Randomly Before I Go

I'm leaving this morning for a one and a half day gig as a Visiting Author.  This afternoon I'll be speaking at Webb School, a private K-12 school on the far side of Knoxville.  I'll be discussing For Freedom and Jefferson's Sons with their sixth and seventh grades.  Then I'll be making a return trip to Roberts Middle School, in Oak Ridge, to discuss the same two books, this time with the entire school.  I've got a few minutes of time this morning since my whole family had to get out the door early, except me.

1.  I haven't been doing as many Visiting Author trips as I used to.  I hope it's the economy, not that my stock has gone down.

2.  My daughter went to a birthday party yesterday.  She gave her friend a copy of one of my books as a gift. (We've gotten away with that trick for years.)  Her friend's Mom said something about my being an author, and another adult sidled up to my daughter and asked, "Published?"

3.  This completely cracked my daughter up, because it's the first question anybody ever asks me.  Both my daughter and I think that while the word "writer" can be somewhat ambiguous, the  word "author" implies published.

4.  No one at the schools I'm going to will ask me if I'm published.  Since they're middle schoolers, they probably won't ask me if I like hot dogs.  One kid, however is sure to ask how much money I make.  The teachers will pretended to be horrified even though they're secretly dying to know.

5.  The guy who works on my farm can not figure out why I'm going to talk at a school.  I've tried explaining, and he just shakes his head and says, "Well, Miss Kim, if that's what you'd like to do, go ahead."

6.  I went to a milestone wedding this weekend:  the first time that I was friends not with the bride, but with her parents.  The first time a bride has ever called me, "Mrs. Bradley."

7.  Those of us at Table Five at the wedding reception--five couples--were all on our first marriages, and had been married between 21 and 33 years.  We were rather proud of that.

8.  I've known the other couples from the time I moved to Bristol.  Kathy and I moved here the same year; the others were friends before that. 

9.  In time, we at Table Five will attend each other's children's weddings.  But since the children range in age from 13 to 20, we all hope it will be awhile. 

10.  My friend Diane snapped a photo with her phone of me raising a glass of wine at the wedding.  Then she put it on Facebook.  I now have one of those Facebook photos that make people nervous about hiring you.

11.  Fortunately, I'm self-employed.

12.  Although really, it's a good thing I got this Visiting Author gig before the photo went up.

The Dog Is In Charge

Our neurotic ancient terrier mutt went berserk this morning.  It wasn't the first time.

The whole problem, the thing that upset his apple cart, was that my daughter, who's spending the night with a friend and going to the friend's house straight after school, came down the stairs carrying a suitcase.  She proceeded to put the suitcase into my van.

You can see how this might be upsetting.

Under Dog loses his marbles at the sight of a suitcase.  Always has, and, judging from this morning, always will.  He was around four months old when we rescued him from the parking lot of a CVS pharmacy (Hence his breed:  "CVS terrier."  It always kills us when people nod sagely and say, "Ah.  I've heard of those," as though he were some fancy-schmancy animal imported at great cost from the British Isles.).  He's thirteen now.  Not once in those thirteen years have we ever abandoned him after packing our suitcases.  Not once have we ever beat him with a suitcase.  Sometimes when we pack suitcases, we're taking him with us to our mountain house, which he loves.  Sometimes we're going on vacation, and we leave him at a very posh kennel where he gets to play with other dogs, which he loves.  Sometimes we're packing suitcases because my daughter is visiting a friend, and it really won't impact him at all.

He still freaks out.  Sometimes I think a Lizard Brain is all he's got.  Today he coped with his overwhelming feelings by jumping onto my office window seat and barking maniacally while the children drove away.  As they do every day.  Then he barked maniacally when the friend who boards his horse with us came to do morning chores.  As he does every day.  Then the dog ignored my husband's departure entirely, curled up in his bed, and took a nap.

While I was in the middle of writing the paragraph above, the phone rang.  It was my son calling from the high school.

Son:  Mom. You didn't buy me a yearbook.
(The school mails yearbook order forms in the fall; you mail back your check.)
Me:  I'm pretty sure I did.  I always do.
Son:  Nope.  (He sounds harassed.  He's a senior, and the yearbook is important to him.)
Me:  Well, can you buy one today?
Son:  Yep.
Me:  Ok, do that.  Do you have enough cash?
Son:  Nope.  It's seventy dollars.
(Seventy dollars!  I don't have that much cash, either.)
Me:  Will they take a credit card?  (He carries one.)
Son:  Nope.
Me:  Will they take a check?
Son:  Yep.  But you have to come now.

I am categorically against rescuing my children from their own problems.  Even when they were little, I tended to reply to cries of "You didn't remind me I needed my P.E. clothes today!" with, "Honey, I have no idea which days you have P.E."  However, this problem seemed to be mine, especially since I remembered telling my son more than once that, yes, of course I had ordered his yearbook.

Halfway to the school I realized I'd run out of checks in my wallet. 

Home again.

 School.  I am not the only parent standing in the office.  There's a line of adults and students both.  The school secretary deals with us sympathetically and quickly.  She pages both of my children from their homerooms, then turns to the kid behind me and says, "What, oversleep again?", scribbles him a note, moves on to the annoyed father holding a graduation cap and gown.  I step to one side and see that if I want a photo of my son in his cap and gown--those photos being taken today--my son needs a form and a check for fifteen dollars.  When my son shows up I give him two checks and an empty photo order form, tell him to fill out the form, and tell him, yes, I do want a photo of him in his cap and gown.  And I'm sorry about the yearbook.

Identical twin girls come in, looking slightly confused.  "What do you need, honey?" the secretary asks one of them.  "You called me," the girl says.  "No, honey I didn't," says the secretary.  But the girl's name is quite close to my daughter's, alphabetically, and I know that the school divides students into homerooms by alphabetical order.  I ask the girl if she's in my daughter's class.  The girl's expression clears.  "Oh, Bradley!" she says.  "On the intercom it sounded like broccoli, so we were guessing who you meant.  We'll get her."  She and her sister bounce out.

My daughter comes in, carrying an extra-large sweet tea from a local fast-food chain, Pal's.  Pal's sells gallons of sweet tea to the high school students every morning.  My daughter laughs when I give her the yearbook check.  She tells me the voice on the intercom sounded like it said broccoli.  She says her friend brought her the tea, and also a small cheddar rounds, which helps me understand how she never starves to death before lunch despite eating barely any breakfast at all.

I come home to my half-completed post.  If it were a normal morning--if I ever had such thing as a normal morning--I might draw a tidy conclusion to the parable of the dog and the suitcases, about how Under thinks he has something to fear, but doesn't really, and how he seems to think he's doing something constructive when he barks, but is really just ticking me off.  How he's not controlling his world despite his delusions.  There's a lesson in there, somewhere.

But I can't find it today.  Just now it seems like the dog might be right:  the best thing to do is bark your fool head off, and then go take a nap.

Good News

I went to my internist for a check-up this week and got good news and bad news.  My blood pressure is down.  My weight is up. 

Now of course I would like both of those things to be down.   But if I had to pick one?  I'd go with my blood pressure.  And I'm aware that flies in the face of all that is thought to be holy in our world.

I have a family history of high blood pressure and a personal history of borderline-to-high bp.  Some of my personal history was a side effect of a medicine I used to take, but not all; I've been paying attention and exercising specifically to keep my blood pressure under control.

My internist rather gleefully told me that I'd traded one problem for another, as a side effect of the medicine I switched to was weight gain, something he'd seen in "all of his patients" taking this particular med.  Great.  

But I gave up disliking my body for Lent, and it went so well that I've kept on.  I mean it.  I spent a lot of years ignoring my body entirely (I was thin in college, but I never realized it), and then several more disliking my soft belly and what a friend once called my "strong Germanic thighs."  But it got old, all that negative energy.  It grew tiresome.  It started to feel like the opposite of healing.  It was certainly the opposite of love.

And when I really stopped to think, I realized that my body is a trooper.  I've been told by three separate physicians that I was very lucky not to have died in my sleep from untreated asthma as a child, but here I am, alive.  My body kept breathing.  I didn't wear glasses and consequently had no depth perception as a child, but now--with the help of bifocals--I can hit a tennis ball well enough to rally with my daughter.  I will never be a runner, not with my asthma issues, but, by God, I am an eventer--and lately I've been having less breathing trouble, not more. 

I have good hands.  Strong hands--one of my superpowers is opening stuck jars.  I type fast, and I can knit plain in dark movie theaters or with my eyes closed. 

I rather like the silver strands running through my hair.  I have no plans to dye them.  I may start wearing hair ribbons again.

My body created, bore, gave birth to, and nursed two beautiful healthy babies, who have grown into tall, graceful near-adults.  I would hate it if my son and daughter didn't understand what gorgeous creations they are.  It would be so untrue.

So, for myself at least, I'm going to keep telling the truth.

Love the Ones You're With

I woke up this morning and thought, "Ah, lovely, an empty day.  No appointments.  No visits from the vet or farrier.  No tennis.  A whole day to write."

Then I remembered it was Wednesday, my day to work at Faith in Action.

Ah well, I thought.  I'll at least get in a couple of hours of writing before I go.

Then I remembered my 8:40 am appointment at the high school.

I thought for another minute or two, lying in bed, and decided that I could write a bit before the appointment and a bit after I got home from FIA, and it was all good.  I'm working on the start of a new novel.  The start's always rough, and I don't think it needs to be perfect before you move on--in fact, better that it isn't--but on the other hand, it needs to be a place from which the story can continue.  Attempt #1 was frightfully boring.  Attempt #2 was better, but a bit navel-gazily for my taste.  Attempt #3 will happen latter today.

A few weeks ago at FIA, we had a moment of down time, and one of our regular Wednesday crew, Vic, settled himself into a chair across from my desk.  Vic is a retired high school teacher and football coach who takes a touching and genuine interest in my novels.  He buys them all up for his granddaughter.  Anyway, Vic asked me how my latest book was coming.  Then he said, "Do you love it?  Do you love writing?"

Nobody ever asks me that.  They ask if I'm published, if I'm famous, if they've ever heard of me, but they never ask if I love it.

"Yes," I said, smiling. "I do."

"That's good," Vic said.  "Loving your work, that's the biggest blessing you can have."

"Did you love your work?" I asked him.

"I did," he said.  "I loved every minute."

I pretty much already knew that.  I could tell by the way Vic interacts with my son, when my son comes to work at FIA.  I could tell, too, by the reaction of a young man who came into FIA as a client, saw Vic, and said, "Coach!"  They embraced; the young man told me, "He's the only reason I managed to graduate from high school."

We have a lot of very good, caring, committed volunteers at FIA.  We're lucky that way.  But Vic is special.  Clients stop by just to say hello to Vic; just to let him know how they're getting on.  Once, when Vic was absent, a client knocked on the office door to ask me, "Doesn't Vic work on Wednesdays?  Is he sick?"  The secret, I once told my daughter, is that Vic makes every person he interviews feel as though he truly cares about them.

"You're wrong," my daughter said sharply.  "Vic doesn't make people feel as though he cares.  Vic actually cares.  People can tell the difference."

She was right, of course.  Loving what you do, that's a blessing.  Loving who you're with, that's something better.  I spend half my Wednesdays now trying to learn from Vic.

The International Bank of Bob (and Me)

So, on my way to my daughter's tennis match in a nearby city a few weeks ago, I got sideswiped by a bookstore.  This is not a surprise to anyone who knows me.

One of the books I picked up was a surprise, a good one:  The International Bank of Bob: Changing the World one $25 loan at a time.

Now, I'd heard of Kiva before.  It's an online site that makes it startlingly easy to participate in microfinance.  Microfinance, for anyone who's not been paying attention, is a way to make little-bitty loans to people, primarily in developing countries, who do not have access to traditional banking, usually because their incomes and assets are too low. 

When I was in South Africa, I quite often saw people selling things on the streets.  ("Chickens: alive or dead" was one of my favorite signs.)  Sometimes the level of commerce was incredibly small:  a woman would go into a grocery, say, and buy a five-pound bag of apples.  Then she'd sit outside the store and sell individual apples at a slight markup.  You can imagine the amount of cash transacted would be pretty small.  You can't possibly make much selling a dozen apples a day. 

So a microfinance loan might, say, help the woman buy enough fruit to stock a small roadside stand.  It would be a boost of capital that while small in the context of the developed world could be life-changing in the developing world.

All Kiva does is vet microfinance operations around the globe, offer to help fund up to 30% of their loans, and then post photos and descriptions of the people needing loans online.  Ordinary people go onto the Kiva site and loan their own money, $25 at at time.  You get a small amount of interest, but nobody's doing this to make money.  They're doing it to help a Zulu woman with her fruit stand. 

Anyway, along about a year ago, I made 3 Kiva loans.  They were repaid, and I reloaned the money, so that in a year's time I'd actually funded 13 people, which was pretty cool.  But of course, one wonders: does this actually do any good?

Enter Bob Harris.  Bob is a writer, comedian, and Jeopardy! champion, among other things.  Not long ago he was hired by a travel magazine to help update their ratings of the most luxurious resorts in the world.  A pretty good gig--but he became bothered by the disconnect between the places in which he was staying, which featured, among other things, $75 coffee made from beans extracted from civet poop, and the ordinary laborers he saw on the streets.  Working men who reminded him of his father.  When he finished traveling for the magazine, he put the $20,000 he earned into Kiva loans.  Then he took off on another trip--to visit the places and people where his money was invested.  Thus the book.

1) it's an easy read, funny and interesting; 2) Bob will go anywhere and do nearly anything, but always with the sort of humility that leads people around the world to trust him with their stories; 3) it turns out you really can change lives with a $25 loan.

When I finished the book and started to tell my husband about it, he said heck, our savings account wasn't making any interest anyhow.  Make some more Kiva loans instead.  Make a difference, he said.  So I loaned to a farmer growing maize in Rwanda.  A man in Peru wanting to buy a dairy cow.  A woman in Sierra Leone selling shoes.  You get the picture.

Right now, Kiva's running a "recruit a new member, get a free loan" deal.  Click here, and change a life.  Then read Bob's book--you'll love it.

Ten Minutes A Day

So, the house has been a mess.  Not the sort of mess that comes from daily living--we deal with that pretty well--but the sort of mess that comes from living in the same place for the past eleven years:  odd accumulations of stuff, in corners, in cabinets, and--especially--on bookshelves.  I'd about had it with the mess, but, on the other hand, the shear scale of it seemed daunting.

Then I read something somewhere that you can accomplish anything if you work on it 10 minutes a day.  While I'm pretty sure that's not universally true, it at least got me over my inertia.  Ten minutes a day.  I started with the bookshelf in the family room.   I pulled books out, stared at the spaces, tried to make sense of it without having any idea what I really wanted to achieve, except more room, since the book piles in my office were overwhelming.  "You know," my husband said, wandering by (I was not offended by his wandering.  This whole project was my idea.), "I'd really like all my golf books to be in one place."

Well, that sounded like an amazing idea.  What if all the golf books were in one place? 

I'll tell you what would happen.  You'd discover that you had multiple copies of several of the books.

From there, energized, I moved to the bookshelf in the hallway.  I got rid of half the tchotkes, reorganized the rest, and found room for my entire collection of World War II reference books, which is about 8 shelf-feet long and which had been overflowing two huge cardboard boxes on my office floor. 

I've since organized a funky corner of the living room, the yarn on my desktop, my mending pile, three bags of unfinished knitting projects (using 4 episodes of Downtown Abbey to finish some of them), the enormous pile of baseball caps that was dominating the bench in the mudroom, and one, but only one, of the cabinets in the family room.  I'm getting there.

Today's project:  ironing.  Now, I don't iron.  I consider microfabric sport shirts to be right up there with the Internet in terms of modern innovation, and even when my husband and I were fairly broke, in the early days of our marriage, we sent his dress shirts to the cleaners.  He likes heavy starch.  I like t-shirts.  Therefore, today's ironing pile was easily tackled in ten minutes.  It consisted of 1 stock tie, 1 linen hand towel featuring a sheep in a Santa suit and the embroidered words "Fleece Navidad," and 8 good napkins, used, I believe, in the formal dinner we gave for my husband's partners.  Before Christmas.

So, there you are. Another corner conquered.  Hooray!

What Next?

I've been having that kind of a week.

On Monday, I had to drive my truck, because my son's car was getting its smashed bumper replaced.  I usually keep the truck for farm use only--it's a quad-cab dually, and I've gotten it stuck in drive-throughs before. 

Since I was going to be driving the truck, and I had some extra time, I decided to be virtuous and get new tires for my horse trailer.  This has been on my to-do list forever. 

I drove the rig across town to the tire place, where they happily informed me that my trailer tires were practically brand-new.  I'd bought new ones last spring. 

I'd forgotten.

Nothing says Welcome to Monday like driving your rig around town for an hour for no reason at all.

Yesterday I told my son to take the trash down to the curb.  This is a big job since our driveway is about a quarter mile long.  My son did it without complaint, then said, "You know tomorrow's not trash day, right?"

Ah, no.  I knew Thursday was trash day.  I just didn't know which day yesterday was.

This morning, in a burst of super-efficiency, I took the dog to the groomer's half an hour before it opened.

I think I made hotel reservations for my son's graduation for the wrong weekend.

I also seen to have forgotten to order graduation announcements at all.

I may go back to bed.  Until Friday. 

Meanwhile, over at Faith in Action, we're making big plans.  Real, strategic, big plans.  We're about to move into our brand-spanking-new building (fully paid for and furnished by an amazingly generous, doggedly anonymous donor).  We'll be able to see more clients.  We plan to hire a part-time social worker, to try to move more people into more sustainable situations.  We've got a classroom to use however we wish.

We can do more now: the question is, what?  The Board is going to sit down and really think about how best to serve the people of Bristol.

So--help me out here (I'm clearly not having my best week).  What do YOU think we should offer?  How to you think we can do the most good?