Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

I just about avoided this prompt. I have fallen back into what I like to call “Midwestern Female Syndrome” — the internal need to be perfect and the external seeming of mediocrity. Don’t promote yourself, deflect all praise, don’t draw attention to yourself. I don’t know why I’ve fallen back there, except I think it might have to do with my upcoming 60th birthday. Women my age are supposed to be (according to society) invisible.

I decided to answer this question precisely because of the discussion above. I need to fight being invisible. I need to have a favorite thing about myself.

So here goes: My favorite thing about me is my sense of humor.

My sense of humor is dry. And sardonic. And silly. And quirky. And sometimes snarky. In rare moments, a bit dark.

Humor helps me cope through rough times. I find laughter reduces both physical and emotional pain and takes my mind off things that disturb me.

Sometimes I laugh for no apparent reason. I’m laughing at the ludicrous moment that has just passed — an accidental pun, a facial expression, a droll witticism. I find humor in places other people miss.

Sometimes I make people laugh to break the tension that fills a room. It has to be done carefully, so as not to offend anyone or make them self-conscious. Humor does not exist to avoid communication, but to make it easier. Best things to joke about in this situation: 1) myself; 2) something in the surroundings. When I joke in class, 3) something about the class material.

My husband is my partner in humor. We throw funny things at each other, and find things funny that nobody else would because of the context. This is a thing possible among friends.

I don’t know what I would do without my sense of humor. Life is, above all, really funny.

In the Wilds of Des Moines

I haven’t been writing enough lately because I have been on internship visits all week. The first trip was Lexington/Liberty/Kansas City MO, and the other Glenwood/Des Moines IA.

Richard and I have gotten to stay overnight because of the mileage involved in visiting 3 interns. So we explore the places we’re staying given the energy we have left. This usually means food places and coffeehouses.

Notes for the Des Moines part of the trip:

Gursha Ethiopian Grill: we ordered this Door Dash. Two drinks and one entree on my 5-item Vegetarian plate went missing. The lentil and split pea dishes were somewhat under spiced. On the other hand, Richard ate the 5-item meat platter and said it tasted exceptionally good. Consensus: don’t eat here if you prefer vegetarian.
Hotel Renovo: This is a “country” themed hotel, but does not come off like Cracker Barrel and its aggressive nostalgia. There are design elements, such as one set of sliding barn doors to shut off a conference room. There is an overall feeling of space and comfort, created by big windows and not cramming spaces with too many couches and tchotkes. One startling use of a window is where the second floor hallway opens out into the breakfast nook. Keep an eye out for the deer in the headlights — the bad pun version — in the lobby.
Waveland Café: Where has this been all my life? The café is a breakfast place. And superlatively so. The atmosphere is quirky. The walls are signed by famous people who have visited, mostly newscasters and their crews, as Iowa is a news making state during primaries. The breakfasts themselves are wonderful, although I’d rate the coffee as “ok”.
Mars Cafe — our coffee and writing stop. The conceit here is outer space, and the cafe does it well in a mellow space with joyous music. Mars has the usual fare in a coffeehouse — coffee, lattes, etc. But they have their own creations; I’m drinking a Sputnik revisited, which is a latte with browned butter, walnut and cinnamon. My husband is drinking a Space Pioneer Miss Baker, which is a non-alcoholic cocktail with espresso, sparkling water, walnut bitters, and rose water. I’m feeling inspired to write this blog!

The mini-vacation ends this afternoon, when we have to drive the 2 1/2 hours back down to Maryville and deal with four very grumpy cats. But my mini-working vacation has been a very good one.

A Fun Work Trip

I’m on day two of a trip to Lexington/Liberty/Kansas City visiting interns. This also means I get to hang around interesting places we don’t have in Maryville. My husband is working remotely while I go to my internship sites.

Lexington, believe it or not, has an indie bookstore/cafe with a real ambiance to it, which is better than we have in Maryville. It helps that Lexington is a town with history, although I’m not quite sure what their history is*. Liberty is more urban, given that it’s closer to Kansas City. We didn’t do much in Liberty.

Kansas City is one of my favorite places. I keep insisting if we win the big lottery, I want to move here. (Richard is pushing for a smaller town. Which is fine, but it better have an indie cafe.) We stayed in KC overnight so we didn’t have to drive the 2 hours back down to visit our third intern. So far, we stayed in the 21c Hotel (based around art), ate an entirely too expensive and utterly magnificent steakhouse (Anton’s), and ate breakfast at our favorite breakfast place (eggtc). Now we’re waiting at Broadway Cafe for my appointment today, and from there we’re going to Whiskers Cat Cafe!

After this, I am going to need a rest, and I’ll get one for one whole day. Then I will drive to Iowa and spend the night in Des Moines. And have more fun.

* Lexington history features being the first booming town west of St. Louis, and for confederates. I don’t like the Confederacy.

Mostly Harmless

Daily writing prompt

If humans had taglines, what would yours be?

View all responses

If I had a tagline, it would be the tagline for humans in the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is “mostly harmless”. I’m pretty innocuous, being almost 60 and overweight and thus doubly invisible to the general public. I write relatively light romantic fantasy (If I weren’t female I don’t know if it would register as romantic at all, given gender biases). I have a silly sense of humor. My only vice is sweets.

I didn’t say entirely harmless. That suggests there is some small fragment of dangerous in me. After some soul-searching, I’d have to say that it’s my ability to argue. I have logic, metaphors, and a great bullshit detector on my side.

I consider my ability to argue dangerous because it can change minds. Sometimes. There are some people who don’t want their minds to be changed, who cling to falsehoods and spurious sources. They want to argue to convince themselves they’re right. I will find the truth in their statements and abridge my arguments, and if they’re right, I will change my mind.

Truth is dangerous. This is why little old me is “mostly harmless”.

The Ideal Place to Write

I am, as you might have guessed from my content, a writer. As a writer, I have favorite places to write, and not-so-favorite places to write. I don’t pretend to be representative of all writers, but I think I have commonalities with many other writers.

I have three criteria when it comes to writing: comfort, space, and activity level. I look for optimal levels of each, not necessarily maximum level. And when I find an optimal place, I really can write better.

Comfort

I look first at comfort. There is an optimal level of comfort that is neither too little nor too much. That may sound counterintuitive, but there is such a thing as too much comfort. Too much comfort and I fall asleep in my chair, which is not conducive to writing. I find the chairs at my local Starbucks, especially the ones at the round tables, friendly to my back. The other corporate coffee place in town has chairs that are at best indifferent, while the booths are downright hostile. Nothing says “Grab your coffee and get out” quite like those booths. At home I have a Serta desk chair (used; love those bargains!) that makes my office very comfortable, and a couch downstairs that’s slightly less comfortable.

“Office Desk” by Bench Accounting/ CC0 1.0

Space

My second criterion is space. This refers both to the confines of the room and the physical atmosphere. Despite the Serta desk chair and the dual large screens, I have trouble writing in my office for very long because of the space. The office is a small, cluttered room where one can’t stretch out without hitting something. The desk (actually a library table) abuts the wall and I find myself staring at the wall when I need to think between words. My eyes take up the clutter and it makes me grumpy. I’m just not going to warm up to the office to write unless this is fixed. The living room loveseat is a far better place to write space wise. I am not crowded unless I let too many books pile up. Coffeehouses have wonderful space, neither too crowded nor too spacious. There is art on the walls, textures in wall coverings and furniture.

Activity Level

Third, I pay attention to activity level, the stirrings of things around me. At home, on the loveseat, there are cats to help me write and short breaks to check the mail or drink hot beverages. The office is quiet and no cats allowed. Music helps, but it gives me nothing to look at during breaks except the Internet, which is a black hole my attention gets sucked into. Writing in public — cafés, hotel lobbies, libraries — usually gives me the right balance of activity level to quiet. Public places, such as my aforementioned Starbucks, can get too noisy at times but overall are just busy enough.

Conclusion

First off, I need to do something with the office to make it more conducive to writing. I’m talking with my husband right now about this. Working with the door open (which increases perception of space and allows cats inside) may be helpful. Playing music may help. Getting a coffee machine in there might be asking too much.

Second, Starbucks will be a regular destination for me as long as they have comfortable seats and coffee drinks (which is part of their corporate mission, so forever).

Finally, I will need to keep going on writing retreats (to places with excellent coffeehouses or lobbies with computer tables).

There are ways around the disaster of an uncomfortable place to write: fix up the place or go elsewhere. I can do some of both.

List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

Three books that have had an impact on me. Hmm… I’m glad the prompt is not “THE three books that have had an impact on you” because there have been many more than three.

The three I’m thinking about right now are all in the fantasy genre because that’s what I’ve been reading most of my life, and because I write in those genres. Keep in mind that I’m almost sixty years old, and so are some of these books. I consider them foundational in my life.

The first book is not just a book, but a series: The Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper. Before we had categories like young adult and middle school, these books appeared in my small town junior high library. Our librarian recommended them to me, and my life changed. People my age facing mythological beings, trying to stop the forces of evil — I know, it sounds like a thousand stories. But dressed in British folk custom, with evocative descriptions, I could read it again as an adult.

The second book was one I was turned on to in college, and it has stayed with me as if I’d read it yesterday. The book is Godbody by Theodore Sturgeon, in which an itinerant man leaves interpersonal miracles in his wake. Is he the second coming of Jesus? The parallels of the narrative suggest so. The book advocates a less hierarchical, more personal relationship with God, and a view of love that transcends the restrictive culture of man. This book has informed my view of religion and spirituality and continues to do so.

The third book is, again, a series, and a lengthy one. The series is Darkover, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and I cannot post this without mentioning the serious and credible allegations against Bradley made by her daughter Moira Greyland. It’s with some uneasiness that I put Bradley’s books on my list.

Darkover isn’t just a series, it’s a world. Not a perfectly realized world, but one where characters recur from book to book, where the reader can trace a family tree over a few hundred years. There’s lore and reputation and conflict — this has been as attractive to its fans as its sword and sorcery, with psychic powers substituted for the magic. Darkover fans have done genealogy with the characters, developed persona in the world, and made a role-playing society of it. I have taken my love of character development, convoluted relationships, and my dream of creating an all-absorbing world from Darkover.

So there are my three books. As I’ve said, there are many others. But these are perhaps the most influential of the fiction items.

Freezing in Summer

Right now, I am in the lobby of the DoubleTree in Chesterfield, MO. I’m writing at a computer table. And I am freezing. Mind you, very seldom in my life am I cold, much less freezing. I am jiggling my foot under the table to keep from turning into an icicle.

This is a business hotel, which means they have a Conference Center, which is a fancy way to say a building with conference rooms. They have a decent cafe for breakfast and lunch and really bad coffee for guests, and they have a broken thermostat in the lobby.

I wish I had a swimsuit. The pool would be warm, right? Warmer than this lobby.

I could go upstairs to my room to write at what is euphemistically called a desk, right? That setup where my face is approximately a foot from the wall? I like a little space myself, which is why I’m out in the lobby at the computer table. It’s a nice computer table.

Eventually it will be lunchtime, and I will go into the slightly warmer cafe to have something that will warm me up.

I suppose if worse comes to worst, I can grab the duvet off the bed, wrap it around me, and sit in the lobby. Nobody would notice, right?

Hydrophobiaphobia

I have an irrational fear and have had it for most of my life, which is quite a few years. Hydrophobiaphobia (I’m told this is what it’s called) is fear of contracting rabies. I fear that someday some animal is going to bite me, or even slobber on me, and I am never going to see it again, and then I’m going to get rabies and die.

Dying is almost inevitable in rabies. Only 29 people have survived rabies ever. Even with the Milwaukee protocol, a method of supportive treatment, most don’t survive. Luckily, rabies is rare. Only one to three people in the US die of rabies each year. This is in part because of the over 60,000 preventive vaccine series given each year.

That does not stop me from my fear. I’m better than I used to be as a kid when I would pet cats and dogs and ask myself if they’d bitten me and I just couldn’t remember. I would lose sleep at night checking for brain malfunction.

Nowadays, I just worry a bit and keep an extra close eye on my cats. It’s necessary because we have bats in the house. Cute, fuzzy little rabies vectors that cats like to play with. So it’s a matter of vaccinating the cats and making sure to bring the bats in to the Public Health Department to test for rabies. I think about the actions it takes to get the treatment if it comes to that. And my fear is much better, because I have a solution.

Have I Missed the Silly Season?

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about living in Maryville is what I call the Silly Season. It runs from April through July, and it features little oddities that I’m not sure most college towns (or towns of any sort) have to weather.

The Silly Season usually starts on campus with art projects. Like giant rubber duckies on Colden Pond, or a doorframe set up in the middle of the sidewalk. The Northwest Yeti. Little things like that. Then it spreads to the town, with horses at the local drive-in tied to the order kiosk and a large cow in the grocery store parking lot. Not so much madness as a head-shake and a chuckle. This is our excitement. It’s slow around here.

That has not happened this year. Nothing has startled a smile out of me on campus, nothing unusual has been sighted in town, not even a Weinermobile. I am worried that the Silly Season has expired in Maryville, and I miss it.

It might be time for me to figure out how to revive the season. The trick is that one cannot try too hard to be silly. One can try to get attention, but not try to dictate what kind of attention one gets. And the most important thing, one has to do it without any self-consciousness. One gives in to the awkwardness and goes all-out. It’s the difference between wearing a mascot costume and doing that mascot dance wholeheartedly.

I have too much self-consciousness lately, and I blame my meds for that. Bipolar has a great correlation with unabashed weirdness, but it has a great correlation with other things I’d rather do without. If I had less, though, I’d consider adding some silly to people’s lives here. Set up (with the proper permits) a lemonade stand downtown. Walk in bunny ears through Walmart. Put signs on my car reading “Lauren Leach-Steffens for Whatever” in campaign style. And more.

I hope the Silly Season comes back. It’s good for some Facebook posts from home.

June 1st

I feel a detachment from the outside world, which dresses itself in an indecisive grey-blue sky. I want it to thunder, with a torrent of rain. Life has gotten dusty.

I dress myself in an equivocal mood: I want to stand in the deluge; I want to rest inside.