dancingsinging

Well, look at that! It's Wednesday and I'm posting about reading, all on schedule and everything

Recently Finished

I just read _Hungry Ghost_, the sequel to the one I just reviewed about the lesbian werewolves. I'll probably do a full Goodreads review sometime, but here's a little bit. This book was not as fun as the first one, with fewer sex scenes and more sexual angst on the part of the protagonist. It was still a fun read--I think I read it in maybe three days?

The things that really worked in it:
- Moon gets real about the less talked about stuff in GLBTQ culture, like sex work and BDSM and conflicted feelings about transgender issues and feminist in-fighting about porn and stripping.
- She has a transgender character and does it well.
- There's a neat theme about transcending the either/or bimodal paradigm (sorry, there are actual feminst theory academic words for that teasing my brain, but I'm not dredging them up right now). She ties together some neat stuff from academia with transgender issues and the whole werewolf thing. Interesting ideas and fun literary play.
- There's a little more in there about the protag's relationship with her father, which I was glad to see.
- One pretty hot BDSM sex scene

The things that pissed me off because of my issues:
- Her protagonist is a poor student. Smart, but whiny and easily distracted and completely unappreciative about the opportunity for education. Having gone to school with a bunch of wealthy, privileged kids who partied and had fun while I financed my half of the tuition my scholarship didn't cover, it just  kind of hits a nerve. I get that Moon is probably making the character annoying so that there can be dynamic character growth, which leads me to my second pet-peeve point.
- A lot of the character's struggle is explained to the reader and only shown in a really fuzzy, confused way. You know, the whole "Lexie felt like she would never be able to have conviction about anything" type of writing. Which seems pretty common in brain-candy type books and doesn't bother a lot of people. But it really ticks me off because I never let myself do that in my writing but I haven't yet mastered how to pull off showing character growth in a smooth and natural way. So I think I get pissy that someone else gets to write it the easy way and still gets to have people read her stuff and like it.

The things that I think are more objectively places where the book is weak:
- The protag's father is pretty two-dimensional. For someone so important to the protagonist and to her character arc, I think he deserves more depth.
- The pacing is choppy. The character growth is shown in sort of jagged spurts and all the plot and action sort of stop dead while that happens.
- Dammit, not enough sex scenes! Or should I say, too many abortive sex scenes that could be great but stop in the middle because of the character having issues. But like, since the character arc isn't smooth or compelling, it doesn't seem fair to have that ruin the sex scenes. I know I seem to be obsessing about the sex! But since this book is a brain-candy book to me (I mean that in the good sense!) I feel like it should have fun-to-read scenes. And, seriously, one of Moon's greatest strengths as a writer are her awesome sex scenes.

I see that I've sort of ended on a downer here. So I'm just going to re-state my overall take, which is that this book was enjoyable to read and does things right (like trans stuff) that you don't often see done well.

Currently Reading
That Duchamp short story collection which is so good.
The other short story collection whose title and author I can't remember but which is also good.
I got Mieville's Embassytown in from the library and read a few pages. It's not really doing much for me, but neither did The Scar and so many people love that book. I think it's because I mostly read for characters and I just am not feeling anything for the characters. I'll probably slog through a little more before I decide whether to finish it.

Up Next
I just got a message from the library that _Seraphina_ is in. Looking forward to that one.

I am proceeding cautiously with trying to read a little bit sometimes, because of the happiness I mentioned in my last post. My usual experience with books is that I have a hard time engaging in real life when I'm reading one, but since last time I was happier even *after* I finished reading for the day (and before I finished the book), I figure I'll read a little more.

I started reading Timmi Duchamp's new novel _Never at Home_ which seems good, judging from the first few pages. I have high expectations because of her other stuff, especially _The Red Rose Rages, Bleeding_, which was far more easily readable than the Marq'ssan series (which I also love).

I'm hoping to read _The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care_, too, but since that's not fiction I'm not going to write much about it here. Unless I find something totally fascinating and change my mind.

In my fiction queue I have _Seraphina_ by Rachel Hartman and _Embassytown_ by China Mieville. I found them both via goodreads and they were recommended highly by smart friends, so I have high hopes. Seraphina is apparently about dragons who fold themselves up into human shape and Embassytown, I understand, is about aliens. (I bounced off _The Scar_, but I think it's mostly because of all the cold oceany landscapes which I found not cozy enough to spend reading time living in and also because I had trouble liking any character much or understanding the point. I couldn't find any stakes to care about in there. But aliens! That's a whole other thing.) I put these two on hold at my library and should get them soon, since I'm always going there for my daughter.

In my "eventually it would be cool to read" pile I have _Redwood and Wildfire_, by Andrea Hairston. I actually ordered that one from Aqueduct Press a while ago, so it's in my house somewhere. I read the first couple of chapters, which I found riveting, but then got distracted and then misplaced the book.

But there! I all organizedly have a plan for future reading, which gives me a happy little glowy feeling. I suppose that if I find myself getting too engaged with fiction, to the point where I'm just annoyed with anything that gets between me and my book (like a certain adorable little tyke) I suppose I can always cut myself off again.

This morning, I was feeling so terrible that I had a cup of caffeinated coffee. So I've been feeling awesome all day. (If only I could do that every day and it would still work!) And feeling awesome, I was able to remember all the people who *are* rushing to my aid as if I were a sweet, spunky protagonist in a teen fantasy novel. Since I spend so much time here whining, I thought I'd share about that for some balance! Things people are doing/have done/have offered to help me:

- wild_irises invited me to come stay with her for a weekend so that she could stay up all night with the baby while I slept. (This one kind of blows me away. Like, really?) I haven't been able to take her up on it yet, but just knowing the offer's on the table makes me feel less desperate.

- A woman I met through my daughter's school offered to drive her back and forth to school every day that she doesn't have a babysitting gig, which works out to about three days a week, two hours a day.

- My dad handed me a $500 check to pay for the first while of having a night nurse, even though we can afford it ourselves, because he didn't want money to be an obstacle to getting started. (So far I haven't found anyone to do it, but maybe I will...)

- My sister spent more than half her spring break playing with the baby so I could sleep during the mornings. She even took him once at four or five in the morning, but that didn't work so well. Still, she was willing to!

- Spouse has started taking the bb for five hours Saturday and Sunday mornings while I sleep. (This is part of the results of that head-tearing-off thing I mentioned in my last post.) I feel sort of strange listing him in my "people helping me" list, since he's the kid's parent, too. So "helping" isn't the right category. But it's more than he was doing before and he started doing it because I asked him to, so that counts for something. It's not half of the sleeping hours around here, but on the weekends, I'm getting more sleep than he is.

- My mom came up for a few days when I was most desperate and cleaned the house for me. And she's coming up again tomorrow!

They might not be supernatural beings offering to eviscerate my enemies, but these people are pretty fucking awesome. When I get out of my own misery enough to consider it, I'm boggled that so many people are willing to do so much for me.

Wheat did not make the cut today. I reintroduced with a sandwich on sourdough bread and felt major ick and minor gastrointestinal upset pretty quickly. <sigh> At least I know.

Why does Pandora have a swear-word filter but no misogyny filter?! My daughter has transformed her love of Michael Martin Murphy (cowboy music) into a Pandora station that plays cowboy nostalgia, country, and weird 70s folk. (OMG, if I have to hear John Denver sing Rocky Mtn High one more time I'm gonna puke.) Anyway, it's weird how country can be all sweet and idealistic and girl-meets-boy-handholding one minute and grossly, disgustingly misogynistic the next. And also, so much gender essentialism! My deal with her was that she could listen to "grown-up" (i.e. not made-for-kids) music but that I could thumbs-down at will. So I do a lot of thumbsing-down. Which is probably fucking up Pandora's method for figuring out what kind of music she likes. (She loves Don Williams, but the one about "pull down the shades, turn out the light, and love me tonight" got the hammer. Not for the sex innuendos but for the annoying demandingness and sort of implied objectification.)

It is weird how strongly some of the country music affects me. I mean it's super sappy, but it gets me. I actually started crying at the dinner table when this song about how this dude and his wife won't be sad when their children grow up and move away because they'll remember when. My daughter was so cute; she said "if it makes you so sad, then don't listen to it." Anyway, I think I get this weird identity resonance/dissonance thing listening to it. I used to feel guilty whenever I listened to country music, but now that I decided to stay married and have another kid, sometimes I just identify. Which is so weird, because it's all heartland, bedrock, God stuff. I dunno.

I had some caffeinated tea today at 5:00 and so I'm awake now, even though the only time the little dude sleeps in his own crib for more than an hour or so is like 8 to 9:30. But you know what? I feel so /damn/ good. It's giving me hope that being depressed really is mostly about sleep deprivation and not something harder to reverse. Not that I can really reverse it right now. But it's nice to have a little brief artificial feeling of enough rest. I know why I always get re-addicted to this drug.

Thank you all for your comments in my last post. It helped a lot to read them.

Just wanted to let you all know that I am feeling a bit better. Also, my mom is coming to help me for a couple days! Thank God she's in a good place right now and is able to help.

So, a while ago I wrote one of my many posts-in-my-head about a realization that hit me all at once--how much my choice to be home with my kids is economic. Like, it's totally true that I think the work I do is important, and that I think it serves my children best to have a lot of time with me when they are very young. But if teaching preschool paid as well as Spouse's engineering job? You bet your sweet bippy I'd be off doing it, leaving dear Spouse at home stressing out because how in the hell do you make dinner while the baby's screaming?! And if gender socialization was different and if our dominant cultural narrative treated teaching as equally important to engineering, I'd totally be arguing that my important work that supports the family requires that *I* be the one to get a good night's sleep and Spouse just has to cope because, you know, he /could/ do his job at home without sleeping. Hell yes, I would. In a hot minute. It's disturbing to me how much my feelings about the Importance of Mommy Being Home might just be some lame justification. (Not saying it is for other women and men who stay home and do domestic stuff! Just me!)

So then, today, I heard this great interview on the DIane Ream show with Cheryl S(mumble, mumble) (I swear, that's time-constraint, not laziness!) the COO of Facebook about women and careers and her book and social project Lean In. And I'm thinking, hell, Spouse has a head start, but there probably is a job out there that I would enjoy and be good at that pays about the same as an engineering salary. I don't know about that transition, where I'm needing to be in school or learning or whatever, which makes it kind of hard to have Spouse stay home while I do it; I mean, it's nice for the family to income More than nice. But still, I have this feeling that if I could just figure it out, there would be a way to swap with Spouse, get some fucking sleep, be the one who gets to do the thing our culture calls important, and, like, have an adult life.

I mean, I made as much per hour as Spouse when I was a contract tech writer, but I didn't have benefits or guaranteed hours, which are both necessary to be the breadwinner. Also, I hated it.

I ended up going to Potlatch even in the midst of baby-induced exhaustion because we had some money with Southwest that we were going to lose if we didn't spend it. And also because I have been feeling really lonely and my poor writerly self has been starved for attention and air-time. I figured that the energy expended in getting us all up there would probably pay off handsomely in an emotional boost from hanging around with people who were eager to talk to me and from having a chance to talk about writing and geek out about books.

Things started off badly, though. I spent Friday night re-introducing myself to people I had met at previous conventions who had been eager to talk to me before but had completely forgotten doing so and now seemed to kind of want to edge away from me. (I'm wondering if I was giving off an exhausted/desperate vibe? Or maybe it's because I've gained about 20 pounds and quite a few wrinkles and don't look as cute anymore? I know that sounds awful, but I think most people unconsciously respond to conventionally-conceived beauty. On a total side note, several weeks back, I noticed that I was totally obsessing about the way my body looks, against all my rational beliefs and convictions. Like seriously I couldn't stop bashing my looks in my own head and being all disgusted with myself. And then I finally was like, What the fuck? I have to figure this out! So I did a bunch of chanting and realized that I was super lonely and somehow I had some fucked-up emotional wiring that was skipping my bayain and just concluding that if I was lonely it must be because of being fat and that of course I had to solve the being fat problem and of course the way to solve being fat is hating your body. So messed up, right? Figuring out what was going on helped break the obsessing.) Anyway, back to my main story. So no one seemed to really want to talk to me, and then I had a couple of minor interactions that made me feel really unwelcome (not that anyone was actually un-welcoming me, it just made me feel that way).

So I went up to my room and plunked the baby on the floor with some toys and cried. Then I sat down to chant, because I didn't want to waste the whole day feeling like crap. While chanting, I figured out that everything was hitting me extra hard because I was afraid that I could never be the writer I want to be, that I could never actually figure out how to get the beautiful stories I can imagine down onto paper. And being at Potlatch had made me remember how much I really, really want to tell those stories.

Shortly after that, I got to have dinner with wild_irises, Nisi Shawl, and Suzy Charnas. It was a wonderful dinner. Exactly what I was hoping to get out of Potlatch--great conversation with interesting people who like me! Then I got to have a one on one conversation with w_i, wherein I related all my suffering about writing. She had some great ideas (like letting the part of me that thinks I'm awesome have a mental dialogue with the part that's afraid that I just suck too much to accomplish anything), great encouragement (she says she thinks I have talent and that she thought the one story of mine that she's read was a good story), and great advice (that I ask some writers who write in the way I want to write how they know whether their work is good).

Then I went to this awesome, awesome poetry reading "moderated" by Eileen Gunn. I went because Nisi Shawl was reading and I love her fiction. Her poetry was amazing--and, bonus!, so was the poetry of the other two women reading. I mean, it was /all/ really great stuff. And then there was this great discussion that included the audience. One of the poets, JT Stewart, struck me as a real master; she's been writing and teaching for decades. She asked the audience if anyone had questions about the writing of poetry, as opposed to the meaning of the poems that had been read. So I went ahead and asked, "How do you know when your work is good?"

She had the most amazing answer, which I can't entirely remember because it was metaphorical and spiritual and, well, an answer that a poet would give. But I can remember two bright points from it--the first, it was the first thing she said, was to not ask that question-is it good or bad--but rather to ask 'what is working in this poem?' or 'why does this poem work?' She said that the first question is useless and eats away at your self-esteem (which is totally true for me!) The other thing she said that I remember is that if you are a person with "antennae" that pick things up from around you, you have to take it in, transform it (she referred to Ovid's Metamorphosis), and then give it back out. That things like that aren't meant to stagnate within you, that you can't just receive it and keep it; that's selfish. Every thing she said resonated with me so deeply.

Then after the programming ended, she spent quite a while with me one on one talking about poetry and rhythm and oh my god I am so inspired to write poetry now. I bought the new Aqueduct Press book of feminist poetry they were all reading from. It looks great. I've read the first poem and it's by Ursula Le Guin and it's great. You all should buy this book! I will hunt down a link eventually, I hope. JT is a remarkable woman and if you all ever get a chance to talk to her at Wiscon or something, you totally should.

Then I ventured back to the consuite briefly (briefly bc Spouse had txted to say that the baby would probably need my boobs soon and could I please get to the room /before/ the screaming for milk started). At the consuite people wanted to talk to me! And I met a writer who was at about my level and had a great conversation about writing! And we swapped emails because we're both looking for crit buddies!

And on top of all that, today when I went to the Aqueduct table to buy the poetry book (and Timmi's new short story collection, yay! And Redwood and Wildfire, which I had been all sad to miss at Wiscon last year, yay!) I had this really fantastic conversation with Timmi about her work. And then I asked her about feeling like is it even worth it to work on this? And she also had great things to say. She said first that every writer pretty much has to do that work, every time they sit down to write. And that was great, to frame that struggle with the question as part of the work of a writer, rather than some stupid thing I do because I suck on even this new meta-layer. Also it made me feel kind of better that even Timmi, who has this whole body of amazing work as evidence that, yes, she probably can pull it off, that even she still has to do that work. And TImmi had practical suggestions, too! She suggested that I have some piece of music that I reserve for just before I write, like a cue to my imaginitive brain that it's time to work. And she suggested that I give myself plenty of time to daydream, and do something with my hands while I do it. And then when I told her that the dreamy part I totally have down, it's getting the thing into a story that I struggle with, she suggested that I let the words get starting /while/ I'm daydreaming. She also had this great metaphor of throwing a bunch of balls in the air, but then writing from /inside/ that place of holding all the balls, not from the outside kind of analytically looking at the balls. She said that if you do it from inside, you intuitively know what comes next. And maybe this sounds super weird the way that I'm writing it down here, but it made PERFECT SENSE when I heard it. Like, something totally clicked.

I am so excited for a chance to sit down and try this stuff out. I'm not sure how I will exactly swing that now that I'm back to real life and not con-space. But maybe I'll figure something out.

Speaking of re-entering regular life, it was interesting driving home. I noticed that the landscape and images of the drive from the freeway to my house now have a total association of loneliness for me. I hadn't realized how sort of laquered on, day by day, that emotional experience has been. But today, at least, it was kind of nice because I could feel the loneliness in the scenery, but I felt sort of wrapped in the last trailing clouds of friendship from the con, so it was kind of buffered. Sort of like standing outside in a cold wind but having a blanket to wrap yourself in.

The other day, my daughter asked me if we could go to the arctic to help the polar bears. I asked her what we'd do when we got there, and she explained that the polar bears are drowning because the ice floes are melting and the bears get too tired swimming and drown. Her plan was to bring a big freezer and lots of cold water to the arctic to make a big ice cube for them to stand on. She explained that she knew it wouldn't solve the long term problem, but that it would help for now.

I asked her what else we might do to help the polar bears besides going to the arctic. She thought maybe we could tackle global warming. I told her we could help by sometimes walking to the store instead of driving and by using less electricity. She went around the house and turned off all the lights we weren't using and dimmed the light we were using. It was very sweet and cute and it made her feel a lot better.

But I still felt like crap. Because, damn, what /are/ we going to do about global warming? Seeing her sincerity and that purehearted belief that we could do something to make a significant difference to fix this seriously fucked-up thing made me confront my own cynicism and (dang, if I weren't so sleep-deprived I could think of the word I want. You know, the one that means how you get all resigned and fatalistic when you don't know how to make something better.)

I've been planning to buy a newer used Subaru, because the one I have is getting pretty old and also is too small to fit a baby car seat in comfortably and doesn't feel that safe. But after the global warming conversation, I started thinking maybe about getting a car that can run on biodiesel*. Or an electric car**. (I discussed it with my engineer spouse and he has a litany of reasons for why electric is better.) This has me now trying to convince myself that it wouldn't be horribly financially irresponsible to buy a new Tesla model S. OMG, that would be so freakin' awesome.

Anyway, back to my story. So I tearfully related the polar-bear-drowning info to Spouse, feeling like a total asshole for having ever driven a car in my life, and he was like, "Didn't you hear? That's totally not true and was fully misrepresented!" And I was all, "Conservative propaganda lies! I'm Googling it!" and anyway it looks like it really isn't true. I mean, polar bear habitat is being lost because of global warming and it's really not pretty what's happening in the arctic, but there are no polar bears pathetically swimming and swimming until they drown. And apparently the original report about it was done in a scientifically unethical way and was basically just some dude who saw four floating dead polar bears who had drowned because of a /storm/ who then speculated that there are more storms bc of global warming but really had no evidence of that.

So I feel all manipulated and also all mad that my *daughter* was all manipulated. I mean, we are both sincere people who care and want to do something about global warming anyway. No need to lie to us and manipulate us already!

So, seriously, do any of you know of anything real my daughter or I could actually do about g.w.? I mean, that's not token effort like in the "10 things kids can do to help the environment" kind of way?


*I know that it's still combustion and still releases carbon dioxide. But the corn plants used up that same co2 to grow, so it's not releasing sequestered co2. (Hey, I have a question. Why can't we just grow a lot of algae or something and then sequester it by like putting it in metal balls and burying it before it decomposes? That would totally take co2 out of the atmosphere, right?)

**I know that the electricity is generated in a co2-producing power plant. But I understand that the efficiency is much better, with a pollution equivalent of, like, 100 mpg. I would research this more before I bought the car.

My dad had a minor stroke in the wee hours this morning (he is fine; it was scary as hell at first when he couldn't talk and I thought he was going to be seriously mentally impaired permanently, but he recovered speech in just a couple hours) and I spent most of the day watching him be a minor pain in the ass to all the doctors and nurses and technicians. (He wasn't horribly obnoxious as he often used to be and he has some fucked-up childhood reasons to have trust issues especially when the stakes are so high. But I digress from my main point.) While watching him and then going off to do self care, I noticed the ways that I have similar habits. Like, I noticed myself thinking how people should be really nice and caring to me because it's so stressful having your dad have a stroke. And then I realized that I almost /always/ have a reason for why people should cut me a break or be extra nice to me (e.g. I'm pregnant & sick; I have a baby who wakes me up every couple hours; I'm having a rough time in my marriage; I'm having an identity crisis; and on and on and there's never an end to it). So I decided that I'm going to like watch really carefully for a time when there isn't a huge crisis going on (maybe a night when I only have to wake up once or twice or something) and then during that time, notice how other people around me might be having a reason that they need to be treated especially well and try to be extra considerate to them. You know, like, balance.

So I've totally been meaning to post about the concept "can you change your diet without dieting" that I saw on the lovelivegrow blog and I've also been meaning to do an in-depth response to this atheist book wild_irises sent me and my thoughts about how the arguments do and don't apply to my religion as I practice it.

But I have no time for these interesting long posts. So instead, here's me seeking info.

I went to the doctor and she said there was nothing I could do about my elevated liver enzymes/fat-marbled liver except lose weight. (To be fair, she didn't say it like she was prescribing weight loss or like OMG OBESITY!!! either.) So I was like, "That's interesting because I was just reading about how studies show there's no way to do that in the long term." And she was like, "True. Except there's some more studies that show that if you do these three things, you'll gain back 10 - 30% instead of 95-110%." I asked her if she knew which studies, but she didn't know off hand. So I'm wondering if these were really studies, or just "what everyone knows" or "some shit the CDC said." Do any of you know? Because if it's true, that kind of changes how I look at the choice to diet for me personally (not my opinion that people deserve human rights, respect, and good treatment regardless of body size, btw). Do any of you know about these possible studies, or know of a resource where I might be able to dredge them up (in all my copious computer time these days).

Incidentally, the three things are:

- Lose weight gradually so that you don't trigger your body's "I'm starving!" response.
- Do a diet that you can switch to a modified version of when you're done losing weight. (I'm assuming "modified" doesn't mean modified back to how you were eating before?)
- Exercise at least 90 minutes a week, 45 of which are something like weight lifting which will build muscle mass.

If any of you all have info on this, I'd totally appreciate it!