books – Onward Hoe!

Miscarriage Resources and Advice

So today I’m supposed to write about the best advice I’ve received since my miscarriage, and honestly, this might rub some folks the wrong way, but it’s where I am, and I’m ok with it for now. I’ve read a lot of things that were supposed to be encouraging that really just pissed me off or made me sadder than I was before, and almost all of them were what I would call the “correct” Christian response to miscarriage. If you don’t know what I mean by that, I’m talking about the things that acknowledge the pain (sort of) but then in the same breath wipe it away with a Bible verse or an attribute of God or something similar. Even as a Christian, it’s hard for me to read that stuff because it’s just not that easy. It feels like jumping straight to the resolution of grief without working through the grief, and I just don’t buy that those people truly feel that peaceful or faith-filled unless they’re a lot further removed from it than I am six weeks out. And maybe when they wrote their stuff, it had been a couple of years and they had already reached a deeper level of resolution, but I am most definitely not there, and I refuse to fake it.

The best advice is the most honest, which also seems to be the best way process grief. There’s no need to try and faith it away (one of the books I’ll recommend below actually says that’s a way of denying or repressing grief.) You just slog through it one minute at a time. And the minutes turn into hours, and the hours turn into days, and the days turn into weeks, and sometimes you feel ok, and sometimes you feel lousy, but I’m told that one day several months from now, I’ll wake up and realize that I feel different. Maybe not good or even better, but just different. Six weeks out, all I can tell you is that I’m ok at best all the time, but that’s an improvement over the first two weeks, when I spent more of each day crying than not.

My two favorite pieces of advice so far are:

“Be kind to yourself.” ~Dawn

“Take your time, bro.” ~Dallas

Simple, easy to remember, and necessary, both of these reminders help me to be patient as I trudge through the crap and give myself a lot of grace. And the fact that Dallas calls me “bro” just makes me smile.

Books on Miscarriage

The best thing I’ve read so far has been a book called Empty Cradle, Broken Heart by Deborah L. Davis. It’s written for people (particularly women) who have lost babies to miscarriage or stillbirth, or who have lost babies after birth, so not all of it speaks directly to me, and I generally just skipped over the bits that didn’t apply to my situation. What’s great about it, though, is that it’s quite comprehensive. It explains everything that you’re going through, tells you that it’s normal to go through those things, and then shares stories from other women who’ve been there just in case you still feel abnormal. I would recommend it for anyone who has lost a baby big enough to have a name. If you had an early miscarriage, you might feel like you have less in common with the parents whose stories are shared.

A friend also gave me a book called Free to Grieve by Maureen Rank. I’ve flipped through it and read some parts, so I can tell you that it’s a book for Christians, and it’s more story-based than Empty Cradle, which has snippets of women’s stories but not long narratives like this one. My friend said she liked it because it walked her through the grieving process after her first miscarriage and encouraged her that her feelings were normal and ok to have. This book does seem appropriate for women who’ve had an early miscarriage. It answers a lot of questions you might have about the medical procedures you went through, and it discusses options for the future as well as how to protect your marriage after going through a miscarriage.

Another friend gave me a book called Never Alone in the Shadows from this website. It’s a read-a-page-a-day sort of deal, and while it is faith-based, I find it encouraging rather than infuriating because I think it comes from a genuine heart of faith and concern for bereaved parents rather than a desire to straighten it all out as quickly as possible without showing any signs of a wavering faith. It’s taking me a while to get through it, honestly, because I tidied up the coffee table, put some things on top of it, and forgot it was hiding under there. But I shall resume now.

That’s all I’ve got for now. If you know of any helpful websites, discussion boards, books, or support groups for women, men, couples, or families coping with the loss of a baby, please comment and let us know. I’d love to build up an arsenal of resources for myself and others who’ve lost babies.

Addendum OR Getting a Taste of My Own Medicine

My husband and I are both writers. He writes fiction; I write non-fiction. We would both love to be able to make enough money with our writing to just do that all the time. I mean, who wouldn’t want to work from home in their jabambas, saving money on gas and car maintenance, and saving sanity by not having to drive on I-40 every day? Currently, however, neither of us is makingany money on writing projects, so we both have “real” jobs. To be fair to our “real” jobs, it’s important to note that we both like them. I actually love mine and would probably miss it if I quit entirely, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

My point is this…

After months and months of saying he wanted to finally write his freaking novel already, and after many conversations wherein I told him it would be hard, but he just needed to suck it up and make it happen if that was what he wanted, he is making progress. Since we got back from our honeymoon, the dude has been getting up at 6:30 every morning to write. I don’t know how he does that, but I couldn’t be prouder. Even on mornings when his brain can’t wake up enough to write anything before his writing time is up, he’s still doing more than I am.

So last night, when I was saying I also wanted to do more writing, I don’t know why I was surprised to hear my own advice coming back at me.

You just have to make time for it and stick to your schedule. No procrastinating.
A little bit at a time is ok. Every little bit counts.
So if your book needs to be 60,000 words, you break it up into, say, 20 chapters, and then you just write 2,000-4,000-word chapters.

Friends, I’m here today to tell you the eleventh thing that changes after you get married: Your spouse picks things up from you and uses them. It’s like a mirror. You give advice, and you get it back. You give encouragement, and you get it back. You say a certain word or phrase all the time, and you’ll start hearing it come out of his mouth. This is potentially dangerous, but it’s also potentially amazing, and y’all are smart enough to understand what I mean by that, so I won’t explain it any further. I’m just going to go ahead and count this instance as amazing.

Nostalgia

Hey remember a month ago when I blogged like twice?? Sigh. Yeah, that was nice. Here are some things I’ve been doing/thinking about since then:

I went kayaking in Asheville last weekend. It was beautiful, I got to see some good friends, and I spent all my money eating delicious food (and maybe also on a teeny-tiny little visit to Urban Outfitters). I’d like to go kayaking more often. I would not like to get sunburnt every time. Guess I should work on my base tan.
Whitney and I stopped at pretty much every Lowe’s and Home Depot off I-40 on the way home and lifted a bunch of paint sample cards (I want to call them paint chips, but that doesn’t feel right. Is that right?) to spruce up our accent wall. If you’d like to come over and get your hot glue on, feel free. We’re also thinking of having a house-warming party wherein our guests would help us with this project. Don’t miss it! This was a pretty fun way to break up a four-hour drive. At the first couple of stores, we both kept a watchful eye out for the employees working the paint department, feeling like we were doing something dangerous, but by the time we got to Greensboro, we were brazenly stuffing our bags with the things and commenting freely on the colors we were taking. No one seemed to care.
I got a new computer because I filled up my old one. Filled it full. It literally has maybe room enough for another album’s worth of songs. I haven’t named the new one yet. Any suggestions?
I’m teaching a new class at NC State, which is pretty hit or miss. I’ve never taught this class before, and I’ve never been given textbooks to use before or had to make a syllabus, so it’s taking a little while to figure out. What I’m learning is that 18-year-olds are lazy, but they think they’re really busy and super cool, I should rely on my own teaching smarts and lean on textbooks for idea-sparks and support, cultural differences are probably more difficult for the students but far more annoying for the teacher, and a two-hour class FLIES by when you’re used to four-hour classes. So basically, there are pros and cons, but I think once I figure out how to add my own flair to the class, it’ll be awesome.
In the past week, I’ve been a part of or witnessed at least four conversations that went something like this:
A: I really want to be more ________.
B: Um, you are already totally ________.
This has got me very curious. I’m wondering why we feel like we’re not enough of things we already are, if the reason we notice the lack of these qualities is that we also (maybe subconsciously) notice their presence, how we go about becoming more of who we are, and how we can help each other along. Your thoughts are welcome.
I can’t WAIT for fall. Oh my gosh. I just want to run through a big shower of red and orange leaves while wearing a scarf! That’s all I want.
We got a basil plant. It’s dying. How do you keep basil from dying?
I’ve read about six books this summer, which is not much for some of you, but for me, that’s a lot. I needed to find one to read with my class this semester, though, so I had to plow through a few pretty quickly. Let’s see, there was Godric, which wasn’t an option for class, but it is lovely. It just has some really nice lines in it – the kinds of phrases that you want to turn over and over in your head and hang on to in your life. Then there was The Giver, Playing for Pizza, The Kite Runner, Holes, and Hoot. I think we’re going to read Hoot in class, but next up is The Book Thief. If you’d like a review of any of these titles, let me know. I’d be happy to oblige. It’d give me a solid blogging topic.
I want to write more. I miss it. I’ve got so many little bits and pieces of ideas and so many big chunks of things already done, but nothing is even close to being finished. Also, I just miss playing with words, getting phrases just right, saying exactly what it is I want to say, and telling stories. Stories are the best.
I should write down a story every day. Nothing big or even fictional. Just something that happened. It doesn’t have to have a moral or anything. Just a story.

Ok that’s enough. Time to make a flow chart to help students decide if they need to use other, another, the other, others, or the others. Fun times!

I OWN You, 2012.

I’ve never really liked the idea of New Year’s resolutions because they are so rarely kept, and really, why do we wait until January to make resolutions? Can’t we resolve to do things any time we want? I submit that we can. So in the spirit of bucking the system, I’m just going to continue doing things this year that I started last year and would like to continue. I also may very well make new resolutions mid-year. Just because I can.

So Simplify2011 will now be called Simplify2012, and it will comprise the following goals:

Get rid of all the books on my small bookcase and half the books on my big bookcase.
Get rid of half of the clothes in both my dresser and closet.
No new home decor purchases. Anything new must be given to me or made from items I already own.
Clean out desk drawers.
Finish consolidating teaching materials into binders, and get rid of unnecessary bins.
Get rid of anything in my bathroom I haven’t used in the past six months.

I’m also going to re-motivate myself to run, not because I’m resolving now to exercise more for exercise’s sake, but because DLF and I have been talking about running a 10k or half-marathon for almost a year now, and my butt ain’t in any kind of shape for that at the moment. Or my heart or lungs or knees for that matter. And since my body insists on getting sick EVERY November, thus putting me out of commission for at least a month, and since I just finished watching EVERY episode of Bones ever made, it is now time to get off the couch and start moving.

And to round things out, I want to continue exploring and developing a few things I started learning about myself last year. When I was preparing to go to Pennsylvania for that week with World Team, they had us take a lot of tests – Bible tests, spiritual gifts tests, personality tests, etc. And on one of the personality tests, I scored really low on the characteristic of dominance (a key leadership quality). And when I say “low,” I mean like really low. Like almost negative. But when we were there, it became really evident to me and everyone else that the test was way wrong. Like holy-crap-what-happened-here? wrong. So I started thinking back on my life, and I was able to pinpoint at least one incident wherein that quality was trained out of me. That kind of pissed me off and inspired this post. So now I’m re-learning who I am naturally and how to use my God-given qualities and abilities to benefit everyone.

Another thing I’ve been learning about myself is still kind of hard to explain, but I think Dr. Brennan (aka Bones) said it pretty well in one episode I watched recently. She’s explaining to Booth how she has changed since she met him, and she makes a distinction between a substance that is impervious and a substance that is strong. She tells him that an impervious substance doesn’t have to be strong because nothing can affect it, but a strong substance allows things in and out and therefore must be strong to survive. That is, of course, a tad too scientific for my liking, but it’s more or less how I feel. I want to be strong, but I also want to be softer. I want to invite people, wisdom, Jesus, love, and yes, even pain and failure into my life if they will make me stronger, wiser and more loving. This one is going to take more work than consolidating my teaching materials (which is saying a lot), but I think it’ll be worth it.

And as always, if you’d like to participate with me in any of these things, you are more than welcome. Especially the running. I’ma need a LOT of butt-kicking in that department.

Countdown

Y’all, I have one more week in this long, long, long, long, long semester. Not bad-long, just long-long. And I’m ready for a break, but what I’m really excited about is organizing all the boxes of class materials under my bed into spiffy binders. And these spiffy binders will all fit into one box, making it possible for me to get rid of all the others. Then, I’m going to adjust my prices and re-list my books on half.com in the hopes that they all sell so I can get rid of that book case. And after that, I’m going to go through all my clothes and sort them honestly based on what I wear and what I don’t. I’m going to get rid of the ones I don’t wear, and then I’m going for a run.

When I get back from the run, I’m going to shave my legs. Both of them. All at once. Then I’m going to catch up on all my stories and take a nap. When I wake up from the nap, I’m going to go to the movies. I don’t know what I’m going to see, but it’s going to be good, and then I’m going to do my Christmas shopping.

After that, I’m going to read. I don’t care what. I’m going to go to the ‘Bou, get the free drink they promised me after making me the wrong drink last time, and read until I’m over it. Then I’m going to look at Etsy and Pinterest while I watch Bones and, let’s be honest, probably Elf for the fourth time in a month. I’m going to lie on the floor and watch the lights on my Christmas tree twinkle while I listen to all my favorite music. And I’m going to talk to people on Skype at all hours of the day and night when I would normally be asleep or at work.

If you would like to join me in any of these activities (except the napping and leg-shaving), you are welcome to do so. It would please me very much. We can make gingerbread houses and eat cookie dough and go ice skating and maybe even hold hands.

Lost…Lost…Lost…I’ve Lost My Marbles

Y’all, seriously. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. I put things down, and they disappear. I can’t find my mailbox key, I keep forgetting to buy more almond milk, I have no idea what I was going to write about here just now, and I feel fairly certain I was supposed to do something. Oh. I remember. Please hold.

Ok, done. Whew. Apparently I haven’t blown all my brains out of my nose this week along with twenty pounds of snot. Hang in there, gray matter! I still need you! I know I haven’t used you much this week at all, but that’s just because you got such an intense workout last week, and I wanted to give you a rest. Plus, I’m tired. Oh so tired. But don’t worry, I have every intention of pulling you off the bench very soon because I feel like not being in school has made me stupider, and I’d really like to work on that.

I’ve been reading about William Tyndale, and one interesting thing I read last night was that while he was at Oxford, he used a book by Erasmus called De Copia, in which there was an exercise to give “no fewer than one hundred fifty ways of saying, ‘Your letter has delighted me very much,'” the point being to force students to “use of all the verbal muscles in order to avoid any hint of flabbiness.” I’m always telling my students how rich the English language is and teaching them new ways to say things so they don’t have to use the same, tired words all the time, but that only challenges them. It doesn’t challenge me. And I’ve found myself recently unable to think of the words I want. Simple words like “radiant” and…oh, see, I’ve forgotten them again. Something must be done.

I know I’m still recovering from a crazy week last week and a cold, but those are poor excuses for losing one’s marbles, and I’m far too young for that. I know I’ll never be one of those old people who does Sudoku to keep her mind sharp because Sudoku already makes me want to punch a baby, but maybe I’ll be a prolific letter-writer or something. Something.

And maybe one day I’ll find my mailbox key.

Making Progress

With the move all finished and the semester over, I now have a couple of weeks to relax, unpack, get organized, get things like internet set up, and prepare for next semester to start. I am proud to report that I’m making progress on all fronts.

Time Warner is coming next weekend to flip our internet switch, which seems a tad ridiculous to me. How hard can this be that we have to wait a week and a half for them to come and plug things in? I mean, we have our own modem and router. We know where the plugs are. The apartments were built long before the Interwebs were, but I’m sure we won’t be the first people to use them there. All they should really need to do is literally flip a switch or click a box or perform a simple tribal dance. Really it can’t be that complicated. But apparently what with it being the beginning of the month and all, enough people are having their internet/cable hooked up to completely book every technician Time Warner employs for every moment of every day until the 14th. But we do have an appointment that day, so we’re making progress.

The unpacking and organizing are going well too. Here is a very bad, cell phone picture to at least give you (Ana) an idea of what’s going on in there. 99% of the boxes are gone, and though I don’t have a picture of it, my room is also taking shape nicely.

On the relaxation front, today marks the second day in a row that I have not woken up in pain, I went to the POOL yesterday, and I’m headed to Asheville tomorrow to get my kayak on!! Well. I’m not sure we’re actually going to go kayaking. We might go white water rafting, or we might go funyaking, which, I know, sound like we’re going to have an awesome time vomiting, but a funyak (aka duck or ducky) is basically an inflatable kayak or one-person raft. In either vessel, I am certain a fun time will be had by all. And I’ll try not to get 2nd degree sun burns this year.

And finally, although I have not yet begun to write actual lesson plans, I did order several books yesterday with which to torture my poor students. Yippee! Hooray!! You might not be able to truly appreciate how satisfying this is unless you are a teacher, but if you are a teacher (especially an ESL teacher), I’m sure you’re jealous that I’m getting new books. Even if I did have to purchase them with my own money from half.com. Whatever. Last year, I discovered the joy and absolute magic of tax write-offs. My goal is to get my AGI into the negative. I think I’m getting close.

Y’all have a great weekend!

I’m a Reading Machine

I am procrastinating on today’s packing just a bit longer to bring you a quick book review of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I’d been putting off reading this one for no apparent reason. I just wasn’t into it, I guess. But then when I was packing to go to the beach last weekend, I figured I may as well take it with me. If I started it and liked it, I could keep going, and if I didn’t like it, the house has plenty of other things to read. Well, I started reading it Friday night on the ferry over to the island, and it took a good 50 pages for me to really get into it, but after that, I was hooked. The rest of my family has already read all three of the books in this series, and they tell me that the other two are easier to get into because you already know the characters and don’t have to go through the whole introduction part in the beginning.

I’m looking forward to that, but I have forbidden myself from reading any more fiction until after I move. I just wouldn’t get anything done, and I have a LOT to get done, so no more books for a week and a half. Then I am definitely going to read the other two Larsson books.

In a nutshell, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is about a completely wacko family, a girl who isn’t crazy but is thought to be by the state, a journalist, his “business partner” (with whom he has a wholly inappropriate relationship), and a whole heck of a lot of crimes against women in Sweden. Y’all, there was so much about this story that I didn’t like, yet I would have to give the book at least three stars. Probably four. Because the things I didn’t like were the things that the characters were doing, and it wasn’t that I had a literary problem with them. It was that I had a moral problem with them. But I’m not scoring books based on my own personal moral compass. I’m scoring them based on the writing and the entertainment value. And this book is extremely well-written and gripping.

I’d be interested to know what I missed having read the English translation of a book originally written in Swedish (and also what I missed by simply not being Swedish) because I got the feeling that there were a fair number of cultural jokes and references that were lost on me. But other than that, the characters were believable and still haven’t given everything away about themselves, which makes me want to read the next book. The story moved at a good pace. I did NOT expect what happened to have happened. And the story was tied up nicely while still leaving you with a little cliff-hanger. I liked it.

Four stars. ****

Simplify2011: Books

I made two steps over the weekend to cut my book inventory WAY down. First I bought myself an eReader. I know, I know. I was staunchly opposed to them, but I basically got the deal of the century, and I couldn’t pass it up. It’s nothing fancy. It’s the Borders Kobo, originally priced at $139.99, but I got mine for $59.99 because the Borders store in Cary is closing, and everything is on super-sale. I went over there to look into some cheap Rosetta Stone software, but all they had left was American English, so I was leaving, but as I approached the door, the Kobo (and its sale sign) caught my eye. I went over to take a peep, and the thing comes pre-loaded with 101 classics and a dictionary! And I thought, 101 books, a dictionary, and space to add 1,000 more books that won’t fill up a billion boxes every time I move, all for 60 bucks? Yes, please. So I bought it, which meant I could add my Complete Works of Jane Austen, my Les Miserables, my Count of Monte Cristo and my Hunchback of Notre Dame to the “sell” pile.

And that brings me to the second thing I did this weekend to reach my goal of a 30-50% reduction in stuff: I put 59 books up for sale on half.com. If you want to see what I have available (and perhaps purchase one or several), you can visit my store. I’d say I would just give you one if you wanted it, but the store also serves a second purpose of helping me raise money to go on a mission trip to Italy this summer. More on that later, but if you want to contribute to the cause by purchasing some new reading material, that would be great.

Book Review: Water for Elephants

Y’all seriously, I don’t know where time comes from or where it goes. On the one hand, I have no idea how I’ve gotten done the things I’ve gotten done this week, and on the other hand, I feel like I didn’t have a moment to spare until yesterday evening. I am thankful for both hands, though, because I like being productive, and I like a week that goes by quickly in a good way like this one did.

I stayed up way too late every night reading Water for Elephants, which I finished on…Wednesday? Geez, I have no idea. Anyway, I finished it, and let me just tell you, it is good. It has a few racy parts and a lot of cussing, so if you’re not comfortable with either of those, I might not recommend it to you, but if you don’t think you’ll be bothered by them, the story is just really great. It’s told well, it’s interesting, it’s engaging, and the ending, I thought, was perfect. It doesn’t give you the feeling that the author is intentionally trying to keep you guessing, but it also doesn’t reveal everything up front. The timing is just right.

It’s also really interesting to read about the circus in the 1930s. I don’t know how accurate a portrayal it is, but it does seem that the author did a lot of research on it, and a lot of the characters and events were based on true stories from the time, which is neat.

I had a little bit of trouble keeping the minor characters straight. A lot of times it felt like when you’re talking to a friend who’s talking about his/her co-workers, but instead of explaining who they all are every time they’re mentioned, your friend just uses their names as though you know them, and you piece it together. In the end, it doesn’t really matter most of the time whether you know exactly who’s who or not. That’s why they were minor characters.

Anyhoe, the story is about a kid named Jacob, who is in his last semester of veterinary school at Cornell when his parents are killed in a car crash. In his despair, he sort of accidentally winds up on a circus train, where he pretty quickly becomes the show’s vet even though he didn’t finish his final exams. I won’t give anything else away, but from there, you get love, betrayal, murder, schizophrenia, friendship, loyalty, lots of animals, and an old man who can never remember if he’s 90 or 93 years old.

Read it before the movie comes out (in April, I think) because I’m not convinced it’s going to be good. I’ll see it, no doubt, but I’m really just not sure about the casting. I’m excited to see Christoph Waltz in something new because he was so incredibly amazing in Inglourious Basterds, but I’m not crazy about Robert Pattinson or Reese Witherspoon in their roles. I pictured Jacob more, I don’t know, alert-looking and less brooding – more wide-eyed and innocent. And I thought Marlena was closer to his age (Pattinson and Witherspoon are 10 years apart in real life).

If given the choice, I think I’d put Rachel McAdams in the role of Marlena and maybe Ryan Gosling or Jake Gyllenhaal in the role of Jacob. But we’ll see.

Oh! And it seems that the film has done away with Uncle Al entirely and maybe merged him and August into one character? I don’t know, but I do not care for that at all.

Oh well. Like I said, we’ll see. But back to the book.

I’m giving Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen four out of five stars. If I could give it another half, I might (because I think I liked it better than The Help), but I don’t have the ability to type half a star, so four it is. Once again, I wouldn’t say it’s my new favorite book, but I thought it was beautifully and fearlessly written, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. ****