Journals

Friday, January 11, 2008 Jackson Compound

“My journaling will never be the same,” I thought on waking. I’m taking a Literary Non-Fiction writing class and we’re starting with the diary / journal. I can feel my editor kicking right in and more than the editor, there’s a full boardroom of critics in my head clamoring at me. This is usually my stress reduction time, the one act of writing I total enjoy, the hour that is just for me, sans façade. Whew. (“A triplet,” a voice in my head notes.) (“Don’t put a parenthesis in the first paragraph for God’s sake!” another voice chimes in.)
Fortunately, Stanford the dog doesn’t know anything is different and in spite of the fact that I have approached this as seriously as a surgeon, he continues to pester and push me for walnuts. One after the other. It’s his routine that accompanies my routine and I hadn’t realized how much a part of my journal experience it is until just now.
Big, fuzzy nose butting up against my lap, threatening to topple my i-book, he ignores my annoyed, “No more walnuts” and nuzzles again and again until I give in and pull a knarly brown ball from the pocket of my old chenille bathrobe. The bathrobe, a cuddly girly-girl lilac, is part of my routine too.
“Take it to bed,” I order as Stanford takes the walnut from my hand into his soft dog mouth. He’s missing so many teeth it is a wonder he can crack those hard shells and extract the soft nutmeat from the membrane inside. But he always succeeds, leaving me with the job of shaking broken nutshells from his bed periodically. He doesn’t seem to notice the lumps or sharp edges of the broken shells as he drops his fifty pounds of flesh and fur down to rest. But I do. What kind of a mom lets her young sleep on a bed of broken walnut shells?
It’s the routine that comforts me enough to get past the “you have an assignment” voices in my head and relax into my writing. Tea, candles, classical music and solitude. And this morning a bonus: the sun has returned. Yahoo! The bare curly willow branches sparkle gloriously with residual raindrops in the rising sun, spectacular small town bling. I like to think that God knows we Californians – even the drought conscious ones among us – can’t take too much rain in one sitting. We need the sun. Let’s face it, we didn’t move here because of the traffic.
O.k. now for the more mundane – the real life stuff: J. copied the filing petitions for me yesterday and this morning he was full of ideas about my campaign, overwhelming me way too early with ideas and suggested tasks. I want to ease into this, not rush and certainly not get overwhelmed or anxious. I am about simple and easy this year. And besides my “city biz” involvement and the need to work for a living, I only want to write. Well, write and garden and run and play tennis. Always too much. I’ve come to my senses about forming a women’s team to play in the leagues this spring and summer. I’ll organize the junior tennis tournament and the junior team tennis for the kids, but I’m not taking on one more thing. Bastante!
I’m so excited about the class. I learned so much just in the first session. When I got home last night my first words to J. were “The class was great. I don’t have my text book. I hope it gets here soon. I wonder where it is?” He didn’t offer much response. It was after 10:00 and he was headed for bed. “Fine,” I thought. “Go to bed.”
He did and when I returned to the kitchen, there on the counter was the yellow envelope from Amazon and I couldn’t contain myself. I marched back to the Gold Room, quietly opened the door, whispered, ‘are you asleep?” and waited.
“Not yet,” he said.
“My book is here. I’m so happy.”
“Well, good honey. Now you can be happy,” emphasis on the “now.”
I hate it when he makes a point about my character without even trying. Ni modo. I was thrilled.
I pulled leftover Chinese food from the refrigerator, turning my nose up at the soggy looking stir-fry veggie/meat dishes, opting for a combination of the hot and sour soup and white rice. While the soup and rice heat in the microwave oven, I tear open the padded envelope and extract the shiny, smooth covered textbook. Two minutes later I am sitting with the book open beside the white porcelain bowl of rusty-red soup. I read about journaling, careful to ignore anything headed “Introduction” – following the advice of my teacher. Then I started into John Cheever’s journal.
Reading it broke my heart, as I remembered how Bob N. introduced me to Cheever many years ago. Fifteen? Eighteen? We were on Southwest Airlines to Los Angeles for business. We were both married then and I was devastatingly infatuated with – what was his name? That’s a shock. I can’t recall his name right now. I poured my agony of rejection out to Bob, until finally Bob confessed to me that he was in love—with me! That was the week we talked about alcoholism and recovery and found an upscale AA meeting in Beverly Hills. I wonder if Bob is still sober? I thought of him yesterday, remembering our consulting gigs and talks about writing and literature. I wonder if I should call him? As far as I know, he still lives with his wife, in Davis. We lost touch after our work together in Europe, a stressful and disappointing assignment for me. But what could he have done, really? He never even called me to offer regret that I’d been dropped from the team. Just went on his way, covering his own butt and raking in the dollars. I’ve probably not forgiven him yet.
That incident with the Brits left me jobless at the time. As fate (or the Gods) would have it, the phone rang and at the request of N., a colleague I hadn’t seen in over ten years, I was off to Italy and Spain on another assignment. That was the interesting twist in the road that none of us could have seen coming. Just goes to show, “don’t quit before the miracle” is a reasonable recommendation. Also it is good to have connections and a phone line where people can find you.
I’ve had some tea and I’m just loving this day. I have the morning to work, TV appearance at noon, time to get a jog in this afternoon; phone calls and real estate tasks and my campaign are up on the work docket.
Ah yes, and additional reading and writing. Well, there went my “wide-open day.”

Sunday, January 13, 2008 Jackson Compound
I wake in the night and my mind takes over writing journal entries and refusing to let me go back to sleep. After an hour, I nearly get up but make one last attempt with progressive relaxation, “going to the beach” and manage to fall back into restful sleep until 6:30.
Coincidental to starting the Literary Non-Fiction class, I selected and began listening to an audio book by Barbara Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an amazing work of literary non-fiction. I have been driving around in such a state of fascination and awe that yesterday I bought the hardcopy of the book. It was either that or suffer the consequences of note-taking while driving. I can multi-task with the best of them, but even I am not that good.
In her book, Barbara tells the story of a year of eating only what can be grown locally. Keep in mind that this takes place in Appalachia country so if you are one of the lucky ones to live here in California, imagine her experience way harder. On the other hand, she lives on a farm in a farm community, so if you live in a city, make that way easier. Ultimately though, I can’t imagine anyone reading or listening to this book and not being inspired to at least try to change some buying and eating habits.
I was exhausted last night after a long day of campaign organizing, playing tennis in a league match in Stockton and bringing a complex real estate deal together. Phone calls and email continued until after 7:00 PM and I was tired. So I put on my PJs and tucked into the Gold Room with my I-book on my lap and Barbara’s book beside me. Instead of reading or writing, I zoomed onto the internet looking for information about making cheese in your own kitchen. (You can find out all you need to know by searching “cheese queen” because there is such a person and Barbara has helped to increase her notoriety.) Within an hour I’d placed an order for my first “cheese making kit” to experiment with mozzarella and ricotta cheeses at home.
You could say I’m jazzed about all of this. And since I’m nearly out of time to write for now, I’ll add that I’m also jazzed about Kingsolver’s style and what I learn from all of these other authors. I’m also reading Three Cups of Tea and Obama’s book is waiting in the queue. Of course we have the selections in the textbook. I haven’t gotten past Cheever, but I will.

Monday, January 14, 2008 Jackson Compound
Somehow in the midst of this, the kick-off to my year focused on writing, I’ve decided to launch a campaign for District One Supervisor. I wake at 2:30 in the morning to the thought, “What are you doing?” and a kind of fear washes over me, just ahead of the hot flash I’ve come to expect upon waking.
“Listen to your gut,” a voice says, and right at this moment my gut is telling me that this is a big mistake. All I see in the darkness is exposure, activity and hard work. And a detour from my writing. I got up to pee and by the time I climbed back in bed I felt better.
“Just have fun with it,” J. had said the evening before in his simple wisdom that always catches me off guard. So I hold onto that fragile reed of advice and drift back into dreamland.
When I wake again it is in the fours. I roll over and realizing he is up – how does he do that? -- I spread out, mushing all of the down pillows and bedding over and under my body, with the idea of getting the eight hours I require for proper functioning. No dice. I am writing in my head again. And now the voice is Barbara Kingsolver, writer of the marvelous work I’ve been listening to and reading.
So dig this, I’m up before 5:00 AM. It’s 5:30 – ish before I sit down to write because I take time to feed the boys, make tea, empty the dishwasher, do up some left over “hand wash” items and light a few candles.
“Are we having a séance?” J. asks as he comes into the Being Room for another cup of his morning coffee. He’s recently graduated to Starbucks or Seattle’s Best, giving up his Folgers. I am not even tempted, though the aroma is so much better than the heavy smell of chicory. I love waking up to my black-vanilla blend tea, special ordered in bulk from Mountain Bros and prepared in my English tea pot, served up with half-and-half laced with a drop of Mexican vanilla. As I move into living like a “loca-vore” (one who eats local foods) this is one thing I will not give up, even though it has to be shipped from some other state to get to me. The vanilla we bring back from Mexico on our own, so no extra petrol burned up there.
I’m feeling so inclined to garden and eat from the land – but I’m so inexperienced and … well, lazy! Yes, I pruned the roses back the other day and I’m hoping like heck I didn’t butcher them too badly. Other things need pruning and I’m so fearful of cutting the wrong thing or the wrong way or too much or at the wrong time. I hate cutting things back. Why can’t I think of it like, say, giving a haircut? I find myself wanting to start seeds (how do you do that?) and build a little green house (how do you do that?) and I still, in the deepest part of me, want to get a couple of hens for eggs (how do you do that?).
Herein lies my dilemna… not enough time to read, learn and then do everything I want to do in this life. I’m “MIC”—multi-interest challenged. My Spanish is rusting for lack of practice and reading. I have a real estate broker’s course (5 of them actually) to take and a license to be had yet this year. I want to run, bike and improve my tennis game. I’ve yet to learn Italian, Portuguese or French. And now I’m going to learn to make cheese at home.
And over arching all of it is this obsession with writing. Ah life. What is this all about anyway? Thank God for the comfort of my home, these sweet animals nudging me for strokes with soft, wet noses, and my health. Corny, but true. I am blessed.