daughter

Invinc-ible!

Posted on by Beth Hull

A Friday Free-for-All Entry

“You have not had sex with Russian girl? Come to us and you shall have it!” Usually I barely glance at the messages in my spam folder, but this one caught my eye. I can almost hear someone whispering it in a Russian accent. I picture the speaker as Boris from the James Bond movie GoldenEye–you know the guy: He figures out some password or other geeky problem, then shouts “I am INVIN-CIBLE!”…And then he’s iced in place by a high-tech blasty-thing, fists frozen high in the air from victory.

Some of my recent experiences remind me of Boris. I’m flying high on the positive response from an agent…and then I find slugs binging on my romaine. Or I finally manage to squeeze back into a pair of old pants…and then the agent writes back with a no, thanks. Or I get to Round 2 of the Amazon contest…what’s next? I am full of trepidation. Illness? Injury? Stain on favorite sweater? Will it be major, or minor?

I guess it might come down to whether I believe the universe operates on balance. For every positive, there must be a negative. For every good, a bad. For every James Bond, a Dr. No. I guess that depends on God’s plan–at least that’s what I believe. I just tried to think of a counter-example in the world of rejection letters. There isn’t always a correlating positive for negative in querying for a novel. Usually it’s a whole lot of negative responses with the very rare positive response. BUT that one positive outweighs, and, I hope, nullifies the negatives. You just have to get there, to that positive.

And then, once you get the positive response, and the publisher, there are probably negative reviews. Unless you’ve written The Hunger Games, in which case, maybe there are other negatives going on in your life. But I’m not spiteful enough to wish that on anyone. Well, maybe that person who cut me off in the library parking lot the other day….

This entry has gone in a completely different direction from the intended. Not that I intend much for the Friday Free-for-Alls. But I’m at a good ending point for this entry, since I’m not getting that hour I wrote about on Wednesday. Z spent a few minutes “reading” my Wicked Spanish dictionary and singing along with Anne Murray to “You Are My Sunshine,” but since then she has smashed her finger in the desk drawer, tripped over a Duplo, and had a dirty diaper.

Until Monday, then!

Duplos & Cheerios

Posted on by Beth Hull

A Wednesday Momming-Around Entry

As Z has grown, so has her tolerance of (I won’t say “joy in” because that’s too much of a stretch) independent play. I think I got a full hour of computer time here in our basement office yesterday, while Z shuffled around her Duplo collection, “read” a couple of books, and only once or twice pestered me to see pictures of “Wab” (Rob, her godfather) on the computer.

While she tolerates playing on her own, I revel in this time, because while it isn’t solitude, it’s as close as I’m going to get until she goes to school and hypothetical Number Two (who I am banking on being a big fan of sleep) takes marathon naps.

At the same time, Mommy-Guilt is starting to rear its ugly, multifaceted head and roar at me that I’m taking advantage of my daughter’s new-found independence. I’m selfishly checking email, critiquing work for other writers, and, if I feel gutsy and Z is particularly focused on her Duplos, working in some last revisions to Savage Autumn.

How much independent play is too much? I know it isn’t my job to talk to her every second of every waking moment, and I know that it’s good for her to know how to play by herself. Do I interrupt that play (and my hard-earned separation from her–I am not lying when I say she had to be ON me 24/7 until she was about six months old) to read to her, take her outside, invent trips to the store so we can get out of the house?

Right now I’m thinking an hour is good for both of us, unless she tells me otherwise–and believe me, she will. Loud and clear. I can really use that hour. Lately I feel as if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with writing groups, this blog (which I just cut down to three days a week), and various other things-going-on.

Well, apparently I’m not hurting her chances of life joy. I just came out of my writing reverie to hear her say, “hap-py, hap-py!” as she hurled the Duplo box lid across the basement floor. Guess we’re doing okay, then.

Poo To Do

Posted on by Beth Hull

I really don’t see how this would be of interest to anyone except myself, but my to-do list (all forms of it updated, categorized, fretted over, and so on, since high school) is on my mind right now, so I think I’ll work with it.

Also, I’m sorry yesterday’s entry didn’t show up until late; I hit the “Save Draft” button instead of the “Schedule [to publish]” button. It’s better than today’s entry, so you could just read that instead. Really.

Poo To Do:

1) read and comment on Ana’s manuscript

2) read and comment on writing for the Sacramento Writers Group (it isn’t posted yet, but since I’m the person who posts them, I can get the head start I desperately need in order to procrastinate until the last minute)

3) rough character sketches for The Black City. Can I please, tonight, NOT get bogged down browsing through 100,001 Baby Names while selecting monikers for my invented people?

4) pick up library books on hold. They haven’t arrived yet, but they should soon. One book I’m especially excited about it Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games. No, I’m not obsessively checking and re-checking my library account. Nope, I haven’t memorized my 14-digit library account number because I’ve been typing it in so often. No, I didn’t actually pack Z up and take her to the library to investigate my holds status in person.

5) stop lying

6) turn Z’s car seat around so she isn’t scrunched up like a jack-in-the-box during our many trips to the library

7) pick some lettuce to make a salad for dinner tonight. LOVING my mini-garden. I’ll post a picture on Friday.

8 ) replace batteries in sound monitor for Z’s room

9) figure out what to write for blog post tomorrow–I need to compose these in my mind early (you think all this witticism shows up on the fly? Oh, no: “…and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments…I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.” -Mr. Collins, Pride and Prejudice)

10) talk to Husband about painting bedroom walls

11) clip back the blackened, frost-killed bush in front of the bathroom window–there’s green in there somewhere–it’ll make it!

12) check, re-check, and check again the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards site to see if my novel made the first cut. For the first cut they just read the pitches. You can click here to read mine.

There’s more, of course. But I’ve gotta go, need to check that ABNA site again.

Number Two

Posted on by Beth Hull

Number Two is a popular topic. It’s talked of between Husband and me, amongst all the play group moms, with the grandparents. Who has one, who wants one, who–oops!–made one accidentally.

It’s really too bad that my euphemism for a second child is also the euphemism for defecation. The two are very separate in my mind…mostly.

The thing is, I finally feel like I’ve gotten a handle on this whole being-a-mother thing. On a good day, that is. Only on a very good day. I’m tired all the time, still don’t get enough personal space or enough time to write, and frankly, I’m a very cranky person. Adding a new baby into the mix sounds like a batch of the terrible pumpkin bread I made one time when I mistook the teaspoon abbreviation for tablespoon on the recipe and put in way more baking soda than required. You see? More is not necessarily better.

On the other hand, I loved being pregnant. And this isn’t as uncommon as you might think. What’s not to love about being huge with purpose and able to eat pretty much everything in sight? There’s a surprise inside, a little being growing, just by virtue of your own existence. For awhile, you are not one, but two. I loved the head trip of the whole experience, not to mention the Dairy Queen trips. (Yes I know ice cream is not the best fuel for growing a little body, but try telling me that when I’m in the third trimester and see if you keep your limbs.)

On the third hand (the one I took from you when you suggested I back off on the Dairy Queen Blizzards), Z could totally use a little playmate. A) I could get away with even more slacker-mom time, and B) her demeanor just begs for more people, all the time. She’s a little extrovert. I’m still puzzling over where she got that personality disorder…er, I mean…trait.

And on the fourth hand (the one I took from Husband when he couldn’t drive me to Dairy Queen that one time, so I had to drive myself and stand in line by my pregnant self and feel very self-conscious of what a bad mom-to-be I was), Number Two can be anybody. With my luck, Number Two will sleep even less than Z does. And s/he could scream even more, if that’s humanly possible. While I dread it now, I would feel the same as I do with Z. She’s aggravating, sure, but I’d never send her back. And that’s how it’ll be with another child…if Husband ever talks me into Number Two.

Slug Love

Posted on by Beth Hull

On Wednesday night I enjoyed my very first salad made with lettuce from my own garden. I felt so in touch with the earth, with nature, that I enjoyed it while watching an episode of “Bones” on hulu. In all seriousness, though, I enjoyed that salad. My hands (and my mother’s) put the seeds into tiny trays and delicately covered them with soil, then I watered them and obsessed over them like my daughter’s first breaths, counting each little seedling as it sprouted. I gloried in the leaves growing bright bright green, reaching for the sun.

I did not glory in the slugs.

Okay, so I’m the girl who cried when my brother salted snails or held a magnifying glass over ants. It just seemed cruel. I didn’t even want to hear him talking about such things. Now I find myself wondering how to take care of these garden pests. Geoff Hamilton, the author of Organic Gardening, recommends dropping these little guys into a bucket of kerosene. While probably an instant death, it also sounds A) cruel, and B) dangerous with a toddler wandering around the backyard, managing to get into everything. For awhile my compromise was to launch them over the back fence and into the yard of the empty, bank-owned house next door. Now that people actually live there, it seems wrong. Especially because those people are nice. If they were mean, I’d probably do it anyway. Okay, okay, I threw a couple of slugs over there yesterday, and I feel really bad about it, okay? I’m not going to do it anymore.

My new compromise is probably worse than the instant kerosene death or the slow torture of the salt, but I bet it makes the little suckers happy in the short run. I stick ’em in the yard waste bin. It’s full of damp, decaying vegetation. Slug’s paradise, right? Yeah, until summer when that thing heats up like a slow-cooker.

If my slug-compassion gets too intense, I can always just plant arugula next winter. Bleh. That stuff is so bitter, even the slugs don’t want to eat it.