Category: Thoughts and Reflections

What I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up

Daily writing prompt
What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?
View all responses

When I was a child, I wanted to be a poet. I remember announcing this to my mother, who said, “Do you like to eat? You’ll starve as a poet.” She didn’t know about academia, where someone could get a Ph.D. and teach in composition and creative writing while getting paid for writing poetry. It’s just as well I didn’t take that path, though; I might have taken well to that unit in poetry as a third-grader, but I’m not enthused with my poetry now.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Then, in Junior High, I wanted to be a doctor. Then I had some medical issues, and I realized I didn’t like doctors. They were abrupt and rude. They didn’t explain things to me and I was the patient. I wouldn’t have made a bad doctor, because in college I loved my physiology and microbiology classes. Chemistry, not so much. I still love medical stuff and try to diagnose people on reruns of Emergency! (American TV show, circa 1972) all the time.

The common wisdom is that the average college student changes majors seven times before they graduate. I think this is a gross exaggeration, but I did change my major three times from dietetics to food and nutrition to foods in business. Still, that wasn’t my final destination.

I didn’t want to become a college professor until college, because I hadn’t been exposed to the job. I had a friend in college whose father was a college professor, and I liked the way he had been brought up. It was only a matter of figuring out what I would be a professor of. My senior year, I discovered family economics and my career path was clear.

I joke sometimes that I still don’t know what I want to do once I grow up, but I have been a college professor for over 30 years, so I guess that’s what I am now.

Sunday Lazy Sunday

I have nothing planned for today. It’s Sunday, and I want to soak up all the leisure I can before the work week starts tomorrow. I just woke up, and a nap feels like a good idea already. I’d do better drinking a cup of coffee and listening to chill music, which is what I’m doing right now.

The coffee is strong and the music mellow. A good combination, but I’m still sleepy. It’s only 7 AM, so I have a whole day of nothing ahead of me. I will probably do something, though — I have some internet searches for the upcoming novel.

Here’s a picture of Chloe doing what I feel like doing today:

Lyrics to an Old Song I Wrote

Chicken wire and crepe paper
wrapped around a hayrack,
towed behind a pickup
in the homecoming parade
in a town as small as this one,
maybe smaller, but that was
too long ago, my distant past,
my childhood a charade

CHORUS:
I had a dream last night
you turned around and asked me why
I wasn't coming home again --
I couldn't tell you (2x)

Traps set in the corners
of the hallways of my high school,
memories like tigers
crouched and ready there to spring;
tried to do my best 
to be invisible, but that was impossible,
a waste of time,
a waste of everything.

CHORUS

Tried to tell the people
with their eyes glued to the tv set
to look at something else
besides the color of their hate
I was just a child then
but I wasn't, but that was 'cause
I couldn't be, 
it wasn't fair,
you can't go back to change my fate

CHORUS

Autumn

It finally feels like fall, with morning temperatures in the 30s and the sunlight growing softer. It’s not a great year for autumn leaves, with most turning a dull yellow-green instead of fiery red. But I’m here for it, and looking forward to the coccooning that happens in the season.

I’m off today (Friday in the US) because of Walkout Day, a custom at the university during Homecoming week. Homecoming is a tradition in colleges and high schools surrounding an (American) football game, where there is a parade and homecoming floats and other activities. Alumni come back to enjoy the festivities, hence the name. It is the epitome of fall activities for small towns and small universities.

I hope to write today. Mostly organizing my notes, but that, too, is writing. I also may pick the picture for the cover of Kringle All the Way. We shall see how productive I feel.

Me and Automobiles

Daily writing prompt
What’s something most people don’t know about you?
View all responses

One thing that people don’t know about me is my relationship to cars and driving. I learned how to drive rather late in my life (age 32). This is not usual for the US where a driver’s license at sixteen is a rite of passage.

I was different. Behind the wheel of a car, I was a hazard. Among the things I managed in driver’s ed: stopping in the middle of the railroad tracks to check for trains, butting the car into a snow drift in an otherwise empty parking lot, and making a 180-degree turn into a parking lot when all I intended was to turn the corner. Needless to say, I did not get my driver’s license in high school.

I took drivers’ ed again, and that time got through it. I didn’t, however, get my driver’s license because my parents were too scared to take me to the testing facility to get tested. I didn’t blame them. Eventually, when I had taken a break from college, I got the license but never drove on it, and my skills extincted. It didn’t help that I got hit by a car in my late 20’s, breaking my leg and resulting in a bar in my left tibia to hold it together.

When I was in college and grad school, I lived in a city with excellent public transit, so I didn’t miss having a car. It wasn’t until I lived in Oneonta, New York, my first teaching job, that I felt the pinch of not being able to drive. Oneonta was a rural town in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, and there was an arts scene in the area — all spread out from Oneonta to West Kortright to Delhi to Franklin. Only accessible with a car.

I took driver’s ed with the best person I could have found, a laid-back man named Lee Fisher. He taught adults how to drive, and thus he knew how to deal with people who struggled to drive. It turned out that, when I drove, all the little pieces of driving wanted to happen in my head all at once. Think of all the actions needed for a right-hand turn: slowing down, activating the turn signal, braking at the stop sign, looking both way, accelerating slowly while turning the wheel, straightening the wheel … my mind couldn’t sort them in order. I learned to drive by reciting all the moves in order just before doing them. When I no longer needed to say them out loud, I went to get my driver’s license, and succeeded.

I didn’t let those skills extinct, instead getting myself a car to drive. I made a lot of mistakes, had a couple accidents, and spent a couple years in the assigned risk pool with expensive insurance coverage. But I got used to driving.

I have never become an excellent driver. I balk at interstate driving, although I can and will do it if necessary. But driving is a part of my life now.

The Long Hiatus

I haven’t started writing yet. It’s been that kind of semester, where I don’t feel like writing at the end of the day. This is not to say I have been completely devoid of writing-related endeavors. I have been waiting for Reclaiming the Balance to come back from a sensitivity edit. I have been working on Kringle All the Way‘s plotting and characters so I’m ready in November. I made a poster for Reclaiming for my office (and have yet to print it).

I haven’t felt like much of a writer lately. Fewer stops to Starbucks, fewer days writing, less inspiration. Neither of my open novels are doing a thing for me inspiration-wise. Not much flow when I do write. I feel a bit foolish now talking about flow and how well I had been doing.

I will go to Starbucks tonight to work on Kringle All the Way. I need some plotting and character sketches before I start writing in November.

Wish me luck.

I’m back

I made it through Missouri Hope. The grand total was 135 role-players in 240 roles (some did multiple slots) over three days. In other words, a lot of work. I would call it the most intense weekend of my year, because I tend not to schedule intense work on weekends. I need my weekends to relax and write.

I have to admit the past couple posts were mainly to keep from losing my record, which is either 70 days or 90-something. The record-keeping software on WordPress has a glitch somewhere, and I don’t know whether the higher or the lower number is the glitched one.

Now is time to recover and work on getting ready for November. I will be writing my latest Kringle novel in the month of November with a goal of 50k words. I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo, for reasons I’ve laid out here. The wheel of the year keeps turning, with Homecoming and Halloween soon, then the holidays, and I am carried along with it.

Reprint: Missouri Hope

Note: This is a reprint of a post I made two years ago for Missouri Hope:

When I’m not a professor or a writer, I’m a moulage artist.

I do this work 2-3 times a year, making up volunteers to look like accident victims sporting injuries from broken legs to burns to drowning to long lacerations. It’s illusion, done with wax and grease paint and fake blood (there are good fake blood recipes at the link).

The big event of the year is Missouri Hope, three days of training in the rough for undergraduates, nurses, and emergency personnel. As the moulage coordinator, this takes a lot of preparation — inventory, ordering, prepping materials, and taking a deep breath and hoping I’ll have enough volunteers to help (recruiting is not part of my duties).

It starts this evening. I will have dinner with my fellow staff, from team and lane controller/evaluators to logistics and operations staff to our catering crew. I know many of these people from the university and from previous exercises. One of them is a current student of mine; another a former student. One is my husband. I feel at home in this crowd, which is part of the reason I’ve been doing moulage for 12 years.

This is me doing moulage. It’s my least gory picture.

I’ve gotten to where doing moulage is second nature, and I can do it pretty quickly. I can’t do it too quickly; injuries like lacerations and breaks require a layer of wax followed by a layer of latex followed by a layer of castor oil followed by a layer of makeup.

I have all my supplies (except the castor oil I’m hunting for) ready to go. The fun starts tomorrow.