Month: June 2021

Summertime is here.

Check out my new story, “Kite Nites,” published at Spillwords!

Thanks Spillwords!

What do they say, you gotta kiss a lot of frogs? You have to wade through a lot of “declined” too.

Hang in there.

I’m sure it must be nice to be John Stewart. Presumably happy marriage, retired from successful career, buckets of money, can live wherever he’d like whenever he’d like.

But, I guess, it’s not enough.

I guess, periodically, he misses playing the old part, and shooting his mouth off in the old indignant way.

Don’t miscast me as a hater. I used to be a big fan.

And I don’t even think of him now, and I guess a lot of people don’t, and I guess, from time-to-time, that must sting a bit, being forgotten.

Maybe he thought he left them wanting more, and maybe they just slotted someone or something else into his spot, like his much more genuine buddy, Colbert. That guy I really think cares. Stewart? Not so sure now.

He came out recently on Colbert to treat the lab-leak version of the Covid origin as fact. He treated it like 100% if you’re not an idiot you know I’m right fact. How disappointing.

Disappointing because he doesn’t 100% know he’s right.

Disappointing because what is the point??

Is the USA going to kick down the doors of the Wuhan lab now? Will Biden punch Xi in the face and call his mother a name? Tell us, Stewart, what difference is your assertion going to make?

When a liberal guy throws around unproven conspiracy theories, is it any different than when a Republican does it?

If it is different, I don’t get it. Explain it to me like I am actually the idiot you seem to think I am.

In the meantime….

I am living in a part of the world where people are happy to pick on others due to their race, and I am raising a Chinese daughter.

If the lab leak theory is proven, well, I’l have to deal with that, then.

But, for now, do any Asian-Americans really need more fuel thrown on the fire?

Until you know for sure, shut-the-fuck-up John. The Asian-haters don’t need an assist from you.

First of all, a Washington Post subscription is so inexpensive. You really should have one. It’s good reporting, amazing recipes, and excellent editorials, like this one.

I live in a primarily rural community. It is building up like crazy, but it is still rural.

And there are always white guys driving pick-up trucks aggressively when I am driving around in my car. The pickup trucks I see every day are almost always riding the bumper of the car in front of them, tearing around into the oncoming traffic lane even when the road does not allow passing. Always, apparently, unable to manage their schedules properly so that they’re not running late for everything. I find their driving behavior threatening when I am in front of them driving in my car . On foot, is is downright scary. And I am not saying they want to rape and murder. I don’t think that about any of them. I think they’re just all impatient with the rest of us. But I do think they could accidentally hit a runner, a biker, or a kid waiting for the bus. Everything and everyone is in their way. It’s just not good driving.

I run in my community. It’s not gated, but it is a community. And, sometimes, pickup trucks drive through, slowly, really early in the morning, and I don’t know why, and when I see them, I go the other way as they crawl along the streets. When I first started running I ran around the perimeter of the community, but the speeding trucks pushed me back inside, and there are no speeding trucks inside, but sometimes there are the very slow ones. Now, thankfully, my husband runs with me.

The fact that some people think they have a right to do things to other people is madness.

I bought one of these for myself, my sister, my daughter, my friend.

They’re inexpensive, and they could be the shock you need to give you time to run.

And, IMHO, every woman should be able to run, for safety.

I’m glad I started running, not for status, weight loss, better abs, or competing, but for safety.

If you want to run, but think you can’t, just start off walking quickly, even for only a block, and try to increase your speed to a fast shuffle over a week or so, and slowly get to bringing your knees up and down over a few weeks.

If not running, then have a plan

for a situation where, no matter how powerfully feminist you may feel, a man is physically stronger than you, or two men are, or someone hits you with his truck, like in the article. (IMHO cities are much safer, so many people. If you’re not in a city, you need a plan. The men who feel angry, left behind, ignored, they’re not in the city. They’re in the rural areas, in their pickups.)

Don’t worry about hurting someone’s feelings.

Always trust your gut.

Always trust your fear.

Carry an alarm.

Carry mace.

Run.

I’m putting the brakes on my overnight fast…. brakefast! Spell check keeps trying to fix it. LOL

Just for the curious, the red stuff is ajvar.

I think it was in HS French class that I learned that in other places breakfast food isn’t a thing, meaning they eat all kinds of food for breakfast that white Americans like myself would not typically consider breakfast food. I noticed, the times I was lucky enough to be in Europe, that breakfast was more of an on-the-go meal, something quick, a pastry and coffee while walking to work, a quick yogurt, something designed to power-up a person, not really something to linger over, like dinner.

When I lived in Los Angels and went to the actual Vietnamese pho shops for breakfast, I noticed that the Vietnamese patrons ate their pho in seconds… compared to my pace. It was steaming hot; they added hot sauce, and they slurped it down and were out… leaving all the broth behind.

I perceive the USA as not being the most morning-achiever place. I think we tend to go slow in the morning and stay up late. But maybe you vision us differently. What do you think?

I see us lingering over loaded plates of eggs and meat and bread or pancakes…. carbs and fat, carbs and fat.

I like to be up early.

And I like unusual (for Americans) breakfasts.

And though I like to linger over coffee, I like to get my work in early in the day.

But that didn’t happen until post-motherhood. LOL. My kid was a morning person, so I am too!

Does your breakfast slow you down, or get you going? Though I love oatmeal, if I eat it in the morning, I need a huge carb-nap. When I was a kid my whole family loved oatmeal, and we ate it for dinner instead of breakfast. Cheap and easy way to feed a lot of people, and it was great. Tired me out then too, but it was bedtime anyway.

What’s on your breakfast plate today?

Taught my very first Outschool class today, and many thanks to the lovely young woman who chose to take it.

This is an ongoing class, so she may be back next week….

Only one student signed up, and classes are supposed to be 4 or more I believe, so many teachers will cancel (and have cancelled on Sophie!), but I think it always better to start small, and even if it stays small, it can be okay.

The class I taught today had to do with creative writing, and the young woman who took it had some amazing ideas, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And this is, actually, the most beautiful part of teaching… you interact with someone on something that you know a lot about that he or she wants to learn about, and you share between you your ideas. Great fun, and no grades. Yay!

Yesterday I spent a very enjoyable and productive day with a co-worker developing a performance piece for body-positivity month at one of the colleges where I teach.

Being an adjunct I am usually not asked to participate in many campus events, and this is both considerate (for a 3-credit class, I am paid 3 hours a week, and those 3 hours should be spent on my feet teaching, so any grading, tutoring, meetings with students are on my own/unpaid time), and also alienating as without that participation it’s hard to feel a true part of the organization.

My coworker is a full-time employee, so she has all the cachet an adjunct doesn’t, including knowing what resources are available, and who to ask to get them into place for the event. I’m going to do some of the writing of the performance piece, and try to both collect student writing that students will perform, and use my writing to link the disparate pieces together. It’s cool, and I’m excited about it.

And I came home, cooked dinner, fed people, and took my daughter to her drawing class. She did amazingly well there too, and it is a class for older kids that she is holding her own in. She is really a very talented artist, but not just talented, skilled too, and I feel lucky that I am her mom.

And then I got the newsletter in my email from the local writing association I belong to. And though they asked me for any updates from Devil’s Party Press, and I gave them many, they chose not to include anything from us in the association newsletter. And they hope I understand that they used logic to make this decision.

Oh I understand.

-Sigh-

Women business owners, do you hear me? Do you feel me?

Yesterday was a day of me working on unpaid jobs.

Being a mom and a wife and cooking dinner for the family: unpaid jobs. I love my family; I’m happy to cook, for anyone honestly, and I don’t consider them a “job” in any way, and driving a kid to lessons, cooking, is work someone has to do, and it’s unpaid. So, unpaid jobs.

Working on a project for one of the colleges where I teach that will not be covered under my 3-credit hours, unpaid job.

Trying to get a small business off the ground, huge and unpaid job.

Being supported by associations in your field, when you are trying to get a small business going, is so important, and so helpful, and it makes you feel like you’re not a nutjob for considering this dumb idea to begin with.

And I have gotten wonderful and free support from IBPA and CLMP. And I have gotten invaluable amazing support from SCORE, but specifically the Chicago branch. I had to go to Chicago to find a publishing professional, but I found a great one, and she is mentoring the hell out of me.

And where support has been completely absent is through my state and my local writing association.

And here’s what I’m going to do about that:

I’m going to open my hands.

I am going to focus on my productive and enervating meeting with my co-worker who treated me like a full partner though I’m only a lowly.

I am going to focus on the fact that I made a tasty dinner in 15 minutes when I got home, and that everyone liked it and ate it and that I was able to get back out the door again with my daughter in time for her class.

I am going to focus on the fact that my daughter killed it at her class, in which she is the youngest kid, and the only girl. Grrrrrl power!

I am going to focus on the fact that as my business evolves I learn more and more every day about what I should be doing, and shouldn’t. And that my business model and practice improves almost weekly.

I am going to focus on one of my current summer students, a guy who has schizophrenia and is terrified of Zoom, who took my advice, and went to the school yesterday, and took the PDF of the article I gave him, and met with the wonderful woman who runs the tutoring center, and that she and a fellow tutor helped him figure out what he is doing without a camera being involved, and that he emailed me to say it went well, and that he is communicating with me, and that there may be one more successful college student who has survived the pandemic-learning shift.

I find that when I drop my arms down, and I open my hands, my head naturally lifts up, and my spine straightens.

All small companies face death a thousand times over. And there will always be people in your circle who don’t care when they should, or who simply would prefer you not succeed for reasons only they understand.

What really knocks my knees out from me is not those groups who actively work to not support me.

What knocks my knees out is me, when I give those groups too much of my focus.

No one can make you open a business, so why assume that anyone can make you close it?

And, yes, there will be people and etc. beyond your control who are not supportive, who want you to fail and close, who are bothered by your business existing.

And there are two ways to turn your back on something you don’t want to know about.

You can curl up in a ball and put your hands over your ears and basically fetal it.

Or you can drop your arms, straighten your spine, lift up your head, turn away from the noise, and open your hands and release all the poison. If someone gives you the gift of poison, do the logical thing, drop it.

Simply open your hands.