cover icon appears on my e-reader screen. It reminds me of the first time I ever got an actual, grown-up present – when I started becoming an adult, whether I wanted to or not.

 

Brave or (Possibly) Stupid

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Sometimes it’s hard to tell the stupid from the brave.

Sometimes it’s little things. Spending $12 to enter a writing contest. Did I just waste $12? Do I have a chance of beating 230 other people to win the prize? 220 people to make it into the money? How can I stand it until the first cut is announced? Is the piece I submitted even close to what they were looking for?

But I did it. I paid my $12 and entered the contest. Stupid (possibly) and brave.

I was told I needed to have a medical treatment that terrified me. Did I really want someone to try something so drastic on me? What if all I got were side effects? What if I got no effects? What if I didn’t get myself back the way I used to be? Should I believe all the negatives I’d heard about it? Should I believe the positives?

I agreed to have it. Stupid (possibly) and brave.

Once upon a time I told someone that I loved him.

I knew the rules. In a casual relationship, never be the first to say it. But how long can you go feeling it but not saying it? What if he runs? What if you thought it might be welcome but afterward you feel like dirt? Couldn’t he have figured it out by this time? Was he not wanting to say it either? Or just not feeling it?

So I said it. Stupid (possibly) and brave.

No risk, no reward, they say. But there you are, hanging out on that cliff, looking over the edge, making the decision. Knowing that it’s brave but (possibly) stupid. That the reward may not be worth the risk, or that there may be no reward at all.

Except. Except taking that step off may mean that you fly. You could win. You could be cured. He could love you. If that’s the case, then not taking the step would be the stupid thing to do.

But you might fall. You might waste $12. You might be no better off, or even worse. He might laugh. Then you were brave but stupid.

How do you weigh bravery versus stupidity? Wasting $12 isn’t much of a gamble. Considering a risky medical procedure is. So is admitting your feelings. Does taking the small risks, being a little bit brave, prepare you for taking the big ones later? I’m not sure. Each risk must be weighed anew. You could still fall, every time.

But taking the leap and not failing puts you a little closer to doing it the next time. I would pay to enter another contest. I would consider another scary health option. I would talk of love.

None of those decisions has turned out exactly as I hoped – or as I feared. One was disappointing; one proved unnecessary; one was satisfying.

Have I been brave or stupid? The next time I have a choice, which will it be?

Statistically, some of my decisions are going to prove to be stupid. Historically, many of them have been. The next one may prove stupid too.

But, as one of my favorite authors said, “If you don’t bet, you can’t win.” That argues for bravery.

We all teeter on that cliff at one time or another. Fall, or be pushed, or leap. Or stay where you are. Which is brave? Which stupid?

 

For “Me Too” Women and “Not Me” Men

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The “Me Too” campaign, in response to all the accusations, admissions, apologies, non-apologies, and political maneuvering, has had enormous effects. Women everywhere are opening up and sharing their stories of microagressions, unwanted attentions, assaults, and rape that many of them have never spoken of before. Most of the attention has gone to politicians and media figures, but the problem goes right down to every level of society.

I’m one of the women who has “Me Too” stories.

  • When I was delivering a job to a client at his home, he tried to kiss me on the lips. And my boss made light of it, wheedling me into saying I wasn’t afraid (I wasn’t) and that I wasn’t offended (I was), and telling the client that I wasn’t bothered by it. I suppose it came in the category of unwanted attentions, though technically it may have been at least battery.
  • Then there was the time that a different boss sat on my lap, just to make me uncomfortable. (He did.)
  • Another boss went around the business comparing the size of female employees’ breasts, including who should be in the “Itty Bitty Titty Club.”
  • And there was the guy who expected sex even though I was newly engaged at the time (one for the road, as it were), then stormed off in a huff after the “No.” (I’m glad that’s all he did.)

But I also have plenty of other stories – of men who were decent, gentlemanly, and reasonable, men who had my back when I needed it, men who respected my autonomy.

I don’t want to get into the “Not All Men” debate, or the “Now I can’t even make a pass” furor. I was challenged by my friend Diana to think about the good men in my life and celebrate them. And that’s what I’m doing here.

Let’s start with my father. One clear memory I have is of when I went to buy my first new car and he came with me. He looked at the cars with me, gave me advice on their mechanical soundness, and shared his experience of various models. I picked out my car (a blue Chevette) and he went with me to the sales office. The salesman asked my dad if he would co-sign the loan with me. And my dad said, “No.” Firmly but politely.

This was back in the day when young single women found it hard to get credit for a major purchase, especially if there was a man around who might take up the slack. But my father said, “No.” He believed that, since I had a job and was living on my own, it was my responsibility to make my own financial decision – and take responsibility for fulfilling it myself. Was I upset that he left the transaction up to me and the car dealer? I was proud.

Then there were the friends, male and female, in line with me at a restaurant. I objected to the racist and sexist decorations. The host replied, “If they really bother you that much, you could leave.” Did I just imagine the sneer in his voice?

“You’re right,” I said, turning on my heel and marching off down the street. When I finally looked back, every one of those in my party were following me, including the men. They literally had my back.

Or the work friend, whom I joined in after-hours putt-putt golf matches and card games at his house. He was a notorious horndog, but he never made a move on me – until the day that we were driving around and he confessed that he was interested. “But you haven’t even kissed me yet,” I replied. Then he did, once I had given him the go-ahead.

There have been men who accepted a “No,” without getting mad, or whining about the “friend zone,” or making me feel like dirt. There was even one, a big, tough guy who accepted a “No” when the interaction had reached the point of “heavy petting,” and held no grudge.

There have been men who accepted a “Yes,” without gloating or bragging or taking it for granted.

And then there’s my husband. We met under peculiar circumstances, in which I was stranded in a town miles from home (by a man who ran off with another woman, never giving a thought as to how I’d get home). Dan lent me money, drove me to the bus station, and gave me a bag of dried apples for snacking during the trip.

Since that time he has had my back every minute, under every circumstance, supporting me when I needed it, backing off when I needed to handle something myself. He has loved me when I was unlovable, cooperated when I was uncooperative. He’s literally supported me when I couldn’t work, and not resented when I could work and made more than he did. We’ve had our disagreements, but he always listened to my side – and sometimes changed his mind because of it. All in all, he’s an unusual man.

So either I’ve met a lot of unusual men and only a few jerks, or there are decent, reasonable, polite, and understanding men out there who get no publicity. Because where’s the newsworthiness (or entertainment value) in saying, “When I knew so-and-so, he treated me like a person. And I appreciated it”?

Adventures in Cat-Sitting

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House-sitting is a great way to get away from home, relax, water a few plants, and scare off burglars who are frightened by lights turning on and off without a pattern.

Cat-sitting is an entirely different matter.

Most cats do all right if you leave them alone for a day or two – even a three-day weekend. Just set out extra food and water and maybe an extra litterbox (depending on how many cats you have). They’ll be fine. They’ll snub you when you get back, but they’ll be fine.

When you’ve got a special-needs cat, or your trip is longer, it’s a different story.

My friends were off to DisneyWorld for a ten-day stay and one of their cats is an insulin-dependent diabetic. I volunteered to sit house and cat. It was a house in a quiet country setting by a stream and the cats were pretty chill, even the diabetic one. Give him treats, I was told, and you can stick him easily. There were four of the critters, but I’ve had as many as five (I love cats), so I left our two in the tender care of my husband and headed for the north woods.

When I arrived, the cats assembled to sniff and greet me and I quickly discovered that they, having been described to me as “large,” were in fact small, medium, large and HUGE. (The small cat had somehow given birth to the other three, a feat I did not envy her in the least.)

P.J., my soon-to-be patient, flopped on his side and demanded a belly-rub. He was the large cat, easily 15 pounds. Maybe more. He was wearing a jaunty purple collar so I could tell him from his brother Red, the HUGE cat (upwards of 20 pounds, I would estimate). Both of them were orange tabbies and only a few pounds separated their heft.

The trial injection went well. I had experience giving cats subcutaneous fluids, which was one reason I was tapped for the job (the other being that I could do my work on the family’s computer instead of my own). Pinch up a fold of skin between the shoulder blades, stick the needle in, squirt, and voilà!

There was a packet of needles on the counter, a bottle of insulin in the fridge, and a handy sharps container for the used needles. Two water dishes and two food dishes, a huge plastic bin of dry cat food, four litter boxes, and several bags of treats stashed in the cabinet completed my cat-sitting kit.

For the most part, the cats ignored me. That was okay. Most cat owners are used to being ignored by their cats. On occasion, Red would accept an invitation to curl up on a blanket beside me on the sofa and allow me to stroke him, or demand treats. P.J. would do his belly-exhibiting routine on the dining room table, and Mama Cat and Vaughn (small and medium) wouldn’t give me the time of day.

Then one day, when I checked P.J.’s litter box (he had his own; he was the only cat in the household who would use the granules with an absorbent pad underneath them), I found a circle of pink around the yellow. Blood! I thought. I had instructions on what to do if the big boy looked lethargic and zoned out (rub corn syrup on his gums), but nothing had prepared me for this. Except when one of my own cats had a blocked urethra, which required surgery.

The vet’s number was on the refrigerator and on my list of instructions. But it was the weekend. I didn’t know if the vet’s office was open, or what the charge was for emergency visits, or where the cat carrier was, or whether I could get P.J. in it, or whether I could even pick up and carry the awkward thing with my bad back. (It was hard enough picking up Red when he wanted to be on the sofa but couldn’t be bothered to jump.)

Well, you all know what the next thing I had to do was: text DisneyWorld, or at least my friends there. They got back to me remarkably quickly (must have been waiting in a line). They discouraged me from running off to the vets and advised I just keep an eye on things, i.e., the pee-pad, and see whether P.J. pee-peed pink again. Or red. (Not Red.) Or some other color.

Two hours later I checked the pee-pad. Nothing. Not yellow, not pink. Nothing.

I had lunch. I checked the pee-pad. Nothing.

I did some work. I checked the pee-pad. Nothing.

I took a bath. I checked the pee-pad. Nothing.

By this time I was biting my nails. The next symptom of a blocked urethra is an inability to pee at all.

I checked the pee-pad. Nothing. I went to bed.

The first thing I did when I got up (after peeing) was check the pee-pad. There was pee and all was clear (or at least yellow).

Then P.J. flopped down on the dining room table and grinned at me.

Sometimes I hate cats.

 

 

The Not-So-Traditional Cookie Challenge

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Make three different cookies – a dozen of each – inspired by your family holiday memories and traditions.

That was the assignment on a recent holiday baking show I watched.

It occurred to me that I would have failed miserably. It’s not that I can’t bake, or that I can’t bake cookies. I just have no family memories or traditions associated with cookies.

My family never baked at the holidays. Occasionally we’d get a tin or box of assorted cookies – chocolate and plain shortbreads, butter cookies, and so forth – that we kids called “kind-a-wanna cookies” because we could each choose the kind we wanted.

My mother’s baking exploits centered around box cake mixes, lemon meringue pies for my father (his favorite dessert), and slice-n-bake chocolate chip cookies. (I notice that now the company that makes these believes even slicing to be too much to task the modern baker with.)

I did have one holiday cookie-baking ritual in my teens, however. I would go over to my friend Peggy’s house and we would make either chocolate chip cookies (from scratch, no slicing involved) or sugar cookies.

The chocolate chip cookies were ones we had learned how to bake in home ec class and Peggy still had the original recipe on the original 3″ x 5″ index card. (I know she recopied the card when it became old and ragged, and I think she may have laminated it.) Actually, Peggy did the baking. I helped with the math (2/3 cup butter times 2 is 4/3 cup is 1-1/3 cups) and ate some of the raw cookie dough, this being back in the days before that was dangerous or if it was, we didn’t know it.

Our other holiday cookie tradition was Christmas sugar cookies. Again, these were from scratch and my assignment was to sprinkle the cut-out Santas and bells and stars with red and green sugar sprinkles. We’d listen to the radio (but not Christmas carols) and tuck the cookies lovingly away in colorful tin boxes with layers of wax paper. After eating just a couple ourselves, of course.

So, were I to be magically transported to a holiday baking contest, what could I make? Chocolate chip and sugar cookies, of course. Though I’d have to think up trendy flavors like bourbon-guava-cinnamon-chip cookies and sugar cookies adorned with fondant and gum paste and decorative isomalt shards.

But what would my third cookie be?

As a young adult, I had a recipe for a spice cake with raisins that I adored. Back in the day my friends and I were always broke, so I made small loaf pans of spice cake and my husband made miniature banana cakes from his Grammy’s recipe. So I suppose I  might have to fudge a little and make banana-spice cookies with raisins. (Fudge! Now there’s an idea!) Not a childhood memory, but sort of a family tradition, of a new family just starting out anyway.

I suppose I could make some kind of peanut butter cookie. That was one my mother did make from scratch, and I loved pressing the fork into the dough to make the criss-cross on top. (I suppose today we would call them “hashtag cookies.”) They’re not very “holiday,” but at least they represent a family memory.

Or, if I was a really accomplished baker, I could invent some kind of lemon-bar cookie with a toasted meringue on top, in honor of my father’s favorite, but non-holiday, pie. My mother would slip the pie into the oven to brown the meringue, but nowadays I see people using blowtorches. I still think of blowtorches as things that belong in the garage, though, not the kitchen.

No, this year I’ll do the same as ever. I don’t have children and Peggy’s son is now grown, but when she comes to town for the holidays, I fully expect we’ll both make time in our schedules for a cookie-baking fest. Chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies with red and green sprinkles. They won’t win any competitions, but I can honestly say they are holiday traditions.

 

 

Three Ways to Revise Your Writing

etc.

There is no writing. Only rewriting.

I’ll admit that in high school and college I used to sit down at my typewriter (yes, I’m that old) and knock out a piece of writing that I would turn in unrevised except for typos. (Thank God for Corrasable Bond and Wite-Out.) And I skated through somehow.

But now that I write and edit for a living, I know the value – the necessity – of rewriting. I checked my blog posts and they average six different versions before I post them each week. Some of those revisions are only a word or two here and there, or a better title or an illustration, but many changes are more significant.

The three main types of revision I do are to add, cut, and rearrange.

Add

By adding, I don’t mean padding. Hardly anyone pays by the word anymore, so there’s no need to bump up your word count on that account. But there are legitimate reasons to add to the text you’ve written. Here’s an example:

Nicky and Spike, trotting now, plunged deeper under the dim canopy of trees. A light sweat on the boy’s forehead and the dog’s rhythmic panting mixed with the early evening’s chill, a seesaw between warm and cool. A few newly fallen leaves scuffed underfoot, reminding him of the sound of rattling papers and the dusty scent of school.

This is a piece of fiction I was writing. In the original I used visual words like “dim”; sound words like “panting”; and even touch words like “sweat,” “chill,” “warm,” and “cool.”  In the sentence I added, I beefed up the sound words (“scuffed,” “rattling”) and added a smell – “dusty scent of school.” Smell is one sense that often gets overlooked in description. In a later scene, I described a garage mechanic’s shop using mostly smell words – “There was the distinct tang in the air entering my nostrils: grease, fuel, ozone, and some solvent that smelled like nail polish remover but probably wasn’t.”

Of course, sensory description can come in to play in nonfiction as well, but more often nonfiction needs supporting points to bolster a thesis, such as arguments or examples or sentences that extend a thought.

Cut

Back in the day, there were two kinds of cutting often required. The first was surgical editing, snipping a word (usually “very”) or even an ending here and there to bring up a widow or orphan in typesetting. (Yes, I am that old.) The other was slash-and-burn cutting, removing entire sentences and paragraphs when an author had overwritten the space allocated. When you have a specific word count, be it 300 words or 3000, you may very well have to cut.

Here’s one case in which I had to cut:

But let’s get back to (advertising. It’s bad enough that large men can’t find clothing to fit and flatter them, but onscreen they’re invisible.) real life. The plus-size men I know don’t even have a clue where they can find underwear that fits.

The text I cut is in parentheses and the words I added to take their place are in bold. When I looked at the paragraph, I realized that I was no longer talking about TV, so I ditched the part about on-screen ads and brought the discussion back to lived experience.

Rearrange

Finally, there is changing the order of sentences or paragraphs – rearranging. This can be triggered by pragmatic as well as aesthetic concerns. In one piece I wrote, I discussed pantyhose, hair coloring, and packaging. The best visual I could find for the piece was one of packaged fruit. Voilà! The piece became one about packaging concerns, hair coloring, and pantyhose. (If you wonder how all those worked together, you can find it at https://wp.me/p4e9wS-za.)

Another post started with the title “Does It Help When Celebrities Talk About Mental Illness?”

The first and second sentences were:

It usually doesn’t hurt.

(Except when it’s someone like Andrew Tate, of course. https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-zj)

I continued:

But how much does it help?

And then it occurred to me that the order was wrong. The intro should read:

It usually doesn’t hurt. But how much does it help?

So I rearranged it. But that left the Andrew Tate sentence hanging. So I cut it. Unless the reader already knew about the Tate incident, it was meaningless, and expecting the reader to go look it up was an imposition.

There are many other techniques of revision – unburying the lead, starting in media res, strengthening the flow of a piece, switching from third person to first – and ones that apply more to fiction or nonfiction (or poetry for that matter). But a fair amount of the revising you do will be a variant of one of these three techniques: adding, cutting, and rearranging.