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SachikoSays
10 July 2009 @ 08:57 am
Yesterday I got to see a few of my favorite people: Dragoon's aunt Tera and aunt Patti.

Some of you have heard the stories about Dragoon's dad, my FIL, and Dragoon's grandma, who is my hero.

Imagine Daniel Boone, throw in J. Golden Kimball, add some Dukes of Hazzard, make everyone tall and blond and superstrong and good-looking and very smart, and then put them on a dairy farm in the Columbia Basin, and you've got my husband's family.  My husband didn't get the blond/supertall gene, but he's a fairly handsome elf all the same and inherited twice the normal amount of the Blowing Stuff Up gene, which is de riguer for country-raised boys.

And then there's me. Japanese enough to be short and squatty, not Japanese enough to look recognizably Japanese. I'm bookish, but I'm a high school dropout. I've gone camping only with church groups, which causes most real backpackers to sniff and say, "That's not camping". I don't have the usual Burton skill set or standard physical attractiveness, you know?

My SIL (now ex-SIL) told me horror stories about the family's clannishness during my two-week-long engagement to Dragoon and I prepared myself to be ignored at worst and the perpetual outsider at best.

Grandma Burton took an inexplicable liking to me (I  of course loved her on first sight) and after that my inlaws closed ranks with me on the inside, and you couldn't find more kind or loving or protective people.
 
I blacked out at Tera's house at the beginning of May--complications from the two miscarriages I had this year--and her husband gave me a priesthood blessing that got me through the last day in Utah and home safely without any more blackouts or really terrible pain.

You know how it is being sick away from home. Aunt Tera and Aunt Myra and Dragoon's cousin Mindi all took care of me and got me home and the pain and dizziness didn't return until the moment I got through my front door and Dragoon was able to take me to the ER for surgery. 

That's just the most recent story of why I have utterly adopted them. Taking their name for my last name means a lot to me. I think I won the In-Law Lottery.

Okay, so, Dragoon's aunt Patti and Tera came by and I got to have Patti all to myself yesterday. We had yakisoba and sushi and mucho tofu at Sushi Mori and chatted. She talked me down from scraping together the money to replace my perfectly fine kitchen counter, and she did so by showing me how much better it would look with better colors in the kitchen.

Aunt Patti is charmed. This is the aunt you want taking you shopping, because she knows all the best places, which clothes will look nice on you, she carries coupons with her and she is kind and gentle about telling you which clothes flatter and which, erm, "don't do you justice, dear, why don't you try this one, yes, this is much more your color". 

( so admire people with tact, because I haven't got any and I wonder what it would be like to. )

I got to chat with her all evening and show her what I've been trying to do with my house that we've had for 10 months. She very nicely loved my house with me, which is a generous thing to do for someone who's just made a major purchase.  I cherish challenges, and I know brutally honest feedback or criticism is sometimes needed, but it is nice sometimes to visit with someone who loves and accepts you and praises the things you're trying to do. It's a long drink of a water in a thirsty land.

Dragoon's aunts are visiting from Utah because today yet another of Dragoon's aunt, one of her kids is getting married/sealed at the temple and I get to go to a sealing for the first time!!! I'm excited, can you tell?

I get to see most of them tonight, in the same church where Dragoon and I got married 10 years ago. I'm really looking forward to it.
 
 
SachikoSays
09 July 2009 @ 11:08 am
Two nights ago Dragoon and I passed a major milestone

(am I thie only one who thinks "passing a milestone" sounds like it should be done under medical supervision?)

in our continuing Mormon pseudo-adulthood:

WE GOT OUR FOOD STORAGE !!!!

We got the grain, we got the grain mills, we got the buckets, we got the oxygen packets, we hammered on the lids

(I gave Dragoon rubber mallets for Father's Day; it's not every day you get a bag of hammers, hee)

we stowed it all away, and thusly concluded 8 years of mild fretting, hand-wringing and praying.

We got the last bucket put away, and then stood there and looked at it, our opus in 50+ PETA plastic buckets. There was this moment of "Okay...what now?"

The next goal is stocking up on ammo. The sporting goods guys at Walmart tell me the .22s sell out within a few hours of restocking. We're having to haunt the store weekly to try to get anything. But I digress. Back to our new ability to make muffins in emergency situations.

I went and looked at it again just now, all our quiet white buckets. 

It's nice to know that if unemployment hits we'll be okay.

We've been unemployed before; once, right after a draining out-of-state move that tripled our debt and left us without medical coverage of any kind.

(though we got far better medical care as uninsured civilians than as enlisted military with TriCare)

Food storage could have helped us so much then.

And if something really bad happens, like a pandemic, it will be so nice to have plenty to share with our neighbors. 

I think the worst thing I can imagine about a catastrophic situation is a feeling of helplessness, of watching people suffer and not having the resources to help.

That's what I love about the food storage concept--you have enough to not be a burden on others during your personal times of need; and then when everyone is in trouble, you have plenty to share until the disaster's over.
 
 
SachikoSays
07 July 2009 @ 07:34 pm
...in the continuing story about how Sachiko struggles to grow up, get over herself and write things that don't make readers vomit.

A person who knows what she's talking about told me to stop worrying about this and that writing problem and to just get my s*** on the page.

(hi, Ilona Andrews, if you're listening...thanks again, I really do appreciate your advice)

With "fun!" in mind, today I approached my dailies with a looser attitude.

I felt a little dry at first. I asked my inner 4-year-old where she'd like to play today--

that inner 4-year-old is in charge more often than I'd like--

 and then, woo hoo, 3,756 words. One whole scene. I'm okay with that.

Thank you Ilona Andrews. I'm happy with what I got done today, and once I got it done I got OFF the computer and went and did other things that did not include worrying obsessively about my book. I got to have a life! Be human! Marry and give in marriage! Hooray.

Victory #1 was showing up consistently to write. I got that down last March during a BIAM with friends.

Victory #2 will be consistently turning out actual scenes and not just talking to myself in bolded italics, like this:

Wait, is this what my character really wants? My unicyclist still needs to steal the stoat for the climactic circus scene and I haven't set up the love triangle enough yet, oh dear

Like that.

Except for several paragraphs. Sometimes half or three-quarters of my daily wordcount is italics, which is like cutting meth with Comet cleaner: it's fast and cheap and can only harm.

Oh, ok, it's not ALL that dithering.  I do come up with some good ideas in my bold italics, but the best maybe-idea in italics is still not as good as the most mediocre idea written as action and dialogue.

Each day I hypnotize myself past terror and into writing, with my writing hat (my "Beware Of Mom!" sign for my children's sake) and my Sharpie fumes and my butcher paper and my iced tisanes and my Scentsy and yes, I KNOW how bad it sounds. I am like 80% crutch. So long as the other 20% keeps putting out something, I don't care. I'm not handicapped, I'm handicapable.

And I do all this because I just need to do whatt it takes to write because nothing counts until it's hit the page. Once I start laying black down on the white, sometimes something opens and parts of the story I didn't know where there, emerge. I'm hoping to keep at it enough in every mood and state of health until I can strip away the crutches and...just...write.

Trying to figure out how to fly with the birdies and still look ahead to needing a structure for my story, I had
my latest little writing A-ha! : Forensic Plotting.

I've tried various methods of plotting. I used--tried to use--one template, a 20-chapter template Mary Higgens Clark uses. It seems simple and other people love it, but after colliding painfully with it several times I realized that looking at the template I'd drawn caused me to simultaneously curl into the fetal position and run away. Anatomical impossibilities tire me.  I backed away from that method.

Then I tried using a Patty Briggs novel for structuring reference. I went through the book and outlined it, and that was very instructive. It probably would have been even more instructive if I were writing a book just like Patty Briggs' books, but this story I'm working on feels different than a series novel.

Then I tried just writing down all the events I'd like to see happen in my book, and I started getting warmer. That felt better.

Now I have a long piece of butcher paper I write my daily work on. Date, length of scene, and a short description. That helps a LOT.

This way, I have the freedom to write a scene anywhere in my story--i.e., FUN! Woo hoo! but I can still organize it into a loose framework, something that will let me see where I've been. Once I amass enough scenes I can start putting them together and seeing where the story /character motivation holes are that I need to fill in.

That's the theory, and now that you're all yawning, I'll stop.

None of this matters anyway except as a security blankie to keep me planting my butt in the chair every day for a couple of hours, rain or shine, allergies or morning sickness, messy or clean house.

Pity me, laugh at me, whatever, perhaps somehere out there in the cyberverse is another wannabe writer who wants to know if it's normal for their story to have this kind of itching and burning.

It is.  And please try not to scratch.  


 
 
SachikoSays
06 July 2009 @ 05:13 pm
I feel much better now. I'm going to go do something fun. I hope you all have a nice day too, with absolutely zero thought to who might be having a nicer day than you.
 
 
SachikoSays
06 July 2009 @ 04:11 pm


When we moved here to the Columbia Basin 18 months ago, we did so after turning down a good job in Boise and on the promise of a very lucrative position here.

           
The position later fell through, which was fine—we were accustomed to financial insecurity at that point and laughed it off—but there were a few heady days when Dragoon worked out how much money we’d make with that job. More to the point: How much MORE money we’d make than we were currently making.

 

            When you’re offered a lot of money, what do you think of? Me, I thought of all the things I’d seen others have and, I admit, envied. Woo woo, finally it was MY turn.

 

We’d have a big house, obviously. We’d get another couch so we wouldn’t all be squished on the one futon sofa. Higher-class food—less beans, more salmon and salad. And if the money kept coming in—dare I imagine it?—a maid service once a week!

 

            That’s all fine, I grew up spoilt rotten and I’m used to being a brat with a sense of entitlement. But what surprised me is what wouldn’t change—I would still want to homeschool, and I would still write.

 

Really? I went over thing again in my head, adding zeros to the end of the imaginary annual income. Yup. No matter how rich, I’d still want to homeschool and write.

 

And if it went the other direction? Well, heck, I started homeschooling and writing when Dragoon was enlisted in the military and we were scraping together grocery money each week for out-of-date commissary food.

 

            My point is, rich or poor, homeschooling feels like the right thing to do, and writing brings fulfillment—or, even if it doesn’t, writing is the brick wall I have chosen to run into repeatedly until my airbags inflate and I have to hang it up and go to bed.

 

            This is where I’m going with this: I know that these are things that make me happy no matter what. So what place would envy have in my life?

 

            Lately, not much. I thought lately my problem lay with Envy’s unwashed brother Sloth. I haven’t been getting up early like I should. My stern talkings-to towards myself have been more concerned with seeing things through that I’m tempted to give up on—one of my more persistant personality traits-- and to meet daily requirements (exercise, bathing, writing 2K a day) even when I just don’t wanna.

 

            I visited a blog of a writer I admire, who linked to another blog, which mentioned envy. Mentioned? Condemned.  Specifically, the envy of aspiring writers towards megasuccessful books like Harry Potter and Twilight. I thought it was nice that they called me/us "aspiring". Not "wannabe" or "grasping". So, I'll give them taht.

 

            I’m not condemning the condemnation. Envy is bad stuff, baby. It eats you alive. I should know.

 

            And those of you have probably been at one point on the wrong end of my opinion when you unwisely asked “Don’t you just love Twilight?”, you know too.

 

       Because there’s a kernel of envy there, it would be easy for you to tell me all my criticisms are borne of envy. (Me, I think some of them hit the target, but then we all think we're right, don't we?)

 

It’s not true, but it’s true enough to shut me up. Now you know! You have the power. This is why I do NOT bring up Twilight anymore and try to change the subject even when goaded. (you know who you are.) I try to avoid Twilight like a dry drunk avoids a bar, but it's hopeless.
 
I write YA paranormal fiction and I am a Mormon momwife living in the Western United States. It is not possible for me to breathe "I'm a writer" without Twilight being invoked. This is why I so rarely breathe "I'm a writer". Everything I write will be compared to Twilight. Period. I understand that publishing is a small world and I should not pee in the sandbox, but, pardon me, it sure seems like someone is peeing in mine, anonymous and humble as it may be.

 

            Having successful writers tell me how ugly it is for me to envy another’s success feels a little like the time I went to church with a half rich, half poor ward. There was a meeting on financial health, which got hijacked by a few of the richest members standing up and one guy literally wagging his finger at stupid poor people like us who couldn’t manage our money well enough to be successful like him. It was like he was sure that *my* penury could somehow irritate him more than it was bothering me. Listen, dude, I'm not enjoying this any more than you are; can we please move on to the place where someone can help me to succeed instead of telling me why I'm so vile because I haven't yet?

 

            My inferiority complex would like to interject something here (as though she hasn't been in control of thise whole screed):

With all her millions of adoring, swirling-eyed fans and her millions of millions of dollars, why does it matter to Stephanie Meyer if I dislike her books or envy her or not?

I’m not even a blip on her radar screen. Of course she looms large in MINE—it’s impossible to write anything YA fiction/paranormal as a Mormon girl now without people invoking the Twilight curse. Often in the form of emails about successful writers with a sort of Post-It “Hey, why don’t you succeed more like THIS?” attached.

And since it doesn't matter to Sister Stephanie, why should it matter to YOU? Are you showing me concern in the form of "tough love"? If this is something that is between me and God, and a sin I need to quit before it hurts me, then how did you get into this conversation? 
 

           
Inferiority complex is done, and I’m putting her back in my Shame Box now. Thank you.

 

            Envy: Yup, you got me! In fact, you could go down the whole list of deadly sins and I’m sure to be guilty of all of them, up to and including Murder, if you were to taste the burnt chicken lunch I fed my long-suffering husband today.

I try to be good, but there are ever so many ways to be bad, and when I'm on autopilot I like to try them all. Including Petulance, Peevishness, Discouragment and Wanting To Have The Last Word.

           

         And they say: Can I just get back to my sad struggling story now? I know it’s nothing anyone else would envy, but it’s mine, and I’d like to go back to being my book’s Holland Mom and plotting weakly on how to glean scraps of success from the megapopular authors' sloppy seconds..

 

Thank you and good day.

 
 
SachikoSays
05 July 2009 @ 06:40 pm

Yesterday my daughters--Slayer's 7, Honeybee's 6--snuggled on the couch with me.

Honeybee said, "Mommy, I love you more than cold cold water."

Slayer, not to be outdone, said, "I love you more than cold cold apple juice!"

Honeybee: "I love you more than the taste of strawberries."

Slayer: "I love you more than raspberries, which are yummier than strawberries."

Honeybee: "I love you up to the moon!"

Slayer: "I love you past the moon."

Honeybee: "I love you more than the whole earth."

Slayer: "I love you past the earth."

Honeybee: "I love you through the whole universe!" (throws her arms out wide)

Honeybee and I looked at Slayer to see what she would come up with.

Slayer paused, raised her eyebrows, and then said, "Mommy....I think I love you as much as I love Daddy."

High praise indeed.
 
 
SachikoSays
03 July 2009 @ 08:29 pm

I just took a quiz at Facebook: The (Real) How Mormon Are You Quiz?

my results:

50% Mormon.
You miss church once in a while, or you might just go to sacrament meeting. You can't stop drinking caffeine and you watch rated R movies. Sometimes you even curse.

The quiz flatters me. I curse ALL the time.

In my defense, I'd like to point out that I met Dragoon at a church dance, like how all good Mormon girls meet their husbands.

(the fact that I was dressed as a succubus is a minor detail...)


 
 
 
SachikoSays
03 July 2009 @ 01:07 pm
Born yesterday morning to my older brother and his wife. Length: 23 inches; Weight: 9 lbs., 13 oz.

(I know, as a veteren of 6 births I am reading those numbers and wincing; my SIL is a hero)

name: (this is the part I love)

Ember Julia Machiko Yvangeline.

Welcome to Earth!
 
 
SachikoSays
03 July 2009 @ 12:50 pm
2156 words today. I really had to grind them out. Only half of them were actual scene snippets. The rest was me arguing with myself over snags in my book's backstory, which I consider bickering with myself in writing and therefore ranking a little below toilet paper, which at least is soft, clean and rational.

I spent the day yesterday on my fundament, reading a trio of Ilona Andrews paperbacks (which are heartily recommended to any of you who liked Buffy, The Vampire Slayer and who gave up on paranormal romance/mystery after Laurel K Hamilton's book but still hold out hope for something more clever and fun)

which was tremendous fun. But it's not free fun--I can't read fiction AND write fiction.

Reading the work of others, especially when I admire and enjoy it, kills my writing mojo. Stalls the engine and I have to take a few days and do a lot of yoga and gardening to get my head back to the knife-edge of humility and arrogance--the arrogance to think that what I have to say is worth hearing, and the humility to get out my very rough first drafts onto an unforgiving black-and-white screen.

I believe our ability to accomplish is proportional to how willing we are to be stupid beginners with not a lot to show for our efforts. I fill that position admirably.

I heard that Dean Koontz wrote a whole slew of novels before any of his got published. I haven't snopes-ed it yet, but let's pretend it's true. Dean Koontz is amazingly prolific now; it's not hard to believe he was amazingly prolific before publishing too.

I am deliberatly exercising faith that if I can keep showing up and eking out my wooden words that someday, maybe tomorrow, maybe next year, maybe longer, a divine finger will touch my words and bring them to life.
But I need to get a lot of wooden words together first.
 
If I can choose a lesson to learn from Dean Koontz' experience--and since when do we get to choose the lessons we learn? We ask for what we want, but we get what we need, which almost always includes more humbling and sacrifice than we wanted to sign up for--anyway, my goal I take from this is to just try to get through this book as quickly as its complicated storyline will allow and on to the next project, and the one after that.

Worst-case scenario: If I can't dazzle them with quality, I'll crush them with quantity.
 
 
SachikoSays
30 June 2009 @ 05:09 pm
I wrote 3000 words today.

Funny--I don't write when afraid that what I write is the stupidest stupid that stupided, and yet once the proof of the stupid is on the page you'd think I'd feel worse. But I don't. I'm just relieved. "Yup, it's stupid all right. OKay! Now I can go play!"

And I just found an Aussie/cowboy hat to wear while I'm writing, ostensibly to give a visual warning to the children that when I'm In The Hat, don't interrupt me unless there's burning, blood or broken bones. But really it's my Stupid hat, worn when I do Stupid Things, like my Stupid Book.

(*I* can call it stupid. It's like black people calling each other n*****. But you can't call it stupid. Just so you know.)
 
 
SachikoSays
29 June 2009 @ 05:44 pm
It's still too soon to say, but I managed to write 2043 words last night, and 2009 today, so the drought *may* be breaking and I'm writing again.

Writing crap, but writing.

Here's my writing goal, as I explained it to my online writing buddies when asked:

...I usually write like a monk illuminates a manuscript. I have an ambitious and well-connected Inner Editor that hardly lets anything through that isn't illuminated manuscript, unless I'm writing at a posting board. Writing online doesn't scare me like writing fiction does.

What I want to do is shown by a part in Spirited Away, where the heroine helps a bloated, stinking spirit nobedy else in the bathhouse will touch. She sees a little wire sticking out, and pulls, and pulls some more, and suddenly, the spirit barfs landfill everywhere.

I don't want to illuminate manuscript. I want to barf landfill.

Then, after lying on my side and panting for a minute, I will get up and sift through the bicycles and tin cans and see if there are any gold nuggets. If I can't find any gold nuggets, then I'll use the bicycles and tin cans and make garbage sculptures. I'd rather have a bunch of big, useful sculpted garbage than one tiny overprotected illuminated manuscript....

So today I threw up just a little in my mouth. Here's to hoping for some big-time regurgitating in the next week.
 
 
SachikoSays
28 June 2009 @ 07:34 pm


Wrestling with writer's block: frustrating.

Blogging about wrestling with writer's block: pathetic.

Searching for something original to say about writer's block: No, thanks, YOU do it.

I know it's irrational. I know it's my fault. I know maybe I could apply some Puritan elbow grease to this thing and just push through if I were Rambo enough.

The stupid thing is, right now I feel like my story is one of the stupider stories ever thought up, a waste of time for all who would read or write it. Which you'd think would take the pressure OFF, because if I already know it sucks, then how much worse can my writing make it?

Oy, uff da, &%*$#!

 
 
SachikoSays
26 June 2009 @ 03:10 pm
Hobbit + self-tanner = Oompa-Loompa.

Good thing I like chocolate.
 
 
SachikoSays
26 June 2009 @ 03:09 pm
After a long hiatus, I am back.

We bought a house and moved out of the ward with the bishop who did not want me to write.

I still haven't named my house.

We are even yet unpacking and somewheres around here is my wit. Hopefully I will find it soon.
 
 
SachikoSays
29 May 2008 @ 03:55 am
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. DH and I saw it and liked it.

The guy who plays Trumpkin is fantastic. I never liked the character in the book half so much as I liked him in the movie! His eyes and voice were so expressive, despite (or because of?) the dwarf makeup, and he created a wonderful wary, reluctantly optimistic person from the less-well developed character in the book.

My favorite scene:

(do I post a spoiler warning? I mean...we've all read the book....)

where Edmund "kills" the White Witch. Not because he's shown up his brother, but because of the drama in the moment where there stand a magnificent High King and a Narnian Prince, and they are both transfixed by the promises of the White Witch--and are saved by the lesser King, who once was a traitor and was saved by Aslan and isn't so easily decieved now.

My only complaint for now would be how suddenly the movie ended...DH and I felt a bit bereft, as though we, too, were suddenly too old for Narnia. I suppose I could snark about this or that, but I prefer not to do that about movies. They're expensive enough as it is that complaining about a movie I can't get my money back for seems to result in nothing but making myself feel bad. 

Not that that's an issue here. I'm not damning the movie with faint praise like "I didn't have to try VERY hard to like this (unlikeable) movie." I think this movie was very easy on the eyes and ideology.

I'm holding off on taking my kids until after we see the movie. We're reading the whole series out loud right now for school, one chapter a day. We've smoked through MN, we're almost done with L,W,&W and will start on H&HB late next week.

My kids are all 8 and under, so they regard movies as the authoritative treatment, which has resulted in many arguments while reading scenes in the books that differ from the film treatment.

Which makes me wonder about something else--how different the fantasy world is for my children, that, for them, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord Of The Rings will always be seen as movies first, and books second. They'll not know the wonder of reading the books and then glorying in the shared-world feeling that comes when what was a cherished inner memory becomes a huge bright, loud cinematic experience.

OTOH, maybe seeing movies first inoculates them against the wistful betrayel one feels when one's favorite scenes are left out or misinterpreted onto film. 

Well, anyway, it was great, and you all should go see it, so that Disney will keep making these movies. My favorite story is The Last Battle and I very, very much want to see it on the screen

After the movie I got my hair trimmed. I had it razor-cut back in Boise last October, and by now it looked like someone had run my head through a lawnmower--let me pause while I shudder at the mental image of lawnmower violence--and now it's a little sleeker. 

We went to Barnes and Noble and wandered the shelves before leaving, empty-handed, a scarce half-hour later.  It seemed like half the YA fic and sf/f shelves were Laurell K. Hamilton/ Stephanie Meyer knockoffs anyway.
One sassy supernatural heroine after another...I'm starting to feel sass-logged. And this from a person who named her oldest daughter after Buffy Summers. 

It's a wonder that the fictional leather clothiers manage to keep a stock of ladies' wear at all, what with all those vampire slayers/dark angels/werewolves/cyberpunk grrls/lioness knights/necromancers/Sidhe lady detectives running around saving the world through being sexy and dangerous and romantically pursued by several men (and sometimes women) at a time.

One of the books we saw cut right to the punch and had a silhouette on it reminiscent of the female outline one sees sometimes on the mudflaps of semis and was entitled "The Demon Karma Sutra". Dragoon snickered when he saw that one. 

I checked in at the baby-name books (I'm a Name Spotter--and you would be, too, if you'd named 6 kids in the last 8 years) and they had nuttin'. 

(off-topic baby name aside: Amazon is the place to go for baby name books, though I've read through most available baby names books several times each. I'll tell you right now--I prefer the Pamela Rosenkrantz ones, though they are more East Coast-oriented and seem to ignore Asian names. The Baby Name Wizard is great and I think it works. Bruce Lansky, meh. I am interested in Japanese names--well, duh--and rule-of-thumb in books that purport to include Japanese names is, if it includes "Leiko", usually with a note that it means "arrogant" in Japanese, then that book has poor sources and doesn't know what it's talking about. I've never seen the name Lieko in the other Japanese babynaming sources I scour. After hundreds of man-hours considering baby names, my tastes run to neo-Puritan virtue names and flagship ethnic names. I think the best source for baby names is coming up with something you like, and then Googling it to make sure there aren't any naughty YouTube stars with that name.)

Books being the food of the mind seem to be following suit with gas and grocery prices and seem to rise all the time. That, or I've got a serious case of the "but when I was a kid all sci-fi paperbacks were $3.99".

I look at the prices and think about all the school supplies I could buy for my kids instead. Ten hardbacks = one Rosetta Stone language course for the whole family. The exception to the sticker-shock rule are the very affordable paperback Charlie & Lola books from the wonderful Lauren Child. 

My children adore those books and we're actually able to buy more than one at a time without feeling terrible financial guilt, not to mention hunger from dropping half the week's grocery budget into the front register at the bookstore. Which is what happened last time I indulged my impatience and bought a Terry Goodkind book in hardback for Dragoon and me. 

Libraries are pretty good about having new hardbacks ready; it's worth $27.95 to me to wait a bit until my holds are ready at the local library. If I didn't have the library, though, it would be a hard call. Even so, my library considers me a parolee. My late fines cost as much as a hardback sometimes. *blush*


 
 
 
SachikoSays
24 May 2008 @ 12:17 pm

Orson Scott Card wrote a short story about a woman who chooses to live her perfect day, over and over, and shows the horror of making time stand still. 

Even with that cautionary tale in mind, I wouldn't mind living yesterday over again for a few weeks. 

The morning went well--I just started doing Body-For-Life. No, it's not a cult (I'm Mormon, a homeschooler, and used to sell Mary Kay; I'm maxed out on cults for now). I won't tell you what it is, because you can Google that yourself, and I hate sounding like a cheesy commercial.

In any case, it's really working for me, and I've already lost weight and seen an increase in strength and energy. 

So, yesterday morning, I lifted weights. Then I watched my friend Frau's kids while she ran errands and we all cleaned the house. (I love having a clean house.)

Then we packed corndogs and carrot sticks and put Cherry Blossom and Moose into the double stroller, and walked a mile down the footpath by the river and had school out in the fresh, Russian-olive scented air. There were birds tweet-tweetering while I read a chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the kids. Then we played for an hour.

After we got home, Chief, my 8 year old boy, was permitted to play Zoombinis while everyone else in the house took a nap. I want to include neon lights around this: I GOT A NAP. 

Dragoon got home before six, while I was packing some chicken and spinach wraps to take with us on errands on our way to Dragoon's Dad's house out in the sticks half an hour from our house.

And at my FIL's house was......

PUPPIES!

Goldie the golden lab had three puppies earlier this week. I got to hold one--a tiny, blind, squeaky, silky little nurser. 

In no time at all they'll have their eyes and ears open, and will be bounding in fat seesaws across my FIL's lawn. 

My FIL's dogs are wonderful; they are smart and gentle, and his only regret about the puppies is that there weren't more of them, because puppies from FIL's dogs are in great demand among people who know him. 

I know, I know, we should never breed dogs, we should all go to the pound and get abandonded doggie orphans, I know.....but that's for another entry. Suffice it to say, I think parentage is important for knowing what kind of dog you're getting, and I am really careful about making sure the dog that's around my babies is a known (and trained) quantity. I'll take chances with other dogs when my kids are older.

Then FIL saddled up one of his horses for the kids. We are over there once a week and he's been teaching Buffy, my 6 year old daughter, how to ride. Chief tried, but he's too nice and horses are very quick about knowing who they can boss around. 

Buffy, OTOH, is a natural alpha, and always has been, and has a great time perched way up there on the tall muscled monsters my FIL prefers.

Then FIL saddled up another horse and pushed Dragoon and me out the door to go ride out on the sagebrush while he gave our five kids root beer floats.

It was a beautiful night; not too hot, not too cold, and the sagebrush smelled sweet and green. We rode up into the foothills and looked out into the rural canyon where my FIL's property is. 

Horseback riding with your honey sounds like an innately romantic thing, but really it's a lot of trying to get horses to stop racing each other, and horses nickering to each other about the idiots on their backs, and saying "Whoa!" and "Stop that" and coughing when the horse in front sends a particularly potent puff of methane into your face. 

But. other than that, it was pretty good. I see now why cowboys wear those boots. My Birkenstocks weren't very helpful for horseback riding. 

This morning was perfect, too. I caught the 7 am session at my temple, and got home in time to make smoothies for the children, and now Dragoon and I are getting the kids and house ready for us to go on a date and go see Prince Caspian.

I think I must secretly be a Calvinist, because all this perfection is spooking me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful too. I am VERY grateful. But it sets such a standard. Now that I've had a wonderful day or two, will every other day pale in comparison? Will I engage in self-recrimination when I read this entry a month or a year from now, because I think I should have the stars align like this every week?

Maybe I'm just borrowing trouble.

Well, anyway...the perfect day. I really liked it. 

(I mean, dude........puppies!)

 
 
SachikoSays
16 May 2008 @ 12:59 pm
Dragoon and I are old. We know this, because appliances make us happy.
 
Last week a jovial Dragoon called me from work to tell me to take off my apron and put on some shoes. 

"I found a lawnmower on Craigslist," he said. "It's a really good deal, so I'm coming home early to grab Sherman and you guys and we can drive out to get it."

It wasn't until after I'd buckled the ducklings into Sherman the Suburban and we were on the freeway that Dragoon told me about the lawnmower--a little 5 horsepower engine mower.

"No no no," I said. "I want a push mower."

"This is a push mower," Dragoon said. "It's not self-propelled."

"No," I said, "a Push Mower is one of those lawn mowers without an engine at all. Just squeaky little blades and a handle."

Pause. "Oh," Dragoon said. Then, "You're sure you really don't want a motor?"

"Are you kidding me?" I said. 

I could see the warring factions in Dragoon's face as he considered this. The Engineer was insisting he show his love for me in buying the best, fanciest tool possible, and in urging me to do the job the Right Way. The Pragmatist reminded him that, after all, if he gets the tool Sachiko wants, then Sachiko's more likely to do the job. 

Dragoon hates mowing the lawn, a loathing formed by the lawnmowing business he had as a teenager and refined by the Gestapo-mandated lawn mowing from our 7 years in military housing.

In the end the Pragmatist won, and Dragoon took the next exit off the freeway and drove us to Home Depot, where he bought me the lawn mower I wanted.

It's narrow, and light, and very simple. You push; the wheel turns; the blades cut the grass. Perfect.

I never thought I would get excited about appliances or power tools. Not only because I'd always hoped to stay "with it", but also because I hate and fear appliances, as a rule. 

It took me 3 years to work up the courage to use our vacuum cleaner--3 years after Dragoon and I got married. I still cower in the corner when Dragoon flips on the garbage disposal. I don't use regular lawnmowers. I hate driving, I avoid buttons, and I ignore remotes. It's a stretch for me to even be writing a journal here online on these newfangles computer thingies, and even so I'm not very adept at it. Imagine the scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home where Scotty's speaking into the mouse, and you're there. 

Like most people, I blame my father. 

He was landed with three of the more boneheaded and persnickety kids around--my 2 older brothers and me--and had to go a little overboard when impressing upon us the need for safety.

When I was 5, Dad introduced me to the garbage disposal with this: 

Dad: "Remember in Star Wars when Darth Vader's light saber cuts off Luke's hand?"

Young Sachiko: (nodding)

Dad: "That's what will happen to your hand if you ever turn this on!"

Young Sachiko: (eyes get huge)


Dad took the same tack with warning me away from the lawnmower. He told me that if I went near the lawn when he was cutting the grass, the lawn mower blades would take off my leg or arm, with much gushing of blood.

He never warned me away from the vacuum cleaner. That fear was my own deduction--it's big, it's loud, and it sucks things into a dirty netherworld. Fear it! 

Seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey confirmed what I'd always secretly suspected: that machines all have a mind of their own, and they don't like us. To my mind, rampancy is only the scientist's term for when machines get demonically possessed, and given enough time, all machines will get possessed.

I don't know how much of my Gadget-Aversion is related to my dysgraphia, or the relationship between my dysgraphia and my family dynamics.

You've heard of hemophilia, where in some the disease manifests, and in others, it's just carried along in the gene...? I am a Geek Carrier.

My father has (among other degrees) a degree in mathematics and was a computer programmer for the military at Cheyenne Mountain way back when computers filled a whole room. My older brothers are math/computer geeks. I married a programmer/gamer/auto mechanic/battery geek. My son, Chief, took his first steps in order to reach a PlayStation 2 controller. He was using a computer well before he could talk or stop pooping in his pants ,and beat HALO 1 by the time he was 4.

I am surrounded by engineers, and am as un-engineerly as you can get. In other words: I am my family's Muggle. 

It doesn't help that I'm also a youngest daughter, surrounded by oldest sons--my father, brother, husband and son are all typical oldest boys. They feel I am bad at math just to annoy them. 

Through school I tested, in the soft subjects  consistiently in the 99th%--except in math, which hovered around moron level. 

My intelligence is non-quantifiable, and not in a good way. 

My father and brothers tried, oh they tried, to cultivate my inner Dilbert. I was given every chance.

I was gifted with watches and clock radios with a space-shuttle-like array of buttons, but for me, the time was always 12:00.  My family had a personal computer way back in 1985, before most people had one, and I tried to keep up with my brothers, playing their games and programming in LOGO. In junior high, I joined Mathletes and I read Stephen Hawking. I have seen every single episode of Star Trek: TNG at least twice.  

I was told that girls could do whatever they wanted, which really means, Why aren't you better at physics? 

And, now, as a wife, Why can't you mow the lawn like a normal person?

I feel sorry for my family. They wanted a Samantha Carter; instead they got a Laura Ingalls. 

Lucky for me, Dragoon is pretty tolerant of it. He likes to tell people that I'm so math-deficient that I married him for his money. 

Dragoon also was raised in a time-warp (he acts like a guy from the fifties) by my athletic, outdoorsy father-in-law, who was raised on a dairy farm, by a World War 2 Marine. Which means Dragoon has a lot of respect for "the old-fashioned way", though he'd rather not personally live it. 

But he shows his love for me in letting me live in my little atechnological halfway house I've built around myself. 

He lets me drive they way I want to, even though my route is longer and less efficient.

 He picks up cash for me, for household budgeting, instead of insisting I do it his way, online. We tried having me budget online like he does, but I apparently cannot understand that even though electronic funds are theoretical, they are not unlimited. We briefly considered using Monopoly money as a stand-in for cash, and then realized that simply using cash would be simpler. At this point, Dragoon is just grateful I understand cash, and don't attempt to barter with livestock. 

He sets the clocks and watches, and keeps our home computer network running, and when the cars break down, he makes them go.

And, out of love and tolerance, he quiets his inner Engineer, and he buys me the lawnmower I want, instead of the high-tech lawn mower that would do the job faster. 

And that's what really excites me about the power tools and appliances Dragoon has bought for both of us. It's that he makes the ultimate sacrifice a geek can make: He choose obsolesence, for the sake of the woman he loves. 









 
 
 
SachikoSays
16 May 2008 @ 12:10 pm
 I used to worry that people would think we were too weird, until I realized that that was an accurate assessment, and the sooner we all get used to it, the better. 

I also used to worry that people would attribute my kids' idiosyncracies to their being homeschooled, but I know my children would be just as interesting if they were public schooled. They'd just get beat up more often.

So, unless the children put a four-letter word into a talk--and I wouldn't put it past them--I try not to lead the witness and I tie my own hands and take dictation without alteration.

Our ward's Primary is small (our kids moving in increased membership by 25%) and junior and senior classes have Sharing Time together. Talks and prayers are assigned alphabetically, so last Sunday on Mother's Day, my oldest three were asked to do all the speaking, praying, testifying and reciting.

The theme was "Heavenly Father planned for me to come to a family." We told the kids to talk about family, and then let the chips fall where they might.

Honeybee was first:

“Heavenly Father planned for me to come to a family. I can strengthen my family now.”

 

I have a mom, and a dad, and 2 brothers and 2 sisters.  I am 4 years old.

 

We are all different. We have different names and different hair. We are all good at different things.

 

(Chief) is good at computer games and he is gentle and kind.

 

(Buffy) paints pictures and is smart at math.

 

My mom says I am cute and happy about things. I have enthusiasm.

 

I like it when my family sews together and eats candy together and reads Narnia together.

 

 I help my family by cleaning and jumping around being happy. I try to be nice to my sister even if she is mean to me.

 

Jesus wants us to be nice to our family even when they’re mean. And we should help clean and be happy, too.

 

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. 


Then it was Buffy's turn to bear her testimony:

I know God is true.

 

One time I was very violent. So Mom had to hold me down. But when I got a blessing from my dad, I became much better.

 

I know God is true because He gave the power to my dad to put his hands on my head and bless me.

 

And I know that if you are very violent, then you will need a blessing. You should ask God for help and then He will help you.

 

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Then 8yo dear son Chief got up to read a scripture, and Dragoon realized that nobody had told him WHAT scripture to read. 

As it turned out, Chief did find a scripture having to do family. He opened his scrips and began reading,
"And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bare Cain..."

Finally he finished up with "Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him", smiled, and sat down.

Buffy's testimony was just a little cringe-worthy, but  but last year while we were still living in Boise, one of my kids was assigned to give a talk about their favorite scripture story. Honeybee chose--it's every kid's favorite--Ammon cutting off the sheep-rustling Lamanites' arms. 

Chief and Buffy got excited and involved and wanted to help Honeybee. They all immediately made visual aids. They traced their arms, and colored and cut them out, and used red poster paint on the torn-paper ends, and there you have it: paper severed arms. 

Buffy, the oldest girl, grabbed one of the PVC/duct tape swords Dragoon makes for our kids, and while Honeybee gave her talk, Buffy acted it out, waving her sword behind her and spilling the paper severed arms out of a tote bag.

It was actually one of the proudest moments of my mothering career to date, my older daughters working together to combine Sharing Time with Sam Peckinpah. 

Likewise, I'm proud of Chief for managing to stay on-topic with his scripture. Granted, his scripture selection may not have been what the Primary Presidency had in mind when they assigned him, but I think procreation and fratricide cover the human family experience.  
 



 



 
 
SachikoSays

Most families have a stripper. My family had me.

One of the favorite stories in the family saga happened when I was a small girl and we were living in Japan. As the story goes, I took off all my clothes and climbed some trees in the middle of the cul-de-sac, and had to be escorted back to our cinderblock house by snickering Japanese construction workers. 

When I was seven, I reached a compromise with my parents, and began wearing a swimsuit all the time as a concession to modesty.

I suspect part of the problem was that I was a child with that kind of annoying telekinesis that recoils from tags, seams, and impure cottons. Some of my kids have inherited this (Hanibess is our stripper) but clothes are comfier these days. Look at tagless tees. Since my 80’s childhood, some clothiers have finally realized that children aren't oversized dolls to be shoved into polyester outfits with huge knife-like seams, but, aha, actual people, who would appreciate a fiber that breathes and a non-binding inseam.

So as a kid I decided that if it weren't comfy, then I weren't wearin' it. My parents were likely eager to prevent temper tantrums associated with kinesthetic oversensitivity, hence, the swimsuit. 

20 years later, the swimsuit compromise seems to have worked. I began adding to my small pool of clothes I would wear, and now I’m an adult, and I mostly keep my clothes on. My parents couldn't be prouder. 

However there is a vexing irony in the commandment to “Keep Modest!”: Motherhood.

I began young adulthood at 19 when Chief, my 8 year old son, was born. I had just spent the last 15 years at church with “Keep Modest!” thundering down. (15 years to account for the years as a toddler when I ignored modesty, and the years as a teenager when I similarly ignored modesty. It wasn’t that I didn’t hear the lessons on modesty, I just didn’t listen to them.:

So it was traumatic to my dignity to give birth. ALL the bits I had been told to keep under wraps were right there, in front of strangers. In front of strangers a LOT. It was horrifying, up till I was uncomfortable enough that I didn’t care anymore., at which I point I felt simply taken advantage of.  

Once Chief was safely out, I thought, “Phew! That’s the end of it! I can forget about this whole embarrassing episode.”

Until the lactation consultant came into the room and "consulted" me right out of my hospital top. She was personally handling my very personal personal-ness before I had a chance to say with indignation, “Excuse me, do I know you?”

And you parents of small children out there are laughing at me, because you know that's still not the end of it. The Great Immodesty of giving birth and learning to breastfeed (sorry, "nurse", other ladies at church don't like me to throw around "breast" too much) is but a prelude to an entire immodesty-based lifestyle--from nursing a regurgitating newborn that makes wearing a shirt pointless, to shoving a post-partum body into clothes suddenly too small and too tight, to never going to the john or taking a shower alone again. 

And that’s just MY motherhood-related immodesty. That doesn’t even begin to cover (I have a weakness for puns) the immodesty of taking small people with you everywhere. Besides the way children like to loudly discuss genitalia in public, including visual demonstrations, or loudly comment on the size of Mommy’s rear end in a public restroom, some small children, when they are upset, like to begin stripping their clothes off and throwing them, like a mix of aggrieved Israelite rending his garment and a monkey throwing its—er, throwing whatever it has at hand.

 I have some of those small children. It’s like a bad martial arts movie around here, the way shirts fly off of chests.

I have wondered if nudists would have an easier time adjusting to the realities of parenting. I briefly considered it, but when I thought about how often I cook burgers and bacon, I decided to stick with clothes for now. Besides, Dragoon doesn't grok nudity. He's always cold as it is, and he's too ethnic British to be running around in the noodypants without convulsing in embarassment. If I were to go naked-with-no-clothes-on, then I would be a lone woman in the Garden of Eden.

All of this is to explain why, for me, modesty has always been, to me, an exotic and confusingly elastic concept. 

 
 
SachikoSays
01 May 2008 @ 09:17 pm
8 year old Chief has discovered the sardonic magic of finger quotes.

He's homeschooled and the oldest child, which means pretty nearly ANY really obnoxious behavior is something he's gotten from me or Dragoon. It's easier to blame Dragoon, since Chief is Dragoon's Mini-Me.

This is one of the few bad habits of which I can pinpoint the conception.

It all began two years ago right after Dragoon and I moved to Boise. 

Our beloved Sherman the Suburban was low on windshield wiper fluid. Windshield wipers on dry glass is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me, so having plenty of wiper fluid is one of my mental health priorities.

Dragoon said, "Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it."

So the next time I got into Sherman to drive, I was all jazzed about having an abundance of wiper fluid to jet, Italian fountain-like, onto the windshield.

Except.....nothing. 

Denied! 

Wipers on dry glass! 

Arrrrggggghhhhh!

Once the full-body shudders were over, I fumed quietly and made a mental note to ask Dragoon, acidly, what exactly became of that promised wiper fluid?

"What are you talking about?" Dragoon said later. "I filled it up!"

"Well, I kept pressing the lever, and nothing was coming out. Again and again." I said, wringing my hands. 

"No no, I filled up the little tank with the car Windex," he insisted. "Look, here's the empty jug."

And I thought, "Ahhh, problem solved, no more dry wipers" and then.....scccccrrrrrith, sccccrrrrrith, sccccccrrrrrritch....

This went on for months. Months, I tell you. 

At one point, Dragoon popped the hood and showed me the wiper fluid tank, which, sure enough, was slightly overfilled.

"Look!" he said, helplessly. "It's all right there!"

"It's not coming OUT!" I wailed. 

Dragoon's eyes narrowed. "There must be something wrong with the delivery system," he said.

"Admit it," I said. "This is another one of your practical jokes, isn't it?"

His face took on a wistful grin and he said, "Naw.....but that's a good idea..."

 Then one of our kids screamed--that only happens every .8 seconds around here--and we ran back into the house from the garage where we'd been huddling on a 5-minute date. 

6 months later: we're driving to church. The sky is drizzling on the dust-encrusted windshield. 

"Hey, Granny, can't you drive any faster?" Dragoon said. "We're going to miss Primary."

"I can't see!" I said. "Look!" I pointed to the grey-brown rivulets sludging across the glass.

"Ah," he said, "That would be what the wiper fluid is for."

"What wiper fluid?" I shot him a glare. "The alleged wiper fluid you've been teasing me with for the past 6 months?"

"I told you, I filled it up."

"I told you, it's not working."

Dragoon looked thoughtfully at the steering column. "Try it again."

"I've tried. Last month I tried. Last week I tried. I tried and I've given up," I said. "I can't go back there again. You can't make me."

"Just try it," he said, and he leaned back to get a good view of my hands.

With a flourish and a pointed look, I pressed down on the windshield wiper lever. The wipers dragged across the silt on the glass.

"See?" I said. 

"Uh huh," he said. He leaned over. "And have you tried....this?"

He took the same lever I'd been hammering down in frustration for months, and....he twisted it.

Twin aqua jets of fluid leapt eagerly out and immediately cleaned the filthy windshield.

I looked down at the lever, and gave it an experimental twist. 

Again, the aqua jets, desperate to please, leapt out and began wetly squeaking--ahhh blessed sound of moisture--several month's worth of windshield guk off the glass. "Why didn't you use us sooner?" the jets of fluid seemed to ask with each clean pass. "We have been awaiting our purpose for lo these many moons!"

Sheepishly, I looked over at Dragoon. Who was doubled over in the passenger seat, purple with mirth. 

He didn't stop laughing until--no, actually, he's still laughing. 

And now, whenever  I insist something has to be done thusly, all he has to do is say, with a twinkle in his eye, (actually, his EYES--whatever his ogre-ish tendencies, I didn't marry a Cyclops) "Kinda like the windshield wiper fluid?"

This happened again, a few months ago, a year after the Wiper Fluid Fiasco. 

Once again, Dragoon was yukking it up, miming the look of shock on my face when the wiper fluid suddenly worked.

I said, heatedly, "It's an honest mistake! I just didn't know the lever did that!"

Dragoon said, using finger quotes, "Technically, it's 'your car'."

I said, using finger quotes, "Technically, 'shut up'."

Little master chiefs have big ears--our 8 year old son was lapping it up and when I said "'shut up'", a phrase that is forbidden in our home (forbidden meaning our kids try really hard to say it all the time) Chief roared.

So now, thanks to my verbal indiscretion, Chief delights in finger quotes for everyday communications. 

"I think I'll 'make some breakfast'."

"Hurry up, Mom, it's time for me to 'go to Scouts'."

"Okay, mom," he said. "I'm going to go (pause) 'clean my room'."

Go "clean your room"? THAT sounds ominous. Thank heavens he hasn't hit puberty yet. 

Still, it isn't as bad as that time he loudly swore in Primary....

 
 
 
 

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